Here Comes A New Contributor!
Filed under: Announcements, Independents Hall
I am historically awful at introducing myself, particularly in blog format. I get nervous and awkward and accidentally hit caps-lock while typing. You’ve been warned.
HEY, I’M ADAM, and I’m the new Office Manager here at Indy Hall. “Office Manager”, by the way, is a terrible title for what I do, here. It sounds so uptight and formal, when really I can just as easily say that my job requirements involve hanging out with extremely talented independent workers, learning from insanely ambitious free-lancers, and tossing back a pint at National Mechanics with said talented and ambitious dudes and ladies.
It’s awesome.
I have so many things that I could drone on about – why I chose to be involved here, how I plan on carrying the coworking torch into and beyond 2012, my humble stance on being the fourth in a prestigious legacy of Indy Hall Den Mothers, etc. Tons of great material. What I will (briefly) say is this:
What consistently surprises the hell out of me, the one thing that always leaves me in awe of this community and concept, is our absolute lack of competitors. We have no rivals, here. No enemies, no detractors. We harbor no secrets, no “corporate” ill will. Our competitive spirit extends into FIFA 2012 and Ping-Pong. Indy Hall, as far as I am concerned, is astonishingly pure – a lawful good paladin. I’m not just exaggerating that. We are karmic gold, with all the kindness and malleability that entails. We love what we do, we love where we live, and we love one another.
If you’re just getting back from throwing up, I understand. It’s weirdly ideal and hokey, but oh my god, I defy you to challenge those statements. Come and visit us, take a glimpse at what we’ve got going on.
I THINK YOU’Re going to like it.
*I Googled the phrase ‘new challenger’ to find a relevant image for this post. What I got is 200 pages of trucks. Didn’t even think of that.
Quick Business Stats
Filed under: Announcements, coworking, From the Business Side, Independents Hall
This week 4 years ago, Indy Hall was in it’s “public beta” before opening officially on September 1st, 2007. I assure you, it wasn’t always glamorous.
Enough sappy reminiscing. I spend plenty of time focusing on the important coworking soft skills on my personal blog that I wanted to share some quick business stats that we’ve produced as a result of operatin on those values:
- In 2011, our basic memberships ($25/month) have generated 20% more revenue than our lite memberships ($175/month)
- In 2011, our full time membership accounts for almost 50% of our total annual revenue
- Our AVERAGE monthly revenue across 2011 is >8x growth over our first revenue generating month in 2007.
Why do people love Indy Hall?
We asked. They told.
Filed under: coworkers, coworking, FAQs, Independents Hall, IndyHall U, Research
After nearly 4 years of working on making the best place in the world to work, we turned to our members to find out exactly what they thought about the experience. In their own words.
I can’t tell you how proud I am to be a part of this community.
Alternative link to PDF hosted on Google Docs
This draft includes the preliminary findings of our interviews. We will continue to synthesize our findings, add more interview sources, and in the near future publish our research framework to encourage other coworking spaces to conduct their own research as well.
Perhaps just as rewarding was hearing some responses from non-interviewed members. Things like:
It’s awesome to take a step back from the day-to-day mindset and take a moment to appreciate the big picture we are actually part of.
Not everyone is jammin’ some nice tunes whilst they work away on something they actually care about, let alone surrounded by people they like.
We get to do that.
This is a rare
and beautiful thing.
I would totally fit into this profile [...] I haven’t seen anything close to this. And I have read a ton of market research stuff and HR stuff as well. I cannot praise this report enough…
I get goosebumps reading some of the quotes in there cause I think exactly the same way.
A very, very big thank you goes to all of our interviewees. And a special thank you to Valerie Wilcox, the Indy Hall member who suggested and led this entire project.
For members, by members, about members. That’s how we do it at Indy Hall.
This Sunday Sept 12th: Tea and Wellness @Indy Hall with Alexis Siemons and Jolene Hart
Filed under: Announcements, Events, Independents Hall
I wanted to share some news about a tea & wellness event that will be taking place at IndyHall on Sept 12th. For those of you that don’t know me, I am passionate about tea (you might have seen me steeping tea at Indy or convincing Parker to try a new blend that I created).
As we begin to embrace fall, I find myself falling deeper and deeper in love with tea as the crisp air has me craving pots of warming teas. So, I wanted to share this love and passion by inviting you to Steeped in Beauty, a tea and wellness event that I am leading at IndyHall with my friend and colleague, Jolene Hart (natural beauty expert). On September 12th, you are welcome to indulge in an afternoon of tea and natural skin care through interactive cooking demos and workshop sessions that highlight the impact of tea and natural beauty on health and wellness. Learn how to cook with tea (white chai smoothie, earl grey cookies, lavender simple syrup) and how to make your own tea inspired beauty treatments.
Beyond the tea and healthy treats prepared during the interactive cooking demos, guests will sample treats provided by Sweet Freedom, Philadelphia’s first and only completely gluten-free, vegan, allergen-friendly bakery. The lovely flower shop, Poppy, will be sharing a few of their delicate arrangements with us (one will even be nestled in a tea pot! hooray!).
Gift bags with our recipes, natural beauty samples, Rishi’s white detox tea/green oolong tea and other goodies are included. All guests will be entered to win one of several raffle prizes, including a personal health and beauty coaching session with Jolene, a tea party consultation with me, a haiku teacup from teaspoons & petals, a pint of Nectarine-Lime jam from Marisa McClellan from Food In Jars, gift certificates to Tbar, a tea & tea documentary film package from The Meaning Of Tea, and a wellness vacation consultation session with professional travel planner, Maya Northen.
I hope you will join me in learning a bit more about how and why its so very special to have tea in our lives. Looking forward to seeing some friendly faces as we sip, cook and talk tea.
Many thanks to Alex and Parker for graciously allowing me to host the event at IndyHall. For those who can’t make it, we’ll try to save a few goodies for members to taste on monday. Although if our guests are extra hungry and thirsty, I’ll stop by the following week with some new tea to share (who knows, maybe I’ll be inspired to make an IndyHall tea blend?).
Steeped in Beauty: An Afternoon of Tea & Natural Skin Care
When: Sunday, September 12th, 1pm-3pm
Where: Independents Hall
20 North 3rd Street
Philadelphia, PA 19106
Admission:
Tickets are available online for $21 and $25 the day of the event at the door (gift bag not guaranteed if purchased at door).
Turning 3
Filed under: Announcements, Events, From the Business Side, Independents Hall
Today is September 1st. That means one thing (ok it means a few things):
Indy Hall has now been open for business for 3 years.
Congratulations to all of us for spending the last 3 years (or some subset thereof) making Philadelphia a better place to make a living doing what we love.
I have a lot to say and a lot on my mind and in my heart, but I’m going to keep it brief for a change and let each of you say your piece instead.
Feel free to use this post and it’s comments to share sentiments, experiences, visions, excitement, joy, friendship, memories, and whatever comes to mind when you realize that before 3 years ago today, Indy Hall was an idea shared by a community, and now it’s one of the greatest things Philadelphia has to offer.
WHERE IS THE PARTY!?!?
For the last 2 years, as well as the re-opening in May of 2007, we’ve thrown an epic party to commemorate our history of accomplishments.
This year, we’re keeping it low key. I invite everyone to head over to – where else – National Mechanics tonight after 6:30pm.
Why no epic shindig with lots of hype?
I think we’re a group noted for action. I want a NEW action to celebrate, rather than a memory of one.
Sooooo let’s plan a MASSIVE multi-product/business/group/whatever launch party to celebrate some of our NEWEST accomplishments a little later this fall. You’ll be hearing more about ways to get involved with that in the coming weeks.
That said – National Mechanics – 6:30pm – you know the drill.
Indy Hall – By the Numbers
Filed under: coworkers, coworking, FAQs, From the Business Side, Independents Hall
Today, a longtime friend and observer of Indy Hall Imran Ali had a research piece published on GigaOm Pro about coworking spaces “by the numbers”. He featured Indy Hall as well as Fly the Coop, a Co-op coworking initiative in Manchester, UK.
This new article is behind a paywall, sadly. At the risk of being asked to take them down, I am going to quote a few select pieces of the article that Imran wrote that I thought were particularly salient. If you’re so inclined, a free 7 day trial of GigaOm Pro (credit card required). I don’t get any sort of kickbacks on subscriptions.
The foresight shown by the coworking movement’s founders — codified in values of collaboration, openness, community, accessibility — readily transposes onto crucial financial constructs, such as transparency, pricing and membership. You really have to live those values to make coworking viable in a fiscal sense.
Imran does a great job of identifying how we parlayed our community growth into business growth.
Both IndyHall and Fly The Coop were only able to build sustainable businesses because of the trust (and loans) that came from early-stage community building[...] It’s this very trust that separates coworking from the more prosaic serviced office.
And, perhaps most importantly, he puts the business viability into perspective for people who are simply in this for the money:
Just as individuals buy into a lifestyle, coworkers are buying into a workstyle; the financial stories of both IndyHall and Fly The Coop show that, though margins are tight, deep community bonds make all the difference, both financially and socially. It’s perhaps not a business for an investor looking to make a significant ROI, but eminently suitable for those who wish to participate as members who also modestly invest.
As promised, here are the RAW numbers that I gave to Imran to tell our story. We operate transparently, so any additional information we can provide about any piece of this data will only be based on the availability of more data points. It’s taken us a while to get good at measuring our growth, so there’s lots of data missing that we’d need to spend more time mining for.
Let me use some numbers to tell a story, from our founding fund-raising to our most recent move and financial stabilization
$0 – Pre-dedicated location costs for 9 months casual coworking/jelly, social gatherings, and other community-building exercises were done on a budget of time, not capital.
$4625 – our projected monthly revenue based on membership projections within 6 months.
———————————————————————————————
23 – our actual number of members on August 6, 2007 (lease signing day)
2 – our actual number of full time members on September 1st, 2007
4 - our actual number of lite members on September 1st, 2007
17 – our actual number of basic members on September 1st, 2007
———————————————————————————————
$1675 – monthly membership-only revenue committed on lease signing day.
———————————————————————————————
$2325 – additional member-driven startup capital, from members pre-paying for 2-6 months of their membership
———————————————————————————————
~$10,000 – money provided by founder for lease security deposit, furniture, supplies, and monthly rent cushion.
———————————————————————————————
$14,000 – total money raised from within membership/founders to sign a lease, furnish the space, and cushion rent until breakeven.
———————————————————————————————
1800 number of sq ft leased in Old City Philadelphia
———————————————————————————————
$2,450 – monthly budget for rent, utilities, and discretionary funds
———————————————————————————————
3 – Months to breakeven/cashflow positive
———————————————————————————————
39 – our actual number of members on June 1st, 2008 (10 months in)
9 – our actual number of full time members on June 1st, 2008
5 – our actual number of lite members on June 1st, 2008
25 – our actual number of basic members on June 1st, 2008
$3975 – Monthly Revenue from Memberships Only
———————————————————————————————
16 – months until partner loan payback ($10,000) completed
———————————————————————————————-
53 – our actual number of members on March 2009
14 – our actual number of full time members on March 2009
7 – our actual number of lite members on March 2009
32 – our actual number of basic members on March 2009
$5875 – Monthly Revenue from Memberships Only
———————————————————————————————–
$3,633.45 – actual monthly operating cost in March 2009
$2.02 – approximate monthly operating cost per square foot in March 2009
———————————————————————————————–
4400 number of sq ft rented in Old City Philadelphia for May 1st, 2009
———————————————————————————————–
67 – our actual number of members on May 1st, 2009
21 – our actual number of full time members on May 1st, 2009
7 – our actual number of lite members on May 1st, 2009
39 – our actual number of basic members on May 1st, 2009
$7975 – Monthly Revenue from Memberships Only
———————————————————————————————–
$8,700.53 – estimated monthly operating cost for May 2009
$1.98 – approximate monthly operating cost per square foot in March 2009
———————————————————————————————–
$30,000 – loan taken from one full-time member
———————————————————————————————–
~$14,000 – savings in May 2009
————————————————————————————————
$21,460 – budget for furniture, buildout materials.
————————————————————————————————
6 – Months to breakeven/cashflow positive
————————————————————————————————
83 – our actual number of members on October 2009 (breakeven)
26 – our actual number of full time members on October 2009
6 – our actual number of lite members on October 2009
51 – our actual number of basic members on October 2009
$9475 – Monthly Revenue from Memberships Only
————————————————————————————————-
9 – Months to begin payback of member loan (<24 month payback target)
————————————————————————————————–
The financials, as it were, are relatively uninteresting. You can see that we operate on relatively thin margins. It’s also worth pointing out that in 3 years, neither Geoff nor I have taken a draw from profit. Every penny made by Indy Hall is re-inves
ted in our members, our space, our events, etc.
The interesting numbers will take some more time to pull together…but they are the numbers that we believe are important. Things like
- Cities, states, and countries of origin of Indy Hall guests.
- Drop-in rates
- Drop-in conversions to memberships
- Events hosted and organized by Indy Hall and Indy Hall Members
- New teams/partnerships formed
- New businesses established
- New products (commercial and non-commercial) developed by Indy Hall Members
- Average revenue generated by an independent worker
And more. What numbers would YOU like to see?
Indy Hall Town Hall – Monday, July 12th, 5:30-7pm
Filed under: Announcements, Community Support, coworking, Events, From the Business Side, Independents Hall
It’s been many months since our last Town Hall meeting, nine of them in fact. That’s a problem!
For the newly initiated (or anyone who has started hanging around Indy Hall in the last year), Town Hall meetings are Indy Hall’s best way of updating community members on large issues that we expect will prompt discussion. As great as our online forums can be, offline events like this have been extremely valuable for important events in our history, including our decisions to grow into this new office last year that we’ve all come to call home.
As we CONTINUE to grow (which is still remarkable to all of us), it’s long overdue we initiate another one of these discussions. In it, we’ll be providing some transparency into Indy Hall’s growth (including membership statistics), as well as some of the new and interesting ideas we have to address some of the pains associated with growing.
We’ll be holding our next Town Hall meeting this upcoming Monday, July 12th, from 5:30 to 7pm right here at Indy Hall.
After a round of introductions from everyone in attendance, the presentation portion of the Town Hall will be led by Geoff and I, and last ~30 minutes at the most. After the discussion, we turn to members from each membership level for some feedback. And then the floor is open more generally for discussion.
Its important to note that these events are NOT for members only: the general public is welcome. In the past we’ve had city council members as well as members of the press present. We think this level of transparency lets us operate the way we know best.
Also, this serves as yet another opportunity to get to know your coworkers, and hopefully get to know Geoff and I a little better as well.
Since this event is open to the public, we’re going to ask people to RSVP so we can plan for seating and space usage: http://anyvite.com/a9urvwzxga
In the end, our goal is that you have some insight into how things are continually evolving at Indy Hall, and what that means for you. There are always opportunities to get involved in new ways, suggest and implement your own ideas with our support, and make this place even better. We wouldn’t be here if you didn’t want to be, and that means a lot to us.
Its up to you to attend and include your voice. We can’t wait to see everyone’s faces on the 12th!
A poem about breakfast by our own Parker Whitney
Filed under: Community Support, coworkers, In The News, Independents Hall
After having his “day saved” by member Chris Dawson, who provided him with a breakfast croissant after he skipped breakfast, our illustrious office manager Parker wrote this piece thanking him. It was too creative not to share.
When’s the last time someone thanked you for a casual gesture with something this thoughtful?
May 18 – Creative Directors Meetup @ Indy Hall
Filed under: Announcements, Community Support, Education/Workshops, Events, Independents Hall
Some months back, I was giving a tour of Indy Hall to Joe Rinaldi, an agent for Aquent focused on interactive design, development, and interactive project management. He’d been expressing interest in Indy Hall as a resource for some of the talent that he works with, but also loved what we were up to in terms of being a regional catalyst for encouraging creatives to interact with one another.
He’d remarked how much he’d like to come work from Indy Hall, and shared that a number of other people he works with who have offices to go to feel like they don’t have a reason to check out Indy Hall…and we agreed that it’d be valuable to find a way to give those people the opportunity they’d been looking for.
Joe’s been rallying a roster of Philadelphia’s finest Creative and Art Directors from agencies including Happy Cog, TMX, Tierney, Stick & Move, Vanguard, Comcast, Digitas, One Trick Pony, Red Tettemer, WellFed and more, for an evening of unique conversation about the challenges facing creative leaders.
Through this dialogue, he’s hoping to foster collaboration and continue to catalyze the creative community in Philadelphia to share the amazing work they are creating.
Seeing how nicely this fit with our mission, it was clear that we would want to host this event and give those creative directors a reason to visit!
The next meeting of this group will be at Indy Hall tomorrow, Tuesday May 18th at 6:30pm. Creative Directors of all levels of experience are encouraged to join for hearty discussion, pizza, and of course some drinks.
If you’re interested in attending, we ask that you drop Joe an e-mail to let him know the headcount for the refreshments. Otherwise, we’ll see you at Indy Hall! Holy moly that was fast! We actually filled up! If you’d like to be included in information about future events, you can drop us a line and we’ll pass word along to Joe.
Indy Hall Member Profiles – Steve Winkler
Filed under: Community Support, coworkers, From the Business Side, Independents Hall
Meet Steve Winkler.
Steve, a representative of the PR and marketing contingent at IndyHall, has been with us since we lived on Strawberry St and has taken the reins of our fine newsletter. As such, I fear he will know what I’m going to ask before I ask it. To start, I wanted to know how he came to be a Haller.
“I was working for a small agency here in Philly and as the years went on we had less and less need for a physical office as employees and clients alike were spread across the country.”
What, then?
“I went on the hunt for a place to work and it came down to Indy Hall and a very corporatized office share in Center City.”
But wait, who doesn’t want a phone answering service, mail service, and a secretary?
“If you need somebody to do stuff for you, then that’s where you go. If you just need to work, and you can handle your own business, you can come here. You have to ask yourself who you want to be? How do you want to work?”
See? This guy is a pro. That last bit could be used as a full on slogan.
Now we know how Steve found us, so why the long tenure?
“This is a more interesting environment to work in. One of the problems with being in marketing and PR is you’re kind of in an echo chamber. You’re just in marketing world and you start to care about what magazines like PR Week think.”
I’m so sorry, Steve.
“When you’re exposed to people outside of what you do, you realize nobody cares about PR week. Being here I’m constantly reminded to take a step back and acknowledge there’s a larger world out there and that’s a huge plus.”
Awesome. Now’s my chance to ask what…
“I’m not doing PR anymore. You ready for this marketing speak? I’m doing what’s called ‘Experiential Marketing.’”
Bollox, I said!
“Clients basically come to us because they want people surrounded by their brands. We produce ads, websites, and do events.”
I was curious whether being here at the Hall had improved his quality of work.
“Programmers, Designers, Marketing people, we all have different ideas about the way things work. The more I am exposed to these different perspectives the more I’m able to synthesize them into ideas for cool new marketing campaigns.”
Unbelievable, this guy. If I keep getting answers like this I’ll be out of a job soon. Thanks Steve.
