288. What I’m Thinking About at the Beginning of 2023

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288. What I’m Thinking About at the Beginning of 2023

00:00:02 Welcome to the Everything Coworking podcast where every week I keep you updated on the latest trends and how-tos in Coworking. I owned and operated Coworking spaces for eight years and then served as the executive director of the Global Workspace Association for five years. And today I work with hundreds of operators and community managers every month, allowing me to bring you thought-provoking operator case studies and inspirational interviews with industry thought leaders to help you confidently stay on top of what's important and what you can apply to your own role in the Coworking industry.

00:00:44 Welcome to the Everything Coworking podcast. This is your host Jamie Russo. I think this is my first time recording for the original podcast for 2023. Giovanni and I did an episode for the Flex Uncensored podcast, but I had a lot of episodes batched up, so I think this is the first time I'm recording and my batch has dwindled. So I've been busy spending time thinking about who I wanna have on the show,

00:01:16 what my themes are for 2023, and what type of content I wanna deliver to you. If you have any requests. By the way, I always love getting requests. So I was trying to figure out what to do for this episode and usually I go to like, okay, what do I wanna share? Is there like some sort of like insight or training?

00:01:36 And I have a lot of those things kind of buzzing around in my head, but I also have to create a lot of that content for my Community Manager membership and my operator membership. So I thought, you know what, I'm gonna just share some bigger picture themes, not predictions because I'm not great at predictions, but I just wanted to give some sort of behind the scenes on what I'm thinking about at the beginning of 2023,

00:02:03 which is a terrible SEO title. That's what I thought when I wrote this. I was like, oh, that's terrible. So one of the things I'm working on, I'm totally skipping ahead on my list, is a new website and I'm working with Ruben and you will laugh. So I don't know if this is an Enneagram three problem, but I am a chronic DIYer and I constantly think I will just do this myself.

00:02:26 I bought like a website template like two years ago. I was gonna redo my website like over Christmas break and finally I said, you know what? This is like important enough, I am going to just get this done. So I decided to work with Ruben and we're going through the process and he's spending all this time like on the back end, you know,

00:02:49 going through my products and my audiences and like showing me things in sort of an organized form that I guess I, you know, anyway, it's been very, very helpful. It's been, it's so good to have other people's eyeballs on your website. Even we were on our operator call this week and it just always reminds me, you should have other people look at your stuff because what makes sense to you?

00:03:12 We miss things, doesn't necessarily make sense for everybody else and the story we tell is so important and I need to walk the walk because my story is really important and it's not being told the right way on my website right now. So Ruben's working on the structure and then we're gonna bid it out and he will bid on it and I will get a copywriter and all those things.

00:03:33 But we are on our operator call for our everything correct inc Academy call this week and this past week, last week. And one of the operators just opened a new location and I looked at the page and I was like, I don't see, you know, the thing that I would expect to see. And she was like, yeah, it's like they took it down,

00:03:51 I need to tell them to put it back up and you know, when we're moving so quickly we can miss some of those details. So part of the theme, the things that I'm thinking about at the beginning of 2023 is giving some time to think and process instead of always doing, and some of you may have no problem with this, but my Enneagram three needs to do this.

00:04:14 So one of the things that I found myself doing over break, so we spent a lot of time at Lake Tahoe, not at the lake, it's cold in the lake, but in Truckee and there was a lot of snow. I don't know how many feet we've gotten this year, 12 feet or something crazy like that. It's so much snow to the point where it's kind of exhausting.

00:04:36 I felt like after winter break, all I had done with shovel, I mean we have a snowblower, we have a snow plow service, but we're always shoveling something, shoveling a berm, shoveling the decks and the dogs. So we have two dogs and if you have dogs and live in snow, packy snow that sticks. There's so much work, I have to put the puppy in the sink and like melt the snowballs off of her anyway because we have a puppy,

00:05:02 she's really barky and she instigates my seven-year-old dog. As soon as she gets up in the morning, it's playtime. And I only have one kid, so I don't observe, never observe these things in siblings. She's like the annoying like little sister. So I get up in the morning and before we go skiing, before we do anything, it's dark out,

00:05:21 like really dark out and I leash them up and try to get them out of the house before my other late risers in my family get up and before they start barking and disturbing everyone and it's dark. So because it's dark, I do not wanna listen to a podcast because I'm afraid that there's a bear out there that wants to say hello or coyotes or some other wildlife and that I should be alert and not be listening to something on my headphones,

00:05:47 although the dogs would probably be alert for me. So it used to be that nobody ever saw bears. And my friend, my best, my CrossFit bestie, Christine has a place in Truckee and they have bears living on their street. So, and they saw them from far away, but they saw them. So anyway, the upside to this is that I have a lot of thinking time.

00:06:08 So I do like a half hour walk with them in the morning and then I walk them again later in the day. We to spread out the tiring out of the puppy and I decided that this is positive and good for me because I love to consume information. So I walk and I listen to podcasts and I try to learn things and I think about what do I wanna do in my business?

00:06:27 And this inevitably ends up, turns into me wanting to do more things that are not already on my list. So if I don't have too much input, then I can't have new ideas and go chase shiny objects. So this is actually healthy for me and it gives me time to sort of process and think about, you know, what's important, what's relevant.

00:06:45 And so that's kind of what I've been doing is thinking about the bigger picture, what's important in the industry. I mean, I think about work a lot, so I'm thinking about you guys and I'm thinking about what's important and the folks that I serve in my paid programs. So thinking time is good and if you are not doing thinking time, the beginning of the year,

00:07:05 all times of the year can be really good. But I'm just trying to be really focused on, you know, what do I wanna, how do I wanna serve this year? Hi, this is Josh Fried, c e o of proximity. When we started proximity, we did it for one reason. We didn't like how hard it was to run our Coworking spaces.

00:07:22 At first we tried testing different space management software in the market and look, we found that we had to use multiple software solutions, then we spent way too much time trying to sync them all together. And then we spent even more time training our staff. And worse yet our members on how to use this over-complicated solution. We ended up going circles, attempting to manage our software instead of letting software do what it's supposed to,

00:07:45 which is help run our business. Our members were frustrated, we were frustrated, we just didn't think it should be so hard to operate a co-working space. So we built our own solution to make co-working spaces easier to manage all packaged up in one, easy to use platform, refined by feedback from hundreds of co-working spaces over the last five years. Proximity software is simple for operators and best of all members and it is backed by our award-winning US-based customer support team.

00:08:15 It's time to stop settling for overcomplicate software, get software that was actually purpose built for Coworking by Coworking Space operators. See it for yourself. Our team is available to chat with Everything Coworking podcast listeners and you can schedule your call today at Proximity Space slash Jamie. So kind of expanding that into, you know, thinking about bigger picture, what's happening in the industry because I feel like we keep talking about,

00:08:44 you know, what's gonna happen, what's gonna happen and when is enterprise gonna join? I think there are gonna be a lot of changes. This industry is still new and evolving so quickly because there are different user types and landlords this. So Giovanni and I did kind of a look forward into 2023 and then the podcast that he did without me this week talks about the landlord trend.

00:09:05 And I think things are just gonna continue to really change. And so we have to keep our heads up and kinda look at the big picture and not just be over overly focused on kind of daily, you know, operations. There's an Earnest Hemingway quote, which actually Caleb Parker used in a recent LinkedIn post. And if you don't follow Caleb, he's a great kind of bigger picture space as a service thought leader.

00:09:28 And he is podcast and Gio and I will probably have him on our podcast soon if he'll agree. But he used the earnest Earnest Hemingway quote, you know, how did you go bankrupt two ways gradually and then suddenly. So I feel like there's some gradual things that are gonna be happening in our industry that will feel sudden, you know, when they happen.

00:09:47 And so, you know, I think about like, okay, what are those kind of big trends? Couple are, you know, hospitality experience, workplace experience, what does that mean? You know, who's experimenting with delivering on those two things? How are they doing it? Who can be on the podcast to talk about those? You know, and I ha now I'm dividing ideas between our Flex Uncensored and this podcast and trying to think about how to bring folks on that can talk about those themes so that it's not happening suddenly that we feel like it's a gradual discussion.

00:10:23 And you can think about, you know, how does that apply? One of our community managers, actually Donna, I'll give Donna a big shoutout, she's from New Zealand. Donna's amazing, she's in our Community Manager group, she's an experienced Community Manager and she will get on our calls, it's like five o'clock in the morning for her. And she, you know,

00:10:41 is thinking hard about how she wants to deliver hospitality in her community this year. And I think she's brainstorming and coming up with some ideas and trying to figure out like how do I deliver on those things, on those themes when something really resonates. So, you know, there's no one right answer for everyone. We see this all the time on our operator calls in our Community Manager calls.

00:11:04 One of the topics that always comes up on both calls is dedicated desks. Some people kill it with dedicated desks, some people can't sell them. Why is it you know, the market? Is it the way you're productizing it? Is it the name? Et cetera. So there's no right answer, but how do I help you think about what's happening out there and apply it to your business?

00:11:25 And another theme that is always on my mind, especially with my Startup school programs and my academy members who are expanding, is what does it take to create a profitable Coworking space? And to me that means generating meaningful income. Somebody wants to replace a salary as an owner or it needs to be a significant investment. I definitely work with folks, I'm actually working,

00:11:48 well, I'll talk about that later. I have projects that aren't focused on profit, but for me that I think is my role in the industry right now is helping operators create profitable Coworking spaces because it's really easy to create an unprofitable Coworking space and very hard to fix an unprofitable Coworking space once you're open. Because the mistakes that you've made are likely due to your product mix and the walls that you've built and things like that where the location that you've chosen or the lease that you've signed,

00:12:16 and those are unfixable. And I think about, you know, what is happening in the industry, what terms are other operators getting? This is such a huge value to me of the Startup school that I run is I see, okay, you know, this is what happening is happening in these markets. And geo contributes to that certainly as well. He works with operators of all types in all different markets and sees what terms are they getting,

00:12:40 what ti are they getting, how much free rent, all those things. So I know it's possible and can, you know, sort of set that bar for for folks so they ask for the right things, but how do you know I embed that the aspects of being profitable and successful even more into my curriculum. So we have a framework for the Startup school and a curriculum that we bring people through and we're kind of,

00:13:03 we're gonna expand that program. I run an accelerator program for folks that want additional support. So more of my support through their Coworking journey. And we're gonna expand that even more. So if you're thinking about starting a space this year, then reach out. If you want more info on the program, it'll be on the updated website, which I mentioned and you know,

00:13:26 emails, et cetera. So you know, what's happening out there, how can I bring that to the podcast, how can I bring that to my paid programs and help folks like you really kind of deliver on that. So for you it's thinking about what's happening out there, how do you apply that to your business? How do you bring trends to your members?

00:13:43 How do you create members out of folks, I think, anyway, we'll talk about the themes on the next podcast. We won't dive into that here. And actually I have to go to urgent care today because I have an appointment. I think I have a piece of plastic stuck in my finger. And Friday night I stuck my finger in a drawer and my daughter had put a shattered screen protector in there and it's like this hard plastic,

00:14:07 there are a bunch of, bunch of shards of hard plastic in there and one of 'em I think shotted itself into my finger. I couldn't bend my finger for a while. And anyway, there's no signs of a sliver in there, but I still ca, it hurts to bend my finger. So I made an appointment at Urgent Care. I didn't know you could make an appointment at Urgent Care to go figure out what's wrong with it.

00:14:30 So anyway, so we don't have time today to go into that cause I have to get the shirt of plastic out of my finger somehow. Hey, I just wanted to jump in really quickly before we continue with our discussion. If you're working on opening a Coworking space, I wanna invite you to join me for my free masterclass. Three behind the Scenes Secrets to Opening a Coworking Space.

00:14:51 If you're working on opening a Coworking space, I wanna 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. If you'd like to join me, you can register at Everything Coworking dot com slash masterclass. If you already have a Coworking space,

00:15:14 I wanna 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 operations, sales and marketing, finance and leadership.

00:15:43 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 Manager can work through any challenges that they're having or opportunities get ideas from other community managers,

00:16:12 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 Coworking dot com slash Community. Manager also, you know, I just wanted to share some things because the website does not communicate as well as it could yet. Ruben, by the way, has been on the podcast a few times and he does SEO work,

00:16:36 he does Google ads and he does website projects, but you can't take up too much of his time until he is done with my project. He works with a lot of our program members on ads and seo, et cetera. So some of the things I'm working on that are not on the website yet, I created a new program back in, well we'd been working on it for a long time,

00:16:58 but we piloted it in March. It is the Flex Office Academy program with Kane Wilmont. So I probably talked about it a little bit. We just did a rollout with Avis and Young and it was so much fun. And I think I mentioned that maybe on the podcast with Geo, which is that it was a big surprise. I work with a lot of operators,

00:17:18 you know, the operators usually are kind of my my where my actually and community managers, but it turns out I love everyone in the industry and it was a really fun sort of professional challenge. So I have an undergraduate degree in learning design. Again, we won't go into that, but my first job outta school was in the change management group at Accenture,

00:17:41 focused on creating interactive training programs. So Kane is actually also quite good at this and it was so fun to collaborate with him on how to create this mindset shift with brokers and Avis and Young is making this incredible investment in their brokerage teams to help them become more proficient in selling Flex and recommending Flex and coaching clients on Flex. So I won't share their whole program.

00:18:06 I'll let maybe G and I will do some detail on that. I don't want to spill anything that's not a hundred percent public, but we ran our first cohort in the fall and we're running our second cohort over the next couple of weeks and we do it live. So a lot of the things that I do, I do a lot of live q and as in coaching and that kind of thing,

00:18:25 but the live training program, super interactive is really fun. So looking forward to that. And I am working on a new product for you, which I've run across my operator members and they're pretty excited. So I can't wait to share it broadly with, it'll be a product that'll help you with your s e o on revenue generating products like virtual office and meeting rooms.

00:18:49 So I'm trying to avoid having everyone reinvent their own wheel with blog posts that require keywords, et cetera. So I'm not gonna say a lot more until we're ready with all the details, but Reuben is helping me with the SEO on that too. So I'm kind of overloading Reuben and his team right now with projects. But that's super fun. And like I mentioned,

00:19:11 we're expanding our coaching as part of our Coworking Startup School program. I've been running an accelerator program, but we're gonna expand it even more this year and work with folks who are probably creating larger spaces that are a really significant investment and are really committed to going through framework and curriculum that is proven and helps 'em get the results that they're looking for without having to figure out a lot on their own or poke through.

00:19:41 I love the Facebook group, but lots of different opinions in there. What else? We also are continuing this year, our monthly, how I did this program. And the goal of that is really, you know, I get to know a lot of operators through the podcast, through our programs that do amazing work and have really interesting things happening in their business.

00:20:02 And you as an operator would have no way of knowing what they're up to. And so I want to share them with you in a more sort of like focused way than the podcast. So we've been doing this monthly how I did this session. We did one on co warehousing, which was super interesting, and we did one on choosing CRMs on building male business.

00:20:27 And we're doing one on starting a podcast that benefits your Coworking business. So it serves as a marketing tool. And we have additional topics coming up once a month. So if you're not on our email list, make sure you jump on the website and subscribe that we're going to continue to do through 2023. And Giovanni and I and I are gonna continue our monthly Flex Uncensored live episode.

00:20:51 So our next one coming up is with Ryan Simonetti, who's the c e O of convene February 9th. And I just confirmed with him today that he doesn't mind the live studio audience. He was all in, of course. So we did one with Jamie Hodari on back at November. It was super fun. Gia was really great at asking personal questions. I just love when you know,

00:21:13 we take sort of business and bring it into real life. And so that was really fun. We played the audio on the podcast, of course you can list to that, but it's fun to be there live so you can register, I don't know what the link is on the website, check LinkedIn or we just sent out an announcement today, ping our team or make sure you're on our newsletter.

00:21:33 So that's kind of what we're up to this year, really, again, just kind of like thinking and listening and figuring out how to incorporate the themes and the bigger picture of what's happening out there. You know what, I'm also gonna put a link in here. Mark Gilbreth, who's the c e O of LiquidSpace, did a really fun project for 2023 predictions.

00:21:59 He asked for a postcard from the future headline and took me forever to figure mine out. And there were some, there were lots of them and they were fantastic. He has a great network. And I will tell you, last year we did a project where we asked for predictions and we asked people to record them on Zoom. It was so hard to get people to do them.

00:22:21 And I also have a big network with people who are willing to do things for me. And that was such a big ask. And when I saw Mark's ask, I was like, oh my God, he's so smart. He's asking for like one line, but people were so creative with it and then he bucketed them into like categories related to Flex and Coworking.

00:22:40 So I'm gonna put the link to his blog post and it also will give you an idea. Some of them, like the tone or whatever resonate with you. All those folks are thought leaders in the industry. So when we talk about just kinda listening to Big Picture, those are great folks to be paying attention to on LinkedIn. And I really like LinkedIn because it's very professional.

00:23:00 It is a little, you get a like a few people talking a lot, but if you follow enough people you kind of get a, you know, a diversity of perspective. So I think it's just really smart conversation and just different from what we find, you know, in Facebook. Facebook groups tend to be just more tactical, you know, like trying to like,

00:23:19 you know, how long are we waiting for Kissy locks right now? Kind of questions. And I think the the, if you're looking for kind of bigger picture content, LinkedIn works really well for that. So, okay, that's it. We have some great interviews scheduled for the next few weeks and you might get one more podcast episode just for me.

00:23:39 This is episode 288. Isn't that crazy? We're rolling towards 300. I love it. So look out for some guests that are focused on experience and profitability and hospitality and kind of weaving all of that together as our kind of Q1 themes. And like I said, if you're working on starting a space and you want to be with a group and expert support with folks that are working on kind of big space with meaningful investment,

00:24:08 then send me a note. Feel free to reach out. We can share details and look forward to our new website, which will also help a lot. So happy New Year to all of you and we will talk next week. Thank you for listening to today's episode. If you like what you heard, tell a friend, hit that subscribe button and leave us a rating and review.

00:24:32 It makes a huge difference in helping others like you find us. If you like to learn more about our education and coaching programs, head over to Everything Coworking dot com. We'll see you next week.

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