“If you’re looking for a coworking space, it’s so important that you really test out the premises and the people – and make sure you’re culturally aligned with what they stand for.

“At the end of the day you’re essentially working in a share-house with 180 entrepreneurs.”

– Chris Kirk, Hub Manager at Stone & Chalk

Coworking spaces like Stone & Chalk can be a great solution for businesses not suited to a typical office environment. They facilitate access to investors, help with staffing and leverage the power of the small business community.

In today’s Xero In podcast, Chris talks to hosts JV Douglas and Rob Stone about the differences between coworking, accelerators, hubs and incubators – and they ways in which they each help small business.

So how do you create a successful coworking space? One essential element is a really strong sense of community.

“If you talk to any of the residents or the members that are in our co-working space, or really any of the co-working spaces, the first real insight they’ll give you is that being an entrepreneur or small business owner can be really damn lonely sometimes,” says Chris.

“There’s massive power in being around a group of like-minded individuals, and what we’ve found at Stone and Chalk is putting a big group of individuals who are working on vaguely overlapping stuff together is really powerful.”

Many predict that coworking is not only here to say – it’s poised to get huge.

“They’re basically saying that in the ballpark of 40 percent of the workforce is going to be in some form of freelancing, temping, independent contract, entrepreneurship sort of capability by 2020,” explains Chris.

“Those people need to work somewhere and the explosion of this idea that just because you’re working by yourself doesn’t mean you really need to work by yourself, and the power of the community has really come to light.”

Small business resources:

• Small Business Guide: How to pitch a business idea – Xero.com
• 11 of the best coworking spaces in Australia – AFR
• TED Talk: The case for collaborative consumption – YouTube

If you enjoyed today’s podcast, check out last week’s episode on why brand is key to retail success with T2 cofounder Maryanne Shearer.

What would you like to hear?

Got a topic you’d like to hear discussed? Or a business expert you admire and would like to hear from? Let us know in the comments below!

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Source: Xero