Your name and position: Alison Klejna, Director
What inspired you to start your business? How did your business get started?
CLICK was founded nearly seven years ago as a coworking community serving a mix of freelancers, creatives, entrepreneurs, sole practitioners, and remote workers. At the time, coworking was starting to gain a lot of traction in big cities, but there weren’t any coworking spaces in the greater Northampton area that were open to professionals working in a variety of industries. CLICK Workspace grew out of the desire of its co-founders to create an alternative workspace for sole practitioners, entrepreneurs, remote employee and small teams.
Tell us a little bit about your business.
Our tagline is “Coworking • Community • Culture” and we are dedicated to those three pillars of our mission. By day, CLICK Workspace is a coworking community dedicated to the belief that innovation and creativity are the engines of economic growth. We support entrepreneurial efforts, collaborative ventures, and professional development of our members. Our new Market Street home, which we moved into in April 2016, has also afforded CLICK the space and opportunities to engage with the broader Northampton community, to foster cultural innovation by supporting visual arts, performance arts, music, and literature through promotion, education, entrepreneurship, and philanthropy. We have a number of affiliated programs, including Innovate413 (a multi-platform publication focusing on innovation and entrepreneurship in the Pioneer Valley), CLICK Music (a monthly concert series held in our event space), and Athena Girls (a website and workshop series dedicated to empowering girls). We also offer our meeting rooms and event space for rent to the public, and we have a Community Membership program that provides local businesses and groups with access to meeting and event space. You can also check us out at every Arts Night Out, when we open our doors to host art openings, performances, makers markets, and more.
What is your favorite thing to do in your business?
I love that CLICK comes to the rescue of people who are looking for both productive, professional workspace and a sense of community in their work life. It can be very isolating to work from home (and sometimes home is not a viable option), and oftentimes entrepreneurs and remote workers need more quiet and privacy than coffee shops provide. It’s so satisfying when I meet a prospective member and it turns out that everything CLICK offers fulfills their needs and desires, and comes with extra perks they hadn’t imagined. I really enjoy getting to know our members as businesspeople, but also more casually and individually through our weekly lunches, monthly happy hours, and the other social activities that we host for CLICK members.
If nothing else, what is the one piece of information you want someone to know about your business?
There are so many different ways to experience and engage with CLICK! If you’re a local business owner or educator, you might be interested in our meeting rooms. If you’re a performer or are planning an event, consider our event space. If you’re an art lover, check out our events calendar for concerts, art openings, literary events, and more. And if you work on your own or need space for your team, CLICK is the perfect place to work, build your professional community, and grow your business.
What is the one piece of business advice you would like to share?
The face of work life is changing rapidly, and there are services such as CLICK that are prepared for those shifts and ready to help you and your business adapt to these changes. Can your office go completely virtual, save for a once-a-week staff meeting? Can your employees work from home or coworking spaces just as effectively as being onsite? And if you work for yourself, do you need to hold down a long-term lease for a private office, or would you thrive with the flexibility and fixed costs of a collaborative workspace? These are going to be increasingly important questions to ask as the traditional definition of an office continues to rapidly change.