Walk into Sleek Cowork and Media Studio in McDonough Square, Georgia, and you might catch a book signing wrapping up in the main room.

Or a wedding being set up.

Or a TV producer scouting backdrops.

Or an attorney with a client in the conference room.

Or a mom on a tour, picturing her kid's graduation party in the same space where, an hour earlier, three entrepreneurs were heads down on laptops.

That range is the whole point.

Liana Brockman runs the day to day at Sleek, and when she describes who comes through the door, she does not start with a member persona. She starts with the variety.

"You never know who's gonna come through the door," she said happily.

For coworking operators trying to figure out how to make a multi-functional space stay cohesive, Sleek is an example worth following.

A space built for more than desks

Sleek Cowork and Media Studio has been in McDonough Square for a few years. It was founded by Mariah HuQ, executive producer and the first Black woman to pioneer a show on Bravo.

Her show, Married to Medicine, ran for multiple seasons and is still in production. Mariah wanted to give creatives and business owners outside of Atlanta a place to work, film, and gather without making the drive into the city.

"A lot of people don't always want to have to go to Atlanta. Mariah wanted to create a space where, okay, this has what I need and is in my backyard."

The result is a hybrid that does not fit neatly into one category.

Sleek has coworking seats. It has two private offices. It has a conference room available for hourly and full day bookings. It has a green screen room and multiple backdrops for podcast and video production. And the entire space transforms into an event venue.

Liana sums it up in a single phrase that doubles as the elevator pitch she gives visitors: a one-stop creative hub.

What the daily grind actually looks like

If you have ever run a coworking space solo, the next part will sound familiar. Liana is the first face members see in the morning and the last person checking the building at night. In between, she does a little bit of everything.

"I handle the day to day operations. I open and close the building, I also check in members. I'm the first person that they see when they come in. Greetings, administration, checking our mailboxes. Respond to emails. Event coordinating. I also do our social media and our newsletter for our members. So I do a little bit of everything."

On top of that, she is currently coordinating two events. She manages the virtual office program for business owners who need a professional mailing location. She works alongside Suzy Guzman to do all the things.

And she uses Coworks space management software to handle invoicing, conference room scheduling for non-members, member status checks, and community-wide announcements.

The software, she said, is what keeps it all from collapsing into chaos. "It keeps everything organized. When we log them into Coworks, it just makes everything run very quickly."

This is the part operators do not always say out loud. The job is not one job. It is twenty small jobs stitched together by whatever system you can get to do the stitching for you. And it's what Cowrks was built for.

A varied community with a common goal

Sleek's member base is a mix that defies easy segmentation. Some are solo entrepreneurs and work from home professionals looking for a desk outside the house. Some run small teams. A few have full companies behind them. Conference room bookings bring in people hosting monthly meetings or one off seminars.

But in some way, they are all creatives. The podcasters using the backdrops. The production teams renting the green screen room. Sleek has in-house production partners who can step in when a client wants to film but does not have their own crew.

What ties this group together is not industry. It is the kind of person who wants a beautiful, well run space without having to drive into Atlanta to find one.

How people become members

Ask any operator about their pipeline and you will get a different answer. For Sleek, the honest answer is foot traffic and search.

"A big thing that I've been trying to do for Sleek is to make it more visible. A lot of people don't know that we're here. I make sure those SEO keywords are in there. But it's mainly foot traffic, and then by phone, or they find us on Google."

Visibility is the word Liana keeps coming back to. Not branding. Not awareness. Visibility.

The simple problem of making sure people in McDonough know the space exists. She has been working the local angle hard, introducing herself to neighboring businesses, hosting a Henry County business meeting that brought every owner on the square through the front door, and joining local Facebook groups to keep Sleek in front of the community.

If you run a space in a smaller market, this is probably the most relatable part of Liana's story. The marketing playbook is not glamorous. It is showing up, shaking hands, and making sure your front door is hard to miss.

The space sets the culture

One of the eternal questions in coworking is who drives community. Do members ask for events and the operator delivers, or does the operator set the tone and members follow? At Sleek, Liana said it is the second one.

"Our space helps create the culture, and then members run with it,” she said.

She is planning a member event for the second quarter and wants to use a poll to figure out what would actually pull people in. Because that is the other reality of community work. Members are busy. They have lives. Even people who love your space sometimes do not show up. Getting them in the door for something other than work takes intention.

In the meantime, Sleek keeps the community warm through content. The biweekly newsletter includes a quote of the week, a message from Mariah HuQ, a message from Liana, evergreen articles for entrepreneurs, recaps of past events, and call to actions for any current specials. There is also a recurring midweek momentum touch point. The newsletter goes out to members and lives on the website, doing double duty as a marketing asset for prospects.

For an operation run by one person, that is a lot of consistent content. It is also one of the things that makes Sleek's brand feel intentional rather than scrappy.

Why coworking is more than desks and Wi Fi (we know, we know)

When I asked Liana what makes coworking different from a coffee shop or a home office, she did not hesitate.

"It's the space. Just having a nice ambience to work at, as well as being a part of a community that keeps you engaged. We try to create a community here that people feel comfortable and want to come back to."

That is the answer most operators give, but Sleek backs it up with the small things. The biweekly newsletter. The midweek check-ins. The events planned for spring. The willingness to ask members what they want instead of guessing. The fact that the founder herself shows up in the newsletter every issue.

None of this is revolutionary. It is just the work. And it is the work that turns a beautiful space into a place people actually want to spend their day.

What other operators can take from Sleek's playbook

A few things stand out about how Liana and Mariah have built Sleek that are worth borrowing if you run your own space.

Lean into the hybrid.

Sleek is not just a coworking space. It is a media studio, an event venue, a meeting room, a podcast set, and a virtual mailbox provider. Each of those revenue streams supports the others, and together they make the space less dependent on any single member type. If your space has unused capacity in the evenings or weekends, there is probably a second or third use case hiding in plain sight.

Make visibility a daily practice.

Liana does not treat marketing as a campaign. She treats it as a habit. Knock on the neighbor's door. Show up at the chamber meeting. Join the Facebook group. Update the website. Send the newsletter. Visibility compounds when you keep at it.

Let the founder's story show.

Mariah's background as a TV producer is not buried in an about page. It is part of the daily pitch. When Liana explains the green screen room and the production partnerships, she is also explaining why Sleek exists in the first place. Founder stories give a space personality that no amount of branding can replicate.

Use software to absorb the chaos.

Liana runs operations, sales, events, marketing, and member services. The only way that math works is if the tools take care of the repetitive pieces. Invoicing, scheduling, member status, announcements. If your community manager is doing any of that by hand, that is time they are not spending with members.

Ask members what they want.

Liana is planning her next member event around a poll, not a hunch. Small move, big difference. Members who feel heard show up more often.

Sleek Cowork and Media Studio is not the biggest space. It is not in the biggest market. It is run by a small team doing a lot of jobs at once.

But it is a great example of what happens when an operator treats every square foot like it can serve more than one kind of person, and treats community work like a daily practice instead of an occasional event.