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Things you have to know before you start your coworking marketplace

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StrategyDriven Starting Your Business Article | Coworking Marketplace | Entrepreneurship | Things you have to know before you start your coworking marketplaceCoworking is a new concept of an open working environment that allows several unrelated companies to share office space and work together. According to Statista, there were around 22,4000 coworking spaces worldwide by the end of 2019. With the rising popularity of shared workspaces, more and more businesses are launching coworking marketplaces. In other words, they are just like Airbnb.

When Airbnb offers vacation rentals with homely amenities, a coworking space marketplace offers office spaces with unique amenities for individuals and businesses. The coworking marketplace efficiently connects coworking space owners looking to rent out their unused office space with individuals and businesses looking for vacant shared work spaces.

In the coming years, we will be seeing tremendous innovation in the field of building and running coworking rental marketplaces. There is no better time to launch your coworking space business. Before we start, let me establish this- There are no easy ways to launch a coworking marketplace and make it successful. Following a sound business strategy and understanding, best practices are important.

Things to consider before starting an Airbnb for coworking

The whole world has been taken aback by the potential of coworking space marketplaces and you are on the right track with launching a coworking rental platform. But running a successful Airbnb for coworking requires a lot of planning and effort. Here are some of the core things to consider before starting your own coworking marketplace that helps you to take your business to new heights.

Research your target market

Whether you are creating a coworking space platform from scratch or using a white label solution, there is no way around doing thorough market research. According to studies, lack of market research is one of the major reasons why startups fail.

To build a viable coworking space rental marketplace, you need to have a clear understanding of the market, how the industry looks like, your target users, their requirement, and the solution they are looking for. Pay attention to market trends as well to spot any big changes like technology breakthroughs so that you can use it for your business advantage.

Choose the right business model

It is a great idea to design a viable business model even before starting your coworking marketplace. Now, the exact way your coworking space rental platform makes money will depend on a lot of factors. However, there are some common business models to consider.

Service fee

It’s a great monetization strategy of any peer-peer marketplaces to charge service providers a service fee each time they receive and process a new booking on your platform. The more transactions your marketplace makes-the more revenue you get. The host service fee can be 3% or more and can vary with different countries. You can also incur service free from guests which can range up to 20% of the booking subtotal. For example, Airbnb takes a 20% service fee from guests and a 3$ from the hosts.

Listing fee

Your coworking marketplace can collect listing fees from coworking space owners when they list their space on your platform. It can be a flat fee or vary based on the total reservation made or any other parameters. To reduce friction, you can consider collecting the fee once the transaction is completed instead of doing it at the time of listing. Airbnb charges a 14% host-fee from property owners according to its new policies.

While these are the common business models- You can add more than that including the following.

  • Adding premium subscriptions
  • Collect payment processing fee
  • Promote sponsored listings
  • Setting your own ad system

Carefully plan your operations

Creating a coworking space management tool is one thing and successfully running is something completely different. As you have to manage two user types, bookings and scheduling, payment processing, and a lot of other functions together, the operations can get a bit complex. Hence, it is important for your rental marketplace to have all essential features that support the operations carried out on your platform.

You will need specialized marketplace payment gateways that allow users to book coworking spaces and pay effortlessly. Implementing an in-app communication system is also essential to set a channel for all your users to communicate regarding scheduling, booking, and cancellation.

Optimize your platform’s search to deliver high performance

Search is one of the most critical interfaces of your coworking office space rental marketplace users leverage these features to interact with your platform. Significant engineering goes behind a smart and intuitive search that performs well. If you take the example of Airbnb, the smart search is one of the most powerful features of this peer-peer vacation rental marketplace.

A typical search for any coworking marketplace should support the following search features.

  • Location
  • Coworking space type
  • Price range
  • Availability
  • Amenities
  • Capacity
  • Meeting rooms
  • And more

Improve the booking flow and experience

To deliver a great user experience to all user groups, your coworking space platform must have a seamless booking feature. When a coworking space owner registers in your platform and activates his listings, the people who are looking for rental office spaces must be able to view and book the space.

Consider instant booking as opposed to normal booking feature as it is the preferred way for hosts to rent out their properties. With proper identification verification services, you can allow service providers to reliably list their coworking space for instant booking option so that users can make instant bookings.

Dealing with Last minute cancellations

Building and running a successful peer-peer coworking management software requires you to think from a user perspective. For example, Airbnb allows hosts to cancel the booking at the 11th hour. When thinking from a host’s perspective, this is an absolutely great feature, but if you think from a guest perspective, this might not be a pleasing feature. Hence, your marketplace must have smart ways to deal with last-minute cancellations considering the interests of both user groups. To reduce last-minute cancellations, you can add a cancelation fee and block booking dates. Another great alternative would be to reallocate another similar coworking space to the user in case a service provider cancels the last minute.

Conclusion

Building an Airbnb for coworking is a different thing and scaling it to millions of users like the real Airbnb does is another thing. Implementing the above-discussed things will help you to run your peer-peer coworking marketplace successfully and gain a competitive advantage in the industry. Happy Coworking!

About the Author

StrategyDriven Expert Contributor | Shirley C. StewartShirley C. Stewart is Business Consultant and Marketing Head at RentCubo. She helps brands to build their web products that people love using. Shirley has a passion for growth hacking and startups.

7 Ways To Finance Your Business

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StrategyDriven Managing Your Finances Article | Entrepreneurship | business finance | 7 Ways To Finance Your Business

Financing a business can be a big obstacle for new startups and established companies alike. It isn’t always easy or even possible to obtain funding through the usual channels, especially if you have no track record to show lenders or investors, and without the money required, it can mean that the business simply cannot succeed. However, there are some ways to obtain the money you need, and if you want to start or grow your business and need funds to do it, you can look at these options to see if anything will work for you.

1. Your Savings

It’s true that not everyone has any savings put aside, but if you do and there is enough, then you might consider using that money to fund your business. This can work out perfectly because there is no requirement for you to borrow the money from anyone else, and therefore your business won’t be in debt (although, of course, you will want to have the money paid back to you over time). You won’t be giving away any equity either, which is something that some business owners don’t like the idea of. Plus, if you do need to borrow more at a later stage, your business’s credit won’t be affected.

2. Your Investments

For those who like to make investments and trade, the profits made in this line can be something you can use to start your business or add funds to it when you need to purchase something specific that will, in turn, help you to make more money in the long-term. Investing doesn’t automatically mean that you will make a profit, which is why checking out the gold and silver price regularly and finding a good broker will help you. However, when you do make money, it can be ideal for your business.

3. A Business Loan

Possibly the first thought that will come into a business owner’s mind when it comes to finding money to fund their project is a business loan from a traditional lender such as a bank. It can work out very well, and with enough research, you will be able to find a variety of different loans with varying interest rates and special deals. You may not be eligible for all of them, however, and applying for too many loans all at once can damage your credit rating. Therefore, it is wiser to make appointments to speak to bank managers or investment advisors to find out what you can and can’t do, and what will work best for you. It may be exciting to find that you can borrow tens of thousands of dollars, but remember that this money must be paid back, and that can be the part that causes problems. Think things through carefully and only borrow what you know you can afford.

4. A Personal Loan

If your business has no trading record, it might be difficult to obtain the loan that you want, in which case a personal loan, assuming your credit rating will allow it, could be the ideal alternative. You take out the loan and then make a director’s loan to your company. The company pays you back each month, and you then pay your own lender back too. This way, you aren’t ever out of pocket, and you don’t have to worry about making repayments.

However, the vital thing to bear in mind with this kind of loan is that you are ultimately liable for it. It means that if the company cannot pay you for any reason, you still have to make the repayments for your loan. Make sure you have two or three months’ worth of repayments in a savings account just in case you need to pay the money back yourself.

5. Angel Investors

Angel investors are groups of people or individuals who use their money to fund businesses and projects that they think are interesting, have potential, and will bring them a profit. This last point is the most important of all because although angel investors do have the business’s interests at heart, their main aim is to make money from whatever they invest in.

The first step in obtaining an angel investor is to write an interesting and informative (and truthful!) business plan as this is what they will want to see before making any decision. You should also work out how much equity you are willing to give away in your business, and how active a role you want the angel investor to take. Some simply want to give you their money and leave you to get on with running the business, and others will want to have a more active role. It is essential you know how you want to do things before agreeing to anything, and don’t get carried away if someone offers you money; make sure you are happy with the deal first.

6. A Credit Card

Credit cards can be supremely useful, or they can be disastrous, and which outcome will depend on how sensible you are with their use. Funding an entire business on a credit card, especially if it is a personal one, is not a good idea; this can leave you in vast amounts of debt that you find difficult to pay off. Plus, the interest rates on credit cards tend to much higher than on other forms of borrowing such as a loan from a reputable company. However, for smaller business expenses a credit card can be ideal, as long as you pay as much off the balance as possible each month. Paying just the minimum amount will mean you spend a lot more than you would need to otherwise, and it will also take you longer.

7. Friends And Family

A loan from a bank or other lender might not be possible if you or your business don’t meet specific criteria, and an alternative might be to borrow money from friends and family. Ideally, you should have a loan agreement drawn up so that everything is legal, and so that everyone knows what is expected of them. This way, there can be no disputes, and you will know how much to pay and when, just as your friend or family member will know how much of a return they should be able to make.

5 Ways To Extend Your Marketing Reach In 2020

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StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article, 5 Ways To Extend Your Marketing Reach In 2020

Creating a buzz around your business or your latest product is vital these days. With competition in all quarters, having a multifaceted marketing campaign will ensure you get the widest reach and the best conversion possible.

Whatever the concept, brand, or item that you are selling is, finding the right vehicle to reach the desired segment of the market is crucial.

With social media trends changing on such as a frequent basis, running a standard campaign on the tried and tested lines may not always cut it.

If you are looking for a fresh and contemporary marketing campaign that will provide you with the widest reach, here are some of the top suggestions of getting the message out there in 2020.

Setting Up A Social Media Challenge

One type of marketing campaign is to set up a viral campaign on social media sites such as Facebook. Check out 5 day challenge ideas for some further inspiration.

Having a series that runs for a few days will keep people coming back and will also encourage them to partake, comment, and share

Invest In Snapchat Or Instagram Filters

Filters on social media offer a great way of subtly getting advertising messages into a vast segment. If you want to broaden your reach to an exciting consumer market that is very much on-trend and looking for the next big thing, creating social media filters are a great way of doing this.

Hold A Flash Mob Event

Holding a flash mob event in a busy crowded area such as on a high street or in a shopping center will allow you to create lots of opportunities for viral footage to get out. With many people more than willing to post every happening event on social media through both stories and news feeds, it would not be hard to encourage anyone who was there witnessing or taking part to pass on the word for you.

Creating event-specific hashtags which are seamlessly communicated throughout the flash mob, will mean that people know exactly what tags to use on sites like Instagram and Twitter.

Utilizing Smart Speaker Technology

With one of the fastest-growing segments of the tech industry being the smart speaker, is it time that you focused your marketing campaigns on this area?

With many homes having them, smart speakers offer a window into people’s lives. The learning capabilities to provide targeted marketing are very high and this is an area that is worth exploring whatever line of business you are in.

Rise Of The AI

Chatbots are here to stay. With seemless messaging across all social media platforms, you could be creating marketing campaigns based around this technology. With the ability to adapt and learn as they go, artificial intelligence chatbots allow you to really engage with your consumers in a way that you previously would not have had the people power to achieve. With many wide ranging applications, chatbots should be central in your marketing strategy in 2020.

How We Prioritize at Sticker Mule

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StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article | How We Prioritize at Sticker MuleOrganizations are the sum of their decisions. Those that prioritize well prosper and those that don’t falter. At Sticker Mule, prioritization is the most important thing we do. Our growth accelerates as we prioritized better, but there’s always room to improve.

What prioritization is not

Most literature on prioritization is terrible. It leads you to believe prioritization is about time management or how to use to-do lists. This way of thinking neglects that priorities are what make or break businesses.

Consider that Amazon started as a bookstore in 1994 and grew to $147 million within 3 years. Today they employ 500,000 people who handle $200 billion in revenue. They picked the right projects and grew at an extraordinary pace.

Other retailers had different priorities and either failed or are much smaller. Walmart could be Amazon, but they did not prioritize the Internet and now they are worth half as much.

What prioritization is

Prioritization is picking the right tasks to maximize impact. That means finding high impact tasks and avoiding low impact ones. Usually the highest impact tasks are elusive. We don’t know the highest impact projects we could pursue right now.

Prioritization might sound stressful, but it’s not. Most tasks won’t affect us. Consequently, we shouldn’t stress about the backlog of tasks we “need” to do. We need to keep our minds free to pursue high impact ideas, when they present themselves, by neglecting low impact ones.

Prioritization categories

It’s unproductive to precisely categorize every task, but it’s useful to roughly classify them in your mind. Prioritization improves with practice and thinking about these categories helps us improve.

  • Growth vs. costs – It’s generally better to use our time to grow revenue than reduce costs. Time is finite. Cash isn’t.
  • High vs. low impact – High impact is better, but completing lots of low impact tasks can be worthwhile if we complete them quickly.
  • Enduring vs. temporary – Tasks that provide enduring value are preferable to those that deliver value temporarily.
  • Definite vs. potential – It’s better to pursue improvements with definite benefits than those with potential.
  • Short vs. long term results – Quick wins are preferable, but you can build competitive advantage pursuing ideas that yield results in the long term since others tend to neglect them.
  • Related vs. unrelated tasks – Sometimes related tasks are completed more efficiently when grouped together. For this reason, we often do low impact tasks that pair well with high impact ones.
  • Estimated time to complete – All else equal, tasks that can be completed faster are preferable.

Questions

Ask yourself these questions periodically to improve your ability to prioritize:

  1. What’s the most impactful thing you can work on?
  2. Did you correctly identify the problems you are facing?
  3. Do you know the most important problem to solve next?
  4. Can you replace any planned tasks with better ones?
  5. Can you delete any especially low impact tasks entirely?

Conclusion

We aim to embed a passion for prioritization into our culture. If you think similarly and want to join our global team, we are hiring.

About the Author

Anthony Constantino is the cofounder and CEO of Sticker Mule. A factory guy at heart, Anthony oversees an operation that spans 16 countries in 4 continents with customers including Google, Facebook, Twitter and many of the world’s best brands. He’s determined to make Sticker Mule, already the Internet’s favorite printing company, the absolute best place to work and shop.

2020 Exit Planning Checklist

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StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship Article | 2020 Exit Planning ChecklistAll business owners will stop being business owners at some point.  So, there is no better time to begin planning for the inevitable than the present.  The earlier you begin planning, the more options you will have for a successful exit.

However, like any strategic plan, it can be difficult to know how and where to begin.  With the start of the new year it’s also an ideal time for us to publish a basic “To-Do List” that will serve you in considering that most significant event as a business owner…your future exit.

DECIDE WHERE YOU WANT TO GO.  Establish Clear Goals and Objectives for Exit and Your Life After Exit.

  • When do you want to leave the business? Whom do you wish to transfer/sell the business to?
  • What are your values-based and legacy exit goals?
  • What is your post-exit “life-plan”? Business owners can often regret leaving when lacking a plan for life that replaces the sense of purpose and meaning they experienced in building their business.
  • Update your Personal Financial Plan. Find out how much $$$$ you will need post-exit to do all you want to do. Is there a gap?

ASSESS WHERE YOU ARE.  Without Accurate Data All Planning Becomes Meaningless.

  • Get an accurate Business Valuation. If the business is your largest asset shouldn’t you know what it really is worth to potential buyers?
  • Assess your business Value-Drivers and areas of Risk.
  • Review your Business Continuity Plan for life transitions and unexpected death or disability. Co-Owners would include a review of their Buy-Sell Agreement to ensure alignment with the current goals of all owners.
  • Review Estate Plan to ensure alignment with exit goals.

DESIGN AND IMPLEMENT A PLAN.  Build Transferable Value and Enjoy a Future Exit On Your Own Terms and Conditions.

  • Which Exit Route will best accomplish your goals? Sale to Third-Party | Sale to Insiders | Transfer to Family Members | Sale to ESOP | Absentee Owner.
  • Focus on growth and profitability today. At the core of tomorrow’s successful exit plan is today’s profitability and plan for growth.
  • Strengthen business value drivers. An owner with a sellable business will have more freedom in life and options for exit.
  • Update a strategic financial plan for the business.
  • Do you have the right Team of Experienced Advisors for plan design and implementation?
  • Who will Manage the Exit Planning Project?

The most important thing you could do in 2020 would be to GET STARTED AND GET HELP if you have yet to do so.  If you wait until you’re ready to exit to begin planning, you won’t be ready and neither will your business.  Keep in mind, that “You don’t know what you don’t know” and, like in all other areas of life, that could end up being disastrous.

There is much at stake during this most significant event in your life as a business owner.  Take steps in 2020 to be as responsible and successful in planning your eventual exit as you have been in running your business.

About the Author

Pat Ennis is the President of ENNIS Legacy Partners (ennislp.com). The mission of ELP is to help business owners build value and exit on their own terms and conditions. With decades of experience in financial services, for-profit and non-profit leadership and management, along with the founding of ELP in 2010, Pat has extensive knowledge and understanding of the many challenges faced by business owners.  His knowledge base, experience, and training results in a goals-based, comprehensive approach for business owners’ who are intent on building transferable business value and exiting their business responsibly and successfully.

“A successful business owner with a thriving business has tremendous impact on many people, including: their family, employees, customers, suppliers, vendors, the community in which they do business and both the local and national economies. All of this impact… all that they’ve built… is at stake when and how they exit their business. We want to help them be as impactful in how they exit their business as they have been in building it.”