146. Case Study: How Jessica Bommarito added a profitable digital layer to her physical coworking membership
Resources Mentioned in this Podcast:
Everything Coworking Featured Resources:
Masterclass: 3 Behind-the-Scenes Secrets to Opening a Coworking Space
Creative Coworking Partnerships: How to negotiate and structure management agreements from the landlord and operator perspective
Transcription
146. Case Study: How Jessica Bommarito added a profitable digital layer to her physical coworking membership
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. Welcome to the everything Coworking podcast. I have a very special guest today. Jessica Bommarito, owner of Groundswell Co. Working in Ontario, Canada. She is in a small town outside of Toronto. She is also a business coach and a community advocate. So I think you're gonna love this episode. It is perfect timing for those of us who are managing through Covert 19 and also just for those of us who have had an inkling about diversifying our physical community and leveraging our community building competencies to do something a little different,
00:01:06 maybe something in the digital space. So, Jess, today in our talk shares ground swells experience pivoting to an online digital membership the second she had to temporarily close her doors. What's interesting is that her digital membership levels actually mirror her physical membership tears but are totally unique to the digital space. So she and not that there's anything wrong with us. Lots of us are doing sort of the everybody is invited to our zoom programming. She customized each level toe, add unique value to her members. And she had a framework that she drew on to make this happen and was able to act quickly to transition from physical to virtual.
00:01:54 So she's gonna share a little bit about that framework and her thought process and how that's working. And this also just might be the perfect time to craft and test a digital membership. You will give you some, uh, thought provoking ideas about how a digital membership might be able to help you serve more entrepreneurs without expanding your physical space. If that's not something you want to d'oh! And we also will have some additional resource is that you can grab. So buckle up or put the leashes on the dogs and get out of the house and take a walk and enjoy my conversation with Jess Bommarito.
00:02:38 I am here today with a very special guest. Just Bommarito is the owner of Groundswell Co. Working in Norfolk, Ontario, which is a town about six of about 65,000 people southwest of Toronto. Jesse's a corking space owner, a business coach and a community advocate, and she and I connected recently on the topic of taking physical communities digital. So she's here to share her story and how she thinks about the process of going digital with communities and share some ideas that might get you thinking about doing the same.
00:03:19 So just thank you for joining me today. Thank you so much for having me. I'm pumped to be here. Totally. So I'm gonna save sort of our connection story for later once you've gotten into a little bit of what we're here to talk about today. But I'm excited that we connected and excited to hear your story. So just is gonna kind of share her story and give us some lessons learned around taking communities digital. Um and we just thought this would be a good time to connect on this topic with everything that's happening in the world.
00:03:52 But even after we get through this phase, there's a lot of opportunity. We were talking earlier about how many of us as co working space operators have developed this competency around community building, and most of us apply it. Thio what's happening in our physical coworking spaces. But community building can happen in a lot of different ways. So we're gonna talk about that a little bit today. Suit, Jess, tell us your story. A little bit of your background, how you started. Groundswell. And then we'll let you kind of transition into some of the drivers for testing some digital community with with your own community.
00:04:33 Awesome. Thank you. Yes. So, uh, groundswell Coworking is the name of my space in Simcoe, Ontario, which is part of Norfolk County. Okay, gotta run. I'm looking on the map earlier. I'm like, where is this? I mean, you're really in a So I grew up in upstate New York, so I was like, Oh, maybe she's on, you know, my side of your like between Rochester and Detroit. Yeah, Yeah, I think. Yeah. Try to think who were directly across from on the lake.
00:04:58 I think it's very maybe Yeah. I mean, Pittsburgh was the major city, but that's far. And you can't get there. You'd have to cross the lake, so yeah. Big Lake in the way standing between us, but yeah. So, basically, Norfolk County, where I live is a rural area. And so when I started my co working space may 1st 2019 for about a year old. Now, um, before that point a few months before when I was working on the business plan,
00:05:22 it was really a big question. Um, does Coworking makes sense in a rural area? Are there going to be enough people here, eh? So what I learned in this 5 to 6 months before we opened is there was a huge untapped community in my area that nobody waas serving. And so when it comes to community building, this is something I actually learned in the online space first. And then when I started to feel a little bit lonely working from home on wanting to start a co working space,
00:05:54 I applied all the things I learned online to the real world physical brick and mortar business. So what I learned online was that before you put out an offer, you've got to make sure there's an audience to which you can put that offer. Um and so what? I did locally as I started to build community first. And I know that there's lots of co working spaces that talk about this all the time. Don't launch your space, and then hope that the community comes to build a community first s.
00:06:21 So that's what we did here in Norfolk. Comey. We built the community First. We started a club called Lonely Laptop er's My husband came up with the name he's like I so I love the name. I love alliteration Tze and it's it's perfect. Thank you. Yes, really funny because some people interpreted it as like a dating thing. Lonely laptop for seeking other lonely laptop birds. Yeah, I just kept playing off of that. So it started out literally as, like me, my husband and my parents in a coffee shop.
00:06:58 I love that you wrote your parents and Oh, totally, they're fully invested. So it's just basically us the first meet up. And I think maybe one friend came because you I kind of felt bad from here. But then a word started to get out. Um, I really use my own, um, Facebook profile. Not even a page yet. Just my profile to get this out there and just say, Hey, who else is out there in my area that feels like this is experiencing this.
00:07:27 And, um, I just basically listed all the things I was I was thinking of feeling when I was working from home, which was like all the things we know very well. The loneliness, like the lack of creativity, the the husband in the way. The dogs barking. Yes, you resume calls like all the things. So we talked. I talked about that, like on my Facebook all the time. And I just said, I'm just looking for a group of people who want to connect and collaborate and talk about what it's really like to work for yourself.
00:07:55 And so slowly this group started to grow a girl, a girl Every week we got together every week and started to grow with people. I have never met before. And so this is me living in a small town where I grew up in this town. I thought I knew everyone. And that's why I was skeptical about my own idea because, right, I already know that run like if I can't think of people who need this and they probably don't exist. But what I learned was I was so wrong.
00:08:20 They were actually a lot of people who had moved to this area from bigger cities because they liked the lifestyle here. And so they were doing their work, whatever they were doing in the city, but from home. And they didn't. They had met you yet, e believe it or not, Yeah. I have never seen these people just walking around town. You know what I mean? But you just you don't know until you reach out. So anyway, so we build the community first, and it ended up becoming this really awesome group of people on.
00:08:52 Then we kind of built the vision of co working space alongside those people. They were, like, hands on helping us develop the vision for what has now become groundswell Coworking. So community has been a big part of what we do from the get go. Um And so we just when everything started happening with this pandemic because we had such a tight knit community because we had built this co working space with them, it wasn't like us forcing this idea on people and expecting them to join, right? It wasn't.
00:09:23 You know, I have this desire to create a beautiful place to work, and I'm gonna go recruit a bunch of people who also might like it it would sometimes happens in larger markets. But for you, I know I just love how authentic and, um, committed your community has been from the beginning. Oh, my gosh, like I can't believe it like it's amazing and we're in Such a small were small space for a small community, so it's even more tight knit to be out. It's just the culture of this area.
00:09:51 So we really leaned on on community from the get go. So when the pandemic came to be, the most important thing for me was keeping this community together, even though we couldn't get together in the physical sense. Um, so we were able to quickly pivot to completely online memberships. I think it took us. Maybe we can have to kind of figure out what that would look like, and then we pitched it to our members. We said, If you can stick with us and April, here's what we can offer you.
00:10:23 Um, so I I don't I'll share what that offer was, but I just wanted, like, preface this by saying that our space is unique to us. Your space is unique to you. What we offer may not work for others, but I just share it as an example of what's possible just to start thinking about other ways that you can really be serving your members. And so what I did is I took a look at the resources we had available, which were my own skills and talents, my team skills and talents and my members skills and talents on what could be offered in a virtual sense,
00:10:59 Some of the skills and talents were like very much related to being physically together. Like, I don't know, people that are stylists like You're losing people here, you know? Um, I don't know, make bread. Yeah, doesn't buy food, right? Yeah. No, I think I just have to be physical, but what skills? And tell us that people have that could translate online. So we kind of took stock of that. And then we took stock of the challenges that we were hearing from our members that they were facing.
00:11:28 And when I say we were hearing from our members, that's because we called them, um, or message. Like every single member between myself and our community manager. We just reached up because there's no way to really know how someone's doing unless you ask. And some members are very vocal inside of our facebooker. But others are. And I wanted to know how everybody was doing, so he called every single member, and that's actually something You, um, put it one of your e mails. Jamie was like,
00:11:56 pick up the phone. And so we did that. And so that gave us this list. This massive list of like, here's all the things that we don't people are facing right now. The challenges. And so then we started to, like, match them up like Okay, which challenges can we solve with the resources we have? And what we realized is between my husband and I, especially we really took for granted how much marketing experience we have between the two of us me being like a business coach and with my online experience working for online companies and him his radio broadcasting background,
00:12:31 which is content creation, which he's since pivoted into a freelance business where he creates content for people. And those were the things that people were struggling with because they were like, How do I pin it? What I'm doing online and I'm like I can tell you, and my husband Adam, can create your content. So we started a package together those things. And ultimately, at the end of the day, like I said before, our main priority was to keep the community together. So even if members couldn't continue their regular membership level,
00:12:59 we still one of the mistake. So in addition to offering these different levels of coaching and content creation and all this great stuff which came at a tiered, um, kind of pricing structure depending on which membership level people wanted to stick with for April and we literally just changed the names of our physical space memberships to, um whatever they were in the physical office to that plus a word online.
00:13:24 So if it was a dedicated dust membership before, it was now a dedicated desk online membership so that they could draw the connection easily.
00:13:32 So we didn't fully, like change the names and all that kind of stuff. We just said, Okay,
00:13:35 if you're dedicated just before now, you're dedicated desk online, but we gave people the chance to upgrade or downgrade as they needed to.
00:13:42 So one thing we did add, in addition to our regular tears isn't pay what you can option because we wanted to keep everyone together.
00:13:51 And I didn't want financial reasons to be the reason somebody left. If they wanted to stay. I wanted them to stay.
00:13:58 So we put him right out there to the group and he said, Listen, here's what we're gonna do for April you've got You could pay whatever you want and you'll get access to Our Facebook group will continue to send you emails with updates.
00:14:11 And here's what's happening inside the Facebook group that you get to participate in. We're doing pop up. Workshops were doing fam thieves every Friday on Zoom.
00:14:19 We're doing this or doing that like you get all these replays. Here's what you get and literally you can pay $5.
00:14:26 If that's all you have. We don't care what you say. We just want you to which everyone has because the Starbucks is not open and that do you even have a Starbucks?
00:14:34 No, we don't. Yeah. I grew up in a tiny town in upstate New York, and the closest Starbucks is 30 minutes away.
00:14:40 So I feel you. Yeah, we have some amazing independent. Yes, So you have your own right.
00:14:46 So whatever the independence, are you? Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, um, the thought process was everybody has at least $5.
00:14:53 If you were paying for a co working membership to begin with, yup. You probably have $5. Um,
00:14:58 so we put that out there were, like, worst case scenario you do to pay what you can,
00:15:02 and you got to stick around, stay in this space book group. And the cool thing was, the Facebook group wasn't just a Facebook group.
00:15:07 This was like the hive mind, you know, this is where everybody was turning As soon as the pandemic happened,
00:15:14 like our Facebook group was going crazy. People were coasting, sharing ideas with each other, supporting one another.
00:15:20 Some people were really opening up and getting really raw and vulnerable in the group and just saying, Listen,
00:15:25 this sucks. And here's what I'm going through. And then in the comments like other members are just showing up and taking care of those members.
00:15:32 So I knew that people wouldn't want to leave that. So the pay what you can model gave them an option to stick around in that group and benefit from all the conversations that were happening in there and all the same calls and stuff like that.
00:15:44 And then, as you went up to part time, flex online or full time flex online or dedicated desk online,
00:15:50 those pricing tiers got higher and higher all the way up, and they each offered a different level of support from Adam and I,
00:15:57 or some of our members actually offered some coaching as well. So we put it out to the group.
00:16:04 Honestly, if the goal was to keep 100% if we could, like if anybody came back and said they wanted to stop their membership,
00:16:10 we would just say, Hey, how about you pay what you can? There was only one person that has to stop,
00:16:15 and we got her back on the pay what you can. Everyone else stuck around on Lee. Three people went down to pay what you can,
00:16:22 and another three went up to dedicate a desk online because they wanted to help with their content. So we were blown away,
00:16:30 absolutely blown away. And what this lit and me was a fire because I knew that other co working space operators could be doing this too.
00:16:40 But I was coming at this from my experience in the online space and again, Like I said, I took that for granted.
00:16:46 Yeah, in like, a very short period of time. I could just completely pivot all of our offers.
00:16:52 Um, we can't offer the desks in the coffee and the WiFi anymore. Drop that and not spend too much time.
00:16:59 Morning, that, and pivot to the entire online version like that. And I'm like, This is the message.
00:17:07 I want to get out there to other coworking operators who are interested in doing this because it's a huge untapped opportunity that I sell for co working even before the pandemic.
00:17:16 But the pandemic forced me to lean on this idea of myself even harder than I was before, because honestly before this,
00:17:23 I wasn't sure I wasn't 100% sure how Thio offer online memberships. And then, boom, you had to figure it out.
00:17:32 I know. So I love I think it's worth, you know, sort of repeating a couple of things.
00:17:38 One that the pandemic sort of triggered you to be decisive and test right. And you didn't know what was gonna work,
00:17:47 but you I decided to go for it even though I've been kind of marinating like there's an opportunity here and also that you,
00:17:56 you know, had some past experience that gave you a framework to draw from which I think I'd love to have you share a little bit more about as we go on,
00:18:04 because I think there's that sort of indecisiveness and that, like for most people that inkling that something else is possible.
00:18:13 We're really not knowing, Like, how doe? I distill that into your point, like, How do I kind of take inventory of what I love to do and what my competency czar as an owner and a community builder?
00:18:25 And then, you know, what can I sort of harness out of my membership and team and create something that's meaningful and you jumped?
00:18:34 I think you know, you skipped all steps that others were really struggling with this even just how to go virtual.
00:18:42 You know, so many folks, like even that was a big leap and you went. Most folks who went virtual said,
00:18:48 You're sort of a blanket program that we're going to do for the membership, you know, and we hope you'll stay.
00:18:53 And he went straight to like that. I'm designing tears that I've, you know, a true virtual membership in that it wasn't,
00:19:00 you know, sort of just like basic zoom programming in social programming for the whole membership you were adding on,
00:19:08 you know, serve real programming that addresses specific needs that folks they're having. And you kind of knew how to get to that and design that programming.
00:19:16 So, yeah, I'd love to have you kind of talk about some of your background that kind of helped youto have that competency.
00:19:24 Yeah, definitely. So, um, I have been very blessed to have the opportunity to learn from a gentleman named Stew McClaren Who?
00:19:33 I know. You know Jamie as well. Um, look him up online. He's amazing. Stew McClaren is his name.
00:19:41 And so I was a student of Stews in his online course. In 2017 hits, he has an annual course called TRIBE,
00:19:49 which is all about growing. It's launching and growing, uh, an online membership. And at the time in 2017 I didn't know why I was so interested in this idea,
00:20:02 but I just took the curse anyway, thinking winding this is gonna land and it'll make sense. But for now,
00:20:08 like, I just want to learn about this cool thing that's happening online. And this was to you,
00:20:13 like, two years before you started your physical space. Yes. Yeah, Just was not even on the radar.
00:20:19 Yeah, I don't even know it existed at that time. So I'm taking Stu's course. It's really interesting just the way that he teaches memberships.
00:20:28 It's relevant to business in general, even if you never launched a membership in your life. Learning from Stew taught me so much about business and marketing strategy and just how to be an entrepreneur as a person.
00:20:41 So, uh, that journey started in 2017. I then ended up getting a job on Stu's team in 2018 which was like,
00:20:51 mind blowing a second. I gonna work for, like, this person that I've looked up to for so many years and because I knew about it like he's his parents of my parents are actually B.
00:21:03 F f. So okay known about him since I was very young. And so he's always been like that little bit ahead of me,
00:21:10 and I've always, like, been aware of his business career. And so I've been following him for a long time.
00:21:15 Let's just say and now here we are 2018 and I get a chance to work on his team and,
00:21:21 like, get paid Thio, hang out with these people, like, so brilliant, um, and really experienced online and and I have so much to learn from.
00:21:31 So that was a blessing, those big blessing. So in 2018 I got to help Stew totally reproduce his TRIBE course from the ground up.
00:21:41 We recorded every lesson him and I was like him and I in a couple Oh wow, yeah, re recorded every single lesson.
00:21:48 Read it every single workbook together. And so I got to relearn all that content again and help him package it together.
00:21:58 So let's just say I know this content like the back of my hand now. But even then, in 2018 there's there's a certain level of like understanding you have when you intellectually understand something.
00:22:08 But it's a whole nother level when you actually start doing it. And at that point I hadn't done it yet.
00:22:14 I was still just consuming this content and learning and just like preparing myself. So one thing I didn't share about my story is that groundswell.
00:22:26 Coworking started as a concept because my town, which is a small town and in rural Ontario, I think this might be the case in rural towns everywhere.
00:22:36 I'm not sure it's pretty depressed. There has been a big economic downturn less 20 years. So, um,
00:22:43 taking along it's taking a big hit and take in the town a long time to recover, and it's still in in that process.
00:22:49 So there are a lot of empty storefronts. There was some funding that came through from the province, and my town decided to dio a contest to win free rent for a year.
00:23:00 And so uh huh remember, I'm working on suits to him at the time, but working from home part time.
00:23:06 And he's I'm walking by the where Ground Soul is now walking by the window. And I see this poster and it's like,
00:23:13 win this space. You know, we could win free run for here. And so I share this because this is like a tiny part of the story.
00:23:20 But a big part of the story I saw the sign and that really was like a sign the for God s Oh,
00:23:30 I see the sign of my initial thought night. This is what I coach people on is the intuitive voice in your business and how it's like the driving force.
00:23:38 So my intuitive voice goes, you should apply for this. The Eagles race comes in right after that.
00:23:45 Who am I? What would I do with space? What do I know about? Yeah, and so I kind of brushed it off for a little while.
00:23:53 But then it kept popping up in my news feeds like more, something like posters. I would walk by and town following you poking Get your intuit your ego.
00:24:03 Hey, So I went to the open house. I did all the things and this is I love this part of the story.
00:24:10 So the coop student who is helping with the open house is e mails everybody who attended the open house.
00:24:18 But she didn't BCC. So I got to see everyone else who was also thinking about applying for this kind of us.
00:24:26 And it's a small town. So most of the people on the list I knew and I just thought I didn't think much of it.
00:24:31 I just kind of scandalous and we call. That's interesting. I'm community minded person. So I'm just like,
00:24:36 this isn't competition, right? This is great. It's gonna be great for the town. Whatever happens here.
00:24:41 Yeah, exactly. Yeah, so I don't think anything of it. Within a couple days later, I get a phone call from someone who saw my name on the list and he said,
00:24:49 Listen, first of all, he's like, What's your idea now? At this point, I didn't I didn't know yet.
00:24:55 I was still like, I don't know, maybe an event center, like I'm just playing with ideas.
00:25:00 So and he's like, Okay, well, here's my idea. And he's like, a reason I'm telling you because I don't actually want to do it.
00:25:06 I want you to do it. So he started talking about how he runs his business from his basement,
00:25:13 and he's like, It's great and all, but, like, I don't have anybody to talk to accept my dog and right business advice.
00:25:23 And so I was like, I was gonna apply for the contest just to put my business in there.
00:25:27 But it's just me. He's like I don't need the whole space. I just need a desk in,
00:25:31 like maybe a whiteboard. That's it. And he's like So I thought maybe a few other people could share this space like same deal kind of thing.
00:25:38 And maybe if you wanna put that together, right? Just could you just organize us? Yeah, I was like,
00:25:47 Okay. And so that's how I discovered Coworking like That's so funny. No idea what it was. When did he know what?
00:25:55 Itwas like it? He's seen it. I'm trying to remember if if yeah, yeah, I think he just had this idea.
00:26:01 Yeah, Office. Yeah. So I started going. I had at one point I remember 52 tabs open.
00:26:07 Like all these different articles, I think my mind was blown. So that's how groundswell started. Was all of the contest really into the contest?
00:26:18 So I didn't really have plans to quit. This job was, too, but this came upon me and it's just like a very one thing led to the next.
00:26:25 Here I am creating this proposal. Oh, suddenly I'm presenting to this committee. Oh, suddenly, they told me one thing,
00:26:32 and I get the keys like next week, so Okay. Yeah. And at that point, that's when the community building started because,
00:26:42 um, because the contest haven't so fast, and I didn't know if we were gonna win or not.
00:26:46 Um, we just kind of put the business plan together, and then we're like, Okay, Part of the business plan is making sure the business plan makes sense,
00:26:53 like, you know, a proof of concept. So we had, like, a five month plan for community building and all that stuff built in.
00:27:00 So we told them straight up, like you guys want the winner to be opened by Christmas. This was like in October.
00:27:07 I don't like That's not gonna happen. So anyway, well, I'm still working for Soos team. I'm starting to build up Lonely laptop Er's okay,
00:27:14 and that's how it kind of all float. So it got to the point where we were almost about to open.
00:27:19 I had to leave the team to focus completely on Coworking, but Stu's team was so supportive and amazing.
00:27:26 Every single thing I learned from Stew about memberships, I was applying to this whole experience. It's why I won the contest,
00:27:35 I think, because the business plan was built on these, like, phase. It's that he teaches.
00:27:40 And so it made the plan really strong. We kind of had a moment like milestones in the plan.
00:27:46 That was like, Okay, we're gonna build our audience. But I called the community. We're gonna build this community.
00:27:52 And then if that community actually exists, then we're gonna get their feedback. We're gonna do this, We're gonna do this,
00:27:56 We're gonna do this. Then we're gonna open. But if the community doesn't show up, then we're just gonna camp like I'm like,
00:28:01 what happens if we don't open? You know what? Do I just return you the right way? The keys.
00:28:08 Who's next on your list? Way kind of had all those contingencies in place like this could just not work.
00:28:14 And that's totally possible. So I want it. I want to know it's not gonna work before I start buying Tantric.
00:28:20 So anyway, all that stuff I learned from stew because there's if you were to drill down. Like all the things I learned from Stew and TRIBE,
00:28:30 it boiled down to three things. A stew talks boat quite often. The first thing he talks about is attracting members and this applies whether you are talk.
00:28:40 We're talking about a physical covering his face for an online coworking membership or literally any business doesn't even have to be a membership attracting members.
00:28:48 You could replace board members with customers like You want to attract people. Step two is convert members, so get them to turn from.
00:28:59 Somebody's interested in what you're doing to paying for what you're offering. And then the third step is keeping members so making sure you're delivering on what you promised.
00:29:08 But you're also like constantly checking in and reassessing and making sure that you're still meeting their needs. And maybe there needs a change.
00:29:16 So those three things a really big for me. There's something I wanted to make sure I shared on this call,
00:29:21 attracting members, converting members and keeping members because the supplies, no matter what we're talking about, whether it's an online membership or not,
00:29:30 see what we can dive more into those three things. Everyone we have time. Yeah, yeah, I mean,
00:29:35 I think you know, I would add to that so I'll jump in just until the quick story about how you and I connected originally,
00:29:44 which is that I can't rember, was an email I sent. So I also took Stu's class because I had an audience that I wanted to serve,
00:29:54 which is community managers of co working spaces and I. So I knew that I wanted to serve them,
00:30:01 and I had an idea of what I thought would be useful content. But I was lacking through that framework of how to go about it and to your point,
00:30:10 sort of you know, how to attract, convert and and learning kind of those steps. And a lot of some of that is,
00:30:16 you know, sort of some marketing concepts that you will have learned in other aspects of your life. But he really applies it.
00:30:26 Thio creating a community that wants to come together, you know, and I think again not to sort of go down a rabbit hole and getting too detailed.
00:30:36 But how you're going to serve the community? Are you teaching them something? Are you bringing them together just to connect?
00:30:43 You know, we're just part of the big value of a co working space, right? Like, you know,
00:30:48 we might do lunch and learns we might do Speaker Siri's. You know, we might come by overlay that with the connection that happens that we facilitate in a space.
00:30:58 But you know, what value are you going to deliver? And to your point, the audience, the coup specifically,
00:31:04 Are you serving? And that's such a big component in, you know, in your town where it's small.
00:31:12 Sometimes the answer is everyone right, But it's really not everyone. I mean, it's it's people who value because you and I talked about this like where you live.
00:31:22 People have home offices that are big enough to be totally fine. It's an option, and you probably actually this.
00:31:29 So I grew up in upstate New York. The closest, like town with the Starbucks is called Courtland,
00:31:35 and there's University there. But the town's population is, you know, maybe maybe 30,000. There's no co working space,
00:31:43 and the main street probably looks how yours did I go? So there's a CrossFit on Main Street, which maybe doesn't exist anywhere else in the world.
00:31:53 Like you don't have CrossFit on Main Street, right? You have it like on the front road frontage road next to the highway,
00:32:00 like in some warehouse. Well, in this town, there's so little retail on Main Street. There's a CrossFit simple,
00:32:07 Um, was my point. Oh, serving everyone. I mean, you're serving people who value coming out of their homes and being together like that.
00:32:17 The guy who said, You know, Jess, I want you to do this thing because I need this.
00:32:21 I don't want to actually do it, but I you know I need it. And so you have to figure out what matters to them and how you serve them.
00:32:29 And so that's unique. But I think in my case, an interesting I don't dwell on my example for too long.
00:32:36 But I had built a competency of community building in my own co working space, and then I actually chose to serve a different audience.
00:32:45 Related, but not sort of. I wasn't just extending the community in my physical space, which is one option,
00:32:53 and you know more of what you did. I said, Well, there's this other thing I want to d'oh,
00:32:58 you know, for the multi passionate that are listening, there's this other you know, audience. I want to serve,
00:33:03 but I'm gonna I'm gonna overlay my competency of community building to that group and serve them. And Stu's course just is such a good framework around.
00:33:13 Can all this steps and how the journey that you're going to take them on? And so I had posed,
00:33:19 I think I sent an email and I talked about the success path, which is totally a stew trademarked term.
00:33:24 Just send me an email and she's like, We should talk. I think I think I'm on to you Success only TRIBE first talk about that.
00:33:37 Totally. Yeah, that was really refreshing to see Ah Coworking industry person in the TRIBE, uh, worlds,
00:33:45 you know, because I hadn't really seen a lot of brick and mortar people, let alone coworking operators.
00:33:50 Yeah, I'd have TRIBE. And this is something like since I've seen TRIBE from the inside out. Now it shocks me that I don't see more brick and mortar businesses in there,
00:34:01 but, um, the I just think there's a disconnect between what's to offers and this the perception of relevance Thio order,
00:34:12 um, business operators, because I'm thinking like, oh, working space operators need to be in TRIBE golf course,
00:34:18 right? It's like anybody. Yeah, right. Gym owners, because I think all like physical brick and mortar retail type spaces struggle to some extent with pulling in the right audience because it's very hyper local and and scaling,
00:34:38 you know, to to have a diversified revenue source. If that's a goal, you know. So for those who are kind of looking outside of how they conserve their immediate community,
00:34:49 it's such a great opportunity. And for those with specialized skills or just audiences that they want to serve and other areas,
00:34:56 it's such a such a direct connection. But right, most folks don't make it and don't know where to start.
00:35:02 It's simple and yet not obvious. Probably to most people, it's true. It's simple, but no obvious obvious.
00:35:11 But once, once you have the privilege of seeing like whether it's the TRIBE course, or maybe there's another course out there that resonates with you.
00:35:18 TRIBE is where I cut my teeth. So I'm 100% TRIBE all the way. I love it. I love that course,
00:35:25 and I can't wait for him to release it again this year. So I want to share a couple of examples that summer.
00:35:31 Not Coworking necessarily related, but they may just trick or some ideas so because okay, it's just amazing how online memberships have helped business owners in this pandemic,
00:35:45 especially brick and mortar business owners who were already on the train of developing an online membership. But if you haven't yet you want to,
00:35:52 it's not too late, But there's an example of a woman and TRIBE who runs a an art studio,
00:35:58 and so that's a brick and mortar business. It's localized, but she had an online membership, teaching people hand lettering,
00:36:06 and she could serve people from all over the world in that online membership. They didn't have to be local to her.
00:36:12 So when she had to shut down her physical art studio, guess what? She still had income and customers from the online membership.
00:36:21 So she was able to keep her team working. She was able to keep business going. There is income coming in,
00:36:28 and she wasn't worried. It just provided so much relief to her, which means to me there's less energy being spent on panicking and more energy being spent on creating and solving the new problems and continuing to stay in the game.
00:36:43 Um, but we don't have that divers revenue mix than the second that all your eggs like that 1000 All your eggs Aaron is now shut down.
00:36:54 That's that's why we go into panic mode, because that's all that we had. Um, and a lot of us are experiencing that.
00:37:01 So there's some things to talk about it on a previous Facebook Live because he's doing lots of lives are now about how to handle Cove it.
00:37:10 One of the things he said that cove it has done is it's exposed vulnerabilities in all of our businesses.
00:37:17 And, he said himself included, um, if you relied on life events of you relied on anything that was like an in person experience for a large portion or old of your revenue.
00:37:28 Suddenly you realize how dependent you are. One thing, and so this is a good thing because it shows us where those vulnerabilities are and how we have that information.
00:37:40 We can make changes to our business to protect it, to safeguard it from future challenges, because we know we're gonna experience another challenge.
00:37:47 We just don't know what it is yet, but right there will be something and it's that driver to adapt.
00:37:53 And I think even for what happened to you, it was you know, you'd sort of been this has been sort of nibbling at your brain and then all of a sudden,
00:38:01 like you had to do it, you had to see you did it. Yeah, but, you know,
00:38:05 it might be the thing that kind of energizes, you know, whatever folks they're thinking about. And I loved,
00:38:10 you know, the one of the points that you shared around Even, you know, folks who have a physical space and they don't necessarily want to do multiple locations like you might be a good example of that.
00:38:23 Like you're in a small town and you're not moving to Toronto tomorrow. And so but you you know you have.
00:38:31 You want to serve more people, right? Like Jess has more to give to the world. And so how do you do that outside of the folks that show up to groundswell every day or every week?
00:38:40 And you can do that through a virtual membership, and I also love. I think that a lot of folks will think about sort of that virtual membership,
00:38:52 and they'll sort of casually attack it on as an option. But usually it's more in the form of you could be on her email list and you can get a couple of days passes.
00:39:03 It's pretty light and it doesn't you know, it doesn't really engage people. It's more for the people who sort of want to be,
00:39:12 ah, part of something. But maybe, you know, for whatever reason, are not going to join the physical space.
00:39:16 It might be budget, or, but usually they're kind of geographically within your reach. Most likely, I'm not sure how compelling that sort of bare bones,
00:39:27 you know, sort of light community membership is, and this is an opportunity to sort of take that more seriously and add more value and say,
00:39:35 you know, in stews language like, What is the success path for that person? Like, what kind of journey can I take them on?
00:39:42 And what kind of value can I add? And owners may have different skill sets that they bring to the table.
00:39:48 Community managers might. I mean, right folks within the community, the physical community or the virtual communities,
00:39:54 just But it provides a framework for thinking about how I really do that, you know, versus just like that extra line item on your website like Well,
00:40:04 if none of these look good, just do the light pass way did have the light pass before we closed for the virus,
00:40:12 but and that was like our dabbling in right online memberships. Yeah, so? So those working spaces that I've already dabbled like that's great,
00:40:21 because you've already started, you know? So now you can just punch that up. Um, so now we're in the process of planning our public campaign for our online memberships.
00:40:30 Because, like I said before, our main concern was to retain our current members and keep the community together.
00:40:36 So we haven't posted yet that these online memberships are available to the public what we're going to And I know there is a tendency ex.
00:40:46 I've seen it in the industry for people to offer these community memberships or these virtual memberships or whatever they're called for,
00:40:53 like, 20 bucks a month. Yeah, but I'm going. No, no, no, no.
00:40:57 We're providing high value in these newly revamped memberships. They're starting at the part time flex level, which for us is $100 a month.
00:41:04 If you want in on this $100 a month, who I like it once you're in our goals to keep you.
00:41:11 So then you were gonna continue offering the pay what you can for as long as this virus last, um,
00:41:17 for current members. So once you're in at the 100 bucks your first month, if you need to go down to pay what you can the next,
00:41:22 that's fine. But we're just not putting that out there as our public offer. Yeah, because I wanted like that.
00:41:28 When you talk about the type of person you're serving when you're attracting members, who were you attracting? We are attracting a certain type of entrepreneur.
00:41:35 It's not for everybody. And we're looking for those entrepreneurs that want to grow. They want to invest in themselves.
00:41:42 They care about community, community over competition all the way like it's all about, like, how can I serve?
00:41:49 And it's not like, Oh, are there other business coaches in this memberships? If there are like,
00:41:56 I want to be the exclusive one? Sorry. No, it's like you're not our people. Um,
00:42:00 we want to really be community minded, and that means like supporting your fellow members. That also means supporting the community that you live in or the world so,
00:42:10 however, that looks for you, but just we're looking for people with that mindset. So the price point is a way to kind of filter out those that aren't at that level yet.
00:42:20 We also have, like, an application form you can't just like by your membership in you're in like you've got to apply for it.
00:42:26 So there's, like, some steps that have to happen, eh? So if you're not a fit,
00:42:31 we can let you know that before you join. So I wanna make a quick point about sort of the ego jumping in and saying,
00:42:39 Well, you know, they're already to your point about business. Coach. Is there a lot of business coaches?
00:42:44 Right. So Jessica said, Well, there are a lot of just bommarito types out there, like my audience is already being served online somewhere.
00:42:53 Maybe, but every one of us is unique, and we will attract people that want to hear the message from us,
00:43:03 right? So if you feel called to serve a group, you have a TRIBE that you want to connect to.
00:43:10 Don't worry about who else is doing it, because you will do it uniquely and differently. Um, there's Ah,
00:43:18 I'm just gonna use a quick example. There's a guy in my flight group program and he I have no idea Phil do anything digitally,
00:43:26 but he was We're talking through, like, all the options, to sort of stay connected to our community and diversify that revenue stream.
00:43:34 So he was a dentist before opening a co working space, and he had, and I can't remember what it is.
00:43:40 He had some proprietary approach to using music in the dental chair to help people be more, you know,
00:43:48 Zen and he's a deejay. He's got all these like, unique things about his personality, right? Like how many dentists turned Coworking Space owners are there out there who also deejay,
00:43:59 and he's just like, I love all those things wrapped into one person, right? And we each have our own package.
00:44:06 And so I was like, kind of nudging him a little bit like you should think about what you could offer your members because,
00:44:13 you know, just like you and your husband did. He's a business owner with a lot of interesting experience that he can draw from from other parts of his life.
00:44:20 That may impact his members during this time and even going forward. But he's just like a unique example of where he's not.
00:44:26 I mean, we're all unique in our own way, I think is, but I think he was not.
00:44:30 It wasn't clear to him that he had something to offer to the world. And I was like, I think you're super interesting,
00:44:37 you know? I want to hear your perspective. So I think we all need to remember that to some extent,
00:44:42 if that sort of ego voice starts jumping in and saying, Well, who are you to try to do something like that?
00:44:48 And that ego voice will jump in 100% on? Uh, yeah, And I think when that when that happens,
00:44:54 like that struck you too lean. And even more when those fears start cropping out like that's the signal that you need to do it,
00:45:02 because people need what you have to offer whether you see that yourself or not. Um, like I said,
00:45:07 I took for granted what I had to offer. I took for granted that I had this experience that's relevant now,
00:45:12 huh? Yeah, was probably relevant before, but right now eso think about your own past experiences and talents and resources that you have that you can offer.
00:45:24 Another thing that we drew on was the fact that Adam and I don't have kids right now, so we have time and not something we could offer,
00:45:32 which is why we went coaching and hands on content creation because we had the time. If you're a parent and you're very busy like homeschooling your kids,
00:45:41 maybe you'll have time to offer. But there's something else that you have. Um, so it's just kind of like a personal experience of just digging in and saying,
00:45:49 What? What do I have to offer and being okay with what you don't right now? Um, there's certain things I love to be able to d'oh myself,
00:45:57 but this is just not the right time for it. Uh, and that's okay, too. But we just dug in tow like what's available to us.
00:46:03 What do we have available that we can offer to other people? And time was one of them. Coaching was another one.
00:46:09 Content creation was another. But for you, that's gonna be something different. And the beauty about kind of going digital in serving folks is that It's pretty low investment.
00:46:19 Where is co working spaces can be fairly high investment, which is not, You know, something everybody's looking for right now,
00:46:25 So it's just a non opportunity to kind of experiment. And I love. I often see in Facebook groups,
00:46:31 you know, people will jump in and say, OK, I want to diversify my revenue. What are y'all doing?
00:46:35 That's different and it's there. Not a lot of like people don't throw out a lot of different things.
00:46:42 There's like, you know, meeting rooms and events and virtual male and those are not all that exciting to some people were too many people,
00:46:51 you know, like the virtual male thing I think of is being very practical. And I, you know,
00:46:56 I'm advocating and my other podcasts and Facebook groups like Start now get this started like it. But if you are like,
00:47:02 I just can't get excited about that, you know, there's this. There are other things, and this is,
00:47:07 I think, one of the the avenues that people can think about a little bit if they're like, Yeah,
00:47:12 I'd like to do something more creative and something you know more. I don't know. Yeah, more,
00:47:17 more that fits and matches some sort of calling. That's there Besides processing mail? Exactly. Yeah, and,
00:47:23 you know, in our town like male is not a thing. I visited some Corrigan spaces in the States,
00:47:28 so I feel like it's maybe different. They're like, I think you guys get a lot of mail.
00:47:32 We don't. So the virtual male thing is not. There's no demand for it, at least in my town.
00:47:37 So it hasn't been an interest for Yeah, I can see why it is for others, from a practical perspective,
00:47:45 you know, it's not. It doesn't so much build community. And so folks were more served on that.
00:47:50 Yet it can, if anyway, but an example of right there. This is kind of an unexplored avenue for folks that are looking to Yes,
00:47:59 that's something I just love talking about because I think coworking can really benefit from taking at least considering this as an option for scaling and growing your impact.
00:48:09 Um, and what? One thing I don't want to say about creating your online membership is like ours is not glamorous,
00:48:17 like as in not super high tech, you're just throwing it together. It's mostly happening in Facebook and Zoom.
00:48:23 There's no mystery platform that you yeah, took weeks to set up. You're just running with it and focusing on how do I serve people?
00:48:31 Yeah, your people don't care that you don't have this perfectly polished membership site, which is something we want to work towards.
00:48:38 Yeah, right now is not a priority. We have a Facebook group, and that's where we keep everybody.
00:48:43 Um, we have an email list, remembers where we just, like, make sure they're they're getting updates.
00:48:48 We have Asim calls and we have, ah, Google drive for shared files and replays of things. And it s so I had to just today I had to create a post in our group with all the links cause I just feel like I remembers are probably very confused about where to find things.
00:49:07 It's like sometimes it's on this zoom link and sometimes not this one. And then there's this Google drive,
00:49:12 and then there's this other pop up Facebook repeat might want to join two, and then I think I like just one.
00:49:19 Posed words like hears everything. Here's the list of events calmly like Here's my cell phone number because, like,
00:49:27 I want to make sure you can find what you need. Yep. Yeah. So there's it doesn't have to be glamorous,
00:49:31 and but at the same time, like you can have fun with it because just like when you created your physical space,
00:49:37 I'm going to bet a lot of your personality and style went into that space. Um, and your brand,
00:49:44 whether you realize it or not, is like rooted in you and your personality, so you could do the same thing in your online membership and kind of design.
00:49:52 This, like fun space that really kind of exemplifies all the things you stand for like and what that could look like if you're doing a Facebook group like I did,
00:50:01 it's just in love the tone of your voice when you post and it's in the graphics that you create on camera,
00:50:07 and it's like in the style of your zoom calls like you can bring your essence to these things and make it just as cool or fun or welcoming as your physical space.
00:50:20 I love that So okay, I feel like we've put a lot out there, and I think maybe it's trying to let people like marinate and sort of decide.
00:50:30 Are they gonna, you know, scratch that itch that they've that they've got happening now? So you have set up a website where folks can go to get spooked.
00:50:40 Some more details. Um, we're gonna host a webinar, and we're gonna kind of cover some of the same topics we've covered today.
00:50:47 But we're in a deep dive a little bit and also open up to Cuba in a So if you're listening to this and you're thinking,
00:50:53 um, that might be for me, I wanna I wanna learn a little bit more. When I asked some questions,
00:50:59 I wanna poke around a little bit about what this might look like. Then you can join us. It's Tuesday,
00:51:04 April 21st at 11 a.m. Pacific. So 2 p.m. Eastern and the link and registration. All the info is going to be on coworking goes digital dot com And just what else can folks find there?
00:51:20 Yes. Oh, this is gonna be kind of like a living landing page. So as more more resources come available that Jamie and are kind of putting together are finding out about we're gonna put everything on Coworking goes digital dot com Because you've heard us talk about stew today,
00:51:37 there is a free workshop being led by stew starting later this month. So we want to make sure that if you are interested,
00:51:43 I'm learning more about online memberships. Um, that you attend this workshop, it is free and it's so good,
00:51:49 it's totally free and his I love again and I don't know, you know, go down a rabbit hole.
00:51:55 But I love his teaching style. He's so engaging, he keeps things so simple. And, you know,
00:52:02 you brought up the point of all the things you can sort of apply, even if you're not totally sure about memberships.
00:52:09 Yeah, I mean, we all if you are a co working space owner or going to be, you do have a membership.
00:52:14 It's a physical membership. He's talking mostly about online memberships because he's helping people with you know that already do something physical,
00:52:21 sort of scale it, but the the aspects of sort of creating and growing that business and all the light,
00:52:28 little experience things, and he's so group interesting tow watch and motivating an inspirational on. And I've taken a 1,000,000 notes as you did.
00:52:37 I mean, I started physical and then went digital about all the things I want to incorporate into the physical aspect of my business.
00:52:44 That and haven't done all the things you know, to your point. I mean, I have such big like visions of what I want to create,
00:52:52 but like little pieces at a time, I'm definitely not nuts do quite yet, but he is just a great marketer and a great person to watch.
00:53:00 So I'm all signed up for the workshop as well. It's a great resource. So that link will be on Coworking goes digital as well.
00:53:07 Yeah, and yeah, we're just gonna keep sharing as much as we can on that on that website.
00:53:12 So feel free to check it out and start a conversation with us around. Maybe some of your own ideas.
00:53:17 Um, if this is a brand new concept for you, this maybe this podcast alone may have just been blown your mind a little bit like it's okay.
00:53:25 Um, as you've heard, Jamie and I have had a few years, um, of experience learning from stew and TRIBE and exploring this online space.
00:53:33 So give yourself the grace like Explorer and check it out. An experiment without any expectation of certain results.
00:53:40 Uh and yeah, I attend Stu's free workshop every year, even though I've done it before. I've launched my memberships.
00:53:49 There's always something else to get from it, and all of those concepts apply to your physical membership as well as your future online membership or current as well.
00:53:59 So it's worth it to just tune in. Even if you don't end up on launching an online membership,
00:54:04 I think totally, and you can watch it on your phone. I watched all of his medical on my phone in the car or walking the dogs.
00:54:14 Of course, there's less car time now, but walking dogs. So if you're like I don't get any space at home to sit and watch,
00:54:21 sign up, take a walk, take your phone and your you know your headphones and, you know,
00:54:27 get a little professional development while you're outside. Awesome. Okay, so I'm gonna put the link to that in the show notes.
00:54:34 If anybody's you know, we'll probably not. Many people are driving. That's the advantage of doing podcast during a pandemic.
00:54:41 Everybody's at home and can't take notes. So the earl is coworking goes digital dot com and the links to our webinar and then to the free workshop that just mentioned will be there.
00:54:52 And she'll continue to add some. Resource is so reach out. If you have any questions, just thanks for sharing your story super inspiring and we hope thought provoking for some of the folks that are listening.
00:55:04 Thank you so much, Jamie. It's a pleasure to get to share and hopefully inspire a few more online memberships.
00:55:10 Yeah, well, I look forward to connecting again on the 21st runner up in our Yeah, me,
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