Coworking companies have flourished in the past 15 years. They have become a place for startups and freelancers to visit and work. However, independent professionals are not the only ones to have found coworking companies useful. Large corporations have also begun to adopt some of the ideas associated with working out of a coworking space.
How Does a Coworking Company Fare in This?
A survey conducted by the Harvard Business Review in collaboration with a coworking company between 2017 and 2018, surveyed more than 1,000 members in the United States –uncovers the following:
- 71% of members worked full-time for businesses or used coworking spaces for remote professionals and teams.
- Members strongly identified with their companies, but not with the coworking company they were using as their workspace.
The study further revealed that coworking companies did not have a negative impact on the culture or brand identity of businesses using it for work. It also indicated that employees working in a shared environment reported having positive experiences when their this environment aligned with their coworking company’s values, in turn leading to employees being more productive.
What Does This Say about a Coworking Company’s Business Identity?
The fact that employees using coworking spaces don’t necessarily associate themselves with their spaces does not reflect negatively on the coworking company: a successful business identity for a coworking company should be narrowly focused on coworking.
Concern should be directed towards expanding their reach to other locations, rather than establishing a business identity. This is true for the later stages, not the beginning.
What Is a Business Identity?
A company’s business identity is the way in which it presents itself to the public (including customers, professionals, and media outlets) through a combination of characteristics that make it recognizable as a specific business. (Examples of these characteristics may be the company’s logo, the product or service it provides, its reputation for reliability, or association with specific ethical alignments.) In this case, the shared office space is primary aspect of the business identity.
Even though coworking companies should primarily focus on coworking, it does not mean that their business identity should be completely disregarded.. They can establish their business identity by expanding their business model to include other ventures.
The CEOs of coworking companies can branch out to include other things they are passionate about, such as establishing a small training school, opening an eatery, or anything they feel passionate about. Even if they are losing money in their main venture, providing coworking spaces, they will be making money from other ventures, thus making up for the loss.
Here is an example:
Coworking companies follow a specific model, which includes pairing long-term office contracts with short-term tenants. If a coworking company is expected to earn $3 billion in profits but loses $700 million in the first quarter of the following year, it will need to convince investors to invest in their company, despite the large losses, especially if they intend to file for the initial public offering (IPO).
To convince investors to invest in their coworking company, they can expand their brand identity by showing the other ventures they have developed and launched. They are not just focusing on establishing their coworking company’s brand identity, but their identity as a whole, consisting of various ventures.
The 3 Characteristics that Ensure the Success of a Coworking Company
Ambition, salesmanship, and confidence — are three crucial characteristics of every successful entrepreneur running a business. Without these three characteristics, coworking companies cannot reach the heights of success as coworking companies before they have.
In the beginning, the focus on establishing their coworking company needs to be their first priority, but with time, they need to start introducing other facilities and launch other companies on a small scale later on.
This is when coworking companies need to start narrowly focusing on coworking and start to focus on other aspects of their business while introducing other businesses into the mix.
Conclusion
Even if they are incurring losses after a while, they can pull themselves out of it by generating revenue from other sources. It is important for coworking companies, especially the up and coming ones, to broaden their scope of interest and begin to introduce other things into their business model.
The introduction of other things into their business model can change the direction of their coworking company, helping them generate revenue through other avenues, which do not even have to be a part of their main venture.
Coworking companies should narrowly focus on coworking if they want to surpass their competition and be known as more than just for providing coworking spaces to independent professionals and businesses.
If you are looking for a coworking space that can offer your business growth check out this Dallas based coworking provider. They offer a lot of amenities to grow your business.
By: KISS PR Dallas Local SEO Expert – Qamar Zaman
