The coffee shop staff has had to ask us to scoot our chairs out of the way of the cream and sugar bar about 3 times now, but I’m not complaining. If this is to be our fate, busting at the seams during our first Jelly – I’ll take it! And oh by the way, we’ve spent a lot of money in this and many other coffee shops just like it all across Austin for the last 7 months so I don’t feel too bad about our piecewise mesh of tables and chairs blocking up half of the back area at 360 Primo. If you’re a Small Business Owner or Entrepreneur, you know exactly what I mean about spending too much time trying to get work done at your local Starbucks. What rewards do you get out of your time working at these coffeehouses anyways, if any? Do you meet new people that contribute to your personal or professional network? Have you ever gotten 4 new twitter followers in a week of working at the same shop? How about in 2 hours?

Enter Jelly. For those of you unfamiliar with the term (I would have raised my hand up until about 1 month ago) here is the gist: Jelly is a planned event where a group of people, mostly unacquainted with one another, meet at a coffee shop or similar venue to work, network and socialize. The vibe of Jelly is friendly and this is particularly true at today’s Jelly because Cospace is hosting! Cospace is a community being driven by Kirtus Dixon and Andrew Bushnell. Our intention is to grow our network of small business owner’s, entrepreneurs and other freelance and indepent professionals and eventually open a coworking space in North Austin that will provide the opportunity to communicate, collabarate and cooperate with others chasing the same dream!

Today’s Jelly Roster:
• Nichole Johnson: An ex-coworker of mine, currently the Ad Sales and Distribution piece for L style G style magazine (AMAZING PUBLICATION). Nichole brought a smile, a laptop and shared copies of her magazine with the group. She has been working from home and coffee shops for the past 5 months and was excited to sit down with a group because the energy and vibe.
• Liz Elam: Propietor of Link Coworking. This Jelly was actually supposed to be a meetup with Liz, but it morphed into a Jelly. Liz is currently in the process of locating space for her Coworking facility that will be geared towards corporate professionals in need of a designated work space. She has an amazing gameplan and brings a lot of knowledge about the coworking scene to our Jelly.
• James Laughlin: James is the owner of Site-Now. Site-Now is a local small business that specializes in custom web design and offers a host of web related services. This is our 3rd visit with James and he is clearly on the path to Small Business success. He brings insight, knowledge and really seems to bring new insight into the world of web design.
• Elze H: Elze is an independent software developer with over 10 years of experience. She is visiting our Jelly for the networking opportunities and chance to get out of the house to do some work with others.
• Andrew Bushnell: Tweet him @atbushnell to see what he’s all about. He’s half the brain behindCospace.
• Dee Gardner: Dee is a friend of James’ and brought a ton of energy and runs a unique consulting business. I didn’t get much time with Dee. Andrew said that he brought a lot to our Jelly. Check out his website www.dmgsouth.com.

The reason I wrote a blurb about each person in attendance is because the whole point of a Jelly and Copsace‘s mission is bring together a group of people to build relationships and share resources, passions and networks. The people are what make an event like this cool.

Click for more information about the Cospace Jelly or keep up with us on twitter @cospace.

PS 360 Primo was very nice and the staff was friendly each time they asked us to move. The wifi was great. They just aren’t quite the right set up for a Jelly and we didn’t quite expect to be 7 deep! I reccommend the iced coffee!

Thanks for reading,

Kirtus

Has anyone ever asked you that question?  Why would they? Whether you’re in startup mode or growth mode as a small business, you should be asking yourself that question all the time!  If you had asked me that question before I took a class on Cash Flow Management at BiG Austin, I would’ve answered “pretty important”.  But I didn’t know why or how to use that information.

My next comment would have been, if you are curious what our Cash Flow Statement looks like, ask our accounting guy.  As an Operations and Marketing guy I didn’t understand why I needed to know what our cash flow situation looked like. All I cared about was that we were selling widgets and actively marketing our business and product.

The Real Why? -  It turns out that most small businesses fail because of reasons related to cash flow.  If you’re like me, “Failing” isn’t even in your vocabulary.  But, as I learned, measuring and monitoring your current cash sources and cash needs is essential for the overall health of a business and becomes especially important when a small business is currently or will be seeking funding (which we will be doing soon).  Ok, so after that intro by the guest presenter I was convinced that I should at least learn about our business’s financials.  You should too. I could always go pick up a couple of books.  But that’s not what BiG Austin is all about.  They don’t just give you a checklist and introduction to what is important as an SBO and then cut you loose to figure it out on your own.  They actually give you access to seasonsed professionals that can speak educatedly and share real life experiences about the subject matter. Who might be better suited to present this information than a Financial Manager from with a local VC firm?

Enter Diane Hopingardner.  It was clear from the onset that Diane is a skilled, young professional thoroughly versed in the financial analysis of startups and small businesses.  She has reviewed hundreds of business plans and met with dozens of startups and small businesses looking for funding. Her objective was to present an overview of P&L Statements, Balance Sheets, Cash Flow Statements, etc while simultaneously convincing her audience, mostly small business owners, of the importance of maintaing accurate financial records.  I’ll spare you the two hours worth of details because I assume you will go take the class.

My four biggest takeaways from the class were:
1. Diane emailed me an actual working spreadsheet that she built that I can use as a template to manage my small business Cash Flow Statement.
2. I received a valuable referral.  Diane was interested in our startup status and is referring us to a entrepreneurship group that she is a part of.
3. I received a list of potential funding sources that may be interested in working with startups like us.
4. I received an opinion and some professional input on the viability of our business concept and gameplan.

Those 4 things are invaluable to me, and the fact that BiG Austin provides access to these types of resources is amazing!  Diane volunteered her time which is also amazing.  She gave me all of these things and asked for nothing in return.  I learned about money, met someone who is an integral part of a VC firm, got multiple referrals and expanded my network all over a 2 hour, FREE, lunchtime class.  I can’t think of anything better.  If you’re the money person in your company (like my partner Andrew) and don’t need a lesson in small biz financials, check out the other two posts about classes we took at BiG Austin.  They’ll convice you to drop by.

Thanks for reading,

Kirtus

This is a review of a class taught at BiG Austin by Brent Buford. Brent is the owner of eBlox. eBlox specializes in E-commerce, integration and consulting for promotional products and apparel distributors and suppliers. For more information, please visit www.eblox.com

As Ali G put it once, “techmology, what is it that all about?”

Exactly.

Luckily, just as I was asking myself that question, I stumbled upon BiG Austin. And less than 1 week later I was sitting in their classroom, attending a class about how to get on the web. Brent Buford was teaching the class; A 3 part course on how to get on the internet properly. What I’m hoping you get from this post is the Brent knows what he is talking about when it comes to all of these topics. His class was fun, and very informative. He has a lot of this information and more on his blog. Don’t judge his class or teaching style by my writing. Brent’s teaching is much better than my writing. Know that it is a very good class that I highly recommend to any small business owner who needs to be on the web. It will save you hours and hours of valuable time by setting you up to do things the right way from the start. I’ll tell you a little about my experience in the class.

The first day was about the basics. First he talked about the reasons we should be on the web. That was why we were there, so he didn’t need to convince anyone. Then he went through the 5 steps for getting it done: Domain name, web provider, design, search engine submission, and going live. Brent had answers for every question the class could come up with. I was personally interested in learning more about web providers and site design going in. I came out also knowing some about getting the site listed on Google and the requirements for doing so. I learned that content is king in website design, especially now in the days of SEO. And I learned about Google’s analytical tools for measuring statistics about a website.

The second class was about SEO, or search engine optimization. This was a brand new topic to me at the time. Google (and other search engines) has to sort through millions of pages when a person submits a search. SEO makes sure that if a person is trying to find your page about cat jewelry (Brent favorite thing in the world) they can. I learned that keywords are a very important part of SEO, but there are also other important parts. Trust and relevance are the big words in this class. Your website has to earn Google’s trust. Google trusts website that have been around for a long time, and will continue to be around in the future. It also trusts websites that other people are linking to. With the links, relevance is important. Your cat jewelry website should have inbound links from Cat Fancy or Jewelry Today websites, not your cousins T-Shirt making website. We then learned about using Google’s tools again to make sure that you are doing the best you can at optimizing your website. It takes time.

The third class was about web advertising. Brent went through the basics of how to plan a web advertising strategy, creating that strategy, and then executing the strategy. Basically everything. Again it all boils down to keywords, knowing your target audience, and catering to them. This is the stage of the game that Cospace is in, so I don’t have a lot to give you all right now. if you want more information, check out Brent’s Blog

I hope this pointed some people in the right direction.

Andrew

If you’re a small business owner, an entreprenuer, a startup or anybody else diving head first into the world of building or growing a business (and you live in Austin, TX) I strongly urge you to check out BiG Austin. This organization provides very valuable tools, resources and information to small business owners for FREE! Your Cospace catalysts (Andrew and Kirtus) were referred to the program by another small business owner that we met downtown. She shared her success story with us which included receiveing a microloan from BiG Austin that helped her quit her job as a teacher and pursue her dream of opening a small business with her best friend. The Cospace dream is to open a coworking space in North Austin, so we thought “why not check it out?” What we found far exceeded our expectations. BiG Austin is a small business development center that offers you access to SBA loans, free training classes and individual consultations. They can help you with everything from writing your business plan to learning how to build your website.

We’ve taken 3 of their free training classes (Web Design Basics, Social Media & Managing Cash Flow). All 3 were fantastic. We will write posts about our experience in each class with a big shout out to the instructors. BiG Austin connects you with very legitimate small business owners and industry professionals that have great knowledge, a lot of skill and experience in their industry and a large personal and professional network. In today’s age of Guerrila Marketing every touch is important and every relationship can turn into profit for a small business. BiG Austin also realizes that the best form of marketing is helping your potential customers or clients achieve their goals. Our current goal is to build our community of Small Business Owners and Entreprenuers looking for an opportunity to regain the social aspects that the traditional office setting provides, without all of the drawbacks that come from a traditional office. Right now, it’s all about who you know and who knows you. BiG Austin has helped us propel Cospace forward on this front as we made some extremely valuable connections during our 6 hours of free class time!

Kirtus

We want Cospace to be a place for current or future small business owners to work and learn with other small business owners.  Being a small business owner, I am already going through the ups and downs of building businesses.  It’s even weird to say businesses plural, because six months ago all I wanted was one.  Now I have two.  So you can imagine I will feel some pain and some joy.  My hope is that by writing about these experiences, I can help others who may also be feeling these same pains.  Also, I have become more interested in history over the last few years.  I want to have a written record of where I started and what I went through so I can look back on it in 1, 5 or even 20 years and see how far I have come.  It’s exciting and fascinating to me.  So sit back, relax and enjoy the ride.  If anyone is reading that is.

Andrew

Welcome to the start of cospace. We will be opening a coworking office in Northwest Austin soon. Right now I’m just trying to figure out how to make this page work so we can deliver all of our updates to you. Don’t worry, it will get much better soon. Thanks for stopping by.

Andrew