298. Jamie Orr on Opening a Second Coworking Space Location in a Mountain Town on a Management Agreement

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,

00:00:29 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. Welcome to the Everything Coworking Podcast. This is your host, Jamie Russo. I have a guest for you today, but before we dive into our interview with Jamie Orr, I want to first congratulate our newly certified Coworking Community managers."

00:01:04,"Although a couple of these I think are from January. So Nicole Antolino from Fireworks in Marietta, Georgia, Beth Gitari, I think I'm saying her name right from Nairobi, Hannah Olsen with, I think it's CO four Workspace in Kana, Wisconsin. Stephanie Hines from the Corner. Coworking in, I think it's Cochrane, I'm saying that right, Canada, which is outside of,"

00:01:34,"hold on, I'm blanking between Bam and I'll come back to it. Why am I Calgary? Got it. Okay. Nancy Wike, who is with 3LS workspaces outside of Nashville. Heather Faust with TechArtista in St. Louis and I've actually visited both of their spaces, so we're thrilled to have their team in the program. And that is it for now."

00:02:00,"If you are looking to get your Community Manager Coworking certified, join our Community Manager program, it's a great time to do it. We have an amazing group from all over the world. You heard Beth is from Nairobi and we get together twice a month live. We do a q and a call and then we do one live training call. We have an incredible library of training,"

00:02:24,"so we have our certification track and then we have a library of electives. And all of those modules are bucketed under industry knowledge, so great for new folks, community building operations and sales and marketing. And then we also have some leadership classes and of course a whole section on coffee and a full section on virtual office digital mail programs. So it's a fantastic onboarding program if you're hiring a new manager or it's really designed to be a training and development program for community managers to leverage throughout their role."

00:03:05,"And we're about to launch an advanced group. So we meet once a month and we're going to, for our more experienced community managers, give them a chance to develop even more and connect with other experienced community managers. So it's a great time to join us. You can find all that info at our website under work with us you'll find the Community Manager program."

00:03:27,"So my guest today is Jamie Orr. I thought she might have been on the podcast more than once, but I can only find one, which is episode 1 34. And the episode is about her creating a space management app, which she did do. She is an accomplished woman. But we also talked in that episode about how they started with kind of a beta location."

00:03:50,"They're in South Lake Tahoe, which is a smaller market, about 30,000 people I think, and kind of a tourist destination lot more local folks since post Covid for sure. So they created a beta location of about 2000 square feet, kind of did their market validation and then moved into a larger space of about 11,000 square feet, if I'm getting that right."

00:04:14,"And they bought that building. So they, so I love their story cuz there's lots of insights to get here. You know, proved there was a market, understood what their folks wanted and then moved into a full-time space and they bought that building, which can be a great model. And then recently they just opened a second location under a new brand."

00:04:34,"It's a beautiful brand, it's called Untethered. What a great name. And they are partnered with a local tech entrepreneur who wants to make an impact in the community and they are doing a management agreement, but they're also just really closely partnered with this group and kind of evenly share some of the duties they're able to get out. I love Jamie and her husband David are just,"

00:04:54,"you know, focused on maintaining kind of a balanced lifestyle. It's important for them to both be outdoors. She talks about their board meetings in quote, they do a lot of outdoor activities with their members and Jamie shared, which I never really thought about that. She's a total introvert. And so I would guess that, you know, when she's community managing,"

00:05:14,"that's probably exhausting for her. We talk about, oh that a lot in our Community Manager program. So she gets out for breaks at lunch, does some snowshoeing, et cetera. So I think just lots of good insights shocks about sort of their management agreement and how that came to be. And starting a second location in a pretty small market. She has an interesting opportunity for their mail program,"

00:05:36,"which you'll hear about in our conversation. So without further ado, here's my conversation with Jamie Orr welcome. I am here with Jamie Orr. She is the co-founder at Co-Work Tahoe with, which is in South Lake Tahoe and a new brand Untethered Coworking, which is in Zephyr Cove, which is just like 20 minutes from the, the original space. And you've got like the awesome mug that I keep seeing you pick up there and anybody watching on YouTube,"

00:06:03,"a beautiful like winter scene out the window because Tahoe just keeps getting more and more snow. A lot of snow. A lot of snow. Yeah. Never ending, shoveling. We went up a couple weeks ago and I spent the whole weekend like shoveling the decks. It's, it's a great workout and a good time to catch up on podcasts, but a lot of work."

00:06:24,"Yeah, no I did, I did about 45 minutes of shoveling this morning. So, you know, definitely alters my training program for each day. Totally. Right. And so you have to, what do you co go to the space like extra early so you can shovel on days when it snows. Yeah, if we need to. I mean,"

00:06:39,"so we got about what, like a foot overnight? Yeah. Or during the day yesterday and so this morning, but it was, it was light and fluffy so it wasn't, it wasn't too bad. Yeah, thank goodness it was light and Fluffy. The Sierra Cement is what the, the plow service calls it in their emails. Yeah, Yeah."

00:06:53,"No, not that. You know, last month was, was pretty brutal. That was very, very Heavy. I know I had to use like the ice pick thing to get, cuz if you let it sit it just gets hard and crunchy and very hard to move. Yeah, that, you know what, I was gonna look up when our last episode was a long time ago,"

00:07:12,"I think. Gosh, 2019. It's like what hasn't changed since then? Okay, so well let's talk about personal friend. I had, I didn't mention this in our pre-chat, you just got another dog? We did, yes. A big one. Let's talk about that. A very big dog. So first of all, both co-working spaces are dog friendly and I actually highlight,"

00:07:33,"highlight the dogs in our social media a lot. So our newest dog is a great pyy. He's a year and a half old and his name is Basa, which is bask for like the, the, the bask like myth mythological Yeti, the Lord of the Woods. Ah, perfect. He's like very regal giant, hundred pound white ver And I used to think our,"

00:07:55,"our three-year-old golden retriever was like a, you know, normal large sized dog and she just looks absolutely, she looks like a chihuahua. They get along, They get along really, really well. Okay. Was it a rescue or how did rescue, Okay. So he was actually pulled out of Needles, California, which is often claims it's claimed of fame as being like one of the hottest places in the country."

00:08:20,"So he was not doing Oh, suited. Yeah. Yeah. So he was not in the right environment. It was a kind of an unstable home life, you know, very loving owner, but realized that, that they needed to do better by him. So he's now Tahoe and Fr in the snow. Right. Which is like his element. Okay."

00:08:37,"So my, I thought I tagged on Facebook. My, my CrossFit, my best friend Christine, she also just got a great ESE rescue. His name is Sampson. Yeah. And so I was like, I thought I, she's like, I was like, I might have to connect the two, two of you, not the, your geography geographically close,"

00:08:58,"but roughly the same age. He's a beautiful dog and, but yeah, similar like a hundred pounds. She's like, and they're, she's like, I'm losing weight cuz I have to walk him all the time. We have to, we have to wear the tracks because, you know, even if it's not super icy, we need like the extra grip under our feet."

00:09:16,"So we wear these like yeah. Tracks on our shoes and we take 'em for a while. And do you have to keep 'em on leash? Cuz she said she had two dogs. She lost them both last year, but she said they, they're like territory. Yeah. They need to go like find their space and they'd be Yeah, it'd be gone if you let him."

00:09:34,"Yeah, we have to keep him on leash all the time, which is a little bit challenging. So Cassie, our golden retriever still gets to be like the backcountry ski dog. So David, my husband, like her on the Backcountry adventures and she just, you know, tears down the ski slope and is great on recall Great for photos. Right."

00:09:50,"Super cute. And she gets her own time with dad gets, so that's nice. He he'll rom for like half an hour and then he's just out like he's done and he'll sleep. But he loves perching on our, we have a, a deck at the back of our house that's three stories up on a hill, so it's really high up. And he will sit on top of a table on that deck and just look out and,"

00:10:13,"because That's like their role right? As a breed To the neighborhood. Yeah. That's awesome. That's awesome. Yeah, So they do bark and they're, it's, it's more like having a toddler than a dog. You can't, they don't really listen to you, but they'll do what you want if they feel like it. Mm. So you have to be nice to them and they have to trust you and,"

00:10:33,"and then they'll go along with it, Which is different than a golden retriever. So I'm sure that's, I know. And wait, speaking of toddlers you have, is your older daughter 11 ish? Cause she's close to my daughter's age. Okay. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. She's 11 in fifth grade. Okay. Yeah. And then the youngest is in tk,"

00:10:51,"which is like the preppy K program that California has four basically four year olds and then they go into Kindergarten and the next I know, but thank goodness for working moms. I was like, thank you, here you go. Yeah. No more paying for daycare for One year. I only have one year where they're ever gonna be at the same school and it's this year and so it's one drop off,"

00:11:10,"one pickup, which is also very helpful. And again, we're in a small town, but it's still, it, it, it adds to it if we're having to cross it, especially when there's ice and snow and potholes and ski traffic Totally gets to be very Interesting. A lot. Yeah. Super fun. Yeah. Okay, so yeah, let's talk about Coworking."

00:11:31,"So a lot going on second space since we last talked for anybody. So I'll find the number of the last episode and I'll put it in the show note so that they can kind of get the original story. So I love your story because you, for anybody listening who's like pre space, you started like a minimum viable product in a couple thousand square feet."

00:11:50,"Cuz you're in a smaller market and at the time, you know, like kind of a smaller community, mountain town, south Lake Tahoe, you'll have to look on a map for anybody that's the bottom of Lake Tahoe it on the California side, but California, Nevada border. And then bought a building with another couple and started Tahoe. So you kind of dove in headfirst and now you've got a second location,"

00:12:18,"new brand and a management agreement. So you're Yeah. Kind of doing, doing all the things. So yeah. Talk about, yeah, let's start with kind of the new space I'm interested in, like when you thought, well you were approached, we were talking about the pre-chat, talk about maybe what that was like and what you thought about and sort of how you evaluated the opportunity."

00:12:40,"And it's about 20 minutes from your first space, but I looked at the, the, the population of Zephyr Cove as like 563. It's like tiny. Yeah. The Neva. So the south shore of Lake Tahoe is, is a fairly cohesive community. Yeah. Which is actually different than North Shore. North Shore is a little bit more scattered Spread."

00:13:03,"Yeah. Yeah. So South Shore Nevada side, I think it's actually there's a couple thousand full-time residents. Okay. But that's looks pretty small. And You know exactly California side, it's still only in the like 25,000 range. And obviously that fluctuates greatly depending on if it's ski season or high summer. We get a lot of tourist traffic. So we have this,"

00:13:23,"you know, very heavily tourism based economy in Tahoe. It is, you know, it's a global destination. It's absolutely gorgeous. I mean the painting behind me is, I know you've got the likes. Yeah. The summer painting, the Winter Mountains there, all the things. Yeah. But you know, we'd, because we do straddle that state line,"

00:13:41,"there was this entire section of our community that actually for tax reasons cannot be members at our California location. The state of Nevada does not, you mean they Just, they couldn't write it off if they wanted to write it off You. Well, so if people start working on the California side, then they actually would be subject to California income tax. Oh,"

00:14:00,"that's So like they're opening an office there. Yep. Yeah. Oh, That's, even though it's a membership, you don't have it's a membership. Huh. That's so interest. Interesting. Yeah, so we had a lot of like members that would come in and also, I mean, because it's So close, I mean it's, It's close. Yeah."

00:14:15,"There is kind of this, the state line, even though again it is only about 20 minutes between the two spaces there is what, it's the downtown COR corridor. So if you think about like driving through the most touristy spaces of any city, like if, you know, it'd be like driving, having to drive through Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco or Right."

00:14:36,"So a lot of people don't like crossing, don't Wanna do it Yeah. Corridor, because that's, and that's like the downtown. Yep. So they won't, I've, I've had friends that have quite literally moved to one side or the other because they don't wanna keep driving back and forth. And of course I drive back and forth, but it's, it's not too bad."

00:14:52,"But because of that, it was just enough that people weren't joining. And so we had this like segment that we were not serving. Okay. And I had been David, Your husband, Your husband and partner. So we worked together on, on all the things which, And you opened the first location you said nine years ago. Is that Nine years?"

00:15:09,"Yeah. Wow. Can you like, is that crazy to think about? It's, it's not, I mean nobody knew what Coworking was in until Right. Still, you know, Like in the rest of the world, I mean, Or even in the rest of the world, it's still kinda like, wait, what are you doing? What is that?"

00:15:22,"Like a business center? Is it like an internet cafe? Like no. And you know, and it's, yeah, I'll have people come by now and they're like, oh you moved to Tahoe before it was cool, like before Covid. It's Like, right. Exactly. Right. And did Coworking before it was cool everything. Yeah. And it was one of those things where we've been looking and thinking about and kind of noodling on opening a second location on the Nevada side so we could fully serve the South Shore."

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00:17:09,"We'll also throw that link in the show notes. So if you open your podcast app, you can grab the link right there. Fast forward to like 2019, we start hearing murmurings that this three story, 10,000 square foot building that we've looked at but didn't wanna pull the trigger on ourselves was in escrow and it was being purchased by a tech ceo. And lo and behold,"

00:17:35,"then we get an introduction and it's Che Pipkin who, for anyone that doesn't know. Yeah, I didn't know his name. Yeah, Yeah. He's the founder of electronics. So Bekin links this limo, he's well known in like the, the Los Angeles Manhattan Beach area. He's often called the, you know, like the, basically the wealthiest tech c e O you've never heard of because he's very low profile,"

00:17:58,"He's very the radar. Wow. Anywhere. He's a really big advocate and along with his entire family of just doing things that are good for people. And he's a big community builder. He's very philanthropic. He and his wife Jan have seven children and then you know, many other, Oh It's a really large family unit. And so they reached out and said,"

00:18:22,"Hey, you know, we're buying this building and we were told to talk to you because we kind of wanna do this like Coworking thing That calls you and you like Google him. You're like, Hey Dave. Ok, wow. Subsides. But we toured. So they finally close on the building in February of 2020 and we tour with them right after they close and kind of talk them through what it would look like to turn this like three story building into a functional Coworking space."

00:18:53,"And apparently what we said at that meeting was totally different than what they were gonna do if they did it themselves. They were gonna do like think Coworking from 10, 15 years ago. So lots and lots of open space, no private offices. Yeah. Just all completely shared amenities. And I Actually, and as a tech Startup guy, I could see him thinking that's what my team would do."

00:19:14,"Who needs pr, who needs offices. We would just like roll in and get to work and yeah, it's all open. He loves the serenity. Yeah, that makes complete sense. Yes. And you were like, okay, well Yeah. So I was like, no, we need to carve out lots of little offices and really nice extra like,"

00:19:31,"kind of like active work environment spaces. So lots of little huddle spaces and phone booths and you know, one or two conference rooms, but nothing too big, no giant event center. And he, and they just like, oh, okay. And so, you know, we continued working on it. Originally it was gonna be a, a second co-work Tahoe location,"

00:19:51,"but given just what our co-work Tahoe co-founders wanted for themselves looking forward and what we were thinking about doing, ultimately we decided that David and I would go ahead and move forward with it under a new brand. And actually it is kind of nice having two brands because it does balance it and actually leaves to a little bit less confusion since they're in different states."

00:20:11,"Yeah. We have slightly different, different vibes and so we really were able to experiment with what a different brand in 2020 could look like compared to when we started back in 2014. Well it was awesome timing cuz I love the brand. Like untethered is so relevant right now. Yeah. I mean it's it's really beautiful. Yeah. We we're, we're doing a just kind of like a,"

00:20:35,"I was taking everybody through a branding exercise and like going through kind of what we wanted from a, like value set and looking at at what would be attractive not only for the local companies that already live and work in Tahoe, but maybe people that were coming through and visiting or considering it Yeah. And, and chat spit out untethered and all of us were just like,"

00:20:55,"that's it. That's it. Yeah. Yeah. And so it was a really, really fun exercise and we've had a lot of fun with it. I keep pushing it more towards like the physics and like think like untethered spacewalk and everybody else. Like brings me back in and like, no, no, no. Like think about Mountain Peaks. I'm like,"

00:21:13,"okay, fine. So I did get some stars at the very top of our logo. There You go. That's your influence. Okay, perfect. Around the building is kind of a, an insight joke then I, I moved them periodically. So how long did it take from when you met him to like, okay, let's do it. Yep."

00:21:34,"So most of, again, 2020 definitely threw in some additional challenges, some Lack of urgency. Well, I mean we kept moving forward, but it was, it was kinda like, all right, so yeah, are things gonna change what, you know, what is the market gonna look like? You know, we're also navigating all of, obviously all of the,"

00:21:51,"the personal stuff and, and still running co-work Tahoe during a pandemic and dealing with having children at home. But we kind of just kept plotting forward and decided that we'd actually go with a management agreement was gonna be the best thing. So the Pipkin family owns the property. David and I are under a management agreement to operate untethered. And then actually the brand we're,"

00:22:13,"we're co we co-founded the actual brand in case we wanna do any additional work with that specific brand. So it's like this three prong approach that I think is actually really effective. So, so their family co-owns the brand. So if you did a third location, if it wasn't with them new brand. Okay, Cool. Well, or no, we could license the brand."

00:22:35,"You could license the brand. Okay. Got it. Yep. All right. It leads, you know, and, and also it, it ensures that, you know, we are truly partnered on it. So Che and his son Trevor are kind of our lead Pipkin partners. Okay. On that. So that's ends with, and you know, Trevor works with David and I kind of on a day-to-day basis as the building owner and,"

00:22:54,"and he'll come in and he'll actually cover for us if we go on vacation. That's amazing. Is that not amazing? I suspect anybody listening with a management agreement does not have that kind of relationship. That's really cool. It truly is a partnership and we've just been thrilled to work with this family. You know, we're, we're able to do a lot of additional philanthropic work through the untethered brand in partnership with their family foundation,"

00:23:19,"which has been fantastic. So, you know, like for example, David and I are, are big supporters of the local area Mountain Bike Association. He's on the board of directors for that. And so, you know, we'll con do donations for that and for events, same with things like the Boys and Girls Club, which is a, a vital piece of childcare infrastructure in Tahoe."

00:23:38,"You know, our own kids use Boys and Girls Club for afterschool care. And so through untethered we support a number of initiatives for that, including like new buildings or, you know, yearly fundraisers. And so really making sure that we're, we're putting that community piece Yeah. Outside just untethered it's actually the broader community that we're trying to support. Yeah."

00:23:59,"Okay. I love it. So do you think that there's, do they have plans to do this like elsewhere? Or is this kind of a one and done thing for them? I think if, you know, I think we'll all kind of decide that together. We just hit our one year anniversary of being open at untethered and Okay, That's exciting."

00:24:20,"Yeah, we opened in December of 2021, which Is also Right Omicron and yeah, it was like never a good time for two years to open Oh. And throw in, throw in the Aded. So in August and September, so basically late summer of 2021 was the Caldor fire, which was one of the largest fires in California history. And so we were actually evacuated for a month."

00:24:42,"It actually Your space or your family or both? The entire town. Oh, Whole month. I don't think I realized there was an entire month. The, Well, the official evacuation Oh my gosh Was Long. But like David and I were gone for a month because between the smoke being so bad, I actually am an asthmatic. Oh gosh. Yeah."

00:25:01,"Leave. But I mean the flames came within a quarter mile of our house. And so like our neighborhood and the, you know, a last minute change of wind is the only thing that kept our neighborhood from burning down and the community from burning down. So that was like, throw that in in the, you know, we're trying to furnish it and get all construction finished and we have to shut construction down."

00:25:23,"You know, we'd already had to shut construction down because of Covid. Like say like the construction team comes out and gets an outbreak, hits their team and so they need to shut down and then we have fires and we have to deal with the smoke mitigation and not knowing if we're coming back. So it was, it was a lot. And then supply chain,"

00:25:42,"like, let me tell you Yeah. Was Hard to get furniture to, and you live in a major city, try getting really nice office furniture in a rural community that is evacuated to fire. Yeah. Wow. So a lot of, a lot of pivoting, a lot of hard work. But we've officially been open for a year. We opened at 85% capacity occupancy and we are now Wow."

00:26:06,"At a hundred percent occupancy with a wait list ever since. Wow. Okay. So yeah, let's talk about that. Yeah. I just would love your perspective of, you know, you did the sort of the M V P nine years ago. Yeah. Talk about the evolution, like who do you serve, how's that, has it changed post covid?"

00:26:26,"Like did Covid help or was that demand there? I mean that's amazing. And then, wait, how many square feet is the building? This building's just over 10,000 square feet. Okay. So similar, you did an expansion on the first Location. Yeah, first one we have just for 12,000. So comparable in size. Tahoe is single story. So that actually that's,"

00:26:45,"you know, that's great. Make the like community design flow easier Yep. Than a three building. So we have like an untethered, we have, there's 36 private offices. We have one co-working area and two kitchens. And then we also have eight meeting rooms of different sizes, like from foam Eight meeting rooms. Okay. Okay. So we have And did you want meeting rooms or was chat like we gotta have meeting rooms."

00:27:08,"Like That was us. Yeah. But they're small. Okay. Like our largest one seats, The cuddle rooms and Yeah, like our largest one seats, you know, up to 16 officially. But I, I wouldn't put more than 10 to 12 in there for most days. That's the big one we have. Unless we, we can use the Coworking."

00:27:25,"We have one kind of open, open Coworking area, but there's only 20 desks. It can double as an event space. Like we will do catered lunches in there. So we actually keep it as a flex space. Yep. We don't, we don't have as many dedicated, like we don't really do dedicated desks. I mean we, we do."

00:27:40,"Interesting. 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 scene Secrets to opening a Coworking space. 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."

00:28:06,"The masterclass is totally free, it's about an hour and includes 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, 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."

00:28:31,"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. 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."

00:29:00,"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, build their own peer network. We also have a private Slack group for the group. So if you're interested in learning more,"

00:29:24,"you can go to Everything Coworking dot com slash Community. Manager do they just not, I'm always inter dedicated desks is always like, will they work, will they not work? I always tell people like, you just gotta experiment. It's hard to know. Less, less demand for those than I would say pre covid. And I don't know if it's just this space or in general."

00:29:48,"Yep. But we do, we do less of that. We do a lot of flex and we do a lot of day passes. Okay. We're starting to build up virtual office as well. And so we, we do get quite a few, we've gotten quite a few meetings and like small team retreats that have come through, which is nice. Cause we do have,"

00:30:03,"again, we have a lot of lodging properties. The beach is a 10 minute walk. We have a lot of restaurants right in the same complex. So it's a great location. But yeah, definitely the, like most of our offices are kind of in the like 75 to a hundred square foot range. Okay. We haven't full micro yet. Yep."

00:30:18,"But yeah, I'd say 80 square is kind of my sweet spot. Okay. I love this chat was like, and it's all open space and it's really collaborative and, and you're like, we're doing 36 offices. Right. 75 to a hundred square feet. Let me show you the floor plan. Okay. But I love that you got him there and now you're a hundred percent occupied."

00:30:37,"So I Got I got it right away. Yeah. Okay. So for him, like what's the ROI for him? Is he, like, does he sort of, and Trevor, is that his son's name? Is that what you said? Yeah. So are they in sort of like less of a typical landlord mode or do like Yeah. What are their kind of goals for the space?"

00:30:57,"They do have, they do have target metrics on like what the ROI for the investments gonna be. And so we have, you know, we have that kind of mapped out as part of our, like our ramp up and so far we're on track. We're hitting our, our revenue and profit goals, which is great cause we do have like a profit share on,"

00:31:13,"on top of some of the management work so that, you know, it's an extra incentive for David and I to, to keep crushing it. Yeah. They love Tahoe. Like they've, you know, he's, he's, they've, their family's had a place in Tahoe for decades. Okay. A number of the family members now live here. So they actually,"

00:31:30,"there's, they just opened a really phenomenal boutique hotel project called Desolation Hotel, which is named after Desolation Wilderness, which is a really amazing wilderness area in South Shore. Okay. And it's like you've got a garage, you've got a full kitchen, but it's like full luxury boutique hotel style, super sustainably built, really high end design. A phenomenal like five star restaurant and it,"

00:31:56,"but there's only, you know, there's, I think there's like maybe 30 rooms or something like that. It's small So it's like a, They just built that from the ground up and so a number of the family members are, are working on that or like GM on that. Okay. Like Ches on that. They also purchased a resort up in Hope Valley,"

00:32:15,"which is closer to the Kirkwood Ski Resort. Okay. It Sorenson, so it's not called Wilder. And so they did that and then they needed office space. And so this is one of the other projects. So they've done a number of kind of fun, but again interesting and modern projects in the Tahoe area and they are really committed to this community."

00:32:35,"And so I think they're just kind of seeing how they go and are having fun and again, again trying to do good work for the communities that they love. Yeah. Would you say they were sort of easier to work with during the, well you hadn't, you hadn't opened during the pandemic so you were not like, okay. Yeah. So they just had to find their way through."

00:32:54,"They closed and then no short term immediate term revenue on that bill. What was in the space before you took it over? It was largely underutilized. There was a, a woman that did consulting work out of the building for a long time. At one point she had actually attempted like a, like a shared office space Coworking model. Yep. And we declined to come in on that for a number of reasons,"

00:33:20,"you know, and before that it was actually like, it was a government, like public agency building at one point. You know, it was built in the like early eighties. So it's, it's a, it's an interesting design. It's very geometrical so there's almost like wings to it. So it was definitely an, it was a challenge from space planning perspective."

00:33:39,"But we do have like a, a Google video tour and you can kind of like walk your way through it A little bit. Okay. We'll link to that in the show notes. Yeah. So yeah, who works there? What, what's the membership like? I actually recently did kind of a polling. So we've got about, we're just over a hundred members so far."

00:33:56,"So again, still on the small side, but we only have about 150 at Cowork Tahoe. So actually always, I was gonna say it's like so relative, you know, you're in a small mar smaller market, so I hear a hundred and I like high five and a hundred percent occupancy. I mean, so you're really kind of building around, you're trying to build your flex membership and you're,"

00:34:17,"you know, the male, all those things. Yes. We have the capacity and then you are on a wait list. It is still about 90% locals. So people that live and work in Tahoe full-time and about thirds of the companies are actually local facing. Okay. So like we'll have like we have real estate, we have financial planners, we've got design and construction,"

00:34:41,"we've got someone that does a lot of it consulting work in the area. Mortgage and lending is also kind of big. So a lot of kind of the primary local facing industries that are up here. We have a few that are our tourist space. One of them is like a, a large scale development project that's like a lakefront property and like private club."

00:35:00,"And so their administrative team is, is in here cuz we're right down the road. And then obviously the Coworking members, like the flex members is where we typically see more of the remote work. Okay. So they're working company that is not here, but they live here full-time because it's Tahoe and they would love to ski and maybe they live in a neighborhood that doesn't have very good broadband infrastructure because it still is very spotty depending on where you are."

00:35:25,"And so we're really, we're serving that population as kind of the remote work from Homers that actually can't work from home because there's no internet at home. Yep, totally. Yeah. Interesting. And so they, so when they come in, what if they have zoom calls? So we built four call rooms instead of getting the modular we, we built out four that are directly adjacent to the Coworking space."

00:35:46,"And so mostly what happens is, you know, most people are only in two to three days a week. We don't have a lot of people that are in every single day. Yeah. Yeah. And so they just jump into those rooms. And then we've got the four other meeting rooms scattered throughout the building that they can book out as well in addition to just like a few like little nooks and crannies you can kind of tuck into if it's not like a super sensitive call."

00:36:06,"Okay. So do you sell any full-time flex memberships? We do and we have a few, but we definitely prioritize. So we, we have two plans. So the first one is, is a flex and that's unlimited use during the month. But you don't get a dedicated desk. Right. It's everything is included. We actually were I think one of the more rare spaces we've never charged for meeting use."

00:36:28,"We don't have credits Or none just using wow Use and if I need to buy phone boost, I will buy phone booths. And then we do have a plan that's an extra a hundred bucks a month if you want a dedicated desk because you don't want people touching your stuff and you like to leave your monitor there. Yeah. But we actually definitely try to try to get everybody as on that,"

00:36:46,"that flex plan as much as possible cuz it's, you know, it's the thing that makes sense for most people. And then yeah, we do like to include everything. Only the like virtual mail is, you know, is an add-on if you're a Coworking member. Wait, so everybody's on a full-time plan versus a part-time plan? Yeah, we don't,"

00:37:06,"we're not counting days. Oh interesting. You're just like, okay, why? Yeah, tell me why. So at co-work Tahoe and it's like we are kind of doing some AB testing. So co-work Tahoe, we do have a part-time plan and it is 10 days a month. Yep. But then we do have to track that and you know, for the most part nobody ever goes over that."

00:37:27,"And we actually do track that in our management system. And then the only other plan is a dedicated desk plan. But what we found is, you know, the sweet spot somewhere in between. And so we wanted to test this flex idea, just opening it up and seeing if people have about the same usage. Yep. And they do. So you know,"

00:37:46,"why, why do I need to track it if they're gonna use it about 10 days a month anyway, maybe less. And then it's one less thing Like you don't need to. Right. You're not, you don't need to charge them for their occupancy because the occupancy is the same. Yes. Okay. And is the price a little bit like how,"

00:38:04,"how do you think about the price for part-time flex versus full-time flex? They're comparable. So like, like I said, the only we do 200 a month is our flex and then 300 a month if again, if you want that dedicated desk. And we just keep it simple and then we do have date passes so people can do just things where they can do our main concerned by the hour."

00:38:25,"Yeah. Okay. And does, do people not, I think Flex it's such an interesting time for pricing because PO like it used to be pre C O V, you would have people who would use the space like closer to full-time. I mean maybe not you, but like in general there would be more people who were like, yeah I go to the Coworking space most of the time and now it's like they do not."

00:38:48,"And so whenever I look at people's pricing plans and they have like a 20 day a month, I'm like, but that, or yes, somebody had a 20 day or hours, like the hours I was looking at somebody who had like an hourly plan. I was like, that's essentially full-time because no one is going full-time. And so you have to think about your pricing and how you know you're gonna handle that."

00:39:11,"So what was my question for you about Oh yes. Does anybody sort of look at that and say, but I'm not gonna use it full-time. I want a part-time membership. You just send them to the day pass. So just buy all a card. Okay. But people don't argue about like under utilization. No, we haven't gotten it once on it."

00:39:29,"So I think, you know, my, my sense is at least right now that we've priced it correctly Yeah. Or what it is. Yeah. And you know, if anybody, so People might get the sense of like value, like it's 200 bucks, I can use it whenever I want. And it's also not too much if I'm only using it half the time."

00:39:48,"And for our members that travel, they can, we don't have a commitment. It's month to month and so they can Okay. And so we'll have people that'll travel. Like let's say they, they don't do winters up here. Yep. And they'll be gone for a month or two and then they'll just restart when they come back. Okay. I'd rather price it for that kind of ultimate flexibility so that they feel good about what they're getting out of the space."

00:40:11,"Because we are, again, we are in a unique market. We're not in a, in a essential business district, we're in a small community that is destination heavy. We do have a few part-time residents that have second homes up here and they actually just keep a subscription going cuz they know they're gonna need it when they're up here and they don't wanna think about it."

00:40:27,"So we have a few people that will see That do that. Yeah. But they just keep it rolling and I'll, I'll ask like, do you wanna pause it? They're like, no, I just don't wanna think about it. Great. Yep. What's the onboarding offboarding lift when people come in and out? Like that's the typical operator. It's like,"

00:40:41,"oh my god it's, you know, it's a lot. So we are still, you know, for anybody that doesn't know, for a while I was doing Jelly Switch, which was a, a mobile first management system in 2020 we did roll that company up and David and I actually retained the IP and we open source the code. And so we actually still use that at both untethered and at Cowork Tahoe."

00:41:04,"So we have our own app so people can just create an account. We, if they, they do it and they haven't done a tour, we just make sure we meet them on their first day or we do a tour in advance and then they go ahead and purchase, purchase a membership and then everything's through there. So their room reservations, they're unlocking the door,"

00:41:21,"they can get ahold of us. That way they can pause, they can restart. So it's actually, it's, it's pretty simple. It's not a huge lift either way. Wait, so if they pause themselves, do they no longer have door access? Correct. Yep. Ah, Interesting. But do you leave them on the emails and And they can,"

00:41:36,"yeah, they can get the emails and get the announcements. Anything, you know, we have 'em in those marketing channels and, and we are, one of the things that I'm, I'm kind of dedicated to this year is getting better about the consistent like monthly newsletters and, and the email marketing. Cuz that's something that we didn't have fully developed just given everything else going on in the past year."

00:41:55,"So that's, that's, so that's, that's my next like focus is getting back into the kind of marketing engine side. Okay. Slightly random question, but the mail, cuz that's kind of your upside now or like a business identity thing. So in Truckee you cannot get mail delivered to your home. Is is that the same thing where you are On the Nevada Side?"

00:42:15,"I mean you kind of can, but it's like a weird, you have to buy a box somewhere and it's small and far away and it's Like, so in California there is carrier service and again this, this sounds absolutely bizarre to pretty much all of your listeners that don't. Yeah. So there's, there is carrier service in California on the Nevada side of Tahoe."

00:42:38,"There is not. So even for a commercial property, we have to have a post office box for the business. We have an untethered box and it is across the parking lot, right. Like right over there. Right. And I have to walk over and check our mail right there and then we can doll it out to, to people. So we,"

00:42:58,"we do, you know, in terms of staffing, that is something that we have to do is we have to walk across the board, get the mail, they will deliver packages here so like we can get ups and right packages delivered. Although the address, the actual mail, physical address of the building is the same as the u p s store."

00:43:16,"One town closer to the state line border, which is with a different zip code. So there's been some confusion there. I bet Nothing store. So I go over there a lot cuz I we're taking packages back and forth. But that'll smooth out. Right. So all of our members have to use our PO box, our physical address as well as their own specific like personal mailbox number or office Suite number."

00:43:41,"Right. But so if you have any sort of business and you need to get physical mail, yes. You are providing it's, I just mentioned it. Cause I think like there is some unique places where you really could build a significant business potentially for folks who have that issue. I mean, it's a weird thing. I remember my friend Christine explaining you cannot get actual mail."

00:44:03,"I was like, what do you mean I can't get actual mail? I mean, great. But so I don't get junk mail. You can get, you know, Amazon Prime and Right. Then other things, but, so that's super interesting. What a huge opportunity. Yeah. And so, you know, that was one of the first things we,"

00:44:19,"we wanted to make sure we were doing right. So we're actually, we're actually using the spear mail platform. Okay. It has been fantastic. David runs that, that side of the business and he's, he is loved it so far. So they've been been super helpful. And so business mail in Nevada, in Tahoe, in a, you know,"

00:44:37,"a Zephyr Cove. Totally. I love it. Yeah. For a number of reasons. Talk to your cpa, But Right. It is something that, you know, and it it is, you know, you shouldn't have, you know, you don't wanna use your personal PO box even let alone your your personal physical home Address. And it's a beautiful,"

00:44:56,"if anybody's looking at the, you know, Google's it, it's a beautiful building, like very Professional, then you get access to our meeting rooms or, or any of our other services. So Yeahinteresting, that'll be fun. Right. So I'm thinking like your email marketing could be even more important. Like you're at a hundred percent occupancy and your offices,"

00:45:15,"but you're building flex and then also educating folks about the business identity service will be fun. So that'll be kind a fun c We've got a notary onsite, we can be Nice. Yeah. All of that. Yeah. Awesome. Okay, so tell me like, what does your, I don't know, what does your daily life look like? Do you ski a lot?"

00:45:37,"Do you and David like trade off in the They do, you know, both of our kids are phenomenal skiers. I am a I can snowboard, let's just leave it at that. I'm not fantastic at it. You know, we, we moved to Tahoe, you know, we, David and I left Silicon Valley almost 10 years ago and we did it very deliberately."

00:45:57,"And I know you and I have talked about this, and I think we talked about this on, on the last, one of our last interviews. We wanted to intentionally design our lives based on how we wanted to raise our kids and what we want enjoyed doing. And so instead of driving up to Tahoe every weekend, we decided to flip the script and be here permanently because this is where we were vacationing anyway."

00:46:19,"And so we do, we try to get out, like we take really nice like snowshoe dog walks at lunch, you know, after this podcast is over, I'm gonna drive home and I'm gonna walk my giant great pi and my, my golden retriever in the forest and Oh gosh, I love that. Which You need because you're inter like Yeah. And you're an introvert."

00:46:37,"I have a lot of these conversations with, you know, I run a Community Manager program and one of the owners, sorry this is a little bit of a sidestep, but was talking about, you know, she made a hire and the hire is make probably more of an introvert and would like, need to go sit in her car and recharge at lunch."

00:46:55,"Oh, totally. So hard. Right? Because I mean, you're in an office right now and we're recording a podcast, but you probably have a lot of interactions and you need some time in the forest, like recover. Yeah, I love that. I love that balance. You know, and, and yeah, so during the winter, like last week,"

00:47:11,"David is a phenomenal snowboarder and he does a lot of back country. Okay. But he actually took a few of our members on like a back country run they'd never done before. And so like we have, like, he, he calls himself the office butler, like his job title. Like these are the things that, that we're able to do is,"

00:47:30,"you know, is we're able to take new members or if we have people that are day passing, we'll give them, like I have trail guides that are, are sitting down in the co-working space when you're drinking coffee that are written by local authors. So if you wanna, if you don't know the trails Yeah. It's why we partner with a lot of the non-profits,"

00:47:46,"like the Mountain Bike Association and the room trail and the league ly Tahoe and all the, you know, all their work with the lake because, you know, we're here and enjoying this place and so we wanna make sure that we help others do the same. And so that's, we consider it part of our job and that's, that's probably the most fun part is like,"

00:48:03,"hey, all right, it's five o'clock everybody. We're gonna go on a mountain bike ride, do some downhill, and it's gonna end at the beach where there's a tiki bar. Like, and that's like a typical Thursday happy hour for us. Yeah. So, you know, board meetings, we, when we say board meeting, we mean you're going skiing and that's,"

00:48:21,"that's wrong. Totally. Okay. I feel like last time we talked you were doing, were you doing a test with Heavenly, like have, have a little Oh yes. I was talking to a friend of mine. I was like, why does this not exist? Like how did this not become wildly popular? I imagine it's just the, like the prime real estate and nobody will give it up."

00:48:43,"So in 20 16, 20 17, we opened the world's first on Mountain Coworking space and it was in partnership with Heavenly Resorts that's owned by Veil. We partnered directly with their marketing team actually. And so there's, there's some, I can send 'em to you, but there's some great marketing videos from this of like someone snowboarding after work with their backpack on down the slope."

00:49:07,"But we did have a space at one of the lodges. You had to, it was Lyft access only. And so you had, it wasn't something buy Ticket, yeah. Buy lift ticket, go up there. But it was a great spot. So if you wanted to get first share or if you wanted, you know, some of those early morning fresh laps,"

00:49:22,"you didn't have to take the extra hour to come all the way down, drive to your office, drive back home, jump on Zoom, you could just go to the lodge and have completely locked off little mini Coworking space. That was a lot of fun. But they did need, the space that Lodge is, is kind of under some renovations, but we are actually talking to their team again about doing some other,"

00:49:45,"some fun promotional work around remote work and Coworking and getting, you know, people engaged on in the lifestyle again. So, okay. I have, I have hope that we'll be able to do that again maybe someday. Okay. Yeah. I totally get the premium real estate, but I also Yes. The use case you just described, of course it would be amazing."

00:50:05,"Okay. So yeah, I mean, you've been through a lot over the last few years. What's next? What are you most excited about right now? I'm most excited to have maybe a more normal year Totally Getting to, you know, again, work on kind of normal business stuff. So it's, it's been really, really fun doing it all again,"

00:50:27,"doing a second location and a place, no one thought a first location would work and knocking it outta the park again. We actually just won our like local Chamber of commerce entrepreneurship award for untethered, which was, it was cool. It's nice to get that local recognition that you're doing good work. Yeah. I'm looking forward to kind of diving back into the industry and seeing,"

00:50:50,"you know, with if what we're doing is actually useful for others, including in major city markets. Again, because we have kind of a, a tricky market. I think David and I have a unique perspective. I think we still have a lot to learn. You know, we might be looking at expansion plans. I don't know what that looks like."

00:51:08,"We don't have anything set. We wanted to get, you know, we wanted to kind of get this space to maturity first. Yeah. And so to do those first two years before we launch into anything else, but we're, you know, we're, we're in year two now, so, you know, I might, you might see me say something completely different in six months."

00:51:24,"I'm doing a lot of soccer coaching Oh, nice. Space up and running. I'm like rededicating to, to some of the more mom stuff. So I'm like coaching soccer and I'm volunteering and teaching science in my kids' classes, trying not to lose all the physics that's in my brain. And just again, trying to make sure that I'm, I'm getting out there and snowshoeing and skiing and continuing to live the life that we intended to in Tahoe."

00:51:48,"It's hard when you start a business, right? Like, yeah, I think about that like constantly, like I live here in Northern California, like what's my, why? How do I, yeah. Instead of like heads down, I have a big tendency to just go heads down, which is, I love being in Tahoe when it's, it's like we live right on an access trail that goes like through the woods and it's like you can't,"

00:52:12,"I'm much better head space in, in getting out and about and like, you're gonna go home and do your snowshoeing. I love that. Yeah. And we, we also need to like you know, I'll, I'll be the first to admit it. David and I looked back at 2021 or no, 2022, and realized we actually didn't take a vacation."

00:52:30,"Woo. We live in Tahoe, so we did a lot time. Yeah. And A lot of snowboarding. It's different though, like getting away. Yeah. Yeah. We, And part of it I think was because in 2021, you know, we were evacuated for a month and we had like a forced month away from Tahoe. And so that was,"

00:52:48,"that was, it was traumatic. You know, we, we ended up being very lucky and, you know, a lot of people did lose their homes and, and we were lucky to not be in that situation too. But, you know, as soon as we got back it was like full to get running. And so now we're also like,"

00:53:05,"okay, we need to work that balance back in. And so we're, we're going to Disneyland in like two weeks and taking the Girls, my daughter, somebody brought that up the other day and my daughter's like, I've never been to Disneyland. And I was like, I hate crowds. Do you hate the idea of Disneyland? I'm not even an introvert and I don't want to go at all."

00:53:26,"I, I ha I'm a like a hyper planner and so, okay. We have our dinner reservations And Yeah. And I am not, I wouldn't make it complete disaster of the trip. We'd get there and like, have to eat McDonald's. So, You know, it's, It's, maybe I'll have you send me your itinerary. Yeah, it's,"

00:53:44,"you know, we're gonna, we're going to at least leave for a long weekend. We're gonna start working on some other, other trip plans. And again, we have this amazing partner, so our, you know, like Trevor's covering us right. And everything's gonna be in, in great shape. So we feel good. Really good about that. Yeah."

00:54:01,"So you guys mostly run the space. There's no other Community Manager? No, not yet. Yeah, that, I mean, that is something that, again, as we continue to grow and look at expansion, we will start looking at, at doing some hiring. But as, as of right now, it's, it's manageable. We've never had employees."

00:54:17,"Yeah. Yep. Awesome. Love it. Okay, well I am standing between you and your walk with the Yes, you're great. Pyrees and snowshoeing on the fresh, powdery snow. So thank you for taking the time to do this. It was great to catch up the, I'll put the last episode cause we get lots of good background on, on Jamie in the,"

00:54:39,"the last episode, which was 1 34 and we're almost at episode 300. So it was a while ago. It was, it was pre covid, I think it was January or February of 2020. And we had no idea what was coming after that. So Watch It again. But there's some great nuggets in that one. I point people to that episode often who are like,"

00:55:00,"you know, trying to, yeah. Anyway, we won't spend time on that, but go enjoy your snowshoeing. It was great to catch up and we'll have to do this again. Thank You. It's always a pleasure. 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."

00:55:22,"It makes a huge difference in helping others like you find us. If you'd 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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Jamie RussoMarch 30, 2023Comment

298. Jamie Orr on Opening a Second Coworking Space Location in a Mountain Town on a Management Agreement

298. Jamie Orr on Opening a Second Coworking Space Location in a Mountain Town on a Management Agreement

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