This week, Pauline Roussel, co-author of Around The World in 250 Coworking Spaces, spoke with Amandine, founder of Mai'be, a coworking space dedicated to promoting well-being. This conversation was translated from the original French.
Hello Amandine, great to chat with you! Could you tell us a bit about yourself and how you came to open a coworking space?
Hello Pauline, thank you for inviting me, I am delighted to chat with you. I am Amandine Tierz Soto, I created Mai'be, the house of well-being, in January 2020 in Caen, one of the biggest cities in Normandy. Mai'be is a coworking space consisting of five offices and two rooms. I thought very quickly about coworking, which for me is an innovative and essential concept in our society. It allows us to pool skills and ideas and, above all, to be proactive by creating synergies.
It seems that your space is entirely dedicated to well-being. Can you describe the complete concept and how it relates to coworking?
Indeed, I have decided to dedicate my space to wellness practitioners. I offer the possibility to practitioners to receive their customers in good conditions (outside their homes, safe, welcoming, and warm). The booths are rentable for half a day, 7 days a week from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. or from 2 p.m. to 8 p.m., which allows them to take advantage of 70 possible slots per week. They can thus adapt to the availability of their customers and not the other way around. The flexibility of coworking is to accommodate any time, according to the availability of the offices, with a simple planning management tool. Thanks to Cobot, they can make their reservations 24 hours a day.
What did you find difficult/challenging in the process of creating Mai’be?
After having validated the 1st stage, finding the ideally-located space with all the necessary services (parking, PRM, quick access), it was essential to move on to the 2nd part which was also quite complex: Finding a tool allowing the autonomy of the practitioners 24 hours a day!
After several approaches with specialized sites, I approached Cobot and I was amazed by the simplicity of the tool. The onboarding is rather fast and quickly effective. I was even surprised to discover that it also generated customer invoicing. A huge time saver for me and in the management of my organization!
Who is part of the Mai'be community? How do your members use the space?
Today more than 40 practitioners use the premises of Mai'be on a regular basis. They are either Sophrologist, Hypnotherapist, Reflexologist, Naturopath,... It is a pleasure to see them flourish on our premises. In addition, the very fact of working on the same premises encouraged them to open up to others, to discover other practices, and thus to form a real work team. We are all working in the same direction: Open well-being for everyone, whether psychological or bodily!
How can readers get in touch with you and find out more?
I am available by email at amandine@mai-be.fr, do not hesitate to follow us on our networks: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, or discover our practitioners and activities on www.mai-be.fr
