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How we saved our indie coworking from COVID and got into growth mode 🍤

When COVID hit the first time, we lost 80% of our little independant coworking space revenue within a month 😱.

The math were pretty simple: 30% of our revenue come from the venue booking for events, 40% from sponsorship, 10% from our own events & 20% from actual coworking membership. With no event, we don't only loose the revenue from this channel but also the value creation we are selling to sponsors: traffic and exposure. So all others channels are getting impacted 💥.

After a month of tears and cry, I realised that this was not a threat: it was actually a surge to upgrade our model. The way events are done and value creation perceived will never be the same again. And we better embrace it now!
So we turned one of our meeting room into a fully equipped studio and started promoting hybrid events to companies.

At the beginning, very few got the point: "Why would I need you when I can simply do a Facebook live on my own". Then they eventually realized that there is 99 ways to do a shitty online event 💩. And finally, when they saw the quality and engagement of our own hybrid event, it was WAY easier to sign some deals.

Quickly, hybrid events became a major part of our revenue. What so interesting is that it became an asset to leverage the existing sponsorship deals we signed pre covid. In deed we will never get the level attention we have today. Meanwhile, most companies social media are cruelly missing high quality content. Thanks to that sponsorship, they were able to deliver value added & relevant content to their audience without having to create it.

Smaller content creators and individuals were also interested by the value creation: a plug and play space where they could create live content in the best possible condition without having to manage the technical parts.

Today, our revenue is mainly driven by content creation needs. Podcast, videocast, live events, interview, it really looks like more and more people understood that quality has a cost but also a return on investment and they are willing to pay for it.

Based on our successful execution, we got the attention of bigger companies and had the honor to co-create https://www.antistud.io, a series a coworking coffee in France turned into production ready spaces.

To put some context, our coworking space (https://www.facebook.com/lespot.coworking.guadeloupe) is based in Guadeloupe, a tiny island in the Caribbean. So you can imagine how proud we are to start from there something that is creating value for a way bigger company.

➡ The take away for you: Where ever you are, what ever is the size of what you're doing, keep in mind that in the internet world, it can be seen by anyone and inspire. So make sure you turn your valuable work into an asset by documenting it. I know, the process is often tiring but if you are doing is creating value for others, the magic of the internet karma powered by your intention will create some magic for you !

🔗 Our coworking: https://www.facebook.com/lespot.coworking.guadeloupe/
🔗 The coworking cafe startup Anticafé: https://anticafe.eu
🔗 Our co-creation with Anticafé: https://www.antistud.io/


🐵 Who are we: We are Crazy Monkeys 🐵, a global remote team hand crafting projects with love (and often pixels)

🤔 What do we do: We are currently launching 12 projects in 12 weeks.
So far we have launched:

🚀 Our main SaaS:

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