San Diego is a great place to do business, the number of big and small companies that are flocking to the city to set up shop should be evidence of that. This city is quickly joining the ranks of bigger cities like New York, Chicago and Los Angeles for startup and entrepreneurial success. CEOs are choosing to relocate their companies here in spite of the fact that it is one of the most expensive places in the country to live and work.

A lot of CEOs and small business owners, in an attempt to save their companies some money, are choosing to allow their employees to work from home, at least part time. As we stated in this article (and infographic), allowing employees to work from home has some benefits but it isn’t the magical cure to budget issues that others have touted.

So what do you do? If you want to save money but still have a beautiful office in a thriving neighborhood?

1. Second Hand is the Best Hand

It sounds trivial, but secondhand furniture is a great place to find savings when you need to furnish and outfit your office space. Even in San Diego (a city not known for its thrift) you can buy used furniture for a fraction of the cost that you’d spend on new pieces. A great practice is to buy used furniture and then fix it up yourself so that it looks brand new. You can rub scratches out of wood with a walnut. You can apply a coat of chalk paint to create a shabby chic look.

No exaggeration–you could easily save thousands of dollars on furniture by going used.

2. Go Green to Save Green

Here’s the great thing about embracing the green movement: it saves your company money (and can even reduce its tax liability). Here are some things that you can do to go green and reduce your overhead costs:

• Install motion detectors in your offices so that the lights will shut off automatically when someone leaves.
• Install low flow toilets and sinks.
• Offer solar chargers for laptops, tablets, phones, etc—to reduce the amount of A/C power your employees draw.
• Instead of disposable cups, dishes, etc in your break room and near your water cooler, furnish your space with reusable mugs, etc. Install an energy friendly dishwasher so that there won’t be any fighting over whose turn it is to do the dishes.
• Go as close to paperless as possible. Apple and Microsoft are often happy to work out cost effective deals for CEOs who want to supply their workforce with tablets (yes, a bulk order is expensive now but it saves you lots of money over the long haul).

Use one of these fantastic, easy and creative ways to reduce waste and go green in your office.

3. Encourage Individuality

Instead of decorating everybody’s offices or office spaces for them, encourage your employees to decorate their own spaces with their own art and other items. This reduces your cost and shows that you value your employees’ individualities—i.e. you’re not trying to create a drone or overly corporatize the environment.

Have you had to outfit an office from scratch on a tiny budget? What did you do to project a professional appearance on a “broke college student” budget?

Image/freedigitalphotos.net