301. What’s Your Success Path for New Coworking Space Members?

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. Thank you for joining me. So a few things to mention, although I'll tell you what we're gonna talk about today first because that's important,"

00:00:59,"I totally get it. We're gonna talk about the success path for a new member. So one of my recent episodes was on member onboarding and how critical that experience is. So this is a slightly deeper dive into that topic. So we will get to that in a second. Speaking of recent episodes, I did recently rerecord episode number 300, and I keep thinking that I need to do,"

00:01:25,"have some sort of fanfare around hitting episode 300, but that has not made it on the schedule yet. So here we are. I thought I would mention it. I don't usually mention the number, the episode number in my intro anymore in case we need to change the order. So I thought it warranted a mention 300 episodes. Totally crazy. I'm so glad to still be here and,"

00:01:49,"and that you're still here because that's why I continue to record. So thank you. Speaking of listeners, I was recently at GCUC just last week actually, which is one of the Coworking conferences. And I talked recently about the ROI of attending conferences and definitely hit the ROI in this one. It was such a great experience, I got to see some of you and that was amazing."

00:02:15,"I love, love to connect with folks that listen to the podcast and our members, some of our Community Manager members, our Coworking, Startup School members, our mastermind members. It was a really great experience for so many reasons. Great venue. Liz and Stormy did an amazing job on the content. There was just such a, you know, impressive list of speakers."

00:02:38,"Great. I already mentioned the content, good food, lots of good after hours events. It was nonstop. As a matter of fact, I sent my Aura score to Giovanni the other day. I can't remember what I sent it. And he sent back today and he said he's still getting in trouble from his aura. And I said, so am I."

00:02:59,"It is Monday morning after the conference and I'm still, well actually just after being away for a week I guess, and I'm still getting the, you should ease up message. I've been trying to kinda get on back on track with workouts, although I did a lot of running in Chicago. If you have ever been in Chicago and gotten to run on the lakefront,"

00:03:18,"you know how amazing that is. I love Chicago. I lived there for 15 years and you know, during the fun 15 years of life and I miss it a lot. Anyway, I hosted a panel. I had the first panel of the first day, so no pressure, but it was a lot of fun. Our panel was on key performance indicators for Coworking Spaces and Kane Wilmot from IQ offices,"

00:03:43,"Alaia Hankins from, she's the VP of ops at Common Desk, which is now WeWork Company and Flip Powered, who's the C e O of Lucid Private offices. And we're giving ourselves a pat on the back, but I think it was pretty good. My panelists were awesome and they shared some really great insights and really numbers, really tangible numbers that people could kinda take to the bank,"

00:04:07,"if you will. Write them down and use them as benchmarks. So it was a great discussion, but there's a lot of great content at the conference. I highly recommend attending. GCUC or GWA is coming up in September. That'll be the next one in Washington DC I wanted to mention a couple of other things I'm working on. I always joke that I feel like people think I'm a professional podcast host."

00:04:29,"I don't actually get paid for podcast hosting. I have had occasional sponsors, but that is not all that I do. So we've been talking a little bit more about what we're up to. We just did a bonus episode on Community, Manager University and I have a couple of special projects that we're working on. So Kane, Wilmont and I are doing a project with Avis and Young."

00:04:51,"They have this awesome program called Flex Fluency. They are working to get their brokers that are in the field really highly equipped to talk to their clients, which are well Avis and Young does a lot of things in its business, but they're field brokers equipped to talk to occupiers about their hybrid work strategies and have really good conversations and really be their coach and their guide as their clients try to figure out how they're gonna figure out their real estate strategy."

00:05:21,"So those folks, those occupiers really need some guidance and it's not all that common that brokers are able to have those conversations because the world of work has changed so quickly. So we are doing a project where we train brokers on the world of flex and how to have those conversations, make recommendations, convert needs into flex, et cetera. So that's a win for the brokers,"

00:05:45,"it's a win for the occupiers and it's a win for flex operators who end up with those clients. So that's a lot of fun. I love collaborating with Kane. I want to interrupt you for a minute with a special offer. If you are an operator that is getting ready to launch or your space is less than a year old and less than 200 members,"

00:06:06,"office r and d is piloting a program called Flex Startup program, which allows you to save 50% on your first year with office r and D Flex to help you grow your Coworking space. As many of you know, I run programs that help operators launch. I run mastermind programs for operators that are in business and a Community Manager program. And we have lots of members that love using r and d office r and d."

00:06:33,"It's kind of an all-in-one platform that has fantastic analytics, meeting room management, lots of integrations, all the things as I like to say. So it's a fan favorite of the Everything Coworking program members. So I'm excited that you get a chance to kind of get started with it at a discounted rate. So 50% off of your first year, you can learn more about the offer and sign up for a demo by going to Everything Coworking dot com slash O R N D."

00:07:08,"That's Everything Coworking dot com slash O R N d. We'll also throw that link in the show notes. So if you open your podcast app, you can grab the link right there. I'm also doing a project for a group in Colorado that is working with some of their underserved populations that want to use Coworking as an economic development tool in some of the really small towns in Colorado."

00:07:37,"And that was actually a referral from Brian Watson. Brian, if you're listening, thank you for that. Also a fun project that kicks off this week. So we haven't actually started it yet, but I am looking forward to it and a good, you know, sort of creative test for me to apply. You know, usually I'm very focused on sort of the commercial aspects of making sure folks have models that generate profit,"

00:07:58,"but their goal and this will be some really creative approaches using different types of venues and serving different audiences. So that's gonna be a really fun project. So lots going on over here in addition to our episode number 30. Okay, so I want to talk about member onboarding and a success path for member onboarding. I was initially thinking about it in terms of getting integrated into the community,"

00:08:24,"but there are a few other things that I think work in the success path. So I've done success path training for our operator membership, our Coworking Academy group and our community managers. So I think this is, we include this in kind of our higher level, you know, 300 general manager sort of track for our community managers cuz this is definitely more of a strategic topic to think about."

00:08:47,"Certainly for owner operators, this is definitely something to give some thought to. So I'm not gonna go into deep detail cuz this is part of our, our paid training, but I think it's one of those topics to give some thought to. And as a member of a community Coworking space, and actually the conference made me think about this this week as well."

00:09:08,"I think that we think that community integration happens naturally. That serendipity is something that happens sort of easily, as long as you kind of smash people together, you know enough people and give them some room to sort of bump into each other and start talking and sort of, you know, cross pollinate and that that just sort of will happen organically. It does not."

00:09:32,"So if you have spent time in your workspace, you may have one of those communities where it magically happens, I suspect if it's magically happening, then you have some members who are behind that magic. We had a member that we used to call the mayor and we had kind of a couple of these, one of them in particular though would absolutely take all new members under his wing and make sure they got introduced."

00:09:54,"You'd take 'em to lunch. It was fantastic. So our Community Manager, you know, was not even doing that. It was one of our members, which is amazing. So if it is happening naturally in your space, then you are getting lucky and someone's kind of taking care of that for you. But if no one's doing it, then it's not happening naturally."

00:10:15,"Most likely it might happen like over a lot of time. But we want members to have a really great experience right off the bat because if they don't have a great experience right off the bat, then their behavior of showing up at the space may slow down. You might lose momentum on them coming and lose the behavior of getting out of their house or getting out of wherever they're coming from."

00:10:38,"And they may feel like they're not using the space enough and stop coming. So we definitely don't want that. We want them to have a great experience and think about if you have a, like a work friend you are. So I'm not gonna cite a specific study, I could Google one, but I remember this like en engagement studies that that big companies do will say if you have a friend at work,"

00:10:58,"you are much more likely to be engaged and be happy with your work. Obviously your boss has a big impact on your happiness too. But this applies to Coworking. So lots of people join Coworking spaces as individuals, they don't have friends at work, so how do they make friends at work? This is where the success path comes in. And the success path is just really about being intentional about helping someone like recognize a path that leads to a good outcome."

00:11:25,"So recognize it, sort of track it along the way and then sort of celebrate or acknowledge the fact that they've achieved those goals. So again, I'm gonna remind you of the analogy that I talked about in the member onboarding episode that I did a couple of episodes back and it was Jim Hyde that I was talking to and he said being a member at a new member at a coworker face,"

00:11:47,"like, like being in high school, it's like everybody knows each other but you don't know anybody yet and maybe people you know aren't making an effort to integrate you. And it's tricky. And you know what, I saw this at the conference too. The Coworking conferences are kind of interesting, not to discourage you, the GWA actually I think does a great job of this because we've been very aware of this and it's part of our,"

00:12:08,"I'm not part of the GWA anymore, but it was part of our success path when I was running the conferences, which is that the Coworking world is not that big. So we have people entering the Coworking world all the time. I see lots of those people enter the industry through our Coworking, Startup, School. But there are folks, I have been going to GCUC for I think 10 years."

00:12:28,"I started going in 2013 and I've gone every single year. And then the GWA conference, I probably started going in 2015. So, you know, I know a lot of people cuz a lot of people know me because of the podcast, but I know a lot of people cuz I go to these conferences, right? I think I mentioned this in the,"

00:12:45,"in the episode I did on going to conferences. If you show up repeatedly then and you want a leadership role in the industry, it's kind of easy to do. You just need to kind of build those relationships and show up because the industry's not that big yet. But because of that, I think it probably feels pretty uncomfortable for new folks who show up at conferences and they're like,"

00:13:04,"oh my god, everybody knows each other and not just knows each other like is in love with each other. We love to see each other. We get very excited about reuniting and get getting to hang out and talk about business, you know, but we also know each other personally. We know a lot about each other's families, those of us who have been hanging out for a long time and you know,"

00:13:21,"having these repeated interactions. And so it can be easy to feel like an outsider and if you want folks, so it doesn't happen naturally that people just sort of a little bit, right? But it depends on the person's personality. Is the outsider like really comfortable with introducing themselves to somebody in the lunch line? Are they gonna introduce themselves to the person sitting next to 'em at the table at lunch?"

00:13:43,"Maybe, maybe not. Or you know, during a session sometimes. And sometimes they'll probably oftentimes not the case because it feels, you know, uncomfortable and it's new and and all those things. And so we really need to facilitate those interactions. So the success path is okay, if someone is new and we want them to get integrated and we want them to have certain outcomes,"

00:14:05,"then what are the actions that they can take that lead to those outcomes? And how do we facilitate those and how do we track those and make sure those can happen? And sometimes how do we automate those? So what are the things that are, so you wanna define your success path. What is success? I won't use the conference analogy, we'll use the co-work analogy for a new member."

00:14:28,"You know, if you were going to define their experience and what would be sort of a positive outcome? I think the positive outcome is, you know, they join, they have some engagement with other members, they use the amenities that are in the space, they have really positive experiences. They come more often than maybe they would have if these things were not the case."

00:14:50,"It becomes showing up the co-working space and interacting with members, having work friends and utilizing the amenities like meeting room spaces or podcast rooms or you know, photo studios or whatever it is, becomes an important part of their work behavior, which aids in retention. And so you have this really positive cycle of they get benefit out of the space and they stay longer and then they have a longer lifetime value."

00:15:17,"So what are the things that they need to do? What are the sort of discreet activities that lead to them making friends and you know, using the amenities and then repeating that behavior. This is definitely not super complicated, but it's also the type of thing that most folks aren't really thinking intentionally about and not documenting. So I have had folks who have been in my groups who have been super on top of this and it works really well for them."

00:15:43,"And again, we do training on this in both of our groups. 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. If you're working on opening a Coworking space,"

00:16:04,"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 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 co-working 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."

00:16:36,"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."

00:17:05,"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 just 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,"

00:17:30,"you can go to Everything Coworking dot com slash Community Manager. So thinking about, you know, what some of the success path steps are or milestones. Stu McLaren is the guy that I'm familiar with that uses this phrase and he teaches people how to have effective memberships. And at Coworking spaces we generally have memberships. So things like, you know, they meet a new member within the first day or two days,"

00:18:00,"they go to lunch or they join a member event and have a really good experience. Or they, we talk about amenities, they use a meeting room, they book a meeting rooms, they know how to do it, they realize how great it is to book a meeting room. Maybe they use one of the other amenities. Maybe you're trying to get them to use a podcast room or a photo studio or a wellness room."

00:18:21,"I'm trying to think of what else. If you have food and beverage, maybe it's making a purchase at the coffee bar or getting a latte made. If you do free lattes, maybe it's attending a networking event. Maybe it's just having a positive interaction with the Community Manager, which is really simple. So maybe these are small things that kind of add up to them feeling more integrated into the space."

00:18:45,"So how do you drive those things to happen? Don't assume they are just going to happen. Make sure you have the success path documented and determine how you integrate. This can be in your onboarding meeting, it can be automated, it can be in checklists that your team has when someone joins. Things that are automated would be reminding them to book a meeting room or checking in with them at at not 60 days."

00:19:13,"We wanna do it much earlier. It's checking in with them after a week. I think just to give you kind of a peek into the training, one of the things we talk about is that in member onboarding, and not everybody's gonna be interested in sort of getting in integrated into the community. We know that, we talked about that in our member onboarding training,"

00:19:31,"but whatever segment of folks that are interested and are there because they wanna meet people, it's good for their business, it's good for them, they're lonely, all those things. We talked a lot about loneliness at the conference and I don't have to tell you it's a big deal. And so connecting with people is the only way, not just being around people."

00:19:47,"For most people, there are actual connections that need to be made in order to not feel lonely. They don't have to be super significant. They can be minor, but they have to happen. So what do those look like? Checking in? Oh, so member onboarding, talking in the member onboarding meeting about what a successful membership looks like. Hey,"

00:20:07,"if you're here to connect, here are the steps that you can take to have success with that. Here are our, you know, examples of members who are here for the same reason. Here are the kinds of things that they do that lead to success in connecting with other members and having relationships and feeling a part of the community. And give them,"

00:20:26,"it could be a visual, it could be a list, it could be just talking through it and then maybe there's a follow-up email that talks about the same thing. And then making sure that your new members are getting notice about how to join a Slack group or how to join a Facebook group. Or getting personal invite from the Community Manager to join an upcoming member welcome event or some other member networking event."

00:20:49,"Making sure the Community Manager is tracking whether or not they booked a meeting room. And if they haven't booked a meeting room, you know, in the first two weeks, checking in with them and saying, Hey, you know, here are the amenities we have. Can I help you book one of them for something that you have upcoming? Making sure they're comfortable if you serve,"

00:21:07,"you know, free coffee or whatever it is, making sure they're comfortable with those amenities and using them, making sure they know if they have free guest passes, whatever it is. But making sure that you have a documented checklist. What can drive success in what drives that successful behavior? And those, you know, success factors that lead our members to stay and making sure those are integrated into your systems."

00:21:34,"So again, automated emails or reminders that come up as part of an onboarding process for your team to check in with members. And then training your staff on what those are. Making sure they're in your standard operating procedures and making them KPIs so that you can actually go through with your team, okay, how are we doing? What percentage of people are going through this success path?"

00:21:55,"What percentage of people are meeting somebody, you know, within the first day or two? What percentage of people are booking amenity spaces within the first couple of weeks? You know, what does that look like? And if it's not happening, then what can you tweak to make sure those things happen? And if you're listening, it sounds kind of like baseline stuff,"

00:22:13,"right? We hope everybody does these things, but I don't think that they do. And I think particularly the, you know, sort of connecting with other members really requires thought and tracking and making sure that that happens. And it can be a lot of work. I, you know, I struggle with that in my programs, figuring out, okay,"

00:22:29,"what's important to track? How do we allocate resources to track without overdoing it? But you know, really identifying the things that are important. So determining kind of what, you know, what are the goals for an individual that wants to be connected, and what do those milestones look like to make sure that the individual is kind of going th getting guided through that success path because they don't know what that looks like,"

00:22:57,"right? People who are totally new to Coworking in particular don't know what success looks like in a Coworking space. And so you have to plant those seeds for them and you have to take them along that path. Again, both through, you know, interactions from your team, maybe interactions from members who are willing to play along. You might have the mayor,"

00:23:16,"you might have ambassadors, you might have other folks in your community who want to be a part of that success path. So definitely don't say no to that help. And sometimes, you know, you just have to ask, you never know who's interested in being a part of your team, even on that kind of basis to be sort of a part of the welcome wagon."

00:23:37,"So just a little food for thought in terms of facilitating and being more intentional about what that success path looks like for new members and making sure you're putting kind of a formal list in place of milestones that lead to that success path and that you're training your team and checking in on those KPIs that you set up around that success path. So, okay, that's it for today."

00:24:01,"We have some awesome interviews scheduled. Of course, I had lots of inspiration around folks that I talked with at the conference that I was like, oh, we have to do a podcast. So well, a couple of episodes here and there with me, and we have some great interviews coming up. So stay tuned. And we're doing some training and a contest for our community managers around Google reviews."

00:24:25,"So I will walk the walk and say, we'd love it if you would open your podcast app and navigate to the reviews and leave us a review. It helps other folks like you find the podcast and connect with the Coworking community. So we would appreciate that and we'll see you next week. Thank you for listening to today's episode. If you like what you heard,"

00:24:49,"tell a friend, hit that subscribe button and leave us a rating and review. 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 RussoApril 27, 2023Comment

301. What’s Your Success Path for New Coworking Space Members?

301. What’s Your Success Path for New Coworking Space Members?

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