Meetings without an Office
I work mostly from home, so if a company is coming from out of town and wants to meet up, I choose one of a few cafes in the neighborhood. I live in an area of San Francisco where the only businesses are restaurants and laundromats. Laptops aren’t rare at our little cafes, but collared shirts and ties are. Much of the jeans-clad clientele comes to read novels or the paper.
But here’s my dilemma. When a team of CEO, VP Biz Dev, and PR person shows up, the four of us crowded around a small table overflowing with laptops and precarious lattes, the CEO using his demo voice…we definitely stand out. At one meeting few weeks ago, it was particularly bad; the guy giving the presentation seemed to have overdosed on public speaking classes. I tried to apologize with my eyes to my neighboring novel-readers when he reached the climactic PowerPoint slide. Oy vey.
I like that place too much not to go back, but for at least this month I skulk on by and go to the cafe down the street.
But if you have no formal place to meet, what can you do to minimize the cringe-factor? I’m trying to develop some rules for myself…let me know if you have any more.
- Show up early and grab a corner table
- Choose a place that plays music that’s loud enough to make your conversation feel private but not so loud it encourages yelling
- My coworker Katie suggests when you propose a meeting place, emphasize it’s a “quiet little cafe” over email
But once I’ve found the perfect meeting spot, I feel like I have to mix it up. I don’t want the baristas to be tempted to start asking me to pay rent! Oh man…maybe I am just too worried about what other people think. Do you guys have this problem too? Any advice?
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I’ve noticed that some small cafe’s and restaurants have private meeting rooms. It’s much better for everyone concerned to book the room. You need space and privacy for a business meeting. It’s considerate of the other patrons, too.
If you don’t have a place like this, consider booking a hotel conference room from the business center.
I meet clients very frequently at cafés in SF, although recently I’ve been using hotel lounges as meeting place. There are some very nice boutique hotels in downtown that won’t charge you a fee to meet. There’s always the nice added benefit of splashing some martini to seal the deal.
There’s a start-up in the UK called Nomads which offers a great solution to this problem. I met the founder at a local women in business forum and I was very impressed with her ideas. http://www.nomadsltd.com/ I think she wants to franchise across the UK. There must be similar offerings in the US?
I’ve met clients at a local hotel. I once got a room for the day and brought in an additional table. I paid for unlimited wireless access and the 3 of us worked together on a few projects to get ahead before Christmas break.
Seemed to work for the non-biz type of workers. When I have to meet the “Officers” of a company then I book a conference meeting room and have them clear out all the table and chairs except 1 in the middle.
I can tell you that these sound obviously NOT like “clients” of yours but “people making a pitch to you”
I would have hope that if they where “clients” or someone that you didn’t want to feel bad for having to meet you, that you’d be able to come up with the $75 – $100 those Temporary offices charge for their meeting rooms.
I mean really! Unless you’re discussing buying the café you’re at, maybe you should think these people are more important than the corner of some café…
Or maybe you’re trying to convince them that you don’t have the kind of money they’re hoping to squeeze from you for the product their hawking.
Or just meet in a meeting room at the library.
That is unless you’re selling THEM something, then meet in the banquet ball room of some ritzy hotel!
It’s a pain in the pocket book, but if you asked me I’d say you just have to grin and bear it in those situations and get a conference room. The quality of the meeting will be much higher and the results will most likely be more favorable.
2 easy-to-find meeting spot is FedEx Kinko’s, which has a growing number of places that has either videoconferencing and/or private conference rooms, and HQ.com has a network of office spaces for rent.
And some restaurants do have private rooms, and those are good place to meet before/after the meal without room costs. Of course, with these 3 options, you do have to plan ahead and make reservations, but you’ll get the privacy to do some focused discussions, presentations, etc.
As a long time freelancer I would not meet with paying clients in a cafe unless I was familiar with them and knew they’d be OK with it. It’s unprofessional (which is what a lot of the commenters are skirting around saying). I understand that renting an office in SF is pretty costly. Sometimes you can borrow a conference room at another business, possibly in exchange for services. Doing a PPT presentation in public? Not good.
Over in the East Bay, we have quite a few places to meet. Most of the employees are very meeting-savvy, too. Show up with a laptop or binder, and they usually direct you toward a quiet table or a corner booth. I tip a bit extra when they do that, and it’s like writing to a ROM chip for the location. From then on you’ll get the same semi-private spots. Works like a dream.
There’s another issue with meeting in a cafe aside from the professionalism one – confidentiality. If you’re there on business, so are others… and some may be competitors of your or your meeting attendees, esp in a place like the Bay Area. No problem if you’re not discussing things that aren’t confidential, but if you are you should not be in a cafe.
In addition to the suggestions above you might want to think about getting together with some other freelancers you feel comfortable with and renting a small office space. Setup a shared calendar for it on 30Boxes or Google Calendar and book the time like any other conference room.