Lauren Urlacher sat in front of her virtual audience at the Coworking Creators Summit with an unusual credential for a coworking presenter: eight years as a professional artist specializing in large-scale, hyper-realistic florals.
Specifically, dahlias. She has a slight obsession with them, she admitted.
But Lauren wasn't there to talk about painting technique. As Community Manager at Fellow Coworking in Spokane, she came to share something more valuable—how to access creative flow on demand, not just when inspiration decides to show up.
This matters more than you might think. Because every coworking operator is doing creative work constantly, whether they realize it or not. Crafting member experiences, designing spaces, solving problems, building community from scratch, writing copy that actually sounds human. All of it requires creativity. And most of us are waiting for inspiration to strike instead of creating the conditions that make it inevitable.
Lauren's presentation—"Finding Your Creative Sweet Spot"—offered a practical framework for aligning your inner and outer environments so that creative flow feels effortless instead of elusive.
Before diving into her framework, Lauren shared something refreshingly honest about her career path. Despite being a practicing artist, she has a business background with bachelor's degrees in marketing, operations management, and communication studies. She's always been split fifty-fifty between creative and analytical thinking.
She learned early that putting full financial dependence on painting was "the quickest way to make me not enjoy painting." So she maintains part-time work, which has actually helped her art career flourish.
Two years ago, she started at Fellow Coworking and fell in love with the industry. "I'm way too extroverted to be a full time artist," she explained. The role fulfills that side of her.
Here's the key insight for operators: as an artist working on another company's schedule, Lauren doesn't have the luxury of only working when she's feeling inspired. She had to train herself to dip in and out of creative flow on command.
That training is exactly what she shared with the summit audience.
Lauren defined creative flow as a mental state where you experience deep immersion in what you're doing. Time slips away. Self-conscious thoughts diminish while concentration heightens. You're so caught up in the work that everything else disappears.
Ideas come faster and easier. You get more done in less time. The work feels authentic rather than forced.
But here's what creative flow is not: it's not about productivity.
"Creative flow is not about productivity. It's about consistently creating work that you're proud of without draining yourself and your energy."
That distinction matters. We've been conditioned to equate flow with output. Lauren reframed it as sustainable quality.
So what does creative flow have to do with building a coworking business? Lauren broke it down into four areas where operators exercise creativity constantly.
Community and culture: This is where creativity makes your brand feel human instead of manufactured. Think of special ways to make members feel seen, or crafting the perfect lunch event that turns strangers into friends by the end of that shared experience. "Anything related to your member experience is going to benefit from you being immersed and playful while you're working on it," Lauren said.
Marketing and storytelling: Creative flow becomes your superpower here. Through language and visuals, you shape your brand's personality and voice. When you're in flow while working on this, keeping that voice consistent across platforms becomes effortless.
Space design and atmosphere: This is tangible creativity. You shape how people feel when they walk into your space through music, art, lighting, plants, and furniture arrangement. "It's really fun how we get to play in that way," Lauren noted.
Problem solving: Lauren doesn't know anyone who hasn't had to approach problems creatively in coworking. The shift in mindset matters here. "We're going to shift from the mindset of having a problem that needs to be fixed to having a puzzle that we get to solve."
Being creative makes tedious tasks more enjoyable.
This is where Lauren diverged from romantic notions of creativity. She was direct: we're not waiting for inspiration anymore.
Inspiration is inconsistent and unreliable. You don't know when it's going to show up or how long it will stick around. When you try to force creativity and feel stuck, you want to put the work off for later. By the time you stop procrastinating, you waste time playing catch-up and revisiting old ideas.
But your creativity is a muscle. Use it or lose it.
Lauren used running as an analogy. If you go running once a month, it's not going to feel good. Your lungs burn, your knees spring. But if you run once or twice a week, suddenly running feels easier.
The same applies to creativity. "Use these often and intentionally, that dreaded feeling of getting started is going to become irrelevant."
The good news? You have control over your inner and outer environment. Small adjustments signal to your body that it's time to create.
Lauren's framework rests on a simple concept: to get into creative flow, your inner environment and outer environment need to align with the task at hand.
Your inner environment lives between your ears. How much is on your mind? Do you have deadlines coming up? What mood are you in? What's your energy level?
Your outer environment is more self-explanatory. What are you looking at? What are you listening to? Do you have access to the tools and materials you need? How's the lighting?
Different tasks require different conditions. You need to shift these throughout the day as you move from task to task.
Lauren's message was liberating: "If you're feeling stuck, it's not you, it's likely your environment."
Feelings like overwhelm, perfectionism, and imposter syndrome can be addressed by tweaking how you're feeling on the inside. Noise, clutter, and distractions can be fixed by changing your outer environment.
If you're working from home and those dirty dishes are screaming at you from the kitchen sink, that's a huge red flag that your environment isn't working for this task.
Lauren emphasized that the answers are already inside you. Through routinely checking in with yourself, you gain self-awareness about what you need for different work.
Clear mental clutter: This was non-negotiable in Lauren's personal routine. She does stream-of-consciousness journaling every day before painting. She keeps a blank notebook in her studio and fills one page with whatever comes to mind—reliving an argument from three days ago with the comebacks she wishes she'd had, or just a long-form to-do list.
"You can have these same thoughts bouncing around in your head for three days, but as soon as you get them on paper, they're out of your head, and you have that sense of peace."
If journaling feels icky or woo-woo, she acknowledged that. But people do it for a reason.
Be present: Start with a couple minutes of quiet meditation or deep breathing. Lauren shared a saying she's heard several times: if you feel you don't have ten minutes to meditate, you actually need thirty.
We skip this step because it doesn't feel productive. But meditation and breathing exercises lower stress, increase focus, and improve mood. That's the direction you want to head.
Find inspiration from others: If Lauren's starting a project and not feeling it, she gains inspiration from others first. If you're setting out to write a blog introducing your coworking business, read a few posts from Cat Johnson's blog. "I promise, you're going to be feeling a lot more motivated and enthusiastic to talk about coworking."
Keep a folder on your computer with member testimonials or photos of friendships formed in your space. Anything that reminds you why you do this will spark that fire.
Set your intentions: This is the fastest way to combat perfectionism and imposter syndrome. Often we feel those things when we don't know where we're going or how to get started.
Setting intentions is your roadmap. Write it on a sticky note—exactly what you're working on today—and put it next to your keyboard. Now you have your starting point and no room for doubt.
Done is better than perfect: Getting yourself into this mindset will improve your life in many ways if you apply it beyond work. But specifically for coworking business tasks, it gives you permission to be playful and experimental. "There's no better place to be than playful and experimental when you're working with your creativity."
Recognize peak creative times: Some people are morning people, others are night owls. We all have different times throughout the day when we're most creative.
Lauren's a bit of a freak—her words—who's most creative between 5:30 and 8:30 in the morning. She gets her creativity done early. If she came home to paint after work, sure, she has the skills. But she'd be more sluggish, more frustrated with mistakes, and the mindset wouldn't be there for success.
Honor your creative time when working on projects.
Create a routine: Use these building blocks to create a routine that works for you. Think of it as Pavlovian conditioning. Ring the bell, the dog gets a treat. You perform your routine, and your mind knows it's time to get creative.
It might feel weird getting started, but try it for a few weeks. You'll notice the difference.
While the inner environment requires introspection and self-awareness, the outer environment is more straightforward.
Do you have what you need? If not, fix that. Otherwise, you won't do a good job.
Soundscape: What you're listening to can motivate or drain you. If you need to do something requiring energy, listen to music that hypes you up. Before her summit presentation, Lauren had a mini dance party with friends in the coworking space to get her energy ready.
If you're doing work requiring quiet concentration, well, it's a good thing you work in coworking and already know the power of noise-canceling headphones.
Social energy of the room: This is the overall mood or vibe created by the people in a space and how they're using it. This can either fuel you or drain you.
Lauren gave a specific example. Thursdays at Fellow Coworking mean community lunch from twelve to one. If you're in the main area during that time, it's loud with laughter and people having a good time. That's not where you want to be if you need to focus. You'd be doing yourself a bigger service by putting yourself in a conference room where you can concentrate better.
Lighting: Very self-explanatory. You'll know if the lighting is good for what you're working on.
Color: As a visual artist, this is where Lauren could geek out all day. Color theory is her thing. And if you were a member of The Lab, you might remember her spring talk about using artwork to reinforce brand identity.
Color affects our subconscious in ways we're not even aware of. Reds and oranges can give you energy. Yellows can make you playful. Greens and blues can be calming. Purple can open a gateway to your imagination.
Color affects everyone differently, just like we all have favorite colors. For Lauren, who runs on the more anxious side of the spectrum, reds can overwhelm her easily. If she's feeling anxious and needs to get going on something, she works close to plants. "Give me the greenery. Put me in the blue room, something to balance out that abundance of energy I already have, so that I'm able to get grounded and focus."
Start paying attention to when you feel good while working. Look around and see if there's a pattern with colors.
Now that you know the elements of inner and outer environment, how do you use them?
Your alignment is personal. What works best for you might not work for the person next to you. This is where you experiment and find your own way.
Check in with yourself when you start: Is your mind clear? Are you comfortable? If there's something you immediately know you need to do, don't try to get started with creative work. Get up, use the restroom, fill that coffee cup, then sit down.
If you're ten minutes into creative work and decide you need a break, you interrupt your cycle and have to start all over again with that routine of getting back into your creative zone. Set yourself up for success right at the beginning.
Check in again after 10 or 30 minutes: Is it feeling good? Maybe the playlist you picked isn't hitting the way you wish it would, and you know a better playlist would make you a better human. Stop and pick a better playlist. You're allowed to stop and adjust. That's the beauty of this.
Your alignment is not static: It changes throughout the day and shifts task to task. Always check in with yourself. Always make adjustments.
Track your patterns: If these concepts are new, Lauren really recommended tracking them. Keep a notebook or a note in your phone. What were you working on? How were you feeling? What was going on around you? What were the results? Were you able to get in flow easily, or were you struggling with imposter syndrome?
Track as you go. Patterns will emerge, and you'll learn what works best.
Fellow Coworking's traffic ebbs and flows throughout the week and different times of year. You might show up expecting to have a place to yourself so you can really hunker down and focus. If you show up and it's really busy, you might instantly panic and feel overwhelmed, like you won't get anything done.
But now you have skills for tweaking your inner and outer environment to make it work.
Match energy to task: If you're brainstorming, pop out to the community area. Interact with other members. Bounce ideas off each other. That's your best type of energy for that task. If you try to brainstorm in a quiet room, you might feel more isolated and stuck.
Now try a different task. Say you're writing your blog. That's when you need quiet concentration. If you try to write in the main area, you'll just feel overwhelmed and frustrated.
In coworking, that's one of your biggest advantages. You have all those different environments under the same roof. Take advantage of it.
Creative anchoring: Bring a consistent object with you every time. This could be your noise-canceling headphones, something symbolic of your why, or your emotional support water bottle. It's like an inanimate accountability partner. You look at it and it helps you refocus and stay motivated.
It sounds funny, but it works.
Time blocking: Break down your day. Say you'll work on a content calendar from nine to eleven AM. Knowing you're only working on that for two hours makes it manageable and less intimidating. It's a much smaller mountain to climb.
Batching and delegating: Do similar work at the same time. Write all your blogs and captions in one segment. Do all your photography and reel filming at another time. This saves cognitive energy.
Lauren concluded with three ways to leverage coworking for creativity.
Home and work separation: When you're coworking, separate yourself from home stress. Not having a laundry list of distractions keeps you focused. Knowing you're working for a limited number of hours helps you stay on task.
Collaborate across disciplines: You've got so many different people working in coworking. If you're working on an Instagram reel, jump over and ask the videographer for a quick tip. Or ask if they want contract work. Give them a free month of membership in exchange for help with that. "It's fantastic how many resources we have."
Share your goals: If Lauren could give one takeaway, it's this. Sharing your goals defeats imposter syndrome, especially in coworking. That community will be your biggest source of support and accountability. Never be afraid to ask someone to give what you're working on a quick look. You can always find inspiration among your community.
Lauren's closing line captured her entire framework in one sentence: "Creative flow is not something we chase, it's something we create conditions for."