In Good Company Workplaces Is A Case Study For Innovation

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This story is not just about women entrepreneurs who have a service that is available only to women, it is also about what both men and women can learn about innovation and branding from the story of these two courageous entrepreneurs. So if you are a woman entrepreneur in the NYC area, or you know one, take special note, this may be a service you need. But if you are a guy anywhere on free-enterprise earth, I encourage you to man-up and listen. This is no chick-flick post.

First, let’s get this part straight. If you have the ‘Sixth Sense’, you can ’see dead people.’ But it takes a seventh sense to see innovative opportunity lying dormant within common items available to anyone, and which already exist in a sea of competitors. Allow me to introduce the business equivalent of Haley Joel Osment’s sequel characters, Adelaide Fives and Amy Abrams. They ’see innovation.’

Adelaide Fives and Amy Abrams created In Good Company Workplaces, a co-working environment concept for women entrepreneurs in New York City that does for office space what Starbucks did for the concept of drinking coffee - they have taken a commodity offering and created an customer experience that puts them in a league of their own.

But make no mistake about it, Adelaide and Amy are not selling real estate on a per-square-foot plan. They are offering:

• the ability to connect with people who are engaged in the entrepreneurial experience
• relief from the oppressive isolation that assaults nearly every solo or new entrepreneur
• the benefits of belonging to a group without having to become someone’s employee or someone’s employer
• the freedom to be in whatever stage you are and be stretched to reach new heights, while retaining control over how much and how often.

It is collaborative, flexible, user-defined and invigorating.

Look at the similarities: Prior to Starbucks, coffee came black or with sugar or cream. Starbucks made coffee an experience with sound, smells, colors of the room, furniture and, perhaps most important, the user-defined ingredients - no matter how finicky the customer. Want a half-caff, 160 degree, non-fat, extra foam, blah, blah, blah……? User-defined. That and ambiance turned a mundane old-school drink into a social experience.

In Good Company Workplaces provides user-defined access to a workspace shared by women entrepreneurs. Prior to this, office space came in fixed length leases on a per-square-foot basis or executive suites that merely sell the same attributes on a fractional basis. In Good Company Workplaces creates an experience of connectivity, camaraderie, learning, mentoring, brainstorming, teamwork and networking. And these experience-based benefits are free. The product you pay for in this case is office space. The details of the offering are discussed in the podcast, so I will not repeat them here.

I strongly encourage you to listen to the podcast. It was a very enjoyable experience for Michelle Monroe and I to interview both Adelaide and Amy. In the podcast, there are details about their entrepreneurial journey, the benefits of what they are doing, and lessons learned that I am not covering in this text. But here are several nuggets that I think warrant special treatment for anyone (big company or first-time entrepreneur) trying to decide their next move in a congested competitive environment.

1. Mix utility features with which everyone is already familiar with emotional benefits that are extremely positive.

Office space for entrepreneurs is hardly innovative, whether you are in the Big Apple or anywhere else. People know they need the space in every major city. The defensiveness is down, the consumers are looking for it. No need to sell the need for office space. The utility is safe and understood. Where Adelaide’s and Amy’s brilliance shines is how they packaged very positive and crucial human emotional needs with the simple utility of office space. Entrepreneurs must connect with customers, they must know their competitors. Entrepreneurs cannot live under a rock and survive. But a solo entrepreneur or a small business with few employees can be profoundly disconnected from the conductive energy that can only come from human interaction. Broadband to the home office, smart phones and wireless laptops on the move can be inadequate to facilitate the human interactivity that entrepreneurs need to stay fresh, sharp and relevant. Adelaide and Amy don’t sell real estate, they just happen to make it available to entrepreneurs smart enough to recognize their need for community and connection.

2. Experience = Brand. Brand = Memorability. Memorability = Repeat Sales. Repeat Sales = Valuable Business.

When I ask you to name the three most important words in real estate, how long does it take you to say, “Location, Location, Location”? You likely knew the answer. It is just speed of recall that I questioned. That is how ingrained that ‘wisdom’ is in our collective assumption about what drives value for office space. Such ‘wisdom’ often becomes its own rule and rules can be confining - too confining. Sometimes we have to break the rules with new wisdom. I would hate to be a competitor to Adelaide and Amy in a comparable location of convenience and quality. They’ve changed the rules. For them, it is “Experience, Experience, Experience.” They have created an opportunity for the customer to have an experience, not just a space. The best branding strategies are experiential. We live in information overload. Our minds remember experiences better than we remember data. This sort of business model is very scalable to other markets - very brand-scalable.

3. People buy to satisfy basic human needs that predate your gadget by thousands of years more than they buy technical wizardry created last quarter.

The more mobile we become, the more our communication devices become attached to our person, the more accessible we are to customers and suppliers, the more disconnected we can become from the human interaction that sustains us. Michelle said it best after we had concluded the interview when she said, “The more we adopt new devices to save time, the more crowded and time-starved we can become if we are not careful.” No matter what expo is running 24/7 in Vegas this week, no matter what new technology is taking the world by storm, people need to be inspired. We need to be encouraged. We need to know we are not alone in how we feel. We need to hear what others have done to overcome obstacles we’re facing now, so we don’t waste time reinventing the wheel. Entrepreneurship is about people. So when we disconnect from people because we are so connected to devices that keep us busy, we are not just time-starved, we are connection-starved. It is felt in how much we love what we do, how good we are at doing it, and how others perceive our offering.

Adelaide and Amy are selling access to emotional and mental resources that every entrepreneur must stock up on routinely. They allow the user to define the dosage, but keep the experience positive. And they packaged it in something every entrepreneur needs: office space.

Brilliant.

It was right there all around us in every city, and where we saw real estate, they saw innovation. Who would have thought, “Hey, let’s make a business to meet the core emotional, mental, intellectual and relational needs of entrepreneurs, and we’ll attract them with office furniture.”

Seventh sense. They see innovation. I rest my case.

Enjoy the podcast available below. Whether they decide to franchise or license the concept, or do corporate owned expansions, just remember they are not selling office space. They just happen to provide office space. They sell at a level people have been buying from since commerce began. On behalf of Michelle and myself, congratulations on the innovation that is elegantly simple and profoundly needed.

To learn more about In Good Company Workplaces’ benefits and pricing, click here.

For a list of upcoming In Good Company Workplaces member events, click here.

To read more about the In Good Company Workplaces story, click here.

Or visit the In Good Company Workplaces home page at http://www.ingoodcompanyworkplaces.com.

How would you expand this business if you were Adelaide and Amy? Franchise, license, company-owned locations? What branding and messaging tips would you give Adelaide and Amy? We want to hear from you! Comment section is below for text comments, and if you have a Viddler account (it’s free) you can post a video comment.

Enjoy the podcast here!

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  Interview with Adelaide Fives and Amy Abrams of In Good Company Workplaces (33.8 MiB, 411 hits)

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