After opening in September of 2017, Forge has grown and changed more than we could have imagined! We’ve learned so much over 2018 and thought it would be fun to recap the highlights of the Forge family over this last year.
We’ve saved a lot of entrepreneurs and remote workers from overcrowded, stuffy coffee shops. Our members love coming to Forge’s atmosphere with an unlimited supply of coffee and tea- plus a fun community of hustlers!
here’s what Forge can save you from
The size of the Forge family has continued to grow over 2018!
In January, we had 67 members.
In December, we have 121 members!
We have nearly doubled in size.
Celebrating Forge’s 1st birthday with some members and friends.
This year we hosted 22 educational Lunch & Learn events!
Josh Andrews of Gatehouse Law teaches at Forge each month.
In 2018 we hosted 12 Free Fridays for the public to come work at Forge! Free Fridays are the perfect time for people to try out coworking and experience the environment at Forge.
Forge also hosted 4 pitch night events to learn about new Birmingham businesses- Your Big Idea.
At Your Big Idea, three businesses present their big idea for feedback from the audience and panelists. It’s not a competition but an opportunity to support the growing businesses in Birmingham!
Your Big Idea: a pitch night for Birmingham businesses.
We organized 5 Founders Fridays to hear the journey of different Birmingham founders.
Erin Holtz- Founder of Pure Fitness
Not only do we focus on educational events to serve our members but we host lots of the fun, networking events. Along with several happy hours, we’ve also held yoga and pilates classes. The wine and chocolate pairing event with Match Chocolate was one of our favorites!
Kala Northrup- Founder of Match Chocolate
Free pilates class taught by Club Pilates
We love celebrating holidays around Forge- it’s a great excuse for a happy hour or friendly competition between Forge members!
Decorating pumpkins at Halloween
Pie competition to celebrate Thanksgiving
Holiday party with Forge friends and homemade eggnog
We’ve also doubled our monthly conference room bookings! Forge opens up its conference rooms and meeting spaces for both members and visitors.
The Vulcan Room with seating for 8 people
We truly love building the coworking community in Birmingham and connecting with entrepreneurs across the city. We can’t wait to see how the Forge family grows and what’s in store for 2019!
If you’re interested in trying out a Coworking Membership, join us in January! Buy one month and get the second month FREE! Email us for details: info@workatforge.com
Autumn Foster of Quire Consulting taught Forge’s most recent Lunch & Learn about survey design. We know we need data in order to get better. So we craft surveys and program evaluations and give them to our customers. We get them back, share the results at a team meeting and return to business as usual. For this lunch and learn Autumn talked about a better way to use customer input to improve your business.
Why do we use surveys in research?
Surveys help us gather information from a large number of people in order to make decisions that impact our business.
First step: Ask yourself “What information do I want to know?”
Different Kinds of Information:
Attitudes: what people say they want
Beliefs: what people think is true
Behavior: what people do (descriptive)
Attributes: what people are
Here are different question structures you can use:
Open-ended
Never use an open-ended question if a close-ended question will do!
People have to think harder about an open-ended question so choose wisely.
Close-ended with ordered choices
Close-ended with unordered choices
Partially close-ended
Pay attention to your wording! Ask yourself these questions:
Will the wording be understood?
Are the questions too vague/precise?
Is the question too demanding?
Is the question objectionable?
Make sure you know your goal! What are you hoping to learn from this survey? Who are you trying to reach?
Define your audience:
Start with what you know
Identify your assumptions
Go beyond your network
Consider your strategic goals
How will your team process and use the data?
After going through the work of gathering data, you don’t want to throw the information in a binder- never to be seen again. So ask yourself how your team will process the data you receive. When processing the data, think about these things: 1. Know your audience (user vs. spectator) 2. Know what they need to know 3. Make it accessible and durable
Autumn and her team processing data a few years back!
Think about the impact of the survey: What does this mean for your business?
Let the data lead by:
doing more research
identifying opportunity areas
setting goals tied to your learning
establishing a plan of action
Surveys take work but they can certainly pay off if you gather valuable information about your audience. Make sure you establish a plan of action to use the information you’ve gathered! Thank you Autumn for sharing with us! Check out Quire Consulting if you haven’t already. Feel free to contact Autumn at autumn@quireconsulting.com.
Are you having trouble deciding what to put on your Christmas wish list? Look no further! We asked the Forge members for all of their Christmas ideas and we have a wide variety of great suggestions!
1. Lindsay: “I really want a smoker… I love to cook for my friends and family and feel like you gotta have the right tools for the job! I’ve gotten pretty good on the grill and now wanna try the slow style of a smoker.”
2. Ginny: “TBH, I want new tires so I don’t have to buy them myself!”
3. Courtney: “A Razor scooter that I can ride around Forge!”
4. Bailey: “An Away Luggage suitcase is definitely on my list this year. As my family lives on the West Coast, I tend to travel a bunch throughout the year and this suitcase is beyond easy to travel with, super durable and even has a USB port to charge your phone or iPad!”
5. Emilie: “AirBnB gift card! I’m a big fan of gifting experiences over “stuff.” My husband and I love travel! Over the past 7 years we’ve explored from Bali to Ecuador & so much in-between. AirBnB gift cards gives us a personalized gift we absolutely will use, but with the luxury of using it on our terms.”
6. Connor: “Nintendo 64 – Our team at forge needs one for ‘productivity breaks.'”
7. Kellyn: “I encourage everyone to give to their passions. Do you love animals? There is the Greater Birmingham Humane Society. Do you want to lend a helping hand to Birmingham’s homeless population? How about the First Light Shelter. And what about supporting the amazing work of educators and therapists helping those with developmental challenges? Give to The Exceptional Foundation.”
8. Glenny: “An Instax share printer. I have been a photo booth devotee for decades and I got my first Instax camera 10 years ago, before the current craze. My photographer husband realized I would love having a photo booth in my purse. Film for the Polaroid-style camera comes in packs of 10. That constraint makes me more thoughtful about how many pictures I take. Now that there’s an Instax printer, however, I am giddy and it’s hard to slow down. The Instax Share app allows you to print any photo on your phone in an Instax format. I have been so pleased to send actual printed pictures to friends and fam. Deciding what to print has made me thoughtful about the pictures that matter most to me. I would love for more people to have that experience.”
9. Pierce: “I’d like to get a bass guitar for Christmas. I used to play and I’d like to pick it back up.”
10. Russell: “A nice DSLR Camera for those epic food pics!”
11. Rebecca: “Does wanting my LLC count?” <— yes it definitely does!
12. Kelsey: “Allbirds tennis shoes! Some friends say they’re the most comfortable shoes they own.”
13. Lauren: “Bluetooth headphones- they would make my life so much easier!”
14. Jami: “One item on my Christmas list is a trip to Disney. It’s actually a gift I am giving AND getting. Long story short, my husband and I weren’t able to go on our honeymoon due to a massive blizzard. He commented to me earlier this year that he’d never been to Disney and was bummed about it. I’m surprising him with a Disney make-up honeymoon in the spring.”
15. Retha: “The calm blanket! It will help me rest better when I’m at home and need to stop working!”
The staff at 24 Communications are part of the Forge family and they always have valuable info to share. We’ve snagged a blog post written by Charlotte Donlon from them focusing on the reasons why blogs are effective!
According to The Content Marketing Institute’s B2C 2018 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends—North Americareport, organizations with an extremely successful or a very successful content marketing approach say blogs are one of the most effective formats for helping them reach their objectives. The only marketing tool more effective for these businesses is email.
1. Your Blog Can Be Used for Email Content Even though email is the most effective marketing strategy, don’t dismiss blogs. Email and blogs go hand in hand because blog content can be used for email content. Including links to your blog in your email newsletters can help drive readers, current customers, and potential customers to your website.
2. Your Blog Can Be Used to Share Helpful Information Your customers have the same question we all have: What’s in it for me? Your blog posts can answer that question for your customers and your potential customers. How do your products or services solve their problems? How do your products or services make their life easier? How do your products or services help them achieve their goals? Blog posts are a great way to communicate these specifics to your audience.
3. Your Blog Can Be Used to Highlight Your Products and Services Do you have a new product or service that you need to introduce to the world? Writing a blog post about your new offering will help spread the word.
4. Your Blog Can Be Used to Respond to Objections You know why a customer might hesitate to purchase your product or service. Why not use your blog to respond to those objections? Your customers and potential customers will see that you are trying to listen to them and trying to understand their point of view which will make them more willing to consider your point of view and more willing to move past their objections.
6. Your Blog Can Help You Connect with Existing and Potential Customers Many consumers feel more positive about a brand and more connected to a brand after reading custom content, especially if that content tells stories about the company’s brand in ways readers can relate to. Stories about your mission and your goals and ways you give back to your community will resonate with readers, customers, and potential customers.
7. Your Blog Can Increase Traffic to Your Website Let’s talk about compounding. One in ten blog posts are “compounding,” meaning organic search consistently increases traffic over time. Compounding posts are important because one compounding blog post generates as much website traffic as six regular posts combined. Also, compounding blog posts generate 38% of all blog traffic. There’s no way to know which of your blog posts will be compounding posts. But if you aren’t blogging, it’s safe to say you won’t have any at all.
8. Your Blog Can Help You Tell Your Story You have a story to tell. And your customers want to know it. Most consumers—70% of them— prefer learning about a company through custom content like blog posts instead of through paid ads. That’s a great incentive to blog more and give your customers the content what they want.
9. Your Blog Can Help Build Trust
Customized content can help build trust with your customers and potential customers. They will see that you know what you’re talking about. They will see that you care enough about your products and services to allocate resources to creating unique content. And if you provide custom content that’s beneficial to them, they will see that you desire to help them. It’s easier to trust someone who is knowledgeable, who cares, and who wants to help you.
24 Communications is here to help you develop and implement your content marketing strategy, and can find strategic and creative ways to leverage your content across multiple platforms to expand your brand’s reach.
We all need a pick-me-up every once in a while, whether it comes in the form of a compelling novel, a heartwarming self-help book, or a business book with a little inspiration. We collected some of the best business books according to our Forge members. Check out our list of the best business books below, complete with an opinion of why this book was chosen by each person!
“One quote I’ve never forgotten from it is, ‘To go from good to great means transcending the curse of competence.’ This has been a core value in my professional life for the past two decades years, and the mission, vision and goals of our company are really built on the foundation of that premise.” – Jennifer Solt of 24 Communications
“This book had a huge impact on me as a reminder that you can stay true to yourself and when you’re with a company that wants to change you, you’re in the wrong place.” Rebecca Dobrinski
“It goes deep into the (at the time new) idea that by being true to your rabid fans, you can generate a stronger business over time. So instead of trying to sell the lowest common denominator product, target exactly who you want with what *they* want. Lots of good crunchy examples too.” – Scott Pierce of Two Ravens
“This book demonstrates how any organization can streamline growth and accelerate it using technology and nine other core characteristics. Any business hoping to avoid becoming a slow, inefficient company should adopt what Ismail outlines in his research.” – Josh Rhodes of Big Lead Gen Inc.
“I enjoyed the book because the authors bring together interviews of and short pieces by people who work in the tech industry, offering advice on how to deal with the high stress, burnout, etc. that modern work produces. Even though it’s focused on Silicon Valley, the concepts apply anywhere.” – Kerry Smith of ecoTexual
“This book is a must read for entrepreneurs. Peter push’s you to become a contrarian and shares many of his most thought provoking insights.” – Connor Hand of Big Lead Gen Inc.
“Lencioni breaks down the building blocks for an effective team. By writing the team in a fable it is very practical and very easy to apply to your own organization. You can easily read the entire book in a few hours and walk away with a clear understanding of the building blocks that need to be in place to create a team that will function cohesively. Implementing all of the building blocks is a much tougher process, but you finish the book with a framework of where you should be headed.” – Kim Lee of Forge
“It’s my recommended read for every new graduate or person trying to figure out what they want to do in life. Helped me understand work and career beyond the boundaries of academic majors and industry definitions.” Autumn Foster of Quire Consulting
“Not only is it full of advice form some of the world’s greatest business leaders. But the documentation of what Alex Banayan went through to make the book possible is absolutely amazing at the least. This book is a great example of the kind of relentlessness that is necessary to bring big dreams to reality.” – Stanley Stevenson of Stevenson Designs
“It talks about how sales techniques are essential across all industries whether you are in marketing or a dentist.” – Russell Hooks of Happenins In The Ham
“Social media has made us writers but the majority of us aren’t professional writers. Our words carry our marketing messages. Everybody Writes is a go-to guide for how to communicate well in writing in order to attract and retain customers.” – Donna Gilliland of MOSTraining
“So much is changing in our world, and some things don’t change – focus on leading people, focus on doing the right things and not just doing things right. This book really helps cut through a lot of the noise you find in most business books.” – Austin Senseman of MNMX.io
“When we were first starting out, my business partner, Krista Baker, and I were energized by The $100 Startup. It reinforced for us the notion that you already have what you need to change course and create what you want; you just have to take action.” – Kelli Eldridge of Race Quest Travel
“In the South, we are raised to not say anything at all if we don’t have anything nice to say. Walking on eggshells and talking around the truth restricts the ability to develop your team, and brutal honesty can do the same by making you out to be an asshole. I like Radical Candor because it clearly illustrates how personally caring for your team earns you the right to challenge them directly.” Trey Noland of Trek EC
