The advantages of having a virtual office in Lisbon.

Do you remember your childhood dreams? At that time, you certainly dreamed of having your own car and imagined yourself behind a steering wheel making fantastic journeys at a high speed. Then you grew up, and little by little, you started believing that if you worked hard you could get a real car, and although it wasn’t what you had dreamed of it was yours. Later on, when you decided to sell it and the seller gave you two options, either making a car Leasing or a Renting, you didn’t accept them: for you, it was more important the car to be yours.

Today, many years later, you most probably don’t have the car of your dreams. However, and ironically, to have other benefits, you accept to pay your holiday with a card full of money that is not yet yours; to pay a mortgage on a house which is  not yet yours, as well as to pay Spotify and Netflix, every month, to listen to music and watch series that will never be yours if you stop paying them.

Any similarity between this story and the choice of your office is no coincidence. To have the office of your dreams, in the centre of Lisbon, which would dignify your dreams and your professional ego, and even if you don’t have more than 25 square metres, you have accepted to pay an income of €1,000 per month, without taking into account all the other fixed costs associated with it which you divide with the person who works for you.

Regardless the business you do every month, in your break-even-point and considering the fatigue at the end of each day, you will always account for this number: 1000. This is the amount you must have in order to pay the rental charges of an office which, if you could and did not have a home and a car to pay, you would also try to buy to ensure it was yours.

Until one day, while walking downtown for lunch, you discover that right next to your office of €1,000, there is a Netflix and a Spotify of offices in Saldanha, also known as virtual offices. You also find out that besides being possible to work from anywhere for less than 10% of the rental charges, you also have access to a space and to the same set of services that you can find in a traditional office – including the use of a prestigious address for your company's headquarters; professional phone services; meeting rooms and a coworking space – while leaving real worries to others.

Of course you won't be able to say the virtual office is yours. The only thing that is truly yours, as long as you have it, is Life.

And Life will only be a dream life if you stop postponing it and start focusing on your freedom and pursuing happiness at work.

Carlos Gonçalves, CEO Avila Spaces.