Reimagining Workspaces for Women: Heather Ashby on CoworkHERS

The InnovateHER Lab Podcast

Adrienne Farrell (00:01.134)
All right, hello and welcome to the Innovator Lab podcast. I'm Adrienne Farrell and today our guest is Heather Ashby. Heather is the founder and CEO of Coworkers, a female-focused coworking space and social club offering Class A office space, amenities and resources for entrepreneurs, freelancers and remote workers. Hello, Heather, and welcome.

Heather Ashby (00:24.171)
Hi, thank you.

Adrienne Farrell (00:26.02)
It's so great to have you on the show. I have so many questions for you, but I would love to just hear a little bit about you and your background leading up to the launch of Coworkers.

Heather Ashby (00:36.834)
Great, so yeah, my background is in event marketing and promotions and I did that for about 13 years, traveling the country, working with big Fortune 500 companies like Coca-Cola, Levi Strauss, Gillette, so I would...

promote their brands at big events all over the country. And I was asked to move to Maine and work here. And so after I got laid off from that job, I started a resale clothing shop with a friend of mine I worked with at that job.

And so that was my first toe in the dipping of the toe in the water of entrepreneurship. And it was scary but not so scary because I was doing it with a friend who I trusted. But I also learned a lot about, well, the fears that we have of starting a business. It's a real fear, but once you do it once, it seems easier and easier. So when the idea hit me after I had left that business to her and kind of went off and worked with my husband in real estate, we had the

We had an apartment building that we sold and we bought this building at auction. So we put that money into this building, the Masonic Temple building. so we inherited the building, which was almost vacant. A law firm was here for 60 years and when they left, when the auction was happening, we had all this vacant space. So for a few years it was empty and we weren't sure what to do with it. This was our first time in commercial real estate.

And I said, if to myself, what if we didn't try to keep leasing it out to one big company for 8,000 square foot space? What if we broke it into little chunks and rented out one office at a time? And I didn't know about coworking at the time. I just thought, what if that's kind of a neat idea? Let's like try to just chip away at it. And then I thought out loud, what if it were for women? Like that would be so neat. A place just for women that would unlike just envision myself in a space surrounded by women. And like there's an architect in this office and a realtor in that office and an engineer in that

Heather Ashby (02:37.93)
I was just honing in on the field we were working in at the time of real estate, imagining the potential of all these women working together. And then I was sitting at the kitchen counter and I Googled it. Like, it legal to open a space for just women? Can I even do that? And I ran into The Wing and Hara Hub and all these other coworking spaces focusing on women. And I was like, my gosh, it's like a thing. I can do it. They can do it, I can do it.

That's where it kind of launched from. People were looking at me like I was crazy, but I was like, no, no, no, this is a really good idea and I'm not gonna tell anybody about it. So I kept it to myself until I was ready to open. So that was in April of 2017 that I was sitting at that kitchen counter and then that December I was open. That's kind of the history of how it all evolved was sort of a fluke.

Adrienne Farrell (03:38.318)
That is really interesting. I'm so curious, how did your community, I know you're located in Portland, Maine, how did Portland, Maine receive coworkers when you launched?

Heather Ashby (03:54.804)
It was actually pretty exciting. it was so I opened that December and in October a couple months before was when Harvey Weinstein got arrested. And so the whole Me Too movement was happening and Hillary Clinton was running for president. There was like a lot of political like chaos and like a lot of like breaking the glass ceiling feeling from women. And so there was also a lot of like, well, what happened to her? Why is she opening this space for women? As if I just could do that in a couple of months between October

December doesn't happen that fast. So I think there was like a lot of interviews and a lot of question as to what happened to this woman, why is she doing this and alienating men and creating a space just for her and her women, you know. But it was well received by the women in the community. I had 22 members signed up before I had even opened and a lot of them were coming to Maine from New York and other cities where they were familiar with co-working.

and knew about the wing and these other places. So I really felt positive that it was gonna be successful right away when I had that kind of feedback in the memberships that were signing up. But I got a lot of press out of it because of that Me Too situation. So that was good, good press.

Adrienne Farrell (05:10.616)
Mm-hmm. That's really great to hear. And what is some of the feedback that you have heard from women since opening? I know it's been a number of years now, but what do you hear from women who are entering your space and utilizing it?

Heather Ashby (05:25.864)
It's all good. had an event last night for entrepreneurs. It's called Pollinate Hers. It's like a support group for female entrepreneurs who are freelancers and loan workers doing their thing, being a mother, being a caretaker, caring for their elderly parents, all the things. And there were 20 women that showed up that most of them I had not met before. And they were just saying, I've walked by here a million times and I've always wanted to come inside. And this was my chance to be inside these walls.

just like warm and fuzzy, kumbaya, like rah rah, great feeling. Everybody's just, and the members here are just so supportive and they don't want to leave. They usually end up leaving because they get pregnant, they lose their job, they have to move for whatever reason, but for the most part, if they end up back in Portland, they sign back up again. It's just, they feel like it's a home away from home. That was my plan. I know that I'm asking them a lot to leave their home office or to leave their kitchen counter and work here.

They're working remotely anyway. Why would they pay money to come here? Which is, you know, in these financial times, not an easy thing to do. And they need it. They do it because they want to be around other people, because they're isolated at home, because they're looking at laundry and dishes and the dog and all the things that they have to do and they're not being productive. And they come in here and they bring a homemade pie and they have coffee and they hang out and they just make friends and they go for walks together. And so it's like, it's a

luxury for them to spend the money to come here and to do that and to drive into the city, but it's clear that it's something that they need. So that feels good for me.

Adrienne Farrell (07:06.482)
Hmm, that sounds so positive and just lovely. I know that in the pandemic and I want to ask you more about your experience with coworkers during that time. But the pandemic was pretty isolating for people. Remote working can be isolating. Being a new mother can be isolating. So I love that you're providing this opportunity for women to have community, have support, have resources. It's just so incredibly needed right now. So, yeah, well, let's jump into the pandemic.

Heather Ashby (07:15.501)
you.

Adrienne Farrell (07:36.496)
because I'm really curious to hear how how did it look you said you opened in 2017 so you had a couple years under your belt and then what happened?

Heather Ashby (07:44.8...