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

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

00:00:01 Welcome to the everything co-working podcast, where you learn what you need to know about how the world wants to work. And now your host coworking space owner and trend expert. Jamie Russo. Welcome to the everything coworking podcast. This is your host. Jamie Russo. Thank you for joining me today. Today. It is just me, but I have episodes with guests coming up the next few weeks.

00:00:41 So if you're not yet subscribed, hit the subscribe button on your podcast player. Next week, I have a guest that I'm really excited about. We're talking about cashflow saving for taxes. What type of entity your business should be, et cetera, with someone that I've been following for a while, I have his book. He's an author, he's a tax attorney and he's passionate about helping small businesses and entrepreneurs make sure they get these things right.

00:01:12 So he's joining me next week. Definitely one to not miss today, we are going to talk about what you should be calling your business, how you should be referring to it. This topic popped up in the Facebook group and I had an instant reaction to it and responded with a Google trend chart. And I wanted to cover it here because I think it's emotional for a lot of people.

00:01:39 And we may potentially be making the wrong decisions because of the emotions that we have around this topic. So we're going to dive into that in a minute. I wanted to share a couple of things. First. If you're working on opening a coworking space, I want to invite you to join me for my free masterclass three behind the scenes secrets to opening a co-working space.

00:01:59 If you are working on starting a space, I want to share three decisions that I've seen over the years. Successful operators make when they're creating their own coworking business, the masterclass is totally free. It's about an hour. If you'd like to join me, register at everything co-working dot com forward slash masterclass. And if you forget the URL, there's a little banner with it on the website,

00:02:23 everything coworking.com. So just click on the top of the website and that'll get you registered. I'm trying to make it easy for people to get to it. People have a hard time finding it when they just listened to it on audio. I think. And then the second thing I post, I started a new podcast. That's not public. You won't find it on iTunes,

00:02:44 but you can get it on Apple podcasts, which is the same thing. I guess it's not public, but you can subscribe to it and get it on your podcast player. So it's an, it's a podcast dedicated to community managers. The community manager is heart and soul of the coworking space, and we rely on them to do a lot of things.

00:03:05 And I think those of us that have community managers are always looking for tips on the right profile, that hats that they wear, how to structure weekly meetings, et cetera. So I just launched a new episode. The first one is kind of all about the hats that they wear and how to think about the role that your community manager plays in your business.

00:03:26 And then the second episode is actually based on a bunch of emails I got from folks saying, do you have a form that I can use to evaluate my community manager for the end of the year? So I did an episode on how I like to approach those discussions and looking forward to 2021. So to subscribe to that, you go to everything co-working dot com forward slash cm podcast.

00:03:50 And you'll get the instructions on how to add that to your podcast player. And you'll get alerts when we have new episodes. Okay, we're going to dive in today. The first thing I have to talk about is another topic that came up in the Facebook group. And if you're not yet in the Facebook group, come join us. It is the everything coworking club.com

00:04:09 or just search for us on Facebook will come up. But we'd love to have you join us. Lots of good discussions. I have paid groups where I dedicate my time, but I try to spend some time in the Facebook group and answer questions and catch things like the topic we're going to talk about today that I think are broader issues that need to be addressed.

00:04:27 So I love having folks in the Facebook group, we do a really fun show off your space Fridays, where people post pictures of their space and you can ask questions and get input. Although I always say, please be careful unless you know, the background of the person giving you advice, take it with a grain of salt. So someone posted and I won't name her name,

00:04:49 but thank you for doing this. If you're listening, she posted in the Facebook group, Hey, it seems like lots of people are fine. Are you fine? I'm not fine. Her, the state of her business, I'm still struggling. She, you know, she basically said, and I think this was a response to an email that I wrote.

00:05:09 So I publish a weekly newsletter. And if you're not on that and you want to get on that jump in on the website and you can subscribe, but I send out a weekly newsletter. Sometimes it's about the podcast topic. Sometimes it's about other things going on. And I wrote about how inspired I was by sort of the grit and the forward-looking mindset of my new flight group members and my existing flight group members.

00:05:36 So the first week of every month I do my flight group calls. I do my community manager calls. I do a coworking startup Q and a. So I talked to operators all week long. And my takeaway from that week was just like, you know, the people who, and it's self-selecting to some extent, right? The folks who self-select into investing into a mastermind group have have a particular mindset,

00:06:03 right? They think that there is a light at the end of the tunnel, and they're looking ahead, they have new opportunities. They're looking at management agreements, they're looking at new locations, they're looking at buying buildings, they're looking at starting masterminds in their coworking space. They're looking at starting digital memberships. They're really focused on things that they can control.

00:06:25 And I wrote in this email, just, just how inspiring that was. And I think I thought about this when I was sending it, but I didn't, you know, address. It was, I don't want people to think I'm saying, you know, everybody's fine. And, but you may not be fine. You know, the folks, nobody's fine.

00:06:45 Right? Nobody's doing amazingly well. I will tell you, you know, there are folks that have a really strong community and we'll, we're going to talk about that. And once I get into our primary topic today that have retained a lot of members. So there are folks that are doing better than others, for different reasons. It may simply be the market that they're in.

00:07:04 It may be that they're in a niche space and people stayed because they really, really need the thing that happens at that space. Or there's a very strong community that moved online. There are also folks who have strong community moved online and it didn't work very well. And it's not, you know, really anything that you could sort of point a finger at them,

00:07:25 not doing it. It didn't work and they're struggling, but you are not alone. If you are struggling in your business, everyone is having a very hard time transitioning into 2021. There are folks who are having an easier time and a much harder time. And so you're somewhere on the spectrum, but know that nobody is experiencing sunshine and rainbows yet. And I struggle with my role.

00:07:49 Sometimes I'm a very optimistic person typically, although I have my own meltdowns, once in a while, I'll ask my husband, but I feel like it's my role to help you look forward. If that's what you want to do, right? If you know that your business is not going to make it, I can't say anything to help that. So I'm here for the folks who are trying to stay on track,

00:08:15 trying to prepare for what we hope will be a turnaround at some point in 2021 when vaccines get distributed, et cetera. So I don't mean to be too sunshine and rainbows, and you are not alone. If you're having days where you're feeling like this is not sunshine and rainbows. So I just wanted to mention that before we dive in another quick note about that Facebook group,

00:08:39 I just posted a Google my business video on how to reduce the risk of allowing your members to use your Google, my business address. So we did an episode a couple of episodes ago about growing your virtual mail business, your virtual office business. And that's a component of that. So I have some videos that I'm releasing that kind of dive a little bit more into Google my business.

00:09:05 So jump into the Facebook. If you want to catch that video, somebody in the Facebook group asked about that today, and I just hadn't posted the video yet. Okay. So today, when I'm really here to talk about today is what do you call your business? So this came up in the Facebook group and I think I lost the post already.

00:09:24 So someone said, Hey, I'm updating my logo and thinking about what to call my space. And I'm thinking about flexible office space. And there was a little bit of a pile on with some encouragement about that phrase. And this is the thing that worries me about Facebook groups. So always be careful when you take advice in Facebook groups, because you may be talking to someone who has no idea what they're talking about.

00:09:49 They may not be profitable. They may not have any systems in place. They may not have a team and they might be giving you advice on how to manage people. I mean, you just never know, right? So this is the benefit to my mastermind group and the community manager group. We have a private Slack group and you know, the people in there and you can trust their advice.

00:10:08 So I encourage you to find your own network of people in whose business you understand, and you know, their point of view and you can trust their advice. So be careful with Facebook groups. I think they're good for simple questions. I don't like getting into complex questions in Facebook groups, and I think this is one of them. So she said,

00:10:28 I'm thinking about using a tagline around flexible office. And there was a little pile on lots of encouragement. I think you have to be really careful with what you call your business. And I think people have an emotion tied to different terms because they have their own association with the term and they choose the name based on their own association. So here's why we want to be careful about that.

00:10:52 And actually, let me tell you kind of the three primary names are sort of categories that people would put their business in coworking, executive suite, or business suite, and then flexible office. So folks probably identify with one of those words, right? Here's how I think about them. Although when you get down to it, here's what I want to say before we dive into this is if you looked at a floor plan,

00:11:23 if, if, if person, you know, if Alice showed up and had a floor plan for a coworking space and Joe showed up and had a floor plan for an executive suite space, and then Dan showed up and he said, I'm creating a flexible office space. Here's my floor plan. I'm not sure that you would be able to tell the difference between those three categories for our industry,

00:11:47 by looking at a floor plan, there might be things that, you know, sort of steer in one direction or another. But I think in the end, the name that we're giving this is really about what happens in the space and where the focus is. It's not on the floor plan. So coworking is not open space. As a matter of fact,

00:12:11 I talk a lot about how you have to be careful about open space. Of course, the pandemic, you know, was an entirely different force that make is making that very challenging. But outside of the pandemic, you know, private space sells really well. It's expensive to build, but it sells really well. And so if you're doing a coworking space,

00:12:28 be careful about opening an open seat, only coworking space. And there are times when that works and areas that works and niches that, that works for it. But I, a lot of folks assume that if you're heavy on private spaces, then you're an executive suite, but that is no longer the case that may be used to be the case like in 2007,

00:12:51 when coworking started and nobody put up walls, right? And then we started with phone booths and then meeting rooms, and then folks started putting in more private space and team Swedes and that kind of thing. And all of a sudden that floor plan for a coworking space looks an awful lot. Like our traditional business executive suites that are more office heavy look at,

00:13:13 we work, right. We work calls itself, coworking. If you've been in a, we work, man, it is just amaze of private spaces for the most part, right? Probably 80 to 90% private spaces. They don't call themselves an executive suite. They call themselves co-working flexible office. If you're, this is a tricky one because I don't think this term is known by many people.

00:13:36 And that was my first response to that Facebook group post was, let's be careful. I think that's an insider term. So we'll talk about that on GWA conferences, right? I think Mark Gilbreath, who's the CEO of liquid space. I think his podcast is called the flexible office economy. So we'll have discussions about what flexible office strategies look like for enterprise occupiers and the,

00:13:59 you know, how flexibility is such an advantage to our model, but the term flexible office, like your uncle Dan is probably not using that term at Thanksgiving dinner. Right? People don't know that term unless you're a landlord or unless you're an insider. And so there's a time and a place to use these terms. Right. But when you're thinking about,

00:14:21 so let's, let's start with what, you know, what category do you want to be in? And that may be more of an emotional decision or more about who your ICA is and how they identify. And that probably is more about co-working and executive suites, right? Do you have a, I'm not gonna kind of go into this cause I don't want to define these two,

00:14:44 but I suspect that an executive suite would feel about community, but would be heavier office, more professional hire and build out that kind of thing and less concerned about helping members maybe make friends. Right? So I think in, in coworking, we're very much about like, look, the humans need to be social and we want to connect them and they might go play kickball together.

00:15:10 They might join a running club together. They might also do business together, but there's a lot of facets to that community. And some folks identify really strongly with that. And some folks say like, look, my, my clients have, and they may not call them members. They call them clients. My clients have friends. They don't need, you know,

00:15:31 they don't need people to have a softball team with, they need a great place to do work. And of course I hope they do business together and I'm going to help support that. And I'm going to be really focused on hospitality and providing them with services. They need to serve their clients and run a great business. Right. And flexible office just has a million different meetings.

00:15:50 I mean, we could probably spend all day asking ourselves what might that look like? So that may look like a Notel model where, you know, a company is leasing space that, you know, is a combo of meeting space, open space and, you know, phone rooms, et cetera, and some amenities, but it just happens to be branded,

00:16:11 you know, by the company it's not serviced. That's typically the distinction for me for flexible office. Typically I think flexible office is not a service offering. It is simply a shorter term lease and it's shorter time to get into it. So it probably has internet. It probably has furniture and it's probably, you know, 2000 square feet instead of 20,000 square feet or it's 5,000 square feet.

00:16:40 So it's on the smaller side, but a company's taking it for three years, not 10 years. And somebody put the internet up for them and somebody, you know, built it's it's maybe it's pre-built out and the furniture's there and it's moving ready. Right. So that's how I typically think about flexible office, but it doesn't come with a community manager.

00:16:58 So these are some different associations that we think of. And I think when you're using these terms, make sure you're using terms that are used by your competitors, in your market and by your ICA, your ICA is your ideal community avatar. And I use the term community because I don't want to use one customer because I want you to think of a diverse group of people that may be a part of your space.

00:17:23 And I do use the term community in that case. And so you may relate to that term or not relate to that term, but who is, what terms do your customers use? And this was my immediate response in the Facebook group. If you go to Google trends, which is a cool site, you can compare search terms and you don't get volume.

00:17:45 You get a relative sort of weight of the, and so you can compare the term co-working with the term flexible office. The flexible office line is very low to the bottom of the graph and pretty flat. And the coworking term is, you know, go gets higher all the time. And it has a much higher volume compared to flex office. If you see the visual,

00:18:13 you'll say, Oh right. I see, I see. I get that. Okay. So that to me is a big deal because if you are opening a space and you want people to find you, if you call it flexible office and everybody's Googling for coworking, you have problems, right. Even if you identify yourself as an executive suite then, but everybody in the market is calling it coworking because that's what we work called it.

00:18:43 And we work within the media all the time. Then you're, you may have a problem also, unless you know that your ideal client is searching for executive office. So you may need to use a combination of the two. So I think flexible office is probably reserved for a category of folks. If you're in it, if you're listening and you're in flexible office,

00:19:05 you know, it, you use it and you're probably using it with enterprise clients. You probably using it for outbound sales. You're talking to real estate folks at enterprises. You're talking to people who make decisions about where businesses are located and you're using the term flexible office. Maybe you're a broker, right. You know how to use that term, if you are a coworking space operator or an executive suite business suite operator.

00:19:29 And that's primarily how you identify yourself, I would be careful about the flexible office term because a it's kind of an insider term and B it connotes not serviced. And that's probably not what you are. You probably have a manager, right? I will say, if you scroll down on that Google trend page, if you pull it up, there is an interest by sub region graph chart,

00:19:51 and it shows you areas of the U S at least you can probably make this global. And yeah, I think you can. I just happen to, did happen to D default to the U S for me, and it'll show you States. And these are, you know, with major metros where that search term has a higher relative volume. So California,

00:20:15 Texas, Florida, New York and North Carolina Pepin, and Georgia would probably Atlanta, right. Popping up as more popular. So you may be in a region where that term has different meaning. And so if you feel confident in using it again, use it, but first you need to look at the relative search volume and get in and make sure you're using data to make this decision.

00:20:50 So I will tell you, this discussion has been going on for a long time. When I took over the global workspace association, as the executive director, it was a major deal because the founding of that organization was really around executive suites, right? They had, they'd been around for a very long time since the seventies. So this idea of shared office space is certainly not new,

00:21:12 the sort of incarnation, the manifestation of coworking and, and some of the connotations of that are newer. And that dates to 2006, 2007 ish, but shared office suites have been around for decades literally. And the global workspace association had been running conferences for ever we've run 33 of them. I think so. And I'm still on the board, but that first conference that I hosted as the executive director in Las Vegas,

00:21:43 which was super, super fun. We had a keynote speaker who was part of my network, and I thought she was awesome and a great storyteller. She used the term coworking about a hundred times in her speech. And I thought people were going to throw her off the stage. You know, there were folks in that audience who emotionally did not want to connect to coworking,

00:22:05 right? They were an executive suite and you may be listening. This may be you and you, maybe you were there. And you remember what that was like. And that was a really challenging, you know, time to navigate. But we put this Google trends, slide on the board. And we said, look as an association, we have to call it coworking because that's what people call it.

00:22:25 That's what the media call it. That's what people use in, you know, the, the broader public. And so we have to use a term that's relatable and we have to help, you know, that that's what people are searching for. And you need to use that in your marketing. So, you know, when you're working with an SEO specialist,

00:22:43 when you're for keywords on your website, maybe you work in some of these other terms. Maybe you do blog posts and work in some of these other terms. But when you're doing, you know, your Google, my business, the name of your space, et cetera, the primary search, you know, top of the funnel, your Google, my business and your website,

00:23:03 make sure coworking is dominant. That would be my advice again. Then you can talk about what that looks like for you and what you offer, because you can be the super professional, high hospitality place that's priced higher. That requires longer-term agreements, whatever you want to be in the marketplace. Talk about that, but make sure you get your people to the website so that you can tell them your story.

00:23:28 And if you're using a term that is just really not used by the general public like flexible office, you may not even get the chance to tell your story. So draw them in with a term that they're familiar with, and then tell your story and talk about how you're different. So that's it kind of a short one today. I just wanted to share that perspective.

00:23:49 I think that's important in all the marketing that we do, make sure you're using data, not emotion. When you're looking at things, I feel this way about social media. I'm feeling very frustrated with organic reach, make sure that you look at the reach that you're getting and, you know, social media can be fun and it feels sexy. And it's such a fun way to get our brand out.

00:24:13 Make sure you're being careful and looking at the data behind that and not just how much fun it is to do social media. So know your numbers, check your KPIs, all that good stuff. We'll talk about that another time. So hopefully helpful perspective would love to hear your perspective on this. Join us in the Facebook group, everything coworking club.com or search us on Facebook.

00:24:35 And we will be back next week with our tax attorney to talk about all the things that we need to be thinking about for tax time. See you next week.

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