Neighbourgood is about great places to live, stay, work, connect, and experience. They've created a dense ecosystem of neighbourhood hotels, apartments, and workspaces that connect communities across Cape Town...and their mission is to do this around the world.

Murray was one of our very first Coworking Startup School™ students and he's taking coworking and community to the next level! He shares the Neighbourgood story to date and their vision for the future.

Resources Mentioned in this Episode:

Murray's LinkedIn profile

Neighbourgood website

Everything Coworking Featured Resources:

Masterclass: 3 Behind-the-Scenes Secrets to Opening a Coworking Space

Coworking Startup School - Phase I: Validate

Community Manager University

The Everything Coworking Academy

Follow Us on YouTube

Tricia Teague is a multi-passionate entrepreneur. 

She moved back to her hometown of Danville, IL after 20 years away and knew she needed to bring coworking to the community.

If you're interested in small-town coworking or leveraging grants to support your space and/or members, this one is for you.

Resources Mentioned in This Podcast

Tricia's LinkedIn profile

Soar Space website

The Trep School website

Everything Coworking Featured Resources:

Masterclass: 3 Behind-the-Scenes Secrets to Opening a Coworking Space

Coworking Startup School - Phase I: Validate

Community Manager University

The Everything Coworking Academy

Follow Us on YouTube

Are potential members trying to get you to talk about cost per square foot? Shift the conversation to "total cost of occupancy" and compare the total cost of a traditional lease, or even a sublease, to a coworking option.

In this episode:

• We explore the concept of TCO, which goes beyond initial rent costs to consider all expenses associated with office space.
• We break down the TCO for coworking and subleasing, emphasizing the importance of hidden costs, flexibility, and included amenities.
• Learn how to use TCO as a powerful tool in conversations with potential customers, helping them understand the true value of coworking for their businesses.

Resources Mentioned in This Podcast

The Total Cost of Occupancy Blog Post

Everything Coworking Featured Resources:

Masterclass: 3 Behind-the-Scenes Secrets to Opening a Coworking Space

Coworking Startup School - Phase I: Validate

Community Manager University

The Everything Coworking Academy

Follow Us on YouTube

In this episode, we explore one operator’s assumption that organic social media is critical to the success of a coworking business. 

We talk about:

• Low organic reach (2% - 10%)

• The concept that we advertise on Google to get found by active searchers and we show up on social media to interrupt potential customers that may not even know about coworking

• Outsourcing social media vs. handling it in-house

• Investing in paid ads on either Google or Facebook

• Tracking your lead sources so that you can let the numbers tell you where to focus and what to spend money on!

Resources Mentioned in This Podcast

The Facebook Ads library

Everything Coworking Featured Resources:

Masterclass: 3 Behind-the-Scenes Secrets to Opening a Coworking Space

The Everything Coworking Academy

Community Manager University

Follow Us on YouTube

This episode focuses on aligning your coworking space size with your goals. It covers topics such as the importance of understanding your business model, considering different goals for your space, diversifying income sources, and understanding the profitability of small spaces.

Highlights:

• Considerations regarding the cost and profitability of small coworking spaces.
• Learning from Brian Watson and his experience with smaller, automated locations.-
• Different goals for creating a coworking space, such as fostering community or generating profit.
• The need to align your business model and strategy with your desired goals.
• The importance of understanding real estate costs, pricing, staffing, and unexpected expenses.

Resources Mentioned in this Episode:

Brian Watson episode on automating small coworking spaces

Everything Coworking Featured Resources:

Masterclass: 3 Behind-the-Scenes Secrets to Opening a Coworking Space

The Coworking Startup School

The Everything Coworking Academy

Community Manager University

Follow Us on YouTube

Jen Luby is the founder and CEO of Dayhouse Coworking in Highland Park, a suburb of Chicago.

Jen's story might sound familiar....one day, while trying to do deep creative work with a three year old interrupting her every 45 seconds, she thought there must be a better way. Enter Dayhouse. Dayhouse was designed to serve members like Jen who needed a professional, but family-friendly place to get work done.

Jen and her team have experimented with various kid-friendly models and landed on a version where there's an enclosed, kid-friendly area in the space that is often used by therapists who work with kids and gets booked for school-day-off activities and day camps. 

Here are some questions that I ask Jen:

Who is your ideal customer? What do they want out of your coworking space?

How do your values align with what your Ideal Customer wants as well as the type of business that you want to run?

What does being family-friendly look like for you? What have you experimented with? 

What has worked/not worked?

Resources Mentioned in this Episode:

Jen's LinkedIn profile

Dayhouse Coworking website

Everything Coworking Featured Resources:

Masterclass: 3 Behind-the-Scenes Secrets to Opening a Coworking Space

The Everything Coworking Academy

Community Manager University

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

Follow Us on YouTube

I like to call myself a chronic DIY’er. This mindset has its place…that place is not in staining three decks with spindle railings…nor does it belong in creating a coworking business that could bankrupt you in mistakes made before you even open your doors. 

Let’s talk about what can go well and what can derail us when we attempt to DIY a significant project.

Resources Mentioned in this Episode:

Coworking Startup School

Everything Coworking Featured Resources:

Masterclass: 3 Behind-the-Scenes Secrets to Opening a Coworking Space

The Everything Coworking Academy

Community Manager University

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

Follow Us on YouTube

In this episode, we talk about why WeWork failed (the simplified version) and why WeWork’s failure isn’t correlated to the ability of an independent operator to be profitable and successful.

We cover:

• The short version of the rise and fall of WeWork

• WeWork’s historical focus on growth over unit economics. 

• How independent operators and asset owners can focus on unit economics, local market knowledge and sustainable growth to create and grow a profitable business

Resources Mentioned in this Episode:

WeCrashed

How I Did This: Expanded to Multiple Locations

Lemonade stand plans on Pinterest

Our lemonade stand! We had to transport it to the park where we could access foot traffic :)

Everything Coworking Featured Resources:

Masterclass: 3 Behind-the-Scenes Secrets to Opening a Coworking Space

The Everything Coworking Academy

Community Manager University

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

Follow Us on YouTube

“And for us since day one, we realized that even though we have competitors in the sense of office space. We're really competing against people in their homes. If we can't bring people out of their houses and into a better experience at GP, then people aren't going to churn, right?”

Tim Hasse, the founder of General Provision, gives us the inside look into a space that identifies as a “work club,” not as an office or even a coworking space. 

His intuition long before COVID was to create an experience that wasn’t just about work. “The mantra very early was that anybody could come in and outbuild us, but they'll never be able to outservice us. And that's the, the culture that still lives on, you know, nine years later.”

Resources Mentioned in this Episode:

Tim's LinkedIn profile

General Provision website

Everything Coworking Featured Resources:

Masterclass: 3 Behind-the-Scenes Secrets to Opening a Coworking Space

The Everything Coworking Academy

Community Manager University

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

Follow Us on YouTube

This is a bonus episode and it will be most relevant to those of you that are still thinking about or working on opening a coworking space.

On this episode I share the new format that we're testing for the Coworking Startup School with the goal to get you more clear and confident on the first few steps of our 12-Step Profitable Coworking Framework because these matter the most...and this is where the most operators make the biggest, most expensive mistakes.

Get the details on our live cohort - registration closes Friday, September 1st.