Everything Coworking

In a membership-based business, each month we win new members and lose others. Our business model relies on a systematic sales and marketing approach that drives net positive membership growth each month.

In this episode, we analyze a local, membership-based, community-focused business that, despite it's strong, engaged community, is losing money each month. I walk through their situation and what we can learn to better manage our coworking businesses.

BJ Rosinus has a real estate background, ran a coworking space in Florida, and then decided to join one of his members in serving a niche need for the coworking space - insurance for operators and members. 

Insurance is not the sexiest topic, but your landlord won't let you sign your lease without it and it can be hard to find a broker that "gets" our business and assigns the appropriate amount of risk and in turn, charges a fair premium. 

Going a step further, BJ's team offers insurance for members that meets the requirement in the member agreement and also satisfies the the growing frequency of requests from landlords that each member provide proof of insurance.

Get the details here: www.everythingcoworking.com/114

Whether you’re new and worried that someone is going to beat you to opening in your market, or you’ve been in business for awhile and competition in your market is starting to heat up, this discussion is for you.

www.everythingcoworkingclub.com

Hannah Walker reflects on her team's first year in business at WorkHub in Tyler, TX.

We cover:

A little about Tyler, TX

What role does Workhub play in your community?

What is special about Workhub?

What WorkHub members do for work

What has surprised Hannah the most in your first year of running a coworking space?

What Hannah has enjoyed the most?

What has been the most challenging?

What advice would Hannah give another operator to help them prepare for their first year?

What is Hannah excited about for year 2?

In this episode, Susan Glosby owner of WorkAway Solutions outside of Washington, DC, shares her coworking story AND her expertise in franchising major brands.

In this episode, I asked Susan to share:

1. What is franchising?
2. What’s involved in franchising a business (as a franchisor?)
3. What’s a ballpark number for the cost of setting up a franchise?
4. What are the benefits of franchising for the franchisor? For the franchisee?
5. If you were talking someone into franchising their coworking business/brand, what would you tell them?
6. If you were talking someone out of franchising their coworking business/brand, what would you tell them?

Want to offer your community managers training and development and a peer community? Check out our new Community Manager U at www.everythingcoworking.com/communitymanagers.

We cover topics including:

1. What is NeoCon?
2. Why do you attend?
3. Who should attend?
4. What are the latest commercial office design trends that apply to coworking?

Interested in a training and development program for your Community Manager? Get more info here: www.everythingcoworking.com/communitymanagers

In this episode, we talk about what to do when your tour flow doesn’t feel right, or better yet, when your tour tracker data demonstrates your numbers are down.

Always get back to basics to troubleshoot issues. It’s tempting to do a “shoot, ready, aim” approach and start (desperately) throwing tactics at the wall.

Try not to do that.

First, go through your sales funnel and evaluate every step of it to see where you might be falling short.

We cover some simple data sources to check to see where the holes might be and how to get some help plugging those holes.

Anne Hardy, Chief Security Officer at Join Digital, shares with us the basics on our physical security and cyber security responsibilities as coworking space operators. Some categories of members such as corporate employees and funded tech startups, will have non-negotiable requirements/specifications for security in the space ranging from guest check-in policies to secure, dedicated SSID's

Anne is a high-tech executive with broad experience, starting from software design, architecture, cybersecurity, to managing teams to release telecommunications and enterprise software, building and leading research labs, managing developer relations, and initiating and driving cultural changes. She recently joined the Join Digital team, passionate about the innovation of their cloud-based IT service platform and its ability to change the IT game for building owners, flexible workspace operators as well as traditional tenants.

Maximilliano and his childhood friend, stumbled upon a unique need in the coworking market. They had a logistics operation involving inland transportation in the US, and they realized that many of their customers were operating some aspects of their business from Coworking Spaces.

These customers had their office at a different place than their actual logistic operation; this didn't make any sense to Max and Guillermo.

Their customers would have to commute from their Coworking Space to a Warehouse, losing valuable time commuting. Max and Guillermo saw an opportunity to put both under one roof - they created Palletized - a Coworking space focused on logistic distribution and e-commerce.

Now their members had access to work space and their warehousing and logistics needs...and they had a community of business owners with similar needs all under one roof.