Coworking business planning

[portlandhead]

Hi All,

I'm in the process of setting up a coworking space in Portland,
Maine. I'm trying to write up a business plan and cash flow. If
anyone has any templates, resources or words of advice, that would be
greatly appreciated.

Cheers,

- Rob
________________________
#RobLandry {
title: Principal;
company: Pemaquid Communications, LLC;
city: Portland, Maine;
ph: 207.221.2520;
url: www.pemaquid.com;
twitter: portlandhead, pemaquid;
}

[Cadu de Castro Alves]

Hi Rob,

There is a place in the group where people share files:
http://groups.google.com/group/coworking/files?hl=en

Enjoy!

[]'s,

Cadu de Castro Alves
Desenvolvedor Web
Blue Factory Solutions
Celular: (21) 7841-5020 / ID: 23*34315

[WHERE MMM]

My quick advice whould be to visit some sites and see what fits for your community and your style of coworking.

 

You are welcome to come to WHERE: Meet, Mix, Mogul in Los Angeles and or contact me if you would like to chat.

 

And, I think that all of us who have started our own sites would wish you good luck!. I will add that it takes a lot of focus, vitamins and keep plenty of caffeine on hand.

 

Best wishes, Danielle

 

www.wheremmm.com

[django_jedi]

Thanks Cadu. I checked out the docs last night. Very helpful. Still
looking for cash flow templates, though, if anyone is willing to
share.

- R

On Aug 4, 12:32 pm, Cadu de Castro Alves <cadudecastroal...@gmail.com>
wrote:

> Hi Rob,
>
> There is a place in the group where people share files:http://groups.google.com/group/coworking/files?hl=en
>
> Enjoy!
>
> []'s,
>
> Cadu de Castro Alves
> Desenvolvedor Web
> Blue Factory Solutions
> Celular: (21) 7841-5020 / ID: 23*34315
>

[jasontg...@gmail.com]

Hi! I'm in the same dilemma—looking for cashflow templates. Here's a
good example of a biz plan with cashflow forecasts. It's in Australian
dollars, however.

http://www.urbanworkspaces.com/wp/business-model/

You could contact the owner to see if he would make the template
available to everyone in an .xls format or similar.

Good luck!

[JeninVT]

Just uploaded my cash flow statement. It's a work in progress.

One issue that I'm challenged with, that you'll see on my cash flow,
is that I can't
be at the space all of the time once it's up and running. I own an IT
consulting
company, which requires me to be at client locs 2-3 days a week.
How does everyone else handle staffing/manning the loc when you're not
there?
Options I've considered:
1. partner with someone (I have someone that i'm working with and we
may be able to split
the hours to cover the space)
2. hire someone (although I'm not sure they will give the place the
right feel)
3. ask one of the community members to cover in exchange for reduced
fees

Other ideas?

Jen.

On Aug 5, 10:41 am, "jasontgoodr...@gmail.com"

[Jerome Chang]

I think you should hire someone to run the space or monitor it at
least on an admin level. At some point, you'll get sick, injured, or
on vacation, let alone your regular on-site client visits. For
liability reasons, I wouldn't hand over supervision to a "customer"
unless you're set up as a co-op or something.


Jerome
______________
BLANKSPACES
"work wide open"

www.blankspaces.com
5405 Wilshire Blvd (2 blocks west of La Brea)
Los Angeles, CA 90036
323.330.9505 (office)

[Anca Mosoiu]

I'm working on that same question myself...  I hired someone as an admin, who is motivated and dedicated enough to keep the place running and also help me with the consulting side of the business.

I'm also working with a possible partner.  

The space has to be able to run without the "owner" there.  If I was running a retail shop, or a hote, I would hire a clerk - so why not for a co-working space?  However, this has an influence on cash flow and profitability, so, it takes some planning to be able to do it.

Cheers,

Anca.

[Alex Hillman]

Fair warning, this gets a little wordy, but I wanted to talk about the issue of hiring a space manager from our experience in the last 2 years.

We took a holistic approach to bringing on someone to help me run IndyHall day to day.

Dana, our office manager, came on a year ago as an assistant to me, with the job of taking administrative tasks away from me as she saw fit, and finding ways to improve things around the office. At the same time, rather than employ her, we brought her on as a contractor.

This was important for two reasons:
1) it helped us keep our overhead low
2) it gave us the opportunity to cultivate another successful independent as a part of the IndyHall community

Dana knew that IndyHall could only afford to pay her a certain amount per month. Having a desk to work from is an obvious perk, but a perk nonetheless.

Most importantly, the rest of the time, she needed to find other things to do to make ends meet. Most of you haven't met her, but Dana is exactly who you'd want to be greeting you when walking into ...well, anywhere. She's smart, friendly, outgoing. She's the perfect person to have at the other end of the phone lines, email, or on the other side of the desk.

Rather than be cornered into an admin job, she also took advantage of the fact that those skills also make her an awesome candidate for doing support work. She took on the role of doing email support for one of the products born at IndyHall, RipIt. Since then, she's grown that role to supporting 4 products, which is now consuming the majority of her time and she's looking at ways to grow and scale that business of providing affordable customer support to indie products.

What does that mean for IndyHall, now that she's dedicating more time to her own ventures?

Well, for one, it means we succeeded in cultivating a successful independent (some would say that I've ruined her for any "real" job. i consider that a success as well). Not only that, but Dana is single handedly responsible for a sizable chunk of our growth in the last year, by not just being a "desk admin" but someone who makes it part of her job to make sure people in the office are happy. Things like cupcake thursdays. And that awesome mural many of you have seen in pictures of our old space, was painted by her.

Furthermore, she helped me get my life back, because I was dedicating all of my personal time to running IndyHall AND my own consulting business. Now, I focus on vision and strategy and leadership for IndyHall, and less on the management of it.

But she's growing this support business. So now what?

With her able to dedicate 20% or less of her time to the office, our admin needs an admin.

And the cycle repeats itself. We're about to start looking for an intern to repeat the cycle we've gone through with Dana in the last year. We're splitting Dana's role into two, a general manager and an admin. The best part? Dana figured this out on her own. She split up the role like this:

Indy Hall Administrator -  8:30a - 5:00p Monday - Friday

Responsibilities would include:

- opening the space every morning
- being available at the front during the day to answer any questions
- give tours of the space
- in charge of reservations
- keep daily attendance records
- daily invoicing for drop ins


Indy Hall General Manager-  5-10 hours a week

- monthly invoices
- membership management
- planning events (show and tell, 2 hr. workshops, etc)
- contact form emails
- general management of things that need to be done / improvements to IH
- cupcakes on Thursdays ;)

The plan would be for the admin to report to her, and in time, have the admin become the GM as Dana continues to grow her support business.

And then the cycle continues.

Geoff and I are really excited about this process, and think it's great for the long term sustainability of the management of the space. It lets me focus on the stuff I need to focus on, and it creates a constant cycle of opportunity for new people to build their careers in creative management roles.

Of course, if your cashflow allows it, you can just pay someone outright. But we think this aligns more with the goals and values of coworking than just hiring an employee. We truly wanted that person to be a part of the community, rather than a service for the community.

Oh, and if you ever meet Dana at IndyHall, SXSW, or anywhere else...be sure to say hi.

-Alex, IndyHall, Philadelphia


--
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--
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Alex Hillman
im always developing something
digital: al...@weknowhtml.com
helpful: www.unstick.me
visual: www.dangerouslyawesome.com
local: www.indyhall.org

[Patrick Tanguay]

Thanks for that post Alex, we're at that stage ourselves now. We have
an intern for a couple of months this summer who's taking some of the
admin too and I don't think we'll be able to go back to doing
everything so your experience is good to have as reference for our own
decisions.


Patrick
http://station-c.com

[Rhyeal]

With a business plan, I used the SCORE website.

http://www.score.org/template_gallery.html - Plenty of templates here
to chose from.

[Tara Hunt]

I would also look through the Google Groups archive for business
plans. I know loads of people have posted them here.

Tara

--
tara 'missrogue' hunt

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