26. From "cool coworking space" to multi-state operator with Alex Hughes

29. Accidental niches, landlord partnerships, and organic growth with Charlotte Kirby

Charlotte Kirby left a career in health care recruitment to open Markham's first coworking space, and ten years later, she runs three Village Hive locations across the GTA, spanning suburban Markham, industrial-adjacent North York, and midtown Toronto at Yonge and Eglinton. Along the way, she has landed a landlord partnership from a cold Google search, survived opening two locations during COVID, and stumbled into a thriving wellness niche with 40 psychotherapists booking on-demand offices, on top of the members she serves across her portfolio of spaces. In Episode 29, Charlotte shares how she built a profitable multi-location business by staying scrappy, saying yes to the right opportunities, and doubling down on what she has before chasing what's next. We discuss how: * Charlotte went from burnt-out hospital administrator and reluctant work-from-homer to coworking operator after a sold-out TEDx event pushed her into a livestream at the Center for Social Innovation, one of Toronto's first coworking spaces, and a for-lease sign on a historic Markham schoolhouse did the rest * Her North York location started with a cold email from a landlord whose sister had simply Googled coworking operators, and Charlotte won the deal partly by being one of the only people who bothered to reply * When that North York building sold, the new landlord toured the space, kept her on, and converted her management agreement to a lease, and Charlotte says the business makes more money now without the revenue share * She tested demand in Aurora with pop-up coworking days at an art gallery and a media company, filling every seat and measuring success on two simple signals: attendance and whether attendees said they would consider a membership * Her therapist niche found her, growing from two on-demand offices to 40 psychotherapists and a dedicated wellness floor at Yonge and Eglinton, with a WhatsApp group where practitioners refer clients to each other instead of competing * Her marketing team is mostly herself plus a part-time contractor, her HubSpot sequences have sat dormant for months, and business is still strong, which raises the question of what happens if she ever turns everything on * AI just might be driving her virtual office boom, including one lead who arrived via Gemini convinced the Hive supplied easels and drop cloths for a paint and sip, which is exactly why operators need to feed AI complete, accurate information * Three locations serve three completely different demographics, from condo dwellers escaping small spaces to private school parents killing the day, all under one brand with one marketing approach, and her current focus is revenue maximization over expansion If you want to hear how an independent operator builds a decade-long business one smart yes at a time, this one's for you. Want to connect with Charlotte Kirby? Find her on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/charlotte-kirby-villagehive/] and check out The Village Hive [https://www.thevillagehive.ca/]. By the way, you can also: * Check us out on YouTube [https://youtube.com/@CoworkingMarketing] * Download all free tools, templates, and resources from 2 Marketers and a Coworking Podcast [https://coworking.marketing/resources] 🛠️ About 2 Marketers and a Coworking Podcast Hosted by Kevin Whelan [https://www.linkedin.com/in/whelankevin/] of Everspaces [https://everspaces.com/] and Taylor Mason [https://www.linkedin.com/in/taylor-mason-37a94a58/] of Talemaker [https://www.talemaker.ca/], 2 Marketers and a Coworking Podcast dives deep into marketing tips, tools, insights, and strategies you can actually use to grow your coworking business.  🔔 Hit subscribe to make sure you don't miss an episode. About Lucid Private Offices The Village Hive [https://www.thevillagehive.ca/] is a network of coworking and community spaces across the Greater Toronto Area, with locations in Markham, North York, and Midtown Toronto at Yonge and Eglinton, offering private offices, coworking memberships, meeting rooms, virtual office services, and on-demand offices.

28. Brand, Positioning, and Performance Marketing at Scale with Flip Howard

Lucid Private Offices CEO Flip Howard has been in the flexible office business since 2001. In that time, he has been through a recession, a pandemic, and two full rebrands, and has come out the other side running one of the most premium brands in the industry.  Today, he has 29 locations open with (at least) two more on the way, and Flip has done the branding, positioning, and marketing math. In Episode 28, Flip dives into the evolution of his business, where his priorities are, and what he sees for the future. We discuss how: * Lucid started in 2001 as Meridian Business Centers, a Regis copycat that competed mostly on price, before two rebrands carried it through Work Suites and upmarket into the modern, premium Lucid Private Offices brand it is today * Flip built Lucid in the gap between Regis and WeWork on purpose, and his test for that in-between position is whether you land on the best of both or the worst of both, because nobody wants to buy a convertible minivan * Lucid's motto is "work is good, where you do it matters," and Flip makes the case with a simple comparison: people happily pay thousands to drink a cold beer by a pool in Fiji and would not pay thirty bucks to drink the same beer at a roadside motel, because the surroundings are the product * He treats marketing as pure ROI and calls the phrase "marketing budget" a stupid sentence, since you would never stop buying customers who cost two dollars and bring in a hundred * He recently cut his Google ad spend roughly in half with almost no drop in lead flow, and he is reinvesting the savings into SEO, AI visibility, referrals, and broker outreach to wean the business off its dependence on Google * After a year and a half of pouring money into sales training that barely moved his close rate, Flip realized the bigger lever was getting more people in the door, since lifting the conversion rate had done so little * His new locations run 25,000 square feet and up by design, because small spaces fill faster, but large ones are where the profit lives, and he thinks the industry confuses occupancy with profitability * He breaks every coworking location into four legs of a stool, real estate, build-out, sales and marketing, and customer service, and the first two are the ones you can never fix once you have signed the lease If you want to hear from one of the coworking industry's pioneers, this one's for you.  Want to connect with Flip Howard? Find him on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/flip-howard/] and check out Lucid Private Offices [https://www.lucidprivateoffices.com/]. By the way, you can also: * Check us out on YouTube [https://youtube.com/@CoworkingMarketing] * Download all free tools, templates, and resources from 2 Marketers and a Coworking Podcast [https://coworking.marketing/resources] 🛠️ About 2 Marketers and a Coworking Podcast Hosted by Kevin Whelan [https://www.linkedin.com/in/whelankevin/] of Everspaces [https://everspaces.com/] and Taylor Mason [https://www.linkedin.com/in/taylor-mason-37a94a58/] of Talemaker [https://www.talemaker.ca/], 2 Marketers and a Coworking Podcast dives deep into marketing tips, tools, insights, and strategies you can actually use to grow your coworking business.  🔔 Hit subscribe to make sure you don't miss an episode. About Lucid Private Offices Lucid Private Offices [https://www.lucidprivateoffices.com/] provides flexible workspace for teams [https://www.lucidprivateoffices.com/team-offices/] and individuals [https://www.lucidprivateoffices.com/office-space/], along with meeting rooms [https://www.lucidprivateoffices.com/meeting-rooms/] and virtual offices [https://www.lucidprivateoffices.com/virtual-offices/]. They operate locations across Austin [https://www.lucidprivateoffices.com/texas/austin/], Dallas–Fort Worth [https://www.lucidprivateoffices.com/texas/dallas/], Houston [https://www.lucidprivateoffices.com/texas/houston/], Atlanta [https://www.lucidprivateoffices.com/georgia/atlanta/], Phoenix [https://www.lucidprivateoffices.com/arizona/phoenix/], and Nashville [https://www.lucidprivateoffices.com/tennessee/nashville/].

27. How to use AI in your business with Justin Moran

Justin Moran is the founder of WorkspaceMA, a five-location coworking operation just outside Boston with around 200 private offices. He's 51, has a sales background, and has never written a line of code. In the last four months, Claude tells him he's written close to 200,000 lines of it. Justin joins this episode to share a recap and follow-up of our AI panel at GWA Immersive in Toronto. We get practical about how we're putting AI to work across marketing and operations, and where any operator should start. In this episode, we cover what's possible and what we're seeing making an impact, including: * How Justin built custom internal tools, including a proposal builder, an attorney-approved license agreement generator, and an infrastructure issue logger, without writing any code * The "tell Claude to write the prompt" approach that lets non-technical operators build real tools by voice * How Justin rebuilt his five-year-old website in a single rainy weekend in Claude Design * How Kevin designed and coded a fully branded newsletter for Shift Workspaces in Claude Design, then dropped it straight into Mailchimp * Taylor's repeatable system for turning one idea into blog, email, LinkedIn, and Instagram content while keeping brand voice consistent and avoiding AI slop If you run a coworking or flexible office business and you've wondered how to put AI to work in a meaningful way, this conversation is worth your time. Want to connect with Justin Moran? Find him on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/justinmoran/%20] and check out WorkspaceMA [https://workspacema.com/]. By the way, you can also: * Check us out on YouTube [https://youtube.com/@CoworkingMarketing] * Download all free tools, templates, and resources from 2 Marketers and a Coworking Podcast [https://coworking.marketing/resources] 🛠️ About 2 Marketers and a Coworking Podcast Hosted by Kevin Whelan [https://www.linkedin.com/in/whelankevin/] of Everspaces [https://everspaces.com/] and Taylor Mason [https://www.linkedin.com/in/taylor-mason-37a94a58/] of Talemaker [https://www.talemaker.ca/], 2 Marketers and a Coworking Podcast dives deep into marketing tips, tools, insights, and strategies you can actually use to grow your coworking business.  🔔 Hit subscribe to make sure you don't miss an episode.

26. From "cool coworking space" to multi-state operator with Alex Hughes

Alex Hughes is the founder of CENTRL Office, an 11-location flexible office brand built across Portland, Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles over the last decade.  He started as a real estate broker who got dared into coworking by a landlord, and grew CENTRL from a single Pearl District location into one of the most respected operators on the West Coast. This is a conversation about what it actually takes to grow a flexible office brand across multiple states without losing the feel of the original neighborhood location. In Episode 26, Alex gets into how he built CENTRL from one Pearl District location into a multi-state operator, including: * The origin story behind CENTRL, and the landlord who "dared" Alex to put his money where his mouth was * Why CENTRL evolved from leases to management agreements, and the reframe at the heart of how Alex structures every deal * The Montessori approach Alex uses to build mixed-stage communities of startups, enterprise tenants, and established companies in the same space * Why CENTRL invested in serious branding from day one with just a single location, and how that decision compounded over the next decade * Where flex is heading next, and why enterprise tenants are driving most of the growth most operators have been waiting for If you're running, scaling, or partnering with landlords on a flexible office operation, this conversation is worth your time. Want to connect with Alex Hughes? Find him on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-hughes-9a804327/] and check out CENTRL Office [https://centrloffice.com/] By the way, you can also: * Check us out on YouTube [https://youtube.com/@CoworkingMarketing] * Download all free tools, templates, and resources from 2 Marketers and a Coworking Podcast [https://coworking.marketing/resources] 🛠️ About 2 Marketers and a Coworking Podcast Hosted by Kevin Whelan [https://www.linkedin.com/in/whelankevin/] of Everspaces [https://everspaces.com/] and Taylor Mason [https://www.linkedin.com/in/taylor-mason-37a94a58/] of Talemaker [https://www.talemaker.ca/], 2 Marketers and a Coworking Podcast dives deep into marketing tips, tools, insights, and strategies you can actually use to grow your coworking business.  🔔 Hit subscribe to make sure you don't miss an episode.

25. Building success by throwing out the playbook with Chiko Abengowe

Chiko Abengowe is the founder of Perfect Office Solutions, a portfolio of 25 coworking and flexible office locations that generates over $125,000 per month in virtual mail revenue alone.  He built his first location without knowing the coworking industry existed, scaled to 18 locations before attending his first GWA conference, and created an unconventional business model focused on affordability, flexibility, and entrepreneurial tenants.  This conversation reveals how he did it without following anyone's playbook. In Episode 25, Chiko breaks down the systems, incentives, and marketing strategies that let him scale without typical tools like Google Ads, corporate pricing, or traditional coworking norms. Plus, he gets into guerrilla marketing, virtual mail dominance, and performance-driven team structures, including: * How he filled his first locations with outbound cold calls, guerrilla yard signs on weekends, and Facebook Marketplace listings instead of paid ads. He made 100 calls a day asking one question: "Are you paying too much for rent?" * Why he welcomes hair stylists, lash techs, massage therapists, and braiders to rent private offices at Perfect Office, how that became a recruiting channel, and why it keeps his pricing model sustainable across all tenant types. * The exact staff bonus structure he applies across all of Perfect Offices’ services and how it turned virtual mail from an operational complaint into $1.5 million in annual revenue.  * How marketing competitions every three months encourage top performers to teach their strategies to teammates, creating a built-in training system that raises the performance floor across all 25 locations. * Why he staffs every location with three people, two of whom are roving managers responsible for five to eight locations each, and how that model keeps overhead low while maintaining service quality. * The contract he pitched to his mom in high school to create his own incentive program (and how he went from a 2.0 to a 4.0 and earned a Bill Gates scholarship). If you run a coworking business and think you need to follow the standard playbook to scale, this episode will show you a completely different path. Want to connect with Chiko? Find him on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/chiko-abengowe-6124452] and check out [https://goperfectoffice.com]Perfect Office Solutions [https://goperfectoffice.com/]. By the way, you can also: * Check us out on YouTube [https://youtube.com/@CoworkingMarketing] * Download all free tools, templates, and resources from 2 Marketers and a Coworking Podcast [https://coworking.marketing/resources] 🛠️ About 2 Marketers and a Coworking Podcast Hosted by Kevin Whelan [https://www.linkedin.com/in/whelankevin/] of Everspaces [https://everspaces.com/] and Taylor Mason [https://www.linkedin.com/in/taylor-mason-37a94a58/] of Talemaker [https://www.talemaker.ca/], 2 Marketers and a Coworking Podcast dives deep into marketing tips, tools, insights, and strategies you can actually use to grow your coworking business.  🔔 Hit subscribe to make sure you don't miss an episode.