245. Making Small (Rural) Coworking Spaces Sustainable Through On-Site Automation and a Shared, Digital Layer of Programming

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245. Making Small (Rural) Coworking Spaces Sustainable Through On-Site Automation and a Shared, Digital Layer of Programming

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, Welcome to the Everything Coworking podcast. This is your host, Jamie Russo. So we are talking today about small town Coworking. I think today more than ever smaller towns and even rural areas want to support local entrepreneurs,

00:00:42 business owners, and even remote workers who are now free to roam the country with workspace amenities and even the community. They need to be productive and stay connected, but we know it is hard to find a sustainable business model for smaller coworking spaces. So my guest today is Brian Watson, he is the co-founder of Altspace and he is working on a model that is evolving over time that works to solve this problem of how do we support all the folks in more remote areas that want also want access to a great place to work,

00:01:24 but to make the business model work. So Brian is going to share his perspective today brand thank you for joining me. Thanks for having me on. So Brian reached out and said, let's do a catch-up and he caught me up in our pre-chat last week on what he's up to. And I said, we definitely need to share this because we have a lot of listeners who want to solve this problem.

00:01:48 So Brian, can you, let's just kind of start with, you know, a little bit about your story, your background, and sort of the, like, how did this, what was the moment when you're like, I see what, you know, you had the vision for, for making this work and tell us where you dialing in from today,

00:02:08 dialing In. So You're not dialing in. So we're calling in from Telluride, Colorado, which is a mountain town in the Southwest portion of Colorado. A little bit of my background. You know, we got to talk a little bit last week and it was a fire hose conversation. I feel like, but It's been a fire hose experience over the last couple of years,

00:02:39 you know, I think as we've seen so much of the industry change and so many of the consumer behavior shifts that we've seen take place. And so I grew up in grand junction, which is on the Western slope of Colorado, and I've always had a huge passion for entrepreneurship. You know, I believe that entrepreneurs are the tool we have in society,

00:03:00 this solve some of these big challenges and we should do whatever we can to support them. And so, you know, I helped some buddies build businesses and ended up moving back to grand junction. And when I moved back, the question was, was there anyone else like us? Oh, we didn't know. And so we S we actually started an organization.

00:03:22 My friend, Josh had an online myself called launch Westco, which was all about kind of building the ecosystem and trying to gather like-minded entrepreneurs in Western Colorado. We did tons of events, tons of programming. Over two years, we found 1500 entrepreneurs that no one knew existed. And so the question after that was sorry, I thought it was on a do not disturb.

00:03:49 I am now. So anyways, so the, we found 1500 entrepreneurs and we said, what the heck are we going to do with all these people? And so that's when we actually founded the first coworking space in grand junction. And, you know, I think through that experience, you know, we've seen that coworking spaces have the ability to kind of transform communities and have a transformative impact on communities.

00:04:20 And especially in rural communities, you know, accelerate, I was one of the co-founders of Proximity and so helped kind of grow the company over the last several years. I recently transitioned out in the end of last year, which we can get into now I've started coworking spaces. And, and so anyways, huge passion for rural entrepreneurship. And I think that coworking spaces play a vital part of transforming that.

00:04:52 And I think that, you know, right now we've seen this huge shift, as you had talked about to remote work, and we're seeing, you know, just so many people relocating to kind of these rural areas within the state of Colorado. And I know you're seeing that all across the country, which is really cool, you know, there's a lot of conversations in the economic development world of like,

00:05:16 how do we diversify these economies? How do we bring in these new jobs? And, you know, people did not think the answer was COVID, but you know, we're seeing that happen organically. Right? And I think one of the advantages of living in smaller rural communities is, you know, access to the outdoors is right at your fingertips and,

00:05:38 you know, right outside. And so lots of people are choosing to live in communities like this, or move back to the towns that they grew up in and they're bringing their big city jobs, which is really cool. And so the next question is how do we build coworking spaces in rural communities in a way that is sustainable? Because I think that that's another big challenge that I've seen over and over and over again,

00:06:05 not only in the spaces that we've run and operated, but you know, in, with my experience with Proximity and getting to work with so many of these communities across the nation, that's always the big question, right. Is like, how do we run these things? The scale is not on the same, you know, in the same universe as like a WeWork or something like that,

00:06:25 where you've got Hundreds of Thousands of And huge passion. Right. It's yeah. It's, it's almost like flipped so real quick before we go any further, how do you, how big was the grand junction? How do you define rural? Like What, what's a good question Because Brian, I grew up in a town. I would have to look at the population.

00:06:45 There were no stoplights and more cows than people I cannot help every time somebody says rural, that's all I can picture. And I keep, I always think, I don't even imagine there's not even like a grocery store. There's like in the town where I grew up, there's like a combo, like feed store, grocery Mart, like something else. Yeah.

00:07:06 So that's what I picture when you say rural. So I feel like we should like, let you know, It's a good question and is worth kind of defining scope, right. And so grand junction is the biggest city on the Western slope. It's about 60,000, it's 150,000. If you include kind of the adjacent towns, which is Fruita Palisade, which make up the grand valley.

00:07:33 And then, but we also have spaces in Montrose Ridgeway until you ride, you know, so tell your ads like 2,500 people. So really changes a lot. My, my wife runs a accelerator up here in Telluride and, you know, the, the language that she uses is rural and frontier communities, which is even smaller than rural. And so maybe that's what you're thinking about is,

00:08:00 you know, the, the one stoplight town or, you know, places that are, are really small. Yep. Okay. Yep. So six, so 60,000 and under like that. Yeah. And like mantras is, is, you know, smaller than, and, you know, Ridgeway is, I have to get, you know, is in that like couple of thousand people that live there,

00:08:27 same with tell you that Really small. Yeah, yeah. Trekkie, which is the mountain town near us is I think north side of the lake is like 10,000, south side might be 30. So yeah. Okay, great. So now we can sort of picture, so w how big, how many square feet was the space in grand junction? So the space injunction is a,

00:08:56 a five, you know, it depends on the, the areas that you're talking about. There was a big event center, but like 2,500, 5,000, if you include some of the other portions of the building and stuff. Yeah. Montrose is 6,000. I think Ridgeway is between two and three and our space and Telluride is 1800. Okay. There we go.

00:09:23 Yeah. So the range of kind of six and under again. Okay, perfect. I think that helps people kind of see, okay, so you like very kind of eloquently talk to me through yeah. The problems, the challenges with smaller spaces. Like you have big goals in terms of what you want to solve and the economic, I mean, this whole conversation is so interesting right now because so many of these towns are trying to figure out housing,

00:09:49 like all the things, integrating people who didn't work here before, and now they are, and, you know, mixing with the locals and, and I mean, I'll let you color it in the fundamental challenge with a small space is that the economics just don't really work. Like it's, if you're renting the space, which you'll have to tell us if all of your spaces are leased,

00:10:12 then it's just a, like a, a rental arbitrage model. And you need some more scale. Usually when I run a proforma, like if you don't own the building, you can't pay a Community Manager is like one big issue, sort of under 4,000. I mean, it depends on a lot of things. What's your rent, you know, all the things.

00:10:31 So maybe in these markets, rent is cheaper. Although I suspect that problem is starting to maybe flip to, and Yes, There's no real estate in those markets because the people who, you know, got in and, and took it. And so now rents are probably going up. So yeah, hard to sort of profit pay someone to staff it.

00:10:53 And then, you know, you talked about, I'd love you to dive into, like, when folks get grants to run spaces like this and that rent out, then there's not really an underlying business model that can move forward. So yeah. Talk a little bit more about like the challenges and then how you're going after. Yeah. So again, I think,

00:11:13 you know, one of the things that we say a lot of times is that co-working spaces, especially in rural communities are kind of required infrastructure for communities that are wanting to attract and retain professionals working in the digital economy. Right. And so they're really important resources. I think a lot of conversations that you hear around rural communities also is like broadband connectivity.

00:11:37 You know, the economics are, are challenging in those towns as well. And so, because there's not density like you have in a city. Right. And so it's really cost prohibitive to have fiber run to every home when there's, you know, acres or miles in between homes sometimes. And so my Parents got dial up like five years ago or broadband,

00:11:58 but I can remember them somewhat reason. My mom would like chase the guy and like plead with him to run the lines. Totally. And like, you know, so, you know, as all coworking operators know fast, reliable internet is so important and is like the most important asset of your coworking space. Right? And so in a lot of these towns,

00:12:25 if there's not that infrastructure built in place, then, you know, coworking spaces become either the gas station or the Tesla charging station for folks that are working remotely in these areas. And so, you know, I was talking with a guy who has a Techstars company and he was like, we're remote, but remote is about flexibility and about lifestyle when I'm working,

00:12:50 if I'm pitching to investors, or if I'm talking to our board, I can't be looking like a doofus because I'm remote. Right. I need somewhere that's reliable that I can go to. Right. What's important Wherever you want. But if you're trying to get business done and do deals, you're in, It's got to work. Right. And so the flexibility is important,

00:13:12 but you need that security and the ability of a reliable place to work wherever you're at. And so I think that a lot of that has, has shifted to like, as more people are going remote, you know, there's the, the, the utility of these coworking spaces are, are more important than ever, especially in a lot of these small and rural communities.

00:13:42 So to go back to, to circle back around to the original question, I think we were talking a lot about sustainability, right? And so sustainability has a lot to do with the scale of these companies. And coworking spaces are so dynamic, which is one of the beautiful things about them. But, you know, there are community centers, they're places where people can get work done,

00:14:07 you know, pre COVID. They were a place where lots of entrepreneurial events and pitch competitions took place and stuff like that. And so your community managers had a lot of different roles. And, and so the question is like, how do you do all the things with such a small space? And so what we saw is, you know, especially in rural communities,

00:14:33 I think coworking spaces are owned or operated by kind of two personas. One is real estate developer who, you know, likes the idea of having a coworking space. And so they, they incorporate it into a larger project. They have the scale, they have the scope. The other one is in rural communities that we see a lot is economic development entities,

00:15:00 whether that's a chamber, a government entity, an incubator, whatever. And so I think one of the challenges that we've seen there is, you know, a lot of economic development entities may have a building that already has fiber hooked up, right. How it works a lot of times. And so it's like, cool. We can get a grant and convert this building.

00:15:24 That's not being occupied that much into a co-working space. One of the challenges that I've seen take place there is that, you know, economic developers where a lot of hats and have a lot of roles. And so, you know, when, when you convert a building into a co-working space and stuff like that, again, coworking spaces are dynamic. There are supposed to be a place where there's events,

00:15:49 community, building management of the space management of the people. And so that's another hat that they take on in addition to their existing role, which comes back to the whole sustainability thing, whether it's financial sustainability or time management sustainability, if that makes sense. And so this is, this is just, this is a big challenge. You know, running rural coworking spaces is hard work,

00:16:17 but it's, but it's important work. And we've seen we've, we've seen the benefits of communities that invest in the kind of Coworking and the entrepreneurial community that it attracts. Right. And so the question is, how do you do this sustainably? Because what happens a lot of times in rural communities is you get this like cyclical nature, where we kind of talked about that,

00:16:44 where it's like, when we moved back and started launch Westco to kind of help boost the entrepreneurial ecosystem in our town, we were in college, you know, so it was like volunteer a lot of volunteer time and energy and work. And we built a lot of critical mats, but then we started companies and weren't able to focus on that stuff as much.

00:17:06 And so then you go back and like, a lot of that momentum has dwindled over the years or whatever, or you get a grant, which you may not get the next grant cycle. And so then does it stay there? You know, and I think what's, what's really important to build entrepreneurial ecosystems. There's a really good book called startup communities by Brad Feld.

00:17:28 And he talks about building entrepreneurial ecosystems is a 20 year commitment in that you have to commit 20 years every single day. You never get closer, but it really needs to be this long-term consistent commitment to doing the work and building something. If, if you don't have those 20 years committed, you get the cyclical cycles that we're, we're trying to break.

00:17:53 And so that's a big, challenging problem. That's always a eaten at me, I guess, in, and, you know, I've gone to conferences with people all over the nation. And I always think like, okay, someone's going to have this like magic bullet solution. And everyone's always dealing with the same problem is like the sustain, the sustainability,

00:18:20 really the goal with Altspace is to try to build a model that creates sustainability for running and operating these spaces that can lay a foundation of sustainable revenue so that we can hire and put people in long-term solutions to do longterm work once the co-working spaces are running. And, and we were, we're able to kind of scale up our operations and we'll talk about how we're doing that.

00:18:50 We can hire people to do regional programming long-term and we've, we've built a sustainable model. And so that's what we're working on. Cool. So wait, I have a guy Roz question for you. Did you have entrepreneurs in your family? You're like an entrepreneur problem-solver guy or as a My, so I guess kind of two things. My grandpa was a business guy and we would,

00:19:21 my, we would always go to Chicago and I always loved the kind of business lifestyle. They lived in like a high, high rise tower right across the street from Lincoln park. And, you know, so I was always really interested in that he had built companies and, and done a lot of that stuff. And then my dad was a pastor and so is a pastor.

00:19:47 And so growing up in the church, we did, you know, have done community building for ever since I was a child and so much, you know, there, we were throwing events, we were doing concerts. We were doing like all the community building work. And so, and I would help out with like the youth group and doing all these things.

00:20:11 And so there, there was a lot of transfer, I guess. Yeah. That's yeah. A little bit of both solving business problems sometimes through community. Yep. Okay. So yeah. So talk about the model and how is your approaching this? And it's a work in progress, right? Like you mentioned, well, we're trying this, and we're still trying to solve this,

00:20:35 but talk about the, you know, the bigger vision and kind of where you are now, because you have how many, five locations, The five locations. Yeah. And so, you know, this really came out of COVID, you know, there, so to give a backstory, my, my wife got a job up in Telluride. She runs the Telluride venture network,

00:20:55 which is a small business support organization. They have, they do a lot of different things. I was remote. We started working out of a coworking space in Telluride that closed at the beginning of COVID we're in a mountain town. And so everyone's got, you know, tiny little condos that we're living out of and, and doing the work from home shared at the kitchen table when the kitchen table is also in our kitchen living room,

00:21:23 like, you know, we didn't have any space. And so it was challenging the, the first few months of COVID we found there was a real estate company that had three locations in town and they didn't need that. And so it was really set up to be turnkey, turnkey, you know, coworking space. And so we talked to the landlords and did a rev share with them a management agreement,

00:21:50 which I know there's been a lot of innovation on a management agreements through COVID and Stephanie, I think has been really good. It, it allowed us to go in and kind of de-risk the whole situation, which we would not have been able to do otherwise. And so, you know, I had a full-time job. My wife, Bonnie has a full-time job.

00:22:09 And so we wanted the coworking space to get out of the house and it displaced everyone else in the coworking space that we were working out of. And so, but the, the goal had to be kind of automation from the start because we were working full time. Hey, I just wanted to jump in really quickly before we continue with our discussion. If you're working on opening a co-working space,

00:22:33 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, 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 includes some Q and a. If you'd like to join me,

00:22:56 you can register at Everything Coworking dot 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. The platform includes many courses that cover the major buckets of the Community Manager role from community management,

00:23:29 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. 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.

00:24:05 We also have a private slack group for the group. So if you're interested in learning more, you can go to Everything. Coworking dot com forward slash Community Manager. Well, I think that that's a great point is because smaller spaces, they don't, there's a lot of like wise to do them, right. People get passionate and, and they need to be a part of their communities.

00:24:27 But if they can't kick off a lot of profit, then the people who run them to your point have other roles, be it economic development, or they have the job that pays the rent or mortgage, like that's the reality, right? And so probably wherever was running, you know, the, the one before close was like, well, we got other stuff we're dealing with here.

00:24:47 We can't keep doing this and not really probably making money. So We can't do it. So sustainability or like the opportunity costs of doing the thing that you're passionate about versus doing the thing that pays the bills, you know, something's going to give a lot. And so anyway, so we opened the coworking space with kind of the goal of, can we build this thing automated as possible?

00:25:11 It was the question and it was a great test space. It's the space that I'm in today, it's 1800 square feet, you know? And so one of the hunches, I guess, that we started, or the hypothesis is that consumer behavior had changed during COVID, you know, the, the QR code got its comeback. You know, everyone's used to doing more like self-service through COVID and stuff like that.

00:25:40 And so we thought that there was maybe potential to implement more processes that allowed people to kind of sign up themselves. We could implement like triggered emails that walk them through how to do that and how to get into the spaces and stuff. And so that's how we started a few months after that I spoke with, with the prox team about the locations that they had.

00:26:08 Cause we started as, as coworking spaces and then built software for managing them, you know, during the evolution of the company, really a lot of the focus has been on building the software company. And so, you know, we saw that a lot of the spaces kind of really slowed down during COVID, as you saw all across the country. And so it was like,

00:26:28 cool, we have this one location or interested in this model in order to make this thing sustainable, we need to scale it up. And so what if we took the spaces off the hands of the software company, which created a clear line of delineation, which was, and so, so we spent last year kind of rebranding all the locations and tying them together.

00:26:52 One of the things that we've seen in rural areas is that a lot of people have regional jobs or whatever, or travel a lot. And so being able to seamlessly access all of the different locations, we do our grocery shopping and mantras cause it's so expensive to do grocery shopping up here. So we drive down, we work for the day, get our groceries,

00:27:12 head back to junction or head back to Telluride or whatever. And so it creates this really fluid dynamic way of working, which I think is really valuable. And so, yeah, so over the last year, we've gone from one to five locations, we're running all of them automated, which has done a couple of different things. I think choosing the automation strategy has allowed us to develop systems.

00:27:45 We may not have developed before or test things that we may not have tested before, but I think ultimately ended up being a lot better. Right. And I think the trade-offs were a lot better. And now, you know, as we're, as we're scaling that up, we're building something that we do have this square footage capable of building something that's more sustainable.

00:28:09 If that makes sense, you know, just to kind of talk about the, the strategy or testing things, you know, when we first started in, there was more than one frustrated conversations with people not being able to get into the space easily or whatever, but after those kind of conversations and iterating the communication and the emails that we're sending, we've had over 250 drop-ins in the last year that has successfully got in that are using the space.

00:28:41 They give good feedback, you know, I'm so happy this resource was here, I'm visiting my family. I didn't have a place to work or whatever. I'm really glad that, And non-members, these are not people who like have sort of stumbled through the tech process and forgive you because they're members they're like coming in right. As sort of cold consumers.

00:29:01 Yup. Yeah. Which is often the most challenging membership type to onboard is When I have those conversations sometimes with small spaces that don't do the drop-ins because it's still high maintenance. And how do you handle it? Right. If you're cause oftentimes the owner will say, well, I can't be there all day. Right. So what if the drop-in comes when you're not there?

00:29:22 I would love for you also to talk about, I was thinking about this after our conversation, there's like a lot of, sort of framing around what makes a coworking space and like the community piece of it, people expect there's a staff person. And so this idea of having like automated there's no Community Manager, which makes it more sustainable, but did you have to sort of talk yourself into like,

00:29:50 that's okay. It's like, like, so talking, yeah. Talk about kind of the bigger picture, because I think I talked to people who want to do this and I start with saying, you should probably figure out, but loosely, because I'm not sure I would have believed it myself after, like, I think to your point, there's a lot of like conversations about how do you solve this problem,

00:30:10 but no one has really taken a stand. There may be others in, I've heard of models here and there, frankly, I think people sort of dismiss that idea that like, we can have a space and it's not going to be staffed. So yeah. Yeah. Tell me more about how you're you are getting over that and helping members shift their expectations.

00:30:31 So again, I think you need to be clear on like what to expect in expectations and, and coworking spaces need to be clear on expectations anyways, right? Like, are you doing the dishes or am I doing the dishes? Like, So That's all on a scale, a sliding scale. Right. And, and so, you know, I think being clear about here's who we are,

00:31:03 here's what to expect. And in order for this to work, this is what we need you to do as well. So I think that that is an important thing to be able to communicate, you know, the, although we don't have full-time space managers, we do have ambassadors at each one of our locations, which is great for it's great to have that presence in the space,

00:31:31 right. And our ambassadors are selected because they have a vision of the purpose of the coworking spaces as well, and, and want to engage the community, want to connect with the people that are moving into town and get them plugged in and stuff like that. And so we're aligned philosophically with our ambassadors. It's, it's not someone just there to get someone online because we've solved for that already.

00:31:59 We talked the other day about kind of the three roles of a space manager, which is cleaning, is one-third of the job. The other third is, you know, events and, you know, getting people signed on. And then the last is really the community development effort. We've tried to eliminate the, the two, the cleaning portion and the,

00:32:25 the onboarding portion and really just allow them to focus on the funnest part of the job, which is community building and getting to meet friends. And so that's one of the ways that we've kind of helped bring people in and get them plugged in The job description for that ambassador role is then laser clear, right? Because this is the hard part about hiring community managers is those three roles.

00:32:55 And they're, you know, it's like, are they good at marketing? Are they good at, you know, you know, bringing in members or are they all still, they also have a little OCD and they noticed when the conference room needs to be cleaned, it's like, no, nobody is great at all those things. And so you just like,

00:33:13 I Just need you to do one thing. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and again, it's like when you start a business or the hypothesis, which is like, I think we can do this. We've got be laser focused on nailing that first, before we spread ourselves too thin on trying to accomplish these other things that we haven't, you know, all of these things are Pandora's boxes basically.

00:33:38 And so I think, you know, the, to kind of go back to the community building piece, you know, I think one of the biggest challenges that every coworking space has dealt with for the last two years is like This huge portion of our business and the huge, the why of our business was taken away. You know? And I think that that's been a huge challenge for co-working space operators because space operators are community builders that when you talk to them,

00:34:09 you know, like that's who they are, that's why they got into the business. And that's been the, I think the biggest challenge over the last two years. And so where we've really focused is like, okay, the game changed. And we have, you know, this, this window in time to focus on just the mechanics of like getting people in and functionally working in this space,

00:34:32 which is kind of the utility part of the business. It's not the sexy part of the business. It's not even, you know, the really fun part of the business, but it is an important part of the business. And if we can nail that, it will allow us, you know, the thing that I'm, I'm really excited to go dive back into as we've kind of built up these systems and,

00:34:51 and things are working pretty good, you know, is okay, well, how do you start doing community engagement and building more at scale? Right. And which I think leads us kind of into the next, the next hypothesis of this thing Is this possible and how do you do it? And I think, you know, my, my answer to that would be,

00:35:19 yes. You know, I think we've seen virtual communities pop up everywhere over COVID we've seen accelerators that, you know, support businesses run virtually over COVID. And so the question is not whether it's possible because we're seeing it take place all over. I think the question is, what am I going to do to shift my strategy, to make this possible?

00:35:48 And the way that we did it before is not going to work because the world changed around us. You know? And so, so I think that that's the next biggest question is, okay, well, under the new context of how we're operating our co-working spaces and how communities building, and even the, the community members that are coming into our coworking spaces have changed.

00:36:12 You know, like when we were first starting, we did three events a month, every month for two years straight, they were all focused on entrepreneurs and all of that stuff, you know, all of my members now, when I call him, I'm like, where are you from? What do you do? They're remote workers that are relocating here,

00:36:31 not the entrepreneurial community that we had originally. Right. And so the services that we provide, the programs that we do, you know, maybe these folks are more interested in going mountain biking with a bunch of new people, because that's what they came in here For. Remote workers are humans too, but they don't have the same why as an entrepreneur,

00:36:55 totally. They want to meet people that, right. That align with this new lifestyle, which is a problem, you know, that co-working spaces can solve too. So, yeah, Totally. And, you know, I think as an entrepreneur, it's not my job to dictate whatever, you know, it's my job to, to observe and see where do I need to move in order to provide value to our customers and who are our customers and what are they looking for?

00:37:24 Right. And so I think that that's really important. I never want to lose the entrepreneurial bend. Like that's what I have a big passion for. However, you know, I think so many of the conversations, especially in rural communities comes back to how do we diversify our economy? How do we do all these things? And it's like the men and women who are moving to these places,

00:37:48 bringing these jobs are diversifying the economy in a profound way. You know, that, that no strategy has ever really had success like this, you know? And so we are uniquely situated to engage in all of these new people, coming to town and get them plugged in. And maybe they work for LinkedIn today, but maybe we get them plugged into a startup tomorrow,

00:38:15 you know? And so I don't know. I think that that's coworking spaces are, like I said, like uniquely positioned to, to connect with that new asset, that's coming to these communities and engage those folks. So I'd love to dive a little deeper. So I also love you. You're doing what is, I think, challenging for people with your personality,

00:38:43 which is a lot of folks listening, which is like, nailed the logistics, right? Like you said, the sort of not sexy parts, get people in the space smoothly and then layer on the community piece. So I'd love to hear how you're automating. Like what does the workflow look like? Yeah. And you, you, we sort of glossed over this,

00:39:07 but you come from Proximity, you were one of the co-founders. So I'm sure that Proximity plays a big part in your tech stack. So yeah. Yeah. So share a little bit about that. And then we could go into the, okay. What do we, what do you think that that community layer looks like? Cause I'm sure people are like,

00:39:25 what do you mean automate and who handles it and who does the onboarding? And It sounds, you know, automation sounds scary. Right. And, and, and complicated, but, you know, I always joke. And like we live in the future, you know, there's, there's technology today that's available. That was not available 10 years ago.

00:39:45 And, and for relatively inexpensive costs. Right. And so, you know, it's our job, again, as entrepreneurs to say, what is the technology that's available to me, that's going to leverage my capability. Right. And so, you know, in order to do all this stuff, we use Proximity. You know, one of the things that's been really helped,

00:40:11 we could never do it without them is, you know, they have door access system, they have automated billing. They have, you know, everything is a digital app on your phone. And so, you know, by using their technology and we can tie all of our spaces together, which create that seamless travel capability. We can tie all of our wife Phi networks together.

00:40:34 So you sign up once and get instant access to all the locations. And so, you know, Proximity is our number one tech stack that we use to allow us to kind of lever leverage up the scale of our, of our business. The other nice thing is because all of our spaces are using the same infrastructure, which is a proximity store, access system,

00:41:04 their billing system, the integration that they have with Meraki, that means we can unify the user experience and the onboarding experience because everyone's doing it in the same way. Right. And so really it's okay, what are the, you know, how do we, you know, maybe we need to layer on some communication on top of that when people are coming in and walk them through how to sign up on the Proximity system and how to download the app and how to,

00:41:33 where they need to go when they get in the building. Right? Because the Community Manager is not sitting at the desk, explaining that two times a day, Again, as going all in on this process allows us to refine the exact same experience over and over and over again. And so, you know, it, when, when we first started,

00:41:57 like I said, you know, there was people like angry calls, like I can't get in or whatever, but because we had the same user experience and it was just my job to say, we're going to iterate that we're going to make it better. We're going to make it better. And now cool. So it emailed, trigger, goes off,

00:42:17 walks them through the whole process, no questions, everyone, everything works. Right. And so we can continue to, to iterate on that process and make it more and more streamlined. So I'm curious about the lazy human problem, because the lazy human problem is why members, you know, walk up to the Community Manager and say, how do I book a conference room when there's an app for that?

00:42:42 And they could do it on their own. So do you get people who just like, won't, won't read your emails or won't like follow along your automation. Yeah. So, and then Also one is they're like, Yeah. So yep. They can. So I would say 80%, 90% of, you know, the initial questions, like this goes back,

00:43:07 you've done consulting with coworking spaces all the time. Right. And it's like, you know, if there's problems or challenges, it's the, it's my fault because they didn't communicate it well. And so if we communicate it well, if we onboard people, well, we don't have those issues. And that's the nice thing about kind of a templated email is I can continue to refine that and make it better.

00:43:31 You know, I still have like things that I'm like, cool. We could, you know, substitute this text with a video of essentially, or make it more high fidelity, you know, and, and, and communicate more information in, in one spot. Right. Which you can't do with two ERs, you know, because you really get one shot and every tour is a little bit different.

00:43:58 And so, you know, refining that process over and over and over again, in some ways is easier in the way that we're doing it. But yes, you always get people that are not going to read something or they missed it or whatever, you know. And so for those folks, you know, they, they can call us or they can text us and we answer the phone and,

00:44:20 and we walk them through that stuff and we can troubleshoot virtually, right. Because of the Proximity system and, and some of the other things that we've put in place, you know, one of the things that we spoke about last time is tours, right? So like, wha what do you do with the two or whatever? And this, we didn't mean to do this during COVID,

00:44:43 but, you know, we had places where people could schedule tours online for all of our locations, you know, so book a tour, which location, what date, and there was like several times where I was supposed to be in grand junction or in Telluride or in mantras or whatever, and life happened. And I couldn't get there, you know,

00:45:04 guess what we've got cameras in this spaces, and we can just call the people, unlock the door again, and we could give them a audio tour. And it was like, huh, that worked pretty well. You know, lots of people were like, this is great, you know, we'll sign up. And so was that, you know,

00:45:22 can that be refined? Yeah, probably. You know, but I think that there's, there's just different ways of doing things that if we're dogmatic on the way that it's supposed to be done, or it has to be done, it it's, it has the opportunity to prohibit us from new ways of doing things. Totally. So is the virtual tour a default now,

00:45:48 or does the ambassador do a tour if somebody's, It just kind of depends. You know, we have a form that people fill out when they book it to her. And so oftentimes if no one's going to be there or whatever, I I'll just call them and say, Hey, I am not going to be in town that day. You know,

00:46:09 I can, I can call you on the phone or we can reschedule, or I could set up an appointment with our ambassador, what works best for you? Honestly, a lot of times they're like, oh, I'm, I'm three blocks away from the coworking space. I can just walk over there right now, if you can let me in, you know,

00:46:24 and you know, so it's like they scheduled it for a week in advance because that was the process. They didn't really care, you know? So it was like, oh, well that just expedited the onboarding and stuff like that. You know? And so, you know, I think that that's, that comes back to like, if we, if we can reach out to those people and,

00:46:45 and say, here's the options what's best for you, then they can select, and we can kind of go from there. So you also mentioned centralizing sort of the backend support because not everything is automatic, right. There's a human that still has to do some things in terms of onboarding and whatnot. Yeah. Talk about, talk about what that looks like,

00:47:06 or, and maybe will look like over time. Yeah. So I think, you know, there's a, there's a couple of different things. I think when I, when I think about it, there's two roles. One is onboarding, you know, do our members get into the space, get online, understand how to do everything. And I think that that's been pretty streamlined,

00:47:31 you know, whatever location you're at, you can call someone and we can walk you through and get you all set up. So that's great. You know, the next layer of kind of triggered communication, I think is I want to start doing more testing of like immediate, like, Hey, Jamie, thanks for signing up. I'm the owner, you know,

00:47:54 I'd love to book a, a 15 minute video call with you and like learn. Yeah, totally. Because, you know, again, it's like before I would have walked you to the coffee shop, now I could send you like a $5 gift card from Starbucks digitally, you know, and get to know who you are and plug, plug you into the community or whatever,

00:48:16 you know? And so it's, it's really interesting, you know, again, the, I get on more phone calls with people who I had two yesterday, you know, new people who had moved to town, we're interested in Coworking. And so I just called them and said, Hey, here's what's going on. Or spaces are automated. Yada,

00:48:42 yada, who are you? I'm an entrepreneur. I just moved into town. Oh, cool. Like, we love entrepreneurs. We want to support you guys. My wife runs the accelerator, right. How can I help you? And they're like, this is amazing, you know? And that was always the magic of the, the, the onboarding walkthrough,

00:49:06 right. Was not how do you get online, but can I make a genuine connection with you and support you? And I think what I'm learning that doesn't have to be in person, I think that we can do that in this kind of hybrid world that we live. Right? Like, do I have to be face-to-face with you to make a genuine connection,

00:49:30 get excited about who you are and what you're doing and, and how we can support you. No, I don't think we do Right. And Connect to other, Right. I run masterminds for co-working space owners. And sometimes they meet in person, which has been happening more often post COVID, but, you know, oftentimes the right, their relationship is on and I,

00:49:51 I make those connections or somebody on our team or right. You can do. It's always great to see people in Person, But it's a competency that you can transfer it digitally. Yeah. And I think it's that, you know, connection always comes back to empathy and do you, and I have never met in person, but we've had very dynamic conversations and,

00:50:16 you know, and, and have genuine connection around our interests and stuff like that. And I can send people to you and vice-versa or whatever, and we've done that without ever meeting face to face. And guess what, when we meet face to face, we'll be like, Hey, how's it going? You know? And so I, again, I think the biggest thing is like,

00:50:38 it seems uncomfortable or weird or obscure maybe on like, how do you do that? You know? But I, again, I think I would say entrepreneurs main job is to Wade through obscurity and, and find the, find the rocks and keep moving forward, you know? And so, and again, the whole goal of like this crazy test that is seeming to work,

00:51:09 and we want to add more spaces and, you know, help support more small, rural coworking spaces by implementing a lot of these systems for them is the goal is to build something that's sustainable so that we have, you know, something that, that works long-term that we can have a long-term impact, you know, and if we don't build a strong foundation,

00:51:39 then we're not going to get there. And so, you know, I think, you know, insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results. And I think, you know, if we just throw the same playbook at it that we continue to do, then, then we're not necessarily going to get a different result. And so we've got to take swings,

00:52:03 you know, we've got to take, apply different strategies. And again, I think I said this earlier, but it's like, we live in the future. You know, we have technology like Proximity and, and stuff like that. And, you know, I'm like if Elan can build driving cars, then like, surely we can get someone in a building and online,

00:52:25 right. Like that shouldn't be that complicated. I think the next thing is, you know, then how do we engage with people at scale, right. And how do we plug them into systems that we can help connect them to tools people, resources, you know, there's a lot of programs, accelerators, you know, angel investors that want to help support these people in a lot of rural areas.

00:52:56 And, and if, if we are the connector and we're building to connect to people at scale and we're implementing systems and databases that we can put them into, then like we can actually be really effective at that. And I think that that's the stuff that makes that, where the long-term impact and the, the thing that everyone wants to see w we can move the dial there.

00:53:23 So, yeah. Paint five-year picture. Do you know, Who are you con you know, do you, do you operate spaces that you lease or management agreement, can other people opt into this network or, Yeah. So, you know, our model has changed a little bit, I think has everyone, as you know, and really what we've done is spend the last year kind of streamlining systems,

00:53:55 allowing people to get in benefit from the utility of the coworking spaces, I would say. And so we're having a lot more conversations with a lot of these smaller and rural coworking spaces that are asking the sustainability question or the, having the bandwidth conversation of like, I've already got 10 jobs, and now I have an extra job, you know, and so it's not necessarily making tons of money,

00:54:23 but has big impact on my community. We want to continue to provide this resource. We want to engage with these entrepreneurs. And so we have like a managed service agreements where we can go in and implement all of our same tools and which is great. You know, we're, we're, we're focused in Colorado right now and in rural Colorado, but not limited to that,

00:54:49 you know, we're, we're doing this for people all over. And so we can implement a lot of those same systems that have been really effective. So in five years, you know, I think what you're really doing is adding kind of nodes on the map and in databases of people that you are doing with, with the co-working spaces and stuff like that,

00:55:14 you know, I think we'll have lots of spaces that we're kind of helping manage. And, you know, as I had mentioned, you know, my, my wife runs an accelerator. That's gone remote, you know, there's all of these different tools. There's, you know, coding schools that have gone remote. Like these are, these are tools that economic developers,

00:55:40 especially in rural communities talk about all the time, and yet they're trying to do it themselves in person. And so the scale doesn't make Sense Where if we lay a strong foundation and then we have the team to, to support it and put in the infrastructure, we can just start stacking those resources on top. And now you have a database of entrepreneurs that are working in all these communities.

00:56:07 You have, you know, mentors from all these different communities that you can plug in and support regardless of where people are from. Right. And it always goes back to my, kind of my big, why that I always talk about when I graduated from university, my favorite professor, his, his, his feedback to me was you need to leave here and,

00:56:31 and, you know, there's nothing for you here. And, and he's an economist, you know? And so that's, that's the nature of a lot of these communities, right? And, and we just believe that you can be successful regardless of where you choose to call home. And, you know, so much of success that, you know,

00:56:57 the reason that people move to cities is because of density, right? And because of the density of tools and resources and people that they can connect and engage with. And that has historically been a challenge in rural communities, but it doesn't have to be. And so if we can develop infrastructure for connecting people, you know, giving them places to check in,

00:57:20 connecting them to, you know, regional or virtual resources and people to support them, then you get, you get to have the best of both worlds. Right. And so that's what we're working on. And that's what I, I hope that we get to see over the next few years. So yeah, this is an incredible effort and story. If folks are interested in what you're up to,

00:57:49 where's the best place for them to follow along. Yeah. So they can check us out. It's, Altspace co-work dot com a L T space co-worker dot com or just email me, Brian, scottWatson@gmail.com. Oh, put, put an email out. I love it. We will put both of those in the show notes and I have your LinkedIn linked up.

00:58:16 So I'm super excited. I think this is really smart. I love, you know, your point about, it's an opportunity to question how things get done and to say, right, we can't keep doing it the same way and watching small spaces not work and close and get out of, you know, out of the cycle, but to Just so important,

00:58:37 you know? So yeah. So how do we do it in a way that's scalable and sustainable? Because the end goal is to support the entrepreneurs and the remote workers who are, who are living in those places. Yeah, totally. I love it. Thank you for taking the time to share what you're up to because it's a work in progress. So we'll have to have you back on to,

00:59:04 to get an update, but I love it. Thank you for doing the work that you do. I think it's going to have a huge impact. Thanks, Jamie. And thank you for everything that you do love the podcast. And I listened to it when I run and I always get lots of good tips and tricks and all that stuff. And you've just been such an advocate for the industry and help so many different people and do such a great job.

00:59:29 So, thanks. Well, we're going to add this episode to the list. Looking forward to that. Thanks Brian. Bye. 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. 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.

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