We've Moved Offices!

Here's our new address:

1275 12th Avenue NW
Suite 12
Issaquah, WA. 98027

Our phone number and fax number remain the same:

877-703-7386

A little history on our company may help put this move into perspective.

My Mom, Dad and I started an HR consulting business out of our home in the early 90's. As the business started to grow we moved to a small three person office in Seattle, near Seattle University. It was cozy and it was fun. Plus, having and official office made all of us more efficient.

As our business grew in the mid-90's we could afford a nicer space, so we moved to the Pioneer Building in Pioneer Square. This is the classic building in Pioneer Square that the "Underground Tour" starts. We loved the building. The neighbors were friendly, the location was amazing (just two blocks from Puget Sound), lots of local coffee hangouts and restaurants, and best of all the building had a classic beauty, both inside and outside.

Our family grew along with our business and soon my wife and I, and other employees, had happy little children coming into the office with them. We expanded our offices and soon we had 1/2 a floor of the building. It was at about this time that the "work-life" movement was getting traction and more press and attention was paid to the balance of our work lives and our personal lives. We had achieved an integrated work-life culture - we just brought the whole family into the office, including the dog! The local neighborhood association even did an article featuring our family and business. The firm was called Johnson/Lindstrand consulting, contrary to the misspelling in the article.


As the Dot-Com boom took hold in Seattle, office space, especially "hip" and "cool" space in Pioneer Square was at a premium and our rent increased very quickly in the late 90's. Parking also became very expensive, not to mention the rising cost of gas at the time. It wasn't affordable to have 1/2 the floor anymore, so we moved to another location in Seattle and eventually we found a space closer to home in Issaquah.

The space in Issaquah had a large play room for the kids, we still had small children coming into the office everyday. We each had our own office and we had all the accumulated furniture and equipment from our earlier growth period.

As happens with kids, they grow up, and now all of the office kids are in school full-time. We had a large space with mostly empty offices and way too much equipment and furniture for the new way of doing business, which is virtual. We can work from anywhere, we don't need copiers, offices, and all the other trappings of a traditional office space.

But we do need a "place" to go and call home for NEXTCOMP.NET. So we found a great location, still in Issaquah, only two blocks from our original Issaquah office.

Before we could move, we needed to shed some of the furniture and equipment that we had in the office. Our first call was to the kids' school district administrative offices. The offices were hit hard by the flooding earlier this year and they were more than happy to come and get desks, shelves and chairs to use in their office. Plus, we had a nice collection of wall art that we didn't have room for anymore. Here's a note from the school district regarding the donation.

"I wanted to express our gratitude once again. Everything you gave us has worked beautifully in our offices here at the District Office. We have some very happy people. I’m taking the framed pictures to the drama teacher at Mount Si today. They lost a lot of their props in the flooding so Kim is very excited to receive these. "

We also donated our full sized fridge to a single dad who had just had his fridge break the week before.

And now we're all moved into our new office space. Here are some photos of the office building.

Here's the story behind the building. It's the first office building built in Issaquah. Built in 1961, it stood in the middle of a cow pasture with a dirt road in front of it for quite a long time. The local farmers and ranchers would ask the owner "Why the heck did you build an office building out here in the middle of no where?" And his response was "Someday, there will be white collar workers in Issaquah and they will need a place to work." He was right! The building eventually became the City of Issaquah courthouse. And now it houses a variety of smaller businesses. The current owner is even renovating the outside an inside, so it feels very modern in the offices.

We have just the right amount of space, equipment and furniture for our current business. It feels really good to go into the office and know we're the right size and we're not carrying along all the years of stuff that we had accumulated over 20 years and two businesses.

Here's my desk, where I hope to continue working with you and building NextComp into the best market pricing system out there.