Hello Everyone!
I am working on my coworking concept, and want to offer coaching services. This will add overhead to the basic membership. I think it could add value to the community, but not sure if my niche client, “entrepreneur”, will be able to afford this type of service. I want to build a coworking space that is focused on growing the individuals in the community, not just another corporate office space for rent. My question is, has anyone offered coaching services before, and who would be the targeted client? Freelancer? Startups? Entrepreneurs? Although I love this idea, I fear I will have no market for it. Thoughts? Thanks. Trey
Hey Trey,
Welcome! I think offering coaching services alongside membership is a great idea that more spaces should be looking into.
Have you considered making it an option that a member can upgrade to, like a personal trainer at a gym?
As for determining whether there’s a market—do you know people personally who are potential customers? Can you ask them what they think?
Tony Bacigalupo
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New Work Cities • Coworking.org
On Mon, Jan 21, 2019 at 11:40 AM [email protected] wrote:
Hello Everyone!
I am working on my coworking concept, and want to offer coaching services. This will add overhead to the basic membership. I think it could add value to the community, but not sure if my niche client, “entrepreneur”, will be able to afford this type of service. I want to build a coworking space that is focused on growing the individuals in the community, not just another corporate office space for rent. My question is, has anyone offered coaching services before, and who would be the targeted client? Freelancer? Startups? Entrepreneurs? Although I love this idea, I fear I will have no market for it. Thoughts? Thanks. Trey
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Hi Trey,
I really LOVED this idea and still do love it. But after having tried it and thought about it, I have really mixed feelings about it and decided to stop providing/promoting coaching services in our own coworking space:
**The good side: **
-
Obviously, it looks great on a website as some kind of added value for the coworking space and it may help bring in new members
-
More importantly, I think many / most freelancers could really use a good coach, given the many challenges of working on one’s own where an outside perspective can really make a difference.
The bad side: -
Conflicts of interest: We have have had a LOT of members who are coaches. You may well alienate potential or existing member coaches who aren’t so happy to be competing with their coworking space for clients.
-
Recreating the corporate/evaluative work environment many of your members left traditional 9-5 jobs to escape: If your coach(es) are members, you you have to pick and choose among them to evaluate the quality of their work and endorse one over the other. It can be great if you do it well, but you may well alienate wonderful members who turn out not to be wonderful employees. I think there’s a reason so many coworking spaces have had the idea of becoming a boutique project management company using their members as their team, but none that I know of have actually succeeded.
-
It’s hard enough to run a good coworking space if that’s your only focus: keep in mind that running a good coaching business won’t be a piece of cake. If you don’t have great coaches doing great work, it will affect your reputation as a coworking space and either way you’ll be giving yourself a lot of extra work.
-
Even if you’re intentions are great, the moment you start adding “upsale” services, many people will be suspicious of them and even less likely to use them than if they were offered by someone outside the coworking space (even if they really like you and the space): there’s a risk of moving your environment from more “community/trust” oriented to more “business transaction” oriented. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing given how hard it is to run a profitable coworking space, but it’s something to keep in mind.
-
Most importantly: Despite my conviction that location-independent knowledge workers are great candidates for coaching, we offered free one-hour coaching sessions with no long term commitment and from coaches I really liked, we had ZERO interest after offering and promoting the service for two years (and with NO upsale or personal benefit that might have made folks suspicious of motives). Obviously spaces and members and markets are different, and maybe what didn’t work for us will work for you, but my sense here in Prague is that coaching generally isn’t something most freelancers want when it comes to the reality of committing time and money. As Tony suggested, I would make sure you have some real demand for this before even considering making the personal investment in it. Unless you’re just doing it for the window dressing.
My 2 cents.
Will
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On Monday, January 21, 2019 at 8:04:51 PM UTC+1, Tony Bacigalupo wrote:
Hey Trey,
Welcome! I think offering coaching services alongside membership is a great idea that more spaces should be looking into.
Have you considered making it an option that a member can upgrade to, like a personal trainer at a gym?
As for determining whether there’s a market—do you know people personally who are potential customers? Can you ask them what they think?
Tony Bacigalupo
—
**
On Mon, Jan 21, 2019 at 11:40 AM [email protected] wrote:
Hello Everyone!
I am working on my coworking concept, and want to offer coaching services. This will add overhead to the basic membership. I think it could add value to the community, but not sure if my niche client, “entrepreneur”, will be able to afford this type of service. I want to build a coworking space that is focused on growing the individuals in the community, not just another corporate office space for rent. My question is, has anyone offered coaching services before, and who would be the targeted client? Freelancer? Startups? Entrepreneurs? Although I love this idea, I fear I will have no market for it. Thoughts? Thanks. Trey
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Hi:
I think that offering coaching services are more or less already a given. In that, people are for the most part wanting to help others succeed in their business. While I am unsure as to what coaching services you would offer, I ask out loud are you creating a new ecosystem within your space or more defining it as a mentorship/colab space? If so, then it is a matter of determining how much to charge your members based on that and think of it as they are paying for a mentorship service with a monthly membership attached to it. So you, in turn, are not renting space, but paying for a service that just happens to come with free wifi, a desk and some great conversations.
Jamie Tyrell
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On Mon, 21 Jan 2019 at 11:40, [email protected] wrote:
Hello Everyone!
I am working on my coworking concept, and want to offer coaching services. This will add overhead to the basic membership. I think it could add value to the community, but not sure if my niche client, “entrepreneur”, will be able to afford this type of service. I want to build a coworking space that is focused on growing the individuals in the community, not just another corporate office space for rent. My question is, has anyone offered coaching services before, and who would be the targeted client? Freelancer? Startups? Entrepreneurs? Although I love this idea, I fear I will have no market for it. Thoughts? Thanks. Trey
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Hello!
I think offering business support services is a great idea. After all, if most of your members are business owners many of them are likely looking for various forms of support to learn and grow their business. I also think that sometimes there is value in just having things available even if most members don’t use them (like our weekly yoga class everyone oohs and aaahs about but only few attend). Even the members that don’t use these services can feel there is added value and it can give your space credibility instead of just being space.
We offer an Online Business Accelerator program that is a combination of training materials accessible online and a weekly group coaching session (also online). This is a program my husband launched to help support not only our members but other coworking spaces as well that want to add a coaching/business accelerator program without having to build their own. We offer our members a big discount and they can add it when they sign up.
We also have a Business Resource Center we are using to provide members with materials and support from the many organizations that offer small business support such as the SCORE mentoring program (they hold office hours with free advising available for example) and the SBDC that provides us with their class schedules, etc.
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On Monday, January 21, 2019 at 8:40:11 AM UTC-8, [email protected] wrote:
Hello Everyone!
I am working on my coworking concept, and want to offer coaching services. This will add overhead to the basic membership. I think it could add value to the community, but not sure if my niche client, “entrepreneur”, will be able to afford this type of service. I want to build a coworking space that is focused on growing the individuals in the community, not just another corporate office space for rent. My question is, has anyone offered coaching services before, and who would be the targeted client? Freelancer? Startups? Entrepreneurs? Although I love this idea, I fear I will have no market for it. Thoughts? Thanks. Trey
I think it could work, coworking providing business support services other than by members. I’d love to hear of examples where it did.
One interesting model is the reverse - http://www.pregamehq.com And General Assembly started in NYC as coworking+classes, and then I think became only classes? I’ve liked visiting both.
Members sharing skills definitely works well, and experts coming in for free can work okay. I’ve seen many coworking spaces close soon when the owner want to offer business training for a fee, or even free, to members. I think it’s a different service than coworking. Again, I’d love to hear where this works; I’m sure it could.
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On Wed, Jan 23, 2019, 7:16 PM Aloma Loren <[email protected] wrote:
Hello!
I think offering business support services is a great idea. After all, if most of your members are business owners many of them are likely looking for various forms of support to learn and grow their business. I also think that sometimes there is value in just having things available even if most members don’t use them (like our weekly yoga class everyone oohs and aaahs about but only few attend). Even the members that don’t use these services can feel there is added value and it can give your space credibility instead of just being space.
We offer an Online Business Accelerator program that is a combination of training materials accessible online and a weekly group coaching session (also online). This is a program my husband launched to help support not only our members but other coworking spaces as well that want to add a coaching/business accelerator program without having to build their own. We offer our members a big discount and they can add it when they sign up.
We also have a Business Resource Center we are using to provide members with materials and support from the many organizations that offer small business support such as the SCORE mentoring program (they hold office hours with free advising available for example) and the SBDC that provides us with their class schedules, etc.
On Monday, January 21, 2019 at 8:40:11 AM UTC-8, [email protected] wrote:
Hello Everyone!
I am working on my coworking concept, and want to offer coaching services. This will add overhead to the basic membership. I think it could add value to the community, but not sure if my niche client, “entrepreneur”, will be able to afford this type of service. I want to build a coworking space that is focused on growing the individuals in the community, not just another corporate office space for rent. My question is, has anyone offered coaching services before, and who would be the targeted client? Freelancer? Startups? Entrepreneurs? Although I love this idea, I fear I will have no market for it. Thoughts? Thanks. Trey
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