Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Maggie Blackham. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Maggie, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Alright, so you had your idea and then what happened? Can you walk us through the story of how you went from just an idea to executing on the idea

I had the idea for Elevate Coworking back when I my first son was a newborn. I remember dreaming of a place to work, along side other women. After some late-night googling, I discovered there at female coworking spaces were not only just a thing but all over the world. Powerful things happen when women support other women! After finding this info, I sat back and thought, I can’t wait for this to come to our town of Wilmington, NC. I was already involved in a close community of entrepreneurs and creatives. Finally after day dreaming about the space for 2 plus years, I gathered all my sticky notes and pinterest boards and thought: if no one else is going to build this here, then I guess I will! We spent a long time finding the perfect location, construction, and prepping to launch. After loads of hard work and late nights, Elevate opened it’s doors in Summer of 2022- Wilmington’s first coworking space designed for women. We have small offices, community space, meeting rooms and monthly social events to keep us connected.

Maggie, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I come from a long line of entrepreneurs, 4 generations I think. So I’ve always had plenty of business ideas over the years and have googled my way into running multiple busineses. While I explored a lot of different creative endeavors- Photography, Cake Decorating, Home Staging, and Interior design. But the main thing I realized through the years, was that I loved connecting with other women business owners and supporting each other in work and in life. I found myself drawn to community and connection. It became a passion of mine to see women succeed and grow their businesses. There’s something really empowering about having a product or a brand around something you love doing. Fast forward to opening Elevate, I now get to connect with even more female entrepreneurs and small business owners. The collaboration and community we have at Elevate is so exciting to be apart of. One of my favorite mugs we have there says” nothing bad happens when women make more money” and I just love that type of energy being magnified throughout our space.

Let’s move on to buying businesses – can you talk to us about your experience with business acquisitions?

Yes I have! In early 2021 my husband and I came across this coffee shop in our downtown that was getting ready to close it’s doors. I had worked as a barista previously and just love the coffee shop “vibe.” We reached out to the owner to see if thye would be interested in selling. I knew the product (coffee roasted in-house) was great, the location was great but there was a few details I felt could be improved. Mainly interior aesthetic and marketing to a wider audience.

The biggest risk for this acquisition was the previous owner had little to no booking keeping, inventory or systems in place for the operation of the store on a day-to-day basis. We didn’t even have recent financials showing what the coffee shop could produce, especially coming out of 2020 when so many small businesses closed up. But we decided to take a risk! I new deep down there was something here that could be something bigger. We sought out a lawyer to create a bill of sale to take over the current equipment and branding as well as the lease on the building where it was located.

Fast forward to today, 3 years later, we redid the interior, rebranded with a new name, added systems and processes. Addtionally we hried a fantastic team who run the day-to-day and the shop is now thriving, with a great following of local , producing multiple 6 figures a year.

If you have multiple revenue streams in your business, would you mind opening up about what those streams are and how they fit together?

When we took over the coffee shop, one thing I knew once we had a steady stream of people coming to visit, I started to look into ways to increase income. Now with coffee, you can only really buy one per person. It’d be really hard to upsell 2 or 3 coffees to one person so we had to get creative. Adding pastries was an easy was to increase ticket sales. We launched several merch ideas branded to our coffee shop and even exploring other coffee related items like mugs and travel cups for people to purchase. One thing that’s a staple at all coworking spaces is coffee to keep everyone caffeinated, so it was an easy fit to bring coffee from my shop to have at Elevate and has opened up doors there for other cross promotion between businesses.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.Elevatecoworking.info
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/elevatecoworking/

Image Credits
Brittany Castello Photography