Flex That Worx

Community is a word used in nearly every conversation within the coworking industry but do we forget about the essential factor of belonging?

In this episode, recorded live at GCUC UK London in October 2026, Graham Clarke sat down to speak with Cat Johnson. Cat Johnson is a coworking leader, teacher, creator, and community builder. She is the founder of and runs Coworking Convos and the Coworking Creators Lab.

Cat shares insights for coworking operators on why belonging is the step before community, how large numbers of members can change the community within coworking spaces and why it is important to ensure a coworking member’s first day sets them up for success. 

For coworking space operators who are navigating how to make members feel like they belong in the space and how this then impacts the coworking space community, this episode with Cat Johnson is the perfect listen.

Key Insights For Coworking Space Operators

• Community takes shape after members feel like they belong in the coworking space.
• On a member’s first day, your role as the coworking space operator or community manager is to help them find their feet and introduce them to others. 
• In larger spaces, try to help members form their own communities through introductions or events that bring together those with similar interests.

These conversations are brought to you in collaboration with GCUC UK.

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 and why. 

Katy described a balanced view of a healthy business. Your occupancy, however you define it, your revenue across all its different streams, the costs you can control set against the ones you cannot, your profit, some honest measure of how members feel and your retention and churn so you know who you are holding onto and why anyone leaves.

Ben shared about the coffee chat, where your team has a real, unscripted conversation with a few members each week and notes what comes up, then reads it alongside your reviews and any survey you send. 

He also made a strong case for keeping a separate set of figures for every site from the very start, even with no plans to grow, so your central costs never disappear into a black hole.

Ben has been building an anonymised way for operators to benchmark their operating costs against one another, because knowing whether what you spend on cleaning or maintenance is in line with everyone else is something you simply cannot work out alone.

Key Takeaways For Coworking & Flexible Workspace Operators

• Track a balanced set, not a single number. Occupancy, revenue, the costs you control, profit, member sentiment and churn together tell you far more than any one of them alone.
• Separate the costs you can control from the ones you cannot. Cleaning and member spend are within reach in a way that rates and utilities are not, so watch them differently.
• The coffee chat is the easiest place to start with member sentiment. Real, unscripted conversations noted down each week build a clear picture over time.
• Keep a separate set of figures for each site from day one. Even with no plans to grow, it stops your central costs disappearing into a black hole.
• Some answers only come from comparing notes with other operators. Knowing whether your operating costs are in line is something you cannot work out in isolation.

These conversations are brought to you in collaboration with GCUC UK.

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, recorded live at GCUC UK in Manchester. 

Fresh from running a workshop on inclusivity, they moved into the question that sits underneath so much of an operator's work. How do you measure the more human impact results, the impact that never shows up cleanly on a spreadsheet?

The honest answer was that it is hard, especially when you are firefighting all day and the qualitative stuff lives in your head until someone asks. 

Felicia drew the line between input, output and impact and made the case that impact is the one too often missed, what your space actually leads to for the people who use it. 

Stacey saw it clearly in her own space, where a coworking space becomes the place someone who has just moved to a rural area finds their feet.

Key Takeaways For Coworking & Flexible Workspace Operators

• Don’t only look at what your space costs to run & what it earns, look at impact also. What your space actually leads to for a member, the business that grew or the person who found their feet, is the number that tells the real story.
• The felt results are real even when they are hard to measure. Building a simple habit to capture them matters, because they live in your head until someone asks.
• Your space does more for your local area than the numbers show. In rural areas especially, being where newcomers land and hidden entrepreneurs gather is a form of impact.
• You do not need reams of data to belong in the conversation. The two or three points that mean something let you stand on your own two feet anywhere and there is plenty to learn from bigger spaces who already collect data.

These conversations are brought to you in collaboration with GCUC UK.

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 you pay for. This conversation, recorded live at GCUC UK in Manchester, is full of grounded thinking for any operator trying to stand out without a big team or budget behind them.

Garry talked about splitting effort between filling a space and holding onto the people already in it, weighting it towards acquisition in the early days and towards retention once the space is full. He made a strong case for taking back control of how members find you rather than handing that relationship to a broker. 

The part that might land with single-site coworking operators is what he said about knowing your local area. You do not learn a place by looking at a map and throwing a dart. You learn it by being there, talking to people, working out what makes the area tick and what would put your kind of member off. This is local space's unique factor for success over large sites. 

Key Takeaways For Coworking & Flexible Workspace Operators

• Lead with people, not empty space. If your marketing feels like everyone else's, the fix is showing the human side of your space rather than the floor plan.
• Think about filling and holding separately. Leaning into finding new members early, then into keeping them once you are full, gives your marketing effort and budget a shape.
• Enquiries through your own marketing channels often cost less than a broker and keep the relationship yours.
• Knowing your area is your real edge and it comes from showing up. Time spent talking to people locally tells you what no map ever will, including what would put members off joining your space.

These conversations are brought to you in collaboration with GCUC UK.

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 relationships you already have. 

This conversation, recorded live at GCUC UK in Manchester with Kreena and Emma Harvey, Head of Community Engagement at Bruntwood SciTech, is full of that kind of grounded, human thinking about keeping members close.

Both were honest about how easily good intentions tip into something hollow. A quarterly check-in done as a box to tick stops feeling like a real conversation and members can tell. 

The better path is simpler and kinder. Meet people where they are, talk to them as people rather than their job title and pay attention the way you would with a friend. 

Emma spoke about the work of pairing the warm member stories with the numbers a board wants to see and how operations teams often forget to celebrate their own wins. Running through all of it was a steady reminder that the relationship is the thing and companies that feel looked after through the lean times tend to stay when they grow again.

Key Takeaways For Coworking & Flexible Workspace Operators

• The signs a member might be drifting are usually small and human. Trusting what your team notices day to day often tells you more than a dashboard can.
• Check-ins only work when they feel real. If a regular catch-up has started to feel like a box to tick, you are not alone and a more natural approach tends to land better.
• People open up when you treat them as people. Meeting a member how and when suits them, rather than on a fixed schedule, builds the kind of trust that lasts.
• Members ebb and flow, it’s normal. Helping a company through a smaller phase is often what keeps them with you when they grow again.
• Your warm member stories deserve the same weight as the numbers. Capturing and sharing them takes effort and it is worth it for the renewal conversations and your team's morale alike.

These conversations are brought to you in collaboration with GCUC UK.

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 from you, not from a redesign. 

This conversation, recorded live at GCUC UK in Manchester with Alexandra and Jonny Rosenblatt, CEO and Co-Founder of Spacemade, is full of that kind of grounded thinking for anyone trying to build something while running it at the same time.

Alexandra was honest about how easily the day-to-day swallows the time you need to step back and think and how a fractional partner who supports you can lift that weight without the cost of a senior hire. 

Jonny traced how landlords moved from asking for a copy of WeWork to real partnership and he was open about how hard it still is to start out before anyone knows your name. 

Both came back to the same gentle challenge for the industry. 

The data stays guarded, the numbers stay private and a lot of good operators quietly assume everyone else is doing better than they are. The ones willing to be honest about how a space is really performing are the ones making it easier for everybody.

Key Takeaways For Coworking & Flexible Workspace Operators

• Not being able to pin down your brand in a sentence is common and it is fixable. Your brand is what you stand for and that clarity comes from you rather than from a rebrand.
• If the day-to-day keeps swallowing your thinking time, you are in good company. Even a few protected hours a week can ease that pressure and help you see the wood for the trees.
• You are not meant to be brilliant at everything yourself. A fractional partner who works alongside you can bring senior thinking within reach, without the weight of a full salary.
• You do not have to be the best at community, events and product all at once. Knowing what your space is for, takes a lot of that pressure off.
• If you have ever assumed everyone else is doing better than you, you are far from alone. Honest conversations about real numbers tend to show that nobody has it all figured out.

These conversations are brought to you in collaboration with GCUC UK.

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 he sees clearly where the smaller, boutique operator wins. They understand the culture, they wrap their arms around the people in the building and every deal matters to them in a way a global provider may find it hard to match.

Paddy was also honest about a habit the industry needs to break. Managed, serviced, flex, traditional: these are the words operators and brokers use to talk to each other, when the occupier walking in just wants a clear answer on desks, meeting rooms and term length. 

The job is to make the message simple for the person actually choosing the space and when a landlord decides to run flex themselves, Paddy is unequivocal about what makes or breaks it. It starts with the people, because coworking runs on people at the end of the day.

Key Takeaways For Coworking & Flexible Workspace Operators

• Your local knowledge is the advantage. Understanding your local area and your community is exactly what the bigger brands struggle to copy, so lean into it rather than apologising for your size.
• Speak the occupier's language, not the industry's. The person choosing a space wants clarity on what they get, not a lesson in managed versus serviced.
• Every deal mattering is a strength. The care you put into looking after each member is the thing larger providers cannot scale.
• If you are building or running flex, get the people right first. The space and the systems follow from the team you put in place.

These conversations are brought to you in collaboration with GCUC UK.

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, coworking and real estate to compare notes on where the industry is heading.

Data ran through every conversation, though the tone around it was measured rather than anxious. The grounded view in the room was that AI and better measurement exist to support the human work operators already do. 

You cannot automate a community manager who knows their members by name. The same themes kept returning across the day: hiring local, getting agreements right from the start and finding the language to talk honestly about how a space is really performing.

What To Expect From The Series

• Honest conversations about data and measurement and how smaller operators can use the same signals the bigger brands track without getting overwhelmed.
• A closer look at hiring local and building teams you can trust to run a space well.
• Practical talk on management agreements and leasing models and getting the framework right from day one.
• The human side of the industry throughout, from community building to the role engaged members play in a space.

This preview sets up everything to come. Here is who Graham and Anne-Marie recorded with across the day and who to stay tuned for as the season rolls out:

• Paddy Kennedy | EP2
• Jonny Rosenblatt and Alexandra Livesey | EP3
• Emma Harvey and Kreena Pithwa | EP4
• Garry James | EP5
• Stacey Sheppard and Felicia Fai | EP6
• Katy Tennant and Ben Newton | EP7
• Michael Ingall | EP8

These conversations are brought to you in collaboration with GCUC UK!

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 lands on a messy system and shows every gap at speed.

In this episode Graham Clarke and Anne-Marie Murphy work through what AI means for a coworking space right now. The jobs it can take on first, why your data has to be in order before any of it helps you and why a strong community manager becomes one of the safest roles in the building. It is an honest read on a noisy moment with a clear head about what sits underneath it.

Key Takeaways For Coworking & Flexible Workspace Operators

• Why the human side of coworking grows more valuable as AI takes the admin
• The everyday jobs AI can handle first, from FAQs to member onboarding
• Why clean data has to be in place before any tool goes in
• How to avoid building a tangle of tools only you understand

Thanks for tuning in to Flex That Worx!

If you enjoyed this episode, don’t forget to follow or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss our next episode.

Connect with us on LinkedIn:

• Graham
• Anne-Marie

Watch the full episode on our YouTube, explore free tools and resources over at Baseworx.co.

This is Flex That Worx powered by Baseworx, scaling your workspace, made simpler and less stressful!

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 gets put off, a change gets softened or a conversation gets parked for another week.

In this episode, Graham and Anne-Marie work through what happens when an operator's relationships with longer-standing members start steering the business.

They cover legacy pricing, communicating change with confidence, the role of a well-kept handbook and why honest conversations are what real community is actually built on. If there's a conversation you've been carrying around, this one will help you find a way through it.

Key takeaways for coworking and flexible workspace operators:

1. Refresh your handbook and reshare it with a quick read-and-acknowledge step
2. Make current pricing visible somewhere all members can see it
3. Pick one small change this month rather than waiting for a bigger overhaul
4. Apply rules consistently for everyone, regardless of how long they've been in the space
5. Set up a feedback channel and respond to what comes through it

Thanks for tuning in to Flex That Worx!

If you enjoyed this episode, don’t forget to follow or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss our next episode.

Connect with us on LinkedIn:

• Graham
• Anne-Marie

Watch the full episode on our YouTube, explore free tools and resources over at Baseworx.co.

This is Flex That Worx powered by Baseworx, scaling your workspace, made simpler and less stressful!