Claire Krawsczyn is no stranger to the entrepreneurial world.
In fact, she's owned her own business for nearly five years, a marketing and communication company. However, she and her friend Rachel Murphy felt that their landscape in suburban Cincinnati was missing something for entrepreneurs like themselves.
So they created The Space, a local community workplace where professionals on the fringes of the city could congregate and work.
Krawsczyn remembers distinctly when she realized The Space was necessary.
"My daughter was home and I was in the home office trying to have a client call, and my daughter was knocking," she said. "I had to shut the door, kind of in her face. I felt awful, but I was totally distracted, and knew it wasn’t going to work anymore."
While Krawsczyn knew there was a considerable amount of activity in the Cincinnati coworking world, it felt unaccessible to her.
"There are a lot of amazing spaces in Cincinnati, downtown," she said. "I don't live or work downtown, very few of my clients are downtown; my house is down in the 'burbs, and I wanted to have space close by."
It also didn't help that a lot of the area coworking places she encountered were, as she described, "more buttoned up, sterile," with a lonely, corporate office feel.
Krawsczyn and Murphy wanted to fix that.
"It's an effort to [give] entrepreneurs and small business owners just like ourselves ... a space to work, or have space to connect with small businesses owners via networking events," she said. "We just needed a good space that was warm and inviting and professional, and we decided to do it ourselves."
The Space officially opened in December 2017, and Krawsczyn and Murphy continue to congruently run both their own businesses and the coworking organization.
"It's serving us exactly what we needed," she said. "We needed the space ourselves, as well ... the immediate need was not to turn this into a money-making business."
Regardless, the bootstrapped spot has resonated with local professionals.
"We've been blown away by the diversity of people showing up and taking advantage of all that’s here," Krawsczyn said.
Users run the gamut from younger, entry level-professionals and creatives to more seasoned entrepreneurs who run businesses out of their homes and working moms.
"It's all over the map, to be perfectly frank," she said.
Some users come to get considerable amounts of work done, while others appreciate the community. Either way, members have resonated with The Space's "warm, very inviting" setting, where they are encouraged to make their experience their own.
"If you are here, we want to equip small business owners with everything they would need to host their own client and own the space," Krawsczyn said. "They get to be in charge, they get to offer hospitality, they get to have their own authority within the space as a paying member; we don’t want to monitor them."
As such, The Space offers office supplies, printing and scanning services, snacks, coffee, tea, beer and wine, along with access to conference rooms and other amenities. Soon, members will be able to access The Space 24/7.
That's not all.
"Something that’s unique about The Space is, a local business donated all the furniture," Krawsczyn added. "Enriching Spaces is a Cincinnati-based business ... with high-end furniture, and they didn’t want to use a warehouse as a showroom." So, the company uses The Space as the stage for some of its pieces, allowing prospective buyers a chance to see the office furniture in an office space.
"They're very supportive of us," she said.
Working closely with the community doesn't stop with the furniture. In fact, The Space has a roster of events, from happy hours to lunches, workshops and more.
Krawsczyn particularly enjoys hosting Cincinnati’s chapter of Business Among Moms, an international organization that supports working mothers.
"So much of where Rachel and I are personally is intertwined [between] being business owners and … as parents of young-ish kids," she said. "That can't be separated, and we don't want them to be separated."
