217. Jenny Poon on a Coworking Management Agreement Gone Wrong, Buying a Building and Automation Hacks

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217. Jenny Poon on a Coworking Management Agreement Gone Wrong, Buying a Building and Automation Hacks

00:00:01 Welcome to the everything co-working 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 Russo, Hey, before we dive in, I want to share with you an upcoming cohort for our management agreements course, which we call creative coworking partnerships. If you're a landlord or a co-working space operator,

00:00:43 looking to get into a creative partnership structure, to put a coworking space in a building that has the right upside for both parties, while being confident that you've covered all the who does what and what ifs before you commit, then, you know, you need to become an expert on the co-working management agreement. I've partnered with management agreement, expert Mike Abrams,

00:01:10 to develop a course that covers structuring and negotiating management agreements and other creative partnerships from a to Z. If you're a coworking space operator, looking to expand through a creative deal structure or a landlord looking to offer flexible workspace in your building, and you want to understand management agreements from both a strategic perspective and a tactical perspective, we designed this course for you.

00:01:36 We have run this course twice. Now with cohorts. We like to launch it in cohorts because we think it's really helpful to do the Q and A's with other operators in landlords that are working through deals real time. So you can access the course at other times of the year, but the next cohort will start on September 13th. So if you'd like to jump in,

00:02:01 you can get all of the details at everything. coworking.com forward slash management agreements. The course is online. So you can access the modules at your own pace, but we run Q and a calls every other week so that you can process what you've learned and get access to Mike and myself to ask questions. And do you break out to the other folks in the group and kind of learn from others.

00:02:28 You also get access to all the Q and a call recordings that we've done either on video or on private podcast, if you'd like to listen to on the go. So if you have any questions, you can find all the details at everything. coworking.com forward slash management agreements. Welcome to the everything coworking podcast. This is your host. Jamie RESO, thank you for joining me.

00:02:51 My guest today is Jenny Poon. She is a true coworking OG. She started her first coworking space back in 2010 in Phoenix, Arizona. So in our conversation today, she shares her experience starting her space. She also did her first base under a management agreement, but after a year in that space had a dispute with the landlord and had to find a new location.

00:03:17 She and her husband eventually bought a building, which they are still running in Phoenix, and they are soon to open another location in Mesa, in conjunction with the city and a local university. So Jenny has a ton to share a little off topic, but she's also known to be the queen of automation. So for those of you that love Zapier and automation,

00:03:40 she shares a few awesome hacks that she's used to automate her space and free up her community managers from the really operational aspects of the business and help them to manage community. So you're going to love this conversation. Oh, let's get into it. Welcome. I am here with Jenny Boone, founder and CEO of cahoots co-working although Jenny has a lot on her plate and I'm really looking forward to hearing her story and journey.

00:04:09 We were just chatting. I don't think we've really connected since I remember seeing her and her husband ODN sitting at a booth at juicy, probably in 2013, I'm gonna maybe make her blush a little bit, but I was looking at your LinkedIn profile, Jenny and I pulled your list of achievements just in 2016, since the list was so long, but just so you know who you're in the company of in 2020,

00:04:38 she was a woman of achievement for in business magazine in 2018 community service corporate leader for Y WCA 2017, Athena finalists, 2017 influential business leaders for the Arizona business leaders and Arizona, big media, 2016 business person of the year named by a Phoenix business journal. So Jenny is out and about, and I am thrilled to have you on and, you know,

00:05:04 hear what you're up to and the evolution of Cahoot. So thank you for making the time. I'm sure you don't have a lot of that these Days. Thank you so much for having me Jamie. So I have a long list of things. That's what I was, I was, we were just chatting. I was like, we need to hit record and get going.

00:05:18 So Kahoots is like super special. You are an OJI. When did you open it? We opened in March of 2010. Yeah. I mean, that was back in the early days. Like Jerome, Cheng, maybe it goes back that, I mean, certainly there are brands, but that was early days when people were completely making up. Co-working I remember I opened at the very beginning of 2012 and I always tell people,

00:05:47 one of the reasons I do what I do is because there was like nothing on the internet about coworking back then, like you would Google it and like just, there was nothing there to tell what to do. You were making it all up. Yeah, but we didn't know. I think honestly, I just, I was an entrepreneur. I wanted to start a business.

00:06:06 I was starting a business and I was a little lost in all the things that I should be doing. And so I just wanted to be around other people who maybe were smarter than me and could guide me through building a business. And I didn't know it was called coworking. I actually thought I was this brilliant person that came up with this amazing, Well,

00:06:25 you know, people still think they're making it up in some markets. So you really work though it, And, and I don't know how I stumbled across it, but I stumbled across co-working the term. And, and it somehow met Jerome in that process and attended like one of his get togethers at a Santa Monica location, Jerome chain for, for people who don't know who I'm referencing.

00:06:51 And it was a baby. Then I think, I think we were maybe eight months in or maybe a year. And she was like, this is for like, people who've been in business, running co-working spaces for a while now, but I'll, I'll let you come. And I went to this thing and I was like, oh my God, I don't know what I'm doing.

00:07:10 But there was, I think I met, I was there and I met a few other people who I can continue to stay in contact with, but I didn't know what coworking was until I just happened to stumble across it. And it aligned with what I was doing. And I was like, oh, that's what that's called. There's A name. And then there's a burgeoning industry,

00:07:29 I guess. Yeah. Yeah. So that's, that's how it all began. And I was, I was a graphic designer and art director for the local newspaper here in the Arizona Republic. And I've lost my job in 2009. And I started a design agency. And through that was fine actually working from home. It's, it's funny to think about 10 years later,

00:07:50 we're going through the same thing of this retraction back to a work from home and in the middle of another recession. So like we were in the middle of a recession in 2009, 2010, and I was building this business and thinking like, this is crazy that we're trying, I'm trying to build this business in the middle of a recession. And at the same town time,

00:08:12 our downtown area was really struggling. And just this combination of wanting to support other businesses, my family being the daughter of immigrants, they also started a small business and that's very near and dear to my heart. And so wanting to just continue to serve and be around other entrepreneurs and build businesses because you can see the kind of impact that that has when businesses,

00:08:37 small businesses in particular are successful. So those ideas all mashed together and somehow came together in this concept of coworking for us. And you, I should mention because I feel like I have not, but you are in Phoenix while your first location, downtown Phoenix. So, but how did that manifest? Did you immediately know you were going to rent, lease an office space and then invite others to join.

00:09:04 You Wanted a space and it was looking for teeny tiny space. Like, is there a, literally like a bedroom that is downtown that somebody would rent me? And I went to a real estate agent and he just kind of laughed at me. He said, the only thing that's available is like minimum thousand or 1500 square feet. And you're looking at a five-year lease and this much down and your own utilities and all this kind of stuff,

00:09:31 or go to Regis. And at that time Regis, isn't what it is today. It was not great. I think he, I went and did a tour and they took me through this like winding hallway to this back room, which looked like a closet. Literally had no windows and opened the door and showed me this teeny tiny space, which is smaller than my closet in my bedroom.

00:09:52 And you're like, I am an artist. This is so deflating. I cannot, I cannot work here. And the furniture looked like stuff from off of like the off of Craigslist, which isn't terrible. I bought a loan for a Charlotte Craig Craigslist as we were growing, but it was like great eighties furniture. Right. And I definitely used, and so not inspiring at all.

00:10:20 And I was like, if I'm going to work in something like this, I might as well just work from home. So I was like, there's gotta be a better solution. It's something that isn't going to break my bank account. And also as a creative, I was like, I needed to be around people in creative industries. So I just started looking for people in coffee shops and,

00:10:40 and just people that I could get along with. And I was just very fortunate that one of my friends connected me. She was like, I pitched her this idea. It's like, it's a shared space. And it was all like people, like-minded people who can collaborate really well together and like this idea of small but mighty. And we can come together and pitch projects together and,

00:10:59 and all of that. And she gave me a list of people that would be really good for this concept to work together on. And I started just going down that list. And the first person I called was a man named Matt Clower. And his website was really creative. And I talked to him, like, I drove to a location of where I was going to see like a space.

00:11:22 I sat in front of the space and I was like, this is the most beautiful space. This is it. And then I called him and I pitched him this idea. And he was quiet for five minutes, as I was telling him, like rambling on like I am right. Like this idea that, you know, when you have this idea,

00:11:37 it's like this beautiful baby in your mind and nothing could be wrong and you just go on and on about it. So I was talking to him about it and then he was quiet for a little bit. And he's like, I love it. You know, like, I'm going to go there now and, and go see the space with you. And so like,

00:11:54 we walked in and he was like, I'm down for this, let's do this. And every time I tell this story, I think about that video. I don't know if you've seen it with like a bunch of people in the park. And there's a one crazy guy that gets up and starts dancing. And then suddenly the next person gets up and starts dancing all wild in some way,

00:12:09 the whole crew, like the whole park is dancing. And it's the story of like, it only takes one crazy person to like start a movement. That's what I think of is that one, like it wasn't, I was the crazy person dancing, but it was that one supporter that then got the ball rolling. Right. And he was, he was the catalyst for it.

00:12:31 And he's just so supportive and always cheering me on. And so that's how it started. And then we just, we throw a party two weeks later and I would have to say, it's the right time. Right? Place like downtown was kind of quiet and dead. So anything that happened meant tons of people would want to be involved. And we had,

00:12:51 we were expecting 50 people and it was literally like Costco cheese puffs is what we brought to that party. And I begged, borrowed stole anything that I could to make that party awesome. My, a bunch of friends were starting businesses. I asked them, begged them to like, come and do something. They're musicians. Like I owe so many people,

00:13:10 so many favors from that first night, but we were expecting 50 people on 350 people came out and it just, it just caught on fire from that like first event and snowballed. And, you know, we've had a lot of ups and downs through the years, but that first like kickoff launch was definitely like something special. I'm curious, You talk about downtown being quiet,

00:13:34 but you get this huge turnout. Was it like a mindset thing like that this group wanted to support like a revitalization of downtown? Or what do you think it was? I think it was partly that I think, I think we were so starved for anything to happen downtown is literally, there's literally like five to 10 restaurants in a very large metropolitan downtown area.

00:14:03 And so, like, I think there was a slew of people that were already champions of downtown waiting for something to happen. And we were like Some crazy person to start dancing. We were lucky enough to have captured their attention and they shared it and then it was shared and it was shared and it was shared, it was shared beyond like we could even imagine.

00:14:24 And, you know, like I said, I bagged a lot of friends, some people in the media industry, some people in the community, and we just had enough with like three or four people, connections between more people who then shared it and shared it and shared it, you know? But I think that was the spark that then said like this,

00:14:44 I think we left that night with a lot of people saying this is the vibe of Phoenix that we want to see happening a daily basis. And it was the cultivation of, of the entrepreneurs along with artists community, along with a small business community, along with all of these champions for an urban environment. It's funny. Cause we had like this photo booth company,

00:15:10 it was, again, one of my friends started a photo booth company and that was the beginning of right. And she was like, can I please do this for you? And it was like, oh my God, please do this. And, and she did this amazing job where she printed a bunch of photos for everybody that night. And literally the next day when I went on Facebook,

00:15:30 like everybody's Facebook photo had turned into our photos from that night. And even today, like as I walk around to like the different businesses, I'll see like one of those photos popped up in like a coffee shop. Right. Cause they had happened to attend that event. And I think partly she was like such an amazing photographer that everybody looked like a movie star.

00:15:53 So it was like the best quantity. Like just a lot of luck in those beginning, those beginning moments. And I never thought it was a business, you know, I really thought it was just this side hustle that would allow me to grow my other business that the marketing design agency little did. I know that it became like So, but you had to sign a lease And buy furniture.

00:16:19 How did that all happen? Very interesting. And I don't know if I would recommend this, but it was 2010. And because of that, we were in the middle of the recession. There was a lot of buildings that were sitting empty. And so I went in to this building that was way bigger than I thought we needed. It was 20,

00:16:36 it was maybe 2000 square feet, 2,500 square feet. And again, remember I was looking for a, like a square foot buildings. So 2,500 was much bigger and it was beautiful. I talked to the landlord and I was like, look, I'm interested in like doing the shared concept. What do you think about maybe like going in and partnering on this.

00:16:57 Right. And I will like split the revenue with you. And I said, I honestly don't even need any of the money. Just give me like a 20, like give me free space. And then you can essentially take everything else. And I'll take like a, I think it was like a five or 10% fee for managing the space. Not only did you invent coworking in Phoenix,

00:17:16 but you invented the management agreement in 2010 Because I didn't want the risk. And, and he said yes. And he even threw in some furniture with it is a big empty space. Now the caveat to this was the space was one half of the whole space. The other half of the space was occupied by a CrossFit gym. Oh gosh. Yes CrossFitter.

00:17:46 But I understand how noisy we are. I had that problem in my own house. Like don't wake people up. No, no, no dead lifting before The wall that divided us, not insulated like six inch separation. It was literally a sheet of drywall. And so every day at 4:00 PM and every 15 minutes afterwards, we would hear giant grunting and dump out music like being dropped loud music,

00:18:23 a lot of huffing and puffing and the smells were just amazing. And did you sort of know this was a problem, but you were like, but I want this. Oh no, you didn't not. When I visited it, it was in the middle of the day when they didn't have classes. So I had no idea about that. And the landlord Didn't mention,

00:18:43 I mean, he didn't try to talk you out of it. No. So like now that I think about it, I wonder why he was so willing to do this crazy deal. Oh, because there's a CrossFit gym next door. It's 2010, Nobody nobody's leasing commercial space and there's cross chip next door, Turned it into this fun game where at four o'clock like you would hustle and do 15 minutes of like quick work.

00:19:08 And then when their bell would ring, we would go take a break or there. And then that was a 15 minute break. And then they would like settle down after 50 minutes. Like there's, there's still like weights and stuff, but not as heavily. And then we'd go at it again until the end of the day. I don't know how,

00:19:29 like, if we were running that business now in 2021, there's no way we could have, like, I don't know who would have bought into that, but Your members, like, I think members won't tolerate that stuff, but right. At the time you had members who were just like we're in. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, our coffee was Folgers coffee,

00:19:52 12 cup coffee machine, a little like mini fridge. We didn't even have closed meeting rooms. Like they were just walls that divided a space and it was a beautiful space. And, but still, so that was a deal. The landlord split the thing, split the revenue with me. I just gave him all of the money and then just said like,

00:20:13 don't charge me for this space. I'll manage it. I'll brand. It came up with a name, did all the marketing, get people in there, manage the whole thing. You can have the revenue as like the payment for rent three months later, he said, you know what? This isn't working for me. This isn't bringing in enough money I needed.

00:20:29 And I gave him projections. I said, give me a year. I need, I think we'll get closer to breakeven by six months, but I need 12 members to break even on what you expect for rent. And at six months, or at three months, I was at six members, but he wasn't happy with that progress. You wanted it to move a lot faster.

00:20:49 And he said, this isn't working for me either you start paying normal rent or you're going to have to get out. And so you Gonna let the space sit vacant while I wait for a broker to find some other yeah. As a landlord do, like, I know there's expenses associated with that. And he probably was just barely breaking even, but it's like something better than nothing.

00:21:11 So I, I, I can see both sides, but basically you left us with that ultimatum. And I talked to our six members at the time and I said, if we, you know, I'll take a couple, a little bit of the losses for a couple of months and then we can see how it goes. And are you guys down?

00:21:26 Like, and they were all down. And within a month we had 12 members. So we were able to break even right away. And then it kind of went bonkers and we got 50 or 70 members Came back and was like, Hey, so no. Yeah, actually that was a lot of the chaos that happened over the first couple of years,

00:21:48 as he got really angry and upset that he didn't stick around and tried to force us out of our lease with a lot of illegal things. And it was not fun. We ended up leaving. We left with a bang, did some fun things as well. But yeah, we, we got out of that situation after a year. Like he moved us around and just trying to try to screw up,

00:22:14 I'll be like, try to steal the business. There was a point where he tried to steal the business. He started telling our members to pay him directly instead of paying me and you know, our coworking space. So, and there are no walls. Everybody stood up when they got that email and brought it over to me. And it was like,

00:22:29 how are we going to shut this down and shut this dude down? So those things happen at the time. I remember going to Jerome and being like, what do I do? This is crazy. And so I'm always grateful for the people that were there guiding baby Jenny and the co-working space that I was building in those early days. So, So then what was next?

00:22:54 Where did you go after year one? So we officially leased a new space. He found out that we had signed a new agreement and kicked us out within 30 days while our new space was being built, like service a 30 day notice because we were on a month to month lease at that point. So we moved into a temporary space that was half the size of our original space and like a dungeon.

00:23:16 But fortunately, everybody stuck with us and we moved into our new space, grew that, and then grew up, grew out of that. In 2016, we were looking for another space because we were out of space at our existing space and we found a space. And now Midtown Phoenix was just, just north of downtown Phoenix, fell in love with the space.

00:23:40 The owner of the building said, you know, I'm not really looking to lease this building. I just want to sell it. And so we figured out how to buy a building. That was a very, very exhausting process. Anybody who wants to talk about buying a building, happy to review, if you talk to you minutes or talk to you through the painful process that we went through,

00:24:00 we, you know, we try to SBA loans and that didn't go, like we were pre-approved and then it fell through at the last minute because they realized where co-working space. And we essentially in their eyes sublease our space. And we sublease for that. Yeah. That I've done a number of episodes about SBA loans. So that was 2016. It is not always yeah,

00:24:26 doable, but there are SBA lenders who get it. So there are SBA loan lenders who support some of the franchisees, like the office evolution. So you can find them not in every market. So yes, your story is not unique, unfortunately. So they, they told us that we were pre-approved, but we needed to sublease our old space. We went in some leased it,

00:24:50 and then they said, just kidding, we can't give you this loan. And this was a month before we were supposed to open and we had no space. We were homeless. Fortunately, one of our community banks heard about what was happening, came forward and said they could fund the whole thing. But at a higher interest rate, we were looking at a really,

00:25:08 really nice interest rate long-term loan. But this community makes said, you know what? We can still fund you. We believe in your model. It's just going to have to be at a higher rate because our, our funds come at this price. And so we had no other choice. We went forward with that. But with that, we ran a crowdfund campaign to bridge that gap of the difference of what we were,

00:25:29 we were not expecting to pay. And that actually ended up being one of the best things we did. So we put out a campaign to raise $50,000 to help us build a home here in central Phoenix. And 300, 400 people came forward and helped fund us to buy our home. And it was amazing. So it was one of those moments where if these things just didn't line up in the right moments,

00:25:55 we probably would not have survived that situation. So I'm super grateful for all the people that came forward and helped us raise. We actually over race, we raised, I think 55 grand that got us, there was a lot of work, but a ton of people came forward and showed that they, they wanted us to stay. So I think Jerome did your own,

00:26:20 right? Somebody has written an article about your crowdfunding experience. I feel like it was drum because I reference it whenever somebody tells me they're going to crowdfund. I say, great. Yeah. Yeah. And I think, Right, Jerome cites the fact that you're a graphic designer, like you had an existing network, right? They were supporting your ability to stay open,

00:26:45 not to start. And you know, you were somewhat well known in the community at that point. You had some things going for you that others that try may not. I worry about people who are going to rely on crowd funding to get right. It, The time when crowdfunding was really hot too. And now I think it's much harder to race using that.

00:27:08 That being said, there are a lot of other ways I think, to raise funds now, too. But yeah, we, we, we had a lot of, we had a lot of good things that happened at the right time, at the right place for us, I think for us to get to where we, So what do you love and hate about owning your building?

00:27:29 Oh God, I'm Sure. There's, there's, there's a bullet list in each of those columns. I think, you know, it is love, hate. I love learning how to do new things. So I've loved learning about how AC systems work and how elevators work and all of those. But once I've learned them, and then I go into maintenance mode,

00:27:52 I'm kind of like, ah, this sucks. So, so while I love like crawling around and like exploring the spaces that I never knew existed in my own building, I also hate having to call electronic gate person because our gate isn't working right. Or having to figure out all of those things. Now, fortunately, anybody who owns a building would probably attest to this.

00:28:18 Like you have to have a really good list of contractors. So if you buy a building, get that list from whoever was the building owner, before anybody who's ever touched that building so that you have a list to start from a good year and a half, the first year and a half was just us building, like having something break, calling 15 different vendors,

00:28:37 contractors, and building that list of who we can trust and who we can't trust. And like the first year our air compressor broke and we were charged $10,000 for that fix the second year or third year that our broke, like I learned how to fix it. And now it's a $500 fix. So it's like that kind of varying situation because I didn't have the networks of people that I could trust to do it.

00:29:01 Right. Or understanding of how, how a fricking building works. How, how, cause ours is a little bit of an older building, so there's just nuances with it. So I, I love, and I hate that at the same time. How about sort of the other advantages, like financial advantages control advantages. So through the pandemic, you know,

00:29:28 we were able to negotiate interest, only payments with our bank because what do they get if we don't, if we pay nothing, right? Nothing. If we close they're on the hook for this giant building. And so they wanted us to stay alive, which is different than I think a landlord situation where they could care less. I think if you stay in that building or not.

00:29:50 And so those are the great things. Margins are 10 times better, you know, while you have more to manage and costs and expenses to manage, it's still less than what you would normally get out in the market. I think those things are important. And the last thing is like, I don't have a landlord telling me no to things. So we're putting in,

00:30:11 like we're putting in electric chargers. Our past landlord would have said no to that. We put bike, bike, share racks in front of our building, our landlord before we asked him, said no to that. You know? So these are just the level of control is I think the most powerful thing in the last day, like you get, you get a say in your community when you have landowner rights,

00:30:33 right. We get to show up at city council meetings and say like, this is what we want to see in the neighborhood. So if that's the kind of impact you want, that's what you're looking for in coworking is to be like truly a fabric of your community, part of the fabric of your community. Then I would say owning is the best way.

00:30:50 And that is something I'm super passionate about. Like I think I look back at businesses that have leased for 30, 40 years. And I'm like, how much you've paid in your lease. You could have bought this building and entire building like four times over. And I think back to my parents who have leased their space for 40 years, and now they're,

00:31:09 you know, close to having to close how much they've paid every single month kind of purchase that building in a very like nice area four times over. So I don't recommend purchasing a building if you have not been in business for very long, but if you've got a proven model and your study, like it only makes sense to purchase your building. It's an asset.

00:31:31 And one of the best things like it's scary to go into one of the best things my grandfather said, when I was thinking about this, as you can always sell the building, right? Like you have an asset, it's an asset that will likely appreciate. So you can always sell it. If you run into hard times, he closed the business,

00:31:48 but you're not in debt to anybody else, but a bank. So you can sell the building and be whole. But if you lease, you have personal guarantee and they can come after your house. And you know, they can do that with a building as well. But you have an asset that you can give back. So it's not as risky and scary as it may seem.

00:32:07 The hardest part is actually qualifying to Be here. We'll get the financing. Yep. Hey, I just wanted to jump in really quickly before we continue with our discussion. If you're working on opening a coworking space, I want to invite you to join me for my free masterclass three behind the scenes secrets to opening a coworking space. If you're working on opening a coworking space,

00:32:29 I want to share the three decisions that I've seen successful operators make when they're creating their coworking business. The masterclass is totally it's about an hour and includes some Q and a. If you'd like to join me, you can register at everything. coworking.com forward slash masterclass. If you already have a coworking space, I want to make sure you know, about community manager,

00:32:53 university, community manager, university is a training and development platform for community managers. And it can be for owner operators. It has content training resources, templates from day one to general manager. The platform includes mini courses that cover the major buckets of the community manager role from community management, operations, sales, and marketing, finance, and leadership. The content is laid out in a graduated learning path.

00:33:23 So the community manager can identify what content is most relevant to them, depending on their experience and kind of jump in from there. We provide a live brand new training every single month for the community manager group. We also host a live Q and a call every single month so that the community managers can work through any challenges that they're having or opportunities get ideas from other community managers build their own peer network.

00:33:51 We also have a private slack group for the group. So if you're interested in learning more, you can go to everything. coworking.com forward slash community manager. So you were expanding into a new location. Tell us about that. And is that, are you leasing that building or what's the structure in that? Yeah, so we are moving or expanding a second location into Mesa Arizona,

00:34:17 which is a second largest city in the Phoenix metropolitan area. It is a partnership between ourselves, the university out there and the city. So we do pay a small fee, but we also run programming around entrepreneurship there. And our, our goals is around supporting youth entrepreneurship, like college entrepreneurs, as well as like the greater community there it's been in the works for a while.

00:34:50 Working with government is very slow working with government and, and university nonprofit university is even slower. And in the middle of a pandemic has, has caused like another year of delays and the construction costs. But our goal is to open next year. It'll be an a, I think 12 or 13,000 square foot building in downtown Nissa. So talk about kind of your role.

00:35:21 We were chatting about this a little bit before we hit record, but you know, what's your involvement in the business? What's your role? How has it evolved over time? What will your role in the new space be? And then you have a husband. We haven't talked about ODM yet. Who well, except for the fact he was sitting at the booth with you and juicy,

00:35:39 how is he involved? You know, do you still have your day job? Do you do client work? I don't do a lot of client work anymore. I mean, if somebody really, really, really, really wants me to do something and something that like, I believe in, I might pick it up as a side project. I don't do a lot of design and marketing advertising work anymore.

00:36:00 Most of my time is with hoots. And then we launched a new, a new business last year in the middle of the pandemic. That's kind of an extension of our work. So we were building an online platform for our community, our coworking community, because we wanted to work more closely with government. This was before the pandemic. And so it was a platform that brings together all the things we know about coworking,

00:36:25 the community aspect of digital online community. We were getting a lot of businesses from far away regions that were saying, we want to be a part of this, but we can't physically get there in time for all the programming that you run. So we run for, for those of you who don't know, we run education programming every week, business business,

00:36:46 best practices, tips on how to improve your business, all that kind of stuff. So we function as kind of an entrepreneur center as well, and we have an incubation program. So we were building these things into more of an online digital presence so that we could expand them beyond our four walls support communities that don't have coworking spaces, but have a community that could really use this kind of support.

00:37:08 So we, we we're building this and then the pandemic hit and actually the city of Mesa reached out and said, we, we need to help our entrepreneurs. We don't really know how to do that. Our small businesses and we can't do it in person. So what do you recommend? And we basically said you need like the central hub for all of these resources,

00:37:31 especially like for our underrepresented communities, that aren't tapped into all the stuff that you already offer. And you could see it very clearly through this pandemic. How many of our women on businesses and our underrepresented communities that were lost out from the grants and the funding and the, all the resources that were available, because one cities are terrible at marketing and, and,

00:37:55 and, and also like reporting those kinds of things. And so we dug into it and realized there was a real need there to help local government distribute funds and resources that were coming down specifically to hard to reach communities. So we built this platform tapped into like our network of underrepresented communities. And like, what we were hearing back was that this should exist in every city that cities typically expect businesses to come to them.

00:38:25 What business is available at 3:00 PM in the middle of the day to have a call with a city, what business owner, that's a native Spanish speaker likes to call a city to talk about their business, assuming that nobody at the city speaks Spanish. Right? So those are the things that we deal with that oftentimes cities just don't don't know how to address.

00:38:45 And so we really like built a platform that could run 24 7 for a business to go access to these resources. It shouldn't take shouldn't these resources shouldn't be bottled up in one city staff person, right. There should not be a bottleneck at that level. And so really bringing transparency to what's available out there, connecting business owners to everything that exists in a city around small businesses and the big piece to this as managing a specific program,

00:39:15 a lot of people don't know that cities have funding to actually help small businesses. A lot of times it comes in the form of like advisement, like a business coach. So you see SBA and SBDC programs. We've worked with cities on something that's expanded beyond that, which is like hire a consultant to actually help you with your business. So think about Jamie,

00:39:38 like when we started our coworking space, if we had $5,000 to build our website or $5,000 to do marketing, or those kinds of things like how different our position would be today, and what people don't know is the cities actually have programs like that, that fund those things. You typically see things like, let me fund the city, we'll help you with signage.

00:39:58 Or like, streetscaping those kinds of things. Right? But there are also programs where they will fund a consultant to help you. It's a specific program. That's like starting to get traction around, but a lot of cities try it and they don't know how to manage it. They don't know how to find good consultants. They don't know how to like track and measure and then report back is can't Operationalize it.

00:40:19 And so it stays Exactly. And what's great about running a coworking space is you have hundreds of talented people in your space who know how to do these crazy, amazing things. And that's what we have always leveraged, right? Like you don't have to be an expert in everything. You just need to know the right people that can help you grow your business.

00:40:39 You do your thing really well, stay in that lane and have a bunch of people around you that are really good at all the other things. And so we basically put that in a digital form. You don't have to be in a coworking space, but you can find all the expert people, right. And on top of that, the city will fund your support that you need,

00:40:56 right. You can't, you can't get $20,000 worth of support, but like really prioritize what you need most and let the city help you with that. So there are funds available and we manage that program for them, which has been really, really successful. And so that's kind of the next phase for me is like, how do I get this to more communities?

00:41:15 Because this is a, a third opportunity of funding, not just like loans and not just venture capital, because most small businesses don't qualify for that. A lot of times, small businesses go for friends and family funding, and then they go for grants or any kind of, any kind of cash money they can get from anywhere, how they grow their business.

00:41:37 We did it, right? Like we, we got four desks and that Fitz desk goes to fund the next furniture that comes in. Right. But like, imagine if we had the ability to cover some of those costs upfront, like there, we would just be further along. And if we had a stronger network in the beginning, didn't have to go through 15 different CPAs to find the right one.

00:42:00 Right? So those, those are the things where like, shortening that, that close closing, that loop of how to find the right person, especially for people who aren't in these networks to begin with. And what I found is that a lot of these business owners didn't even know these things existed, right? Like, which is so hard to see because I can see how it could change their lives.

00:42:31 And so it's great. Like I'm, I'm excited about it. And I'm excited to, to see like our local governments actually invest in small businesses and in entrepreneurs and in the work that we do. So I feel like it's the next evolution of, of the work that we've been doing. So we're growing another space. We're also building this digital or growing this digital platform it's called hub.

00:42:55 Will there be any overlap between the digital and physical? I think there will be some, but the digital platform is rolled out at a municipality level. So it's essentially white labeled to a local government. It's not our brand or anything. So I think in terms of like, we will direct our businesses that we see to this platform, right. So should the SBA show social at the SBDC?

00:43:21 Like it's a central aggregator of all resources. I think that will be the overlap. Otherwise it's just an extension of the work that we're already passionate about. And to really, really see, I guess, the shift in power of, of small businesses and, you know, no longer are seeing the, the access to those kinds of funds only going to those who have entire teams to navigate those kinds of programs.

00:43:52 Right. Typically it's your big agencies that know how to navigate these complex systems and Have the resources to your point to put some money on it. Yeah. Yeah. So I love that. It's, it's kind of right. An extension of the physical piece and the way you're supporting entrepreneurs in person. So you've community managers that run your locations. Yeah.

00:44:18 So Dean leads up like physical on the ground locations. And then we have two community managers that are running one that's focused on like marketing and the other on like facility operations, but they're, they're doing great job. And, you know, the last year was challenging, but for some reason in June, everything, everything just went bunkers again. I think at least in Arizona,

00:44:45 people were ready to get out of the house and get back into it. So I don't know what happens in the next couple of months with the Delta variant, but right now we're seeing, we're still seeing that traction. Like we're still seeing the movement forward for businesses engaging in coworking and even more so a lot of people leaving their typical office office lease to go flex to find a more flexible solution and continue doing remote with their teams,

00:45:16 but giving the option for a physical space if they needed it. And Phoenix lost a rework, is that right? Did they close One of their locations, locations here? To be honest, we don't pay a lot of attention to them and, and grateful that they don't mess with the work that we do very much, but I believe one of them closed,

00:45:39 but they had like two almost right next door to each other. So I imagine it's just, doesn't make sense to that Or supplied there. Yeah. So one of the things that I hear about you is that you are an automation queen. So tell, tell us, yeah. What do you automate? How do you approach that? Like, what are your favorites that you you've figured out over the years?

00:46:05 Oh yeah. I spend way too much time automating. I think I posted once that, like, is it worth it to spend like 72 hours on an automation? That would be like one second, a day. I've like, anytime I have something that bothers me, I basically try to figure out how to automate it. So I never have to deal with that again In ceiling tiles.

00:46:27 Yeah. That might be one that I have to buy a robot for, but we've automated. Like I have, like the tools that I use are Zapier, like buttons, if this, then that, and we use active campaign for digital marketing. And so, you know, we've got a lot of sequences, some basic ones are, we have two coffee machines.

00:46:49 Like for those in the coworking space industry, we have two coffee machines and they're big ones right there. I think 40 or 50 cup coffee machines, and we get local coffee and we set those up and we only have one run. And then we have a button that says like his coffee out, hit this button, you hit that button. Then the second brew starts running.

00:47:10 Right. So we noticed that like when we were just making one, every time in the middle of the day, our community manager would have to go remake another one. And then sometimes we would learn or we would like make two and then it would go unused and then be wasted coffee. And, and so we decided to set up that system. So it's set up,

00:47:32 that's like one basic example of something. We have little, like, I love flip buttons. We have flipped buttons in the bathroom that notify us if like bathrooms need to be cleaned or anything like that. How does the flick button communicate? Does it okay. Yeah. You can trigger whatever you want. Like you can send a text message or whatever,

00:47:51 but we have it hooked up to slack. Our whole team is on slack. We have a flick button for emergencies, right? Like if there's ever a crazy person that comes in, there's like at a gas station, right. Like call the cops number. We've got that. That also like when you click that button, it also triggers a notification to us that says like something's in emergency.

00:48:12 So if we have somebody on our team that needs to do that, I set up, you know, in the middle of the pandemic, we had to close, but also still receive mail. And so we set up buttons that would like unlock the door for mail people. We just got a ring camera. They would hit the ring camera. We could hit a button and it would unlock it.

00:48:35 Or if you're at the front desk, but like, you didn't, you were, or you were farther away from their front desk. You would get notified that somebody hit the ring button, but you could hit your flick button, which would unlock the door for them. Wow. Yeah. Just a bunch of little things we've Got really little and yet.

00:48:52 Right. I mean, you're solving all the, yeah. The dream It's like what, how this came about was like, we would sell this beautiful vision on like supporting entrepreneurs. If you work at cahoots, you are really changing our community by like empowering more entrepreneurs and small businesses. And you do that by being a connector. Right. And we would always sell that.

00:49:14 And it is core to our work, but every day they would come in and they're making coffee and they're like checking bathrooms and they're stocking shelves. If they're doing all this like operational stuff that wasn't in Zone of genius. Yes. Like for 10 years I would get, and we'd have this turnover. And they're like, I just feel like I'm always changed at this desk.

00:49:32 Or I feel like I'm not doing what I was here for. And it's hard to have somebody who can sit and have a meeting with the mayor and these like top leaders about like building entrepreneur communities and then go back and have to plunge a toilet, you know? And those are just two different roles. And so finally I was like, okay, how much of this can I take off of your plate,

00:49:57 big goal list? And I was like, okay, if the handyman or like our cleaners, like set up the coffee at night, you don't ever have to touch it. We have a button it'll automatically start it. Like that's off your plate. So just started running through that. So as much of the nitty gritty little facility, operational things, I could take off a community manager's plate.

00:50:17 I tried. And it's been 10 years of building. Yeah, No, I, I love it. I think people are intimidated by automation. People find Zapier to be overwhelming. Oh my God, I love it. I think we're on like the highest cheer team plan. I'm pretty sure I have over a hundred apps running and they are amazing plug and call out Zapier.

00:50:41 They're amazing customer service team. Anytime you have trouble with anything, you just put in a ticket and they'll respond within 24 hours and fix the problem for you. Get paid for that. But love that Zapier, what is it that triggers the coffee machine to run The flick button? So entrepreneurs or our members would go and like try to get coffee. And if it's empty,

00:51:07 there's a little button next to it that says is this empty? And then they'll hit the button and the next coffee machine will start brewing. It takes like, I think 10 minutes or something, but The flick button triggered the coffee machine. Oh. Off of a smart switch. So there's a smart switch that turns on and off That on. Yeah,

00:51:29 it is brilliant though. I was like, how does this work? Okay, interesting. So there's a lot of things you can do with the flick button and a smart switch. Yeah. We have the smart switches on all of our TVs. So they automatically turn on at the right time in the morning and turn off at the end of the day.

00:51:47 So again, another thing like Broke down, opening the space, setting the space it's yeah. Yep. Can they judge the pillows on the couch? I've thought about getting like a robot vacuum, but our space might be a little bit too big for a robot guy. Yeah. I'm curious about updated models of those. We have one at home, you know,

00:52:08 it'll knock over like the dog's water bowl and if it's not without its, you know, imperfections, so in a coworking space, all those table legs and, and chairs and whatnot, I suspect it would be a little bit of a mess. So what's, what's next for you? You've talked a little bit about new location, expanding the hub model and kind of making space to do that.

00:52:37 Yeah. Making space, you know, Jamie, I'm also tired. So I feel like I've got another at max and other decade in this, but I would love to, like at some point, I don't know if I'd actually retire, but I think I'd make a really good executive assistant or admin be a to somebody at some point. So at some point in the next,

00:53:03 I don't know, five to 10 years, I plan to do something else. Right. Like we've been working hard for a really long time. And my daughter's seven, my parents worked like they're in their seventies and they've worked all their lives. And I would just hate to get to that point in my life where I've not really done all the things that I want to do.

00:53:28 And so I think, you know, my passion is always going to be around supporting entrepreneurs and small businesses. Cause that's what I grew up in. And I saw like the impact of that and thinking about like, if more women and people of color were successful, like what our world would actually look like. I don't know if you've read the book,

00:53:46 we should all be millionaires by Rachel Rogers. I have read that book. So that is like, that's like really inspiring. Yeah, exactly. And I think, I think of that, right? Like it's not just women in power, but like people who actually care about other people in power is what I want to see. So maybe at some point I want to like work for somebody changing policy or B I don't,

00:54:13 I don't, I'll never, I guess never say never, but I don't ever really want to run for elected office, but I'd love to support somebody who can like make some serious change in our policies. I think things that are coming down right now are really interesting with like childcare support and our healthcare system. There's so much that needs to be changed.

00:54:34 The fact that America has like no safety net for people is a little ridiculous to me. So those are, those are the things that are on my mind and they're big, big topics. But for now I will focus on co-working and on our hub platform, they're creating impact in the spaces that I know. I think in the next decade, I'll be looking for something that is a little bit,

00:55:01 a little bit slower pace. And, and, and I hope that I'll have enough experience and, and knowledge and to be able to clearly identify what kind of change I want to make in the policy space. So yeah, I think that's where I'd go and spending some executive assistant virtual assistant. I could specialize in automation. Yeah. Zapier will hire me totally.

00:55:29 But somehow I'm not seeing that given all the big picture things you're doing, but maybe you just need a sabbatical. That's not, you know, helping your parents for a month, so maybe you can, can make that happen. So I appreciate you sharing your journey and your story. And it was fun for me to hear because yeah, I didn't know most of the details that you shared and I think it's inspiring.

00:55:53 You hit a lot of roadblocks along the way, and yet you've come a long way in contributed a lot to your community. So I know there are folks listening who are inspired to do the same and get through those hard days and figure out a way to make it happen. It is hard. And I will say, I'm here for you for anybody who's going through it.

00:56:14 And I will say, once you get through it, you'll look back. And you're like, oh, that actually wasn't as bad as it may have seemed because something worse ahead of you and you will also get through it. Right. We never would have thought that we would be in legal battles with our first landlord. Right. And we never would've thought that we might lose our business because of the SBA,

00:56:39 or we never thought that we'd be in the middle of the pandemic and lost lose, like more than 50% of our revenue in the span of six months, you know, but we get through it. And I think the only way that I've been able to is having like a really, really good, strong network of people to, to cry with and to get support from.

00:57:02 So just build that, build that tribe and that support. And if you need me I'm here. Awesome. Speaking of, we will link to all things, Jenny and cahoots in the show notes. So you can, can check out the website and the hub and all those good things. So Jenny, I'll let you go. Thank you so much for sharing your story.

00:57:22 Thank you for having me.

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