What Makes Good?

You’re probably wondering how you got here. The chances are you are part of a little community that isn’t at home or in the office, but somewhere in between. Let me introduce you to our brand new newsletter, What Makes Good?

We all want to do good things. Make good things. Experience good things. Right? The world is swirling with references to this concept of goodness, but it still feels like an enigma to most of us. 

What is good anyway? What makes something good? 

When we started our first community focused shared workspace in a residential part of London we called it ‘Good’ Space’ because we wanted it to be the kind of place where good things happen and a place where good people congregate, or at least people trying to be good ;).

3 years in and we have that place. There are 120+ people that call Good Space their working ‘home away from home’ and they create some of the most amazing ‘good’ stuff we’ve ever seen. And they are definitely ‘good’ people. And we’ve become ‘good’ friends. So we opened a few other spaces around London to create these opportunities for other people in other neighbourhoods to do other good stuff. At Good Space, there is an energy of projects being shared, interesting things happening and ideas bouncing off each other.

Our mission is to create a family of independent brands transforming buildings into places of belonging. At the heart of this is a desire to do a little good. To make the world a slightly better place. To encourage and inspire others to do the same and to do it together. This is what we invite you into. An exploration of the idea of GOOD. What is it? Where is it? How do we know it? How do we make it?

There are so many stories of members of this community doing things that are so compelling. One member built a support program for fellow pilots who found themselves with nothing to do during the height of the pandemic, another created a mate tea drinks brand, and two others found a way to collaborate and enhance both of their organisations. 

The questions we want to ask are: Why did you decide to start this? What drives you? Why would you put yourself through all of this to make something out of nothing?  

It's important to us that What Makes Good is interactive and involves you (the reader)  in it. What do we want you to get from this ultimately? To be inspired. We want you to go out and do something. Wouldn’t it be great if one person, inspired by this effort, will take an idea and bring it to life. 

It could be recognizing the job that you're in and understanding that actually what I'm doing here is not just moving numbers on a spreadsheet but connecting what you do on a daily basis to the value that's created down the line. Even if it doesn't change what your day to day looks like, but maybe changes the way you approach it.

This is the core of What Makes Good? Let’s dig under the surface and discover the purpose and the inspiration behind this product that allows other people to share in the same enjoyment you get out of it. 

Hopefully at the end of the day, the stories we tell and the ideas we share are something you want to read and enjoy. We want to make this ‘wait for the postman’ worthy. That’s what we're aiming at. We want to make something good, something of value.

Jamie says that “Of all the first words that my two-year-old daughter has said, the one that I am most thrilled that she says is ‘wow’. It literally makes me so excited, because if I have one goal for my child, over almost anything , is that she's curious.” 

I suppose that’s it in a nutshell. What Makes Good is about provoking a childlike curiosity, inspiring each other by sharing stories, interviews or whatever, about people and things that make us say WOW out loud, literally. We hope you will as well.