308. Part II. Automating your Coworking Space Operations So Your Team can Focus on the Humans

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308. Part II. Automating your Coworking Space Operations So Your Team can Focus on the Humans

00:00:02,"Welcome to the Everything Coworking podcast, where every week I keep you updated on the latest trends and how-tos in Coworking. I owned and operated Coworking spaces for eight years, and then served as the executive director of the Global Workspace Association for five years. And today I work with hundreds of operators and community managers every month, allowing me to bring you thought-provoking operator case studies and inspirational interviews with industry thought leaders to help you confidently stay on top of what's important and what you can apply to your own role in the Coworking industry."

00:00:45,"Welcome to the Everything Coworking Podcast. This is your host, Jamie Russo. This week we have part two or part B of my second interview with Brian Watson, automating your Coworking space operations so your team can focus on the humans. If you missed part one, you gotta go back to last week's episode because they definitely go together. We just kind of split them in half."

00:01:10,"As I mentioned last week, Brian's YouTube video is by far, by far, far, far our most popular. No offense to my other guests. I think Brian has done a good job of sharing this interview is by far outperforms our our other videos. So I decided that we would work this one and do a part A and part B and add a little suspense."

00:01:32,"So I don't think I mentioned this last time. They have seven locations, no employees, and hundreds of happy customers. And I talked in the interior last time about why I think just thinking about this concept is important. I'm not arguing that spaces should go unstaffed by any means, but I do think that it's time for us to look at the template that we assume overlays a Coworking space model and just ask ourselves,"

00:01:57,"you know, does every space work like this? You know, if you have 10,000 feet, you're probably not gonna be automated. You're gonna have somebody on staff. But again, we've seen models even at 10,000, 15,000 feet that are outsourcing the operations, trying to centralize, you know, sort of backend piece of the business. And then having lighter staffing on site that can focus on the humans and missing staff,"

00:02:21,"as I said last time, unless you do it really, really well, can be challenging. So it's not a fit for everyone by any means. But I love how Brian thinks about this. So I think this is in part B. He talks about the four customer types that the Altspace Automation Program serves and walks through those and what they, that might look like in each of those use cases."

00:02:40,"So part B is going to be just as good as Part A was, and I hope you enjoy it. Before we dive in, if you are listening this week when it comes out, it is your last chance to get registered for our live cohort of our relaunched management agreement program. So Giovanni Vicini and I are running the management agreement course live. You can get all,"

00:03:04,"and that starts on live session part one on the 29th. It'll be recorded, but for those of you that like to show up to stuff live, this will be great. And we also do live q and a calls after this. And for those of you who have been in our program before, you will get an invite to the session and to our live q and a calls."

00:03:22,"I had an email about that and hadn't thought to mention that. Or for those of you that are thinking about pursuing a management agreement, this is a great course to help you figure out who pays for what, who does what, what are the terms that get negotiated. We have a template that shows you all the terms, what the ranges are, everything that needs to be included in order to write a solid operating agreement."

00:03:44,"So plus you get us to answer all your questions. And Gio has done over a hundred flex deals, including management agreements, and so he can answer your questions. So we'd love to have you join us. You can get all the details at Everything Coworking dot com slash management agreement. And if you have anything, any questions about the program, don't hesitate to reach out."

00:04:05,"Without further ado, here is part B with Brian Watson. Again, I think segment the role, if the role of the, the flex space and Coworking space that that primary function is, get people in, get 'em online, answer their questions, you know, and make sure that they can get onto the system and our billing and all of like that stuff."

00:04:27,"Understand how the system works, segmenting that is done and can be automated and done in a very good way. Right? Then if you're wanting to do events or you're wanting to do programming or accelerators or you know, community building, any of that other stuff is really a different role. And so I think this is always the hard part for founders that are hiring space managers or whatever is it's like the model lets me have one person Yeah."

00:04:56,"And I need this one person to do a hundred things. Which they may be good at some things, but probably not all things. And so, as you know, as you've talked to all these people, it's like finding a good space manager is a unicorn search, right? Like, it's like almost impossible to find someone who's good and then you are,"

00:05:16,"you better hope you can keep them forever, you know, which You don't, they move on. Which is the other challenge of the system. Of course they do because they're unicorns, they're good, Like they're totally unicorns. Yep. Marketplace is in, you know, demands them. So, yep. Totally. And so I think like that was another thing that,"

00:05:35,"especially in Telluride, yeah. You know, you spend time in Tahoe, like these mountain towns, it's impossible for people to even live up there. Like we have firms that have clothing, like retail shops up in these places and like they're like, you know, trying to find like high school students that can like man the store so they can keep their doors open because it's so expensive to live up there."

00:05:55,"It's really hard. You know, where we can say we're guaranteed to be open, we're guaranteed that you can get in. Like Yeah, yeah, exactly. No problems. You know? And so it goes back to the sustainability thing. And if you believe, which I do, that Coworking spaces are an important amenity for your community and that people need these locations to be able to continue working remotely."

00:06:18,"Like the impact of that remote workers are having on a lot of these small communities is profound. Yeah. Like there's nothing ever in the history of economic development that has had the impact that remote work does on these communities that have such high quality of life. And of course people want to live there, but they've never been able to live there because their jobs aren't there."

00:06:39,"Well now they can take their jobs anywhere. And so it's our job to provide them with a place where they can work. You know, I was, I had a phone to her with, with a lady that works for Microsoft and she's, she lives in Montrose now, you know, and it's like, that could not have happened. Yeah. You know,"

00:06:56,"before. And so, yeah. You know, she's like, I can't, you know, you know, all the things, I can't work at the coffee shop, I can't do any of of those things. You know, a lot of these places, whether it's, whether you're looking for community or a place outside of your house for sanity or you know,"

00:07:13,"you don't have good internet in your community. Like, these are all like benefits obviously of Coworking. And so it's really important that we have these locations and these communities and we've gotta do it sustainably. And so, you know, we can do all of that stuff at scale with this kind of model. I guess You just talk, well I know we talked about this last time,"

00:07:33,"but a little bit about sort of your ambassador approach. We did, Giovanni and I did an interview with Marcus Jeromes, he owns Therapy Suites and his model, I don't know if you listen to the podcast, but his model was super interesting also. He is got these 2000 square foot spaces and they serve, there's a huge value to therapists, new therapists who wanna go out on their own and could never get their own space."

00:07:54,"You know, and therapists who cannot do calls at home, right. With whatever got going on at home, Andy helps them kind of build their business all like, and I wanna talk about sort of what's next for your model. He's, I think, got some similarities to yours. Like he wants to at scale help these folks be more successful. Yeah."

00:08:12,"And then he gets these ambassadors who are local that's like core to his success. And I was like, wow. And he, you know, like has kind of an incentive. They're not paid. So yeah. Talk about how you manage that in your space and yeah. A little bit about what that looks like and what role they play. Yeah."

00:08:29,"So with our, our spaces, we do have ambassadors at the locations, which are basically, you know, members who are consistently there and we get to give them the best part of the community manager's job, right? Which is just introducing them and being friendly. The band, that's all that they like to do anyways. And so, you know,"

00:08:50,"and again, it's built in, so when you sign up you get automated communication and introduction emails to that person Oh. And say like, yeah, I'd love for you to connect with them. You know. And so again, it's built into the system. They know that they've signed up for that role. They're gonna get intros, introductions via text or email or whatever's best for them."

00:09:12,"And then they can make that connection with that person. And if they have any questions, they can answer it and stuff like that. And so, again, we've taken on the role and responsibility of communication and questions that that come up in member onboarding and and management. But we still, I think the community part is really important. A lot of people are still looking for Coworking spaces as a place to connect and engage with the community."

00:09:37,"Yeah. And so having an appointed space ambassador at each location is really important to make sure that there is a, a human touch element there that can be done again at scale. And so, again, I think that human touch, that connection, taking someone out to lunch for the first time or grabbing coffee with someone for the first time is really important and provides high stickiness."

00:10:00,"Yeah. I think to the community and everything, that's a part of a, traditionally a Coworking space manager's job, but it's a segment of their job. Right. And, and honestly I think if you Don't get to spend enough time on Totally, and It's, it's the thing that I think is oftentimes the most rewarding. It's like the best part of the job and yet it's probably the smallest percentage of the job that they get to do all the time."

00:10:23,"And so for us, a space ambassador is like, Hey, we're gonna give you a discounted membership or a free membership for just the best part of the job. And you don't have to worry about anything else. If there's any other questions, if you need anything, yeah. Send 'em back to us. You know? Mm. And so that is really kind of how that Space Ambassador works."

00:10:41,"Yeah, I love that. Cause I was just thinking, going back to the, there's lots of spaces who probably aren't, aren't even introduced if you don't do an in-person onboarding meeting when someone joins, you're getting emails from the Community Manager. But you may never actually like formally get introduced, Hey, this is Kristen and she's here to help you get integrated if you want."

00:11:03,"Right. Like, we're not gonna force fun. But yeah, even that's like a good system to have in place that most spaces probably aren't doing. I joined a local space and they're two community managers. So one of them did the onboarding meeting, the other one I had never met. And so I was in the space one day and she thought I was a guest because she,"

00:11:23,"you know, we just hadn't like connected and probably no one talk. Yeah. And I was, so when you were saying that, I was like, yeah, that's really interesting cuz like even having those systems, like how do you make sure everybody knows who's new and that's automated and there's that direct connection made, like people should probably be doing that anyway and and likely aren't."

00:11:39,"So Yeah. That's very cool. And it's a lift, you know, I'm always very anxious when people talk about ambassadors. Like, well, you cannot make them log into all the systems. It's like, but if you're only asking them to do the really fun part, that could be really rewarding. I want to interrupt you for a minute. With a special offer,"

00:12:00,"if you are an operator that is getting ready to launch or your space is less than a year old and less than 200 members, office r and d is piloting a program called Flex Startup program, which allows you to save 50% on your first year with office r and D Flex to help you grow your Coworking space. As many of you know, I run programs that help operators launch,"

00:12:25,"I run mastermind programs for operators that are in business and a Community Manager program. And we have lots of members that love using r and d office r and d. It's kind of an all-in-one platform that has fantastic analytics, meeting room management, lots of integrations, all the things as I like to say. So it's a fan favorite of the Everything Coworking program members."

00:12:53,"So I'm excited that you get a chance to kind of get started with it at a discounted rate. So 50% off of your first year, you can learn more about the offer and sign up for a demo by going to Everything Coworking dot com slash O N d, that's Everything Coworking dot com slash O N d. We'll also throw that link in the show notes."

00:13:18,"So if you open your podcast app, you can grab the link right there. Or it's just an intro, you know, and I think you can play with things, you know, we could load a, maybe they get a discount or you know, you have a budget, a coffee budget that you load a pre, you know, loaded card or whatever and you know,"

00:13:39,"it's like, go to coffee and I'll buy you totally, you both coffee or whatever. Or you know, we've done things with ambassadors where it's like, I'll give you a hundred bucks if you want to just take people out for happy hour beers or whatever. Like yeah. It's on us, you know? And so I think the ambassador has to be a per,"

00:13:57,"it's like a space manager, right? You have to select the right person that understands what you're trying to accomplish that is extroverted and recharged by being with people and connecting with people and stuff like that. But every space has those people, every space also has people that are like, I don't wanna do any of that. Right? Yeah. And so you have to find the right person,"

00:14:17,"but I think when you find the right person, they're probably gonna be doing that stuff anyways. Right? Totally. Like they're the natural role they take on. Yep. So recognize them. Yeah. Yeah. Totally. Yep. And again, it's like if, if that person has those attributes, you know, inherently and all they have to do is like meet new friends,"

00:14:42,"which is like who you're invest, like that's who they're, oh, a new friend. You know? So just worry about that and you know, tell 'em about the fun things that you're doing or invite them out somewhere or whatever. And then don't worry about anything else, like all the other logistics, you know? Right. We'll take care of,"

00:15:02,"Do you think the ambassador is a critical part of making the model work? Or do you think a space could be automated but ambassador lists? It depends on how you measure success to Jamie. So I think a space can exist and be ambassador list, but that's, it's definitely an amenity that you're gonna miss out on, if that makes sense. So,"

00:15:22,"because it's a component, right? Like I think it when people connect with ambassadors or, or whatever, there's just a whole nother level of kind of that hospitality and touch that is really important that I think is hard to scale without that. Yeah. I think your segment of people are smaller that, that would want a space that's like totally doesn't have that layer."

00:15:45,"Totally. Well, and I think You just have to know, right? Like what's your why and what do you wanna get out of this? Be getting into it. Yeah. And is there, are you, have you confirmed there's a segment of people in your market that would buy that? Totally. I know that you work with a lot of commercial real estate flex people,"

00:16:03,"you know, and I think like, so that's really kind of, I think there's really kind of two benefits that we're providing and offering and talking to other, you know, operators about is a kind of automating all this stuff is really important, is gonna save you time and money. And then the other is this kind of like turn key Coworking brand thing that you can just kind of plug into the system."

00:16:27,"So if you have a commercial building owner that wants that co-working or flex amenity built in, we can provide all the, the branding turnkey almost. Yeah. Franchise light, right? The box. Yep. Everything is done. The box is not a very sexy way to say it, but it's, but that's what it's do it for you. Like Yeah."

00:16:49,"All the branding, all the technology is taken care of, all the hardware is taken care of and the onboarding and management. So it's like kind of ready to go. Right. And I think for a lot of people that is compelling offer, you know, again, if you're wanting these other things, just like if you're wanting to do events, if you're wanting to do programming Yeah."

00:17:12,"Then you'll probably need an additional person or Yeah. If to identify somebody who could be in charge of that aspect, also not impossible. Correct. Totally. Yeah. Okay. So if you, okay, say a landlord's like, you know what, I have 5,000 feet and I wanna like make this an amenity. I wanna plug and play. How do you identify an ambassador in a community that you are not connected to?"

00:17:36,"It feels like a chicken or egg thing here. Totally. I mean, if it was at like a com, a place completely out of where we reside or whatever, yeah. You'd really want to work with the boots on the ground there, whether it's the building owner or whatever, and trying figure out who is person, Somebody like gets it and can help you recruit that person."

00:17:57,"Okay. Yeah. Okay. So is this a model you're pursuing? Is this, tell us what's next for Altspace? Yeah, so this is a model that we're pursuing is offering kind of this turnkey virtual management solution for people. We're talking to a lot of people that are, I think kind of the, the different personas I think that we're talking to are either a,"

00:18:19,"I'm an existing operator and I'm either doing everything myself and don't want to anymore. Or you know, asking myself, you know, I, I've talked to a lot of people who started their space, they really appreciate their space. They don't want to lose their space, but they're interested in pursuing other things or are just, you know, don't necessarily want to be the one managing it all the time,"

00:18:47,"but don't want it to go away. And so for those people it's like, sweet, we can help you with that. We can let you kind of keep the wheels on the bus, keep the thing going, we'll take over all the onboarding and management and all of that stuff for you. So that's kind of, you know, customer number one."

00:19:03,"And then customer number two is that property owner who's looking at having the amenity in their space. Again, they don't want to be the ones to do it. They're trying to remodel their commercial building or, or do any of that stuff. They want to plug and play a turnkey solution. And again, I think when you look at some of the other options out there as far as Coworking franchises,"

00:19:26,"it's like very expensive. Yeah. Very big long commitment and in which you cannot get outta your contract obligated. I That conversation with the editor, you know, you can't like, So it's like forever. Yes. It's like, oh, we could just plug you in and, you know, and, and have it kind of, all the systems are built."

00:19:49,"They don't have to worry about anything. Hey, I just wanted to jump in really quickly before we continue with our discussion. If you're working on opening a Coworking space, I wanna 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 wanna share the three decisions that I've seen successful operators make when they're creating their Coworking business."

00:20:16,"The masterclass is totally free, it's about an hour and includes some q and a. If you'd like to join me, you can register at Everything Coworking dot com slash masterclass. If you already have a Coworking space, I wanna 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."

00:20:40,"It has content training resources, templates from day one to general manager. The platform includes mini 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."

00:21:09,"We provide a live brand new training every single month for the Community Manager group. We also host a live q and a call every single month so that the Community Manager 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,"

00:21:34,"you can go to Everything Coworking dot com slash Community Manager. So that's kind of the second. And then I think the other one is really looking at folks who are managing multiple locations and are, are either trying to figure out how to become more efficient. I gotta get my business more efficient, I'm doing all this work and when I get to the end of the month,"

00:21:56,"you know, what am I doing it for? And so by working with us, we can build a lot more efficiency into your business by saving you time, money, and taking a lot of kind of the, the, the obligation that you're dealing with all the time off of your shoulders. And so whether that's pairing us up with your team Yeah."

00:22:17,"And making your team more efficient. Again, like if you were having, hypothetically if you've got five locations and you've got a team of five or six or whatever that we talk to, a lot of times, you know, we could probably get all the same work done and if you were looking at downsizing or anything like that, we can keep everything moving forward with a,"

00:22:37,"with a leaner team and I don't think the experience will be worse. Right. I think, again, as we talked about by, by building in this automation, it's gonna, the, the end user is going to have the same or better experience across the board a hundred percent of them all the time. And you don't have to worry about what if I lose Jamie on my team or what if I lose whatever because we're,"

00:22:58,"we're, we're investing in systems that are gonna be Yeah. Sustainable or the kind of last one is teams that are wanting to expand their footprint. So I think there's a lot of people that have one Coworking space or two, you know, and there's opportunities that they could grab more in their region, but they don't really have the capacity to manage or operate all of them because they're too far away or whatever."

00:23:25,"We can work with them to increase their capacity of their team and so then, then they can become kind of like a regional brand whereas before they didn't have the ability to do that. Does that make sense? It Totally makes sense. My wheels are turning. So wait, customer number two, the landlord. How do you handle customer acquisition in that case?"

00:23:48,"How do you get members? Is that, do you guys do that or is that still like So I think, I think that's a little tb d So we do stuff like, we'll work with them. We're building out their, their, you know, Google my business page. We're every one of our locations has their own landing page with all of that information they're adding,"

00:24:10,"they're being added to the newsletter. We're helping with a lot of that stuff. I would still say, you know, just like in a franchise, you know, you still have a responsibility They need to Yeah. Market. And so the way that we're billing and everything like that is really being paid for the, the member onboarding and ongoing management. So it's really managing what is already inbound."

00:24:34,"Yep. You know, if you wanted to expand on all the marketing and driving traffic into your space and stuff like that, you know, you know you need to invest in that stuff. So whether we helped you do it Yeah. Or you did it yourself separate yourself separate. You can't Just, but the sales funnel, I mean that's really top of funnel,"

00:24:51,"right? So you're still handling a lot of the automation for the rest of the sales funnel, which is critical cuz the top of the funnel is one thing, it's the rest of the funnel that, that often has a lot of leaks and so you're really automating a lot of that. Yep. And being able to do it in a very efficient Yep."

00:25:09,"A capital efficient way basically. Okay. Super interesting. Yeah. Hmm. I, yeah, I think you're up to a lot of things that make a lot of sense and I think that's one of the reasons, I mean you've been doing this for a while, proximity and now alt space, like the people stay in the industry cuz there's like, we're still evolving and learning and thinking about how to evolve the model to work for different Yeah,"

00:25:32,"Totally. And I think, you know, the other thing is we're building out kind of our alt altspace footprint in Colorado. So again that's really nice too because as, as we're adding more locations, it's increasing the value of the brand, right? And so people can travel seamlessly. Yeah. And we have complete control over the hardware and software that's getting used,"

00:25:53,"which means we have complete control over the end user experience and how to do all that stuff. I think, you know, there's been a lot of different folks who have, who have tried, like we tried the nomad passer proximity or whatever and I think it's just always hard because everyone had a different system. Yeah. In reality, the logistics, it's like,"

00:26:13,"well it's sort of helpful. It facilitates, it helps you find Everyone has to be on the same system. You have to be. But so that means you spec this, you ha like the end user has to adopt your hardware, the total Package, all Of it. Like you have to opt into this, that's the way this works. Yeah."

00:26:30,"Otherwise, yeah, You're running, it's not a bunch of different Yep. Yep. And so I think that that's really important too, is we've really standardized Yeah. Here's what you need. You know, and that's, that's why we can have it turnkey and say, say like, these are the things that we need. This is how the system works,"

00:26:46,"this is how the automation works, is because we're all on the same system and it's because we're on the same system. What that translates to is a better UI for the end user. You know, and I think, I know we're kind of like running out of time, but I think what we've seen is if we zoom out, you know, and,"

00:27:07,"and even stop talking about Coworking in general, like at a macro perspective of things, there's gonna be more automation in the market as we move forward. Yeah. And so I think people are more used to that. A lot of the software that has been developed over the last decade, whether it's box or office r d or whoever, fill in the blank,"

00:27:30,"was really built to make managing the space really efficient. But it wasn't built for talking directly with the customer and you helped automate kind of the space manager's job and then it was their job to deal with the customer and, and figure out all the, the the complicated things or whatever. Now what we're able to do now with all these automation tools is just go use those tools and then work directly with the customer to kind of circumvent all that other stuff."

00:28:03,"Right. And so I think by doing that, you know, that creates a bunch of opportunity for efficiency within the business, efficiency with how capital is spent, efficiency with how we're communicating with the end user. You know, we're, we're starting to, there's all sorts of AI tools that are coming out that now I don't have to work with you just with email,"

00:28:25,"but can do email or text messaging or chatbot or like whatever communication works best for you. We can do all that for the end user. And so, I don't know, I just think, I think it is really important. I think you're hearing that a lot of people are trying to figure out the model because the model is becoming more and more lean and will continue to do so as prices get more expensive for things."

00:28:48,"Yeah. You know, and so I think this was a model that we came up with out of covid basically because we had to, we didn't have really any other options. But I think by, by going all in on it and and committing to it, I think what we've been able to do is be kind of in a blue ocean and, and being,"

00:29:06,"working in a model that has a lot of advantages. Obviously there's, there's tradeoffs to some of those things, but we found that the, the tradeoffs that we've made have been, have created a positive outcome for us and is going to allow us to do this work for a really long time in a way that is sustainable and that is ultimately what is most important to us and will allow us to have what we believe is greater impact these things."

00:29:32,"I think that's a perfect way to end. I have a million questions. I can keep going, but yes, we, I have to let you go. Thanks for doing this and thanks for doing what you're doing. If people wanna learn more about getting involved, if they fall into one of your customer buckets, what's the best? Yeah, best way,"

00:29:47,"Check us out. It's altspace cowork.com. Go there. If you're interested in the automation, there's a little tab at the top that says Coworking Automation Services. So just click that, fill out the form and we'd be happy to get in touch with You. Okay, perfect. And we'll put the links link in the show notes and if you're listening on your phone,"

00:30:03,"you can click and get to the show notes. I like to remind people of that cuz it's so easy versus having to remember to do it when you get back to your computer. Brian, thank you. And until next time. All right, thanks Jamie. Thank you for listening to today's episode. If you like what you heard, tell a friend,"

00:30:23,"hit that subscribe button and leave us a rating and review. It makes a huge difference in helping others like you find us. If you'd like to learn more about our education and coaching programs, head over to Everything Coworking dot com. We'll see you next week."

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Jamie RussoComment