Business Inspires welcomes Versa Coworking to this episode. Brought to you by The Village Of Marble Cliff
Business Inspires Podcast welcomes Versa Coworking
: Hi this is Michelle Wilson I'm the executive director of the TriVillage Chamber Partnership. And this morning we are speaking with April Zimmerman Katz who is the president of Zimmerman Companies and the founder of Versa. And we're actually sitting in Versa at 1201 Dublin Road. So thank you for joining me today.
: Thank you for having me.
: This is exciting. We've done a few podcasts here and the space works really beautifully so glad to finally have you and find out what you what your inspirations were to have this space and start this space. But we always try to start this podcast off with. What did you want to be when you were young what did you want to grow up to?
: Oh wow OK I wasn't expecting that question!
: You are from Columbus right?
: I am from Columbus, right. I come from a long line of entrepreneurs and we've been in Columbus as far back as my great great grandparents. As far as I'm aware of. So we've been in business in the city for a long time. I think at one point I thought I wanted to be a marine biologist. But then it occurred to me that I really did not like to be in the ocean. So I like to look at it. But I like to be in it so that wasn't going to work out for me.
: And then I went towards art. So I've always had an artistic streak. I was an art major in college. Studio art major in college. And these days my artistic tendencies are manifesting themselves in space.
: Yes this place is beautiful and Oliver tells us that you did everything here. Every bit of decorating and interior design was all inspired you.
: Well I won't take credit for all of it. I have a great team. But I do have a specific aesthetic that I like and I like found objects. I like to blend different kinds of things so well our architectural team brought in great architectural elements so the spokes that hang from the ceiling and those kinds of details that are really unique in the space. And then we had some people who helped with color schemes. But yes I was part of all of that have very strong opinions about what I want to see and how I want to see it.
: And I go as far as I can with the design professionals and then I like to fill in the rest so I like to shop at flea markets. I like found objects and I spend a lot of time filling in all of the gaps with that. And I think it gives the space personality.
: Oh it does and I love how well this is a very large space but there's so many nooks and crannies that have their own personality. But it all flows so beautifully together. And I love that I cannot do that to save my life. I wish I could my house as well, I will talk about my house, but it's really beautiful here. And I think everybody can find a space that's very comfortable for them.
: Thank you. That's not our goal.
: Well you did a great job. And. So having the artistic background and major certainly plays into what you're doing today. So even at a young age you kind of knew what you liked and wanted to do and you turned that into a career.
: Yes. I needed to be creating something. And I love color and texture and design. And I think that's it adds richness to the fabric of our lives.
: Absolutely. Good for you. Before Versa you kind of worked hand in hand with your husband Kyle. Is that true?
: Well yes and no. We worked together on a project before we started Versa. So I have been running a family business the third generation apart in multifamily.
: And that Zimmerman Companies?
: Yes. So we have had properties throughout Columbus for four decades. More than that now I actually think the's 1970's. So we're getting closer to five decades. And I came to work inside the apartment business in 1999. I was newly single and had three kids and I needed a job. And so I went to work renting apartments and I loved every minute of it.
: What did you love about that?
: What I loved was getting to meet new people all the time. I really enjoy that. I get a lot of energy from other people. These were people who were making big decisions about how they were going to spend their money on the most expensive part of their budget. It doesn't matter what level of apartment that is that holds true whether it's a 500 dollar apartment or fifteen hundred dollar apartment. There's that expectation that people have of being treated well and having a friendly face. And I loved it. So I worked my way up through the ranks of the apartment business. And now I am in part I'm a partnership with my father and he also owns Olympic Indoor Tennis. So that falls now under that umbrella of the companies that we own and manage.
: That's part of Columbus fiber right?
: Yes. So originally my great grandfather had a Olympic swim the Olympic Swim Club. And my family owned that through various generations until 2014 as a pool. And then I purchased the property in 2014 and built The Deco which is a mixed use project. Kyle helped me build that. He is a developer. He's particularly good at that. And so he helped my father and I build The Deco over on the pool property. The tennis property is still there, next door and getting ready to open for forty-third season in September 2018. So yes that was a very exciting opportunity for Kyle and I to work together.
: So I did a lot of the design work. Once again I think at times the architects were probably tired of seeing me because I had a lot of opinions about how I wanted it to look. And we had a great time working on that project together. And so we sort of rolled into this project from that one.
: There was an article earlier this year that says that Kyle was quoted saying "I find and build it, she fills it and runs it." That kind of simplifies a lot of work I'm sure.
: It does.
: It's a pretty neat way to sum up what you both do and how you compliment each other.
: Yeah we figured out that we have different superpowers and yeah it's better to not step on one another's toes in those situations. We've found it to work so far. We're having a lot of fun.
: And clearly having fun is key when you're talking working with your spouse. We interviewed Steve Weaver a few months back who owns The Candle Labs, and he and his wife started The Candle Labs and they've really grown the business and he says if it were up to him he'd have a thousand stores all over the place and if it were up to her she'd have one that's run just perfectly. And I love that and I love that they figured it out and they have a handful of stores and they're very deliberate about what they do and what they each bring to the table. So I think it has to be finding a balance of what your superpowers are and and having fun because that could be disastrous otherwise.
: When you're in business together your day never ends. So you are at work all day long. And then you're home. And he and I do not see each other over the course of the day. He has Katz Development and he's over at The Buggy Works and I am here in this building. And so we don't really lay eyes on each other until the end of the day. Like most couples. And then we have lots of things to talk about.
: So, I did have someone ask us at one point "How do your children feel? What is the talk around the dinner table sound like at your house?".
: Right. That is interesting.
: We're always talking about business or new opportunities or whatever. Sometimes the girls put a stop to that. "No business tonight!".
: But I think it can be cool that when there's exciting things happening or successes you really deeply understand what those successes mean and what was behind them so you can share that experience each other.
: So let's talk about Versa. So this is a very large space. I think it's larger than what's around.
Yes.
: Is that true?
: Yes.
: OK.
: At the moment.
: At the moment right. Because this as I as I was saying this industry has just really taken off in the past five years in its projections on growth are just crazy. But this is a very large space. And what attracted you to the larger space and was it a concern? Was it just the challenge of it or all of the above?
: So I had this wild idea. I'd heard a little bit about coworking. I was interested in what it was because I was already in the business of essentially renting space. And I was just hearing just the beginnings of this. I convinced my husband to go to a conference with me and it was very interesting. It was the spaces that people were talking about at that conference were anywhere from three to maybe eight thousand square feet. Some people were just on the verge of the ten to fifteen thousand square feet when we were there. Moving very very quickly. So Kyle is well versed in figuring out economies of scale. And when you put all of that infrastructure into space, 5000 square feet, it's really hard to make that work. So pretty quickly we abandoned the idea of five thousand square feet. We were looking at 15000 square feet. And then we stumbled upon this building.
: We didn't stumble. We were brought to this building, very intentionally, by our wonderful brokers and we just thought that it was just an amazing building.
: I mean it has water views. There was so much natural light in the building. And so we thought well we were just going to make the ground floor and the first floor coworking to begin with. And that would have been about 18000 square feet on the first floor and another 12 down here on the ground level. But as we were moving ahead over the course of building it out, spaces were going from 15000 to 20000. It was a process of many many many months to lay all of this out and get the business up and running. And also a new user was coming in to the arena and that was an enterprise user. So whole companies of size that wanted to be able to come in and get right to work and not have to worry about working with a broker, working with a contractor, working with an architect building out their space.
: Entrepreneurs, companies who are in existence with multiple employees.
: And so at that point I decided to build out the second floor and make it part of the space. And I know that Kyle thought I was losing my mind because it brought us to 37000 square feet in the building for Versa. And it was far exceeded any of the competition. With that it's definitely slower to get members. When you're talking about that many square feet. We did manage to get in a whole company on the second floor. Singularity University is here. They moved in August 2018 and we're super excited to have them..
: They have all of the second floor?
: Yes.
: Because when we toured it a few months ago it wasn't quite completed. It was almost there and it was really just waiting for that enterprise.
: So they came in and made the decision relatively quickly which is really the essence of what coworking allows companies to do. It allows them to move fast and to get down to business quickly.
: So how do you think that's affected real estate and people signing five, 10 year leases? And I don't mean that just here, I mean the flex space, coworking space availability?
: Well you know it's scary when you're a growing company to sign a long term lease. When you've been in business for a long time and you've got lots of credit and financials to back up those positions and your growth is steady and you know where you're headed, then that makes sense. And we do see a lot of people who come in. Not as many now. But when we first opened, people really curious about what we were doing here, but just didn't understand what we were doing here. the sort of "Why would I do this when I can do that?".
: So there's been a huge learning curve in Columbus when we started. There was a learning curve for the brokers. There was a learning curve for landlords. There is a learning curve for architects in designing the spaces. And then of course the learning curve for the end user. So we had a lot to battle.
: One of the things though is that there have been some accounting changes where long term leases now have to be accounted for on the balance sheet. That can really be devastating for a small company. So if a small enterprise were to sign a five year lease, they have to put the entire five year lease on their balance sheet as a liability like a mortgage would be.
: And if they have a five year option on it they have to put that on it as well. So all of a sudden you have a tremendous liability against potentially a growing company. Where you may or may not know how fast you're going to grow, or if you're going to grow. And this can make a big difference in your ability to raise money. There are lots of different things. I'm not an accountant but I have researched this a lot because it makes a difference and we found that it makes a difference to the people who are here.
: We have a little bit more of a mature membership here. So people who have been in business for a little while. Not long, but long enough to know the direction that they really want to head and maybe have had some kind of space before. And are really ready to hit the ground but also to have a professional face on what they're trying to accomplish.
: People can walk in this building and have conference space and have had the things that they would have in their own long term lease space. So is this month to month?
: It can be. We have different membership levels and some of them can be month to month. So coworking can be month to month. We have what we call community membership which allows an individual or a company who has their own space, but at times needs to access spaces like this or conference room space. Somebody who really likes to perhaps work from home, but they have to meet clients and they can't do it at the dining room table, Panera or Starbucks. It's not appropriate for what they're doing. And so we have a community membership that allows those users to come in and have member pricing on all of our open spaces. And then also join us for all the fun stuff we do.
: So let's talk about some of the fun stuff. I mean I think that's that's a lot of the appeal. Besides not having a long term lease, but having a lot of great amenities at somebody's disposal for a great price every month that somebody can afford.
: So what are some of those amenities that people can look forward to a Versa?
: Well I like to start off with really what we talked about before which was design which makes a difference. Everybody who is starting a business is good at exactly what they're doing great. That doesn't mean that they're good at all of the other things that need to be done. You may be great at tech but terrible at H.R. Every entrepreneur in the world, every growing business, understands this point.
: A lot of people want a great space and great design. They can't afford it or they don't know how to do it. And so we get a lot of feedback just as people walk right through the doors and say "Wow the space is really beautiful and I really love the way it feels." We have heard that it feels much different from any of the other competitors. That has a lot more eclectic feel to it. So there's that that they got which already has a sort of a feel to it that is more professional and more beautiful than they may be able to afford or achieve on their own. We have a cafe of course which is right in the front and that includes drinks and snacks and lots and lots of coffee. We get all of our coffee from Crimson Cup. And it's a great hub for people to sort of come and go throughout their day. and great place to meet, say hello in the morning to each other, other entrepreneurs that are here.
: Because this does give these enterprise companies an opportunity to interact with other businesses and other minds. And connect on different levels.
: We do have happy hour on Thursday nights because why not?
: Because why not!
: Often we have it out on the balcony in the back where we can look over the water. It's also one of the amenities that we have. We have outdoor space here with great views and people really take advantage of it. We've really seen that of course over the summer months where people take their laptop and go sit under an umbrella on a beautiful day and get to spend their day working in that kind of an atmosphere. The other amenities that we have here includes lots of different conference spaces. So we have everything from four person spaces to 12 to 16 to a conversation room which can hold 50 comfortably. And then we have the studios. We have two studios on the lower level that are classroom style, and can hold up to 70 people in those spaces. So we have lots of different spaces available for people for whatever they might need.
: And is that available to nonmembers to rent that space out?
: Yes we have member and non-member availability for all of our spaces. So it's been a great opportunity for people to come in and see this space. And we've had lots of different organizations in here. And it's great to have everyone come and be a part of what we're doing. I think it would be very short sighted to not include the community at large in what we're trying to do here. And having this be an asset for Columbus. Being a member has its privileges. So we do have Member Pricing on things but yes we're very excited to welcome lots of different organizations to the space.
: I ask that because you sit on the edge of Grandview Heights and there's not a lot of meeting space that would hold 50 to 70 people. That space is really very limited and at a premium in the immediate community. But then you're also right on the edge of downtown and so I'm sure that you could really market that beautifully to some overflow meeting space for downtown meeting, convention attendees.
: We like to think that downtown is an amenity. And Grandview would be as well. This lovely community, lots of places where you can go and have a wonderful meal and all that is so close.
: Yes we have lots of people here that loved the idea of being downtown but don't want to be downtown.
: Parking
: Yes we do have free parking here, which is different from our competitor. Most of our competitors of size. We're getting ready to open our second location in the Arena District here in just the next couple of weeks.
: That was my next question, let's transition right into that. Let's talk about that. You're going to be right on Nationwide Boulevard?
: Nationwide and Neil.
: So you're right in the middle in the heart of the Nationwide Arena and the Clippers stadium, you are going to be right there. What a great space! So what will that be? How will that be different than this space, or will it mirror it?
: It will be a more intimate space. It's only 12000 square feet, so it's smaller. The building is just fantastic and the location is great. And there is parking on the site. So that is available to members. And that makes it a different kind of a space for the Arena District.
: Free parking?
: It's not free parking. But I do have that available right there for our members. We have about 46 spots there. Well I think be very very helpful.
: One of the things that we find in coworking rate is that not everybody is here every day. They come and go. Some people are here every day. But a lot of people aren't. People don't necessarily need a parking spot. All of the time. So we are we are really pushing the boundaries of flexibility inside of this business.
: And we're trying to pare all of that with great hospitality. So one of the other amenities I would say is that we have a hospitality director here who is really very dedicated to making sure that everyone's experience in the space is great. Everyone who has a board meeting or a vistage meeting or conference or whatever. All of their needs are taken care of.
: It's a very nice amenity to have somebody on staff.
: It really is. Because it allows you to come in and do what you need to do and not have to worry about it. So again it's one of those opportunities that we provide to business owners and entrepreneurs where it lets them do what they need to do and not worry about the other things. We'll take care of the other things. You get down to business. That's why you're here.
: I love that. I had no idea. I did read that you had hired people from the hospitality industry but I didn't realize that they were very focused on doing those types of things for your members. That is really special. I love that. So with the new Versa location, who will you be attracting to that space versus the space. Or will it just be the same marketing plan?
: We already have pre licensed several of those spaces. We have found that a lot are people who are living right there in the neighborhood. So they're coming out of the condominiums there or close by. They want to be able to walk to work. Maybe right now they're working from home. And very excited about not working from home anymore and having something that's just really right there.
: That location also has several offices that are larger sized. So we have a lot more 4, 5, 6, 8 person offices than we do here. We hear we have a lot of 1, 3, or larger size spaces sold out right away here in Grandview Heights. And so we built out some larger spaces there. And and we're getting a lot of traction on that. So people with four or five employees who once again if you want to be in the Arena District, and you have a small firm of four or five people, really where are you going to go?
: Right. And like you said and have the amenities of just beautiful office space that's very impressive to clients when you walk in and it may be something that they couldn't have if they were furnishing and decorating on their own. And it really is very impressive and atmospheric. So that's great. I love it here.
: And I can't wait to show our new space.
: I know I can't wait to see it.
: I'm really excited about it.
: I was asking on the way in about the big scroll on the top of the what's going to happen with that.
: We're working on that. We're working on that. So we keep scraping it down and with every layer it still says Business First, which is fine. We love Business First and we're excited. They've been very curious about what we have done inside the space, and we look forward to having them come and see what we've done. They're going to get the first peek at it. It's all in process, let's put it that way. We did get our name on the building last week. But we still have the Business First scroll on the top.
: But it's so noticeable that you know keeping doing something differently with it's going to be just great, because it's really noticeable. And eye catching.
: So how can people find out more about Versa?
: You can find us online. We're at Versa dot works. And we have lots of information there. You can stop in so we take walk ins and we have our staff who is here Monday through Friday from 8a to 6p, they're here. Give us a call. So we have you Amy Minahan who is our Director of the space here, and Oliver Coffey who you have met. Trey who is doing our business development and we're all having a lot of fun. So we would welcome anyone who wants to check out what this is all about to come and see.
: And you know not every space is right for every person.
: But that's the beauty of this.
: That's the beauty of this. There's lots to learn about this trend that's happening and we're late to the trend as far as in the United States. So as always, the coast go first. But we're picking up steam quickly. You know people are really figuring this out.
: And it's really going to be a nice way for people to connect with one another and to work either independently or in small groups or like I said in enterprises. But allows them to get done what they need to do, and not worry about the stuff, the distractions.
: The distractions, right, because you're taking care of that for them.
: Right.
: And so Versa dot works. I would really encourage everybody listening to stop in and meet the staff and see this space and take a look around because it really is beautiful and unique and I think there's something for just about everybody. So I would encourage everybody to come in. But thank you for joining us and giving us a little more insight and diversity and we look forward to the next one opening soon.
: Yes, thank you.
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