Category Archives: Coworking

The Powers Within

Leave a reply

As individuals, we think we need extraordinary powers to achieve something big. But, what are these powers and where do they come from?

The answer is simple, they come from within us.

What are these powers? These powers are categorised into two – Latent Powers and Occult Powers.

Latent Powers

Latent powers are rudimentary and they are within us and these powers usually do not mature into what we want unless we ignite them or start to utilise them.

Usain Bolt, the fastest man on earth invoked his latent powers within which helped him train and achieve what he has achieved.

I am sure all of you have heard Virat Kohli, one of Indian Cricket Team’s legendary player say “One day in the dressing room, I saw myself in the mirror and said to myself that I am not going to be a good player unless I do something about my physical fitness and that day on wards I changed my food and lifestyle habits”. He invoked his Latent powers to improve his health and fitness and the rest his history.

Do you think these individuals are different from us? Why could they achieve what they did and why can’t we achieve what we need to? For this to happen, we need to first accept our flaws and start focusing on nurturing them. That’s when good starts to becoming great.

As Entrepreneurs, we need find what it takes for us to solve the problem or achieve what need to and start focusing on them.

Occult Powers

The moment you hear this name, it is accepted that you look at it negatively mainly relating to psychic’s and people who do things which are not normal. In the west, it is related to a psychological disorder and in the East people also refer in a different way.

However, Spiritually, Occult Powers are related to using your body along with the powers in the nature to achieve control over something. For instance, igniting the 7 Chakra’s in the body with meditation, music and if you are comfortable with appropriate sloka’s in the Veda’s can help you bring more control you to body and mind and with synergies with the nature you can achieve what you wish. This is all about control.

I am sure you must have seen people doing magic and making objects appearing in their hand. This is nothing but using the powers within the body and connecting with nature to do the impossible. If you ever speak to any one who does these things, they laugh it off saying its the basic thing you can do when you start connecting your body to the nature. But, to get here takes years of practice.

As Entrepreneurs, we need to find a means to help us achieve what we want. Spending sometime to ourselves each day meditating, chanting, or anything which can help you channel your energies, it helps in enhancing the focus on what you want to do.

How do you invoke your inner powers?

Recap

Leave a reply

It has been a while since I wrote my blog. Honestly, I have been active in writing on LinkedIn and not updating here.

Over the last one month, I wrote more than 30 posts and would request you to please subscribe to my LinkedIn Newsletter

I will continue to publish here too.

Building Communities

Leave a reply

When ever I go for a sales pitch, I get this question – How can your platform help build our community?

 The 3 conferences I attended over the last one year, this was one of the most common question. There have been sessions and tracks on building communities and I tried to attend to understand the perspective. 

Technically, Culture is how people in a Community co-exist (live). So, when we build a community, we are directly building a Culture of the space. 
Let us bring this conversation to the context of workplace. Be it a factory, be it an office, Culture existed from the beginning of mankind. So, how is it different today in the context of a #Coworking or #SharedOffice space? 

After sitting through these conferences and talking to various people and my clients and potential clients, I am coming to understand that the aspect of Community in workspace relates to how people are bonded around. The common theme. 

In a factory, the community looks at working together to accomplish a task. Be it building an aircraft or an automobile or any other. Tasks are defined, SLA’s set and employees are trained to focus to ensure all tasks are complete end of the day meeting all the required metrics. Employees rejoice the success of their produce. 

Now, let us move this to an office. What I mean by office is collection of employees working on different parts of the workflow. Be it a Bank or a Technology firm or any other. Organisation sets the objective of the tasks and employees are meant to complete these tasks on time to accomplish the goal. 
In the context of #Coworking and #SharedOffice space, this becomes a little tricky. Why? Because it is not a factory or a traditional office. People from various organisations co-exist. 

How do we build a Community here? That’s the question. I have friends who are working on building their spaces with culture of their ideas. Few succeed and few fail and few are very clear of how they want their community to be. However, no one is able to crack the code for a framework to build communities. Hence turning to technology to build it for them, or help create one for them. 

How to build a Community?

Building a community is a human exercise. We spend time with people who care about and who are like minded, fun to be around with, who inspire us or whom we inspire. At times, even if we don’t like someone’s company, over a period of time, the relationship grows upon us. 

In the workplace, there are no set rules. A culture/community is already built by the time we get there and it takes a lot of work to change people around, alternatively in most times, we adapt to the new environment. If it really gets toxic we move out. 

In a #Coworking or #SharedOffice space setting, this gets even more complicated. Members curate the community mostly. I have seen spaces where the culture is already set and the leadership is very clear on how their space’s culture should be. They let their potential clients know about their culture and make them adapt to their way of seeing things. Alternatively, they just leave it to members to structure the community the way they want and if there is anything required to be done, the leadership steps in to curate the community. 

However, one thing is common, the culture of a #Coworking or #SharedOffice space is not deep rooted because everyone who shared the space and every company has their own was of seeing things and they would not liked to be forced upon. So, there is a very fine line of how culture is built.

How do we translate this to technology? 

For me, curating a community is like creating a product. It starts with a basic functioning design and over the period of time, it evolves into how the users like it. We can take a lot of examples, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Slack etc. and a lot more. In fact I keep seeing new products coming with different value prepositions. 

When Orkut came, everyone was excited to be connected in the virtual world, share pictures and what they have been upto. In no time, Facebook took over as the de facto space for connecting with people. 

After Facebook, came twitter and then came Instagram. Why? Couldn’t Facebook cater to all the needs of people. All the three are same, connecting people virtually to share a message, news, picture or video. But, still, all the three coexist today with differentiation. 

What is the difference between each one? Facebook became de facto for connecting with friends, sharing updates, pictures, videos etc. Twitter became de facto for sharing messages to an audience in a more simplistic manner. Instagram focused on pictures and now slowly towards videos and advertisements. 

Each of these platforms have their communities and build their culture and it is difficult to measure which is better. 

When we bring this conversation down to Coworking spaces, it becomes difficult for each space to create different cultures and communities, so, insteadspaces focus on building a culture which they wish to represent. Based on what the need is, you use the appropriate platform. 

Technology, can help create cultures by identifying interests and gathering members opinions and then structuring an ecosystem which caters to most of the members. 

When we bring this conversation down to Coworking spaces, it becomes difficult for each space to create different cultures and communities, so, instead of spaces focus on building a culture which they wish to represent. Based on what the need is, you use the appropriate platform. 
Technology can help create cultures by identifying interests and gathering members opinions and then structuring an ecosystem which caters to most of the members. 

A word of caution here, building a community takes a long time and as time progresses, it is also important for spaces to adapt to the changing needs. 

Did we crack the code? It is work-in-progress, but sure there are the building blocks. 

Technology in #Coworking

Leave a reply

In 2016, I quit my full time corporate job to start working on my own. I had an idea of building a consulting firm (even though my heart was in Products).

After few months of working from coffee shops, I stumbled upon a #coworking space which opened near my home and I subscribed for a Hot desk just to see how things would be.

Over the last three years, the scene of #Coworking has completely changed the landscape of Real Estate in India and all over the world.

Fast forward 3 years, with a lot of hard work, we are ready to contribute to how #coworking shapes the future with a SaaS product offering for #Coworking and #SharedOfficeSpace .

Market Growth/Bubble?

Real Estate has been the pillar of any economy and it will continue to do so. However, even real estate promoters are understanding the power of subscription offices. Today, 95% of commercial real estate is based on contracts of lease or ownership and around 5% (I am optimistic here) is becoming subscription based.

When all offerings from a Private Jet to your car are moving towards subscriptions, it is nothing but natural for Real Estate to also explore the possibility.

Enter #Coworking?

All organisation tend to adapt to newer models to cut costs and be more flexible.

#Coworking offers more freedom to employers and employees. According to resent researchers, employees feel more contended and powerful when they work in #coworking spaces. **Why?** Simple reason, they are no longer sitting in cramped desks or meeting rooms, rather occupy inspirational space in a cozy sofa / recliner / bean bag and most importantly they work in spaces with coworkers from many other organisations. They feel special and empowered. It gives sense of mental liberation and allows them to be more productive.

Take myself as an example. Even when I worked in the luxury of a personal cabin, I was not as productive as when I used to travel or once in a while sit in a coffee shop. Even today, as I write this, I am sitting in an airport coffee shop. I have been meaning to write this post for quite sometime, but today, when I just sat here to check my email, the idea just flowed in and I completed writing.

Technology in Coworking

When we started looking at technology, it has not evolved as much to cope with the speed of the evolving business models of coworking and shared office spaces.

Just as fish does not know it is wet, companies often Can’t see or feel the very opportunities they are swimming.

Enter aCubeNow®. We are a SaaS based technology provider to protect your business model with a concrete shell.

We focused on automating simple workflows of a #Coworking and #SharedOfficeSpace from managing the visitors, managing infrastructure, assets, business metrics and last but not the least, creating the experience for your clients/members. Along with this, our API’s work with your website to make it dynamically sell your infrastructure.

It sounds simple but automating Business Models is no joke and it only gets complicated as we get deeper and you expand your operations.

At the end, cutting costs, providing the experience and being the best is what anyone wishes to. What if we say we can help you save up to 20% of your operating costs within the first 12 months?

Don’t believe us? Write to us and we would be more than happy to walk you through what we offer.

Starting a Co-workng space

Leave a reply

Co-working, as a term, moved away from being a verb to a noun.

Starting a Co-working space is both fascinating and capital rich. Inspiring people around you to achieve much more is the key attitude of a Co-working space operation. Over the last year or so, I noticed many Co-working spaces started sprouting up all over the country and all have the same vision – To create inspiring new workspaces. This, in fact, became my inspiration to what I do today.

To start a Co-working space, it is very important to identify key parameters and ensure you build a meaningful correlation between each of the points to ensure the Co-working space is successful. Let us look at a few of them:

Production factors
Co-working spaces which become successful and help incubate best ideas focus on two aspects – Service and Community.

For any Co-working space, providing the right service to its members is the first step to creating a meaningful organization. What are the components of Service? Relationship facilitation, Networking, Events, Community & Communication, Interior Design, Promotions, Alliances & Partnerships, Mentorship Programs, Device support.

Location
Identifying the right location becomes very important for the success of a Co-working space. If we consider India, in Tier 1 Cities, finding a parking spot is one of the major concerns and Co-working spaces struggle to provide ample parking largely due to the price of real estate. It is only natural to think out of the box and provide better ways of reaching the space instead of leaving this point un-attended.

Focus of Co-working space
Recently, ONECo.Work started a co-working space focusing on Blockchain startups. This kind of focus helps Startup’s / SME’s and other organizations who are evaluating co-working spaces identify the right ones for their teams. It also becomes easy for the Co-working space to ensure the right kind of environment is set up and their events become more meaningful to their members. It will also help members of the Co-working space to gain more mileage with other members.

Be Discoverable
It is understandable that after making a heavy investment in the real-estate and infrastructure for building the best Co-working space, it becomes tough for spaces to invest in marketing their offering. The key here is to make oneself discoverable. How to make oneself discoverable? There are many ways – Social Media marketing, listing oneself in aggregators, sponsoring events etc. To better the prospects, it is very important to identify the community you wish to serve and creating programs for the community will help strengthen your workplace.

Events
It is very important to organize the right kind of events to garner attention for members. Constant interaction mechanisms with members provide Co-working spaces the ability to pick the right kind of events for their space. Again, find right ways to make your events discoverable also helps co-working spaces find new people coming and exploring your space. Host events which attract the right kind of audience, for instance, HeadStart, Startup’s Club have monthly events in more than 25 cities across India. Invite them to host a few on your space/location.

Alliances & Partnerships
Why people are beginning to like Co-working spaces is because of the Cost Effectiveness and ability to interact with many others rather than sitting alone in a Coffee shop or at home. No Co-working space can provide all that is required to their members but finding the right alliances who can provide that, would be the best option. It takes away the stress of trying to provide all that members need. Alliances also can help Co-working spaces to create meaningful events and collaborations.

Community Manager
Community Manager is a very key role in a Co-working space. It is very important that you employ the right Community Manager who can understand the aspects of Co-working, be proactive and most importantly be more empathetic towards members. If the Community Manager does not understand their members, trust me, the Co-working space is going to not sustain very long. No matter the pro’s and con’s of Co-working spaces, if the Community Manager cannot bridge members to the Co-working space, it is only a matter of time before the Co-working space loses its value.

Most Co-working space businesses, like any other new business trends enthusiasm, are coming up offering any real estate they have to people who want to find a place to work. However, if you wish to be the best, you will need to focus on what your members want and definitely not what you wish to provide.

Being an Entrepreneur – 1 Year Review

Leave a reply

Last year, in August (precisely on the 11 August), I announced to the world, that I am transitioning to be an entrepreneur.

When I started, had a very big idea to build a Strategy Consulting firm focusing on Ideation and Business Model Validation for start-ups.

In the last one year, have done 4 in person sessions, 2 webinars and have been ideating on 3 ideas out of which 1 is development phase, 1 in ideation phase and 1 in the design phase. Well, what has been my learnings in the last 1 year? Here are few of my experiences.

You will feel lonely – Like it or not, if you are coming from the corporate world where you are working in a team, you will feel very lonely to be on your own. Accept the fact you will no longer have people around you to have a chat, share your experiences, catch up for a lunch/coffee or going out on team outings.

During this time, your Facebook timeline will be filled with more travel check-ins and pictures of fun times at work. Read this as a test for your commitment 🙂

How I handled it, I reduced my FB time. I only browse through the page once in a day and don’t go back to it. Fortunately, there will be one person in your network who will post a motivational quote and that will help you come back to track.

Self-doubt – You will have this each day. Am I in the correct path, am I doing things right? Should I get back to a job? These questions will come to you each day and especially when you look around and people are busy in their lives and when you have a lot more time to ponder about.

STOP self-doubting. Your heart will tell you if you are in the right direction or not. All you have to do is be conscious of what your heart is telling you. If you are not being comfortable with something, then you need to change something. Think of new ways. There are various tools and techniques on the internet, find something which will help you focus. For instance, I used BusinessModelYou, a toolbox for evaluating yourself.

Days are much longer than you thought – When we are in a job, our outlook calendar drives our day. But, when we are on our own, we drive our calendar. There is a lot of difference in this. In a job, you are driven by what the company needs, but when you are an Entrepreneur, you drive what the company needs.

You will be in control of your day. You plan your meetings and you plan what you will need to accomplish over the course of time. Since the time is in your hands, you will feel that the days are longer than you actually thought.

Health improves – Knowingly or unknowingly we take a lot of stress when we are in a job. There are exceptions, I know people who handle stress amazingly well and never let it affect their health. Being an Entrepreneur it is much more stressful than you ever think – Social pressures, responsibilities at home etc take a toll on you. But, if you leave these aside, then life becomes more beautiful.

Meditate – You must have heard this everywhere, but I will put in a simple line. Don’t get carried away with all the jargons you hear, but just focus on one thing – Sit down for ten minutes each day at a said time and just focus on your breathing. That’s all. The key here is the time, stick to a time schedule. If you want to do at 7 in the morning, ensure each day you automatically sit down at 7 for ten minutes, where ever you are in this world.

Accept and Focus – You will see down times more regularly during the start-up phase. Each day will be a roller coaster. Accept it. It’s ok to feel low and depressed. Watch a cartoon movie or an inspirational movie or speech, it will help you regain your confidence.

Find a life coach – If you need to work on building on your strengths and transform the power of your thoughts to reality and you need a little help, find a Life coach. Remember the movie, Dear Zindagi? How does Alia Bhat find herself? Through her coach Shahrukh. I, fortunately, watched this movie after I took life and professional coaching. It made a lot of sense and in fact, I went back to another coach to help me fine tune my learnings. So, don’t be afraid to ask for help. It will change your life.

PS: If you are reading this post and want to know my experiences, don’t hesitate to shout out to me.

Of all the above, before you embark on your entrepreneurial journey, spend time thinking, find your favorite place – a park, coffee shop, a religious place, an ashram or a relaxing center and just think of what you wish to accomplish. Accomplishment here is not money, Yes, all of us want to be rich, but remember, this is a by-product of what you are going to do. So, don’t focus on money, focus on what you want to change or make an impact or remembered for. This is the key. When you begin, the plan will be labyrinth or you might not see anything for tomorrow. Focus on what you want to accomplish and over a period of time things will start falling in place. All you need is to commit to what you want to accomplish.

If it helps, The arc of ambition will give you a very good sense of direction and motivation. This is my bible.

Good luck, more experiences to come…

Troubleshooting Apps on MaC

Leave a reply

This might not be a path-breaking post, but wanted to share how I troubleshooted Firefox not running on my MaC.

Recently, I began to see that my Firefox browser has not been working on my MaC. I removed the application (moving it to trash), reinstalling it etc. But the problem still persisted. As per the MaC, if the application is moved to trash, the same would be completely uninstalled. But, this did not happen. When I downloaded and reinstalled Firefox, the problem persisted and continued.

I used AppZapper and uninstalled Firefox. Then I understood that few of the DLL’s were struck and the whole application was not unistalling completely.

Now I re-installed Firefox and it is working like a zoom… 🙂