GCUC Podcast - Jonathan O’Byrne, Co-Founder of The Coworking Institute

Speaker A: Foreign. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to a special edition of the Jucy podcast. I'm your host, Lizzy Lim, founder of Juicy. Today is a little different. My guest isn't just a guest. He is my new business partner in the Co Working Institute. You might remember Jonathan o' Byrne from an earlier episode where we talked about his books on the coworking industry. Or from him speaking at, uh, Juicy or hosting a Juicy with me in Singapore. He built an exited Collective works one of Singapore's top coworking brands and spent years running APAC strategy for iwg and along the way became one of the sharpest thinkers I know on where this industry is actually headed. This summer, Jonathan and I got together and decided to do something about a problem we've seen in the industry. The Coworking Institute is a real education platform for the coworking operators, and it's built on the idea that this industry has always run on instinct rather than by design. We're announcing it publicly right now, and I wanted Jonathan and I to have a chance to talk to you guys in depth about why we thought this had to exist, how we built it, and what people need to know if they want to get started. Started with us this year. Welcome back, Jonathan.

Speaker B: Thanks, Liz. Pleasure to be here.

Speaker A: Oh, I'm so glad you're here. So what inspired you to make that phone call to me in June?

Speaker B: I think it was actually before June,

Speaker A: but, um, no, it was June because I was in Vietnam.

Speaker B: Oh, sorry. Well, first of all, because you were in my part of the world. Um, so. So what, what inspired me to make. Make that phone call? Well, I think, Liz, last year I wrote the book after coworking because I realized that coworking had hit this sort of pivot point and it was becoming core. A core CRE skill set. Um, and I've been off doing other ventures and other things, but I keep getting pulled back in to coworking advisory. Whether it's helping coworking spaces sell exit. Um, I'm consulting with one at the moment that's scaling really interesting space. But I keep talking to founders and I keep going, wait, this again? We're still solving this again. And, um, so I, I called you up because I just went, you know what? There's a lot of education in coworking, and you have been on a mission to educate the industry for the last 15 years. Um, but the challenge is, is that conferences are great at, ah, creating community, pulling you together, but sometimes you actually need a bit more depth, you need a bit more time Spent with somebody to walk through, hold your hand, have some mentoring, that kind of thing. And I, and I called you up cause I said, uh, is there something we could do around conferences, um, on a demand or cohort base to actually educate people? And I said the industry is kind of missing an mba because we all talk about how difficult it is to run coworking spaces, how complicated they are, how multifaceted they are. But the interesting thing about the industry is the answer to all of this complication is held by a few. I mean, there might be a dozen people who've had multimillion dollar exits in the coworking industry.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: And those are the people that truly have mastered the art of the deal, the art of the lease, the art of customer service, the art creating community, all of those things. And that the knowledge is held in such a small set of hands. And I thought, you know what, Wouldn't it be awesome if we got all of our friends together? Because you and I grew up in this industry together. And between my network in Asia, your network in North America and Europe, we kind of are two degrees of separation from pretty much all the coworking founders on the planet. I, uh, thought maybe we could combine networks and we could do something really special. So that's why I called you.

Speaker A: I love it. I love it. And of course I was very intrigued because you know, one of the things that we had done was we had um, we had gotten rid of Camp Juicy, which was something we used to run at Juicy, which was like a one day primer for people who wanted to open up a co working space. But um, after Covid it was the, the numbers kept dwindling because people weren't opening post Covid. It was pretty rare. So we, we killed it temporarily. And I'm very happy to announce that actually we are bringing it back. And we will be running a version of Camp Juicy in Miami the day before Juicy, but it's going to be called Foundations formerly known as Camp Juicy. Um, so I'm really excited to bring that back, but I want to get more, more into our journey before we talk about everything that we have available. Um, so we already have conferences and consultants and podcasts, including this one. Why do we need an actual institute right now?

Speaker B: Well, coworking has become a multi billion dollar industry and it's forecast to keep growing at a really rapid rate. But we don't actually have an, an industry body. If you look at other industries, you've got an institute of marketing. You know, corporate real estate has its own institutes as well, you know, on the brokerage side, on the operation management side. And coworking is such a specific skill set. It just seemed like a gap in the market that there was nobody actually providing this and putting a stamp of quality on what is good coworking because as we know it's an incredibly diverse industry. So you know, I don't think you and I set out to create an industry body. We set out to create education. And then as we started bouncing around these ideas over the weeks and months where we were talking, um, we went, hang on, we're actually, this is more than a course. What we're talking about now is industry standards. We're talking about, you know, wouldn't it be amazing if there was a certification? And it was something. I think there was a few little pieces of insight that I've had in my career which told me this was needed. One was you mentioned I worked at IWG and I was on the partnership side of that business where they were growing the franchise and the license side of iwg. That's been going tremendously well for them. They're signing over 900 new locations annually, which is a phenomenal quantity of locations. Um, and then I had a stint doing corporate turnarounds. And it's funny, the one of the spaces I was turning around was a medium sized coworking operator that had a lot of X I G executives in it and they had tried to create a mini IWG in that business and they almost killed it because they were using skill sets that were completely the wrong size for that, that size of business. If you use multi billion dollar Systems in a $100 million business, you'll kill it. So uh, I have this rare position of I've, I started a coworking business with my savings and grew into a multi million dollar business. I've done a uh, big institutional role with IWG and I've done turnarounds at the kind of hundred million dollar size. And the answer is the what is good coworking changes with the size of the operator. And those are difficult jumps. Those are difficult jumps for people to make. And very, very few people have gone all the way through from founder to publicly, uh, listed except for, you know, uh, wework, Mark Dixon and I guess Industrious have kind of reverse IPO'd through CBRE. So, so I see the coworking skill set as becoming critical in corporate real estate. But right now, how do we hire people who are accredited? How do we know that people are good at what they're doing, how do we make sure people in the industry are keeping up to date with the latest, uh, trends and changes and advances in technology. So that's why there's a need for, um, for an institute, some, somebody to kind of go, actually this is the standard. Let's try and hold ourselves to it.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think, you know, it's. I love it so much because as you know, I've always like, been trying to push this industry more of a business, um, because my goal in life is to help coworking spaces be better and do better so that they can grow and thrive, so that we can make a dent in the loneliness epidemic. And this is just another thing that can help the operators and their teams and their people next level and run a better business because at the end of the day, that's what we need to be doing to help people thrive. Um, so walk me through how the institute is set up, uh, what does it do and what can people tap into today?

Speaker B: So I will answer that question, but I want to just pick up on something you said first around solving the, solving the loneliness, um, epidemic. The challenge right now is if you want to get into coworking, if you want to start a coworking space, where do you go? You know, there are some books that have been written on it. There are some existing courses that will give you kind of a little kickstart. You can go to one of the conferences, they happen a few times a year. But outside of the really big operators, the really big franchises where you're spending a couple of million dollars opening an IWG center or a Venture X center, there isn't really deep institutional training in coworking. So that's the first thing which is we know this is an operationally complex business. We know for that reason, coworking spaces are very hard to sell because typically they only sell to other operators or corporate real estate because somebody needs to have the skillset to run them. So there is this real problem of there's a lot of people trying to get into the market now. There isn't a lot of good education and there isn't a lot of good exit pathways. And the answer to all of these things is education. So when you said, what have we got now? Uh, where the Co Working Institute started with this idea of a co working MBA. So we've designed a 10 module MBA which covers everything from niching and product, uh, through community stickiness, but also the stuff that isn't taught, like mergers and acquisitions in coworking, because there's Specific use of, of corporate structuring. You know, we've got some amazing lecturers coming in teaching the art of the deal, people who've sold their business for millions of dollars, teaching us how they did it or how they raised funding. And I think that's probably the next thing which is really critical with the Co Working Institute was when I called you up I said I didn't want this to be Liz and Jonathan's version of what coworking is. I said let's get together everybody we know, let's find the best person on community, the best person on deal making, the best person on corporate real estate and, and let's get them to lecture on each of these cohorts. So all 10 modules in the co working MBA are delivered by industry experts in those fields. And we have two other, what I call X modules, so cross modules. One of them is in AI. So we have a leading AI expert who had his own AI practice, who's also developing some executive education courses for us which are amazing. I am learning so much building these courses with him. I thought I was a pro user but I'm getting schooled every time, every time I speak to him. And the other X is we have one on mental health. So we're going to be doing some work around actually making sure the people in the MBA are focusing on their mental health and the mental health of their teams. Because the frontline work and coworking can be really demanding. Leading frontline teams can be really demanding. And you know, part of being a good leader is making sure that you have that toolkit as well. So um, and that was something, you know, it's important to both of us that we have that sort of mental health link as well. So Co Working MBA is our flagship. We have the coworking foundations which are ah, being delivered both as an in person event right before Juicy as you mentioned and I would love to start doing that before more Juicy's internationally. But we're also going to be uh, delivering foundations online so that if you can't make it to the event or it doesn't coincide nicely, you'll be able to do the foundations. The whole point of the foundation program is so many um, mistakes in coworking are expensive and they're made up front. You mess up your interior design, you mess up your leasing deal, all that stuff is baked in at the very beginning, the first few months of operating and it's really unforgiving. Messing up a bad floor plan and trying to remediate it costs hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars depending on the size of the space. So the point of foundations is let's stop you making expensive mistakes in the beginning. And the point of the MBA is let's get you to mastery. Let's get you delivering amazing products, amazing services, leading amazing teams, partnering, joint venturing. You know, we're entering into this incredible period of consolidation and coworking. I keep getting called about roll ups. You know, would I help facilitate a roll up? Would I be the CEO of a rollup? And it's happening. But the industry needs to get to a size where it starts to become interesting for institutional private equity, but to better structure that. People running coworking spaces need to have a better understanding of corporate M and A, which this is. You know, as we talked about you mentioned earlier, we have to get this wonderful business full of lovely people. Um, we've got to give them the street smarts and the business smarts to actually scale as the industry scales. Yeah, so that's a few of them. And then in addition we've got executive education, which are both things like, you know, few, uh, briefings. So we have an um, AI briefing for leaders which is specifically on how to manage AI deployments. It's very high level how to manage AI deployments through your business and make sure that they're running safely. It's kind of a need to know, urgent briefing for uh, coworking leaders. And then we've also got longer executive education programs, like a 14, uh, week program in AI for people to build out their own AI workflows again tailored towards the coworking operators. And within the institute we're building like a little digital lab. We're putting together all the software kit of a coworking operator would use. So the billing, the space management, all that kind of stuff. So we have our own tech stack that you can play with and see how we use it on those programs, um, without messing with the one that's actually running your coworking space. So a few things like that, which are really cool and I'm really excited about and as you said, we've been head down for months on this. Um, but yeah, we, I can't believe we're launching with such a comprehensive course portfolio from day one.

Speaker A: Yeah, I'm really, really excited about it. And you know, if you go to coworkinginstitute.com you can see a incredible amount of information. Do you want to tell people about this insane wiki you put together?

Speaker B: Um, yeah, there's a few things on the Co working Institute website. So uh, I did build a wiki. There's a little public preview of the wiki. So you can't see the whole thing on the website but you can see the front end of it. So we've essentially cataloged all the vendors in coworking. So whatever industry you're in, the vendors are there, there are a few get started guides and coworking things like that. But the actual wiki for our members is even more comprehensive. And the other thing we've put together is a huge open Educational resources section where we've scoured the Internet and we've put together, we've put together all the best reports that we can find, all the best books, all the best podcasts, all the best substacks. Um, all there is an easy to access reference. Everything links straight through to so you can subscribe. So if you were new to the industry and you wanted to get started for free in coworking, you can just go to our Open Education resources, go through subscribe to everything. And I've got a huge database. I think we've already got a hundred and uh, like 160, 170 key people and coworking in it as well. And you can find them all on LinkedIn. Um, so yeah, so we've done a lot of pulling together of our knowledge both from Juicy and my knowledge from the industry, um, and making what's free and available, Free and available and um, but then also keeping, keeping some of the best stuff uh, secret for our members. But there's a lot there, there's, there's hundreds of hours of reading and media that's available. Free.

Speaker A: Yeah, for sure. It's, it's incredible y'. All, I can't wait for you to check it out. It's just a wonderful database for our industry and um, I think it's going to be super helpful. So um, a couple of things I just wanted to clarify for our audience. Um, if you want to join foundations, you can get ticket to it through Juicy on Juicy Co. And our website should be live by the time this comes out. Meaning our North America website so that you can buy a ticket to camp. We've got a really great affordable price on those. Um, but the room will probably sell out. So if you want to get your foundations down, you should get a ticket to Juicy Miami. And then in addition to that I'm very excited about some of this AI education. We do have a very short leadership course which you can just go and buy and attend from there after you've attended that. You can then apply to go join the much smaller course which I'm sure will sell out it, which is the 14 course, which I can't wait to take. Um, and I know we're gonna have a ton of demand for that one and if we need to run it multiple times, of course we will. Um, and then we do have the mba, which is starting in mid January, but we are going to run a very small group that we're going to put through the entire program in five months instead of 10 months so that we can test our curriculum and also our lecturers. So if you want to get a coworking MBA at a incredibly affordable price, we're only offering four spots and you can apply for that online as well. And that's going to start pretty quick and be very intensive. So think of it as like taking a drink from a fire hose. That's what that class will be like. Hey everybody, I am breaking in to let you know that we have three conferences coming up. Uh, in September, we're going to be in Cape Town for the inaugural Juicy Africa. It's going to be amazing. Can't wait for it. Please join us September 16th to the 17th and you can find tickets and information on Africa Juicy Co, also London, one of the best coworking cities in the world. We are back this time at the Together space and that will be October 8th and 9th. If you want to see what coworking excellence looks like, you need to head to London. And then in April, we are going to be in the beautiful city of Miami the 5th through the 7th. We've got a amazing venue. We're already working on a fantastic agenda and that is not something you want to miss. If you want the best guaranteed price for all of these, you should definitely join Juicy membership where you get great pricing, resources, information, webinars, all kinds of things. It is the way to be connected to juicy. 36524 7. Okay, back to the show

Speaker B: 100%. So we're calling that batch zero. So batch zero is really special. It's um. So to be clear, the coworking MBA curriculum is written and we're putting all of our lecturers through the MBA program because we want them to be fully versed on everything and how their modules all connect together and the pre work that will have happened by the time students get to their individual modules. So this batch, Batch Zero, you'll be going through it with our lecturers, which is a veritable who's who of the coworking Industry and a very tiny accountability group of students. So that one's going to be really exciting, really great one to get involved with. Um, I will give Liz a link for it to put in the show notes because batch Zero is not broadly available. So. And it is application only. So we'll be picking, um, a few people to join that. And anybody who wants to apply to Batch Zero, but doesn't make it will open spots to you in batch one, which is, Liz mentions, opens in January and goes at a slightly slower pace, but they both will be great. And the other point just on your, the 14 week AI program, that course is strictly limited to 14 places because we want to make sure that we're giving everybody individual attention. So a big part of the philosophy with the Corky Institute is that these courses are not like sign up online and watch some videos. You know, they're live taught classes. There'll be work in between the classes and if you need help, we'll actually book time with the lecturers to go. Okay, walk me through. Where are you getting stuck? Let's look at your individual systems. So some of our higher ticket programs is. There's a big, a big component of mentorship in them. So that's just something else I wanted to emphasize. Yeah, getting all excited. Excited, Liz.

Speaker A: I know, I know. And in the cohort, well, in the mba, there's also core cohorts. So you have people who walk with it hand in hand with you through it, which when I got my graduate work, that was really, really important to me. And at the end of this, you do get to put up that you are accredited coworking MBA on LinkedIn or wherever you want to put it, which I think is really exciting. So let's get real concrete here for a minute. Jonathan, who belongs in foundations, who's ready for executive education, and who should be taking the coworking mba, which is really three questions in one.

Speaker B: I can, I can take it. I can hit all three questions in one. Liz. I'm used, I'm. We're friends. I'm used to this. Um, so foundations is, you're new to coworking, you're thinking of opening a co working space, you've just been hired by a coworking space. Potentially foundations would be a great. If you're a coworking space and you want to train up your team, potentially you could put them through foundations to give them a chance to just understand the industry a bit more. Um, we've had some inquiries from some people in business going, we want to Put, uh, non frontline teams so people who are like in finance through foundations to give them a bit more of a rounded understanding. So foundations is, you're new to coworking. Executive education is kind of open to everyone. The real target we have in mind is our busy senior leaders who don't have time to do a full MBA program but want to keep enriching their skills. And they can literally just go, I want to know more about marketing, I want to know more about AI, I want to know more about this. So they can just target and pick the individual areas they want to jump into. So those courses are generally shorter, um, more accessible, less coursework. The coworking MBA is targeted at people who've been in the industry at least two years. You need to have a solid foundation of what coworking is and how it works to do the coworking mba, because the MBA is all about advanced learning. So there are, there are other programs around which are kind of entry points into co working or you can actually read a lot online about coworking or listen to podcasts and that will give you a good foundation. But the MBA is really there for, um, coworking founders, senior leadership team in coworking who want to advance. If, if, uh, if you're, if you own a coworking business and you want to develop your team, then this is a chance to have your team mentored by CEOs or former CEOs of other co working spaces and take them through the kind of rounding out of all of the skills that generally founders tend to accumulate, but the senior team tend to miss out on. But honestly, I think every coworking founder would benefit from the co working mba. And it's because, because we've got experts in each of those subjects. We went out to try and find somebody who knew more than us on every single subject. And we're trying to get a global perspective. The other element here was, it was very important to me that the Co working Institute was not North American focused. It needed because a lot of the education candidly is North American focused. And coworking is different in Europe. It's different in Asia, it's different in Africa. You know, you look at the operators like office and people like that in India. Those coworking models don't work outside of India. They would just break in other markets. But conversely, if you tried to run coworking spaces in the US like you do in Hong Kong, that just wouldn't work either. But there are amazing things you can learn from other operators. In other markets. Creativity and deal structure. Creativity in service offering. Um, yeah. So that's the piece that I'm really excited about. The fact that we have a global curriculum, we have global lecturers and I think it'd be really exciting.

Speaker A: Yeah. And if you have not been contacted by us about being a guest lecturer and you want to, there's also a place where you can just figure, fill out a form online for that and we'll be happy to talk to you about being a lecturer. Um, okay. So the other thing that I thought was interesting that people would be um, curious about is how we came to doing an assessment because I think you started with one avenue on the curriculum and then you kind of changed midway. And let's explain that to people because I think it's important.

Speaker B: Sure. So, um, it was important to me or important to us. I think we, we bounced around a few times on this. It was important that the, particularly the MBA and courses like the foundations were assessed courses and you didn't essentially just get a stamp of approval for attendance. It, it was important. There was comprehension, it was important, there were actions. Even the AI for Leadership program is assessed. So you have coursework, you have to build your own AI ecosystem at the end of it. The final part of the AI assessment is a show and tell day where everyone kind of posts what they've done and how they've implemented AI in their business. So it's, we can all learn from each other. I felt it was really important because part of the mission of the Co Working Institute was to increase standards of education in the industry. And we can't issue credentials like a Co Working MBA or a certified coworking foundation if we don't actually stand behind it and measure what we do. And we looked at other reference courses like the mini MBA in Marketing, the alt MBA and things like that. They're all, they're all assessed. So it was a lot more work for us. We had to build assessment rubrics and standardized assessment methods the whole way through. So it's, I mean Liz, it's, it's a real mba. Like, like the students get a handbook, they're getting documentation mailed to them when they start. There are the lectures, there's coursework in between. There's like, I'm really love you if you can get that. I'm over caffeinated and excited. Um, but like it's real. There's, there's so much work that's gone into this and we're so excited about it and you know, at this point, everybody who's reviewing the material is loving it so much. So, like, anyway, so the reason we went with assessment was because we wanted it to mean something so you'll be able to graduate with different levels. And if you don't hit a certain. If you don't hit enough points, you don't graduate. So, yeah, we wanted people to take it seriously.

Speaker A: I also really love that we're bringing in so many of our friends and folks who have even left the industry who want to come back and share their knowledge. Like, they see this as a way of giving back and, um, helping the next generation, which I think is really cool. And, like, it's also really fun because, you know, these are all people that are my friends, and it's just been fun calling them up and being like, hey, do you want to. Want to do this? And. And the results have been phenomenal. You know, we've got Craig Bowdy helping us teach. We've got Liz Simon, we've got Lisa sky, we've got Jessica Knapp. Like, we've got so many of our friends in the industry that are coming together to help us with the mba, and it's. It's going to be amazing. And then the other thing that I thought was really fun that I just wanted to touch on because, um, you know, we have utilized AI a lot to help us, you know, get information and things, but everything was, you know, reviewed by humans. But, like, would this have even been possible two years ago?

Speaker B: It would have been possible. It wouldn't have been possible to do it this fast. Ah. I, um, think, you know, Liz, you and I both have an advantage. So I've written two books, so I have a lot of material to go on. You have organized 50 conferences. You have a lot of material to go on.

Speaker A: Yeah, um, I know a thing or two.

Speaker B: Exactly. So it wasn't like we. We sat down and used AI to create everything. We used AI to help curate. I used AI to do some of the researching. So we set out research agents and bots, um, building the wiki and building the open education resources. You know, a lot of them we knew. So we'd be like, start with these people and then see what else you find. But the amazing thing about that, though, like, for example, I was trying to list all of the associations for coworking the country, specific ones, but I don't speak Japanese. But the. Because the AI agents do, they found the Japanese associations, they found the Brazilian association. So, um, so there's. So in some ways, our resources are more Complete because of AI, because they, they got past the limitations of us. But you're right, everything has been reviewed by hand. The. I can't even begin to tell you the thousands of hours that have gone into building this program. Um, but yeah, it wouldn't have been possible without AI tools. But at the same time, as you'll have heard me say this at previous coworking conferences, AI is potentially the biggest opportunity for customer service and community building, um, in the coworking industry ever. It's an incredible opportunity to get busy, work away from your team and get your team back on face to face work. But also I think this is kind of in some ways almost the philosophy with, with us, which is we're trying to make sure our lecturers are spending time with you and focus on you and that the stuff that we can codify, we've, we've got that in documentation, we've got that in handbooks.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: So no, it wouldn't have been possible or it would have taken us a couple of years to get to this point, um, for sure. Without a guy.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. So one of the outcomes is the certified coworking operator credential. Why does professional recognition matter for operators, their teams, landlords and investors, and for our industry credibility?

Speaker B: That's a really good question. And it spans end to end. So if you look at the beginning of someone's career or as, uh, spaces are trying to grow, it helps with recruitment, it helps with finding the right talent. It shows that someone's really committed to the industry and invested in a specific credential for that industry. It even, um. Liz, Even my experience working at iwg, some of the biggest coworking operators in the world struggle with finding talent. And then when they find them. IWG does have excellent internal training materials to onboard people. But like I said, it's at the moment we're. The industry is gatekeeping its education. It's kind of a unique, um, in some ways a competitive advantage with certain operators. But now that coworking is shifting and becoming part of the background of our cities, we need to have people who are trained in this. And we know it's not property management, we know it's not facilities management. It's a completely different skillset. So it needs to have some accreditation. So I think it helps with recruitment, helps with career advancement, it helps investors, uh, see that the team you have are well trained because I think, you know, there's this sort of, um. It's often said in the industry, people say, oh, it's so hard to raise money. It's not hard to raise money if you're credible. And I think actually having somebody else go, well, actually our entire team has been through the co working NDA. They're all accredited by the leading, you know, what we hope will become the leading body in the industry. And you know, so it deals with a lot of different things because it takes something which is amorphous right now, which is sort of knowledge of operating co working spaces and turns it into something that you can tangibly hold.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, I love that, Love that. So if somebody that's listening recognizes that they're kind of working too hard and they're, they're, you know, burnout, they're deciding on instinct and they're repeating the same problems and over and uh, over and over, what should they do next?

Speaker B: Well, if they're, if they're burnt out, then maybe the coworking MBA is not the right choice because they're going to get busier before they get better. But if, if you want to shift from working in your business to working on your business, then we have an application procedure for the coworking mba. So we're hand picking our cohorts partly for time zones and partly also just to make sure that people coming onto the program know enough and are resourced enough that they're going to be able to complete the mba. Um, so that's really the goal. It's, it's an opportunity to step out of your business. Think about it really strategically. And it's not just a regular business course. This is with people who are experienced, they've exited coworking businesses, you know, Liz, you've exited, I've exited. Um, and you know, or they're experts in their field. So it'll really just help you kind of come. So at the end of every kind of intensive, you'll come away with some strategic, um, implementation opportunities that you can deploy in your business in the next month. The 10 month pacing on the MBA is deliberately paced. We're going to have, you know, a couple of days of lectures and you'll have some actions that month to take away and go and implement your business. So the idea is that you start feeling the effects early and that month, one month, two months, three, you're starting to actually see and implement some best practice in your business that can help improve it. So yeah, so it's really see it as a strategic step taking your business to the next level.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. So, um, you know, one of, so we're so at on when this podcast airs. If you're interested in Batch 0, go to the notes, apply for Batch 0. You need to be very available in the next five months and make this a priority because it's, it's a dedication to get this MBA in five months. Think of it as summer school during college. It's like that. It's super intensive, very short, very fast.

Speaker B: Also we are going to be super invested in your success as our first batch. You guys have to win. So yeah, uh, just know that Liz and I will be kicking your ass if you're not actually showing up for this 100%.

Speaker A: Um, and then the other thing is you can apply for our first 10 month MBA. That's going to be in a link. You can sign up for AI Leadership. What are we calling that course? Jonathan?

Speaker B: We're still, we're still bouncing on that one.

Speaker A: Anyway, there will be a short AI course you can sign up for which

Speaker B: is an AI executive briefing. It'll be really obvious. One of them is a two hour briefing. The other one is a 14 week program.

Speaker A: But you have to apply for the 14 week and you have to have gone through the first one to get to the second one. So just FYI, that's happening. Um, and then you know, stay tuned because we are going to evolve and grow. There will be other MBAs like the MBA will be offered again probably mid to fall of next year. So we will be stacking classes. Um, we will be rolling out additional um, courses we're also offering. Some of our lecturers are able to develop courses and add to our course so that like let's say um, let's say somebody really wants to do a course on corporations and how they work well within coworking and flex space and offer that through the Coworking Institute. We're making that available and talking to some amazing people about developing additional courses for us. So this is, this is like, this is for you guys, this is for the co working world and we want to get all of this knowledge in one place and just further help everybody to succeed and grow. And yeah, yeah.

Speaker B: Can I, can I add a little bit to that on the commercials? So um, just to kind of really underscore the point that we want this to be an industry, um, an industry product. Not just Liz and Jonathan show, um, all of our lecturers are paid, they're paid a really decent hourly rate. And then people that are coming in and building programs with the Coworking Institute, we're offering a revenue share on those programs in addition to lecture fees for the hours of those delivered. So if you'd ever thought about building, um, you know, building a training program or wanted to give back all the knowledge you've accumulated in the coworking industry, consider doing it with us. We'll be the platform. We'll be the marketing distribution. For that. You'll get a royalty, or not a royalty, but a revenue share on the course that you build. And if you teach it, you'll get hours for teaching it as well. So we've actually really thought through the commercials. We think really thoughtfully on this to make sure that we're sharing success back with the experts that are lending it to the industry.

Speaker A: Love it. Love it. Yeah, but this is. This is a group project. Everybody. We need everybody's help. So hit us up. If you've got something you want to teach, we want to hear about it. Okay? So, Jonathan, I want to be cognizant of time, so I'm going to ask you my zinger of a last question, which is one you've probably heard before, because I know you occasionally listen to my podcast. What should I have asked you that?

Speaker B: I didn't m. I mean, you could have asked me how I was or, like, my morning routine.

Speaker A: Y', all, we had some technical difficulties getting started today, and I was like, there will be no pleasantries. We are going in. We are getting this done. Yeah. Okay. Jonathan, how are you?

Speaker B: No, I think. I think you nailed it, Liz. I just. For your listeners, uh, if you're not watching the video, Liz has been slightly mad this whole call, and I. And I find that really funny. So I've probably been high, too. I've been too high because of the. Of getting this recording started. No, Liz, I honestly, I think you. I think you've nailed it. I don't think we have anything else to talk about. I know, like, we've told them everything. It's. It's like, guys, it's the most comprehensive education platform.

Speaker A: I have a question for you.

Speaker B: Okay.

Speaker A: Because I think you and I disagree on this, but, like, in a good, fun, playful way.

Speaker B: Sure.

Speaker A: What do you think is going to just absolutely sell so fast? It's going to kind of blow our minds. And also, what's a course we haven't created but you're thinking about creating?

Speaker B: Oh, okay. Well, to answer to your first question is so you. Okay, clearly, I love the deep, intensive, long courses because that's what I see is missing in the industry. Whereas you love an executive briefing. You're like, tell me what I need to know in two hours.

Speaker A: I need It. Just give it to me.

Speaker B: Yeah, so, so I will say that we have you and I have some calls where I'm like, liz, we can't possibly fit that into two hours. And you're like, make it fit. Like we can do it. You kind of Steve Jobs me a little bit. You know, if, if you could, if you could pick up a curriculum and drop it in a fish tank and let air bubbles pop out, you'd be like, look, there's air between the pages. You can fit more in there.

Speaker A: Um, so.

Speaker B: Yeah, so Liz loves an executive briefing and I love the depth because I think there is so much nuance in co working and it just sometimes, you know when you go to amazing conferences and you're, you're listening to a speaker or a panel and you're just like, oh, this is so good. And then they get off the stage and you have to like run up and talk to them because you haven't quite had your feel. I've had that experience so many times and I'm just like, no, I want to, I want to be satiated. I want all the information out of this person.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: And that's why I'm so passionate about the NBA. I just, I just want people to go nuts and detailed on community, on systems, on corporate structuring, you know, because it's, it's uh, I mean, if you didn't know it before this call, I'm a huge nerd. And I just, I love that intensity and that depth. I'm also a Scorpio, so that, that all makes sense. Um, and I can't remember your second question.

Speaker A: Oh, it's. What are, what is a course you haven't told me about that you're like noodling that. You're like, ooh, you really need to. I think I really want to develop

Speaker B: X. I really think because we, we haven't managed to fit it into the foundation. And I really want to do a short course on emerging coworking business models. So we've got the, so the classic coworking model that we think of it is real estate arbitrage with workstations. And I've been sort of asking the question for a year or two going, is the workstation still the right metric in coworking? Um, with the advent of AI and there's been some interesting products like IWG in a few markets has launched what they call dyo, which is design your own. And they, they sell their offices on square meters and you can fit it how you want. So that was an interesting beginning of the shift away from workstations as the unit. Um, when I started teaching coworking 10 years ago, I said there were four models. You've got the desk arbitrage, you've got sort of a grand entrepreneur model where you're working with governments and grants. There's an event space type model. And I can't remember the fourth one was back then. But what we're seeing now is um, you know, so, uh, con, like convene type models of these sort of event space, which I see as fringe. Coworking is certainly happening. I've seen. And it's one of. I'm getting the founder of that to come in and speak and lecture a really interesting flywheel model and sort of coworking spaces for really specific niches that build and stack service businesses on top of them. Those are incredibly robust and high margin. So I think there's an interesting short course on emerging business models in coworking. And I think that would be a really interesting and eye opening course for anyone in the industry who's thinking of going, how do I diversify, how do I expand, how do I identify revenue? Or how do I do something even more relevant? So that's, that's one I want to build. It's still very much in a draft kind of stage in my mind.

Speaker A: I love that, I love that.

Speaker B: What do you want to build, Liz?

Speaker A: You know, um, I think there's a couple of like mine would all be around probably wellness and mental health. You know, how do we, how do you scale. Addressing mental health I think would be really interesting or um, going through and showing how different people have created, um, Juicy Access, which is, you know, making free therapy, um, for their members available. A lot of people do it for their staff, but they don't do it for their members. And I'd like to capture those but, but somehow also teach those. But I don't have any idea how. And then the other thing, um, is wellness, like I'm loving. I work out of a coworking space that's very focused on wellness and I love it. And so, and I love all the things popping up around wellness and longevity. And I would love to see um, a course on, you know, kind of what are some things that you could do to really change the wellness and longevity focus of your business?

Speaker B: Interesting. Yeah, yeah, it's, yeah, I would love to see those. And it's. And part of the fun is working out what do we codify, what do we capture? Yeah, particularly when it, when it's an emerging area like that where it isn't codified, you know, And I think some of these wellness and longevity focused spaces have commercial challenges because longevity and, and wellness equipment is expensive. Large occupies a lot of room. I. I don't know if I ever told you this. I did a study about putting flotation tanks into one of my centers, and we realized. Yeah, but we realized that the raised floor wasn't strong enough to put flotation tanks on, so we'd have to lift the raised floor out. And then we were going, oh, having, you know, big bags of. Of salt in the space is terrible for corrosion and cables. Um, so it's. Yeah, it is an interesting. It's an interesting thing. And also trying to separate what is a fad from what is. What is sort of scientifically based is also really interesting in that space as well, because it's, it's. These are expensive infrastructure decisions. Yeah, it would be a cool, cool course. We'll have to try and work on that one.

Speaker A: Yeah, for sure. All right, y', all, that is all the time we have for today. Thank you so much, Jonathan, for sticking with me today and for, you know, forming a company with me. I'm super flattered and I'm super excited for people to log on to the coworkinginstitute.com and see what we've been working on all summer.

Speaker B: Thank you, friend. This has been good fun.

Speaker A: You bet. Thank you for building this with me, Jonathan. It's been an absolute pleasure. Generally one of the most exciting things I've worked on in years. If you're listening and you want to learn more about the coworking Institute, all the links are down below in the show notes. Keep an eye out for enrollment details on foundation, our AI Leadership course, and the co working mba. The January cohort is coming up fast. If this episode got you excited about where coworking education is headed, please subscribe to the show and share it with an operator who needs to hear it or needs to take some courses and leave us a review. I'm Liz Elam, this is the Juicy Podcast and we'll see you next time.