Posts

Image for blog post Coworking value proposition part 1

The Coworking Value Proposition – Part 1

/in , , , , , /by

Between being a coworking space & building owner the past five years and being the co-founder of a software company focused upon supporting the operation of coworking spaces, I have spent a lot of time thinking about the industry. Not just my own space and its growth and performance, but how the industry fits into the overall evolution of the workplace and what its trajectory is going to be in the upcoming years.

Office typing pool | Missouri State Archives

The traditional corporate office is becoming antiquated and many corporations have already experimented with changing their operations to attract and retain employees – from adding perks like fancy chefs and on-site dental care to replacing the old cubicle with hip open office plans. Some of these experiments have worked better than others, but ultimately have not resulted in the increase in employee productivity and satisfaction that was desired. As digital tools have become more available, the movement from the corporate office to remote options has been gaining momentum. There is no denying that the future of work is distributed. Over 50% of employees across the globe are working part time remotely and that number is estimated to grow significantly in the next few years.

The need for a professional office environment for those workers, however, has not diminished as a result of movement. The coworking industry has not kept up with the need for distributed workspace. When a good solution is not available, we improvise and use what is accessible instead. An example of this is the number of remote workers that work-from-home or from coffee shops. There was first a rise in the number of employees working from home, taking advantage of telework policies. Then, as wifi became more accessible, many of those same employees filled tables at the corner coffee shop. The increase in the use of home offices and coffee shops was not a result of those being the best workplaces, but rather the only alternative options for so long. Likewise, commuting long hours to a main company office. People don’t commute because they will be most productive and happy at that office, they do so because there has not been a viable alternative.

That has begun to change, and it should. The demand for office space has become distributed.

The mission of the coworking industry is to drive the decentralization of the workplace that increases the productivity of the workforce. Coworking spaces provide a professional office environment wherever and whenever one is needed.

The value proposition of the coworking industry is a strong one. This is why there has been such a buzz around it in the past few years. While still a very young industry, it was already proven its not going anywhere. What exactly is the value proposition for coworking? In this series of posts, I’m going to explore that from the perspective of users of coworking spaces, commercial real estate owners, employers, and communities.

It’s not enough to articulate a value proposition for an entire industry, it is also important for the individual companies within the industry to articulate their own value, and then deliver on it. My hope is that not only will this series serve as a guide for my fellow coworking industry colleagues on how to craft compelling messaging to attract and retain members in their own spaces, but provide some perspective on the industry as a whole, whether you’re in the business or not.

Stay tuned or subscribe to this blog so you won’t miss the next entry!

  • Part 1: The Value Proposition of the Coworking Industry: An Overview
  • Part 2:  The Value Proposition of the Coworking Industry: Members
  • Part 3: The Value Proposition of the Coworking Industry: CRE
  • Part 4: The Value Proposition of the Coworking Industry: Employers
  • Part 5: The Value Proposition of the Coworking Industry: Communities
  • Part 6: Creating a Value Proposition for your Coworking Space
  • Part 7: Delivering on your Value Proposition
  • Part 8: Communicating your Value Proposition
Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs for Coworking

/1 Comment/in /by

Coworking spaces pride themselves on offering a great workspace and communities of peers to work around. Building and maintaining a thriving coworking community requires an understanding of what members need in order to be productive.

What is it that members of coworking spaces need? At the most basic level, a place to get work done. Better than they could find at home, the local coffee shop, or their company headquarters.

Is that all they need? What is it that motivates someone to pay for a membership at a coworking space? Am I providing it? As the owner of a vibrant coworking space, this is a question that I return to on a daily basis. It drives every business decision I make. If I didn’t continuously evaluate this question, I would lose members and my revenue source. In the coworking industry, members are everything.

To explore this more deeply, I’ve turned to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, a positive theory of human motivation first proposed by American psychologist Abraham Maslow in his foundational 1943 paper. The theory outlines both the basic needs of human beings as well as the order in which they need to be satisfied for a person.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, adapted for members of coworking spaces.

The needs, which I’ve adapted for members of coworking spaces, are categorized by Maslow as physiological needs, safety needs, needs for love & belonging, esteem needs, and self-fulfillment or self-actualization.

Basic needs

Physiological – Physiological needs are the most fundamental. They pertain largely to requirements for personal comfort. In a coworking space, this starts with the quality of the physical space itself. A coworking space must have nice desks and comfortable chairs that are conducive to working at a computer for long hours. There should be good lighting, comfortable temperatures, good air quality, and clean bathrooms. The environment should have minimal distractions to allow for focus and concentration. And coffee is a must. Lots of coffee.

Safety – First and foremost, safety and security for coworking members means trust. Trust that there will be reliable internet access so they can do their jobs and maintain their own personal financial stability. Trust in a safe building, through access control, security cameras, or well-established community rules and good staffing to assure members of their privacy and personal security while they are at work. And trust that their interests will be taken into account when changes are being made to the work environment.

Psychological needs

Belonging – As humans, we need love. Beyond our family and social circles, we need to feel a sense of belonging in our larger circles, including our professional ones. Professional relationships can combat feelings of isolation and loneliness. Sometimes, just being around people is helpful.

Esteem – Professionally, coworking members are seeking to be productive in their jobs or careers. They want to achieve their professional goals, and thereby receive respect and recognition for those accomplishments.

Self-fulfillment needs

Self-actualization – Self-actualization is narrowly defined by Maslow in the following way,  “This tendency might be phrased as the desire to become more and more what one is, to become everything that one is capable of becoming.”

A coworking space, or any business, that serves the higher and largely intangible needs of their customers will be rewarded with a more satisfied, more loyal customer base. And that translates directly to value for a business that is solely dependent upon its members.

As coworking space owners, we should follow this hierarchy consciously and deliberately. It is easy to focus upon the lower levels needs of our members. We spend lots of time and energy picking out the right paint colors, the location of our space, the layout, the furniture, or the artwork. There are building access solutions and policies to help with safety & security and great bandwidth is something I worked on before even picking up paint samples.

Meeting psychological needs is the reason many professionals choose to pay for a coworking space. The basic needs around physical space and safety can often be met at a home office, but friendship and professional relationships become more difficult when working for long hours in isolation. Coworking spaces offer a great way for freelancers and distributed workers to maintain positive professional social connections.

As Maslow wrote, “if all the needs are unsatisfied, and the organism is then dominated by the physiological needs, all other needs may become simply non-existent or be pushed into the background.”

The fastest way to lose members is not meeting their basic needs. 

It’s clear that a member that can’t find a private place for a phone call, experiences intermittent connectivity, or can’t stand the fluorescent lighting has a likelihood of canceling their membership. Less obvious is a member leaving as a result of their psychological needs not being met. A coworking space that is making adjustments only in the snack cupboard and is not putting enough effort into fostering potential interactions among members is missing a key component of member retention.

Determining where to focus efforts as a coworking manager and also discerning between what will impact a physiological need and a psychological one is hard. It can feel a bit like whack-a-mole tending to everything members ask for. That is, if you don’t have data to help you see what the needs actually are. Will your members talk to one another more if you offer a big after-hours event, or if you simply put out donuts & bagels one morning? If you are spending too much time tracking invoices and expenses, do you have the bandwidth to create a new customer pipeline for your unused meeting space? Do you know how often your meeting space is being used?

Having a complete picture of how your members are using the space is the only way to know how to meet their needs, from the most basic needs like lighting and furniture, all the way to helping them achieve self-fulfillment.

Achieving one’s full potential even partially as a result of where you work is where things get really interesting, and the research is clear – people that work from coworking spaces thrive. According to research conducted by a team of productivity researchers, members of coworking spaces see their work as meaningful, they feel in control of their job and their work, and they feel a sense of community.

Having a great workplace with a strong community, members have the bandwidth to focus upon their self-fulfillment. One of the largest factors that the researchers attributed the higher levels of productivity to was the autonomy enjoyed by workers in coworking spaces. When someone is able to bring their whole self to work and is not bogged down by unmet lower level needs, they are able to bring the best of their energy, their creativity, and problem solving skills to their work.

A coworking space that can help their members achieve this type of outcome is one that will enjoy high levels of member satisfaction, retention, and the best business outcomes.

Image for blog post the value of time

The value of time.

/in /by

As a physicist, I know a thing or two about time. I have spent countless amounts of it pondering its meaning, its measurement, and our relationship with it. I have lectured on how the gravitational pull of a black hole affects it and how it slows down if you are moving at close to the speed of light. So when I say that time is our most valuable asset, I mean it.

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

These days, although I may not be working to uncover secrets of the universe, I am still very much working on the importance of time. My focus now is on getting more leverage on my time so that I am spending more it of doing the things that are most important to me, both personally and professionally.

Personally, that meant doing things like moving to Lake Tahoe and away from the soul crushing traffic jams of Silicon Valley. When my oldest was a baby, there were way too many nights that my husband didn’t make it home from work before bedtime. Even my 5-mile commute could sometimes take an hour. Now, the time we used to spend in rush hour traffic is spent enjoying the trails and beaches of Tahoe with our daughters. We are both home to do things like work on homework with our oldest, actually cook a nice meal, and play with our toddler.

Professionally, its easy to never have enough time, particularly when it comes to running our coworking space. As a coworking space owner & manager, I have a bazillion different things that need to be done each day, and it is impossible to do a bazillion things well. There’s coffee to make, desks to be rented, tours to give, building maintenance to schedule, bathrooms to clean, dishes to put away, forks to buy (again), interns to manage, coffee to make (again), social media posts to write, events to plan, calendars to manage, expenses to track, community to build, and on and on.

I know I am not alone in my juggling act. It is one of the most common topics I see brought up by other coworking colleagues. It is all too easy to get bogged down in the tasks that keep us busy each day. The trap of being busy is a dangerous one. While it may feel like working hard, its not necessarily working well. Time at work should be focused on what is most important to make my business better, more profitable, and more resilient.

What is important for my business? Members, members, members.

Rather than spending hours buried in spreadsheets and databases, it is more important for me to be spending face-to-face time with my members. I love talking with them, learning what they like and need, and helping them so they can get the best leverage on their own time by working from my coworking space. The more time I have to spend actually with my customers, the better. Those interactions are what help inform decisions on space allocation in the building, on the events we host (or don’t), on additional product lines we offer, and what amenities we invest in.

In order to have enough time for the human part of the business, the busy parts need to be handled in a much more efficient and automated way. However, no matter how much time I personally spend with members, there is still only so much I can learn about their needs from the space or remember from the interactions I have with them.

This is why building Jellyswitch has been so important to me. What is needed is a balance between complete automation and manual management for coworking. Things like conference room calendars, billing, and building access don’t need the same human touch as space design, tours, or events, and can be operationalized. At the same time, it’s important not to lose the information and insight that can be gleaned from all of the little human interactions that happen day to day. Managing and tracking everything in one place rather than across multiple systems or not at all, I am able to see the full picture. And with that view, I can make the most of my most valuable asset for the benefit of my customers & my business. My time.

Image for blog post Working remote not equals working from home

Working Remote != Working from Home

/in /by

I’ve been seeing a lot of twitter threads, blog posts, and discussions online recently about working remote. Anecdotally at least, it feels like the frequency of these discussions is increasing. That increase may be related to the increase in the number of workers that are able to engage in part or full time remote work. In the US today, 43% of the workforce either is, or can, work remotely.

During many of these discussions there is a digression that makes me cringe. A conversation about remote work turns into a discussion of working from home and all the pros and cons that come with the ability to wear yoga pants until noon, sitting close to your refrigerator, your dog, your kids, etc. Then come the statements about why certain companies don’t allow working from home, why some do, how to better deck out a home office, and so on.

Here’s the thing – working remotely does not mean working from home. There are lots of other options in practice: coffee shops, business centers, libraries, and the best alternative, coworking spaces.

(left) How people think you work when you say you are a remote worker versus how you actually do (right)

The prolific rise of coworking spaces means that a remote worker can still have all the benefits of a professional workspace even if it is not their own company HQ. Coworking spaces provide a traditional office environment in a completely distributed way. A remote worker that belongs to a coworking space can have the same routine as their non-remote colleagues: getting ready in the morning, a commute of some length, a nice work environment, regular working hours, and human interaction (usually around the coffee maker).

When a neighborhood coworking space is available, working from a home office becomes an option and not a requirement to work remotely. Coworking spaces are popping up everywhere, with over 30,000 expected to exist worldwide by 2022 with more than 5 million members. They are no longer a passing fad limited to major cities. I’ve worked with spaces in every size community imaginable, my own space being in a town of only 25,000 people. I want the default assumption about a remote worker to be someone working from a coworking space.

Do you run a coworking space and want it to run even better? Or, are you thinking about opening a coworking space? Either way, let us know!

Wide image with a red couch and a pillow which says "The mountains are calling I must go"

Coworking & the Future of Work

/in /by

*This article was originally posted on CoworkTahoe.com on January 4, 2019*

Five years ago, I left Silicon Valley for the mountains. My husband and I reached a point where we no longer could see a healthy future for ourselves or our children if we stayed. As the oft quoted John Muir said, “The mountains are calling, and I must go.”

SO WE WENT.

We moved to South Lake Tahoe in pursuit of an outdoor lifestyle, of a small tight-knit community, of the best environment we could provide for our children. The only question mark was work. Could we still access a labor market that would allow us to thrive economically?

We were lucky. For the first year living in Tahoe, we had work that we were able to bring with us from Silicon Valley – me, an education grant that I could wrap up from afar, and my husband, a startup that only required him to drive to San Francisco once a week or so. Not ideal, but doable. The cost of living in Tahoe was less than half of what it had been in Mountain View, so that made our decision to give it a shot much easier. We decided to give ourselves two years. If Tahoe wasn’t working for us by then, it would be back to the city.

That we had to worry about finding work is something that has started to shift as more and more companies are getting comfortable with a distributed workforce. It hasn’t shifted enough, though. Companies that aren’t actively recruiting from the digital, remote workforce are missing out. Likewise, communities that aren’t supporting their workforce to participate remotely are missing out as well. This is particularly true of rural communities that in so many cases are desperate to diversify their economy or risk the demise of their communities completely.

What we did is create the first coworking community in South Lake Tahoe. We did this not only to help us stay in Tahoe and thrive, but to support others in their own pursuits of participating in industries not traditionally available in our tourism-based mountain town. We wanted to show the community that there were options available outside of the service industry, outside of the ski resorts & casinos. This was important for a community like South Lake Tahoe that is highly susceptible to the swings of the economy and climate change. If the snowflakes don’t fall, there has to be a way to economically support the town. Diversification can do that. A workforce that is tapping into a global market, not just a local one, can do that.

BUILDING THE INFRASTRUCTURE FOR THE FUTURE OF WORK

This is a pillar of the Future of Work. A truly global workforce. One where your location is independent of your career path. Where the previously inseparable link between where you work and where you live is severed. So, why are so many tech giants and economic development organizations still pushing for an old model? That model is about giant HQs, and about cities competing to attract them. We saw this recently with the new Amazon HQ circus. And I say circus because I watched as economic development groups spent countless hours on a pitch for why their city should be Amazon’s pick when many weren’t even in the running in the first place. Communities give huge tax breaks and incentives to bring in a major company, but the studies show over and over that it is ultimately the companies that win, not the workers and their communities. Subsidizing private industry is not paying off.

Competing for the attention of a company against other communities is a “zero sum game” mentality that will not stand up to the changing global economy. For secondary and smaller regions, there isn’t really a way to compete for the top tier firms anyhow. The big announcements I see in our nearby regions are for 200 jobs here, 75 jobs there, the occasional big “win” of 1,000 jobs…although many of those are not high wage. We may be replacing coal mines with distribution centers, but is that really progress? If that distribution center or factory closes, there is still a gaping economic hole that can destroy a town. There is no reason to continue putting all of our economic eggs in one basket. Why is economic development as an industry still using that model? Job attraction, retention, and expansion, are old metrics that need to evolve.

The new metric is human capital. Is your workforce prepared to participate in the digital labor market? If not, what are you doing to prepare them? Is your community, your social capital attractive enough – good schools, attainable housing, access to leisure & entertainment – to retain your human capital? If not, what are you doing to make it attractive?

Coworking spaces, especially in smaller, more rural communities, are helping to provide the infrastructure for the future of work. Here in South Lake Tahoe, we have created what I have previously called the modern day community center. Workers from a huge range of industries now have their own remote HQ, complete with friendly faces, good coffee, and water cooler chit chat. We all get to live in a place we love, but still have access to the careers we had in Silicon Valley, New York, Chicago, etc.

A DISTRIBUTED WORKFORCE IS A BETTER WORKFORCE

I recently had an amazing conversation with John O’Duinn, the author of the book Distributed Teams. (I highly recommend the book). We talked about how workers in San Francisco for major firms, including himself, pay exorbitant prices to buy or rent a home that isn’t too far from the office. Then, upon arriving at the office, they sit down at their desk and jump into video conferences. Sometimes even with people on the same floor. If you can’t afford the high cost of living? Then you commute, for hours a day, to arrive at that same office and sit on your computer connected to the internet. Why are we doing that??? The carbon footprint alone of commuting and powering a giant HQ that no one needs to be at is ludicrous. We can do better.

Here’s a better scenario…

My family moved to a community we love. For work, my commute is a whopping 10 minutes. If I include school drop off, it’s still less than 30 minutes tops. If the weather is nice, I can commute by bike. The office? A shared space with great lighting, friendly faces, and stellar internet access. After a productive work day, I can still squeeze in a mountain bike ride, or take my daughter to the local climbing gym, or take the time to just enjoy my family. I have that time because I’m not sitting in rush hour traffic for 2 hours, each way. The result? I am healthier. I get to spend time with my children. My carbon footprint is drastically reduced. I’m not commuting anymore, my office is smaller and I share it with lots of people, so the resource requirements for that alone are reduced. Additionally, my income is being generated out of the area and is brought in, where I then spend it locally at stores, restaurants, and for services, thus supporting the local economy. I want to see more people have this option.

Another benefit for companies is by expanding their reach, they can actually recruit the best talent for the job and don’t have to depend on who is nearby their giant HQ that no one really needs to be at. Recruiting becomes less about who can afford to live nearby, or who is willing to commute in if they can’t, and about who actually has the right competencies to get the job done. This can go a long way in improving not just the quality of a company’s workforce, but also its diversity. And that is good for every industry.

We are seeing the global economy swing towards a distributed model and away from the monolithic centralized systems of the past century. Rather than fight it, communities should embrace and prepare for it. My contribution is creating one piece of the infrastructure in my chosen mountain town, at least for now. My call to the economic development world is how will you support the shift?

My Coworking Story

My coworking story

/in /by

From an early age, 3rd grade to be exact, I knew that I wanted to be a teacher. I won a school wide reading contest and got to be a teacher-for-a-day at my elementary school. I still have a picture of myself, dressed up to look more like a teacher, at least to my 3rd grade self, diligently hunched over the teacher’s desk grading spelling tests that the rest of my classmates had just taken that day. The principal took me on a tour of the district office, and I was asked what I wanted to do when I grew up. I answered, without missing a beat, “Teach.” I loved every minute of that day and set my sights on becoming an educator.

Even as I began graduate school with dreams of landing a physics professorship and a research lab, I don’t think I fully understood what it meant to be an educator or how I could be one outside of academia. I loved the rush I got in the classroom. The challenge of helping my students understand how the universe worked and seeing those light bulb moments light up their faces was everything I thought it would be as a doe-eyed 9 year old.

Despite loving it, my meandering career path ultimately led me away from academia, for the most part anyhow, and to the shores of South Lake Tahoe to build its first coworking space. On the surface, coworking and education seem disparate. Most people that find out my background seemed puzzled by the apparent departure. But if you start to dig deeper, into the spirit of coworking and its part in the future of work, they really aren’t so different.

If I reflect on why on I love being an educator, it comes down to this. I believe in a future that is better than the present, and better for all, not just a few. And while that seems overly optimistic and Utopian, it is a core value that I depend on to guide my day to day decisions and how I determine what is worth my focus.

Education is about constant improvement. It is about gaining more knowledge, more experience, and more perspective, to improve ourselves and our lives. It is a yearning to thrive. In this sense, the spirit of education reaches far beyond classroom walls and institutions. And so did I. I came to realize that what I am truly passionate about is helping others with their educational journeys, and that did not mean I needed to be in a traditional classroom.

One of the most challenging educations I’ve had is entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurs must learn quickly, they must become masters of often entirely new subject areas, they must themselves grow, and they must be resilient.

In a coworking space, I am surrounded by entrepreneurs. These are lovers of learning,a tribe that has the same yearning for education that I have. And by operating the space, I get to help them thrive. I also get to help bring about a vision for the future of work that gives us all more freedom to work the way we want to live, and to better access a digital market that allows us to do it. Coworking spaces are more than beautiful and convenient places to work.

Through entrepreneurship, I found my classroom. And my coworking space has become my institution.