Setting up your own business and escaping the mundane life of being an employee to become your own boss is the dream of pretty much everyone. No more pesky bosses, mind-numbing commute or long drawn-out meetings. Just freedom. Complete freedom. However, no matter how tempting such a life may seem, this too isn’t free from its own set of challenges.
Do you have the self-discipline to sit for the required amount of time and see your work through the end? Do you have the motivation required to keep going on? Do you have the fresh ideas which will turn your business into an overnight success story? For these reasons and a whole host of others, coworking spaces are becoming a great option for aspiring entrepreneurs to set up shop. For a better understanding of what coworking spaces actually are, you might want to go through this article.
Here are 5 sweet benefits of coworking which will make you consider moving into one right now!
1. Its all about the money, money, money!
Imagine you just left your frustrating job to pursue your entrepreneurial dreams. Or even, in fact, you have your own startup. How much money do you think would you have which you would be able to spend on just setting up shop? And even if we assume you have that kind of money lying around, would you really want to spend such big money right at the beginning of your business journey? What if the business doesn’t work out that well? What if you want to do something else or you want to do your business in some other city? Would it be really feasible to shift your business if you are working out of an office space you just purchased? Hence, coworking spaces act as a real money saver and allow you to reduce your responsibilities at least at the beginning of your business. You can get an office address for your business at really low prices and you only pay for the number of seats you use. Plus, you can pack up and leave any day without any worry in the world. Isn’t that just amazing?
2. Flexibility
Ok, so now, you have set up your business and it’s doing good. In fact, you just decided to scale up your operations and hire a few people to help out with the business. So can you get more space in your coworking space? Of course, you can! It becomes extremely easy to scale up as your team grows when working in coworking spaces. In the case of buying an office space, you will need to create new space for the new members of the team, you may have to buy new furniture to accommodate them. This will lead to increased costs on both ends – you’ll be paying more in salaries, plus, you’ll have to spend on creating a working space for them. Coworking eases up the latter cost for you. Now, you only have to pay the salaries and an additional amount for another seat at the coworking space. Moreover, it won’t cost you as much as one seat as many coworking spaces provide lucrative discount packages for multi-member teams.
3. Central Location
Business is many times all about location, location, location. How close are you to your clients, are you able to establish your presence in the right region – where all your prospective customers are located, are your prospective customers aware of your presence? All of these are questions which are in some way or the other linked to location. Thus, setting up shop in the right location can mean the difference between a raging success and a dismal failure. Coworking spaces usually are located in industry hubs, and pretty often are located in InfoTech parks or other IT hubs (due to the overabundance of startups related to IT :P). Coworking spaces provide you with a central location just a stone’s throw away from your client which puts you in a good position to capture that market. Central locations also have other perks. Namely, they provide a better, cleaner location to establish your business in, you get better transportation facilities, access to cafes, gyms, and great shopping options.
4. Great Networking Opportunities
All businesses depend on networking. “Who knows who” more often than not seems to be more important than “who knows what”. Thus, it is imperative to a good business strategy to establish a good network of friendships which may come in handy at some time in the future. Coworking spaces are occupied by other entrepreneurs as well who, just like you, are target-driven and wish to expand their business further. Interacting with them may open up opportunities for future collaborations and increased revenues for both parties. Also, coworking spaces lead to the development of coworking communities. These act as support systems for young entrepreneurs, helping them out in different aspects of their startup journey. Coworking communities make the entire experience of working much more fun and may act as melting pots for ideas and lead to the development of ideas. Also, they can help their individual members gauge the impact of their ideas by acting as a sample audience. Moreover, who knows, socialising may lead to fruitful friendships that may last a lifetime 🙂
5. You don’t become a couch potato 😛
How many times have you caught yourself thinking how great it would be to work from home? You can work as you please, you can set the environment just the way you like it, nobody will pester you, it would be just perfect, wouldn’t it? Wrong. Working from home very frequently becomes a nightmare for people. Do you feel you have the self-discipline to make yourself work when it becomes tough and tiresome and not fun at all? Remember that time you bought a gym membership and went to the gym a total of 2 times? Yup, exactly. We have a tendency to overestimate our capabilities at times, self-discipline being the most common amongst them. Most of the times, people working from home become undisciplined and unmotivated towards their work. This leads to wastage of a lot of precious time. Moreover, working from home leads to loneliness and brings you down. You then end up watching way too much TV, or eating too much or sleeping too much. This is detrimental not just for your business but your way of living as well. Many times, people working from home are not able to separate work from life and this erasing of boundaries leads to continuous stress. Coworking brings you out of this shell and gives you a place to go to so that you complete a task that you have to. It leads to better focus and zero distractions.
So, these were some of the benefits of coworking. What do you feel about these? Are there others which we missed out? Do let us know in the comments down below 🙂
