It seems like our economy is moving towards a greater and great percentage of people being self-employed. As someone who’s been self-employed for over 10 years now, this is exciting to hear. Self-employment is a unique way of making a living–full of ups and downs like any other job, but also has advantages that few other methods of employment have. So, I welcome these other business-folks to the world of self-employment!
One of the biggest challenges that I have seen in self-employment from a home office is in maintaining an appropriate separation of work/home energy. When at home, and needing to get work tasks accomplished, it can be easy to get distracted by household tasks–it takes discipline to keep on track. Too, surrounded by the comforts of home, it is possible to putz around a little too much. So, while working at home is convenient in many ways, it definitely requires a good amount of self-discipline in order to remain productive. Three different businesses in the downtown Milwaukee are seeking to provide another way of working for people that provides certain amenities of renting an office without quite the same level of expense. Gravity Connect, Open MiKE, and Hudson all have different offerings to help self-employed or “out of the office” workers keep their productivity up.
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1. Gravity Connect, who I’ve blogged about often here, offers the most casual setting. Gravity Connect, located in the Pritzlaff Building, is a free “coffee-shop/meeting space/work space” for local independent creatives and small business people who have registered with Gravity. Gravity is a marketing firm who sees fostering a creative community as part of their business mission. I’ve been a member of Gravity Connect since early 2010 and use Connect on a regular basis for meetings and just to get out of my home office. I probably go to Gravity Connect 4-5x a month. A great aspect of Gravity is that there is always free Stone Creek Coffee and wi-fi at your disposal–two swell tools to keep you productive! (oh yeah, AND, Gravity is a member of Local First Milwaukee!)
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2. Open MiKE, or “Innovation in Milwaukee”, is sponsored by the Shops at Grand Avenue, Greater Milwaukee Committee, and the Creative Alliance amongst others (check the “Members” and “Partners” sections!). The eastern end of the Grand Avenue Mall has been trying a variety of tactics to revitalize the Plankinton Arcade to varying degrees of success. This newest, and to me, most interesting attempt, is to transform some of the unoccupied shopping space into a business incubator/co-working space. Open MiKE, for a very reasonable fee, allows members access to a bare-bones sort of workspace–sort of a study hall with wi-fi and a really fabulous location. Jeff Ganger, of Ganger Design, an environmentally-friendly and socially-progressive design firm, has recently become a member of Open MiKE and sees a lot of potential in it. I visited with Jeff and got some of his ideas for what MiKE could be…
-(MiKE)…”is for creatives, young or old, experienced or inexperienced, looking to build something (like a community), not just a finished product to sell.”
-(from a practical standpoint)…great for biking to work, get to work downtown and there’s plenty of space in MiKE to park the bike. Cel signal is good, wi-fi is responsive.
-”If you have earnest initiative, people WILL respond to that.”
Open MiKE seems to me like a real neat idea. It is less casual than Gravity, and more grass-roots in its purpose. Besides helping businesses to get off the ground, MiKE is seeking to give people a place to network for success, and to revitalize a portion of the Grand Avenue Mall at the same time.
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3. Hudson (not yet open), located in the midst of the Third Ward, is the most “full-service” of these three work-places. Hudson intends to be a “business lounge and espresso bar,” catering to any person who wants to pay the no-contract monthly membership fee (which comes in four tiers of access). There will be regular business education events (with those seminars later cataloged online), conference rooms for members to have meetings in, technology provided as based on requests from members, and the open-to-the-public espresso bar. Barbara DeMeulenaere, who I spoke with, has said Hudson has been receiving a lot of interest from people and already has over 130 sign-ups for when they open. Hudson’s mission is to serve as an incubator for new businesses and as a “business lounge” for established business people who might be in between appointments and such. They want to give entrepreneurs “all they need to grow out of Hudson” and into their own established businesses. In hearing all the plans for Hudson, it’s no surprise to learn that the founder has a background in the hospitality industry. They are certainly seeking to give members all they could need to succeed. Memberships are going to range between $55/month (part-time access) to approximately $1000/month (private office space).
Gravity Connect and on Twitter
The Hudson and on Twitter
