We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Katherine Lake. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Katherine below.

Katherine, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. If you could go back in time do you wish you had started your business sooner or later

How do you decide when to start a business? Is there a “perfect” time – a time when it is clear to take a risk and do something completely different?

During my first 30 working years, I was an employee of various organizations. Large and small, public, private, and governmental – I saw it all! On and off, I’d play around with the idea of how great it would be to run my own business. I loved the idea of being able to design and do things the way I believed they should be done. Control, at last!

And yet, as I look back, I don’t think I ever “seriously” considered being a small business owner. It’s fun to dream and talk about an idea, but until you take steps towards a goal or dream, are you seriously considering it?

I was comfortable receiving my regular paycheck and living life as it presented itself. It seemed to be a low-risk way to navigate my days. But paychecks . . . and jobs . . . are never guaranteed. What appeared to be a low-risk way to navigate life was simply a mirage.

The mirage of my life started revealing itself when the company I had worked at for ten years ran out of cash. We survived the economic downturn of 2008-2009, but we weren’t strong enough to last more than another four years.

I moved into an interesting and challenging new position, prepared to stay for a decade. What I didn’t realize is that the leadership of that company had much different plans. They were busy positioning themselves to acquire another company, a publicly-traded company, and then merge the two. Once these plans were announced, I could see the handwriting on the wall – I wouldn’t have a position for long. I had been there less than a year, and the thought of another job search was discouraging.

As I had before, I reached out to my family and friends and asked them to let me know of any job opportunities they might know about. A good friend, who had also been my teacher, wrote back and asked me why I was not starting a business instead.

Me? Own a business? What would I do? Was this something I could succeed at doing? I was plagued by fear, uncertainty, and doubt.

What got my feet on the road to progress was taking a primary step – attending a class about how to start a business. Once I stepped foot in that classroom, the momentum of the idea, the dream, took over! I began to see the possibilities and ways to address the uncertainties. The momentum continued to build as I committed to developing a business plan. There is power in writing things down!

My journey began over eight years ago. It hasn’t been easy, and there have been painful moments along with joyous ones. But, for me, the right time to start a business was when the pain of inaction was greater than my fear of failure.

Katherine, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Kate Lake is a long-term employee who became a small business owner after 35 years of working for others. Her passion for business and love of helping people administratively led her to open My Office & More in 2015.

My Office & More provides a place to work and meet for entrepreneurs, freelancers, road warriors, remote employees, and small businesses. In this professional, shared business environment, people benefit from having the same business tools and a productive atmosphere as larger companies without having to make significant capital commitments.

Kate has worked for small-, medium-, and large-size companies. One of her most exciting positions was as the administrative assistant to the president of Disney Cruise Line during its start-up years. The position gave her access to senior corporate executives and celebrities who needed a high level of administrative support to ensure they could stay productive. Kate’s ambition is to offer the same administrative support to all businesspeople, whether they are Fortune 100 senior executives or not.

In addition to work experience, Kate has undergraduate degrees in secretarial administration, accounting, and business information systems from Robert Morris University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Later she received her Master of Business Administration (accounting emphasis) from Florida Southern College in Lakeland, Florida.

My Office & More is housed in a 112-year-old building that combines historic charm with modern furniture, technology, and convenience. Private offices are arranged around the perimeter of the second floor, with coworking desks in the middle.

Three different conference rooms can accommodate a variety of meetings for up to 49 people. The positive, neutral meeting space enables companies of any size to conduct off-site meetings conveniently located in downtown Lakeland, Florida. Since Lakeland is midway between Orlando and Tampa, Florida, it is the ideal, centralized meeting place for companies to host gatherings and corporate meetings.

Do you have multiple revenue streams – if so, can you talk to us about those streams and how your developed them?

One of Kate’s work experiences was for a small business owner. There she learned how important it is for every business to develop multiple streams of income. When there is more than one way to bring cash into your business, you reduce the risk of running out of cash if the main stream of income dips or dries up.

In Kate’s business, the primary income stream is memberships – bundled services that have contractual commitments of three, six, or twelve months. Each service is also available individually on an ala carte basis. For example, someone can purchase a business mailing address alone or as part of a membership.

Other income streams include the rental of conference rooms and various administrative services, including notaries, copies, and shredding. Because Kate’s corporation owns the physical building, there is also rental income from the tenants.

Any fun sales or marketing stories?

When Kate’s business was less than two years old, she experienced a financial crisis that almost forced her to close the business. One of her members had five office memberships – nearly a third of her total number of offices – and they decided to close their Florida location. They fired or relocated their local team and planned to walk away from the contract. At the same time, another member ended their membership because he got a new job out of the area, and an additional member had to terminate his membership because his business ran out of cash.

Kate was faced with a financial catastrophe – the revenue of half of her offices, the principal income for her business, disappeared practically overnight! Worse, at the same time this happened, she received a call from her banker that they would not renew her line of credit. The original collateral for the loan was her home which she sold to start the business. When the loan came up for renewal, the bank decided to reduce its financial risk and didn’t renew the credit line.

Fortunately for Kate, she had hired a sales coach when she first started the business, and he just happened to call right after she got the news about the non-renewal of the line of credit. After listening quietly to her story and fears, he asked her one question. “What are you going to do about it?” His question stopped her as she pondered what he was asking her. What did he mean? “Kate, there is one sure way out of this problem – start selling! What are you going to do?”

What her coach was getting at was that she had been procrastinating. He taught her how to do cold call selling, but she had not acted. Now she had a new choice – either face business failure or face rejection in making cold calls. When she considered these choices, it was clear what she had to do. She committed to spending the following week making 100 phone calls using the techniques her coach had taught her. Then the next week, she made another 75 phone calls.

Each day began the same way – dread at spending a day on the phone, facing rejection after rejection. Each day ended the same way – exhilaration thanks to successfully surviving the many instances of rejection! Despite feeling invincible by the end of the day, she started the following day with dread, knowing that more rejection was about to follow.

But then an amazing thing happened! She had left a message for the person who was the 173rd call. He called back and said he was looking for an office and was glad she had reached out! Within two weeks, he began his new office membership.

As her sales coach pointed out, sales is a numbers game. The key is to speak with enough people to find the ones who need your product or solution.

The momentum of that win and the experience of having successfully navigated the sales process on a daily basis gave Kate the momentum she needed to find people to fill the rest of her offices and keep the business running. The company is now over seven years old, but she never forgets that ACTION is the best antidote to fear.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.MyOfficeandMore.com
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/myofficeandmore
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katemyofficeandmore/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/MyOfficeandMore
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFjHhcqQSP2HXehIKRFiQKw
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/my-office-and-more-lakeland

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