On 16 July, Brave Ideas and Flexspace AI brought together around 25 sales and marketing leaders from flex and coworking brands for a roundtable disuccsion at Office Space in Town’s Liverpool Street site in London.

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View and download photographs from the event in the gallery above.

TL;DR

Prefer to skip the read and watch the highlights? Check out this Friday Five debrief with David Song, CMO at Flexspace AI

We wanted to explore one central question:

How can flex and coworking brands create a clearer path from audience, to qualified demand, to pipeline, to paid customers?

We structured the roundtable around two parts of that journey.

1. Filling the top of the funnel, with a focus on brand building and reaching customers before they enter the market.

2. Nurturing the middle of the funnel, with a focus on intent, response times, retargeting, sales and marketing alignment, and conversion.

Led by co-hosts Jamie Stuart (OSIT) and Sarah Sich (Work.Life) the format was peer-led and everyone in the room brought current challenges, experiments, and examples from inside their own businesses.

The value came from people sharing what they are actually doing, where they are struggling, and what they are learning.

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Here are my biggest takeaways from the discussion…

Start with why, then get clear on who you serve

The demand funnel begins long before the content calendar, campaign, event, or sales offer.

It begins with clarity around why the brand exists, what it believes, and who it is designed to serve.

Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle remains a useful framework:

Why, the purpose or belief behind the business.

How, the principles and behaviours that bring that belief to life.

What, the products and services the business delivers.

Flex operators often lead their communication with location, desks, meeting rooms, amenities, pricing, and availability.

Those details help an active customer compare options.
Purpose and values give people a reason to connect with the brand before they need the product.

A stronger starting point is understanding what the business believes about work, people, culture, and the role of the workplace.

Then comes the audience.

Who shares those beliefs?
Who is the product genuinely suited to?
Which customers will value the experience enough to choose it, remain loyal, and recommend it?

A useful ideal customer profile combines commercial fit, practical need, behaviour, and shared values.

Operators need to understand the type of companies they want to serve, how those companies think about work, the cultures they are trying to build, and what they expect the office to enable.

My takeaway was simple:

Start with why, define who shares that belief, then build the product and customer journey around them.

That clarity should shape the brand, content, events, workplace design, community, service, calls to action, and sales experience.

Filling the top of the funnel

Most future customers are out of market today

One of the most useful distinctions from the roundtable was the difference between in market and out of market customers.

In market customers already have an active requirement.
They may know the location, team size, product, budget, and move date they need. They are comparing operators, speaking with brokers, visiting websites, and booking tours.

This is immediate demand, and the audience is relatively small.

A far larger audience are out of market customers, which includes the founders, CEOs, operations directors, people leaders, and workplace decision makers who may need space in three, six, or twelve months.

They are already forming opinions about brands, locations, products, and operators.

This is where top of funnel brand building earns its value.

The goal is to build familiarity and trust before the requirement becomes active. When someone eventually moves into the market, your brand should already feel known, relevant, and credible.

Sarah from Work.Life shared that around 85 percent of their business comes through direct leads.

Those direct enquiries are usually the visible outcome of repeated exposure across multiple channels.

A future customer may attend an event, follow the company on LinkedIn, see a video from one of its leaders, visit a location page, read a customer story, receive a newsletter, speak to someone in their network, and use an AI platform to compare providers.

By the time they submit an enquiry, the brand may already have done months of work.

Turn attendees into followers, followers into fans, and fans into customers

We spent time discussing events as a top of funnel strategy.

Events create the first meaningful interaction.

People attend because the subject matters to them, the peer group is valuable, or the discussion addresses a challenge they are already trying to solve.

The commercial value develops through what happens after they leave the room.

The progression looks like this:

Attendee → Follower → Fan → In market prospect → Customer

An attendee experiences the brand through the quality of the discussion, the people in the room, the venue, the hospitality, and the overall format.

A strong event gives them a reason to stay connected.

They follow the brand on social media, subscribe to the newsletter, listen to the podcast, attend future events, and continue engaging with the content.

That turns an attendee into a follower.

The role of ongoing content is to keep stimulating the relationship.

The brand continues sharing useful ideas, customer stories, workplace insights, event highlights, and evidence of its values in action.

Repeated engagement can turn that follower into a fan.

Fans understand what the brand stands for. They trust its point of view. They recognise the people behind it. They feel connected to the community around it.

That creates affinity and preference before an active workplace requirement exists.

When the fan eventually moves into the market, the operator is already top of mind.

The prospect understands the positioning, recognises the people, and has a sense of the experience the brand delivers.

Conversion becomes easier because the relationship started months before the sales conversation.

This is why judging an event only by the number of enquiries generated on the day misses much of its value.

Operators should also ask:

• Did we attract the right ideal customer profile?

• How many attendees followed the brand afterwards?

• Did they continue engaging with our content?

• Did they attend another event?

• Did they eventually move into an active buying journey?

• Did the relationship turn into revenue?

The event creates attention. Content sustains the relationship. Consistent engagement builds fans. Top of mind awareness supports conversion when the customer is ready to buy.

Brand led social should create memory and preference

Social content plays an important role in moving someone from follower to fan.

The strongest content expresses the purpose, values, personality, and customer promise of the brand consistently.

Customers now research operators across more channels and over longer periods. They look at websites, social feeds, customer reviews, founder profiles, employee content, events, and recommendations from their networks. They are also using ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and other AI tools to research and compare providers.

The market is forming an impression of your brand before anyone speaks to sales.

Your content should help people understand who the operator is designed for, what the brand believes, what makes the product distinctive, what the workplace experience feels like, and why the operator is credible.

People connect with people.

Founders, sales leaders, community managers, and employees can all make the brand more visible, credible, and human.

The critical issue is consistency. The people representing the company need to reinforce a clear view of what the brand believes and who it serves.

Content should create a measurable next step

Reach, impressions, engagement, and follower growth can all be useful signals. Their commercial value depends on whether the right audience is paying attention and taking an observable action.

Content should communicate a clear point of view, tell relevant customer stories, demonstrate the workplace experience, explain specific use cases, and address common questions.

Social media rarely tells you whether someone is actively searching for space. The initial call to action should therefore be relevant and low friction.

That might include following the brand, registering for an event, subscribing to a newsletter, reading an article, listening to a podcast, or visiting the website.

Each of those actions creates a signal.

The role of the content is to generate enough interest for someone to take the next step and give the operator a clearer indication of what they care about.

Once someone takes that measurable action, the middle of the funnel begins.

Nurturing the middle of the funnel

Behaviour tells you when interest is becoming intent

A behavioural signal only becomes commercially useful when the operator can capture it, connect it to the wider customer journey, and decide what should happen next.

A CRM such as HubSpot can bring together event registrations, website activity, email engagement, enquiries, day pass bookings, tour requests, sales notes, and follow-up communication into one customer record.

That record should help sales and marketing teams understand how the prospect discovered the brand, which topics, locations, or products attracted their attention, what actions they have taken, what information they have already received, who owns the relationship, and what the next relevant step should be.

This creates the basis for more relevant retargeting, lead nurturing, and sales follow-up.

The technology only creates value when the data is accurate and teams use it consistently.

Duplicate records, incomplete notes, inconsistent lead stages, and conversations taking place outside the CRM reduce visibility across the journey.

The customer sees one brand. Their experience should remain connected across social media, the website, marketing communication, sales conversations, and the workplace itself.

Once intent is visible and ownership is clear, response time becomes part of the brand experience.

Response time is part of the brand experience

Once a prospect signals intent, speed matters.

A fast and relevant response maintains momentum and builds confidence. Every delay creates more time for the prospect to engage with another operator.

Teams need clear answers to several operational questions:

• Who owns the enquiry?

• How quickly should they respond?

• Which leads need immediate human attention?

• Which information can be delivered automatically?

• How is the conversation recorded?

• When does the opportunity move from marketing to sales?

The communication channel also matters.

Email and phone calls remain important. WhatsApp can be more effective when someone wants a quick answer about availability, pricing, a tour, or a meeting room.

It can support tour coordination, reminders, availability updates, and ongoing communication during the decision process.

Those conversations still need ownership and visibility. Important customer information cannot remain trapped inside an individual employee’s phone.

AI sales agents can improve speed and consistency

We also discussed the role of AI sales agents.

They can answer common questions, gather initial requirements, qualify prospects, recommend next steps, and respond outside normal working hours.

Their value depends on accurate information, clear commercial processes, and a reliable handover to a human salesperson.

An effective AI sales agent needs access to current product and availability information, a clear understanding of the ideal customer, qualification criteria, appropriate brand language, escalation rules, and CRM integration.

The measures should be commercial.

Did response times improve?

Were prospects qualified accurately?

Did more people complete an enquiry?

Did tour bookings increase?

Did human sales teams follow up faster?

Did more opportunities convert into paid customers?

AI sales agents are useful when they make the buying journey faster, easier, and more relevant.

Remarketing, remarketing, remarketing

David Song’s strongest takeaway from the session was repeated three times:

“Remarketing, remarketing, remarketing.”

One interaction is rarely enough.

Prospects are busy. Requirements change. Budgets need approval. Teams compare several options. Decision makers enter and leave the process.

The brand needs to remain visible while those factors develop.

Remarketing can happen through LinkedIn, paid social, search, email, telephone, WhatsApp, website journeys, direct mail, future events, and the physical workplace.

The message should respond to the prospect’s behaviour.

Someone who viewed a location page may need availability information.

Someone who attended an event may benefit from related content.

Someone who booked a day pass may be ready for a tour.

Someone who completed a tour may need a customer story, revised proposal, availability update, or further conversation.

A completed tour remains a high intent opportunity, even when the decision is delayed.

The timing may be wrong. The budget may need approval. The team may still be comparing options. The move date may have changed.

That prospect already knows the product and has shown meaningful intent.

The opportunity needs structured follow up.

Sales and marketing need to manage one revenue journey

Customers can feel the gaps created by disconnected sales and marketing teams.

Marketing needs feedback on which audiences convert, which messages lead to tours, where prospects become stuck, and which campaigns create commercially valuable demand.

Sales needs visibility into where the customer came from, what content influenced them, which behaviours signalled intent, and what information they have already received.

The handover should feel like the next step in the same conversation.

Shared data, clear ownership, agreed lead stages, and common revenue outcomes make that possible.

Matching online UX with onsite CX

This was one of my biggest takeaways from the day.

Being brand-led means creating consistency between what someone sees online and what they experience onsite.

The social content, website, digital booking journey, sales communication, arrival, tour, service, and follow up should all express the same positioning and values.

The online user experience creates the expectation.

The onsite customer experience fulfils it.

A brand that presents itself as welcoming, energetic, premium, community focused, or hospitality led needs to deliver those qualities when the prospect enters the workplace.

The tour should reflect the personality of the brand, the specific requirements of the customer, the quality of the service, the atmosphere of the workplace, and the value of the overall experience.

A consistent online and onsite journey strengthens trust and supports conversion.

The strongest operators design the digital and physical journeys as one connected brand experience.

Measure the full journey from audience to paid customer

The commercial equation behind all of this is lifetime value compared with customer acquisition cost.

Operators often focus on the cost of an enquiry or tour booking. A fuller view considers the entire relationship.

The acquisition journey may include events, content, paid distribution, remarketing, sales follow up, free day passes, several tours, proposal development, and ongoing nurturing.

The customer value may include the initial membership plan, the length of the relationship, additional products and services, expansion, referrals, advocacy, and future requirements. Jamie from OSIT shared their average member tenure is 4.5 years.

A high value customer can justify a longer nurturing period and multiple interactions.

The more useful question is:

How much did it cost to move this person from audience member, to follower, to fan, to in market prospect, to paid customer, and how much value did that relationship create?

That gives sales and marketing teams a common commercial outcome.

It also creates a more complete picture of return on advertising spend.

See Event Photo Gallery

View and download photographs from the event in the gallery above.

Final thoughts

My biggest takeaway was that demand generation in flex is a connected system.

Brand builds familiarity before the customer enters the market. Content and events turn familiarity into affinity. CRM, quick communication, and remarketing move people through the buying journey. The onsite experience determines whether the brand promise holds up.

Operators that design each stage deliberately will have a better chance of turning audience into paid customers.

Thank you to Flexspace AI, Office Space in Town, our co-hosts Sarah and Jamie, and everyone who contributed openly to the discussion.

The willingness to share practical examples, honest challenges, and current experiments made the roundtable valuable.

That is exactly what a Brave Ideas roundtable should deliver.

Happy Hour

Huge thank you to Jamie Stuart and OSIT for hosting the post-event happy hour in their super cool speakeasy bar.

“The GCUC Series” Season Finale

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Why disciplined growth, private office economics, and customer focus still matter in a market chasing more complex deal structures.

Coworking has always had a strong missionary streak.

Community, entrepreneurship, access, belonging, and impact are part of what make the industry powerful.

But mission does not pay the rent on its own.

Without strong unit economics, disciplined underwriting, operational control, and a clear understanding of the customer, even the best-intentioned operators can build something fragile.

In this episode, Brave Corp CEO, Caleb Parker sits down with Chiko Abengowe, Founder and CEO of Perfect Offices, to unpack why simplicity can still be a competitive advantage. While much of the industry has moved toward management agreements, hybrid leases, and increasingly complex partnership structures, Chiko has continued scaling through disciplined lease deals, private offices, and a deep understanding of the entrepreneur customer.

The Commercial Shift

1. Why mission without margin can create a fragile coworking business.

2. How private office economics can support more durable cash flow and operational resilience.

3. Why disciplined lease deals can still work when the operator understands the customer, the landlord, and the market.

4. How knowing exactly who you serve can create focus, pricing discipline, and stronger growth decisions.

Watch or listen wherever you get Brave Ideas.

Behind the Scenes

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Why occupier demand, hospitality, and landlord-operator partnerships are changing how companies choose office buildings.

Enterprise occupiers are not evaluating flex the way they used to.

It is no longer just a short-term fix at the end of the real estate process.
It is becoming part of how companies think about portfolio strategy, building selection, team gatherings, services, and optionality.

That changes the role of the flex operator.

In the right building, flex can support conferencing, events, hospitality, front-of-house experience, overflow capacity, and even broader facilities management. For landlords, that means the operator is no longer just filling space, they may be helping the building compete.

In this episode, Brave Corp CEO, Caleb Parker sits down with Shay Bolton (Corporate Managing Director) and Kirill Azovtsev (Vice Chairman) from Savills to unpack what enterprise occupiers are really buying when they choose flex. They discuss how companies evaluate flexible workplaces, what they value in a building, why hospitality and customer experience matter, and how landlords are responding to changing demand.

The Commercial Shift

1. Why enterprise occupiers are using flex as part of broader portfolio strategy, not just short-term overflow.

2. How flex can help landlords and operators respond to what enterprise customers actually value.

3. Why hospitality, conferencing, amenities, and customer service are becoming part of how occupiers compare buildings.

4. How deal risks such as security deposits, entity strength, and construction costs can still derail strong operator-landlord partnerships.

Watch or listen wherever you get Brave Ideas.

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Why team autonomy, shared infrastructure, and flexible workplace networks could reshape how companies use office space.

The traditional office was built for a more predictable world.

Modern work is becoming more fluid, more team-led, and harder to contain inside one fixed workplace model.

Work is increasingly organised around teams, projects, skills, and changing priorities. But much of the office market still assumes stable headcount, fixed space requirements, and long-term occupancy patterns that no longer reflect how many businesses actually operate.

In this episode, Brave Corp CEO, Caleb Parker sits down with returning Brave Ideas guest Phil Kirschner, Founder of PK Consulting LLC, to unpack why traditional offices remain misaligned with modern work. They discuss full-stack flex, enterprise demand, team autonomy, workplace infrastructure, shared space, employee choice, and why buildings need to support movement, not just occupancy.

The Commercial Shift

1. Why traditional office products may struggle when companies need more variable, team-led space.

2. How full-stack flex can support movement, optionality, and better use of workplace assets.

3. Why shared infrastructure could become more important as occupiers rethink headquarters, satellite space, and third places.

4. How landlords and operators can create buildings that support changing work patterns instead of forcing customers into fixed assumptions.

Watch or listen wherever you get Brave Ideas.

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Why brand, design, customer focus, and private office economics matter in a market where too many spaces still feel interchangeable.

Generic coworking is easy to copy.
Premium positioning is much harder to replicate.

For years, much of the serviced office and executive suite market competed on convenience and price. Coworking then added energy, community, and brand. But as the market becomes more crowded, customers need a stronger reason to choose one space over another.

In this episode, Brave Corp CEO, Caleb Parker sits down Flip Howard, CEO of Lucid Private Offices, to unpack how Lucid evolved from a traditional executive suite operator into a more intentional, premium private office brand. They discuss brand positioning, design consistency, customer experience, community, private office economics, and why Lucid chose to sit between the old executive suite model and the more casual coworking model.

The Commercial Shift

1. Why premium positioning can help operators move beyond commodity office space.

2. How design can attract the right customer before the sales pitch even begins.

3. Why private offices remain one of the strongest revenue drivers in coworking and flex.

4. How knowing your niche can create pricing power, stronger retention, and a more durable brand.

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Why flex operators need to prove their business model, not just sell their brand, to win the next generation of landlord partnerships.

Winning landlords used to be easier.
Pay the highest rent, show proof of funds, sign the lease, and deal done.

That world has changed.

As flex moves from lease arbitrage to hybrid leases, management agreements, and revenue share structures, landlords are no longer just evaluating the rent. They are evaluating the operator, the strategy, the capital stack, the customer demand, and the probability that the business will actually perform.

In this episode, Brave Corp CEO, Caleb Parker sits down with Christine Wyckoff (Head of Americas Flexible Office Solutions ) and Justin Halpern (Managing Director) from Cushman & Wakefield to unpack what landlords are really looking for from flex operators today.

They discuss enterprise demand, speed to market, hybrid leases, management agreements, revenue share, landlord selection, and why operators increasingly need to walk into landlord meetings with the discipline of a company raising capital.

The Commercial Shift

• Why landlords are evaluating flex operators as strategic partners, not just tenants.

• How hybrid leases, management agreements, and revenue share structures are changing the operator pitch.

• Why operators need to understand the landlord’s ownership structure, capital stack, and investment priorities before pitching a deal.

• How enterprise demand is making flex a building-level advantage, not just an operator-level product.

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Why tenant-level intelligence, customer behaviour, and retention may define the next office cycle.

A rent roll tells you who occupies the building. It does not tell you whether they are engaged, using the space, or likely to stay.

Office landlords used to manage leases. In a more predictable market, that was often enough. But when occupiers are reassessing how much space they need, how their teams use it, and whether the building still supports their business, the rent roll only tells part of the story.

In this episode, Brave Corp CEO, Caleb Parker sits down with Brandon Medeiros, CEO of Rekalibrate, to unpack why office real estate is becoming a customer intelligence business. They discuss tenant-level data, retention versus renewal, occupancy signals, amenity performance, AI, and why landlords need to understand what is happening behind the lease long before the lease event arrives.

The Commercial Shift

• Why rent rolls can create false comfort when customer behaviour is changing.

• How tenant-level intelligence can help landlords identify retention risk before it becomes vacancy.

• Why understanding the people using the building now matters as much as understanding the company on the lease.

• How amenities, technology, and engagement need to prove their value through measurable customer outcomes.

Watch or listen wherever you get Brave Ideas.

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In my experience, most conversations about town centre regeneration start with the building.

That is understandable. Property is visible. It can be photographed, valued, funded, refurbished, and put into a plan. Buildings give people something tangible to rally around.

People are harder to underwrite.

A person with an idea rarely looks like economic infrastructure at the beginning. They look like someone trying to work something out, often before anyone else can see the shape of it.

Yet that is where growth starts.

That distinction matters, especially for towns and smaller cities.

For years, too much regeneration thinking has treated people as something that happens after the property strategy. Build the thing, improve the public realm, attract the anchor occupier, then hope the local economy responds.

Sometimes it does.
Often it does not.

The building opens, the launch photographs look good, the ribbon is cut, and then the harder question remains.

Who is actually being helped to succeed?

Making Local Ambition Visible

Several years ago, when I was Founder and CEO of Bold, I had the great privilege of speaking at our launch event for Bold Bauhaus in Manchester’s Spinningfields area.

We were just getting started, and there was real energy around the building. The launch event attracted significant local interest. Bold opened at approximately 60% occupancy and reached approximately 90% occupancy within its first 90 days.

That mattered commercially. Any operator opening a new building wants demand to show up quickly. Occupancy gives you confidence that the market understands the offer.

I remember the invitation described Bold as Manchester’s newest flex space. In the speech, I corrected that framing.

“Bold is not a flex space, we’re a community for entrepreneurs and innovators.”

That line carried the reason we built the company.

We created Bold to champion and support entrepreneurs and innovators, especially people with ideas big enough to challenge the status quo. We wanted to build a place for people who believed there had to be a better way, and who were prepared to do the difficult work of proving it.

In the launch speech, I spoke about Manchester’s creative people with ideas to improve the world. That was the belief behind the brand.

What happened over the following months and years confirmed that belief.

Brave Ideas

Bold Bauhaus Launch Speech

This is a special episode to celebrate the 1 Year Anniversary of the launch of our Bold Bauhaus community in Manchester, England…

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3 years ago · Caleb Parker

Bold Bauhaus attracted the kind of people we hoped it would attract. Some arrived with companies. Some arrived with early stage ideas. Some were still working out whether the thing they were building could stand up in the market.

The building became more interesting as the people inside it became more interesting.

You would see someone at an event, then see them again a few weeks later deep in conversation with another founder. A small team would arrive, take an office, start showing up, and slowly become part of the place. The useful moments were rarely dramatic. They happened through the steady repetition of people being in the same environment.

That was when the original idea behind Bold started showing up in the day-to-day life of the building.

That is why I struggle with the way coworking is often categorised.

From a real estate perspective, the product is easy to reduce to desks, offices, memberships, meeting rooms, and event space. That language is useful for pricing and operations. It is less useful for understanding what a strong coworking community can actually do.

The best coworking communities make ambition visible.

In many towns, ambition is already there, but it is fragmented. A good coworking community changes the daily pattern. It gives people proximity to others who are also trying. It creates a rhythm of interaction. It makes progress observable.

None of this looks dramatic from the outside.
But over time, it changes the psychology of a place.

When Growth Becomes Visible

One of the clearest examples I saw at Bold was Jack Frimston of We Have A Meeting.

Jack joined Bold with a small office for his team. He became active within the community. He attended events, built relationships, and became part of the building’s entrepreneurial life.

The company grew.
As it grew, the team expanded their office three separate times.
Eventually, they outgrew the available space.

From a narrow occupancy perspective, a growing company leaving the building creates a gap for the operator to refill. A stronger reading of the situation recognises the growth that happened before they left.

I felt proud of that growth. I also wished we had more space available for the next stage of their journey. That experience changed how I think coworking communities should measure success.

Retention matters, of course. No operator can build a sustainable business if everyone leaves. But the best coworking communities also measure how many businesses grow beyond them.

The Graduation Economy

I think of this as the Graduation Economy.

The Graduation Economy is what happens when coworking communities become part of a local growth pathway. People arrive with ambition, ideas, early revenue, small teams, or simply the need to be around others who are also building. Some stay small by design. Some grow steadily within the space. Some expand, outgrow their office, and move into larger premises elsewhere in the town or city.

That should be celebrated.

A business growing beyond a coworking space is evidence that the environment helped create momentum. It means the community supported a company through a formative stage, gave it a professional home, exposed it to other ambitious people, and helped create enough confidence for the next step.

For local authorities, landlords, and economic development teams, this changes the questions worth asking.

If coworking is treated only as workspace, the questions become narrow. Occupancy, rent, lease terms, and desk sales all matter. Yet they are incomplete measures of value.

A better assessment would look at the businesses being supported, the relationships being formed, the confidence being created, and the number of companies graduating into larger premises nearby.

Confidence Is Part of the System

Confidence is not a soft metric when you have spent time around entrepreneurs.

Most early stage business growth involves uncertainty. Founders are constantly making decisions with incomplete information. They are trying to keep themselves moving forward before the full picture is visible, even to them.

Being around other people doing the same thing helps.

No, that does not remove the risk. It does not make weak businesses strong by magic. But it does normalise the act of building. It makes ambition less lonely. It gives people access to practical conversations that can change the trajectory of a business.

Sometimes the value is simply seeing someone else a few steps ahead. Someone in the same building has dealt with a problem you are now facing, won the kind of client you are trying to win, or made the kind of decision you have been avoiding. That proximity can change how a founder reads their own situation.

Local ecosystems compound through these small interactions.

They rarely compound because of one beautifully designed building, although design matters. They compound because people repeatedly come into contact with other people who expand their sense of what is possible and help them act on it.

The High Street After Hybrid Work

This is where high street coworking has become more relevant.

Hybrid work has redistributed economic activity.

The old assumption that knowledge workers must travel into major city centres five days a week has weakened. Sure, many people still value cities, networks, culture, customers, and great offices. But many people also now spend more of their working week closer to where they live.

A high street coworking space has to offer more than a convenient alternative to the commute. Convenience may get someone through the door once. Community is what makes the space matter.

Operators such as Patch and Foundry are interesting because they are building around this broader idea.

Patch talks about creating opportunities for people, work, and communities on every UK high street.
Foundry positions itself around freelancers, startups, established businesses, and local business community, including locations outside the biggest traditional office markets.

The details of each operator will differ, and each town will need its own version of the model. The broader pattern is worth paying attention to.

Coworking is moving closer to where people live, and in doing so it has the potential to become part of the civic and economic life of places that have often been treated as secondary to major city centres.

The Role of Local Authorities

This should matter to local authorities.

Many councils are trying to solve difficult problems with limited budgets. They are dealing with empty space, changing work patterns, pressure on services, and the need to show credible economic growth. They are also expected to support entrepreneurship while making town centres feel active again.

Too often, these responsibilities sit in separate boxes.

The regeneration team thinks about buildings.
The economic development team thinks about business support.
The property team thinks about leases.
The inward investment team thinks about employers.
The skills team thinks about training.
The planning team thinks about use classes.

Entrepreneurs experience the local economy more practically.

They need a place to work, people to learn from, useful relationships, access to customers, and a reason to believe they are building in the right environment.

A strong coworking community can sit at the intersection of those needs.

This does not mean every council should become a coworking operator. In most cases, they probably should not. Operating a community is a specialist skill. It requires hospitality, sales, programming, local knowledge, brand, management discipline, and commercial accountability. A space can look good on opening day and still fail if nobody knows how to animate it.

Local authorities can be better partners.

They can back capable operators, bring landlords and investors into the conversation, use public assets more creatively, and direct business support into places where entrepreneurs already gather. In some cases, they can subsidise access for people who would benefit from being inside a stronger entrepreneurial ecosystem.

Most importantly, they can start treating coworking communities as local economic platforms.

Why Landlords Should Pay Attention

This matters for landlords and investors too.

A coworking operator with a strong community is doing more than leasing space from a building owner. They are creating demand, relationships, events, local relevance, and business formation. They are increasing the building’s connection to the local economy.

In weaker town centre assets, that may be the difference between a building that sits outside the life of the town and a building that becomes part of its daily rhythm.

The best operators understand that this is about more than aesthetics. Hospitality matters. Design matters. Technology matters. Management matters. Brand matters.

But all of it has to support the creation of human momentum.

A beautiful coworking space with no community is still just a nicer room.
A strong coworking community can make an imperfect building feel alive.

Every Town Already Has Ambitious People

This is where the argument for high street coworking comes back to people.

A healthy coworking community gives local ambition somewhere to gather, become visible, and move through the wider economy. Some members will stay for years. Some will grow beyond the space. Some will become customers, collaborators, mentors, or examples for the next person trying to build something.

That movement is part of the value.

When people talk about town centre regeneration, they often talk about bringing life back. Usually that means footfall, retail activity, events, cafés, culture, and public realm.

All of that certainly matters.

Economic life is also built through ambition becoming organised.

That requires a more patient view of coworking. It cannot be judged only by launch occupancy, desk sales, or fit-out photography. The real evidence appears over time, in the businesses that grow, the relationships that form, the confidence that spreads, and the companies that eventually need more space than the community can provide.

I still think about Jack’s company outgrowing Bold.

There was pride in seeing the business grow, and frustration that there was not more space available for the next stage. Those mixed emotions say a lot about what coworking can become.

For local authorities, landlords, investors, and operators, the opportunity is to create communities strong enough that members grow beyond the original container, then build local pathways that allow them to keep growing nearby.

A town that understands this will think differently about its vacant buildings.

It will start seeing them as possible homes for ambition that is already there, waiting for the right environment to make it more visible, more connected, and more likely to succeed.

High street coworking matters because every town already has people trying to build something, and many of them would go further if the place around them made growth feel a little less isolated.

Firstly, Convene’s marketing team: Take a bow

The Knicks won the title.

First in fifty-three years. And New York celebrated the way it always does, which is to say it poured into the street and climbed anything that would take the weight. Bus shelters, scaffolding, traffic lights. Edges turned into balconies. Signage turned into part of the night.

Outside Convene at One Liberty Plaza, the sign took a hit.
A letter came off.
The N.

For a moment Convene wasn’t a hospitality brand with a clean sign on the wall. It was part of the street. Not the backdrop to it, not the sponsor of it. Part of it.

That’s what made me stop scrolling and sit forward.

Not because damage is good, or because anyone should be hauling themselves up onto a building’s signage, or because chaos makes a marketing plan. It was that every so often a brand gets dragged out of the controlled room it built for itself and into something real, and you get to see what it’s actually made of.

And most brands are terrified of that.

They spend money trying to look lived-in, but panic the second life actually touches them. They want the atmosphere, but not the fingerprints. They want culture, but only once it has been approved, edited, captioned and resized for Instagram.

Convene did the smart thing.

They did not pretend it had not happened.
They did not bury it under a corporate statement about safety and repair works.
They folded the moment back into the brand.
They let the broken sign become the story.

That matters.

Because the best brand moments are not always the ones you planned.

Brand Authenticity

A few years ago, Shohei Ohtani hit a foul ball at Citi Field and damaged a Coors Light LED ad. The screen was displaying a can. The ball killed a section of pixels and left a black square sitting awkwardly on the image.

Most brands would have fixed it quietly.

Coors Light made it the campaign.

They took the damaged pixels and put them onto cans, billboards and the wider creative. The flaw became the asset. The broken bit became the proof that something had happened. No apology. No quiet repair. It worked because it understood something most brands forget.

A scar is often more interesting than polish.

The same thing happened with the Convene sign.
The missing letter was not the point. The point was that the brand had been caught in the path of actual public energy.

That is rare now.

Most hospitality and workspace brands are built to look like life happens there, while being carefully protected from the full force of it. We create warm lighting, curated playlists, plants, coffee spaces , event programmes, community language and photography of people laughing at laptops. Then we try to control every possible variable around how that life appears.

Nothing too messy. Nothing too weird. Nothing too honest. Nothing that might make the building look like it has been used by actual humans.

But cities do not work like that.

Neither does culture.

Culture is not a campaign calendar.
It is not a launch plan. It does not care about your brand guidelines. It spills over, stains things, changes the meaning of objects, gives places nicknames, turns corners into meeting points and makes certain rooms matter for reasons the operator never predicted.

The Convene sign became memorable because, for a few hours, it stopped belonging entirely to Convene.

It belonged to the city.

That is the uncomfortable part for brands.
The moment something becomes culturally useful, you do not fully own it anymore. People touch it. Rename it. Misuse it. Mock it. Celebrate around it. Build a story on top of it.

That loss of control is frightening.

It is also where the good stuff lives.

The flex industry should pay attention to this.
We talk endlessly about community, but often what we really mean is managed engagement. We want the warmth of belonging without the unpredictability of people. We want activation, but not interruption. We want members to feel ownership, but not so much ownership that they change the place.

That is a weak version of community.

Real community leaves evidence.

It moves chairs. It fills corners you did not programme. It makes one table more important than the rest. It turns a coffee machine into a gossip point. It turns a roof terrace into a ritual. It creates habits you did not design. It gives a room a name that is better than the one on your floorplan.

And yes, sometimes it scuffs the paintwork.

There is a version of flex that would see the Convene moment and only think about facilities. Repair costs. Liability. Brand consistency. Risk assessment. The sign needs fixing. The photo needs removing. The messaging needs controlling.

Fine.
All of that exists.
Nobody sensible is saying ignore the operational reality.

But if that is all you see, you have missed the valuable part.

Because for once, a workspace brand was not trying to insert itself into culture. Culture inserted itself into the workspace brand.

That is the gold.

The mistake would be to reduce this to reactive marketing.

Reactive marketing is usually a brand moving quickly with a topical joke. Some of it works. Most of it is just companies trying to sound like people for six minutes.

This was different.

This was physical. Public. Unplanned. A real asset being changed by a real moment, then a brand having enough confidence not to flinch.

That confidence is the lesson.

Everyone in flex wants to call themselves hospitality now. Fine. But hospitality is not just nice lighting, decent coffee, a scented lobby and someone greeting you by name.

Hospitality is tolerance.

Tolerance for noise. Tolerance for rhythm. Tolerance for people arriving in different moods. Tolerance for the fact that the best moments in a building might not be the ones on the events calendar.

Hospitality without tolerance is just styling.

And that is where a lot of flex gets stuck. It wants the aesthetic of hospitality but not the temperament. It wants the warmth, the rituals and the language, but still wants the product to remain perfectly intact.

You cannot have both.

If your space is alive, it will get marked.

That does not mean accepting damage for the sake of it. It means understanding that the marks, rituals, interruptions and strange little stories are often what make a place believable.

Nobody falls in love with a render.

Nobody remembers the generic shot of a meeting room with a carafe of water and three identical notepads.

People remember the table where something happened. The view from the place they always sat. The team member who knew their order. The event that got slightly out of hand in the right way. The sofa, the corner, the ritual, the running joke.

Brands do not become meaningful because every asset remains pristine.

They become meaningful when people can attach memory to them.

That is why the broken Coors screen worked.

That is why the Convene sign worked too.

Both had proof of life.

And proof of life is becoming more valuable than polish.

Polish is easy. You can buy polish. You can brief polish. You can render polish before the building even opens. Every operator can get the nice chairs, the soft lighting, the decent coffee, the plants, the podcast room, the wellness language and the curated community copy.

What you cannot easily buy is a place in the public imagination.

That has to be earned.

Sometimes it is earned slowly, through repeated daily usefulness. Sometimes through great service. Sometimes because your sign happens to be in the right place when the city decides to lose its mind.

That is not a strategy you can manufacture.

But you can build a brand with enough confidence to benefit when it happens.

A nervous brand protects itself from the public.
A strong brand lets the public leave a mark.

So yes, the sign needed fixing.

But for one day, it was probably better broken.

Sponsorship Opportunities

Office real estate is being rewritten.

That’s no longer a grand statement by industry commentators.

It’s literally being rewritten.

In the financial models being underwritten.
In the deals being negotiated.
In the buildings being repositioned.
In the way office customers are using space.
And in the operators proving that flex is no longer an afterthought.

This is Brave Ideas Season 18

“The GCUC Series”

Over six conversations, we sat down with operators, brokers, consultants, and workplace strategists to ask a bigger question…

Because GCUC’s 50th edition was about more than coworking,
and this Brave Ideas season brings a taste of that conversation straight to you.

This season is about office real estate.

It is about value.

What creates value when long leases are harder to rely on, vacancy is still a risk, and customers have more choice than ever?

It is about demand.

What do enterprise occupiers actually want from flex today,
and how is that changing the way landlords think about their buildings?

It is about hospitality.

Not as a buzzword, but as an operating layer that can improve experience, engagement, and retention.

It is about brand.

Who are you for, what do you stand for, and why should a customer choose your building over the one across the street?

And it is about underwriting.

Because no matter how good the story sounds, the math still has to work.

This season explores the tension sitting at the heart of the market.

The tension between the missionaries and the mercenaries.

The missionaries who believe deeply in community, belonging, entrepreneurship, and creating places people actually want to be.

And the mercenaries who know that without disciplined underwriting, strong margins, rent coverage, and operational control, the business does not survive.

This season asks whether the future belongs to one side or the other.

Or whether the real winners will be the operators, landlords, and investors who understand both.

Because mission without margin is fragile.

But margin without mission is just real estate with better furniture.

Some operators are moving toward management agreements, landlord partnerships, open plan communities, and highly activated spaces.

Others are winning by going back to the foundational basics of the industry, private offices, disciplined leases, clear customer focus, and simple economics.

Neither side gets a free pass.

Because the real question is not which model sounds most innovative.

The real question is:

Which model works,
for that customer,
in that building,
with that landlord,
in that market?

Season 18 Distinguished Guests

With Brandon we get into tenant level intelligence, engagement, retention, and why landlords need to understand their customers far better than they have in the past.

With Christine and Justin we unpack enterprise demand, hybrid leases, management agreements, and why pitching a landlord today can feel more like pitching an investor.

With Flip we explore the value of premium private offices, brand positioning, lease arbitrage, and why the fundamentals still matter in a market chasing new structures.

THE Phil Kirschner returns to this podcast to help us zoom out into the future of work, team autonomy, shared infrastructure, full stack flex, and why traditional offices are still misaligned with how modern companies actually operate.

The Savills duo of Shay and Kirill helps us look at flex through the occupier lens, how enterprise customers are using it, how landlords are responding, and where deal structures are really changing.

And with the inspirational Chiko we go back to the entrepreneur, private office economics, disciplined growth, and the power of knowing exactly who you serve.

This is a season about the next chapter of office.

Not the hype.
Not the headlines.

The actual operating models, deal structures, customer behaviours, and investment logic shaping where the market goes next.

HUGE THANK YOU to Liz and the GCUC team for the collaboration.

And to Zac, Jack, and the team at The Podcast House for making our guests look and sound as good as they deserve.

Brave Ideas Season 18, The GCUC Series, drops July 1st.

Sponsorship Opportunities

Subscribe now

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De-Risking Flex Starts Before the Doors Open

Opening a new flex location is hard enough.

Opening your first location around 85% occupied before the doors officially open is something different.

In this episode of Brave Ideas, is joined by Mark Gregson, CoFounder at Juntos, to unpack how the new coworking and flex office brand de-risked its first deal, took over a former WeWork location in Holborn, and launched with strong demand already validated.

Mark teamed up with his CoFounder, James Hennessy to launch Juntos House.

That deal structure helped make the investment case more attractive, shortened the expected payback period, and gave the business early cash flow to support future growth.

Mark explains why Juntos is not following a standard copy-and-paste expansion model. The team is already looking at opportunities in London, Amsterdam, and New York, while also exploring coffee shops, play cafes, and family-friendly work concepts that respond to changing customer demand.

This conversation goes deep into what makes a flex deal work commercially, from CapEx efficiency and investor alignment to lease structure, revenue quality, customer covenant, retention, and community.

Mark also shares a strong view on what community should actually mean in a coworking environment. For him, it is about understanding the people in and around the building, designing around their non-negotiables, and creating a place where members feel happy, productive, and connected.

Listen to the full episode to hear how Juntos is thinking about the next generation of flex, the opportunity in former operator spaces, and why de-risking a deal starts long before the first member walks through the door.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

• How Juntos opened its first location around 85% occupied.

• Why Juntos took a 12-year lease with no breaks on its first flex deal.

• How taking over a former WeWork site helped reduce CapEx and speed up launch.

• Why existing infrastructure can materially change the risk profile of a flex deal.

• How early demand validation helped support the investment case.

• Why Mark and James Hennessy are looking at London, Amsterdam, and New York.

• How Juntos is thinking about coffee shops, play cafes, and family-friendly work environments.

• Why revenue quality matters alongside occupancy.

• How longer customer commitments can create more stable early cash flow.

• Why community should connect into the local area around the building.

• How workplace experience, happiness, and productivity are linked.

Key Takeaways for Operators

• De-risking starts with the building, the fit-out, and the demand.
  Juntos House worked because the team found a building where demand had already been validated and the existing infrastructure was strong. That meant lower CapEx, faster launch, and a more attractive investment case.

• Former operator spaces can create a faster path to market.
  Taking over a former WeWork location gave Juntos a fitted platform to build from. The team still had to rebrand, reposition, and soften the space, but they avoided the cost and time burden of a full fit-out from shell and core.

• Opening at 85% occupancy changes the cash flow story.
  Strong pre-opening demand gave Juntos early revenue visibility. For a new operator, that matters. It supports investor confidence, reduces early trading risk, and creates a stronger base for future growth.

• Revenue quality is more than filling desks.
  Mark talks about the importance of customer covenant, contract length, and cash flow stability. Occupancy matters, but the quality and durability of that revenue matters just as much.

• Community needs to be built around real human needs.
  For Mark, community is about more than events. It means understanding the different ways people connect, what makes them happy, and what keeps them coming back to the workplace.

Key Takeaways for Real Estate Investors and Landlords

• CapEx efficiency can make flex more investable.
  A lower upfront capital requirement can improve the risk-return profile of a flex deal. In the case of Juntos House, inheriting existing infrastructure helped create a more efficient launch model.

• Lease structure still has a place in flex.
  While many operators have moved toward management agreements, Juntos took a 12-year lease with no breaks on its first location. That decision was based on confidence in the building, the location, the demand, and the economics of the deal.

• Former flex spaces can be repositioned without starting again.
  Landlords holding fitted space from a previous operator may have an opportunity to bring in a new brand, refresh the product, and reactivate demand without a full reset.

• Occupancy is only one part of the underwriting story.
  The stronger question is whether the income is durable. Contract length, customer quality, retention, CapEx burden, incentives, and investor cost of capital all shape whether a flex location can generate sustainable returns.

• Experience can support retention and long-term value.
  Mark’s argument is that people stay in places where they feel good, supported, and understood. For landlords and investors, that has a direct link to churn, renewal probability, and income resilience.

Behind The Scenes

This episode was recorded onsite at Juntos House in Holborn, just before the building officially opened.

That’s a wrap for Brave Ideas Season 17!

Thank you for tuning in all season!

Season 18 drops 1 July

Want a sneak peek?

Watch Season 18 Trailer

For decades, it went a little like this:

A landlord owned a building, found a tenant, got them to sign a lease often for ten, fifteen, twenty years. Job done.

The relationship between landlord and tenant was transactional.

You didn’t need:

→ a brand strategy when your tenants were legally committed to you for the better part of a decade

→ to think about experience, community, or belonging.

You needed a building, a legal document, and a managing agent who could keep the lights on, water running and the boiler functioning.

But that world has changed.

The rise of flexible workspace operators changed the baseline expectation for what an office could feel like.

Then came the pandemic.
The shift that shook the foundations of the office entirely, forcing businesses and their people to ask a question that had never really been asked before: “why come to the office at all?”

The answer to that question is what has reshuffled the deck for everyone in the built environment.

The data is speaking… but is the industry listening?

Offices that have remained merely functional with four walls, a lift, and a reception desk have steadily lost customers. On the other hand, buildings that invested in experience, community and a distinct identity held onto their tenants longer, attracted new ones, and commanded better rents.

JLL’s 2024 Future of Work survey found that 70% of companies now consider workplace experience a key factor in their real estate decisions.

What this tells us is that brand (the way a building feels, the story it tells, and the community it fosters) is now a commercial lever. It isn’t a nice to have, nor is it a soft consideration. The building experience is a hard, measurable driver of performance.

We’re now in the hospitality industry

At TSP, we’ve been making this argument for a while.

Our whole operating model is built on the idea that the hospitality industry worked this out long before the property sector did. A great hotel gives you a consistent, and intentional experience, designed to make you want to come back.

So, this begs the question:

Why should an office building be any different?

Today’s landlords are operating in a market where customers have a plethora of options and are not afraid to use them. The average UK office lease length has been declining steadily for years.

Flexibility is no longer a premium, it’s an expectation.

And the landlords and operators who are winning are the ones who have realised that the question is no longer “can we fill the building?” It’s “can we keep it full?”

Keeping it full requires something the industry has never really had to develop before: a reason for people to stay.

The reason?

It’s that sense of identity, belonging, and care for the people inside a building. This is exhibit A of what a good brand strategy can do.

What comes next

This is the first piece in a four part series I’m writing on brand, marketing, and the evolving world of offices.

Over the next three articles, I want to dig into what tenants actually want now, why brand is your most underrated retention strategy, and what it really means to run a building with a clear sense of purpose.

The industry is waking up.

The question is, is it waking up fast enough?

I asked a panel about weaponising community.

Not building community. Not nurturing community. Not creating meaningful connection.

Weaponising it.

Using community to hold higher rates. Using it to reduce churn. Using it to make the commercial strategy sharper, harder, more defensible.

A few people hated the phrase.

Good.

They should hate it a little. It is an ugly phrase because it drags the quiet part into the light. It says the thing coworking usually dresses up in softer language.

That is where people get uncomfortable.

Not because they do not believe community has value. Everyone in this industry says community has value. They say it in pitch decks, on tours, in award submissions, in LinkedIn posts, and in those painful little “more than just a desk” captions underneath photos of people eating pastries.

The discomfort starts when you ask what that value is worth.

Does it protect rate?

Does it reduce churn?

Does it make someone choose your building over the cheaper one down the road?

Does it make members bring other people in?

Does it turn occupancy into loyalty?

If the answer is no, then it is not strategy. It is decoration.

And coworking has become dangerously good at decoration.

The breakfast spread.

The tote bag.

The networking drinks.

The panel with a vague title and three people talking about purpose.

Some of it works. Some of it matters. But none of it means anything if it does not change the way people feel about the building.

The commercial point

Community becomes powerful when it creates a cost to exit that is not written into the licence agreement.

Not a penalty. Not a trap. Not a cynical retention hack.

A genuine emotional and practical cost.

“I know people here.”

“My team has a rhythm here.”

“We meet clients here.”

“I get introduced to people here.”

“This place makes us look good.”

“We would lose something if we moved.”

That is community doing its job.

What hospitality already knows

Hotels understand this. The Hoxton is not just selling a bed. It sells the lobby, the neighbourhood, the noise, the bar, the people working from sofas, the sense that you are not trapped in some dead corporate box above a breakfast buffet. The room matters, obviously. But the room is not the whole transaction. The atmosphere is doing part of the selling.

Soho House understands it even more brutally. You are not just paying for somewhere to sit down. You are paying for access, taste, familiarity, recognition, and the small ego hit of belonging to something with a door policy.

You can hate that. You can call it pretentious. But commercially, it works because the product is not square footage. The product is belonging with a bar tab.

Airbnb did not build itself on “we have spare rooms.” It sold the idea of living somewhere, not visiting it. The commercial machine was accommodation, but the emotional sale was localness, intimacy, and the feeling that you had slipped through the side door of a city rather than queued at the front desk.

Restaurants know this instinctively. The good ones are not just selling food. They are selling recognition. Ritual. Taste. Pace. Memory. The table you like. The person who remembers your drink. The sense that the room works and that you understand how to be in it.

That is why people go back. Not because the chair is technically comfortable. Because something about the place has attached itself to them.

What coworking needs to get braver about

Community is not always warm and fuzzy. Sometimes it is standards. Sometimes it is status. Sometimes it is convenience. Sometimes it is taste. Sometimes it is shared routine. Sometimes it is the quiet confidence that the right people are in the room.

So yes, I like the phrase weaponising community.

Not because members are the target. They are not.

The target is churn.

The target is discounting.

The target is the lazy race to same desk, cheaper price.

The target is the broker spreadsheet where every product gets reduced to location, desk count, meeting rooms, and monthly rate.

That is what community should be weaponised against.

If your community is real, it should make your product harder to compare. It should make the cheaper option feel thinner. It should give your sales team something better than “we have great breakout space.” It should give your renewal conversation more weight than “costs have increased.” It should give members a reason to stay that is not just admin, habit, or contract dates.

If you are building community because it sounds nice, say that. But if you are running a flexible workspace business, be honest. You are building community because the strongest products are the hardest ones to leave.

That means the community team is not just doing vibes. They are protecting revenue. They are building memory into the building. They are creating reasons to return. They are making introductions that turn strangers into members and members into advocates. They are spotting drift before the cancellation lands. They are giving the sales team proof that the product is alive. They are making the building feel like more than rented furniture and a coffee machine.

That is not fluffy. That is commercial infrastructure.

And the operators who understand that will win. Not because they exploit community. Because they take it seriously enough to design it properly, measure it honestly, and admit what it is really for.

Weaponising community sounds dirty. Maybe that is why it works. Because it forces the industry to stop pretending that the most valuable part of the product should somehow be commercially invisible.

Flex operates with one of the most fragmented technology stacks in commercial real estate.

A typical operator runs at least a CRM, a property management system, an access control layer, a billing tool, a community platform, sensors and comms, and each of those tools has its own opinion about what a “member” or a “renewal” or an “occupied seat” actually is.

Most of the time you can work around it.

You sit in a meeting, look at two different occupancy numbers, agree which one to trust for the next twenty minutes, and move on. It’s annoying, it costs time, but it works, because a human in the room is doing the reconciling silently. Judgement is patching the foundation in real time.

The reason that’s about to stop being good enough has nothing to do with AI being smart or dumb.

And right now, every one of those is being held together by a person in a meeting who knows which version of “occupancy” actually fits the question being asked.

When an AI agent reads the same stack, it doesn’t do that.

It isn’t that an agent can’t reason.
Agents apply probabilistic reasoning constantly, that’s the whole point.
What they can’t do is interrogate the structure they’ve been handed.
They take the definitions and the data as given, and they act on them confidently.

So the silent reconciliation that used to happen in the meeting just…doesn’t. A bad assumption stops being a one off slip and becomes a pattern, the same confidently wrong answer repeated across every report, every forecast, every customer touchpoint, faster than anyone can audit it.

That’s what changes the stakes.
Not that AI introduces a new problem, but that it compounds an old one at scale, with full confidence, and no obvious failure mode.

The meeting where you notice it

Every flex team I’ve worked with has had the same meeting.
Three people in a room, four definitions of occupancy, and a spreadsheet that was fine until someone asked the question.

Is it contracted desks over total?
Physical presence over capacity?
Revenue weighted?
Does a hot desk count?

Everyone in the room is technically right. The reports aren’t wrong. It isn’t a messy team failing to agree, it’s four very sensible definitions colliding.

Some of that disagreement is worth keeping.
If you run mostly private offices you’ll almost certainly measure occupancy differently to someone running mostly hot desks, because you’re running very different businesses. The mistake isn’t the definition varying between companies. It’s letting it vary inside one.

And inside one report that’s going to the asset owner.

Two shapes of the problem

All of this tends to land in two recognisable shapes.

One is when a single word is actually doing two jobs.
One operator I’ve been working with had been using “occupancy” as a single metric. The contracted side, what percentage of their offices had a paying customer’s name against them, turned out to be a different number from the actual use side, what percentage of the desks in the building were under contract. They’d been leaning on one of those and treating it as the whole picture. The number wasn’t wrong. It was a siloed view of what their occupancy actually looked like.

Once they ran both signals side by side, named them as different things, and understood what each really meant, the planning conversation finally had both halves of the picture.

Their approach to driving top of funnel totally changed, they then realised they had more budget to play with than they thought.

And the landlord report they’d been producing started telling a story that actually held together under questioning.

The other shape lives between systems rather than inside heads.
Another operator we work with had a member whose contract was terminated and reissued under a new arrangement. The original contract was being held as inactive in one system and as still live in another. The renewal was being counted in one place and missed completely in another.

The fix here wasn’t an SQL query.
It was the documented agreement about what an “active contract” actually meant in that business, and what counted as a rolling renewal versus a fresh signing. Once that was agreed and communicated, the systems could be aligned to it. Without that, no amount of integration work would have made the numbers make sense, and the MRR figure being reported up to the asset owner was off by enough to make a difference.

All of this is genuinely unglamorous.

But without agreed definitions, every decision built on top of them is at risk. The planning session running on a metric that means different things to different people in the room. The landlord report that doesn’t actually add up, and maybe isn’t questioned until it’s audited, or worse, until the asset owner runs their own analysis and notices. The public inventory feed you push to Valve showing listings that don’t match what’s actually true on the floor.

The internal version costs time.

The external one costs trust, credibility, the margin you’re meant to be protecting, and ultimately the asset value you’re meant to be creating. Which is probably tight enough already.

What it takes to fix, and when not to

We spent the best part of eighteen months on this at Koho.
Not handing operators a universal definition they need to adopt, but getting each operator’s stack to a single agreed set. Occupancy, utilisation, MRR that matches how they actually bill, and how the finance team needs to recognise it, churn that can tell a non renewal apart from a mid term exit.

That outcome’s only possible when you totally understand how an operation functions day to day. Walking through every metric that lands on every report, finding where it’s defined, finding where two systems disagree about it, deciding which is correct for that particular business, because the answer is hardly ever universal, then actually writing it down and treating it as gospel.

It’s worth being honest about when addressing all of this gets easier and when it gets harder.

Early is easier.
A two building operator with eighteen months of trading data has a much cheaper version of this conversation than a multisite operator with eight years of accumulated reporting and a dozen integrations to align. The definitions you set early embed in the team’s vocabulary, the training, the operational habits.

Wait, and now you’re untangling legacy noise alongside the actual decisions, paying for it twice. Once in the unpicking, once in every report that ran on the wrong number in the meantime.

For most multisite operators, the cost has already been quietly piling up.
The landlord report is already arguing with itself, the AI tools are being demoed and deployed, and the data underneath all of it is still disagreeing.

Most operators are implementing the features before they fix the foundations underneath.

The agent gets bought, the demo works, and the failure starts quietly afterwards. An AI reasoning over inconsistent definitions doesn’t fail loudly, it delivers a confident answer that happens to be wrong, and the wrongness compounds across every report and forecast it touches before anyone goes looking for it. And the first person who goes looking is usually sitting outside your operation, the prospect on a demo call, the auditor running their own numbers, the asset owner reading the report you handed up last quarter.

Tons of the conversations I’m in are spent on the tool at the top, the end result, the tangible piece the customer sees and acts on.
Because it’s fun, it’s exciting.

Hardly anyone gets excited about standardising CRM or PMS datasets.

The version of AI flex operators are being sold, the one that takes a workflow end to end, not just drafts the email before it’s sent, needs reconciled definitions underneath it.

Or it will make mistakes.

And those mistakes will land in the report you hand up the chain.

The unglamorous question of what your metrics actually mean was always going to decide what your building is worth.

AI didn’t change that.

It just guaranteed the asset owner gets to the answer before you do.

Presented by

Learn how Flexspace AI is transforming coworking with their ecommerce revenue platform, featuring SmartPricing Agent, an AI-powered dynamic pricing engine. Tap here

AI Is Reshaping Office Search

In this episode of Brave Ideas, is joined by , CEO of Space to Places, and co-host , CEO of Flexspace AI, to explore how AI is beginning to influence office search, and why better data, greater transparency, and clearer market information will become more important as companies use new tools to discover and compare office options.

Zoe explains why the flex office market is still difficult for customers to navigate. With coworking, serviced offices, managed offices, enterprise suites, landlord-led flex, and hybrid models all competing for attention, the terminology is often confusing and the data is inconsistent.

That becomes even more important as companies begin using LLMs and AI tools to search for office space.

If customers are asking:

“Where is the best office for my team?”

or

“Which workplace fits our culture, budget, and location?”,

then, the industry needs cleaner, more trusted, and more structured data.

Zoe shares her vision for Office Tier List, an independent information layer designed to help end users compare workplace options with greater confidence, based on verified information rather than marketing claims or opaque incentives.

The conversation also covers brand differentiation, managed office growth, service quality, workplace culture, and why the next phase of flex will depend on better information as much as better product.

FREE UK Flexible Office Market Reports

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

• How companies are beginning to use AI tools to search for office space

• Why the flex office market is still difficult for customers to understand

• How LLMs and AI assistants are beginning to reshape workplace discovery

• Why clean, structured, trusted data will become more important in flex

• Why brand differentiation needs to be backed by substance, not just design

• How managed office is blurring the lines between traditional office and flex

• Why customers need better terminology, clearer comparisons, and better market education

• How operators can improve discoverability in an AI-enabled search environment

• Why better data can help landlords understand the operator landscape and different flex models available to them

Key Takeaways for Operators

• AI discovery will reward operators with better data.
  As customers begin using AI tools to search for office space, operators will need accurate, structured, trustworthy information about their locations, amenities, services, availability, customer fit, and product positioning. Generic marketing language will become less useful if it cannot be understood, verified, and compared.

• Brand needs to be clear, not just attractive.
  Zoe makes the point that brand is not just about style, logos, or interiors. Operators need to clearly communicate who they serve, what they offer, how their service differs, and why a customer should choose them over another option.

• The customer is still confused.
  The industry uses too many overlapping terms, including coworking, serviced office, managed office, flex, enterprise suites, landlord-led flex, and traditional office with service layers. Operators that simplify the decision-making process will have an advantage.

• Verified information will become more valuable than marketing claims.
  Zoe argues that the sector needs more factual, independent, high-quality data. That includes real location information, actual amenities, verified services, accurate imagery, and clearer comparisons across the market.

• Managed office is raising the bar for differentiation.
  As more operators and landlords offer managed solutions, the winners will not just be those with fitted space. They will be the ones that can demonstrate service quality, responsiveness, cultural fit, and clear value for the customer.

Key Takeaways for Real Estate Investors and Landlords

• AI is beginning to change how demand discovers supply.
  If companies increasingly begin their office search through AI tools, landlords will need to think differently about how their buildings, flex products, and operator partners are represented in structured data environments.

• Flex strategy cannot be based on guesswork.
  Zoe explains that landlords are using different models, including leases, management agreements, hybrid structures, franchises, and in-house platforms. The right model depends on the building, location, hold period, target customer, and asset strategy.

• Data will become a leasing and asset management advantage.
  The landlords and operators with clearer information about product, service, amenities, customer fit, and performance will be better positioned as the market becomes more transparent and AI-enabled.

• Managed office is not just fitted space.
  Landlords moving into managed office need to understand the service layer, the customer experience, the operational requirements, and the brand expectations that come with the product. Furniture and flexible terms alone will not create a defensible offer.

• Better transparency should improve market understanding.
  As more independent data becomes available, landlords should be able to better understand the operator landscape, the range of flex models available, and the different ways flexible office can be delivered within an asset.

Behind The Scenes

We want to give a special shoutout to Nat and the team at Work.Life, where this episode was recorded, for their brilliant podcast studio and hospitality throughout the season. Tap here to book their podcast studio yourself!

The next day the trio joined the Flex Tribes event, where Zoe & Eyal were in the Yield Management discussion.

Season 17 of Brave Ideas explores one of the most important questions in office real estate today, how to build a more profitable flex business. Across the season, Caleb Parker speaks with industry leaders about the real commercial drivers behind Space-as-a-Service.

Presented by

Learn how Flexspace AI is transforming coworking with their ecommerce revenue platform, featuring SmartPricing Agent, an AI-powered dynamic pricing engine. Tap here

The Frontline Knows Before the Dashboard

In this episode of Brave Ideas, Caleb Parker is joined by Sophie Turnbull, Chief Revenue Officer at Orega, along with Cohost, , CEO of Flexspace AI.

Sophie has been in the flexible office industry for nearly two decades, and you can hear it in the way she talks about the business.

She started at The Instant Group back in 2008, when this industry was still a much smaller world, and has since worked across several different operator brands, including Work.Life, Huckletree, and now Orega.

That gives her a pretty unique perspective.

She has seen the broker side, the operator side, the community-led brands, the design-led brands, and the more traditional serviced office side. So when Sophie talks about what actually makes a flex business work, it is not theory. It is based on years of being close to the customer, close to the sales team, and close to the operational detail.

And that is where this conversation gets really interesting.

Because if operators are serious about reducing churn, improving retention, and making better commercial decisions, they need to find better ways to capture that insight and bring it into the business.

We also talk about customer fit, pipeline discipline, broker relationships, sales training, product knowledge, and why operators need to stop treating customers as just a number in an office.

This episode is a practical look at how frontline insight, commercial discipline, and better account management can help operators build stronger, more resilient flexible workspace businesses.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

• Why frontline teams may hold some of the most valuable customer data in a flex operation

• How informal conversations in kitchens, corridors, lifts, and reception areas can reveal renewal risk

• Why operators need better systems for capturing customer intelligence before it disappears

• How frontline feedback can support account management, retention, and churn prevention

• Why renewal conversations should happen throughout the customer lifecycle, not just at renewal stage

• How customer fit affects retention, pricing power, and long term revenue quality

• Why operators need to understand when a customer is worth retaining, and when churn may be the right outcome

• How sales teams can improve conversion by knowing the product, brand, inventory, facilities, and competition in detail

• Why pipeline discipline matters when making pricing, renewal, and churn decisions

• How brokers can add value when they understand the operator’s product and customer profile

• Why direct leads and broker led leads require different commercial thinking

• How operators can turn customer insight into better pricing, better service, and stronger retention

• Why investing in people remains one of the most practical ways to improve operator performance

Key Takeaways for Operators

• Your frontline team may know about churn before your reports do.
  Sophie makes the point that front of house and centre teams often hear what leadership does not. They hear complaints, frustrations, positive feedback, expansion signals, and small comments that reveal whether a customer is happy, disengaged, or at risk.

• The problem is not just collecting data, it is capturing what people already know.
  Many operators already have valuable customer intelligence inside the business, but it sits in people’s heads, informal conversations, spreadsheets, decks, and scattered notes. The challenge is turning that into something the business can actually use.

• Retention starts before the renewal conversation.
  Sophie is clear that customers often remember the most recent part of the relationship when renewal time comes. That means operators need to listen, communicate, and act throughout the customer lifecycle, not only when a contract is about to expire.

• Churn prevention depends on account management, not last minute discounting.
  If a customer is unhappy, operators need to understand why early enough to solve it. Sometimes the answer is better communication, sometimes it is a service fix, sometimes it is a product adjustment, and sometimes it is a more suitable office configuration.

• Customers should not be treated as numbers in offices.
  Sophie warns against looking at yield management purely through the lens of office size and revenue. Operators need to understand the business behind the customer, how they use the space, what value they bring, and whether there is a better solution that works for both sides.

• The best sales teams know the product in detail.
  Sales teams need to know more than pricing and availability. They need to understand the brand, the building, the inventory, IT, amenities, facilities, and what can physically be changed inside the space. That level of preparation makes customer and broker conversations more effective.

• Training is not a soft cost, it is a commercial lever.
  Sophie argues that operators often fail to educate their teams properly when launching new products, processes, or ways of working. Better training creates more confident teams, better customer conversations, and stronger conversion.

• Pipeline discipline gives operators confidence.
  Understanding lead flow, tour conversion, warm prospects, blockers, and decision timelines helps operators make better decisions on pricing and retention. Without that visibility, operators risk making renewal decisions in the dark.

• Broker relationships need clarity and mutual value.
  Sophie sees real value in the broker channel, but only when brokers understand the product, are given the right information, and help customers make better decisions. Operators also need to be clear on fees, expectations, and the true cost of acquisition.

Key Takeaways for Real Estate Investors and Landlords

• Frontline intelligence should be part of asset management.
  Landlords and investors should not only ask for occupancy, revenue, and pipeline reports. They should also ask how operators capture customer sentiment, service issues, renewal risk, expansion demand, and informal feedback from the teams closest to customers.

• Churn risk is often visible before it becomes financial.
  A customer rarely leaves without signals. Complaints, reduced engagement, changed utilisation, pricing concerns, service frustrations, and expansion or contraction needs can often be spotted early if the operator has the right feedback loops.

• Operator quality shows up in the account management system.
  A strong operator does not wait for renewal dates. They manage relationships continuously, understand each customer’s business, track risk, and use customer intelligence to make better commercial decisions.

• People are part of the operating platform.
  In flexible workspace, the team is not separate from the product. The frontline team shapes the customer experience, the sales team shapes conversion, and the account management team shapes retention. Weak teams can undermine strong real estate.

• Data strategy should include human data.
  Dashboards matter, but they do not capture everything. Some of the most valuable insights come from conversations, service moments, and day to day interactions. The opportunity is to combine operational data with human intelligence.

• Sales enablement affects asset performance.
  If the sales team does not understand the product, inventory, customer profile, and competitive context, the asset will leak revenue. Better training can improve conversion, protect rate, and reduce avoidable friction in the sales process.

• Brand clarity improves customer fit.
  Sophie is clear that operators need to know who their product is for. That matters for landlords and investors because better customer fit can improve retention, reduce churn risk, and support stronger pricing discipline.

• Churn is not always bad, but unmanaged churn is.
  There are cases where a customer may not be the right fit, or where the economics no longer work. The key is making that decision deliberately, with visibility on replacement demand, acquisition cost, void risk, and long term value.

Behind The Scenes

We want to give a special shoutout to Nat and the team at Work.Life, where this episode was recorded, for their brilliant podcast studio and hospitality throughout the season. Tap here to book their podcast studio yourself!

Season 17 of Brave Ideas explores one of the most important questions in office real estate today, how to build a more profitable flex business. Across the season, Caleb Parker speaks with industry leaders about the real commercial drivers behind Space-as-a-Service.

Presented by

Learn how Flexspace AI is transforming coworking with their ecommerce revenue platform, featuring SmartPricing Agent, an AI-powered dynamic pricing engine. Tap here

From Rent Roll to Retention

For decades, office real estate was built around a simple idea, sign the lease, collect the rent, manage the building.

But that model has been under pressure in recent years.

Customers want more flexibility.
SMEs need room to grow and contract.
Teams want better service.
Landlords need more resilient income.
And in a market where occupiers have more choice, the operators who understand people may be better positioned than landlords who only understand space.

In this episode of Brave Ideas, is joined by Rebekah Lloyd-Beere, Head of Flex at MediaCity, where she leads a 100,000 SqFt flex operation in Manchester, England.

Rebekah’s career did not start in traditional property.
She came from hospitality, joined MediaCity as a receptionist ten years ago, and built her career by identifying what customers needed before the organisation had roles designed to serve them.

Today, she oversees the P&L, customer experience, and growth of MediaCity’s flex business.

Joining as co-host is , CEO of Flexspace AI.

Rebekah explains why flex is not just about shorter contracts or higher desk rates. It is about retention, trust, customer lifetime value, and knowing when the best commercial decision is not to squeeze the highest rent today, but to keep the right customer for the long term.

We get into the practical decisions behind that mindset, from helping a customer downsize rather than lose them, to using virtual offices, meeting rooms, podcast studios, and day bookings as entry points into long-term membership.

Rebekah also explains why small hospitality details, remembering names, understanding businesses, checking in when people are struggling, can directly influence retention.

For office landlords and investors, the message is clear, the next phase of office value will not be created by rent roll alone. It will be created by operating models that keep customers, grow relationships, and protect income through flexibility.

Listen to the full episode to hear how MediaCity is turning flex into a customer retention strategy.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

• Why Rebekah believes office real estate is ultimately a people business.

• How MediaCity built a 100,000 SqFt flex operation around customer experience, retention, and SME growth.

• Why the highest rent today is not always the best long-term commercial decision.

• How helping a customer downsize can become a retention strategy rather than a loss.

• Why virtual offices and day bookings can become gateways into long-term membership.

• How meeting rooms, podcast studios, and content facilities create both ancillary revenue and future demand.

• Why hospitality skills may be more valuable to flex operators than traditional property experience.

• How customer trust can protect income, reduce churn, and support long-term asset performance.

• Why landlords need to think about customer lifetime value, not just rent per SqFt.

• How small operational details can have a direct impact on retention and revenue quality.

Key Takeaways for Operators

• Retention is not a renewal tactic, it is an operating philosophy.
  Rebekah’s approach is simple, know the customer before there is a problem. If a business is struggling, the answer is not always to enforce the contract. Sometimes the better decision is to help them resize, protect the relationship, and keep them in the ecosystem.

• Flex cannot just mean premium pricing.
  Rebekah makes a clear point, flex is supposed to be flexible. If the model only works when customers keep paying for space they no longer need, it is not really flexible. It is just a shorter lease with better branding.

• The best operators understand the difference between price and value.
  Rebekah is willing to accept a lower initial rate for the right customer when she sees growth potential, retention upside, and strategic value to the wider estate. That does not mean ignoring the P&L, it means managing for longer-term income quality.

• Ancillary revenue should also be a customer acquisition channel.
  Meeting rooms, podcast studios, content spaces, virtual offices, and day offices are not just bolt-on revenue lines. They introduce people to the building, the brand, the team, and the experience.

• Hospitality is not softness, it is commercial discipline.
  Remembering names, understanding business needs, checking in when someone is struggling, and treating every customer as important are not cosmetic gestures. They create trust, and trust is what keeps customers from leaving.

Key Takeaways for Real Estate Investors and Landlords

• Stop underwriting flex like it is just a rent premium.
  The real upside is not only higher £ per SqFt. It is customer diversification, retention, ancillary income, SME growth, and the ability to capture demand that traditional leasing would miss.

• A building without an operating strategy is exposed.
  If landlords rely only on agents, leases, and fit-out to drive value, they risk missing the customer relationship layer. MediaCity’s example shows how value can be created through active management, not just asset ownership.

• Revenue quality is more nuanced than headline desk rate.
  A lower-paying customer who stays, grows, uses meeting rooms, upgrades over time, and contributes to the ecosystem may be more valuable than a higher-paying customer with weak loyalty.

• The strongest flex operators may reduce leasing risk across the wider asset.
  A well-run flex platform can act as a demand funnel, bringing in SMEs, startups, creators, and project-based teams that may eventually grow into larger office requirements.

• Customer lifetime value should be part of the landlord’s underwriting model.
  Traditional office underwriting still leans heavily on lease length, covenant, ERV, incentives, voids, and capex. In an operating model, landlords also need to understand conversion, churn, retention, upsell, downgrade risk, meeting room usage, and ancillary spend.

• The future office landlord needs operational empathy.
  That does not mean being charitable. It means understanding that members’ businesses fluctuate. Operators who can flex with those businesses may retain income that a rigid landlord would lose.

Behind The Scenes

We want to give a special shoutout to Nat and the team at Work.Life, where this episode was recorded, for their brilliant podcast studio and hospitality throughout the season. Tap here to book their podcast studio yourself!

Rebekah also recently co-hosted our Brave Ideas x Flexspace AI event on Hacking the New Office Product for Hybrid Companies

Tap here to see Rebekah’s appearance on Brave Ideas Friday Five

Season 17 of Brave Ideas explores one of the most important questions in office real estate today, how to build a more profitable flex business. Across the season, Caleb Parker speaks with industry leaders about the real commercial drivers behind Space-as-a-Service.

SEE FULL PHOTO GALLERY

On Tuesday, 19 May, Brave Ideas and Flexspace AI brought together coworking & flex office operators for an intimate round table at at MediaCity in Manchester, UK to discuss one of the biggest questions facing commercial real estate today.

What does the office product need to become in a hybrid world?

The session was co-hosted by Rebekah Lloyd-Beere and James Panepinto.

The room included brands from across the flex and coworking ecosystem, including leaders from:

• Koba

• Wizu

• Halkin

• Clockwise

• MediaCity

• Capital & Centric’s Civic

• Colony

• Iconic Offices

• Consensus

• Department

• Brave

• Level

What made the conversation interesting was not just the agreement around hybrid work changing demand patterns. Most people in the room already accept that reality.

The deeper discussion focused on something more important:

Most office products, leasing structures, and sales processes are still built around pre-hybrid behaviour.

That mismatch is creating problems across the industry.

The Core Challenges Discussed

1. Getting People Into The Building

One of the strongest themes was footfall.

The challenge is no longer simply hitting occupancy targets.
It is creating enough value, energy, and relevance for people to choose to come in consistently.

Hybrid work has fundamentally changed occupancy rhythms.
Tuesdays and Wednesdays are overloaded;
Mondays and Fridays often feel empty.
That uneven usage pattern creates both operational and experiential problems.

Buildings can feel under-energised even when occupancy appears healthy on paper.

And when energy drops, perceived value often drops with it.

2. Companies Want Flexibility, But The Product Often Hasn’t Evolved

Another key topic was how companies increasingly want less permanent space and more optionality.

Many companies no longer need traditional five-day-a-week offices, yet our industry still largely sells fixed products designed around full-time usage.

This has created growing interest in ideas such as:

• Fractional offices

• Shared team suites

• Flexible HQ models

• Membership-based workplace access

• Dynamic workplace subscriptions

The consensus in the room was that hybrid work is not necessarily shrinking office demand. It is reshaping how companies actually want to buy.

3. Underutilised Space Represents A Revenue Opportunity

A major conversation centered around monetising underused space and amenities, and quieter days.

Instead of viewing slow days and vacancy as dead space, operators discussed how buildings could generate additional revenue through:

• Day passes

• Event programming

• Wellness access

• Meeting rooms

• Hospitality offerings

• Non-member amenity access

Several people discussed the idea that future coworking locations may operate more like hotels, where multiple overlapping revenue streams support the core product.

This is particularly important for hybrid environments where utilisation fluctuates throughout the week.

4. The Coworking Industry Still Struggles To Explain Its Value Clearly

Another honest discussion focused on positioning.

Many coworking and flex brands still describe themselves using nearly identical language:

Community. Flexibility. Hospitality. Amenities. Collaboration.

The topics are not unimportant.
But the issue is that they are no longer enough on their own to create differentiation.

The room discussed how the strongest brands increasingly stand for something more specific.

From Generic Buildings To Location-Based Brands

One of the most compelling ideas discussed was the emergence of location-based brands.

Instead of buildings competing purely on fit-out or location, some operators are creating environments associated with specific industries, communities, or identities.

The idea is that a building becomes known for a particular ecosystem through:

• Its member mix

• Programming

• Events

• Partnerships

• Marketing

• Hospitality experience

Over time, the building itself develops brand gravity.

This creates stronger network effects, better retention, and clearer market positioning.

Several operators noted that this model may become increasingly important as office demand becomes more experience-led rather than purely functional.

Selling Offices Online

Another important conversation centered around distribution.

If the workplace product is becoming more flexible and productised, should the sales process evolve too?

The industry still relies heavily on enquiry-led leasing journeys, lengthy tours, and manual negotiations.

But many modern customers are increasingly comfortable purchasing flexible products online.

That raises important questions:

• What products can be booked online?

• Can workplace memberships & offices function more like ecommerce products?

• How much friction can be removed from the buying process?

The conversation suggested that operators who simplify the customer journey may gain a major competitive advantage.

The Bigger Takeaway

The future office market will not be won by space alone.

It will be won by operators who understand how to combine:

• Product design

• Hospitality

• Programming

• Community

• Technology

• Brand

• Flexible commercial models

• Revenue diversification

And align with how companies and individuals actually behave today.

Hybrid work is not just changing where people work.
It is forcing our industry to rethink what the office product actually is.

BOOK A DEMO WITH FLEXSPACE AI

Presented by

Learn how Flexspace AI is transforming coworking with their ecommerce revenue platform, featuring SmartPricing Agent, an AI-powered dynamic pricing engine. Tap here

Customer First, Spreadsheet Second

Roy explains why Tradestars reversed the traditional real estate process, starting with what founders and business owners actually need, then working back to the spreadsheet, instead of beginning with NIA, GIA, and rent maximisation.

In this episode of Brave Ideas, and cohost , CEO at Flexspace AI, are joined by Roy Shaby, Founder and CEO of Tradestars, for a conversation on how social commerce is creating a new category of workspace demand.

Roy has one of the most entrepreneurial stories of the season.
He started with a sushi delivery business run out of a rented kebab shop kitchen, turned that into one of London’s early dark kitchen businesses, then went on to cofound FoodStars, which was later acquired by Travis Kalanick’s (former Uber Founder/CEO) CloudKitchens business.

Today, he is applying that same entrepreneurial lens to real estate through Tradestars.

Tradestars provides offline space for online businesses, from TikTok sellers and social commerce brands to barbers, tattoo artists, beauty entrepreneurs, production companies, and digital first operators. These are not traditional office occupiers, but they are not traditional retailers either. They no longer rely on retail footfall, but still need functional, social media ready, brandable space shaped around content, community, logistics, production, client experience, and online customer acquisition.

They also discuss development costs, occupancy, churn, retention, customer acquisition, community, data, and why the rise of social commerce could become a meaningful force in the future of workspace.

Listen to the full episode to hear how Tradestars built workspace for the TikTok economy, and what landlords, investors, and operators can learn from a model that sits somewhere between coworking, light industrial, retail, production, and hospitality.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

• How Roy went from running a sushi delivery business out of a kebab shop kitchen to building one of London’s early dark kitchen businesses

• Why FoodStars became an early dark kitchen platform before “dark kitchens” were even a widely used term

• How the FoodStars journey led to an acquisition by Travis Kalanick’s CloudKitchens

• Why Tradestars was created for online entrepreneurs who still need high-quality offline operational space

• How TikTok sellers, barbers, tattoo artists, beauty entrepreneurs, and production companies are changing the demand profile for real estate

• Why social commerce businesses need workspace that supports content, logistics, client experience, and brand presentation

• How Tradestars starts with the end user first, then reverse engineers the real estate model around that customer

• How distressed and underused buildings can be repositioned into high-energy operational hubs

• Why product quality matters, and how Tradestars claims to reduce development cost without compromising the customer experience

• How Tradestars thinks about occupancy, churn, retention, and customer growth

• Why community is not just a soft benefit, but a driver of stickiness and collaboration

• How data science, CRM analysis, and marketing performance shape customer acquisition

• Why the TikTok economy could become a serious demand driver for new workspace formats

Key Takeaways for Operators

• The TikTok economy still needs physical space.
  Digital first businesses may acquire customers online, but many still need studios, production space, treatment rooms, logistics support, meeting rooms, and professional environments where they can serve clients and create content.

• Start with the customer, not the spreadsheet.
  Roy makes a direct point that Tradestars reversed the traditional real estate process. Instead of starting with net internal area, gross area, and rent maximisation, the model began with what the entrepreneur actually needs, then worked back to the underwriting.

• Different entrepreneurs need different workspace products.
  Tradestars is not traditional coworking, but many of the same Space as a Service principles apply. Members get private studios, shared amenities, hospitality, meeting rooms, podcast facilities, logistics support, and a professional front-of-house experience.

• Product quality is part of the commercial model.
  Tradestars has not treated design, lighting, toilets, common areas, and studio infrastructure as cosmetic extras. These details help members bring their own clients into the building, build their own brands, and justify staying.

• Retention is built through flexibility.
  Roy discusses how Tradestars works with members when they need to grow, shrink, or adjust. That flexibility helps maintain relationships, even when member circumstances change.

• Community becomes real when members trade with each other.
  The strongest signal is not just people attending events, it is when tattoo artists, TikTok sellers, barbers, production companies, and beauty entrepreneurs begin collaborating because they are in the same ecosystem.

• Churn needs to be interrogated, not accepted.
  Roy personally conducts exit interviews with many departing members to understand whether they are leaving because of financial pressure, growth, service issues, or a better alternative. That is operational discipline.

Key Takeaways for Real Estate Investors and Landlords

• Social commerce is creating new real estate demand.
  TikTok sellers, creator-led brands, beauty operators, and digital first product businesses may not need high street retail in the traditional sense, but they still need physical infrastructure. That demand does not always fit neatly into office, retail, or industrial categories.

• Distressed buildings need demand-led repositioning.
  Tradestars has taken buildings that were struggling, underused, or dilapidated, then repositioned them around a specific customer segment with clear operational needs.

• The future of workspace may not look like traditional office demand.
  The customers using Tradestars are not simply looking for desks. They need operational space that supports selling, filming, treating clients, storing products, receiving visitors, and presenting their brands.

• Diversified income can reduce concentration risk.
  By dividing buildings into many studios rather than relying on a small number of large occupiers, Tradestars creates a more diversified member base. That can reduce the impact of any single member leaving.

• CapEx discipline can create pricing advantage.
  Roy explains that Tradestars goes directly to overseas manufacturers and suppliers to reduce development costs. The claim is that this allows the business to maintain product quality while building below typical market cost.

• Operational real estate value is created through income, not just asset appreciation.
  The model is about increasing the income a building can generate by changing the use case, customer base, product design, and operating model.

• Brand and experience can support valuation.
  Tradestars is not just renting space. It is building a recognisable platform for modern entrepreneurs. If that brand creates pricing power, retention, and repeatable demand, it becomes part of the investment logic.

Behind The Scenes

This episode was recorded at Tradestars on Caledonian Road, where Caleb and Eyal toured the building before sitting down with Roy.

Season 17 of Brave Ideas explores one of the most important questions in office real estate today, how to build a more profitable flex business. Across the season, Caleb Parker speaks with industry leaders about the real commercial drivers behind Space-as-a-Service.

Coworking Tech Week, hosted by Pauline Roussel and Dimitar Inchev, got a lot of us thinking.

The week-long event touched quite a bit on how we can implement technology to remove the administrative burden on community teams so they can focus on what they do best, building community. As someone who has spent time in these roles, I can tell you that unnecessary admin is a real and specific drain that fragments your focus at exactly the moments you need it most.

Great idea, I’m sold.

However, there’s something else you could be doing.
Something cheaper, faster, more effective than any other strategy floating around the coworking sphere at the moment.

What if I told you you’re treating the symptom, not the cause?

In my last article, Stop Selling Community, I argued that community building cannot be an isolated act.

In order to foster community, you must participate in it.

Community builders become the beating heart of their spaces, building key relationships with members and becoming a constant, reliable support for the people around them. It’s hospitality on the surface, but the reality is something much deeper.

Let’s look at it from a member perspective, as operators are prone to doing, to ensure client satisfaction is being met.

You come into work after a crowded and long tube journey, tired and mentally preparing for your day, and you’re greeted by a cheery community host at reception. They call you by the nickname they’ve given you, ask you about an important meeting you have coming up that day, remember that problem you were having with the WiFi yesterday and tell you they’ve already fixed it for you. You walk away from the desk to your office calm, happy.

You feel seen and ready for the day ahead.

Fantastic, just what an operator wants.
Keep your members happy and keep your members coming.

Now let’s put ourselves in the shoes of that host.

You come into work after a crowded and long tube journey, tired from waking up earlier than most so you can arrive before everyone else starts their day. You put on a smile you don’t really feel and start making a mental checklist of everything going on that day. Things that went wrong, things that are going right, things to keep an eye on, what needs to be done to ensure everything runs smoothly.

One of your favourite members walks in and you greet them with joy you mean, but energy you have to manufacture. You start to ask them about their day and they go on about the usual gripes of the office - perhaps they’re having a bad day, nervous about something that went wrong in their job, or feeling pressure approaching. You sympathize, and then they ask you about your day.

Here’s where it gets complicated.

You’re comfortable with this member.
You see them every single day.
You know where they’re from, their dog’s name, their role and responsibilities, their kids’ names - maybe you’ve even met them.
You feel close to calling them a friend.
You start to relate to them and open your mouth to tell them about a problem you need to get off your chest.

But then you stop. You can’t do that.
Complaining would reflect badly on the company.
You are there to make the experience feel seamless after all. So you swallow it, say you’re doing great, let them pass, and go along with your day.

Repeat this about 20 times.

Admin work is draining. But distancing yourself from a community you’re actively encouraged to be part of - that’s a different kind of exhausting.

It’s all well and good to put systems in place that remove some of the administrative workload from your community team.
But that just shifts the nature of the work, not the work itself.

There is a burden placed on community teams that is inherent to the role. There is a glass wall between community builders and the community they foster that can be incredibly isolating - and unlike most jobs, the people best placed to understand that weight aren’t sitting at the next desk. The mental load is often shouldered alone.

What, then, is the cure?

There’s no point putting gas in the tank if the engine is broken.
How do we prevent the heartbeat of our spaces from burning out before we start to adjust the nature of their workload?

Operators, the heart of the issue is simple.
Your community team needs to have its own community.
One they feel they can be their true authentic selves in, where their gripes can be freely expressed, responsibilities shared, burdens assisted, and camaraderie found amongst people who know what they are going through.

I’ve seen some operators attempt this well by hosting monthly or annually team building events, like going to dinner or going on trips, but even then, the effort doesn’t need to (necessarily) be extended that far.

• Do your employees have a designated person they feel they can turn to for work related issues (either a mentor figure or an HR representative, just someone they feel safe opening up to)?

• Do you notice them talking with the rest of the team or are they more isolated?

• Are there regular check-ins in place to make sure the workload they are given is manageable, and do they feel comfortable enough to be honest when it isn’t?

• Are there systems in place to help manage stress, burnout, and overworking?

I’d like to shine light on what my current company, techsapiens, does.

There is a weekly team day that is encouraged and reviewed in advance to ensure it works well with everyone’s schedules.

What does team day involve?
Having lunch together that day.
That’s it!
Simple, but an effective way to encourage bonding within the team.

There are regular check-ins as well, daily, at the start of the week, and at the end of the week. There is a shared document that is passed around where employees can write down their accomplishments that are celebrated at the end of every week. Even if they aren’t documented, they are often still noticed and celebrated anyways.

You can’t foster community without being a part of it.
I still believe this is true.
But before we start to brainstorm tools to get the highest ROI on your community strategies, perhaps laying the foundation for communities to be built is a good start.

So, how can operators make the most of their community teams?
Give them a little support.