373. Building Global Community: Inside Emanuele Sisti’s Innovation Campus Journey
Resources Mentioned in this Episode:
Everything Coworking Featured Resources:
Masterclass: 3 Behind-the-Scenes Secrets to Opening a Coworking Space
TRANSCRIPTION
373. Building Global Community: Inside Emanuele Sisti’s Innovation Campus Journey
00:00:00,"Welcome to the Everything Coworking podcast where every week I keep you updated on the latest trends and how to's in coworking. I owned and operated coworking spaces for eight years and then served as the Executive Director of the Global Workspace association for five years. And today I work with hundreds of operators and community managers every month, allowing me to bring you thought provoking operator case studies and inspirational interviews with industry thought leaders to help you confidently stay on top of what's important and what you can apply to your own role in the coworking industry."
00:00:44,"Welcome to the Everything Coworking podcast. This is your host, Jamie Russo. Thank you for joining us. If you are not yet a subscriber, hit that follow button so that you can join us same time, same place, every single week. We have a guest today, Emanuele Sisti. I am not doing justice with my lack of accent to his name. He operates in Spain and Italy and shares some great nuggets about his experience, how he serves a very international group in his coworking space, some of his lessons learned and advice for new operators."
00:01:17,"So I can't wait to dive in. Before we dive into his story, we have an exciting event coming up. If you are a podcast listener, you know that I am kind of obsessed with you getting Google reviews. They're really critical because roughly 80% of your organic leads probably come through your Google business profile and when potential members show up to that profile, they are looking at your reviews."
00:01:46,"Are they positive, are there, are they recent? And do you have a lot of them? So they're pretty critical in terms of driving tours and memberships. But we all know this struggle. Asking for reviews can feel awkward and keeping up with getting consistent reviews every single month is just one more thing on a long to do list. We actually host a Google Review Challenge every year in our Community Manager University program and we will have folks get like 50 new reviews in a month."
00:02:19,"But then I suspect what happens is that excitement sort of trails off. And one of the things that we really want to help you with is automating those reviews because if you can automate the process, you can still keep it authentic. You can still ask personally when it's important to do that, but the only way to to ensure consistency is to automate it. So we're hosting the Reputation Accelerator Challenge, which is mostly focused on Google, but there are other reputation platforms like Yelp, et cetera that you might be managing as well depending on what market you're in."
00:02:58,"We just want to make it really easy for you to level up your online Presence. We're doing this the week of January 13th so you can start the new year off with systems in place to just kick it in 2025. I like to see at least two new reviews every single month. And what's becoming more important, which is why automation is so helpful, is that you have reviews not only for your coworking space in general, but also reviews that talk about your meeting rooms because meeting room demand has gone up over time."
00:03:30,"And your mail program so that you have testimonials for your mail landing page, which we teach in our Moneymaker mailbox program. So this will help you get reviews across the board. So we're going to take five days starting January 13th and we're going to go through a simple system to automate your reviews. So if you don't want to, no more chasing down members, no awkward ask, just a step steady stream of feedback because you're doing amazing work."
00:04:01,"You're just not asking for the testimonials. And I totally have been there and know what that's like and having to just do the one offs every month and check in with your team and your team can do the challenge. If you want your team to go through this 100%. If you are in our community manager university program, our operator membership or our startup school coaching program, then we will come to you with a direct link to register for this."
00:04:28,"You do not need to register separately. So this is on us, it'll be included in your program. So the system we teach is going to be easy to implement and designed specifically for you, a coworking space owner or manager. Again, five days. We're going to do a live interactive session every single day for like 45 minutes and then you're gonna have a little bit of homework and you're gonna be off to the races."
00:05:02,"So we're gonna have some things that you'll need to make a little bit of time for. So try to schedule a little bit time in your calendar each day, five days and then you'll be done, you'll be automated and ready to go with automated sequences, emails, templates. We're gonna provide all those things for you. So and you can use the system that you already have. So if you're using ActiveCampaign Mailchimp, we are also going to offer a trial for a platform that we really like that I am using called co level and we have our."
00:05:34,"Some of our coaching clients are on the platform and this is all set up and automated in that system already. So if you want the opportunity to see how that works, what that looks like. This is going to be your chance. We're doing a $1 trial on that platform. So if you just want to get in there, see what it looks like and run the reputation challenge in there, it's really plug and play."
00:05:57,"If you're doing it in your own platform, it'll just take a little bit more work. You'll have to set up the automations yourself again, like in a mailchimp, activecampaign, HubSpot, etc. But this will be the accountability you need, the templates you need, and the company of other coworking space operators and community managers so you can get all the details, get your spot. It's 27 bucks is the whole week."
00:06:22,"All the templates, all the instruction, etc. Everything will be recorded and we're putting it in. We use a platform that has learning hubs, so there will be a hub just for you where you can access all the recordings and worksheets. The hub will only be up for 30 days, so we're going to put a little time sensitivity on it so that you actually get this done if you can't make all the calls and if you miss Monday, but you can come Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday."
00:06:47,"Great. Do what you can and will the times and all that good stuff will be on the page. You can get all the details@the reputationchallenge.com and then once you register, we'll get an invite to the hub and we'll get those calls on your calendar. So we hope you join us again. January 13th, we're kicking off and it's $27. The price is going to go up at the beginning of January."
00:07:15,"So if you're listening to this, you can find the link in the show notes and just click it and register there. We hope to see you there. Welcome. I have a special guest with me today and thank you to him for recording after hours. He is located in Spain but he is Italian. So my guest. I'll see if I can get the accent right. Emanuele, not no good accent."
00:07:40,"Sisti, thank you for joining me. You are the founder of Innovation Campus which has locations in Spain and Italy. So I can't wait to hear all about your business. So tell us about your background and how did you get into coworking? How did you start the Innovation Campus? Okay. I'm an engineer, so completely different background. Background let's say. And I moved to Spain in 2012 to work as an engineer in Malaga, beautiful city in the south of Spain, on the beach, beautiful weather, so after a few years of a job, I say okay, it's time to do something different here."
00:08:19,"And the city was already more and more attractive for people, especially from the north of Europe, uk, Holland, Germany, Scandinavia, were moving here to set up their own business. It's really attractive, it's quite international, way connected. So with my job I got a kind of sabbatical to think about business. Meanwhile, I started using coworking space in the city to. To work, to get a network, etc. At that time, coworking Zimana were mostly flats with Ikea furniture."
00:08:57,"So what's that? And so I said okay, maybe it's time to raise the bar doing something better. And so I decided to open my own coworking space, Innovation Campus. So I mean create something with a better standard. So we had, we started wooden table, rough table with iron legs, a bit more stylish. And I call it Innovation Campus because in my deal was supposed to be the place where people will join together not just to work, but also to develop their own business to learn about the new trends in technology, business, marketing, whatever."
00:09:39,"So that's why they named Innovation Campus. And so how it started, it's been six years now. Things have changed a lot in six years in coworking in the world in general with COVID everything, you know. So yeah, has been a great tip so far. So it looks like you have three locations. Talk about that you started in Spain, but you have two locations in. Well, tell me about your other location."
00:10:07,"So I make sure I have this right. I started with a small location, was 250 square meters in square feet. Yeah, so that's. I think it's two, 500 square feet. So yeah, small. But yeah, yeah, it wasn't about 26 desks, five small office spaces and one meeting room. Okay. And then it was 2018, then things start working and my idea was always to do something bigger. So as soon as the first space was filmed, I got another space, small one at the beginning, but with a big rooftop terrace."
00:10:44,"So it was our second location was a tiny space but with big, big terrace. So still, since many of our customers we always focus on international customers. Even if we are a business pain. Our main target was international customers. Both Spanish, but mostly international. And having the terrace in south of Spain for a coworking space is really attractive for people coming from the northern. So that's irresistible."
00:11:10,"That's why we took space which was with the first part of our current second space. And then just after Covid 2021, I had the feeling that people, things Were changing. The coworking industry was big companies were moving in the beginning. At the beginning, our main customers were small entrepreneurs and then startups as most of coworking spaces. Instead, during the COVID just after the COVID more and more companies started getting in touch saying okay guys, we have a big office in Malaga."
00:11:48,"Now we want to give it out and have a smaller team, more flexible and coworking. So okay, feeling this the trend we decided to. I decided to make this step and get an entire building the city centers was a big step for us and get some partners in the company to of course, with the investment. And so we opened our third location which was the biggest one, which is now our main location in Malaga."
00:12:17,"During the years we have expand in the second location. We closed down the first one, which was too small for. Yeah the business. And at the same time we tried also to grow internationally. Since I'm Italian. Also part of the business partners are Italians. We try to expand Twitter because it's almost easy for us to spend Twitter and Spain because of connections and knowledge of the territory. But we are trying to expand with a low budget because we are still a small company."
00:12:52,"So we open up Ancona in Italy by itself franchising and through a collaboration with a company was because of remote work. And now they are just extra space in their. Their office. Yeah, we are over another. Another location in Sardinia. Okay, let's say expansion in Italy. It's through creative partnerships in collaboration. So yeah, no, that's. I mean it's. That's really interesting. Okay, so. So how many square feet is your current location in Spain?"
00:13:32,"Okay. In Spain, which is the spaces we manage direct manage directly. We have in total 2,300 square meters. Okay, you can make the conversion. I think it's roughly times 10 to get to or wait times 10 or 100 anyway. Got it. Okay, so which is not huge compared to other big cities by Malaga, which is a still a second layer city and with an historical city center lack of big spaces."
00:14:05,"We used to be till last year, I think the biggest coworker in the city. Now Banagat, as I told you, has been growing in terms of the tourism and business. And now big chains are coming, landing, coming to the city. So big players are arriving with opening up big spaces. Now we have proper competitors in the city. But last year we used to be the biggest coworking area."
00:14:32,"Okay, so is it good news to you that there's more supply coming, that more people know about coworking or how do you feel about the expansion of it in Your city, it's competition. So on the side, as you said, more people and company are getting aware of the coworking concept of flexible workspace. Also they rise the level. So because they open of course beautiful space with high fees."
00:15:04,"So they also allow us to increase our fees to, to, to adapt. But at the same time they, they also offer really beautiful spaces. So. And a few years ago we could be not, not relaxed, but we don't need to be on top of improve the space every month. Every six months. Now. Yeah, it's a, it's always a continuous competition. Also the time we need to get the customer."
00:15:32,"Remember two years ago when we got the building, our main building, we signed the contract mid June, end of July was completely reset. So one month it was 1500 square meters completely reset. Now you see every customer pass by, they check the space, then they go all around to the other coworkers. They're shopping. Yeah. They have much more options. So is getting more, more competitive to also to acquire customers."
00:16:03,"Yeah. Yeah. I'm interrupting for a second. Are you working on starting a coworking space? I often emphasize how important the planning stage is. You've heard me say most unrecoverable issues happen well before you open your doors. And they are related to the size of your space, your real estate deal and a few other things. If you think you are going to pick your favorite coworking space and reverse engineer what you think you see happening in there and then pick your own paint colors and your favorite furniture, you are in for a surprise."
00:16:45,"This business is really about making the right fundamental decisions that align with your individual personal and financial goals. So we want to help you avoid the mistakes that a lot of operators make in planning and launching that can really set you back in terms of time and finances. So we have got your back. We have created a free training to help you really get behind the three key decisions that we think are the most critical for you to get right when you're designing your coworking business."
00:17:22,"The model, not the colors, the model. And these insights come from years of operating, designing the model for two different locations, and then my work with hundreds of operators as they work on their businesses. So grab your spot in our training class. You can watch it anytime. It's totally on demand. And start your coworking journey with confidence and the right strategies in place. You can grab that training at everything coworking.com"
00:17:54,"forward/masterclass. So how have you adjusted your sales process since you opened now that there's more competition? What does that look like for you. Yeah, it's, it's a find your, your niche. You know what you can. Because especially in our case, we are, I will say we are kind of hybrid because we are big but same as many big players. But we don't have the economical capacity of those big players."
00:18:22,"But on the other side we are still small companies who are quite more flexible than the big players. So we try to be, to adapt to customer needs to be more flexible in terms of more accommodating. Yeah. We thought giving somehow the same services but in a different way. In a more friendly and flexible way. Yeah, yeah. Which is right. The benefit of being local and independent. So you offer."
00:18:49,"So you have private offices. Tell us what else. Meeting rooms and then like Flex desk, dedicated desk, kind of. What are your products look like? Yeah, we all have all the other products so they can get or the one you mentioned. We have. Okay. So. And okay. Nowadays let's say in terms of revenue stream 70 more than 70% is private offices because we have some big companies in."
00:19:18,"So of course they, they bring the most of revenues. Let's say 15% is coworking both flex and dedicated desk. Another 10 more or less it's meeting rooms and the rest is services from virtual office gathering or whatever's happening. Yeah, that's right. Okay. We have almost 100% occupancy in private offices. So now our target for next year especially is to increase the revenue coming from services meeting rooms which are in high demand now again and they find out new possible revenue streams."
00:19:55,"Yep, got it. Yep. Do you open up your meeting rooms to outside rentals or are they only for many? You do, that's, that's why them excited. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know coworking businesses are hard because you build them and they're, they're kind of fixed. Right. You have, you have what you have and to your point competition comes in and you have to think about like well how are we positioned and what do we do that's different because we can't really change the physical space."
00:20:22,"I mean sometimes you can expand but sometimes you can change the wall, you know, change the walls, add offices or the object is always to maximize the space you have even if you spend it's extra costs. So you have to find a way to get the max of what you have so the cost there and increase the revenue. Yeah, yep. That is the challenge. So where do you tend, where do your members tend to come from?"
00:20:52,"I'm guessing you don't run ads. Is it events, word of mouth? What's how do your members find you? Well, I mean if we talk about co workers, let's say so, so it's, it's Google, Google Maps and Google also AdWords and Word of mouth. Because we have a big community. We really work on community. We host event, we host. Organize events every week. So for people who are in my already, it's community."
00:21:18,"It's a, it's a good marketing channel. And for people who land to Malaga will hide to Malaga, it's Google which is now one of the best tools, let's say marketing tools for companies the same. But yeah, mostly it's Google and platform list. So they get to us through third party platforms. What's an example of a third party platform that they come from? What okay, in Spain, for instance there is Coworking Spain which is the main directory for Spanish Coworking Spain."
00:21:56,"And what else would be coworker.com I think they got acquired by somebody. But so those work. It's. It's helpful to know because the, I think the you know, lead sources are different in the U.S. so it's always, you know, interesting to know what's happening outside of the US you know and some things are the same and some things are a little bit different. So, so we like to ask so tell me what do your members love most about working at your space?"
00:22:29,"I think they love the community because as I told you we are the really international community. So and many of our members are expats or from abroad so they, they feel our main language is English. So they feel home because they don't feel this disconnection come to Spain with the difficult to communicate with with the place you. You in the place you work with in. And so we try to treat them comfortable home."
00:22:57,"And so the community is the main reason. And also we offer nice spaces. I told you we have on a side that plays with a huge terrace. Another side all the building. So it's both this places where it's nice to work. Yeah, yeah. It's a beautiful space. I think it's such a special community to serve expats because they don't know anyone when they move. Right. Like they, for whatever demanding are they needy?"
00:23:29,"Yeah, they want to, they want you to organize events. The afterward drinks. The, the not the sport event, the, the Christmas D. Halloween party, whatever. They have nothing else to do. They don't have any friends. That's funny. But that's a good vibe because on other side we can say okay, let's reach to office spaces. Much easier to manage. Can be also completely automatized space because they have much less requests."
00:24:02,"But then you lose the vibe. The vibe even by the co workers which is this international community people exchange an experience from. We have really people from all over the world from the us from Australia, from South America, from Russia, anywhere. So it's a. It's a really cool community. I think it's really good place to work. So it's. Yeah, it's what people like. Yeah. Hey there. I'm jumping in again."
00:24:28,"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 coworking space operators to create their own training and development material to support their community managers. And this is so important in terms of onboarding new community managers and supporting the growth of your existing community managers."
00:25:01,"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. And we find that's one of the biggest values we have."
00:25:27,"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. So I'm in the group."
00:25:49,"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, et cetera that they can just kind of grab and go and use."
00:26:20,"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."
00:26:48,"So the leadership bucket is great for our more advanced community managers. We also 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."
00:27:19,"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. 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."
00:27:50,"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, etc. 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."
00:28:27,"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.com forward/community manager. Now back to our episode. I mean, right? And again, it's not just work for them. It's really filling like a void that they have because otherwise they'd be at home and they would know no one. So they need, they need the community."
00:28:52,"And I almost think there's like a little advantage to that. I think all the time about, you know, in the US there's so many people who are just at home and they don't, it's like, how do you, how do you, you know, get them to understand what it might feel like to have something better, but that pain point isn't strong enough for them to leave the house. Right."
00:29:14,"But you know, for you, they, it's so hard for people to be alone in a new place that they are just like compelled to, to go and, and they find that solution. So it's, yeah, it's, it's, it's interesting. Okay, tell us a lesson that you've learned over the years. You've been doing this for a while. You have some creative partnerships, you've closed a location. What are a couple of lessons that you've learned that you would share."
00:29:42,"Okay, then the lesson, the main lesson was for me, my case in our case was at one point we grew really fast. So we got this space which was 10 times the space which we were managing before. And that was a huge change which really affected the company they were working. And so this business needed deep renovation. So for a couple of years at most of one year, one year and a half, especially myself had to be dedicated to the renovation to follow physically what was going there with the workplace, with electricians, which is not I wanted to do."
00:30:27,"Which also led me to just focus on the real business, on the community, on the development. Yeah. So was a bit. Was tough. And somehow we also focus on what was. What is really important in when you manage coworking. So. Okay. If you want to grow bigger, be sure to be ready. I mean to get everything ready before doing the step in our case was a bit. Couldn't."
00:31:00,"Couldn't be different if it was just after Covid because we found this kind of deal. So was yes or no. So let's do it. Let's try. You just had to take the. In general, in general it's better either you grow little by little or that you get ready financially and in terms of the team structure before you. You grow big. If you. Even if you have a small space working properly when you grow bigger, it's completely, completely different."
00:31:29,"Yeah yeah, yeah. Especially and the risk is like this that then you lose. You lose sightless focus on what is what is what you should redo for the. For your company. Yeah, but it's hard in this business. To your point, like the build out and managing the construction and the renovations is you have to do it. It's just not what. Not what you got into business to take care of."
00:31:54,"Okay, tell us a little about. A little bit about the technology you use. What do you use for like your space management platform or building billing customers? Yeah, we use Office R and D to manage the space and we. We have smart access control to. To. To enter the space. And those are our main, main tools. We use of course EZ for cloud printing. So we try to have everything as."
00:32:25,"As much automatized as possible to. To reduce the workload of the employees, office managers so that they can be dedicated to the. To the community. That's. That's more than the end. Did you use office R and D on the initial. On the original smaller space or did you get into it? Yeah, we at the beginning Norway. I think I started as many working spaces With Excel or Google Sheets."
00:32:50,"Totally rocker with some charts and everything. Then when was a bit more consolidated somehow we started using the. Yeah, we started with officer and then we switched to another platform and then we get got back to officer and. Because we thought was better. Yeah. The grass is always greener but nobody's perfect. Yeah. Yes. Although you have an engineering background so you probably get into the technology a little bit and have some high standards."
00:33:25,"Because I want things of water. I want. Yeah, totally. Okay. What's one piece of advice that you'd give to somebody who's just starting. What, what maybe mistake would you suggest they avoid or. Yeah, just any, any. If you were having coffee with someone, what are one or two things that you'd tell them to make sure they. They think ahead about or something they would avoid. Okay. If you start your own working space in terms of small business or medium business, what I suggest is not open up before opening up the space to connect with the local entrepreneurial community, startup community."
00:34:10,"So start being touched or be involved in the local community because that's going to be your customer base. So it's better, you know your customer base even to make some market analysis to check if there is really and request for coworking. So being in the local community before opening the space, not opening the space and then wait for the community to get to know you. It's better you, you are involved and then so you can mark up your space even, even before you have it, you can start organizing events, pre events, start lunch, early birds, let's say."
00:34:50,"So it's especially for small space, smaller spaces. Being into the local startup or entrepreneurial community, it is really important and that can make the difference the moment you open your space. Yeah. Yeah. Well for you that was probably the difference or the reason you filled so quickly is because you were a part of that community and you knew what people needed. You were solving a problem, you know, problems that you."
00:35:20,"You saw were real and you could, you know, create. I used to go to meetups events before, even before I had the idea of opening up was also maybe getting the input from the people I, I met that I decided to, to go do it. Yeah. People start saying we need something like this, we need a place like this. And you're like well I could do that. So what's, what's next?"
00:35:48,"You, you have this main location, you have a couple of creative partnerships. What is, what does 2025 look like or beyond? Yeah, let's see. Okay. The idea will be to keep on growing somehow. Let's See but so we grow a. Grew a lot in the last year. So we are now consolidating because we invested a lot and we are still a small company so invested mostly with our own resources and so now we need to consolidate numbers and make the."
00:36:17,"The company stable and then we will probably evaluate to keep on growing. In Spain, the coworking industry is really, really dynamic. So I told you the competition is really, really tough. So we could maybe focus to Italy. We are, we are now checking what can be the best option for the next few years. Yep, got it. Got it. We have some. Yeah. Some beautiful locations. Well, thank you for taking the time to do this."
00:36:45,"I, I appreciate it and it's fun to hear. We, we're a little U S centric on the podcast so we appreciate to hear from. From other countries besides just the UK So we can, you know, I and I want to come visit now. I want to enjoy your terrace and I looked at where you are on the map. I mean it's. What a beautiful location. I've been to Spain but not that part of Spain."
00:37:10,"So I'm gonna put it on the list. Beautiful. Thank you for taking the time to do this, especially at the end of your day and we can. We look forward to continuing to follow your journey. Thank you. Thank you so much for your invitation. It's been a pleasure. And whenever you want to come to Spain, you have your place to work from. Perfect. Thank you for listening to today's episode."
00:37:35,"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 everything coworking.com we'll see you next week."
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