In this episode, I’m excited to chat with Sarah Athanas, Co-Founder of Groundwork Coworking in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Sarah's story of starting and growing a coworking space in a smaller market is inspiring, full of persistence, creativity, and community building. She shares how her experience living in Argentina planted the seed for Groundwork and how she navigated the challenges of building a business from scratch in a city that needed it.
Here’s what we dive into:
How Sarah’s experience at an Argentine coworking space inspired her to bring the concept to New Bedford
The unique journey of partnering with the city and using grant funding to get Groundwork off the ground
What it’s like to grow a coworking business in a smaller market and how patience and persistence paid off
Insights on expanding to a second location and the importance of finding the right partners
The evolving role of nonprofits and the offshore wind industry as key members of Groundwork
Resources Mentioned in this Episode:
Everything Coworking Featured Resources:
Masterclass: 3 Behind-the-Scenes Secrets to Opening a Coworking Space
In this episode, I chat with Evan Preslopsky, Senior Sales Manager at Venture X and Office Evolution, about his unique path from fitness to coworking sales. Evan shares how his background in fitness and construction sales has influenced his approach to building broker relationships and scaling sales across multiple coworking locations.
What you’ll learn in this episode:
Evan’s journey from the fitness industry into coworking and sales
How to cultivate strong broker relationships to close larger coworking deals
The role fitness plays in maintaining discipline and focus in the sales process
Key strategies for managing multiple coworking locations efficiently
Tips on automating and tracking sales processes to support coworking growth
Resources Mentioned in this Episode:
Venture X - Charlotte – The Refinery website
Everything Coworking Featured Resources:
Masterclass: 3 Behind-the-Scenes Secrets to Opening a Coworking Space
In this episode, I sit down with Kristin Hardwick, the Founder and CEO of CoHo, a thriving coworking space in Milford, New Hampshire. Kristin shares her journey from corporate life to photography, and eventually, the creation of CoHo—a coworking space that prioritizes community, connection, and the needs of small business owners and remote workers.
Tune in as Kristin breaks down her philosophy on creating a welcoming environment and the unique challenges of opening a coworking space right before the pandemic.
We talked about:
How Kristin’s experience in photography and corporate life influenced her approach to building CoHo.
The unexpected benefits of launching a coworking space in a smaller town.
The importance of building personal connections with members to foster a thriving coworking community.
How Kristin has adapted her space and operations to meet the post-pandemic demand for private offices.
Marketing strategies that have worked for CoHo.
Resources Mentioned in this Episode:
Everything Coworking Featured Resources:
Masterclass: 3 Behind-the-Scenes Secrets to Opening a Coworking Space
Resources Mentioned in this Episode:
The Residence Coworking website
Everything Coworking Featured Resources:
Masterclass: 3 Behind-the-Scenes Secrets to Opening a Coworking Space
In this episode, I chat with Alison Rogers, the founder of Blush Cowork, a coworking space that combines professional workspace with onsite childcare services. Alison shares her journey from corporate marketing to entrepreneurship, addressing a gap for working parents. Her story highlights how Blush Cowork is reshaping the coworking landscape for families, especially for parents seeking a balance between professional life and parenting.
What you'll learn in this episode:
Resources Mentioned in this Episode:
Everything Coworking Featured Resources:
Masterclass: 3 Behind-the-Scenes Secrets to Opening a Coworking Space
Q4 is right around the corner and on this episode, I share three ideas for Q4 goals that you can set to add profit to your business.
Resources Mentioned in this Episode:
Everything Coworking Featured Resources:
Masterclass: 3 Behind-the-Scenes Secrets to Opening a Coworking Space
What does it take to leave a high-stakes career in investment banking and build a thriving coworking community in the suburbs? Mark Fornasiero, co-founder of ACE Coworking in Oakville, shares his unexpected journey from the trading floor to coworking.
Mark reveals how he and his wife, Nancy, went from dreaming about coworking spaces to opening two successful locations. They navigated the ups and downs of building in a suburban market, including surviving the challenges of COVID-19.
In this episode, we cover:
Whether you’re looking to expand your coworking business or just getting started, Mark’s insights will help you think strategically and make the right moves.
Tune in to hear Mark’s real-life experiences and get practical tips you can use in your own coworking journey!
Resources Mentioned in this Episode:
Everything Coworking Featured Resources:
Masterclass: 3 Behind-the-Scenes Secrets to Opening a Coworking Space
Resources Mentioned in this Episode:
Everything Coworking Featured Resources:
Masterclass: 3 Behind-the-Scenes Secrets to Opening a Coworking Space
On this episode, we're sharing some nuggets from our recent Community Manager University roundtable on 2024 Coworking Trends.
The group discussed the "hospitality" trend in coworking and shared a few simple ideas to integrate daily hospitality into your coworking space.
Resources Mentioned in this Episode:
Everything Coworking Featured Resources:
Masterclass: 3 Behind-the-Scenes Secrets to Opening a Coworking Space
While recurring memberships are the gold standard, the reality is that more and more users are seeking flexibility. In this episode, we explore how to adapt to this shift and capitalize on the opportunities it presents.
We talk about:
The Rise of On-Demand Users: Understanding the increasing demand for flexible, on-demand coworking options and how to cater to this market segment.
Types of On-Demand Products: An overview of popular on-demand offerings, including day passes, meeting room bookings, day offices, and punch cards, and how they can fit into your business model.
Pricing Strategies: Tips on setting premium prices for on-demand services to ensure profitability while meeting user needs.
Mindset Shift: Encouraging operators to embrace on-demand users and view them as a valuable revenue stream rather than a disruption to traditional membership models.
Implementing On-Demand Services: Practical advice on how to integrate on-demand booking options into your website, ensuring a seamless and user-friendly experience for potential customers.
Resources Mentioned in this Episode:
Is Your Coworking Space Ready for Enterprise Clients? (episode with Phil Kirschner)
Everything Coworking Featured Resources:
Masterclass: 3 Behind-the-Scenes Secrets to Opening a Coworking Space
A recent trip to the groomer got me thinking about balancing tech-enabled coworking purchases and onboarding with on-site customer service and hospitality.
Resources Mentioned in this Episode:
Live Masterclass: on August 15th: 3 Behind-the-Scenes Secrets to Opening a Coworking Space
Everything Coworking Featured Resources:
To Staff or Not to Staff. That is the question we explore in this episode.
Here’s what we dive into:
Staffed vs. Unstaffed Spaces: Why might an operator choose to run a space without staff? What are the trade-offs?
Real-Life Experiences: Hear about operators that successfully operate unstaffed spades.
Coffee Culture: Learn creative ways to manage coffee service in unstaffed coworking environments—because let’s face it, coffee is the lifeblood of productivity!
Hybrid Models: Explore how some coworking spaces are blending staffed and unstaffed models to maximize flexibility and efficiency for their members.
Decision-Making Tips: Get practical advice on choosing the right model for your coworking space based on target audience, location, budget, and long-term goals.
Resources Mentioned in this Episode:
Everything Coworking Featured Resources:
Masterclass: 3 Behind-the-Scenes Secrets to Opening a Coworking Space
You love a little extra revenue...flex memberships are hard to sell, so you're happy to have a little more buzz in the space with the day passers...but day passers can be high maintenance, it can be challenging to make sure they have a great experience, and sometimes it feels like they are more work than they're worth.
Day passes create the ultimate flexibility for the commitment-phobic user. So if you offer them at an attractive price, you might get repeat day pass users who never upgrade to a recurring membership, helping you to sleep a little easier at night.
Who does not offer them?
Lucid Private Offices
Gather
Here are a few tips to encourage day passers to upgrade to recurring memberships:
Raise the price of your day pass. If the daily rate of your lowest recurring membership is not significantly less than your day pass, you won't get your day pass users to upgrade. There's both a monetary cost and a mental cost to committing to a recurring fee. You have to make it attractive enough to overcome that resistance.
Create a more compelling "fence" between your day pass and a recurring membership. If you don't want to encourage repeat day pass purchases, don't give them the benefits of membership.
Run periodic promotions to create urgency and scarcity. Humans generally operate on inertia. You have to give them a really compelling reason to change their behavior. Encourage the upgrade by offering new-members-only promotions with a compelling discount on a recurring membership for a short period. You could put a minimum membership commitment on the promo such as 3 months, to avoid having day passers upgrade for one month only.
And if the admin cost of offering day passes is just too high, don't do it.
Everything Coworking Featured Resources:
Masterclass: 3 Behind-the-Scenes Secrets to Opening a Coworking Space
What gets focus gets better.
If you want to improve your coworking business, define your KPIs (Key Performance Indicators), track them, pull levers to make them better, and grow your coworking business.
In this episode, I walk through 3 of my 5 favorite KPIs for coworking businesses.
If you missed the first two KPIs, scroll back to episode #351.
Resources Mentioned in this Episode:
Everything Coworking Featured Resources:
Masterclass: 3 Behind-the-Scenes Secrets to Opening a Coworking Space
What gets focus gets better.
If you want to improve your coworking business, define your KPIs (Key Performance Indicators), track them, pull levers to make them better, and grow your coworking business.
In this episode, I walk through 2 of my 5 favorite KPIs for coworking businesses.
Resources Mentioned in this Episode:
Everything Coworking Featured Resources:
Masterclass: 3 Behind-the-Scenes Secrets to Opening a Coworking Space
Maryann Baldwin opened a 2400 square foot coworking space in Lansing Iowa, population 1,000. This is her third year in business and this year she will turn a profit.
She owns the building and doesn’t staff full time.
Her “Whys” in no particular order include: economic development, connecting like-minded people, coaching new business owners, helping the local community keep their minds healthy through lifelong learning, and providing Internet and a great place to work for visitors.
Resources Mentioned in this Episode:
Everything Coworking Featured Resources:
Masterclass: 3 Behind-the-Scenes Secrets to Opening a Coworking Space
Sam Pickering is the head of the sustainability practice at Incendium Consulting which is part of the Instant Group.
Sam shares:
What their Sustainability Index tracks and how it helps operators make better decisions about their environmental impact and changes they can make to improve their score.
Incendium’s partnership with the International WELL Building Institute (IWBI) to create a simplified/approachable coworking version of the Well Certification.
Resources Mentioned in this Episode:
Everything Coworking Featured Resources:
Masterclass: 3 Behind-the-Scenes Secrets to Opening a Coworking Space
Felicia founded HAYVN to support local women in business and make an impact in the community. Being a B Corp Certified business is an external signal of the values she leads at HAYVN from recruiting practices to vendor selection, to the programming she hosts to drive local economic development.
She and her B-Corp Certification consultant, Kerrie McDevitt, share what it means to be B-Corp certified, why a business might want to become certified, how much time it takes, and what it costs.
Resources Mentioned in this Episode:
Connect with Kerrie at Impact Growth Partners: kerrie@impactgrowthpartners.com
Everything Coworking Featured Resources:
Masterclass: 3 Behind-the-Scenes Secrets to Opening a Coworking Space
Wes Walker, Laura Fisher, and Ashleigh Ramsay share the details on their virtual service revenue - what they offer, how they price, lead sources, how long it takes them to process the mail, the impact it has on their revenue, and more.
Deadline: May 12: Register for the Everything Coworking Club's Quarterly Revenue Challenge: Start or Grow your Virtual Mailbox Service
Get on your email address to learn more about the quarterly revenue challenge.
Everything Coworking Featured Resources:
Masterclass: 3 Behind-the-Scenes Secrets to Opening a Coworking Space
Virtual Mailbox demand is growing - see our "Why Mail" video. Virtual Mailbox services can create a significant revenue stream for coworking spaces. This video walks through a simple forecasting model for how virtual mail adds revenue to your coworking business over time.
Resources Mentioned in this Episode:
The video version of this episode on YouTube
Get on your email address to learn more about the challenge.
Deadline: May 12: Register for the Everything Coworking Club's Quarterly Revenue Challenge: Start or Grow your Virtual Mailbox Service
Everything Coworking Featured Resources:
Masterclass: 3 Behind-the-Scenes Secrets to Opening a Coworking Space
Is it a head-scratcher to you as to why someone might buy a virtual mailbox at a coworking space?
Or do you get it but you just think it’s got to be too much work to make it worth it?
Have you launched a mail program half-heartedly and had lukewarm results?
In this episode, we dive into why people buy mail packages, why you should consider launching a mail program, and how our upcoming challenge will help you start or optimize a money-making mail program.
Resources Mentioned in this Episode:
Get on your email address to learn more about the challenge.
Deadline: May 12!! Register for the May Mail Money Maker Challenge
Everything Coworking Featured Resources:
Masterclass: 3 Behind-the-Scenes Secrets to Opening a Coworking Space
Welcome to another episode of the Everything Coworking Podcast! Today, I’m joined by Tracy Beavers, a business visibility and strategy coach who specializes in turning strategies into actionable success. We dive into a crucial topic for any coworking space owner looking to boost their business—email marketing.
Want to join Tracy’s FREE, live masterclass coming up next week? https://www.tracybeavers.com/masterclass
What We Discuss:
The Power of Email Marketing: Tracy explains why email marketing remains a powerful tool for coworking spaces, helping to promote memberships, event spaces, meeting rooms, and special events effectively.
Building Your Email List: We cover strategies for not just creating but also growing a marketing email list—a vital asset for any business. Tracy shares insights on how to attract the right subscribers who are genuinely interested in what your coworking space offers.
Consistency is Key: Tracy emphasizes the importance of consistency in emailing, recommending that coworking owners send out communications at least twice a month. We talk about how regular updates can keep your community engaged and informed.
Content That Converts: Learn what types of emails have been most successful in converting inquiries into memberships and event participants. Tracy provides examples of content that resonates with audiences and drives engagement.
Resources Mentioned in this Episode:
Tracy’s Free, live masterclass (week of 4/15 and 4/22)
Everything Coworking Featured Resources:
Masterclass: 3 Behind-the-Scenes Secrets to Opening a Coworking Space
The Everything Coworking Academy
Brandon Houston, founder of the Collingwood Foundry shares his entrepreneurial journey from running a web development agency to pioneering a coworking space that has grown into a central hub of community and innovation in Collingwood, Ontario.
Key topics include:
The power of starting small and building a connection and reputation with the local community.
The evolution of Collingwood Foundry into a space that members don’t just work in, but genuinely love and support.
The challenges and triumphs of bringing coworking to a smaller town and the vision for expanding the Foundry's influence.
An exploration of culture-setting and hospitality in coworking, with creative initiatives like the use of the Donut plugin to foster member interactions.
Resources Mentioned in this Episode:
Everything Coworking Featured Resources:
Free Masterclass: 3 Behind-the-Scenes Secrets to Opening a Coworking Space
In the latest episode of Everything Coworking, we’re unpacking a truth bomb about the entrepreneurial life, especially in our world of coworking. Taking a page from Brooke Castillo, we’re exploring the idea that our journeys are a healthy mix of wins and challenges – yes, it's a 50/50 split of highs and lows.
I’m diving into why expecting a smooth sail can throw us off course and how those inevitable tough times actually shore up our resilience and push our growth. It’s all about embracing every bit of the ride, knowing that each twist and turn is shaping us and our coworking ventures.
If this conversation hits home for you, do me a favor – drop by Apple Podcasts and share your thoughts with a review. It helps spread the word and gets more folks in on our coworking convos.
Tune in and let's get real about the ebb and flow that keeps us on our toes and makes this whole journey worthwhile.
Everything Coworking Featured Resources:
Masterclass: 3 Behind-the-Scenes Secrets to Opening a Coworking Space
The Everything Coworking Academy
This episode explores how we might apply some examples of hospitality to elements of hospitality offered at a coworking space.
Episode Highlights:
Introduction to Hospitality in Coworking: We kick things off by exploring why hospitality is just as crucial in our coworking spaces as it is in the hotel industry. It's about creating experiences that stick and spaces where people feel truly welcomed.
A Personal Tale of Hotel Hospitality: I share my own story of incredible service during a hotel stay - from the effortless help with finding the best local sandwiches to sorting out ski rentals and even snagging a ride to the airport. It was service with a smile, but more importantly, it was personal and responsive.
Drawing Parallels: How do these moments of thoughtful hospitality translate to the coworking world? We dive deep into the similarities between the services provided by hotels and those we can offer in coworking spaces. It’s all about elevating the member experience.
Lessons for Coworking Spaces: Learn how we can apply these hotel hospitality hacks to make our coworking spaces more responsive, personable, and ultimately, more successful. From communication tools to staff training and creating personalized member experiences, we cover it all.
Resources Mentioned in this Episode:
Interview with Grant Barnhill, CEO of Shift Workspaces
Everything Coworking Featured Resources:
Masterclass: 3 Behind-the-Scenes Secrets to Opening a Coworking Space
The Everything Coworking Academy