Finding Writing for Your Readers

In November 2012 I was coming home on the Central line, Lisa Gansky's audiobook of The Mesh: Why the Future of Business Is Sharing playing in my ears. Emily and I had started Sharing Economy Radio a few months earlier, looking for people in the sharing economy who had something to say — not the usual suspects, but the people building things before anyone was paying attention.

I'd connected with Lisa a little on LinkedIn. We'd exchanged an email and I'd asked if she'd come on the podcast. I got off the train at Stratford station, my phone rang with a US number, and it was Lisa Gansky. I said, "This is a bit freaky. I was listening to your voice on an audiobook, and now you are live."

She wasn't calling about the podcast. She was calling about her Mesh event in San Francisco. "Bernie, can you come?"

The event was May 2013. Emily and I went, and I was, without question, the dumbest person in that room. Two hundred people from the sharing economy — a quarter of them had done real TED talks, people whose books you'd read, whose software you'd used, starting companies you've heard of now. It was my first in-person meeting with the OuiShare community. I walked out of that room knowing I'd been handed something I couldn't name yet, something that had nothing to do with networking or business cards.

The Same Thread

At the OuiShare summits in Paris, Berlin, and London, I met Ariane Conrad. Years later she helped Jon Alexander write Citizens, and when Jon came to the London Coworking Assembly, Joyce interviewed him on stage at Peckham Levels. Joyce was working for Islington Council at the time.

That was the moment, for me and for a lot of people in that room: That's what I've been looking for. It's not the consumer story. It's the citizen story. Our coworking spaces are businesses, but they're also social capital and citizen connection points.

The thread runs from Lisa's book through OuiShare through Ariane through Jon to Joyce on a stage in Peckham. Fifteen years, same question: who are we building for?

Ten Years of Workarounds

I've resisted a membership model for the London Coworking Assembly for ten years. Every time someone asked "What do I get when I join?" I knew they were asking the wrong question. They wanted a product, and I was offering a room full of people who care about the same things.

We've never had a £100 membership before. That figure didn't exist until a few weeks ago. For a decade we did bring-and-share, or found someone to bankroll food and coffee. The question was always how to keep it accessible. A lot of the people who needed to be in the room were employees whose organisations wouldn't give them budget. Or they were business owners who were tight because they were starting up.

We wanted it open to everyone, so we found workarounds. It worked, but a workaround isn't a model.

The Audience Already Knew

Meanwhile, the podcast. Sharing Economy Radio became OuiShare Radio, which became the Coworking Values Podcast you know today. Different names, same instinct: find the people and topics that weren't as visible, and help them tell their story.

At the end of last year I looked at the data and the twelve most listened-to episodes weren't about brand partnerships or enterprise strategy. They were about money trauma, wealth inequality, menopause, mental health, collapsing systems, and people filling gaps the state left open.

Williamz Omope appeared twice — the same person, filling state-shaped gaps. He runs job clubs in East London coworking spaces because job centres can't keep up, and he brings NHS workers in to do health checks because the health service is overwhelmed. The audience chose him twice.

The sponsorship model would have given you the head of a company talking about their seamless integrations. The audience chose the mother who integrated childcare into her workspace without waiting for permission.

My curiosity and their attention were pointing in the same direction, and I hadn't built the economic model to match.

Fund the Work

A few weeks ago I was in our monthly peer group session in the Drive Network, which Ann Hawkins runs. Every month Ann leads a session where we talk about challenges and progress in our businesses. I needed to find a way to make the core costs of the London Coworking Assembly sustainable without doing anything else — I'm always writing, podcasting, sending newsletters, and getting people together.

By funding that core part through people who want the work to exist, I could carry on doing the same thing and get the costs covered, rather than going out and attracting sponsors.

Because the London Coworking Assembly is a informal community, not my main business, it meant I could focus on my core work and everything would be more contained.

I've believed for a long time that if you're going to pitch something in a sponsorship slot, you might as well pitch something you're making rather than something someone else is paying you to say. That's not a revelation I had; it's something I've always known. The fund-the-work model is the economic structure that finally matches the instinct.

The idea didn't come during the call. It came afterwards, turning over the suggestions people had made: fund the work.

I decided on Tuesday, built the structure on Wednesday, and emailed people on Thursday. Forty-eight people at £100 a year. That's £4,800. It covers hosting, paying Urban MBA students to work on our projects, and sending ten percent to the European Coworking Assembly so they can work on parallel projects. No ads, no sponsors, no advertorials dressed up as journalism.

The Souvenir and the Citizen

When I told people, the first question was still: "What do I get?"

The answer is no adverts and impartial work — writing and audio that isn't someone's content-marketing budget wearing an article as a costume. The podcast is a research project, not a marketing project. But that's hard to explain to someone who wants a transaction. They want the spreadsheet, and the thing we do doesn't fit in a spreadsheet.

Someone said to me, "If my name is on the website, giving you £100 to write is a no-brainer." I don't mind putting people's names on the website. But if you need me to show other people that you contributed, you've missed the point. Lisa's line, fifteen years later: a brand is a voice and a product is a souvenir.

Consumers buy souvenirs; citizens fund the voice. The £100 isn't a transaction — it's evidence you helped the voice stay independent.

When readers fund the work, I create for my readers. When sponsors fund the work, I create for sponsors. We're not looking for readers for our writing. We're looking for writing for our readers.

The Other End of the Telescope

I watched a Gary Stevenson video the same week I sent that email. Gary from Gary's Economics, who grew up around the corner from me in Ilford — the inequality economist who used to trade for Citibank.

He makes the number human: a million seconds is a week and a half, a billion seconds is 32 years, and a trillion seconds is 32,000 years. Elon Musk makes $137 million a day in passive income, not from work but from assets.

He doesn't get out of bed. And Gary says: "When you see that number growing, what I want you to see is the homelessness of your kids and your grandkids." People are excited about the first trillionaire, but every dollar he gains is a dollar your kids don't get.

Gary is arguing for a wealth tax at national scale — tax wealth, not work. What I think I've done with 48 people is different. Gary wants the government to take money from the top and spread it around. We're keeping the money in the community so it never enters the extraction pipeline in the first place.

Research in Islington shows that when you spend a pound with a local business, it goes around the local economy four times. When you spend a pound with a global company, it leaves. That's retention, not redistribution — a small group of people funding the thing they want to exist directly, with no intermediary taking a cut.

This isn't a polished business model. It's still forming, and that's the point. You don't wait for the model to be perfect before you ask people to fund it.

Forty-Eight

Gary says the billionaire class is a black hole. At their rate of compounding, they will eventually own everything, and that's true at macro scale. But at human scale, the alternative doesn't need to beat the black hole. It needs to exist, visibly, in a room with an open door.

• Forty-eight people. That's the number.
• Not £4,800. Not a grant.
• Not a sponsor. Forty-eight.

We're a few weeks into this and building. If one person a week backed the work, we'd sail past the target without breaking stride.

Monday Domino

Think of one thing you make. A newsletter, a podcast, a meetup — pick one.

Open your notes app and write down one number: what would it cost to keep that thing alive for a year? Don't build the model or write the launch email. Name the number, close the app, and get on with your day.

Bernie's Picks

🎥 Gary Stevenson — "Elon Musk is the world's first trillionaire. How scared should you be?" The macro argument. A million seconds is a week and a half. A trillion seconds is 32,000 years. On YouTube.

🎥 Lisa Gansky: TEDx - The future of business is the "mesh"- 2010 On YouTube.

🎧 Coworking Values Podcast — Williamz Omope The person the audience chose twice. Job clubs, health checks, no eligibility criteria. Listen on the London Coworking Assembly site.

🔗 London Coworking Assembly — Coworking Community Builder (£100/year) Find out how 'Fund the work' happens here.

📅 Jon Alexander — A pivotal moment for community ownership? Join the movement from Brixton to Frome - Details and tickets here.