Everything Coworking

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

Community Manager University

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

Resources Mentioned in this Podcast:

Jim Heid on Linkedin

Jim’s Book: Building Small

Jim’s coworking space

Jim’s website

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

Community Manager University

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

Community Manager University

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

Resources Mentioned in this Podcast:

The Owl for meeting rooms

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!

Virtual Office training program

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

Community Manager University

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

Resources Mentioned in this Podcast:

Miro on LinkedIn

Office RnD FlexIndex

Miro’s email address: if you have KPI requests: [email protected]

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

Community Manager University

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

Community Manager University

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

Resources Mentioned in this Podcast:

Michael Abrams on LinkedIn

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

Community Manager University

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:

Community Manager University

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:

Craftwork packages for offsites

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:

Community Manager University

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

OfficeRnD FlexWorld Conference

ULI Small Developer Forum