Garrett Tichy shows being human beats being fancy (every time)

Garrett Tichy founded Hygge Coworking in Charlotte back in 2014. He started with a small 3,000-square-foot space. Over eight or nine years, his team grew it to over 80,000 square feet across five locations. Then sold it about two and a half years ago to a larger brand outside of Columbus.

It was, in his words, a truly wild ride.

But Garrett didn't come to the Coworking Creators Summit to brag about metrics or share growth hacks. He came to talk about ice cream.

He also came to talk about something more fundamental. Something he attributes his entire success to: the people who walked through your doors. 

The tens of thousands of people over the years. What the community gave him during seven years of sobriety, through a separation and divorce, through a pandemic.

"I very much attribute my success in life to building Hygge and the people that I met and the effect that those people that surrounded me had on my life."

Since leaving coworking, Garrett co-founded Seemingly Overzealous, what Cat Johnson called "the coolest ice cream brand I've ever seen." Everything Garrett builds has intention and humanness to it. That's not an accident. That's a brand strategy he's refined over a decade.

And it turns out that strategy works just as well for ice cream as it did for coworking.

Every interaction is part of your brand (yes, every single one)

Garrett admitted to being guilty of something he warned attendees against: hearing so many things at conferences and feeling the need to go out and change everything. That's a quick way to end up changing nothing, getting overwhelmed, and staying exactly where you are.

What he was about to share worked for him. He doesn't recommend going out and changing everything you do. You have to find what works for you and execute in a meaningful way that feels sustainable, on brand, and fits into what you're doing.

That said, here's the thing he believes we miss over and over: every single way that people interact with you is a part of your brand. Everything.

When people walk up to your buildings, they're meant to feel something. Every single interaction matters. The form on your website—are you using a boring form that just says "Full Name" and "Email Address"? Those are experiential things that are part of your brand. Are you doing anything meaningful to make people feel special or different?

At Seemingly Overzealous, they glitter all their floors and epoxy them. It's a stunning, cool effect that shocks people when they walk in. It's part of the brand and will be in every shop. They created custom pint carriers—not paper bags you throw out, but carriers that unfold with games or coloring pages. "We think about every last little intervention," Garrett said.

"Nothing should be throw away. And if it's throw away, throw it away."

Be the same person at work and in life

Someone told Garrett back in 2014 that he shouldn't be a different person at work. The person you are at work should be the same person you are in your personal life, and vice versa.

Why do we have a LinkedIn person and a Facebook person and a Twitter person? That's the way Garrett approached building Hygge. He's human. He has feelings and thoughts. Why can't he speak as his brand the same way?

"I'm unique, but I'm not so unique that other people won't relate or see themselves in the things that I share."

Finding somebody connected to your space who feels that same sense of authenticity is critical. Garrett referenced Taylor Mason's talk about agencies and outside help. Even at 80,000 square feet, Hygge never brought in outside help for marketing, branding, anything.

That's because those people who don't work in the space are never going to communicate on your behalf as well as you will. Some of that might sound overwhelming, and you don't have time to do these things. Garrett believes it's because you're probably trying to do too much.

Finding somebody—whether it's you, a community manager, or a member—who embodies what you believe and having that person communicate on your behalf, write your content, take your photos is essential.

"That consistency, when it goes back and forth... I'm telling you, when COHatch acquired us, you can see the clear moment where we as Hygge in Charlotte stopped talking as Hygge. It's shocking. Go look at the last two years of posts on Instagram. Dig up a newsletter they've sent out. It's clear that someone in Charlotte, in one of our spaces, is not communicating on the brand's behalf."

Every letter, every post, every interaction. Who is speaking on your behalf? That's important.

Make people want to know more

Everybody goes, "What the heck is Hygge?" It's the Danish word people associate with comfort and coziness. Then you get that explanation, then you meet the team, then you come into the spaces and they're very bright with lots of blankets and pillows and things that make people feel it.

The "Easy." came a little later in the brand. They put it on their yellow Easy mug and people started stealing the mugs because they thought they were cool. Hygge was losing mugs so much in the early days that they felt obligated to extend the brand to be more in that line.

It became huge on the walls in the spaces. More as an ironic saying. People always asked, "Why the Easy?" Garrett's response: "Well, this, but also, nothing's really easy. It's not easy. It's actually pretty hard."

It was always the approach. They wanted to be sure people asked why.

Seemingly Overzealous is so much more interesting than Two Scoops or Local Scoop or any generic name. People ask why Seemingly Overzealous, and Garrett gets to tell them a story. The day after his first date with his now-wife, he sent her a text: "I don't want to seem overzealous, but I want to see you again today."

That's a huge part of how he thinks about every little detail. How do they make people curious?

Their scoop sizes are Frisky, Flirty, and Fearless instead of Single, Double, Triple. They don't call them shakes—they call them Something Else that integrates further into the brand and gives people more reasons to ask, "Why'd you do that? That's cool, that's different."

Consistency across everything

The same way Garrett talks about shakes has to feel connected to everything else. He knows it's weird sometimes—is he really spending too much time thinking about how shakes fit and how people will have that experience in the shops?

But he wants people to have a very consistent experience across the board.

When you read Hygge's newsletters, you got a very human, very personal approach. Everything was also very yellow. When you Google Hygge, the image search is a vomit of yellow everywhere. Garrett loves it. They took a bold chance with it, and it worked for them.

They became the yellow brand so much that if anyone anywhere painted a wall yellow, people would send Hygge photos asking if they were opening a location. It was wild.

Across social media, everything was very human, very yellow, very much not about space. It was about what happens and the people in the space. That was part of the brand.

"I think space is the least interesting thing that we do. I think the people that inhabit our spaces are certainly the most interesting thing that we get to do."

You have to have values

This connects to Dean's talk, Garrett noted. You have to have some values as a brand.

This doesn't mean you need a social mission. It doesn't mean you need to take political stances. But Hygge valued people. Everything about how you interacted with them felt very human. It felt like they loved everyone who walked through the door.

That was what they hung their hat on.

Garrett doesn't believe there's anyone on the call who doesn't like people. "I mean, you're in the wrong business."

"Look beyond your walls. Yes, we have four walls. Yes, we are trying to build a community internally. But if you can find a way to break out of your walls and be a community in Charlotte or wherever city you're in, you'll be better for it."