Recently, we had chance to catch up with close friend, Dianna Bautista with Shear Love International for an episode on The Mike Thakur Show.

Dianna’s a rock star who’s committed her life to rescuing and helping people trapped in human trafficking and the sex slave industry. Through our in-house, nonprofit partner the Gabriel Project, we’ve supported Dianna for years. They don’t just help and rescue, but they teach, educate and retrain the people they help with new, meaningful skills that translate to earning a living wage so these folks never return back to the lives they came from.

Although it’s great to think about giving all through the year, it’s especially encouraging that there is one special day, right around the Thanksgiving holiday, where everybody chooses to think just a little bit harder, and a little bit more intentionally, about the value of being generous, being thankful, and being able to give to help others…

Have you ever wondered why so many of the Fortune 500, along with an overwhelmingly high percentage of small to mid sized businesses lease or rent office space instead of buying it?

Often times, it’s easy to look at the expense like an individual would look at their home lease and think ‘oh, I’m spending $xxx each month that could be going into equity if I just bought a home instead’. It’s an easy mistake to make, but let me break down why it could be one of the worst decisions you could ever make for your business.

Sure, subleasing office space sounds like a great idea…

“Don’t go and spend money on an office space, I’ve got a spare room at my office you can just work out of!” they said.

I’ve heard it from friends, clients and even suppliers. They all claim they can save money but in reality, the opportunity cost and risks involved can be more than you think. Before you jump in on what looks like the best deal on earth, here’s 5 things to be mindful of to protect your business today, and tomorrow.

I’ve got to be honest here, before creating WorkLodge I was one of those folks that would go chair shopping and pick whatever I could find, as long as it was less than a couple hundred dollars. I’d look at one, maybe sit in it for a few seconds and that was the extent of my research.

When we started working on this business, I started to dig a little deeper because I knew our goal was to deliver a premium experience and level of quality, and I figured there must be more to the chair ‘thing’ than I knew.

Our founder built WorkLodge because the whole work from home thing wasn’t really working. It’s noisy and distracting. It’s challenging when the kids don’t understand it’s “work time” and it’s unproductive when you’re bombarded with distractions, by the hour and sometime by the minute. To cap it off, losing that separation of home life and work life wreaks havoc on those around you! The idea of working from home sounds great, but there was a reason office space was invented in the first place.