327. Jace Rasche Goes Behind the Scenes on his Coffee Shop + Coworking Business
Resources Mentioned in this Episode:
Everything Coworking Featured Resources:
Masterclass: 3 Behind-the-Scenes Secrets to Opening a Coworking Space
TRANSCRIPTION
327. Jace Rasche Goes Behind the Scenes on his Coffee Shop + Coworking Business
00:00:00,"Welcome to the Everything Coworking podcast, where every week I keep you updated on the latest trends and how toss 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 a thought provoking operator,"
00:00:26,"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. Okay, get ready if you are interested in how a coffee business can fit in with Coworking. This is the episode for you."
00:00:57,"So Jace and I just realized when I went to record the intro that I never said his last name and I'm not totally sure how it's pronounced. Jace, I am sorry. How about Ra Raschi, it's R-A-S-C-H-E. He is the co-founder and general manager at Common Good Co in Waltham, Massachusetts, which is outside of Boston. And he, I met Jace and I've known Jace now for a long time."
00:01:22,"And I didn't go back through our notes, but he joined the Startup school. And like many of you, or if you haven't opened a space yet, like your experience may be, it took some time. He, it took him some time to find the location and then it took a long time to negotiate with the landlord. And this was post covid,"
00:01:44,"so you would think the landlord would be interested in signing a lease, but it took some time for that to get done. And I remember Jace would get in on our monthly call calls or every other week. So the, in the Coworking, Startup School, we have the course, we now run a live version of the first phase, which is to validate your model."
00:02:05,"And we then you can opt into every other week coaching calls. So Jace was in these calls for literally like two years. So I got to know Jace pretty well and he'd pop in, not every call, but every once in a while when he had something to figure out, he'd jump in. And he's now in our Community Manager program. So Coworking,"
00:02:24,"Startup School, and then Community Manager program. So it's been awesome to follow along on his journey, but we hadn't gotten a chance to sit down and really talk through his model and how it's going, because of course, once he opened, he was kind of buried. So it was really fun for me to learn how he's doing. And I think food and beverage integrated with Coworking is super on trend because folks really want that all-inclusive experience when they leave their house."
00:02:56,"So I love what Jace has created here, and he talks through the benefits of the model, some of the challenges that he experienced, you know, what he likes about, you know, each aspect of the business, how it's set up, what it looks like for him. There are other folks who don't do it exactly the same way. Obviously there's a lot of different ways to approach this model,"
00:03:14,"but hearing Jace's story I think will be really helpful. And I'll say one of the other things that's really fun about the Startup School program, we're launching our next live cohort in January, so we're already enrolling folks. So if you're thinking about it jump in, you can also join our free masterclass to learn more about Coworking and what it looks like to start a space."
00:03:40,"We talk about three lessons learned that you should know before you embark on your Coworking journey. You can access that masterclass at Everything Coworking dot com slash masterclass. And at the end, it also talks about the Startup School program, which you can learn more about, which is how I got to know Jace. So Jace, you know, talks about his business model and his journey and how he's looking at the business now,"
00:04:05,"how they're thinking about growth. One other interesting aspect of his story is that he's on a main street in Waltham and the population of Waltham, I have that on here. It's 64,000 people, so not huge, but he is on this great main street. There was no coffee shop, but otherwise a pretty vibrant main street. But he took over a Verizon store."
00:04:24,"And I remember when he told me this on one of the calls, I was like, oh boy, trouble, trouble, trouble. And I remember like the plumbing and the hvac, it was a pretty significant build out for him to undertake. And then he had the problem that a lot of folks had where his construction costs went through the roof kind of after he'd signed the lease,"
00:04:43,"he'd gotten his initial quote, signed the lease, and then his numbers, his construction costs went up by like 30%. So we helped him work through that. And that's the great thing about the calls that we do for the Startup School. What I was gonna say is one great thing is that you get to meet a lot of other folks who are opening Coworking businesses and are in many different phases of that process."
00:05:05,"And you get this under the hood peak at what their models look like. So anybody who was in the cohort going through when Jace was, would get to learn about the aspects of putting in plumbing for a coffee shop and how he was looking at the model and should he have two different Google business listings. He was figuring out the construction cost aspect, how he worked through that."
00:05:28,"So there's a lot of learnings from going through that process with others. But also for Jace, I think it was really helpful for him to be able to get perspective on like, what's normal, what do I do now? How do I approach this? And just be able to bounce challenges off of experts and peers while he was going through that process."
00:05:45,"And again, also normalizing that sometimes that process can take a while. But here Chase is, and he just has a great success story so far. And I'm sure he has ups and downs, just like every operator does. So just a reminder, next cohort starts in January. Go join the masterclass if you want to go through a framework of some of the lessons learned that you want to be aware of before you embark on that journey."
00:06:09,"Again, Everything Coworking dot com slash masterclass. We'll, the link is in the you. If you open up your podcast player to the show notes, you can grab the link right there. Okay. Without further ado, here is my conversation with Jace. Okay. I'm super excited about this conversation and everybody listening wants to hear about Coffee and Coworking. So I'm glad that we finally figured out a time to do this."
00:06:33,"Welcome. So Jace is sitting in Walham, Massachusetts. How far are you from Boston? Eight miles. Anywhere from 15 to 45 minutes, depending on the Exactly. Totally. Yep. Okay. But Walham is like a little city. It's population is 64,000 people. So, okay. I wanna hear the whole story. Jace and I have not had a chance to catch up."
00:06:57,"Jace was in our Coworking Startup. School. Yes. You started, when did you start this school? Oh, After Covid A while ago. Before it was Okay. Pre pandemic. I mean, we Have people who are in the program for so long and, but you maybe you were making progress, you picked your space, construction costs went way up at some point."
00:07:16,"Yep. 'cause we were about to sign the lease and then that's when the world shut down. So then we held back and yes. So that Was like, And then I press pause Plumbing, you were plumbing it or, or your electrical had like doubled since Yeah, it was outrageous. The supply chains, ugh, I never wanna go back to that."
00:07:30,"To, okay. Yeah, we've moved on. So we're at a different place now, which is great. Yes. And now you're in our Community Manager program. Although I was saying I never see you because you've got your Yes. Lots of community managers get on our calls with their video off, so Yes. Because You just never know. Okay."
00:07:45,"So yes, tell us. Okay. Give us your background. Yeah. And then your why for Coworking slash Coffee. We'll talk a little bit about your building. Yeah. 'cause you're, you know, and your location. Give, give us the story and then I'll Sure. I'll begin with some questions along the way. So the, the, the quick backstory is I was a business major at Indiana University,"
00:08:04,"so I, I went to the Kelly School business and then decided I didn't wanna do business. Right. So I graduated. Yeah. It's like, well, that's interesting. I would not have expected that. So I graduated and I did actually did Teach for America, if you're familiar with that. So I taught high school math. Yes. All These things that I don't pick up on."
00:08:19,"Yeah. When we did all those calls together and I know right. I need to start asking people like they're, they're deeper backgrounds. Wait, are you from the Boston area though? No, I grew up in Indiana, so I spent most of my childhood in Indiana. Oh. So I've, I've lived in the Boston area for about five years now."
00:08:34,"Five? Yeah. A little over five Years. Oh, okay. Wait. And how old are your ki how old are your kids? Five and three. Okay. And, and one about to come in about a month. Yes. Okay. Got it. Okay. Business, don't, don't wanna do business. Didn't wanna do that. Did Teach for America quickly found out teaching was also not my thing."
00:08:52,"Okay. Process Of elimination. Yes. But I knew I still didn't wanna do business, so I went in, I worked for a nonprofit outreach organization called Young Life. So I did that for about seven years. And then, so I've always, so I worked with Young Life nonprofits and then moved here, was working for another nonprofit here in the Boston area."
00:09:11,"And then that's when, but what were You doing for this non nonprofit? It was Also, it was also Faith-based helping people. The short story is, is help people that kind of want to do church a little bit differently than what maybe they're Used to in the past. Okay. Can I tell you that the new niche is churches and Coworking. Really?"
00:09:27,"I've had, we've had a couple people reach out to us about wanting to use their building for Coworking. Yeah, totally. So interesting. I can see, I can, it makes sense. Interesting. It's mostly used on one day a week and you get the rest of the Work week. Exactly. And then all the like, sort of Startup churches that need space and they're trying to figure out like,"
00:09:43,"well I'm not gonna like build the church. Yeah. Anyway. Yeah. Okay, cool. Multi multipurpose. I think it makes a ton of sense. So, so that was us. And then that was, we were doing that. And so we were, you know, we, we were qua a quasi church, you know, we're, we weren't a typical church,"
00:09:58,"but not what you think of when you hear the word church. But, so same similar thing of us of like, okay, how can we, it was too expensive 'cause we were still holding events and stuff and it's too expensive to, I mean, we're in the Boston area to Yeah. Just one day a month even was just outrageous. So it was like,"
00:10:11,"well, let's create a business that's making money during the day, and then maybe we can use the space for our trainings and coachings and events and things. Okay. And so that was really the genesis of Coworking for us. And then it was really just being in the neighborhood myself and my co-founder Drew, like our neighborhood could really just use a Coworking space."
00:10:28,"Like you, you were saying wall fame is this unique spot intersection of two interstates. It's its own thing, but yet it's close enough to the city. You know, you can fly in and get here within a half an hour from the airport. And so, and like every, every place that you could sit at in the city was just packed with people like the brewery or the local coffee shop or the other deli."
00:10:49,"Mostly It's expensive, so nothing's very big. We have that problem here. The Starbucks are tiny. You cannot go sit in a Starbucks. It's like, Yeah, you're so small. So we, we were, we were a Startup nonprofit, right? So we're like trying, let's meet at the local coffee shop. Well, we didn't, one,"
00:11:01,"we didn't like the coffee, which that's what, hence why coffee came into the picture Press. Ah, Okay. But it was too, it was just like, we can never get a seat. It was always packed everywhere we went and we couldn't find seats and we're like, okay, there's something here that there's is missing in our city. And so that was really what started the,"
00:11:15,"that combined with and our bent towards, you know, community and really wanting to create a space that kind of fosters that connection between the local nonprofits and just kind of be a hub for the community. And so coffee fits really well into that too. People like to connect over a cup of coffee. They do. So, so we're like, what,"
00:11:31,"what, what would it look like to create a space that really was about the community, created a space for people to come to work, but also to connect with one another, like-minded people and just kind of, you know, our vision was kind of like the living room of Waltham. Like what would it look like to be the living room of Waltham?"
00:11:46,"So that, and somewhere that would allow us to work and have better coffee nearby rather than having to Wait is Drew the coffee snob? Because you said he Yes. You're not the director of coffee, you're like I am not. Yeah, he is. He's he's the general manager. Your co-founder. I should have started with that. Co-founder. Yes."
00:12:01,"And general manager. So you manage the Coworking, but, right. You said, so he handles the coffee. He's the coffee nerd. He's, no, well, we hired someone else to do coffee. He's, he's the, he's the like idea man behind the copy. He's the one that tastes it and makes sure, you know, he helps us with what we are ordering."
00:12:15,"He's the coffee snob. Yeah. Yeah. So, so I manage the whole thing. And then I'm not as much day-to-Day in the coffee shop, although some days it feels like I am, but it's not supposed to be every single day in the coffee shop. But it ends up being, but the, the coffee was really born outta the same thing of just,"
00:12:31,"there was, we were driving to the next town over to get a good cup of coffee and we're like, there's definitely a need for this. We have a little street in Walham called Moody Street, which has got a ton of restaurants and people come from all over to go out to eat here. And there was no coffee shop on the street. And we're like,"
00:12:44,"this is just crazy criminal. So Criminal that's all this problem. Yeah. So I was like, we can, I was like, we can do this. And I was like, I have a business school degree. I haven't used it, but I'm sure I could figure it out. So Right. I could dust that off. Yeah. Join,"
00:12:58,"join the Startup school, which was phenomenal. We did a couple other cohorts. We had a advisor on our board of directors that had run coffee shops before. So gave us the coffee angle. Okay, Great. So you were not totally making up the coffee piece? No, No, No, no. Yeah. 'cause I know nothing about coffee and we get,"
00:13:12,"well we, you know, we get lots of folks who wanna do childcare, which gives me high anxiety. Yes. I have much less anxiety about the coffee, but still it's a different business. So We thought about childcare initially and then I think you scared it off. And then all the liability and the thing, the logistics was just like, yeah,"
00:13:28,"we'll just, we'll just do coffee. Just let's just do coffee. We'll figure out the childcare like separately. Yeah. Right. Okay. So let's talk about the space. I was also had a little anxiety, so you knew you need to be on Moody Street, it's called. Right? That's where everybody is. Yes. We gotta have the coffee shop there."
00:13:45,"And your real estate option was an old Verizon store. Yes. Which I was like, oh no walls, you're starting from scratch. It's not ideal. Okay. Right. Okay. And you had pre-construction estimates or pre covid construction estimates and then all that changed after the fact. Yes. Yeah. And you had like, I wouldn't, some extra like hvac,"
00:14:08,"like it was not suited really for All things. No. And the, the landlord didn't give us any Well, he wouldn't respond to you. Now I remember that's why part of the reason you were in the program for so long because, but you were like, okay, we're ready. These negotiations took Over a year will not respond. Yeah. Yeah."
00:14:24,"Crazy landlords. Okay. So we, we got a really good, we got like way below market rate on rent. We just got no ti ti Okay. And so we had to front all that, which logistically made it a little bit harder, so. Yep. And we knew when we chose the space that it would, you know, we were choosing it and it was definitely more geared towards coffee."
00:14:43,"Like Yeah. We're being on this street with frontage on the street. Yeah. Like we've gotta, We gotta prioritize That we use for coffee. Priority was, we looked at a bunch of spaces where Coworking would've been the main priority and we would've done coffee as an ancillary thing. But yeah. With this location, we knew we had to do the coffee really well to go along with,"
00:15:00,"to make the Coworking work too, because it was kind of tucked in the back, you know, it's not a lot of parking nearby. It's just a little tricky. Yeah. It's not, it's not, it's not ideal for Coworking, it's ideal for a coffee shop. So that was the challenge for us to make it work. Okay. But you made an informed decision and you did have to do a bunch of extra work that you had to pay for."
00:15:20,"Yes. Yes. How long is your list lease and We did a five year with a five year opt-in, so it's essentially a 10 year lease that we can opt out of after five if we want to. Okay. Already. So it's all the same terms For the second five. So you already, like, how long have you been open? We've been,"
00:15:34,"well yeah, we've been open a year and a half. We signed the lease in June of 2021. Okay. So we've had the le Yeah. And then we opened in March of 2022. And it's, isn't it, can you, are you like, I can't believe like, all this time has gone by already. Goodness. It's Crazy. 10 years."
00:15:50,"Yeah. It, it's, it's crazy. Yeah. And it's, it's nuts to think about just like the, even just the proforma, the stuff that we did on the front end, just how quickly it all changes and When you actually, When you actually open and then you're like the market, all the market studies and stuff. And then to get to the point where you're actually opening the space of just like,"
00:16:10,"okay, this needs to change and we need to adapt this or this, we're gonna have to do this differently. So there's just a lot of those variables. And the, the other thing about the space too is that it's only 3,500 square feet total. Yeah. Which is a lot. We were looking for space that had at least 5,000 square feet."
00:16:24,"Yeah. So it was a lot smaller than what we had wanted to do for Coworking. So that also complicated the Coworking side of things because like, I mean, we would've made the coffee shop a little bit bigger if we had more space, but it still feels like a normal good sized coffee shop. The Coworking feels, you know, it's small."
00:16:38,"We, we squeezed in 11 offices. We have a, I'm in the small meeting room right now and we have a Oh, So because, so is the coffee shop like 2000? Like what's the split? The coffee shop is a thousand square feet. Oh, okay. And then Coworking is about 2,500. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And you got 11 offices in there."
00:16:55,"And do, I'm trying to remember, did you do the micro offices or they what we did, We did. So ours are super, just for one person, they're six by six by eight. Basically like 40, less than 50 square feet per person, per Office. Wait, those are not a DA compliant. That wasn't a problem. No."
00:17:12,"Yeah, No. Okay. The, the hallways and everything were, everything was like the minimum a DA requirements for that. And then we've, we've had multiple members that utilize wheelchairs. One of them was in our double office, which was bigger. Oh, perfect. Yeah, it was great. You have Options. That's probably, yeah. Yeah."
00:17:31,"Wow. Okay. So I love this. I re Yeah, I remember this and thinking, but it's a great way to optimize. And then it took a while for you to lease up your offices and you were getting nervous. Yeah, it was, I was nervous On your behalf. It was slow going on the office front. I think it was hard."
00:17:45,"I think one of the biggest challenges with the, really it's two, it's two separate businesses that work really well together. Yeah. So, and you have to kind of operate them as two separate businesses. Right. And I think that's the, that was the challenge for us. And starting, you're sort of starting two separate businesses once too. And the operational complexity of the coffee shop,"
00:18:02,"I'm guessing was pretty like time intensive. Hey, I interrupting this episode for any of you that are thinking about, or are already working on starting a Coworking space, which would be 2024 at this point, if you're just getting started, I wanna make sure, you know, we have updated the format of our Coworking Startup School. We are now running it live."
00:18:28,"Although you don't have to attend live. You can get all the content and resources and the roadmap without attending live. But we think that is the absolute best way to get the support that you need and build your own Coworking community as you're getting started. So we've split the Coworking, Startup School into two phases. And we've been running phase one, which we call validate your plan."
00:18:56,"And we really, really want folks to clearly know their numbers before they commit to a lease. We even have folks that already own buildings that are going through phase one to make sure they get everything right before they actually commit to their layouts and start construction. So phase one is really around knowing who your target customer is, making sure you have the right size of space that aligns with your goals."
00:19:25,"And then figuring out your product mix, your floor plan and your pricing. And then putting that all together so that you have a pro forma that you can take to the bank, as they say literally and figuratively. We also have pitch deck and business plan templates, and we run these workshops live. So you're actually, we have prep work that you're doing offline as homework."
00:19:51,"We try to keep that pretty reasonable. We want you to be able to complete this work and make a go no go decision. And if you have draft floor plans and things that you're trying to like finalize and take to contractors or get plans approved on, we want you to be able to do that pretty quickly. So we run this across five weeks,"
00:20:09,"which gives you a little bit of time to catch up on your homework. And we run live sessions with live coaches so that we can get you questions answered and walk you through as we go. But you're work shopping, you're doing the work on the calls, unless you've already done some of the work and then you're getting feedback on that work on the calls."
00:20:28,"Again, you don't have to come live, but we've designed it so that you get expert support and again, you meet others who are going through the same process. And we do it pretty quickly. So phase one, validate your model is running our next session. We have scheduled to start at the very beginning of January. And that's a ways away if you're listening to this when we just launch it so you can register anytime and get the content immediately so you can start working on it."
00:20:59,"If we have enough folks register, we will move up the live date. So we like to have a little cohort that we can run through the pl through the program. So if we get folks who are registering, then we can move up the date of the start of the first live session. We've set it for the second week in January. So to get more details on that,"
00:21:19,"go to Everything Coworking Everything Coworking dot com slash start. Now back to our episode In the coffee shop. It just demands like your urgency, you know, it's that urgent versus important. It's like, I know I need to get these offices sold, but I also like my grinder's not working or whatever. The POS went down today and I had to go out and fix the,"
00:21:43,"so it's just like the immediacy of the coffee shop kind of overtakes the Coworking a lot of times and just, yeah. So it's, it's complicated on that front. And then it's also hard just from like a marketing perspective of just like, how do you, 'cause we went back and forth on do we have two, do we, are they two separate things or are they the same thing?"
00:21:59,"Because You have one website and one Google One website Business listing. Right. We actually have another Google business listing, but no one, no one really uses it. And we haven't really promoted it very Much. Oh, okay. Because right at the beginning you were like, well, all the reviews are for coffee. We have like 1,000,000,005 star reviews,"
00:22:17,"but none of them mentioned Coworking. So in the end that has not been detrimental. You're just like, okay. Whoa. Yeah. I would say not detrimental, not ideal, but not detrimental. Yeah. It's, and it's such just been hard to, like, do we do two separate ones and then that's just double the work on our part and trying to manage it both and Yeah."
00:22:34,"We wanted it to highlight both. So it's, it's just trying to find that even on like our posts on Instagram or our, you know, paid marketing. Like what do we advertise? And trying to Yeah. Separate that out has Been tricky. Do we paid marketing? I'm sort of jumping around, but since you mentioned it, are you running ads?"
00:22:50,"Not, not a lot. I mean, we've done like social media and then, you know, we've, we've done, we've, we printed out some nice, like one free day cards that we've handed out at local apartment complexes and hotels and things to try and attract people in. But other than that, most, most of our leads, we get quite a few tours from our website,"
00:23:11,"but most of our leads are people that are in the coffee shop, working in the coffee shop. Mm. And see that we have Coworking and, or go up and ask a barista, Hey, could someone show me around in the back? So, okay. A lot of my day is interruptions of people. Hey, someone wants to see the space."
00:23:27,"Do you have time to show them? Yeah. So you have a, you have barista coffee shop manager, but you are handling the Coworking? Yes. Yeah. Co I'm, I'm all things Coworking. You are the guy on the live chat. Yes. So there, yeah. Yeah. You type in on the live chat on our website. It Goes to me."
00:23:46,"That's you. Okay, great. Okay, wait, let's finish on the Coworking. You have a couple of dedicated desks. Do I remember that correctly? Yeah. We have two dedicated desks, which have not sold well it since our beginning. So now one of 'em is our coffee shop manager that uses one. Okay. Yeah. And so the other one,"
00:24:03,"and we've reconfigured that initially we had a lot of dedicated desks. Okay. And then we quickly realized that is not the, that's Not the answer. Well don't want it. Interesting. So it's real. That's always really hard to predict. Yeah. So did you just turn it into flex? We turned it into flex. Our original idea was, well we have a coffee shop that can be our flex area."
00:24:20,"And then it quick, we quickly realized, well that's filled with people actually eating and drinking in the coffee shop. But there's not really any seats There. Don't limit that you people can sit and hang out. Yeah. And I think that that's the, with The wifi, like what happens if I, We do, we throttle it down. So we have a guest network that we throttle down."
00:24:36,"So It's slow and annoying. Does it cut off after Two hours? It's not, it's not, it's not, it's not annoyingly slow, but it's not as fast as the, the business one and it cuts off after an hour. Oh, an hour. Perfect. Okay. And You have to, you can, you can get it again, you just have to go through the like process again where you click all the buttons and I agree."
00:24:53,"And so it's just one of those things to try and like create a Little kind of a signal like, Hey, you're not really supposed to stay here all day. Yeah. Because 'cause our, our, we are unique in that we are a Coworking space and so people are working and we do have a lot of our Coworking members that love going and working in the cafe."
00:25:07,"Ah. And so Interesting. Okay. Which is interesting. Like, they'll pop out of their office and go sit, like They'll leave their private office that they're paying, you know, $600 a month for and go sit in the coffee shop. 'cause they just like the vibe of the Yeah. The Coffee shop. So that would be me. I would love that."
00:25:20,"Yeah. Like I got a Zoom call, I'm gonna go sit in my office, but I love the energy of Yes. Yeah. Which is really, that's, that's, that's a lot of our people. So that, so we, we thought out that way. And then it's really, that's a lot of our leads have come from people in the coffee shop or,"
00:25:33,"and I think because the coffee shop is done really well and people really, and it's really good coffee. People will come for that and then notice that we have other things and you know, their mind starts working of like, oh, I need to, this would be great. Or I would love to get out of the house. We have a lot of people that just wanted to get outta the house."
00:25:48,"They wanna be around people. Yeah. And so it's great 'cause we have the, 'cause since we're so small back here, our, our flex area is really, you know, we have seven or eight desks kind of out in the open area and that's it. But they're never more than half full. And so it's a little bit quieter, but you still have the,"
00:26:04,"like you can still hear the coffee shop music in the background faintly. And so it still feels like there's more energy than I love it. A stale office. So, okay. And you have snacks. This would be my problem. I would have like muffins and croissants every day and gain like two pounds. Yeah. Is that avocado toast? What's that?"
00:26:20,"In the photo? Yeah. Oh yeah. That's a big seller. Our breakfast sandwiches are our most popular item, but Okay. Yeah. People love the avocado toast. And that's been also, I mean, the synergy between the two, I mean, it works really well. People, I mean, by far the biggest perk is the, we do free coffee and tea from the coffee shop."
00:26:35,"And so they just love Drip coffee. What if I want an almond milk cappuccino? It's 50% off espresso drinks. That's Amazing. Yeah. So, so people love that. Like that they'll sign up to be a member just for the, that plus they get access to the, you know, workspace. Oh, I didn't even think about that. That's inter they're like,"
00:26:54,"it's sort of a bundle. Like Yeah. So it's really Until of like, ooh. Yeah. If You're gonna, and we, we, we even have a coffee, we call it a coffee connoisseur plan. If you want to just work only in the coffee shop, we call it a loyalty program on steroids. You can get access to the better internet and all the discounts on the coffee drinks for a hundred dollars a month."
00:27:13,"What? So if you're gonna be here every day anyways, you can get all the free coffee you want better internet. That's amazing. Yeah. I love that so much. Wow. So it's, it's really, it's joint, but it's, you know, it's surprising. Like this is one of those like, economies of scale things that I wasn't expecting,"
00:27:30,"but like if you think about like a Keurig machine or whatever you normally have in the Coworking space, or if you did, you upgrade and did a little bit better. Yeah. Like even K-cups cost over 50 cents each. Yeah. They do Like a cup coffee for a cup of coffee for us costs less than that. Right. So it actually saves us money having the really nice coffee because we're doing,"
00:27:49,"we're doing full scale, you know, we're Right. Doing It at scale, We're you're totally at scale. Right. Exactly. So, So even the, even the 50% off espresso drinks, you know, we're doing a, making a just a little bit on that, but we're not even losing money when on not losing, losing money. Okay."
00:28:05,"So, wow. I love it. So that, that allows us to, I mean that's by far our biggest perk for people that want, there's A lot of stuff. Lavender lemonade. Oh, oh, pumpkin Spice latte. Maple Cinnamon. Ooh, yum. Yes. Okay. What is, how do you handle the order ahead? Is this a custom app or is this a white labeled something That's,"
00:28:25,"that's white labeled from We use Lightspeed as our POS. We have a separate POS system and everything for the coffee shop and Yeah. And so it's really its own its own thing. It it functions as its own Yeah. Thing. And we intentionally use different, we have stripe, well we have proximity for the Coworking space. Okay. Which uses Stripe."
00:28:46,"So we have Stripe for the back. Got it. Light speed in the front. Yeah. Okay. If you, I mean, it's hard to maybe answer this question, but if you were to do, like, do you wi are you happy with the mix, like size of coffee shop? Like do you wish you did anything different in terms of Yeah,"
00:29:02,"there's a, there's a lot of things we've been reflecting recently. 'cause we were thinking about what's next in terms of like, Is this gonna be like an empire or what Yeah. Is this like, do we do another location or do we expand just the Coworking? We have also an entire empty basement below us. So that's an option. Basement's hard for workspace."
00:29:19,"Yeah. So is, so, well the basement we've looked into is being a roastery. Do we start roasting our own coffee? Do we expand the coffee production or do we go lean more into Coworking? And then, you know, we've had, we've had local landlords and people that own other buildings approach us and say, Hey, would you do co your Coworking in my building?"
00:29:38,"Right. And the copy. So like a management Agreement that Totally. Yeah. Right. We're just thinking through what's next. So, so we were reflecting a lot about like, what did we learn? What would we do differently? I think we would definitely, we did not expect to be as busy in the coffee shop as what we are, which is a good problem."
00:29:53,"Yeah. But we would have more, you know, bigger storage area, bigger fridge, bigger. Okay. I see All that would've volume, the bigger footprint for the, for the coffee and then make it more Efficient and Yeah. And then also just would've had definitely more space for Coworking. Obviously the space was limited in the space, but you know."
00:30:11,"Yep. If I was drawing up an ideal plan, we would've had a lot more space back here to kind of do different, to have different zones. I think that the hard part right now is, you know, we don't really have a zone where if you are gonna, if you're gonna be on the phone all day, you know, we have one phone booth,"
00:30:28,"but we're so small, you need to have An office or not. Like Yeah. You need to have an office or otherwise you're gonna be bothering people. And then if you take calls out in the coffee shop, people look at you funny and Right. You know, that's not what you wanna do. Yeah. So it's, and then the grinder pops on every once in a while."
00:30:41,"Yeah. Right, right. It's just the, so I, so I think that that's the tricky part is we don't really have a, it's not a big enough space to really have multiple Zones. Totally. That is a big problem with small space. That's why I, I kind of love your combo because you're like, well, we're office people."
00:30:55,"Yep. A little bit of flex and you know, what you're getting with Flex and then with this other revenue stream, which is coffee. Yeah. And we have, we have a couple universities in our city. So we have, we have a couple professors that are members. They like, they do their, come here and do their research or software engineers is a big,"
00:31:12,"we have a lot of software engineers or like freelancers, people that are doing their own thing or Yeah. You know, kind of running their own deal and want something more professional than just a home office or, Okay. Wait, where do you work? I work here. I have one of the, I'm in one of the 11 offices. Right,"
00:31:29,"okay. Yes. Which I'm sure every month you're like, should I be doing, but you need to, so you still have, I'm just jumping around a little bit, but you still do your not-for-profit work, so Yes. Yeah. And you said like, yeah, yeah. Tell tell tell us the Yeah, I would, I would say I'm,"
00:31:46,"I'm right now I'm at like 25 to 40%. I probably one to two days a week that I'm still doing that in between, really in between interruptions. I think that that's the good and the bad of Coworking and a coffee shop is just that I, I feel like I'm just constantly being interrupted all day. I know people, other people have said that on the,"
00:32:05,"the Community Manager calls, but just, and you wouldn't think so with a small Coworking space, but I think the coffee shop amplifies it. 'cause we have so many people that are like, Hey, can I just get a quick tour? Or Hey, can I drop see this or drop? Totally. There is no, I think on one of our last calls,"
00:32:20,"people were complaining about, not complaining, but lamenting how challenging it can be. Like if you wanna not be in the office, like for smaller locations that aren't staffed full-time, putting like the QR code on the door and people just ignore it and they bang on the door. That used to happen to us. It's like you can't, but if you have a coffee shop in front that is constant."
00:32:39,"People feel like, oh sure, of course I can. Right. Ask for a tour. Yeah. And it's never, and the Barista can't do it. She's busy making a lot change. Right. Yeah. And then that's, you know, we've, we've crosstrained you know, some of our, we have a couple full-time baristas that we've cross-trained to at least know the basics and be able to explain what is Coworking."
00:32:56,"But that was another thing, you know, we have people going up and asking our baristas about code looking. So like, I don't know, what is this? I'm just here to make coffee. So we've had to do like the basics of just like, you know, I made up a little sheet of like, if someone asks you about this,"
00:33:07,"right. Yeah. Here's what you should say. Hey there, I'm jumping in again this time. I am speaking to those of you that have, are either getting ready to hire a Community Manager or who have a Community Manager and you would like to support their training and development. We know how challenging it can be for Coworking space operators to create their own training and development material to support their community managers."
00:33:38,"And this is so important in terms of onboarding new community managers and supporting the growth of your existing community managers. And we're getting towards the end of the year, what a great holiday gift end of year gift to give to your Community Manager. So the platform is really around a couple of things. One is access to a community of like-minded folks. We have a very active Slack group with really wonderful questions that are posed every single day."
00:34:09,"And we find that's one of the biggest values. We have community managers from all over the world. And this is an excellent group of community managers that have invested time and effort into getting better at that role. And they are the kind of folks that you want your Community Manager to be by and hanging out with and they know their stuff or sometimes they don't and they ask questions and we help them out."
00:34:33,"So I am in the group, we have coaches that are in the group to support them. So we love when they ask questions for things they need help with because the other aspect of the program is really around helping them get resources they need to make their jobs easier and to learn things that they can use in their role to be better at their job."
00:34:53,"So we provide some done for you resources like Google business posts, detailed event ideas, et cetera, that they can just kind of grab and go and use. And we also provide monthly resources that add to our training library so they can do our certification. And then we have a lot of electives that help them kind of get better at all the things that,"
00:35:19,"that go with the role. So the, our community managers wear a lot of hats. So we break our content into industry knowledge for new community managers, community building operations, sales and marketing and leadership. So the leadership bucket is great for our more advanced community managers. We also have virtual office and digital mail training and coffee training for anybody who needs to know how to use commercial coffee brewers."
00:35:49,"So we have some of the, I'm just gonna give you kind of a sampling of content that we have. So in our community building modules, we have hosting your first member events, building community with budget friendly events, member events, swipe files, our sales and marketing modules. We have tour training, we have the training on the full Coworking sales funnel so they understand what that looks like."
00:36:18,"We have social media planning frameworks. We have, what else do we have? Three simple steps to an effective marketing newsletter. These are just some of our samples. Ooh. These are some of our best utilized topics. Demystifying the process of letting your Coworking members use your address for their Google business listing. How to close a tour operations modules, how to set up automations,"
00:36:47,"how to do a new member onboarding audit. Simple ways to use AI to boost your productivity. We have over 40 courses in the program, so we cover kind of higher level topics and then we also cover things that are timely, like the CMRA updates, Google business updates, et cetera. So we get together monthly to do official training and we also host a best practice sharing call,"
00:37:15,"which is one of the fan favorites of the group and the Slack group. So if you have any questions at all about the program, don't hesitate to reach out. You can learn more and register at Everything Coworking dot com slash Community Manager. Now back to our episode. So all those little things that, yeah. So I think having the coffee shop there is my day gets hijacked a lot,"
00:37:40,"so I, yeah, it's nice that I can do most of what I do. I do a lot of administrative work for the, the other nonprofit and a lot of stuff on a computer or spreadsheet, so I can do that in between. Yeah. Most of that stuff I can do in between interruptions. It's not like You're trying to manage zoom meetings and people are knocking on the door for tours and Yeah."
00:37:58,"Which that's, that's Drew, he's the other co-founder. He's, he's probably the opposite. He's the inverse of me. So he's 75% still at the nonprofit and then 25% does, like, you know, he does all of our social media marketing. He's the creative person. I'm the numbers guy on the relationship. And so he, but he's the one that has meetings and calls and all that stuff all day."
00:38:16,"So that's, yeah. He, he doesn't have deal with those the interruptions like I am, but Okay. So are you tempted to hire somebody to do some of your work? Or does, is it just hard to justify like That's that's what we're in the middle of right now, is that it's, we're not, we're in that weird space where we're not big enough as a Coworking space to justify a full-time person."
00:38:34,"Yeah. Not really even like a halftime person. Yeah. It's weird that, you know, it's, it's, It's totally to, that's the challenge with Right. That size. Yeah. Can't justify the human, but you still have the interruptions and so it's taking up your time. Right. Worth more than, you know. Exactly. It's tricky though."
00:38:52,"It's like, we would love, it would be ideal if we had someone that was a flex member. Like, you know, I know that like a master on the calls, but like someone that was gonna be be here anyways, that wouldn't mind being interrupted. But it yeah. Just really hard to find. For us at least, it's been really hard to find someone that a can be here every day."
00:39:07,"A lot of our flex members are, you know, two or three days a week. Totally. Right. And then b that's whatever they're doing is they're able to be interrupted periodically throughout the day. So just, and then our flex membership is only 300 a month and if you're being interrupted every day, it feels, you're Like, it's not worth it Now that's not,"
00:39:22,"that's not worth it. So it feels like we have to pay you more. And so we've, we've, we've toyed around with doing a more like commission based model of you where you get paid per like conference room reservation. You get paid per, per tour. And then a percentage of any like mail service or whatever you, any new signups you get."
00:39:41,"Yeah. So That's kind of paying for activity. Yeah. Right. So basically we'll pay, we'll compensate you if you have to do anything. Right. So it's just, yeah. In an ideal world, we'd have someone that's doing it part-time or we would have another location and then I was gonna say that's the argument for another location Yeah. Is that then you could have a floater who's kind of managing Stuff."
00:40:00,"Right. If we had an expansion where you could bounce back and forth depending on the reservations or day passes and Yeah. Which I, we've gotten way more day pass and conference room use than, So Okay. So you do have, you mentioned small meeting room, what are, what even you have another meeting room? So we have, I'm in the small one that fits four and then we have another room that fits eight up to eight."
00:40:21,"It was, it was initially supposed to be bigger and then we ran out of space. So that's as big as we could make it and still Have the offices. I, I don't usually recommend. I, I think right now it's small and very large that are selling. Yes. You you rent the eight though. Yeah. That's, that's our most popular."
00:40:39,"We lots of like, you know, we're doing a offsite team training for the day or we're doing a whatever this for the day. I would say it's, and our members use it quite a bit. Like I said, we use it, we rent it out and use it for our trainings for the nonprofit. We rent it out. We have another,"
00:40:56,"we have the, the other thing is because we're so nonprofit focused, we give, we give back 5% of every membership to local nonprofits. We have little giving wall and, and our members get to choose where their 5% goes. And so that's a cool little thing. I love that. That they love. And so we, we actually have two or three other nonprofits that have our offices here and so they're using it a lot for their meetings and Various things."
00:41:17,"Okay, great. 'cause that was part of the initial sort of why like, you know what I'd like this. Right. I have this community. Okay, good. So we would love to, that's one of the reasons why we, if we did another location, we would wanna do different, a different product mix. We would want to have one of those larger rooms."
00:41:34,"I'd say that the biggest thing right now that we can't accommodate that we get requests for room probably once, once a week is is more of like a classroom size. Yeah. Like we need somewhere for 20 people and then that's Totally a post covid thing. Or like people like are just more aware. But that's a really hard product to find. Yes."
00:41:52,"It's either a hotel or a Coworking space generally. Maybe a rec center. Like we have a really beautiful rec center in our town that has that, but Yeah. Yeah. So that, that we get requests for that and we get requests for bigger offices. 'cause our largest office only fits two people. And so we, we get Yeah. Requests for,"
00:42:08,"hey we, we, there's a team of four of us. Yeah. It's like, well we can't really Yeah. Fit that or six, you know Yeah. The bigger, bigger offices and bigger meeting spaces. Yeah. Yeah. So we're, we're, we're talking to someone right now that has a, that has a space that they wanna use on the weekends for event space and is looking for someone that wants to do something with it during the week."
00:42:27,"Oh. So there you go. Yeah. Approached us about what would that look like. And Wait, so do you do events at all in the coffee shop area or? We do, yeah. Okay. So you can rent out the coffee shop. Okay. After hours. Yeah. So we have event, event rental and we've done three or four,"
00:42:44,"you know, we've done birthday parties and Okay. Graduation parties all the way to, we've done a nonprofit fundraisers, which have been really fun. Yep. Yeah. And even like community night, we did a storytelling poetry kind of night live music that was fun. So Stuff. Okay. So my understanding is that the coffee business is location, location,"
00:43:09,"location. Yes. So it sounds like you optimized for the coffee and that's working well. Yes. Yeah. So if you went to another location or, and if you did an additional location, you'd have to like really figure out Yeah, yeah. Like we, you, we would definitely, it's not that we didn't prioritize the Coworking, it was just that given the location we had to make sure we got the coffee right,"
00:43:35,"the copy. Yeah. We knew that was key. That was the thing. So if we did another location, we've even talked about what would it look like for a hybrid role where we would have sort of like a Community Manager slash barista where we have a little coffee cart that's serving our coffee in a smaller espresso machine and they can make drinks for members on site and then also do all the other Coworking stuff."
00:43:56,"So Yeah, I think something where the Coworking would be the focus and we would still have our coffee Ah, yep. It would be ancillary. So it would still be the perks and then it would still work both places. You could still come here and get a coffee and vice versa. Yes. So that's, that's what we're exploring right now is how do we,"
00:44:12,"how do we get another space where the, we can put more of a priority on the Coworking space itself and, and really expand that, but Still keep the coffee integrated. That's interesting. Right? Yeah. Yeah. And it, and it's so strange too. 'cause the coffee, you know, the, the coffee side of thing probably does six times the revenue of the Coworking space."
00:44:33,"Yeah. But the profits are, the Coworking profits are actually higher than coffee profits. Interesting. After, after we pay, you know, after payroll and the cost of goods On a percentage basis or on a total basis? Like an absolute basis or percentage? Both. Well, yeah, I percentage, definitely percentage. That's close on the absolute. Okay."
00:44:56,"Interesting. I always think of coffee shops as like printing money. Yeah. It's actually, that was one of the things our advisors said to us was don't, just so you Know. Right. Just so you know, like this is a super, like the margin on a cup of coffee is high, but to make money on the business when you're paying,"
00:45:15,"you know that a cup of coffee is only three. Do you have to sell a lot of those? Yeah. The Volume, you Have to sell the volume to justify. Yeah. Which is why the location is so important. Because if you don't have the volume, it's not working. I, yeah, no, Yeah. Because you know between Yeah."
00:45:29,"Payroll, cost of goods, yeah. Rent, even just, you know, yeah. Rent the dumpster, all the like food safety stuff, like all the things that you just wouldn't, we wouldn't have had to do. Yeah. Maintenance. I'm sure there's just a lot of operational costs. It's, I mean, it's a beast in terms of like pure nu like it's nice because we have steady,"
00:45:47,"steady sales volume. We have something we can depend on. You don't have, it's for Coworking, but you don't, I guess do you have swings, like one of the things that comes up in our operator membership, we don't talk about it as much in the Community Manager group, but it's just like sort of some, sometimes you're like, where did everybody go this month?"
00:46:04,"Like it's, yep. Yeah. Like you have recurring revenue, but sometimes there can be swings. Is there less of that with the combo business? Yes. I would say there's less of that. That, I think that's one of the biggest pros to this is that there, there's two different revenue streams and so that was kind of like, yeah."
00:46:22,"They both have, they both have to be doing bad for it to, for us to like feel it. So like if the coffee shop's doing good, we can absorb a couple months of an open office or two. Or vice versa. If all of our offices are filled, it's okay if the coffee shops, you know, takes a dip in sales."
00:46:37,"But, so it's, it's, it's nice that it's kind of leveled that out for us. You know, like October is our busiest month in the coffee shop and we surprisingly have the Biggest, that's your highest grossing month, like opinion. Yeah. Yeah. For some reason people love their pumpkin spice and cin and lattes. I was gonna see pumpkin spice."
00:46:56,"There's something about fall and coffee and you know, wintertime is kind of a lull. Yeah. Right. 'cause you, it's very cold where you are less. Okay. Do you do a lot of door DoorDash Volume? No, we, we do, we do none. We don't, we Don't do any As a Choice. Yeah. As a choice."
00:47:12,"Okay. That was just something we didn't wanna Yeah. That was a whole nother beast that we didn't wanna mess with. Might help with winter revenues though. Yes. So that would be another potential revenue stream if we wanted to explore that. We've, yeah, they've tried to get us to do that for a while, but yeah, with, with such a small footprint,"
00:47:29,"it's just hard. We're just so limited on space already. And then, and then also it would require us to upgrade our packaging and, and you'd have to have someone else on, you'd have to have more payroll. Yeah. And you have to give them fees and so it was just one of those headaches that No thanks at the end of the day."
00:47:46,"Yeah. And then like someone gets a spilled drink and it's just not the experience that we want from Yeah. The coffee side of spice latte tastes cold when they get it. Yeah, Yeah. Or, or it's watered down because it sat there in the car for so long. Yeah. And all the foam went. Yeah. Hmm. Yeah. Yeah."
00:48:02,"Yeah. So, so there's, I mean, there's, there's obviously pros and cons to it, but that was one of the things where we had enough other things going on that we didn't need to, to mess with that. But it is ni it is nice to have revenue of two different revenue streams. And, you know, there's been, you know,"
00:48:17,"our, we were open six months and our coffee shop manager left, and I kind of had to do that both jobs for a little bit. And so it was like, okay, I'm gonna have to put Coworking on the back burner Yeah. And focus on coffee, make sure that this is run Now it feels like this, you know, focus is shifting and build our,"
00:48:33,"we have all of our offices filled in a wait list for the first time in a long time, so that's nice going into the winter months as well, so, Okay. How hard is staffing the coffee shop in terms of like, it is hiring good people, getting them to stay? It's Hard. Yes. Getting them to stay. I think it's just the nature of the industry."
00:48:54,"I think that's just like, you know Yeah. It's a transitory sort of job. Yeah. Very few people are like, I want to be a barista as my career. Yeah. That's, we know that going in. I mean, and we want that. So we, we do the best to try. And we have a, we have two colleges here,"
00:49:06,"so we have a lot of college kids that apply and want to be a barista. And they've, they've been some of our best employees. And then our, we found some other ones that are post grad but aren't ready to start their career. And they're like, I just wanna do this. Or they're aspiring artist or musician or something, and they just need something to pay the bills while they're pay rent,"
00:49:29,"pursuing their other passions. And so those have been great. Those have been some great employees, but the, you know, it's hard. It feels like every six, six months we have a new, new staff. Yeah. More training and we're just back Yeah. It's the same thing over and over and over again in terms of training and staffing and,"
00:49:45,"and that whole thing. So that's where it's really just, it's, it's a machine. Yeah. It's a beast that's like demand so much. So it's really, it sounds more it, you know, when you think, ah, I'm just gonna open a copy shop. Its sounds, it sounds Romantic, sounds Great. You know, I get,"
00:50:00,"and it is, I get nice good coffee every day. It's awesome. But, but it's just, it's a lot. And that's, that would be my, my biggest advice to anyone that's thinking about it is Yeah. I Was just gonna ask you. Yeah. What if you were gonna give some advice Yeah. Around the combo. You can separate your advice if you want,"
00:50:17,"but Yeah. What would, what would you tell somebody who's excited about both ideas? It's, yeah. Is is it to really treat it as two two businesses? It's two separate things, you know, or, or no going in and optimize, you know, like we, we treat Coworking and coffee as two separate businesses. They obviously have a lot of synergies,"
00:50:36,"but to really focus on, you really need someone focused on coffee and you really need someone focused on Coworking to make it work. It's just, it's just too much for me to do both. I couldn't do both effectively when I was doing it both. So I think we got, you know, if if if you, if you're more Coworking focused,"
00:50:53,"maybe you need, that's where you need to hire a full-time person. Or if it, like us coffee focus, hire a full-time person there. But you've gotta do something where you have someone that's taking a big chunk of it off because it's just, it's too much. You'll get consumed with one or the other. And then it really Yeah. Neglect."
00:51:11,"They, and they both, they both need there, there is a, they both need to work independently. I think that that's the other thing too. If, you know, it'd be really easy, you know, we have the coffee shop and it could subsidize the Coworking space and be like, oh, we don't need to fab all the offices filled the coffee shop's doing great,"
00:51:29,"but then why do we have all this space in the first place? We should have just done the co like yeah. At some point, like, this needs to be profitable and the coffee shop needs to be profitable for us for this to work. And that needs to be the goal going in. And I mean, I, we knew going in 2,500 feet square feet for a Coworking space was not,"
00:51:46,"it wasn't gonna be a lot of profit if it was profitable. But what can we do to maximize the space? And really we viewed it as how can we break even, how can the Coworking space pay the rent and allow us to be here so that all the co whatever we make from coffee is our profits. And that's gravy. And that was kind of our goal of like,"
00:52:02,"can we get some people, some guaranteed revenue on a monthly basis that we know is gonna pay the bills Yep. So that the coffee shop can be the extra ancillary thing. And so I think that that's, that would be my biggest piece of advice is tr to, to treat it as, don't try and do it all combined. Obviously there's overlap."
00:52:19,"They get the free coffee and we have little discount cards that they carry and they, you know, like a little badge that they get and there's a lot of other overlaps, but the, to, to treat them as two separate things and make sure that they're both working well Yeah. Would be the, the biggest piece of advice. Yeah. And the location has to work."
00:52:37,"I've heard operators say there's a group in Denver that owns their building. They have 60,000 feet and they had a coffee shop in it, and they were like not, they didn't have no foot traffic. And so even a 60,000 square foot building was not enough to support Right. Not enough volume that couldn't afford staff to staff it all day long. So,"
00:52:57,"and I, Yeah. Yeah. I would, I would, I would echo that in just saying, you know, I think we're, we're proof that if you want to do both, I think it makes sense to be in a location where you're going to have a lot of foot traffic for the coffee. And then that's a thing. Like we had,"
00:53:11,"we, and you're gonna have to make sacrifices. We had to sacrifice parking. Right. It's not ideal. We don't have any windows in our Coworking space, which is not ideal. Oh, that's So interesting. None. Yeah. None. Ah, Okay. But people like the vibe enough, right? You got the mix, obviously you nailed the mix."
00:53:26,"I mean, you had to adjust your dedicated desk. Okay, let's make 'em flex. Yeah. Right. But, but if you, if you do that, and if the coffee shop is done really well, and it's a location where you're gonna get lots of foot traffic and people walking by and walking in, that's really been the engine for the marketing and the people seeing the space."
00:53:42,"And if they love your coffee shop and they love being in your coffee shop and they're looking for a place to work, or they have a colleague who's like, or they need to have a meeting. So many of our meetings are, we were meeting in your coffee shop, but it's just, you know, there's, it's too packed, can We?"
00:53:55,"Right. And then we realize we could just pay you and be back, And then we pay, and then they do it one time and they're like, oh, this is fantastic. We're gonna do this every time because we also include free coffee with any room reservation. You do free, Free coffee. So why we do this? Yeah. So,"
00:54:09,"so I, so I think that if you, if you optimize and get a lot of foot traffic in there, that'll be, I mean, that's been our biggest lead generation for the Coworking space, which we was our intention going in. And we knew we had to do, because it's, our signage says Coffee and Coworking. But most people, when they're coming here,"
00:54:24,"they're coming here for coffee. Yeah. And then they see the Coworking, or they're unfamiliar with it, or they're learning about what Coworking is, and then they walk through the doors and they're like, oh, this is great. And just being so community focused too has allowed us to really build a community around other people who are community focused, you know,"
00:54:43,"other nonprofits and just people that wanna give back and are in involved in the community. And so I think we've quickly embedded ourselves and we've being known as a place like that they're for the community. And I think that that naturally brings people into, so if I, so if you do that well, I think the Coworking will follow, obviously you have to do the Coworking well too."
00:55:03,"And it's, I think, yeah. Ours is well designed and I think we we're very focused on the hospi, they're both hospitality. So it is, it's really this, it's no different. We serve people out there and then we just serve them back here and it's just serving them in a different way. Yeah. In different needs. But it's that same mentality."
00:55:19,"And I think that because we do that well, people are drawn to that and they want to be part of the space in the community that goes with it. You know, I, I don't think anyone would say, this is where, this is the ideal place for me to drive and work every day. It's hard, you know, it's not easy to get to."
00:55:34,"There's not parking. Yep. But they're in the middle of town and they're around a lot of people, and there's a really awesome coffee shop that if they do need to have a meeting, they could step out there and meet with someone, or they can invite them back into the meeting room. So, Yep. Yeah, it's worked really well. Good."
00:55:51,"Okay. Our time is up. I have to let you go. I'm sure people listening are thinking of questions that I have not asked, so we might have to Do this point. I'm always open to answering some more. Yeah, Yeah. Yeah. You'll have to keep me posted if you pursue the building of the, the Empire. Yes. Yeah."
00:56:07,"It was so good to catch up. I'm glad things are going well and you're, do it. Yeah. And, and the family's growing. Good luck with, with that addition. Yes. I'm gonna take some time off. Did you? I'm going to try to, we'll see, we'll see how that works. But I'm going to attempt to not be here as much at least."
00:56:24,"So, Yeah, totally good. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Well, thanks for having me on. It's been fun. Yeah. From the chat. Good. 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. It makes a huge difference in helping others like you find us."
00:56:46,"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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