362. How Karen Tait, Founder of The Residence, Created a Thriving Suburban Coworking Space

Welcome to the Everything Co-working Podcast where every week I keep you updated on the latest trends and how to's in co-working. I owned and operated co-working 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 co-working industry. I am here with Caran Tate, the founder of the Residence Co-working in the UK. Caran just wanted to tell me about her weekend going to see Coldplay in Ireland. You're so fun! Did I just drop that in? I don't know, I don't know. I think I went to your whole family girl, where I took my husband and I took my daughter and my daughter took her best friend who had the treat of a lifetime. I bought the tickets every year ago, couldn't get them in the UK so I go to Dublin. Dublin's fun. Right! Yeah, so they were off the scale, friggin' amazing. I mean, I bet this is so fun of you, Caran. Yeah. Yeah, it was just, yeah. Yeah, I think everyone should go to a co-working concert. I think it's like, I think it's like co-working. It's just got so much love and good feeling. 82,000 people singing the harps out to live concerts. I have no live concerts in a million years. It's crazy. So if I could go. If you know who's on my list, Pitbull is on my list. I'm going to say, I don't know who they are. No! Which is why I tend to simply said, do you know who co-play is? I totally know who co-play is. Yes, much more, what's the word? I don't know. Like legendary, probably, but Pitbull would be fun anyway. Good for you. Okay, Caran. So much to talk about today. We're going to dive right in. Yeah. And you and I have not cut up in a while so some of this will be known. Ages. I know. I brought tea. Oh, good. Yes. Well, I'm having my morning coffee. My cafeteria. Okay. So, okay, tell us, like, tell us where in the world you're located and then tell us your co-working story. How did you, what was the, the moment and where did you start in co-working? And then we'll work our way along to where you are. Okay. I, my space is in Bishop's Torfett Harvacher, which is probably 40 miles outside of London. If you like it. And 40 miles, acquitted since the other way, further north to Cambridge, which are probably hopefully too pretty well known cities. So that's where we're located. So we're in a suburb of the outer regions. My journey started back. Well, to go about even further, my career was an investment banking in the, you know, early 2000s. So I was at, could it Swiss? In England, I could support and then Morgan Stanley and then Goldman Sachs and Jeppie Muppens. So I kind of worked my way around them all and left in probably on that my boots in about 2050. And thought, well, I will be a virtual assistant. So I will do admin for small business owners. Remote, that will give me a bit more balance less community. Yeah, you were, so you were commuting? Yeah, I was commuting successfully. Yeah, every day, like, well, yeah. And I had a half there and I went a half back. And I think that the, the points at which I had a nanny for the wraparound care for the children and they were little. So at the point, she was earning more than me for an hour early basis. Yeah, yeah. And you broke it down when you took out the cost, the time, the childcare costs, you know. And the BA singers kind of started to be something I'd heard about thought, well, that's my skill set. I can do that remotely. I've got a big black book of, you know, kind of, let established bankers who started their own side. Or whatever. So I started that and I factored a lot of things into my career change, but never actually factored where I would work. But I just was like, oh, I just never factored missing the office, if you like. And, you know, because my background, as I say, best of all, thank you. You run floors with two to three thousand people just on a floor. Yeah. So I was looking forward to taking a break from that, right? You didn't. Like, okay, well, what does that mean? Where are me and my laptop going to settle in? And I like, I'm like, well, I'll be at home. I'm like, you know, a children will be at school, my husband's at work, the home, you know, it's actually great. And like six, maybe 12 months in, might have started to get a bit isolated and a bit. And I start to get a bit of a same day every day, you know, kind of say, you know, different from the same commute every day, but missing peace was people and conversations and a bit of fun and a bit of socializing and getting, getting putting something really nice on and getting to my office and good morning and how are you and all those kind of pleasantries. And I started to kind of look around me in my local area and this is going back to when I finally started the space in its original four nine 2017 to not a great till a choice. If I'm honest, there was a religious reasonably close by St Ancestan, St Ancestan's airport. Obviously London. Yeah, London had lots of stories. I know. I didn't want to go back to London. Of course, you didn't want to stick to you in our. I was kind of prepared to though, darkening on. Across my mind, briefly, and the couple of other, the couple of other local operators that are more mid-sized operations, but predominantly private office, predominantly meeting really. So, you know, co-working, if they even considered it was just a couple of tables shoved over there. That's where I co-workers go and then I did try that and it wasn't really meeting anybody. I was sitting at home on my own so that vibe wasn't there. So 2017, the barn came up for rent, not far from where I lived, probably a thousand square feet, very old, traditional beams, floorboards. You know, and it felt like it would provide me with some way to work. And it would provide a space for other people to work. It didn't need to. I had to test the concept, right? I had to test the concept that co-working outside of London in the second. So you knew about co-working because I'll interview a lot of people who think, you know, even still when I, when people, you know, reach out, it's like they think they invented it. You know, they never heard of it. They had that idea and they're like, oh, it actually exists. You knew it existed and you kind of looked around you. Yeah, a little. And that came out as my background, I guess, in the best but banking the clients that we then also, why clients, some of them worked with a couple of them worked at Forer, so I'd been when I went into work with them if I did it would be in there. Yeah. And I just was like, why is there nothing around here? Why is there no. There's a burping, right. Totally. I mean, there was one in Cambridge now. But in 2017 there was, uh, Regis or. Now that we're appealing to me, I didn't need a private office, didn't want to sit on my own. And as I say, like, I rented a small barn. The landlord was very sweet. It was a lot to say to people. The lease was written on the back of the. I'm going to say, Fag a Packet. I don't know if you'll know that in the US. Maybe you lose, you agree to pay me X on Y. No end day, no start day, nada. No, it was in charge of the HVAC. No, no, no, no, it was in charge of when the boiler went down. No, it was in charge of when the mouse came to visit. All the things that an old barn gave you. But that suited me right, because it fitted failed. If it had not flown, it'd popkula gone. I could say, thanks very much Bob. We give it a go. And he'd be like, no problem with going. Right? Yeah. And like, 12 months in, I'm like, oh, we got a lot of people coming. When it was Rappers Club and Seeding. All open seating. The meeting room. We did have a very cute mezzanine for four deaths. We had 15 deaths on the open floor. And one mezzanine for ten and a slok kitchen downstairs. So whilst it was small, it had pockets. And it had charm. And it had very British charm. And we just up to the point of COVID, we had reached capacity. But that's not a lot, not a great deal of in today's world. Co-working, not a great deal of. If you had validated, or there are other people beside me. No, I don't want something like that. Or like this. Yeah. Exactly. And you had a website. I mean, you were treating it like a real business. I mean, yes. What's it like? Yeah. I mean, you were doing your VA business. Yeah. And this. But you had a website. You were marketing. I mean, you were doing all these things. And I think. that in back in 2017, its purpose was to provide me a space to work. It wasn't a source of income for me. It didn't provide me a living. Now, as I look back now, which I thought it might give me some return, even above, you know, a few hundred pounds if you want. And that was on a good month, right? But it didn't need to because I had a nine to five job Monday to Friday, game, a space to work, a space to meet people, talk about my VA business, provide service. Yeah, put my teeth in. Here are all the reasons not to come, here are all the reasons to come, the reasons why people leave, what people want, what they don't want, what they're prepared to pay. And then I think I hooked up with, I think I made a no, I hooked up with yourself January 2021, which was at the stage of, we're going to expand. And they obviously pivot, closed us all down, and but we already committed to this second location. But then you could see that maybe the way of work was going to change. Sounds cliche, doesn't it, to say it, but it felt like, well, so clear in hindsight, but in the, yeah, we didn't know anything, right? Yeah. Yeah. And it, it felt like we might never go back fully to the office or the office might take on different formats or different scenarios. So we were committed. So we opened the doors to the second location, which is where I am today in Bishop's Jorford Harpshire, August 2021. So we have been operational for three years this, this month. That's crazy. I don't, yeah, how is that possible? Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to say that DJ, we got a, we're having a party. We're throwing it. Okay. So fun. I'm interrupting for a second. Are you working on starting a co-working space? I often emphasize how important the planning stages, you've heard me say most unrecoverable issues happen well before you open your doors and they are related to the size of your space, your real estate deal, and a few other things. If you think you're going to pick your favorite co-working space and reverse engineer, what you think you see happening in there and then pick your own paint colors and your favorite furniture, you are in for a surprise. This business is really about making the right fundamental decisions that align with your individual personal and financial goals. So we want to help you avoid the mistakes that a lot of operators make in planning and launching that can really set you back in terms of time and finances. So we have got your back. We have created a free training to help you really get behind the three key decisions that we think are the most critical for you to get right when you're designing your co-working business, the model, not the colors, the model. And these insights come from years of operating, designing the model for two different locations, and then my work with hundreds of operators as they work on their businesses. So grab your spot in our training class. You can watch it anytime, it's totally on demand, and start your co-working journey with confidence and the right strategies in place. You can grab that training at everythingcoworking.com/masterclass. Okay, I'm going to read one of your Google reviews that we can set up how fabulous this space is and what an amazing operator Karen is. Okay, so Karen has 104 five star Google reviews, which we'll talk later, but I want to read this one. I used the residence conference room for a workshop recently and the experience was fantastic. I should use my British, I can't do a British accent, my daughter can't but I cannot. Super easy to book through their app or via email and it's easy to change the date if needed. On the day, Laura Community Manager made sure everything was ready for me and took care to make sure my laptop was connected to the screen, T and coffee plates, et cetera were provided and they would have organized catering if needed. The environment is beautiful and very professional looking while being friendly and comfortable. Everyone is super friendly and welcoming too. I would recommend this co-working space to anyone needing either a desk for the day or a space for meetings and workshops. I mean, yeah, so you okay, so three years you've been open, tell us more about big shift. You kept a smaller space open for a little while, moved into the, yeah, so we yeah and I'm going to put the link in the show notes because it's beautiful. It's a beautiful build. It's beautiful surroundings. You just you had a vision and it is. It is. I had a vision. Yeah, I had a strong vision and I did have help bringing that vision to life in terms of commercial interior designer, you know, aspects of the business that you know, not my forte design is not my forte, but I had a vision of environments that I'd worked in in investment banking that were luxurious. You know, marble lifts and food on tap and just just beautiful foyes and you know, I knew what good looked like and I didn't want mediocre. So I was prepared to invest the extra money to deliver a project that spoke to the people who were happy to align with that and weren't looking for mediocre, risky, whatever the word is. Do you know what I mean? Like they weren't looking for just just a desk. They're looking for something else that's finding space in the suburbs, right? Yeah, you're like you're settling it just because you're in the suburbs and you're not going to commute. So yeah, and then if you that's another barrier, you've got an over for them that the cost of a day pass for those is too little to get to London. So if I'm getting the same vibe in a local info, it's a no brainer isn't it? And then you know, reparking and free coffee and cake and the free and the monitor, like all the barriers that you could justify going to London. If you don't need to, that's the point. Then hopefully we result those for you. Yeah. Yeah. So you did shift into more private offices, meeting rooms. Can you talk about your mix a little bit? Yeah, so here in this space, we're just under 5,000 square feet. We have nine private offices. 30 open desks, one meeting room, one conference room for 20. And then there is pockets of the space that are given over to what I might call casual seating like chairs to sit on, places to do a jigsaw, places to have your lunch, breakfasts, stools at the bar, a couple of chairs upstairs with the views of the country. So like pockets where if you just think you're to get away from your desk, I'm quite lucky where we are, we are in the bank of the countryside. So there are horses looking out of the window, cows to the left, horses to the right, you know, green spaces, birds tweeting, beautiful flowers, like lots of uplifting kind of mentally stimulating things. Okay, so it's been a while since we caught up, you were working on your meeting room revenue. What's going well today? What's, you know, what's a good source of revenue? I'm curious about your meeting room business. Yeah, I mean, I think I think the mainstay of our business, obviously, is the private offices. The demand is high. The demand keeps coming. They don't turn as quickly. They stay longer. They stay more. All the reasons that you told me that they would, which was that it is a physical need. It's not a fancy way, sure, it's just I don't really find, you know, they have team members, they have belongings, they have requirements that require private offices and it's almost like I have a big waiting list for private offices and they don't really, you know, so if you've asked me my product mix, which are the bits that I can turn the taps on a bit more as them when the flexible plans, the monthly flexible plans and the virtual office is something that we've worked on with you or, you know, your previous mailbox challenge. So something that now I feel like I'll have the roadmap to deliver because that's obviously an aspect into the business for revenue. Well, I don't need bombs on seats because I don't have many more seats to give them. You know, this has been a quite period for us. I think it's probably quiet for all operators August and December. Today already we fell a plethora of emails, like the kids are back, get me back, the kids are gone. Yeah. Yeah. You can come in, can I come in today? Like so I think and what has gone extremely well is our monthly plans. We switched them about 12 months ago to not just be days, but they were also hours. So we've got a Flexi 5 and a Flexi 10, which is five days or 10 days. No carryover, recurring every month, right? Super easy, low exit point 30 days. But give some access to the space 24/7. And they've come in 24/7. Yeah, absolutely. You don't get that obviously with the day pass and the day passes 8.35.30. But what we did was we'd switch shit to five days off 40 hours or 10 days 90 hours each day being eight hours. And what it attracted was the working parent. and the person who worked internationally early morning, late evenings, they had a side hustle, they were doing blogging, that all reasons why they weren't working standard hours and what it did was it allowed them access to the space without me compromising on security because they were a member of the space and they could use those hours in one end and four night they wanted, so maybe you've dropped your children at school, you're at E-Desk by 9, you're leaving again at 2.30, you might come back in the evenings, all of that was possible with the plan and the idea was that that would increase monthly revenue that I could account for, like because I can't account for day passes. I can't predict that. I can't. Yeah, that's the right word. I can't predict. And it's not that consistent. We all know, I think that co-working has to become a habit and I think that the day pass person comes out of fourth need. I notice the absolute, you know, come and the absolutely love it. That's why it's priced a bit higher, right? Yeah. But we do do a, like the, you call them in the US, a punch card. Yeah, I call it a loyalty card, so every time you come for a day pass, you've got to stamp five day passes, you've got to free one. Everyone loves something free. Yeah, I mean, I love this. I think I remember you thinking about doing this and you're like, what about the hours? I mean, I love like you're so willing to experiment because so you've given people that mental option, like, okay, I'm good thinking about it in terms of days or hours and you said, look, you get 24/7 access. I'm just going to give that to you. And I feel like we used to be like, nope, nope, you can't have, you know, and you still have to think about how you segment, you know, your access. But if that's the demand that's coming in and that's what they value, okay, fine. Let's do it. Yeah, I didn't want to lose that demand that I was hearing, like people saying, like, well, I have to go to London in the morning. So I'd love to come to the space in the afternoon, but don't really want to use a whole day of my credits. So, yeah, or the other, the human psychology and like, yeah, and humans are so, so, so, so, I'd send people saying, yeah, they would care. Some people like, well, no, but don't we want to use eight hours because I'm only here for four. And I kind of get that. There should hopefully be enough flexibility in the operation of the space that we can afford that, but that comes with with membership, not just, yeah, commitment is coming in in for an hour, right? Four hours. No, you can have by four hours with a time, but you can commit to getting our wee package monthly. Where it's exclusive, it's just that this is, I don't want to dilute the offering by just offering an hour or two hours here with that. Look, we've made exceptions where people are travelling through and there's always that flexibility with when the owner's on-site to be able to say, like, someone might just ask for a dedicated desk for a month because the builders are in. Why would I say, why would I say no? It's possible. It's just that, you know, it's not normally our model, but we can do that and we will do that. So, and there were always circumstances that drive people out of their homes, not just for them into health, but for their actual getting the job done, right? So, yeah. Yeah. Hey there, I'm jumping in again. This time, I'm speaking to those of you that are either getting ready to hire a community manager or who have a community manager, and you would like to support their training and development. We know how challenging it can be for co-working space operators to create their own training and development material to support their community managers. And this is so important in terms of onboarding new community managers and supporting the growth of your existing community managers. And we're getting towards the end of the year. What a great holiday gift end of year gift to give to your community manager. So, the platform is really around a couple of things. One is access to a community of like-minded folks. We have a very active Slack group with really wonderful questions that are posed every single day. And we find that's one of the biggest values we have community managers from all over the world. And this is an excellent group of community managers that have invested time and effort into getting better at that role. And they are the kind of folks that you want your community manager to be by and hanging out with. And they know their stuff. Or sometimes they go and they ask questions and we help them out. So, I'm in the group. We have coaches that are in the group to support them. So, we love when they ask questions for things they need help with. Because the other aspect of the program is really around helping them get resources they need to make their jobs easier and to learn things that they can use in their role to be better at their job. So, we provide some done-for-you resources like Google Business Post, detailed event ideas, etc. that they can just kind of grab and go and use. And we also provide monthly resources that add to our training library. So, they can do our certification. And then we have a lot of electives that help them get better at all the things that go with the role. So, our community managers wear a lot of hats. So, we break our content into industry knowledge for new community managers, community building, operations, sales and marketing and leadership. So, the leadership bucket is great for our more advanced community managers. We also have virtual office and digital mail training and coffee training for anybody who needs to know how to use commercial coffee brewers. So, we have some of the, I'm just going to give you kind of a sampling of content that we have. So, in our community building modules, we have hosting your first member events, building community with budget friendly events, member events, white files, our sales and marketing modules. We have tour training. We have the training on the full co-working sales funnel. So, they understand what that looks like. We have social media planning frameworks. We have, what else do we have? Three simple steps to an effective marketing newsletter. These are just some of our samples. Oh, these are some of our best utilized topics. Demystifying the process of letting your co-working members use your address for their Google business listing, how to close it to our operations modules, how to set up automations, how to do a new member onboarding audit, simple ways to use AI to boost your productivity. We have over 40 courses in the program. So, we cover kind of higher level topics and then we also cover things that are timely like the CMARA updates, Google business updates, etc. So, we get together monthly to do official training and we also host a best practice sharing call, which is one of the fan favorites of the group and the Slack group. So, if you have any questions at all about the program, don't hesitate to reach out. You can learn more and register at everythingcoworking.com/communitymanager. Now back to our episode. Okay, how about meeting room demand? How is that? Is that picked up? Well, I didn't increase the price, like you said. No, I did make a different entry to actually between the meeting space and the conference room. I did actually have the price I'm kind of half joking there. What I've decided is that we have two meeting spaces. So, our biggest conference room is probably 350 square feet. So, we're going to subdivide it so that it can be one big conference room or two smaller meeting rooms. And because the waitlist list was so long for private offices, this meeting will become a private office. So, the members don't feel like they're losing a resource. Yeah. My member who's getting an into the door is happy. It's also freeing up one of my smaller offices because they're moving up into a four person, which every list helps, right? To my bottom line, to not have to sell a lot of meeting room time, that can be better utilized as a private office. Yeah, I love it. Okay. And since the office that you're sitting in now, that's, that this one's going to become the private office and then the room next door. And it will be subdivided, you know, professionally with a retractable door, acoustically sound. It'll both have its HVACs on either side, both of technology on either side. So, if say like we host a lot of networking groups, women in business, the rising tide, six-figured females, you know, predominantly, you know, large groups of people. I don't want to lose that because that's also thoughtful through the space where people come and, oh gosh, I co-working, what's co-working? I can work here. I'm a solo trader. I'm a freelancer. I'm here networking, why are we so, so then we can retract the doors, have it as a big space. But the majority of the people that come from meetings sit between six and eight people, it seems to be the know all. So, yeah. I don't realize. Nope, I love it. Yeah, yeah, kind of take you thing. What do we have? What do people want more of? Let's do that. Okay, so you have a beautiful zoom background. Can you take a little detour and can you tell us about your rental art program? Yeah, I think the interior is really important to me that it was aligned with the brand, but also I felt like the artwork could add an element of something that could be very interchangeable depending on the seasonal, summer, winter, whatever. It's a nice talking point. It is one of our members, Chris White from Art Rote, who have known since I opened 2017, does art rental in predominantly London, predominantly high-end business, and I was like, "Well, we could do that right." So each piece was chose by R&T designer Helen, who designed the interiors, and she collimatched each piece of artwork with the furniture to create the mood. I think behind me is a great example of we've got four of these throughout the space, two of blue, and there's another yellow. And there's nothing worse than a blank wall with. Especially when I'm looking at you on Zoom, when you logged in, I was like, "Oh my gosh, this is fabulous. It's a real bad thing. It's beautiful." And people are like, "Right, you want them to have a nice background." So does that stay up to the private office and get that, or do you have to move it out? Oh, they said that. And told them to fat back. So don't sell that, Jamie. I know, you might. You could sell that as a package. I think you're Tommy's listening, I'll be asking. No, I love that. I also have me thinking about your positioning. You're in the suburbs, but you said, "Well, I'm not going to be mediocre. I'm going to be high-end, beautiful space." And I think. And I want to talk about the cake. We'll tell us about the cake. Yeah, yeah. So this cake. I'm going to pour into the US folks, probably on the British folks. They're like, "Yeah, we, of course." Well, I think our most rated word on our reviews is cake. And the cake came about. Well, the cake scenario and the coffee scenario came around in my head. So I feel like sometimes my biggest competitor is the coffee shop, which was where I used to hang out. Right? So when I didn't find what I needed, I thought, "Well, I'll coffee shop hop." And it serves the purpose. And it's. It can become expensive, right? If you're there all day and they probably don't wait you there all day and you know, and it's not conducive to your best work. If you can't find a socket or it's noisy or all those things. So I thought, "Well, if we have all inclusive pricing that I'm not like, well, the desk is 20. And if you want to coffee, that's £2. If you want to slice of cake, that's £2. A bit like my easy jet fly over the weekend, I've learned like. My daughter still laughed about that. We took one last fall and she uses that analogy also. She wants to bring her back on. Like, "Oh, well, I'm just doing empty handed for four days. Of course, neither bag. Anyway, so I didn't want people to have to pay. I didn't want them to not have a cup of coffee because they couldn't afford it or I was civilly becoming at the. And maybe it's my northern hospitality. I'm from the north of England. The thing, everything is done over a cup of tea. Tea is the most. Yeah, you know, we don't. Up north, we don't have people standing on our doorsteps talking in the house, cup of tea, slice of cake. So it feels like host, host of the host of the salad, it's welcoming, it's feeding, it's. And then it became a talking point like, what's coming today? And people will be on Zoom calls at 9 a.m. on a Monday doing the, you know, the the watch cooler moment, set the wake up for success, all the things. And the people on the Zoom calls all over the world are being gone, "What cake is it today?" And be like, "It's multi-zer." Or it's a scoffy or a favorite. Oh, I don't like that one. We had that one, don't like that one. And we went whole 18 months without having the same cake. Wow. But also the idea was also that the space would use local suppliers. That was also important to me. So the cake is made by the lovely Esther, local cake maker. A coffee comes from a local roaster in Southamworld. And as I say, there aren't what we used to local interior design. And we were at the local accountant. The idea is the space is not just somewhere that is commercially successful. It's all, it almost feels like it's that money that is in local communities being moved around and is not being spent in London or Manchester or on Amazon, giving it to Jeff, lovely Jeff. It's been given to the nice guy who set up a roasting coffee business who needs this for in the door. I was currently given it to Tesco's, which is obviously a big UK food chain in the UK. Why would I not? He priced matched. And then we up the prices we needed. Oh, so it's like giving back. Yeah, but we're all adding to the experience. And I think, I think this was intentional for you and what you wanted, but also it's kind of aligning with what people want. I mean, you live in a nice suburb outside of London where people have nice home offices, right? And so I was talking to Kevin Wheeling about this recently. He was on our other podcast and talking about like how he advises or newer brands to think about their positioning. It was really hard to be right down the middle. Yeah, so you'd have to look at you started with like the barn and we very approachable, you know, innocent memberships, but you know, very charming. And then you went for the we're going to create something really beautiful and unique that is as nice or better than what people have at home, which is pretty nice. And so you've got the beautiful artwork, you're very well styled, professional designer, thick tape. I mean, it's like a step up from what you would have at home or what you would ever create on your own in a suburb, but which is so critical because you probably have people walk in who were just like, this is it. Yeah, I mean, you're absolutely right. I mean, I can crave it. Everybody suddenly had to pray if they had the space. I really nice home office. So to entice them out of there, it had to deliver more than you could get and the other aspects that we could have on top of the nice home office was equal to have a nice styled office, but also refreshments. Which is a natural to you. And I hear you talk about it. You're like, well, of course, this is what we do and it happens to be what people want, especially today. Yeah. And I mean, and when we saw the gas and electric prices go through the roof across the world, you know, don't have your heating on at home. I mean, he sings on our air conditioning's on. So those little subtle things that we're delivering, which we have to deliver anyway to keep the lights on, is saying, we're good value for money. We're not going to try and upsell you at every point, you know, because when we first opened in Bishop's Court third, you know, I was mindful we could charge for printing, we could charge for scanning, we could charge for the coffee, we could, you know, there were lots of layers where we could have increased margin, but I just didn't just didn't sit with me. It just was like, if I was that user, I might think twice about the second cup of coffee and equally, then I could easily say, well, I could go to costus then and have the coffee and pay for the coffee I'm paying for the coffee with you. I wanted again to remove the next barrier to excuse is not to use the residence. Yeah. If that makes sense. It would completely make sense. It's just like the hours calculation, right? It's like the things that get in people's way can be really funny and it's like, right, you just like, I don't want them to even be thinking about it. Like, oh, I have to pay for my second cup of coffee here and that becomes like a little nagging, like just removes all of that. No, I think it's really smart. We're, so you're in a suburban location. How do most of your members find you? I think what else? Socials. Google my business because when you do do co-working, ambitious, stupid co-working, what ever that search time might be, if you are aware, obviously, what co-working is, we come up quite nicely. You're 104 Google reviews. Yeah. Pretty impressive. Especially because you, why do you tell me about the, you know, putting effort into that because you do come up first, you could get a little lazy about that. Yeah. How do you get to 104? We were very intentional or I was or now Laura is from the start in the, I know that many of us will choose a holiday, choose a car, choose something and validate it externally by someone else. And I think that validation out of the customer's mouth carries a lot of weight over my mouth. I can tell you I got all the vibe going on here. I can tell you I've got all the community, and all the latest pop songs and the best artwork in the earth. And if I lock up as a user and it is soulless and lacking in vibe, and where all these people you promised me, I'm just going to feel you've been disingenuous and that's for me where the reviews felt like they could be really a good driver to validate what we're saying because I'm always going to be biased and I need to call people with just so keen to leave reviews like felt like they really wanted to tell everybody about this amazing co-working space they found in their local community and that indeed of the people to come and they needed other people to experience it not just the productivity but the transformations in their business and how their business has thrived by you think if not this co-working space, any co-working space and I think people have been really really generous we've never bribed anybody, we've never offered money, we all absolutely know it's just been just yeah people feel like I'd definitely view a few of you've been so amazing yeah and there are times when we'll you know we'll ask I think two or three great reviews every month means that you know it's kept fresh I do try and update the Google My Business on a consistent basis new offers new pitches new interactions I think it I think it pays to do that we you know this we encourage that to our community manager program and provide templates and all those things but we still see people who don't you know don't do it I guess I think it's a great defense mechanism because you may get competitors right and when that search happens like oh you know 100 plus five so you know yes they'll probably tour the other location but it's also and related to that you also have have invested over time in your website and the content usability SEO can you just talk a little bit about why that was important to you well weirdly enough don't be since we last spoke I'm doing a website rebrand not the brand itself but the overhaul of the website I felt like the first iteration we had done was done during the build out phase or the actual space and I didn't give it enough time to to really reflect our personality what happens here it felt it just needed to be elevated and the reason for that is its expansion and as you've just said about you can get lazy with your list of your reviews our website now needs to work a lot harder as we look to expand because we're well known in this local area and if we move into other areas our website is going to have to bring us traffic and everything needs to be aligned you know the new Google Analytics with my Facebook with my all the platform and it also I want the the content to be aligned with the brands the the Donald Miller and the Brown story and the positioning and the the guide and the customer and the problem and the solution and all the things and and we'll create a very Facebook framework for that and you know that should launch hopefully in the next month again one of the those the web developers in the building the content writers in the building so we're using in-house in-house resources and I mean it's not as bad or should I use the folks in the building I've seen that not go well yeah it's beautiful when you can do that and they understand they really deeply understand your brand yeah yeah I mean criminal my content writer I'd work with for seven years so that was a no brainer book but more recent edition where Kellyser web developer and I loved what she did and and I knew that if we were going to elevate and change then she was the person to do is and let you say like we've had lots of meetings we've had lots of we're all on the same page and we trialled it with a virtual office landing page as part of your challenge and it was just beautiful you know we can go on your site now I might do no it's not there sorry okay tell me when everything is make it live yeah so that's my procrastination but it just felt like a more a fraction of who we are fun friendly yeah I love that and it's so much work of data website okay so talk about your expansion plans what are you what what are you working on well I think if we if we go back two years conversations we're hard to have I didn't even get past the brokers in the UK you know flexor pray to now our landlord doesn't want to speak to you like very and then I felt like everything I've learned over the last seven years is that like we need to do a traditionally model on this building to prove that our concept works that our model works that we know our model and our revenues and what we need to do to break even etc etc so to do a very traditional lease you know seven-year five-year exit is what we need to do and that has opened the doors now to conversations with other landlords who have got vacant buildings or a building buildings or building developments and it's been a bit like busses recently that they've all just opportunities have just come our way and we're deep into conversations with two and we've been very cautious I don't want to I think it's very easy to get a very excited that because you filled a space you know that in this space in Bishop's talk thread we had a runway of 18 months to get to 90% capacity and we did it in eight months of opening so it's easy to get carried away and go we could do that on the next building but everything and we have looked a lot of looked at a lot of potential sides that are just not ticked in our boxes and have been very clear about what I won't compromise on and one of them is location one of them is to look in terms of the structure itself I don't want to do you have a high bar because you yeah your building is beautiful yeah you damn yeah and I didn't want a soulless office lock in the middle of a commercial park just and parking is something I won't compromise on not having it I think is is a big barrier for people to overcome because if they're thinking day passes and then parking on top and then the aggro of parking of finding soulless things so we've been very cautious and very cheesy we've turned down a couple of deals but that's actually they're that's for the right reasons because we've ran the models run the performers and you can pretend something as you always say Jamie the one thing you can't fix is the deal that you do even before you open the doors yes the interior the furniture to some extent some walls perhaps fixable but deal structures and profitability on the actual space that you're going to lease if you haven't got that right then super difficult super super difficult because you don't have in a floor place floor plate rather to sell enough product to petables Aaron you could teach now you're you've got it I love it from the best right I did it it's absolutely honest to be on your podcast because you were the first person I came across when I started to think about co-working and I didn't quite find a voice in the UK at the time though and I listened and I absorbed and I learned and I read some more and I attended conferences at GC and I built some relationships and I asked some questions that I was too afraid to ask in public because it felt like I should know but why would I know some of the things I've done I just and now I can pass those things on to all the people and I know it for yourself to right like you hearing it is one thing kind of believing it but I just hear you talking like oh she really like she knows it yeah experience and through the numbers and you know you've done all the things you know marketing you've hired a community manager you've run a bunch of performers and thought about deal yeah you really really know it are you going to juicy in October I think I probably will I went to GC a month's history I was and that was just recent yeah so and like three months ago so I was again honored to ask to be on a panel so we on what makes you know local co-working special with other speakers and I could talk about it all day because it's not a job it's a passion so and of course it it doesn't mean anything but you don't feel like you're doing a day's work when you're when you love it yeah there have there must be days I have days yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah and then I wake up the next day and I feel the same way I think it's so amazing to be able to do do this work and be in an industry yeah that you love and that adds so much meaning to people I mean, your Google reviews, you had, you also, I just briefly want to touch on your LinkedIn strategy. You post on LinkedIn and you get, you had a member recently, like an old Karen and the Reds. Yes. So amazing. That is Noah. Yeah. I remember you were like, you know, about social and LinkedIn. Can you just talk about kind of your commitment to spending time there? Yeah. So I tend to use Instagram and Facebook as, you know, so informative post stories. Some fun behind the scenes, which dog, which K, which person, which dogs always features super high. People always tag us with their dogs, and tag us with the eating their cake. And so the stories are a lot of fun. But I have a, I use LinkedIn to, to build my own authority in this co-working industry. So I pivoted away from selling on LinkedIn in terms of like my own thoughts around industry and what I've experienced and commenting on other people's staff, reading other people's staff, sharing other people's staff. So to try and, which has only come about by the hire of Laura, moving me out of operations into the next phase of strategic growth and using my voice to amplify local co-working, of which there's still not enough of, you know, I hear it all the time. Well, we still was wanting knowledge and I wish there was one here. We still was what there. And I want to, to maybe try and amplify that it is possible for, if you're sitting, it is possible to bootstrap it, which we have done. You know, there's no investors here. There's, you know, we're not funded. It's not easy. You have not going to lie and say, everyone should do it. It's not for the fainthearted, but it's equally possible to do it with as long as you stay true and authentic to yourself and you are, who you say you are and you will do what you say you will do. And that's, you know, I think the one of the biggest, I think relationships in your business and that includes my business and your business, Jamie and any relationships or the backbone of everything that happens in the world. If you are, if you can listen and ask questions and be inspired and I try to use those relationships on LinkedIn to be up for good. There's a lot of good in the world. We don't often shout about the good things that go on in the world and there's a lot of, it's easy to get sucked into doom and gloom and that goes especially for those solid pronoun and the small business and who probably spend a lot of time in their own head telling themselves they can't do it, they're not capable, they don't have the know how and you come in here and you get yourself not physically obviously with a little bit of positivity. You said, we're here. And some tea and some can be better. Everything's better. You've got come in here, couldn't you? You've lost your major client. What are we going to do? I've seen it happen time and time again and we've seen people in the space who have got funded after five years of trying and they just want to bounce in here and celebrate and we want to pick you up when you're down. Celebrate when you're high. Go on the journey with you because it is the journey and we're here for all of it. Tears, support, we have a very lively WhatsApp group which radiates between banter, mickey taking as we call it in the UK, job opportunities, collaborations, Christ for help and that's what co-working can do for you as a person as an individual and I think that I obviously have children that are about 20 years of work and I think that this we're all suffering from elements of loneliness and isolation and I'm not sure that fully remote working is conducive to good mental health of which also we have a crisis. Anything that can be down to people's spirits high for me is a driving force and I did actually say that the two-seat conference that money was not my motivator of which there were sharp intakes of breath from the audience. Well I would like to stand on behalf of the entire co-working industry if money was our real true motivator right we'd all be in investment banking. Not good. Yes. Yes. Yes. I get my energy levels from seeing people use the space exactly how I intended I get my energy from people using the space and talking about the space and posting on LinkedIn without asking them to reiterate what they feel is fantastic and I can't buy that. You can't buy that's authenticity in play but of course you have to keep the lights on and so we do have to keep our eye on the numbers and the data and tweak when needed where you know parts of the building are not utilized like the small meeting room or we'd have a high bench or whenever's that a date. It was pretty. We're up the bench I know. Yes. Okay Karen we are out of time. We might have to do a part two because I love so many more things I did update fun. Thank you so much for taking the time and sharing your story. Thank you very much for having me. And a pleasure. Thank you for listening to today's episode. If you like what you heard tell a friend hit that subscribe button and leave us a rating and review. If you'd like to learn more about our education and coaching programs head over to everythingcoworking.com. We'll see you next week.