136. Jamie Russo shares 5 Things to Focus on in your Coworking Business in 2020 to Drive Growth and Make an Impact

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136. Jamie Russo shares 5 Things to Focus on in your Coworking Business in 2020 to Drive Growth and Make an Impact

00:00:01 Welcome to the everything Coworking podcast, where you learn what you need to know about how the world wants to work. And now your host, co working space owner and trend expert Jamie Russo Way. Welcome to everything. Coworking podcast. This is Jamie Russo. I know we are a bit into 2020. At this point, I thought I'd let the dust settle a little bit and jump in with my two cents on the five things to focus on in your co working business in 2020 or any year, for that matter.

00:00:40 So I love the perspective. Running a business is hard, but it's fairly simple. There are a lot of simple things that we do in our business, and sometimes we're poking around for things that air difficult and complex. But it's really the simple things we should focus on in orderto have a profitable, sustainable business. And that is my goal for you. For anyone who's just starting out, I want you to design a business that is sustainable and that you love to run. And for those of you that are already running,

00:01:13 I want youto optimize your business, make it sustainable for you and your team and give you the time and energy to focus on developing your community. So what's the goal of focusing on the right things in 2020? For me in this episode, it's three things to help you get more members to help you keep more members and to help you make an impact and meet your financial goals. When we talk about get more members, most of us are always looking to add to our membership. Some of us might be full to the brim,

00:01:44 but then we're looking to expand. And when we open that next location, we're gonna need more members. More members is generally good for our bottom line and good for our members. More members equals a bigger, stronger TRIBE. To appoint, you can outgrow your ability to serve your TRIBE. A community can get too big, but generally we're learning and we're optimizing the size of our space is to really work, be the right size, create the right communities. More members generally equals more revenue and a higher margin,

00:02:17 allowing us to invest in the space and invest in activities that help our members to connect. So if we have more members It's just like a wonderful cycle. Then we have the budget to keep our spaces tiptop and host member events and put a little budget behind those member events, which can really help members to connect. And, of course, that is one of the things on my list to focus on for 2020. But we're not there yet. Focusing on the right things could help you to keep more members read a great discussion in one of my flight group calls.

00:02:50 Ah Wise member of the group, pointed out that it's much easier to retain members than to lose them and have to find new members to replace them. We'd much rather keep our members, and then all the new members are gravy right? We don't wanna have to keep replacing members and sort of be a a net neutral number. We want to have incremental new members every month, so we want to focus on simple things that help us with our attention, and then we want to be able to make an impact.

00:03:18 As a co working space operator, you likely have ah, couple of goals. You want to run a profitable business that helps you to meet your financial goals for the space, and you want to make an impact on your community. We can't pursue our purpose driven goals if the space isn't profitable, so we need to focus on the right things. So let's dive into the five things that I'm suggesting to focus on in your co working business in the new year. One is systems. Systems are sexy. OK,

00:03:51 maybe not. But let's pretend they are. They're super important that can help you get to the sexy things in your business. What do I mean by systems? Let's get you business organized and automated as much as you can on the front and the back end. This will improve your members experience and your team's experience and give you time to do the other things on this list. I want you to think about being the CEO of your business. Put that hat on. You're in charge. You drive it.

00:04:22 You choose what to focus on every day, so I want you to give yourself the head room to do the important things. By really taking care of the things that are repeated every month. Put some leadership systems in place to help you and your team be intentional. What are some examples of the systems I'm talking about here again? Pretty straightforward, But a lot of us don't do these things. I didn't do these things for a long time. I always felt this weight of, like accounting and what's my team up to you and where's the business?

00:04:55 And just, like, sort of in reactionary mode, said a word reactive mode, reacting to things not being intentional, not being super organized and blocking things out in my schedule to do them on an expected date every month. It's not easy for your brain to be all over the place all the time and not easy for your team to keep up. Not having any idea when you're gonna want to do accounting or when you're going to check on the marketing tracker. So let's get organized. Burst. Have a weekly team meeting.

00:05:25 You and your team need to be aligned, create a team meeting that happens on the same day and the same time each week. If a conflict comes up, they will. Monday's Martin Luther King Day. We had to move ours. We're closed that day. Reschedule the meeting for the same day or the day after trying not to skip a week. If you have to skip a week, get right back on the wagon and make sure you're there the next week. Your team needs access to you, and you should be in the loop on what's happening in the space.

00:05:54 Certainly empower your team to make decisions. Don't micromanage. Don't make them ask. Review every little thing with you. But you want to keep your fingers on the pulse of what's happening in this space because you want to be able to make adjustments a real time, not when it's too late. If you don't do team meetings and you don't check in and you start to get kind of distance from what's happening, then things can start to slip and you won't know until it's too late and you have actual problems to fix.

00:06:20 So make sure you're in tune with the vibe of your team and the members Super important. We don't want any surprises when it comes to team members, leaving suddenly because they're not happy or the space kind of going downhill and member starting to leave. Another example of systems scheduled time to run your monthly processes on the same day of the month. I always felt behind on things like accounting and marketing, because again, just like other things going on, that I'd focus on other businesses that have needs. So get organized.

00:06:53 Put those processes in place, and this will also help you recognize if they're things that are, you need to get done that you don't have time to do, and your team doesn't have time to Dio. And therefore they're just gonna slip every month. And you need some help needing to outsource some things so that they get done. They can't just not get done because this will impact your business. It will impact your members experience at some point. It's a couple of examples of things that you might schedule every week or every month.

00:07:21 Have your team reviewed the monthly billing before it runs to get in front of any issues? Super simple. But let me tell you, we have not done that, and there always is something wacky. A new member start. We forget to put him in as a recurring member. Somebody needs a manual conference room charges that we forget to d'oh. So pick a date.

00:07:40 We try to pick the 23rd of the month because it's a good week out, and it gives us some time to fix something.

00:07:46 Investigate something if we see something wonky and you're probably using a space management platform that handles your billing automatically,

00:07:53 we do, too. But the inputs or manual humans make mistakes, and so it's easy to have something that's off and you want to fix it if you can,

00:08:02 before all the charges run instead of afterwards. But you probably have mistakes he don't catch and happen afterwards,

00:08:10 or credit cards that expire. So also, book a slot in your calendar. Have your team do it where once a month they go under the billing system and look for anything that didn't run correctly.

00:08:21 Expired Credit cards, et cetera. Again, sounds simple. I've made this mistake a bunch of times.

00:08:27 Well, a virtual male client. They didn't pay their bill in March. We didn't see it until August,

00:08:33 No good, and that was my fault because we had staff turnovers and I was not organized because I was not used to having to run those systems.

00:08:40 And, man, I just was not on top of it. We had no major disasters, but that was revenue we should have had We couldn't go back and recover that.

00:08:49 They probably weren't gonna pay anyway. But we should have known that at the time we shouldn't have missed it.

00:08:54 We didn't have the right process in place. So now we're super super systematic about making sure we schedule time to review everything.

00:09:02 And then it gets done in a very timely manner. And if we missed something, we know it.

00:09:06 Have your team block out time once a month to update your offer's on Google, your Google my business page and solicit reviews from members.

00:09:15 They might also block out a couple of times a week to post to Google my business. Man, this is courage,

00:09:23 iCal. We still get approximately 20 times the number of visitors to our Google, my business listing through the Google map App that we do our website people are on mobile.

00:09:34 They're searching via map maps, so you need to be found. And Google needs to like you. And Google likes dynamic content.

00:09:43 So what gets scheduled gets done. Have your team block this off. I recently had my community manager go through and we figured out what she spends,

00:09:53 You know her time on during the day. And man that time is really fragmented and gets eaten up really quickly.

00:10:00 As you know, our managers air doing a 1,000,000 different things during the day. And if you don't schedule in some of these critical,

00:10:07 repetitive things, then they can get stuck being reacting to member needs. Unexpected tours, planning events, all the things that are sort of more urgent and sort of speak more loudly than that Google posting that needs to be updated,

00:10:21 but it needs to get done. So I also recommend that you have a tracker for these critical things that you reviewed during your weekly meetings to make sure that these tests are getting done.

00:10:31 If they're not, then work with your team to figure out how do you make time? How do you help them block schedule?

00:10:37 How do you help them get away from the front desk? If they need time to focus, it can be difficult,

00:10:42 but this is our business we're talking about. We got to get these things done. Schedule a time each week to review inventory and place orders again.

00:10:50 This is an example. Lots of people have this like down pat. We do now. But I've had managers.

00:10:56 This was just not their forte. And, you know, it's almost as bad as the Internet going down or running out of half and half.

00:11:03 That happened to us during a season of not a great community manager and my members zero tolerance for no half in half,

00:11:12 right? I mean, they're showing up. Yeah, they could stop it Starbucks on the way in.

00:11:16 But they don't know that you're gonna be head of half and half. You simply cannot run out of it.

00:11:21 And anyway, make sure that you have that system in place and make sure you're on top of it and get that feedback if that's not getting done.

00:11:30 And it's something that, especially if you have a new manager who just may not be in the flow of things yet.

00:11:35 Review those things in your weekly meeting again. Another simple thing. But this can impact members Review upcoming holidays and make sure you've blocked them out in your reservation system.

00:11:45 Put up signs if your clothes so that your members know your clothes that they have to bring their own coffee that day if they're going to come in.

00:11:52 Martin Luther King Day is a great one, man. Entrepreneurs not taking the day off unless they need to be home with their kids.

00:11:59 You work for corporate America? Sure as heck you're taken that day off. This is a U. S.

00:12:03 Only holiday Sorry for any of our international members. But the banks are closed, I think. But not every company has that day off,

00:12:10 and so people will be in your space. But if you give your team the day off, then you need to let members know.

00:12:16 And members do not like surprises, right? They like the routine of coming to your space and they walk in in the morning and they get a hello like they're a cheers and everybody knows their name and they chat with their people and they get their coffee with their half and half.

00:12:32 They do their routine. And so if the space is an open and there's no coffee and a sink full of dishes from the night before,

00:12:40 it's, you know, they're unhappy and they feel like they've been let down. But if you let them know in advance,

00:12:45 then they know that's the kind of day it's going to be. They get prepared, they bring their own coffee.

00:12:50 They know this thing's gonna be full of some dishes cause nobody ran the dishwasher in the morning and it's easier to handle.

00:12:56 People don't like surprises. Another example for the systems. Identify the KP eyes that are most important to you and put systems in place to help track them and work on them.

00:13:08 I think it's a super important one. It's easy to say we're gonna look at KP eyes and have these grand visions of what we want to do in a new year.

00:13:18 But unless we put the systems in place to do them not getting done, because all of the urgent,

00:13:23 loud things that come up in our day are going to win, so make it part of your weekly team meeting.

00:13:29 That way, you and your team are on the same page. There is a block post affiliated with this podcast post.

00:13:37 I'm going to link to it, and I have a really good KP I guide. You probably have it if you're in the Facebook group,

00:13:43 so know that you have it. But if it's if you lost it and need it again, there's gonna be a link to it.

00:13:48 You can grab it. It is super detailed. I almost feel like I should change it because it's got the kitchen sink of KP eyes in it.

00:13:57 But pick a few, so do not. Do not worry about all of them. Pick a few that you want to focus on.

00:14:04 Maybe a few 1/4 and spend time creating a little tracker and a dashboard so you can track the metrics that you want to use to optimize your results.

00:14:13 So an example might be you want to increase the number of tours that gets scheduled from your website. Create a little dashboard so he can track that number.

00:14:22 Pull your Google analytics. Know where that comes from at a link to the dashboard of your weekly meeting agenda,

00:14:29 so that you remember to review it or block out time in your own schedule to work on the KP eyes.

00:14:35 But if it's not scheduled, it's not getting done, and I like the accountability of having it in the team meeting because it's on the agenda just go through it with your team.

00:14:44 That way you can't tell your own self that it's even though it's on your schedule. You're gonna skip it that day.

00:14:49 And I also think if you're trying to develop a manager, even if you feel like it's a little over their head,

00:14:55 it's probably not. And they probably enjoy learning something. New. Exposure to Google Analytics It's a very transferable skill and sales funnel concepts and marketing concepts,

00:15:05 those air all super transferrable and great for your team to learn. And eventually you could take it off your plate and give it to one of your senior team members.

00:15:14 Okay, so Number one was all about systems, and I probably went a little overboard with all those examples again.

00:15:21 There's a block post that supports this podcast, so if you want to read through it, you can go check out the block post on the everything coworking dot com site.

00:15:31 You have to go under. Resource is in block. I think I need a adjust. The navigation on the websites a little bit hidden,

00:15:38 but you can find it there. Okay, so number two train and develop your team. So speaking of giving them transferable skills.

00:15:46 The same wise flight group member that I mentioned before also reported that one of his biggest learnings, from 2019 was to focus on his team.

00:15:56 First, he literally said Team first Members next, and he said that focus on his team will trickle down to the membership.

00:16:04 Having a high performance team working in your co working space each day will help you, like we said at the beginning.

00:16:11 Attract more members, retain more members and give you the owner more time to work on the business instead of in the business.

00:16:19 When you have time to work on the business, you should be able to create a more profitable, sustainable business that allows you to invest in your team and invest in the space and in your members,

00:16:31 which is a reinforcing cycle. No team wants to work in a space meeting, community manager or operations manager,

00:16:39 or whatever your name is for that team member. No team member wants to work in a space that isn't well cared for and try to support a membership with no resource is for member events,

00:16:52 right? We can all get scrappy, but at some point that becomes a little exhausting. And then no member wants to work in a space that has an under resourced community manager.

00:17:01 Just like losing members is a lot of work. Losing team members is extremely disruptive to you. The owner and tear membership.

00:17:09 I lost a community manager last January took me months to recover. I had to man the front desk until I could find replacements.

00:17:17 The replacements were desperation. One of them didn't work well. I had to find another one. I now have the most amazing community manager,

00:17:26 and that is a thank you from above for all of the disaster of the first quarter last year. So invest in your team.

00:17:34 Don't make desperate hiring decisions. But that's for another podcast episode. Consider if you can, allocating one day 1/4 for team development.

00:17:43 Pacific workplaces does exactly this. They take their team off site once 1/4 and they do professional development for their team to give an update.

00:17:53 Go through what's new in the business. What's coming up in the business. Any news? Any expansions,

00:17:59 et cetera. Go through team, you know, things, announcements. They need to make that maybe think some things that aren't working well or updated team members.

00:18:06 And then they do look a training session. So the team comes together, get some social time, get some company updates and gets to do some professional development.

00:18:15 Now they have 19 locations and growing, and a big team and a group of leadership team that can help support this professional development.

00:18:25 Not everyone has that, And if you have a small team that maybe you just spend a few hours.

00:18:29 But it's time for you and your team to align on the business, do some team building and provide your team with some professional development opportunities,

00:18:37 even if you don't have time to develop but curriculum, even just spending time with you, you who's a more experienced business person,

00:18:44 presumably, can be a great mentoring opportunity for your team. Also, meeting with your team weekly is an important I keep talking about this,

00:18:54 but it's so critical. It's an important tool for staying aligned with your team, supporting them and ensuring that you're making important decisions together.

00:19:03 Human communication is so challenging, it's so easy to get off track, and it's really easy to misunderstand each other over slack through asana I'm on boarding a new team member right now for my everything coworking business.

00:19:18 And every time I work with someone new, I'm reminded, like how hard it is to be really clear.

00:19:24 You know how you have to. It's a lot of effort and intentionality to be really, really clear so that the other person has no,

00:19:31 you know, can't misunderstand your direction very hard. And generally, if you're not just constantly communicating, then things will be misinterpreted and mistakes we've made.

00:19:41 So try to connect as regularly as you can and if you can, folks love to learn they love are they love the community manager role because it's so purpose driven right there,

00:19:54 a lot of pain in the butt, things you have to to in that role. Clean conference rooms make coffee,

00:19:59 But the interaction with the members is usually what fuels our community managers, but they're also probably millennials. They want development.

00:20:08 They want to see an ability to grow. They want transferable skills, they're gonna have another job. They're not gonna work for you forever,

00:20:16 so they want to know that they're preparing themselves for the next thing. So try to give them some professional development opportunities and shameless plug here.

00:20:27 I recently launched a community manager university for folks who don't have all the resources to do this on their own or even if you do,

00:20:35 to give your team exposure to other spaces and how they do things. Give your team access to their own TRIBE.

00:20:43 So we do. Ongoing Training and Development Month, A Q and A calls, as well as a private slack group for a D exchange and community building.

00:20:51 Weaver Q and A. Calls this week. We just had one today. It was awesome. Lots of note taking and good interaction and suggestions shared OK,

00:21:00 so number two number one with systems things to focus on Number two was trained and develop your team. Number three is get found.

00:21:08 First, this hiss super simple but super hard to stay focused on. But it's so important. The thing about business again is it's not easy,

00:21:20 but it's usually simple, and it's the simple things that make the big difference. So the best way to get more leads into the top of your sales funnel is to show up first in the search results.

00:21:30 If you're in the U. S. and certainly many other countries. That means showing up first on Google Search results and Google Maps,

00:21:38 which is your Google. My business listing on the back end. These are free activities that you can have your team.

00:21:45 D'oh! That will help you with your organic rankings. You can write blood post. This takes time,

00:21:50 but you don't have to pay for it. It's not paid advertising, right? Bog post with keywords Update your Google My business listing weekly with photos,

00:21:59 offers and member reviews. But then, the next thing you should focus on is learning about Google ads and Facebook ads and hiring a professional to help you test them for your space.

00:22:11 If you have a space with no marketing budget and you have competition so this doesn't apply to everyone, you might be in a small market where you're teaching people about co working and you're not ready for ads yet,

00:22:23 although ads can help with that education process, but it might take some time to see a return on those.

00:22:30 You will likely struggle to get enough leads. If you don't have a paid marketing budget and you're in a market with competition,

00:22:37 take a hard look at your business and figure out how to create a marketing budget, even if it's small to begin with,

00:22:44 start doing some testing and see what will work. Profitable. Coworking spaces and competitive markets are investing in paid digital ads on Google and Facebook.

00:22:56 So we have this ongoing discussion in my flight groups around. And if you're interested in joining a flight group,

00:23:02 by the way Link is in this block post everything coworking dot com forward slash flight groups. We meet once a month and we talk about business.

00:23:11 We typically have a theme. We talked a lot about marketing. Some folks do really well with Facebook ads.

00:23:17 Some folks don't so I can't get it. A data driven read on why that is, it might be market based.

00:23:25 It might be the type of ads they're doing. We had a call today, and one of the members was talking about Facebook ads working really well for them.

00:23:35 Pre launch. She's got a professional digital ad guy friend of the family running the ads for them, so she's not setting up the ad campaigns.

00:23:46 But you can learn to do this stuff yourself. It's better to use someone who knows how to set them up and knows how to test them.

00:23:53 There are people if you don't have a, you know, a friend, family a find the budget there also,

00:23:58 you can get good referrals for people they can hire. Threw up work. It set her up. That's what I d'oh.

00:24:03 I understand enough to be dangerous. But I don't want to do all the set up myself. So I have to hire somebody to do the setup.

00:24:08 And then I, you know, kind of give them feedback on what I think needs to be adjusted.

00:24:13 So number three is get found. First, do the work. Spend the time on S e o block post google my business listing and make sure you're carving out some paid digital dollars.

00:24:31 And we have Kevin Whalen coming onto the podcast shortly to talk about creating your marketing plan. So keep that in mind when you listen to his podcast.

00:24:39 Number four, celebrate your members. Okay, so we've talked 1000 things that will trickle down to your members.

00:24:46 This one is a little bit more focused directly on your members. Your members joined her co working space because they need a productive,

00:24:52 professional place to work. They want to be a part of a community of diverse but like minded professionals.

00:25:00 They want a reason to get out of their PJs each day, and they want to be seen and have positive social interactions Beyond greeting the U.

00:25:08 P s delivery guy. When you deliver on the reasons that your members joined your space, they will stay.

00:25:16 And remember, we talked about this. We don't want to be replacing members right. We only want members to leave if they like,

00:25:22 move or get a job. Even then, hopefully they can stay. So let's honor our members and help them to build relationships and feel rewarded for leaving the comfort of their kitchen table.

00:25:35 And this requires intentional effort from you and your team. Here are some tangible things that you can do to recognize and celebrate your members.

00:25:45 Create a member while many of you probably have this, Does it get a little stale? Do we get behind on the photos?

00:25:51 Freshen it up if you don't have one yet, look for some samples online, you remember. While can be informal or fancy,

00:25:59 it can be professional or entertaining you can design it to fit your culture. It can be front and center for your guests to see or tucked into a break room.

00:26:08 I love when member walls air visible because I think that everyone wants to know who's in the space. People outside of the community want to see who's on the inside,

00:26:20 and then that helps him to make a call as to whether or not they'll fit. But make it a spot where people don't feel super awkward if they're kind of oh,

00:26:29 going the profiles like if I'm a member and I'm fairly new and I want to get an idea of who's in the space and I want to actually read the profiles and look at the photos.

00:26:38 Don't make me feel weird for standing there looking at that wall. So kind of find a happy medium of making it public enough but accessible for people who want to check it out.

00:26:47 Unless you have an online directory that's easy to scroll through. Not everybody has that either on that member,

00:26:52 while you could include photos and short bios of members that air kind of in a visible place, and at the other thing a member wall does when you have the photos in the short bios it send a signal members and nonmembers alike that you respect and recognize your members and you want to show them off.

00:27:09 It's a signal that this place is about the members, right? It's there because they're for you, the member,

00:27:16 not for us. The operator is there because this is the thing that we want to contribute to the world.

00:27:22 And so showing off our members just helps to send that signal host consistent member events. We talked about that in a recent podcast episode.

00:27:30 We talked about how some member relationships will develop organically but happened so much faster if we helped facilitate those connections.

00:27:39 And one of the easiest ways to do that is to facilitate member events. So go back and listen to that episode,

00:27:47 which is a couple of episodes ago also have a detailed approach to developing a sustainable member event program on the blogged.

00:27:56 Also, a couple of posts ago. Just search for in the block if you're listening to this long after January 2020 highlight your members on social media.

00:28:05 I always advise teams to be careful about allocating too much time to social media. It's not a search platform that's going to deliver you most of your members.

00:28:16 It should be a part of your marketing mix, and it can help you meet some of your non member acquisition objective,

00:28:23 such as helping members feel scene and recognized and helping members to meet and connect. So highlight them on social media when your members joined have a simple profile form that they fill out get a head shot.

00:28:36 Pulling their head shot from Lincoln continues to be a total pain. Not everybody has a fancy updated profile picture,

00:28:43 or your team might have to sort of influence them to fill it out. This form might have a mix of professional and personal questions on it.

00:28:51 I love asking personal questions. You should also sort of get them to submit a headshot and use the profile and the headshot for your social media shoutouts.

00:29:03 You can create a template to do this, have a headshot template with a little blurb about the person next to it,

00:29:09 create one that size for Facebook and one that size for Instagram. You can post bolt to Facebook and Instagram as well as to your bog post and your newsletters.

00:29:20 So this content is compelling to your members and to your peeping Tom Nonmembers. You want to know who's in space,

00:29:27 and it's easy to repurpose, so you're getting a lot of value out of that member profile. So step number five last one.

00:29:35 Hang in there 1% your member experience. If the 1% concept isn't familiar, I highly recommend James Clears book atomic habits.

00:29:44 He makes the point that if you are consistent and very small ways that will add up a lot over time,

00:29:52 Why is the member experience important? The member experience will trump many things about your space except the Internet and coffee.

00:30:01 I will give you a personal example. We opened our Palo Alto space almost seven years ago. We took the space because it was fairly plug and play.

00:30:09 It had the right layout, the right mix almost of offices in open space and dedicated desk area. Good lighting,

00:30:17 great parking. So the ability to start this business super low cost to get into the space and get up and running,

00:30:24 which, if you are already up and running, you know, is a huge advantage to the r A y of your business.

00:30:32 Over the years we've had seasoned of really strong membership and some of not great membership and the season's correlate to the team managing the space.

00:30:42 They're fit in their roll, their execution of the things that air we've talked about today, members will drift away.

00:30:49 And when the team isn't committed to the member experience, I think members start to drift away when member events are not frequent,

00:30:56 inconsistent staff, its present, but not engaged. We don't manage things like inventory, and we run out of half and half.

00:31:04 Our team doesn't engage with each member personally. The head nod in the holo is not the same as Hey,

00:31:10 John, how is your son soccer game this weekend when we don't celebrate members in a public way, When we don't execute our basic marketing to do's,

00:31:20 it gets a lot harder to post frequently to your Google, my business listing when you don't host member events and you don't have photos of happy members of those member events and then likewise again,

00:31:31 it's like a self reinforcing challenge. Your members, when you're not having member event and not doing all the things on the list.

00:31:38 Your members don't fall in love with your space and their experience quite the same way. So it's harder to get them to write those reviews,

00:31:44 which make a big difference. And then the vibe starts to go down, and your members start to kind of look at other options.

00:31:52 If there's competition in your area and it's harder to close new members, new members sent when something is off in the energy just isn't the same.

00:32:00 You need the right energy to attract new members. So one of my quotes, favorite quotes, which you're gonna hear me repeat is intensity makes a good story.

00:32:11 Consistency makes progress, and this goes right along with James Clears. 1% approach. So what can you do each day to make a 1% greater positive impact on your community?

00:32:22 Greet members with a bigger smile or an individual greeting chat with members of the coffee bar asking personal questions.

00:32:29 Not too personal, but you know what I mean. Get past the weather conversation. Host member appreciation vans.

00:32:36 Thes can be simple and low budget. Refresh your member wall and keep it updated. Add something to the space that members have been asking for.

00:32:45 That was another big learning from 2019 that one of our flight group members mentioned was that you know, when people ask for things and you do them,

00:32:53 they love it. They notice it and they appreciate it. You could update your on boarding process can connect one member to another based on common interests.

00:33:04 You can add fresh flowers to the space, change out your throw pillows. I know super simple, but we're talking about 1%.

00:33:12 We're looking for easy things that make a difference over time. So that is my list of five. I will run through them again.

00:33:20 One is systems to is train and develop your team three is get found first meaning before your competition for its celebrate your members.

00:33:30 Five is 1% your member experiences. I would love to hear what you are focusing on in 2020 and what some of your 1% efforts are.

00:33:41 If you're not already in there, we have over 800 people now in our Facebook group and just they're such a great resource.

00:33:48 You ask a question. You're getting an answer from a bunch of people and I like to happen there as much as I can and help to answer as well so you can find us in the everything coworking Facebook group and share some of your focus ideas and 1% ideas and connect with other listeners.

00:34:04 We'd love to see you there. Thanks for joining us on this episode of everything co working. Be sure to click the subscribe button so you can stay up to date on the latest trends and how to until next time.

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Jamie Russo