Building Cococo – #2 – Dreams meet reality
I had a lot of time to plan and dream, but how easy will it be to get it done?
Been a month since I’ve been back on the island. The surf is amazing, people are friendly as always, I finally met my old friends and made some new ones. There are so many new restaurants and hostels, and it feels like the place is alive like I have never seen before. Oh, what about my project? Yeah, that’s a little mess.
Hiring
My original plan, which was due to my business values, was to hire only people who live on the island for any service I would need for building CoCoCo. The first thing I did when coming back was to find potential service providers who moved to live on the island and scheduled meetings with them. Unfortunately, not everyone showed up or were on the same page as me, so I expanded my hiring guideline to be all across the Philippines.
Architectural Plan
Luckily, one of the guys I met and a good connection with, is now my architect (and maybe future contractor), Richard. I got a few recommendations about him from friends who build villas here. Working together on how CoCoCo will look and feel, Richard already had to make me give up some of my dreams, like having two separate buildings for the Coliving and the Coworking space. Apparently, I wasn’t considering many practical things that should be obvious to normal people, like a plumbing system, columns, septic tank, and other construction stuff.
Saying that, after building only resorts and villas for the last 12 years, Richard is sometimes more excited than me to design a Coworking space. We have a very good collaboration and thinking process. He tries to make things practical while I have to make sure that what I learned on my Europe research trip and the Coworking/Coliving poll is being applied, and that I provide everything I ever wanted to have in a Coworking space as a digital nomad.
I’m very happy with our current plan, which is not yet final but looks like how I imagined CoCoCo. If you want to have a quick look – I keep updating the Architectural plan asset with the most updated plan available.
Timeline
Whether I like it or not, I became the address for many digital nomads to ask about the internet, and when it will finally be possible to work from the island. These questions, along with people’s positive reactions when I say what I’m working on, sure make me want to open the space as fast as possible.
So far, I’m still waiting for a few documents to be approved, and there is no real indication of when that will actually happen.
Hopefully, I won’t read these words in two months and laugh, but we should start building by the end of December and finish less than a year from today. That’s if nothing goes wrong, something I am very doubtful about but yet doing my best for it to happen.
Money
Oh well, you guessed it right. It’s gonna be more expensive than I thought. From my initial estimates of around $250k total, we are already somewhere in the $400k zone. Not fun.
The floor area will be around 700 sqm, and building from expensive materials like concrete, which needed to be imported to the island, is going to be costly, but necessary.
As for a start, I am restricting my personal expenses to an $850 budget per month. It might sound rough by western standards but considering my one-bedroom apt. here is $250/m, including bills; this is doable.
Even with my future savings while living on a budget (I still run two SaaS products with my business partner), I am missing around $200k.
It looks like what I initially tried to avoid, finding investors or taking loans, are inevitable. I already sold one of my apps and technically can sell the other ones, but since I am in a partnership, that’s a bit complicated.
Another option I’ll might go for is building the Coworking space, which is the main offer, and keep the Coliving space for later. I can easily fulfill the living need by partnering with hostels/Airbnbs in the area until I have more cash flow and finish the Coliving space.
Overall positive
It feels like I was mostly ranting in this post, don’t get it wrong – I am fully hyped on CoCoCo. Every minute here or while researching the industry around the web makes me more confident about the project. I love life here, surf a lot, and meet cool people almost every day. It might take longer, and I will need to compensate and work harder, but this going to happen big time.
Progress Report
The main things I did and achieved since the last post.
Actions
💪🏾 Added Services and Offers to the live workspace
💪🏾 Published a few Siargao guides for digital nomads
💪🏾 I started living on an $850/month budget
💪🏾 Designed with the architect an initial architectural plan
Achievements
🏆 SEO started showing results (90 clicks in 2 weeks!)
🏆 85 people joined the FB group and actively posted in it
🏆 Siargao Digital Nomad dinner has happened 3 times already, with an average of 15 people showing up