Everything Coworking

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.

Link to show notes here

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.

Get the full show notes here

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:

• Propmodo - what topics they cover and why you should subscribe.
• How flexible lease contracts don’t fit into the way we typically value buildings...and how the current market is changing that.
• How lenders view Flex and it's nuances.
• What will it take for Flex to become accepted in the mainstream market?

Click here for episode shownotes.

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:

• Coworking/flex demand numbers by major markets (per Upsuite data)
• Which markets are “over-flexed” and under-flexed” based on “demand by location?” Overall, demand in Q1 across North America was up 21% creating a benchmark for operators to use to look at their own demand.
• Why people are going to the office? What drives people to leave their home office? How can operators leverage these insights for marketing messages? 
• Ben’s recommendation for product mix to match demand: Private offices + The living room you always wanted + Kitchen
• Why Ben thinks we’ll see a tremendous shift to management agreements
• Why Ben thinks the operators that survived the pandemic are here to stay.

Get the show notes here!

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…

• More productive
• More confident
• More clear on the next step in their business
• More focused
• Happier
• Healthier
• More connected….

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.

Link to shownotes here

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:

1. A framework for reviewing your current offering and determining what you might need to adjust.
2. Opportunities to upsell things to your members that they need and value.
3. Some creative ideas for re-framing and marketing spaces that aren’t selling yet (like team offices!).

Get the show notes here!

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:

1. Rebranding - not once but twice! Expansive, novel, level
2. The Expansive business model
3. How Expansive is shifting its product mix to serve today's customer needs
4. Expansive’s net promoter score and amazing GMB reviews
5. The unique Expansive company culture

Link to show notes here!

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.

Link to show notes 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?

Link to show notes here!

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!