367. Amanda Lewan, CEO of Bamboo, on Building Sustainable and Hyperlocal Coworking Communities
Resources Mentioned in this Episode:
Everything Coworking Featured Resources:
Masterclass: 3 Behind-the-Scenes Secrets to Opening a Coworking Space
TRANSCRIPTION
367. Amanda Lewan, CEO of Bamboo, on Building Sustainable and Hyperlocal Coworking Communities
00:00:00,"Welcome to the Everything Co Working podcast where every week I keep you updated on the latest trends and how to's in co working. I owned and operated co working spaces for eight years and then served as the executive director of the Global Workspace association for five years. And today I work with hundreds of operators and community managers every month, allowing me to bring you thought provoking operator case studies and inspirational interviews with industry thought leaders to help you confidently stay on top of what's important and what you can apply to your own role in the coworking industry."
00:00:44,"Welcome. I am here with Amanda Lewan. She is the CEO and co founder of Bamboo with locations, three locations now across Michigan. And we'll talk about that in a minute. So, Amanda, I didn't look up you. You were like on the podcast 1 million years ago and you've been open since 2013, so you're over 10 years old already. This is wild. And thanks for coming on the podcast."
00:01:12,"I see you pop into. You're like on LinkedIn and in the Facebook groups there are things. And you, you posted. I mean, we have connected recently and you posted on LinkedIn kind of some three. Three lessons you've learned from being open in three different markets. And I was like, oh, we got to get Amanda on the podcast to talk about this. But I love the. And you have a six month old son and that's your second baby number two, three Bambooz."
00:01:41,"Wow. Yeah, the world keeps us a little busy, but it's a lot of fun and thank you for everything you do, Jamie. We get so much value. My team feels so connected to the community through you and the work that you do in this podcast. And you know, we're all community people, so we need to lean in on each other, learn and share our experiences. Totally. Well, I love that you make time to do it because you."
00:02:03,"Yeah. You have a lot going on. We were just talking about all of Amanda's hats. Besides being among small children, you're like head of growth, you know, CEO, head of, you know, all the hats that that one wears and figure out kind of how to balance those. Okay, so tell. What. Let's start at the beginning because everybody loves to hear the story. You started in 2013, which is like pretty early days."
00:02:29,"I opened in Chicago in 2012 and I remember being like, there's like not that much on the Internet about coworking was so new. Yeah, yeah. I hadn't happened in. Right. What. So how. How did you know? Like, okay, this is like what. This is what I want to do. This Is what it's called. Tell us about the. The genesis of the first bamboo location. Yeah. So my background was in marketing."
00:02:52,"I got laid off from an advertising firm after being there for a couple of years and started working downtown. And I didn't know what I was going to do. I was freelancing. And then I worked at a community center that had. It was a nonprofit model that was like a welcome center so you could come in and learn about the city. And when they interviewed me to work there, they were like, what do you want to do in the next three to five years?"
00:03:11,"And I hate that question, but cool. You're nearly 20 in spade. Yeah. And somebody's like, I love the idea of like a community center. Like, I would love to be someone that creates that. Fast forward. We just had a couple friends who came up with this idea and my business partner, who I'm still partners with today, we convinced his dad to let us take. It was literally like 3, 3, 500 square feet."
00:03:32,"Test out the model we bought. We borrowed $5,000 from him, got Ikea furniture and paint. Very grassroots. We had no sign we were in downtown Detroit, which was going through a lot of change. And yeah, we just threw a bunch of events. That marketing background I was also, was always the personality that brought people together. So the connector. I learned, learned a lot. And I worked in. I like, worked in restaurants and hospitality all through high, high school and college."
00:03:56,"So it was kind of like this natural fusion of my skills. But we really bootstrapped it. We tested out the model for a few years and we convinced his dad, like, let us test this out since your space has been empty for 10 years and if we can generate revenue, we'll start paying on a lease. Most people probably sort of like a pop up. You're like, okay, the building's here."
00:04:14,"No one's staking it. Can we just pop in out, see how it goes and go from there? And then very quickly, we learned like one out of every two people that called us wanted a private office. And we were like, whoa, this space is too small for that. So we sort of evolved our model over time. We signed a lease, we did a long term lease, went down to Detroit."
00:04:35,"And then right in the middle of the pandemic, we decided, since my partner had a background in real estate development, and mostly because we wanted to fully control the experience. Yeah, we thought maybe we should look at owning and developing property and the location we found in the suburbs. Right before the pandemic, the numbers just made more sense. And so we ended up going down that process, closed on the building just a few months before the global pandemic hit."
00:04:59,"And it ended up being one of the best things we did because a lot of our listeners know coworking shifted more from downtown urban core to suburban locations. And we really lucked out. It's right on Main street, across from a Starbucks, really busy. And what we learned is that's the model we want to replicate going forward. We look for a pathway to ownership or ownership so we can bring in an investor or an investor group that helps with the high build out costs that you all have to negotiate with landlords on."
00:05:26,"And, and then I get to control the experience and make sure that everybody's happy and like greeted right away by our team and connected to community. And we love like being on a street corner or having a very visible location. That's like one of the biggest things I learned from opening that second location is it's just people walk in all day, every day, night and day, or drive past it."
00:05:50,"Oh, hey, I saw bamboo. I've been thinking about signing up for six months and it's just like it's we, you probably end up paying a little bit more, but it can be worth it if you find that right location. It's a marketing tool, but it is right. It's a hospitality business, but location, location, location. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you can fast forward. You know, it took quite a while for us to recover from the pandemic and navigate that opening."
00:06:12,"I mean, we were in the middle of construction, got renovating a historic building with masks on and being told that people wouldn't come back. And then I think probably like everyone who survived the pandemic, we kept thinking, okay, we'll just plan for one year. Worst case scenario, it would be like two or three years. But every market's different. I think recovery was a little slower. In Michigan. We just opened our third location 45 minutes away in Ann Arbor, which is a university town."
00:06:37,"We had a lot of partners here and we had some customers here and so that felt like a good opportunity. And our mission is to really change the culture in our region to be more innovative and inclusive. So we are looking for places where, where are the startups, where are the creatives, where do young people want to be? Where can we create change? And a university town that has had a ton of startup success has had."
00:06:57,"They were home to the first like unicorn in Michigan. And that kind of, that energy, that talent was really helpful. So we're really looking to like just expand in our state. Do a couple more. Create a more sustainable model. But happy to talk through our model a little bit more, how it's evolved. Definitely started with 3,000 square feet and $5,000. So it is possible that you do a pop up."
00:07:19,"It takes a long time. Yeah. To then get to a sustainable model. But like you all listening and Jamie, it's like, I think we're all in this because we want to create something sustainable, but also we just value community or we find this fun. Hopefully we'd better. Right. Because it's not easy enough for it to not be really fun and rewarding. So the location in Royal Oak, how many square feet is that?"
00:07:44,"Because it's great location. Sometimes it can be very hard to find the right amount of square feet and have. Yeah, 20,000 square feet. And that's something else we learned. So 20,000. Yes. Okay. Wow. Great. We keep adding square feet in our downtown location. Every like year we would bootstrap, build out a little more space because we learned that people kept growing, especially since we often have startups and small businesses at Bamboo."
00:08:08,"That's the culture we build. So they would start as a team of one, grow to 10. But they don't want to leave yet. Like just gain the leave. They don't want to. And they're like, you do everything for us. You bring, you give us furniture, you give us the coffee and the people and the great vibes. And we don't want to go build that all on our own."
00:08:24,"Too much. Yeah. And then, I mean, In Arbor, we're 25,000 square feet. We are looking at our next one, maybe a little larger, but we want to have that room for people to move. That was like, for us, that's what our customer needs. Yeah. Gives us flexibility. Although ironically. Now one of my lessons learned is like small spaces are just like in such high demand. So it's like."
00:08:42,"So even in sort of a startup environment where people are growing. Do you have some team suites in the Royal Oak space or. Yeah, usually our biggest offices are for about 10, but we have. Everybody's using things differently. So we did sell our biggest offices in Ann Arbor before opening to a 40 person company or 40 remote workers in that area. And they got two 10 person offices to rotate in and just have a landing spot and bring people back."
00:09:10,"But I think every market's slightly different. A lot of individuals and small teams are back. The bigger teams, they're still creating change. They're still shutting their leases, they're still deciding what they're doing. And they can just use coworking differently. And that's our job as the operators, is to educate these people and help them learn and then support their return to office. They're just coming back. So it's like all this change has been happening in our industry and I think we're still all navigating that and playing a role in it and figuring out how to predict a little bit."
00:09:40,"Because right when you do a build out it's not, it's, it is some maybe a little easier to change when you own the building because at least you're incented to make friends. You don't want to change it. You don't. No, totally. It's. Yeah, it's hard. So. Okay, we'll talk about. So it sounds like you, you know, you're, you're in markets where you're supporting startups that may want to grow with you."
00:10:03,"Who were the people who come in for the one person offices? Lots of remote workers. I think that's where like we're trying to figure out how much is co working shifted from big teams we used to be in every day to these hybrid smaller groups. Or like maybe you have a team with just a few remote workers and they need to meet up. Like it does sort of feel like a lot of that demand."
00:10:23,"Like our number one product is I want a one to two person office, I'll pay 500, 800 bucks a month all inclusive. And like we could sell that all day. Yeah. But we still have some space for those teams because eventually they do outgrow and move up. So it's been kind of interesting and I think it's also a lot of the larger teams come in for off sites so having like a little bit larger event space has been interesting to see."
00:10:46,"And so one thing we've been talking about, Jamie, and like I know why you want to potentially have this conversation is that now that we're at three locations we're trying to see like what is co working is so hyper local. Each community is slightly different. Our Detroit and Royal Oak locations are only 20 minutes away. So now that we have one that's an hour away, it's like we're seeing, seeing like slightly different trends."
00:11:06,"I still think that smaller office product, it is probably the number one product, just a staple like cut as many big offices, build smaller if you can. But yeah, I don't know, it's just interesting. So we're kind of in this space, we're looking for those trends and deciding what is hyperlocal to that community. And what is now like the norm post pandemic. Now that we're a few years kind of out of that change, I'm interrupting for a second."
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00:13:21,"forward slash masterclass. So how do you get to know a market like Ann Arbor when you don't live there? Great question. Our investor and our architect designer who partner with us on Royal Oak are from there. And Even though it's 45 minutes away, there's a lot of cultural interest in the two cities. Detroit, you know, put the world on wheels, helped build the middle class, has this like maker and entrepreneurial spirit."
00:13:45,"Ann Arbor University of Michigan is like one of the top universities for talent. And it just seemed like it was an under. It is a smaller market, but it was very underbuilt from what we could see in a lot of the co working spaces. Didn't have private office product. Yep. Our model evolved to private office product being the number one stabilizer of the model. I think you've also like broken this down in your classes and just how important it is because they pay more, they stay longer."
00:14:12,"Our people, we think now post pandemic are staying up to three years. It really just depends on their company. And what they need. But if you've got a customer that'll pay 3,500amonth for three years, it balances out the $60 a month virtual office customer and makes it more accessible for small businesses and startups. So when you're looking around, we're like, wow, you know, we know the market. We have some relationships."
00:14:34,"We think it's underbuilt. The only spaces we saw doing coworking didn't have private offices. And we still like to be in downtown walkable areas or suburban. Like, our cities in Michigan are a lot overlooked by the weworks of industrious. So we're looking at how can we be that regional leader and build those bridges. So it's kind of a mix of like, our customers are there, our partners are there."
00:14:54,"We've been building relationships for years there. As we look at other markets in Michigan, it's like, what other cities are big enough that could maybe sustain that and are missing that product because that product stabilizes the business model and everybody's model is different. But I kind of do feel like a lot of people who start courting spaces, they start small, maybe too small. They don't know to build more private offices or."
00:15:15,"It's scary. You're leasing seven offices for your first time. I remember the first bamboo was like we had seven offices and I was like, who's going to buy these? And then we magically lease them all up right before opening. And now it's like the number one thing we try to sell. So it's just interesting. And also like educating people in a new market since they don't have private offices."
00:15:35,"We've been having to teach people on if you're a bigger team, it is more affordable than getting a lease and. And having. Helping them understand that math. Right. It's a little bit of a. More flexible. Yeah. So probably a better fit for you, especially if you don't know what you're doing yet or you're just coming back together or you're supporting hybrid and remote work. And so it's like this really interesting time I think we have in an industry to like figure out new models, but it still is really hyper local to each city in each community."
00:16:02,"I think. Yeah. Which I also think is an advantage for operators like you versus an industrious. Like, they're not. They. They don't really have the, the. I don't think the infrastructure to like really get to understand a market. I mean, they'll do some work and think like, okay, that looks like a Good market but you know, to, to really localize it and really dive into the community. I also think for people listening Ann Arbor, I happened to do a feasibility study on the market and I reached out to you about it."
00:16:27,"It was another building owner who wanted, you know, was thinking about turning the building into Flex. And I knew nothing about Ann Arbor and came to the same conclusion as you. I was like, this is so interesting. It's a great market and it's got right the, you know, innovation college campus, good household income. Like the types of things like we look for remote workers and. Exactly. The supply just didn't match what we see sell in terms of modern day co working."
00:16:54,"And I think part of that is, is right when people build a product, like it's just really hard. You've got a lease, it's too expensive to change it. And so but for people listening, like there's opportunity for, for that still. Like great markets like Ann Arbor that are underserved. Oh yeah, it took us three, three years to get the building, I think. And landlords, when you're in a market like that where you have one dominant player like a university, just sit on their property and wait to sell to the university."
00:17:22,"So we had to, I think honestly the pandemic had to like empty out some buildings for them to be like fine. Yeah, I think, I think that's a challenge of a smaller market. And I'm sure everyone listening if you're exploring real estate, you know this like there's only going to be a couple landlords and then if there's anybody like a billion dollar institution, it's hard to compete with that if someone thinks they can sell their building there."
00:17:44,"So anyway, just some thoughts and no, I love it. Take like years to find a location too. But you bought the building in Ann Arbor, this one we have a lease to own structure option so that we can just get in, fill the space and then do that and royal out the purchase and the next couple ones we're looking at purchase or we have a potential management option we're looking at and Jamie and I were talking about that and figuring out if that's a viable option."
00:18:11,"But ideally our thought on the purchase is that it helps, it helps us bring in investors and create a model that's a little more sustainable potentially. But I think the downside is you have to be really committed to that local community because you're doing like long term loans, guaranteeing that or someone's guaranteeing that. So you do have to be really, really confident. I think in that location. Yeah."
00:18:32,"But I think I actually learned from the podcast that owning operating is pretty popular in Europe. I think you had mentioned that or someone on your podcast did. So I think that is a model that exists elsewhere and I think we might see it more potentially now. We. If you are in a market where you still have empty real estate. Yeah. Still have landlords that are slow to move."
00:18:53,"Depends. I think it's going to be covering. But we saw an opportunity to like can we get in a little cheaper. Yep. And acquire a property in a couple new cities and make it a more valuable offer to an investor. Yep. And so your inveterate. Are your investors investing in only the asset or also the operating company right now? Only the asset. But they like trust us. They like the idea that we're managing it and like building that and they share our values and want to make an impact to community or see their downtown area redeveloped."
00:19:23,"They're usually, they're like a stakeholder. I think too they're not just investing just for real estate. Like that's ideal for us is that you share some values and care about the impact. Co working does generate impact. You guys have members every day, growing companies, spending money at the coffee shop down the street, partnering with each other. It's hard to capture that impact and tell a story around it."
00:19:45,"But I do think people, your local cities and your states and like your stakeholders should care about that impact that you create. Yeah. 100%. I mean think about even just the money spent. Right. If everybody's working at home, which is not a good choice for a lot of people. They're not, you know, lunch, coffee, you know. Right. All the things. And hiring, growing to your point. Yeah, I know."
00:20:08,"I love that. Are your connections. Like we have members who found co founders and started companies and they're now like at series A, series B stage because they were like present. But you all know not everybody participates in the community too. So Jeannie, you and I were talking. We're talking about like a couple lessons learned. Definitely. Like lesson number one is just how hyper local it is. Like even if you're an hour away, it's a different city, could be a different community, could have different trends."
00:20:34,"And your job is to learn those trends and try to build the product to fit that trend. Totally. I was going to say before you make all the assumptions about it. Yes. Yeah, I, yeah, I think that's, that's a hundred percent true. Even the growth when. And this was a long time ago for me too. But when we moved, when I had a space in Chicago and then opened in Palo Alto."
00:20:54,"And it just didn't. I knew that, you know, I learned a bunch of lessons and thought, okay, I figured this out. And Palo Alto is full of startups who wanted growth. Yeah. And I didn't have it. I didn't have the bigger suites because I knew, like, okay, this is the product that sells. And they were so disappointed because they just wanted to. Right. Stay and grow. And I was like, okay, yeah, I can't."
00:21:15,"Can't do that. And I just didn't see it coming. I didn't understand, like, that difference in the market. So I think it's hard to know. Yep. Unless you have. Right. But you're. You're trying to create the right relationships to really understand those markets and do the right due diligence as possible. I sort of still feel like we could always do more. But I talk to everybody. I'll be like."
00:21:36,"And it's hard because you need the building of their contract if you're purchasing it or developing it. And you only have a certain time to, like, get up and decide. Right. You don't want to. We're sensitive in Detroit. People announce projects all the time. That never happens. So, like, we try to build those relationships. Gut check everything. Would this be a good location? Why? Why not? Would you park here?"
00:21:55,"What's parking like? Funny story. I had a member in Detroit who used to take a bus from Ann Arbor to Detroit every day. And he'd walk past our Ann Arbor building, going to his bus, and he, like, asked me, he said, did you? There's this building in my neighborhood. It would just be so good for co working. But I was negotiating with the landlord. It wasn't under contract yet."
00:22:14,"My team was like, Amanda, you have. You cannot tell anybody. And I'm not good at keeping secrets. So I had to not tell that member. And then was the one that was the building. He was walking by our building every day. He's like, oh, I would just love to go cowork there. And I'm like, oh, yeah, I'll have to look at it. But then when we did finally close on our negotiations, he joined a launch committee."
00:22:36,"I put together, like, 12 people who know the community. Just a gut check. Like, is this relevant? What should we be doing? Who should. Can you be on for two years? Right. We don't want to ask too much. Wow. Just once or twice. It's kind of social and fun, too, because they all. Some of them know each other, some of them don't. And then they can gut check, like, are we being relevant?"
00:22:56,"Are we adding value? Hey, you get free membership for two years or like a free event rental or two, and then you get to use it. And generally they just also care about the mission and, like, want to see something like this in their community. So that's what we did in Ann Arbor that I'm hoping we can do in other cities. I think it's always hard to join a committee and get, like, value from that."
00:23:14,"So you have to balance being asked people. But that was also what we tried to do to, like, gut check a lot of our assumptions. Okay, that's brilliant. I love it. Well, tie that into. So one of your lessons learned is about community. And so the launch committee probably plays into that. I mean, I love that I would want to be on the launch committee because you're probably meeting others, like, really, you know, connected people who maybe know people on your committee in Ann Arbor."
00:23:40,"Well, yeah, so the lesson I. Or it's kind of like a mantra I've been saying lately. Community. People always find each other. You value community. You usually find other people. And those are your people. Those are your. Usually your early adopters or you're like your super fans or super users. They're going to launch. Like, we have some people who regularly host events, like weekly or monthly, and they're just doing it to add value, and they don't."
00:24:01,"They're not trying to be transactional. They're trying to actually build relationships and help people. And that's the kind of energy you want in a community space. Everybody has different intentions. That's not going to be everybody. But I do think community people find each other. People who value community find each other. And so on that launch committee, we had people who are like founders who are community builders or someone who runs the local incubator in town whose job is to create business development in the community."
00:24:29,"She's been like a godsend helping us so much. So you kind of know probably who some of those leaders are. You could think about it like influencers, but I think they're just community builders too, whether they have a different. Their own business or their other role. And you're sort of inviting them to co create with you and adding some value to them as well. Like we've made some intros or invited them to come speak at our other locations, which has been really fun."
00:24:54,"Yeah, it's so smart because. Right. They. I mean, again, yeah, they're not. Maybe they're influencers, but they. They know people and they know the Kinds of people who want to be a part of what you're building. I mean that is too like, oh no, that wouldn't probably work here or. Right. Yeah. Or like that's a broker you definitely want to work with. Like that's the one broker in town that's going to be really helpful and be engaged."
00:25:19,"Like those are the kind of things you're looking for. Yeah. So that, and then also this is going to sound so cheesy, going deep. Bring it on. They also do feel like everything you need is in your community once you're building it. So we've had, we've been like tapping into that. I found a mentor that I built, did something, I volunteered and helped him with an event. Like seven years ago, he came to Bamboo's grand opening."
00:25:43,"He then gave me some advice on our next location and then I hired him as a consultant and he has successfully, potentially gotten us a grant to help us make that location happen. And so like oftentimes the people coming to your events, people in your community, like our accounting is outsourced to a local accountant that started out of Bamboo. He's immigrant owned founder, like paired up with another person."
00:26:03,"Now they have a team of like 15 that actually outgrew us, but we're still one of their clients. They do the accounting of bookkeeping for all of our locations. You know, we had a lawyer that and like, you know, sometimes you can't do business with everyone or like, you know, but oftentimes if you ask, sometimes that's right there in your network. So we've been really leaning into our community and trying to balance that to like now we have multiple locations."
00:26:26,"How do you keep that community culture authentic so you don't become, you know, I always compare co working and E co working as like the local coffee shop versus the Starbucks. Yeah, you know, you know what you're getting in a WeWork, you know what you're getting in a Starbucks. But it's that local coffee shop. That authenticity of the brand and the experience and the people, that's what makes it really special."
00:26:45,"So now one of our challenges too is how we have this great networking community. If we open two hours away, what does that look like? How does it stay connected and how does those values like transfer over? So yeah, we were talking to Jimmy and I have talked offline on like growing from three. You know, our goal is to get to five eventually. And it's like a whole other kind of challenge there now too."
00:27:06,"Like what has work that you can replicate but still keep that authentic community. I don't know. We're gonna have to figure out more strategies like a launch committee to help. But yeah, I mean, a launch, you know, a launch team. Your launch committee is super smart too, because you don't have to deploy. I mean, you're hiring people in these markets obviously, but you don't. Yeah, some brands will have a launch team who moves around as they open new locations in different markets."
00:27:30,"Then you're moving humans. You know, I'm the moving human right now. Well, I was just gonna say, I mean, speaking of which, so you're in Ann Arbor today, which is an from home to. You know, you're still ramp up period. So you're checking in and. Okay, so slightly personal question. Would you have two small kids, three locations? How do you do it? I don't know. I do have a really supportive partner."
00:27:54,"My husband who Jamie met, he's an advisor. He started and sold a company before, so we're an entrepreneurial couple. That adds a whole nother layer though, because sometimes I'm a morning person, he's a night person. I'll be like, my brain is dead at 10pm, I'm going to bed. I have a baby. I might nurse at 5 or 6 in the morning. And he'll be like, he found our potential fourth location, which has been a difficult one."
00:28:17,"So I always remind him, you found that one. But he'll be like, Amanda, I found a building. It's like midnight. I'm like, I'm asleep. He thinks I'm like, hey, there's a set of residence when you have a partner that you are in a like marriage with involved. But also he brings a lot of free skills to the table and passion and wants to support. I have a great business partner that started with us 10 years ago."
00:28:39,"His dad took that risk to let us test the model out. And he balances me out on the construction and real estate side, having mentors and friends. And honestly, I just focused on sleep the last six months, like. And I did take a small maternity leave. I came back at like 12, 13, 14 weeks. I have a great team and I try to have my team really lead each location, which helps a lot."
00:29:01,"And you know, it's just not perfect. But you have, you have stages and seasons and we're in the two Kiddos season. And actually, in some ways it feels harder and easier with two kids because she's two and a half and he's six months. So she is obsessed with her brother and wants to help and hang out with him. She literally made him do a reading circle at like 8 in the morning."
00:29:21,"I was trying to get him out the door and she was holding his hand and I'm like, he's six months old, he does not know what is going on. So there's no perfect answer. I think you just need, you know, you need to like find support in a village either way, you know, if you're building a family or building a company and sleeping was like my big focus and sleep training."
00:29:41,"We're kind of a sleep training house. So trying to, trying to control things but even though you can't fully control it. Yep. You gotta let go a little bit. Yeah, yeah. I love the focus on sleep. Nothing goes well when you're tired. No, you can't. And like you just gotta take care of yourself sometimes. And I actually had an unexpected injury a week or two ago. I saw that on LinkedIn."
00:30:02,"Yeah, I had to be out for a week resting and I was like, honestly it was kind of good. It was the most sleep I got. Everything healed and I got to detach from like the day to day. And it's hard as an operator, it's hard as a business owner. A lot of us, you know, maybe you're like me and you get high energy from being in the space and being with the community, but sometimes you do need to take that self care."
00:30:26,"And they actually had a lot of benefits while I was healing which was really nice. Good. Hey there. I'm jumping in again. This time I'm speaking to those of you that 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 co working space operators to create their own training and development material to support their community managers."
00:30:59,"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."
00:31:31,"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."
00:31:54,"So I'm 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. So we provide some done for you resources like Google business posts, detailed event ideas, etc."
00:32:22,"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 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."
00:32:55,"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. So we have some of the. I'm just going to 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 event swipe files Our sales and marketing modules we have tour training."
00:33:30,"We have the training on the full co working sales funnel so they understand what that looks like. 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. Oh. These are some of our best utilized topics. Demystifying the process of letting your coworking members use your address for their Google business list."
00:33:56,"How to close a tour operations modules, how to set up automations, 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 which is one of the fan favorites of the group and the Slack group."
00:34:33,"So if you have any questions at all about the program, don't hesitate to reach out. You can learn more and register@everyTHING coworking.com communitymanager now back to our episode. Okay, well let's can we talk about your team really quickly? So three locations you Said you outsource accounting and marketing? Yeah, yeah. So what does your location team look like? Who's running while Amanda's recovering? Amanda's actually, no joking, we do have, we have a."
00:35:08,"We call them community directors. They are essentially community managers, but they came up with that title because they felt like it was a little bit more authentic to what they were doing. So community directors and community coordinators. So one full time leader, they're really over the office. Sales and relationship building, managing the team, ensuring high level day to day is running smooth. Community coordinators or associates is what you might hear them called."
00:35:35,"They're managing most of the facility day to day stocking, keeping things smooth, checking in on things, helping tag team. And oftentimes they're sharing some of that front desk situation. But they're planning and helping execute events. They're doing some light sales. They might sign up co working or day passes, but the majority of the main accounts are under that director level or that manager level. So each location has."
00:36:01,"In Detroit we have two. In Royal Oak we have two and a half. So we added a part time person that can flex and help with events rentals on nights and weekends. We also have an outsource event team that we can call in for bigger events if we need to, which is great. So each location, if they're 20 to 30, 000 square feet, we probably need two, two and a half humans."
00:36:21,"I've heard other models, I know we're a little more heavily staffed, but I just think one, I, I worry about one person because you get sick and like, oh, you can't do one person for 20,000. No, in, yeah, in like there's a culture thing there of having the team. I think you burn people out. I mean it's just, I mean to your point, the sales versus facilities, I mean that's such a natural with some overlap in terms of."
00:36:46,"Yeah, like obviously someone got my kitchen. The director's making coffee and checking the printer and totally fine with that. But they know that they're mostly on the higher level, sales and relationship building. So that's kind of our model now. And we do bonus everyone for sales and we have some fun things like we all hit the quarterly membership bonus. Everyone gets the bonus. So we try to do some of that too."
00:37:07,"And just to keep my husband's incentives aligned. But also like we want to pay our people higher quality. Like we want them to like be in charge and keep the space full and like create community at a local level. So that's kind of the thought we've put into that model and then hopefully when we get to the 3 to 5 range, I can hire a GM or a director of operations."
00:37:28,"I'm the main full time operator overseeing and managing the team of nine. So. Or is it 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 team at eight. So that's my goal is to kind of start building that. Not corporate leadership, but one or two leaders to help and balancing. We were just talking about this not hiring too much because we're you know, trying to balance things sustainable and profitable too."
00:37:51,"Yeah, yeah, I love that. So where do most of your leads come from? Very organic like word of mouth and Google search. So we think because it's hyper local, you're searching co working in Detroit and hopefully finding private office in Detroit and finding us. Or you're coming to an event, you've heard about us, you've had a few event experiences or a friend has told you about an event."
00:38:15,"So we're very events driven. We try to do one to two events a week. Our team plans one to three events a month and then a lot of times they partner and sponsor just to keep foot traffic coming in and, and also build community and add value. So mostly it's through Google search, word of mouth and events. We want to start building a broker program. I just listened to an episode on your podcast about that."
00:38:39,"Probably heaven clutter at the brokers, but looking for other like strategic things as we get more capacity. Yeah. So you do the one million cups. You do some kind of ongoing founders First Fridays. You've got some events that just kind of keep folks like coming in and eventually you'll wear them down and they'll join in terms of revenue. Are events an important part of your revenue and is that it's really secondary or even tertiary now that we're like in Ann Arbor, we do have a rooftop patio and a 50 person classroom space."
00:39:16,"Oh wow. It's been a little nice bump in revenue for events, but we mostly focus on office and membership with events being like a secondary focus. However, I think as we other locations might have more larger event spaces that might grow and be something we really think about more and a perfect world. I'd love to have food and beverage and all that stuff but I think we're a little too small to add that."
00:39:39,"We do have. We went really went bougie with the beverage bar. My husband picked out sparkling butter. Okay, nice. All that kind of stuff to make that feel really nice. So. But we don't have like food and beverage like we don't bring you a coffee cart or have the food on site. So that's something that. That would be fun to do. If we have bigger facilities, I think that would be great."
00:40:03,"So adding those couple, like smaller investments, that could maybe make an impact. You think we try to do too. So we'll have cold brew coffee, sparkling water, cappuccino machine, but not like the super massive expensive ones. Small but a good experience still 100%. Yes, that makes sense. I think we hit your three main lessons learned. I mean, if you had to look back, I feel like I want to harness a little bit more of your experience because you're 11 years in three locations, a couple more potentially on the way."
00:40:41,"Well, one other quick question about funding. What it must be your Royal Oak location. You did use SBA funding. We did the SBA loan. We did our SBA loan too, for the construction in our. Okay. In our potential fourth location, we actually are tapping a state capital program. So you could look to your city or state and see do they have federal dollars? Do they have state dollars?"
00:41:04,"We have a challenge in this one location where we're getting it very cheap, but it requires a lot of investment. So we have gap financing issue where we need some more dollars to close the gap on the real estate development. And we were able from that expert that came to the opening that I used, that I volunteered for seven years ago, helped us get secure a potential grant and start to like."
00:41:24,"So there are people out there that can help you figure these things out. It's tough. That one's very complex. I don't know if I'll do one like that again if it works out, but if it does, we'll have to break it apart on another podcast episode. So sometimes corporate grants, it's hard, but you can look for it. Sometimes it's the landlord, sometimes it's an investor. The asset for us helps make that a little more attractive for an investor."
00:41:46,"Yeah. So those are kind of the main. And then customers like. If you can pre sell. It's hard, but especially if you're. We try to pre sell as much as we can before opening a location that's hard to balance with construction and timeline, but that can be a good revenue source as well. Cash flow. Cash flow. Cash flow. Yes, 100%. I do think, I mean, to your point, post pandemic, owning in certain markets is becoming, you know, maybe a little more achievable as, you know, landlords are, you know, look okay with letting go of attractive buildings and I think, you know, access to SBA funding is becoming easier only because there's more education around for the lenders."
00:42:31,"Because I remember, I think, yeah, I reached out to you, Jimmy, in the middle of a royal load project. Yeah. Our lender told us to get SBA financing and he was like, oh, one co working space did it in Michigan. We found out that was like number six ever that got approved. They did not know what the co working model was. It was very difficult. It can be very hard, but."
00:42:52,"But you helped connect us to someone else who did in the industry, who shared. And yeah, I think there's been several more now, too. So that does help, because SBA financing is designed to help small businesses and fill that gap with riskier capital. Yeah, I think so. Those three lessons were like, co working is very hyper local. There's some trends that carry over, but every market could be different for us."
00:43:12,"The small private offices are like, number one in demand. And then community people always find each other, like the one million Cups group, like, you know, and creating that energy of we're really collaborating, I think is important from the beginning for every location. Yeah, I love it. Well, thank you for posting that to LinkedIn and prompting a check on the podcast. It was awesome to reconnect and, yeah, thanks for taking the time."
00:43:35,"You've got so much going on. I appreciate your. That's how I always feel about you. I'm like, how is Amanda popping in here to share whenever. Sometimes I'm just worried. I'm like, what's going. I also Lehman. I mean, I get so much community too. Right. I want to hear, you know, how someone figured out their next location. Or like, you know, I might go to the operators conference."
00:43:56,"That'll be in LA from Jerome, because I just want to learn. You know, I tried. I went to Juicy for my first time last year, which is wild. I'm probably going to go to that every year because I just think you learn so much from other people and what they're doing, no matter what market they're in. Yep. 100%. Yeah. And what's next? Were they. Yeah, all the things."
00:44:13,"Well, good. Well, I look forward to seeing you again in person sometime soon. Thank you, Amanda, and thank you, Jamie. Thanks, everybody, for listening. 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. If you'd like to learn more about our education and coaching programs, head over to everythingcoworking.com. we'll see you next week."
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