Community through Shared Workspaces with Ann Marlin

Action's Antidotes

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,