Owner Commitment and Hours Put In

Hi all,

I’m Karen, and along with two other partners, I’ll be opening a coworking space for creatives/artists this August in Bend, OR. While the creation of this business has been nearly a year in the making, and has become a full time pursuit, we are looking ahead to a few months after opening, once major wrinkles are ironed out. We are wondering what sort of time commitment we should expect? Assuming we will use some sort of software management system, have keycode access to our space, and be hosting the occasional after-hours event, how much time do you think we will have to put in for operations? Is it a single 40 hour per week job? Or will the three of us likely be putting in near full time hours? We are all working artists as well, so hope to find a nice balance between running this space, and our personal businesses. Pipe dream?

Thanks so much,

Karen

Karen,
How big is your space? How many members do you currently have vs. how many you max out at?

···

On Friday, May 15, 2015 at 12:58:41 PM UTC-6, Karen Ruane wrote:

Hi all,

I’m Karen, and along with two other partners, I’ll be opening a coworking space for creatives/artists this August in Bend, OR. While the creation of this business has been nearly a year in the making, and has become a full time pursuit, we are looking ahead to a few months after opening, once major wrinkles are ironed out. We are wondering what sort of time commitment we should expect? Assuming we will use some sort of software management system, have keycode access to our space, and be hosting the occasional after-hours event, how much time do you think we will have to put in for operations? Is it a single 40 hour per week job? Or will the three of us likely be putting in near full time hours? We are all working artists as well, so hope to find a nice balance between running this space, and our personal businesses. Pipe dream?

Thanks so much,

Karen

Ah yes, that info. would help! Our space is 2400sqft. It’s a bit different in that much of this space will be in the form of art studio space, reducing our membership drastically. We plan to have about 9 resident members, and another 15-20 drop-ins. Out hope is to have about 10-15 people in the space each day.

Thanks!

Karen

Hi Karen,

My advice would be that you’ll need more than one person, for sure but will everyone need to work full time? Not likely.

When I was running the HiVE, I was there about 3-4 days/week and we had a full-time front desk person then used contractors that we paid hourly to manage after-hours events. Their time was build into the space rental.

I think given what you’ve said, as long as there is someone there pretty consistently M-F, 9-5, you should only need one body there at any given time but splitting this workload between 2-3 people means that no one gets stuck with it as a full-time job.

  • Aaron
···

On Fri, May 15, 2015 at 11:58 AM, Karen Ruane [email protected] wrote:

Hi all,

I’m Karen, and along with two other partners, I’ll be opening a coworking space for creatives/artists this August in Bend, OR. While the creation of this business has been nearly a year in the making, and has become a full time pursuit, we are looking ahead to a few months after opening, once major wrinkles are ironed out. We are wondering what sort of time commitment we should expect? Assuming we will use some sort of software management system, have keycode access to our space, and be hosting the occasional after-hours event, how much time do you think we will have to put in for operations? Is it a single 40 hour per week job? Or will the three of us likely be putting in near full time hours? We are all working artists as well, so hope to find a nice balance between running this space, and our personal businesses. Pipe dream?

Thanks so much,

Karen

Visit this forum on the web at http://discuss.coworking.com


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Aaron Cruikshank
Principal, CRUIKSHANK

phone: 778.908.4560

e-mail: [email protected]

web: cruikshank.me

twitter: @cruikshank

book a meeting: doodle.com/cruikshank

linkedin: in/cruikshank

Hi Karen. Numbers of staff in all the spaces I’ve been so seems to vary hugely, and not always logically with regards to numbers of members etc. From my experience the closer a space is to a workspace (vs a studio space) then the more likely/necessary a full time person is, as someone needs to man reception, let visitors in etc. We have 3500 sq ft here, 150 members and around 30 in on any given day, and we have 3 of us working here, though only 1 full time, one effectively half time (as in here but also working on business development for our new hub), and one (me) who is around less and less as we bring other hubs on line. One thing that does need to be taken into account is lunch breaks- you really need two people so that the person on reception can have a lunchhour.

···

On Friday, 15 May 2015 19:58:41 UTC+1, Karen Ruane wrote:

Hi all,

I’m Karen, and along with two other partners, I’ll be opening a coworking space for creatives/artists this August in Bend, OR. While the creation of this business has been nearly a year in the making, and has become a full time pursuit, we are looking ahead to a few months after opening, once major wrinkles are ironed out. We are wondering what sort of time commitment we should expect? Assuming we will use some sort of software management system, have keycode access to our space, and be hosting the occasional after-hours event, how much time do you think we will have to put in for operations? Is it a single 40 hour per week job? Or will the three of us likely be putting in near full time hours? We are all working artists as well, so hope to find a nice balance between running this space, and our personal businesses. Pipe dream?

Thanks so much,

Karen

I think it depends on how you expect the space to function. There are a few locked-door spaces will all full-time members there with no reception in my town, and I suspect the owner’s time is relatively low there. We have a bunch of part-time members, outside groups renting space, and so have decided to keep doors unlocked 9-5 with an “ambassador” at the front desk. Ambassadors are people who work one day/week in exchange for membership. Then we have a 8 hours a week back-end operations/ bookkeeper and I the owner work 5-40 hrs/ week. (we’re 4,500 sf and currently have 60 members but hope to grow to 120. )

···

On Monday, May 18, 2015 at 6:27:40 PM UTC-4, Aaron Cruikshank wrote:

Hi Karen,

My advice would be that you’ll need more than one person, for sure but will everyone need to work full time? Not likely.

When I was running the HiVE, I was there about 3-4 days/week and we had a full-time front desk person then used contractors that we paid hourly to manage after-hours events. Their time was build into the space rental.

I think given what you’ve said, as long as there is someone there pretty consistently M-F, 9-5, you should only need one body there at any given time but splitting this workload between 2-3 people means that no one gets stuck with it as a full-time job.

  • Aaron

Aaron Cruikshank
Principal, CRUIKSHANK

phone: 778.908.4560

e-mail: [email protected]

web: cruikshank.me

twitter: @cruikshank

book a meeting: doodle.com/cruikshank

linkedin: in/cruikshank

On Fri, May 15, 2015 at 11:58 AM, Karen Ruane [email protected] wrote:

Hi all,

I’m Karen, and along with two other partners, I’ll be opening a coworking space for creatives/artists this August in Bend, OR. While the creation of this business has been nearly a year in the making, and has become a full time pursuit, we are looking ahead to a few months after opening, once major wrinkles are ironed out. We are wondering what sort of time commitment we should expect? Assuming we will use some sort of software management system, have keycode access to our space, and be hosting the occasional after-hours event, how much time do you think we will have to put in for operations? Is it a single 40 hour per week job? Or will the three of us likely be putting in near full time hours? We are all working artists as well, so hope to find a nice balance between running this space, and our personal businesses. Pipe dream?

Thanks so much,

Karen

Visit this forum on the web at http://discuss.coworking.com


You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups “Coworking” group.

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I feel like I could write a novel on this. Pardon my scattered-ness.

The answer to your question is ethereal at best. A big portion of figuring out how often you need “Staff” is to determine how high touch your community will be. Is it important to you that every person be greeted, that drop in visitors get a tour? You and the other owners should view yourselves as members first and owners second. Maybe you decide not to be open to the public? After 2.5 years, I cut off the ability for people/strangers to drop in on us and require an appointment for any visitor while members have 24/7 access. We found that this minimized the interruptive nature of visitors (since our tours are kind of long and involve doing intros to EVERY person in the space). Requiring appointments allows our staff to group people into tours, which is valuable in its own right for immediate connections. In 5 years, I’ve maybe had 10 people try to pop in on us and its usually solved by them calling me and me explaining they need an appt. My staff and I like this setup b/c we can better able chunk out our time and we know what chunks of time to block out on our own calendar in case a tour is requested.

Is your space fully “serviced” or partially serviced or not serviced at all? This is probably best discussed with your members. Early expectation setting around who is responsible for what and how often will minimize sadness and resentment. If everyone knows the restrooms get cleaned 1x/week, then everyone can be on the same page. Conversely, if you promise to clean the restrooms every day then that’s the new expectation and you better find a way to maintain that :slight_smile:

Cohere has a nice mix of owner responsibilities, staff responsibilities, member responsibilities and contractor responsibilities.

Here’s a smattering:

Owner-billing, invoicing, making connections, 1/3 of tours, event planning, weird things that come up, big supply purchases, landlord stuff (15-30 hours/week spread over 3 locations). Caveat: I have all kinds of systems in place like Cobot, Zapier, a book keeper etc that make me more efficient than I was when I started.

Staff-tours, tidying up, introducing people, telling owner stuff (2 hours/week over 2 locations)

Members, tidying up, meaningful greeting with each other, 1 member gets a lower membership to handle every day supplies like cream and toilet paper and taking out the trash

Happy to answer even more granular questions if you have them. /ramble

Angel

···

On Monday, May 18, 2015 at 11:57:23 AM UTC-6, Karen Ruane wrote:

Ah yes, that info. would help! Our space is 2400sqft. It’s a bit different in that much of this space will be in the form of art studio space, reducing our membership drastically. We plan to have about 9 resident members, and another 15-20 drop-ins. Out hope is to have about 10-15 people in the space each day.

Thanks!

Karen

Thank you so much, Tom, Elizabeth and Angel! I’m so impressed with the wealth of knowledge available on this forum - I wish I’d found you all months ago!

Best,

Karen