Coworking Values Podcast

Bernie J Mitchell

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Management
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.

Oct 27

Brain-first Coworking spaces with Amanda Perry

Brain-First Coworking Spaces with Amanda Perry Brain First Workspaces: What Neurodivergent Members Need From Your Space What a curry, a Bluetooth headset and a missing front door taught one founder about designing coworking spaces that more people can use. Want the short version by email? Grab the free five-day email course, 5 Mistakes That Hollow Out a Coworking Community and What to Do Instead, at thecoworkingvaluespodcast.com. Episode Summary Amanda Perry booked a coworking desk in a hurry, without researching the space. What she got was someone reheating leftover curry beside her, a woman pacing past on an aggressive recruitment call through a Bluetooth headset, and a set of phone booth rules that changed depending on who was asking. She wrote about it on LinkedIn. Around 165 comments later, Bernie found her, and the conversation that followed is this episode. Amanda is the founder of Brain First, a platform for neurodivergent founders and leaders, and the author of Brain First Business. Her argument is straightforward. Plenty of late-diagnosed neurodivergent adults spent decades masking, telling themselves to get over it, and assuming the problem was them. Learning how your brain is wired changes that. You stop treating your needs as a character flaw and start building accommodations around them: an extra ten minutes to travel, checking the route on Google Maps before you leave, needing certainty about where you will sit. Then the question flips to the space. Most coworking operators are not trying to exclude anyone. They simply have never had the sensory and communication detail written down. A London space Amanda tried to use had no signage on the door. She could not find the entrance, arrived dysregulated, stressed and sweaty, and never went back. A different app, Worksee, takes you right to the door of the workspace, and she rates it for exactly that reason. The most useful idea in the episode is the drop curb. Designers built kerb cuts for wheelchair users in 1940s America. Now mums with prams, delivery drivers and cyclists rely on them. Design for the edges, and everyone benefits. Amanda is not asking for a space built for every single brain. She is asking for enough variety: quiet in the morning, energy and conversation in the afternoon. Her survey found that 44% of respondents named hot desking as the thing that stopped them trying coworking, or put them off once they had. If you run a space and want more people through the door, welcomed, and staying longer, this is a commercial conversation. Start with the detail you have never written down. Timeline Highlights Amanda's hellish coworking experience. Someone reheating leftover curry beside her, a woman pacing on an aggressive recruitment call through a Bluetooth headset, and 20 minutes in the phone booth that stretched if nobody else wanted it.Booking without research. Amanda booked the desk in a hurry. The mismatch between what she needed and what she got is the whole problem in miniature.The LinkedIn post. Around 165 comments. Bernie found Amanda through it, and the response is its own evidence that this experience is common.Late diagnosis and a lifetime of masking. Neurodivergent adults told themselves to get over it long before anyone explained how their brain was wired.Accommodations that look small and are not. An extra ten minutes to travel, a route checked on Google Maps, certainty about where you will sit. Knowing your wiring turns these into sensible adjustments.Worksee and the missing door. An app that walks you to the workspace door, versus a London space with no signage where Amanda arrived dysregulated, stressed and sweaty, and wrote the space off.Clarity of communication is the accommodation. The information a space publishes about arrival, rules and layout does more work than most operators realise.The drop curb. Built for wheelchair users in 1940s America, used now by prams, delivery drivers and cyclists. Design for the edges and everyone benefits.Not perfection, variety. Quiet in the morning, energy and chat in the afternoon. Enough range that different brains can find their hour.The survey's 44%. Respondents who named hot desking as the thing that put them off coworking, or stopped them trying it at all.Hot desking and the need for certainty. A colleague supporting neurodivergent students describes absolute chaos and meltdowns. Amanda compares it to being seated mid-room in a restaurant.Dean at the Juicy roundtable. A design-led view that good design should be the standard, against Amanda's point that everything around the design makes the difference.The commercial case. More people through the door, welcomed, and retained longer.The Curry, the Headset and the Rule Nobody Wrote Down Start with the scene, because the scene is the argument. Amanda booked a desk quickly, without checking much. Within a short time she had someone reheating leftover curry next to her, a woman pacing past while running an aggressive recruitment call through a Bluetooth headset, and a phone booth with a 20-minute limit that could stretch (or not) depending on who was asking. None of that is malice. It is an unmanaged sensory environment plus rules that live in someone's head instead of on a wall. The reader who runs a space should read that list and recognise how much of it would be cheap to fix: where the kitchen reheating happens, where calls are taken, and whether the booth rules are printed or improvised. Amanda wrote it up on LinkedIn. Around 165 comments came back. If you are an operator wondering whether this matters to enough people to act on, that thread is your answer. Why Late Diagnosis Changes What People Ask For Plenty of neurodivergent adults are diagnosed late, after years of assuming the friction was personal. The phrase Amanda uses is people telling themselves to get over it. That habit is hard to unlearn, and it is why so many members never ask for anything. Diagnosis gives them language. Once you know how your brain is wired, accommodations stop looking like special treatment. An extra ten minutes to travel is not indulgence; it is the difference between arriving regulated and arriving wrecked. Checking the route in advance is not fussiness. Wanting certainty about where you will sit is not a demand. The practical consequence for a space is this: the people who need the most clarity are usually the least likely to ask for it. Waiting for members to tell you what they need guarantees you will hear from the confident few. What a Missing Door Cost, and What a Good Sign Would Have Saved Amanda names Worksee, an app that takes you right to the workspace door, and praises it for that single function. Then she describes the opposite: a London coworking space with no signage on the entrance. She could not find the door, arrived dysregulated, stressed and sweaty, and will never use that space again. That is a lost member, a lost referral and a lost review, caused by a sign. Clarity of communication is the cheapest accessibility work available to any operator, and it happens before anyone walks in. Write down what a first-time visitor needs: the exact entrance, the buzzer, what to do when they arrive, where to sit...
Oct 15

From a Thousand Spaces to a Movement with Thilo Utke

Go to the Coworking Values Podcast website for the free five-day email course, The Five Biggest Mistakes Coworking Community Builders Make and How to Avoid Them — peer-to-peer stories from the trenches drawn from this podcast, one practical action each day. Episode Summary "We are a movement, not just an industry. It's still true. And I think we just got more powerful and also more grown up." Thilo Utke can name the moment coworking grew up. He was there for it. In 2010 he and Alex started with a coworking space, then built the software to run it because nothing else did the job. That software is Cobot. Sixteen years on, the people who made it are paying members of Workish, a neighbourhood space in Berlin that runs on their own product. Bernie opens with the thing that matters: this "isn't brought to you by Cobot. It's just a really nice, interesting story." The occasion is a homecoming. Thilo is flying to Coworking Canada at the end of October, his first time back in a decade. The last time was 2016, in Montreal, the same city. The two of them read an old blog post from that trip and ask what aged well. The numbers from Carsten at Deskmag aged well. But the line that carried then still carries now. Tony Bacigalupo, one of the pioneers, said it in a speech: we are a movement, not just an industry. Thilo's verdict a decade later is the whole thesis in one breath. It's still true. And we just got more powerful and also more grown up. When Bernie presses him on what "powerful" means, the answer is precise. Coworking "already succeeded." The idea that the workplace is fluid, not static, has been picked up by the real estate industry. You now have flex office. The expectation that a workplace is more than the tools around it, a place inside an ecosystem, is the idea winning. In a world where you need resources to push your ideas forward, that's what power looks like. Bernie gives it a local shape. COVID forced people to stay in their neighbourhoods, and the spaces followed them. London used to cluster its coworking in Zone 1 and Zone 2, around Old Street. Now spaces sit in Zones 4, 5 and 6. If someone had proposed opening one there in 2016, "everyone would've looked like you were mad." What follows is an episode about that growing up. Not a teenage phase, Thilo insists — that would be disrespectful. "Forceful youth. Student protests and big ideals and lots of energy to fight." Now it's settled, hit with reality in some way or another, and the speaker list has started asking how to pass it on to the next generation. This is for the operator wondering whether the values that started all this can survive its success, and for the community manager who suspects nobody sees the job they actually do. The answer sits in the way Thilo ends: the next generation "keeps yourself a little bit on your toes. Don't get too comfortable." Timeline Highlights [00:04] Bernie's cold open from Vigo: "Sorry, I've been away eating too much cheesecake, having a sabbatical, whatever you want to call it, but we're back now and shinier than ever." [01:01] The true subject: "Thilo and I take a little trip down memory lane, remembering when there was only about 1,000 coworking spaces in the world and Instagram was a brand-new thing." [01:52] Bernie on why the email course matters: "One of the things people always say is, I thought it was just me... a kind of find the others of coworking mistakes." [02:20] Thilo, asked what he wants to be known for: "I always introduce myself as Thilo from Cobot... building that software and providing it to spaces so that they can run a coworking space more easily... that we have been around, that we will be around." [02:53] Bernie's founding memory: "It was in 2008 when I found Tony and New Work Cities on meetup.com." Cobot itself started in 2010. [03:24] The homecoming: "It was in 2016. I went personally... So it's a 10-year anniversary." The same city, Montreal. [03:55] The monster line, quoting Tony Bacigalupo: "We are a movement, not just an industry. It's still true. And I think we just got more powerful and also more grown up." [04:34] What "powerful" means: coworking "already succeeded... the workplace is not something static but fluid has been picked up by the real estate industry. You now have flex office." [05:38] COVID's effect, in London's geography: spaces once clumped in "Zone 1 and Zone 2 and around Old Street," now "there's like [Zones] 6, 5, and 4." Opening one there in 2016, "everyone would've looked like you were mad." [06:42] Thilo refuses the teenage framing: "That would be disrespectful for the movement to say it's like a teenager... Forceful youth. Student protests and big ideals and lots of energy to fight." [07:27] Bernie's hospitality analogy for community managers: once a job "you got while you were at college... like a job in a bar or a restaurant, but there's actually a lot more to that role because of all the plates you have to hold." [09:43] The Trello and Google Docs memory, from Coworking Europe in Dublin, 2017. Bernie and Phil ran their Euston space on spreadsheets until Inga ended the debate: "I don't think you can possibly run a building these days without software. Like you're mad to even be having this conversation." [11:28] Thilo on why Cobot's team are members at Workish: "It's a nice dog-fooding experience... They're forced to be on the member part, which is also very good to reveal blind spots." [11:52] Workish, described: a "neighbourhood owner-operated coworking space... centred around a maker and creative community," with a coding school, smaller offices, a nice backyard and a maker lab. "You care for your stuff you built when you see it every day." [13:31] Alex, the co-founder who "got really into hardware," in the maker lab, building speakers and "adjusting his keyboard." [17:41] The closing turn, toward Shared Futures: "How coworking can tie in with the social challenges we are facing. And they have not become less, they have become more." Coworking "has become more important, not less." [22:04] The Rosie moment. Thilo: "She's the one who writes a lot of content and we would be so screwed without her because I'm not the best writer." Bernie, on her output: "I have to go and see my therapist. It's so good." [22:23] The last word, unprompted: "Well, it's the next generation, bro. This keeps yourself a little bit on your toes. Don't get too comfortable." The Problem: The Idea Already Won Coworking succeeded, and the success is the problem nobody wants to name. Thilo says it plainly: the idea that work is fluid, not pinned to a fixed desk, has been picked up by the real estate industry. Flex office is the idea, adopted and renamed. Where the early operators fought to be seen as different from hotels and corporate property, those same players now speak the language fluently. When your vocabulary gets borrowed, the moat is gone for anyone who thought the moat was the words. For the independent operator, the risk is real: the wave that adopted your language can also outspend you on the sign above the door. What cannot be copied is the thi...
Episode 270

What's ahead for the rest of 2026

What's next for Coworking Values Podcast - the next few months. Back in May we ran Unreasonable Connection, a London Coworking Assembly event, and introduced the patronage work. It threw up a disconnect: am I supporting the Coworking Values Podcast, or am I supporting the London Coworking Assembly? So we're leading with the Coworking Values Podcast and Unreasonable Connection event, and London Coworking Assembly is a newsletter and yearly event under the podcast umbrella and European Coworking Assembly. The events. Unreasonable Connection will happen four times in 2027. Three cities are already lined up, and we're looking for a fourth. Plus four online events across the same year, kicking off with one online event in November. The whole point is people getting together and talking to each other. No star speakers. Everything stays connected and community focused. The move. The London Coworking Assembly URL now redirects to the Coworking Values Podcast - we're still fixing a few things! The publishing. Twice a week, a combination of essays and podcasts. This is not a customer acquisition podcast, and it's not best in class with seamless integrations. It's a conversation about hyper-local leadership and third places, the cost of living crisis, economic inclusion, the neurodivergent experience, and coworking as a civic and social force. The frame. You'll hear me quoting Robert Putnam a lot. He wrote Bowling Alone, and he has three instructions: go young, go local, go morality. The people who will rebuild what we're doing aren't here yet. They're walking through your door for the first time. Change never arrives as national policy. It bubbles up from the people walking up and down your high street, the ones you bump into in the supermarket, in the park, in your café. And the morality bit, which Putnam explains far more elegantly than I can, is that we have obligations to each other, not just to ourselves. Coworking has always been sold as a service. It has never been just desks and wifi. Your neighbourhood coworking space is gold dust for connecting the neighbourhood, and doing something much bigger than helping you earn a living and build a business. Where to go next There's a five-day email course on the site: the five biggest mistakes that hollow out a coworking community, and what to do instead. A lot of you who've been on this podcast are already in that sequence. It's a small declaration and manifesto, and it'll be valuable to you. One More Thing Coworking brings communities together, helping people find and share their voices. Each episode of the Coworking Values Podcast explores Accessibility, Community, Openness, Collaboration, and Sustainability, the values that shape the spaces where we gather, work, and grow. We hope this resonates with you, so please rate, follow, and share the podcast. Your support helps others discover how coworking enriches lives, builds careers, and strengthens communities. Community is the key 🔑
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...
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...
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 ...
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 ...
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...

Trailer

What's ahead for the rest of 2026

What's next for Coworking Values Podcast - the next few months. Back in May we ran Unreasonable Connection, a London Coworking Assembly event, and introduced the patronage work. It threw up a disconnect: am I supporting the Coworking Values Podcast, or am I supporting the London Coworking Assembly? So we're leading with the Coworking Values Podcast and Unreasonable Connection event, and London Coworking Assembly is a newsletter and yearly event under the podcast umbrella and European Coworking Assembly. The events. Unreasonable Connection will happen four times in 2027. Three cities are already lined up, and we're looking for a fourth. Plus four online events across the same year, kicking off with one online event in November. The whole point is people getting together and talking to each other. No star speakers. Everything stays connected and community focused. The move. The London Coworking Assembly URL now redirects to the Coworking Values Podcast - we're still fixing a few things! The publishing. Twice a week, a combination of essays and podcasts. This is not a customer acquisition podcast, and it's not best in class with seamless integrations. It's a conversation about hyper-local leadership and third places, the cost of living crisis, economic inclusion, the neurodivergent experience, and coworking as a civic and social force. The frame. You'll hear me quoting Robert Putnam a lot. He wrote Bowling Alone, and he has three instructions: go young, go local, go morality. The people who will rebuild what we're doing aren't here yet. They're walking through your door for the first time. Change never arrives as national policy. It bubbles up from the people walking up and down your high street, the ones you bump into in the supermarket, in the park, in your café. And the morality bit, which Putnam explains far more elegantly than I can, is that we have obligations to each other, not just to ourselves. Coworking has always been sold as a service. It has never been just desks and wifi. Your neighbourhood coworking space is gold dust for connecting the neighbourhood, and doing something much bigger than helping you earn a living and build a business. Where to go next There's a five-day email course on the site: the five biggest mistakes that hollow out a coworking community, and what to do instead. A lot of you who've been on this podcast are already in that sequence. It's a small declaration and manifesto, and it'll be valuable to you. One More Thing Coworking brings communities together, helping people find and share their voices. Each episode of the Coworking Values Podcast explores Accessibility, Community, Openness, Collaboration, and Sustainability, the values that shape the spaces where we gather, work, and grow. We hope this resonates with you, so please rate, follow, and share the podcast. Your support helps others discover how coworking enriches lives, builds careers, and strengthens communities. Community is the key 🔑

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.

Creator

Bernie J Mitchell
Years Active

2019 - 2026
Episodes

195
Rating

Explicit
Copyright

© Coworking Values Podcast / London Coworking Assembly
Show Website

Coworking Values Podcast