Today more than ever, smaller towns and even rural areas want to support local entrepreneurs, business owners, and even remote workers, with the workspace, amenities, and community they need to be productive and stay connected. But it’s hard.
Brian Watson - Co-founder of Proximity and now Co-founder of Alt Space, shares his thesis on how to make small-town coworking work by using automation to build the first sustainable rural coworking brand.
Alt Space exists to connect small businesses, entrepreneurs, and remote workers to the tools, resources, and people they need in order to be successful. We believe in the power of community and collaboration, and know that by working together we can accomplish the impossible.
In this episode, we talk about:
- Catching up with Brian - leaving Proximity, moving to Telluride, co-founding Alt Space
- The problem Brian is solving with Alt Space
- The economic development opportunity in small towns/rural areas (esp. post-COVID)
- Why grant-funded spaces aren’t sustainable (most of the time)
- How the Alt Coworking model is set up to be an automated workspace
- The Alt Coworking tech stack
- What the digital layer of programming and community will offer to the network of member spaces
- What type of space this model can work for
- What’s working well with the model
- What are the challenges that they’re still solving
- Brian's 5-year vision for the platform
Everything Coworking Featured Resources:
Masterclass: 3 Behind-the-Scenes Secrets to Opening a Coworking Space
Creative Coworking Partnerships: How to negotiate and structure management agreements from the landlord and operator perspective
Resources Mentioned in this Podcast:
Proximity space management software
With 3300 locations worldwide, IWG, a public company, is by far the largest flexible workspace provider in the world. They have locations in 120 countries and serve over 8 million members under a broad array of brand flags including Regus, Spaces, The Wing, and The Clubhouse.
Wayne Berger, Chief Executive Officer, The Americas at IWG plc, has been on a wild ride since he joined 8 years ago. He joined just as startup WeWork was taking the space-as-a-service industry by storm, going from 0 to 750 locations in less than 10 years, and then making a move to go public. Wayne also managed a global portfolio during a global pandemic and has a birds-eye view of how the recovery is unfolding.
My cohost for this episode, Giovanni Palavicini, Principal- Flexible Office Solutions Avison Young & GWA Board Member & Worked at Regus in their Real Estate Dev Group from 2012 to 2016.
Giovanni and I talk with Wayne about his predictions for the next 5 years in flexible workspace, what he’s seeing globally as markets recover, and how IWG will add 1,000 locations a year over the next few years.
Everything Coworking Featured Resources:
Masterclass: 3 Behind-the-Scenes Secrets to Opening a Coworking Space
Creative Coworking Partnerships: How to negotiate and structure management agreements from the landlord and operator perspective
Resources Mentioned in this Podcast:
Michelle Talbert, a recovering corporate attorney, opened the doors to Her Power Space on January 12, 2020 and, due to the pandemic, locked them on March 31, and didn’t return to the Space until May.
Michelle talks us through this challenging beginning to her business, how she recovered, her unique blend of digital and physical business support for her members, and how she got her email marketing superpowers.
Everything Coworking Featured Resources:
Masterclass: 3 Behind-the-Scenes Secrets to Opening a Coworking Space
Creative Coworking Partnerships: How to negotiate and structure management agreements from the landlord and operator perspective
Resources Mentioned in this Podcast:
Michelle Y. Talbert on LinkedIn
Michelle's Free Business and Marketing Resource: Make It Rain Customers
The space-as-a-service industry is evolving rapidly post-COVID. We asked five thought leaders in various industry roles to share their perspectives on what 2022 will look like for coworking.
In this episode, you’ll hear from:
Nicole Vasquez, Deskpass Co-Founder & Chief People Officer
Laurent Dhollande, CEO, Pacific Workplaces and CEO CloudVO
Kayley DiCicco, Enterprise Account Solutions for Expansive
Hector Kolonas, Co-founder of Syncaroo
Everything Coworking Featured Resources:
Masterclass: 3 Behind-the-Scenes Secrets to Opening a Coworking Space
Creative Coworking Partnerships: How to negotiate and structure management agreements from the landlord and operator perspective
On this episode, I answer three questions from the Everything Coworking Facebook Group on:
- Creating a joint venture to run a cafe adjacent to the coworking space
- Managing shared membership requests between spouses/household members
- Social media accounts to follow and tips for coworking social media accounts
Everything Coworking Featured Resources:
Masterclass: 3 Behind-the-Scenes Secrets to Opening a Coworking Space
Creative Coworking Partnerships: How to negotiate and structure management agreements from the landlord and operator perspective
Hector Kolonas is a flex workspace technologist, which means he spends a little too long exploring the tech that makes coworking spaces well... work.
He's the cofounder of Syncaroo, curates the ThisWeekInCoworking newsletter and previously founded included.co the coworking perks program.
Everything Coworking Featured Resources:
Masterclass: 3 Behind-the-Scenes Secrets to Opening a Coworking Space
Creative Coworking Partnerships: How to negotiate and structure management agreements from the landlord and operator perspective.
Resources Mentioned in this Podcast:
Talent acquisition and retention is a hot topic today, especially for local, brick and mortar businesses like coworking spaces.
Even small companies need to think big about how to attract great talent. Hope is not a strategy (the name of one of my favorite sales books). We need to be intentional about how we are going to position ourselves as employers, and how we’re going to message about what it’s really like to work with us so that we have a better shot at finding and keeping a strong fit for our team.
Bryan Adams, CEO of Ph.Creative, shares his perspective on creating an Employer Value Proposition (EVP), and misconceptions and common pitfalls of conventional employer branding strategy.
Everything Coworking Featured Resources:
Masterclass: 3 Behind-the-Scenes Secrets to Opening a Coworking Space
Creative Coworking Partnerships: How to negotiate and structure management agreements from the landlord and operator perspective
Resources Mentioned in this Podcast:
Bryan’s Book: Give and Get: Employer Branding
Virtual Office training program
Interested in joining our new membership for operators? Make sure you’re on our email list! Go to our home page and scroll to the bottom and enter your email address!
Gather, a regional coworking operator near Richmond, VA, had a world-class “product,” but was looking to up-level its marketing and sales tools and processes.
They partnered with member Rick Whittington, a local marketing agency owner, to design a comprehensive marketing strategy and implement HubSpot as the primary tool to manage and track their marketing efforts.
Everything Coworking Featured Resources:
Masterclass: 3 Behind-the-Scenes Secrets to Opening a Coworking Space
Creative Coworking Partnerships: How to negotiate and structure management agreements from the landlord and operator perspective
Resources Mentioned in this Podcast:
Furniture poses many challenges to coworking spaces - the biggest two are:
1) Furniture is a significant start-up cost for coworking and other space-as-a-service offerings.
2) It’s pretty hard to predict exactly what pieces you need to best support your future membership.
If you want to run any sort of custom, “HQ”-type model for your space-as-a-service customers, you need access to the right furniture at the right time. Feather solves this problem and WeWork is all over it.
Everything Coworking Featured Resources:
Masterclass: 3 Behind-the-Scenes Secrets to Opening a Coworking Space
Creative Coworking Partnerships: How to negotiate and structure management agreements from the landlord and operator perspective
Resources Mentioned in this Podcast:
Ilyse Kaplan, President, and COO at Feather, gives us the details on how their model works and how you can participate.
On this episode, I answer three questions from the Everything Coworking Facebook Group on working with investors, using a management agreement template from someone else's deal, and managing phone booth usage.
Everything Coworking Featured Resources:
Masterclass: 3 Behind-the-Scenes Secrets to Opening a Coworking Space
Creative Coworking Partnerships: How to negotiate and structure management agreements from the landlord and operator perspective
As a coworking business owner, you gotta know your numbers. Do whatever it takes to get into the habit of reviewing your goals and progress against those goals every single week.
The most important numbers on your score card at the beginning of 2022 are:
- How many tours do I have booked?
- How many show up?
- How many convert?
- Where are those leads coming from?
What “product” are they interested in?
Knowing these numbers will help you predict the time it will take to get to full occupancy (our goal!) if everything stays the same in your business. It will also give you the documentation and confidence you will need to sell a bank, an investor, a spouse, or a landlord partner, on funding for a new location.
Here are the resources we mention in the podcast if you want to grab them:
Everything Coworking’s Ultimate Guide to Coworking KPIs
Not fancy sample Coworking Scorecard
The book Traction (must read!! And get the paperback, not the Kindle version)
Also….while you’re here…if you’re on Apple Podcasts, go back to the main screen for this show, scroll down past the episodes and leave us a rating and review! To leave a written review, you have to click the “Write a review” link under the sample rating you see on the screen.
Thank you in advance!
Jim Heid is my guest on this episode. Jim has accumulated 40 years (yikes!) focused on the built environment - how we build community, how we improve the quality of life in towns and cities, and how real estate development can and should play an outsize role in improving people's lives.
From consulting, founding innovation companies, to real estate development for my own account, common threads are innovation, sustainability, creating stronger connections to the environment, and helping clients and communities make better decisions through improved processes, better information, and constructive examples and dialogue.
Jim is….
A built environment entrepreneur
Author of Building Small
Founder of Craftwork Coworking in Healdsburg, CA
In this episode, Jim and I talk about:
- Jim’s background
- The value of building small
- Why coworking for small developers - how it fits in to the value system of building small
- Why coworking for Jim in Healdsburg
Everything Coworking Featured Resources:
Masterclass: 3 Behind-the-Scenes Secrets to Opening a Coworking Space
Creative Coworking Partnerships: How to negotiate and structure management agreements from the landlord and operator perspective
Resources Mentioned in this Podcast:
Jim’s Book: Building Small
One of the most common questions I hear from coworking space operators today is: I'm having trouble selling my flex desks and dedicated desks. Help!
Most coworking space operators can't be profitable without coworking revenue - they designed their product mix and therefore their pro forma, to include significant non-office revenue. They need to sell the open space memberships - maybe 2 or 3x over!
Here's a framework for working through your challenge:
1. Describe your Ideal Community Member in detail. Why do they work away from home? What do they do for work? What type of work space do they need? What problem does coworking solve for them?
2. Out of that group of ideal members, what is the profile of a member that would use mostly open space seating to get their work done?
3. Are they comfortable coming to your space? Are you providing the cues they need to see on your website, in your social media, newsletter, etc.?
4. How can you find them? How can you message to them so that they know you have a solution to their problem?
5. What creative ideas might you come up with to frame your open space options to make them more compelling? Can you attract a niche? Can you create more privacy using divider systems?
Everything Coworking Featured Resources:
Masterclass: 3 Behind-the-Scenes Secrets to Opening a Coworking Space
Creative Coworking Partnerships: How to negotiate and structure management agreements from the landlord and operator perspective
I run a mastermind program for coworking operators called the “Flight Group.” Usually, what happens in the Flight Group stays in the Fight Group. But I thought it would be a good time of year to share a few nuggets from our Flight Group members to get you thinking about what you might pursue in your coworking business in 2022.
So I pulled together 10 nuggets or tips shared by our Flight Group members this year.
Here they are, in no particular order:
1. Close for the full week between Christmas and New Year’s Eve.
2. Charge setup fees.
3. Put urgency behind your email promotions.
4. Invest in your team - Think creatively about how to support them. sign them up for Community Manager University.
5. Use interns!
6. Steal my community manager, pay a finder’s fee.
7. Get an “Owl” for your meeting room.
8. Have a team office you can’t sell? Make it a shared private office of dedicated desks.
9. Focus on building your virtual office and digital mail program.
10. Test stuff and don’t be afraid to fail!
Everything Coworking Featured Resources:
Masterclass: 3 Behind-the-Scenes Secrets to Opening a Coworking Space
Creative Coworking Partnerships: How to negotiate and structure management agreements from the landlord and operator perspective
Resources Mentioned in this Podcast:
Interested in joining our new membership for operators? Make sure you’re on our email list! Go to our home page and scroll to the bottom and enter your email address!
Miro Miroslavov is the CEO and Co-founder of OfficeRnD
He is also a GWA Board Member.
Miro joins us fro his home in Bulgaria.
OfficeRnD recently launched the FlexIndex. The FlexIndex is a novel composite index, that provides visibility into the flex space industry’s health, post-lockdown recovery, and global trends. The index is comprised of 5 components (or KPIs), which represent critical business aspects of both small and large flex operators.
In this episode, Miro and I talk about:
- An intro to to the FlexIndex
- What geographies are most represented in the data
- What we can expect from the FlexIndex
- How often it will be published
- Where to find it
- We'll walk through the 5 KPIs - what's being measuring, what the data says today and what insights we can draw from it
Everything Coworking Featured Resources:
Masterclass: 3 Behind-the-Scenes Secrets to Opening a Coworking Space
Creative Coworking Partnerships: How to negotiate and structure management agreements from the landlord and operator perspective
Resources Mentioned in this Podcast:
Miro’s email address: if you have KPI requests: Miro@officernd.com
Link to show notes here
There are three reasons that coworking spaces should think about using virtual assistants:
1. To grow your own coworking business or to make your own business more sustainable without adding another full time team member.
2. To help your members do the same...and to help them to be more successful so that they can afford to continue to be members.
3. To consider offering a VA service to your members as an additional revenue stream.
Molly Rose Speed is the founder of Virtual Assistant Management, a Training and Placement company for Virtual Assistants.
In this episode, Molly and I talk about:
- Molly’s background - her “why” for starting her virtual assistant company
- The types of things VA’s can do for a business
- How a VA might contribute to a coworking business
- How coworking member companies might use a VA
- How to shift a resistant mindset from “I can’t afford to hire help” to “I can’t afford to not hire help.”
- How you know you're "ready" for a VA
- What if you don't have documented processes in place to help you train a VA?
- How the VA model works
- Integrating into team
Everything Coworking Featured Resources:
Masterclass: 3 Behind-the-Scenes Secrets to Opening a Coworking Space
Creative Coworking Partnerships: How to negotiate and structure management agreements from the landlord and operator perspective
Resources Mentioned in this Podcast:
Download Molly’s Outsourcing Guide here
Hire a VA: www.virtualassistantmanagement.com
Becoming a VA: www.virtualassistantacademy.com
Learn more about Molly Rose: www.mollyrosespeed.com
https://www.instagram.com/mollyrosespeed/
Link to show notes here
In this series on “The New Rules of Engagement for Coworking Spaces,” we’re talking about what aspects of our coworking business we should examine.
Michael Abrams is my guest on the show. Michael has a deep background in real estate - as a landlord, developer and more recently in the flex office sector.
Michael is actively helping operators negotiate creative partnerships and shares his perspective and case studies.
Everything Coworking Featured Resources:
Masterclass: 3 Behind-the-Scenes Secrets to Opening a Coworking Space
Creative Coworking Partnerships: How to negotiate and structure management agreements from the landlord and operator perspective
Resources Mentioned in this Podcast:
Here’s the course that Michael and I teach: Creative Coworking Partnerships: How to negotiate and structure management agreements from the landlord and operator perspective.
Link to show notes here
Things have changed. You must question all aspects of your coworking business. I like to refer to this shift as “The New Rules of Engagement.”
This is the third episode in a series on “The New Rules of Engagement.”
In the first episode of the series, I walked through the key areas of our business that we should question post-COVID.
In last week’s episode, I did a deep dive on the aspects around “What you sell” that you should review/consider updating.
This week, we’re questioning who you serve.
In this episode, I talk about:
How the potential membership for coworking has evolved:
- Coworking started as a solution primarily for freelancers and solopreneurs that needed to get out of the house, find an alternative to the coffee shop and find their tribe.
- Coworking evolved as a solution for professional service professionals that needed small private offices.
- Over time, it started to grow into a flexible option for tech startups and small businesses that wanted the benefits of a large office but with more flexibility and without the overhead and operational hassle.
- Post-COVID, flex is an ideal solution for….everyone...and for all types of work, collaboration, events, and more.
- How coworking space operators need to decide who they are serving and adjust their physical space and their offers to meet their needs (as we discussed in last week’s “what you sell” episode.
Everything Coworking Featured Resources:
Masterclass: 3 Behind-the-Scenes Secrets to Opening a Coworking Space
Creative Coworking Partnerships: How to negotiate and structure management agreements from the landlord and operator perspective
Link to show notes here
Things have changed. You must question all aspects of your coworking business. I like to refer to this shift as “The New Rules of Engagement.”
Last week, I walked through the key areas of our business that we should question post-COVID. In this episode, I do a deep dive on the aspects around “What you sell” that you should review/consider updating.
In this episode, I talk about:
- Flexibility
- Privacy
- The HQ Model
- Other Shared Space Models our Coworking Startup School Students are Pursuing
- Other Sources of Revenue
Everything Coworking Featured Resources:
Masterclass: 3 Behind-the-Scenes Secrets to Opening a Coworking Space
Creative Coworking Partnerships: How to negotiate and structure management agreements from the landlord and operator perspective
Resources Mentioned in this Podcast:
Things have changed a lot over the past 18 months. You must question all aspects of your coworking business.
I like to refer to this shift as “The New Rules of Engagement.”
In this episode, I walk through the areas of your coworking business that we should question:
- Who you serve
- What you sell
- How you market
- Your real estate structure
Everything Coworking Featured Resources:
Masterclass: 3 Behind-the-Scenes Secrets to Opening a Coworking Space
Creative Coworking Partnerships: How to negotiate and structure management agreements from the landlord and operator perspective
Resources Mentioned in this Podcast:
Everything Coworking YouTube Channel
The coworking ethos promises a lot. Productivity, hospitality, community, networking, business growth, and more. I had a serious case of expectation failure when I toured two coworking spaces in the town next to mine...which was amplified when I joined one of them.
In this episode, I talk about:
- How frustrating the tour experience can be when you can’t easily find the front desk
- How going on a coworking space tour should feel like being on a great date
- How it’s easy to use industry buzzwords but much harder to actually execute on things like hospitality and community
- Why you should have someone shop your tour experience to see if your stated values align with the actual experience.
- Why I’m thinking harder about offering 10-day passes
- One approach you might take to kick-start your referral program
Phil Kirschner, Senior Expert, McKinsey Real Estate and Organizational Transformation practices, has a pretty unique perspective on coworking & flexible workspace. On this episode, he shares a personal experience using a coworking space for a last-minute client call first thing in the morning...and how that sent off both literal and figurative alarms for him.
On this episode, we talk about:
- How is the perspective about flexible workplace / coworking changing for large enterprise companies?
- How are large enterprises using flexible workplace / coworking to inform and implement their post-pandemic workplace strategies?
- What are the benefits and challenges of increased adoption of flexible workplace / coworking by employees of large enterprises?
- What can smaller operators do to improve the experience of enterprise members, both the decision-makers and the individual user?
Every time Mitch Gray spoke to a group or a new client, he heard "Our biggest business challenge is that t's really hard to find good people." He had discovered a simple approach to his own hiring practice that gave him a constant pipeline of good people. He decided to share this with others. On this episode, we talk about how to always be hiring, why Indeed may not be the best source for local talent, and how to sell our "why" to attract great candidates. Mitch is a member of coworking space Firehouse in Clovis, NM.
Mitch Gray, small business consultant and author of “How to Hire and Keep Great People” shares his insights around hiring and how to get out of the mindset that “it’s really hard to find good people right now.”
On this episode, we talk about:
Everything Coworking Featured Resources:
Masterclass: 3 Behind-the-Scenes Secrets to Opening a Coworking Space Creative
Resources Mentioned in this Podcast:
Instagram: @mgraymedia
Twitter: @mgraymedia
Cofounders Amirh Davis and Christina Gutierrez met each other through a mutual friend that connected them to work on their mutual passion for coworking and childcare. They renovated a former bank building and opened in March 2, 2020, just a week before the stay-at-home order in response to COVID-19.
They give us a behind-the-scenes experience growing their business during a challenging environment for coworking and childcare.
They share how they attract their members, how they run their childcare model, and advice they’d give to new operators, and anyone considering integrating childcare into their coworking business.
MRP launched its first flexible office concept under Make Offices. Over time, MRP expanded that brand into non-owned assets.
After several years of learning, a global pandemic, and significant evolution in what tenants want from office space, they relaunched a more inclusive building services platform under the moniker “Heyday Properties.”