Storytelling to Build Trust: 5 Tips for Coworking Space Operators

This post originally appeared on catjohnson.co

Storytelling is one of the best ways to connect with your target market.

Whether someone is reading a blog post, following your social media feeds, listening to you on a podcast, or watching a video, they want to connect with you.

We want to see ourselves in each other.

We want to feel a sense of trust.

We want to see our shared humanity.

Our humanness is what connects us.

Differences fall away when we meet each other as humans.

Sharing Our Humanness

Stories are a very good way to share our humanness and show people who we are.

If we as business owners and operators want to engage people on a human level, storytelling should be a core part of our marketing.

Forget blasting advertising messages into the void, hoping they land on someone who cares.

Instead, share the stories of your coworking space, your community, your business and yourself.

Here are five ways to build trust through storytelling:

1. Start Early

Resist the temptation to wait until everything is perfect with your space, community and self before you share your story.

Let us in on your journey. Your journey is your story.

Let us see what you’re working on. Let us see the messy, imprecise work-in-progress.

We want to root for you.

Don’t wait until things are perfect before you let us in.

If you wait too long, you’ll open your (perfect) doors to crickets. And nobody wants that.

Things will never be perfect in your space and community, so start telling your perfectly imperfect, oh-so-human story today.

2. Be Real

Are you brave enough to be who you are?

It’s a serious question.

Being real in this world takes courage.

It’s far easier to hide and pretend to be someone we’re not than to step into our real selves—in all our multi-dimensional, sometimes contradictory brilliance.

Think of the people you most admire in the world.

Go ahead, think of a few now.

I’m willing to bet that one of the things you admire about them is that they are who they are. They don’t pretend to be perfect. They’re not faking it until they make it. They’re real and true to themselves.

Am I right?

Let’s do that.

3. Share what You Know

The best way to grow a community around you is to be helpful and generous.

Take a service mindset in your life and business.

Share what you know, help where you can.

Don’t save all that knowledge for your book, or course, or whatever.

Start today.

You can’t keep what you don’t give away.

4. Express Your Values and Vision

You’re in coworking for a reason that goes beyond making money, right?

If money were your sole aim, there are industries with much higher profit margins.

Right?

So why are you doing this work?

How does coworking align with your values? What’s your vision for your space and community? What’s the dream that wakes you up in the night because it’s so brilliant?

I want to know.

And so does your community.

Let us in on the beauty of your values and vision.

The world needs your magic.

5. Showcase your Community

Your community is your coworking space.

Without your members, your space would be a dull, empty building.

Even the most fabulous design in the world—the hippest mural, the comfiest chairs and the craftiest beverages on tap won’t turn empty rooms into a coworking space.

Showcase the people in your community: who they are, what they care about, what they’re working on, what they value.

Help members learn about each other through stories.

Help potential members see themselves in your space by sharing the stories of those already at home in your space.

Your Turn

How’s your storytelling going?

Are you building trust with your existing members and extended community?

What’s going well? What do you struggle with?

Leave a comment or get in touch and let me know. Let’s figure this thing out together.

— Cat