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Kicking Off Summer

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We’re kicking off summer with our July community partner, SKY Soccer Club! Who also happen to be Ment members. 

SKY is a non-profit organization with a mission to develop great players and people and enhance the community they serve. They provide sports programs to roughly 2000 kids in southern Kentucky every year! Their services have been provided since 1976!

Talking to Keiliah

I talked with Keiliah Prater, the club administrator, about her time with the organization.  Four years ago she wasn’t even looking for a job when they offered her one. SKY was just what she needed with her background in sports.  She is driven by her lifetime of passion for sports and how they enhanced her childhood. Working at SKY has further developed her passion for sports and for this organization because of what it brings to the BG community.

 “Being able to provide the youth in our community a place to feel empowered, practice living a healthy and active lifestyle, encouragement to be good leaders and good people, and learn to work well with others, are just some of the reasons why I do what I do!” 

 

What’s happening right now

Youth sports play such an important role in physical, mental, and social development. Soccer, and all sports, are looking a little different right now. But SKY is working hard to make sure the youth of BG are still able to play! They have already kicked off the season and hosted a successful, socially distanced tryout for their Academy Select teams and are planning a full recreational season this fall.

Keiliah said that COVID-1 9 has really put their mission back into focus as they strive for players and families to have the best possible experience.  During Tim (director of operations) and Keiliah’s downtime over the last few months, they’ve really been basking in the kindness of their players and families, as well as, working on a new strategy for future success after taking a hit as a non-profit during COVID-19. 

Goodbye WFH

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As we say goodbye WFH (work from home) and hello to our new normals, it is important we take with us the lessons we have learned over the last few months.

Whenever I used to get really busy, I would always think it would be nice to have a couple of months where I could veg out and watch all the Netflix I wanted. You know what they say – be careful what you wish for! I think quarantine gave us all a taste of this and I’m not sure we will ever want quite so much time on our hands again.

The four or so months of staying in emptied the walls of Ment for a while however our members are slowly coming back into the office (yay!). After hearing from them, it is clear to see that while quarantine had its low points it also had its upsides. 

The New Normal

We have all been affected personally and professionally by the outbreak. During these last few months, we were challenged to create a new normal, and still are. For most, work did not stop, but WFH (work from home) meant that the kids had to be taught and taken care of, laundry needed to be done, dinner needed to be made, all while keeping up with our work tasks interchangeably. Thankfully there was camaraderie in the fact that we were all at home. Many of our members decided to create a new dedicated workspace from their homes but said that there were still many distractions. 

Beyond working and doing chores, our members found other ways to be productive with their time. Tim and Keilah from SKY Soccer both did a lot of exercising to keep their mental and physical health in check. The Harris’ spent a lot of time outside with their dogs. Kari spent a lot of time with her dog too (I think we all wore our dogs out with too many walks). Nick gardened and ran. Eric spent time Netflixing and planning for future trips. — these are just some of the things they did to keep happy and healthy during possibly the weirdest 4 months we’ll hopefully ever have. 

We’re All in This Together

Our members work in several different industries which is why work was very different for everyone. As we can see from above though, we all can relate at some point during these strange times. Some of our members saw business as usual, and some, unfortunately, saw a loss. However, everyone took this as a time to reevaluate in some way, shape, or form and slow down. Whether it was with their companies’ futures due to complications from the coronavirus, or their work-life balance routines. 

When it is all said and done, I think we can all agree it is nice to leave the laundry in the basket and step out for a few hours to go to the office, dedicate our time and brain space to our projects, and then be able to go home and feel completely present.

 

*Special thanks to our members with OnTarget Cleaning and Restoration for staying really busy by cleaning and sanitizing to protect from COVID-19! 

The Middle: A Two-Year Reflection

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As short as two years really is, it feels like another lifetime ago. We are in the middle of the ride. As we reflect and celebrate this anniversary, we thought it would be fun for me to take a trip down memory lane of my time spent inside 911 College Street as Ment’s Brand + Community manager.

The Start Part 1

My beginning with “Ment” was one we will all never forget. (I will explain the quotations in a bit.) I had just moved back to Bowling Green after graduating in 2016 and living in Lousiville for a few years working as the PR Manager at Kentucky Peerless Distilling Company. (Shoutout to my Peerless family!) Having no clue what coworking was at the time, I trusted my dear friend’s father, JD Haase, to have something really cool up his sleeve when he invited me into his office to meet with him and his assistant Valerie to discuss a potential job they had in mind for me.

That summer, I had a plan to take the GRE and apply for grad school at WKU, my alma mater, but anything past that was a wide-open agenda. I know now it was truly ment to be that JD offered me the job of being the community manager at Bowling Green’s first-ever coworking space… And I should have put my seat belt on then.

JD and Valerie welcomed me onto their team in April 2018. At this point, the second floor of the building was still in the construction trenches but the green carpet was gone and it was starting to shape into the beautiful workspace it is today.

I sat in through design meetings, marketing meetings, game-plan meetings, and took so many notes my hand almost fell off. I was a sponge who had no idea what I was soaking up, but just knew I needed to be of help when asked. 

The Start Part 2

Fast forward a month into May and we were starting to give tours that still needed a bit of imagination as we put the finishing touches on. We were gearing up for our soft opening, we had a tiny bit of press sent our way, which put our “first name” The Büro in the papers. I, being in PR, loved this! It was great promotion for bringing our brand new concept to BG.

I bet you’re wondering what I mean by our first name, right? Well, we aren’t going to dwell on the past, but let’s just say there was already a different coworking space in Miami, FL that had the name in which we had to, in turn, pivot as a business and desist using the name immediately. 

The reason I feel the need to share this very minor portion of the journey is to show how fast we reacted in a time of crisis. This happened to us on May 25, 2018, and we opened with a new name, new logo, new brand concept by June 13th.

AND we had our papers submitted to file for trademarking our now Ment Cowork by the first of June. It is truly crazy thinking about that. In the beginning, we had a team of professionals doing the marketing and branding for us. In the end, to create Ment, we had only us three. 

I knew at that point when I pulled nearly three all-nighters to create the Ment brand plus create a re-brand plan with a little bit of crisis public relations in the mix that it would be personal for me moving forward. 

 

The Middle

As Jimmy Eat World said, “It just takes some time, little girl you’re in the middle of the ride.”

Some days it feels bigger than just office space. I can bet most of us have felt this way about our jobs. Especially if it is something you have put so much time into, stress, literal blood, sweat, and tears. However, when you look at it in the grand scheme of things it won’t ever mean as much to those you are selling it to as it has meant to you.

Since June 13, 2018, I have worked to show every person I could how amazing I think not only Ment is but how special coworking is as an industry. And along the way, we have met and gained some amazing people who see it too and reap the benefits of a space like ours. That is what it is all about. That is why we are here. 

Every step of the way has been a learning process and still is. After all, we are only two! Ment is in the middle of the ride, and we know everything, everything will be alright, alright.