Working for Yourself Doesn’t Have To Mean Working Alone

When the economy took a turn for the worst, many professionals found themselves out of work in a job market that offered few options for taking a vertical step up the ladder. While many became discouraged and resigned to the unemployment rosters, some took it as a hint from the universe to realize their lifelong dream of self-employment.

For a while the lack of a regular paycheck can keep you motivated, but what happens when freelancing becomes routine and your clients are on retainer? Even worse, what happens when your business becomes your life and the separation between work and home is lost?

Angel's desk at Cohere

Does this scenario sound familiar? Some nights you work until 3 a.m. Some days you don’t get up until noon. You’ve lost your balance, your social connections, and your sanity. Maybe your business is suffering or maybe you’re wildly successful, but either way, something is missing.

What you’re missing is your tribe. You had a tribe in college or when you worked for a company. You didn’t know it at the time, but you NEED people around you. Coworking fills that need. Coworking is a movement that was invented for you.

What is Coworking?

Coworking happens when people gather together to work on their own projects. Instead of working in their basements, home offices or local coffee shops, coworkers convene in shared, collaborative workspaces that allow for rich conversation as well as increased productivity.

As of March 2011, there are over seven hundred coworking spaces around the world. Each of these has its own personality and style, but a few things remain constant whether you’re in Tel Aviv or Tampa: fast wifi, open desks, free coffee, and a global community of people who value innovation, creativity and collaboration.

Benefits of Coworking

Although coworking has happened in one form or another for centuries, the official concept has grown from an experiment to a movement of thousands in just a few short years. The benefits of coworking extend far beyond what can be surveyed or tallied, but here are some of the most revealing stats about this phenomenon:

• 82 percent of coworkers in the U.S. report that they are more motivated and productive since joining a coworking space.
• 50 percent of U.S. coworkers report higher incomes since joining a coworking space
• 91 percent of coworkers enjoy better interaction with others, both inside and outside their industry. Most make vital professional connections within two months of joining a space.

At my home coworking space, Cohere, we like to say that failure is the best part of coworking.

This may not sound very uplifting, but it’s true when you stop and think about it. Some of our best times together as a community occur when someone shares their really messy failure story, and we figure out how to clean it up. Or at least how to avoid that same mistake in the future.

A community where everyone keeps their failures to themselves is shallow and uninteresting. It’s much more fun to be real. The self-employed like is messy and complex, and when you feel like you’re all alone, it can be downright depressing. Coworking gives you a posse when you feel like bailing and taking an office job. And they’ll be there to laugh (or cry) when you mail a press release with a typo.

Who Can Cowork?

Short answer: anyone who needs a laptop to get their job done. Long answer: technically creative people who are interested in working for themselves in the company of others. This casts a wide net, and it’s exciting to see who coworking can catch. For example, at Cohere, we’ve got coders, web developers, project managers, copywriters, stay-at-home moms who also run a blog, a meat scientist, a climate researcher, app builders, software developers, event planners, a former rocket scientist (no joking), and an accountant, just to name a few.

This built in diversity means coworkers are constantly learning. Web developers have useful tips for bloggers. Graphic designers love picking the brains of software developers. Writers are the unofficial group dictionary and thesaurus. So when coworkers have a question about html or how to pitch new product, they just have to take out their headphones and ask.

Beth Buczynski

Beth Buczynski is a freelance writer living in Northern Colorado, and the co-author of an ongoing series of ebooks about coworking and the emerging mobile workforce. In the summer of 2010, she and her partner Eric spent four months traveling in an RV and visiting coworking spaces around the country. Chat with Beth about self-employment, writing, or coworking on Twitter.

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