225. Do You Walk Your Own Talk? My Experience Joining a Coworking Space

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225. Do You Walk Your Own Talk? My Experience Joining a Coworking Space

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 Russo Hey there, this is Jamie Russo. Thank you for tuning in with me today. It is just me today. It's been a while. So I wanted to share a little bit about my experience becoming a member of a coworking space.

00:00:42 So if you're a newer listener, I ran coworking spaces for nine years, ish in Chicago and Palo Alto, California. And my second space closed in June of 2020. So I spend my time focusing on helping folks start and run profitable co-working spaces. We do that through our coworking startup school, which some of you have been through our community manager university program,

00:01:09 and we are relaunching a brand new membership or sort of updating an operator membership coming this November. So stay tuned for more details on that. We are hard at work behind the scenes on that, and can't wait to share. So my, since my coworking space closed, I've been working at home. And if you're a podcast listener, you know, I have been saying here and there that I find it very challenging to be at home all the time in particular with a husband who's at home almost all the time,

00:01:41 although he just left for a business trip and I am so excited to have a few days just to have the place to myself. I think it's, I've been thinking about this a lot. I think the difference is that stranger noises are, you can deal with that. You sort of filter them out when you're listening to a spouse or a kid. Those noises are much more distracting and annoying.

00:02:10 So I think that's kind of the case because obviously, so I go to a coworking space a couple of times a week and I sit in the open space and I, you know, our people sit at coffee shops and we don't mind the, the noise, the background noise, the ambient noise, right? I think it's when you place a judgment on that noise,

00:02:27 that it becomes a problem. So, so my husband left today and will be, he's gone for like two days. And I even asked him, could you maybe go for the whole day instead of part of the day? And he was like, no, he's like, my company doesn't have space for me. He has to go to Seattle. And he's like,

00:02:44 we they're in a shared workspace and it is full and he cannot get access to a private space. And he's on the phone all day. He can't sit out in the open and also just not his style. He just doesn't sort of process things the same way in an open space. So he needs to have an office. So he said, no,

00:03:03 I cannot go earlier home. So I said, okay, I'm going to get out of the house. I try to manage my calendar. I'm obviously on zooms a lot. I record things a lot. I'm, you know, so I have to be in a private space. Often I run operator calls. I do some one-on-one calls, all the things I record podcasts.

00:03:25 So I'm not a good open space member. And if you listen to the podcast, like we talk a lot about know who your best end user is. And many of you are having folks come through the door and all they want is an office, right? It's harder to sell open space and that's because people need private space. So we see a lot of experimentation around that.

00:03:46 I personally absolutely love the coworking plus access to a private office membership. I live in a area where real estate is really expensive. So I toured a couple of co-working spaces and one that had window access offices. The single office was over $2,000 a month. So that's out of my budget. I decided I will work at home. I have an office at home with a nice window and I will go to the coworking space on the days when I don't have meetings.

00:04:24 So I want to start with sort of the tour process, cause I kind of dove into some details there and I want, I'm trying to think through what's most, I feel like this is a good shareable experience, but I want it to not just be sort of my rant on my, you know, experience, joining a space that I'm frankly, not at all in love with and try to figure out what's useful to share with you because it's not often that we get to get into the mind of being a shopper,

00:04:55 right. And even have our own space. And so I think it's important to, or other spaces, although it's really hard to do. I'm not necessarily saying shop other spaces in your market, but if you're on vacation or whatnot, it's, I think it's a good experience to see how other people handled tours handled the sales experience. For me, it was so I should first say I was actually looking for space.

00:05:19 And so I didn't sort of out myself. I didn't say I work in the coworking industry because I think that's really distracting for people anyway. I didn't think a lot about it, but I, I didn't. So you should know that. So I just said, you know, I have a consulting business, which is not how I refer to my business,

00:05:36 but I thought for simplicity sake, that's what I'll say. And I just lost my train of thought. So I didn't tell them who was, I should say, if I come to tour your space, I will tell you, we toured. I was Kane. Wilma was in town from IQ office feeds. He's been on the podcast before he has locations across Canada.

00:05:58 He was in town to do an iron man. And we toured five locations in San Francisco last week. And we absolutely told every person we encountered who we were and why we were visiting. So we did not shop those spaces. So just so you know, I'm definitely a fan of outing yourself, but it can be interesting to sort of go through the experience when they don't know that you're you're in the biz.

00:06:20 So the I there, I really wanted a place downtown near my town. So my actual town doesn't have any coworking spaces. I think that's because there's not a lot of commercial space and real estate is really, really expensive. So I'm just south of San Francisco. I'm not going to say the exact town that I'm looking in because I don't want to specify but location.

00:06:42 So I was looking at a town nearby about a 15 minute drive, which is totally fine for me. It's almost the idea of like, okay, I've got this 15 minute drive. I can listen to podcasts. I can stop at the grocery store on my way home. Like when you work from home all the time, leaving your house to do even simple errands,

00:06:59 like grocery store in the bank, feel like a lot of work. So I like the idea that it's just like in the flow, the parking, you know, in that town is not bad. It's like 75 cents an hour. So, which is interesting. Real estate is really expensive, but I think the parking is really approachable and the parking is right downtown.

00:07:19 So it's close to everything I wanted to be downtown. So there are, if you're listening and you are, you know, nearby, I specifically wanted a space that was downtown because I, I just miss my urban identity from living in Chicago. And now I live in, you know, a really dense suburb, but I cannot walk to things. I cannot walk to a coffee shop.

00:07:41 So my very favorite coffee shop and bakery is, is right downtown in this town. And so I just wanted to have that vibe and be able to walk around at lunchtime and do those things and feel like I'm part of the action. So that was my mindset. And that was how I was looking for a space. So there were two locations that met that criteria.

00:08:02 One of them I pretty much wrote off completely. And the other one I had high up high hopes for and the other one has another location in another, in a city nearby. So I re put in a tour request and was called pretty quickly. I love the phone call by the way. And my members have been telling me that they get really great to our conversions when they make phone calls to confirm to worse.

00:08:30 So this was, I put in the request. I scheduled the time someone called me just to say, Hey, you know, what are you looking for? What can we help you with? They didn't ask a ton of questions, but I just said, I just want one office. And I did ask a question though. I'm pretty sure I asked it on the phone call because I wasn't sure the answer would be yes,

00:08:50 but I said, look, I'm looking for an office and I want to be able to share it with my husband. So my dream scenario was that I would go there half the time and my husband would go there the other half of the time. And we could each be at home on our own on the other days. And he said, the sales person I talked to said,

00:09:08 absolutely fine. That's no problem. And that was a little bit of a surprise to me because it's a wa I was looking for a one person office and just basically asking to do an office share. And I'm not sure that pre COVID, that answer would have been yes by many of us. Right. And now it's absolutely no problem. So perfectly pleasant experience.

00:09:28 And I had high hopes for what I would encounter. So I had my tour set up it's in my calendar. And then on the day of, I drove to the place. I couldn't remember at that point where he said to park, because I remember asking, cause at that point I wasn't sure where the parking garage was. And I know that he told me,

00:09:48 but I couldn't remember. So that was like one of the first learning points is people just don't remember things. You need to tell them all the things and put it in writing. So I looked in my calendar invite for the tour and it was not there. So, which is, it is what it is. I was hoping it would be there.

00:10:07 So if you have places for folks to park or have a suggestion, put it in the calendar invite, because I think it's natural that people would go there to find the details. So I get to the building and it is still, they're not totally open yet, which I didn't really realize from my conversation, which would be fine, except I literally could not find the entrance.

00:10:30 So I parked in a parking lot right next to the building, sort of hoping it was okay for me to park there, there were no signs, but I just took a guess. And cause street parking is not that simple. So you either need to park in the parking garage or this parking lot that was adjacent to the building. So I couldn't find the entrance.

00:10:51 So I finally had to ask the business located on the first floor. Hi, I'm looking for this coworking space and I know it's here, but I cannot find the entrance. Can you tell me where to go? I had to interrupt someone doing her job. And she was as nice as could be. And she said, oh, you know, they just stopped using the construction elevator.

00:11:11 And the entrance is down at the end of the hall. And I was like, well, there are two people like sign boards down there. She's like, well, that's where the elevator is. So I had a walk by like two guys, like with a saw sign, something to get into the elevator, no signage anywhere at all whatsoever. So now I realize I don't actually know what floor I'm going to.

00:11:32 So I look at my calendar invite and it said, you know, whatever floor. So I go to that floor. That is not the lobby. There's no laughing on the floor, that's in the calendar invite. So I go up and down this elevator trying to figure out where I'm going. Finally, somebody comes into the elevator and I asked where's the lobby.

00:11:50 At this point, I am pretty frustrated because it took me five minutes to figure out how to get into the building. And now I can't find the actual lobby. And this to me should be not a time of frustration, but a time of like, oh my gosh, look how cute. This is great signage. I'm so excited for my tour.

00:12:10 I was not in that head space. So they told me the floor, which is not labeled anywhere. And it was not what was in my invite. So I get to the floor and I walk out the front desk is not in front of the elevators, which is what it is. There's, you know, there are reasons why that can't always be the case.

00:12:29 So I walk over to the front desk and the community manager is on her phone, drinking an ice coffee and has no idea who I am. And when I say this, I'm sorry, I'm getting into a bit of a rant here. I suspect that if you are listening to this podcast, this is not you, right. You are not running this type of experience,

00:12:53 but I will tell you, I didn't expect this out of this location either. And it was definitely my sense that the ownership who was gave me my tour didn't think that this is how they were portraying themselves. And so I think it can be really good to give a hard look and maybe have someone shop you, maybe ask a friend to shop you and be really honest,

00:13:18 or like a half a friend, like an acquaintance. He doesn't mind hurting your feelings, shop you and tell you like, you know, really, and truly what their, what their experience was. And so she didn't know who I was. And I thought, I mean, how many tours are you giving today? You can't know who I am and it's,

00:13:34 you know, three, o'clock like, I'm in your calendar. Right? So, you know, I sit down and I wait for the tour guide to come give me a tour, which was not the woman at the front desk. The space is large, multiple floors. And so that it makes sense that they had, you know, a tour manager and they're in like full sales mode trying to fill up the space.

00:13:56 So the tour manager is part of the ownership team and did not ask me a single question for a good 10 minutes of our conversation and which I, so in our community manager university, and as part of our startup school we do to our training and the tour training is very focused on getting to know the potential member, helping them feel like they're on a date.

00:14:26 Like you're very interested in them because you are right. So I suspect if you are listening to this, you are very much aligned with the idea that you are trying to treat a potential member is if you're very interested in their work and in them personally, because you sincerely are. So I was kind of surprised at this approach. Hey, I just wanted to jump in really quickly before we continue with our discussion.

00:14:55 If you're working on opening a co-working 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 co-working space, 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 free. It's about an hour and include some Q and a.

00:15:19 If you'd like to join me, you can register@everythingcoworking.com forward slash masterclass. If you already have a coworking space, I want to make sure you know, about community manager, 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.

00:15:46 The platform includes many 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. 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.

00:16:14 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. We also have a private slack group for the group. So if you're interested in learning more, you can go to everything co-working dot com forward slash community manager.

00:16:38 And the other thing I would say about the space that surprised me a little bit is that it was very, very office dense. And certainly I understand the business model reason for this because most people are looking for offices, right? But it was so dense. There was a tiny little bit of collaborative space on the very top floor. So if you're not an office member,

00:17:03 there is one place for you to sit and it is not very large. And so it really, really was a place that was focused on office members, which is completely fine. If that's your positioning, it felt far too dense for me. And I could not get a one person office on a window line. So they had an interior office that was completely interior.

00:17:26 That was much less expensive than the $2,000 one that I mentioned less than half the price, but it was interior and had no soundproofing. So I asked, you know, what if I wanted to record a podcast and he was super honest, which I appreciated very much. He said, definitely not during the day. So there was a no place in,

00:17:48 you know, the many floors where I could get a soundproof or at least sound, you know, mitigated space to record something. So for me to take an office where I can't record something, it doesn't have to be soundproof, but is it, you know, no podcast room, no meeting rooms that would allow for that. And the type of construction that they did on the was a like a wall system did not allow for some privacy.

00:18:16 So that was just a bad use case for me. And I knew my husband would not accept an office that was not on a window line because we each have an office at home with a window. I will tell you, they're both guest rooms slash offices. We are not sitting on a lot of real estate in our home, but we've converted two rooms and they each have windows.

00:18:35 And so when you have a window at home to go to an interior office and pay for that is a really tough, it's probably not going to happen. So I think that's a really helpful perspective is like, if you're going to offer that, you have to be confident that you have a membership base that needs that type of space. And they don't have something better at home because we're trying to upgrade when we leave the house.

00:19:01 Right. And I should back up my, you know, primary goals for leaving the house because to me, the 24 7 exposure to the family is just way too much. And also I want to know other people in my community. I want to know the other entrepreneurs and people running businesses. And I, I want to meet them and interact with them.

00:19:24 And I can't do that at home. Right. I can get to know you guys and I can get to know my sort of immediate co-working professional network, but if I want to meet other business folks that I want to include in my network here, I can't do that at home. And so I, I want to meet people. And so that was the other challenge was sort of that interior office and the very office density of that particular space was I just felt like I'm not going to meet people here.

00:19:55 However, the person touring me had a lot of sort of commentary around community and hospitality. I struggled with that a lot because it felt very disconnected to me. I didn't really believe his promise on the tour. I couldn't see how that was going to be delivered when I showed up. I didn't know where to go. And there were reasonings given about why there's no signage.

00:20:25 I think that is somewhat inexcusable to have people frustrated when they show up at the front desk. So think about that. I have had two locations with very, very entrance challenge situations. And I think after living through those, that is a big challenge. And I wouldn't do it again, but you have to go overboard on the signage. If your entrance is hard to find and put all the detail into the calendar invite.

00:20:56 So people have a reference when they're in that moment of not knowing where they're going. So anyway, the point I was just making is that there was a disconnect, lots of buzzwords around community and hospitality being used. And I did not see how that was going to play out. There was barely any like collaboration space. I didn't see any like lounge spaces.

00:21:18 There were meeting rooms. The only lounge space was around the kitchen area. So I just, and I know that it's very hard to give off that vibe when you're new and you don't have people in the space, but even the way the space was set up, it was really hard to make that connection. I will say everyone was very, very nice.

00:21:38 The sales person in particular, who communicated with me after the tour was extremely nice and gracious. You know, I even said at one point, I said, I can't join your space because I can't have an interior office. You know, if that ever changes and you have a window office, please let me know. And he still was like, look,

00:21:58 anytime you're around, come over having to so very, very cordial. And I really appreciated that aspect. So their sales team is doing really well. So that was not a great fit. So I decided, okay, I guess I have to choose this other space, which is a national brand. And I won't, I don't want to out anyone,

00:22:20 but it was not sort of my first choice. I wanted to join a local brand. So I support many of you who are local brands. And there are, I know that there are franchise brands and other national brands that listened to this podcast and I respect each and every one of you and would join one of you, this particular, I was just,

00:22:41 I wanted it to be the last option. And so it was so there again, right downtown, and they have this kind of awesome hip looking loungey first floor that's right at retail level. So I decided I would tour there. So I submitted once, maybe twice on the website and never got a response. So there's something broken there because there was a,

00:23:03 you know, do you want to come in for a tour? And I think it was a free, you know, a day pass to kind of hang out and experience the space and I didn't get any response. So finally I called and I said, look, I, you know, submitted this and I didn't get a response. Somebody answered my phone call right away,

00:23:21 got me set up, but never sent me any confirmation email or calendar invite or anything just said, okay, come in, you know, Monday at 9:00 AM. So again, no calendar invite, no nothing. So I came in Monday at 9:00 AM for a tour. And I said, you know, went in to the front desk, which is right at the front and introduced myself and you know,

00:23:40 said, I'm here. I'm looking for a one person office. And I was hoping to stay in, you know, hang out and just get a feel for the space for the day. So the woman who gave me the tour asked me two questions on our entire tour to one was, can I show you any other office sizes? The other one was,

00:23:59 when would you like to start? She didn't ask me, where do I live? What do I do for work? Do I have any dogs, nothing to get to know me personally, not literally. She asked me that was two questions. So, you know, I felt like it wasn't a good cultural fit and yet I really need to get out of the house and they offer a 10 day pass and the other space did not offer anything part-time.

00:24:27 And if you listened to the podcast for a long time, you know, that I am pretty anti part-time membership, particularly pre COVID, but here I am post COVID. I need a place to work. And I can't the office at this place. It's $2,000 a month on a window. So I don't want to invest that in office space, but I want to get out of the house.

00:24:52 And so the part-time membership is perfect for me. I don't need 24 7 access. After I drop my daughter off from school, I can barely, you know, get there by eight 30. I have to hustle to do all my morning things, you know, the workout, all the things drop her off and be there at eight 30 with like all the things ready to go.

00:25:12 So I can't use 24 7 access, and usually I have to leave and pick her up on the way home. So the 10 day is really perfect for me. And if you're listening consider the 10 day, but price it at a premium right. President of premium. So let me keep going through the tour experience. So I stayed, I did not get any check-in while I was there at all.

00:25:37 I didn't meet any other members while I was there. The open space is pretty quiet. We are still actually on a indoor mask mandate in my county. So that may be prohibiting folks. I will tell you that the general vibe, everyone sits so far apart from each other, that, you know, we, everybody takes their masks off while they're doing,

00:25:59 you know, zoom. You can even do zoom calls in that space, out in the open. I think they have white noise. I cannot visually see it, but they must have white noise because you can do a zoom call somebody across the room. I can't, it's not distracting, which is kind of amazing. I still go into the phone room to take my calls because it's just so ingrained in what I do.

00:26:22 So no, check-in no nothing. She is clearly only responsible for the actual tour, their regional sales person. Follow it up with me either later that day or the next day and said, you know, what, what would you like to do office, et cetera. And I said, you know, only the 10 day, please. Then he sent me a contract right away and we got set up.

00:26:45 So I did read that contract 17 times to make sure that it was a 30 day out clause. If it wasn't a good fit for me. And it is a 30 day out clause. So I was comfortable enough to, to try it. So I've been going there and I will tell you, it is, you know, I am avoiding the distractions at home,

00:27:10 but it is very, very quiet. I would call, call it like sort of a soulless sort of culture. I haven't met anybody else. I'm pretty outgoing, but it is sort of weird to just introduce yourself to random people in a space because the co you have to pay for the coffee. There's no free coffee at all whatsoever. And I know if you're listening,

00:27:31 you have free coffee. I don't, I, I understand the upgraded. I'm happy to pay for my cappuccino because I don't want that milk, milk bill, bill either. But it's all for pay in a machine where you put your debit card and maybe it's because they have many coffee shops kind of nearby. I mentioned like, I love there's a coffee shop in bakery right next door,

00:27:53 which I also don't love because I have now been eating way too many croissants. And they're the really big croissants, not the teeny little petite croissants. So that habit needs to get adjusted. So there's not even like, oh, I'm getting coffee and I'm chatting with someone for sure, no member event. So the, the woman who runs the space,

00:28:12 I am going to stop calling her a community manager because she does not community manage. She must be more of an operations manager and they simply don't have another role in this space. The space is 17,000 square feet. And has, I think they said 70 offices. So all the offices are on the floors above the retail floor. The retail floor is all open space and they have booths,

00:28:37 which I love, although the backs of the booths are so vertical that you cannot comfortably sit in one. You have to have a pillow behind you. So maybe that's just standard for boots. But I found that to be fairly interesting. So I will say a couple of other things that I've noticed about my experience. One, so I'm not meeting anybody so that's not helping.

00:29:02 And so if anybody wants to open an independent brand near me, please call, I'm hoping that will shift. And maybe as people go back more to the open space, then it'll be more normal for people to kind of introduce themselves. I will say. So here's a couple of things I've noticed. There's this like not a small nook, but like an alcove area on the wage of the phone booth and the bathrooms.

00:29:28 And it has a high top table that seats five. So there is one guy who goes there. I mean, he's always there when I'm there, but I only, I only go a couple of times a week. He's always there. And so I kind of think he's made at his office. And if you have this problem, you should stop it right now because he's getting used to it.

00:29:47 And he's also like he's taking over the whole place. Cause he does all his phone calls. It's like, he's just totally made it himself at home edit table that should seed five people. And it's only him. And I know we're still coming out of COVID, but that seems like totally inappropriate behavior to me. And it would be the community manager's job to stop that,

00:30:05 to shut that down. But she does not phone rooms are painful, so there's no soundproofing at all whatsoever. So I don't even know why I feel like I have to go in one. Actually it's like optics because there's a big gap at the bottom. I can hear the people outside of the phone booth. So I know they can hear me and the table that's there.

00:30:27 There's a chair, a low chair and a table in there. And the table is much lower than the chair. So I have to do this awkward. I'm always looking down into my camera, which is really awkward and it hurts my back. I hate those phone booths. So I understand because we designed coworking spaces and help people make those decisions. We'll often joke and say,

00:30:49 well, you don't want the phone booth to be too comfortable, right? We don't want people in there for three hours at a time that should be managed with policy, right? Don't make your phone booth actually uncomfortable for people to use for a real phone call. It feels very awkward to me to have a professional call and feel like, oh, I'm in a co-working space,

00:31:07 but I'm staring at you very awkwardly from way up in this chair. And you're way down here. And I know it doesn't look good. So, you know, help people look good on their phone calls with your phone boosts, please. And if you've never sat in one, which I feel like is the case here, please go test them out and see how they feel.

00:31:24 Again, this is probably not you, but I bet some of us are making some of these mistakes just because we get used to how things are, or we don't know because we've never used the phone booth or we've never sat in the booth. I don't know who does that. I do probably know who designed those boots, that aren't very comfortable. So one other thing I noticed about sort of the mindset of my membership.

00:31:45 I have a 10 day membership. And for some reason, one day I was thinking about how is it going to like, not be able to do two days next week? And so I started doing the math in my head around, well, how many days am I actually using 10 days a month? And I for sure was not. And so then I started to like,

00:32:05 it started to bug me and I thought, oh my gosh, I am becoming the member that we all hate. That thinks about whether I'm using 10 days or not. And this is why I struggle with, with the less than full-time membership, right? Because we want people to think I have access. I am not counting my days, you know,

00:32:24 particularly, or I'm not worried about paying for more days than I actually use. What I'm paying for is the possibility of using 10 days. And it's there if I need it, if I only use eight days, that's okay. If people are using only eight days, they're for 10 days, you should not create a plan for them to have eight days.

00:32:42 I see people doing this do not do that. But from a member perspective is very tempting to think I'm overpaying for this space because I cannot get in there for two days this month. So it sort of surprised me that that happened in my very well-trained brain, who knows how the model works and knows that we need people to pay for more time than they really use.

00:33:02 And 10 days is already a complete gift in my mind that I can only go for 10 days. So what else do I want to share about this experience? 10 days meeting room. Okay. So I think my overall takeaways, I have to share one more thing. I mentioned, I mentioned the, that the bakery next door has these amazing croissants.

00:33:31 And so I tend to get them on Fridays. It's like my Friday treats. So I have my almond milk cappuccino and the guy puts the little heart in it, which makes me so happy. And I take my big croissant. That's like the size of my head. It's delicious. Don't get me wrong. It's very, it's so good. This bakery is fabulous.

00:33:53 And I go sit down and I get started on my day. So the second Friday I was there eating my croissant. I looked down and noticed that Microsoft crumbs from the previous Friday, we're still on the floor. So embarrassing that I'm that member who leaves crumbs, you know, but the croissant is really flaky, but they were still there from the previous week.

00:34:16 So who's cleaning, not good. Don't be that guy. So the bigger picture takeaways are this. There are probably little things that we all do that maybe we're not aware of. That could be better. That could be executed better. The tour experience matters a lot. So you're probably really great at giving tours, but as we're transitioning back into COVID,

00:34:38 if you haven't revisited your tour or training, shadowed, your team sent somebody in to shop them, you should do it because it makes such a big difference and make sure you have a checklist of things you're looking for on that tour, because that part of the experience just is so critical. And if you haven't been running events because of COVID, please at least introduce your members,

00:35:02 have some onboarding experience that helps to connect your members because, and lots of coworking spaces are back to doing events. I think you can find some way to make it comfortable for your members, even if it's more of a grab and go, or, you know, if it's food, I get it. You know, I get, we want distance and we don't all want to sit next to each other and eat our waffle Wednesdays.

00:35:27 But I think the spaces that are back to finding some way to accommodate events, and we talk about this a lot in our community manager university, it makes a difference because experience has been really not amazing because I don't know anyone and that's even if I didn't want to make new friends, I still want to know people, right? If it's not the primary goal of me going there,

00:35:49 everyone wants some human connection. And this, again, the manager of the front desk barely acknowledged it's me showing up in the morning, the coffee barista one day told me she liked my pants. And that was the best thing that's happened to me in a while. So big picture takeaways, cause I've gone a little, little detail in a few things.

00:36:13 Not every market has great coworking spaces yet. Right? I live in a market near San Francisco. That's very familiar with co-working. Although I'll tell you that's one other quick point I would make, I don't, I could bring friends to that coworking space, but you know what I want, this is again like my member hat. I'm not sure I would think of this on,

00:36:33 on the, on the owner hat, in my member hat, I would like the community manager. Who's very social and attentive and connecting people to give me a free 10 day pass or even a free five day pass. How about how did a five day pass to give to my neighbors? Because if I invited my neighbors to come work at that space,

00:36:56 you know, on Mondays and Fridays with me, I think they would come and I think they would convert, but I already don't like the space. So to ask them to pay for something without experiencing it first, I don't know, but if they could come like on a Friday and we could get coffee and croissant and you know, we work, we do our own work.

00:37:15 I'm not saying nobody's getting any work done, but I would love a way to introduce my neighbors who work for Facebook and all sorts of places. They're not going into the office, but they are in the same situation as I am. They need a place to be away from their family and from distractions. And they want some community too. So I would love a free day pass or five for them is what I would love to get them introduced in the space.

00:37:40 And it's really easy for me to invite them because I'm not asking them to spend money, to do something that I know I love, but they're not sure that they love yet. So just food for thought on that. Okay. So bigger picture. Not every market has great coworking yet. So if you feel like markets are overserved, they're just not,

00:38:01 you know, they're just not yet. And you, if you're a local brand, I just know you're not doing most of the things that I mentioned today. You're doing them better. If you're listening to this podcast, you're already invested in being a better operator or a better community manager, and you can win against other brands. These other brands that I,

00:38:21 two word are big brands that have access to capital and the experience was subpar with both of them. And so don't think that just because there's a big name, that's coming to town that they're going to take you lunch, they eat your lunch, sorry. They won't take your lunch either. But you know, you may run into some challenges if you really do sort of compete directly against them.

00:38:45 And, and they're competing heavily on price. I get that, that can always be challenging, but check them out and get to know their culture and understand how you're different and how you can play to those strengths. You can amplify the things that are different for you that are outside of price. So there's a price at which I won't pay for an experience,

00:39:07 even if it's amazing. Amazing, amazing. Although I did visit a co-working space in San Francisco last week, that is the most expensive coworking space I've ever been in. And if it was closer, I would find a way to, to put it in the budget. I very much love that space and want to be a part of that community. So where there's a will,

00:39:25 there is a way, but markets are not oversaturated yet. Most of them are just not. I saw a stat the other day flex office is still 2% of the national office inventory, 2%. So it's tiny and you can be different. You can do things better than bigger brands. And just, you have to, to know who you're serving and design the space to attract them and execute,

00:39:53 execute, execute, which is what, you know, part of what these two locations were missing. So, and they're, they're not, nobody's bad humans. I'm not trying to pick on anybody I'm just trying to share. So for me, it's very interesting to go through, you know, being a member of a space and thinking, I mean,

00:40:10 really my, my thought about all of this was I just know the lo a great local brand could blow these guys out of the water based on experience. I just know they could, and it's not it doesn't, it's not about money. It's about the experience and the attention and the intentionality and the thoughtfulness and all of those things. So you can do that.

00:40:31 So hang in there, think about, you know, your member experience, your tour experience, make sure it is up to par and we'll see you next week. Hey there, thanks for sticking with us through the end of the episode, don't forget to subscribe on your favorite podcast player. And if you were enjoying the podcast, please go leave us a review.

00:40:55 It helps other folks find the podcast who are thinking about starting a coworking space or already operating a coworking space and are looking to stay up to speed on tips and trends. And we started a YouTube channel. We'd love to have you catch us on video. You can join us for podcast, videos, and Q and a videos and other things that we post to the channel.

00:41:18 We'd love to see you there.

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