GCUC Podcast Recap: Kate Dezarnaulds

Going all in – crazy or exceptional?

With a background rooted in fundraising and festivals, Founder and CEO at WorkLife, Kate Dezarnaulds, is no stranger to the entrepreneurial grind and getting creative to make it work. Kate talks about her regional living in Australia, the importance of community life, coworking survival techniques, alternative revenue streams, doubling down on a dream, and more in this episode of the GCUC Podcast.

Find your purpose and joy with these juicy sound bites:

The small regional coworking business is a really hard thing to make work. Mate, if I knew what I know now 6 years ago when we started, I love to say I wouldn’t make a different decision, but I am in this far and constantly adapting the model, constantly shifting and changing what we are doing to make it stand on its own two legs. But the thing that has never changed is the purpose and the joy. -Kate Dezarnaulds, Founder & CEO at WorkLife

The challenge, as always, is just making the dollars and cents stack up so I can stop stressing about money so I can start stressing about people and projects and expansion plans. -Kate Dezarnaulds, Founder & CEO at WorkLife

Our research showed for the small regional places in Australia, like me, 70% of them closed over covid. We lost an enormous amount of them due to the economic infrastructure in regional Australia. Now my real guiding light is that really enthusiastic, new generation of people that are opening up in those towns, learn from what we learned from. To have a better chance at making their smaller spaces work long term and be sustainable. -Kate Dezarnaulds, Founder & CEO at WorkLife

I started a coworking business because I really craved that community and the productivity that comes from being in a shared space. I was really burnt out on the inherent risk of trying to run festivals and events. Which relied on sponsorship and government grants that keep them afloat. -Kate Dezarnaulds, Founder & CEO at WorkLife

It’s hard to make a living off of a coworking space. It just is. There’s so much work, there’s so much complexity. I always refer to it as adult daycare because there is just so much you have to do. -Liz Elam, Founder at GCUC

To the new generation, I wish I could tell you that you are able to make a staffed coworking space at a smaller scale happen in a smaller community and have your community pay enough to make that work. But we’ve had to get really clever with alternative income streams, diversified income. We have a bar, we have multiple sites, we hold exhibitions and events. A lot of busy work to make a second, third, and fourth income stream that really make the place hum. -Kate Dezarnaulds, Founder & CEO at WorkLife

One of the best income streams I have for my business is showing up in the community and helping people facilitate conversations that matter and helping them make positive plans for the future. That’s really aligned with what we are here for but it was kind of an accidental upside of having to be creative about extra income sources over covid. -Kate Dezarnaulds, Founder & CEO at WorkLife

I actually learned at the beginning of my career at Dell to constantly ask: What else? What’s next? What can we add? What service is next? Doubling down on service is a great way to do it. -Liz Elam, Founder at GCUC

When your brain is split into so many different places and having to do lots of businesses, the chances of you doing them all well and not going mad at the same time, is pretty slim. -Kate Dezarnaulds, Founder & CEO at WorkLife

Anytime I would be working at Work Club I would be hyper productive and just my best working self. I just need the energy of other people around me to focus. -Kate Dezarnaulds, Founder & CEO at WorkLife

It’s not just about community and productivity. Its about the way coworking spaces cement more people, for longer in the daily life of a town. -Kate Dezarnaulds, Founder & CEO at WorkLife

Click HERE to listen to the full podcast with Liz Elam and Kate Dezarnaulds. It’s juicy!