Curious about first year growth specifically. How quickly or slowly did membership build for your spaces then? And what type of promotion and advertising did you find to provide the most viable leads coming into the space?
We just opened in a 1,350 sqft space in Summerport Village in a suburbian area that is growing very, very quickly. Lots of mid 30s-40s with youngish families in the area and a high percentage of entrepreneurial types, contractors and independent workers that have home offices setup (us for the last 14 years!)
Tons of new homes going up within 2 miles of us so thinking those new to the area are prime to target as they've not setup a cozy home office yet or gotten in the habit of working from Starbucks yet and are naturally excited and curious about the business offerings in their new community.
Any numbers to show growth the first months to year would be so appreciated to reference as a reality check as well as what you've found best to spend $ on to spread the word!
And if any of you ever come to Disney World in Florida - give me a heads up and stop in for a visit! We are close enough we see the fireworks at night and can hear the train at the Magic Kingdom when the wind is blowing the right way.
On Sun, Mar 8, 2015 at 2:41 PM, Cynthia Dailey [email protected] wrote:
Curious about first year growth specifically. How quickly or slowly did membership build for your spaces then? And what type of promotion and advertising did you find to provide the most viable leads coming into the space?
We just opened in a 1,350 sqft space in Summerport Village in a suburbian area that is growing very, very quickly. Lots of mid 30s-40s with youngish families in the area and a high percentage of entrepreneurial types, contractors and independent workers that have home offices setup (us for the last 14 years!)
Tons of new homes going up within 2 miles of us so thinking those new to the area are prime to target as they’ve not setup a cozy home office yet or gotten in the habit of working from Starbucks yet and are naturally excited and curious about the business offerings in their new community.
Any numbers to show growth the first months to year would be so appreciated to reference as a reality check as well as what you’ve found best to spend $ on to spread the word!
And if any of you ever come to Disney World in Florida - give me a heads up and stop in for a visit! We are close enough we see the fireworks at night and can hear the train at the Magic Kingdom when the wind is blowing the right way.
Ah, I missed that part of your question, saw the “1 year” in the subject and that’s what stuck
From what I’ve seen, most spaces have one of two experiences in their initial months:
1 - Lots of fanfare and excitement, often fueled by membership pre-sales and the opening itself…but the initial excitement dies down quickly. This isn’t unique to coworking, this is a pretty common launch graph for all sorts of businesses. A spike, followed by a cliff.
2 - A lot of tire-kickers. Curious people, but very few buyers. This can be VERY demotivating. “Why aren’t these people coming back? What are we doing wrong?”
Hi Cynthia, Collective Agency got 26 members in the first 3 months and 54 in the first year, and has had around that many ever since, enough to pay every staff and owner for work we do here. We could go up to 100 or 140 members. In the first 3 months 80% of revenue was from meetings and 20% was from members, and then I flipped the revenue model, which works well for recurring revenue. -Alex Linsker, Collective Agency, Portland Oregon http://collectiveagency.co
