Another podcast and we have another fantastic guest with us.
We have Samantha Hulls of the Melting Pot from Edinburgh, Scotland.
Sam and I chat about how they started the melting pot and how they introduced coworking in Scotland and all about the programs they have in the Melting pot.
Sam shares all about the Melting Pot and how social innovation builds a coworking community that helps each other grow.
What is the Melting Pot all about?
“We are Scotland Center for Innovation.
So this means that we are founded and based around Coworking but we also do a lot more than that.
We exist to stimulate and support social innovation which is people who are working to do good in the world, whether that is in, you know, the charity sector, whether it’s in government, whether it’s even in the private sector.
The business model is to find ways to support the people to achieve that work so through coworking, creating a shared physical space where people could come and work, connects, meet and learn.
I’ve learned events in the time then that’s grown too.
We also have an incubation program, which is now, eight years old.
And that is to support startup social enterprise entrepreneurs on their journey.
So, help them through that really difficult journey of going from a good idea.”
Links mentioned in the show
The Melting Pot Edinburgh – Scotlands Centre for Social Innovation
The Melting Pot 2018 Social Impact Report
SAM HULLS – COWORKING IN SCOTLAND PODCAST TRANSCRIPT
Zeljko Crnjakovic 00:03
Welcome to the Coworking Values Podcast of the European Coworking Assembly. Each week we deep dive into one of the values of accessibility, community, openness, collaboration, and sustainability. This episode is brought to you by Cobot, leading management software for coworking spaces, office hubs, and flexible workspaces around the world. One of the best things about Cobot is that it is produced by people who manage a coworking space and know the ins and outs of the main problems and issues bugging coworking managers. So, if you want more time for your coworkers and community, check out cobot, @cobot.me and take your coworking management to the next level.
Zeljko Crnjakovic 00:47
So today we have Samantha Hulls with us as a guest on the Coworking Values Podcast. And Samantha Hulls comes from The Melting Pot in Edinburgh in Scotland, which was the first coworking space in Scotland and one of the first in Europe. Welcome to the show.
Samantha Hulls 01:04
Well, I thank you very much for having me.
Zeljko Crnjakovic 01:08
12 years running. Yeah. How did you do that?
Samantha Hulls 01:13
It’s a very good question. I think those years probably crept up on us and swept away with us. I personally have been there for the last five years now, which I couldn’t tell you where they have all gone in a lot of hard work, a lot of blood, sweat and tears, I think.
Zeljko Crnjakovic 01:30
And was it all in the same space? It was all in one go. And you didn’t have any ups and downs, closings, openings?
Samantha Hulls 01:35
No. No. I mean ups and downs. Yes. No closings, no openings. We opened the doors on Rose street in Edinburgh. We opened the doors there on the 1st of October 2007 and everyone rushed in. It was super easy. I don’t know what people complain about.
Zeljko Crnjakovic 01:54
Tell me something about that, The Melting pot, what kind of a coworking space is it? What do you do?
Samantha Hulls 01:58
We are Scotland centre for social innovation. So, this means that we are founded and based around concept of coworking, but we also do a lot more than that. We exist to stimulate and support social innovation, which is people who are working to do good in the world. Whether that is in, you know, the charity sector, whether it’s in government, whether it’s even in private sector. A business model is to find ways to support the people to achieve that work. So through coworking, through creating of shared physical space where people could come and work, connects, meet, learn and have learning events, in the time, then that’s grown to, we also have an incubation program, which is now eight years old. And that is to support start-up social enterprise entrepreneurs on their journey. So, help them through that really difficult journey of going from a, a good idea.
Zeljko Crnjakovic 02:49
So, but all that, did that all happen from the start? So, did you start off just as a coworking space?
Samantha Hulls 02:57
Yeah. So, we started, we actually started because, such early days before the word coworking had really come to Scotland or the concepts. And basically Claire, our founder, had an idea that, as someone who was a founder and entrepreneur herself had always worked for herself. She wanted a space where she could work from, somewhere where you wouldn’t have to pay the rent for an entire year when you were in the using it intimately, where you’re dropping in and out. Somewhere you could solve the problem of loneliness, of being an entrepreneur and starting your own business. It’s a really lonely, difficult journey. And there must be other people going on that journey. So, the thought was how can you come together?
Samantha Hulls 03:33
How can you kind of solve these two problems of physical space needs and community connection, fostering the support needs. There wasn’t anything that existed, so she decided to create that space herself. And everything has grown from that. Actually, we’re very city centre. We may as well have a space that you can run events and therefore you can increase the impact that you have.
Samantha Hulls 03:57
We can hire that event space out at a really affordable rate to other third sector community priority clients so that they can have a nice space, that city centre. That you don’t have to be exiled to the outskirts cause that’s all you can afford. And then from within that foster the learning and sharing amongst the network. So, will you run, start running a learning program or skills sharing program of events and, and start to grow that. It all came from that.
Zeljko Crnjakovic 04:20
Being the first in Scotland and as any person in the coworking space and many listeners in the coworking arena will agree is very, very difficult. So, how did the community or the general audience react and where were the peaks?
Samantha Hulls 04:41
Yeah, what are the peaks and troughs? I think, so we’ve been open for 12 years. There was at least another two years of work behind planning, gathering, you know, pull volunteers, gathering your community and making sure there is an interest for this business before opening. So, we opened off the back of that having a lot of people. But even then, we opened what, two months before the global financial crisis.
Samantha Hulls 05:06
Yeah, really great time to open a new business in a very niche, new untested market.
Zeljko Crnjakovic 05:13
Well you just need the right messaging. So, don’t rent that big expensive office. You come to coworking.
Samantha Hulls 05:21
Exactly so I think, you know, it was, it was rough for those, for those first, you know, let’s say first five years, particularly around the messaging of trying to explain what it is that you do when you don’t have an easy word, just as eight coworking and people have an idea, you have to explain. Shared office space, resource, flexible working, but also community. Also, network, was really difficult. I think we worked really well through word of mouth in the sector where we feel very well held and supported by the third sector in Edinburgh and the social enterprise sector. So that was really a strong point for us to get across the word of mouth.
But it really was just a matter of trying different things, learning, reiterating, trying different marketing options, testing, you know, how you sell the membership packages, like speak team members, ask them what they need, introduce different services. Like you know, we’ve, we’ve always had a virtual office service, which is one of the easiest income streams. We’ve always got ours sitting at the desk when we’re open anyway. Might as well stick up some mailboxes, charge people a little bit of money to have a registered address. It’s an easy win.
Zeljko Crnjakovic 06:29
Cool. So, The Melting pot is all about social entrepreneurship. Did they, did that come from necessity or from a personal kind of want to go into that sector?
Samantha Hulls 06:41
Yeah, I think the second option, definitely. The vision and the mission of The Melting pot was always to support social impact, to support other people. It was never, let’s open a space where we can make some money, you know, have some cool desks.
Zeljko Crnjakovic 06:57
Yeah, because we all opened the spaces because we have so much money.
Samantha Hulls 07:00
Exactly. Because we know that it’s such a high-income stream, such good profit margins, but exactly, exactly. So, it’s, you know, I think that that has been a really good USP and a really good strength for us. I don’t know that it was out of, it was out of a personal necessity, I think put it that way, personal necessity and to find a place in the landscape was always to be a social enterprise. We exist to help other people and that is still a really strong, I personally find that it a really strong, you know, guidance for us even in, even in small day to day decisions about, you know, anything to do with clients or something. You can just always come back to, well, what’s that ethos? Is that the right thing to do? Is that why we’re here actually. Yeah.
Zeljko Crnjakovic 07:45
So, what are some of the cool projects that you did through social entrepreneurship? So, I’m getting the melting pot by itself is a, is a social project and I’m guessing that other projects came to you or incubate incubator.
Samantha Hulls 08:02
Yeah, So, as I said, incubation program, good ideas have been going for eight years. Now. I don’t have all the stats, but I know that we’ve incubated, I think over a hundred, organisations in that time within that. So that means we’ve just seen so many really cool and really successful organisations, you know, based in Scotland and the UK and further abroad, things like, the UK’s first tool library and a virtual library. We’ve got invisible cities, which is, you know, walking tool led by, people affected by homelessness.
Zeljko Crnjakovic 08:43
And is that a through a project or a through a coop with government?
Samantha Hulls 08:48
No, no. Well, so it’s a good ideas business. So that is a business on itself that is, entirely funded. So that’s part funded by the income from The Melting Pot and part funded from, various, all the funders that we have across the years for that one. So that’s, that’s kind of the main arm in terms of, in terms of projects wise, what we’ve done across the years. It tends to be a bit more Melting pot, kind of under Claire’s expertise. So, she, Claire’s done a lot of consultancy work. She’s worked with groups in Northern Ireland about developing enterprising communities there. Yeah, that’s, that’s how it folds most of the other projects. We will kind of work more as a partnership under The Melting Pot umbrella.
Zeljko Crnjakovic 09:32
And, can you tell me, so basically The Melting Pot has several branches. So, one is social entrepreneurship, projects, a coworking accelerator that we’re going to talk about and the coworking itself. So, so is that all? Are there other branches?
Samantha Hulls 09:48
That not enough?
Samantha Hulls 09:50
So, it’s good. We actually put our branches under Collaborate, Incubate, Accelerate. So, they kind of broadly neatly categorize the three things that we do.
Zeljko Crnjakovic 10:02
And they are connected. So, are the coworking members also those who are incubated?
Samantha Hulls 10:09
Sometimes it goes, yeah, sometimes it goes the other way. I guess the way that it’s designed, we’ll have, we’ll occasionally have people who joined the coworking space and then go, great, you’ve got an incubation program. Actually that’s, that’s where I’m at and that’s where I need to be. More often it’s the other way, someone will have no idea about coworking or any, you know, sometimes not anything about social entrepreneurship and they will hear about the Good Ideas program.
They will come along and come through that process. And then, as an offshoot of that, will get to know The Melting pot. Yeah. We’ll stay, to be honest, one of the, we actually have a bit of a gap at the moment because, because when people first are opening up their business, they don’t really have any money to do, let’s be honest, you don’t have any money to join a coworking space.
Samantha Hulls 10:57
We are a coworking space that unfortunately doesn’t have the physical space to be able to provide free. You know, I would love to be able to give free space to all of our, all of our Good Ideas, graduates, but I need more business that needs to pay the rent of a city centre location. So, we do have a bit of a gap, between when they finish that program and when they’re actually in a position to be able to, you know, pay for regular membership. But the good thing is that we have a really strong support network, so we’ll continue to support them. And we actually find that a lot of people who graduate within a year will come back around. They got some funding. We’re doing really well.
Zeljko Crnjakovic 11:34
Fantastic. So there was also the always that kind of story between the difference between incubators, accelerators, and coworking that incubators incubate start-ups and you know, help them grow and then kicked you out, you know, in a year and accelerators help you grow and stuff like that in coworking, basically, it’s just, you know, rent. Yeah. It’s real estate. It’s real estate. That’s it. So, whoever comes to coworking basically needs a job in order to pay the rent. Yes.
Samantha Hulls 12:02
Exactly. And that’s the thing, it’s, you know, we are about impact in supporting people, but, if I don’t charge people for their desks, then The Melting Pot doesn’t exist. So literally my charity has to end at some point.
Zeljko Crnjakovic 12:15
Yeah. And through all of this and the intertwining with between anything, how is your community within the coworking? So how is your community building within coworking?
Samantha Hulls 12:27
Our community is fantastic. It really is. And I, you know, I recognise, I feel so lucky to have almost walked into a community that had already had the benefit of, you know, however many years of college, my math, seven years behind it by the time I got there. So, you know, it’s obviously constantly changing, you know, with the churn rate of members. You see that change happening. But I think that we are at a point where it’s really strong and really self-perpetuating.
Zeljko Crnjakovic 12:56
Yeah. And do you have a lot of changes within members? So, do you have more steady members?
Samantha Hulls 13:01
Yeah, I would say we have, I say we have more stability in our membership. But you know, we also see, actually we, we always joke that when people leave, if they’ve left because they’ve got another job or that yeah, they’re no longer a freelancer, then, we’ll say, yeah, you’ll be back. Cause we do find that people do, you know, and particularly because we’ve, we’ve been there for 12 years now. People who actually were first remember 10 years ago and then went away for a bit and now things have changed, and they come back around. So, obviously it’s kind of, it always hurts to see people go, but actually, you know, half the time they leave because they’ve outgrown us and that’s really good. Or we go actually “great”. You know, we’ve served, we’ve helped you when you needed us and we’re back here again.
Zeljko Crnjakovic 13:45
Yeah. I always liked it. Coworking kind of breeds families and that’s the exact point that you made. So, families grow, outgrow each other, you know, you go out, have your own food and come back and visit and stuff like that. So, basically each coworking community is a small family.
Samantha Hulls 14:04
Yeah. And I think that it, just to go back to your point about like how is our community, I think that we have gotten to a point where the members feel very much that they are as much creating the community as anyone else. So therefore we are at a place where certain pockets of it or certain aspects continue without us doing anything actually, which is, you know, like one of my favourite things to see and I used to see it a bit more when I was kind of sitting hosting. Now I’m kind of strategically behind the bigger desks and it’s like half a half step removed. But one of my favourite things is just to welcome a new member into the space and see them sit down. And before I get a chance to do a full induction with them or anything, just see all the other members introduce themselves and it just, it warms my heart. It makes a part of my brain go.
Samantha Hulls 14:50
I mean, why are we tearing our hair out of it? Planning this extensive events program when like just to put a kettle out and also our members will listen. They will do all the community building that you need. But obviously it’s all, it’s all the pieces.
Zeljko Crnjakovic 15:01
And when you mentioned events, so does The Melting Pot do events for the wider community.
Samantha Hulls 15:08
So, we have a handful events that, members only things like mean it was lunch, all the drinks. , but then all of our lit, what we call our learning events are open to the public to attend and then they’re free for members to attend. So, we will, we’ve got, quite a good mix at the moment of, we’ll always kind of go to our community first. So when people first join the space or if we’re just having chats with members about, great, do you want to do like either an evening event for an hour and a half or do you want to do a one hour lunchtime talk, talk about what you do. It’s a good skill sharing. You get to promote yourself to the community and, and your business, particularly if you’re a freelancer, but you also get to skill share. And then probably in the last 12 to 18 months, we’ve had a nice mix of introducing some, actually having external people approach us.
Samantha Hulls 15:50
We don’t get that much time, that often, to proactively go out to bring experts in, but we have found that a lot of people who’ve been coming to us to say, “Hey, I just started a business ” or you know, like when the GDPR regulations came in, we had someone come to work from the space for just a day, and he said, actually, do you want me to run a talk on this? With a few members? because I’m an expert in this and I’d be happy to do that for free. So yeah, it’s going to a really nice point where our ethos in it that we’ve realized is like stick to the structure that we have that can be low effort for the high turn around for us. So, we do at least one, sometimes two learning events a month. And then we’ve at least got used to social events or we’ve learnt, you know, stick to your process that you’ve got. It’s great if the facilitators and the members can bring what they want to do it, but don’t try and stretch cause then we always just end up getting a bit too stressed out. So, we’ll probably do at least one or two events a year that it may be a bit grand up, bit bigger outreach. But, ultimately, it’s great if we can engage the wider community, but we are here to service our members, let’s do what’s best for them.
Zeljko Crnjakovic 16:56
When we talk about this, we didn’t mention, so how big is your membership? So how big is this space.
Samantha Hulls 17:02
So, our membership, we’ve got 170 members, usually around 70. So, around about 80 to 90, come in to use the space at least on a monthly basis.
Zeljko Crnjakovic 17:16
Oh, you’re on the right side of the spectra in that car. And Carson estimate,
Samantha Hulls 17:23
Which actually surprises me because our space is a 3000 square foot. So, I have got about 40 desks when the hot desk and the permanent desks and still within that, regularly about 80 to 90 people using the space and then the rest we are part of the broader network. So, we have like a bunch of members as well.
Zeljko Crnjakovic 17:39
For all the listeners listening, so when I mentioned the right side of the spectra, yeah, it’s a desk. My story that’s mags research on coworking spaces and on the left are the smaller spaces on the right are larger spaces between a 52, 82 to a hundred and more.
Samantha Hulls 17:56
Yeah. But we would still consider ourselves a small space. So yeah, that was, maybe it’s just the feel of a small space, so it was interesting.
Zeljko Crnjakovic 18:04
It should be bigger.
Samantha Hulls 18:08
Yeah, I mean if somebody wants to give me a building, I will happily Fill it.
Zeljko Crnjakovic 18:13
Yes. We’ll get your contact info under the podcasts, you know, and anyone who wants to give you a building
Samantha Hulls 18:23
Oh yes, I will fill that space.
Zeljko Crnjakovic 18:24
Okay, Coworking accelerator, really interesting program that you developed based on all of the things that you learned over the past 12 years. Yeah. So, tell me something more about that
Zeljko Crnjakovic 18:35
Yeah for sure, it came from a point of, you know, being filling out space, and trying to see, trying to figure out how else we could expand and scale impact. So, you’ve kind of got a few ways of doing that. One is to find another building opened a second location. Yup
Samantha Hulls 18:52
Let’s still trying to do that. It’s incredibly difficult to doing that. Her mother very scarce and hard to come by. The next option is, okay, well do you open up franchises elsewhere or what we decided to go with was actually it doesn’t need to be the melting pot across the world and actually it’s maybe not appropriate if we want to really, if we’re thinking big about scaling our impact in, you know, taking everything that we’ve learnt that can be relevant to coworking spaces wherever you are, let’s strip it back to a white label version and make that adaptable because the principles that we’ve learned, the values of coworking, as well as the key elements and even down to the processes are going to be the same. I’m going to be useful for wherever your space is. If it’s a small place in rural Scotland’s, if it’s somewhere, you know, a big city space somewhere else across Europe, actually these elements all the same. So, we created the coworking accelerator to help support other people on their journey to a company. Having a successful coworking business
Zeljko Crnjakovic 19:51
How do you become a member yeah, you’re telling me, you know, coworking celery, this is a big grandiose and you can do it from wherever you want, but?
Samantha Hulls 20:01
How I think is important to set the background, know it’s, it’s still about our impact and about helping people.
Samantha Hulls 20:08
Everybody who wants to open a space, who is growing a space, who has problems within a space can benefit from this.
Samantha Hulls 20:17
Even if you don’t have problems and you have a very successful space. We want that. So, we’ve got a few levels. So, we’ll start from the smaller level, which is you have a space, it’s running really well, or you know, you’ve been open a few years showing our network. It’s called Connect, it’s about skills sharing and, you know, we can’t all afford, should come to conferences sometimes, not even once a year or more than that. We all know the benefit of coming to speak to other people within the industry. Share your problems, share solutions, give an update, just get that inspiration. The network is about doing that virtually.
Samantha Hulls 20:46
So, yeah, resource sharing and just connecting with other coworking spaces who you know are aligned to the same values as you, who know are there for the belonging, nurturing, and placemaking of coworking. So, you can do that with a few options that you can join that for free. You can sign up on our website as well as a bit of a high-level version of that. The next one is exploring. It’s all about the people who have an idea to open a coworking business, maybe they are in the stage where they have a building, they have blends that try to figure things out. We can help you at that stage with consultancy. So that is often with Claire, our founder, or if appropriate with another member of the team, you know, half day consultancy that we call a sense check, which is literally that I don’t know what I’m doing here.
Samantha Hulls 21:30
I think I’m doing okay. Have an expert, have someone who’s been there, look up your business plans, help you out and just give you a bit of a check or it can be right up to, you know, six to 12 or 18 months of consultancy while you’re developing that.
Samantha Hulls 21:43
We’ve also distilled that down into actually a really, you know, again, if you’re about to open your in coworking business, we get it. You probably don’t have a lot of money ads, spending money, even though it’s absolutely worth the value, can be quite scary and difficult to do. So, we have created the coworking fundamentals book, which is a PDF and E book that you can download yourself and have to use and it takes you through all the steps of that business planning. It’s everything that we learnt from our good ideas program, from taking social entrepreneurs through that process. Actually, everything that we’ve learned from that about what they need about, you know, the tools and, you know, the business model canvas with what the coworking canvas that we use for that specifically, the numbers modelling tools for how you’re going to design your space, who’s your market, how do you do market research, how do you pitch to those clients?
Zeljko Crnjakovic 22:30
So basically, it’s adaptable to any situation, right? Because every coworking environment is different.
Samantha Hulls 22:37
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So that’s just why you download at once. It’s 75 pounds. You’ve got that and you can go and work through that yourself and you’ve got some guidance to help you. , the next one that we have also, another eBook is called the coworking canvas work and playbook. So, we’ve developed, I will take a little side detour about the coworking cameras, which is again, what we developed when we were trying to pin down. Really how do we do coworking? What is our ethos, what works, what’s the play here? The coworking canvas identifies the six elements that we have pinned down as we think it’s key to be present in a collaborative coworking business. So, they are hosting space learning network, peer support. And I knew that I was gonna forget that.
Zeljko Crnjakovic 23:21
I was gonna say, I know it by heart, so I’m so proud of you. And then you, yeah,
Samantha Hulls 23:26
I’m just going to keep talking and then we’ll come back to me. I’m not going to fill us in. We can put a link to the code on the podcast as well. So, the work and playbook, it’s, that’s actually a practical tool that you can use at any stage of your space. I use it with my team still to kind of do a check in with how we’re doing with our hosting. Are we, you know, what’s, what’s bad, what needs improvement? This eBook is a series of at the moment six, but we will have further iterations with up to 12 or 18 exercises. But again, you can facilitate a session with your team that you’re, , working through how you’re building your space, what you want it to be, where are the gaps, how do you solve those problems? You download that once you can use it again and again and again as a tool to help you develop your space. And then I’ll find a piece of the puzzle is what we’ve called coworking in a box. So that is all
Zeljko Crnjakovic 24:17
You buy the box, you’d get the coworker no, no trouble. Yeah, I’m getting it
Samantha Hulls 24:24
Yeah. So that one is essentially 12 years of experience, distil down into guides, templates, processes, how to use everything that you,
Zeljko Crnjakovic 24:35
I just imagined you in a box, you know, because it would be like, you know, coworking in a box. We’ll just send you Sam, you know, like
Samantha Hulls 24:43
Yeah exactly. So it’s, it’s got a really nice combination of the, , of the why of a bit of the chat around, well this is the model and this is what you need to think about and why it’s important in developing a coworking space. , you know, stimulating questions. But it also literally has the practical tools of, you need tie some stuff. Here’s a checklist for recruitment. Here are some templates for a job advertisement. Here’s some templates for the interview process. Here is a template, you know, contracts of employment or you know, subject to you need and or in country, legality wise. , all of that, which I, this is no joke. I literally last week, hired a new staff member it was a busy time. We also just threw a party for our 12th birthday. We’re coming to this conference. There’s a lot going on.
Samantha Hulls 25:26
And I thought, okay, what are the things I need to think of in the onboarding process for this staff member? Oh, I think I’ve got a checklist for this. Yeah, I’m pretty sure we created one, open it up, boom. There was something to which I created myself a year ago that I’d forgotten about. Literally walks me through all the steps and all the things I need to think about. And it was honestly such, I was thinking my past self, it was such a relief to have that mental load removed, to know that actually everything I need to do is he a captured well, I need to just follow a checklist. That is what we can give to other people.
Zeljko Crnjakovic 25:56
That happens to everybody. And this is a great thing that you did. But for anybody, you know, just advice is, you know, write down the processes, you know, and even if you hire a new staff, you don’t have to, you know, just give him the list, you go once through him. But I can always go back to this, even if your process is different than you know, a general, you know, like a help guide writing down is docketing the entire process.
Samantha Hulls 26:26
Exactly and this is it. Like, so we give you a starting point when by all means. I mean for us it is, it is everything that we need, but we have stripped it back to be, you know, a fit all template, which means as we, as we heard at the conference yesterday, there is no such thing as average. So, you know, it’s a point and then adapt it to your needs.
Zeljko Crnjakovic 26:45
Yeah, so very cool. So, anybody interested in the coworking selarator we’re going to give you a link below the podcast, but the actual address is
Samantha Hulls 26:56
Coworking accelerator dot network.
Zeljko Crnjakovic 26:58
Cool, and so what do you mind as the order? What do you think is the best advice they would you would take out of this package that somebody needs to, you know, decide to lie, but you know, as a, as a, as a tip for the listeners. So, for anybody, you know, starting a space or owning a space, what is the main focus that you need to focus on?
Samantha Hulls 27:27
That’s a good question. The main focus that you need to focus on is your members and knowing your market, getting people into the space, speaking to the people in your space, understanding what they need with the coworking accelerator, coworking in a box, you can spend less time working out all the admin, business side writing templates, processes, guides, and spend more time getting people in your space, fostering the people once they’re in your space and building that community that is going to be, you know, so fulfilling. Once you can get it started,
Zeljko Crnjakovic 28:02
Basically, a focus on the people and then the profits will come out or the business side was on the other side of it. Yeah,
Samantha Hulls 28:10
I mean, you do need, you do need the processes behind the scenes. , but if you’ve only got your eye, if you’ve got your head down in your eye all on processes, you’re not going to, you’re not going to get business in the door for one. , and two, once you, if you do get business in the door, you’re not going to know what to do with it or have time to actually foster it so that it stays there. So, yeah, you need, you need to kind of have, have an eye on both.
Zeljko Crnjakovic 28:34
Fantastic, Sam! thank you for a talk on The Melting Pot and all the things that you do, we’re right now by the guys in Belgrade on the coworking co-living conference of South-eastern Europe. So how do you like it so far?
Samantha Hulls 28:48
It’s been fantastic. I’ve really enjoyed it my first time, to South-eastern Europe at all. Yeah, it’s a bit of a flying visit for me, but I think I will definitely be back.
Zeljko Crnjakovic 28:57
Okay, fantastic. Sam, thank you very much for being on the podcast. Thank you. And guys talk to you soon.
Transcribed by Otter.