Jen and others, I agree most coworking spaces earn revenue from what is being sold: desks. This concept reminds me of the time when my company was bought by AOL and we did research on AOL customer usage. The users overwhelmingly used chat rooms (dog chat rooms, knitting chat rooms, etc.) way more than what we were directly selling/marketing which was news, financial info, etc.. So, we decided to market the chat rooms directly knowing that is what people spent the most of their time on AOL doing, so perhaps there are more people out there wanting to engage in chat rooms. Not only did our sales decline but we lost current subscribers as well. This was a time when people were paying a lot for their dial-up and we helped them realize they were wasting their money on irrational frivolous activities.
So, we went back to marketing our service as providing news, financial information, etc. Sales went up. Rationally, people make choices. They made the purchase for rational reasons. Then, once the choice was made, they tended to gravitate to what they liked/desired. However, the kitting chat room caught on quickly as a strong vibrant community. These were people very passionate about knitting. They were sharing tips, techniques, and pointing to places (offline mostly at that time) to buy knitting products. Businesses blossomed and the knitting chat rooms became one of our most highly used areas. Perhaps not so irrational. I truly believe if we had marketed the value of these chat rooms for rational reasons, creating very powerful communities of interest, we could have been far ahead of the curve in realizing that engaging passionate people online in a real and community oriented way is good business. Yes, I do believe customers of coworking spaces make rational business decisions and buy a 'desk'. CoWorking spaces, in turn, sell 'desks'. However, the experience is really why they are there -- and there is rational value behind those services. CoWorking places need to showcase their rational value. Events have value, rational value. Discounts to much needed business services have rational value. Creating connections with synergistic companies have rational value. Creating spaces where people can meet others in different industries has rational value. Sell your overall service and the rational value of it instead of just desks. Then let your customers gravitate to whatever need/desire they wish with both their rational mind and what they may have thought as their irrational desires :-). ~ Janice Caillet ~ ~ ~ ~ Janice Caillet Founder & Chief Catalyst iStartup.cc <http://istartup.cc/> +1.617.874.6923 Our Mission To assist individuals, teams, organizations and communities to turn on and realize their potential. -- 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. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
