At Downtown Works, our community is fortunate to have many loyal members who support and share with one another, generating a high level of energy throughout DW’s coworking space!  One such vivacious member who raises the bar, fostering goodwill and productivity at Downtown Works is Sarah Hernholm!

SARAH SHARES ABOUT HER CHOICE TO TRANSITION FROM WORKING AT HOME TO COWORKING AT DOWNTOWN WORKS.

Many of us kick off our entrepreneurial journey at a kitchen counter, on a living room couch, or maybe even in a garage. Rarely do we jump right into taking on the overhead of an office … we prefer the “overhead” of multiple cups of coffee at our local cafe where we oftentimes set up shop.

In my case, I started WIT – Whatever It Takes from my home, and from what is still my favorite coffee shop, Influx. I would post up for hours drinking cappuccinos, and on occasion, I’d splurge on lunch. Eventually, as the organization began to grow and working from home became less and less productive (too many distractions!), I started to think about renting office space. The challenge was that everywhere I went felt too expensive or too isolating. Then one night I was at a dinner party and a guest was talking about this new co-work space opening up in Downtown. The more I heard about it, the more excited I got. A couple of days later I was at the space, which was still a construction site. Yet, as one of the partners shared their vision, for the first time since I started WIT I felt I was ready to “make the leap”.

Yes, I think going from zero rent to paying monthly rent is a leap, and I felt all the nerves that come with making such a decision. But I did it anyway. And guess what? Our revenue increased right away. I credit that to being in an environment that invites collaboration – we’ve done partnerships with a few of the DW members. I also know that our productivity increased because we were in an environment that inspired creativity and an even greater work ethic. We even launched a new program – Smart City Saturday hackathons, which are about to be launched around the country.

I’ll always be grateful for those early days of WIT – hustling at home, downing caffeine at Influx, and chatting with fellow entrepreneurs at the cafe, but right now I’m loving collaborating in the conference rooms of DW, chatting with fellow entrepreneurs in the DW kitchen … all while still downing lots of caffeine.