Edition 27: Hector Kolonas

Here at GCUC we are immensely fortunate to cross paths and work with so many amazing people. Through our work, we’ve cultivated a global community of people we think you should know about.

Community of Cultivators is a blog series we created to introduce you to coworking game changers and connectors. Each month, we’ll release new interviews that we hope inform and inspire you.

This week we had the pleasure of interviewing Hector Kolonas, Founder of Included.co and Syncaroo. Hector is a true community catalyst and pillar in our community- if you don’t know him, you should. Give his answers a read below.

What in your life are you most proud of cultivating or creating? Why?

I love building and supporting the included.co network, which allows hundreds of coworking and workspace communities across 60+ countries to share buying-power and instantly begin offering their members business-boosting perks.

However its the cross-community collaborations that spring out of this work that I’m most proud of. It fills me with pride to be able to support the inspiring people who work tirelessly behind the scenes on important projects, campaigns, and platforms that make an everlasting impact on the reach and sustainability of our industry.

A few that come to mind are the coworkinglibrary.com, coworking.jobs, the period-products-in-every-space campaign, CoworkingConvos.com, Women Who Cowork and the numerous continent-wide projects being led by the European Coworking Assembly.

Where do you personally feel the most sense of community?

Having moved across 4 countries, and getting to work with coworking space operators around the planet; I definitely feel the most sense of community amongst communities of community operators and managers.

I know. How meta right? But hear me out…

Regardless of whether they’re in formalised alliances or forming informal groups of independent, niche or like-minded community operators… when these community leaders come together there’s one thing that becomes abundantly clear.

It’s undeniable how truly passionate many of these people are about enabling, connecting and supporting the humans who join their ‘workplace families’.

As someone who believes that sustainable entrepreneurship is one of the pillars for improving local economies and livelihoods; I feel fortunate to be able to participate in these communities of people who are so dedicated to supporting local entrepreneurship.

What podcast would you recommend to others and why?

My go-to recommendation is “Stuff to blow your mind” by “How stuff’s made”. In their casual conversations a great number of topics, thought experiments and concepts are discussed.

One of their older episodes even inspired the framing of my recent “Theseus’ Ship and the global coworking movement” blog post.

What is one piece of advice you give everyone that works with and/or for you?

Create value. We certainly won’t win every day or even win every battle; but if we focus on continuously creating value for our stakeholders, partners and their communities we’ll help them win more often.

And that’s why we do what we do.

If you had $500 to spend- what would you buy?

A third of a ticket to see Hamilton on Broadway. No, just kidding. Kinda.

Other than that, 6 pairs of Adidas Stan Smiths. White shoes are always going to be in fashion right?

No?! Well at least they’re comfy for running between coworking spaces.

What is the best habit you ever started? What habit do you want to start but haven’t yet?

The best habit was initially waking up really early to get more work hours in the day, before emails and calls started coming in. Then being able to squeeze in a high-interval gym session before the day has started for many, allows me to plan and focus on the days schedule, whilst also making sure I’m looking after body and mind.

I’d love to form a habit of efficiently blocking out time for some arguably more important ‘non-work things’, like learning Russian which has been on my to-do list for like 10+ years.