Everything Coworking

Michael Youngblood, cofounder of Unsettled, asked himself a question that would change the course of the next few years of his life. "Why would I spend the winter in cold, snowy Boston?" Shortly after posing that question, he and 40 or so of his friends and their friends spent a month working remotely in a warm climate. Turns out, there are a lot of people that want to experience new cultures in beautiful cities with other location-unconstrained professionals. Michael shared his story, how the company is growing and evolving and how he leverages coworking spaces to give professionals the resources they need to run their businesses and a local community to enhance their experience.

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Hector Kolonas is growing a platform that he developed to help members of shared workspaces leverage collective buying power for discounts on commonly used products and services. In turn, this platform shares part of the savings with the shared space owner, providing a diversified revenue source for space.

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This episode highlights a few 2017 Coworking Predictions that I made for Work Design Magazine.

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Wendy Spreenberg, President and Founder of SITE RESolutions, goes through a SWOT Analysis for experienced shared space operators in a rapidly evolving market. 

This week we talk to Rick Mulready, host of the Art of Paid Traffic podcast.

In our intro, Rick shares his experience working in a shared workspace in San Diego. 

Rick covers:

• An overview of the benefits of FB ads to local business owners
• Examples of clients he's worked with that have had incredible success with local Facebook Ads (including a roofer!)
• How local targeting works on Facebook
• Ideas for lead magnets
• How you can easily do impactful video ads for Facebook (100 million hours of video is being consumed on FB every single day!)
• Ideas for video ad copy for shared workspaces
• How to think through a simple sales funnel: ad/offer/opt-in/follow-up before jumping into writing your ad copy
• The idea that you have to test, test, test!

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She consults primarily with corporations and helps them make workplace policy decisions that really impact their workforce. But she considers workspace to be anywhere that people work, from hospitals to schools to traditional office buildings.

Spaces that are highly occupied are serving people’s needs

Underutilization can indicate not that people don’t need space but that that particular space isn’t serving the occupant group

She believes in “fail fast” facilities management - test work environments. If they aren’t used, they aren’t working so swap it out. She sees the coworking industry as participating in this test environment - being very consumer-focused and letting the user “vote with their feet” for what works.

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• How listening to operators made a difference while brokers were a negative topic in coworking.
• How a lease is important for your business.
• What are the common mistakes operators make when getting into leasing business.
• How getting general is not always a good idea.
• Why you have to pay attention to details on every lease.
• How having a flexibility to expand and contract is a must have for a coworking business.
• Why factoring in pass-throughs and operating expenses into coworking business models is important.
• How having conversations with your broker for joint adventures is great idea.
• The benefits of using a broker.
• Why Dawson is excited about Data and the information it provides.
• Why is it important to be sensitive and start measuring what kind of people are coming into your space.
• How knowing about the competition can be of great value.
• Why all operators on real estate side need to be conservative about modeling.
• The outlook of coworking over the next three to five years.

This episode features Chris Holt, co-founder of TechArtista in St. Louis, Missouri.

Chris shares his experience on expanding his space over time and adding member-driven services such as a Movement Lab, a hair studio, a photography studio and a maker's space.

Get the full show notes here.

Welcome to Episode #31 of the Everything Coworking Podcast!

This episode is brought to you by the Global Workspace Association.

In this episode, Craig Baute, founder of Creative Density, a coworking space in Denver, shares his experience around how to cultivate community in a shared workspace. He gives some tips on how to facilitate without going overboard. This episode and our next episode, #32, focus on facilitating community in a shared workspace. I created a downloadable cheat sheet with a list of tips and insights shared by our guests, Craig in this episode, and Chris Holt from Tech Artista in the next episode.

To get the cheat sheet, text GWA2016 to 44222, and then follow the instructions on your phone.

Enjoy our conversation!

Full Show Notes