The Idea That Won’t Leave Me Alone
I work at a coworking space right now. That’s not the problem. The problem is I haven’t found one that actually matches my vibe.
Good music. A community of people who show up to get stuff done. A room where you walk in and think, damn, I actually want to be here. That place. That’s what I’m looking for, and I don’t think it exists yet in the way I’m imagining it.
So I’ve been sitting with this idea of building one myself.
What a Coworking Space Should Actually Feel Like
There’s this thing that happens when you’re around the right people working on real things. The energy is different. You pull up your laptop and you just go. Nobody’s interrupting you with nonsense, but when you need to talk through an idea, someone’s there who gets it.
That’s what I want to build. Not a coffee shop with desks. Not a corporate WeWork situation. Something more like a gathering spot where people are genuinely locked in, and the environment makes you want to lock in too.
You walk in and think, damn, I really want to be here. That’s the whole thing.
I think about places like that and how rare they actually are. When you find one, you know it immediately. I want to build one that people feel the second they walk through the door.
The Right Way to Do This
I’m not rushing it. That’s the first thing I know for sure.
I want to bring in the right people on the design side, people who have taste and understand what the space is supposed to feel like. I want the community to come first, not the revenue model. And I want to be financially steady before I start trying to fuel something like this, because a coworking space built from desperation is just a liability with good lighting.
The real questions I’m sitting with right now:
- What does it actually cost to lease and operate a building month to month?
- How do you structure memberships in a way that’s fair and keeps the space funded?
- Who’s the right person to collaborate with on this, and what does that partnership actually look like?
I don’t have clean answers to any of those yet. And I’m okay with that, because this isn’t a this-week move. It’s a build-toward-it move.
Why Community Is the Whole Point
The coworking space idea only works if the community is real. Not a curated LinkedIn roster. Actually real, people who know each other, work with each other, refer each other, hold each other accountable a little bit.
The spaces I’ve been in that felt hollow were hollow because the people were strangers who happened to share a WiFi password. That’s not community. That’s just proximity.
What I’m picturing is a place where the people inside are as much a reason to show up as the space itself. Where I can teach sometimes, where others can too, where whatever everybody’s building gets a little sharper just from being in the same room.
That’s the version worth building. The one where the space reflects the people and the people shape the space back.
The Timeline Is Honest
I’m not going to pretend I’m about to go sign a lease. I’m not there yet, and I know it.
What I do know is that the vision is clear enough now that I can start working backward from it. What financial position do I need to be in? What do I need to learn about commercial real estate? Who do I need to meet?
I want to be able to fuel the community, not just survive it.
There’s a version of this that I could stumble into too early and burn through cash trying to keep the lights on. That’s not the move. The move is to get to a place where opening this thing is an investment I can actually support, not a bet I can’t afford to lose.
Maybe that’s sooner than I think. Maybe it’s two or three years out. Either way, the idea is locked in now, and that matters. You can’t build toward something you haven’t named yet.
This is named. This is the vision. Now I work toward it the right way.