Community through Shared Workspaces with Ann Marlin

In today’s world, shared workspaces have become more than just a place to work—they’re hubs for connection and collaboration. They bring people together, creating opportunities to build relationships, share ideas, and grow alongside others who share similar goals. These spaces remind us how important it is to surround ourselves with supportive communities that inspire us to reach our full potential. How can being part of a shared workspace community help us achieve our goals? In this episode, I chat with Ann Marlin, the Owner of Broadway Collective, a co-working space in Englewood, Colorado. Ann shares her insights on creating spaces where entrepreneurs and small businesses can truly connect and thrive. We also explore the impact of a well-designed workspace on productivity and how finding balance between work and life can lead to long-term success. --- Listen to the podcast here: Community through Shared Workspaces with Ann Marlin Welcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. One of the things that I find most important in today’s society is connecting people, rebuilding community. You’re probably aware that compared to, say, 50, 100 years ago, we’ve seen a lot of our traditional sources of community decimated and people don’t really kind of run into each other and people will often talk about this idea of a third place, a third place being somewhere other than the home and other than the work where you still go and regularly interact with people and regularly just bump into people, and that the way a lot of people build connections is just by these chance circumstances in which you run into anyone. And in modern society, in my own life in particular, I often notice that someone has to start taking the initiative to plan meetings. Otherwise, people can easily go weeks, months without seeing their friends, without seeing the people they’re connected with. Today, I would like to bring on my guest, Ann Marlin, who is the owner, founder, and operator of a building where we’re actually sitting in right now, called the Broadway Collective. --- Ann, welcome to the program. Thank you for having me. I’m excited to be here. Well, excited to have you. We’re sitting here so we’re on the premise of the very initiative so this is a first for Action’s Antidotes here at the Broadway Collective. Tell us what the Broadway Collective is all about. Thank you. So the Broadway Collective really was born for the necessity of our sister company as we needed office space. We outgrew our previous office space and found an amazing mid mod building right here on Broadway in Oxford in Englewood, Colorado, and we fell in love with the building because of the floor-to-ceiling windows and just the overall vibe. It had not been touched since the 80s so I’m talking wood paneling, purple carpet, baby blue walls, but we really could see the potential in the building in that our sister company, we do real estate investments and fix and flip. The minute we stepped into this building, we’re like, “Gosh, this is amazing.” We knew, however, that this building was going to be too big for our sister company, Elevation, so we thought, well, what can we do with this building? And our passion is to support other small and local businesses and so I thought, oh my gosh, let’s make a co-workspace out of it and invite other businesses into our sphere and see if we can pass back business back and forth. Now, one thing I love about your story is how you were able to come in and play a little bit bigger than a lot of people were thinking because I think a lot of people would look at something like this and be like, “Oh my god, I love this building so much but it’s too big for us. What are we gonna do with all this space? Let’s just keep shopping for somewhere smaller or find a way to get by with what we currently have.” What would you say is it about your experience, your mindset, the way you approach life in general, that allowed you to look at this and think, “Okay, I love this but I’m gonna do more”? That is a great question. I think, personally, I have been an entrepreneur since 2002 with a previous business in a previous industry. Also, my father has been an entrepreneur, his grandfather, and so I don’t know if I’ve ever really been stuck into that paradigm or that mindset of like, “Okay, this is what I need, I need to find that exact fit.” So I think I have always had that brain where I can come into a situation or maybe even a property and be like, okay, what can we absolutely do with this? How can we not only maximize it, make it super efficient, but how can we build something super cool in a way that maybe didn’t fit the box that it was supposed to go into? So that’s personally for me but I do think that just in general, when we walked in, being in the business that we are in with our sister company, we’re really good at envisioning what a property could be and I just think that because of being in Denver and being surrounded with other entrepreneurs and small businesses in my past career, and then, of course, this career as well, I mean, I feel like when you surround yourself with amazing people in businesses, you can’t help but to grow and be positive and have a great impact on the community. So if anyone out there listening is feeling that they’re, say, stuck in that fixed mindset, you were saying it has to be that exact thing, and let’s say that person listening right now recognizes that this might be an issue in their lives and there might be something that is preventing them from getting to the life that they really want, what do you think someone can do to find a way to improve that mindset, to find a way to get a little bit more to where you are because you were fortunate enough to have people in your life kind of encourage you in that direction? The biggest token of advice that I could give in this specific subject would be to surround yourself with people that – either mentors, get a mentor, or surround yourself with people who might be one, two, five, ten steps ahead of you in life, business, career, whatever it may be, because I feel like those are the people that you can really tap into and glean amazing advice and also hear stories, their starting stories and how they came to fruition, how they are where they’re at in their career or in their personal life. And so I think with us specifically walking into this building, there was a small team of us, meaning there was myself and my husband but we also had our project manager and so I feel like the more eyes on something, the more opinions you might get, and then from that, you can build on what you either want this specific project to be like or if you’re looking for a goal in life or in career, I think that outside help is always amazing. So when you talk about getting more eyes on something and getting more opinions, is there a magic number? Because I know there are probably some people who have been in the situation where you go out and you try to get opinions but then you start getting more and more opinions and you end up with that decision fatigue, analysis paralysis, where you’re just so confused because you’re like, “Oh, I brought this idea to this one person, they told me to go that way, and I brought the idea to another person, they told me to go that way, and I brought my idea to someone else, and they were like telling me this,” you could end up getting a little bit frazzled. Oh, gosh, you’re so right. It happens to all of us. I feel like at the end of the day, whether you obtained three opinions or thirty opinions, I think at the end of the day, you need to go into any situation not only knowing your authentic self but also really having a handle on what your goals are or at least where you think you want to be with wherever this path may take you.Share on X And so I feel like it’s really easy to get taken into different maybe pathways or different other people’s opinions, where you’re like, “That doesn’t really feel right but they’re smart. I mean, I should listen to them.” I think there’s always something you can glean from everybody but, at the end of the day, you have to be happy with yourself and happy with what you’re possibly either putting together or the goal that you’re trying to obtain, making sure that it is reflective of what you want. So it’s about kind of just understanding that this is still your initiative, this is still your business, your event, whatever it is, right? Absolutely. It’s still yours. And so if someone might have given you an opinion, and sometimes maybe you’ll like it, maybe like, “Oh, you made me think of it in a different way,” but if someone gives you an opinion and it just doesn’t really resonate with you, you can kind of just take a deep breath maybe and say, “Okay, I’m glad you shared this opinion with me but this isn’t where I want to go because it’s taking it in a direction that’s different than what my vision is.” Right, and I also think too, if it doesn’t come to you right then and there, that’s okay. There’s so many examples that I could give where I might have brought something to someone and say, “Hey, can you help me with this particular situation or this problem,” or whatever, and what they’ve said, I’m like, wow, it doesn’t really quite resonate. However, after sleeping on it for a little bit, why did I feel really great about this piece of advice or why didn’t I, and then really try to get to the bottom of that. Well, why didn’t I? Is it because it made me feel uncomfortable? Well, why didn’t it make me feel comfortable? What is the reason behind that? Or why did that make me feel so happy and motivated and excited? And maybe then that’s kind of where I feel like a lot of answers can come. Yeah, so kind of digging a little bit deeper,...