Co-Work Corner: next steps

Time for action!

Either ‘We have lift-off!’ or ‘We have something in our eyes and a can of squirty cream’. You be the judge.

Income stream ideas: vote results

If you recall, I had tasked my esteemed Advisory Board, to vote on which of the two income stream ideas I should take forward:

Option 1: Substack Type Club

Option 2: Co-working Collective

Option 3: both

The votes are in and counted (which didn’t take long) and the overwhelming majority was ‘both’!

So, I will be gently moving forward on them over the course of the coming weeks, thank you to all who voted!

First up… Co-Work Corner

Despite the above numerical order, I’m going to kick-off with option No.2 for the following reasons:

1. I’m already doing it, i.e. co-working in pubs.

2. It’s going to be a very slow burn, as it relies on people being local to me to start with, so the sooner it can be established the better.

3. It’s the easiest to get going, I just need to do a spot of branding, set-up the Substack and off we go!

The branding

Much discussion has been had regarding the name, here were the ones short-listed:

• The Inn Crowd

• Pub Hub

• The Co-Working Collective

Logistically, i.e. what works best in a logo, Pub Hub is well out in front here, as it’s short and snappy, but thinking big, would it work internationally?

The word Pub is a ‘cosy bar’ in the UK and Australia but I’m not sure this link to alcohol would work as well in the States.

Let’s face it, a co-working venue could be a café or juice bar, so I thought it needed to be a bit more generic.

Also, the top two in the list above, need an explanation, whereas the 3rd one is way more descriptive. If you just heard it once, you could probably have a reasonable guess at what it is, which is what you want.

I think with branding, you don’t want to try and be too clever, that often backfires when you end up explaining the tenuous links again and again to people new to the brand… which is of course everyone.

I love the sound of the phrase The Co-Working Collective, but that is way more letters than we want to be dealing with.

Nurse! The Scalpel please!

The ‘The’ can go for a start, and then we need to find another word for Collective: Club, Hub, Crew…

At this stage it’s worth checking out what your original iphone Note or Mac folder was entitled when you initially had the idea and started to generate collateral for it.

Often that will be a seriously simple title, which actually might just work…

In this case ‘K8s Co-Work Corner’ was my folder name, let’s run with that, or most of it at least.

I became hung-up on the idea of placing the words into a laptop, and eventually ended up with this.

It’s blue because I haven’t done that colour yet in any of my previous projects, having gone through lilac, magenta & black, purple & lime green, orange & grey.

I’m actually quite pleased with the logo… otherwise we wouldn’t be staring at it now. 😉

Done is better than perfect.

This mantra should always be front and centre when starting anything up.

It is very easy to get side-tracked into perfecting graphics when you should be working out how the hell it’s going to work generally as a project.

• Just get it up and running to test the market.

• Put together your MVP and launch.

• Fail fast.

In this case, our MVP (Minimum Viable Product) is the facility for me to set-up the co-working sessions in gorgeous venues in Area 1 (in and around Guildford) and for members to subscribe to it as a service.

Substack very much takes the heavy lifting out of this in the initial stages, but given it’s hefty 14% commission (10% Substack + 4% Stripe payments) it may well not be a great solution in the long run.

But hey, let’s test it out for free first, before dealing with the headache of setting up a separate Wordpress site and bolting on a recurring payments solution… which experience has taught me, can be fraught with pain points.

If I was setting it up from scratch elsewhere, we’d be looking at a lead time of roughly three months (and countless hours) I reckon.

Not to mention the myriad of opportunities to get side-tracked and therefore procrastinate myself into a state of total inertia, or so I said to Mr.D as he was pushing for a WooCommerce solution.

Maybe in the future, but for now let’s stick with Substack.

Also using Substack gives me the opportunity to grow it within the Substack network, which I like for two main reasons:

1. Everyone here seems to be lovely, so the network would grow with lovely people.

2. It’s full of writers, freelancers and solopreneurs who collectively do a lot of working from home, and so could probably really enjoy the Co-Work Corner meet-ups all through the week and not just on a Friday afternoon when the Employed WFH’ers have a break in their Teams calls.

Fast-forward to the launch!

I’m happy to report that Co-Work Corner is now up and running, and enjoying a 50% off Launch offer!

Please subscribe and join us, if the following applies to you:

Paid Plan (only £5/month for the first year): you are in the Guildford area (inc. Godalming, Haslemere, Farnham, UK) and would like to come along and co-work with me (and others) in up to six sessions per month. Full details.

Free Plan: you are interested in co-working in general, but we are not in your area yet. Pop along, subscribe for free, let us know where you are and if there are others in your area we will look to set something up there next.

No Plan: if you have no interest in ever co-working in your area please don’t subscribe, I only want people who are genuinely interested.

In summary

I honestly believe my tireless early adopters and I are already reaping the benefits of this, not only from a mental health perspective, but also because it’s fun to have pretend colleagues to chitchat with, while you’re tethered to your laptop. 🤓

I sincerely hope you all join me, so we can solve the cabin fever of working from home, whilst helping to boost the hospitality sector! 🥳

Thank you muchly!

K8x 

Join in the comments below:

Let us know where in the world you are?

Do you already co-work with others, or wish something in your area would start?

Thank you for being here, please ❤️ (below) if you enjoyed this piece, it really helps others find it.

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Welcome to Co-Work Corner!