What we learned from a 3-month co-living experiment

Each of the events were 4-nights. One was more “professional”, with people paying €1500-2500 for a ticket. The others were more lowkey, with tickets between €200-500. All of our events are priced on a sliding scale so people with more income contribute more, making it more accessible to people with low income. Co-living guests paid €200-350/week (all inclusive)..

Nati & I were left with a €5k profit for the co-living period, and about a €10k profit for the 4 events we facilitated. €15k for 3 months is not an amazing salary for two people, but considering all our living expenses were covered, and the work is satisfying, it’s quite doable.

Next to the dinner table was the “community mastery board” – a facilitation tool we learned from our friend Drew from Agile Learning Centers. This is an easy way for people to name small problems and quickly come up with solutions together, like “the downstairs bedrooms have poor sound insulation” → “let’s keep the noise level down in that part of the house between 10pm and 8am”

If you’re an aspiring community-builder: I would definitely recommend you run an experiment something like this. But I should note there are other factors that enabled us to be successful.

For one: reputation. We’re well connected in multiple networks: TPOT, The Hum, Microsolidarity, and Enspiral. From my position in that web, it’s pretty easy to get an invitation in front of a few thousand people, so that takes most of the effort out of event promotion. 96% occupancy across 4 events is exceptionally high, and it’s the result of a decade of network-building internationally.

Another factor: skills for living in community.