303. Adding a Course or Membership as a New Revenue Stream

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."

00:00:45,"Welcome to the Everything Coworking Podcast. This is your host, Jamie Russo. I am also the c e O of Everything Coworking, and our programs include the Coworking Startup School, and Community Manager University. Welcome. I'm glad you're here today. So I have wonderful opportunity for you. So we are going to play for you today a case study that we ran way back in the day because this was episode number 146 and we are over 300 episodes,"

00:01:22,"but this still comes up as one of our top podcasts. The case study is with Jessica Bommarrito. She is the owner of a Coworking space outside of Toronto. She owns her building and she's added courses and memberships to augment her physical Coworking membership. And she is a little bit of a pro in this area. And we have been talking in the Facebook group about some of the superpowers that our other Coworking space operators have and how they might teach others to also have those superpowers and add some additional revenue streams to their physical Coworking business."

00:02:06,"So for some folks focusing on Coworking is a full-time job. That's it. And other folks are looking for a variety of revenue streams. And we featured a lot of those folks on the podcast. And I'm always interested in folks that are sort of multi-passionate. I certainly am. We do a lot of different things in our Everything Coworking business, including memberships and courses."

00:02:29,"Our Coworking, Startup School is a course, and our Community Manager University program is a membership that has a lot of course content in it. Of course, we just did a bonus episode on how that works. So we're gonna rerun Jess's episode because we have a special event for you next week, Wednesday, May 17th from one to two Eastern. She is going to run a workshop for you,"

00:02:55,"talking about how Coworking space owners can grow their business and expand their reach with an online course or digital offering. You have to register in advance because she has a little homework for you to do. It won't be painful, she promises. So to register, you're gonna go, and we'll put this in the show notes. If you're listening on Apple Podcasts,"

00:03:18,"you can just click on the episode description on your phone and you'll see the link right there. You can also go to our website and find it on the podcast page. So the link to register is messy but done.com/ Everything Coworking. And you're gonna get all the details about what Jess and her partner Crystal are gonna do in the workshop. But they're gonna share why you as a Coworking space owner are uniquely positioned to grow your business and expand your reach with an online course or other digital offering."

00:03:53,"They're gonna share a five step recipe to create and launch your course with very little amount of time and low investment, low tech, low, low, all the things, how to fast track your results by avoiding common pitfalls and what to focus on and the secrets to selling your course before you've created it, which I for sure have done as well. And she's got a bonus,"

00:04:21,"which is discover how a Coworking space owner used flex and dedicated desks to skyrocket their business. No private offices needed that. That is juicy and compelling. So if you are interested in learning more, you can go to messy but dunn.com/ Everything Coworking and join us on Wednesday, May 17th, and I will be in there as well, of course. And Jess will answer any of your questions as part of this workshop."

00:04:53,"She loves this topic. She'll tell you what she's up to. Give a little update to episode 1 46. So we're gonna play 1 46 for you now. And again, if you're interested in the workshop, you can go to the Everything Coworking website or just open the little description on your phone and and tap the link there and sign up. So if you have any questions at all,"

00:05:13,"reach out, enjoy one of our top episodes with Jess Bommarrito and we'll hope to see you at the workshop and we'll see you back here next week. I am here today with a very special guest. Jess Bommarrito is the owner of Groundswell Coworking in Norfolk, Ontario, which is a town about six of about 65,000 people southwest of Toronto. Jess is a Coworking space owner,"

00:05:44,"a business coach, and a community advocate. And she and I connected recently on the topic of taking physical communities digital. So she's here to share her story and how she thinks about the process of going digital with communities and share some ideas that might get you thinking about doing the same. So Jess, thank you for joining me today. Thank you so much for having me."

00:06:10,"I'm pumped to be here. Totally. So I'm, I'm gonna save sort of our, our connection story for later once you've gotten into a little bit of what we're here to talk about today. But I'm excited that we connected and excited to hear your story. So Jess is gonna kind of share her story and give us some lessons learned around taking communities digital."

00:06:33,"And we just thought this would be a good time to connect on this topic with everything that's happening in the world. But even after we get through this phase, there's a lot of opportunity. We were talking earlier about how many of us as co-working space operators have developed this competency around community building. And most of us apply it to what's happening in our physical Coworking spaces,"

00:06:59,"but community building can happen in a lot of different ways. So we're gonna talk about that a little bit today. So Jess, tell us your story, a little bit of your background, how you started groundswell, and then we'll let you kind of transition into some of the drivers for testing some digital community with, with your own community. Awesome, thank you."

00:07:21,"Yes. So Groundswell Coworking is the name of my space in Simco, Ontario, which is part of Norfolk County. Okay. Got a rock. I was looking on the map earlier, I'm like, where is this? I mean, you're really in a, so I grew up in upstate New York, so I was like, oh, maybe she's on,"

00:07:36,"you know, my side of You're like between Rochester and Detroit? Yeah, Yeah, yeah. I think, yeah, I'm trying to think who were directly across from on the lake. I think it's Erie maybe, but yeah, I mean Pittsburgh was the major city, but that's far and you can't get there. You'd have to cross the lake, so yeah."

00:07:52,"Yeah. Big lake in the way standing between us. But yeah, so basically Norfolk County, where I live is a rural area. And so when I started my Coworking space, May 1st, 2019, we're about a year old now. Before that point, a few months before when I was working on the business plan, it was really a big question, does Coworking make sense in a rural area?"

00:08:14,"Are there going to be enough people here? So what I learned in the five to six months before we opened is there was a huge untapped community in my area that nobody was serving. And so when it comes to community building, this is something I actually learned in the online space first. And then when I started to feel a little bit lonely working from home and wanting to start a co-working space,"

00:08:40,"I applied all the things I learned online to the real world, physical brick and mortar business. So what I learned online was that before you put out an offer, you gotta make sure there's an audience to which you can put that offer. And so what I did locally is I started to build community first. And I know that there's lots of Coworking spaces that talk about this all the time,"

00:09:02,"don't launch your space and then hope that the community comes build the community first. So that's what we did here in Norfolk County. We built the community first. We started a club called Lonely Laptops. My, my husband came up with the name, he's like a market at heart. So I love the name, I love Alliterations and it's, it's perfect."

00:09:24,"Thank You. Yeah. Yeah. It's really funny because some people interpreted it as like a dating thing. Oh, Lonely laptop. Or seeking other lonely laptop birds too. Yeah. But we thought that was hilarious. We just kept playing off of that. So it started out literally as like me, my husband and my parents in a coffee shop. I love that you roped your parents in."

00:09:48,"Oh, totally. They're fully invested. So just basically us, the first meetup, and I think maybe one friend came because he kind of felt bad for me or whatever, but then word started to get out. I really used my own Facebook profile, not even a page yet, just my profile to get this out there and just say, Hey,"

00:10:10,"who else is out there in my area that feels like this is experiencing this? And I just basically listed all the things I was, I was thinking and feeling when I was working from home, which was like all the things that we know very well. The loneliness, like the lack of creativity, the lack of The husband in the way the dogs barking."

00:10:27,"Yeah. Front Noises on your zoom calls, like all the things. So we talked, I talked about that like on my Facebook all the time. And I just said, I'm just looking for a group of people who want to connect and collaborate and talk about what it's really like to work for yourself. And so slowly this group started to grow and grow and grow every week."

00:10:45,"We got together every week and started to grow with people I had never met before. And so this is me living in a small town where I grew up in this town. I thought I knew everyone and that's why I was skeptical about my own idea because Right. I already know everyone. Like if I can't think of people who need this and they probably don't exist."

00:11:04,"But what I learned was I was so wrong. There were actually a lot of people who had moved to this area from bigger cities because they liked the lifestyle here. And so they were doing their work, whatever they were doing in the city, but from home. And they didn't, They hadn't met you yet. Yeah, they Hadn't met me, Believe it or not."

00:11:24,"Yeah. Like how have I never seen these people just walking around town? You know what I mean? But you just, you don't know until you reach out. So anyway, so we built the community first and it ended up becoming this really awesome group of people. And then we kind of built the vision of the co-working space alongside those people. They were like hands on helping us develop the vision for what has now become groundswell Coworking."

00:11:50,"So community's been a big part of what we do from the get go Go. And so we just, when everything started happening with this pandemic, because we had such a tight knit community, because we had built this Coworking space with them, it wasn't like us forcing this idea on people and expecting them to join. Right. It wasn't, you know,"

00:12:10,"I have this desire to create a beautiful place to work and then I'm gonna go recruit a bunch of people who also might like it, it, which sometimes happens in larger markets for sure. But for you, I know, I just love how authentic and committed your community has been from the beginning. Oh my gosh. Like I can't believe it. Like it's amazing."

00:12:31,"And we're in such a small, we're a small space, we're a small community. So it's even more tight-knit to begin with. Yeah. Just than culture of this area. So we really leaned on, on community from the get-go. So when the pandemic came to be the, the most important thing for me was keeping this community together, even though we couldn't get together in the physical sense."

00:12:53,"So we were able to quickly pivot to completely online memberships. I think it took us maybe a week and a half to kind of figure out what that would look like. And then we pitched it to our members and we said, if you can stick with us in April, here's what we can offer you. So I, I don't, I'll share what that offer was,"

00:13:13,"but I just wanna like preface this with by saying that our space is unique to us. Your space is unique to you. What we offer may not work for others, but I just share it as an example of what's possible, just to start thinking about other ways that you can really be serving your members. And so what I did is I took a look at the resources we had available,"

00:13:36,"which were my own skills and talents, my team's skills and talents and my members' skills and talents and what could be offered in a virtual sense. Some of the skills and talents were like very much related to being physically together. Like, I don't know, people that are stylists, like hairstylists and people that are, you know, I don't know. I'm trying to Make bread."

00:13:59,"Yeah, yeah. That's what I, the food, right? Yeah, no, the food side of things. Yeah. There's Certain things that are just, they have to be physical, but what skills and talents do people have that could translate online? And so we kind of took stock of that and then we took stock of the challenges that we were hearing from our members that they were facing."

00:14:15,"And when I say we were hearing from our members, that's because we called them or message like every single member between myself and our Community, Manager, we just reached out because there's no way to really know how someone's doing unless you ask. And some members are very vocal inside of our Facebook group, but others aren't. And I wanted to know how every everybody was doing."

00:14:38,"So we called every single member. And that's actually something you put in one of your emails. Jamie was like, pick up the phone. And so we did that. And so that gave us this list, this massive list of like, here's all the things that we know people are facing right now, the challenges. And so then we started to like match them up."

00:14:55,"We're like, okay, which challenges can we solve with the resources we have? And what we realized is between my husband and I especially, we really took for granted how much marketing experience we had between the two of us, me being like a business coach and with my online experience working for online companies and him, his radio broadcasting background, which is content creation,"

00:15:20,"which he's since pivoted into a freelance business where he creates content for people. And those were the things that people were struggling with cuz they were like, how do I pivot what I'm doing online? And I'm like, I can tell you and my husband Adam can create your content. So we started to package together those things. And ultimately at the end of the day,"

00:15:38,"like I said before, our main priority was to keep the community together. So even if members couldn't continue their regular membership level, we still wanted them to stay. So in addition to offering these different levels of coaching and content creation and all this great stuff, which came at a tiered kind of pricing structure depending on which membership level people wanted to stick with for April."

00:16:02,"And we r literally just changed the names of our physical space memberships to whatever they were in the physical office to that plus the word online. So if it was a dedicated desk membership before it was now a dedicated desk online membership so that they could draw the connection easily. So we didn't fully like change the names and all that kind of stuff. We just said,"

00:16:22,"okay, if you're a dedicated desk before now, dedicated desk online. But we gave people the chance to upgrade or downgrade as they needed to. So one thing we did add in addition to our regular tiers is a pay what you can option. Because we wanted to keep everyone together and I didn't want financial reasons to be the reason somebody left. If they wanted to stay,"

00:16:43,"I wanted them to stay. So we put it right out there to the group and we said, listen, here's what we're gonna do for April. You've got, you can pay whatever you want and you'll get access to our Facebook group. We'll continue to send you emails with updates. And here's what's happening inside the Facebook group that you'll get to participate in."

00:17:01,"We're doing pop-up workshops, we're doing fam feasts every Friday on Zoom. We are doing this, we're doing that. Like you get all these replays, here's what you get. And literally you can pay $5 if that's all you have. We don't care what you pay, we just want you to, which Everyone has because the Starbucks is not open and the,"

00:17:18,"do you even have a Starbucks? No, we don't. Yeah, I grew up in a tiny town in upstate New York and the closest Starbucks is 30 minutes away. So I feel you. Same. We have some amazing independent. Yeah. So you have your own right. So whatever the independent are. Yeah, yeah, Exactly. So yeah, the thought process was everybody has at least $5."

00:17:40,"If you were paying for a co-working membership to begin with, then yeah, you probably have $5. So we put that out there we're like worst case scenario, you do the pay what you can and you get to stick around, stay in this, this Facebook group. And the cool thing was the Facebook group wasn't just a Facebook group, this was like the Hive mind."

00:17:57,"You know, this is where everybody was turning. As soon as the pandemic happened, like our Facebook group was going crazy, people were posting sharing ideas with each other, supporting one another. Some people were really opening up and getting really raw and vulnerable in the group and just saying, listen, this sucks and here's what I'm going through. And then in the comments,"

00:18:16,"like, other members are just showing up and, and taking care of those members. So I knew that people wouldn't wanna leave that. So the pay what you can model gave them an option to stick around in that group and benefit from all the conversations that were happening in there and all the Zoom calls and stuff like that. And then as you went up to part-time Flex online or full-time Flex online or dedicated desk online,"

00:18:37,"those pricing tiers got higher and higher all the way up. And they each offered a different level of support from Adam and I, or some of our members actually offered some coaching as well. 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,"

00:19:01,"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."

00:19:29,"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 nd."

00:20:04,"That's Everything Coworking dot com slash O 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. So we put it out to the group. Honestly, the goal was to keep a hundred percent if we could, like if anybody came back and said they wanted to stop their membership,"

00:20:24,"we would just say, Hey, how about you do pay what you can? There was only one person that asked to stop and we got her back on the pay what you can, everyone else stuck around, only three people went down to pay what you can. And another three went up to dedicated desk online because they wanted the help with their content."

00:20:42,"So we were blown away, absolutely blown away. And what this lit in me was a fire because I knew that other Coworking space operators could be doing this too. But I was coming at this from my experience in the online space. And again, like I said, I took that for granted. Yeah. In like a very short period of time."

00:21:02,"I could just completely pivot all of our offers. We can't offer the desks and the coffee and the wifi anymore, drop that and not spend too much time mourning that and pivot to the entire online version like that. And I'm like, this is the message I wanna get out there to other co-working operators who are interested in doing this. Cuz it's a huge untapped opportunity that I saw for Coworking even before the pandemic."

00:21:30,"But the pandemic forced me to lean on this idea of myself even harder than I was before. Because honestly before this I wasn't sure, I wasn't a hundred percent sure how to offer online memberships. And it was, and then boom, you had to figure it out To figure it out. Yeah, Exactly. I know. So I love, I think it's worth,"

00:21:50,"you know, sort of repeating a couple of things. One, that the pandemic sort of triggered you to be decisive and test, right? Yes. And you didn't know what was gonna work, but you decided to go for it even though it'd been kind of marinating, like there's an opportunity here. And also that you, you know, had some past experience that gave you a framework to draw from,"

00:22:13,"which I think I'd love to have you share a little bit more about as we go on, because I think there's that sort of indecisiveness and that like for most people that inkling that something else is possible, but really not knowing, like how do I distill that? And to your point, like how do I kind of take inventory of what I love to do and what my competencies are as an owner and a community builder and then,"

00:22:39,"you know, what can I sort of harness out of my membership and team and and create something that's meaningful? And you jumped, I think, you know, you skipped a steps that others were really struggling with is even just how to go virtual. You know, so many folks, like even that was a big leap and you went, most folks who went virtual said,"

00:23:02,"here's sort of a blanket program that we're gonna do for the membership, you know, and we hope y'all stay. And you went straight to like, no, I'm designing tears and I've, you know, a, a true virtual membership in that it wasn't, you know, sort of just like basic zoom programming and so, and social programming for the whole membership you were adding on,"

00:23:21,"you know, sort of real programming that addresses specific needs that folks are having and you kind of knew how to get to that and, and design that programming. So yeah, I I'd love to have you kind of talk about some of your background that kind of helped you to have that competency. Yeah, definitely. So I have been very blessed to have the opportunity to learn from a gentleman named Stu McLaren,"

00:23:47,"who I know, you know, Jamie as well. Look him up online. He's amazing. Stu McLaren is his name. And so I was a student of Stews in his online course in 2017. He has, he has a annual course called Tribe, which is all about growing and launching and growing an online membership. And at the time in 2017,"

00:24:11,"I didn't know why I was so interested in this idea, but I just took the course anyway thinking one day this is gonna land and it'll make sense, but for now, like I just wanna learn about this cool thing that's happening online. And this was Two, like two years before you started your physical space? Yes. Yeah. Just Coworking was not even on the radar at,"

00:24:32,"yeah, I didn't even know what existed at that time. So I'm taking Stew's course and it's really interesting just the way that he teaches memberships. It's relevant to business in general, even if you never launch a membership in your life. Learning from Stu taught me so much about business and marketing and strategy and just how to be an entrepreneur as a person."

00:24:55,"So that journey started in 2017. I then ended up getting a job on ST's team in 2018, which was like mind blowing. I'm like, wait a second, I, I'm gonna work for like this person that I've looked up to for so many years. And cuz I knew about it, like he's an, he's his parents and my parents are actually BFFs."

00:25:17,"So I've known about him since I was very young. And so he is always been like that little bit ahead of me and I've always like been aware of his business career. And so I've been following him for a long time, let's just say. And now here we are 2018 and I get a chance to work on his team and like get paid to hang out with these people that are just like so brilliant and really experienced online and,"

00:25:43,"and I have so much to learn from. So that was a blessing. That was a big blessing. So in 2018, I got to help Stu totally rece his tribe course from the ground up. We recorded every lesson, him and I like, it was like him and I and a couple Oh wow. Yeah. Rerecorded every single lesson. Redid every single workbook together."

00:26:04,"And so I got to relearn all that content again and help him package it together. So let's just say I know this content like the back of my hand now, but even then in 2018, there's, there's a certain level of like understanding you have when you intellectually understand something, but it's a whole nother level when you actually start doing it. And at that point,"

00:26:26,"I hadn't done it yet. I was still just consuming this content and learning and just like preparing myself. So one thing I didn't share about my story is that groundswell, Coworking started as a concept because my town, which is a small town and in rural Ontario, I think this might be the case in rural towns everywhere. I'm not sure it's pretty depressed."

00:26:52,"There's been a big economic downturn in the last 20 years. So it's taken a long, it's taken a big hit and taken the town a long time to recover. And it ha it's still in in that process. So there are a lot of empty storefront. There was some funding that came through from the province and my town decided to do a contest to win free rent for a year."

00:27:14,"And so I remember, I'm working on Stew's team at the time, but working from home part-time and he's, I'm, I'm walking by the, where Groundswell is now. I'm walking by the window and I see this poster and it's like, win this space. You know, you could win free rent for a year. And so I share this because this is like a tiny part of the story,"

00:27:33,"but a big part of the story. I saw the sign and literally this like a sign Metaphorical sentence, literal sentence. And so I see the sign in my initial thought and I, this is what I coach people on, is the intuitive voice in your business and how it's like the driving force. So my intuitive voice goes, you should apply for this."

00:27:55,"The ego voice comes in right after that. Like as it does, Who am I? What would I do with the space? What do I know about? Yeah, exactly. And so I kind of brushed it off for a little while, but then it kept popping up in my news feeds like more so like posters. I would walk by in town just Following you,"

00:28:13,"following me, poking it, you're into it. Your ego. Hey. Exactly. So I went to the open house, I did all the things and this is, I love this part of the story. So the co-op student who is helping with the open houses emailed everybody who attended the open house, but she didn't be CC'd. So I got to see everyone else who is also thinking about applying for this contest."

00:28:40,"And it's a small town, so most of the people on the list I knew and I just kind, I didn't think much of it. I just kind of scanned the list. I'm like, oh, that's interesting. I'm community minded person. So I'm just like, this isn't competition, This is great. It's gonna be great for the town, whatever happens here."

00:28:54,"Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So I, I didn't think anything of it. But then a couple days later I get a phone call from someone who saw my name on the list and he said, listen, first of all, he's like, what's your idea? And at this point I didn't, I didn't know me yet. I was still like,"

00:29:09,"I don't know, maybe an event center. Like I'm just playing with ideas still. And he's like, okay, well here's my idea. And he's like, the reason why I'm telling you is cuz I don't actually want to do it. I want you to do it. And so he started talking about how he runs his business from his basement and he's like,"

00:29:28,"it's great and all, but like I don't have anybody to talk to except my dog. Right. Good business advice. And so I, he's like, I was gonna apply for the contest just to put my business in there, but it's just me. So he's like, I don't need the whole space, I just need a desk and like maybe a whiteboard."

00:29:46,"That's it. And he's like, so I thought maybe a few other people could share the space, like same deal kind of thing. And maybe if you wanna put that together. Right. Cool. Jess, could you just organize us? Yeah. I was Like, okay. And so that's how I discovered Coworking like before That point. That's so funny."

00:30:06,"No Idea what it was. Wait, did he know what it was like? Had he seen it? I'm trying to remember if He heard Coworking. I don't think he did. I think he just had this idea. Yeah. Office. Yeah. So then I start googling, I, I had at one point, I remember 52 tabs open of like all these different articles about Coworking."

00:30:24,"This is a thing. Yeah. My Mind was blown. So that's how Groundswell started was all at the contest related to the contest. So I didn't really have plans to quit this job with Sue, but this came upon me and it is just like, okay, one thing led to the next, here I am creating this proposal. Oh, suddenly I'm presenting to this committee."

00:30:44,"Oh, suddenly they tell me I won and I get the keys like next week. So Oh, it happened very fast. Yeah. And at that point, that's when the community building started because, because the contest happened so fast and I, we didn't know if we were gonna win or not. We just kind of put the business plan together and then we're like,"

00:31:04,"okay, part of the business plan is making sure the business plan makes sense, like, you know, proof of concept. Yeah. So We had like a five month plan for community building and all that stuff built in. So we told them straight up like, you guys want the winner to be open by Christmas? This was like in October. And I'm like,"

00:31:21,"that's not gonna happen. So anyway, while I'm still working for Sue's team, I'm starting to build up lonely laptops. Okay. And that's how it kind of all flowed. So it got to the point where we were almost about to open. I had to leave the team to focus completely on Coworking, but Stew's team was so supportive and amazing. Every single thing I learned from Stu about memberships,"

00:31:43,"I was applying to this whole experience. It's why I won the contest. I think because the business plan was built on these like phases that he teaches. And so it made the plan really strong. We kind of had moment like milestones in the plan that was like, okay, we're gonna build our audience, what I called it, community. We're gonna build this community."

00:32:05,"And then if that community actually exists, then we're gonna like get their feedback. We're gonna do this, we're gonna do this, we're gonna do this, then we're gonna open. But if the community doesn't show up, then we're just gonna camp. Like, I'm like, what happens if we don't open? You know, what do I just return you to the keys?"

00:32:19,"Right. You know, who are the keys? Who's next on your list? Yeah, exactly. So we kind of had all those contingencies in place, like this could just not work and that's totally possible. So I wanna, I wanna know it's not gonna work before I start buying furniture. Yeah. Hey, I just wanted to jump in really quickly before we continue with our discussion."

00:32:39,"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. The masterclass is totally free, it's about an hour and includes some q and a."

00:33:03,"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. 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,"

00:33:37,"sales and marketing, finance and leadership. The content is laid out in a graduated learning path. So the Community Manager can identify what content is most relevant to them depending on their experience and kind of jump in from there. We provide a live brand new training every single month for the Community Manager group. We also host a live q and a call every single month so that the Community Manager can work through any challenges that they're having or opportunities get ideas from other community managers,"

00:34:09,"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. So anyway, all that stuff I learned from Stu because there's, if you were to drill down like all the things I learned from Stu and Tribe, it boiled down to three things that Stu talks about quite often."

00:34:36,"The first thing he talks about is attracting members. And this applies whether you are talk, we're talking about a physical Coworking space or an online Coworking membership, or literally any business doesn't even have to be a membership. Attracting members, you could replace the word members with customers, like you wanna attract people. Step two is convert members. So get them to turn from somebody who's interested in what you're doing to paying for what you're offering."

00:35:05,"And then the third step is keeping members. So making sure you're delivering on what you promised, but you're also like constantly checking in and reassessing and making sure that you're still meeting their needs and maybe their needs have changed. Excuse me. So those three things are really big for me and they're something I wanted to make sure I shared on this call. Attracting members,"

00:35:24,"converting members, and keeping members. Because this applies no matter what we're talking about, whether it's an online membership or not. So yeah, we can dive more into those three things if we want, if we have time. Yeah. Yeah, I mean I think, you know, I would add to that. So I'll, I'll jump in just and tell the quick story about how you and I connected originally."

00:35:46,"Yes. Which is that, I can't remember if it was an email I sent. So I also took deuce class because I had an audience that I wanted to serve, which is community managers of Coworking spaces. And I, so I knew that I wanted to serve them and I had an idea of what I thought would be useful content, but I was lacking sort of that framework of how to go about it."

00:36:11,"And to your point, sort of, you know, how to attract, convert and, and learning kind of those steps. And a lot of some of that is, you know, sort of ty some, you know, marketing concepts that you will have learned in other aspects of your life. But he really applies it to creating a community that wants to come together."

00:36:32,"You know, and I think, again, not to to sort of go down a rabbit hole and getting too detailed, but how you're gonna serve the community. Are you teaching them something? Are you bringing them together just to connect, you know, which is part of the big value of a Coworking space, right? Like yes, you know, we might do lunch and learns,"

00:36:52,"we might do speaker series, you know, we might com overlay that with the connection that happens that we facilitate in a space. But you know, sort of h what value are you going to deliver? And to your point, the audience is like, who specifically are you serving? And that's such a big component in, you know, in your town where it's small sometimes the answer is everyone,"

00:37:16,"right? But it's really not everyone. I mean it's, it's people who value, because you and I talked about this, like where you live, people have home offices that are big enough to be totally fine, right? It's an option. And you probably actually this, so I grew up in upstate New York. The closest like town with a Starbucks is called Cortland and there's a university there,"

00:37:40,"but the town's population is, you know, maybe, maybe 30,000. There's no co-working space. And the main street probably looks how yours did. Yeah. I go, so there's a CrossFit on Main Street, which maybe doesn't exist anywhere else in the world. Like you don't have CrossFit on Main Street, right? You have it like on the front road,"

00:38:00,"frontage road next to the highway, like in some warehouse. Well in this town there's so little retail on Main Street, there's a CrossFit. So, well it's my 0.0 serving everyone. I mean you're serving people who value coming out of their homes. Yes. And being together like the, the guy who said, you know Jess, I want you to do this thing cuz I need this."

00:38:23,"I don't wanna actually do it, but I, you know, I need it. And so you have to figure out what matters to them and how you serve them. And so that's unique. But I think in my case, an interesting, I, and I don't wanna dwell on my example for too long, but I had built a competency of community building in my own Coworking space."

00:38:44,"And then I actually chose to serve a different audience, you know, related, but not sort of, I wasn't just extending the community in my physical space, which is one option and you know, more of what you did. I said, well there's this other thing I wanna do, you know, for the multi-passionate that are listening, there's this other,"

00:39:04,"you know, audience I wanna serve, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna overlay my competency of community building to that group and serve them. And ST's course just is such a good framework around kinda all the steps and how like the journey that you're gonna take them on. And so I had posed, I think I sent an email and I talked about the success path,"

00:39:24,"which is totally a stew trademarked term. And so Jess sent me an email and she's like, we should talk, I think I I think I'm onto you. Yeah, You, I saw a success pad on your website and I'm just Wondering only Traverse talk about that. Yeah, totally. Yeah. Yeah. That was really refreshing to see a Coworking industry person in the tribe world,"

00:39:47,"you know, cuz I hadn't really seen a lot of brick and mortar people, let alone Coworking operators Yeah. Inside of tribe. And this is something like, since I've seen tribe from the inside out now it shocks me that I don't see more brick and mortar businesses in there. But I, I just think there's a disconnect between what Stu offers and the,"

00:40:10,"the perception of relevance to brick and mortar business operators. Because I'm thinking like Coworking space operators need to be in tribe golf course operators. Right. In tribe It's like anybody, yeah, right. Jim owners. Because I think all like physical brick and mortar retail type spaces struggle to some extent with pulling in the right audience because it's very hyper local and,"

00:40:39,"and scaling, you know, to, to have a diversified revenue source if that's a goal, you know? Right. So for those who are kind of looking outside of how they can serve their immediate community, it's such a great opportunity. And for those with specialized skills or you know, just audiences that they wanna serve in other areas, it's such,"

00:41:00,"it's such a direct connection but Right. Most folks don't make it and don't know where to start. Yeah. It's, it's simple and yet not obvious probably to most people. Right? I think that's true. It's simple, but not obvious, obvious. But once, once you have the privilege of seeing like whether it's the tribe course or maybe there's another course out there that resonates with you,"

00:41:20,"tribe is where I cut my teeth. So I'm a hundred percent tribe all the way. I love it. I love that course and I can't wait for him to release it again this year. So I wanna share a couple of that. Some are not co-working necessarily related, but they may just trigger some ideas. So because of, okay. It's just so amazing how online memberships have helped business owners in this pandemic,"

00:41:47,"especially brick and mortar business owners who were already on the train of developing an online membership. But if you haven't yet, you want to, it's not too late. But there's an example of a woman in tribe who runs a, an art studio. And so that's a brick and mortar business, it's localized, but she had an online membership teaching people hand lettering and she could serve people from all over the world in that online membership."

00:42:12,"They didn't have to be local to her. So when she had to shut down her physical art studio, guess what? She still had income and customers from the online membership. So she was able to keep her team working, she was able to keep business going, there was income coming in and she wasn't worried. It just provided so much relief to her,"

00:42:34,"which means to me there's less energy being spent on panicking and more energy being spent on creating and solving the new problems and continuing to stay in the game. But when you don't have that diverse revenue mix, then the second that all your eggs, like that one basket that all your eggs are in, is now shut down. That's, that's why we go into panic mode cuz that's all that we had and,"

00:43:01,"and a lot of us are experiencing that. So there's something Stu talked about on a previous Facebook Live, cuz he's doing lots of lives right now about how to handle Covid. One of the things he said that Covid has done is it's exposed vulnerabilities in all of our businesses. And he said himself included, if you relied on live events, if you relied on anything that was like an in-person experience for a large portion or all of your revenue,"

00:43:31,"suddenly you realize how dependent you are on one thing. And so this is a good thing because it shows us where those vulnerabilities are and now we have that information, we can make changes to our business to protect it, to safeguard it from future challenges. Cuz we know we're gonna experience another challenge. We just don't know what it is yet. Right."

00:43:51,"There will be something and it's that driver to adapt. And I think even for what happened to you, it was, you know, you'd sort of been, this has been sort of nibbling at your brain and then all of a sudden, like you had to do it, you had to, so you did it. Yeah. But you know, it might be the thing that kind of energizes,"

00:44:10,"you know, whatever folks are thinking about. And I loved, you know, the, one of the points that you shared around even, you know, folks who have a physical space and they don't necessarily want to do multiple locations. Like you might be a good example of that. Like you're in a small town and you're not moving to Toronto tomorrow,"

00:44:29,"and so, but you, you know, you have, you wanna serve more people, right? Like Jess has more to give to the world. And so how do you do that outside of the folks that show up to groundswell every day or every week? And you can do that through a virtual membership. And I also love, I think that a lot of folks will think about sort of that virtual membership and they'll sort of casually tack it on as an option."

00:44:58,"But usually it's more in the form of you can be on our email list and you can get a couple of day passes. It's pretty light and it doesn't, you know, it doesn't really engage people. It's more for the people who sort of wanna be a part of something but maybe, you know, for whatever reason are not gonna join the physical space."

00:45:18,"It might be budget or, but usually they're kind of geographically within your reach most likely. I'm not sure how compelling that sort of bare bones, you know, sort of light community membership is. And this is an opportunity to sort of take that more seriously and add more value and say, you know, in stew's, you know, language. Like what is the success path for that person?"

00:45:41,"Like what kind of journey can I take them on and what kind of value can I add? And owners may have different skillsets that they bring to the table. Community managers might, I mean right. Folks within the community, the physical community or the virtual community. It's just, but it'll, it provides a framework for thinking about how do I really do that?"

00:46:02,"You know, versus just like that extra line item on your website. Like, well if none of these look good, just do the light pass, you know? Yes. Right. And we did have the light pass before we closed for the, the virus, but, and that was like our dabbling in right? Online memberships. Yeah. So,"

00:46:19,"so those co-working spaces that have already dabbled, like, that's great because you've already started, you know, so now you can just punch that up. So now we're in the process of planning our public campaign for our online memberships because like I said before, our main concern was to retain our current members and keep the community together. So we haven't posted yet that these online memberships are available to the public."

00:46:44,"What we're going to, and I know there is a tendency, cause I've seen it in the industry for people to offer these community memberships or these virtual memberships or whatever they're called for like 20 bucks a month. Yeah. But I'm going, no, no, no, no. We're providing high value. Yeah. In these newly revamped memberships, they're starting at the part-time flex level,"

00:47:05,"which for us is a hundred dollars a month. If you want in on this a hundred dollars a month. Ooh, I like it. But once you're in, our goal is to keep you, so then you we're gonna continue offering the pay what you can for as long as this virus lasts for, for current members. So once you're in at the a hundred bucks your first month,"

00:47:23,"if you need to go down to pay what you can the next, that's fine. But we're just not putting that out there as our public offer. Yep. Because I wanted, like there, when you talk about the type of person you're serving, when you're attracting members, who are you attracting? We are attracting a certain type of entrepreneur. It's not for everybody."

00:47:39,"And we're looking for those entrepreneurs that want to grow. They want to invest in themselves. They care about community, community over competition all the way. Like it's all about like, how can I serve? And it's not like, oh, are there other business coaches in this membership? Cause if there are, like, I wanna be the exclusive one,"

00:47:59,"sorry. No, like you're not our people. We want to really be community minded. What, and that means like supporting your fellow members, that also means supporting the community that you live in or the world. So however that looks for you. But just we're looking for people with that mindset. So the price point is a way to kind of filter out those that aren't at that level yet."

00:48:22,"We also have like a application form. You can't just like buy your membership and you're in, like you've gotta apply for it. So there's like some steps that have to happen. So if you're not a fit, we can let you know that before you join. So I wanna make a quick point about sort of the ego jumping in and saying, well,"

00:48:42,"you know, they're already, to your point about business coaches, there are a lot of business coaches, right? So Jess could have said, well there are a lot of Jess Bommarrito types out there. Like my audience is already being served online somewhere, maybe. But every one of us is unique and we will attract people that want to hear the message from us."

00:49:05,"Yes. Right? So if you feel called to serve a group, you have a tribe that you wanna connect to, don't worry about who else is doing it because you will do it uniquely and differently. There's a, I'm just gonna use a quick example. There's a guy in my Flight Group program and he, I have no idea if he'll do anything digitally,"

00:49:28,"but he was, we were talking through like all the options to sort of stay connected to our community and diversify that revenue stream. So he was a dentist before opening a Coworking space. And he had, and I can't remember what it is, he had some proprietary approach to using music in the dental chair to help people be more, you know, a zen and he's a dj,"

00:49:52,"he's got all these like unique things about his personality, right? Like how many dentist turn Coworking space owners are there out there who also dj and he's just like, I love all those things wrapped into one person, right? And we each have our own package. And so I was like kind of nudging him a little bit, like, you should think about what you could offer your members because you,"

00:50:15,"you know, just like you and your husband did, he's a business owner with a lot of interesting experience that he can draw from, from other parts of his life that may impact his members during this time and even going forward. But he's just like a unique example of, or he's not, I mean we're all unique in our own way, I think is,"

00:50:31,"but I think he was not, so it wasn't clear to him that he had something to offer to the world. And I was like, I think you're super interesting, you know, I wanna hear your perspective. So I think we all need to remember that to some extent if that sort of ego voice starts jumping in and saying, well, who are you to try to do something online?"

00:50:50,"Oh my god. And that ego voice will jump in 100%. And yeah, and I think when they, when that happens, like that's your cue to lean in even more when those fears start cropping off. Yeah. Like that's the signal that you need to do it because people need what you have to offer, whether you see that yourself or not."

00:51:09,"Like I said, I took for granted what I had to offer. I took for granted that I had this experience that's relevant now. Yeah. Was probably relevant before, but Right. Very Relevant right now. So think about your own past experiences and ex talents and resources that you have that you can offer. Another thing that we drew on was the fact that Adam and I don't have kids right now,"

00:51:31,"so we have time and that's something we could offer, which is why we went coaching and hands on content creation because we had the time. If you're a parent and you're very busy like homeschooling your kids, maybe you don't have time to offer, but there's something else that you have. So it's just a kind of like a personal experience of just digging in and saying,"

00:51:51,"what, what do I have to offer? And being okay with what you don't right now, there's certain things I'd love to be able to do myself, but this is just not the right time for it, and that's okay too. But we just dug into like, what's available to us? What do we have available that we can offer to other people?"

00:52:09,"And time was one of them. Coaching was another one. Content creation was another, but for you, that's gonna be something different. And the beauty about kind of going digital in serving folks is that it's pretty low investment, whereas Coworking spaces can be fairly high investment, which is not, you know, something everybody's looking for right now. So it's just an opportunity to kind of experiment."

00:52:30,"Yes. And I love, I often see in Facebook groups, you know, people will jump in and say, okay, I wanna diversify my revenue. What are y'all doing that's different? And it's, there are not a lot of, like, people don't throw out a lot of different things. There's like, you know, meeting rooms and events and virtual mail and those are not all that exciting to some people or to many people."

00:52:53,"You know, like the virtual mail thing I think of as being very practical. And I, you know, am advocating in my other podcasts and Facebook groups like, start now, get this started like it, but if you are like, I just can't get excited about that there, you know, there's, there's, there are other things, and this is I think one of the,"

00:53:11,"the avenues that people can think about a little bit if they're like, yeah, I'd like to do something more creative and something, you know, more s I don't know. Yeah. More, more that fits and and matches some sort of calling that's there besides Oh, totally. Processing mail. Exactly. Yeah. And you know what, in our town,"

00:53:27,"like mail is not a thing. Yeah. I, I visited some Coworking spaces in the state, so I feel like it's maybe different there. Like I think you guys get a lot of mail. We don't, so the virtual mail thing is not a, there's no demand for it, at least in my town. So it hasn't been an interest for me."

00:53:41,"Yeah. But I can See why it is for others. Like, that makes sense. Right. So we Totally, yeah. From a practical perspective, you know? Yeah, yeah. It's not, it doesn't so much build community. And so for folks who are more served on that, you know, it can, if, anyway, I get what you're saying,"

00:53:55,"but an example of right there, this is kind of a, an unexplored avenue for folks that are looking to Yes. And It's something I just love talking about because I think Coworking can really benefit from taking, at least considering this as an option for scaling and, and growing your impact. And one, one thing I wanna say about creating your online membership is like,"

00:54:16,"ours is not glamorous right now. Like as in not super high tech, you're just throwing it together. It's mostly happening in Facebook and Zoom. There's no mystery platform that you Yeah. Took weeks to set up. You're just running with it and focusing on how do I serve people? Yeah. Your people don't care that you don't have this perfectly polished membership site."

00:54:38,"Yeah. Which is something we wanna work towards. Yeah. But right now is not a priority. We have a Facebook group and that's where we keep everybody, we have an email list for members where we just like make sure they're, they're getting updates. We have Zoom calls and we have a Google drive for shared files and replays of things and that's it."

00:54:59,"So I had to just, I, today I had to create a post in our group with all the links. Cuz I just feel like our members are probably very confused about where to find things. Cause it's like, sometimes it's on this Zoom link and sometimes it's on this one and then there's this Google drive and then there's this other pop-up Facebook repeat might wanna join too."

00:55:17,"And then there's other Thing. Yeah. So I had to like, just one post where it's like here's everything, here's the list of events. Call me. Like here's my cell phone number if you need anything. Because like, I wanna make sure you can find what you need. Yeah. Yeah. So there's, it doesn't have to be glamorous and,"

00:55:34,"but at the same time, like you can have fun with it because just like when you created your physical space, I'm going to bet a lot of your personality and style went into that space. And your brand, whether you realize it or not, is like rooted in you and your personality. So you can do the same thing in your online membership and kind of design this like fun space that really kind of exemplifies all the things you stand for."

00:56:00,"Like, and what that could look like if you're doing a Facebook group like I did. It's just in the, the tone of your voice when you post and it's in the graphics that you create on Canva. And it's like in the style of your Zoom calls, like you can bring your essence to these things and make it just as cool or fun or welcoming as your physical space."

00:56:22,"I love that. So, okay. I feel like we've put a lot out there and I think maybe it's time to let people like marinate and Yes. And sort of decide are they gonna, you know, scratch that itch that, that they've, that they've got happening now. So you have set up a website where folks can go to get some more details."

00:56:44,"We're gonna host a webinar and we're gonna kind of cover some of the same topics we've covered today, but we're gonna deep dive a little bit and also open up to q and a. So if you're listening to this and you're thinking, Hmm, that might be for me, I wanna, I wanna learn a little bit more. I wanna ask some questions."

00:57:01,"I wanna poke around a little bit about what this might look like. Then you can join us. It's Tuesday, April 21st at 11:00 AM Pacific. So 2:00 PM Eastern and the link in registration and all the info is going to be on Coworking goes digital.com. And Jess, what else can folks find there? Yeah, so this is gonna be kind of like a living landing page."

00:57:27,"So as more and more resources come available that Jamie and I are kind of putting together are finding out about, we're gonna put everything on Coworking goes digital.com because you've heard us talk about Stu today. There is a free workshop being led by Stu starting later this month. So we wanna make sure that if you are interested in learning more about online memberships, that you attend this workshop."

00:57:49,"It is free and it's so good. It's totally free. And his, I love again and I don't wanna, you know, go down a rabbit hole, but I love his teaching style. He's so engaging. He keeps things so simple. And you, you know, you brought up the point of all the things you can sort of apply, even if you're not totally sure about memberships,"

00:58:11,"you, I mean, we all, if you are a co-working space owner or going to be, you do have a membership, it's a physical membership. He's talking mostly about online memberships cuz he's helping people with, you know, that already do something physical, sort of scale it. But the, the aspects of sort of creating and growing that business and all the like little experience things and he's so gr interesting to watch and motivating and inspirational."

00:58:37,"And I've taken a million notes as you did. I mean, I started physical and then went digital about all the things I wanna incorporate into the physical aspect of my business. That, and I haven't done all the things, you know, to your point, I mean I have such big like visions of, of what I wanna create, but like little pieces at a time."

00:58:56,"I'm definitely not, not Stu quite yet, but he is just a great marketer and a great person to watch. So I'm all signed up for the workshop as well. It's a great resource. So that link will be on co-working goes digital as well. Yeah. And yeah, we're just gonna keep sharing as much as we can on that, on that website."

00:59:14,"So feel free to check it out and start a conversation with us around maybe some of your own ideas. If this is a brand new concept for you, this may be, this podcast alone may have just been blown your mind a little bit. Like it's okay. As you've heard, Jamie and I have had a few years of experience learning from Stew and Tribe and exploring this online space."

00:59:35,"So give yourself the grace to like, explore and check it out and experiment without any expectation of a certain result. And yeah, I attend STS free workshop every year, even though I've done it before, I've launched my memberships. There's always something else to get from it. And all of those concepts apply to your physical membership as well as your future online membership or current as well."

01:00:01,"So it's worth it to just tune in even if you don't end up launch launching an online membership, I think. Totally. And you can watch it on your phone. I watch all of his material on my phone in the car or walking the dogs. Of course there's less car time now, but walking dogs. So if you're like, I don't get any space at home to sit and watch,"

01:00:24,"sign up, take a walk, take your phone. Yes. And your, you know, your headphones and you know, get a little professional development while you're outside. Absolutely. Awesome. Okay, so I'm gonna put the link to that in the show notes. If anybody's, you know, well probably not many people are driving. So that's the advantage of doing podcasts during a pandemic."

01:00:43,"Everybody's at home and can take notes. So yeah, the URL is Coworking goes digital.com and the links to our webinar and then to the free workshop that Jess mentioned will be there and she'll continue to add some resources. So reach out if you have any questions. Jess, thanks for sharing your story. Super inspiring and we hope thought-provoking for some of the folks that are listening."

01:01:06,"Thank you so much, Jamie, it's a pleasure to get to share and hopefully inspire a few more online memberships. Yeah, well I look forward to connecting again on the 21st on our webinar. Yay. Me too. 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."

01:01:29,"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 RussoMay 11, 2023Comment

303. Adding a Course or Membership as a New Revenue Stream

303. Adding a Course or Membership as a New Revenue Stream

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