233. Best of Episode 192 - How Do You Sell Hot Desks and Dedicated Desks?

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233. Best of Episode 192 - How Do You Sell Hot Desks and Dedicated Desks?

00:00:01 Welcome to the Everything Coworking podcast, where you learn what you need to know about how the world wants to work. And now your host co-working space owner and trend expert, Jamie Russo. Welcome to the Everything Coworking podcast. This is your host, Jamie Russo. At the time of this recording, we are heading into the last week of 2021. I hope you have some fun and safe new year's Eve plans.

00:00:42 So to mark this occasion, we are running a best of episode. So I pulled the stats on the top episodes from 2021. And my theory was actually going to be the top five were from January of 2021 because they have been out the longest, but that is not actually the case. So the third top episode is from the end of June and Kristen on my team is actually gonna post some top episode links on social media.

00:01:21 So stay tuned and you can relisten to any that you missed that were fan favorites. So the winner, the absolute top ranked one is actually from last February, 2021 Coworking market preview with Giovanni pelvis Cine of Avison young. So I reached out to Giovanni and said, I think it would be weird to rerun this one because it was a preview into 2021. But how about we do a 20, 22 preview?

00:01:50 So we have that on the books. So I'm going to run the second, most popular episode from 2022, which is how do you sell hot desks and dedicated desks? Because isn't that a question we are always asking. So it has a framework to help you work through this challenge. So if you're walking the dog or just hanging out, take some notes and give some thoughts to how this might apply to you.

00:02:18 And I think this still applies given the fact that open seating is still probably somewhat challenging to sell, given the state of the pandemic, et cetera, et cetera. And it's just always harder to sell than private offices. So we're always looking for ways to frame it, looking for ways to educate folks and looking for a way to create a really great compelling experience in order to convert potential members.

00:02:42 So here is our replay. Hope that it helps get you set up for 2022. How do you sell hot desks and dedicated desks in a coworking space? And I'm going to give you a quick preview. We are running a slightly different framework for the podcast for 2022. So I want to really highlight case studies that help you learn how someone else is handling their Coworking business decisions that they've made challenges they've overcome,

00:03:10 et cetera. So the first interview that will be the case study format is with Jim Hyde. He is the owner of craft work in Healdsburg, California. He is involved. He runs these small developer council for ULI, and I got to meet Jim in November. He asked me to speak on a panel at an event that he hosted and he, I love what he's doing,

00:03:33 love what he's up to. And he shared a lot of great insights on our interview. So you can look forward to that the first week of January. So until then enjoy this episode, happy middle of March. Some of us just survived a weekend of daylight savings time. That's always an adjustment. I know I'm adjusting for my CrossFitters out there. I know there are many of you.

00:03:56 I just met a new one who just joined my mentor program. Jacqueline is in Minneapolis and I don't think she realized I was a CrossFitter. And I was like, I feel like I talk about it all the time. So it made me want to say, Hey, CrossFitters out there it is open season. So those of you who just did 21.1,

00:04:15 know what I'm talking about? I hope things are going well for you. So we're going to dive right in today. I hope everyone back to our March. I hope everyone's doing well and starting to feel optimistic. I live in California where it's nice most of the time, but I spent most of my life in cold climates. Most recently, Chicago and I know March is that month where we start to see the light at the end of the long dark winter.

00:04:41 And for many of us, I hope that that is bringing a lot of optimism in the U S the vaccine program is going very well. So we're starting to feel positive about what's to come more sunshine, more vaccines, hopefully optimism out there. And so that brings me to today's topic, which is, I want to address a question. That's been coming up a lot.

00:05:05 I see it on my prep forms for my mentor calls. I see it in the Facebook group. It's been a hot topic of conversation. If you're not in the Facebook group, find us, you just search for Everything Coworking. And I think we'll come right up. And the question that folks are asking is how do I sell my hot desk, flex,

00:05:25 flex desks, whatever you call them and my dedicated desks. So most folks find that they're having a much easier time selling private space, right? That has always been the case, even pre COVID, but that is more so the case post COVID, which I think many of us saw coming. So I want to talk about that question and try to help you think through a framework of how to get to an answer for your business and the answer for your business may be different than for others.

00:05:56 So here's what we're going to start with, which is who is your ideal community member, which is the acronym for that is ICA. It doesn't have to be one person because our community, we want our community to be diverse and to be made up of reasonably different types of people. But there is something about your space and what you're offering that will draw people in and help them choose you versus another option.

00:06:24 Maybe it's location. That's fine. What are the people that are around you? What do they do for work? So here are the questions you want to ask yourself about your ideal community member. Think about your best members, the ones who come in, you love them. They're probably going to stay forever. They're easy. It's just a clear fit.

00:06:43 They probably two-word. And they probably signed up really quickly, right. A great fit. So what is it about them? Is it what they do for work? Is it a mindset? Is it where they live? You know, what is it that makes you guys a really great match and kind of try to really dig into those, write them down.

00:07:04 You need to write these things down. So in my Coworking Startup School program, which I run to help folks start spaces, this is the very first module. And I always feel like it's one of those things. Like people are like, no, no, no, no. Let's get to the good stuff like picking furniture, but really you have to know who your ideal member is because that drives every single decision.

00:07:26 How can you pick your furniture if you don't know who your member is? Do they like Ikea? Or do they like anthropology? Those are two very different people, right? What kind of coffee do they want? Dunkin donuts or the locally roasted $18 a pound version. Right. Very different people. So you need to know who your ideal member is.

00:07:44 And of course, you'll attract some people come to you who may not be ideal. Maybe they're not a totally perfect fit, but they live next door. So let's go with the 80 20 rule, you know, like what are, what do most of your members really value about what you offer and what do those folks do for work? Are they on the phone all day?

00:08:04 Are they on zoom calls all day? Or do they do heads down work? Do they come in to get really focused and write books or decode or, you know, things that are really independent? Do they see clients? Do they need an office for that? Or do they need a meeting room for that? What do they want to do at a coworking space?

00:08:24 Why do they want to work at a coworking space and not at home? Is, are they avoiding distractions or do they need the mojo or do they want a network? Like, is it that they're running away from something or running towards something? What are they trying to accomplish? These are really important things to know. I mean, these will impact your product,

00:08:44 mix your programming. So even if you're not a new space, because I suspect if you didn't go through my program, you have not really gone through this framework. And so you probably haven't asked yourself these questions. And what I fear has happened to many folks is you made your decision on your product mix, you know, sorta one or two ways.

00:09:06 One might be, you looked at the places around you and you said, oh, well, they have some offices and they have some dedicated desks and they have some hot desks. So I'm going to do that too. I'm not really aligning your product mix with who you're trying to attract. And even your proforma, right? The product mix as you're seeing drives your proforma.

00:09:27 And then the other thing you might've done, speaking of performance is said, well, I probably could have more offices, but those are really expensive to build. So I'm going to make more open space. And that may, that's a trade-off. I talk about that a lot. Our life is full of trade-offs building a coworking space is full of trade-offs.

00:09:47 We can't always have everything we want, right? If we have access to capital, then we're going to build more offices. Because when you proforma offices, they sell faster. People stay longer and they cost more. And so that is always going to make your performer look better over 10 years, but you have to have like a capital or do a management agreement so that you can get those built because they cost money.

00:10:08 I totally get that. And so most of us will make a trade-off around budget and putting in the number of offices that we want. And so we either weren't intentional, or we're very focused on budget when we created our product mix, not everyone, but I'm guessing if you're struggling, that may be one of the reasons, so know your ideal community member.

00:10:28 And again, what do they do? What do they need from you? How do they spend their day? And therefore, what type of work setting is appropriate for them, right? And some of them are going to be a good fit for open space or a dedicated desk. So for those of you that are newer, those of you that are open,

00:10:49 I think you probably know this, but I'm just going to run through this. Like a dedicated desk is a great spot for a couple of profiles. Somebody that really wants to come in every day, but is not on the phone a lot. And it doesn't need an office, right? So office people need privacy. They don't want to be in the open space because maybe they're very distracted by visual movement.

00:11:09 And probably it's because they're on the phone a lot, right. Or they have a team and they want the team to have sound privacy and be in their own space. So we understand office people pretty well dedicated desk. Folks tend to be people who are not on the phone all the time, or can do it quietly, which is risky, right?

00:11:30 Maybe they need a couple of monitors they're in finance or they're a programmer, or, you know, they just like the two monitors set up. You can't do that at a hot desk or a flex desk. Right. And so if I want to leave my home every day and I need the two monitors set up, or I just want a very specific spot where I can leave some stuff and come back to,

00:11:52 that's more of a mindset thing, right? I don't want to roll in with just my laptop. I want my stuff. I want my sticky notes. I want, you know, photos, I want this to feel like my setup. So it's either a functional need. I've got monitors or maybe a filing cabinet, although I'm not going to go down the filing cabinet route.

00:12:09 Most people don't actually need filing cabinets, but they want to leave stuff at their desk. They want it to feel like a more permanent setup and part of their routine. This is what I do every day and I don't want it to be. So, you know, I have to take everything home every day. So those are dedicated desk users. Another dedicated desk user might be,

00:12:28 we have office members and it's a five person office, but their team is seven. And they want to put two people at dedicated desk outside of the office. That's another use case for a dedicated desk, right? Hot desk members are much more fleeting, you know, much more like light and, and take their laptop with them when they leave. And they don't come with a lot of stuff and they're not carrying around a lot of,

00:12:51 you know, files and notebooks and equipment that they need to do their work. So they're coming in probably, you know, half the time, maybe a third of the time of the month. You know, they have other places that they do work, but they have a specific reason. They like to come into the coworking space. They want to see people.

00:13:11 They want to network. They want to do heads down work that they're not getting done at home. You know, maybe they've got the, the two monitors set up and the podcast equipment and the lighting, you should see my home office. It's got all those things. I can't take that with me. Right. And so maybe they do all the equipment work at home a couple of days a week.

00:13:30 And then they want to, you know, get out and put on an outfit and be in an office or, you know, being a coworking space. So maybe it's more of a mindset thing and they want to get their heads down, work done away from home. And, you know, they want to be able to pop out for lunch and just have that like office routine.

00:13:47 So sometimes it's mindset. Sometimes it's like, well, I need to get certain types of work done. So you want to think through that for your membership and your membership is going to be unique. You might have a niche. You might be in a certain type of location where people do certain types of work. You might be attracting certain types of,

00:14:07 of users, like lots of tech folks or, you know, who knows. So you have to think through it for your own specific location and your own specific membership. And it's tricky if you're kind of a generic space. Like we welcome anyone. We don't have a real, you know, kind of got a little bit of everything you're gonna have to really like dig into.

00:14:28 Okay. But why would someone pick you then maybe it's simply location, right? So if you are, you know, you've got a pretty broad product mix, a larger space, like you really could serve most people. And maybe you're more suburban, but you've got lots of parking, you know, but there's no like super compelling reason why someone would pick your space.

00:14:49 It's probably simply location. It's easier to get to. Or, you know, somebody has kids that go to school across the street, leverage that you have to dig for those things. Right. Because what is it that's going to make someone pick you, you have to find those things. Or we're maybe even sort of backup and say, okay, who am I going to try to attract?

00:15:12 I'm going to pick a little bit of a niche and try to get people to, to come this way. So it, but it's super important because here's what I want you to do next once you've thought through, okay, I have open space, I have flex desks. I have dedicated desks who will buy them, you know, think through your ideal community member,

00:15:32 out of your ideal community member, the folks that do the type of work or have the type of, you know, need for space that aligns with hot desks and dedicated desks. So out of your sort of audience that would buy open space or dedicated desks, you know, how do you, how do you get to them? Have you validated? Here's what I want you to think about.

00:15:55 Did you validate that demand before the pandemic? So if you've been open long enough, were you selling those products before the pandemic? For some of you, you weren't open long enough. And so you simply don't know, will they sell? I had this discussion with one of the folks who did a mentorship call with me last week and she opened right before the pandemic.

00:16:19 And I said, okay, so we're going to have to validate, can you sell open space? We don't know that yet. And we may not know that until people get comfortable coming in. So I think if you weren't selling it before the pandemic, it is possible that you hadn't gone through this process of thinking about who's the right person for this type of space.

00:16:39 How do I message it on my tours? How do I match people to this type of space? How do I align my marketing messages to people who would use this type of space? So you could try again, right? For those of you who that were new right before the pandemic, and nobody's doing open space for the whole year of 2020, and into 2021,

00:17:01 you simply don't know you, haven't validated that you can sell it or how to sell it. And so we're kind of starting over Mike, you know, what I would be careful about is drawing conclusions too quickly, because there are lots of markets where people just aren't using open space. They're not comfortable. Right? So a few things to think about,

00:17:21 if you haven't validated it yet, or you used to sell it, but now no one is coming for it. Are people comfortable in your market sitting in open space, even, you know, with masks and whatnot, if you think they're comfortable, we'll look at how your messaging do you images on your website, show people in masks. I mean,

00:17:40 we're still, we're doing well on the vaccine. We have states that are open and removing those requirements. But look just because the state says you don't have to wear a mask. Doesn't mean half the population wouldn't is it nervous? Right? Because not everyone's been vaccinated. And so there's there's risk. So, you know, does your website show people in masks?

00:18:03 Does it say anything about what your requirements are? Are you Demond? Are you helping people who would use open space, feel comfortable using it? Does your do your website? Photos showed people distanced. I was looking at a website yesterday with people standing right next to each other. They were real photos, not stock photos. And I, you know,

00:18:22 I have that like, and also I'm in California. So I have more than lots of other people are. It depends on where you are in the world. But I had, I asked the person that I was talking to on the phone. I said, well, what's your, you know, what are your COVID requirements? Because what I see on your website are people standing right next to each other with no mask.

00:18:40 So I don't really know from the visual indicators. And so it may be that you want to swap some of those website photos and show people sitting for their part and show people with masks on if that might be part of the issue. Hey, I just wanted to jump in really quickly before we continue with our discussion. If you're working on opening a co-working space,

00:19:01 I want to invite you to join me for my free masterclass three behind the scenes secrets to opening a coworking space. If you're working on opening a coworking space, I want to share the three decisions that I've seen successful operators make when they're creating their Coworking business. The masterclass is totally free. It's about an hour and include some Q and a. If you'd like to join me,

00:19:24 you can register at Everything. Coworking dot com forward slash masterclass. If you already have a coworking space, I want to make sure you know, about Community Manager, University, Community Manager, University is a training and development platform for community managers. And it can be for owner operators. It has content training resources, templates from day one to general manager.

00:19:50 The platform includes many courses that cover the major buckets of the Community Manager role from community management, operations, sales, and marketing, finance, and leadership. The content is laid out in a graduated learning path. So the Community Manager can identify what content is most relevant to them, depending on their experience and kind of jump in from there. We provide a live brand new training every single month for the Community Manager group.

00:20:18 We also host a live Q and a call every single month so that the community managers can work through any challenges that they're having or opportunities get ideas from other community managers build their own peer network. We also have a private slack group for the group. So if you're interested in learning more, you can go to Everything, Coworking dot com forward slash Community Manager.

00:20:44 And so again, you know who in your market needs is a good fit for dedicated desks or hot desks. And you have to be really honest about this because lots of people who will pay for space need an office. That is just a simple reality. And again, I know that there are a couple of reasons we don't build all offices. One is budget and one is we don't want to build all offices,

00:21:09 right? That's not the format that you're interested in running. You want open space. You want some mojo in your open space. You want that feeling of community. You want that vibe that you simply don't get when you're running a space, that's all offices. So I totally get it, but do you know, lots and lots of people who pay for space,

00:21:28 that's more of a need and they take an office. And so we're already, you know, selling open spaces already harder. It's cheaper, but most people don't need it. Right? They want it because it helps them be more productive or they like putting on an outfit and going to work. They like your fancy coffee. They like the routine of,

00:21:48 you know, going to an office and popping out for lunch. You know, making some friends like they like those things, but it's not a requirement to do their job. And so you have to sell them on it. So it's a selling process. And so I think that's the other piece is if you're newer and you don't have their reps on selling and matching people to what type of product they need,

00:22:10 it's just harder. And it's going to take some time. And so it may not be that you can't sell them, but you need practice. And that kind of goes into, okay. A couple of other ideas before I talk about messaging, messaging is ultimately important, but if you're starting to feel like, look, I just can't get, I'm not getting people who even want these products,

00:22:34 a couple of creative ideas, and you may have more. And if you have creative ideas about open-space dedicated desk, please drop them in the Facebook because I'm more ideas is always better. And we all struggle with selling our full portfolio, right? So the more we can help each other, think about how to do this the better. So a couple of ideas.

00:22:55 Can you create like a niche that creates demand for open space? Is there something you could do with your open space that would allow you to message very specifically to a group that would be very compelled to use that space? So I don't know exactly what that niche is. Is it, the women is one example. We have a lot of folks who do,

00:23:21 you know, female only spaces and they do a lot of open space, but is there some, you know, group in your community that's very focused on a certain thing and they would be good for open space. Like maybe it's a business incubator, maybe it's. Yeah. I don't know. I didn't think too hard about that one, but that,

00:23:43 so people will travel niche spaces, right? Like normally we're sort of, okay, I'm going to pick a radius of 20 minutes and I'm going to visit the spots that are 20 minutes away. And I'm going to pick the coworking space. That is best for me. That's reasonably close to my home because I still don't want to work that hard to get to work.

00:24:02 Right. But a niche space I'll travel further. And so, and, and I would, you know, maybe use some open space time. I would get some level of membership to use open space, time if it's a really compelling group. So just an idea, potting. So we used to do this. We would run out of private offices all the time and have waiting lists.

00:24:23 And so we would have people come in looking for private space, but sometimes it was just that they wanted to be able to sit together. They didn't need the privacy. What they needed was like meeting room hours and the ability to, to sit at a big table, but together and have it reserved. Right. So if you think about your product mix,

00:24:42 you've got team suites, which I know are hard to sell right now. So this is probably a little down the road. And then you have your long probably like cafe hot desk type table where there's, you know, 10 seats, but people will only sit and half of them. And then you've got your dedicated desks. Well, if you have a team of six that comes in and you have no offices,

00:25:04 what do you do with them? You don't have a great match. And so what we would do is we'd take one of those long tables and we would reserve it for them and give it to them. And we'd give them extra meeting room time so that they could do their all hands on Monday or there, you know, oftentimes it was some sort of startup group that needed to be together and they needed to be able to whiteboard stuff.

00:25:24 So we just gave them access to that stuff. And then we charged them basically an office price for the open seating, but together it was reserved. They could leave all their stuff. So it was like really their space. And it gave us a way to, you know, convert them into members and then charge them for an office price. But can I give them what they need?

00:25:44 So is there something like that that you could do for teams? Again, we found that worked mostly with startup type teams, but we had other, I'm trying to think with like a cooking show group, that same thing, they, you know, we didn't have an office and they just needed to be able to sit together and brainstorm on stuff and go back and forth.

00:26:02 And you have to be careful and make sure that it fits into your open, open space. We kind of liked it. Sometimes we would have three or four of those going, and then you get a nice little buzz in your open space, which I know many people struggle with. If you're new and you don't have people in your open space, it's super quiet.

00:26:18 And then you have this chicken or egg problem with open space, which I didn't mention yet. And that was actually not in my notes, but I would say this, if you're new, try to seed your open space, right? Friends and family, give them a three month membership to use the space and ask them to please come in as often as they can,

00:26:37 because selling open space really is chicken or egg in normal times. Again, if you're jamming your open space and people aren't comfortable with that, then that's not going to work. But as we start to come out of this and vaccines are pretty prevalent and people are more comfortable in open space, seed the open space with people. Maybe there's a non-profit in your community that you could donate some space to something like that.

00:27:01 But it is like a restaurant. If nobody's there, then people think it's not interesting. If it's busy than people think is really interesting and they convert. So having wide open, no one, there is a really hard, so find a creative way to seed the space, just, you know, temporarily. But honestly, you'd be just kicking it if you really filled your open space every day.

00:27:23 So even if you took that nonprofit and said, it's yours for a year, that's probably not a big revenue risk. So think about seating. So, and then, okay, couple more creative ideas. Could you create more privacy or premium space in your open space by using dividers? So I saw an image. It was one of the borough Miami locations that I can't remember where I was looking at that yesterday.

00:27:50 And they were selling private spaces that are not actually offices for almost $800 a piece. And they have the kind of divider walls. You can get them from like a loft wall or probably Steelcase has a system like this or the sliding door company. It's like glass, it's a glass like, or not even glass. I don't know what the material is,

00:28:15 but it's a wraparound system with the door, but it, I think it had a door that it doesn't go to the ceiling. So you don't have sound privacy. So you can't sell it at Office pricing, right. Because it's not sound privacy. And so there'll be lots of people who say that's okay, but it's not what I need. I need sound privacy.

00:28:35 Right. But for people who want a dedicated space, but don't need the sound privacy, the, you know, sort of enclosed pod. And there are a lot of new products coming out that start to solve this. Steelcase has an interesting line. I've been tagging Mara Houser and Mara is going to come on and do kind of a design chat about how to update your space.

00:28:54 If you're struggling with your product mix, that's one of the topics we're going to talk about, but there are products, lots of products coming out to help you with this. So it's an investment, but it might make those spaces more attractive to people who just have a different need. So think about creating more privacy and charging a premium price for that with a divider system that isn't walls is just furniture pricing.

00:29:18 So again, be careful not to just drop your price because that's probably not the problem, right? If you're not getting people who want these spaces, it's not the price it's that you have not matched a demand to a need, sorry, a demand to a solution, demand, a need are the same things. You're not messaging, right? There's something about your product mix and who you're attracting that don't match and pricing is not going to fix that.

00:29:43 So don't do that. Okay. So one other idea, and I would love to get Dan to talk about this idea a little bit more, but Dan Weston is one of my Flight Group members, and we were talking, we had kind of an animated discussion on one of our last Flight Group calls about this concept of like, what does the customer need?

00:30:04 Like he threw out this idea. He's like, so what if we all just stopped kind of marketing? And I won't, I won't do his exact words, justice, I'm paraphrasing his idea, but I was super excited about it. You know, what, if we stopped marketing specific workspaces on our website, which I think it's brilliant for a number of reasons,

00:30:23 one which he didn't say, I always wonder, do people even know what a hot desk is and what a dedicated desk is? And if you're one of those people who called those things, some crazy thing to match your brand, that doesn't actually describe what it is like, will people even come in knowing, like, that's what I want. If somebody worked in a coworking space before and they're familiar with the lingo,

00:30:46 then they know, but if they don't know, do they get it? I wonder. Right. And I ran a code, I ran two co-working spaces across the span of eight years. And of course that's what I sold offices, dedicated desks and hot desks. And I was in, particularly in Palo Alto, people knew what those were. And so it wasn't a big deal.

00:31:08 But I wonder if you, if Coworking is new, is that lingo confusing to people or do they even know? And do they feel like, oh, I'm I have to know before I go in for a tour. Right? So what if we just said, Hey, we have really great workspace come on in for a tour and we'll, we'll match you with what works for your needs.

00:31:29 So Dan's been experimenting. So they run the post workspaces in Tucson, the space is gorgeous and they were really reducing their Coworking memberships. They didn't want Coworking memberships during COVID. And so I love this because I think sometimes these challenges make you come up with the best solution. So they started experimenting with recurring part-time office plans, like not a day office,

00:31:56 but recurring part-time office plans and doing really well with that, which I think made Dan say, what if we just gave everyone more flexibility? Cause he's like, you know, we all know you can sign somebody for an office for a year. Maybe they stay, maybe they don't. They usually do right. Dan, they, oh, Dan opened at the beginning of COVID.

00:32:12 So I think some of his experiences are not typical. So he referenced the CVRE had this like 360 office, which was basically like, I think this is how it worked. It was Uber flexible. They were an early adopter of activity-based working. And if you worked for CVRE, you would kind of book a space for the day. It was an office or it was an open seat or is it,

00:32:36 there were no, I don't think there were dedicated seats. In that case, they're probably phone rooms, meeting rooms for teams, different options based on what you needed to get done that day. So I think what he's suggesting is what, if you have a membership that gives you access to different types of spaces and you have to reserve those and maybe your membership has a limit to the number of office hours that you can book.

00:33:01 Right. But what if you bring people into the space and you say, Hey, tell me why you want to get out of the house. What do you do for work? How do you, you know, what type of work do you think you would do when you come in? Would that change? Like would sometimes you need to do this type of work and other,

00:33:16 you know, let them talk through, how would they use the space? What would they do in the space? Would they meet, would they do heads down? Would they take zoom calls for eight hours straight, which I did yesterday? You know, what would they do? And then you say, okay, here's what I think. I think you need this membership,

00:33:31 which is, you know, $650 a month. And it gets you some meeting room time for when you need to bring clients in, it gets you some private office time, which you can use for making phone calls or doing eight hours zoom days or recording podcasts. And then it gets you some open space time. When do you want to come in and catch up on paperwork or write your blog posts or,

00:33:52 you know, hang out with people. So whatever you need to do that day, you have an option. You just go in and book what you need. It's an interesting idea, right? I don't know people who have tested this yet, so I can't tell you that I'm recommending it, but I recommend that someone try it and tell us how it goes,

00:34:10 because maybe people have just changed how they think about work and what they do where right. And they're learning about sort of different settings for different types of work. And we can help them learn that in our sales process. So what if we played matchmaker, instead of assuming that people knew they wanted a dedicated desk, do you know what I mean? Food for thought?

00:34:35 Okay. So once you've gone through this process of saying, okay, who is my ideal community member out of that group, who would use open space, who would buy it? What's their comfort level around coming in? Is there something I need to do with a space, with a website, you know, to help them feel like we're doing the right things and they can be comfortable in open space,

00:34:59 brainstorm some ideas about what could you do with your open space that, you know, might allow you to sell it to specific groups or pods, you know, or make it more private. So once you've thought through this, then you really need to think about your messaging. Because again, I'm not sure people know what hot desks and flux desks are when they go to your website.

00:35:21 And so who are you talking to? Why is your space, the perfect space for your members? Is it because you know, you're near a school and all the parents want to work in your space and go to the school next door, is it because you are, you know, best place for small businesses that want to be surrounded by all the services that they need.

00:35:44 There's a woman in St. Louis. Who's really created a great community around serving that audience, you know, or just, why would people come to your space and you have to message around that. So try to speak directly to them. And if you're simply more generic and you're going to stay that way, then think about trying the, Hey, we have the right space for you.

00:36:07 Come in and we'll matchmake. And maybe you don't have pricing on your website. What if you didn't have pricing, but you had packages that people could buy. And again, don't put it on your website because people don't know that that's what they need until you talk them through the process. So I was talking, I've been doing some videos on LinkedIn,

00:36:25 which I also post to Facebook, but I did one last week about a concept called average revenue per member. And I'm going to wrap this up in a minute. I don't want to go on a huge tangent here, but I'm, I always think it's really healthy to get insights from other industries. And so this one comes from the fitness industry. And so there's a guy who mentors,

00:36:47 CrossFit gyms, and he suggests, you know, don't only sell group classes because if you only sell group classes, which might be the equivalent to hot desks, not everyone wants that. Right. They're intimidated. They don't know CrossFit. They need the accountability of a personal trainer. So he really advocates look, bring the person in, figure out where they're at in their fitness journey,

00:37:13 what are their goals? And then make a recommendation. Should they go to group classes? Should they have personal training? Should they have nutrition coaching? Should they have mindset coaching, which I love, what do they need? What's the right fit for them. And what's the right combination. And don't make any assumptions about what they can afford and what they'll buy.

00:37:35 Tell them what you think is best for them. And oftentimes they'll take your recommendation because they really want to make a transformation, right? So fitness is a little bit different because our health and transforming that is a little bit different, but people who, you know, value their careers or are entrepreneurs will also invest. And so if you can frame an opportunity for them that really can help them transform how they feel at work and how productive they are based on what you can offer them.

00:38:03 And you can frame it that way. That's a more compelling sell than, Hey, come buy my hot desk. So messaging and framing really matters and thinking about, you know, how do you get people in and how do you match them to a solution? So again, think about who's going to buy the hot desk and the dedicated desk. And then how do you speak to them on social media,

00:38:27 in your emails, in your Google ads, right? What do they need to talk about the problem that you can solve for them versus like the features and benefits of a flexible desk. So hopefully that helps a little bit. If you are going through this struggle, I think many are right now, if you want some help working through figuring out who your ICA is,

00:38:49 how do you manage your product mix to match that? How do you update your messaging? We do that in our mentorship program. So schedule a free mentor call. We can talk about your situation and figure out if it's a good fit for you. You can do that at Everything. Coworking dot com forward slash mentor. So food for thought, continue the discussion in the Facebook group.

00:39:11 Again, any ideas and experiences and experiments that you can share are absolutely welcome. Encouraged in the group would love to hear from you. And we will see you next week. Hey there, thanks for sticking with us through the end of the episode, don't forget to subscribe on your favorite podcast player. And if you were enjoying the podcast, please go leave us a review.

00:39:38 It helps other folks find the podcast too, are thinking about starting a coworking space or already operating a coworking space and are looking to stay up to speed on tips and trends. And we started a YouTube channel. We'd love to have you catch us on video. You can join us for podcast, videos, and Q and a videos and other things that we post to the channel.

00:40:02 We'd love to see you there.

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