Award-Worthy Workspaces: The Secret Sauce Behind MyWorkSpot Named Workplace of the Year at the Hustle Awards 2024, MyWorkSpot, a Maidenhead based flexible remote work platform, is redefining workspaces with its innovative design and dynamic community, creating the perfect environment for businesses to thrive and grow.

Entrepreneur UK talks to co-founder David Johnston about community driven growth and how the right environment and community can "significantly impact a business's growth and success."

What unique features of MyWorkSpot do you think contributed to its Workplace of the Year Award win?

That's of course one for the judging panel to confirm! We'd like to think it has been our own ability to continue to grow as a business in terms of locations, team and financials (pre and post-COVID), while staying true to our principal goal of creating inspiring workspaces for our business customers and through our services helping them to thrive and grow.

How do you help startups thrive and what one feature is a game-changer for early-stage startups at MyWorkSpot

As with any workplace or indeed any venue where different people get together -be it sports, leisure, retail, etc.- we believe it is very much the environment created at MyWorkSpot that makes the difference for startups. Environment can only be created by people which at MyWorkSpot includes a fantastic range of businesses across sectors from brand new startups through to employees of super large corporations bringing differing perspectives, relationships and indeed commercial opportunities under one roof. You just don't get that at a normal one company office and people seem to love it. "People" also means having the right MyWorkSpot Community staff to help create that atmosphere and connect the community be it informally or through set events or in-office activities, such as the bi-weekly My Work Spot "Take 15" where we encourage members to get together over coffee and treats.

Of course you need to have a combination of factors such as the right office location, the facilities, a combination of work areas and affordable membership options which are also flexible and scalable for startups as they grow; but ultimately it is the environment created. The analogy might be that of a restaurant. It might have fantastic food, but without the people, customers and staff, you'd probably prefer to get a takeaway!

How does MyWorkSpot's flexible workspace model benefit entrepreneurs who are scaling their businesses?

We of course hate losing any customers and on the rare occasion that we do, it is often for the right reason. Without giving away names, we've had a number of companies who have started in a MyWorkSpot location, but at some point after scaling they decide to open their own office space or are acquired and move elsewhere. We see this as actually a reason to celebrate and MyWorkSpot is delighted to be part of their growth story!

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What's one common mistake startups make when using coworking spaces, and how can they avoid it?

Not a mistake necessarily just of startups, but a pet peeve (based on feedback) are those people who decide to host video conference calls in open areas without using headphones. Not cool and we've had to send a few strategic messages out!

What were some surprising challenges in creating MyWorkSpot, and how did you tackle them?

The obvious challenges when starting a coworking company like MyWorkSpot from scratch are the costs in terms of funding and fitting out the office space(s) themselves. Ultimately it is property-based business and however the service is badged those fundamentals remain.

However, like any business it is about finding and establishing your customer base. We knew theoretically that the market trends were pointing towards more flexible working and flexible office terms, but theory doesn't pay the rent. We spent quite a bit of time before opening our first office officially, hosting coworking days at the local rugby club to find and understand the market.

Perhaps most surprising in the early days was the need to educate our potential customers in terms of what our service was and how we differed from the more traditional model of leasing office space. When we opened our first location in Maidenhead back in 2017, the whole flexible office and coworking proposition was a lot less known and established certainly outside of London. That has changed a lot over the past 7 years as the sector has grown throughout the UK especially post COVID.

How has winning the Workplace of the Year award shaped your future plans for the workspace and company culture?

I think the award has validated that we must be doing something right with our team and for our customers. It was especially nice as we were being benchmarked against some other really fantastic operators.