196. Roland Stanley on Expanding his Coworking Community both Physically and Virtually During COVID

Resources Mentioned in this Podcast:

Other episodes related to this topic:

Demystifying Google Ads for Coworking Spaces

Learn more about our Mentorship Program

Free Masterclass: 3 Behind-the-Scenes Secrets to Opening a Coworking Space

Everything Coworking Featured Resources:

TRANSCRIPTION

196. Roland Stanley on Expanding his Coworking Community both Physically and Virtually During COVID

00:01:29 Good. How are you? Really good. Thank you so much. Really good sunshine. It's lovely day. So yeah, really good. Thank you very much. Still shining. What time is it? Five o'clock yeah. Oh good. I know the days getting longer or so like when we sit and eat dinner and it's still light out, I'm like,

00:01:48 Oh, so much better. Yeah. That's it. Yeah, definitely. I take my dogs for a walk in the morning. It's nice and light now, sun just coming off and yeah, it's lovely. Now, what kind of dogs do you have? I spent in Terria and cockapoo. Oh, Cute. Yeah. Crazy. Crazy, crazy.

00:02:11 And cute. He's a, he's a character. Definitely a character. Wait, do you, do you have kids married? Not married. Marriage? Yeah. Marriage. Yeah, Maritz. And I've got a son who's coming up to 16 and I've got two old, yeah, two older stepchildren when it's 26 and one that's 23, But a 16 year old at home.

00:02:39 Wow. Yeah, that's been, that's been tough. Tough through lockdown. He's yes. 16 year old. I mean 16 moving 16 is tough enough already, but without being locked in a house with your mom and dad for the last, however many months, it's been now six months. It's yeah. What is the status now? Is, are people,

00:03:01 you know, what's open, School's opened again two weeks ago. So that's the first time I've been open since December and then literally yesterday we can meet six people outside now and that's it. So, but still everything else is. And, and the work from compulsory work from home lifted. So now it's slightly advising, advising people to work from home,

00:03:23 but it's not central, but all the restaurants, pubs, F everything else is shut. Still, almost totally closed. The 12th, 12th of April pubs can open up and you can have a drink in the garden and non essential retail can open. And then it's not until the 17th of May, that hospitality can reopen with limited, limited capacity. Then 21st to 21st of June is the date we've been given for complete end of social distancing back to normal,

00:03:55 hopefully. Oh, wow. So that's like fast reopening, like that's zero to 60, huh? Yeah. But they're like, really like, it's massive. There's there's five week gaps in between each stage where there's big caveats, you know, that look, if anything starts, slipping was going up, this is going to be extended. The vaccination process going for you guys Really stunningly what's tellingly.

00:04:18 Well, for us. Yeah. I think we're up to, I think 55%, that's a population that's been vaccinated now. And it CMA to be massively massive impact and numbers have just ditch. We noticed I have to now, whereas in a really bad area, we're in, it was a really bad area at Christmas. We, the highest in the country and hospitals were full and it was,

00:04:38 it was terrible, but you know, it's really low now, so yeah. Which is good. Thank goodness. Yeah. Yeah. Have you gotten yours? Not yet. It's no. My wife had hers over the weekend and, but hopefully next month I should, I'm scheduled to have mine. Yeah. We just big just announced April 15th in our state.

00:05:00 Anybody can get it, you know, over the age of 16. So I suspect I'm going to, I'm going to try, I'm going to go Friday. They have a big like convention center in San Francisco and I've heard there's a line that you can wait in, in case they have extra and people have been getting it. So I'm going to try on Friday and just see,

00:05:21 I think once they open it to everyone, it'll probably take a while to get an appointment. So we'll see. Yeah, we'll see. I haven't my, I have a nine-year-old and we have not seen my parents. It'll be two years in June. So I'm just like, like we gotta get this done so we can get on a plane and go see them because it's been too long.

00:05:45 Definitely. Yeah. We haven't seen my, my older two stepchildren. We haven't seen them since November and I'd put September because basically Christmas was canceled for us. They canceled Christmas three days beforehand. So there's Jews come and spend Christmas with us. Of course it didn't happen. So on this weekend we can actually all sit in the garden together. So yeah,

00:06:04 they're coming down, coming down, sit in the garden, which would be great. But the weather has taken a dive. It's gonna be really cold, but we said, we're going to get fire pit on we, I sit there and it's going to be, we're going to do it. It's going to sit outside. Well, at least there's a light at the end of the tunnel.

00:06:21 Yeah. Okay. I'm going to start recording before asking you a million more questions. Okay. So yeah, I mean, we'll just start with your story and kinda, kinda go from there. My little list of questions here. Cool. Okay. Oh, I was already recording. Whoops. We'll edit out all of our shit. You know what,

00:06:44 Kristin, finally, she's like, I'm just going to auto record. Cause I was like, my worst nightmare is to forget to record. Right. So, okay. I did it the other day. Actually it was on an event and I said that it's going to be, and I said, right, we'll record it. We'll put it onto YouTube.

00:07:00 And these lace, I'm not bad. 10 minutes into the event. We weren't recording. But lucky it was live streaming Facebook's we've managed to get a recording off there instead. Yeah. You know what, that's what I did do that one time. I forgot until like 10 minutes in and then right. We, I was yeah. Live streaming to Facebook.

00:07:18 So we grabbed that recording. Thank goodness. I know it's a lot to remember when you're, you know, organizing all the things, so. Okay. Okay, cool. So I'll just interrupt. Intro. I'll start. Welcome. I have a guest today with me from over the pond for me, which I'm excited about because I do a lot of hosting us guests and there's a lot of coworking outside of the U S so I'm rolling.

00:07:46 Thank you for joining me today. Roland is the founder of dragon co-working and he's in the UK outside of London. Rolling. Tell us, so first Roland, I have to thank you because every time I send one of these invites to an operator during this time, I think they don't want to talk to me right now. They would like to postpone for like a year when everything is,

00:08:09 you know, sunshine and rainbows, nobody wants to tell me their coworking story. You know, coming out of COVID, especially Roland you're in the UK. And we were just chatting about, you know, you, you guys are still really closed down. You know, hospitality is still closed and you mentioned, they've just lifted the, you know, required work from home mandate.

00:08:31 And so you have, but, but one of the reasons I wanted to have you on is because you've had such a, at least from my vantage point, such a positive attitude and have really tried to serve your members through this. And I've done some creative things that I thought would be fun to share with the audience. So anyways, thank you for coming on during this challenging time when you may be,

00:08:51 would rather wait until a year from now. So, so Roland, I'll stop talking. Tell us about a little bit about you. I'd love to share with our audience, you know, your coworking story. How did you get started? You have a unique background, so please share. Yeah. Thank you. Well, thank you very much, Jamie.

00:09:10 Thank you for inviting me. I really appreciate it. And I feel like I'm sort of giving something back now to these, these podcasts that over the years I've found them. So, so beneficial. So listening to you and every time I've had a problem with operating a space or something, I've listened to one of your podcasts and you have a very calming voice and it's been brilliant.

00:09:28 So I'll be stressing out about funnels or something like that. I've just listened. That's one of the requisites and it's been absolutely brilliant. So thank you very much for that. Yeah. So yeah, I'm based in Rochester, which is about 35 miles Southeast of London. It's it's about 300,000 people live in our towns altogether, really historic record, nice castle cathedral links,

00:09:50 links to Charles Dickens. And he wrote a lot of his notes here and also a big Naval dockyard there's back was based here in Chatham as well. And yeah, my background, I started in hospitality. I trained as a chef and back in the back in the early nineties and had no intention. I didn't know anything about co-working back then. And I'm literally just start off as a chef,

00:10:16 worked in a few local restaurants and worked over in France, but we did have my family out, ran a hotel and I started working for the family back in the 1996. And I just came, literally came to help my dad out for a couple of weeks. And I had no intention about working in the family business. Didn't want anything to do with it,

00:10:37 but I was between jobs and my dad offered me a few weeks work. So it starts to come back and I'm helping help, help power that out for a few weeks. So that was back in 96. And I ended up staying at the hotel for 23 years<inaudible> But I did lots of different jobs. So when I started, when I joined the business,

00:11:00 it was pretty much bankrupt. It was about the worst hotel you could ever want to stay in. You know, you literally close the curtains and mosques flew out and it's incredibly tight. It was absolutely terrible. So I spent a few years working like that to build the business back up. Then my dad announced to me that he wants to leave the business and he said he wants to tie.

00:11:22 And I said, great. When do you want to retire? And he said, this Friday, Well, interesting. He bought me a seat and bought me a name badge with manager on it. And that was it. And they left me to, it Seems like dad had a master plan that may be, Do you know why it was brilliant because he did.

00:11:43 He just literally handed over to me and just let me get on with it. And it was, it was fantastic. And because I was young, I had no fear whatsoever, you know, and I just took it and it didn't matter. It didn't matter how many hours I worked and it's quite a big hotel. We had 45 bedrooms. You've got function suites for 300 people,

00:12:02 another one for a hundred, another one 50. So it was it's big business. It's big, quite big hotel. And I spent the next few years build it back up and with a colleague of mine and the cousin, we really did build it back up into a good business and I really enjoyed it. And it was fun, lots of really nice people and dealing with lots of brides and brides,

00:12:25 mums and all these sort of things. And so that really sort of grounded me in how to, in hospitality that has about half the people and yeah, and I should love, actually love dealing in the weddings. You know, you have to go on a real long, a long journey with them several years sometimes. And it was absolutely brilliant, but it was hard work.

00:12:43 It was really hard work. And it came to about 2016 and I've been here 20 years and I thought, you know what? I've got to do something different and something needs to change. And I'll share through that time to have some time off during the summer. And I thought, I'm going to take these next six weeks with my family, my son and,

00:13:05 and the dog. And we jumped in some, I've got an old VW camper van. So jumped in the camper van. Everybody wants one of those right now. Yeah. Yeah. And we went driving around Europe for six weeks, which is, yeah know, it'd be lovely. I'd love to do that now, but obviously can't do that. And I went and I took like six weeks to think about what I wanted to do.

00:13:24 And I thought, you know what? I read, I'd love to start my own business. I've run businesses, multiple businesses, but the only ones that have taken over. So I really want to do something for myself. Didn't know what I still didn't know anything about coworking didn't know what it was at all. Then I literally, I was looking at my emails.

00:13:44 I think I said, Peter, I remember that's how I was in pizza. And I was looking at my emails and some, an email popped up from a guy who rented a part of the hotel from us. It was three and a half thousand square foot space was he had been using as a big office. And it, it was quite a big,

00:14:03 long sort of space. And my granddad built X, my granddad built the hotel. He built it as a, for people to draw a blueprint. Preprints he ran a company doing drawings and I've got, and I've got an old picture from the 1970s and the coworking space of all these men's furniture doing their touring drawings and big boards. And then the space was used.

00:14:24 It was used for an aligned dancing club. It was a very strange. And then I, then it was used by this company who used to make wiring looms for Harrier jump jets. And so it had long strange pieces. And so I got this email and it got me thinking about what to do, but I didn't really, I didn't think anything about coworking didn't know about it.

00:14:49 And then I got back from the, and really just started thinking about what we could be doing in this space. But by then, we're sort of getting into the Christmas season or run up to Christmas at a hotel and say nothing was going to happen. Then after Christmas, again, our sort of course about it a little bit got caught out without the businesses.

00:15:06 And it wasn't till about February in 2017, I had a letter from the council saying, there's going to start charging me business rates on this is three and a half thousand square foot space. So I thought, well, I don't really want to paying business rates on something. That's not making me money. So I need to do something. Is that it's time.

00:15:23 My business mentor actually Lawrence, he said to me, if you have thought about doing co-working, I was like, what's<inaudible>, I've never heard that. And he said, Oh, you should check it out. And this was by now, it's probably in about March, 2017. So literally that next couple of days, I'd gotten a train up to London because only about 35 miles from London.

00:15:44 And we made some appointments that we work because you Google coworking where you work comes up. I went up there and I thought, wow, this is amazing. This is absolutely amazing. I walked in there, there, they got beer or they got coffee. They can help yourself. There's like a really funky vibe to it. Everybody's really happy. And you know,

00:16:05 and it, it was just absolutely amazing. And we went around a few other coworking space and independent spaces and it was just an absolute revelation. I've never seen anything like it before. And I was really, really, really excited. So right. We've got to do this in Medway. So I came back and I got working on it straight away.

00:16:31 And the first thing I was thinking about what, w w what name can we call it? And cause we overlook a river. I was thinking, we call it the river coworking river something. And it was, and I started talking to Lawrence again. And he said to me, you should call it dragon coworking. Why tracking co-working? And he said,

00:16:48 well, your insights and George hotel hotel's name and said George hotel. So George has patron Saint of England. And he's renowned for slaying the dragon. That's where the whole dragon coworking comes from. And, But, and you avoided trademark problems. I have, I'm always talking to my startup school students. I'll get, I think at some point we had three of them with the word Connect in their name,

00:17:13 let go, it gets hard, right. To come up with a new name. So that's perfect. Yeah. Really hard yet. And as soon as he said it, I was like, great, brilliant company's house, all done. So this was sort of like now sort of beginning, end of March, beginning of April. And then we just literally went at it full bore.

00:17:33 I had no budget whatsoever. So we literally recycled stuff. We made all a lot of our tables out of scaffold boards and I've got my dad's house. I've still got my dad's old cipher in here. And, but we made it look really nice and we made it look. So it was meant to be like this. And it is a bit shabby chic and people are really impressed.

00:18:00 You know, we didn't, I think we spent in the end, it was really 14 pounds per square foot. Oh, wow. That's fantastic. Yeah. And that included putting a new boiler in, and it included all the network cables in and things like that, Which is probably most of the budget. Yeah. Yeah. We didn't skimp on things with the wifi and networks Connect connectivity.

00:18:20 We didn't skimp on everything else. We sort of like literally would be bought on eBay, but I hope I've already cited. Co-working spaces built. Lay-by literally everything. Everything always gets still. Now. Actually, I still buy a lot of my stuff on eBay. I begrudge paying full price for anything, especially things like phone booths and things totally utilize me.

00:18:40 I look first and say, we had it all ready for beginning of July. I had already pre-sold all the offices where we had 11 offices and, And where the office is preexisting. No. Oh, that was budget. Yes. Yes. So we did do, I mean a lot. I did, I did a lot. I'm not very handy,

00:19:07 but I can do things like strip wallpaper and move rubbish shadow. I can do what I sort of thing. So I did some of that and I was lucky. I did have a handyman guy who was, just could do everything. So Yeah, I'm sure at the hotel you had to have, you got a guy for everything, That's it. And I had quite a good network already built up.

00:19:25 I did a lot of networking and are standing up in networking saying, look, I built this amazing space, you know, come down and have a look at it. It's a coworking space and everyone was blank faced or was coworking. I tried to explain to her a little bit about it. And I mean, by then do your point. We worked all over London and you're only 35 miles from London,

00:19:46 but still right. Right. We think everybody knows what coworking was, but you, you invented it in Rochester a few years ago. Nobody knew anything about it. I mean, there was interesting, there was, there was another coworking. I mean, I did claim to be the first coworking space earn upsets the original co-working space. There's co-worker space called<inaudible>.

00:20:06 They're actually here a few years before us, but they, yeah, they, they, they, they've only around a few years. They were, they were ahead of their time. I think there was too far ahead of the time because people just didn't get it back then. And yeah. So I, my network came to my age and they started moving into the offices or pre pre pre putting deposits down in the offices.

00:20:27 And I was literally showing them around. I taped out the outlines or the Oxys with duct tape and Told with duct tape, But I was literally walking around this dusty, old building sites with duct tape on the floor. And I'm showing these guys, there's a first tendance guy company called clockwork Modi. And I was showing them, I said, look,

00:20:51 your desks are going to be here. You can be sat here. It's going to be absolutely brilliant. And it's like, all we had was literally just laser rubble. They'll just rebel dust and duct tape on the floor. They were like, we'll take it, we'll Take it. But it wasn't quite as simple, but pretty much. Yeah. Rolling.

00:21:07 I think we're going to give you a sales, a salesmanship award, but it's also, you know, I talk about that in the presale podcast. Sometimes it's just mindset, right? Some people are like, I can not sell until this thing is all wrapped up in a bow and Roland you're out there selling with duct tape on the floor, pointing out the imaginary future desks,

00:21:28 But that's it. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. So he did that. And then we opened in July, beginning of July 17 and, and the first eyeopening I remember I came down here and I sat down and I don't know why. I just expect a lot of Chung, quite few people around for desks, but nobody had actually shown up for the actual hot desking side of it and the officer's real sold,

00:21:50 but there's all saying to me, let, we're going to move in. We're going to move it into the week's time two weeks time. And I literally sat on my own for a week with no pain space. And I was thinking, I have, I really I've made a mess. I made a mistake, not Saudi of they are going to be moving.

00:22:06 They will come. And then of course, when you did show people around, it was like saying, it's going to be a great community. You know, these desks are amazing. The, you know, and you can come here and drink laser our lovely coffee. And, and there was nobody else there. And it's a hard sell. I did then give away quite a few memberships for a few months.

00:22:25 And now I've got people and again, from my networking, yeah. Got people in on desks. And then, and then it was, you know, it started building from there and you know what, it's got people in desks, people started talking to each other and it just, it just built. And we kept it really simple. We just had three really basic memberships.

00:22:42 Cause again, people didn't really get what I was doing. And if I'm really honest, probably I didn't really get, While you went to London one day you to word and then yeah, I'm in, I'm doing it, That's it? Yeah. That's how I was all in on it. And so w we built, and then sort of by December,

00:23:04 we had about 40 members in total. So, which was, it was okay. But it was building and was doing events and it was getting people into the space and we're starting to get a reputation. And it was the Christmas party. I remember really 50 to the Christmas party. That, that was my absolute, my epiphany at what we're actually doing here.

00:23:24 We decided that we weren't going to go out. We're just gonna all sit around and order some pizza in and bring some drinks. And we started playing games with insurance and things like that. And, and it was just sitting there and everybody was laughing and it was all talking to each other. And I thought, this is great. This is amazing.

00:23:43 And it suddenly hit me that actually these were any purely here because you know, I've built this space and they've come and they've met each other and they're enjoying each other's company, even a casually you're out on a night out. And it was suddenly, I suddenly realized I wasn't selling desk facing. I was selling the community. I was selling the whole feeling that they're getting now.

00:24:03 And that is what it was really all about. You know, it's at the desk or unimportant, you know, it's the people, it's the squishy bits in the coworking space, the really important bits. And from that moment on that's when I sort of really realized what we're actually doing here and we just built, built from there. So yeah. So that's where we are now,

00:24:22 If only we could figure out how to bottle up that feeling and put it on our websites. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. That would be, yeah. That would definitely be helpful in that. Yeah, Totally. It's amazing though. And I think people, they don't, you can't imagine what that's like until you actually experience it, which is, you know,

00:24:40 what, what happened to you? So tell us about your community. What do they do for work? They're real, they're a real mixture. And now a lot of digital creative industries, we have a lot of website designers, SEO, artificial intelligence, those sort of things. And then we've also got a lot of like traditional got accountants, solicitors,

00:25:08 bookkeepers. We've got a guy, I've got a guy who I described as a chicken nugget broker and he didn't write it. Doesn't, he doesn't like it when I say that, but he literally buys and sells chicken nuggets and chicken products from Europe, brings them in. I repackaged them up. And, and one of the funny thing at Christmas, somebody bought some,

00:25:30 a little thing for his office and he's got welcome to clucking and palace chicken man. And it's really, really varies. I mean, age range, I mean, sort of 25 to 55, but really, I mean, because we're really the only true co-worker space in the whole town. And we haven't really sort of got a niche or tick this area.

00:25:53 We saw quite broad and Not more, I mean, so you must pull from a bit of a close geography, but that's a big population to not be more served. I think again, people just didn't really get it. You know, there's been other space. There has been other spaces that have tried co-working, but they've been essentially surface office buildings and they've never really succeeded in building the community.

00:26:24 There's more coworking spaces coming. I know that from talking to the local council with everything that's happening, they will be coming. But I think now people are suddenly more aware of it. Yeah. Well, and you must be in that sweet spot where lots of people were commuting to London and now we're not we're in that, That the it's called the London donut.

00:26:46 Yeah. So yeah, the don't, London's in the middle of the hole and then where are in that sweet spot around the outside. So that 25 to 50 miles outside of London where people that used to commute out to London, but, but they're not doing so now. And sort of a lot of them are reevaluating exactly what they want to do.

00:27:05 And it's going to be In the outcome of that. I think, I mean, same, same thing for, I think much of the U S it's like we see theoretically understand that people are at home and what will they do now, but everybody, you know, so many people are still at home and you're really in that spot with compulsory work from home,

00:27:24 you know, just being lifted. So, no, I mean, maybe people have given thought to the afterlife, you know, what happens when we, when we can, but you probably haven't really seen that play out yet. Right? No, I mean, it's really interesting. We've got some people that have joined up, they've joined up in the last few months that would normally be commuting into London and they've joined because they're sick of working at home or they've got really rubbish internet.

00:27:48 They usually excuses. And some of them are saying, look, you know, we're only here, literally tell their office opens. Then we want to be back in our office in London. Others are saying, you know, I've sold our office in London. We're not going back there full time. But our office I've actually got a coworking space in London.

00:28:05 So we're going to do two days there, two days at home and a day here. So there's a real sort of mixture and a real hybrid, but seems to be coming out of it. But it's, I mean, people, people want to travel to London, still. A lot of them do because a lot of them, I mean, it's not just the office,

00:28:18 it's the whole London, the whole sort of thing. People really love. And that's why a lot of people love working in London. If they don't have to do it so much, I think they're lucky even more so. Yeah, Totally. So Roland, do you have, is it roughly 3000 square feet? A little bit more, More and more now we've just,

00:28:38 we've built Jane COVID we've doubled up in size. Yeah. I was trying to remember. I knew you were expanding, but I couldn't remember you having talked about it, but you started with about that much space with 11 offices. Yeah. Yeah. So it's interesting to me. How did you know to you had to build those offices. They didn't exist.

00:28:59 You have a dent model, which I think is good for your financial model. And yet you also managed to build community into that group of lots of offices. How did you know to go heavy on the offices? It basically came down to numbers. And when I first worked out the original financials, I worked out that I could more than cover all the costs,

00:29:24 just purely by offices. And I knew that office office spaces, You had a sense. Yeah. Especially, I mean, our office is a small, you know, our offices are quite small. I mean the one person offices we've just built are only 55 foot. The three person offices we've had originally, there are 130 square foots. So they're not,

00:29:48 they're not huge, but they sell and the people people want them. And, and, and that, that was, that was, that was the original for drivers building 11 offices, because that more than covered the cost. So then I knew if I didn't have anyone on hot desks. Yeah. I'd still be fine. And when it was so new,

00:30:07 I think this is a challenge. A lot of people have is they struggle with making the investment into the offices up front, but then they're in a market that doesn't really understand the hot desk product. So you kind of hedged your bets and said, I'm going to cover my cost with the offices. And then I'll, I won't have so much pressure to build up the hot desk business,

00:30:28 which Yeah. I mean, it's, I mean, the office is great. The office, he always said the office is pay the bill, but it's the guys out on the desk that really make the community. So if I, if I said Roland, how, you know, if you took the hot desks away, what would the, yeah.

00:30:46 How strong would the community be? Would you, do you think your office members are less interactive? Funnily enough? I think since COVID, they'd probably come more interactive because a lot of the time they're the only guys that have been here. So all of a sudden, you know, they've built, there's been a whole lock and all sort of new sort of community.

00:31:04 That's sort of built where these guys, I mean, I did used to talk to each other anyway, but now where they're the only people here, they started talking to each other and have lunch and yeah, Because they don't have anybody else to talk to all day. Then I go into the cafe in the morning or out for lunch. So, huh.

00:31:22 Interesting. Yeah. But so it's the mix. You've still feel like the mix is really important. Yeah, definitely. Absolutely. And we've sort of designed when we designed the space, we designed it. So everybody has to mingle as no sort of hidden away offices that people can get to without having to walk through the public area, the coffee machine,

00:31:43 even if the new space, we kept one coffee machine in the existing area. So everybody has to come to that one coffee machine, you know, so people then, you know, they come and talk to each other and chat other capital and the water cooler and things like that. So you can sort of really, everything's done to be really mindful about actually getting people to actually interact and talk to each other and speak.

00:32:00 And So the, is it an expansion of the existing space that you did? Yes. So we had a, the original spikes and then there was a corridor led the hotel. So taken over that corridor now, and then another 300,000 square foot space. And the other side that was originally a Masonic temple for license. And it was an interesting one because it had no windows,

00:32:26 no roof lights. It was just literally a concrete box by where we've transformed that into 12 more offices meeting room and nine more fixed desks and hot. Did you add windows? Yes. It's funny. We've added three flights and we've had some windows where the building regulations wouldn't let us do as many windows as we'd liked, but it's, but it's worked out really,

00:32:55 really well. And it seems the United people don't even notice. There's not as many windows as they'd probably like, yeah. That space is open now. Yes. Yes. So we actually opened just before Christmas, last space and we sold out all the offices. Again, we sold the offices all out before they was actually built during COVID during COVID.

00:33:16 Yes. And then We might have to have you do a sales class. Cause they're saying, I think it's, you know, it's all about the, again, the community, we have such a strong community against during COVID. We kept up social media and showing how from community was, and then people, people want it to be a part of it.

00:33:35 And you know, people, we had a wait list of offices that, cause we've been saying, we've got to build these offices for about 80 nights a year, wait list. And then an exciting, I said assaulted more white people, but it's positive stand. But then some people did come out and then other people came in and we've just had an office coming wall office of eight West from tomorrow.

00:33:56 Other than that, we're all fully booked at the moment. Yeah. Amazing. Congratulations. So you during COVID one, so I should have mentioned you're, you're a part of our flight group program. And I remember you sharing this networking event that you were doing, which was very simple, but very rewarding for everyone involved, everybody being like, wait,

00:34:19 what are you doing? Tell us more Roland, how is this working? And you know, people setting up one-on-ones with you to kind of dig into that. Can you, so it was a networking event that you would started in-person before COVID Yeah. So it's an networking event that basically it's been going for quite a bit back 10 years. And it's actually my mentor who started it called Ashley Lawrence 10 years ago.

00:34:44 And I joined as a leader for about three or five years ago now. And we were running just literally just running physical groups. And when were doing this at the hotel at the hotel and sort of we're doing about eight or nine other venues around the whole County, which was great, but then it used to take you an hour or so traveling at least there two,

00:35:05 three hours for meetings, then an hour traveling back. And it was really, I mean, it was great seeing everybody in person and having breakfast together and things like that. But actually time wise, it was pretty inefficient time-wise so we, as soon as COVID hit, we decided to put it online and we kept a really, really simple way of doing it.

00:35:27 So we've literally start at seven 15 in the morning, we put out breakout rooms, then dead on seven 30, we bring the people back and we have a, basically they get a minute pitch to talk about their business and then quarter past eight, we'll bring them all back again. And then we have 15 minutes of breakout rooms and then eight 30 dead.

00:35:48 It stops and everybody has it done. Everyone's back to work. And we did it completely free of charge for the first four months. I think he's five months. And then in September, October time we did a 20 pounds founders members and we had, I think it was 50 people signed up in the end of that, sold out on the founders members.

00:36:08 And now we're up to, I believe it's about 70 members at the moment. I was still going strong Wednesdays and Fridays. We still have about 40 people come along. Even if you do it every Wednesday and Friday, every Wednesday, Friday. Yeah. And we, we have, we've picked when new people come along and even though I thought it might sort of start by now,

00:36:28 people getting complete using fatigues, but know that people still want to be part of it and it, and it's great. And it's, we really encourage people to have one-to-one outside of the network group and really get to know each other. And it's all about the relationship building for us. It's building relationships and, and then people, they can go and be their Salesforce essentially.

00:36:49 But it's, it's, it's just great to, it's really helped a lot of people just because they're around positive people who are negative time and, and it's, it's growing and growing and we're hopefully going to get back to do some physical meetings, but nowhere near as many as we used to, To do yeah. A big learning. Yeah. So who you mentioned at one point that some of the attendees of these events are not necessarily people that would use the physical space?

00:37:15 No. I mean, to be honest, a lot of them aren't, you know, I tend to use it as the members here can attend some, do some don'ts. I tend to use it as, as, as it's more, I sort of supermarket for selling coworking because a lot of these guys are startup businesses, small businesses, or they know a lot of other smaller businesses,

00:37:34 startups. So I use it for, for marketing essentially a lot, but yeah, we do have quite a lot of members say recently, I'm just trying to think now. Yeah, they are, they are starting to come back again. Yeah. Some of them disappeared off. They've got bit zoom fatigued, but they are starting to come back a little bit.

00:37:52 Yeah. It's also, so you're creating a networking event for the broader community because it's, it's marketing for you, but it's marketing for them. It's business owners who get to talk about their business for a minute to a room full of 40 to 50 people at any given meeting. So it's great exposure to them. And then they learn about coworking kind of it's a side benefit because you introduce yourself and talk about the space.

00:38:17 Yeah. That's it? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yes I am. I mean, a lot of these guys are either quite small or they're startups, so they haven't got huge budgets to spend on marketing, but you know, by talking to 40 people in the room, those 40 people then get to know their story and then get to know them.

00:38:32 And then they talk to other 40 people and then the 40 people and other 40 people. And, and you know, we've got some members of being with us since the beginning of lockdown who they've never met in person. And you know, they've never met in person, they're running an essay on zoom and it's, it's quite strange. Actually, somebody came into the coworking space on last Monday.

00:38:52 Never met them before, but it felt like we knew each other really well. And it was like, Oh yeah, that guy off the TV. Yeah. It's strange base estimate, but it's been, it's been brilliant. It's kept us all really, really positive. And there's been lots of business happening and just getting to know each other. It's been really great.

00:39:10 Yeah. No, I love that. So it's like a really like authentic way to contribute to the community. And it's a good marketing tool. Yeah. So speaking of marketing, what are the ways that people tend to find your space? We do. I mean, we do a lot of, or we did do a lot of vents and that was one of our prime routes apart from networking primary rates for actually getting people in here.

00:39:35 So pre COVID, we did a lot of other networking things. We had something called waffle, which is sort of like our anchor event that we used to do. And essentially it was really, really simple. We basically made loads of waffles and we, one of the members usually sponsored it and then they got to theme the events. So we had lots of different themes around it.

00:39:57 And we usually have at 50, 60 people turn up to it and you know, and it was, and it was great. The last one we did was a lady who does face and body painting. And he just did, she brought loads and models along. She's got a lot of the co-workers and they did full face and body paints and, and it was absolutely amazing.

00:40:15 And it was, and it was, it was a brilliant, brilliant thing. And it was just sad. It was, I lost one, but it's coming back in July, hopefully Wait. And you eat waffles at the same time. Yeah. Yeah. So essentially what, what fling with waffles is what we call it. It's that sort of shop line and Who makes the waffles?

00:40:33 We've got the, the hotel. We, we were actually in, they come down, their chef comes along and gets a waffle iron and you know, then we have a sponsoring, it gets to make up some different waffles or their own menus and things like that. Oh, I love that. So the whole, so what happened? So what's your involvement in the hotel now And nothing,

00:40:53 nothing. It's all now I sold the business now two years ago, so I literally just retain the space for the coworking and you know, the hotel is nothing to do with me. I get this. Okay. Except for your waffle relationship. Well, the relationship, that's it. I love that. Okay. So, but speaking of which you,

00:41:13 you do everything yourself right now. Yeah. How do you, I mean, what's your secret to kind of, so you do a lot of events in your, you're very focused on community building. What's your secret to kind of getting everything done and staying sane. You always seem so relaxed when I talk to you. Yeah. Yeah. I mean,

00:41:35 I think, I think it comes from the hospitality industry. Again, I used to work so many hours and, you know, we had to be so prepared for things when you're doing running somebodies wedding, you know, the most important day of their lifestyle, all the details. And I was always really paranoid about making sure going over the details again and again and again,

00:41:52 to make sure it makes sure it's right. And when I set the coworking space up everything, I tried to set everything up to run by itself from the start. So everything is reasonably automated. If there's an issue, it gets dealt with straight away and things like we do a really, really detailed induction and orientation. One, if I want, I want to find a bit of a funky name for it,

00:42:18 rather than orientation sounds a bit corporate, but really detailed. And we go over every detail and co-worker space. It takes about half an hour, but things like Acquire it and you get people to do it. Yeah, that's it. Yeah. And it, it goes over things like, you know, what's happens if the wifi breaks what happened, you know,

00:42:38 it's, it caused a couple of common issues. So if the coffee machine stops stops working, you just, I'm not here. Just literally do this, do this. And it works. And, and lots of things like that, it just sold some of the issues and problems before they start and being very clear. And a lot of things are policies like the noise and sound policy about when you can use a phone,

00:42:58 when you can go on zoom calls, doing things, I have to start to solve any problems and stops any problems coming up. And I've got a few really good members that have been here since the start. You know? So if I, I, for more, for a week, I can just say to them, can you just keep an eye out?

00:43:15 And they do. And then everything else is pretty much automated than my phones. So all things like door locking systems, security heating, you know, it's either automated works by itself by sensors or my phone controls everything. So it just wherever I am, I can, if there's a problem I can source accurately, I can deal with it. And you kind of set that expectation.

00:43:35 Cause I know in our flight group calls, this comes up a lot people struggling with, you know, well I have one staff member or it's only me and what if I write, what if I'm not there? And you're really setting that expectation with members upfront during your orientation and kind of, it's the culture of your space. Look, you need to be somewhat self-sufficient and I'm going to tell you how to,

00:43:55 how to deal with these things. If I'm not here, I'm sure they're often, but Yeah, that's it. I mean, I tend to be here sort of most of the time during the day. And so that's when problems are going to go up and come up and usually, I mean the problems that reoccur again and again, and again, you know,

00:44:11 the ones we always say to people that this is how to quickly solve this one. It might just be literally you just go and click on this link and it'll show you a video of how to solve your problem, your team. And, you know, we just tried to make it really simple. And you know, we always frame it up that,

00:44:27 you know, just in case I'm with another customer or a member or something, you to go into work, you know, this is just how to do this. And you know, just, just try and frame uprights and yeah. But you know, things like the door locking systems and that it's, everything's just automated so people can come and go as they want,

00:44:43 You need to, it doesn't require you. Yeah. Do your members have 24 seven access, then they can come in anytime, Certain members. Yeah. It depends on their membership. And yeah, we do have people that do come in overnight and, you know, work, if they want a deadline, they do come and work overnight. And again,

00:45:00 things like, you know, if somebody sets off a door sensor, they come in in the middle of the night, the heating will automatically come on and lights come on and thinking about that. Perfect. Yeah. So then they're not, they're not messaging me the next morning. Say I was freezing cold all night when you know Totally. Yeah. And you own the space.

00:45:15 So you own the building you're in. So you control the HVAC. Yeah. That's it. Yeah. Yeah. So that's a, yes, that's a big deal because a lot of folks don't control their HVAC and you know, they're at least we'll say, you know, who, who, who knows 50? I think I'm trying to think what we used to pay $50 an hour to have the HVAC on after hours or whatever it is that adds up quickly.

00:45:39 So you have that benefit and you control the door access. You like, you can do whatever you need to do on the building. I mean, we were, I mean, when it, when the hotel and there were actually the hotels closed down at the moment, she's COVID, that did make a bit of an issue for us. We had to quickly install some new door kits to actually make that.

00:45:58 Yeah. Cause before that we had, which was really handy. We used to have 24 hour reception, which is great. Cause they used to take in all our parcels or our posts and those sort of things and send people down to us, you know, actually were actually quite difficult to find crew down some long corridors. So yeah, we had to sort of think of things like the post.

00:46:17 We had to think of what to do with the posts and the parcels. And Tell us about your box because this is like the littlest things that people get so excited about. I'm one of our calls. Everybody was like, and what do we do as a male when we're not there? And you're like, you'd get a box from Amazon. You ordered.

00:46:31 Yeah. Tell us about your box that you ordered. Yeah. So it was one of the, it was one of the problems we had straight away. Like, you know, the hotel was shut if we're not here. And during the first lockdown in the UK, we did shut down for eight weeks and it was like, we don't know, what do you do with the mail?

00:46:47 And people still need the post. And you know, we've got an accountants here and at the time it was the end of year. So people wanted to drop off the, you know, their carry a bag of receipts that they hadn't been looking after for the last year. And you know, so we got this a box it's just called smart mailbox or small paths.

00:47:03 Yeah. Smart mailbox. And essentially it's just the postbox and it's got a big flap on it that opens up. It's got a barcode on it that Korea scans sites there. And then he just put it in and that's it just done really simple, but really secure. And it just solves a whole lot of problems and installed It outside of your building.

00:47:21 Yeah. Just instilled out there and you know, it's, I can't remember. I think we got the medium size, there are bigger ones. It takes some really big parcels. We found it and it's been an absolute, we couldn't do it at it. You know, it saved us over COVID and you know, especially cause we've got people with virtual mail as well.

00:47:38 So you couldn't be turning them away. And yeah. So it's, it has been a brilliant, it was, you know, it was a few hundred pounds, but it was definitely worth it. Absolutely. I've got one at home now. Small I've got smaller version at home. Yes. Actually. It's a great idea. Right. A good way to keep your,

00:47:54 I know whenever we're not here, I have to bug the neighbors. Can you please get our packages because right. Amazon comes every day. So back to your networking event, I just want to circle back to that real quick. Do you, will you continue to build that as a, do you look at it more of a revenue generator or a marketing tool or a community builder or a combination of the three?

00:48:21 A combination? I think really it's marketing from Emmy, for me being a leader of that group, you know, it helps me educate people about coworking and tell them what we do. And you know, people always get, you know, I do my woman at pitch. I'm always like try to tell them a story about a member that we helped or,

00:48:40 you know, just telling them something about coworking and something along those lines. I mean, financially it doesn't generate huge amounts of money. You know, it does a bit, you know, it's yeah. Pay pays, pay some bills, but it's more just purely just marketing, making sure people are aware of our products and what we do and how we can solve their problems,

00:49:02 how it can help them with virtual mailboxes. And yeah, I know even virtual mail, right. You just kind of funneling people into a simple service to get started even. Yeah, Yeah. Yeah. And even like, I mean, funneling ones for our events as well, because we know once we get people into the space, then they're interested and then they see things,

00:49:21 you know, they, they say we've got a bear pump, you know, you've got a really nice coffee machine and you've got the, got the fake grass and the beanbags from co-working spaces in that I have up in London, this is a great space. So once you actually get people here, various that yeah. Make them aware, get them to an event,

00:49:37 sign them up for a member, the member, give them a free trial in a member. Yeah. Pre COVID. Do you do most of your events after hours or do you do some during the day? It's a mix. We tend to stay them after hours. We do, we do some social events and we do then some sort of business events.

00:50:00 So we do things like the members, breakfasts and things like that, which are all about building the community and member retention. They tend to be during the day. And then in the evening we tend to do the business events and the information that's going to help them with their business away doing. And they tend to be sort of there in the evening,

00:50:17 sort of at six o'clock in the evening and they'd bring the people in from outside. And funnily enough, it's a lot of the members don't attend the, the information business runs. It's, it's strange. I mean, at first I was really, so I took it to heart a little bit that I put on these really great events or the, the co-working members and hardly any of them came.

00:50:36 And, but it, it does generate awareness and, you know, gets people into tools and, and trial days and gets them into being a member. So I think that's such an important point because I think everyone goes through that cycle of, okay, what members do, what events do my members want? What will they attend? And you have this idea that they want all these educational,

00:51:01 like grow their business and then right. They don't show up, but they come to the social like breakfast, it sounds like works well for your group. And do they come to the waffle event? Yeah, they do. I mean, some of them, again, you know, there are some, I remember the first couple of waffles we did there is it got to about half an hour before the event and people will started packing up.

00:51:22 And I said, I get ready for work when I was like, no, we're off home. Why? And they said, Oh no, we don't really want to do networking. I do what I do is bringing these, bring other people into the space so they can network with them and generate business and get to know other people as well as being a funnel for me,

00:51:40 I thought, and I just didn't get it. But you know, over time I'll just, you know, peak events, a lot of members aren't going to come, it's the 80, 20 rule. Again, the members aren't going to come to them. A lot of the members won't come soon, but having events for coworking space, I think is so essential.

00:51:55 It really separates us from other service office providers and things like that. And if we didn't have the events, you know, what I think would be a proper coworking space. Yeah. So it's a right. It's a marketing tool. It's a connection to the broader community. And you find what works for your own membership, which might simply be breakfast or happy hour or whatever,

00:52:15 and don't work. Right. That's fine. It's fine. That's it? Yeah. Yeah. Love the idea that this stuff is going on. So if they wanted to come, they could, right. Yeah, Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it was, I mean, during COVID we ran sort of a daily sort of get together like 10 o'clock get together.

00:52:35 And again, it was pretty much the same people that used to turn up to the events, turned out to those in calls, you know, but then we sort of, I mean, we did really well in those. We got quite a lot of people and we did things like an Friday evening events and we called, we, we used to have always have a drink on a Friday afternoon about four o'clock,

00:52:52 you know, whether it's coffee or a beer or something to get together. So we replicated that. And then we started inviting guests along. So he had like a, I said less celebrity from the X-Factor and a singer out of a band from the 1960s. And we had magicians and things like that. And we did fancy dress and that sort of pulled in more members.

00:53:10 I got really interested in that. And we actually, we actually got some really good publicity or they actually, we actually was on the BBC was on good morning. Britain was on rage. I was in local. You and it was over zoom. Yes. I, we actually was actually on the TV. So as in cool, dressed up all dressed up as like dogs and Smurfs and I was dressed up as a Viking and,

00:53:33 and it was, yeah, it was just a really, really fun events that we used to do on a Friday afternoon. But I actually drew in more of the community than some of the actual, some people came to that I've never seen actually come to a physical event. That's funny. Right. You never know. And sometimes when you try totally different things,

00:53:49 you find what works. So you're still doing virtual events and Kristen says, thank you because you're, you are MVP of submitting, shared events for free for the flight group. She's like, cause I was like, Oh, Roland got a Canva event. This one looks really good. So you're still doing, will you move those into the space? When I think we're going to be,

00:54:12 we will be doing like hybrid events. So we'll be doing both. So we'll be literally live streaming it. And then we've invested in, I, I used to have one nivo camera, I think it's called. And we, we used to live stream some events and then we stopped. It just didn't work out very well. And I sold it on eBay and I wish I hadn't now,

00:54:32 so I'm gonna have to get a new one of those and some proper lights. And we're gonna, we're going to actually sort of like the live stream events as well as having people here in person. And it'd be really proactive, like taking questions from the audience that we're live streaming to and things. So yeah. A mixed hybrid event, I think.

00:54:49 Yeah. Let's see. I think we're going to be doing. Yeah. And we're really looking forward to doing some social events soon as well. I know soon we're getting there. So you're coming out. You said mid, when we were talking in advance of the call, June ish, things are going to start to kind of really open up and get back to normal.

00:55:08 What do you, what do you think, you know, September will look like? Cause I wonder if summer is the summer similar for you where people travel and who knows if people come in. So I feel like we're pointing towards September. What do you, what do you, what's your prediction? Yeah, we have, I mean, usually sort of mid July to like second week of September gets re was really,

00:55:28 really quiet, you know, people off for holiday and things, but whether we're going to be allowed to go off holiday, certainly not. Yeah. Maybe around the UK, do you know? It's it's really, I mean, hopefully I locked down as GE to be actually completely finished by the 21st of June. Those dates probably get may well slept, who knows fingers crossed.

00:55:47 They don't we've I've had a lot of later inquiries, a lot of people doing zoom tours and physical tours that want to join. They're still a little bit unsure about where we're going with with restrictions and things and they're still nervous and it's, and that's been one of the difficult things is actually dealing with people's different levels of nervousness and anxiety towards it all.

00:56:10 And when they're ready to come back, we've got a lot of members that still saying they want to come back, but when it's right for them. So I'm hoping by September I set my goals. I know how many members I want to have by then. Okay. The fingers crossed it's going to do. We will be back to some pretty much normality.

00:56:27 I'm hoping by September. Yeah. Yeah. I was saying that this time last year, I think so. Well right. Who knew what was coming this time last year? Yeah. So is there a five-year plan for dragon co-working do you think you will do more expansion or are you gonna hang tight? W do you know, am I originally when I did go original business plan,

00:56:53 so four years ago by now I should have had four different for four different locations. And, you know, I still think I'm still at work to do here really. And I really enjoy it. I think having other business and other businesses as well, property business, which, which I do as well. So I've still got time to put so that,

00:57:16 but I really enjoy what I do and I love being hands-on and I love looking after the members and hearing their stories and helping out them and connecting them and trying to make sure they're getting the most out dragging coworking. And I went through that sort of soul searching about, you know, I was offered another, another location and I thought, do I really want to do it?

00:57:39 And I thought, you know what, I'd rather be brilliant in one location than be stretched across two and sort of failing in, in two locations. So I'd really be no, I'd really want to be known for doing something really well in one place first. And then you never know, it may well, never say never at the moment, you know what,

00:57:57 I'm really happy doing what I'm doing and you know, I don't, I don't, I don't want to be pressured into doing something I don't want to do really. And yeah, just enjoy. I mean, I love spending time with my kids and my wife and the dogs and, you know, doing those sort of things and, and, and,

00:58:12 you know, a lot of these guys are my friends now. And so I just enjoy spending time with them. Yeah. And it's a different relationship when you have to split your time across locations and yeah. The operational complexities. So, but there will be opportunities. It starts getting to a point where people are sort of, they're just customers. And for me,

00:58:31 it's all about, I say that community is actually getting to know people and yeah. Going back. Yeah. I mean, going back from when the hospitality, one of the things we used to do is really get to know people. And we used to take notes about what they used to say to us. So we used to know their kids' names and we used to know all the details where they went holiday and all their bits and pieces like that.

00:58:50 So when they came back in, we just talked to them and it used to blow their mind that six months later we knew where they went on holiday and you know, their kids' names and things like that. And that's what I really love. And that's what I've really tried to put into the coworking space is getting to know people really well and making it really personal.

00:59:04 Yeah. Rolling. I feel like we could have, we could have another episode about integrating hospitality into the coworking space because I think there's a lot to be said for that, that folks have not really picked up. So we might, we might have to do a repeat and to have you on again. Okay. So I'm going to be cognizant, we have been chatting for a while.

00:59:22 I'm going to let you well go home for dinner and walk the dogs really for me late for you. Thank you for making the time to do this and for sharing your story and your insights and or rooting for everyone. But certainly I think the UK has had a tough go of the, the lockdown scenarios. So we're rooting for you between now and June to stay on track and get fully back,

00:59:48 open and congrats on your expansion. And we wish you continued success. I said, thank you very much. Well, thank you very much for inviting me on it. So yeah, really, really, really enjoyed it. Thank you.

For the full show notes of this episode, click here.

Want to join our coworking conversation in the Everything Coworking Facebook Group? Find us here!

Looking for a specific episode? Go to the episode index here.

Jamie RussoComment