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What to Consider When Buying a New Commercial Property

StrategyDriven Starting Your Business Article | Entrepreneurship | What to Consider When Buying a New Commercial PropertyLeasing a commercial property isn’t the best option for a lot of businesses. Therefore, if you have made the choice to buy your next business property, you are opening yourself up to more flexibility and more freedom to allow your business to grow.

That said, there are a lot of important areas to take into account when searching for the ideal commercial property.

The Maintenance Costs

Alongside your fixed monthly outgoings, you’re going to have to prepare for maintenance costs over time, and any unexpected issues that may arise. This means you should consider any commercial property that you view with the expected maintenance costs in mind.

For example, are there any structural features of the building which you see as having a high maintenance bill? Does the sheer size mean more maintenance should be expected?

Maintenance is always a must, no matter the building, so budgeting for it is essential. You should also seek out a dependable maintenance service such as urban-propertymaintenance.com.

The Need for a Survey

Having any new potential business property professionally surveyed is a must. You shouldn’t elect for the cheapest and quickest option, either. Although it’s preferable to save money, you will lose money in the long run if you fail to have a property survey in the first instance, resulting in your property running into problems further down the line. Ensure that you have a thorough survey carried out, which is specifically tailored for commercial properties.

The Location

Your location needs will vary depending on what your business entails, so you’ll need to think carefully about yours. Location can be a crucial factor in the successful running of your business.

Consider the following:

  • Do you have clients regularly visiting your business premises? If so, the property will need to be in an easily accessible location, and close to your main clients.
  • Do you have a large team of staff who will work on site? If so, the property will need to be easily accessible for them, and not difficult to travel to.

Also think about the impression that you want to give of your business; you need the property and location to reflect this in a positive light if you are going to have external individuals and clients visiting the commercial property on a regular basis.

Transport Links

This is an imperative consideration if you have people traveling to the premises on a daily basis, whether they are staff or clients. If your new commercial property is near plenty of public transport links, such as train stations and bus stops, then this is a huge positive.

If you can’t find a property which is close to public transport links, or if your commercial premises is in a very remote location, then you need to ensure that there is at least a car park for staff and visitors.

A commercial property in a remote location, without a car park, and far away from any public transport links, will be very problematic and may be seen as unprofessional if you are failing to provide these needs.

Things you have to know before you start your coworking marketplace

StrategyDriven Starting Your Business Article | Coworking Marketplace | Entrepreneurship | Things you have to know before you start your coworking marketplaceCoworking is a new concept of an open working environment that allows several unrelated companies to share office space and work together. According to Statista, there were around 22,4000 coworking spaces worldwide by the end of 2019. With the rising popularity of shared workspaces, more and more businesses are launching coworking marketplaces. In other words, they are just like Airbnb.

When Airbnb offers vacation rentals with homely amenities, a coworking space marketplace offers office spaces with unique amenities for individuals and businesses. The coworking marketplace efficiently connects coworking space owners looking to rent out their unused office space with individuals and businesses looking for vacant shared work spaces.

In the coming years, we will be seeing tremendous innovation in the field of building and running coworking rental marketplaces. There is no better time to launch your coworking space business. Before we start, let me establish this- There are no easy ways to launch a coworking marketplace and make it successful. Following a sound business strategy and understanding, best practices are important.

Things to consider before starting an Airbnb for coworking

The whole world has been taken aback by the potential of coworking space marketplaces and you are on the right track with launching a coworking rental platform. But running a successful Airbnb for coworking requires a lot of planning and effort. Here are some of the core things to consider before starting your own coworking marketplace that helps you to take your business to new heights.

Research your target market

Whether you are creating a coworking space platform from scratch or using a white label solution, there is no way around doing thorough market research. According to studies, lack of market research is one of the major reasons why startups fail.

To build a viable coworking space rental marketplace, you need to have a clear understanding of the market, how the industry looks like, your target users, their requirement, and the solution they are looking for. Pay attention to market trends as well to spot any big changes like technology breakthroughs so that you can use it for your business advantage.

Choose the right business model

It is a great idea to design a viable business model even before starting your coworking marketplace. Now, the exact way your coworking space rental platform makes money will depend on a lot of factors. However, there are some common business models to consider.

Service fee

It’s a great monetization strategy of any peer-peer marketplaces to charge service providers a service fee each time they receive and process a new booking on your platform. The more transactions your marketplace makes-the more revenue you get. The host service fee can be 3% or more and can vary with different countries. You can also incur service free from guests which can range up to 20% of the booking subtotal. For example, Airbnb takes a 20% service fee from guests and a 3$ from the hosts.

Listing fee

Your coworking marketplace can collect listing fees from coworking space owners when they list their space on your platform. It can be a flat fee or vary based on the total reservation made or any other parameters. To reduce friction, you can consider collecting the fee once the transaction is completed instead of doing it at the time of listing. Airbnb charges a 14% host-fee from property owners according to its new policies.

While these are the common business models- You can add more than that including the following.

  • Adding premium subscriptions
  • Collect payment processing fee
  • Promote sponsored listings
  • Setting your own ad system

Carefully plan your operations

Creating a coworking space management tool is one thing and successfully running is something completely different. As you have to manage two user types, bookings and scheduling, payment processing, and a lot of other functions together, the operations can get a bit complex. Hence, it is important for your rental marketplace to have all essential features that support the operations carried out on your platform.

You will need specialized marketplace payment gateways that allow users to book coworking spaces and pay effortlessly. Implementing an in-app communication system is also essential to set a channel for all your users to communicate regarding scheduling, booking, and cancellation.

Optimize your platform’s search to deliver high performance

Search is one of the most critical interfaces of your coworking office space rental marketplace users leverage these features to interact with your platform. Significant engineering goes behind a smart and intuitive search that performs well. If you take the example of Airbnb, the smart search is one of the most powerful features of this peer-peer vacation rental marketplace.

A typical search for any coworking marketplace should support the following search features.

  • Location
  • Coworking space type
  • Price range
  • Availability
  • Amenities
  • Capacity
  • Meeting rooms
  • And more

Improve the booking flow and experience

To deliver a great user experience to all user groups, your coworking space platform must have a seamless booking feature. When a coworking space owner registers in your platform and activates his listings, the people who are looking for rental office spaces must be able to view and book the space.

Consider instant booking as opposed to normal booking feature as it is the preferred way for hosts to rent out their properties. With proper identification verification services, you can allow service providers to reliably list their coworking space for instant booking option so that users can make instant bookings.

Dealing with Last minute cancellations

Building and running a successful peer-peer coworking management software requires you to think from a user perspective. For example, Airbnb allows hosts to cancel the booking at the 11th hour. When thinking from a host’s perspective, this is an absolutely great feature, but if you think from a guest perspective, this might not be a pleasing feature. Hence, your marketplace must have smart ways to deal with last-minute cancellations considering the interests of both user groups. To reduce last-minute cancellations, you can add a cancelation fee and block booking dates. Another great alternative would be to reallocate another similar coworking space to the user in case a service provider cancels the last minute.

Conclusion

Building an Airbnb for coworking is a different thing and scaling it to millions of users like the real Airbnb does is another thing. Implementing the above-discussed things will help you to run your peer-peer coworking marketplace successfully and gain a competitive advantage in the industry. Happy Coworking!


About the Author

StrategyDriven Expert Contributor | Shirley C. StewartShirley C. Stewart is Business Consultant and Marketing Head at RentCubo. She helps brands to build their web products that people love using. Shirley has a passion for growth hacking and startups.

4 tips for starting a business in a poor economy

At one point in our life, we’ve probably all been there. The economy is like a rollercoaster, and from time to time you do reach new lows.

Quite often, these lows give some people a new lease of life. Companies are forced to offload employees, and this means that an increased number of people are without work and ultimately asking, “what’s next?”.

Well, for many of these, a new business is one solution. The economy doesn’t make it easy, but it shouldn’t be a direct obstacle that tells you to turn around and do something else.

If you are considering starting a business in this sort of climate, it’s time to read on and find out our four most recommended tips for doing so.

The location is crucial

Without trying to be patronizing, we really can’t emphasize the importance of location, location, location. It’s something that can make or break your business in these tough times, and this infographic perhaps describes it in the best detail:

StrategyDriven Starting Your Business Article | Entrepreneurship | 4 tips for starting a business in a poor economy

No, you shouldn’t be targeting those locations which are faring the best during these tough times, but you need to be shrewd about how your potential market is going to react. If you are selling high-end products, you need to assess whether the area you are about to venture into is ready for these, and vice versa.

Use the economy to your advantage

There are a lot of ways that the economy is going to hurt you during these times, so you should be trying to take advantage wherever possible.

Lowering costs is one of these and whilst negotiating with suppliers, understand that you probably hold the upper hand. They will be feeling the pinch as well, so use the economy as an excuse to get even better deals. Whether it’s rents, products or equipment, this is something that you must use to your advantage to drive those margins up.

Start as small as can be

Of course, if you have major backing behind you, this next point might be invalid.

For everyone else, starting small is crucial advice. If you don’t necessarily need office space, don’t hire it. The same rules apply to employees, as both of these elements are fixed costs that are going to heap pressure onto your business.

Start as small as you can, and scale up when the market signals that it is time to do so.

Watch the competition closely

The competition is going to be an excellent signal on just how you are going to perform in this market. It will indicate just how flat the market is, and provide you any ideas on how you can treat it differently.

Sometimes, it might suggest that the market has become extremely price sensitive – and this might not fit within your business plan. Or, it might suggest the otherwise, and a creative marketing plan is all you need. Analyze the competition and then plan your strategy accordingly.

Five Aspects of a Business Plan You Need to Get Right

StrategyDriven Starting Your Business Article | Five Aspects of a Business Plan You Need to Get RightBuilding a business cannot be done without planning. The second you start a business your future and your financials are at risk. While the pay-off can be great, and you can even start a legacy, none of that will come to fruition if you don’t have an accurate plan on how to get from place A to place B.

Take opportunities as they arise by all means, but never go into a new business without creating a solid business plan:

Business Model

Choosing your business model is very important, especially with all the options available today. You can go for a subscription model, an advertising model, a pay now model, and so many more, and that’s just the payment plan. Decide in advance how you plan your company will be run and what it needs so that you can strategize around a real product.

Competitor Research

Your competition will offer a lot of valuable insight into what does and does not work. You should try to extend this research into companies that have failed previously and learn from their mistakes. Not only will you be able to improve upon your business model, but you will also be able to devise services and marketing strategies that appeal to your customers.

Cashflow Forecasting

You need to work out overhead beforehand so that you can predict how much you need in sales. This way you can either improve your business model or diversify your incomes to meet your base needs and hopefully exceed them. Once your business gets off the ground for a year redo your cash flow forecast so that you can better predict where spending will be tight.

Your Financing Options

Knowing your financing options is critical, especially as a new business. Without any previous business credit history or substantial enough assets banks will not provide you with a loan. Instead, you will need to diversify between personal funding and third-party loans.

Then there is the type of loan in question. A secure loan is secured against your assets, but if you do not have substantial enough assets, there are unsecured loans you can look at. You can learn all about the pros and cons of an unsecured business loan on biz2credit.com, and though it can be a good way to launch or expand your business you need to be aware of the risks ahead of time, as rather than leverage an asset you will often have to provide a personal guarantee.

Location

If you are opening a physical store the last part of your business plan that you will need to address is the location. Rent costs will be high, but more than that you will need to ensure your location serves your needs and is where your demographic is located.

It is important to remember that, though business plan size recommendations might only be a few pages, the work that goes into those few pages needs to be substantial. Consider your final business plan like a summary for a much larger report that works out what you need for your business to succeed. The effort you put in early on will be a key factor in any success you see.

How to Limit Personal Risk When Starting a Business

You’ve got to be pretty brave to start a company. The failure rate is pretty high, it’s a lot of hard work, and, if it goes wrong, you might find that you’re in a difficult position. However, it’s probably not fair that people are punished for trying something and failing — the hit to their pride will be hard enough, must they really suffer in other ways too? We think not. There are ways that you can limit your risk when it comes to running a business. We take a look at a few ways how below. Incorporate them into your business strategies, and you’ll find there’s a reduced chance of your business having a negative impact on your life.

StrategyDriven Starting Your Business Article | How to Limit Personal Risk When Starting a Business | EntrepreneurshipDo Your Research

It all begins with your initial research. You could save yourself a lot of potential heartache and trouble by simply ensuring that what you’re trying to establish is, indeed, a good idea. Too many companies begin trading before figuring out whether there’s a demand for their products or services, who the competition is, and so on. If all the evidence suggests that it’s not a great idea, you should pull the plug.

The Right Set Up

It’s recommended that you limit the legal risk that you could face if your company isn’t as successful as hoped. You can do this by having the right set up for your company. As a business owner, an LLC offers the highest level of protection. Your business debts will stay tied to the business, rather than to your name. Similarly, if there’s an issue of negligence, then your assets could be at risk, even if you were only indirectly involved. It’s much better to set up as an LLC, rather than a sole proprietorship, with which your company’s debts would also be yours.

Stringent Quality Checks

Of course, while you can protect yourself financially and legally, there’s no hiding when it comes to your reputation. If your company is involved in an accident that was verifiably your fault, then it won’t just be your business that it affects – your name will be affected, too. As such, it’s imperative that you’re conducting stringent quality checks to ensure that everything is safe and high-quality. It’s when corners are cut and checks are not carried out when troubles can arise.

Legal Matters

You might think that everything is going smoothly for your business, only to discover that you’re in trouble with the authorities. Why? Because you were lax when it came to your company’s legal matters. Because of the threat that unlawful practices can bring, it’s recommended that you outsource the jobs to a law firm. They’ll make sure that everything is watertight.

Keep Things Separate

Finally, for your own sake, ensure that you’re keeping your business and personal finances separate. There are plenty of advantages to this, but one of the most important is that it makes it much easier to manage your money, and to ensure that you’re not screwed should your business flop.

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