Flex That Worx

If you have ever wondered which numbers actually matter for a coworking space like yours, this episode lays it out.  Ben Newton, Operations Director at Patch and Katy Tennant, Director of Operations for UK and EU at Clockwise Offices, spend their days deep in operations and in this conversation recorded live at GCUC UK in Manchester they walked through what an operator should be keeping an eye on...

There is a difference between what your space costs, what it earns and what it actually impacts, and that last one is the hardest to capture and the most worth telling. That was the thread tying together this conversation with Stacey Sheppard, founder of The Tribe Coworking and Felicia Fai, Associate Professor in International Business & Innovation at University of Bath School of Management, r...

A lot of coworking marketing looks the same. The empty office shot, the square footage, the desk you could rent tomorrow. Garry James, CMO at FOUNDRY, came into the industry from tech, entertainment and journalism and that outside eye is exactly why he notices the sameness.  His marketing leads with people rather than property, because a space is something you belong to long before it is something...

The members who are about to leave rarely announce it. The signs are quieter than that. A team coming in less often, a familiar face you have not seen in a while, a quick word at the coffee machine that lands differently.  Kreena Pithwa, Head of Member Success at Runway East, knows those signals well and the reassuring part is that catching them is less about sophisticated data and more about the...

The operator who knows their local area has something the global brands cannot replicate at scale. That was the thread running through this conversation with Paddy Kennedy, practice leader for Global Flexible Workspace Advisory at Colliers, recorded live at GCUC UK in Manchester as part of the series we made with the GCUC UK team. Paddy spends his days advising occupiers and landlords on flex, so...

If someone asked you to describe your coworking or workspace brand in one sentence, could you do it without reaching for the website or the colours? A lot of operators cannot and there is no shame in that.  Alexandra Livesey, Co-Founder of Little Red Donkey, is reassuring on this point. Take the orange out of EasyJet and it is still EasyJet. Your brand is what you stand for and the clarity comes f...

The strengths that keep a single-site coworking space full are the same ones the biggest brands are reaching for as they move into regional cities. That was one of the clearest signals from a full day of recording at GCUC UK in Manchester, a series we made in collaboration with the GCUC UK team.  Across the day Graham and Anne-Marie sat down with operators and industry leaders from across flex, co...

There is a lot of noise telling coworking operators that AI is about to upend everything overnight. The truth is steadier than that, coworking sits among the harder industries to automate, because what keeps a space alive is human work that coworking operators already do well.  Where AI earns its keep is in clearing admin and other tasks off your plate. Where it catches operators out is when it la...

For anyone running a coworking space, there's a tension that builds up slowly and rarely gets talked about. The members you opened the doors with become part of the furniture. You know their kids' names and you've shared the highs and the wobbles.  Somewhere along the way, decisions that should sit with you start getting weighed against how those members might react. A price review...

If your energy bill doubled tomorrow, would your space still make money, and would you actually know why? It is the question Graham and Anne-Marie sit with this week on Flex That Worx, with single space coworking operators front of mind, because you are the one carrying this weight, in a building full of people you know by name and that takes its own kind of strength. This is a practical chat abou...

If you're running a coworking space on your own, sales is the work that probably gets pushed to the side when the day gets full. There's always something else going on like a tour to give, a question to answer, a list of small things waiting on you before lunch. If this sounds like your current reality, this week's Flex Rewind is for you.  Anne-Marie and Graham return to one of the...

Pricing your space sits in a category of its own. The numbers come together quickly enough. The harder part is sitting with what a change might mean for the members who've stayed with you, who've shaped the community in your space and who you'd rather not lose. That weight is real and it's part of what makes you the kind of operator your members are happy to keep coming back to...

Scaling a coworking space is a milestone worth pausing over. If you are looking at opening a second location or you already have a handful of spaces running, you have built something that works well enough to grow from. Scaling also tends to come with feelings that rarely get talked about out loud, like the tiredness, the overworked team and the Sunday evening reports that take longer than they sh...

When you're deep in the day-to-day of running a space, brand can feel like something that belongs to other people. The operators with bigger budgets or the ones who seem to just get it naturally. In this Flex Rewind from our conversation with Emilie Lashmar, Creative Director at TOGETHER and Director of GCUC UK, we explore why brand has very little to do with logos or colour palettes and ever...

How much time do you spend reaching out to the businesses in your area? Not the freelancers or the solo workers who already know what coworking is, but the employers with remote teams who have probably never set foot in a space like yours and the companies thinking about releasing their office lease, but wanting to still give their team a place to work from. It is a detail that a lot of operators...

If someone walked into your space for the first time, would they know straight away what kind of place it is or would they need a while to figure it out? Hotels and hostels both sell beds, nobody ever confuses the two. Coworking and flexible workspaces also both sell desks but plenty of operators are trying to be both at once and that is where it starts to get complicated. In this episode, Anne-Ma...

If someone asked you what your lead-to-tour conversion looks like right now, would you have an answer? In this episode of Flex That Worx, Anne-Marie and Graham unpack something that comes up again and again with operators. It can feel like an occupancy issue, but when you take a closer look, it’s actually about what’s happening behind the scenes. Community plays a huge role in any space, it keeps...

Events have always been part of coworking. Breakfasts, meetups, workshops, the occasional Friday social. But anyone running a workspace knows the real question isn’t whether events matter. It’s whether they’re actually driving value for your members. In this episode of Flex That Worx, we sit down with Emilie Lashmar, Creative Director at TOGETHER and Director of GCUC UK, to unpack what events can...

When someone joins your space, in the busyness of signing them up do you and your team stop to consider who is actually paying for the desk? In this episode of Flex That Worx, we explore a shift that coworking operators are noticing. As coworking becomes more mainstream, more employees of established businesses are choosing to work from coworking spaces and in many cases they are covering the cost...

Running a coworking space is not easy! It involves signing long leases in a market that behaves month to month. It’s about managing rising expectations, rising costs and a future that feels harder to predict every year. In this episode of Flex That Worx, we sit down with Claire Carpenter, who has seen coworking evolve from handwritten membership forms and direct hustling to integrated platforms, A...

You can be busy with tours and still feel stuck. People come in, they like the space, they compliment the atmosphere and then they leave until you hear later that they have chosen not to become a member. A reason we hear often from coworking operators is price. In this episode of Flex That Worx, we break down this frustration properly instead of rushing to fix it with discounts & how marketing...

Marketing a coworking space is rarely the main job on the list for an operator but it is often the one that determines whether a space grows, stalls or quietly struggles. In this episode of Flex That Worx, we’re joined by Jack Regan from Trend 7 Media for an honest conversation about what actually works when it comes to coworking marketing. Trend 7 Media is a Content Marketing Agency for B2B Tech...

Coworking spaces and gyms tend to be discussed in very different circles but when you stand back and look at both models, they are more alike than we think.  A few similarities we noticed are they both sell memberships, depend on retention and they only work if people actually show up. In this week’s episode of Flex That Worx , Anne-Marie and Graham dig into why gyms have become very good at under...

Coworking spaces have traditionally been designed around desks, meetings, and laptop-based work. But a growing group of workers do not fit neatly into that model. In this episode of Flex That Worx , Anne-Marie Murphy and Graham Clarke explore whether coworking spaces are truly set up to support creators, people whose work depends on content, visibility, and personal branding. Creators work differe...

In this Flex Rewind episode of Flex That Worx , we take a closer look at why niche coworking and flexible workspace models are gaining momentum, and why clear positioning is becoming critical for operators. Graham Clarke, Anne-Marie Murphy and Joe Averill discuss how flexible work has evolved beyond its early roots in freelancer-led coworking and traditional serviced offices. As remote and hybrid...