380. How James Westbrook Transformed Commercial Property into a Thriving Coworking Business
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TRANSCRIPTION
380. How James Westbrook Transformed Commercial Property into a Thriving Coworking Business
00:00:00,"It taught me that you need to have a mentor and an outline and help because reality of what we're doing is every business, no matter what, has got nuances of how do you be successful. And you can't necessarily always be successful just kind of shooting from the hip or winging it. Welcome to the Everything coworking podcast where every week I keep you updated on the latest Trends and how tos in coworking."
00:00:28,"I owned and operated coworking spaces for 8 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."
00:01:03,"Welcome. I am here with James Westbrook. He and his wife Amy are the co owners at Magnolia Woods, which is about 45 minutes from Houston. They also own a property management company and we were just kind of diving into business talk but James, we didn't. I got a little bit of your story over email. Can you. Yeah. Tell us your background and how you got into coworking."
00:01:27,"So I, I was a corporate sales guy for 25 years. I worked in building products mostly and so about about two and a half years ago we, we bought a, a building that we decided to turn into a coworking space. We we've owned properties for about 11 years. We, we both mart. Started buying houses like in 2011 when, when we were kind of coming out of the housing bust."
00:01:51,"So we bought several properties and did well in that. So over the last several years we've been kind of progressing out of houses and into commercial properties. So this, the building that we, the first building that we purchased was, was a great location. You know, you couldn't, you couldn't ask for much of a better spot. So we ended up buying the, buying the building. Didn't even really have a plan for it."
00:02:13,"Just knew it was a great, it was a great piece of dirt kind of thing. So it was. So we bought the, we bought the property and ended up looking at it as a commercial property and didn't really like the return. So I said well I've, I've been to a few, you know, coworking type of places and that looks pretty cool. And so we, we decided that was a great idea for, for a business for us."
00:02:34,"So my wife and I kind of kind of put our heads together and started started putting together a Plan on. On it. And went through a lot. It went through some, some. I'll say this. Some. A little bit, A little bit of fun. I'll call it fun because it really wasn't. But, but renovating. It took us, took us quite a while to go through that process. What, what year was it that you bought the building?"
00:02:57,"20, 22. Okay, so. So fairly recently because Houston, we were just saying, you know, I work with a lot of operators, independent operators in Houston. Houston was a little bit slower to adopt. Coworking like we work. It took. We work time to get there. And you said you're in the suburbs which are growing. I mean, Houston's the large. Third, third largest. Almost. Wait, like it rivals Chicago sometimes for second largest, third or fourth in that, in that range."
00:03:25,"It just depends. I always kind of forget what a big city it is, though. I mean, it's a really big city and it's sprawling. Exactly. I was going to say it sprawls forever. And it's, it's, it's a, it's a, it's a great place that I always just say the bad part about Houston is summertime, July and August, you just can't go outside. But other than it's a great place."
00:03:43,"The thing I remember about working with operators starting spaces in Houston is they all like, were like, okay, we have to have like the ice chip machine. Like, the ice chips were very important in the summer, like, you know, for drinks or whatever. Like more so than anywhere else. And. Right. H vac costs are high. Yeah. Electricity you got. That's one thing I've learned in our, in our two and a half years of doing this business is your air conditioner and your Internet in Houston."
00:04:09,"So you got to have, you can't be without an air conditioner and you got to have your Internet. So totally. Okay, so you have two locations. So Magnolia and Montgomery. So how did, how did those, how did the second one happen? So, so like I was saying, I've been a real estate investor for, for a long time and I'm always, always looking. And we bought this one and the one in Magnolia in June of 22, and then we bought the second one in December of 22."
00:04:37,"It just was a opportunity that came across as a, as, as it was actually a formerly a real estate office. So it was set up really, really well for what we do. So kind of like we already kind of had our footprint and had our, our, our business structure in place. And the building was, was again, a great, great dirt. You know, it was in a great spot."
00:04:59,"And so we decided that that was a, a great opportunity for us to. To add another location. And it's actually been. Been great. We, you know that that building pretty much stays full for us. So we, we, we. We actually have had to make some adjustments because we actually had had a conference room that somebody ended up renting out because they needed more space as an office. Yes, that's a good problem to have."
00:05:21,"Yes. No, but Montgomery's been. Been a great, a great opportunity for us. And the Magnolia has as well. We've gone through three expansions at Magnolia. As far as we started out with nine offices. Then we went to I think 18. And then our last expansion, we added another 20 something. So we're. Right now we're 49 offices at Magnolia. And that's in 10, 10,000ft, correct? Yeah. That's dense. Yes."
00:05:46,"So most of our offices. And I'll tell you the funniest part of it though. We, when we were. So when, when we bought this property in Magnolia, it was basically had some office and warehouse space, so about 50, 50 split office and warehouse. So we ended up building out the warehouse. So we kind of had the plan of, all right, we, we. We do what. We do what we can with the offices first, get the business up and running and then expand later."
00:06:08,"So we, we did our. We renovated the offices. Then we had to build a parking lot to accommodate the expansion. And then we built out the expansion and added the additional offices. The funny part is we were. I drew the, I drew the floor plan on the Excel spreadsheet to put everything together. I just kind of like, all right, this is my boundaries. And we kind of. I do find this about building owners when I work with them."
00:06:29,"Like, wait, well, where's the like, CAD drawing with all the. They're like, that's for the tenants. The building arms don't have those. They go and measure the offices and send me back the dimensions. Yeah. Yeah. So we, we pretty much scrappy in the process. We, we actually had some space that was not ideal size for office space, but we decided to put in some very small spaces, five by fives."
00:06:55,"And so the funny part of it is when we opened, when we finally got the expansion up and running and ready to go, those were the first three. Only had three. Those were the first three spaces we rented five by five as an office. So two of them were office. And then one is actually one of our, One of our, our people needed some storage. Storage. Yeah. We actually now I have."
00:07:17,"We've kind of gone through some, some evolution, but I still have two of them actually ended up adding another one later. So we actually have four of them and two of them are two of our offices and two of them are storage. So, so it's, it's, you just, you just never know what somebody needs. So. Right. I've learned, that's one of the things I've learned in this business."
00:07:38,"You just never be flexible. Amen. Okay. But the advantage is you own the walls. You own it and you have. I, I mean, I'm sure you have some exit strategy at some point, but that you can calculate the ROI of making those changes and you're not thinking, oh, my lease is up in four years. It doesn't make sense for me to, to move walls. Right. I mean that's, that's a big advantage."
00:08:01,"Yeah, it's, it's. I mean like I say, we, we kind of. I, I'll say this. We. I've always owned. I, I, I find it hard to, to really have, wrap my arms around how you would rent and make it work long term. Yeah. So for, for us, I don't look at this as a, as a, as like I'm going to go and sell this thing for, for a ton of money."
00:08:22,"I like the business and when I was a, when I was a sales rep, I was very involved in all of my, all the people that I worked with. We did a lot of trainings, a lot of, a lot of mentoring with, with, I worked in building products or with contractors, and some of them were, we're just getting started and some were growing. So that's, that's kind of one of the reasons why we, why I do what we do is we like to see small businesses and give them a place to plant and grow and, and, and then, you know, kind of say, I would kind of say be a small part of their success."
00:08:50,"Yeah. So some things we try to do too is some trainings we, we do some, we have a, we have a marketing partner that comes in once a month and does trainings and we try to do things with, we have an attorney who will come in and do it, do, do some meetings and CPA and those kinds of things to, to give our, our people a little. I mean, I was going to say that anybody can, can open an, open an office and you can walk in with your laptop and sit down and go to work."
00:09:13,"But you know, we try to take it that extra step to give people some, some additional resources to say, hey, with this, I'll choose working with them over, over another operator. Just because we, we, we offer just a little bit more support, I guess. Yeah. Okay. What's a building product? So I worked, I worked in roofing and garage door. So I was, I worked for a roofing manufacturer for, for four years, worked for a garage door manufacturer for almost 10, and then back to a roofing manufacturer for 11 years."
00:09:45,"Okay, interesting. Wait. And so, and, but how did you get into real estate investing? I was tired of losing my money in the stock market. I, in 2011. Right? Don't. You weren't supposed to be looking at your account in 2011. You were supposed to. Just like I listened to a podcast the other day. I can't remember who it was. Might have been Scott Galloway and he was. I actually, I can't remember who it was."
00:10:08,"They were like, the, the best investing is like when you lose the password. You know, start early and then you lose the password to your account and then you look, you know, 20 years later and you're, you're in 2011, you're looking at your account. You're like, this is not going well. Yeah. I'll say this, we're lucky. Here in Houston. There was, there's one of the, the large, one of the larger residential real estate mentoring programs is based here in Houston and they were on the radio a lot."
00:10:35,"And so I started learning it. So I, I, I started learning the game by listening to their radio show and figured out that there, you know, you don't have to be dependent on the stock Market or 401K or any of those kinds of things to, to, to, to give you a retirement. So that's kind of where I got started in. That was just, you know, and so I spent months listening to that and then started buying, you know, we bought a house and then over the span of two years, we end up getting, buying 10 houses."
00:11:03,"We bought some of our own and then we also also started managing for other people. So. But it was good, it was, it was a great time to buy because everything was a foreclosure and they kind of get then it. Then on the flip side of that, now it's kind of given us the seed money to, to do some of our commercial projects, including our co Working spaces."
00:11:21,"Okay. And your wife was on board. She's like, yeah, let's do this. Who needs a 401k? Well, she was very, very nervous when we, when we started because obviously, you know, everybody wants stability and all that sort of stuff. And I said, when we bought the first house, I Said well let's just try this and if it doesn't work, you know, we, yeah, it's, it's, it's, it would hurt but we can, we could survive it."
00:11:44,"And so we did that and then that one, we bought it and then within like three days we got it rented. So I was like, well I found another one. So we got a contract on that one and then my wife went and saw it and there was another house in the neighborhood on the way out. She's like, well let's go look at that one too. So about the time we got, I mean she got, she got into it, she was into it."
00:12:04,"So, so yeah, she's, she's been very supportive and been, been a huge part of business actually. We couldn't have done the coworking space without her. We. So it was when we started, when we started the first location really both locations I was still working a full time job okay. In the, in the roofing business. So it was a deal where she absolutely, you know, she has, she's been a, she's been an entrepreneur as well."
00:12:27,"She had a photography business. Okay. So she was a little bit of the bug. Yeah, she hadn't been a, a really actively in a, in a, in a corporate or on a business role in a while other than doing her, her photography business. She was very successful in that. But it ended up being a deal where she stepped in and I mean took it from, from zero to a hundred and no time."
00:12:47,"So she really helped and was, was the, was the glue that really started the business. And she's helping our son now. We have a son who's in college and she's helping him sit now. So she's kind of stepped away to help him. So how are the locations staffed? So I have a, I have an office manager and my, and myself and we're actually in the process of hiring at least one more person right now."
00:13:11,"We had, we actually had a, we had a couple of, we had had my office manager and one other person and we're kind of in the process of replacing, replacing the one lady who, who left. So it's, and that's one of the things that we kind of go back and forth on, on the staffing side of it because it can. But right now we've gotten to this to the stage and the occupancy level that we pretty much have to have everybody, somebody here at least, at least kind of a part time."
00:13:37,"If not we're not to this to the, to the stage where we say all Right. We need to have somebody 8 to 5 Monday through Friday. Yeah, but we, we basically are at least nine to one Monday through Friday, you know, at the locations because, so we, we've kind of learned that you know, after, after a certain time in the day, people aren't always, you know, they don't need much, they don't need us, but you know, at prime time."
00:13:59,"So, so I, I've, I've stayed very, you know, active and, and I often, I have an office at, at one of the, one of the locations makes it where I'm, I'm usually around to take care of things. And like today I, I had somebody coming in. They were a first time first timer with us. So, so my office manager, we had her scheduled for a meeting at her other location."
00:14:21,"My wife was, was doing something so I was like, all right. So I had to push my schedule around. So it's kind of the make it work of being an entrepreneur and doing, doing this, doing what we do. 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 un issues happen well before you open your doors."
00:14:51,"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. This business is really about making the right fundamental decisions that align with your individual personal and financial goals."
00:15:23,"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."
00:15:50,"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."
00:16:20,"Com forward slash masterclass. So the Magnolia location is very office dense. What about Montgomery? Is it similar? Yeah. So the offices there tend to be a little bit bigger. We there most of them are about 12 by 12s. So we have at 60, I think that if I remember at 6400 square feet. And we have three offices there, two and two meeting rooms. Yeah. So I mean it's most."
00:16:47,"So you're. You do offer dedicated desks and open workspace, but I'm guessing that's not your revenue is mostly offices. We have determined. We actually are this year we're pulling, we're probably just pulling those out. Okay. The website's getting updated. No more. Yeah. Because it's, it's a deal that we figured out there at least what we've seen in this area. For the most part. People are looking for an office."
00:17:11,"They're wanting to get that, that, that workspace away from home. We got a lot of people that are like, you know, between the, the kids, the dog, laundry, whatever. It's like I need, I need a place to go. So that's become our, our biggest, the biggest part of our, our business. So. And then meeting meeting. One thing we're learning too on the meeting side of things as much as anything, it's, that's become a being being Just being here longer it's become people know us and people come back."
00:17:38,"They might not come back, you know, every month, but they're six weeks, eight weeks, whatever. So as our, our biz, our meeting business grows monthly almost now because we got, we're, we're getting our regulars coming through. Yep, got it. And the meeting room business, I mean tell me if I'm right. It probably partly drives the staffing requirement because you're. Your office members could be fairly self sufficient. I mean you got to have, you know, supplies and, and, and that kind of thing."
00:18:03,"And it sounds like you have, you know, you mentioned there's a competitor in town who culturally is not very human focused and you guys have, you know, a higher level of sort of customer service and engagement with your members and do some programming to support local businesses. So there's kind of that layer of, of engagement with your members. But office members are a lot less high maintenance than flex members."
00:18:30,"And we, we've. We've realized too that most of our office members that we have here are you know, one of the things we learned. I learned by, by starting out with everything coworking is you define your, your ICA, your ideal customer. And our ideal customer avatar is 30 plus. They drive an SUV. They have, they have you did the worksheet at least. At least. You know, typically they, they have, they have children and a dog kind of thing."
00:18:53,"So it's like we've realized that for most of the people that come to us, they want to, they want to get, get in, get their work done and go. So we, you know what, they need us when they need us, but for the most part they want to get in here, do that, do their stuff and get back to the family. Yeah, I, I always refer to, I listen to podcasts constantly."
00:19:15,"It's probably a little bit obnoxious, but my, I was listening to one the other day and they were talking about social connection and just this idea that we all need it. We're all like very social humans, even introverts, but that it can be solved like pretty lightly. Right? Like, you know, hello to the barista, hello to the front desk, you know, hello to somebody else, you know, like getting coffee at the workspace."
00:19:42,"It's, it's not necessarily, I think is some people want this, but to your point, your, your ideal customer is like they, they're really getting their heavy. They've got probably other community involvement. Right. The kids play sports, they're, you know, involved in the school, whatever. And so at work, it's like a light touch in terms of the interaction, which probably makes a big difference in their day to day, but they also need the breathing to get their stuff done."
00:20:08,"Productivity, focus. It's. Yeah, it's that piece. But, but then the little touches, you know, layer on the social connection, which we all need. But it doesn't have to be happy hour and you know, all the things that they probably don't have time for. Yeah, exactly. We tried it a couple of times of doing like, hey, we're going to do a wine mixer or something like that. And everybody's like, I'm by 5:00, I'm at soccer practice or."
00:20:32,"Right. So, so. But the interesting part of it is both of our locations, we have several, we have. We'll have at least one or two people that has somebody on, on site all day long and usually their doors open. Like I have like one of my facilities, we have a, we have a functional medicine doctor and they're kind of the, the, the, the. The. That's that social, that social mayor."
00:20:53,"Yeah, yeah. Patient in my other place or have a real estate agent. They actually have somebody there at the front desk all the time. So it kind of. Oh, that's funny. Yeah, they, they. We're, we're that the, our Montgomery location is, is in an area that's, it's right next to a lake and people are always looking for, you know, people drive up There, and they're looking for maybe a lake house for the weekend or whatever."
00:21:17,"They've always had somebody there to just kind of intercept those. Those opportunities. Yeah. So we kind of have another win. Win. Yeah. Yeah. So they. They have their. Their. Their place and. And we have somebody that's kind of our. Hey, how you doing? When they walk in. So, yeah, Houston is really. I've. I think I've been to Houston like, once in my life. We have a group in the Woodlands, and they were just doing a photo shoot, and they were walking me around a little bit outside."
00:21:42,"It's gorgeous. Like the, you know, I think of sort of downtown Houston, but I was like, this is so pretty. I can't imagine getting to work. They had a little, like, pond, you know, next to the building. It was so pretty. Yeah, no, it's, you know, it's. Like I say it's. It's a. It's a great. It's a. It's a great area to live. And the weather is. The weather is good most of the time."
00:22:02,"Like I say, summers are. Summers are tough, but the rest of the year is pretty good. But yeah, the Woodlands were very close to the Woodlands, where we are as well. And so it's. But it's one of those things where you've got, you know, you kind of have the. The trees and nature and all that. So in both of our places where we kind of have. Have that."
00:22:18,"That vibe as well, so it makes it where people can kind of go outside during the day if they need to, to. To, you know, have lunch or do whatever. But it's enough to, like I say they. That's one thing that we seem to. Notices. They come in, they get their stuff done, and they. Then they want. They want to go and see their trees, not mine, so."
00:22:36,"Right. Yeah. Right. Perfect. Again, I'm curious about your mail business. Is that something you focus on and is that kind of growing like the meeting room business or. Because that requires a little bit of staff time? It's been good business, and it's kind of. It's kind of unique, and we've. We've evolved that business. We have kind of three different levels of service in that, and. And it works out pretty."
00:23:00,"And it's worked out pretty good. It's nice. It's nice additional business. And. And most of the. Most of it's pretty. Pretty low maintenance. The only problem. The only problems we. We continue, I think we see as much as anything is when people stop service and then we're still getting. Yes, they stop service and, and we're, we get, we're still getting tons of their mail and it's like, I know."
00:23:20,"But for the most part it's, it's been a very, a very good piece of the business. And you know, it grow, I mean it grows every, every month for the most part. So it's, it's, it's a deal where you know, it, it, you know, kind of as you look at it, it's, after a while it's almost like you're renting another office or two offices or whatever. So it, it, it's nice, nice additional revenue for just a little the, the, the, the little bit of effort that it takes."
00:23:45,"Juicy North America, a coworking conference is coming up April 7th through 10th in Boston. It's at the Track and New Balance. It's a great venue, but even better than the venue. The content and the people and the conversations and the connections and the insights and the perspective. Nothing replaces taking a couple days out from your business, getting out of town and really immersing yourself into the business that you're in or working on, being in that you love and getting to do tours and just connect with people that you've seen on Zoom but never seen in person."
00:24:22,"I might be one of those people. I'm definitely going to be there. I haven't missed one in 10 years and I would love to see you there. We have a special discount code for you. Thank you to the Juicy team. It is in the show notes so grab the show notes on your phone or on the website and the URL to get all the details and register is in the same spot."
00:24:43,"I'd love to see you there. Where do you. It sounds like you run it pretty high occupancy, but I'm sure you have churn like everybody does. Where do your leads come from? So a few different places. I'll say. The, the, the we do. We do a good amount of networking events. Those kinds of things have helped us a lot. We've been doing some, we, we, we hired a, a marketing company this year or late last year to do some Facebook ads for us."
00:25:09,"And did those work? It's yes and no. So we've picked up some good business and we, we and we've tested it. We're, we're so it's been, it's been good. We probably, we've been doing it now for three or four months and we've probably out of the three or four months, I think we've picked up maybe four or five office People as well as virtual. Some meetings as well."
00:25:32,"So it's, it's worked. But it's, it's a, it's like one of those things as we, as we look at it. There's certain. It has gotten a little bit more expensive but. But it's, it's worked for the most part. So I'd say we're, we're going to stick with it. I just, we're actually kind of. We put a pause on it just, just recently because we're going to focus on a couple other marketing things early this year and then kind of kind of restart it."
00:25:56,"But we actually just, we actually have one that, that was for. Specifically for virtual mail that we did. It was a video. Interesting. Yeah. And we got a lot of. We got. The interesting part about it is we got a lot of, of responses on virtual mail but our virtual offices. But unfortunately the one thing. I don't know how familiar you are with Facebook ads, the quality can be."
00:26:17,"Yeah. The leads can be. Yeah. Yep. That's why it's good to test them. I will say ad prices go through the roof during election and holidays, which we just had. So it, that may be what you were experiencing. So if you felt like it was kind of working and there's a. Yeah, it's. We have operators that do really well with them, but it. You can get. Yes. Bad leads."
00:26:40,"Yeah. And that was kind of our, that kind of like. And also one of the things that I realized as we go through this process with Facebook is having the, having the infrastructure and the follow up processes in place to map leads as they come in. Because I, as we have gotten into it, it's like I've realized when we, when we went from kind of, you know, the people calling in to the Facebook leads, for the most part if somebody calls in, they've already done their homework and they just need to be pushed over the edge to buy Facebook lead."
00:27:11,"There's more nurturing and a pipeline that we really kind of made kind of helped me realize that we need to build that interesting. To make sure that we can accommodate those leads better. And because you always hear that the most sales happen between contact 7 and 12. Yeah. We've always heard. I don't, I, I don't know what that. No, totally. That. Yeah. People need to. If they're new to your point, if they're like newer to a concept."
00:27:41,"Right. And you're telling them how to. How it works, what the terms are, you know, all those things versus somebody who's like, oh, I Saw you. I need an office. When can I start? Yeah yeah. So that, that's been a, that's been one of those things that I, I have, I, Right. We're working on now. I mean I have a, but I have a VA that, that I work with has been been outstanding and we're setting up some of our automations as well."
00:28:05,"We use in our CRM program to, to make sure that we're getting, we're getting the, the right number of opportunities to follow up with with emails and text messages and phone calls and all that because we're, we. But we just kind of realized that that that piece of our business was not as, as strong as as it needs to invest that amount of money to make it make it convert."
00:28:27,"Yep, totally. That makes sense. Is do you have a marketing company doing your Instagram? Your Instagram is great. I pulled it up the other day and I was like, oh, I love like your member new member features. I love those. So we, we have both. So I have a, I have an our VA does does our does our does all of our Facebook ads and our, our meta ads."
00:28:49,"So most everything goes between Facebook and Instagram. Yeah. And then I also have my mark the, my marketing company that, that also does some of the videos and, and built built out the pay per click ads or whatever you want to call it on Facebook. Yeah. Or Insta. It's been interesting yesterday we don't get a lot through Instagram unfortunately. I don't know why, but yesterday I actually had somebody that called off our Instagram ad and they, you know, they walked and signed up for an office."
00:29:17,"Like what? She was like, yeah, we've been looking and, and it was just, I was like, yeah, yes, we need it. And so they, they came in and signed up like on the spot. So it was. So you just, that's one thing I've learned is you just never know where the next opportunity is going to come. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, I mean you'll learn that over time. To your point about the homework, like, I love the, you know, the Instagram does a great job of showcasing like who's in your space, getting to know, you know, the members."
00:29:46,"I just always think people want to know like what's happening behind that door? Who's, who's in there? You know, are they people like me? Will I fit? So I love the profiles. I think that's great to do. Give your give your VA a high five. Yeah, no, that she, she's been awesome. I, I, that's a, that's a, that's one of the things that I will, I'll say that finding fight."
00:30:04,"We've gone through a few, but finding somebody that once you find the right one, they're, they're just ultra valuable to the, to the business and taking, taking some of those things. And especially our RVA has been, has been, been in, been in that, in that space for quite a while, so knows a lot about technology which. Okay, totally helpful. Yep. Because because of my age I'm, I know enough to be dangerous, but I, I sure am not the most tech savvy person in the world."
00:30:30,"So she's filled a huge gap for us. Well there, there you go. You're adding in, you're, you're accommodating accommodating for your weaknesses. We can't be good at everything. You, you bring the real estate and the deal expertise. Yeah, she's doing a great job. I'm also sort of struck by all the women your, your female members. I don't know why, but I, I'm like, oh look, you know, it looks you've got a lot of female members."
00:30:54,"Yeah. So I think over. I, I actually it was interesting. We, we do, we'll donate space to certain groups that want to just need an office, need a meeting room to hold their meetings. So I don't know, probably three or four months ago we actually had a Women's Council of Entrepreneurs. Used our, used our office. And so I was like, well, you know, they said come in and tell us a little bit about your business."
00:31:15,"So I, I started looking at it and I started calculating IT and over 80, over 80% of our members are female. That's nuts. I mean. And so I think, I think at the end of the day we, you know, it's, you know, I don't know how, what it necessarily to equate it to other than just maybe the area we're in or, or so we have, we have phenomenal entrepreneurs in our space."
00:31:41,"Yeah. I learned from, from our, from our members all the time. I've got a couple of people that I'm just like, whenever I have a problem or a thought or whatever, I'm like, hey, what do you think about this? So. And I think we just have a good, a good network too. And, and so I think that's, that's a lot of it. But I like, I say I can't, I can't put my finger on it other than I think especially when we, when we just, when we designed everything."
00:32:04,"My wife was, was integral in designing Everything. She created beautiful spaces. And I think that's also part of it too. It's. Yeah, the aesthetic. They're very attractive. And I, I don't mean that women don't, you know, get offices and go to coworking spaces. I would say usually, you know, you're looking at 50, 50, maybe a little bit of a male skew. And then I get people who go, you know, you went through the startup school."
00:32:28,"People who go through the startup school who want to do female focused bases. And I get nervous about that because if you're in a market, you know, like, if you said, whoa, that's what we want to focus on, I'd be like, I'm not sure if that's a good idea. You know, you might be limiting yourself. And here you are at 80%, you know, without. Well, it's. Yeah, you."
00:32:45,"I don't, I don't want to. I definitely don't want to. To eliminate 50% of my market. Right. No, Right. Yeah. But I wonder. Free, freestanding building, you know, sort of attractive aesthetics. Like, your buildings are attractive also. You own them and you've gotten to decide how they look. And so I wonder if some of those things play into it. And then, I mean, is word of mouth a referral source for you?"
00:33:10,"Yeah, definitely. We do, we do well with, with, with, with referrals. And, and also, too, like our, our Magnolia location, we also are very, very high on the security of it too. I. When we first opened, I was a little nervous because the building, when we purchased it, had access control where the doors basically stayed locked 24 hours a day. Yeah. And I was nervous about that because I would think people would get frustrated."
00:33:33,"But I actually, you know, have kind of changed my tune on that now because I use it as a positive because, like, hey, you don't know. You don't know who's out there. Once we're on busy roads, so anybody can walk in and whether they're, whether whatever they're trying to do, whether they're trying to, you know, sell you something or, or just wander around. So it's actually, I think that's also been a key to it as well."
00:33:54,"Just having a little bit more security. Okay. Yep. I like, yeah, retail level buildings are hard. We had one in Palo Alto and it's always like, you feel strange having the door locked all the time. But, yep, it can be a positive. How do you bill your members? What system do you use? So we have been on Archie, and everything operates through Archie. We're actually in the process right now."
00:34:17,"We, we started with Nexus and then we went over to Archie and we're actually, our, our website is built on Squarespace. Okay. And we're actually trying, we're, we're in the process right now of converting everything to the E commerce part of Squarespace and using another company called Bookable because there's. Nexus was, was good but it was, it was a little bit difficult. Archie's got some, some, a lot of great things but we're trying to simplify it a little bit as far as keeping everything inside of our site not having where somebody has to bounce out."
00:34:51,"Yeah. Because it confuses people. That's one of the tech stack and coworking is shocking when you think about all the things you need to make it happen. Yeah. Yeah. So it's a deal. We, we're, we're in that process right now and we've, we're maybe 30% of the way up through the process of seeing if we can make it work, moving it over to, to the E commerce part of Squarespace and then, and doing that because you know we're fairly simple."
00:35:20,"We don't, we don't. So our, you know, we don't integrate our locks and different things like that with the, with the offices. So for the reality of it is we use it for, if we can use it for our building and our booking and all that sort of stuff and everything else is. We can also integrate it through our CRM doing automations and so forth. Yeah, the CRM is key."
00:35:39,"Don't use the Squarespace email system. Very limited. Yeah. I, so yeah all of our, all of our emails run run through you know through Google and then and everything through and through our cm. So for the most part we're doing pretty good there. We actually are. I've been very, very happy with our CF CRM which is. Oh gosh, I'm drawing a blank. Not HubSpot. Active. Active Campaign. Oh, use ActiveCampaign."
00:36:00,"Okay. Yes, very robust. Okay great. Yeah, very, very, very good. Very user friendly. So shout out to activecampaign. They, they've done. And were you CRM familiar from your previous roles or. Not really. I mean my, the previous company I worked with we used, we had Salesforce but I knew enough to be dangerous. But I was, I wasn't, I wasn't, I wasn't a CRM warrior power user. Yeah, yeah."
00:36:24,"And I still, I, unfortunately I'm still not. You know, it's one of those things. I, I am like I've got to do this because and, and record my calls. But when I, you know, when I look at my. I mean I've kind of gotten into the habit especially as we continue to grow more and more. As I get to the end of my day and reviewing my sales, my calls on my."
00:36:41,"Yeah, because we have three different phone numbers and text messages and emails and so I'm trying to do all that and I realize like I. It's hard to say. I'm. Yeah, I've had, you know, 40 phone calls and 120 emails and so to get all of that captured is, is, is a challenge. Yeah, yeah. But, but, but they do a really. I'll say this, that the integration between emails and texts and everything like that with RCRM is pretty sure."
00:37:05,"Yeah. So you can see it all in one place. 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."
00:37:35,"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 and this is an excellent group of community managers that have invested time and effort into getting better at that role."
00:38:20,"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. So we love when they ask questions for things they need help with because the other aspect of the program is really around helping them get resources they need to make their jobs easier and to learn things that they can use in their role to be better at their job."
00:38:50,"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. 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 our community managers wear a lot of hats."
00:39:20,"So we break our content into industry knowledge for new community managers, community building operations, sales and marketing and leadership. So the leadership bucket is great. For our more advanced community managers we also have virtual office and digital mail training and coffee training for anybody who needs to know how to use commercial coffee brewers. So we have some of the. I'm just going to give you kind of a sampling of content that we have."
00:39:52,"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. 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."
00:40:22,"These are just some of our samples. Ooh. These are some of our best utilized topics. Demystifying the process of letting your coworking members use your address for their Google business listing. How to close a tour operations modules, how to set up automations, how to do a new member onboarding audit. Simple ways to use AI to boost your productivity. We have over 40 courses in the program so we cover kind of higher level topics and then we also cover things that are timely like the CMRA updates, Google business updates, et cetera."
00:40:58,"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. 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. Will you do more locations? We, we will."
00:41:27,"You know I as being kind of a serial real estate guy, we do, we've done a lot of different things. I, I've been looking at some other areas around the around because I like where we are. I don't want to go too far away because one, I don't, I don't have the bandwidth to go that far. Yeah, we, I've got a couple of places that I, that I'm working on right now."
00:41:47,"I actually we so you know, out of all the things that we, we've done, I've done office property, office, you know, true office buildings, storage buildings, houses, all these kinds of things. And so that's one of those things that as I look at it the, the biggest challenge I have is an office building. We, we have a couple of those where it's basically we're, we, we just manage maintenance and we don't have to be on site."
00:42:10,"The, the amount of, of time and energy is significantly less. That's my, that's my, my big, we love this business and it's a lot of work. Yes. So it's, but as we, you know, I'm, you know, our, my goal for 2025 is to, is to build our, our team better because, you know, it's, it's one of those kind of the, the, the story of an entrepreneur is you're, you're, you do every, when you do it all."
00:42:34,"Yeah. Do everything. And then, you know, now I've kind of got to get into that, to that, to that phase of getting, getting a team and getting them and being a, especially being a kind of an independent sales guy. I've never, I'm, I've never managed people before. Yeah. Yeah. So I've been very lucky. We have one, we have an office manager who I always, I always tell her she was sent from heaven because she, she kind of came in and has been able to wear all the hats and do all this, do a good job, and she takes ownership, just has like the right energy and initiative to do it."
00:43:07,"I mean, that's a big, big deal. Yeah. Yeah. And so I could say she, she's been, been outstanding and so, so, but now I, you know, I've got to find more people like her to, to help us, you know, so for, if we're going to do this, because right now I feel like we've got it, we've got a good, a good system. We understand it. So we need to, we, you know, I think we need that."
00:43:27,"We need to do more because, you know, we, it's like, it's kind of like we've got this, we got everything built out now. It's just fine. In the next hour. Yeah. Now that you figured out especially two locations, can you go on vacation? Sometimes I'm not, I'll say this. We, we go and I, I have my phone with me. But you know, like I say, my office manager, she will say, turn off your phone, whatever."
00:43:52,"She tries to save you from yourself. Exactly. And, and sometimes I, sometimes I, I, I can do that and, and be successful. But most of the time I'm, I'm, I'm an early riser. And so a lot of times I'll get up and like, if I'm going on vacation with My wife or whatever. I'll get up at, you know, five in the morning and get on email for a little while and get everything at least, you know, where I feel like I'm comfortable and then that kind of thing."
00:44:15,"So I think I have a hard time just turning it off regardless. Yeah, the true entrepreneur probably. And if you're going to be that way, you might as well work for yourself. So. Yeah, and that was kind of where I got. Because, you know, when I left my corporate job about a year ago and was very, very successful. Made, made. Made a great living. Had a, you know, company car and expense account and all those kinds of things."
00:44:42,"Yeah, it was, you know, there's a lot of people like, man, what, what are you thinking? Why, why walk away from that? I'm like, well, but also this, this had grown to a, to a point where, you know, it needed more, needed more attention. And also too, I'm like, if I, if I don't, if I don't do this, I, I, you know, I'll be, I'll. I'll never do it kind of thing."
00:45:00,"So I just needed to say, all right, I need to, I need to make that, make the jump and jump. Yeah, do something. And it's been the, the, you know, I called it a retirement from my old, from my job, but my wife's like, well, you're supposed to be retired. And I'm like, well, yeah, but that's probably not the right, right word to. Yeah, we definitely work. I work harder than, than that, than, than I was when I was over there."
00:45:24,"But it's, it's. I always tell everybody it's like, it's, it's mine and I make, it's to be able to make the decisions in the business and live with them whether they're good or bad. But, but that's kind of been, been the great part of what we do is we, we, we, we have a good a, A, A good business and good people that we work with. And that's kind of made."
00:45:41,"Made it a lot, a lot better than, than just, you know, working for, working for the man. Totally. Well, I'm going to go out. I gotta go out of order a little bit because I feel like you answered the. What do you like about the business? What's been most surprising or hardest about the business? On the. I, I'll say this. Probably for us it's, it's keeping the, keeping the flow of opportunities going because I think, you know, for the most part we've been, we've been Very, very fortunate."
00:46:11,"We, we, we haven't had a lot of people come in and you know, stiff us or, or you know, just typical business problems. I mean we have where I think we've done a pretty good job of getting good people. So, but the most part of it, especially when we go through an expansion and, and, and add 20 some odd new offices and that, that pro, that little bit of nervous factor of."
00:46:32,"Yeah. The ramp, the. Yep. How do we keep this, keep it going? You know, we've been, we the good part of it. We've been very, very fortunate and, and like I said, we're in it. We're in a good area where there's, where there's, where there's people. We're in the path of growth here. So yeah, there's always people moving to the area, but it's, I think that's been the."
00:46:48,"I kind of like I was saying, I was a sales guy for 25 years, so I always kind of, you know, like to pat myself on the back on being a good sales guy. But it's, but the marketing is part of it. That is, it that's different than the sales side of it. It's like it's so getting. Right, right. You're doing both because you, you had somebody somewhere who was doing the broader marketing in your corporate job and then you were the salesperson and now you have to write how do we have that constant flow of leads that'll come in and you, right, you close them."
00:47:15,"Do you do most of the tours or, or does your team do them? So it depends, depends on the location. Okay. But I do, I do, I do quite, I do a good amount of them just because of my office manager is, she's, she works, she works part, she works part time. So a lot of times people are coming in at 5 o'clock at night or whatever. Yesterday I was, I was at my Montgomery location and I just out of the blue I had two people that called that day."
00:47:41,"I would come in today and book and, and booked a tour and we close, closed both of them. Nice. Yeah. So I, I, I, I need to get to a better, a better spot where, where I'm not the one that has to do them all. Like, like I say, my office manager, she does it, she does a great job. And initially my wife did them all when she, when she, when we started the business and she, she found out how great of a salesperson she was."
00:48:03,"She was right. Yeah. So well, and also really good product market fit. I mean it's sounds like and I can see from your photos on your website that you have a beautiful space, so great location, beautiful space. And then you, you know, I'm sure you give great tours. There was a, somebody tagged me in a discussion on LinkedIn about some guy who went into a WeWork in India and the, you know, manager just asked them all these like requirements questions, you know, just very."
00:48:33,"And I was like that's really funny because in generally an independent owner will like ask you your life story before they, you know, before they ask you what kind of office you need. You know, it's like the opposite. It's almost like, like that or not have, right. All the systems that you're trying to get into place. Like the automations, there's like this balance, right. You can't be high touch you know, through the entire process because you just, it's not sustainable."
00:49:01,"So you, you know, pick and choose where you create that human interaction. But I'm sure you ask lots of questions about somebody's business and you know, why do they need space? And then you get to okay, which one would you like? And you know, when do you want to start? Yeah, I mean I think a lot of it comes down to, to be creating the, you know, the business as a, as a, or the, the coworking space as a, as a, almost as a person or whatever."
00:49:26,"But you know we're here to, we're here to be a, be, be a part of your business and help you and be. Be, you know, create that, help them, you know, create a personal touch for what we do. As opposed to like the, like you were saying, the, the guy that walked into the, to the Regis or whatever where they didn't feel like they were, they were being treated like a person."
00:49:44,"They were just treated like okay, well you check all these boxes. We, you know, we, we, we ask questions and we, we, we qualify people. But it's, but it's also first and foremost we're like well tell me about yourself. So what do you do? And you know, you know, understand them because obviously the questions are, you know, they'll, a lot of times if you ask the right questions they'll, they'll, they'll sell themselves because they'll be like oh yeah, we you know, like we do this or oh, so you like that."
00:50:07,"Yeah, we have that or whatever and then that you can kind of, yeah. That process as opposed to being, you know, just checking boxes and then somebody feels, feels like they're being, they're being sold as opposed to being helped I guess. Right. Yeah. And to your point, kind of selling themselves, like, they just need to confirm this is the right. Yeah. Right solution for them and if it's not, then you don't want to sell them anyway."
00:50:31,"Yeah. And I'll say that we've had that. I had that happen last week. I had somebody come in and they actually like said, yes, I'll take my office. And then, then they called back a couple days later, hey, I've got a, I've got a problem, whatever. And I was talking to my office manager and. I know, I'm sorry. I was talking to my va. And I said, well, I said those, those are okay because at the end of the day, sometimes those."
00:50:53,"It wasn't meant to be. And they would have, There's a good chance that would have been a problem for us down the road. So I'm, I'm okay with. Sometimes when something happens like that, you just kind of. That was, that was a. We dodged a bullet problem. So. Yeah, bless and release and maybe they'll be back some day later. Yeah, absolutely. And that's kind of what I looked at."
00:51:12,"It was a good person. No, no negativity at all. It was just like, hey, you know, something came up and you, like I say you never know where, where those opportunities lead or whether they become maybe a referral at some point, maybe they didn't work out, but that they're like, hey, you know, my friend's looking for a space. And, and so that's kind of what we look at."
00:51:29,"It is we, we try to be, be, be cordial to everybody in, in any situation because you never know what, what, where the, where the road takes you and who they cross and that they can send, send us opportunities or just, or just be a friend. So. Yeah, a hundred percent. Okay, so I'm curious. You did the startup school. What made you look for help when you were starting?"
00:51:50,"Well, like I was saying when I, when I, when I started and doing rental houses in the real estate business, I was, I was a part of that. The radio show. Yep. And it really, you know, it taught me that you can't go into a business or in, or an entity. And I'll, I'll share my next story too to reinforce that. But it taught me that you need to have a mentor and an outline and some."
00:52:13,"And help because reality of what we're doing is every business, no matter what, has got nuances of. Yeah. How do you be successful? And you, you can't necessarily always be successful just kind of, kind of shooting from the hip or winging it. And, you know, and I'll tell you that my, My. The. You know, the next step in my story is I did. I've done rental houses and I."
00:52:32,"We've done. We've had the co. Working space and. And done. And done well. So I ended up buying a storage building about the same time we bought. We bought some of the. This, The. The. The. These properties as well. And, And I, I got into that. I was like, it's property rental. No big deal. And I'll just figure this one out. Yeah, I'll figure it out. No problem."
00:52:51,"And that. And the business has done okay. It breaks even probably in the, in the grand scheme of it, but it kind of made me realize whenever you're going into something new or something that you're not. You're not an expert in getting help, because if you don't. If you don't have that. That help and the knowledge and the experiencers, you know, the, the mentor group that I work."
00:53:10,"That I. That I work with here in Houston, they always. They always. They have a saying there that's like, there's people that have been where you want to go. They just. These are. This group. They send back the maps. So, yeah, I love that. There's a great way to put it. There's a roadmap to where you want to go. They've been there and they send the maps back."
00:53:27,"And I think that's one of the great parts about what y'all do as well is that there's. There's. There's a. There's a roadmap to success and this business model. It's just kind of also having that. What do you call it? The courage to say I don't know it all and I need help. And because. And. And as I. As I go through this, and I've actually got a business coach now because, you know, y'all."
00:53:53,"Y'all have done great for us. And I've got a guy that has really helped us as far as giving us the resources to take it to the. To the next level and manage. Manage that. Because, you know, one of the things that's very simple that I never really ferreted out very much was, do you have a business plan? Do you have a mission statement? All these things. And we, we, you know, and."
00:54:12,"And by the way, he was like, well, hey, if you. If you don't have that chat, GPT it. And so we did that within. Within. Within about an hour and a half, I had. Instead of spending weeks and weeks. Yeah, I use the chat. GPT developed all of that and, and it was. So that's the other, that's the other piece that's been great. So but now like I say, my, the."
00:54:29,"Our. Our. Our business coach has been. Been very helpful. His name is Steve Rosenberg. He's here in Houston as well and has done, you know, has a, has a great group of entrepreneurs that they, that they really have done a phenomenal job and given, you know, given us the, the resources. And he's also the kind of coach too that like I was saying, he's, he's. He's done. Done a lot but he also brings in experts."
00:54:52,"So it's not just, not just this one standing up on a stage and hey, I know it all. It's like I know enough. But I also know that there's people out there that are really good and processes or AI or marketing or whatever that he brings in to really help. So there. That's one thing I'll say too is the, you know, we, yeah, we all work in our, in our little corner of the world, but there's experts in all of these other areas that we can, that we can tap into that really help us get to the, to the next level and, and make it where maybe one day we can take a vacation."
00:55:21,"Right? That's the goal. That's the goal. Awesome. Okay, I'm gonna let you go. We're at the end of our time. Thank you for doing this and sharing your story and some of the little nuggets that'll help other people that are listening and thank Amy for us as well. Absolutely. Will she. She, like I say, she's awesome and she helps. Helps in so many ways and is just love of my life and we walk together every day to make it a better place and help everybody."
00:55:46,"We can love it. Thank you, James. Hey, thank you so much. Have a great day. James said it perfectly. You can shoot from the hip and maybe get it right or maybe make some expensive mistakes or you can get some expert support through coaching, mentorship, etc. At Everything Coworking. We are focused on mentorship this year and that can take many different forms. We are working with clients to launch spaces from scratch, to relaunch spaces, to help existing spaces get more profitable, to helping folks expand to their next space location."
00:56:27,"If you are working on launching or growing your coworking space and want expert support, you can book a discovery call@coworking mentorship.com. we'd love to hear what your goals are and see how we can support you. Thank you for listening to today's episode. If you like what you heard, tell a friend, hit that subscribe button and leave us a rating and review. If you'd like to learn more about our education and coaching programs, head over to everythingcoworking."
00:56:57,"Com. We'll see you next week."
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