374. Creating Coworking Magic in a Small Town: Amanda Findlay’s Vision for Matchbox Studios
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TRANSCRIPTION
374. Creating Coworking Magic in a Small Town: Amanda Findlay’s Vision for Matchbox Studios
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."
00:00:40,"Welcome to the Everything Coworking podcast. This is your host, Jamie Russo. Thank you for joining me today. Okay, I think you're really, really going to love this episode. I thoroughly enjoyed this interview. I learned a ton. Amanda Findlay is the Executive Director at Matchbox Studios in Lafayette, Indiana, home of Purdue University. And Matchbox Studios operates as a not for profit organization blending coworking, innovation and community building in a town with a population of just 70,000."
00:01:16,"And again that population includes a student population. So it's a unique model in a unique sort of town. But I think there are definitely some of you listening who can learn from this because you might be in a university town trying to figure out how to make this work. Amanda talks about their structure, how they came to be, how they get their funding, what keeps her up at night, what their product mix is, who their members are, which might not be what you think."
00:01:47,"They have this awesome little maker space built into the space. You have to check out their website. The website is really nicely done and gives you a really great sense of the space. She they just have this really unique, I think blend of membership. So they love supporting new businesses. So not necessarily startups that are coming out of the university, but normal people just like you starting businesses, they have remote workers."
00:02:18,"She told this awesome story about a couple that came to town. One of the members of the partnership was going to work at the university and the other one was like well, I'm going to be totally new, I'm not going to know anyone. And so they brought them into Matchbox and immediately that person felt felt more optimistic about their ability to make some friends fit in and find a place of their own, which I thought was really cool."
00:02:46,"So they just do a lot in this 10,000 square foot space. And Amanda just really dug in and shared a lot of detail and a lot of perspective. So you're going to get a lot out of this episode. And our Google Reviews to Revenue challenge is coming up. We were originally going to run it the week of January 13th, and we announced that on our last podcast episode."
00:03:10,"But if you're with us, it's taking everyone a little bit longer to get back into the groove. So we are going to run the challenge the week of February 10th. We'd love to have you join us. We talked a little bit about the challenge on the last episode. Essentially, the goal is to automate the workflows around generating Google reviews. You know, or should know that most of your organic traffic comes from Google, and most of that organic traffic hits your Google business profile."
00:03:37,"And that's where your reviews show up, and that's where people start forming opinions and making decisions about whether or not they're going to tour your space. And I've operated my own coworking spaces and work with hundreds of operators and community managers. And I know how busy you are and how many conflicting priorities you have and how hard it is to make time to ask members for reviews. So it generally doesn't get done and the reviews don't get put up as consistently as they should to attract new members."
00:04:10,"So we're going to help you automate that process and that's what we're going to get done. The week of February 10th. This is not a nice to know informational session. This is a, an a taking action week. So you're going to spend probably an hour a day with us. So it'll take a little bit of time and investment and we'll go through step by step the workflows of automating your Google reviews and responding to those reviews and managing your reputation."
00:04:39,"If you're in, you can get all the details and register@the reputationchallenge.com Welcome. I am here with Amanda Findlay. She is the executive director at Matchbox Studios in Lafayette, Indiana, which is like 65 miles south of Chicago. Yeah, I was, I was like worried. I, I was familiar that I spent 15 years in Chicago. So. Okay, so I knew roughly, but I double checked on the map this morning."
00:05:10,"So. Nice. Yeah, we're kind of conveniently located between Chicago and Indianapolis. Okay. Yeah. So tell us about Lafayette, like roughly population 70,000. Wikipedia says it's a great place to live. Dense suburban area. I was like, okay, ah, that's so nice of Wikipedia. Yeah, we think it's a great place to live. Yeah. Population roughly 70,000. We're right across the Wabash river from Purdue University, and a huge percentage of Purdue graduate students live in downtown Lafayette."
00:05:43,"Matchbox is based in downtown Lafayette, but, you know, the whole footprint of the city Isn't that large. So everything's relatively centrally located, close to interstate. That takes you straight from Indy to Chicago. So pretty good place. Okay. Or Indianapolis. Perfect. Yeah. When I lived in Chicago, before I opened my coworking space, I worked for a healthcare startup and we had a. We were. Eli Lilly was our client."
00:06:09,"So I would. Sure. The day trip down to Indianapolis, get my Starbucks, get on the expressway and. Yeah. Anyway. Okay, tell us. So I want to get to your coworking story. Tell us a little bit about your background and how did you end up in cworking. How did you end up at Matchbox? Sure. Serendipitously. I love. I feel like I find myself on panels every once in a while where they're like, did you intend to have a career in coworking?"
00:06:35,"And I'm like coworking with my thing when my career started. I don't understand the question. Yeah, I started my career in healthcare marketing, interestingly, women's health, specifically in like a critical access hospital in rural Indiana and did that for a handful of years, but then moved to Lafayette with the intention of being here maybe for a little while while kids were little, and then just fully embraced this community and immersed myself in it."
00:07:01,"So I've been here for 15 years. I started at Purdue's research foundation when I moved to the community 15 years ago doing like the incubation thing. So Purdue's very intentional about incubating companies. A lot of them are technology from the university. So I started in that space and then worked with a statewide network and we dabbled in coworking. We always put like the hyphen in it and sometimes we call."
00:07:27,"One of the first things you mentioned is the hyphen. Yeah, yeah. We didn't really know what to do with it, but we had a lot of square footage. I'm also offended by the hyphens. So offensive. It's a whole word. It can stand alone now. But we did, you know, then it couldn't. Then it kind of couldn't. So we, we dabbled with that in these statewide. And we're kind of familiar with it from an incubator, like business."
00:07:48,"Yeah, yeah. And before that, you know, in my, in my role in healthcare marketing, we were really focused on community building and like activating spaces in different ways. So transferable, transferable skills, transferable interest. But yeah, we did that for a little while and then we started an organization on campus Maybe I guess 11 years ago called Purdue Foundry and worked really intentionally with faculty, staff, student and alumni startups."
00:08:16,"And I was with that organization for a few years and Matchbox was kind of opening in tandem and I was watching this happen and we were really good partners with Matchbox at the time. We're trying to figure out what partnership looks like. And a year after they opened the doors here, the opportunity to, to work for Matchbox opened up. And because it is a small ecosystem, I'd familiarized myself with the co founders and got the opportunity to make the transition."
00:08:42,"And I've been at Matchbox for the last nine years. Oh, nine years. Yeah. That nobody ever. That's easy. Although I have started to interview people who have been open for 10 years, which is. It's like nobody, we, nobody knew, you know, started in coke. Like people who now have had careers like you. Yeah, it's like so unusual. So I know this is our. We just celebrated our 10 year anniversary."
00:09:10,"I brought a prop. This is our like 2014-2024 10 year anniversary book. So. Yeah. Did you make that? Who made it? Oh, one of our. We are so lucky. One of our co founders is an incredibly talented designer and we worked with him to, to put it all together. Our co founder story is really fun actually. Do you want to give us the short versions of who they are?"
00:09:34,"I'd love to, yeah. Okay. So Matchbox, we are a 501c3 nonprofit and we have three co founders. One is a startup founder. He's in the tech space. I met him 15 years ago, probably when I first came to this community. Really, really good at community building. He ran a group called Lafayette Tech. He had meetups for different, like coding languages. He was just like the most intentional about community of like anyone I've met in the tech space."
00:10:02,"So that was kind of the strengths that he brought to the table. That's Michael Berger. Dennis Carson is the director of economic development for the city of Lafayette and he runs the Lafayette Urban Enterprise Association. So he lives and breathes economic development. Incredibly good at his job. That's what he brought to the table. He's also worked closely with the mayor for a really long time who's been an advocate for us forever."
00:10:24,"And then the third was Jason Tenenhaus. He's a serial entrepreneur, industrial designer. He designed strategies spaces. So he is the one who made everything look beautiful. So I like to joke, like with their powers combined. Yeah, totally. How lucky? Like how lucky when we have those three forces behind this organization. And really the only reason why in 2014 or 2012, which I guess is kind of when the project got started, they could get a whole community behind Something that they kind of had to, like, educate them about before they could get a foot in the door."
00:10:59,"Yeah, yeah, it's. It's. So you're making me think of a lot of things. Have you. Have you run across Kevin Whelan by any chance? No, he's been on the podcast a couple times. He's a marketer in the space and he works mostly with multisite spaces. But he posted on LinkedIn yesterday something about marketing. Not just being, you know, the ability to run digital ads or posting things to social."
00:11:22,"It's like what you just talked about with the three founders and probably your own background within the ecosystem, like being able to really, like, connect and mobilize and just, you know, be really visible and a part of what's happening. And those three and plus you a year later, that's so meaningful. It's so different than starting, you know, from. From scratch. So to say it's like this was a manifestation of, like a place making for the work that they were already doing, which."
00:11:51,"And the networks they already had, which is really interesting. Absolutely. Like, some of the folks that they brought to the table 10 years ago to do some of even like the early strategy, like, they. They put together a group of people in the community and brought them into this space when it was like gravel floors and boarded up windows and handed them chalk and said, like, I don't know, where would you put walls?"
00:12:11,"So they've like, they've had the kinds of connections to do things collaboratively the whole time, and that's been pretty great. Yeah. Well, I love hearing about your model because we talked to, you know, we get. Well, I run this program called the Coworking Startup School, and we always start with what is your. Why? Because one of the things I love about coworking is some people are like, well, I'm really passionate about community, but I want this to make a lot of money."
00:12:34,"I mean, a lot of money is always relative, of course, as you know. And then there are models like yours where the founders probably like, we're like, well, how can we make this sustainable? But the community needs this and we want to do this. And it wasn't really about the profit it was going to drive. As a matter of fact, your website says it. It costs a lot of money to run this space."
00:12:55,"So we'll talk about that in a minute. But I think in our audience, we have a lot of folks who are probably just really interested in. In your model. So I'm So thank you for taking the time to do this and Telling your story. So what is their, the three founders involvement in the, in the business or the project? I don't know. Do you call it a business?"
00:13:15,"What do you call it? Yeah, yeah. Organization probably. Organizations. Yeah, yeah. It's still a business. It's still. Yeah, I think, I think thinking about it as a business, a mission driven business, but thinking about it as a business also I think helps us avoid falling into a lot of nonprofit traps. I've always worked in the nonprofit space, so I know that there are a lot of traps to fall into and they're easy to fall into sometimes."
00:13:42,"So that like mashup of like mission mindedness and business mindedness I think has, has been really helpful for us their current involvement. One, Dennis is the president of our board of directors. Jason served as executive director until our 10 year anniversary when he resigned and I scooped and stole his job. And the. Michael served on our board for about eight years until he stepped back to make, to make space for new folks on the board."
00:14:09,"Got it. Okay. Yeah. And then what is your relationship like as the executive executive director with the board? Oh my gosh. So we're, we are so lucky to have the board that we have. They represent like so much of the demographic that we serve. So being able to tap into them for like not only feedback and advice and guidance, but also like really their stories sometimes drive the decisions that we make because they are, they've lived the life of the folks who are in the space."
00:14:39,"But maybe like five ago. So. Yeah, yeah, they're like. Right. So in front of your ideal members. Oh my gosh. Yeah, they all get it. Some of them are biggest cheerleaders, some of them are a little tougher, but I think that's probably like good board balance. Right. Some folks who are really like tough and want to, want to go through every budget line by line and want to like poke holes in every, in every strategy but in a helpful way."
00:15:02,"And then others who are just like real hype guys both in the space and in the community. Yeah. So you meet, you. You essentially report to the board, I presume. And so yeah, mentioned budget. You're. You're putting together an annual budget, which I also love having a board. Really. I've. So I was the executive director of the Global Workspace association for five years and they are board operated or managed I should say as well."
00:15:27,"And it's such good discipline because right. There's a bunch of really smart people who are getting in a room once a month or once a quarter and you, you know, you have to report, you know, or this. You, what's the plan? And then how are we doing to plan? And it can be hard for business owners to have that discipline. So I like the board, partly for that reason."
00:15:47,"You like the board? Yeah. Every. Every two months, I have to put together a report and pull all of the data. I also, and I think I'm the kind of person who loves data. I'm so data driven. But the process of collecting data can be so onerous. Totally, totally. Yeah. So that it's like forcing you to do the thing that you know that you should be doing. Yeah."
00:16:04,"And that's why, you know, entrepreneurial founders just, like, often don't do those things because it's so painful. It's like they know they should and they appreciate the process, but then it's just too hard and they just. Cleaning my gutter. It's like cleaning my gutters. Yeah, exactly. So I. I love that the. That the board requires that. Okay. So, yeah. Let. Tell me about Matchbox. What is. Who does it serve?"
00:16:29,"You know, what are. Who are your members? You. It sounds. And this I only know from your website. I mean, it sounds like you provide an incredible amount of programming classes. Tell us. Tell us the deal. Yeah, it's been through so many iterations. My favorite thing about preparing to talk to you today was just like thinking back through all of the generations and iterations of the organization and, like, how it was modeled and how we were executing."
00:16:57,"But today, the base level of Matchbox Studios is an 11,000 square foot coworking space. So we're operating out of an old car dealership that turned into a car repair garage that turned into a private, families like storage space for a long time. And then they donated it to the Tippecanoe County Public Library, who very kindly leases it to us. But it took about a $1.5 million renovation to make people's face."
00:17:27,"Yeah, right. So nineteen 1930s era car dealership. A lot of the space and the aesthetics of the space were kept original. So a lot of our brickwork, the inside of our roof, which is really actually quite beautiful. It's like a curved. A curved roof or ceiling, I guess. And to preserve that look, they put a couple of new roofs on the outside, so we're well insulated and safe in here."
00:17:53,"Well, I mean, Indiana winters, so it gets rough, you know? Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah, I can see that. Winters. That's wild. Yeah, totally. Yeah, I can see it. If. For those who want to take a peek, we'll have the Link to the website in the show notes and you can see it right on your. Yeah, it is really looking. The virtual tour on our page is really nice too."
00:18:13,"One of our members is an incredibly talented real estate like photographer and he usually does like, you know, high rises in. In big cities. So we were grateful that he volunteered to do that for us. We have the best member community. I. Don't get me started. We have the best mem. You've been in this space for the whole 10 years? Nine of 10. Nine. Okay. Yeah. Nine of 10."
00:18:38,"Wow. Which is sometimes incredible to think about and sometimes terrifying because what. What happens next. But for now it's great. 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."
00:19:18,"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. 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."
00:19:53,"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. 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."
00:20:25,"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 forward/masterclass. Okay, so it looks like no private offices, heavy on the meeting rooms, media studio, and then you have a maker space adjacent. Yeah. So tell us. Yeah, tell us like the purpose of the space."
00:20:57,"Like, so having no private offices is like definitely the opposite of, you know, we're trying to monetize the space. It's very aligned with what you're trying to accomplish. Yeah. Can you talk about that a little bit more? Well, from, from like a financial model perspective, you can rent A private office for one person in downtown Lafayette, like a block from where we're located for, like, hardly any dollars."
00:21:20,"The cost of living is incredible here. Rent is very affordable. Office space is accessible, and there's not a shortage of it. So the idea of filling this gorgeous space with a bunch of offices or even like cubicles just did extent those resources exist. That's not the gap in the market. That wasn't the gap in the market. What we didn't have was a sense of community. The share, like anything that was more of a shared space."
00:21:44,"And this was 10 years ago. So now we do have, like incredible coffee shops downtown and more shared spaces. But the fun thing is we all kind of like follow each other around downtown and work from all of these places, which I'm sure is not specific to our community. So the intention of building it so open was really for that connection, for that community building. The meeting rooms are heavily used."
00:22:08,"They do get a lot of use. And our reserve desks are too. We've doubled our reserve desks since we opened our doors because they. They are in more demand, especially as there are more remote workers living in our community. But the open workspace works pretty well for our community. We have about 350 members and partners that use the space right now. That max out about a hundred people in a given day from."
00:22:29,"You know, would you get a hundred people that check in in a day? Yeah. That's a lot. We are 247 space too. Yep. Okay. So do you have college? Yeah. Do you have college students? Yeah, graduate students. So we have had like two undergrad members in the history of this place. It's not. Undergrads have access to so many places to work. Graduate students are like, at that precipice between being a student and like a job."
00:23:00,"Right. Graduate school's different from undergrad, and they don't want to be in a campus building necessarily. They don't want to be surrounded by undergrads. So it is appealing to them, especially when they're a little bit further in their work and they're like heads down on their thesis, they're working on their dissertation, they're getting close to defending. Grad students have really utilized the space heavily. It's hard because they're."
00:23:23,"That's a transient community. They're going to finish that degree and. And we'll never see them again and. Right. Miss them. Yeah. So that's like. That's the one where we're not. We're not getting those numbers and keeping them for 10 years. But they're, they're integral to the space. They're also great at building community. They're like inviting people to brunch and like pulling them out from behind their laptops. Yeah."
00:23:43,"Being in conversation maybe as a distraction tactic to avoid more thesis work. But we totally. I need to get. No, but to your point, they're still in that phase where they really. Right. Embrace community. And they're not totally like, I'm working, don't bother, you know, to do every year. Well, okay. But you do have remote workers. So the space is not only filled with sort of like the economic development."
00:24:08,"There's people who have, you know, nine to fives who want to be a part of what you're doing. Yeah. And a lot of our, a lot of our remote work community has, you know, a spouse or a partner or a family member who has like brought them to this community for work, maybe at the university or. Yeah. And they need to find their own people. Absolutely. Yeah, totally."
00:24:36,"One, one note on that that I, that I do think is worth sharing. And this has been a relationship that we've had to like build and rebuild over time. But like plugging in with the HR folks who are doing retention and recruitment for those big organizations has been helpful for us. So if they're trying to like pull in someone in a high level position and they know that they're part."
00:24:56,"And they're coming from another part of the country and they know that their partner either does something entrepreneurial or will work remotely once they relocate, they bring them here for a tour and I think it's like sealed some deals on a couple. On a couple. Interesting. It's like a benefit. It's like a sort of benefit perk for the partner. Yeah. So just making sure you're going to relocate your family or the two of, you know."
00:25:18,"Yeah, that's, that's really. Yeah, that's, that's, that makes a lot of sense. So how do you foster those relationships? Is that. Yeah. Intentionally. Yeah. Yeah. So just we, we've tried to stay connected to the HR offices at like the largest employers in our community. And we let them know that like when they're going through this recruitment process or if they think they might lose someone to another community, like use us as a, as a resource, like hit us up and we'll give someone a tour and we'll sit down and talk."
00:25:50,"We'll even, you know, if they're recruiting someone for a high level position and they really want to like draw them to the community, we'll Bring other folks to the table. We'll like get a lunch together so we can be helpful resource in that. In that aspect too. That is so smart. And I love it too, because a lot of coworking spaces are. Are trying to figure out, like, well, how do we attract those people?"
00:26:17,"And it's like, I think they think like, oh, I have to go find HR at not even like sort of the local, like just, you know, they're thinking about it at scale versus, like you're just going straight to the local people. Yeah. Yeah. We also. We did find that our community has like an area HR association. Cool. Yeah. I don't know if that's common or not, but if your area has an HR association and they have regular meetings, they're probably looking for speakers for those meetings."
00:26:46,"Just reach out and offer to speak. Yeah, brilliant. Also, even I'm just thinking, I mean, the power of connection is so. It's so simple and yet so often overlooked. And I'm just thinking like, I was just, you know, doing a couple of podcast episodes about. I joined this CrossFit gym and they just made no effort on. On that front. And I left. And then I joined this other place in town that's not actually really my favorite workout, but they're so lovely, like in terms of connections and outreach and making sure you're comfortable and, you know, people."
00:27:19,"And it's like, it just makes all the difference. Oh my gosh. Absolutely. I. We relocated for my husband's job, and I cannot even imagine what it would have been like. I mean, they did some like, helpful logistical things like, you know, they moved us and had people unpack for us. But, like, I still feel like I'm trying to, like, find my people here because I don't have a coworking."
00:27:42,"My coworking space here was half hour from my house, so not my neighborhood. Right. It's like the comfort that you can like put people in right away. I'm just picturing what you just. Even with lunch with a few people to help them say, like, oh, I could fit here. I can see myself here. Okay, let's do this. Like, amazing. Do you. I am. I. How focused do we have to be?"
00:28:06,"Can I share my personal neuro. Totally. I keep. I keep like a note in my phone of like, people I maybe want to be friends with just because, like, as adults and this is something we talk about with like, coworking, community building. I think as adults, it's so hard to make friends and it doesn't happen organically. Like, we're not going to each other in class, we're not going to have the same lunch period."
00:28:31,"Like these things kind of stop existing. And we talk about coworking fits that need for so many working adults who have workplace dynamics as they're like number one social outlet. But if we think about like what it takes to actually foster friendship with those people. When I see our members who will approach someone and just say like I'm going down the street for lunch, do you want to come with me?"
00:28:53,"I'm so envious. And I've learned from them. So yeah, I keep this note and I'm like, I met this person. The vibes were good. We seemed to have a couple things in common. You know, next time you're going to brunch, maybe hit them up. No, I actually love that I have the same problem because yeah, we moved here and I didn't know anyone. Right. And even now. And how do you have kid you said you mentioned?"
00:29:13,"I do. Yeah. Two. Yeah. How old are they now? Right. I have a 13 year old daughter and I feel like my whole social life is actually just chauffeuring her to her literally in my car. Yeah, yeah. I've started to get a little resentful. Yesterday she like got in the back seat and sits and looks at her phone and I was like hey, hey, hey, what are you doing back there?"
00:29:37,"Like yeah, driver, come on. Yeah, yeah, you have to talk to me. My 15 year old puts his headphones in immediately and I'm like, no way, no chair. How we're going to roll. But totally that I think coworking. Right. It's even just little. It's not like you. Yeah. Even it's the little thing that I think we overlook that sometimes with sort of the. I mean people in the coworking community do talk about it and certainly I love getting into this stuff because I often focus on the numbers and you know, the things that."
00:30:08,"Because I really care about people running sustainable businesses. But it's those little things that it's so funny. We can all relate to. I know. I had to. I asked this woman out on a dinner date that I met. Same thing. I was like, okay, I need some more friends. Who can I be friends with? My husband, without a doubt. And I was like, I'm gonna ask her if she wants to get dinner."
00:30:28,"I love that. Hard as an adult and coworking can like totally facilitate that. And it also. You mentioned watching someone go up to somebody. It's like it is, it's like asking someone out. It's like what if they don't like me back. Yeah. Oh yeah. That's also why we have community manager, you know, people that. That and events and. Well, so what does your team look like? So you're the executive director."
00:30:53,"Yeah. Newly on the team. I've been so. I've been in this role for six months. Our director of operations is Juliana Casavan. She and I have worked together. This is so nuts for like 15 years in various aspect. So yeah, we work together at Purdue, we work together at the research foundation. We kind of just keep like following each other from place to place. So we've been at it for a while and really like she's so key."
00:31:19,"She, she knows her way around a spreadsheet. She can write a budget, she can do all the things that I am not good at. So I love the opportunity to keep working with her. I think we, we work really, really well together. And she's been at Matchbox for the last five years. We have a manager of programs and acceleration which was my job until my promotion. I've been just handing that over with ease and without any control issues at all."
00:31:51,"So hard. These teams start really small and kind of grow and you have to kind of give things up every pn because I've been here so long. Every time it is like a process. When we hired our first studio coordinator and it wasn't me. So when I was hired we had two employees. My colleague Emily was running our events and our social media and then I was really doing like operations studio stuff."
00:32:15,"We were tag teaming tours, new member orientations, but it was just the two of us for a long time with a lot of members. So I think what's interesting is you have 10,000ft which you know, in a traditional space you could run with one person. Probably it is the volume of like programming and events and members that you have. I mean it's really incredible to have that many members in a popular."
00:32:41,"In 70,000 in a population of 70,000. And I'd be curious how much of a role the university plays, but sometimes I ask people like this might be borderline. Let's see if this works. And you have 300 members, you know. Yeah, yeah there I know our co founder's goal was to have I think 75 members ever like that was. They were like if we can get and keep. And that's we've accomplished what we came here to do."
00:33:05,"Yeah, yeah, yeah. They had around 75 when I started after the first year. So they did that in 12 months and by the end of the Second year we. I doubled that. So, like, it's continued to grow. It does seem like we've kind of like this is kind of where our membership number lives. Yeah. Over the life of the organization, in 10 years, we've had over a thousand members total."
00:33:28,"Yeah. Yeah. We knew they were out there. We didn't know there were this many of them out there. Yeah. And so because you do, I'm just curious because it's. Space is a part of what you do. I'm gonna look at your website now and see what your memberships are. Well, let's finish your team first because. Oh yeah, I interrupted you to say like you have a lot of team members for 10,000ft."
00:33:48,"It's because you have a lot of members and you do. Yeah, A. Of programming and events. So. Yeah. Oh, sorry. Keep going. We also work with contractors, so we've learned from our members on how to like optimize small teams and we work with contractors. So our, our full time staff, Juliana Aaron, program, she's programs and accelerations manager and Sam. And Sam is our studio coordinator. So four full timers."
00:34:12,"And then we have a marketing contractor, we have a makerspace and media studio contractor, and then we have an acceleration like coordination contractor. And that's because that nonprofit thing means that we get to play in the grant space. And right now we're in the middle of. Middle of like a great big grant execution, so we needed some extra hands on deck for that. Okay, got it. Okay. Can you talk about what, what is the studio?"
00:34:37,"The studio. Usually when we're talking about the studio, it's like all three of those components and how they play together. So coworking, acceleration, and then makerspace and media studio. Those are kind of the three components that make up Matchbox Studios. So coworking is coworking, right? Yeah, I don't need to explain that to this crowd. Yeah, shared workspace, private desks, meeting rooms, makerspace, media studio. And then programming for that demographic which really focuses on like getting and keeping them connected."
00:35:12,"And then we've done some series in things like professional development, you know, how to network, how to goal set, that sort of thing. And then we've done workshops, how to start a podcast, how to use a laser cutter. Yeah. So you have kind of two segments of members, like the regular person who's. And then also this other mission of, of advancing startups and, and helping. Yeah. So yeah, our membership programming for both."
00:35:42,"We're really doing programming for both and our membership kind of breaks down in third. So about a third of our members Are like traditional remote work or like work from anywhere, folks. A third are entrepreneurial. And that last third falls into this like hobbyist, graduate student, like writer, designer space. That's a little bit. Yeah. A little bit more creative. They're fun. We love them. Okay, so now I'm curious about how."
00:36:05,"I'm curious about so many things. So how do people, you know, you talk about 300 members. You might check in a hundred people a day, which is a lot. But what do people's memberships look like and how they spend their time? Like the. Or how do they use the space? How much time do they spend there for maybe for each segment. Do you mind talking about that? I just don't know that I can distill that into anything useful."
00:36:31,"They're so across the board, varied. Okay. It's so varied. And think that our like, our nonprofit formation also means that we have some members that we really only see like once a month. But they're supportive and they want to be able to have access. They want to be able to attend, you know, events and show up and support this like, work that we're doing here. So we go all the way from those folks that we see maybe every 30 days to this is."
00:36:57,"This is your office every day. But it doesn't. That doesn't necessarily like break down by those. Those. Okay. By the, by the segments. It's just kind of individual. But the. So you have a 99amonth membership that includes kind of access to everything. And that is unlimited. Yeah, 25 unlimited. We limit their meeting rooms by hours, but that's it. Okay, cool. And then the reserved is 298 or 249 for startup, which I also love."
00:37:29,"Okay, very cool. And then you've got yet business address, day pass. Super simple. I mean, I love this. I love a lot of things about your. I don't know if you had a member to your website, but your website is really nicely done. Thank you so much. But also like the user, I always, you know, I'm like, why would somebody have this button here? Or it's so clear."
00:37:48,"Oh, thank you. So easy to navigate. Even the. My favorite thing on your homepage is your. How do I get started? Like the little four boxes. You might think it's ridiculous, but like I love it. It's like if you don't understand, like you're new. It's like, here you go. This is what you do. It's just. No, we very. Donald Miller. Have you ever read Story Brand? Yes, yes, yes."
00:38:11,"You know, his whole Confuse, you lose. Just tell them in three steps what it is. I was like, perfect, they've done it. 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 coworking space operators to create their own training and development material to support their community managers."
00:38:44,"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 and we find that's one of the biggest values we have community managers from all over the world."
00:39:21,"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. We have coaches that are in the group to support them."
00:39:43,"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. That they can just kind of grab and go and use."
00:40:11,"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."
00:40:40,"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 Our sales and marketing modules, we have tour training."
00:41:15,"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."
00:41:41,"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."
00:42:18,"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 think the bet like the coolest thing about running our acceleration workshops and courses out of the studio is that we've also like put ourselves through that. So we like graduate school for you guys. Okay, let's do a project."
00:42:46,"Let's apply. Yeah. Everything that we make them do, we have to make ourselves do. Like if I'm telling them that they have to do customer discovery and like talk to who their potential customers might be, I have to do the same thing. Or if I'm asking them to do like a value proposition canvas and figure out what they deliver that has value for their customers, we have to know that too."
00:43:04,"Like we, we can't, we can't speak to it if we don't practice it. So we redid our website probably four years ago and moved everything to Squarespace. So we also have a ton of control over it, which is fine, it's easy for you guys to update it. But yeah, yeah, it's, it's. If anybody listening will link to it in the show notes, it is really nicely done. Also, that's Squarespace."
00:43:26,"Again, it's pretty simple, but it's, I think it's the simplicity that makes it work really well. Well, and your cool videos and photos because you also really get a sense for this space which is. Oh, now I'm seeing the makerspace on the video. Wow. So is that wow why people do in there? What do they even do? It's wild. So it's small. Can you get, like, small? That's why I was like, I wasn't even picturing."
00:43:52,"I haven't seen that many makerspace and some of them are. They vary so much. Your equipment looks very high tech. I was like, what's in there? Sewing machines, 3D printers. Like, yeah. Stuff in yours. Over 60 processes. Laser cutters, 3D printers, sewing machine, leather working, casting, molding, modeling, and then like a ton of like, product photography sort of stuff in there too. Who uses it? Everyone from, like, me, laser cutting a map of Indiana for my kids, like, social studies class to folks."
00:44:25,"They'll appreciate that someday. If they don't appreciate it now. I think they are. They're nerds. I think they already did. Yeah, they are. Okay. Okay, great. Neat. Okay. Yeah. Cool. To like, prototyping and small scale manufacturing. So it literally runs a gamut. Like, I've gone in there to glue the sole back on my shoe. And we've had members build first prototypes of international companies back there. So it's."
00:44:46,"It really is such a multifunctional space. We're really lucky to have it. It's a weird one because its value doesn't always make sense. Like, then if we're talking about, like, making numbers make sense. Doesn't look good on a spreadsheet. Yeah, it doesn't look good on a spreadsheet. But we also have a big red slide in the studio. And like, those are the two things that I feel like, set us apart."
00:45:07,"Right. We have this makerspace that every member has access to. So if anyone wants to, like, tinker or learn or just, like, try a thing or go to a workshop, they can. And I love the creative components of that. So it sets us apart. It's hard to make the numbers make sense. And we've been. I think we've been seeing that in makerspace trends across the country. There are a lot of."
00:45:28,"Makerspace is closing because the business model is complicated. Such a. So is yours. How did you fund the equipment? Through grants. Donations. What, both of those? Yeah. So sponsorships. Wabash national is like a trailer manufacturer in our community, and they supported it in the beginning. Purdue's industrial design department had a faculty member who was really supportive and he would like, connect us to 3D printer companies who would send us a sample."
00:45:56,"So we've had a lot of, like, really good luck with interactions do that. We got a community foundation grant one year to help us expand our services back there. Indiana Economic Development Corporation has granted us funds for. For the Programming. So we've had really good luck with partnerships because I think it is interesting. It is something that's kind of harder to buy and. Yeah, it's like funding innovation."
00:46:18,"It just has to be an investment that you might not get a return on. I mean it's, it's a, it's a societal return. The plate, you have to believe. So I could see people doing it on a smaller scale or maybe not in an area with so much support that it could be hard. Yeah. Keeping the square footage small and making it like a component of what we do and not we primarily do."
00:46:42,"Yeah. Because. Right. If you're paying rent and the numbers. Because getting people to private pay for that space, I could see hard because it's people who haven't commercialized. Right there. Experimenting and learning and so. Yeah, totally. And prototyping is like a phase in the iterative design process. Right. Like you prototype and then hopefully you stop prototyping and you don't need that space anymore. You're like working with your manufacturers and."
00:47:07,"Yeah. So it's either like a short term need or it's a hobby and that's hard to monetize. Yeah. But good community. We have good community background and a bunch of that too. I could totally see that because lots of shared interests, like. Oh, you know, Totally. Right. You're doing your leather. What? What did you do? Leather. Leather. Working jewelry. Like. Yeah, there are people. Our makerspace contractor. In his day job, he runs a cosplay studio."
00:47:34,"Like that's, that's what he does when he's not here. So what Cosplay, like elaborate costumes, a lot of based on movie characters. He makes like realistic looking props. My. How. My favorite. His name's J. Wolfgar. My favorite James like project that he's told me about. He made a prop like weapon, I guess for Alana Del Re music video. Wow. Yeah. So that's what he does. He lives in Layet and this is what he does."
00:48:07,"Yeah, he travels. Okay. But that's the cool thing too about doing these in small towns is you're like, who knew this guy was here? Oh my gosh. 100% shows up in the face. Yeah. Like, when I think about who I get to interact with day in and day out, our member community is so interesting. You're kind of making me want to move to Lafayette, honestly. Which is cost of living."
00:48:31,"Right. No. Yes, you did. And believe me that I calculated California is not a low cost place to live. We do have great weather. It has not snowed yet. But. But Back to the economic development piece. I mean, you're like, an amenity for the town. I mean, it's so cool. Which obviously, like, goes back to your founding story and. And why you're there. Yeah, yeah. I think that's why the mayor did, like, didn't hesitate to get behind it."
00:48:54,"We were so lucky. And we've, like, you know, people reach out to us and, like, ask to get connected with him because they're like, how do I convince my mayor to get behind? Right, right, right. Yes. You'll get some phone calls from this podcast, so be prepared. So whose role is it to keep the lights on? Like, to keep you funded? And how does that. That work? Yeah, that's."
00:49:16,"That's me now. That's your job. Okay. Is it. Was it six months ago, or did you opt into that? Yeah, so I kind of opted into it. Our model, the way that we kind of grew. Our co founder, Jason, who served as our executive director for the first 10 years, was fractional. So he runs a strategy and design business. This was a component of what he did. And I really, like, am grateful for the opportunity to have been managing director like."
00:49:42,"Like, while he was in that role, because I got to learn so much. I got to get my hands, like, into what all of that looks like. Before, I had to hold the reins. So that's. That's my. Now I work with our board. I work with Juliana, our director of operations. We're constantly looking for opportunities for partnership, for writing grants, for, like, growing and retaining our member base, for sponsor relations."
00:50:07,"All those things are kind of, like, top of mind constantly for us. Yeah, because so your website says your membership fees support, like, roughly a third of what it costs to run this space. So you're funding the rest of it. Yeah. And we have. We have corporate memberships. Okay. Really look, more like sponsorships. They're sponsorships. So we have names on the doors. There are naming opportunities all over this space."
00:50:34,"We have, like, a wall of sponsors. They're on our website. And I think, like, the draw for them is not only, like, to be able to utilize the space if they're doing offsite trainings or things like that, you know, hosting events. But also, like, that. That story earlier about working with the recruitment and retention folks in hr. They care that this is in our community because they are trying to recruit people to our community, and they do want Greater Lafayette to be a place where people want to live."
00:51:02,"And we're. That's such a significant part of our mission. So does it ever keep you up at night. This like having to keep the lights on. Yeah, it does. Okay. Yeah. Because most of these grand. It didn't for a while. I'll say. Like, we had some really strong partners. We, we did the pandemic thing alongside everyone else and we lost a lot of our sponsorships through that process for good reason."
00:51:28,"They were saying we're furloughing, we're furloughing employees. Yeah. We're not going to keep sponsoring the local coworking studio, which that makes sense, of course. Yeah. You got to reprioritize where that money goes. And I think during that process we realized that it was important for us to diversify our funding model. So we, we built our acceleration programming for a couple of reasons. One, once we got kind of that like critical mass of members, we heard from them what they need for the next thing."
00:51:59,"And I think we always knew because of the mission and vision of the organization that it wasn't just a building. It wasn't, you know, that like it had. We had to go a little bit deeper in the community. And we were all encountering individually members approaching us and asking us like, how to start a thing. Right. Like it's like ramped up big time in 2020. And so my background was helping the Purdue entrepreneurs start and grow businesses."
00:52:26,"Juliana did the same thing at Purdue. Jason had started several accelerators and had like worked in that space and was a serial entrepreneur himself. So we're doing a lot of these like one on one meetings and we realized we needed to systemize that. And because we'd worked in the incubator and accelerator spaces, we knew we could take that model and make it applicable for like Main street businesses."
00:52:51,"So that's kind of what we built like the, the repeatable component of our programming is that acceleration course. And it's been amazing. This is our first year where We've graduated over 100 founders in a single year. So that there's been so much opportunity for partnership that's been cool for us. We have, we have some like large accelerators that play in our state, but these aren't venture track companies."
00:53:18,"They're not looking for venture capital. They're never going to raise a fund. They need customers. We put them through that like business model canvas. We can still go through all of the curriculum and models that we have experience with from running other accelerators. And we've just kind of like custom tailored that to fit literally anyone. So it's good for, you know, a micro business or a consultant. Wow."
00:53:44,"Okay. So even though you are in the university environment that you're not focused only on like the big ideas because that is. My husband's in biotech and it's so interesting to me. Like big ideas come out of, you know, he's working at a company, the science is from Johns Hopkins. His last company, you know, it was from the University of Seattle. Like it came out of the lab on campus."
00:54:05,"So that's not your focus. It's really like the regular. Yeah. That's so cool. Yeah, we, we do work with, we do get those like high tech, high growth startups that come through that are really like innovation driven. Yeah. But that's not our, that's not our focus necessarily. It's one area where we focus. We still want to, we want to support those companies as much as a flower shop, but we know that it's embracing like both those idea oriented, innovation driven but also like the small and medium enterprises, the main street businesses, the consultants, the remote businesses, et cetera."
00:54:44,"And all of our cohorts are cross sector. So we get those folks in a room together and it's pretty cool to see what happens then. Yeah. And then do they stay? They usually stay. Yeah. The idea. Right. The, this cycle of start. I mean unless you're a flower shop and you have to go work in your flower shop. Sure. But you know what? Like you'd be surprised. Like the flower shop shops stay too."
00:55:08,"And they like, they'll stay and then they'll bring us flowers once a week. I mean this is a real story. She's a Main street flower shop and she brings us flowers like once a week and puts them on the counter and she comes to all of our events and she, and she's our florist when we have a big event. So it's all, it's all symbiotic. Yeah. Amazing. Okay, so we talked about."
00:55:32,"We're running out of time. It's going to have to ask. I know. Okay. And besides the, the, besides the funding, what's the hardest part of your job? No, it's that I hate, I hate being sponsorship. I'm. I'm still bad at. There she goes. Okay, confession time. No, you're doing great. Well, I can re, like, I can do the relationship building part for days, for months, but making that ask is still something I'm working on."
00:55:58,"That's. I'm developing my development skills. Yeah. Okay. Which is. Right. It's a set of skills. It's experience, it's good tools. Yeah. Yeah. And it's. They more aligned with sales than Community building. Yeah. I always do think that people who do. It's like a fundraising role. Yeah. Which is it? Right. Totally. But okay, well, good for your professional development. You're growing and somebody's got to keep the lights on."
00:56:22,"So now that's your job. Yeah, that's. And I'll talk when my board of directors asks me where I could use improvement. I'll put this right on my self assessment professional development plan for 2025. It's on there. Okay. Favorite coworking app. Oh my gosh. Yeah. So coworking specific app. Because we've been around for 10 years. Yeah. Yeah. We've kind of like. We've kind of like gone through the process of starting and migrating I think three times."
00:57:01,"We're currently getting ready to do our third migration. Oh, no. Yeah. And it is wild. It's wild. So I don't think we've landed on the right one for us just yet, but hopefully if you ask me this question in a year. Yeah. Okay. Favorite app that used in business in general. I mentioned Squarespace earlier and I do love it. I just love it. We do our email marketing through Squarespace."
00:57:26,"We do forums on our website. Like all of our event registrations in place. It did all that. Wow, registrations. Yeah. It took a little bit to. To like wrap our head around it, but I kind of love it and it makes it easy to help members who are trying to build. So I'm amazing. Good point. Super simple platform. We know how to use it and then you can help other people."
00:57:48,"Okay. You did confess that you don't really know how to use the Media Studio, but that it gets. Get used. It gets used a lot and you are in a smaller market. And I said sometimes I'm really nervous. So it's a multi purpose room but has a great background which is super important because everybody's always recording video. This is an excerpt from the Cave by Plato. This is our co founder, Jason."
00:58:10,"He. This is his work, his design work. So he put that together. Yeah. It's multifunctional. Everything here, this whole space is on wheels. Like everything in the studio can be moved around, but this room, especially all of the equipment. I'll pivot you. All of the equipment is on that table. Oh yeah. It's a big space too. Okay, cool. Yeah, it's pretty big. So. But you're at like a com."
00:58:32,"A typical like boardroom table kind of. Boardroom table. Yeah. Okay. And they can kind of. Everything can be moved around that can be pushed to the side. So it's Very multifunctional, but, you know, really well used. I think, you know, podcasts are the new book. Book. So anyone who's doing consulting work has to generate content somehow. So. Yeah, so they use it. They book it. Cool. So how do you."
00:58:55,"Since you don't know how to use it, how do you teach people how to use it? Like, if somebody's like, yeah, podcast. How do I use this stuff? What do they do? Yeah, we have on. We have videos, we have SOPs, and then James, our banker, space and media studio contractor, will do training. Okay, cool. Yeah, I do feel like it is not a set it and forget it because you will have people who want to start and if you don't show, if you're."
00:59:20,"If you don't have a mechanism to help them, then 100%. Yeah. Media Studio or makerspace, like both of those require a ton of like ongoing hands on maintenance and resetting and training and strategize. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Awesome. Is anything in coworking a set it and forget it. I know, totally. You know what's so funny? Hey, anybody who's listening from the sba. You know, the SBA lends to coworking spaces and they consider it to be passive income."
00:59:53,"Do you want to just like roll on the floor and laugh? I mean, I know it's like. No, it's. It's just not. I mean, it's really not even like the more traditional, like lots of offices. It's just still not right. I mean, it's a membership driven short term. It's. Yeah, it's. I don't understand. Yeah, they. They need to spend more time in them anyway. That's amazing. No. Okay, so we have to go."
01:00:21,"It was. I. I love your story. I'm not here. I'm sat here and we totally just got here. Okay. What are you most excited about for 2025? It's that time. Oh my gosh. The. The Global Entrepreneurship conference is coming to Indiana in 2025. Yeah. So I think the whole state's like a little bit buzzed about that. Yeah. In our studio, we're translating our acceleration curriculum to Spanish and Haitian Creole to make it accessible to more folks in our community."
01:00:48,"And I'm really excited about that. Yeah, those are the top two. Okay, Very cool. Okay. It was great to meet you. Thank you for having us. And we'll have to do this again. Sounds good. Thanks for the invite. Bye, Jamie. Thank you 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 everything coworking.com"
01:01:15,"we'll see you next week."
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