151. Internal vs. External problems - which ones do you solve?
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Transcription
151. Internal vs. External problems - which ones do you solve?
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, coworking space owner and trend expert, Jamie Rousseau. Welcome to the everyday in Coworking podcast. This is Jamie Russo. Thank you for joining me today. It is a busy time for everyone. Many of you are getting ready to reopen.
00:00:29 Some of you are still sheltering in place and figuring out what it looks like to reopen, making decisions about how much to invest in reopening and what that looks like tactically communicating with members. There is a lot going on right now so I'm going to just take us up a level from all of the tactical things we're figuring out today and we're going to talk about the context concept of solving internal versus external problems.
00:00:59 First I want to share with you that the global workspace association is working hard on an event that will go live on June 3rd which is about a week away, a little over a week. We are hosting roughly 24 hours of live content, taking you through the process of re-examining your business post coven. So very focused on helping you think through the following buckets of your business.
00:01:32 We're going to start with the customer and we are doing our best to get real life customers on the line so that you can hear directly from them. You have your own customers to serve a broader view including enterprise occupiers. So if you don't typically serve that group, we want to help you hear from them what they're looking for, what's important to them,
00:01:51 the types of shifts their organizations are making in their work policies when they'll start paying for coworking memberships, things like that. What the customer expects from you, what they want to hear from you, what indicators they need, um, what type of space they'll demand. So then we're going to segue into based on what we've heard from the customer, what does our product look like,
00:02:13 how do we update our product? And not just, we will talk about D densification and all the things we need to do in the short term. But when this longer term demand shows up, what does that look like? What are they interested in? How can we serve, you know, the new customer and their new needs? How does that adjust our product?
00:02:31 What are the new opportunities that we have to serve new members and to create new offerings? And then we're going to talk about sales and marketing. Now that we understand more about the customer and have thought about how our product might update, what's a framework to go through to think about how we shift our messaging? Do we need to make updates to our website?
00:02:51 Do we need to update our actual offerings on our website? Do we need to retrain our staff on talking points and, and um, you know, just sort of rethink how we're marketing and talking to our potential customers. And then we have a strategy bucket just kind of talking about bigger picture opportunities in the industry. So it's a lot of content. You do not have to stay with us live for any hours.
00:03:15 We'd love to have you register, get access, pick a couple of sessions that look good to you to sit in live. Our presenters will be live and we're trying to hit multiple time zones so that there's some content that will be live for you. It will all be recorded so you can access it anytime, but you have to register to get access to it.
00:03:35 We are also going to have some fun. We're getting a DJ and having happy hour and with a bartender and we'll have a popup face group for a lots of interaction and you can join in that conversation anytime you'd like, but it'll be a really great opportunity to connect globally on the same topic. So go to conference.global workspace.org and you can register and big news,
00:03:59 I probably should have started with this, but initially we were charging for this event because it's an incredible amount of content and it is as much work as we would put into an actual conference. So it's pretty intense. Um, and a huge thanks to Mark Gilbreath who has been working very hard with me on the agenda. And we're recruiting speakers and to the GWA team who's been working like crazy to make sure you know about it,
00:04:22 getting the website up, all of those things, because we did it fairly quickly, we don't expect that we'll have an in person conference in September like we usually do. So we are kind of going all in on this and making sure that you have the resources you need and just trying to kind of really dive deep on bringing you support and community. So anyway,
00:04:41 it's a ton of work and we were going to charge for it and we've had some feedback folks saying they want to attend, not sure about the budget. So we've had some really great sponsor support. Thank you wholeheartedly to our sponsors, especially our industry leader sponsors, Yardi and sphere mail. We super appreciate you can't wait to share more about what they're up to and some of our other sponsors,
00:05:09 and they're great sources of information. I've been talking to many of them getting ready for the conference and they have their ear to the ground and they know what customers want so they have a lot to share as well. So the conference is free for attendees. So you just have to go register conference.global workspace.org. You can register and you'll get the details on the agenda.
00:05:29 You can add some of them to your calendar and then you can have access to the sessions when you want to get through them. Can be on the weekend, can be while you're walking the dog. Um, some of them will be better to watch, but I often listen to a lot of content and if you are listening to me, then you are also a podcast fan.
00:05:46 Okay. So we hope you join us. That is June 3rd. Go register. Today we back to today's content. We're going to talk about internal and external problems. So I've um, this has come to me. This content concept is not mine. It originates, I think with Donald Miller who is the author of StoryBrand and business made simple. And I am a Donald Miller junkie,
00:06:10 so I love his stuff. I'm working on updating my website based on his framework. And, um, I also follow Stu McLaren, who teaches how to create memberships. Um, many of you know, I have a membership for community managers to help train and develop them and give them their own community. So I need to learn how to do these things as well.
00:06:32 So he talks about Donald Miller's concept of internal and external problems. So I wanted to talk about that today because this keeps coming up for me in this large conversation we're having right now about people working from home. And what does this look like? And some of the media reports I see of, you know, well now you can use anything as office space.
00:06:53 Everybody's at home. So you know, have some empty space. Just throw ups walls and put the humans between the walls and then everybody's safe. And I keep thinking that's not what it's about, so I don't think that's going to happen. And here's why. So external problems are problems that you can solve. Um, like by Googling, you're looking for an answer.
00:07:19 We're looking on YouTube. You looking for how to change the P trap under your sink, which I have YouTube before, or you're looking how to change out that frame that goes around your microwave, which we also Googled this weekend. Or you're Googling for an office because you have a physical need. You, you meet with your team and you need a place for all of them to work and you want them to be in the same place and that can't be in your living room.
00:07:41 Or you have a meeting with a client who's in town and you don't have office space, but you need a professional place to go and you need a meeting room to use for a couple of hours. Those are external problems that we solve as coworking space operators and that we often market too, right? We often use those as the features that we have on our website and we talk about things that these things on tour,
00:08:04 and maybe this is what we advertise, but I would argue while people may come to us for external problems, generally they're making decisions based on internal problems that they want to solve and they are paying us because they think we can help them be happier and be better humans. So internal problems are really about what are people thinking and feeling, what are their fears and doubts and anxieties?
00:08:37 What thoughts are keeping them up at night? So what does that look like for coworking? Even in times like these where safety is oftentimes like first on the list, ask yourself, have any of those other questions gone away for you? Are you still anxious about your identity, your role as a professional, your role as a business owner, your place in the community,
00:09:08 your ability to lead? Have any of those thoughts or worries kind of totally gone away? Definitely not. So they might be right underneath the safety concern, but all those things are still there. So all of those internal problems for people at home with their families and their dogs and their kids in an office that is not designed for them to work optimally still have these internal problems.
00:09:36 So I think what I want to encourage you is don't forget about these internal problems and that while we are dealing with densification and germs and all the tactical concerned about safety right now, don't forget to keep talking to people in a way that lets them know that you solve the internal problems also because I think that's what's going to get people out of their house.
00:10:03 It might start with a pain point around my work situation at home is not ideal, but the thing that will move them to action is you getting at one of those internal pain points and them seeing a better life because they have come to your space. So let's just talk about some of the internal problems that are solved by a coworking space. The need to feel motivated,
00:10:29 they need to feel inspired. They need to feel aspirational, they need to feel professional. They need to feel not alone. They need to feel legitimate. The need to laugh. I, one of my friends posted this whole Arius, Chris Farley meme on Facebook the other day and I laughed until I cried and I realized, I can't even remember the last time I left that heart because I've not been around enough humans and my family is not that funny and I don't watch TV.
00:11:02 Um, I only read, I don't read enough funny thing. So I was like, I almost then cried because I realized how been since I laughed until I cried. And so I want to be around people that make me laugh. It felt so good. Uh, another internal problem. I want to feel like I'm making progress and I don't always feel that way when I'm at home by myself.
00:11:24 Right? I need to be out with people talking about what I'm doing and what I'm working on and just being around other people making progress makes me recognize that I am making progress. And so there are a lot of things about being a human that are a part of our, you know, mindset and our mental state that require us to be out and about.
00:11:48 And so we need to fix all the safety concerns and do the best we can to, um, make people feel comfortable in our spaces. And there will be some people who don't, right, who, who won't, um, prioritize these sort of internal needs over that external need of safety. And that's totally fine. We respect that 100%, but for those that have those nagging internal problems,
00:12:12 don't forget to talk about those and to message to those and to remember the human side of all of this and that the human don't really want to be out of the house. And that continues to be B. You know, my hope for this industry is that those internal needs are not going away and everybody has them. Entrepreneurs might have them look, they might be more painful for,
00:12:41 you know, folks that are in a corporate job or in a small business. But everybody has those things to some extent. And coworking spaces really help us move towards, um, you know, at least them feeling less painful at times, right? So coworking space is not a silver bullet for making us all feel totally amazing 100% of the time. But the mental health aspect of this is so critical and I think The,
00:13:10 It might take some time for like the enterprise, um, occupiers to recognize that issue with people being at home. I think they're at the point where they're like, Oh, people can work from home. This is so good. We didn't think that was the case. So they're going through the stages of awareness that it's possible, but then they will continue down the continuum of,
00:13:35 okay, but we recognize it's not that great for everyone or they may not and we may need to help people recognize why they're feeling the way they feel at home, not that great for some people. And the fact that coworking spaces are a solution for that and help them become the demand generator. So folks may come to us under the guise of it being an external problem.
00:13:58 I can't work at my office identification. I need some space or it can't work from home. Kids are at home, but they're really there about the internal problems. And so don't forget that in your marketing, and I'm doing a training in June for our community manager university to help them think about how to integrate these concepts across their events, whether those be digital or physical,
00:14:22 um, their newsletters, all the touch points to help people remember why they joined and the fact that you are helping them along this continuum. So short and sweet today. I just wanted to get you thinking about that and also help you to feel optimistic that that problem, those problems, the internal problems are not going away and you can still solve them.
00:14:44 So keep those at the front of your mind as you're reconsidering your marketing and your messaging and how you talk to on tours and all the aspects of your sales funnel. Speaking of sales funnel, one quick other note before I take off. I am working with Kevin Whelan, who's been on the podcast for a couple of times on a coworking sales system course.
00:15:08 Um, that's going to help you really optimize every aspect of your sales funnel. And we are collaborating on that and having a great time and that is going to be coming to you in July. So stay tuned. We'll start talking a little bit more about that. Hope you are all well and never hesitate to reach out. Shoot me an email, Jamie at everything,
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