2 Marketers and a Coworking Podcast

Charlotte Kirby left a career in health care recruitment to open Markham's first coworking space, and ten years later, she runs three Village Hive locations across the GTA, spanning suburban Markham, industrial-adjacent North York, and midtown Toronto at Yonge and Eglinton.

Along the way, she has landed a landlord partnership from a cold Google search, survived opening two locations during COVID, and stumbled into a thriving wellness niche with 40 psychotherapists booking on-demand offices, on top of the members she serves across her portfolio of spaces.

In Episode 29, Charlotte shares how she built a profitable multi-location business by staying scrappy, saying yes to the right opportunities, and doubling down on what she has before chasing what's next.

We discuss how:

• Charlotte went from burnt-out hospital administrator and reluctant work-from-homer to coworking operator after a sold-out TEDx event pushed her into a livestream at the Center for Social Innovation, one of Toronto's first coworking spaces, and a for-lease sign on a historic Markham schoolhouse did the rest
• Her North York location started with a cold email from a landlord whose sister had simply Googled coworking operators, and Charlotte won the deal partly by being one of the only people who bothered to reply
• When that North York building sold, the new landlord toured the space, kept her on, and converted her management agreement to a lease, and Charlotte says the business makes more money now without the revenue share
• She tested demand in Aurora with pop-up coworking days at an art gallery and a media company, filling every seat and measuring success on two simple signals: attendance and whether attendees said they would consider a membership
• Her therapist niche found her, growing from two on-demand offices to 40 psychotherapists and a dedicated wellness floor at Yonge and Eglinton, with a WhatsApp group where practitioners refer clients to each other instead of competing
• Her marketing team is mostly herself plus a part-time contractor, her HubSpot sequences have sat dormant for months, and business is still strong, which raises the question of what happens if she ever turns everything on
• AI just might be driving her virtual office boom, including one lead who arrived via Gemini convinced the Hive supplied easels and drop cloths for a paint and sip, which is exactly why operators need to feed AI complete, accurate information
• Three locations serve three completely different demographics, from condo dwellers escaping small spaces to private school parents killing the day, all under one brand with one marketing approach, and her current focus is revenue maximization over expansion

If you want to hear how an independent operator builds a decade-long business one smart yes at a time, this one's for you.

Want to connect with Charlotte Kirby? Find her on LinkedIn and check out The Village Hive.

By the way, you can also:

• Check us out on YouTube
• Download all free tools, templates, and resources from 2 Marketers and a Coworking Podcast 🛠️

About 2 Marketers and a Coworking Podcast

Hosted by Kevin Whelan of Everspaces and Taylor Mason of Talemaker, 2 Marketers and a Coworking Podcast dives deep into marketing tips, tools, insights, and strategies you can actually use to grow your coworking business. 

🔔 Hit subscribe to make sure you don't miss an episode.

About The Village Hive

The Village Hive is a network of coworking and community spaces across the Greater Toronto Area, with locations in Markham, North York, and Midtown Toronto at Yonge and Eglinton. They offer private offices, coworking memberships, meeting rooms, virtual office services, and on-demand wellness space for therapists and practitioners.

Lucid Private Offices CEO Flip Howard has been in the flexible office business since 2001. In that time, he has been through a recession, a pandemic, and two full rebrands, and has come out the other side running one of the most premium brands in the industry. 

Today, he has 29 locations open with (at least) two more on the way, and Flip has done the branding, positioning, and marketing math.

In Episode 28, Flip dives into the evolution of his business, where his priorities are, and what he sees for the future.

We discuss how:

• Lucid started in 2001 as Meridian Business Centers, a Regus copycat that competed mostly on price, before two rebrands carried it through Work Suites and upmarket into the modern, premium Lucid Private Offices brand it is today
• Flip built Lucid in the gap between Regus and WeWork on purpose, and his test for that in-between position is whether you land on the best of both or the worst of both, because nobody wants to buy a convertible minivan
• Lucid's motto is "work is good, where you do it matters," and Flip makes the case with a simple comparison: people happily pay thousands to drink a cold beer by a pool in Fiji and would not pay thirty bucks to drink the same beer at a roadside motel, because the surroundings are the product
• He treats marketing as pure ROI and calls the phrase "marketing budget" a stupid sentence, since you would never stop buying customers who cost two dollars and bring in a hundred
• He recently cut his Google ad spend roughly in half with almost no drop in lead flow, and he is reinvesting the savings into SEO, AI visibility, referrals, and broker outreach to wean the business off its dependence on Google
• After a year and a half of pouring money into sales training that barely moved his close rate, Flip realized the bigger lever was getting more people in the door, since lifting the conversion rate had done so little
• His new locations run 25,000 square feet and up by design, because small spaces fill faster, but large ones are where the profit lives, and he thinks the industry confuses occupancy with profitability
• He breaks every coworking location into four legs of a stool, real estate, build-out, sales and marketing, and customer service, and the first two are the ones you can never fix once you have signed the lease

If you want to hear from one of the coworking industry's pioneers, this one's for you. 

Want to connect with Flip Howard? Find him on LinkedIn and check out Lucid Private Offices.

By the way, you can also:

• Check us out on YouTube
• Download all free tools, templates, and resources from 2 Marketers and a Coworking Podcast 🛠️

About 2 Marketers and a Coworking Podcast

Hosted by Kevin Whelan of Everspaces and Taylor Mason of Talemaker, 2 Marketers and a Coworking Podcast dives deep into marketing tips, tools, insights, and strategies you can actually use to grow your coworking business. 

🔔 Hit subscribe to make sure you don't miss an episode.

About Lucid Private Offices

Lucid Private Offices provides flexible workspace for teams and individuals, along with meeting rooms and virtual offices. They operate locations across Austin, Dallas–Fort Worth, Houston, Atlanta, Phoenix, and Nashville.

Justin Moran is the founder of WorkspaceMA, a five-location coworking operation just outside Boston with around 200 private offices. He's 51, has a sales background, and has never written a line of code. In the last four months, Claude tells him he's written close to 200,000 lines of it.

Justin joins this episode to share a recap and follow-up of our AI panel at GWA Immersive in Toronto. We get practical about how we're putting AI to work across marketing and operations, and where any operator should start.

In this episode, we cover what's possible and what we're seeing making an impact, including:

• How Justin built custom internal tools, including a proposal builder, an attorney-approved license agreement generator, and an infrastructure issue logger, without writing any code
• The "tell Claude to write the prompt" approach that lets non-technical operators build real tools by voice
• How Justin rebuilt his five-year-old website in a single rainy weekend in Claude Design
• How Kevin designed and coded a fully branded newsletter for Shift Workspaces in Claude Design, then dropped it straight into Mailchimp
• Taylor's repeatable system for turning one idea into blog, email, LinkedIn, and Instagram content while keeping brand voice consistent and avoiding AI slop

If you run a coworking or flexible office business and you've wondered how to put AI to work in a meaningful way, this conversation is worth your time.

Want to connect with Justin Moran? Find him on LinkedIn and check out WorkspaceMA.

By the way, you can also:

• Check us out on YouTube
• Download all free tools, templates, and resources from 2 Marketers and a Coworking Podcast 🛠️

About 2 Marketers and a Coworking Podcast

Hosted by Kevin Whelan of Everspaces and Taylor Mason of Talemaker, 2 Marketers and a Coworking Podcast dives deep into marketing tips, tools, insights, and strategies you can actually use to grow your coworking business. 

🔔 Hit subscribe to make sure you don't miss an episode.

Alex Hughes is the founder of CENTRL Office, an 11-location flexible office brand built across Portland, Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles over the last decade. 

He started as a real estate broker who got dared into coworking by a landlord, and grew CENTRL from a single Pearl District location into one of the most respected operators on the West Coast.

This is a conversation about what it actually takes to grow a flexible office brand across multiple states without losing the feel of the original neighborhood location.

In Episode 26, Alex gets into how he built CENTRL from one Pearl District location into a multi-state operator, including:

• The origin story behind CENTRL, and the landlord who "dared" Alex to put his money where his mouth was
• Why CENTRL evolved from leases to management agreements, and the reframe at the heart of how Alex structures every deal
• The Montessori approach Alex uses to build mixed-stage communities of startups, enterprise tenants, and established companies in the same space
• Why CENTRL invested in serious branding from day one with just a single location, and how that decision compounded over the next decade
• Where flex is heading next, and why enterprise tenants are driving most of the growth most operators have been waiting for

If you're running, scaling, or partnering with landlords on a flexible office operation, this conversation is worth your time.

Want to connect with Alex Hughes? Find him on LinkedIn and check out CENTRL Office

By the way, you can also:

• Check us out on YouTube
• Download all free tools, templates, and resources from 2 Marketers and a Coworking Podcast 🛠️

About 2 Marketers and a Coworking Podcast

Hosted by Kevin Whelan of Everspaces and Taylor Mason of Talemaker, 2 Marketers and a Coworking Podcast dives deep into marketing tips, tools, insights, and strategies you can actually use to grow your coworking business. 

🔔 Hit subscribe to make sure you don't miss an episode.

Chiko Abengowe is the founder of Perfect Office Solutions, a portfolio of 25 coworking and flexible office locations that generates over $125,000 per month in virtual mail revenue alone. 

He built his first location without knowing the coworking industry existed, scaled to 18 locations before attending his first GWA conference, and created an unconventional business model focused on affordability, flexibility, and entrepreneurial tenants. 

This conversation reveals how he did it without following anyone's playbook.

In Episode 25, Chiko breaks down the systems, incentives, and marketing strategies that let him scale without typical tools like Google Ads, corporate pricing, or traditional coworking norms.

Plus, he gets into guerrilla marketing, virtual mail dominance, and performance-driven team structures, including:

• How he filled his first locations with outbound cold calls, guerrilla yard signs on weekends, and Facebook Marketplace listings instead of paid ads. He made 100 calls a day asking one question: "Are you paying too much for rent?"
• Why he welcomes hair stylists, lash techs, massage therapists, and braiders to rent private offices at Perfect Office, how that became a recruiting channel, and why it keeps his pricing model sustainable across all tenant types.
• The exact staff bonus structure he applies across all of Perfect Offices’ services and how it turned virtual mail from an operational complaint into $1.5 million in annual revenue. 
• How marketing competitions every three months encourage top performers to teach their strategies to teammates, creating a built-in training system that raises the performance floor across all 25 locations.
• Why he staffs every location with three people, two of whom are roving managers responsible for five to eight locations each, and how that model keeps overhead low while maintaining service quality.
• The contract he pitched to his mom in high school to create his own incentive program (and how he went from a 2.0 to a 4.0 and earned a Bill Gates scholarship).

If you run a coworking business and think you need to follow the standard playbook to scale, this episode will show you a completely different path.

Want to connect with Chiko? Find him on LinkedIn and check out Perfect Office Solutions.

By the way, you can also:

• Check us out on YouTube
• Download all free tools, templates, and resources from 2 Marketers and a Coworking Podcast 🛠️

About 2 Marketers and a Coworking Podcast

Hosted by Kevin Whelan of Everspaces and Taylor Mason of Talemaker, 2 Marketers and a Coworking Podcast dives deep into marketing tips, tools, insights, and strategies you can actually use to grow your coworking business. 

🔔 Hit subscribe to make sure you don't miss an episode.

Kane Willmott has been building iQ Offices since 2012. Today, he has eight locations across Canada (and counting). He's also the former president of the GWA, the current president of LExC, and, somehow, an Ironman athlete in his “spare” time.

Kevin's been calling Kane the unofficial CEO of Coworking for years. The title fits, and this discussion will show you why.

In Episode 24, Kane gets into the decisions and strategies behind iQ's growth, including:

• How he used AI to analyze iQ's customer data and discovered that 82% of their desks were occupied by enterprise companies, and how that one insight led to a full repositioning of the business.
• Why iQ cut hot desks, dedicated desks, and lounge passes entirely, and stopped renting single-person offices, and how knowing your core customer makes every other decision easier.
• His broker strategy and why he's making the case to brokerage managing directors that coworking deals are the best way for junior brokers to build a book of business.
• Why iQ doesn't try to out-pay competitors on broker commissions, and why speed and ease of doing business is a bigger moat than the rate.
• His take on where websites and AI are heading, and why spending $100K on a website right now might be the worst investment a coworking operator could make.
• The Van Halen brown M&M story and what it has to do with building a data discipline that actually works.

If you're running or scaling a coworking operation, this one's worth your time.

Want to connect with Kane? Find him on LinkedIn and check out iQ Offices

By the way, you can also:

• Check us out on YouTube
• Download all free tools, templates, and resources from 2 Marketers and a Coworking Podcast 🛠️

About 2 Marketers and a Coworking Podcast

Hosted by Kevin Whelan of Everspaces and Taylor Mason of Talemaker, 2 Marketers and a Coworking Podcast dives deep into marketing tips, tools, insights, and strategies you can actually use to grow your coworking business. 

🔔 Hit subscribe to make sure you don't miss an episode.

Check us out on YouTube

https://youtube.com/@CoworkingMarketing

Download all free tools, templates, and resources from 2 Marketers and a Coworking Podcast 🛠️

https://coworking.marketing/resources

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Connect with Kevin

Website: https://everspaces.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/whelankevin/

Connect with Taylor

Website: https://www.talemaker.ca
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/taylor-mason-37a94a58/

Connect with Justin

Website: http://www.workspacema.com/ 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/justinmoran/ 

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When Justin Moran took over Workspace MA in 2015, it was a single-location coworking operation in Hingham, MA. A decade later, he's grown the business to five locations across the South Shore, all while staying deeply involved in sales, marketing, and day-to-day ops.

In Episode 23, Justin shares the tools, tactics, and mindsets behind his multi-location success, including:

• Why he stopped caring about social media reach and started obsessing over capturing people who are ready to buy right now (plus how he did it and how it worked out)
• How adding video and retargeting killed his Monday morning lead anxiety and made his pipeline predictable.
• Why he's got 80+ automations running in Optix, and how it helps ensure every member gets the same experience, whether they're paying $49 one time or $1,000/month.
• His approach to following up with every lead immediately and the tools that help him do it to make sure no lead ever goes cold.
• His AI chatbot Lillian, named after his grandmother, who lives on his website, answers inquiries 24/7, and has already closed people on a current promotion he's running.
• Why he goes to Upwork instead of agencies and how he gets things done in days instead of weeks.
• How he uses Gemini to get smart on a topic before engaging a specialist so he can actually evaluate the work.
• His thoughts on vetting vendors before partnering up with them (and the $20K horror story that taught him this lesson the hard way).

If you’re looking to start or scale a coworking operation, this one’s a must-listen.

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About 2 Marketers and a Coworking Podcast

Hosted by Kevin Whelan of Everspaces and Taylor Mason of Talemaker, 2 Marketers and a Coworking Podcast dives deep into marketing tips, tools, insights, and strategies you can actually use to grow your coworking business. 

🔔 Hit subscribe to make sure you don't miss an episode.

Check us out on YouTube

https://youtube.com/@CoworkingMarketing

Download all free tools, templates, and resources from 2 Marketers and a Coworking Podcast 🛠️

https://coworking.marketing/resources

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Connect with Kevin

Website: https://everspaces.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/whelankevin/

Connect with Taylor

Website: https://www.talemaker.ca
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/taylor-mason-37a94a58/

Connect with Mike

Website: https://launchworkplaces.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mike-kriel-a43994/
Flex in Five: https://youtube.com/@flexinfive

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Mike Kriel built Launch Workplaces to be a strategic partner for landlords and to run successful coworking centers with them. So, he’s very clear on who his ideal partners are, as well as who isn’t. That positioning drives his entire marketing strategy for Launch, and it’s working.

In Episode 22, Mike breaks down his strategy for attracting the right landlord partners:

• Know who you're for (and who you're not for): Launch works best with landlords who are curious, accessible, and see flex as strategic. Mike's not interested in landlords who are so insulated he can't have real conversations or ones treating operators like commodities. His marketing attracts the first group and filters out the second.
• Lead with education, not pitches: Mike wrote a 50+ page landlord ebook and produces his Flex in Five content series. The goal is simple: teach landlords how flex office works so the right ones see Launch as the obvious partner.
• Model what you want back: Mike wants transparent, accessible landlord partnerships. So, he shows up that way. Launch’s marketing attracts the type of relationship he's looking for.
• Rising tide mentality: Mike shares what he knows because growing the flex industry creates better opportunities for everyone, including Launch.
• Activity creates opportunity: Showing up consistently and helping landlords understand flex compounds over time.

This one's for operators who want to attract the right landlord partners instead of competing on price.

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About 2 Marketers and a Coworking Podcast

Hosted by Kevin Whelan of Everspaces and Taylor Mason of Talemaker, 2 Marketers and a Coworking Podcast dives deep into marketing tips, tools, insights, and strategies you can actually use to grow your coworking business. 

🔔 Hit subscribe to make sure you don't miss an episode.

Check us out on YouTube

https://youtube.com/@CoworkingMarketing

Download all free tools, templates, and resources from 2 Marketers and a Coworking Podcast 🛠️

https://coworking.marketing/resources

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Connect with Kevin

Website: https://everspaces.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/whelankevin/

Connect with Taylor

Website: https://www.talemaker.ca
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/taylor-mason-37a94a58/

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Video marketing is quickly becoming a high-ROI, hyper-relevant medium, and a significant competitive advantage for coworking space operators who choose to lean into it.

And no, we're not talking about Hollywood-level production. It can be as simple as using an iPhone and the willingness to push through being camera-shy.

Video delivers disproportionate results compared to the effort required to execute it: 

• Better ad performance on Meta and Google
• Higher conversion rates
• More engagement on your blog, social media, and email

And in an AI-saturated world where everyone's churning out generic blog content, video gives people the human connection they're craving.

The barrier to entry is lower than you think, and the operators using video are seeing real results. 

So, we took this opportunity to discuss a few essential ways that video can fit into your marketing strategy:

• Website: Service explainers, productizing your meeting spaces and private offices, and location tours that actually sell
• Video podcasts + YouTube + LinkedIn-first video: Building thought leadership and brand authority like what we're doing right now (meta, we know)
• "Asset Zero" for content repurposing: Interview members, capture event footage and b-roll, record expert conversations—then parcel that one piece of video into blog posts, emails, and social media
• Digital PR: Building your personal brand to support your coworking brand (bonus: helps with AI search visibility)
• Internal assets: Member portal how-to videos, team onboarding materials, and SOPs that people will actually watch instead of ignoring a 47-page PDF

The key is getting started. Video one isn't going to be perfect. But if you don't do video one, video 20 never happens. Start anywhere—even if it's rough—and build from there.

To help you get started, we're giving away a free shotlist template for photo and video assets you can easily capture in your coworking space.

You can find it here: https://coworking.marketing/resources

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About 2 Marketers and a Coworking Podcast

Hosted by Kevin Whelan of Everspaces and Taylor Mason of Talemaker, 2 Marketers and a Coworking Podcast dives deep into marketing tips, tools, insights, and strategies you can actually use to grow your coworking business. 

🔔 Hit subscribe to make sure you don't miss an episode.

Check us out on YouTube

https://youtube.com/@CoworkingMarketing

Download all free tools, templates, and resources from 2 Marketers and a Coworking Podcast 🛠️

https://coworking.marketing/resources

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Connect with Kevin

Website: https://everspaces.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/whelankevin/

Connect with Taylor

Website: https://www.talemaker.ca
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/taylor-mason-37a94a58/

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In this follow-up to Episode 19, we review some of our favorite coworking newsletters, from coworking spaces and industry peers alike, and break down what makes them awesome.

Paired with examples and visual walkthroughs, we talk through what makes these newsletters effective communications that serve both members and prospects, and give people a window into the community's beating heart.

We also call out a few best practices you can borrow from some coworking industry pros you probably already know and follow.

If you want to optimize your newsletter or start one from scratch, this one’s for you.

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About 2 Marketers and a Coworking Podcast

Hosted by Kevin Whelan of Everspaces and Taylor Mason of Talemaker, 2 Marketers and a Coworking Podcast dives deep into marketing tips, tools, insights, and strategies you can actually use to grow your coworking business. 

🔔 Hit subscribe to make sure you don't miss an episode.