Focusing on what drives your coworking business will be critical in 2021 to set yourself up for office re-entry. What we measure gets focus, what we focus on improves. KPIs can help you to get objective data on what’s working and what’s not...but they can also keep you focused and disciplined while you’re working on projects that don’t reap immediate financial rewards. In this episode, we walk through what KPIs are, what to track, and how to set yourself up for success in your measuring and tracking process.

Everything Coworking

181. KPIs for Coworking Spaces with a 2021 Lens

Daan Van Rossum, Chief Experience Officer for Dreamplex in Vietnam shares: - How Dreamplex came to be - a culmination of Daan’s experience at international ad agencies, his commitment to helping others discover self-fulfillment, personal development, and figuring out what we want out of life. - That work should help employees to pursue meaning, purpose and the ability to be their best selves. - How Dreamplex’s Gen Z research reflects a desire to go to a place to work that is designed around their wants and needs. How the Vietnamese highly value being able to work away from home - which in their culture, is often not a quiet, productive place to focus. - How Dreamplex’s reason for being is not so much about building community among members, but giving companies access to an intentional work environment that draws employees in. The Vietnamese culture is more individual. But they want to go to a PLACE to do their work. They don’t want to work in a big open floor plan where they can spend the day encountering strangers. - Why Vietnam is embracing flexible workspaces. - What later stage startups are looking for as they grow their teams and build a culture and deliver a really great employee experience - which becomes a big factor in attracting and retaining key talent. - That Dreamplex’s real competition is companies creating their OWN office space - not other coworking spaces, not market saturation. How the physical product is only one tool in engaging the best people for a company….and how Dreamplex plays a role outside of the physical environment. - How they use content marketing as a major marketing tool. Listen to the full episode here: www.everythingcoworking.com/episodes/189

189. Daan Van Rossum Chief experience officer at Dreamplex in Vietnam on how they are designing coworking spaces that support members on their journeys to become better versions of themselves.

The ability to acquire customers to fill a coworking space to 90-95% capacity, and then replace customers every single month as members inevitably leave, is central to a coworking space operator’s ability to survive. If you don’t build and optimize a customer acquisition machine, you may not fail, but you will not thrive. The ability to acquire many individual or small teams as customers every single month, is what differentiates your coworking business from a landlord or a commercial real estate broker. In this episode, we talk about what the customer acquisition process looks like in a coworking business and how it differs from models like Knotel which just filed for bankruptcy. Looking for the show notes for this episode? www.everythingcoworking.com/episodes/188

188. Why Your #1 Competency as a Coworking Space Owner Should be Customer Acquisition

Giovanni Palvacini is one of a handful of professionals in the coworking industry that have a macro view of what's happening in coworking across constituencies. He has deep real estate experience and is the unusual broker that has a deep understanding of the coworking business model. Giovanni works with landlords and operators on coworking leases, management agreements and other creative deal structures. Avision Young also provides strategic services to enterprise users on integrating flexible office into their real estate portfolio. Looking for the show notes for this episode? www.everythingcoworking.com/episodes/187

187. A 2021 Coworking Market Preview with Giovanni Palvacini Principal in the Flexible Office Practice at Avison Young

187.A 2021 Coworking Market Preview with Giovanni Palvacini Principal in the Flexible Office practice at Avison Young

Running a business generally means competing priorities. Focus on sales or get our "back-of-the-house" in order? Sales wins every time, but that can cause some headaches down the road...with the IRS for example. Ain't nobody got time for that. Braden Drake, lawyer, author, educator, shares his perspective on establishing your business entity, saving for quarterly taxes and, most importantly....paying yourself! Looking for the show notes for this episode? www.everythingcoworking.com/episodes/186

186. From Paying Yourself to Saving for Tax Payments to S Corps - Braden Drake Shares Business Entity and Cashflow Tips for Coworking Space Owners

Trina-K is the Community Manager for ECOMSPACES in Atlanta, GA. She's also a confidence coach, SOP writer, video shoot scheduler, project manager, and more for ECOM members. If you're interested in hearing an out of the box take on the coworking Community Manager role, this episode is for you. Looking for the show notes for this episode?  www.everythingcoworking.com/episodes/185

185. How a Community Manager for a Niche E-Commerce-Focused Coworking Space in Atlanta Shaped Her Own Unique Role

There was a discussion in the Everything Coworking Facebook Group recently about whether to use "coworking" or "flexible office" as a tagline for a new space under development. There was a lot of emotional support from the group members to "go with your gut." Bad advice. Go with Google. Using the right organic search terms matter a lot to help your ideal members find you. Use the term they know and they're searching for. This epsiode talks about the emotional and the data driven aspects to making this decision.

184. What You Should Call Your Business So That Your Ideal Customers Find You

If you’re curious about what a successful community manager profile looks like, how they contribute to the business and how they manage their time, keep the ear buds in, this episode is for you! Kelsey Sizemore is the Community Manager & Marketing Manager for Forge Birmingham, AL. At the time of this recording, she’s been in the role for three years and has helped the team expand from 7,000 square feet into 13,000 square feet, start a podcast, optimize their marketing mix and more!

183. Behind the Scenes with Community & Marketing Manager at Forge - Kelsey Sizemore

182. Kim Lee takes on 2020: Expands her space, launches a coworking collective and starts a podcast

Demand for virtual offices is growing. Building up a competency around marketing and servicing virtual office memberships can add margin to your business and help you to serve a member that doesn’t require much access to physical space. There are operators that build their virtual office business to the point where it pays their rent. In this episode we discuss three ways to build your virtual office program. 1. What is virtual office? 2. Should a virtual office program include use of our GMB Listing? 3. Three ways to grow your virtual office business: - Run Google Ads - Focus on SEO/organic traffic using keyword optimization - List your offerings with lead-gen partners

180. Three Ways to Build your Coworking Virtual Office Business

In this episode we discuss three pricing strategies for tough times: 1. Consider offering more flexibility on your memberships than you typically would, but don’t overwhelm your potential members with too many options. Want evidence? Read the “jam study” here: https://hbr.org/2006/06/more-isnt-always-better 2. Try to avoid offering rock bottom pricing You can’t lure people out of their homes with deals. They either can leave the house and want to leave the house or they don’t. When they evaluate options, they want the best environment FOR THEM that they can get out of the home. Focus on consultative selling vs. price. WHY are they leaving the house? How can what you offer provide the transformation they are looking for? A better network A better office environment than they have at home A more productive day Work friends A place to record in silence 3. Don't get into a price war with the local competition. Know your strengths and know their weaknesses. If they’re doing ridiculous deals, they may be locked into very long, inflexible agreements. They may be paying for coffee and meeting rooms. Know how to make the apples to apples comparison, but even then, you might lose on price and need to sell on other strengths such as hospitality and community. Give all deals/COVID accommodations an end date. Frame them as a COVID discount and make them good for 3 months (you can always extend if you need to). 

179. 3 Pricing Strategies for Coworking Spaces During Tough Times

Trevor Hightower started his own coworking brand in the lobby of a multi-family apartment building. He learned a lot about what worked and didn't work in that model and eventually met and joined forces with the founder of Craftwork. Craftwork enhanced the revenue model and mojo of a coworking space by combining it with an open-to-the public coffee shop. Coffee in the front, coworking in the back. Craftwork started experimenting with partnering with developers of multi-family apartment buildings to build a Craftwork location into the amenity set. The buildout was paid for, but they still signed a lease. COVID struck....all coffee shops closed down. The leasing model showed its weaknesses. Trevor shares his story about how COVID accelerated their pursuit of a stronger model for their business - hospitality as a service...what that looks like and where they're headed.

178. Coworking & Coffee Company Pivots to Hospitality as a Service for Multi-Family Lobbies

Are you excited about the huge potential demand for coworking space coming from the "Work from Home" segment? They are not the same nut to crack as our typical coworking space member. Let's discuss: - How the WFH segment is different than our traditional coworking segments, who pays for their memberships, safety and security expectations. - How they are not solution-aware and require a different marketing approach than our active searchers. - Which advertising platforms align with different awareness stages. - Some tactics to use on the solution-unaware segment to get them into the top of our sales funnel.

177. How to Attract the WFH Segment to our Coworking Spaces

If you’re curious about what a successful community manager profile looks like, how they contribute to the business and how they manage their time, keep the ear buds in, this episode is for you! Alex Biddle is the Community Manager for La Suprema Works & Events in Tucson, Arizona. At the time of this recording, she’s been in the role for about a year and during that time, helped the team launch their flagship location during a global pandemic.

176. Behind the Scenes with a Rockstar Coworking Community Manager

The Everything Coworking podcast shares trends and how-tos for coworking operators and anyone following this exploding trend. Jamie owns coworking spaces in Chicago and Palo Alto under the brand Enerspace Coworking. She is the president of the League of Extraordinary Coworking spaces, a global network of 35+ boutique coworking spaces. She also advises start-ups, Fortune 100 companies and other coworking spaces on space design and operations.

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181. KPIs for Coworking Spaces with a 2021 Lens

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