I said something at GCUC that kept coming back up.
On why the ugliest phrase in the room was also a honest one.
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.
Community is not just a nice thing we do because we are nice people.
It is part of the product.
And if it is part of the product, it has to do commercial work.
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.
The problem is not commercialising community. The problem is lying about it.
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.