This article takes a look at the coworking business model.

It’s a great read for persons seeking to establish a coworking business.

Ever wanted to establish a real estate business but got held back by the specifics? Such specifics may be related to the intended customer base, financing details, sources of revenue, and more.

When this happens, you’ll need to have a business model in place to serve as a guide towards achieving set objectives.

A well-laid-out model serves to create ongoing value for customers. It considers key operational areas that seek to make a business grounded in terms of the value it brings to clients.

What Your Coworking Business Model Does

A lot of times, people miss the point about what a model is all about.

Compared to a coworking space business plan, the model is quite shorter and contains basic details about how your coworking business will make money.

In defining how a business makes money, you’ll need to describe what the business has to offer.

Also, you’ll need to state why customers should patronize your business instead of belonging to your competition.

Three main uses of the coworking business model include serving as a tool that summarizes and describes your business within a page.

This can be further expanded into a plan. Secondly, your coworking business model should allow you to experiment with the different ways to structure costs and revenue streams.

Thirdly, it helps you stay on task or refines your focus as well as that of employees and potential investors.

Key Elements of A Coworking Business Model

To successfully draft a sound business model, you’ll need to know the key elements or sections to include. Each of these sections touches on vital areas of importance to your coworking business.

They include value chain structure, value proposition & market segment as well as position in the market.

Other elements of this model include revenue generation strategies, long-term strategy, determining key business partners, and allowing for innovation. Also included is the need to record vital business resources.

Let’s further discussion on each of these sections for more clarity.

i. Value Chain Structure

What’s the value chain structure about?

A coworking space offers a lot of related activities. It’s your duty to brainstorm on such activities to demonstrate how much value they bring to your services.

Remember, the more value a business offers, the more attractive it is to clients and investors.

ii. Value Proposition & Market Segment

Within this section, you want to include information on how your business solves customer needs.

Of course, having or establishing a coworking space helps provide a central and conducive work environment for people from diverse fields.

You want to state the value of your service as perceived by the client or customer. Here, you want to focus on the branding, customer relations as well as the quality of service being rendered.

With the value proposition, you get to distinguish your coworking business from those of competitors.

What more? Identifying your market segment helps connect you to the clients in need of the services you offer. This enables you to develop proper marketing approaches and strategies to reach them.

In other words, you get to appeal to your target market directly, thus leading to more patronage or sales.

iii. Position in the Market

What’s your position in the market? This may sound quite vague but it isn’t.

To fully understand what this element or section is about, you’ll have to consider your competitors. Now, these competitors offer similar coworking services to yours.

To stand out, you’ll have to identify your strengths in terms of how your coworking business differs from theirs. More importantly, the quality of service and pricing will count.

Is there anything or edge that helps you sell your spaces faster?

If there is, that’s your edge and it must be stated.

iv. Revenue Generation Strategies

Revenue generation is crucial to running a successful coworking business.

As such, it should be included in the model. Here, you want to clearly state how or where earnings for your coworking business will flow from.

How many revenue streams are there?

The more revenue streams there are the better. Additional revenue may be generated from value-added services. Such may be sold (in the form of products), or be subscribed to. It all depends on creativity.

Consider coming up with something appealing and useful to your clients.

v. Long-Term Strategy

Every successful business is established to have it outlast its founders. As such, a long-term strategy for success needs to be adopted and followed.

This includes developing a competitive edge and position in the market that lasts for as long as possible.

vi. Determining Key Business Partners

Who are you in business with? Are you in a partnership? A partnership can have a broad meaning as it could refer to business partners coming together to start a coworking business.

It could also refer to key alliances entered into with advertising partners and any other businesses that help promote the growth of your coworking space.

With key alliances comes success. You’ll need to figure out what options you have and how these options contribute to the steady growth of your business.

  • Allowing for Innovation

One of the vital areas needed for sustainable growth has to do with leaving room for innovation.

With a coworking business, there’s always room for innovation. Innovation has a lot to do with creative ways to enhance service delivery and also to improve revenue streams.

Of course, such revenue streams will have to come from services that are needed and useful to clients. Your coworking business model is never a static document and should enable you to fine-tune your strategies among other things.

  • Need to Record Vital Business Resources

The everyday operation or functioning of your coworking business is guaranteed by certain resources. It’s your job to identify these and have them included as part of your growth strategies.

Some examples of these business resources include customer lists, capital as well as a website among many others.

This coworking business model template should enable you to establish a solid business.

Once modeled after, the inclusion of key details relating to your daily operations should help you succeed.