COFFICE

THE NEW WORK SPACE

MILLIONS OF PEOPLE
MAKE MILLIONS
BY NO LONGER
ʻGOING TO WORKʼ

JOIN US

includes:
Stop Going to the Office
How to Get Started
The Coffice Success Manifesto

CHRIS WARD
Draft 1.4 / Proposed structure plus sample content.
To be viewed alongside ʻMarketing Cofficeʼ PDF

Represented by:
Gordon Wise / Curtis Brown Group Ltd / Haymarket House, 28-29 Haymarket,
London SW1Y 4SP
gordon@curtisbrown.co.uk Tel 020 7393 4400 Fax 020 7393 4401
Direct line 020 7393 4432
MENU
Step 1: Stop Going to the Office
How did we get from The Office to the Coffice
Millions of people have stopped ʻgoing to workʼ…
… are making millions of dollars…
… and itʼs only just begun
Your office has changed forever
How you reach your customers has changed forever
Are you your own worst enemy? So, stop going to the office
15 things you wonʼt miss about going to work

Step 2: Welcome to Coffice - How to get started

What to take with you on Day 1
Finding the perfect Coffice
How to choose the right coffice for your needs
Your Coffice Contract
Coffice Working as part of a team or organisation
Your new working tools and infrastructure

Step 3: The Coffice Success Manifesto

How to engage millions and make millions
1. Work opening hours, not office hours
2. Work with the best people on earth
3. Use the secret of knowing if your new idea has the X-Factor
4. Only do what you do best (and then be open and out)
5. Collaborate, donʼt employ
6. Market your new product free in primetime
7. Never research anything, ever again
8. Get a public that doesnʼt care, to care
9. Donʼt worry if youʼre going to sell any, but if you are going to sell a million
10. Afford to fail and try again and again and again

The Coffice@Home
What next? Office: To-Go
Join the global ʻcoffice workersʼ community
1GOAL: The coffee shop diaries

Other features to include:

Creating your city ʻHead Cofficeʼ / Successful coffice workers and businesses /
10 best global coffee shop chains / 10 best coffices around the world / 10 best
bookshops with coffices / For the travelling Coffice worker – 10 best hotel chains
and airports
INTRODUCTION

Do you work hard and productively but dislike having to do it in an office, donʼt
like working in silence, own a laptop you love, spend time on Twitter and
Facebook, can work with the sound of crying babies, like tearing the latest
cuttings out of newspapers to read later, and drinking hot freshly roasted coffee?

Then you are probably already a Coffice worker.

AND at the forefront of the new work / life ethic that enables you to enjoy success
NOW, both at work and through a fulfilling life.

Millions of students, home workers, sole proprietors, employers, employees,

artists, writers, creatives, business travellers, entrepreneurs, coaches,
consultants and non-profit workers are already generating success, making
millions of dollars, engaging millions of people AND living a more fulfilling life by
working out of coffee shops.

Cool local coffee shops, delis and even international chains like Starbucks are
very positive places - happy, even. Customers go there to meet friends, to laugh,
smile, eat good food, enjoy good conversation and chill out. Iʼm sure youʼve also
seen a few people in there beavering away on their laptops or smartphones.
Thatʼs because there is now no better environment in which to achieve
successful work.

With a smartphone, fresh cappuccino, occasional(!) muffin and laptop with

wireless internet, the person sitting next to you in a busy coffee shop sharing two
feet of table top space is one of the people leading the changing face of work.

Moving to a Coffice-based lifestyle will genuinely change your life. In the good old
days before someone created the monotonous idea of 9-5 there didnʼt used to be
a word for work. It was an integrated part of life and what you did from day to
day. Thatʼs what the ʻcofficeʼ enables once again, the enjoyment of work as part
of your daily life.

“In many ways weʼre renting space to people and the food is the price of
admission. We have become as much a community gathering space as a
bustling lunch spot” Ron Shaich, CEO Panera (best performing major restaurant
stock of 21st century) www.panerabread.com

Coffee shop working now provides the best space and tools with which to launch
and build a successful idea or business. Itʼs the new mobile work phenomenon
that no-one has written about. And COFFICE is no idle coffee table book: itʼs a
call to arms, an inspiring practical guide to getting started and a manifesto for
becoming successful in the new working ethic.

Itʼs also great for the soul, with no extra buildings, dreary commuting, less paper
… and with the sharing of resources it is the most environmentally friendly way to
work.

Chris Ward made millions as a coffice worker. In Coffice, heʼll show you how
anyone can.

I did it, so can you

This book recounts my own story as to how I made millions and engage millions
by using coffee shops and includes a step by step guide for you to achieve it
yourself. Itʼs mixed with my own personal experiences and those from many of
todayʼs most successful people.

I used to commute to the office every day, every single day. In fact I was usually
first there (if the traffic was OK or the trains were running on time). Iʼd get there
around 8am, leaving before my kids got up, so missing the shared family
breakfast. I needed to get there first. Why? I was the boss and so you would
expect I had urgent meetings or new business pitches to attend to early. No, I
could deal with those later in the day. The reason I showed up early was simply
to ʻshow my faceʼ. To lead by example and give the impression to my team that
by working 12 hours a day I was achieving as much as I could and we would all
be more successful if we all did the same.

And, as I was leading by example, guess what? I was also the last to leave every
evening.

Donʼt get me wrong. I really enjoy work, being creative, winning pitches, seeing
my work out there in the public domain and working as part of a team. It was the
loss of control over my time. I had no freedom. Even though some days I finished
my work in a few hours, or didnʼt feel productive or was enjoying a long lunch
with a client I would still be one of the last ones there.

I wanted to be successful but it was hugely to the detriment of the rest of my life,
both to my own stress levels and to the stress in my relationships. I used to come
home slightly grumpy that if one of our kids was doing something I felt was
wrong; lazing around with their mess of toys all over the place; being ʻon the
computerʼ (again!). Iʼd instantly be a slightly moany parent, hating myself while
my kids thought I hated them…
I hated the actual office. I hated having to go simply to show my face, hated
people asking me questions before I had a chance to prepare for the day, hated
the fact that I wasnʼt in control of my own time.

I first started ʻcoffice workingʼ as I realised I was coming up with better ideas for
my clients while hanging out in a coffee shop, than when I was working away in
the office. I was giving myself the freedom to relax alongside their customers, to
enjoy a good coffee and pastry and to read what the experts thought in the latest
magazines and newspapers.

My stress levels were also reducing and my mood was improving!

I could justify to myself what I felt others saw as skiving off to the café, as I was
coming up with ideas that were winning significant business. But over the years,
as I found I become more successful and better to be around, I no longer needed
to justify it to myself or to others this was a much better way of working and living.

So working in coffee shops really has had the biggest impact on my ability to
become a millionaire and it now also enables me to successfully engage millions
of people for charitable causes.

It also enables me to spend as much time as I want with my four children. I have
now managed to become a millionaire, mountain bike race over the Alps,
Rockies and Africa, run ten international marathons, have annual ʻholidays of a
lifetimeʼ and still produce work faster, more creatively and productively than I did
when I was doing 12 hours a day in the office.

I now have a choice over how I spend my time.

This book is the sum of my learnings from successful coffice working collated into
a step by step manifesto on how to best use the Coffice environment in order to
maximise your chances of success for yourself and for your business. Itʼs a
manifesto I have followed in creating campaigns for Friends Reunited, Comic
Reliefʼs Red Nose Day and the upcoming 1GOAL (World Cup 2010).

How I got started

I actually left school at 16 with just 1 ʻOʼ level, in Art, and managed to get onto an
Art, Design and Fashion Foundation Course. As I was no good at drawing (but
great at inventing board games!) I left after a year and ended up selling records
and photographic equipment in a branch of Boots the Chemist for 3 years. At the
time this was very dead-end but in hindsight I learnt more about what consumers
want, like and dislike than during any other work I have ever done. It stood me in
good stead for the future and as much as I expound the benefits of working out of
a coffee shop, I also reckon most people would benefit from serving in one,
where you really do truly see what people are like.

My coffice working CV started in 1986, when I left the BBC in London (which was
then the ʻultimateʼ employer for providing an office job for life), to become a band
manager. I lived in a small flat, which I shared with then-budding TV presenter
Fiona Phillips, and we used to take our really heavy PC laptops down to the local
ʻgreasy spoonʼ café or quiet pub (no coffee shops in London then) to escape the
very cheap, slightly damp ʻcanʼt swing a catʼ flat.

I started my own marketing agency, Beatwax, in 1992 as the UK's first specialist
youth and student marketing company and travelled Britain promoting the latest
new bands – Radiohead, Blur, Gorillaz etc – movies – Pulp Fiction, Blair Witch
Project, Toy Story etc – video games and beer in universities and clubs. Iʼd
spend all my daytimes on the phone from hotel rooms calling clients and
universities I still had to appear at.

I went travelling in the early ʻ90s on the Trans Siberian train, across Russia to
China, where I had to pre-plan visits to post offices to pick up week-old letters
and keep an eye on my first employee, another budding TV presenter, Jamie
Theakston. We had a small workspace we rented but it kept getting broken into
so weʼd often find ourselves in the cafes of Notting Hill trying to continue
business as if we were still in the office.

I travelled Britain again in ʻ97, working on the Labour party campaign for Tony
Blairʼs landslide election win. While I was busy working in student refectories and
common rooms on a 14kb dial up internet connection with student union officers
(many, like Ricky Gervais, going on to slightly bigger success) to try and get
every student to vote Labour, my flatmate Peter was busy back in the Notting Hill
cafes, massive headphones on, laptop on the bar, writing a song that went on to
be Labourʼs election soundtrack, ʻThings Can Only Get Betterʼ.

In the late ʻ90s I started another company, Firstmovies, which undertook online
research for major Hollywood movies. Along with Beatwax it grew and grew, and
we finally had to resort to a proper office, complete with lift and receptionist!

It was around this time, as I had to deal with the growing staff levels, the start of
my family, the pressure of delivering creative work in order to win business and
pay all the staff salaries and then also the dotcom boom and bust, that I was
sneaking off to cafes and having the epiphany that this was actually the best
working environment in which to produce the best business results and deal with
the stresses of running a business.
It also coincided with the internet coming of its first age.

We got bigger and better offices and moved further into central London. Soon, we
worked in the heart of town and the coffee shops of Soho became my Coffice
working spaces.

Since then, Iʼve worked in coffee shops globally as an entrepreneur, employee,

employer and run my whole companies from them.

How my Friends Reunited story began in a coffee shop

During this time I discovered a small start-up website called Friends Reunited
that had a few thousand users. It was in a café, while reading a review of a
previous eveningʼs TV programme about how some street savvy, suited
entrepreneurs were planning their website exit strategies before theyʼd even
launched, that the idea was sparked in my head that the best way of marketing
this website was as being set up by a husband and wife (Steve and Julie
Pankurst), in their house, without an office in site. I couldnʼt see the public
wanting to pay £5 online to some cool dudes who looked like they wanted to
make money out of them. They needed someone they trusted and identified with.

It worked a storm as 12 million people in the UK joined up and the postman daily
beat a pathway to the Pankhursts front door with bags of £5 cheques, and TV
crews flocked to the back bedroom door to interview Julie about this cosy home-
run business.

Over the years demand for our services saw the company grow to become one
of the UK's foremost contemporary communications agencies. I oversaw activity
for a wide range of clients, mainly through our expertise in creating cutting edge
ideas that appealed to the youth and opinion formers of the day – coincidently,
the same people that were hanging out in the cafes where I was coming up with
the ideas that would engage them.

We worked for clients such as Stella Artois, Allied Domecq, Emap, BBC, Adidas,
Friends Reunited, Barclays Bank, E4, The Labour Party, Nokia, Casio, Evian,
Carlsberg, Rizla, Young Persons Railcard, Future Publishing, International
Tennis Federation, London Film Festival and Sony PlayStation. We promoted the
latest releases from most movie distributors, record companies and computer
gaming businesses such as UIP, EMI, Activision, Disney, Warner Bros, 20th
Century Fox and Sony.

I know that Coffice working provided the environment and consumer insight for
my businesses that helped them become hugely successful and meant I was
able to sell them for £millions. I was also able to enjoy the growth and at the
same time also really enjoy life outside work; my growing family, playing sport,
nights down the pub with friends and the biggest extravagance; being able to pay
my utility bills without worrying about them.

Itʼs what I learned in doing this that I have crystallised into the manifesto I now
lay out in this book.

My Comic turn

After I sold both Beatwax and Firstmovies to an international media group, I

launched a sports website, iSporty.com, with ex England manager Terry
Venables, and really ran this as a Coffice business. At the same time as I was
securing investment funding and overseeing the small team that was building and
growing the site I did some marathon running and mountain bike racing for
charity and spent time working in an orphanage in Mozambique. With the
purchase of my Blackberry I was able to make all the decisions and have all the
interactions that I needed to.

I ran iSporty from cafes and race day tents as I raced across some of the most
remote parts of the world. iSporty did well, and I know that it wouldnʼt have done
any better if I had been sitting in an office for 12 hours a day. In fact Iʼm
convinced that taking part in major sports events while running a website that
was trying to engage those people meant we did even better than we should
have done.

I was enjoying life but there was something missing, an idea I could get stuck
into. I wanted to mix business with pleasure. It was time to do something that I
really and truly believed in. I considered myself pretty unemployable – I hadnʼt
really ʻworkedʼ for four years. And I hadnʼt worked for anyone else for 20 years.

So I wasnʼt looking for a job. But on another day in a coffice, when I had created
some valuable free time in order to get some inspiration from reading the paper, I
saw an advert for the job of Creative Communications Director at Comic Relief,
the UKʼs most well known and supported charity, through its now national
institution of Red Nose Day, that engages the country in fun fundraising activities.
I applied through the paper and apparently was the only short-listed applicant not
to be headhunted. It was while being interviewed by Comic Reliefʼs founder,
writer and film director Richard Curtis, that we found we shared many coffice
working beliefs. I think it was that that sealed my appointment.

I oversaw all the creative TV, radio, digital and print output of Red Nose Day 09.
A daunting task for such a loved brand, as simply everyone has an opinion,
especially on the famous red noses. For which I had invented three.

On holiday I do like a little excuse to get away from my four great kids and wife
for an hour or so and lap up the culture, get myself in the flow and achieve as
much as I can in an hour of creative work. And much of the creative campaign for
Red Nose Day was planned like this in a great harbour café in Sardinia during
our family holiday over the summer of 2008.

My new Goal

I have now been seconded over to attempt to engage not just Britain but the
whole world, from coffee shops around the world, for a ʻlegacy projectʼ from the
2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa. We are achieving what was previously
considered impossible: a truly record-breaking global first of mobile phone
operators worldwide working together in what is currently a confidential project to
reach over a billion people around the planet to rally world leaders to achieve
Education For All. A campaign running between April 19 2010 and World Cup
final day – July 11th 2010.

It is set to be bigger than Make Poverty History and the biggest cause campaign
in history (see www.join1goal.org).

I am currently operating as the Global Digital Communications Director for the

campaign from some of the best coffices in the world; BeanThere in
Johannesburg, Soho House Manhattan, Nero on the seafront in Cape Town,
branches of Mugg and Bean and Starbucks in Hong Kong, Fernandez and Wells
in Soho and Monmouth Coffee Shop in Covent Garden, London, and further
great coffices in San Francisco, LA and Barcelona.

The power of NOW.

One quote totally inspired the digital campaign for 1GOAL.

“If Twitter had a billion users, it would truly be the pulse of the
planet” Twitter strategy document 2009.

But I wouldnʼt have understood or believed this without my experience of Coffice

working. Through our partnership with most of the worldʼs biggest mobile phone
companies we were able to use that as motivation and focus to attempt to beat
Twitter to their own zeitgeist moment and use that ʻpulse of the planetʼ moment in
order to engage the world in 1GOAL. Because the zeitgeist isnʼt Twitter itself, itʼs
the way of thinking and working and interacting that Twitter exemplifies and
Coffice is simply the practical real life manifestation of this.

Talking of being in the zeitgeist, working in a coffice, especially over lunchtimes,

more often than really necessary, reminds me why I find the environment of an
office so negative. Itʼs in the overheard conversations of lunching office workers
as they gossip and bad-mouth their fellow colleagues. And in way too many
cases, the remaining colleagues slag off the first person to return to the office,
only moments after theyʼve appeared to have enjoyed a lunchtime chat together.

Mind you, over that same lunchtime period Iʼve also often enjoyed overhearing
the first illicit whispered conversations of a new affair between young office
workers.

I continue to love to work in a cool deli on a nice big communal table with my
laptop on WI-FI, with an espresso I can make last hours, accompanied by a glass
of tap water and a chocolate treat.

This set-up gets me into a positive and productive working state that can last for
hours. I then also get home relaxed and satisfied that I have genuinely achieved
what I set out to do that day.

I love it. Join me.

You can do it too …

It can be you. Coffice working is not for a special type of person.

Thatʼs what this book is all about.

Do you recognise yourself (or the person you are buying this book for) in the
following description of a coffice worker…?

You …

• spend longer in an office than many of your colleagues and contemporaries

and be someone that your boss or client trusts very much. You may turn
up late for work occasionally but they know to trust you as you are nearly
always one of the last to leave or email or call them at weekends of past
midnight. You are already trying to live a coffice lifestyle but squeezing it
into the existing office structure.

• are interested in people and like ʻpeople watchingʼ, just as much as

interacting with them.
 • donʼt like being dictated to. You flourish with freedom and a target to
achieve.

• are entrepreneurial in spirit.

• donʼt like two days to be the same.

• enjoy great holidays and extended family and social time

• want a fulfilling job

• take the environment seriously

• donʼt like working in silence but equally donʼt want to talk to everyone. Can
feel awkward with small talk.

• understand when you are being productive and when not. And donʼt like the
randomness of an office interrupting when you are working hard and feel
you are wasting time being in an office when you are not feeling
particularly productive.

• feel home and social life is also equally important to you.

• like to know about the latest culture and be the first to share with your social
circle.

• like good food and drink

• actually donʼt watch too much TV, and enjoy live radio and new music. If
anything on TV was really good you would have read the previews and
watched it. But you enjoy the random nature of live TV, sport and breaking
news; where literally anything could happen and you would be there to see
it.

• donʼt like wasting money but do appreciate premium products

… but it doesnʼt have to be the same for everyone …

However good anything in life is, there are a few people that it will never be right
for. That is also true for coffice working.
 “My office is extremely tidy and painted white throughout. A
messy office is a sign of a robust inner state — it requires
courage and strength of mind. The offices of the tidy, these are
the offices of the psychologically brittle.”
Alain De Botton, philosopher and author

A café is not a tidy place. It is loud, busy and unstructured. You may struggle if
you need the ʻstructureʼ of ʻgoing to workʼ in your life and:

• you leave work dead on time every night

• wear your company ID round your neck all day like a badge
• canʼt handle colleagues leaving dirty cups out in the staff room
• donʼt like children
• like using Post-it notes (everywhere)
• have a desk full of personal mementoes
• prefer to work in silence
• like to gossip about colleagues

Working in a public environment, there are always going to be a few distractions

that are hard to work with.

Even I sometimes find it hard. When work is interrupted by a multiple baby-crying

incident (and I have four kids) or when a parent insists on speaking to their child
by broadcasting it to the entire café. I love kids but sometimes with that
distraction, itʼs hard.

But it need only be momentary. Simply move to another coffee shop. And thatʼs
also another reason people use coffices, to escape the distraction of their
children at home.

Itʼs also never 9-5pm. As you will see, a huge part of the success of coffice
working is not being stuck to working a set routine everyday. So it maybe that
coffice working is a part of your overall working life, rather than the whole. It may
be best that some of your work is carried out in a traditional office, on the road or
at home.

… for you to be successful

Do you look at successful people or friends and think ʻI could have done thatʼ or ʻI
could have come up with that ideaʼ? Are you a little bit jealous of them? Well, the
Coffice manifesto and the guide to getting started thatʼs also in this book are all
the tools you need to unlock that one last part you need to give yourself the best
chance of joining them.
And you can be truly successful. Successful people are the same as you and I.
Many of them canʼt believe their luck. But many of them do live a coffice stylelife
and therefore donʼt see their success as a result of hard work, channelled in the
right way to the right people. They see it as luck.

Once you are there it is not a different life. You will not feel out of place. I have
the same thoughts and ideas as when I was unsuccessful but now people listen
to me and they actually happen. Even my wife thinks I live a ʻdifferentʼ life. But it
isnʼt. Itʼs so very ordinarily the same. Why would I want it any different? The
Coffice lifestyle is what I want. Iʼm sure if you are not happy with your lifestyle
and you do become successful then you will have ample chance to change your
lifestyle. But thatʼs not the way round it worked for me.
Step 1: Stop Going to the Office

• How we got from The Office to the Coffice

• Millions of people have stopped ʻgoing to workʼ …
• … are making millions of dollars …
• … and itʼs only just begun
• Your office has changed forever
• Selling to your customers has changed forever
• 15 things you wonʼt miss about going to work
• Are you your own worst enemy?
How we went from The Office to the Coffice

500BC
Invention of the office.

1688
Founding, in a coffee shop, of Lloyds of London

Everything invented in communications over the last 15 years has been towards
enabling your escape from the office. The last thing you need to be is tied to one
desk any more:

1995
Internet reached the mainstream

1996
Internet cafes were the first outlets to attract the modern coffice worker out of the
office, but they often unfortunately resembled offices, with single person cubicles,
silence and cheap coffee.

1998
The first Starbucks opens outside the US.

2002
The BlackBerry was released, with its push e-mail, mobile telephone, text
messaging, Internet faxing and Web browsing it enabled true mobile working

29 August 2003
Skype launched enabling free phone calls via P2P wireless internet.

2005
As of July 2005, there were at least 68,000 Wi-Fi locations worldwide, and in
areas of the US enough to provide public Wi-Fi coverage as a public free service.
That figure is now more than a hundred times bigger.

2005 – 2010 Coffee shop growth

coffee shop chains have expanded at breakneck speed. In the US coffee shops
have seen close to a five fold increase in sales between 2000 and 2010. In 2005
there was one coffee house for every 14,000 Americans. MINTEL believes that
the number of shops could well continue to rise until there is a coffee shop for
every 10,000 Americans. The number of coffee shops globally has grown 23% in
last two years*.
June 2008
3G Dongles that enable you to access fast speed internet without the use of
wireless launched

3 June 2008
Starbucks put free Wi-Fi in all their stores across the US. In September 2009,
Starbucks in the UK rolled out free Wi-Fi at most of its outlets

10 July 2008
The App Store opened. As of March 20, 2010, there are at least 150,000 third-
party applications officially available with over 3 billion total downloads

11 July 2008
The iPhone launched and came pre-loaded with App Store support.

2008-2010 economic recession

The global economic recession that hit the business world during 2009 resulted
in substantial loss of jobs and restructuring of businesses and thus more people
becoming freelancers and unemployed, looking for a new challenge. With the
proliferation of mobile telecoms the coffice become the natural habitat for these
people to start their new enterprises.

2 April 2010
The first generation iPad launched in the US and is set to have a revolutionary
impact on mobile working.

With laptops outselling desktops, and with iPhones and Blackberries the norm
and 40% of new businesses set up without a traditional office, Coffice working is
exploding.

With it now being possible to run your entire office on an iPhone, with Wi-Fi
dongles and with iPads coming, working culture is changing forever.

The single biggest supplier of office space in the world is soon to be McDonalds
through the free Wi-Fi they are introducing in all their restaurants.

Coffice workers are now better equipped than workers in an office. The modern
mobile lifestyle means the new successful generation of global companies such
as Google and Apple are producing all their latest hard- and software for coffice,
rather than office, workers.
The future of successful people and business is built on applications, not
infrastructure.

“Smartphone applications are predicted to overtake the desktop-

software market. Meanwhile the phone is becoming a productivity
tool, with growing business use. Already today the ratio of phones to
desktops is four to one” Wired Magazine

Millions of people have stopped going to work ...

In the USA over 2,300 people start a sole proprietor business every single day.
Most of those undertake some Coffice working on a daily basis.

Britain alone now has 3.6 million flexible mobile workers, more than treble the 0.9
million people who were working outside a traditional office set-up in 1997.

... and are making millions of dollars …

In the UK 60% of new firms start up without an office and are turning over
£284bn.

In the US it is $992bn. This is a huge economy created from coffee shops. Who
would have thought the person sitting next to you in a busy coffee shop sharing
two feet of table top space with you is one of the people leading the changing
face of work?

This is not simply aspirational. This is the reality of your future workspace. And
you have to start before your competitors take the ʻfirst moverʼ advantage.

… and itʼs only just begun

“3G mobile penetration had risen to 29% in 2009 and is forecast to reach 67%
next year. In Japan it is already 91%” Wired

“In 2009 the number of people who access mobile email was 139m worldwide.
By the end of 2013 that is predicted to have topped 1 Billion”
Radican Research Group
(8 times bigger!)

• Enterprise Nation report Jan 2010 / Allegra Coffee shop retailing report Nov 2009 / US
administration Oct 2009
Your office has changed forever

Modern office communication with its lack of chatter, ʻreal lifeʼ meetings and
landline phone conversations, caused by the proliferation of email, Facebook and
IM (Instant Messenger), to name but a very few, have dictated that offices have
become overridingly silent spaces. But because you produce your own work in
quiet, does that mean you want to be surrounded by silence? Which is maybe
why many of you are wearing headphones?

Sitting in an open plan office with 30 other people in complete silence, as you
receive an email from someone sitting three feet from you results in the
unspoken undercurrents of stress, unresolved disagreements and internal
politics, sounding louder and louder. This is such a negative, unnatural
environment for humans to thrive in.

“The traditional model of the office is dead”

Mark Dixon, Global CEO, Regus (largest suppliers of office space in the world)

Traditional offices are NOT fit for the demands and emotional well being of the
21st century worker.

It is also crazy that almost every job in the developed world is still meant to take
40 hours, between 9am and 5pm over five days every single week, of every
single year, to achieve, in whatever business in whatever sector, in whatever
country. It is a ridiculous notion.

“Bosses who continue to insist that people go to work at the same time and stick
to a set routine may actually weaken morale and business performance. People
donʼt generally like being told how to run their life. They feel their boss is
controlling them and therefore are actually less motivated. By contrast bosses
who equip staff with technological means to work flexibility and remotely reap the
benefits of a more committed, goal orientated workforce”
Graham Jones, Internet Psychologist

People do instinctively know this because it feels unnatural, uncomfortable. But

many people canʼt change their working culture of a lifetime. Many are trying to
shoehorn this new 21st century communications culture into that of their 20th
century traditional office set-up.

Many companies build their own internal coffee shops, they try dress down
Fridays, they let the sandwich man in from the great local deli at lunchtimes, they
hold inspiring team-building ʻawaydaysʼ. But these are only minor steps that only
reduce some of the negatives of office working and create only a few of the
positives of coffice working.
 “Two thirds of our customers donʼt have a physical office. This is probably the
single biggest change to happen to the world of work. New technology has made
it possible for millions of people to work wherever they want and naturally enough
most of them choose to work where they are, in an alternative workspace, such
as a café. In the future our children will reminisce about daily commuting to the
office in much the same way that we recall life without the telephone”
Mark Dixon, Global CEO Regus

How you reach your customers has changed forever

Being successful in art and commerce is now all about understanding and
engaging instantly in the ʻNOWʼ moment of consumerism, connections and
communications. Being right there, at the right time, with the ʻwinningʼ form of
communication or product that gets you the results you want. It is about totally
understanding your consumers and how they instantly engage, consume and
communicate in this world of smartphones, iPads, Twitter and laptops, with their
instant access and consumption of products, content and information ʻon
demandʼ.

But the office is a cocoon from that ʻreal lifeʼ living. Every day it postpones your
experiences from 9am to 5pm. Outside of that you are living with your customers
but from 9-5pm, 5 days a week, you remove yourself from what is really going on
in the world, into the cocoon of the unreal silent environment of the office.
Is your office fit for 21st Century working purpose?
From: National Institute of Open Schooling, 2009

Working Environment
Office work is mostly of repetitive nature and leads to monotony of the
office staff. Sometimes mental work may be more fatiguing than manual
work. Excessive mental concentration may also be tiring. Therefore, it is
necessary that the office staff should be provided with congenial working
environment, which is conducive to work.

Office environment has a significant effect on the efficiency of office staff.

The surroundings in which office personnel work should be healthy and
pleasant. Poor office environment results in low output and low morale of
employees. Labour turnover and absenteeism also tend to be high.

Significance of Office set-up

A planned organisation establishes a harmonious relationship between
people, work and resources. In a good organisation, every employee
knows what he is to do, and work is performed with speed, accuracy
and economy. It co-ordinates the efforts of different individuals and
ensures commonness of purpose.

Stimulates creativity
In a well-organised set up it stimulates creativity and initiative
in the individual and he may explore new methods of doing the job.

Facilitates development of office personnel

Proper organisation of office is a pre-requisite for division of
labour and specialisation. It facilitates growth of office
personnel to the maximum extent in the area of their duties.

Location of Office
Proper location of the office is of great importance to every
organisation. While taking decision on this issue, the management must
take into consideration the present as well as future needs. An unsuitable
location adversely affects the efficiency of operations.

So, is your office achieving all that for you?

Answer: ?
Are you your own worst enemy?

Are you bored of sitting on the same chair, at the same desk for 40 hours a week
or making exactly the same commute five times each way every week?

Then stop. The link between you and that one desk has gone.

Are you actually your own worst enemy though? Getting involved in colleaguesʼ
ideas and work and the office politics, when you know you donʼt need to AND you
canʼt win?

Have you trapped yourself into daily achieving the officeʼs workers only
recognition of what they have achieved that day…how many emails you have
sent?!

Do you have a go at your kids for spending too long on the internet or computer
games at home? But really are frustrated at yourself for being equally trapped in
unrewarding repetitive computer usage.

This book provides you with all the tools for the way out of that. Iʼll leave your kids
to you!

“62% of workers reported that they are sick of the daily commute and want to
reduce the time they spend travelling to and from work”
National Commute Smart Week
(Makes you wonder about the other 38%!)

Were you any actually less productive when people around you were on the
phone or simply chatting to each other across their desks...? The new
communication tools mean you can do more and you might be busier now, but
are you actually being more productive?

“Productivity, not presence, is the best way to measure the

contribution employees make to their organisation” Lyonsdown Flexible Working
Report 2009

People used to look up to company lifers who had reached the top of their career
ladder by their mid 50s as the really successful business people they should aim
to emulate. But that is all changing. We are starting to look at them as the
failures, who have no ambition, drive, bravery and creativity to lead the full and
varied life they really want to.

Donʼt let that happen to you.

So, stop going to the office

With the ability to now reach the top of the tree by your early 40s and a highly
successful portfolio career the new yardstick of a fulfilling working life, the coffice
is the missing component to enable you to best achieve it.

Most of our heroes; sportsmen, writers, actors, artists etc donʼt work in an office –
So, why are you?

“Having lunch together is so much more important to

creating something than a business meeting” Jack Dorsey, Founder, Twitter

Ask yourself:

Do I need to really, genuinely go to the office tomorrow to achieve everything I

need to do?

List your responses.

I am sure you will be able to find positive answers for everything in a Coffice,
tenfold.

Join the Coffice revolution. Stop going to work and enjoy the new work and life
ethic. Look, so much of your life has changed in the last 15 years.

You no longer:
• Go to the video shop
• Go to the record store
• Go to the bookstore

But you still go to the office.

Why are you still working in an office 40 hours a week?

15 things you wonʼt miss about ʻgoing to workʼ

• Turning up just to show your face

• Rubbish coffee from a vending machine or jar
• Unspoken tension
• Avoiding colleagues
• Being ccʼd into emails just so it covers the senderʼs back
• It can too often be just really boring
• It kills creative thought
• Stultifying meetings
• Office clichés
• Gossiping behind your back
• Your boss looking over your shoulder
• Getting an email from someone sitting 2 foot away
• A full in and out tray
• Commuting!
 Step 2: WELCOME TO THE COFFICE – HOW
TO GET STARTED

• The new work ethic

• What to take with you on Day 1
• Finding the perfect Coffice
• Your ʻcofficeʼ contract
• Coffice working as part of a team or organisation
• Your new working tools and infrastructure

The new work ethic

ʻCofficeʼ
A coffee shop (or similar positive location with Wi:Fi facilities) one uses as an
office where non-coffee shop work is performed.

Enabling the worker to produce the most creative and productive output in a
relaxed and positive environment.

Coffice worker
Someone who wants the freedom to live a fulfilling successful business, home
and social life NOW and not wait until their retirement some time in the distant
future.

Takes advantage of wireless internet to have complete freedom and control over
their own life.

The rat race is over. Join the winners.

What to take with you on Day 1

Your new office is now only 12” x 18”, hangs off your shoulder and needs to fit a
laptop in it. And your working space will often not be too much bigger either.

You need to keep it simple and keep it light.

So, you can forget about personal momentoes, and in and out tray, draws full of
stationery and unfiled documents.

A sturdy rainproof bag

You need to pack your entire office into an easily carryable bag, certainly small
enough to fit in your hand luggage.

You could be travelling around a fair amount between coffices and potentially
continents, so you need a good sturdy bag that will keep your laptop safe and all
your gear dry.

I use a Deuter mountain bike bag, as it is incredibly comfortable, keeps any

potential sweat off my back dry, as well as being sturdy enough to protect my
laptop and take me across mountains! As it has done several times.

I do sometimes stuff it so full (with the rest of the stuff in this list) that I tend to
break the zips before any other part of the bag wears out, something I need to
work on reducing…

Good laptop with Wi-Fi

You will see far more Macs in coffee shops than PCs, perhaps due to the type of
creative person that both Apple and coffice working appeals to. It doesnʼt really
matter but the easier it is to plug and play the better. The quicker it will simply
start up, with no viruses or anything that will stop your instant connection to Wi-
Fi, the better.

Mouse
Up to you entirely. Obviously laptops are made to work without mice but Iʼm a bit
of a mouse fan and still take mine along. I only tend not to use it if space is a bit
too tight.

Laptop plug
If you plan to be out for longer than the life of your battery you need to take your
laptop plug. This is extra weight but essential. I take my plug on every trip as I
often donʼt know where I am going to end up or where any last minute demand
for work will take me. The most inconvenient aspect of coffice working is running
out of laptop power when you have work to do or feel in the flow to produce some
great stuff.

Phone
I think the average number of Smartphones per population is probably higher in
coffice workers than any other segment of workers. You can run your entire office
on an iPhone or Blackberry or any one of the new smartphones coming to market
every week. What phone you have is up to you but one enabled for Skype usage
does makes life cheaper.

I do put my phone on mute, unless the café is very busy.

Headphones that work in your phone and laptop

Always worth having a small earpiece for phone calls or conference calls where it
can often be hard to hear all parties. It also means you donʼt have to hold your
phone up to your ear and you can hold the mouthpiece right to your mouth
therefore reducing any external café noise your own phone is picking up.

I also have an earphone in case a news story breaks and I want to follow video
stories on the web.

If you are involved in ʻcreativeʼ work then often a good pair of headphones is
needed for listening to and editing material.

Cash
Most cafes will take bank cards but if you are only paying for one coffee
obviously that can be annoying. Itʼs also best to tip in cash: itʼs more likely to go
to the staff and also you can make a bit of a point of dropping the tip into the jar
or saucer so the staff know that even though you turn up very regularly and donʼt
eat or drink much, you do value the space and their time.

Pen and pad

Again, another one thatʼs up to you. I still produce my best creative work when
Iʼm able to scribble notes down in any order at any time. So I always have both
on me.

Inspiring materials
I like to bring the last cool magazines or books Iʼm reading to just be inspired by
their presence and have the odd flick if I need some more specific inspiration or
have run dry of productive thoughts and want a break. If the coffice is not being
particularly inspiring I will often read a couple of snippets from one of the
magazines Iʼve brought with me to get myself going (generally either Wired or
Fast Company; my two favourite magazines).
Reference materials for that dayʼs work
This is where I too often bring too much. As I really donʼt know when inspiration is
going to strike to do a particular piece of work, from the five different pieces I
have to do, I tend to bring all the paperwork relevant to achieving all five, when in
fact I often only get one or two done at best.

Iʼd rather do that though, than not have the right materials on me when I want or
need to achieve a piece of work. I justify it to myself that by however heavy my
bag is and however far I cycle around one city between cafes, it is nowhere near
enough the exercise that I should be really be doing. But at least itʼs better than
nothing…

USB memory stick

If you are producing something you need to print or share later then saving to a
USB stick is the quickest and easiest way. You donʼt need an enormous memory
stick: 2mg is generally big enough for anything you need to do on a daily basis.
Finding the perfect Coffice
You have everything you need with you. So now, what to look for in finding the
best coffee shop to work from?

Warmth
Letʼs get the important things right first. You donʼt want to be sitting there freezing
with your coat on. Many coffee shops do like to have their door open to attract
passers-by with the smell of freshly roasting coffee and baking pastries. So find
one that generally has the door closed when itʼs cold, and some good heating.

Friendly staff not minding you working there all day

In reality most coffice workers arenʼt in the same coffee house for an entire day;
they move around. As well as needing different stimuli during the day or heading
off to hold/attend meetings, Iʼd also rather move when they still want me to return
than outstay my welcome.

How do you know if the staff are happy with coffice workers? Well the quick-start
way to tell, until you have the confidence to make your own choices, is checking
the people on laptops in there already. If there are a number of people coffice
working then itʼs a pretty safe bet that the staff are very cool about it.

Free Wi-Fi
You ideally want to be able to access free and fast Wi-Fi, or a very cheap deal
associated with buying the establishmentʼs products (many coffee shops have a
system of giving you a code when you purchase something). Most Wi-Fi access
is behind a password that you will need the first time you go in. Most computers
will remember the password for your next visits, so you will only need to enter it
the first time.

How do you find out if a café has free WI:FI? Ask. Ask someone on a laptop
already or ask the barista or waiting staff. Donʼt be shy and donʼt think you are
asking anything out of the ordinary. Also, feel happy to sit down and check your
laptop can access it first before you order any food and drink and then find your
computer cannot get ʻontoʼ the Wi-FI for some reason.

The worst thing is ordering something and then finding you canʼt get the Wi-Fi
and knowing you need to move to another coffee shop. You canʼt always leave
what youʼve purchased and move on – but do try some productive work without
your laptop: phone calls, notes, idea generation etc.

Plenty of plug points

Now, this separates out the coffices from the cafes. Plug points are not
necessarily easy to come by in plentiful supply. Most cafes will have one or two
but if it is a great coffice you will find other laptops are plugged in and annoyingly
many will stay plugged in for the entire time their owners are there, whether their
computer is fully charged or not (see sharing plugs, later!).

Iʼve spent many a time stooping round the skirting board of a great café for a
stray plug point that I can use.

Until technology develops and battery life lasts for over 8 hours or electricity
works wirelessly you will have to work around it, without a plug for the 3-5 hours
that your laptop will last and then going to a café that you know you will be able
to get a plug point in.

Big tables
Small round tables are a bit of a pain to work on. A laptop next to a coffee cup
and a plate of goodies doesnʼt leave much room for your newspaper or notepad.
Iʼm not a great fan of Starbucksʼ small circular tables and youʼll find many coffice
workers use the odd rectangular desks they happen to have in most branches.

I love a big long sharing table; you get your own space but also feel close to
other café-goers to ʻpeople watchʼ and soak up the inspiration.

Free newspapers
You want to get into the right frame of mind and see what is in the zeitgeist today,
what people are talking about, what is in the newspapers thatʼs ʻbeyondʼ the
actual news; the leaders, comments and supplements. I do tend to scan the
supplements of the broadsheets most days to see what news has been picked
up and become the ʻtalking pointʼ of the newspapers.

A television in the corner

As mentioned, us coffice workers like to be on top of the latest, breaking news
and what better than a TV in the corner, permanently tuned to a rolling news and
sport channel, with the sound down. You can read all you want on the scrolling
screens and when you have your eye caught by the special breaking news
colours and splashes used, itʼs onto Twitter and Facebook to be the first to
ʻshareʼ the news amongst your social circle.

Good bathroom facilities

You are working in a café because you feel in the flow and feel good about
yourself, you feel you will come up with better work and better ideas. So, you
donʼt want that positive train slammed to a halt by a visit to a crappy bathroom. I
have to say though, that this is a rare occurrence these days as the owners of
good cafes understand this more than you do.
Low background music
I have noticed loud music increasingly frequently and therefore increasingly, for
me, a problem. I can work in loud music but it needs to be of a time and a track of
my choosing. Low background music is great for keeping the general flow of the
café going but should it be loud then it can break concentration and flow. But this
is just as much of an imposition for general cafe goers as it is for coffice workers.
The owner will not generally be looking to drive people away from his café so Iʼm
sure the sound will come down if he isnʼt busy enough.

Busy but with plenty of space and choice of where to sit

You donʼt want to be sitting in an empty café if you want to benefit from the full
coffice positives. If itʼs that quiet you may as well work in an office or at home. I
can often go to the coffee shop that I think I want to work in but when I get there it
is either too busy or too quiet and I wonʼt therefore go in but get back on the
bicycle and make my way to my second choice for that day or area.

Great food and coffee

Itʼs a great bonus and something to look forward to if the café serves great
freshly roasted coffee and great homemade bakes (Iʼm not a fan of anything that
comes wrapped in plastic).

And donʼt look too closely at the prices. The café has to make money from you
somehow, and how much would renting an office cost you?

“It is no secret that the best place to write, in my opinion, is a cafe; you don't have
to make your own coffee, you don't feel that you are in solitary confinement while
you work and when inspiration fails, you can take a walk to the next cafe while
your batteries re-charge. In my opinion, the best writing cafe is just crowded
enough so that you blend in, but not so crowded that you end up sharing a table
with somebody who tries to read chapter twenty upside down, has staff who don't
glower at you if you sit there too long (though these days I can afford to keep
ordering coffees even if I don't drink them, so that's less of a problem) and
doesn't play very loud music, which is the only noise that disturbs me when I'm
writing”
JK Rowling
(It was in Nicholsonʼs Cafe and the Elephant House, in Edinburgh, where as a hard-up single
mother, JK Rowling famously penned her first Harry Potter novel.)
How to choose the right coffice for your needs
You can choose depending on your mood or what work you have to achieve:

Breakfast Meeting
You need to host a breakfast meeting. Iʼd look for the best best espresso in town
and bakes in town in a hustling, bustle place where you can feel ʻup and at themʼ
early.

Full Daysʼ Work

You need to do a standard full daysʼ work that includes phone calls, emailing and
writing then look for a fairly big café that is generally always quite busy or never
full so you can work away in the coffice vibe but know that you are not losing the
owner any business by taking up space that could be used by someone whoʼll
pop in for a quick lunch or bite to eat.

Creative and Marketing Work

Every city has its cool areas and cool cafes. Often, either right in the centre of
town or around a University or student living area. This is the type of café I check
out most to get into the vibe of what that cityʼs opinion formers are in to.

Lunch
I often tie in lunch time to a meeting and get away from other coffice workers for
a while and go to a great café, great food and drink.

Market Research
If you are researching a market you can always find good cafes where that
market frequent more than others – due to its location. Find that café and simply
work alongside ʻpeople watchingʼ.

There are certain times of the day when general Coffice working is ideal for
researching certain markets, whichever one you are in:
Business people 7-9am
New mothers 10-12pm
Mothers 9 – 11am
Kids 4-6pm
Home workers 12-2pm

Coffice To-Go
Want to get some great take out coffee for working on the go or at home. More
and more of the independent coffee shops and chains are selling fresh coffee
beans that you can roast yourself at home.
After Work Drink
Again, an increasing amount of cafes are getting liquor licenses and staying open
longer. If you are planning to work into the evening or arranging to meet a friend
for an after work drink then check out cafe websites whether they sell liquor and
what their opening hours are.

Refreshments
A good coffice is one where the staff know what you are doing and are happy
that as long as you have ordered enough for the hours you have been there, you
donʼt have to always be eating or drinking something.

Itʼs better to eat less and tip well! And donʼt overeat and drink too much coffee!

There is an unspoken ʻguilty pleasureʼ amongst coffice workers of eating other

café goersʼ leftovers. Might sound disgusting to some but if you have been
working away and see that the majority of a pastry has gone untouched its hard
to resist as they leave and itʼs sitting there next to you, just waiting …

Opening time recommendations

Different coffices are good to work in at different times.

Mon-Fri
9.30 – 12pm After school drop off / before lunchtime rush
2 – 7pm After lunchtime rush – until closing time
3 - 4.30pm Not good if near a school
9 – 10am Not good if near a school
(in fact, there arenʼt many good coffices near schools….)
Fri. 4pm Onwards always empty. But always a bit sad – go to the pub!

Sun AM Good time for being creative – not report writing

Your Coffice Contract
Coffice working is the most relaxed and positive way to work but to keep it that
way, and especially with an increasing number of workers around, there are
some rules that it is good to keep, to keep the experience great for everyone,
both for fellow coffice workers and fellow general café goers.

You should really be sacked and return to office working for gross misconduct if
you break the golden coffice rules:

• A café can only be your coffice because it is everyone elseʼs café.

Keep it that way. Please donʼt impose on the atmosphere of any café that would
turn it into an office.

• Be polite and exchange pleasantries with the café staff.

They allow you to work away for as long as you want. Someone else is paying
them and itʼs the least you can do.

• Tip well
Itʼs instead of paying office rent, remember that. It is so cheap in comparison you
can afford to tip very well.

• Donʼt work without buying any food or coffee for too long
Donʼt abuse the hospitality or make business difficult for the owner, especially
during lunchtimes. This is the part of the day when cafes need to make their
money. Itʼs a short period, 12-3, in a long day when they have to serve as much
food and drink as possible. So please donʼt sit there taking up one of the last
places but with no food or drink. And donʼt only ask for free tap water. Iʼm a big
fan of tap water and not bottled water but I wouldnʼt abuse hospitality by only
ordering this. You may get into a routine of actually only eating half your food and
taking the rest away with you.

That leads to another conscious problem for coffice workers. When you have
food with you when you reach a café. Iʼve seen, and joined in, the vast number of
people that are secretly eating the food they brought from the last café out of
their bag whilst drinking the coffee they have just bought at the new place.

I do find many cafes donʼt sell fruit and will often take an apple with me in the
morning but havenʼt found a problem in that. I would encourage all cafes to serve
single pieces of fruit. Even us coffice workers need to have a balanced diet!

As long as you are happy that over time you are ordering enough and tipping well
then you will be working away guilt free and thatʼs an important positive feeling
you want to retain from the coffee shop atmosphere, in order to produce your
best work
 • Donʼt ask staff to turn the music down.
This would be you imposing your office culture on the café. If you want silence
then go back to an office, if you want it quieter then go to another café. The one
time you could politely ask is when the café is empty and they are likely to lose
you if they donʼt turn it down.

• Donʼt hog the plug sockets.

As mentioned the availability of numerous plugs sockets is very rare therefore
you need to share. Donʼt take up more than 1 plug and share the plug socket
when your laptop is fully charged.

• Donʼt rip bits out of the free papers or steal them (go to the website)
So you have turned up at the Coffice, thought youʼd start the day with a skim
through the mornings papers, thereʼs a great feature promoted on the front cover,
you turn to read it…and itʼs gone! The page has been ripped out or indeed the
entire supplement has been stolen. It happens to you, so donʼt do it to other
people.

One thing youʼll find by coffice working is how similar people are and that means
we all want to read the same articles. Youʼll be surprised at how much of a
newspaper goes unread, not appealing to anybody.

If you have your laptop with you then type into Google the name of the paper and
the headline to the feature and you will have it on screen in moments to read
again or share.

Are you one of those people who tear cuttings out and actually never gets to read
them anyway? Thatʼs because youʼve already digested the important bits, the
headline, opening paragraph or two and its position in the paper, showing how
important it is.

• Put your phone on vibrate

Another way to keep the café vibe strong. Not that everyone else will have their
phone on vibrate, youʼll hear enough ringing going on but itʼs just a sign of good
manners to do so.

• Go outside or in a quiet corner if you make a phone call

No one else in the café wants to hear you go through your entire business plan
on the phone, while they are relaxing and enjoying a break. Itʼs not difficult to go
to a quiet corner or outside as long as you keep an eye on your bag.
 • Always watch other peoplesʼ gear when they have to visit the
bathroom or go outside to make a call
Or ask someone else to do so for you. There is an unspoken camaraderie
between coffice workers and the small silent nod in your direction while someone
disappears outside or to the bathroom means far more than a simple request.
They trust you and you them.

Working as part of a team or organisation

Do you work in a big organisation or a small team but all currently based in an
office and you want to make the leap to Coffice working? Here are the best tips to
make it work for you, whether you are an employee or the boss.

Employee
Phone colleagues, donʼt email them.
You will now be out of sight and out of mind. Actually for so much of office life
that is very beneficial, you get to miss out on all the things that just slow up your
efficiency. But it also means your personality wonʼt be there. If you are not careful
you will be just the name at the end of an email. You need to ring fellow workers
and let them hear you, have a laugh with you, understand your crazy requests
etc.

Answer their phone calls.

We all know how easy it is to not take a phone call. A quick glance at the screen
and a press of the mute button and its gone. But you mustnʼt do that with your
colleagues. Your relationship with them will only get slightly more distant every
time you do that, especially if you get the reputation for never being available.

Attend and hold meetings

You need to get back to the office for your weekly internal meetings. Again, you
need to show you are a full member of the team and taking everything everyone
says regarding your output onboard.

Also, be happy to meet them on their way to or from the office, in a coffice that is
convenient for them.

Be on time. Donʼt disrespect the people that work in an office

Many coffice workers (and Mac users for that mind) are of a nature to be late for
meetings; donʼt be. We work best with a bit of an adrenaline rush and leaving late
to get to a meeting means we have that rush every day, while we chase across
town. Do everything against your nature to do the best for your inter-company
relationships and be on time for meetings. Even make it your business to be the
first there every week (thatʼll surprise a few people).
Donʼt email colleagues outside 9-5pm
Especially in the middle of the night! It might impress the boss but it doesnʼt
impress your co-workers. They like, just as much as you do, to start each day
with a bit of a plan of what they are going to do, not start it with 20 emails from
you, sent randomly between 6pm last night and 9am this morning.

Anything you want to mail colleagues, consider ringing them about first but
collate into one long email during those non-office hours, save it as a draft and
then in the morning, check it is still all relevant and send after 9am.

Employer
If one of your employees approaches you about wanting to start coffice working.
Give them a chance. Let them come to you with a proposal of how many days
they would like to initially start working away from the office and what they think
they can achieve

To maximise their productivity and relationships with their co-workers always aim
to provide:

Clarity on the scope of their role.

So there can be no misunderstanding with others in the team. They will want this.
Also:

• Something they can succeed at

• Something they can concentrate on
• Clear goals
• Something you can tell them quite quickly whether theyʼve achieved or not.

All fairly self-explanatory, and from the golden rules of ʻFlowʼ. If you want
someone out of your sight to achieve the best productivity then you need to give
them a single goal you believe they can achieve, a reasonable timeframe in
which to achieve it, (much shorter than you would give them in the office, when
you would expect them to be distracted and pulled into wider team activity and
brainstorms) and the promise that you will get back to them quickly with the
results, or your feedback, on their work, once it is submitted.

As well as helping their productivity it also provides you ample measurement as

to whether they are succeeding in their new working structure and environment
or not.
The time when a team works better together
There are one or two working scenarios when it is more productive for a team to
work together for most of each day.

Generally it is when the whole teamsʼ work will be ʻoutwardʼ facing towards the
media or their customers. Meaning company actions need to be immediate and
are dependent on instant team interaction and decisions. This is often just before
the release of a product or the culmination of a campaign, when success is
dependent on a short burst of high intensity team work. Youʼll know when it is
that time because your office will start to sound like a café; vibrant, busy and
positive.

Hire or borrow some flexible office space for this period and use the coffee shop
as a coffee shop, not a coffice.
Your new working tools and infrastructure
(latest recommendations to be added into this section)

Even traditional office set-ups are starting to involve workers in multiple locations
interacting and collaborating, as becoming multi-national and growing into a
global business has become easier to achieve.

So there are now many web-based solutions to facilitate distributed working, to

connect people, to promote a sense of belonging and enable great collaboration.
They have been developed for large companies and teams but they are perfect
for collaborative coffice working. The book will include details on the following:

Which laptop / smartphone

Accessories: Plugs and leads
Spare battery
USB phone charger

Your virtual office tools

Setting up Email / website
Sharing documents
Using cloud computing

Infrastructure
Printing
Faxing
Scanning
Location
Meeting rooms
Communications
Dongle
Mobile
IM
Skype
Email
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Google Wave
Bluetooth
Webcams
Conference call lines
Video conferencing
Smartphones
You can now run your entire business on a smartphone. As of May 2010 these
are the best apps in order for you to achieve that on an iPhone and Blackberry.

iPhone
Business
Mail
Skype
instapaper
linked in
Facebook
Twitter
Maps
Quick office
A Note
Google
Reference / media
Maps
BBC Mobile
Wiki near you

Blackberry

And remember, although youʼd love to, you canʼt do everything in a coffice
Boring things that need intense concentration and attention to accurate detail.
Receipts
Accounts
Anything else dull and boring
 Step 3
HOW TO MAKE MILLIONS OF DOLLARS
OR ENGAGE MILLIONS OF PEOPLE

The Coffice Success Manifesto

1. Work opening hours, not office hours

2. Work with the best people on earth
3. Use the secret of knowing if your new idea has the X-Factor
4. Only do what you do best (and then be open and out)
5. Collaborate not employ
6. Market your new product free in primetime
7. Never research anything, ever again
8. Get a public that doesnʼt care, to care
9. Donʼt worry if youʼre going to sell any, but if you are going to sell a
million
10. Afford to fail and try again and again and again
1. Work Opening Hours, Not Office Hours

When you are working well, feel vibrant, having good ideas, banging away on a
whole document non-stop, youʼre getting things done fast and effectively. You
are ʻin the flowʼ.

“People who are in "flow" achieve a state of consciousness that is in harmony

with their surroundings and feelings. They do not make distinctions between work
and play ... people in "flow" create an inner state of being that brings them peace
and fulfillment. They are focused, what they do is meaningful and has purpose,
they are absorbed in their activities and they have a sense of connection to their
inner self and also with others. Some people experience it for minutes, some for
hours, some for days on end ... evidently it can be sustained for long periods
of time by some people” Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

For all the negatives I have already highlighted, an office is a hard place in
which to feel you are ʻin the flowʼ.

With its positive atmosphere, a coffice enables you to be in the flow more often
and for far longer. Itʼs like living in your own real life Facebook live feed. You can
actually live what Facebook are trying to replicate virtually. People in cafes want
to live a permanent water cooler moment, be the first to tell others, the equivalent
of the Facebook ʻwallʼ feature. You can choose to be surrounded by a whole
community that is in the flow.

Be prepared to work odd hours though. Enlightening thoughts and the feeling of
ʻflowʼ can be like a dream. It appears and disappears quickly and so you must be
ready and prepared to capture that moment.

With ʻflowʼ striking at any time you can go to the best coffice for what you need to
do. Whether thatʼs at 7.30am on a Monday morning or 3pm on a Saturday
afternoon. You can turn up and maximise your productivity and creativity in that
ʼflowʼ moment.

Work when you feel like it

Observations imply that people working while in a state of ʻflowʼ achieve
their work in around half the time of what it takes them in an office. So you are
free to take half the day off or to continue working and achieve twice as much.

Stop when you feel like it

Some days I choose to relax and on others continue to work while in the ʻflowʼ
state but the big trick is to stop working as soon as you realise you are not in the
most productive state anymore. Your productivity and enthusiasm soon drops to
that of a normal office worker and you certainly want to avoid working too much
in that state and achieving nothing.

I find a good trick for that is to create myself an artificial deadline, anything to aim
for as an end time. So I know I have an exact amount of time and will want to
look back at the end of that period and see something that has been achieved
(rather than just having sent another 100 emails). So I will call the wife or a friend
and arrange to meet them or call the kids and promise to be home by a certain
time. The worst is when I donʼt have a deadline, and I could just get home at any
time in the evening, from 6-10pm. It will nearly always be nearer the latter than
the former.

Working while you feel in the flow is by far the most effective route to having a
good positive lifestyle and for creating business success.

Also, I needed to explain this point to my understanding partner and you may use
this point to show yours and say ʻsee, itʼs not just meʼ. It explains why I often
donʼt go up to bed at the same time as her or disappear at odd times down to the
local café, sometimes unfortunately coinciding with chores at home or when the
kids come home or especially when dinner is ready, but Iʼm in the ʻflowʼ.

I do struggle to work anywhere when cafes are quiet, especially late Friday or
Sunday. Itʼs annoying if I feel in the flow then, as cafes are not inspiring at those
times. Everyone is out with friends or home with family and itʼs a very uninspiring,
lonely experience. I will often battle with myself as to whether I should leave the
opportunity to achieve loads and simply do the right thing and play with my kids
or go for it for an uninspiring but effective few hours…
2. Work with the Best People On Earth

Get support, advice and inspiration from the best thinkers, experts and
commentators.

You need time and space and inspiration in order to come up with new ideas.

There is a classic book on the subject of idea creation: ʻA Technique for

Producing Ideasʼ by James Young. He cites a set format to finding that eureka
moment when you put two existing ideas together in an original way - the basis of
any new idea.

To stand your best chance of achieving that, you may as well work with the best
people on earth. With the state of flow working enabling you to complete your
daily workload in half the time, if you need to come up with some new ideas use
that extra time to take in the thoughts of some of the best people around:

• Read books from the greatest thinkers.

• Read articles from the daily broadsheets and websites by the greatest
experts.
• Listen in to the conversation (real-life or social) of the greatest
commentators

Thinkers
Some of the best and most original thinkers have put their thoughts down into the
following books that are all well worth reading:

Itʼs Not How Good You Are, Itʼs How Good You Want to Beʼ by Paul Arden
The best book on inspiring different ways of thinking. I agree with almost
everything in here and have bought it for everyone who has worked with me.

ʻGetting Things Doneʼ by David Allen

The bible for maximising work productivity

ʻBlinkʼ by Malcolm Gladwell

To maximise your time in the flow you need to be acting on the impulse of ʻBlinkʼ

ʻThe 4 Hour Work Weekʼ by Timothy Ferris

ʻLateral Thinkingʼ by Edward De Bono

Experts
Read features by good journalists on the talking points of that day, written by
them only hours earlier. You need to be in the zeitgeist and therefore have a look
at the features in that dayʼs broadsheets or most respected websites.

Donʼt only refer to colleagues for certain information, who know far less than the
most important global experts of their generation, whose thoughts and views you
can read, only moments after they have written them.

Essentially this is stretching your Google usage to its full potential. Think a bit
more about specifically what you want to know and learn and search a bit more.

I read the advert for the Comic Relief job in a Coffice. I read a review of a TV
programme in a free newspaper in a coffice that gave me the idea for how to
market Friends Reunited.

So many of my ideas have come through this route.

I donʼt read all the things I tear out of the papers. Itʼs the fact that itʼs in there at
all that is the most useful piece of information. The size and positioning of the
article, if it has a picture, whoʼs likely to have read it. That all adds up to an
answer as to whether something is in the zeitgeist or not.

Commentators
What better situation to put yourself in for creating new ideas than working
alongside likeminded people from different backgrounds, businesses and
industries in the best cafes in your city.

Without the politics of the office and without any conversations that you donʼt
want to be involved in, you are in control of how much you engage with other
people. But choose the right coffice for inspiration, listen and possibly chat and
you could soon see an idea in one industry that might well work in your own.

And then surf with all three...

It is much easier to have a successful business if you surf the wave of the
zeitgeist. If you are in competition with anyone it generally comes down to
competing to be the lowest cost, which is not a great place to be.

So take as long as you need to come up with a new idea. If it is one that will surf
then it will be worth that additional time. If it doesnʼt, then donʼt bother pursuing it
anyway. In this world of millions of coffice workers you donʼt want to be
competing with too many of them!

This was the case with my first agency, Beatwax, that I sold for £millions. In 1992
we had read reports in the paper that the Government of the day said they were
going to get a million students into higher education by the end of the century (at
that stage there were around 120,000). We started an agency marketing to
students. The first few years were tough and then from 1994-2000 we surfed the
crest of that wave and worked for nearly every brand going and the money came
rolling in.

My partner in that jumped off that wave and started surfing a bigger, even faster
moving one. He came to our wedding in 1994 and said he was leaving to start an
internet agency. I asked what the internet was, exactly? Sounded like CB radio to
me at the time. But guess which of us has got more cash in the bank now...?

Remember though, your big selling idea might not actually be yours. Your role
might not be what you think it is. The best idea is probably right in front of your
face and youʼre looking too far. Look closer to home.

Look around the café. What do these people want? How can you engage them?
Whatʼs missing that they need?
3. The Secret of Knowing If Your New Idea Has the X-Factor

Customers tell you what they want

The most successful new business ideas are the ones that provide the answer to
a gap in a market. They solve a problem; “Thereʼs no book for this subject I want
to read, thereʼs no product that will do what I want” etc.

Success is achieved by solving those problems and filling that gap.

From school onwards, you are taught that the best way to learn to solve a
problem is to explain it to someone else.

“While revising ask your child to explain their answer to you.

Itʼs the best way to learn” Twyford School

“The best way to solve a problem? Try explaining it to

somebody outside your field” Wired Magazine

Working in a coffice you are working right alongside your customers. If you are
trying to solve a problem and create a business success that will appeal to them,
then sitting amongst them enables you to be solving that problem, whilst in your
mind playing through the thought process of explaining it to them. You donʼt
actually have to speak to them but hey, why not?

This will give you an instant feeling as to whether you have a good idea or not.
This I believe is the premise behind Malcolm Gladwellʼs Blink. This is idea
generation living the premise of Blink in real life. Trusting your initial gut feeling
about an idea because you are surrounded by the people that it is relevant to.

Comic Relief founder Richard Curtis told me that he used to write his TV show
ʻNot The Nine OʼClock Newsʼ in an office at the BBC with no one around. He
didnʼt know what was funny or not until he could hear someone coming up the
stairs towards him. He then instantly knew which were the funny jokes by going
through in his mind telling that joke to the person coming.

This is why kids can do homework with TV and background noise on. They are
sensing whether their answers are right or not. Are you one of those coffice
workers who wanted, and were allowed, to do homework with a noisy
background at home?

You can sense if someone likes something, if it will work or appeal or not. You
canʼt do that in silence or if you are surrounded by people that need you to solve
that problem (your fellow office workers), rather than the people you will sell it to
(your fellow café dwellers).
4. Only Do What You Do Best and Be Open and Out with the
Rest

ʻDo what you do best and link to the rest.ʼ

What Would Google Do? Jeff Jarvis

You cannot plan or predict real genuine, huge success. If you could, then we
would all be successful! Companies prepare marketing plans for success but
how often does it achieve beyond their goals (and dreams). Huge success
comes out of the blue, from somewhere leftfield. You need to be flexible to
go with it when the sudden interest or demand comes.

That happened with both Friends Reunited and Red Nose Day. We had a good
marketing plan with both but they both suddenly shot forward due to a piece of
media coverage that generated far more response than anyone could predict.
That results in more and bigger opportunities suddenly coming your way and
blowing away completely your carefully structured marketing plan.

Iʼve seen many big companies and agencies miss opportunities that they were
not able to react quickly enough to capitalize on and that one moment they had to
change everything for better, for ever, was lost.

Working in a Coffice enables you to concentrate on your one skillset and goal.
You avoid all the time consuming chores you are pulled into in an office that donʼt
really concern you. Out of sight out of mind for peripheral requests on you, long
boring meetings, ccʼd on mails for no real reason etc

With a coffice lifestyle you are not burdening yourself with a structure, buildings
or staff levels that would take too long to change direction when that massive
opportunity arises.

I was happily working away on this book in my own time, alongside the 1GOAL
campaign when I showed it to one writer friend. He recommended a publisher,
who was immediately interested, which prompted me into 2 weeks of 24/7 writing
to capitalise on the opportunity. I couldnʼt have done that under the old office
work ethic.

Twitterʼs a great example of doing only what they do best.

Twitter has remained shockingly simple. “We have been at this long enough to
realise that simplicity is core to the philosophy,” says Biz Stone, co-founder “We
are always thinking, ʻHow would this feature work if you were only to use Twitter
over SMS?ʼ SMS is a good common denominator because it forces us to think
very simply.”
 Twitter focused its slim resources on keeping the site online. “Twitter actually
hasnʼt done that much innovation itself” says Mr Owyang. “A lot of the features
that are popular have been designed by the community.”
Financial Times

Be open and out

We talk in the next rule about collaborating but generally to maixmise your
flexibility you should outsource to other great people and organisations
everything that is not within your expertise and use open source software for any
digital work. Donʼt ever build your own video players and photo sharing
functionality when you can happily utilise websites like youtube and flickr.
5. Collaborate, Donʼt Employ

As we have seen you should only do what you do best and nothing else. In an
office you would be employing people to do all the other work. But if you want
real success stop that immediately and start collaborating.

Itʼs cheaper, more manageable, and you often get to work with better people.

There are different types of collaborators:

• Citizens
• Crowd-sourced volunteers
• Contributors
• Freelancers
• Organizations

With the first half (the free half!) of this list, comprising citizens, volunteers and
contributors, you need to provide a platform where they can show off their own
work and contribution and feel that they have a value.

“The overlooked lesson of Obamaʼs campaign is that it treated

voters as citizens with active roles in a democratic society than
passive consumers swayed by party marketing” The Guardian

ʻThe contribution revolution. Letting volunteers build your

businessʼ Harvard Business Review (full feature: http://bit.ly/cvCcpv)

ʻThe ability to “retweet” another userʼs post, the hashtag and even the use of the
word “tweet” were all pioneered by users. The company has also let a community
of developers run wild. More than 50,000 applications now tap into Twitterʼs
stream of information. “We decided to open up the technology platform early on,”
says Mr Stone. “That led to an unexpected explosion of variety for users in all
these Twitter applications.” Financial Times

“Twitterʼs founders created a simple messaging service. Its users turned it into
something huge. So the question now: Whoʼs in charge? Steven Levy, Wired

“By encouraging users to experiment with the service and build around it, Twitter
has cultivated an engaged and loyal user base. “Letting developers create a
presence on the web that is three to four times larger than Twitter.com is
extremely smart,” says Loic Le Meur, founder of Seesmic, one of the largest
Twitter application developers. “They let us innovate faster than they innovate
themselves.” Its genius has been to let its users and the developer community
decide what to do with it” Financial Times
With the second half of the list, the half you have to pay or share ownership of
your idea or business with, the freelancers and organizations, there are some
golden rules to follow and golden people to find.

Work with people more successful than you.

Get someone who knows ten times more than you and works in an office to tell
you what to do and to get your ideas listened to by the ʻinner circleʼ that controls
your sector.

Generally these are slightly older, old skool, successful people, rich and well
connected, in the real life rather than virtual space.

Secure either a top PR person, or an industry specialist to become chairman /

spokesman for your idea or business etc. Their involvement will mean important
people will take your idea seriously.

Iʼve secured to work with me previously some of the very best people in their
fields (for which I gave them equity in my businesses): Stewart Till (Chairman of
the British Film Council), Terry Venables (ex England manager), Mike Lee
(Media Director of the London 2012 Olympic bid) and Richard Curtis (writer,
director) and now Iʼm working closely with Queen Rania of Jordan on 1GOAL,
who opens doors at the highest level and enables me to walk through with the
1GOAL plan.

They truly enable all your hard coffice working to be worthwhile

Work with someone great and loyal who will pull the whole thing together
for you.
Behind every great coffice worker is a great C.O.O.
Attention to detail, through a C.O.O. running your operation or a developer geek
building your website, can be the hardest thing to achieve in a coffice and the
mindset of many coffice workers is often of more of a creative than detail leaning.

But to have success, you need every single aspect to be perfect. Your financial
management and your website working on every platform are but two. So try to
find that great person who will turn everything you do into gold. Someone who
really cares about your finer details and enjoys working in silence!
6. Market Your New Product in Primetime for Free

Realtime is the new primetime

Prime Time in the media has traditionally been early evening TV news and
entertainment and what people famously talk about around the water cooler at
work the following day.

Now – it is Now! This minute, while you are reading this book. Even the fact that
you are reading Coffice now has value to your wider social network. Watch
Twitter and see how much conversation and breaking news is trending right now,
this minute. Top items of discussion can have tens of thousands of new tweeted
conversation and sharing every minute.

Take advantage of the fact that Real Time is the new prime time to market and
advertise your product or idea for free by following the 4 Rʼs: Be right now, real,
relevant and ripped off!

Be Right Now
Twitter and Facebook are the new global water coolers. Itʼs where the latest
conversation is taking place and where people need to be talking about you.

“To me itʼs like working in an office with thousands of funny / clever people who
only speak when they have something useful or funny or interesting to say”
Graham Linehan, writer of Father Ted and The IT Crowd on Twitter

You should be tweeting and updating your Facebook status constantly

throughout a day. And donʼt feel guilty. Many bosses still unbelievably see this as
a waste of their staff time but it is now a critical part of success.

For companies large and small, Twitter emerged as an effective way for them to
communicate directly with consumers. Politicians used it as a campaigning tool,
while to celebrities, Twitter offered a more intimate connection with their fans. For
the media, Twitter helped break news and supplement reporting.

“Today, promotions on Twitter have helped Dell generate an additional $6.5m in

sales, and other companies are following its lead. Hotels and airlines are now
offering special promotions on the site. Small businesses share updated
inventory. Food carts broadcast their location to devoted lunchtime followings”
Financial Times
Be Relevant
Present your product or idea in a form that is relevant to NOW.

I saw this when working recently with Queen Rania of Jordan for 1GOAL. She
sent out a tweet, covering several points. Twice as many people retweeted the
top fact - relevant to everybodyʼs daily life, than the bottom one.

ʻThe Answer Factory give the people what they want. A fiendishly clever start-up
knows what we are goggling and then churns out thousands of videos and
articles to meet our every instant whim and wish” Wired

Be real
You need your business to be real and authentic. There are so many
communication channels and you cannot stop public opinion. So if you are not
real then people will soon be telling each other very publicly their thoughts about
your unreal, artificial messaging.

Protesters in Iran had a very real, authentic issue, which they managed to
communicate to the world through people believing their story and spreading
their voice globally through Twitter.

While anyone trying to promote through unauthentic means generally now gets
ʻfound outʼ, and ends up in a far worse place.

And then get someone (everyone) to rip you off!

Share your new ideas with everyone you donʼt know (or are related to!), hopefully
they will want to rip you off! Because your idea is right now, relevant and real.

Share the idea around the coffice, through your social network and listen to what
they say. If they like it, loads of other people will, if they donʼt, other people wont.

People donʼt generally steal actual business plan ideas from others these days
but if they do it is also generally quite easy to claim your ownership.

I had a friend come round one evening and tell me they had seen one of my
ideas in Time Out London magazine. I didnʼt know anything about it, bought a
copy, contacted the major sports brand that had ripped me off and banked £15k
later in the week.
7. Never Research Anything, Ever Again

Get to know what your customers really want

Everyone has other people as some sort of customer. From your boss or client
being a customer of your work, a designer with buyers of their product or piece of
art, a writer and his readers etc.

ALL these ʻcustomersʼ hang out in coffee shops. Find the right one and make it
your coffice. Listen to them, see what interests them. Find out what people really
want, what they are really like, what pushes buttons. Watch and observe your
customers.

Listen to your surroundings Throw away your iPod! Listening to headphones is

what people in offices do now as its too quiet and they are trying to artificially
create their own sense of ʻflowʼ.

In my first job in the Boots the Chemist for 3 years behind the counter, I learnt
more there about engaging people than doing anything else before or since.

Whatever you are selling keep an eye on the kids

Kids think email is like a landline answerphone. Why would they leave a
message on a phone when they donʼt know when someone will pick it up?
“Thatʼs so random!” Everything today is about instant communication. Just look,
you do not see many under-15s using email. Itʼs already out of date and can be
superseded with even more instant and shorter forms of communication like SMS
and Twitter.

Children are the present and future of communications.

They donʼt know any different, you do. Their whole mindset to media, technology
and products is different from yours and it is a critical distinction to acknowledge
and learn from. Their use of communications are the future of your business.

ʻYou had computers before the internet – what on earth for?ʼ they ask.

Every time you show you are impressed with technology – ʻOh look, I can watch
live TV on my iPadʼ - is exactly like your parents saying to you while you watched
Top Of The Pops, ʻIt all sounds the same to meʼ.

Working in a coffice will stop you becoming out of date...

Case Study: Cranium
Richard Taitʼs $77m cup of coffee

“Ever since the age of four, Iʼve been creating businesses in my head. The
greatest gift my parents gave me was the freedom to dream.” Richard Tait had
left Microsoft in Seattle after launching 13 businesses for them. Along with his
partner Whit Alexander, he developed a new board game called Cranium. He
knew they had a winning product, yet despite huge efforts they couldnʼt get the
main toy distributors to take it on.

They had placed an order for 27,000 copies with a manufacturer “but we had
nowhere to sell it,” Richard recalls. Commiserating with Whit in a local Starbucks
after failing to get their product into the American International Toy Fair, they
looked around at the customers in the store. “We thought, letʼs take our games to
where customers are, rather than where games are traditionally sold,” says
Richard. It was the perfect audience of young, hip professionals. Using his
business connections he persuaded Starbucks to stock the game – the first time
theyʼd sold such an item.

As it took off, Richardʼs became the first game sold on Amazon.com, the first sold
in Barnes and Noble and the first with a host of other retailers. Growth from this
point was prodigious before Richard and Whit sold out to Hasbro for $77.5
million. “We built the third largest games company in the world because we love
to change the rules,” concludes Richard.“ Iʼd urge other entrepreneurs not to be
fearful. By challenging rules, you open-up your business to bigger thinking. And
besides, itʼs tons of fun!”
8. How to Engage a Public that Doesnʼt Care, to Care

People donʼt really care about your product - or your great ideas.

Sitting next to people in a café and earwigging you will hear how little they really
care about brands and news. They are topics for a brief catch-up and gossip but
rarely do people, when talking about anything current, get all the facts right.
Theyʼve quickly heard or scanned something and only got 80% of the story,
which is enough for them. They donʼt care enough, or even have the time in their
busy lives, to give you the time you want.

Journalists and politicians should read this.

When you do engage them and they ʻcareʼ it is only for the time it takes to drive
past a car crash. (You know, when drivers slow down to look at the devastation
and then pass, speed back up and put it behind them.) So, to put it in perspective
... youʼve got to keep creating car crashes every day of your campaign.

The bloggers in Iran in ʼ09 created a huge global swirl of support with citizens
and media but then it all suddenly stopped. Why? Michael Jackson died. And the
news agenda moved on and didnʼt return. It hardly ever does.

So you canʼt start too early but once you go – go. Start your campaign with a
bang and keep it going every single day with new news and interesting stories. It
means all your coffice work for that period is outward facing. No more time for
reflection and relaxing, itʼs go go go. Once you have a momentum going you
canʼt stop.

For Red Nose Day we chose to create a momentum for 42 days. For 1GOAL it is
77 days. Anything longer we canʼt sustain. Itʼs a ral challenge to have enough
content and stories to keep the public caring for any longer.

A graph showing the interest online for the biggest fundraising event in UK
history, Red Nose Day 09, raising £82m, indicates that although it was a huge
success the graph is like the long tail in reverse. People only cared for a short
time and in that moment we had to make them do something...

You need to engage some very cool, uncaring people.

Opinion formers
Are they using Gowalla?

The easiest people to market anything to are the opinion formers within your
consumers. The ones that want to be the first to know and the first to tell their
friends about anything good and new.

They are on the look out for something new to share with their community. Again,
work in the right coffice, where these people hang out and see what they think of
your idea and the latest communications tools they use.

And use those tools. It was Twitter, if you used that it created interest in its own
right. Now it is Gowalla. Use Gowalla to promote your brand right now and you
will pique the opinion formers interest.

Journalists
Help them show off.

Make sure your idea enables journalists to tell their own story about it. They
should be targeted to become fans of your product so that they ʻwantʼ to write
about it. Often they simply want to show off, being first to know about
something...or being a journalist with your product makes them better than
anyone they know. Journalists like to show off, help them do that.

Test it on fellow coffice workers. if they tell other people then itʼs a good sign.
They will only tell other people if it makes them look good...

With Friends Reunited we invited journalists to cover the website by writing a

story about their old school friends, that we would help find for them. This
enabled them to go back to their school and show off to their old school mates
under the premise that they were writing a newspaper feature. “What do you do?
Work in a bank or a shop? Really? Iʼm a writer for the Guardian/Times in
London...”

AND, many journalists are coffice workers by trade. They are freelance and have
to move around, so Iʼm hoping that works for this book!! But also find the local
coffice where journalists hang out and work alongside them.

You need to love celebs. Everyone else does.

The public love celebrities, Iʼm afraid. So in the your coffice when you get to this
stage in your campaign, make sure you spend time relaxing, in an inspiring way,
with the latest gossip mags and sites and keep yourself up to date with whoʼs on
the A list and whoʼs down on D.

With Red Nose Day, we had our nice logo on the top of our Facebook page. We
were doing well with new ʻfansʼ joining every day but one day someone
suggested changing it for a picture of Chris Moyles, the big UK radio DJ, with a
red nose on, our traffic went through the roof.
Also that same Chris Moyles kindly climbed Kilimanjaro for Comic Relief. He is a
well-known user of Twitter. While he was climbing he didnʼt take his phone and
didnʼt tweet but his Twitter followers grew by 20,000. Meanwhile our official
(unknown) tweeter was tweeting about the climb every hour. Our official Twitter
account grew by 5,000 followers!

The Public
Go to them. They wonʼt come to you. and they probably donʼt trust you, either!

The public is very busy. They havenʼt got time for you or your new product or
idea. They certainly arenʼt going to go out of their way to find out about you.

You need to go to them.

Online, this manifests itself by providing all the communication you want to with
your audience on the third party websites they are already on. With Red Nose
Day we found that not many people clicked through from our pages on Facebook
or the BBCʼs website to our own rednoseday.com site.

So with 1GOAL we have gone to them. We have produced mini websites that
can sit on third party sites and the user doesnʼt have to leave their favourite site
to see what we are all about and engage with us.

Again, itʼs a by-product of Coffice working that you come to understand this and
see what your customers are interested in today, as it might not be the same as
yesterday or tomorrow.

“The message you get, in a lot of ways, is less important than whom you get it
from. If you get it from someone you trust, youʼll listen to it. Whereas if you get it
from someone you donʼt trust (ie anyone (brand) you donʼt know) you might
actually believe the opposite of what they said. I think thatʼs the basis of
the value that people get on Facebook ” Mark Zuckerberg, Founder, Facebook
9. Donʼt Worry If Youʼre Going to Sell Anything, But Plan How
You Are Going to Sell a Million

If you take everything youʼve learnt from this book and put it into the
development of your winning product, it will result in the very reason why your
potential customer will be interested in talking to you about it.

Youʼve learnt and lived with the very people you want to buy your product.

You should be in a position where itʼs like selling shoes. You should not have
reached this point unless you have a product or idea to sell that is exactly what
the customer wants, with no debate. You wouldnʼt sell a size 9 shoe to someone
who wanted size 8.

The trick from here is how do you get from that first customer to the millionth.
You need the first customer to engage for you on average at least one further
sale. This is called a viral expansion loop. If you can average above one you are
guaranteed sales.

“Facebook and others have tapped into the power of viral loops to build massive
audiences in record time. Now theyʼre using these growth engines to create the
future” Fast Company magazine

Imagine being in this position if you were still working in an office? Youʼre not, are
you?
10. Tip Well and You Can Afford to Start Again and Again

Becoming successful in a coffice is affordable.

Becoming a failure in coffice costs relatively nothing.

Without all those office leasing and commuting costs you are saving a fortune.
Always remember that: be nice, tip well. Avoid any guilty feelings that will detract
from your positive wellbeing and make sure if you like a coffice that the staff are
happy to see you day after day.

You might spend more on food and drink but you can choose to eat the very
best, most healthy food and itʼs still cheaper than any office option. You can
even afford to order teas and coffees and not drink them.

The cost of an office space can be £300+ per week. The cost of a coffice should
be around £10 per day.

You can now achieve spaceless growth for the business.

 APPENDIX
(more depth / info to be added to this section)

The Coffice@Home
What next? Office: To-Go
Join the global ʻcoffice workersʼ community
1GOAL: The coffee shop diaries

Other features to include:

Creating your city ʻHead Cofficeʼ / Successful coffice workers and
businesses / 10 best global coffee shop chains / 10 best coffices
around the world / 10 best bookshops with coffices / For the travelling
Coffice worker – 10 best hotel chains and airports
The Coffice@Home
Youʼve movef to the coffice way of life. And soon you find that that positive ʻflowʼ
moment can strike in the middle of the night.

Youʼre relaxed, had something to eat, watched a bit of TV and suddenly feel
ʻready to goʼ. But itʼs pitch black and unless you live in our ever-growing number
of 24-hour cities you are going to have to work at home...

So how do you create the Coffice@Home?

Which coffee machine should you invest in (for a late-night decaff)? Iʼll review:
Clover
Nespresso
Lavazza
Filter
Gaggia
iLLy
San Remo

But make sure you but a wholesale supply of Byron Bay cookies. The most
popular café cookies in the world. Iʼve seen them literally everywhere.

And buy some great cookbooks from great cafes:

Breakfast Lunch Tea: Rose Bakery by Rose Carrarini

The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook by Tarek Malouf

And Iʼll offer tip sheets on essentials like these:

Five steps to the best cappuccino

By Gwilym Davies, world champion Barista

• Know where your beans come from (Davies' are from a farm in El Salvador and
one in Nicaragua.)
• Freshness. "You need to know when the coffee was roasted." Three weeks is
the optimum.
• Favour a burr grinder, not one of those helicopter blades because they don't
grind evenly.
• Get a good-quality machine with a stable temperature.
• Keep the frothing wand clean. "If you overheat the milk it loses its sweetness."

Youʼll also fnd that coffice working makes you even more popular at home, if you
choose it to! Because you can finish your work in half the time (but itʼs your
choice whether to go home and relax and enjoy company or, unfortunately like
me in too many occasions, choose to just keep on working….).

But when you do get home, you are a lot less stressed than having been in the
office all day. And if you have played your cards really right you will have brought
home some great break and bakes that the café sells off for half prices at the end
of the day!

What next? Office: To-Go

Whatʼs the future and even the NOW for you early adopting coffice workers... ?

Coffices provide far more than just a cheap and mobile outlet as weʼve seen.
They create an environment thatʼs good for you and your business. But
technologyand retail trends are constantly changing and with WIFI through
dongles, 3G and the iPad, Office: To-Go is the future.

But it is early days. You can maybe work on a plane, train and bus now but they
donʼt yet provide the most conducive and effective environment for the positives
of Coffice life outlined in the book

So we will look at which sector will grow or change to meet the demand for
coffice working on the go.

Continue the conversation today with the ʻcoffice lifeʼ community

At www.cofficelife.com
Facebook.com/cofficelife
Linkedin.com/cofficelife
Twitter.com/cofficelife

To discuss, collaborate and share:

Fun and life changing stories from your new lifestyle
Stories of how you found success
The latest mobile / laptop technology
Best overheard conversations

Join our petition for free hotel Wi-Fi

“Hotel Internet Charges Are a rip-off. Imagine your reaction if a

hotel you were staying on charged £15 a night for providing a TV in
your room. You'd probably check out immediately. So why do we
put up with exorbitant internet costs. I am staying at the Hilton
 Metropole in Brighton and they charge £15 per night for an internet
connection.
City Inn hotels provide free wifi access in all their hotels and it gets
them a huge amount of goodwill. Why don't other hotels cotton on
to this?” Iain Dale, MP, UK

Let us know
Nominate 5* coffices in every town and city in the world
The most expensive Wi-Fi youʼve ever come across

Access
Latest reference websites and materials
Daily inspiring websites
Magazines to read
Case Study: 1GOAL
The Coffee Shop Diaries (sample)

Showing the behind the scenes work in creating the biggest cause related
campaign of all time. 1GOAL: Education For All, A legacy of the 2010 World Cup
campaign, which I am doing from great coffices around the world



Working away in the very cool (and free WI-FI) Alsur Cafe in El Born.
http://bit.ly/b2sjbq (except getting high on second degree
smoking!) 5:15 PM Feb 17th from bit.ly



Talking 1goal with supporters MTN CEO (130m customers in Africa!) and
Simon Le Bon... #mwc 11:33 PM Feb 16th from Tweetie



Backstage with Duran Duran. That wasn't something I thought I'd ever
say, let alone this morning...#mwc 11:05 PM Feb 16th from Tweetie

Backstage at GSMA #mwc with Eric Schmidt - he's taller in real life....
4:01 PM Feb 16th from Tweetie


http://twitpic.com/13l7rb - All the mobile CEO's signing up to reach

over 1billion people for 1GOAL #join1goal #mwc 2:57 PM Feb 16th
from TwitPic


So, I introduced Queen Rania to Joan Laporta for 1GOAL - didn't think
that would happen when I got up this morning... 1:10 PM Feb 16th
from web

join1goal 
Thanks to #queenrania, Joan Lapaorta, Aaron Mokoena and

the GSMA for helping to start engaging 1 billion people globally for
#join1goal #mwc 1:08 PM Feb 16th from web 
Retweeted by you
and 2 others


QueenRania 
Proud to be part of largest-ever cause-related campaign!
GSMA-1GOAL announce over BILLION mobile phones in reach 4
Education 4 All message 11:51 AM Feb 16th from Seesmic

Retweeted by you and 49 others


Backstage at #mwc with joan Leporta, president of FC Barcelona! On

stage with #1GOAL shortly - DONT MISS 9:38 AM Feb 16th from
Tweetie



Good meeting on 1GOAL with Avatar producer Jon Landau at Queen
Rania event pre our major announcement tomorrow. #mwc 11:47
PM Feb 15th from web

join1goal 
Only 1 day until Queen Rania announces biggest Cause

campaign of all time for 1GOAL - a legacy of the 2010 World Cup
#mwc 9:11 AM Feb 15th from web 
Retweeted by you and 4 others



Preparing 1GOAL for huge mobile announcement in cool Cafe Shilling,
C/Ferran, BCN. #mwc 2:17 PM Feb 14th from Tweetie
 
Valentines pres from Helen of an alarm clock - aiming to keep the
iPhone (and all its tweets, posts and mails) out of the bedroom. Will it
work? 9:11 AM Feb 14th from Tweetie

http://twitter.com/chrisatcoffice

Crloissants, toast and papers with family. Now in suit and on way to
Barcelona to announce biggest charity campaign of all time for
1GOAL #mwc 1:07 PM Feb 13th from Tweetie

 

join1goal 
Yes that's right - Shakira is our latest ambassador! Check
out the news in full here: http://www.join1goal.org/ and dont
forget to sign up! 11:57 AM Feb 8th from web 
Retweeted by you
and 6 others


Lets hope we can make the 1GOAL campaign as rewarding for children
not in education as it is to work on it... 11:13 PM Feb 7th from web



Just had work emails from 3 different people in last ten minutes...Still
25 weeks to go and 1GOAL already 24/7... 11:12 PM Feb 7th from
web



This is the day I write 'Coffice' book. At Bills (Brighton) the best cafe in
UK - not a good coffice but great food and coffee.. 12:03 PM Feb
6th from Tweetie


In Tate Britain cafe for meeting with someone who's currently in the
Tate Modern cafe... 10:52 AM Feb 5th from Tweetie



In Soho cafe with h'phones on - sure others think Im listening to
something 'cool' and not Owain updating us on 1GOAL lobby and policy
work... 1:13 PM Feb 4th from web


Security alert at the office (as we're next to MI5) - so the whole 1GOAL
team coffice working in local Starbucks... 11:59 AM Feb 3rd from
web


Long day - still going - lots of calls with Jordan, NY x2, San Fran and
Joburg. All exciting to get so much support for 1GOAL. 6:21 PM Jan
29th from web



Looking forward to millions more coffice workers joining in the coffee
shops of the world with the improved iwork on the apple #ipad....
7:59 PM Jan 27th from web


Molly is 14 this week. When she was 9 YouTube didn't exist. Mind you,
when I got married the Internet didn't exist... 11:07 PM Jan 26th
from Tweetie


Major multiple baby crying incident in 'coffice'. Equivalent of 5 people

from office 'facilities' finding unwashed cups in the staff room.!? 3:22 PM
Jan 25th from web


I'm in the 'actual office'! It's almost a first! The coffee's not great, we're
in rainy vauxhall but the vibe on 1GOAL is big and brilliant... 4:21 PM
Jan 22nd from web


Gordon Brown on Haiti, poverty and our 1GOAL campaign in The Indie.
Motivating for the last 14hr work day of the wk!
http://bit.ly/6Kge4t 7:35 AM Jan 22nd from bit.ly


At mfootball conf at Arsenal to talk about 1GOAL and to see how they
keep the pitch so green! http://twitpic.com/z1s4c 11:07 AM Jan
21st from Tweetie

http://twitter.com/chrisatcoffice

Good meetings with 1GOAL team, X-box, Ning and London 2012 - now
working away in the laptop hell of the Soho House 'coffice'... 5:04 PM Jan
20th from web

join1goal 
http://twitpic.com/yt6we - @ UN with Banki-Moon - just

called on all Govt's to keep aid commitments to $16bn for
education for all http://bi 5:02 PM Jan 19th from TwitPic 
Retweeted
by you and 2 others


Following Conran's 'Albion Cafe' Twitter that tweets when the buns are
fresh out the oven.. http://bit.ly/8UCofs 3:54 PM Jan 13th from
bit.ly 
http://twitter.com/chrisatcoffice


Good meeting with DiFD and Microsoft in the Phoenix Pub, Victoria.
Great pub as well! 6:54 PM Jan 12th from Tweetie

http://twitter.com/chrisatcoffice
QueenRania 
Many thanks 4 all the New Yearʼs wishes. Good 2 B back in
the saddle after the school holidays. Any NYʼs resolutions? Mine: 1GOAL!
1:34 PM Jan 8th from TweetDeck 
Retweeted by you and 7 others


http://twitpic.com/x6qbo - Some New York coffee shops starting a

backlash to 'coffice' culture? Unfortunately both cool spaces...
11:20 AM Jan 8th from TwitPic


So! Im writing the book (at last) about why working from a coffee shop
is the best way to build a winning business! 'Coffice' Will want
help!? 9:26 AM Jan 7th from web


Enjoying a 'moment' at top of an alp at end of a great year with an

espresso! Thinking I've got a great family and a great cause to work
for. 1:41 PM Dec 23rd, 2009 from Tweetie


join1goal 
Great news from last night. Queen Rania picks up the FIFA
Presidential Award for her work on 1GOAL http://bit.ly/5l4iBN 7:16 AM
Dec 22nd, 2009 from web 
Retweeted by you and 4 others

U know I like working in coffee shops but this is the worst conditions
ever. 2 v.old people playing v.bad lounge music in the Alp hotel
bar. 6:30 PM Dec 21st, 2009 from bit.ly



Amazing view from the Coffice of Les Deuz Alps at 1800. Lots of
1GOAL planning and work still to get through before skiing and Xmas....
6:56 AM Dec 21st, 2009 from web


Sat in my Chez Kristoff 'coffice' http://bit.ly/2XVhR5 on major

conference call with all Asian mobile phone leaders for
www.join1goal.org 9:48 AM Dec 17th, 2009 from web


Had the honour of meeting Mo Ibrahim this afternoon. A great man

doing great work across Africa.... http://bit.ly/89ZbPl 7:53 PM Dec
16th, 2009 from bit.ly



A good 2012 London Olympics legacy meeting... Plans coming on well
- and its still 2 years after the World Cup... 2:44 PM Dec 16th, 2009
from web



So...after 3 continents and 40hrs flying in 12 days...I have a 4hr 10min
delay for the 90min flight home to London from Paris.......... 10:20
AM Dec 11th, 2009 from web

rt QueenRania 
Met top web gurus of our time to talk about 1GOAL.
Hopefully these great minds will come up with great ideas to
support the campaign!? 1:14 PM Dec 10th, 2009 from web

Retweeted by you and 19 others


So on Air France to #leweb Paris I get to learn the words 'turbulance'
and 'seatbelt' are the same in English and French.. 11:51 AM Dec 9th,
2009 from Tweetie


Another mad day ends at airport. Leaving Bono and Mariah behind at NY
Vevo.com-#1GOAL launch and off to Paris with #queenrania team for
#leweb 3:58 AM Dec 9th, 2009 from web


RT @join1goal at the launch of Vevo - the massive new music website
supporting education for all with #QueenRania, Bono, 50Cent and
Mariah... 1:24 AM Dec 9th, 2009 from Tweetie



Coffice working in City Bakery on W18th, amazing cooking smells! and
watching S. Blatter anounce 1GOAL again at the draw and feeling
emotional! 1:17 AM Dec 9th, 2009 from Tweetie


There's actually more laptops in Soho House NY than people....it looks

like the 'coffice shop' equivalent of a call centre.. 7:33 PM Dec 7th,
2009 from web



Having an espresso from a Clover machine in Cafe Grumpy on W20th.
Best espresso machine in world. U didn't know I was such a coffee
geek! 11:52 PM Dec 6th, 2009 from Tweetie



Dinner Cape Town, b'fast London, dinner New York - I don't
recommend it, but it's good to be here... 11:48 PM Dec 6th, 2009
from Tweetie

Sepp Blatter is going to promote #join1goal to 1.5bn people within the

hour now.. 4:41 PM Dec 4th, 2009 from web
So,....I've just been introduced to David Beckham...over lunch at The One
and Only, Cape Town
3:11 PM Dec 3rd from Tweetie

Just had coffee at The Butchers Block, Joburg with the 1GOAL team and
Eusebio! - really. And Andy Cole
10:48 PM Nov 29th from Tweetie

Joburg. Very hot, bloke shot dead outside hotel y'terday. A long way from
winning 'guess the weight of the Xmas cake' in rainy LDN yesterday
10:14 AM Nov 29th from Tweetie

Trying to offset another crappy night at Heathrow with a drink at

Ramsey's 'Plane Food' Menu looks OK... http://twitpic.com/rc4wl
7:02 PM Nov 28th from Tweetie

Seen Queen Rania's personal 1GOAL msg to the GSMA board I'm
presenting and where I'm sitting, so the tie is now on!
http://twitpic.com/putuj
10:52 AM Nov 17th from Tweetie
So, tea at Mozimann's with Queen Rania was great - hatching plans on
amazing opportunity to communicate with the whole world for 1GOAL
7:01 PM Nov 9th from Tweetie
OTHER FEATURES TO INCLUDE (full content to follow)

Successful people and companies who work in coffices

Malcolm Gladwell / JK Rowling / goal.com
Fav café / City / Coffee / Any treat / What youʼve done / created in a café

The top bookshop chains with coffices inside

Barnes and Noble
Waterstones
Blackwells
Retail centres

Global chains review

Starbucks
Costa coffee
Café Nero
McDonalds
Segafredo
Illy Pret a Manger
CaffèCafé
Nescafé, McCafé
Caffè Ritazza
Coffeeheaven
Douwe Egberts
Tchibo
Lavazza
Le Pain Quotidien

Cities featured top tens

London / New York / San Francisco / Tokyo / Cape Town / Hong Kong /
Barcelona / Berlin / Paris / etc

The best coffices to make that whole city your head coffice
Best for: meetings, making phone calls, writing reports, a cool vibe, amazing
views / etc
Links to reference sites
Twitter groups and Facebook to follow for the city coffice vibe
Best café that isnʼt a coffice – to enjoy

The travelling coffice worker

Eg top ten hotel chains and airports / airlines:
Hilton
Marriott
Choice
Best Western
Hyatt

Charles de Guille
JFK
Heathrow

Airline lounges and onboard

Virgin
BA
Air France
KLM
American Airlines