Everything Coworking

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

Community Manager University

Creative Coworking Partnerships: How to negotiate and structure management agreements from the landlord and operator perspective

Resources Mentioned in this Podcast:

Brian on LinkedIn

Alt Space website

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

Community Manager University

Creative Coworking Partnerships: How to negotiate and structure management agreements from the landlord and operator perspective

Resources Mentioned in this Podcast:

Wayne Berger on LinkedIn

Giovanni Palavicini on LinkedIn

IWG’s list of brands

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

Community Manager University

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

Her Power Space website

Her Power Space on Facebook

Her Power Space on Instagram

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:

Kane Willmott, CEO, IQ Office

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

Community Manager University

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

Community Manager University

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

Community Manager University

Creative Coworking Partnerships: How to negotiate and structure management agreements from the landlord and operator perspective.

Resources Mentioned in this Podcast:

Hector’s website

Syncaroo’s website

Hector on LinkedIn

This Week in Coworking website

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

Community Manager University

Creative Coworking Partnerships: How to negotiate and structure management agreements from the landlord and operator perspective

Resources Mentioned in this Podcast:

Bryan on LinkedIn

Bryan’s website PH.creative

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

Community Manager University

Creative Coworking Partnerships: How to negotiate and structure management agreements from the landlord and operator perspective

Resources Mentioned in this Podcast:

Whitington Consulting

Rick Whittington on LinkedIn  

Caroline on LinkedIn

The Gather Case Study

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

Community Manager University

Creative Coworking Partnerships: How to negotiate and structure management agreements from the landlord and operator perspective

Resources Mentioned in this Podcast:

Ilyse on LinkedIn

The Feather Website

The Feather/WeWork builder

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

Community Manager University

Creative Coworking Partnerships: How to negotiate and structure management agreements from the landlord and operator perspective