Heydays HQ feels like a place you’d want to hang out with your friends. Both floors of the space are warm and understated, with plenty of texture and color to make the polished concrete and exposed brick feel modern and inviting. The second floor’s south-facing side opens up to a roomy, concrete outdoor space overlooking Olive Street in St. Louis.
“This space did not look like this on Saturday,” says Keisha Mabry Haymore, founder and owner of Heydays HQ, while surveying the room. “It was a marketplace. There were booths everywhere. A few days before that, there was a whole fabricated stage out there. People are doing yoga next week. I just love that people are using it as a blank canvas.”
Visitors might default to calling Heydays HQ a coworking space, but Mabry Haymore’s descriptor as a “blank canvas” is more fitting. Heydays officially opened in Midtown on Feb. 9, and focuses on supporting women founders and founders of color specifically. But it’s also much more than place to park your laptop. There are the basics, of course — membership with 24/7 access, a drop-in option to access Heydays for the day, a virtual option for people in need of an address and mail service for their business, internet and printing, coffee and snacks.
But where Mabry Haymore really shines is in Heydays’ shared services program. With connections and partnerships maintained across several firms, agencies, organizations and companies in the St. Louis region and elsewhere, Heydays has a roster of support for members to choose from: free legal service; access to accountants, human resources and operations support, and virtual sales and marketing assistants; and access to funding partners to secure personal or business loans, credit repair and financial coaching.
“There are a lot of solopreneurs here in St. Louis and no one supports the solopreneur,” says Mabry Haymore, referring to business owners who are both the owner and the only employee. “People support you when you’re in the idea phase and then they support you when you have a team. But what do you do in between?”
Mabry Haymore designed Heydays to fill a gap in the region’s dynamic and innovative small business and entrepreneurial community and create a model for targeted support to empower more St. Louisans to build the professional lives they want.
“I believe this city is a possibility city, where things are made possible,” she says. “And I think that’s beautiful. My goal is to be a possibility model, and create spaces where things are possible.”
Mabry Haymore has been building that exact kind of life for herself, too. Since moving from Louisville, Kentucky, to St. Louis 10 years ago, she’s made it her mission to get to know the city one person at a time. She calls that practice “friend-working” instead of networking, employing her strategy of meeting 100 people in 100 days to get her footing. After completing that community-building method several times, Mabry Haymore published her book, “Hey Friend: 100 Ways to Connect with 100 people in 100 Days” in 2017.
“I learned that it’s not as easy for everyone to navigate spaces here, and not all spaces accept everyone here,” she says, recalling her introduction to the St. Louis startup and small business ecosystem. “And I didn’t think that was right. I wanted spaces that felt safe, and that really was the beginning of Heydays. At the core of it, I knew I wanted to create a safe place where women and founders of color could take up space.”
When she first came across the building, the idea of renting the property herself to launch Heydays was scary — even for a WEPOWER alum, TEDxStLouis speaker and Grow With Google veteran. She saw the building in early September, just a few weeks after leaving her full-time job, and ended up signing a lease and getting the keys a month later. Mabry Haymore says that St. Louis’ affordability and lower cost of living compared to other metropolitan cities makes it easier to experiment and take risks.
“I think St. Louis is a beautiful city,” she says. “I think it gets a lot of flak, but when people see that you are trying and you stay consistent and committed, the support and the love is there. I’ve felt so much love, even not being from here, and I don’t take that for granted.”
STLMade, an initiative of Greater St. Louis Inc., shines a light on people and ideas that are moving the region forward and contributing to make this a place where you can start something, you can get the support to stand out, and you can stay and make St. Louis yours.
