Newsletter

The Companies That Market Community Don't Have It

On involvement, extraction, and getting in the kitchen together

Bernie J Mitchell

03 Nov 2025 — 9 min read

I once worked with a coworking space that had only just opened. Three people in the building. Maybe four on a good day.

All the owner talked about was ‘the community.’

At some point, I had to say to the owner, “We don’t have a community yet. We can offer early adopters to help shape one, maybe. But don’t sell what doesn’t exist.”

I see the signs on big shiny buildings everywhere now. “Let’s reimagine work!” “The community you need!” The invisible promise.

And I throw up in my mouth every time.

At one point in 2019, even my website headline read “Connection, Community, Coworking,” and I thought I was all thought leadership and so cool.

Then a group of fellow red-hot marketing buddies dismantled me and my website in a peer-to-peer working group.

I’m not cool; I’m a lovable Labrador, and what does “Connection, Community, Coworking” mean in real life? Do you think that solves anyone’s problem? No.

Because here’s what I know: The companies that market community are the ones that don’t have it.

Community isn’t a feature you add after you’ve figured out the desk pricing. It’s not something you manufacture in a brand workshop or deliver through an app.

Community exists when people are actually doing something together. Your Saturday running club.

The regulars at that DJ’s bar.
The people who always show up to London Coworking Assembly meetups and say, “It’s nice to be with people on the same journey. When it was just me...”
Even far-right groups protesting outside Essex hotels are a community. I’m not celebrating them, but they’re real. They showed up. They’re involved.

A real community is people doing something together; otherwise, it’s nothing at all.

Stephen Covey has a phrase I’ve been thinking about since I first read The 8th Habit fifteen years ago:

“Without involvement, there is no commitment.”

That’s one of my favourite lines that cuts through all the corporate bullshit.

When you market ‘community’, you’re asking people to consume it. Show up, pay the membership fee, receive the benefit of “belonging” like it’s a perk in a subscription package.

But consumption isn’t involvement. And without any involvement, there’s no commitment.

Which means there is no community. Just a room full of people who happened to buy the same product.

People Have Replaced Brands

Scott Galloway has been saying for years that the era of the brand is dead.

His core argument? “Product is the new brand.” The actual experience you deliver matters more than the messaging around it.

For me, this is the line that matters most: “People have replaced brands.”

Not the logo. Not the marketing. The actual human beings delivering the experience.

Starbucks doesn’t create community. The barista behind the counter creates community.

This is the same argument Jon Alexander makes about the citizen story versus the consumer story.

The consumer story says you have agency because you get to pick from options someone else created. The citizen story says real agency is shaping the options in the first place.

Scott’s saying it from the business side. Jon’s saying it from the citizenship side. But they’re describing the same shift.

People have replaced brands = Citizens replace consumers.

The old game — spend big on advertising, create brand recognition, convince people to buy based on the promise — that’s over.

People who pay attention in business have stopped wasting money on pre-purchase marketing and started investing in the actual experience: the space itself, the welcome, the relationships, the ongoing care.

That’s where community lives. In the post-purchase phase. In involvement. In commitment.

Corporate coworking spaces are still playing the old game. Marketing community. Selling belonging.

Independent spaces? We’re living in the post-purchase phase. Building relationships. Involving people. Creating the conditions for actual commitment.

The difference is everything.

What Involvement Actually Looks Like

I recorded a podcast last week with Shamena Nurse-Kingsley. She is co-founder of Cowo & Crèche, a faith-forward coworking space in Alexandria, Virginia.

Shamena said something that filled me with delight, because I think this too:

“People are still good. I’m still a believer, Bernie, that people are good.”

She chooses what she calls “connection over convenience.” She could make her space transactional, efficient, and purely commercial. But she doesn’t. She leans into the relationship. Into trust. Into the messy, vulnerable work of actually knowing the people in her space.

In another Coworking Values Podcast last year, Shamena called her space “Switzerland” — a politically neutral, drama-free haven, a refuge. But in our conversation, she raised a question that gets to the heart of what “connection over convenience” actually costs:

“What happens when your members need more than just desks? How far can you go before you’re overextended?”

This is the question we’re exploring at this month’s Unreasonable Connection — our online monthly gathering for coworking community builders.

This isn’t networking. It’s recognition.

The moment when you realise your quiet summer wasn’t personal failure — it’s an industry-wide pattern.

When struggling with profitability stops feeling like a secret shame and becomes a shared challenge we’re all navigating.

When figuring out AI shifts from overwhelming isolation to collaborative problem-solving.

People join these calls feeling like they’re the only ones who care. They leave knowing they’re part of something bigger.

One community builder told me it’s become their favourite hour of the month. Not because we have all the answers, but because none of us has to face the questions alone.

This month’s call: Based on Shamena’s insight from the Coworking Values Podcast - RSVP for November’s Unreasonable Connection HERE.

What Commercial Savvy Looks Like

Stephen Phillips, cofounder of Neighbors and Nomads showed me what commercial savvy looks like when it’s combined with genuine hospitality.

They ask for Google reviews. Simple enough. But the way they do it matters.

About half of the members of Stephen’s place are ‘digital nomads’ and half are from the local community.

Stephen’s team waits until the last day of a digital nomad member’s stay. They approach them while they’re still at their desk, before they leave and forget. They say, “Would you be up for leaving us a Google review?”

If the person says yes, they offer them a coffee as thanks.

Not “If I give you a coffee, will you leave a review?” That’s a transaction. That’s extraction.

“You want to help because you’ve had a good experience. Here’s a coffee as thanks.” That’s hospitality. That’s involvement.

Stephen called it “commercial savvy with genuine hospitality.” Without the hospitality, commercial savvy becomes cold and calculating.

Scale Becomes Extraction

Here’s what makes me rage:

Even well-intentioned businesses that started with the right formula often end up more focused on scale and growth than connection, meaning, and lasting change.

I’m fine if you choose to run a scalable business. But there’s a point where scale becomes extraction and colonialism, and it’s very hard to work out when you’ve passed that line.

And if you can’t work out if you’ve passed that line, maybe don’t call your business “The Colony” or anything with “Colonial” in the title. It’s 2025. Read the room or read Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad - it’s a short book.

When I worked in the restaurant industry, I knew people with one or two restaurants. They were great. Then it became a cookie-cutter growth thing and all the soul evaporated — both theirs and the food.

In person-to-person businesses, the higher you scale, the more fragmented your energy gets.

Software is a scale business. It’s about the product and service.

Coworking is a contact sport. And the margins are low. When you’re a local, owner-managed coworking space, the stress and strength of running your business is exhausting. There’s very little margin for error.

All the coworking businesses I have the strongest connection with are owner-managed or run by local authorities.

There are examples of multi-site operations — I’ve always found TownSq, to be very conscious of how they show up in the neighbourhood.

The first twelve-week in-person Urban MBA course was run at ARC Club in Hackney in 2021.

I also know operations that turn up in neighbourhoods in London with a formula:

They buy up competitors’ names in SEO.
They throw money at advertising in tube stations.
They outspend and price out the local owner-managed businesses.

No matter how well-intentioned people are — including me — at some point, price and convenience become deciding factors.

In an economic shitstorm, with the UK Labour government with big business’s cock firmly in its mouth, life for micro and small businesses is even harder.

We need to reignite the reclaim coworking conversation.

Local coworking spaces can be more than just a place to open your laptop.

“It’s not about desks and Wifi,” as Ai likes to tell you. 🙄

Hands down Urban MBA is one of the most important things in my universe.

Urban MBA is a cash-strapped charity with a coworking space. They’ve had incredible support from people in the London Coworking Assembly— including Caleb Parker, technologywithin, Charlie Harris, Amy Morgan, and Guenaelle Watson to name a few.

Urban MBA has fought hard for years. Because, like it or not, the truth is Brown and Black people and women get under 5% of funding or grants in the UK.

2% for all-female teams. Less than 1% for Black founders.
Black female entrepreneurs? 0.02% of capital between 2009 and 2019.
Less than one penny of every pound invested.

But Urban MBA is running workshops, teaching local residents how to use AI to battle the establishment and the system. AND they’re showing the 25-minute ACTionism movie during Global Entrepreneurship Week.

Some of the people who’ve gone through the Urban MBA curriculum have generated significant revenue, such as “Saint Giovanni De La Mode,” created by Rody, one of the first individuals to complete the Urban MBA program with Kofi Oppong.

Others are running their own food businesses, marketing agencies, fashion brands, consulting firms, event companies, fitness and coaching services, gaming companies, and the list goes on.

(And I’m sure they’re doing their own little bit of extraction here and there — it’s inevitable in business.)

But when you grow up in tough circumstances in Hackney, like many of these people did, and work together with your peers at Urban MBA, this is the story you can learn to write for yourself.

But if big shiny businesses turn up in your neighbourhood, price you out of the market, gentrify the whole area and don’t mind fucking you - with ‘No Vasaline’ as my good friend Ice Cube likes to say - you’ll be too exhausted to meet other people, let alone carry on the fight.

So then, all those venture capital companies funding coworking companies — some of which also back battle tech and drones in Gaza — will win, and you’ll end up like Bob, whom I wrote about a couple of weeks ago.

There’s the subject story. There’s the consumer story. And then there’s the citizen story — which is how coworking gets reclaimed.

People love to rant about hospitality and coworking these days.

I especially love to rant about hospitality and coworking, I’m just not as accurate at it as Ian Minor - who majors in it.

To continue the analogy: with coworking and society as they are now, we can obediently continue to pick from the menu we’ve been given, or we can get in the kitchen together and create our own.

Getting in the Kitchen

In February, we’re gathering 150 coworking community builders in London for Unreasonable Connection Going Live! — by the London Coworking Assembly and Coworking Values Podcast.

We’re not delivering an event to you. We’re building it with you.

We’re creating a co-creation list — people who’ll help shape the event before it happens. Because involvement creates commitment.

When you help build it, you’re invested in the people in the room. And those connections strengthen throughout 2026 and beyond.

This is a day of working together to share what we’re learning: how to build coworking spaces that are sustainable as businesses and create connection, meaning, and change in a world of division, wealth inequality, and uncertainty.

Many of you already know each other. This event deepens those bonds and creates new ones.

Want to co-create with us? Join the list

Join in!

Join this month’s Unreasonable Connection call and explore Shamena’s question about how far you can go before you’re overextended. RSVP here.

The Art of Finding Your People to Take Collective Action — Watch the trailer and request a screening

Join Marko Orel, Helga Moreno, and Jeannine van der Linden on November 27th online as they discuss the development of coworking support for Ukraine since the Russian invasion on February 24, 2022. RSVP here