Week 36, 2022

Cat Johnson shares about her truly terrible intro to coworking.

This mirrors my own experience with flex spaces pretty closely, but is also a stark reminder that there’s a huge opportunity to win over and better-support freelancers, employees and others who are disappointed with their current workspace and/or community.

Kayley DiCicco shares a video they previously posted in 2019 about how companies and multinationals were at a turning point of adopting flex workspaces.

Right on the money! Kayley, please send me some lottery numbers when you get a moment.

Hector Kolonas digs into how a lot of coworking spaces have forgotten about the ‘other’ side of coworking marketing, and seven ways TWIC helps great-people-powered coworking spaces improve their marketing to the people who make all of our spaces worth visiting, grow and even more valuable.

UK flexible workspace operator Spacemade, which runs 15 sites, reports AI-driven productivity demands are shifting tenant preferences from maximum capacity toward spaces offering focus, privacy, and human connection. Phone booths have become the most in-demand amenity with 80% utilization rates, while 95% of tours for teams as small as 10 people now request meeting rooms compared to previously only teams of 30 or more. The company hosted over 450 events for more than 2,500 members in the past year, with nearly half attending for social networking, 29% for wellness, and 24% for professional development.

CEO Jonny Rosenblatt says traditional metrics like density and cost-per-desk are being replaced by "emotional utility" as workspaces must support both focused individuals and collaborative teams while protecting boundaries in an AI-accelerated work environment.

Christy Alexander from WorkSmart shares some excellent tips for how you (or your members) can deal with "friendly fraud" – the annoyingly frequent situation where you’ve provided a product or service, and then someone disputes the charge claiming they never received it.

The Denver network of Office Evolution locations have eliminated setup fees across ALL their plans.

We’ve recently seen a shift away from setup fees on virtual office plans, but across coworking, private offices and dedicated desks? That’s new. Do you charge setup fees? Why or why not?

Jamie Hodari, CEO of Industrious, lays out a well presented argument as to why London is the undisputed center of the global flex real estate industry.

In short: there was first a focus on hyperlocal growth and dominance by flex operators, and then there’s a large pool of global businesses that can (and do) experiment with flex office solutions.

Jeremy Bamberg opines about how it’s increasingly obvious that in real estate, brand is dethroning location.

While Jeremy shares some well-known examples across models, the comment thread digs deeper into if it’s true and how many more coworking brands kicking but through, well… brand building.

Tyler Scriven shares that Saltbox have launched their new website, and it’s not only nice to look out but outlines a wide variety of offerings they provide customers. From content creation, to labor support, to logistics, and custom shipping software (and bulk discounts), Saltbox is leaning deep into supporting ecommerce and related businesses.

As the consumption of workspace heads more and more towards on-demand usage, it’s exciting to see the evolution of shared spaces from just serviced offices, and further into all sorts of auxiliary services for ecommerce, pharma, biotech, therapy and more niches.

John Preece from Hub Australia penned a piece into how the flex industry needs to look at itself instead of echoing that "valuers just don’t get it".

While great parallels are drawn to the hotel industry, and their "willingness" to share data, there may be a bigger first principle challenge in that data that needs to be shared isn’t always reliable and collectable, let alone efficiently shared as Hector Kolonas explores in the comments.

Looking to build up your email list? Good call. It’s a top-tier marketing channel—especially when it comes to filling flex offices. But if you’re wondering how exactly you can build up an email list, maybe even from zero, then good news…. Taylor from talemaker shares 10 coworking-specific ways to build up your mailing list.

Caroline Van den Eynde shares some observations from popping into two coworking spaces in Paphos, Cyprus while she was out there visiting family.

What hat was she wearing? FLOC obvs. Which spaces? Beon and Hügge. What were the observations? How high-tech they were, and their different vibes. Are there photos? Of course!

Asen Stoyanchev from OfficeRnD shares the six processes and tasks to automate first in your flex space.

What are they? Managing billing, memberships, bookings, visitors, hardware and reporting.

Castleforge, who own Clockwise Offices, has worked with Lloyds banking group on an £180M refinancing via the consolidation of six individuals loans via a single, cross-collateralized facility.

Keep an eye on which banks are loaning, or refinancing loans, for flex-based businesses – and to who.

Rosee from Cobot shares practical content tips for coworking operators. The tips include how to write stronger headlines, telling real member stories, creating newsletters, and some easy formats for small teams.

The issue closes with a reminder that the best content isn’t complicated, it’s about uniqueness, usefulness, and simplicity.

If you’re running a space that can or does cater to workers who would usually commute into an HQ further away, calculators like this can help make your case.

Cat Johnson shares that a tour of your coworking space is your first opportunity to truly shine, connect, and invite the person into your community. First impressions are everything. If you fail to connect, you’ll likely never see that person again.

While it might sound like something out of a movie, there’s an ominous side to Google Ads—one where your budget can be intentionally or inadvertently burnt out by invalid clicks. It’s called “click fraud,” and if you’re not seeing results from your coworking space’s Google Ads campaigns, it might be the reason.

While this might sound farfetched, it’s a real problem: research has found that 11% of search ad clicks are fraudulent or invalid. In this article, Reuben Lau from Spacefully share what click fraud is, how to identify it and prevent it, and what to do if it happens to you.

Industrious partnered with Brightline to open workspaces at four Florida train stations including Miami Central, Fort Lauderdale, West Palm Beach, and Orlando, offering meeting rooms ranging from 210 to 652 square feet with video conferencing capabilities. The spaces feature private phone booths, quiet work areas, lounges, and complimentary food and bar access, with bookings available to anyone through the Industrious website, not just members. A unique offering includes the ability to book an entire private train car accommodating up to 66 people for team meetings or events while traveling between cities.

This initiative follows Industrious’ $800 million acquisition by CBRE in early 2025 and other travel partnerships including Delta Business Traveler and the IKEA Hej! Workshop location in San Francisco, as the group sees partnerships as a model for future expansion into high-traffic, non-traditional spaces.

Elena Giroli, Community Manager at Creative Works Space in London, is working through her first pregnancy while managing daily operations and receiving strong support from the coworking community. While the team attempted to expand services by adding childcare provision in a vacant downstairs space that had been empty for nearly three years, local council bid applications were rejected despite local demand.

Elena’s experience highlights the continued discussion around opportunities for coworking spaces to fill childcare support gaps through flexible membership models, on-site childcare partnerships, and peer networks, particularly for middle-class freelancers who struggle to access funded childcare due to fluctuating incomes.

Jesse Sharratt of LAUFT workspaces announced the first contract with the Government of Canada to provide upwards of 10,000 government employees with access to space-as-a-service by the end of 2024.

This follows a growing shift from governments dipping their toes, budgets and thousands of employees into coworking and flex spaces.

Stan Zabolotsky, Group CFO at The Flexi Group, shared insights on finance sector evolution during a recent interview. He predicts AI will fundamentally shift finance roles from creating reports to analyzing data, with analysts spending only 10-20% of their time on model building compared to the current 80%, leading to leaner organizations with fewer middle management layers.

This leads to his belief that communication skills are the most critical capability for finance leaders, as the role focuses on simplifying complex data for stakeholders rather than conducting sophisticated analysis.

Keke Patissier from Koho.ai describes the Three Horizons Model, and how flex space operators can leverage the framework to build strategies.

Projects, a Brighton, UK-based coworking space, reached 8,000 Instagram followers after pivoting their social media strategy to focus on member spotlights and authentic working life content rather than posting for posting’s sake. The strategy emphasized building trust and consistency while capturing the rhythm of working life in Brighton, with the company now planning to extend this approach to building an online community space that mirrors their physical workspace culture.

From May 2024 to May 2025, the space achieved entirely organic growth across all metrics: likes increased 241%, comments rose 93%, shares grew 258%, saves jumped 1,054%, reach expanded 251%, impressions climbed 254%, interactions surged 320%, and follower growth reached 2,200%. Are you posting content your members and whole community would engage with? Why not?

Retail and coworking are not new partners, but it used to be the retailers that were adding coworking. Now, it looks like coworking brands has shifted to take over the stores that were being abandoned.

The Guardian provides a great snapshot of how retail is pivoting and provides a nice shoutout to Patch.

Andrew Runnette, COO at Portal Warehousing, digs into how co-warehousing is the next frontier for growing small businesses.

We love how it lines up coworking (Andrew, friends don’t let friends hyphenate coworking. Here’s why.) and co-warehousing as a force multiplier for more businesses, especially those with logistical components.

Caleb Parker makes a bold prediction that by 2024 that the most in demand job titles could be Chief Community Officer, or Head of Community, or Director of Community, and more.

What makes the prediction even bolder is that it highlights this shift for CRE firms. It also highlights an earlier observation by Jerome Chang that flex spaces could provide community direction

Helga Moreno shares a Q&A with Neil Usher from GoSpace AI on their observations from 30 years in the real estate industry.