Starting a coworking space? Plan to avoid the Red Zone, and save yourself a lot of trouble!

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To get a new space open, you need to do probably at least several thousand different things.

No matter what you do, you’re not going to get to all of them, and you’re not going to get them all right.

It’s amazing how much leeway you get, actually. I realized, having built a business from scratch, just how many things I could get wrong and still succeed.

If you’re stepping up to lead where no one else is doing so, people give you the benefit of the doubt. They will, to some degree, be patient with you. They’ll even help pick up the slack, so long as you show that you’re pulling far more than your weight.

But I still want to be sure that, when you approach opening day for your new space, you’re as ready as you can be.

Which is why we need to talk about the Red Zone.

This came up in a recent Mastermind call as part of our Organizers Club, where several people are working together to help each other start their spaces all over the world.

In the course of one of those conversations, I noticed a recurring temptation to wait until later to address things that one might naturally expect won’t be necessary until the doors are open.

The trouble, however, is that there are a whole lot of things you don’t need until you do—and then you need them all, right away.

The Red Zone is the crazy crunch time just before and after you open your space.

From my own experience, I’d estimate this time period to extend six weeks in either direction from the date of opening.

In the six weeks or so leading up to the opening, many things start to come together at once. Final preparations. Activating accounts. Planning the launch party. Finalizing buildout. Dealing with arriving furniture. Testing the wifi infrastructure. Marketing plans implemented. More than I could reasonably list here!

In the six weeks after, the doors are open and people are (hopefully!) flooding in. You’re getting calls, emails, walk-ins.

You’re getting tested in ways you never anticipated. Can you rent out the conference room for a half-day? How much? Is there a member rate? You haven’t thought of that, have you? Can a part-time member bring in a monitor and leave it on a desk? The list goes on.

Then there are the operational challenges. Figuring out just how often you have to get toilet paper, and from where. Do you order online, or run out to Costco to pick it up yourself?

You get the idea.

The Red Zone is intense. To get you ready for it, I’ve got my top list of things I would have told myself if I could go back:

See more here:
http://nwc.co/3/starting-a-coworking-...