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

Roxette, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Often outsiders look at a successful business and think it became a success overnight. Even media and especially movies love to gloss over nitty, gritty details that went into that middle phase of your business – after you started but before you got to where you are today. In our experience, overnight success is usually the result of years of hard work laying the foundation for success, but unfortunately, it’s exactly this part of the story that most of the media ignores. Can you talk to us about your scaling up story – what are some of the nitty, gritty details folks should know about?

Over the years one questions Founders always ask is “how do I scale?” If you ask yourself how I provide value, scaling is inevitable. I spent the last 5+ years in the Coworking industry and one thing I enjoyed about the spaces who were evangelicals about community building was all the resources they gave to early-stage startups. It’s what got me involved over 3+ years ago in the accelerator space through Founder Institute, a global pre-seed tech accelerator.

Over the last decade I had to speak at conferences and tradeshows, host events, and community build for tech. Recently, I joined a Coworking space that was the epicenter for entrepreneurship for the last 10 years, The LAB Miami. It was created thanks to amazing forward-thinking founders and the Knight Foundation, today, it’s evolved beyond its space and is a community for events.

I wasn’t always an event person but, the core value I always had how can I help people achieve their goals, the value I provided was my network and connecting dots, and the way to do that was to bring people together.

I started Directing Founder Institute Florida and founded a Meetup group called Pitch Night MIA, to escape the corporate bureaucracy and take my innovative spirit into something that would help others with their business endeavors. We ran our first FI cohort and Pitch Night MIA out of CIC Miami and did tons of events all over Miami with the help of the amazing tech leaders in South Florida who had amazing Coworking and event spaces. Because I came from a Coworking background, my partner and I had decided to launch a small Coworking space called 305 Works in Wynwood to house our cohorts, host our events like Pitch Night, and give back to the Miami community that embraced us.

To get to this point there was a lot of setbacks. It seemed like everything was going well. Doing large scale conferences for my corporate job all over US and Canada, monthly Pitch Nights in NYC and Miami, networking events for Founder Institute, and construction was pretty much finished for 305 Works but, permits slowed down the project, partners dropped, and then after all the delays Covid happened. Before we could even start our 305 Works venture, we had to pivot. What did the setback teach me? That you must be agile and keep true to your mission.

Although 305 Works didn’t happen, the events and resources for startups kept going. I managed to scale on community regardless of location. 305 Works is now used as a consulting arm for startups, we can still do the mission of creating value through network events and shared resources with partners. Now as the Managing Director for the LAB, we scaled our focus to be premier space for Meetups and a resource center. Hosting a variety of conferences, hackathons, panels, pitches, networking events, office hours you name it. The one thing aside from tenacity is if you keep to your mission and value you are creating, no matter what setback, you’ll find a way to pivot, and this will lead you to never skip a beat. I know that if another pandemic hits, a location is gone, it won’t matter, the value exist beyond the space and the business can still run if it catering to the community which allowed us to scale.

Over the last year, it was easy to pivot my own Coworking space into a consulting arm but, taking a brand like The LAB with a decade of history and having an entire following behind it is a different story. Changing gears on something that was established and unchanged while maintaining integrity of the business to scale in a new direction with so many impending changes comes with its own set of internalized struggles.

You must real thick skin to handle some backlash. People in general don’t like change and imagine changing something that was unchanged for the last decade into something a bit different. To scale, you have to say No and experiment. At first, I was trying to keep as much intact but, realized that sometimes you must purge, make hard decisions that are not orthodox and sometimes turn old customers away to innovate. I found myself saying No to a lot and taking some risks. If it doesn’t serve the best interest in the new vision, even if it seems like a loss in the short term, it was best to cut some ties to reinvent the wheel for future gains. I had one instance that was difficult where I rejected a long-standing event that served a very small community. I decided to tell this client No but, by doing so we received a new client with a contract worth 5x more with events that catered to s a larger community that catapulted the brand as the premier space for Web3. It was hard to say no to a lot of the smaller event partners but, the reward was partnering with larger well-known companies and providing immense value to the community. It was hard on a personal level, as I’d like to please everyone, but sometimes you just can’t.

If I could go back to some of the instances where I said No, I think I would have been a bit clearer as to why. Think one of the mistakes and key take aways I take from when you’re scaling or rebranding or changing focus is that you need to be clear as to why with everyone not just stakeholders. I started to be more vocal about direction, reasons why the decisions are being made, and the future impact it will have.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

As a jack of all trades and things community, I was born in Miami, one of the few unicorns in tech that might have been born and raised in South Beach. Over the years, just like in Miami I reinvented myself and started working since I was in high school in hospitality & nightlife all the way through college. When I graduated from FIU, I knew after a few internships, I didn’t want to pursue a career as an attorney but, got fascinated with the pharmaceutical and medical device industry as my mom spent years working in hospitals and was exposed to it. I figured, just like everything in my life, I would pivot from hospitality and joined a Medical Device startup. Learned all about neuro/orthopedic surgery and spent my time in an OR looking at spinal and brain surgery for hours on end every day. It was super rewarding even with the 4:30 am calls to the hospital. The company got bought by the manufacturer in Philly, and I was not sure what to do after that. Spent some time doing marketing and promo work for a couple of health and sports brands but, really wanted to work at a startup again. Joined a SaaS company that covered an end-to-end coworking software/hardware management which got acquired and that’s how I ended up where I am today. Loving the journey of helping tech startups launch through running an accelerator, running a coworking space, and creating community resources and events for the tech community.

There are a ton of community builders, spaces, and programs now in comparison to 5 years ago, even 10 years ago. I was excited because 10 years ago the people in Miami who had the vision to create and invest in programs and spaces are seeing the fruits of their labor flourish. Feel extremely lucky that they opened the doors for me to start the journey to building community, which is what we do. It allowed those that are now new to Miami to be able to set their flags here and be more perceptive to make it easier to community build and collaborate with those who have been working here for the last decade and I think that’s what sets the brand and the team apart. It’s almost like a rite of passage for all those who have come before. If you want to create, launch, you go to the epicenter, and think that’s what makes it so special.

Can you share one of your favorite marketing or sales stories?

I’ll start by saying Sales is not easy and I think successful Founders must be convincing and sell themselves and their vision. I’m pretty sure I can’t mention the team due to NDAs but let’s just say a prominent institutional sports team was in the process of needing a solution for an endeavor they were going to launch. I was the lead on this deal and at the time, we were going to a transition where we were creating a product, pretty much a brand-new company, and I had gotten good at selling a vision and getting beta clients. During this time, I got word that their process was extremely rigid, and everyone had to put bids, fly out, and pitch to be considered as one of the choices to move forward in conversation. Although we had the funds to fly out and make the trip, I decided that all the years dealing with C-level trained me to assume the nice power dynamic that people play in the board room with these heavy hitters. I took a very calculated risk, where I told them that I needed to have an initial call, evaluate their needs, meet their team, and decide if they were a good fit for us as a client, then and only then, I’d fly out to do an initial pitch and demo of the product. All our other competitors flew out on moment’s notice, dropped everything they were doing, and went on this 1-day onsite bid. Their team had reached out mentioning that this was their process to be considered and that if we didn’t, it was going to be detrimental. Have you ever gotten something too easy you don’t want it but, something that takes harder to get is more intriguing? I took that approach which, honestly, was a huge risk considering the fact we didn’t even have a fully finished product and pretty much told this well-known franchise that, this was my process, in order to deliver value and not waste either of our time this would maximize the decision making to move forward or not. It worked! While everyone did the bid which was essentially a pitch your product day at their offices, I had a meet for an initial call, they met me, spend some time getting to know each other, and eventually flew out for an awesome all-day tour of the future site. In the end, I closed an extremely hard deal, it was a proud moment but, also a risky move. Really, my mentor at the time Carlos Garrido, talked me into the hold your process talks, and it stuck with me.

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

I think with any business you need multiple and supplementary revenue streams. With The LAB, there’s one revenue stream that we all find hilarious. I wasn’t the one who installed this revenue stream so I can’t take the credit for it but, I think it’s genius.

There’s a service called Bounce which is a storage luggage startup that allows travelers with layovers to store their luggage in locations while they explore the area. We’re located in the heart of Wynwood which is now a tourist attraction thanks to the graffiti walls and great restaurants. My team decided to add another company who does similar services and almost every day we get tourists coming in dropping off their bags,

In turn, one of our members, Miami Best Graffiti, Pedro AMOS, get’s all these inquiries about walking and golf cart tours, we also have had some who decide to catch up on work and get a day pass. It’s not conventional, because we’re a Coworking and Event space but, who would have thought a little luggage storage would give revenues to not just us but, to our members.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.thelabmiami.com
• Instagram: @roxyroxstar
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/roxettemiranda/
• Twitter: @thelabmiami
• Other: www.305works.com