10 things I wish I knew before running my coliving
Master the coliving operations and create a fertile ground for a transformative experience
In just 2 months, I’ve managed to host 2 coliving experiences. Transitioning to the pop-up coliving model has not only allowed me to start faster and with less risk but also learn so much and get a lot of valuable hands-on experience. In my first experience alone, I learned so much more than I ever did in my previous year and a half deep diving into everything related to coliving.
The first experience in Fuerteventura overall went really well but there was definitely a lot of room for improvement. Learning from my fuck ups and creating principles that I couldn’t have learned just from talking to people or reading different resources made the second one in Gran Canaria in collaboration with Borderless Retreat go so much more smoothly operationally and better in terms of overall satisfaction.
Below, I’ll share with you all of my learnings from launching and running my coliving so you don’t have to make the same mistakes I did. I will be covering all of the main pillars of the experiences ranging from everything that happens before and during the experience so that you can offer a better experience to your residents and avoid any potential points of friction. Buckle up and let’s get started!
Curation process
A successful experience starts before residents even arrive at the coliving. One of the most critical aspects of a coliving is the curation process, in which you aim to select residents that are as aligned as possible. As Gui Perdrix put it in his book The Art of Coliving, the formula for a thriving community is:
Community = Alignment - Differences
If you have a clothing business and someone who isn’t aligned with your brand buys one of your shirts, it doesn’t really affect the business. It’s even a positive thing. However, in coliving, which is human dynamics on steroids, one bad apple can ruin the experience for everyone.
As a coliving owner or operator, it’s fundamental to have a clear concept, target audience and proper selection process to bring in the right group of people together. The people are what take an experience to the next level or make it a total disaster.
When in doubt about someone, I recommend not accepting that person. This can be challenging when getting started and struggling to fill up the space. It may be tough in the short term, but it’s going to be much more beneficial in the long run as you develop your culture, increase the chemistry among like-minded residents and create an epic environment that people will want to return to.
Expectations
A huge part of attracting the right people and removing friction within the community is setting the right expectations from the very beginning. I can’t stress enough how important this point is. Be very clear in your messaging and let prospective colivers know what they can expect from your experience, who will be attending and what’s expected of them. It’s crucial to have everyone on the same page and to avoid any negative surprises.
Assume people don’t know anything. For most people, coliving is a totally new thing. Not properly communicating the expectations has the potential to create a lot of friction. Any point of friction adds to the differences
part of the equation, which reduces the sense of community and overall satisfaction of residents.
Even something as simple as the role of the hosts is very important to make clear. In case anything comes up, residents should know who is responsible for what and who they seek for guidance in any situation. I didn’t make it very clear in my first experience, which created some confusion.
Onboarding
You have set the right expectations, you’ve selected the right people for your community and it’s show time. Your residents are finally in your space. This is a crucial moment in the overall experience, in which a proper onboarding is required. The onboarding is key not just to give people a good first impression but to set the tone for what’s coming and creating the foundation on which the community is built.
In case of a temporary experience, in which most people arrive around the same time, it’s crucial to set a check-in time, in which everyone should arrive. In the Fuerteventura coliving, I allowed people to arrive Thursday, Friday, Saturday or Sunday, which created a very messy onboarding. In my second experience, everyone arrived at the same time and we kicked off with a deep connection round, in which everyone opened up, shared about their life experiences and mentioned what they were currently working on. Everyone was immediately on the same page and aware of who they were living with.
In the case of a pop-up coliving or retreat, it can also be beneficial to hold the onboarding before people even arrive. You can host video calls, in which everyone has the opportunity to get to know each other, create groups chats and even survey your residents to know what it is that they would like to get out of this experience.
Event facilitation
The complicated thing about running a coliving is that every experience is unique and, therefore, unpredictable. In every experience, there’s a different group dynamic and every person has a different set of needs and wants. For example, in my first experience, there was a huge desire to learn about web3 whereas the second group didn’t really care much about it.
When it comes to organizing events and activities, the key lies in finding the right balance between a top-down and bottom-up (facilitators) approach. In the top-down approach, the organizers decide in advance the events and activities that will be held. This could make more sense in a shorter experience, like a retreat, which requires more structure or if there’s a specific theme. The bottom-up approach, which is much more common in longer-term colivings, is all about giving the power to the community and using the desires of the collective to organize events that the current people are most interested in.
The bottom-up approach still requires a lot of processes and frameworks that facilitate the organization of these events. Sun and Co, for example, has a Family Meeting every Monday to structure the week ahead and plan collaboratively any masterminds, skillshares or physical activities. To organize our skillshares in Gran Canaria, everyone mentioned the topics they were interested in. Then, on a whiteboard, each resident wrote down their name next to the topics they wanted to learn about or the ones they would be willing and able to teach. The four most popular themes were picked. Shoutout to Jon Hormaetxe for showing me this effortless and community-driven way of organizing events.
I believe that enforcing certain activities on people without asking them about their interests can be tricky. On top of that, the best experiences are usually not artificially planned and enforced. A coliving should be like a sandbox. You’re providing the space and resources for things to happen, but it’s the kids or residents in the sandbox that use their imagination to create the things they want.
Community involvement
The collective intelligence can not only be used to organize cool and interesting events but also to gather feedback for your own coliving. Let’s face it, these residents, which may become very close friends, are your customers at the end of the day. They are using your product so why not ask them for feedback and ways to improve.
As you run the coliving, it’s crucial to have group meetings to check in with ourselves, see how everything is going, plan the week ahead and make any adjustments. These moments are gold. Use them to listen carefully and know what your community truly desires.
It’s also very important to listen to the overall sentiment of the group and to adapt quickly. In Gran Canaria, residents wanted to do yoga outside but some were complaining about how cold it was in the mornings (we were in a valley). People also wanted to go to the Dunes of Maspalomas so we improvised and decided to host a morning yoga and meditation session in the sunny dunes, which was one of the highlights of the experience.
Communication
It’s not just expectations that should be properly communicated but pretty much anything. From my experience, it’s better to over-communicate than to under-communicate. Let people know when new people are arriving, what the agenda for the day is, event changes, availability of cars, etc.
On top of that, figure out what’s the most effective way of communicating whatever you’d like to communicate. If you want to communicate something that everyone should know about, perhaps a busy WhatsApp group where messages can easily get lost, isn’t the best place to do that.
For example, we used whiteboards to let people write down the groceries they desired. With another whiteboard, residents were also notified about any upcoming events and were able to fill some of the gaps with activities they want to have or offer. In the second experience, which was more of a retreat, we created an agenda that was shared before the start, utilized as the WhatsApp group picture and posted in different parts of the house. It was impossible to miss. We also had a Notion page with the link in the WhatsApp group description with all relevant information, such as WiFis, things to do, emergency contacts, etc.
Conflict resolution
The last thing you want is conflict among community members. However, we’re humans and conflict will arise at some point whether you want it or not. Thus, it’s important to know what to do in case such situations arise.
One of the best things you can do is solving the problem before it escalates and gets out of control. First try to solve it between the people involved. Don’t involve the whole community right away unless it affects everyone. You don’t want the bad vibes to spread to the rest of the group.
It is key to create the space and trust for people to express their concerns and problems in a trustful and safe way. Don’t use platforms like WhatsApp for people to raise their problems. Tell people to come to you first or to solve it among themselves.
Communication—not just what you say but how you say it—plays a huge role in conflict resolution. This is where your soft skills come in very handy, especially when trying to put yourself in the shoes of those involved and finding a common solution. It is important also to use non-violent communication frameworks that help you deal with emotional situations without letting them escalate.
WiFi
Fast WiFi is a must. Don’t fuck this one up and invest whatever you need to guarantee good internet connectivity. If you have a stunning villa, cool people and a great concept but the WiFi is shit and residents can’t really be productive, your whole coliving experience is at risk. The basics, like WiFi, food or hygiene, need to be on point so that everything else can flourish.
Food
Food is a tricky one. It depends on the experience and the people that come to your experience. If it’s a 1-week coliving retreat, perhaps it makes sense to prepare food for the residents whereas in a longer-term coliving residents should take more responsibility over their own food. Taking care of groceries and cooking are big time and energy investment so consider also what you think is best for yourself as an operator.
There’s not a clear strategy on what works best. What I would do is ask people in advance and throughout each experience you host to find what works best for your community. I don’t really have an answer to this issue yet but two things I’m considering is using volunteers and making food an extra service for those who don’t want to cook.
What I can recommend to you, however, is to ask people what groceries they want before making the first purchase (in case you do the groceries for the group). This way, you don’t up buying and wasting food that no one wants to eat. I also disclosed the food budget in my first experience. Residents started doing the math and asking for refunds because they weren’t consuming as much. One full price is better.
Another important thing to consider are any special diets. In my second experience, which was a coliving retreat, the hosts did all of the cooking and all dishes were either vegan or vegetarian to make it easier to satisfy everyone. We made sure they were as tasty as possible.
Rules
No one likes rules but they set the boundaries to make sure people can colive with each other respectfully and pleasantly. They are important, but should be adapted based on the community and intention that the people have.
Still, I wouldn’t go all out and create as many rules as possible but rather develop them over time as you see fit. Perhaps you can start with some basic ones that serve as guidance. For example, if it’s a work-oriented coliving, no noise after 10pm. If everyone does his/her own cooking, clean the dishes after using them.
As you start encountering situations that cause friction, then you can start creating the rules that best disincentivize that behavior. In my first experience, we had 2 cars at the disposal of residents. Because people wanted to use them at similar times, we created a rule, in which residents had to book the car in advance and let each other know through a shared Google Calendar.
I wrote down these learnings during and after the first experience in Fuerteventura. I waited until after I used and tested them during Gran Canaria to make them public. Operationally, the coliving retreat in Gran Canaria was a massive success (thanks also to Borderless’ experience). Removing any potential friction created a fertile ground for residents to have satisfying and transformative experience.
The crazy thing is that they now start to seem rather obvious, even though they were big breakthroughs just 1-2 months ago. These breakthroughs only came after being in the trenches and actually getting my hands dirty.
If you want to start your coliving business, I recommend you jump into the trenches as well. Pop-ups are the best and fastest way to learn. Don’t wait for over a year and do these critical mistakes with your permanent coliving. In a matter of 2 months, I’ve already hosted 2 pop-up spaces and I’m planning already 4 more with different lengths, people and themes for 2022.
These experiences will get better and better with time as a I learn how to run this complex machine and develop the secret weapons for Karisma. By the time I build my first space, I will be so prepared and face significantly less risk. Even after my first 6 experiences and when I build my first space, properly running a coliving will always be a constant work in progress.
There’s a lot of things I’m probably missing and that I’ve yet to learn. Perhaps, I’ll do a follow up post in the future. One thing that wasn’t mentioned in here that is also really important to the overall experience is what happens after the experience.
What will for sure happen next is Karisma’s third edition in Croatia from May 15th to May 22nd. Wanna join or curious? Email me at marc@karismaliving.com or apply right here👈