Why Umbrella Spaces? The Back Story, and The First Space

I've been running my own businesses now for about 15 years -

Wow, I didn't even realise myself it was that long, until I just calculated it right now.

Not one singular business for that whole time - I actually started off being a Virtual Assistant before it was really a thing - back in 2005, when I still lived in Scotland (where I lived until I was in my early 40's).

When my husband (the Extrovert in our family, if you haven't read my other blog yet...) and our two young sons moved here late 2011, I closed the business. 

After getting the boys settled into school and kindy, and figuring out where the supermarkets were, and shockingly discovering that I had to actually take the extra time to go to other shops to buy items other than food (if you don't know, in the UK, the 'supermarkets' sell literally everything - alcohol, clothes, electrical items - so for other Australians, imagine Coles + Kmart + the bottle-o all merged together into one big store), I started looking around to decide whether to start another business, or go and work in the city. 

The city is only about 35 minutes on public transport for us, but having no family or close-knit friendship groups yet, it seemed like too much of a stretch to find a job where I could drop the boys off, jump on a train, start work at 10am - if I was lucky with train times, and then leave before 2pm to make sure I was back to collect kids by 2.45pm...
Not many jobs like that around 10 years ago. 

Add to that, the fact that my husband was in the early stages of establishing himself in a new country, new company, and new industry, and it seemed obvious that I'd have to find a new way to work - literally.

I started to look for a place to find others like me. 

I joined a networking group and struggled along to a few of their evening events. With a 5.30pm start, I had to make Mr Extrovert come home early from work to hand him the parenting baton, and I would usually arrive at the events profusely sweaty and stressed (I'm the Introvert, in case you hadn't figured that out yet!), and probably not giving anyone the impression that they should hire me to help them run their business! 

One day at school pickup, I realised that I already knew other small business owners who were also parents at the school. I made an extra effort to start to talk to them, and soon, realising there was a gap in the networking events market in our area, I created, and started running, a coffee morning event for the networking group I had joined. It suited us school parents so much better, dropping the kids at school, then putting on the business hat and heading to meet other local small business owners over morning coffee (and cake - there was always cake...).

The First Space

Over the next two years, so many people approached me and said it was just what they needed. We had created a safe space for women, particularly mums running businesses, as it was a women's networking group - I've since connected with many dads and other non-parents, who all want flexibility around their work-lives.
And of course, since 2020, when Covid and the 'WFH' movement hit us ('Working From Home', if you haven't had the option to try it yet), more and more people are realising that there is a better way of integrating work and life, to create more space for both - allowing more productive work, and more opportunity for the freedom to do those things you didn't have the time for previously.
Sometimes this could be because of wasted time commuting to an office, or in others, it would be the expectation of your presence in that office from 9-5, as the classic song told us all - oh no, that's right, that song was written FORTY-TWO years ago! So why are we still doing this?? 

Even back then Dolly said "It's enough to drive you crazy if you let it"..

Those conversations were with people who were trying to build a new business, and who needed to come to these events to make connections and potential clients. They really wanted to be there, as it felt so supportive.

I'd deliberately made the coffee events as casual as possible, as I wanted people like me (an introvert who would really rather be at home in my comfort zone, or hanging with people I've known for ages) to hear from others that it was a safe place to come along to, even if you didn't know anyone. And - yes, you will need to individually tell everyone about what your business is and does (and what introvert doesn't just love an elevator pitch🙄), but it was a place to learn how to do this if it doesn't come naturally to you, and people would give kind words of advice on how to maybe improve it next time.

But those people just starting out would feel guilty for even being there - feeling like they should be at home, doing the paid work, not spending money to be chit-chatting at an event. They wanted to be there, but they wanted to make a success of their business.

So I started thinking - how can I fill this new gap in the market? How could we make it work so that we could network and do our work at the same time? What would that space look like?

And so began the Umbrella Spaces. 

Next time, I'll tell the story of The Second Space - Collaborative Coworking.