Coworking Values Podcast

Bernie J Mitchell
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  • Management
  • Updated Biweekly

Welcome to Coworking Values the podcast of the European Coworking Assembly. Each week we deep dive into one of the values of accessibility, community, openness, collaboration and sustainability. Listen in to learn how these values can make or break Coworking culture.

  1. They Come for the Promise. They Stay for the Hospitality. with Dr. JJ Peterson

    May 7

    They Come for the Promise. They Stay for the Hospitality. with Dr. JJ Peterson

    "They come for the promise. They stay for the hospitality."— Dr. JJ Peterson Episode Summary JJ Peterson has spent eleven years inside the StoryBrand universe. He co-authored Marketing Made Simple with Donald Miller. He helped Will Guidara write the certification for Unreasonable Hospitality. He hosts the Badass Softie podcast — for leaders who are unapologetically driven but want to lead with their hearts. He is flying to London in June to teach at the first workshop in the world to bring StoryBrand and Unreasonable Hospitality together in the same room, two days back to back, in Holborn. This conversation surprised me. I thought we'd spend an hour on frameworks and funnels. We didn't. We talked about a failure mode that kills coworking spaces quietly, before anyone notices. The moment an operator puts community in the shop window — makes it the headline offer — they've already lost. JJ has a phrase for this. He calls it the wish dream. Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote about it in 1937. JJ applies it to every organisation that confuses the byproduct with the product. Marketing makes the promise. Hospitality delivers it. Community is what emerges when both work. That's the spine of this episode. JJ is warm, wickedly sharp, and completely uninterested in jargon. He brings academic depth — he has a PhD in Communication and wrote his dissertation on Kierkegaard's theory of indirect communication — without ever sounding like a lecture. Nashville to London. June 10th and 11th. The discount code is at the bottom. Timeline Highlights 00:00 — Intro: Bernie on why marketing in coworking is both essential and misunderstood — and why most operators are selling the wrong thing. 02:15 — JJ introduces himself: eleven years at StoryBrand, co-author of Marketing Made Simple, host of Badass Softie, and the man who helped Will Guidara translate Unreasonable Hospitality into a teachable system. 06:40 — "If you confuse, you lose." The core StoryBrand premise: customers don't buy the best product. They buy the one they understand fastest. 10:05 — The difference between service and hospitality. Service is transactional. Hospitality is relational. JJ: "Service is black and white. Hospitality is colour." 13:30 — Why you cannot sell community. JJ introduces Bonhoeffer's wish dream — the trap of falling in love with your idea of community rather than doing the actual work of it. 18:00 — How this maps to coworking: operators who lead with "we're a community!" as their pitch are often the spaces where no real community exists. The promise swamps the experience. 22:25 — The line that became the title of this episode. JJ, unprompted: "They come for the promise. They stay for the hospitality." 26:10 — How JJ helped Will Guidara write the Unreasonable Hospitality certification — and what surprised him about the process. Hospitality is not a department. It's a posture. 30:45 — The two-day workshop explained. Day one: StoryBrand clarity. Day two: Unreasonable Hospitality. Why you need both in the right order, and what breaks when you skip the first. 34:20 — Kierkegaard and indirect communication. JJ's PhD work, and why the best marketing never announces itself as marketing. Story does the work that argument cannot. 39:50 — The coworking operator's messaging problem: most spaces describe the building when they should be describing the transformation. JJ on writing copy that puts the member as the hero. 44:15 — Badass Softie: why JJ started a podcast for leaders who are driven and warm in the same breath — and why he thinks that tension is the most important thing to hold. 48:00 — London in June. The workshop, the people it's for, and why this is the only place in the world where StoryBrand and Unreasonable Hospitality land together. 52:30 — Closing: JJ on the one thing operators can do this week. Clarify who you serve and why it matters. Everything else follows. 5 Core Lessons 1. You Can't Sell Community. You Can Only Create the Conditions for It. Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote in 1937 about what he called the wish dream — the dangerous habit of loving your idea of community more than the actual people in front of you. JJ brought this into the conversation with zero fanfare and it landed like a brick. Most coworking operators I know have a version of this problem. They put community in the headline. On the website. On the door. And then the person who walks through the door can't feel it anywhere.  Because community isn't a product you deliver on day one. It's a byproduct of repeated human contact over time — and it requires hospitality as the infrastructure. What JJ said is this: when you lead with community as the promise, you almost guarantee the thing won't exist.  Because you've set an expectation the space can't meet immediately. The new member arrives looking for instant belonging. They don't find it. They leave. The operator blames the member, not the messaging. Sell the desk. Sell the clarity. Sell the transformation your space makes possible. Let community emerge from the hospitality you build around it. The wish dream kills more spaces than bad Wi-Fi ever will. 2. Marketing Makes the Promise. Hospitality Delivers It. These Are Not the Same Job. JJ spent eleven years at StoryBrand teaching people to clarify their message. Then he helped Will  Guidara systematise Unreasonable Hospitality into something teachable. What struck him — and what he shared in this episode — is how rarely organisations connect those two things deliberately. Your marketing creates an expectation. Your hospitality either meets it or breaks it. Most coworking operators do one of two things. They either pour everything into their marketing — slick website, sharp copy, clear call to action — and then the person walks in and the experience doesn't match. Or they run a genuinely warm, hospitable space but can't explain what they do clearly enough for the right people to find them. The two days in Holborn in June are specifically designed around this. Day one is StoryBrand: get the message right. Day two is Unreasonable Hospitality: design the experience to match. One without the other is a half-finished sentence. I've been saying for years that coworking operators undersell themselves. What JJ gave me was a framework for understanding why: they're not telling a clear enough story, and the experience isn't intentional enough to stick. Both are fixable. Both require work. 3. Service Is Black and White. Hospitality Is Colour. JJ used this line in passing and I wrote it down immediately. It's the clearest articulation I've heard of something I've been trying to say for a long time. Service is the execution of a function. The desk works. The Wi-Fi connects. The printer prints. That's service. It's binary: it works or it doesn't. Hospitality is something else. It's the moment a member walks in on a terrible morning and the person at the front desk reads the room and says the right thing without being asked. It's the unexpected touch — the thing that wasn't in the contract. It's what Will Guidara calls u...

    37 min
  2. Why AI Can't Feel the Room: Practical Operations with Carlos Almansa

    Apr 28

    Why AI Can't Feel the Room: Practical Operations with Carlos Almansa

    Why AI Can't Feel the Room: Practical Operations with Carlos Almansa Coworking Values Podcast "The AI cannot feel the space. It can't feel the dynamics or the vibe. But it can free up time for you to talk to your members, to have a coffee with them, to understand and to read people."— Carlos Almansa Ballesteros Episode Summary Most conversations about AI in coworking are either evangelical or dismissive. Carlos Almansa Ballesteros, co-founder of Nexudus and author of the Coworkings AI newsletter, refuses both positions. In this episode he lays out a practical baseline: start with what you already do, keep a human in the loop, and never mistake efficiency for community. He also raises the question that sits underneath all of it — the Dead Internet Theory — and what it means for spaces that exist precisely because human presence still matters. No frameworks. No magic. Just what actually works. Timeline Highlights 00:02 — Bernie sets the episode up: practical AI, not rocket science01:16 — Carlos introduces himself: Nexudus co-founder, Coworkings AI newsletter author03:02 — Carlos's first coworking space, and why he's always joined one when moving to a new city06:41 — The first 60–90 days: how a community manager makes or breaks early membership09:09 — The London Coworking Assembly AI survey: most people use it for social media captions and don't go further10:15 — Why the Coworkings AI newsletter exists: cutting through noise to find usable signals for operators12:54 — The solo operator and AI: actually easier to start when you know all your own processes15:03 — Practical use case one: automating repetitive help desk replies (Wi-Fi, printing, FAQs)16:21 — Practical use case two: surfacing data patterns you can't see manually17:53 — The soul-of-the-space question: automation versus presence19:36 — Sentiment analysis: feeding community messages into AI to understand the pulse of a space20:52 — Context is everything: how to give an AI model what it needs to work properly23:56 — What goes wrong: people who automate everything at once and erode trust25:21 — The human-in-the-loop rule: never hand your reputation to an unmonitored system25:56 — Transparency: be honest about AI, always offer a route to a real person28:42 — Can you automate community? Carlos on what AI can and cannot do in a 300-person space30:05 — The kitchen conversation: serendipity as the baseline unit of community31:09 — What community actually is, from random coffee chats to self-organising hackathons33:47 — Mobile work and the future floor plan: what happens when nobody needs a desk?35:32 — The Dead Internet Theory: bots talking to bots, and why human signal is becoming the premium Lesson 1: Only Take AI to Something You're Already Doing The most useful thing Carlos said in the whole conversation is also the least glamorous. Before you touch any tool, review your processes. Do you actually know them? When you're a solo operator running a space from first enquiry to member induction, you probably do. That's an advantage. The mistake Carlos sees repeatedly is people who want to automate first and understand later. You end up with ten tools stacked on top of a process that was working fine. Start somewhere specific. The help desk is a good example. The same questions come in every week — how do I connect to the Wi-Fi, how do I print, where's the code for the meeting room. That's exactly the kind of repetitive, low-stakes task where AI earns its place. Automate the reply. Free yourself for the conversation that actually matters. Carlos, on the starting point:"The best way to start with AI is to start with something that you are already doing, not trying to implement a new process or a new tool into something that you are not familiar with." Here is how I look at it: don't ask AI to do something you don't already know how to do. I wouldn't go to AI and say, "Make me a hit record." I go to AI and say, "How do I make a podcast intro?" Lesson 2: The First 60–90 Days Are on You, Not the Software When a new member joins, the community manager is doing something no platform can replicate. They're introducing names. They're reading the room. They're noticing who eats lunch alone and who lights up when someone mentions their industry.  Carlos joined coworking spaces in South Spain, Madrid, and London. Every time, the spaces that made it work did the same thing: they put a person in the room who paid attention. Shared lunches in Madrid led to basketball at weekends. Hot desking in London broke the ice faster than any directory ever could. The first 60–90 days determine whether someone stays. Carlos is clear on this. And he's equally clear that no amount of automated onboarding email replaces what happens when you walk someone through the kitchen on day one and explain — face to face — how to clean up after yourself. That small thing sets the tone. It says: this is a shared space. We're in it together. AI can surface patterns. It can flag a member who hasn't engaged in three weeks. It cannot do the introduction. Lesson 3: Your Community's Messages Are Data — Use Them Members tell you how they're feeling all the time. The problem is they're doing it across email, WhatsApp, Slack, and every other channel simultaneously. Some of it is friction: "the Wi-Fi's broken again." Some of it is gold: "that event last week genuinely changed something for me." Most of it sits in inboxes, unanalysed, until the member quietly cancels their membership. Carlos's newsletter recently covered this directly. You can feed your community's communications into an AI, build a sentiment analysis across those messages, and surface patterns that would take weeks to spot manually. Who's frustrated? Who's energised? What topics keep coming up? That's not automating community. That's clearing the brush so you can see what's actually there. Carlos:"When you have a community of 200 or 300 people in your space, it's not easy to get to know everyone, to know where they are, how they're feeling. AI can help to surface issues, to connect people. But it cannot automate those relationships." The distinction matters. AI as insight layer, not as relationship substitute. Lesson 4: Never Let AI Go Solo — Your Reputation Is on the Line Carlos is consistent on this throughout the episode. New technology, new risks. The worst thing you can do is automate a customer-facing process and walk away from it. If AI is replying to enquiries through your website, you need to be watching those replies for months. The system might not be calibrated yet. One bad reply to a prospective member and you've made a first impression you can't undo. The related point is transparency. When someone lands on a chat widget, don't dress the AI up with a human name — "Hi, I'm Brad." Carlos didn't say it exactly like that, but Bernie put it plainly: that's obvious, and it damages trust immediately. Be honest. Tell pe...

    39 min
  3. The Golden Thread: Why Unreasonable Hospitality Needs a Story First with Sonya & Julie

    Apr 21

    The Golden Thread: Why Unreasonable Hospitality Needs a Story First with Sonya & Julie

    Why your coworking space needs a Story before it can practise hospitality "Marketing makes these promises and service delivers that. So for us, StoryBrand and unreasonable hospitality, you know, really work together kind of hand in glove. And StoryBrand is, you know, really about thinking about how you communicate that you care to your customers. And the unreasonable hospitality side of things is how you prove it."— Sonya WhittamSonya Whittam and Julie Firth run Story22, a customer-centric marketing agency based in the UK. They're also two of the handful of certified Unreasonable Hospitality facilitators in the country, trained directly by Will Guidara. Bernie met them in Nashville in February 2020, just before COVID lockdown, when they were all training to become StoryBrand guides with Donald Miller and Dr. JJ Peterson. Since then, Unreasonable Hospitality has become the book of choice for the UK coworking industry. Operators read it, love it, and then struggle to implement it. The problem? Most people jump straight into implementation without first figuring out what their business actually stands for. This conversation unpacks the disconnect between reading the book and actually implementing it. Sonya and Julie explain why you need a clear Story first before your team can deliver hospitality. Without that "golden thread," random wow moments don't reinforce anything. They're blunt about the traps: generic positioning ("quality, service, and value"), rigid scripts that kill personalisation, and the hotelification obsession. The conversation covers the Honest Greens experience in Barcelona, the George Hotel flat white story from Scotland, why finance and compliance teams should attend hospitality workshops, and the critical difference between gimmicks and genuine care. For operators trying to figure out how to make their space feel hospitable without burning out or going broke, this episode is the operating manual. Timeline Highlights 00:00 – Bernie intro: "Unreasonable Hospitality has become the book du jour of the coworking industry... I worked in hospitality for about 3,000 years and I really, really rate that book." 01:42 – Sonya introduces Story22: "Marketing makes these promises and service delivers that... StoryBrand is really about thinking about how you communicate that you care to your customers. And the unreasonable hospitality side of things is how you prove it." 02:43 – Julie on why the two frameworks work together: "StoryBrand helps you understand who you are. And then Unreasonable Hospitality helps you then deliver what you stand for." 03:40 – Bernie, Sonya, and Julie met in Nashville in February 2020 doing StoryBrand guide training together, just before COVID lockdown. 04:52 – Julie on the biggest implementation problem: "Unless you have this kind of golden thread running through everything that you do about what you stand for, who you are as a business, what you want to be known for... people are at risk of going into a million different directions." 06:33 – Bernie asks: "Working out who you are, is that like a little bit at a time over a year, or is that writing it on a napkin in a cafe?" 07:04 – Sonya: "Positioning, understanding what you stand for needs to come before you even start getting into your messaging and should come before you get into thinking about the service elements." 09:00 – Bernie calls out the "quality, service, and value" trap: "That's like Marks & Spencer's in 1994. What do you actually believe in?" 10:18 – Julie on customer-first values: "You could have one [space] that is trying to be a home from home and they want this to feel cosy... That could have a very different personality to one that was very tech-focused where people needed efficiency." 11:56 – Sonya on team culture and non-negotiables: "Your culture internally, your team have to want to deliver those things for your customers. The non-negotiable that you agree with your team, they have to be brought onto that." 12:03 – Honest Greens example in Barcelona: "We had 4 or 5 different touchpoints... every single touchpoint was exceptional... they were brought into, we value our customers here." 14:31 – Julie on hiring for culture: "It's not about hiring someone that can be well organised and manage the bookings. It's how do they fit into that culture." 18:32 – Sonya on team empowerment: "If your team aren't free to act, they can't deliver the promises that you make." 19:34 – Will Guidara's "one size fits one" philosophy: "You're creating an experience that is for individuals... you want to empower your team to be able to solve those problems individually for customers." 21:36 – Julie on gimmicks vs genuine hospitality: "The Storys that we've shared are probably of things that have happened to us that have either cost nothing at all, or, you know, a couple of quid... someone has kind of gone out of their way to help you or to greet you or to remember something." 24:16 – Sonya introduces the June workshop: "We're running a 2-day event in central London, just outside of Holborn on the 10th and 11th of June... Dr JJ Peterson coming over to run the 2-day workshop with us." 26:43 – Julie on who should attend: "Anyone that has customer touch is the answer... I think the more of a mix of different perspectives you have in there, the more valuable it is." Lesson 1: Marketing Makes Promises, Service Delivers Them The UK coworking industry loves Unreasonable Hospitality. Operators read the book, get inspired by the New York hot dog story and the bottle of cognac at 11 Madison Park, and then try to replicate those moments in their own spaces. The results are often gimmicky. Cupcakes at the front desk. Branded tote bags. Free coffee upgrades. The problem isn't the gestures themselves. The problem is they're disconnected from any coherent Story about what the business stands for. Sonya and Julie's insight cuts through this: "Marketing makes these promises and service delivers that. So for us, StoryBrand and unreasonable hospitality really work together kind of hand in glove." Here's what that means in practice: StoryBrand is the framework for figuring out what you communicate to your customers. It clarifies your message, your positioning, and what you're promising to solve for people. Unreasonable Hospitality is how you prove those promises through the actual experience people have in your space. One without the other creates a disconnect. If you promise "home from home" but your team are rigid and scripted, people feel the gap between the marketing and the reality. If you create amazing hospitality moments but your website says "quality, service, and value" (the Marks & Spencer 1994 trap), no one knows what those moments are supposed to mean. Julie put it this way: "StoryBrand helps you understand who you are. And then Unreasonable Hospitality helps you then deliver what you stand for and how you want to project that onto your clients so that your customers, your members, have the best possible experience." The hand-in-glove relationship works because you need clarity before you can deliver consistency. For coworking operators, the lesson is this: before you buy fancy coffee beans or install a slide in your ...

    31 min
  4. You're Never Broke If You Got Ideas: How Koder Brings Music to the Neighbourhood

    Apr 9

    You're Never Broke If You Got Ideas: How Koder Brings Music to the Neighbourhood

    Why your coworking space should partner with local creatives "Ideas are currency, you know. And you're never broke if you got ideas... Everything we are looking at around us came from an idea. So for me, they are, it is a currency within itself."— KoderKoder runs Undeniable Studios, a music production conglomerate built from youth clubs, pirate radio, and 10,000 hours of free studio time in Brockley. He's now the first Creative in Residence at Blue Garage in Lewisham, where he's installing a commercial music studio, planning his Circle the Ends tour, and bringing brand partnerships to local creatives. The partnership model is simple: the coworking space provides infrastructure and network access. Koder brings cultural programming, creative energy, and a proven track record of "fostering local greatness." This conversation unpacks how Koder built an independent music career without major label backing, what he learned from Miguel (co-founder of WeWork) about the tension between community and revenue, and why creative infrastructure in the neighbourhood matters for young people who can't afford to travel into town. Bernie met Koder at Unreasonable Connection on 24th February. The conversation kept circling back to one theme: barriers to entry. Who feels welcome in a coworking space? Who gets access to creative infrastructure? Who has to leave their neighbourhood to find the room, the equipment, and the people who believe in their work? Koder's philosophy is stark: "You're never broke if you got ideas." But ideas need space to develop. They need microphones, mixers, and rooms where you can close the door and record without your mum shouting upstairs. They need Uncle Dennis types—local mentors who teach you how to use a DAW without charging £500 for a course. This episode is for operators who want to turn a corner of their space into a studio, a rehearsal room, or a cultural residency. It's for operators who know their neighbourhood has talent but don't know how to give that talent access. Koder's built the model. He's willing to replicate it. The question is whether your space is ready to move from desk rental to creative infrastructure. Timeline Highlights 01:43 – Koder introduces himself: "I'm known for my ability to put my memories and my experiences on record, make music essentially. And I'm also known for being a connector of people." 02:24 – The Undeniable ecosystem: started as Undeniable Records in 2017, expanded into Undeniable Studios, then Undeniable Films. "It's a conglomerate... the arm that I would say is the most active at the moment... is Undeniable Studios." 03:31 – Early career: youth clubs in the ends, building local buzz, girls playing his songs on old Nokias at the back of the bus. "It was before social media... sometimes I'll be travelling around Lewisham, people be playing my songs on bus, singing the words, and they didn't even know it was me." 04:56 – Learning in real time: "The reason I can say words like conglomerate... it's not because I've done a business course... I was taking risks... betting on myself... and I was coming across people that was like, actually, what you're doing should all sit under one thing called a conglomerate." 06:48 – Uncle Dennis's front-room studio in Brockley: "When he found out that I was into music, he taught me the basics of how to record myself and how to use a mixer... my journey of self-sufficiency kind of started with... my Uncle Dennis." 08:41 – What he was listening to at 14: Craig David, So Solid Crew, S Club 7, Wiley, early Dizzee Rascal. "I was a very UK garage or super pop kid... I didn't really have a hip-hop upbringing." 11:19 – At 20: started Indigo Child Records with his friend Age. Artists like Nadia Rose and Sam Tompkins came through that era. "We didn't understand the business of things, but we just knew how we wanted to feel and the flexibility we wanted." 14:52 – The guest list rule: "If you wanted a free ticket or you was on the guest list, the rule was you had to bring someone who'd never heard of Koder before." 16:42 – Missing the stage: "That's why this year I'm gonna hit the road again on my Circle the Ends tour... I miss being out there and touching the people and just feeling that energy of being on stage." 21:54 – What he learned from Miguel (WeWork co-founder): "The importance of community in a space... but the danger of what happens when things are very community-centric and revenue's prioritised... finding that balance is key." 28:10 – The philosophy: "Ideas are currency. You're never broke if you got ideas... the ability to back and bring an idea to life is a form of currency." 32:08 – Creatives in Residence at Blue Garage: "We're gonna put a music studio in Blue Garage... also planning the Circle the Ends tour in the space... the merch, the signage, and all of the physical products... will be made there." 34:58 – Fostering local greatness: "My drive and my commitment is for other coworking spaces that are forward-thinking... if I'm able to set up an Undeniable Studios in different coworking spaces, then they can also start to attract that creativity." Lesson 1: Ideas Are Currency (But They Need a Room) Koder's entire career is built on a single premise: ideas are currency, and you're never broke if you've got them. But ideas aren't enough on their own. They need infrastructure. When Koder was 10, he formed Hazard Crew with his cousins. They burned blank CDs, designed artwork, and shopped them around the family. They didn't know what "marketing" meant. They just knew they had something they wanted people to hear. By 14, he was recording himself using his Uncle Dennis's front-room studio in Brockley. Uncle Dennis taught him how to use a mixer, a microphone, and a DAW (digital audio workstation). "My Uncle Dennis gave me them early skills and early lessons and took time out... he had a lot of patience... to teach me, not knowing what I was going to become today." That patience matters. Uncle Dennis didn't charge him. Didn't gate-keep the equipment. Didn't require proof of commitment or potential. He just taught his nephew how to record. By 20, Koder had started Indigo Child Records. By his mid-twenties, he was headlining Sickabit—one of the most important up-and-coming music showcases in London. People like Stormzy came through those early lineups. None of this required a major label. It required rooms. Microphones. Mixers. Blank CDs. Uncle Dennis types. Fast forward to now: Undeniable Studios gives away 10,000 hours of free studio time in Brockley. The space functions as a music studio, a coworking space, and delivery infrastructure for youth-related projects with brands like Universal. Koder realised early on that different people see the same room differently. "I see this as a music studio, but a corporate brand... sees this as a space that they can deliver programmes. The person down the road... they do work on their laptop. They see it as a coworking space." The room adapts to the user. That's the model. For coworking operators, the lesson is this: creative infrastructure doesn't require massive capital investment. It requires one small room, some equipment, and a willingness to let people use it on their terms. If Koder can give away 10,000 hours in Brockley and ...

    40 min

  5. Mar 19

    When a Shopping Centre Becomes a Hope Hub with Parisa Wright

    “You might not be able to give them money donations for what they’re doing, but what you can do is give them support in various ways, which then means that you are effectively helping achieve those things in your community.” — Parisa Wright Parisa Wright runs Greener and Cleaner, a community sustainability charity that took over a vacant unit inside The Glades shopping centre in Bromley. Five days a week, the Hub teaches residents how to mend clothes, reduce energy bills, grow food, and repair electronics—all whilst sitting opposite a McDonald’s and the public toilets. The location is deliberate. Parisa chose accessibility over purity, planting a “hope hub” in the middle of the retail rat race where people already are, not where activists think they should be. The conversation centres on how coworking spaces can partner with community projects like Greener and Cleaner without running them. You don’t need deep pockets or a dedicated sustainability manager. You can offer free desk passes, meeting room access, or signpost volunteering opportunities. In return, your members get training (carbon literacy, energy clinics), CSR pathways, and visible proof that their workspace invests in the local community. Parisa also chairs the new Community Sustainability Support Network for England, launching in spring 2025. It’s a free network for anyone running a community sustainability project—coworking hubs included. Members share templates, case studies, impact data, and collaborate on funding bids. If you’re running a repair café, a community fridge, or a lending library in your space, you can join. The partnership model here is simple: local charities get breathing room (free workspace and promotional reach), and coworking operators can amplify their impact without taking on another full-time project. Both sides win. The community wins twice. Timeline Highlights 00:01:44 – Parisa introduces herself: founder of Greener and Cleaner, chair of the Community Sustainability Support Network for England (launching spring 2025). 00:03:22 – The Hub location: a prominent vacant unit in The Glades shopping centre, chosen specifically because it’s near McDonald’s, opposite public toilets, and accessible by public transport. “We specifically chose one that was near a McDonald’s... to be able to engage everyone.” 00:04:23 – What happens at the Hub: “People can learn how to mend things, how to repair things, how to grow food, how to insulate my home... It gives them an oasis of positivity, agency, community collaboration and connexion.” 00:06:16 – The knit, stitch, and crochet social: 30 people attend regularly, a mix of ages and languages. “Some people are going for their mental health, some people are going for loneliness... and they always have a community project on the go.” 00:07:06 – “It’s like a hope hub... because they’re like a ray of sunshine and people can feel like they’re not alone and that they can make a difference.” 00:09:14 – Why five days a week matters: “What there hasn’t been has been something that’s been 5 days a week and that is meeting all different areas of sustainability, but all different areas of community need as well.” 00:10:13 – The in-person advantage: “It’s very experiential. You can’t just do it online... come out of the misinformation... and actually come and have a conversation with someone.” Local issues like ULEZ become less divisive when discussed face-to-face at the Hub. 00:12:59 – The coworking partnership begins: “You can give [charities] membership for free or at a discounted rate... day passes... access to podcast studios, meeting rooms.” 00:13:58 – Community tech reuse: “A partner company... takes out the hard drives, returns them, and basically updates them... then we get them out to people who are digitally excluded... or schools.” 00:14:57 – Why coworking spaces benefit: “Contingent Works... can get the word out to its members... a visual reminder that our coworking space is investing into the community... and tells them about a cool activity or project they can get involved in.” 00:16:09 – Training at local rates: “A big corporate in London is like a grand and a half to two and a half grand... with a local coworking space... we are doing it to cover our costs.” Carbon literacy training, Climate Fresk workshops, lunch-and-learns—all priced for local partnerships, not London corporates. 00:17:14 – Volunteering pipelines: “Provide volunteering opportunities... in person locally... [and] remotely—designing a poster... marketing advice... helping create a video.” This gives coworking members CSR pathways without heavy infrastructure. 00:20:39 – The national network: “We are launching a network for the region of England... join the Community Sustainability Support Network for England for free... share our video case studies... templates... collaborate on funding bids... and have a bit more of a voice with government and with funders.” 00:29:21 – Library of Things funding: “We persuaded the council’s carbon management team to use the carbon reduction fund... [to fund] the Library of Things... brand new tools... trade quality... with regular and concession rates so people can borrow rather than buy new.” Lesson 1: Accessibility Beats Purity Greener and Cleaner didn’t open in a refurbished warehouse or a community garden tucked behind the railway arches. It opened in a shopping centre, near McDonald’s, opposite the public toilets. That choice was strategic, not accidental. Parisa explicitly wanted to intercept people where they already were—not where environmental activists thought they should be. The Glades gets footfall. It has lifts, toilets, changing stations, and public transport links. It’s where parents go with pushchairs, where elderly residents can get to without a car, and where teenagers hang out after school. “We specifically chose one that was near a McDonald’s and opposite public toilets because for us... We wanted to be able to engage everyone.” The location creates a jarring sensory contrast. Outside the Hub: bright retail lighting, the smell of fast food, aggressive visual merchandising designed to induce passive consumption. Inside the Hub: community sewing machines, returned power tools from the Library of Things, peer-to-peer conversations about energy poverty and ULEZ. This pattern interrupt is the point. If you bury your community project in an activist enclave, you only reach people who already agree with you. If you plant it in a mainstream commercial space, you intercept the accidental passerby—the person looking for the toilets, grabbing a coffee, killing time before a meeting. Matt Golding (the guest from the previous episode) called it a “hope hub.” Bernie described walking past and seeing a table full of people knitting in the middle of the mall—shop, lights, shop, lights, oh, table with lots of people. That’s the design working. For coworking operators, the lesson is this: don’t wait for the perfect purpose-built space to start a community project. Use what you have. A corner table. A meeting room once a week. A partnership with someone who’s already doing the work across the road. Accessibility beats purity every time. Lesson 2: You Don’t Have to Run It—You Just Have to Connect to It One of the most practical sections of this conversation is Parisa's explanation of how coworking spaces can partner with local charities without t...

    38 min

  6. Mar 12

    The Hero's Journey Is Broken: How to Tell Stories That Drive Collective Action with Matt Golding

    Episode Summary The hero’s journey is broken. That 2,000-year-old storytelling archetype—the one from ancient Greece, from Jason and the Argonauts, from Star Wars and Lord of the Rings—was built for a different kind of story. It’s individualistic, extractive, and violent. It works brilliantly for getting millions of people to watch Orcs die while Tom Cruise learns a personal lesson. But it doesn’t work for collective action. Matt Golding has spent four years learning how to fix it. He’s a filmmaker and the founder of Rubber Republic, a content studio he rebooted in 2019 to work exclusively on positive storytelling. Before that, he made viral campaigns—the kind that racked up millions of views and Cannes Lions awards. Comedy sketches shared across the early internet. He taught himself by doing it. After two years working for environmental and social justice organisations, he realised they were all making the same mistake. They were telling people what not to do. What to cut down on. What to avoid. Framed around the problem, not the solution. And even when they tried to tell positive stories, people didn’t believe them. The pushback wasn’t from ideological opponents. It came from people who agreed with the cause but fundamentally didn’t think community action could create meaningful change at scale. So Matt created the Antidote Project. It’s a framework for how to tell collective action stories in a way that makes people believe change is achievable. The podcast—Screw This, Let’s Try Something Else—demonstrates it in practice. Six episodes, made with Maryam Pasha and Immediate Media, each one showing how local communities are transforming the fundamentals of how we live: energy, food, housing, and decision-making. The framework has two parts: the Filter (eight criteria for which stories to tell) and the Narrative Arc (eight steps for how to tell them). It starts with a positive vision. It briefly acknowledges the problem. Then it shows how the idea can spread, how it’s already spreading, and how you can participate if you want. No pressure. No single call-to-action railroading you into clicking a link. Just agency. The first episode of the podcast is about a working-class community on the outskirts of Bristol. They rewrote the entire housing policy for their area—it’s now illegal to build a home there with a gas boiler, without EV charging, or without top-notch insulation. Then they built the UK’s largest community-owned wind turbine and now make £100,000 a year from it. That money doesn’t leave the neighbourhood. It stays in a regenerative economy. It shifts how rent, energy, and food bills flow. When money starts flowing differently, the whole game changes. Bernie and Matt get into why “positive stories” don’t work (people think they’re nice but not scalable), why social media is toxic for this kind of storytelling (park it for now), and why global solutions are a lie we tell ourselves. Humans work best locally. Where we can see the effects. Where ingenuity comes out of community action because people can see what they need and come up with brilliant solutions. This episode is a lesson, not an interview. It teaches the Antidote method so you can use it. Timeline Highlights [01:43] Matt on what he does: “I am learning how we change the way we tell stories around collective action to help us all believe we can change the world” [02:07] The Antidote Project: “Exploring how we change the way we approach progressive and collective action storytelling... to make it feel invitational, exciting, and like something you want to join in with” [03:55] On storytelling being hijacked: “The word storytelling has been abused... by overpaid people in marketing... The stories we tell shape the world that we inhabit... storytelling done badly has created the problems in the world” [07:33] The podcast as demonstration: “We’ve made a podcast called, Screw This, Let’s Try Something Else, which aims to demonstrate how we could tell collective action stories in a different way” [09:54] The hero’s journey problem: “We live in this very individualistic, very extractive, very violent culture... the hero’s journey... normalises theft, violence... That is okay because we’re on the side of these people” [13:39] World-changing ideas hidden in humble stories: “Amazing ideas are embedded in a load of community action, but they’re almost quite mutedly, humbly shared... These are world-changing ideas, and we need to shout about them” [14:51] The four universal needs: “The four things we identified are energy, food, housing, and decision-making. We tell all stories framed around those key framings” [16:02] The three scaling steps: “Bring it down to an action you can take part in today... scale that up... and network it and mention the fact that this example... is not the only example... This is happening everywhere” [17:33] Parking social media: “Social media... has toxic algorithms. It drives storytelling behaviours and habits that are not very helpful. So let’s park that one” [19:51] Why positive stories failed initially: “A lot of the pushback we got... they just fundamentally didn’t believe that this stuff would ever create a scale of change that was meaningful” [22:28] The Antidote goal: “How do you change the shape of storytelling to overcome that... and start to re-find that truth that together we can create big change?” [26:00] Humble beginnings matter: “We don’t tell any stories from communities who exhibit elements of what others could perceive as privilege... Let’s tell those stories... to prove that you don’t need amazing, stupid expertise to do this stuff” [29:09] Plural invitations: “We make sure that invitation is plural... We have to allow people agency in how they participate” [31:51] The Bristol example: “In Bristol, the community... rewrote the entire housing policy for their area... then went on to build the biggest community-owned wind turbine in the country and make 100 grand a year from it” [36:14] Why local works: “We’ve created a culture through globalisation that allows us to take more responsibility than we’re cognitively capable of... But how we do work really well is... with our communities around us, where we can see the effects” The Problem: Traditional Storytelling Was Built for Extraction Storytelling has been hijacked by marketing. That’s the first thing to understand. The word itself has been co-opted by overpaid people in agencies to describe what they do when they’re really just selling stuff. Bernie describes it perfectly: the social media week events ten years ago, full of blokes in skinny jeans two sizes too tight and £400 black-framed glasses saying, “It’s all about the narrative. Storytelling is the transformation of seamless integration.” Meaningless jargon. But the problem runs deeper than marketing. It’s in the structure itself. The dominant storytelling archetype in Western culture is the hero’s journey. It comes from Aristotle’s Poetics, the original backbone of Western narrative. It’s 2,000 years old. It governs nearly every blockbuster film, every novel on the bestseller list, every story we’ve been told since childhood. The hero has a want (bring peace to the galaxy) and a need (overcome a personal flaw). They go on a journey. They face obstacles. They achieve the want by fulfilling the need. The End. Here’s the problem: that structure is individualistic, extractive, and violent. Think about Jason and the Argon...

    41 min

  7. Mar 10

    The Tactical Playbook from Coworking Operators Weekend with Lauren Walker

    “One of the attendees spoke about their local government saying that they could not show favour to specific business and therefore couldn’t collaborate with the coworking space. One of the panellists said, We’ll create a downtown alliance. They can work with an alliance.” —Lauren Walker Episode Summary Lauren Walker is a storyteller who’s spent 25 years behind the scenes. Reader’s Digest in the 1990s, where she learned direct marketing when things were still on paper. A couple of dot-com startups during the boom. Thirteen years at IBM, writing deep technical marketing before becoming the editor of IBM.com’s homepage. She’s been working remotely since 2005. Twenty years of distributed work before it became the default. Now she’s CMO at Coworks, a coworking space software company. And in February 2026, she helped organise the Coworking Operators Weekend in Raleigh—a small, focused gathering of 40 operators and managers at Raleigh Founded. The event started in LA in 2025. Jerome Chang and Jackie Latragna created it with one principle: small, no bells and whistles, just operators talking. Sean Brown, CEO of Coworks, attended and loved it. Jerome asked if Coworks wanted to bring it to the East Coast. They said yes. Lauren describes the energy simply: “It was folks recognising game. It was folks saying, I do what you do, you do what I do, but how do you do it?” What made it work was what it wasn’t. No vendor presentations. No polished keynotes. Just operators sharing what they’d learned by doing the work. There’s something else worth naming here, because Lauren shared it publicly after the event. She has brain cancer. She’s in remission, but she lives with a tumour on her cerebellum. The radiation treatment left visible effects—her face is droopy, her eye doesn’t blink, she walks with an unusual gait. She’d been hiding. Camera positioned to show her left side on calls. AI-generated headshot. Avoiding in-person events despite wanting to be there. Her anxiety about the Operators Weekend wasn’t about the logistics or the agenda. It was about explaining her face. But the people she told were warm and understanding. No one ran. She showed up anyway. That matters. Not because it’s inspirational theatre, but because it shows what these events actually are: spaces where operators can be honest about what’s hard without performing strength they don’t feel. Bernie and Lauren talk through the tactical lessons from the weekend—the downtown alliance hack, the circus metaphor for marketing, the AI panel’s three questions, and what FLOC is doing about career paths in coworking. This episode is for operators who need their peers more than they need another conference. Timeline Highlights [01:27] Lauren on being a marketer: “I’m not really known for anything because I’m a marketer. I have to be behind the scenes. But that is what I’m known for. I’m a content marketer. I’m a storyteller.” [02:55] On 20 years of remote work: “IBM... they kicked us out in 2005. They said, Work from home. I have been working remote for 20 years.” [05:25] The origin of COW: “Let’s have a small event. Let’s not plan this. Let’s not have bells and whistles. Let’s just get together and talk.” [06:42] Game recognising game: “These are the people doing the work. These are not the consultants. These are not the vendors.” [08:25] On articulating value to cities: “It’s being able to discuss the economic impact that you are having on that local area.” [09:41] The downtown alliance solution: “One of the panellists said, We’ll create a downtown alliance. They can work with an alliance.” [10:39] Proctor’s tactical hack: “Just create a coworking day. Go to your government and say, This is going to be Raleigh coworking Day.” [11:51] On impact reports: “What goes into what’s called an impact report, and then how do you quantify the value you bring to your city?” [13:05] The 3-5 year drop-off: “She’s really identified this drop-off after the first 3-5 years... we’re missing a pipeline of growth.” [14:26] Role title confusion: “Sometimes they’re hiring for a community manager, but what they really need is an operations coordinator.” [16:45] Samantha Reel’s AI questions: “What are you spending the most time doing? What are you ignoring that’s high value? And what is messy and should be cleaned up?” [17:35] Taylor Mason on training AI: “Everything that you put into it, you’ll get out of it. So if you don’t train your AI... you’re going to get something very generic.” [20:04] The real AI fear: “There was a concern like, is this going to change the makeup of our membership?” [23:26] The circus metaphor begins: “If you have a circus and you went looking for the right town to be in, that is market research.” [25:24] Marketing advice: “What’s the goal? What do you want to achieve?... work backward from that.” [26:19] Channel strategy: “Where is your audience? What channel do they use?... And go there” The Downtown Alliance Hack Here’s the problem operators keep hitting. You want to work with your city. You want them to understand the economic value you’re creating—the businesses you’re launching, the foot traffic you’re bringing downtown, the parking revenue, the local spending. But when you approach your local government, they say: “We can’t show favour to a specific business.” Dead end. One operator at the Coworking Operators Weekend raised exactly this. Their city wouldn’t collaborate because working with one coworking space would be preferential treatment. A panellist solved it in one sentence: “We’ll create a downtown alliance. They can work with an alliance.” Lauren explains what that means: “Work with the local coffee shop, work with the local printer, work with folks that are on this business corridor and create an alliance, and then your city can work with that alliance.” It’s not a coworking space asking for support. It’s a coalition of local businesses presenting a unified economic case. The city can’t work with you alone. But they can work with an entity that represents multiple stakeholders. This is already happening in the US. Lauren mentions the Denver Alliance, the Atlanta Alliance. City-based alliances, interest-based alliances. The infrastructure exists. For UK operators navigating the business rates crisis, this is the playbook. You’re not asking for relief for your space. You’re asking on behalf of a corridor, a district, a coalition of independents who are all absorbing the same systemic pressure. That’s a political entity. That’s something a council can work with. The Impact Report You’re Not Writing Lauren talks about the “impact report” like it’s obvious, but most operators aren’t doing it. “What goes into what’s called an impact report, and then how do you quantify the value you bring to your city? Collect this data, look at this data, and then present it.” What data? * The number of businesses you’re launching. * The number of people coming downtown for lunch because your members are there. * The number of people using the parking deck. * The total local spend your members generate in the surrounding area. This isn’t marketing fluff. This is economic evidence. Cities care about footfall. They care about business formation. They care about parking revenue because that funds other services. They care about vitality in the city centre. I...

    32 min

  8. Feb 26

    Why Glasgow's First Coworking Space Stayed All-Subscription with Teresa Jackson

    “I found myself with a building, a smaller building than the one I’m in now, with the bills to pay, and was a bit like, Oh, dear, I’m going to have to do something about this.” —Teresa Jackson The journey continues - May 19th On May 19th at Space4, the Unreasonable Connection Goes Live! The London Coworking Assembly Forum is back for part two. A one-day working session for the people running London’s most vital neighbourhood spaces and the public sector allies working to help them thrive. Episode Summary Teresa Jackson didn’t set out to become a coworking pioneer. She was working from a flat in Glasgow’s city centre, bouncing between her dining table and a sofa three feet away. You know that feeling—laptop balanced on your knees, no separation between work and life, the walls closing in a bit more each day. She’d been running a networking organisation called 4 Networking—23 groups across Scotland in the first year—and knew plenty of freelancers and small business owners in the same boat. So she asked a few of them: what if we rented an office together? A few people said yes. Then she signed the lease on an attic space on John Street. No lift. Tiny kitchen. A proper commitment. Then, as often happens when it’s time to actually pay, some of those people vanished into the sunset. She was left holding the keys to a building she couldn’t afford alone. That moment—being stuck with the bills and no plan—is where Collabor8te actually began. Teresa applied the membership model she knew from networking to the space. Monthly subscription. No long-term commitment. Book what you need when you need it. She started with a 32-hour membership, then added a 12-hour “now and then” option when people said they liked the idea but weren’t sure they’d use it that much. That was 2014. By 2016, they’d moved to 22 Montrose Street—a Victorian sandstone building in the Merchant City with 40 desks, 9 meeting rooms, and room for about 100 people at any one time. Today, Collabor8te has 350 members. It’s still all subscription. Still no dedicated desks. Still monthly, flexible, all-inclusive. Bernie and Teresa talk through what it actually means to run a space like this—where members can cancel with a month’s notice, but you’re locked into a long-term lease. They discuss the difference between networking (transactional, two hours of business development) and coworking (ambient learning from just being in the room). They get into Teresa’s B Corp journey, which started as a lockdown project and ended with a governance structure that legally prevents the space from being sold to private equity. And they talk about the 4-day work week Teresa introduced for her staff, and how that works when your business is meant to be open and welcoming all the time. This episode is for anyone who’s ever signed a lease and then realised they had no idea what they were doing. Timeline Highlights [01:18] Teresa on what she’d like to be known for: “Providing the most welcoming coworking space that is possible to... in the world.” [02:09] The accidental start: “I got into coworking by a complete accident.” [03:09] When commitment gets real: “I found myself with a building... with the bills to pay, and was a bit like, Oh, dear, I’m going to have to do something about this” [03:46] The model that never changed: “It’s always been monthly. It’s always been all-inclusive memberships.” [05:11] Bernie on whether Teresa questions her model: “Do you see other people doing different memberships and go, Oh, my God, am I doing this right?” [06:00] Teresa on why their model works: “I think where we are based in the city centre, that we’re all subscription, we do buck the trend.” [06:49] On attracting the right people: “We attract a certain type of person because of what we do here... you have to want to share.” [07:27] Glasgow’s first: “It was the first coworking space in Glasgow.” [08:40] How people come for community now: “Now I think people are drawn to, I want to be with other people. I don’t want to be sitting at home on my own all the time.” [10:19] On the “hijacking” of coworking: “Everyone thinks they can open a coworking space these days. It’s just always nice and easy. But... it’s a big risk.” [13:15] Teresa on the accidental nature of it: “If I hadn’t found myself in that situation, would I have done it? I don’t know.” [16:54] Natural networking: “You aren’t just networking with people while you’re making a coffee in the kitchen... you get to know your fellow coworkers and become friends.” [18:18] The B Corp project: “We wanted a project. We were a bit bored... this would be a good challenge.” [22:20] What B Corp revealed: “We learned lots of things. One of the main things, I think, was we had to write things down.” [24:18] The 4-day week and other changes: “We introduced some things... private health care... cycle to work scheme... a four-day working week.” The Widow-Maker Lease Let’s be clear about what Teresa signed herself up for. A commercial lease in Glasgow’s Merchant City on a Victorian sandstone building is likely a 10-year Full Repairing and Insuring lease. That means every crack in the facade, every leak in the roof, every drain that backs up—that’s on her. Not the landlord. Her. If the Victorian roof at 22 Montrose Street fails, Teresa pays to fix it. If the sandstone needs repointing, Teresa pays. If the boiler dies in January, Teresa pays. This isn’t a month-to-month WeWork membership. This is a decade-long liability that could bankrupt you if the building turns against you. And who are her customers? People paying £200 a month who can cancel with 30 days’ notice. Teresa absorbs 100% of the risk. Her members carry none. “I found myself with a building... with the bills to pay, and was a bit like, Oh, dear, I’m going to have to do something about this.” That “Oh, dear” is doing a lot of work. It’s the voice of someone who’s just realised they’re standing on the edge of a financial cliff, and the only way forward is to build a bridge while walking across it. Most people in that situation would panic and try to lock members into long-term contracts. Annual commitments. Upfront payments. Anything to create certainty. Teresa did the opposite. She made it easier to leave. Monthly memberships. Cancel anytime. No questions asked. Why? Because she understood something fundamental: you can’t build community by trapping people. The subscription model works because it builds trust rather than extracting commitment. Members don’t stay because they’re locked in. They stay because they don’t want to leave. That’s a completely different kind of certainty. And it only works if you’re willing to carry the risk yourself. The Glasgow Texture Montrose Street sits in the Merchant City, the heart of old Glasgow money. The buildings here are Victorian sandstone—the kind that turns golden in rare Scottish sunlight and looks like they’re brooding the rest of the time. This neighbourhood used to belong to the Tobacco Lords, the merchants who built Glasgow’s wealth on transatlantic trade. The warehouses that once stored tobacco now store something else: human capital, ideas, the quiet hum of people working on things that might or might not succeed. Teresa’s building has weight. Thick walls. High ceilings. The kind of space that m...

    27 min
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About

Welcome to Coworking Values the podcast of the European Coworking Assembly. Each week we deep dive into one of the values of accessibility, community, openness, collaboration and sustainability. Listen in to learn how these values can make or break Coworking culture.

Information

  • Creator
    Bernie J Mitchell
  • Years Active
    2019 - 2026
  • Episodes
    192
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Coworking Values Podcast / London Coworking Assembly
  • Show Website
    Coworking Values Podcast