Brown Couch Consulting

Since I have more ideas than time (I am borrowing this line from a friend – Greg Raiz), I have to write them here in the hopes that someone picks them up and uses them to do some good.

So – here is my idea.  I met a couple of women who are starting out as independent attorneys in the Boston/Brookline/Newton area and are looking to share office space.  I think that someone should start the Zipcar equivalent of office space rental.  For example, there would be a building with, say, 5 personal offices, a receptionist, a main number with several extensions, Internet and a coffee pot with a never ending supply. You’d have to pay some nominal fee for the year – say $200 – to partake in this venture.  Then you’d have to rent the office space by the hour.  I’m not sure how much an hourly rate should be, but I’m guessing that something around $20 dollars should be able to cover the cost while being affordable.  

This setup would allow the contractors to keep costs to a minumum because they would only use the office when they were meeting with clients or when they needed some quiet time and place to work.  There would also have to be a conference room. 

I think that if the prices were right and the marketing was done correctly, they would really be able to make this a good profitable venture out of this.   You’d have to figure out a way to track hours of who occupied what office for how long.  Perhaps the card readers most companies use to give access to facilities for their employees would do the trick. Finally someone would be open about tracking time with those things.

And, so? Any takers?

I attended a meeting yesterday on Effective Networking orgnized by the various groups on Brookline that support women-owned businesses.  Usually, these networking things spend about 95% of the time with a guest speaker who talks all about the different tactics on networking and then 5% of the meeting is alloted to meeting the people present and well, networking.  I was pleasantly surprised that this meeting was actually more intent on us putting the networking advise to practice rather than sitting in uncomfortable chairs listening to a speaker drone on and on.

So, what’s so funny about this event?  Well, you see, there was a raffle from the attendee’s business cards – pretty standard stuff. I didn’t have a business card, so I filled out a blank.  I completely forgot about this towards the end of the meeting because I met amazing people and the raffle had not real consequence to the proceedings.  So, as with all of these things, there is usually a raffle administrator looking for someone to pull cards from the pile.   I step up and lend a helping hand (literally) and yank a card.  In my usual, off handed way, while I do this, I say – “Would it be a problem if I pulled out mine?”  A split second later I pulled out my business card from a pile of at least 60 cards.