Meetings without an Office
I work mostly from home, so if a company is coming from out of town and wants to meet up, I choose one of a few cafes in the neighborhood. I live in an area of San Francisco where the only businesses are restaurants and laundromats. Laptops aren’t rare at our little cafes, but collared shirts and ties are. Much of the jeans-clad clientele comes to read novels or the paper.
But here’s my dilemma. When a team of CEO, VP Biz Dev, and PR person shows up, the four of us crowded around a small table overflowing with laptops and precarious lattes, the CEO using his demo voice…we definitely stand out. At one meeting few weeks ago, it was particularly bad; the guy giving the presentation seemed to have overdosed on public speaking classes. I tried to apologize with my eyes to my neighboring novel-readers when he reached the climactic PowerPoint slide. Oy vey.
I like that place too much not to go back, but for at least this month I skulk on by and go to the cafe down the street.
But if you have no formal place to meet, what can you do to minimize the cringe-factor? I’m trying to develop some rules for myself…let me know if you have any more.
- Show up early and grab a corner table
- Choose a place that plays music that’s loud enough to make your conversation feel private but not so loud it encourages yelling
- My coworker Katie suggests when you propose a meeting place, emphasize it’s a “quiet little cafe” over email
But once I’ve found the perfect meeting spot, I feel like I have to mix it up. I don’t want the baristas to be tempted to start asking me to pay rent! Oh man…maybe I am just too worried about what other people think. Do you guys have this problem too? Any advice?
I’ve noticed that some small cafe’s and restaurants have private meeting rooms. It’s much better for everyone concerned to book the room. You need space and privacy for a business meeting. It’s considerate of the other patrons, too.
If you don’t have a place like this, consider booking a hotel conference room from the business center.
I meet clients very frequently at cafés in SF, although recently I’ve been using hotel lounges as meeting place. There are some very nice boutique hotels in downtown that won’t charge you a fee to meet. There’s always the nice added benefit of splashing some martini to seal the deal.
There’s a start-up in the UK called Nomads which offers a great solution to this problem. I met the founder at a local women in business forum and I was very impressed with her ideas. http://www.nomadsltd.com/ I think she wants to franchise across the UK. There must be similar offerings in the US?
I’ve met clients at a local hotel. I once got a room for the day and brought in an additional table. I paid for unlimited wireless access and the 3 of us worked together on a few projects to get ahead before Christmas break.
Seemed to work for the non-biz type of workers. When I have to meet the “Officers” of a company then I book a conference meeting room and have them clear out all the table and chairs except 1 in the middle.
I can tell you that these sound obviously NOT like “clients” of yours but “people making a pitch to you”
I would have hope that if they where “clients” or someone that you didn’t want to feel bad for having to meet you, that you’d be able to come up with the $75 – $100 those Temporary offices charge for their meeting rooms.
I mean really! Unless you’re discussing buying the café you’re at, maybe you should think these people are more important than the corner of some café…
Or maybe you’re trying to convince them that you don’t have the kind of money they’re hoping to squeeze from you for the product their hawking.
Or just meet in a meeting room at the library.
That is unless you’re selling THEM something, then meet in the banquet ball room of some ritzy hotel!
It’s a pain in the pocket book, but if you asked me I’d say you just have to grin and bear it in those situations and get a conference room. The quality of the meeting will be much higher and the results will most likely be more favorable.
2 easy-to-find meeting spot is FedEx Kinko’s, which has a growing number of places that has either videoconferencing and/or private conference rooms, and HQ.com has a network of office spaces for rent.
And some restaurants do have private rooms, and those are good place to meet before/after the meal without room costs. Of course, with these 3 options, you do have to plan ahead and make reservations, but you’ll get the privacy to do some focused discussions, presentations, etc.
As a long time freelancer I would not meet with paying clients in a cafe unless I was familiar with them and knew they’d be OK with it. It’s unprofessional (which is what a lot of the commenters are skirting around saying). I understand that renting an office in SF is pretty costly. Sometimes you can borrow a conference room at another business, possibly in exchange for services. Doing a PPT presentation in public? Not good.
Over in the East Bay, we have quite a few places to meet. Most of the employees are very meeting-savvy, too. Show up with a laptop or binder, and they usually direct you toward a quiet table or a corner booth. I tip a bit extra when they do that, and it’s like writing to a ROM chip for the location. From then on you’ll get the same semi-private spots. Works like a dream.
There’s another issue with meeting in a cafe aside from the professionalism one – confidentiality. If you’re there on business, so are others… and some may be competitors of your or your meeting attendees, esp in a place like the Bay Area. No problem if you’re not discussing things that aren’t confidential, but if you are you should not be in a cafe.
In addition to the suggestions above you might want to think about getting together with some other freelancers you feel comfortable with and renting a small office space. Setup a shared calendar for it on 30Boxes or Google Calendar and book the time like any other conference room.
I find that public libraries have very good conference rooms, and free wi fi quite a bit, as I travel.
Some may charge $5 to 10 for meetings over an hour….
Steve Epstein
I have agreements worked out with a couple of clients who will allow me to use their conference room if I need it. If it arises all I have to do is call ahead and reserve it. Keep in mind these are professionals with very nice offices.
If you have an accountant or attorney, alot of times they will allow you to use their conference room too. Afterall, it’s advertising for them in the long run.
Point being, tap into your clients and service providers. You’ll find they are sympathetic and understanding, and for the most part happy to extend a helping hand.
Thanks to all those who commented. To be clear, the meetings I’m talking about generally involve out-of-town companies on press tours giving me a demo of an upcoming product. My situation is not a client relationship…there is never any money exchanging hands. The comments about using hotels are particularly helpful — I will try to suggest that more often.
Back when I was in Korea, I did have an office, but mostly deemed unfit for receiving people. So I usually had short meetings in one of the international hotels’ lobby coffee shops – the Hyatt’s was my favourite, as the coffee shop is large, comfortable, and noisy enough to protect privacy and not noisy enough to prevent conversation.
For longer meetings, I used either the Executive Floor Lounges [which provide meeting rooms, food and beverages for their guests and their visitors] of hotels I had deals with – since out of town visitors had to stay somewhere anyway, and I usually handled their hotel bookings anyway – or rented a room. The Lounges were quite possibly the best deal.
You might be interested in the coworking movement which is all about independents sharing an office environment/cafe culture: http://coworking.pbwiki.com/
Most executive suites have meeting rooms of various sizes you can rent by the hour or the day. Try http://meetingrooms.regus.com/default.htm
-c
How about something like TheOffice:
http://www.theofficeonline.com/
We do meetup @ Coffee Day for hours togather to sort out our work. We choose the tables that lie outside (non-ac, less number of waiters and less customers) to continue our discussions which these cofee day owners never care much for…… Anyway, we do keep control on our tempo and integrity.
Public libraries are a very good option with free wifi and free to cheap meetings. These days many even have a coffee shop included.
depending on the product and the company – another options/alternative to consider might be to see about making the presention more public not less – i.e. suggest to a firm that might want to make public demos that they:
sponsor a local networking event (such as the SFWIN events I’ve helped with in the past, the SF Tech Sessions Niall does, STIRR, or tomorrow night’s SF Beta event) most of these events will gladly let a firm demo a product in exchange for sponsorship
contact local/related users groups for even more specific and targeted demos
talk with stores such as Apple which have facilities designed for demonstrations and training
talk to local universities who also often have rooms designed for presentations that can be rented (or made available). I’ve been to some great events at the new Mission Bay campus though it is a bit out of the way.
I also second the suggestion of downtown hotels. There are a few right near the Moscone Center that have very large, open lobbies (one I think the Marriot that has a second floor area that is very large and very well suited to small group conversations and informal meetings).
Many restaurants also have private rooms.
Another option for the firm that was on a traveling road show would be to consider renting a movie theater at an offhour – I know that Landmark theaters in particular have been making a push to do this (and also to rent them out late at night for all night computer gaming events). In most cases they would already have the projectors etc (and clearly the screens) and could be an affordable alternative for the right types of presentations.
Shannon
Hi, Liz–
I also work at home, and although my CEO wears jeans and t-shirts to everything, I might also suggest you ask that unless absolutely necessary, no presentation be delivered, rather bring it in printed form or just talk casually.
online propecia.