Ben Wright is Head of Flexible Office Solutions, SquareFoot. He is also the founder of Upsuite, a digital platform that helps people find and book flexible work space. Ben is a former economist and a data nerd. His passion for data surfaces insights that help coworking space operators get access to market dynamics that they can act on.
On this episode, we talk about:
- The findings of Upsuite’s Q2 North American coworking data
- The return of demand in major cities such as NY and LA
- How operators are still working on getting to a cash flow positive occupancy rate
- How shopping is still lagging signing in many markets
- The challenge of digging out of deep COVID discounts for WeWork
- The return of small team demand
- 4-8 seat requirements
- How the drop in supply is making demand feel higher in some markets
- Why he’s worried that the coworking sector isn’t ready for the return of demand.
Jenny Poon is the CEO and founder of CO+HOOTS coworking in Phoenix, AZ. She is a true OG in the coworking industry with a wealth of experience to share.
In this episode, we talk about:
- How Jenny got her first space started by doing a management agreement with her landlord way back in 2010.
- How she eventually moved her community into a building that she bought...after having her SBA loan pulled at the last minute and crowd-funding to save her business.
- How favorite automation hacks to free up her Community Managers to focus on...community!
Justin and Kelly are co-owners of Flocc Studio in Dallas, TX. Kelly is also a sculptor and Justin is also a photographer and the founder of a digital lighting school. On this episode they share:
- Their unwavering decision to serve a creative niche at their space
- How they curate their application-based membership
- Managing a business with a spouse
- Their approach to alancing the coworking space + three more businesses
- How their intern program saves the day and how they run it and more!
Mark Gilbreath is the CEO of liquidspace, a real-time booking platform for offices and meeting rooms by the hour, month or longer.
On Wednesday, August 18th, GSA, the federal agency responsible for managing the world’s largest workplace, a 700M square feet of real estate portfolio serving over two million employees, announced that they have awarded LiquidSpace a contract to provide Flexible Coworking Services (FCS) to government employees.
So, what’s the backstory?
18 months ago, in January 2020 the GSA issued an RFP as a part of their Total Workplace Program stating that "Working beyond the confines of a traditional office had become common" and that they sought to "equip government employees with the tools and the spaces to work from anywhere". With the announcement of the GSA’s awards, it is now evident that the government is poised to become one of the world’s largest consumers of coworking.
Others included in the contract award:
Mark and I talk about:
This is a discussion you don't want to miss, be sure to listen to the full episode.
Creating a marketing list for your coworking business opens up opportunities to use email marketing as a tool. On this episode, we talk about three things you can do with a “marketing” email list:
Sales Funnel tool: To nurture those that aren’t “search and join” members.
Direct Sales: To announce office openings, run BOGOS, sell event tickets
Indirect Sales: Affiliate revenue, Membership sales that aren’t attached to your physical space
Listen to the full episode for details on how to use your marketing list for these opportunities, what email service providers to use, and how to grow your email list.
This week we're shifting from working on the "how" to working on the mindset challenges that often prevent us from making progress and living our best lives.
I am highly trained in the “how” department. So much so that my analytical rigor as an MBA grad from the top business school in the country might have squashed some of my intuitive side. I got to a point in my post-MBA career when I was really stuck and wasn't able to move on to the thing I could sense deep down was next for me.
Fortunately, I found Rita Hyland. Her website describes her coaching practice as "a place where leaders come to reclaim their purpose, clarify their vision, and reconnect with their true voice."
She did exactly that for me. Not just once, but twice :-) The first time I worked with her was the process that birthed Enerspace, my own coworking space. It was a life-changing process that gave me the awareness and the tools to work through mindset issues as they come up. And as entrepreneurs, we are all managing mindset issues on a daily basis.
Rita is an entrepreneur, coach, speaker, wife, and mother of three active children. In this episode, she talks with us about how to recognize common mindset barriers that keep us from pursuing our best lives.
For some of you, the idea of being your own landlord is terrifying. For others, it's a compelling way to create operating income and build long-term wealth at the same time.
Jerry Alexander has been running this combo successfully since 2004. He is a commercial real estate investor running seven flex office/coworking locations out of buildings he owns.
He shares a bit about his flex operations, but more importantly, the value of investing in commercial property. Listen to our full conversation here.
Customer Lifetime Value is a key metric for coworking space operators.
CLTV is important because it can help you make decisions about:
In this episode, we cover three decisions you can make with CLTV data - how to measure it, what drives it, and how to increase it.
Tracy Wilson is an OG of shared workspace. She is a partner at Pacific workplaces (18+ locations in California) and CloudVO. She is also now co-founder and COO at SUPER, which is on a mission to reduce single use plastic in businesses.
Coworking is part of the circular economy. It is inherently environmentally friendly. If you think your members would resonate with a higher level of service that also saves $ and reduces environmental waste, this episode is for you.
Ted Laatz, COO of Success Magazine, gives us a preview of the new SUCCESS Space concept.
The suburban-focused locations will show up primarily in strip malls with each access and parking. The front of the space will be a publicly accessible cafe with coffee in the morning and wine/beer and snacks in the afternoon/evening.
The workspace will be uber-flexible with access billed starting at by the minute.
The space will have a concierge and will also offer a SUCCESS-certified coach to support members in groups and 1:1.
Listen to our conversation to get more details!
Marc Blum redeveloped his 80,000 square foot building for commercial office use. He built out all eight floors for Spaces, an IWG brand of coworking. Spaces filed for bankruptcy less than 6 months after moving into the space (during COVID-19).
Marc had a dilemma on his hands.
Should he/could he find another tenant? Should he run the flex office model himself? Should he find a partner?
Enter Adam Showalter and the rest is history. They share the story of how they converted the Spaces buildout to their own flexible office offering, gave the building a brand and became a leader in the evolution of the commercial office world.
Coworking space owners wear a lot of hats. "Content Marketer" is one of those hats that often times doesn't get worn as much as it should.
Creating relevant, consistent content can be challenging for owners and Community Managers.
Taylor Mason shares his perspective on where to start, where to focus and what to measure to see the ROI of content marketing.
It's summer in the northern hemisphere, so your coworking space is likely getting quiet as parents deal with summer camp schedules, kids at home, family vacations, and more time off in general.
While we're all celebrating the reclaimed freedom to move about the country, we cringe at a quiet coworking space. Distract yourself by doing the work now to welcome back members and top off your membership in the fall.
On this episode, we cover 6 summer to-do's that will have a fall ROI when it comes to member acquisition and retention.
Saltbox recently raised $10 million to fund their co-warehousing expansion.
Saltbox provides purpose-built spaces for entrepreneurs with physical goods. This model is a sister to coworking - with overlapping value propisition and services provided.
Zubin, Canteenwalla, their COO, shares his perspective on their customer acquisition approach, their ideal customer, their expansion strategy through management agreements, and more.
The guest on this episode is Franco Faraudo, co-founder of Propmodo. Propmodo deciphers and defines trends for commercial real estate professionals through a combination of news, research, events, and marketing services.
I reached out to him after reading an early April article he published entitled: Underwriting Flexibility: How and why flexible offices should change the way we value buildings
In this episode we cover:
The guest on this podcast episode is Ben Wright, CEO and founder of Upsuite, an online platform to help individuals and teams find workspace.
You should list your space on Upsuite to get access to leads that don’t come through your own website or Google my Business website.
The other reason to pay attention to platforms like Upsuite is that they have access to North American demand data, transaction data and pricing data. They see macro trends that individual operators don’t have access to. Their published insights are invaluable. Make sure to check out the Upsuite blog.
In this episode we cover:
If you’re a coworking operator or soon-to-be one, you opened your coworking space because you wanted to offer your members a better way of working.
You want them to be…
But on your website, many of you sell them 10 day punch cards and dedicated desks.
If you are marketing a coworking space, you have two audiences - those that know what you're selling and those that don’t.
Your first audience is problem + solution aware.
Your second audience is maybe not aware that they have a problem, and not aware that you can solve it.
The solution needs to be clear to your potential member, not just to you.
You have no chance in succeeding if you are selling a solution that your end-user doesn’t know they need or doesn’t know that you sell.
On this podcast episode, I share two case studies from my mentor calls and some “clear messaging” and “confusing messaging” examples from coworking websites.
Mara Hauser is the CEO of 25N Coworking with locations outside of Chicago, Frisco, TX and Alexandria, VA. She is also Principal at Workplace Studio, a commercial interiors design firm.
Mara has a unique perspective of interior design expert and coworking space owner. I love to tap into her perspective periodically to share with my audience what’s new and what’s evolving.
Today, the focus is on evaluating your current offerings to determine what you might need to adjust as we get into full re-entry post-COVID19.
In this episode we cover:
Kris has deep industry experience - she started her flex office career at Regus, after 10 years in senior roles there, became President of Preferred Office Network for 7 years, and she’s now COO of Expansive, formerly Novel Coworking, formerly Level Office. I would like to call out that some of these transitions were spurred by relationships built at GWA conferences. In-person networking is magical - we can’t wait to get back to it!
I could talk shop with Kris for hours...but we had to narrow it down for today’s podcast. Here’s what we’re covering on this episode:
In this episode we cover:
Each year, we publish a guide to the Coworking Tech Stack. The guide is organized by category and includes hardware, software, industry consultants and more.
The coworking tech stack is critical to create a positive member experience and to optimize back of house operations. As the industry experiences tremendous year over year growth, the tech stack innnovation is keeping pace. Get your copy of the guide to make sure your tech stack....stacks up!
Get your copy here.
David Cairns is a Senior Vice President - Office Leasing CBRE and founder of CBRE Forward. David is hyper-active on LinkedIn. If you want to follow along as he questions traditional commercial office thinking, you can find him here.
This episode is important because many of the brokerage firms have their own coworking or flex space brand..but most have very few locations AND brokers are a key marketing tool for coworking spaces that focus on offering private spaces.
CBRE launched its own flex space brand under the name “HANA” but at the time of this recording, recently announced that they made a 35% acquisition of Industrious which was an investment of $200M. That investment was a big win for the coworking industry at large.
If my discussion with Dave makes you curious about how to implement a better broker program for your coworking space, Kane Willmott, CEO of IQ Office, shared the details on his program on episode #129.
In this episode we cover:
- As a thought leader and "futurist" in the office sector, how many years ahead of the average broker are you in embracing WFA and Flex as part of the strategy?
- What are the conversations that your clients are having today about their workplace strategy? What is your role as a broker in those strategic discussions?
- How do you think about your compensation as tenants want less traditional space? - What does the role of the broker look like in 5 years? 10 years?
- What can flex operators do to help occupiers and brokers understand their offer as part of a multi-pronged real estate solution?
- You are one of the few office brokers I see on LinkedIn taking risks by sharing your thinking. Does your risk-taking always serve you?
Roland Stanley is the Founder of Dragon Coworking. Like many of us, he found coworking somewhat accidentally as he prepared to exit from owning and managing a hotel.
In this episode, Roland shares the story of how he turned some extra space in the hotel into a coworking space, filled it up, retained his members during COVID, expanded his physical space in December of 2020, AND started to monetize a virtual networking event that had once been a successful, but time-consuming physical event serving Roland’s surrounding communities.
In this episode we talk about:
Roland’s “coworking story”
How his product mix serves his community (and pays the bills!)
What processes Roland has in place to allow him to run it on his own
How he transitioned a successful physical networking event into a paid, virtual membership during COVID
How he expanded his physical space and pre-sold his twelve new offices during the pandemic
Link to show notes here!
In this episode, online marketing strategist Reuben Lau, shares his SEO/SEM expertise with us.
Reuben works with several coworking spaces to improve their organic search engine results, and he also helps them to develop Google ad campaigns that get results.
In this episode, we cover:
What is SEO?
How do I know if my website has been optimized for SEO? What if it has not been?
When you're investing in SEO, what are the actual tactics? What gets done one-time? What do I need to make into a business process that gets done regularly?
What is the 80/20 rule for SEO? What are the 20% of SEO-related activities that will get you 80% of the results?
What SEO tactics can I do on my own? What can my Community Manager do? What do I need to outsource to an expert?
How is SEO different from SEM?
In a smaller market where there's not a lot of search volume, what is the interplay between SEM and SEO? How do I measure the ROI of running Google ads?
Should I set up and run Google ads on my own?
Link to show notes here!
In this episode, we’re focusing on your coworking website through the lens of our customer’s journey.
We talk about the process of conducting an optimization process on your website: