We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Daniel Lamb a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Daniel, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Risk taking is something we’re really interested in and we’d love to hear the story of a risk you’ve taken.

It’s hard to have a simple relationship to “risk.” But

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I got into the world of coworking after experiencing the instability of the marketing industry at the outset of the pandemic, having moved to this neighborhood in the spring of 2019.

I was working for a new global agency in 2020 when I was furloughed and then laid off. During the interim, I experienced a lot of physical isolation and a breakdown of my peer networks.

So when I met our developer-property owner who wanted to start something social and work-related, I was hungry for change.

Most of the funding was tied up in the development of other properties, so the launch was the perfect combination of creativity, sweat equity and a few lucky acquisitions that gave us the bare bones and framework we needed.

In the smallest town in Cobb County, we have faced some growth challenges around the lack of foot traffic and tourism to our unique area whereas the more well-funded and developed areas have seen much faster growth.

Austell Cowork is a project that’s driven by passion through the mechanism of community activation — we serve members in the startup and entrepreneurial space, remote workers from surrounding neighborhoods and longterm residents of the Austell Community. We play host to groups like Austell Business Association, the Austell Arts Alliance and Create Austell.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

When we launched, we tried to be all things to all people — we offered different membership packages, day passes, and short-term rentals. As my day-job got busier and I was getting more responsibility added to my plate, it became apparent that we needed some better operational procedures. So, we pivoted to an access control model where we were able to add and remove users without having to track physical keys — and we had to sunset the day pass offer since we don’t have a full-time staff. Today, we occasionally offer open houses, and we do tours by appointment — this allows us to control our time and provide a great new customer experience while honoring our boundaries.

Any fun sales or marketing stories?

With a super small team and budget, we’ve always had to be creative. Other than desks and wifi, we didn’t start with a ton of perks! For example, as neighbors, we opened our office to the brewmaster at Frog Rock Brewing Co because he was incubating his business before his brick-and-mortar was ready. So, we created a small brew space in what is now our commissary and storage area. We were able to provide a low-cost marketing ploy (free beer?!?!?) as well as a temporary home for what has become the gem of our development and a major attraction to the Downtown Austell area.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.austellcowork.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/austellcowork/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/austellcowork
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/austell-cowork/
• Other: https://linktr.ee/austellcowork

Image Credits

Abigail Sykes