When a coworking Death Star opens next door...

In my three hundred and fifty million years in the coworking industry, time and time again I have seen people who run coworking spaces, usually owner-run spaces, and it is all knocking along nicely, and then a great big Death Star corporate coworking company opens up in the neighbourhood and undercuts everything. Cooler furniture, beer on tap, helicopter pads, all of that.

And because you have not maintained a connection and relationship with the people you thought you had, you go into panic tactics mode, offering fifty percent off for the rest of your life, stuff like that.

Those tactics harm your community more than you would have done by emailing them, by making constant contact. (Constant Contact, by the way, what a great name for an email machine.)

Being in constant contact with your members, staying relevant to them, listening to them, that is how you avoid those tacky 50%-off-everyone-to-the-lifeboats panics when a Death Star opens up next door to you.

Often in this situation, it's when people suddenly decide to start running LinkedIn ads, when they've never run one in their lives before, instead of emailing the people they're already connected to.

Oddly, it seems easier to take on the journey of learning LinkedIn ads and burning money over there than sitting down and looking at all the people in your membership and your email list and thinking about what could you send them that is connected, relatable, and relevant in order to establish a connection with them.

Or said another way, sometimes it is easier to look needy in front of people you've never met than people you know.

Every time you start to learn about ads on any platform, you need to accept you're going to burn a chunk of money before you work out what works for you, which is why I've never got into that part of marketing - I'm not good in casinos either.

As my friend and photographer Jon always says, "Marketing is a commitment, not a campaign."