Today we’d like to introduce you to Jon Durell.
Hi Jon, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
When I started college almost 30 years ago, my plan was to finish undergrad and go right to law school. Things changed, the world changed, and when I finished my degree in fall of 2001, public service was calling. I started out as a police officer about 8 weeks after graduating.
Fast forward almost a decade, and I was assigned as a detective. With up to 6 years ahead of evenings and weekends generally free for the first time in a long time, I re-enrolled and started a 3 year journey through law school. When I finished, I spent about 4 years in practice helping families in both the public and private sectors. At the end of 2018, the firm I worked in closed its Grand Rapids office with very little notice.
My brother and father are also attorneys, and their practice was at a transition point that created excellent opportunity for all of us to work together. We had a few years of constant change, where my brother left to go in-house with a client. My father had embraced a well-earned retirement. The fourth attorney at the firm also went in-house with a different client. And in the middle of it all, we fully renovated our office suite.
On the last stretch out of the pandemic, I recognized that I had two clear options – lease my office to another small business and begin to work from home full-time, or find another way to offset the cost of a large, fully-renovated office suite that I was now in along.
Practicing in real estate, I understood the difficulty that office leases faced after the pandemic. I spent some energy courting full-time office share clients. But this was a space with little interest. Where I found the biggest draw was with customers that wanted occasional office space. So I went full-tilt into the hotel office model: space by the day. What I learned is that today’s workers wanted a space to call ‘the office’ without the time and cost of running an office. They want easy online reservations. They want no commitment – just a great place to focus or meet with clients.
I launched Shared: Coworking EGR. It was a concept not widely pursued in the market. There are lots of large space opportunities to cowork. But most of those are tailored to full-time options, with high pricing, significantly using open space coworking and less on private offices. Coworking suites were generally downtown Grand Rapids, making the time and expense to drive and park a real consideration.
Shared, on the other hand, is nestled into the East Grand Rapids community, with an easy location, convenient parking, great amenities nearby, and where a number of amazing professionals live.
A couple of years in, and I don’t see the pendulum swinging back to traditional office leases. I love having a vibrant place to work, where I’m surrounded by professionals, and where I can encourage small businesses and remote employees to come together, have a place to call ‘the office’ where they can put amazing energy to work.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Things have definitely been challenging. The transitions in my law practice has seemed non-stop. At times, the economics seemed uncertain and even unsustainable. And the pandemic only exacerbated that. But with some foresight and patience, I’ve been able to supplement the cost of having a professional office space by creating a welcoming place with a great community for professionals to share as much or little time as their workspace needs require.
As you know, we’re big fans of Shared: Coworking EGR. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
Shared is a hotel-style office model. With the exception of my office, the spaces at Shared are all reserved on a daily basis. Shared is meant to meet the workstyle of today’s professionals who all learned that working from home is doable – and in some ways desirable. But working from home is also isolating and lacks a degree of privacy between our home and professional life. So whether someone needs a space one time, or once in a while, once a week, or more – Shared is a great option.
Using the spaces at Shared are meant to be budget friendly, so that guests pay only for the amount of office space they’ll use. It also centralizes office management, so that professionals don’t have the time-expense of running their own office.
What I’ve seen over the last year is the number of professionals who have worked from home for a few years, and have realized how isolating that is. It’s really exciting to have guests who come to Shared just to be around other people. And the community that has grown here is extremely welcoming and energizing.
Can you tell us more about what you were like growing up?
I am one of six siblings. Growing up, I was the youngest of the 4 boys with one older and one younger sister. I was a kid growing up in the 80’s. I grew up with lots of physical activities, and also with the early video games.
I enjoyed being a problem solver and helping hand. That took me through a few summers of being a lifeguard, and then into my police career. That service mentality has carried through in my legal career and my style as a coworking host at Shared.
Pricing:
- Daily Office Rentals from $57/day with a plan
- Daily Coworking Desks from $21/day with a plan
- Meeting Room Rentals from $69/two-hours
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.sharedegr.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shared_coworking_egr
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sharedcoworkingegr
