January has come and gone, time is flying! Once I was done with my first public pitch, and received fantastic advice while surrounded by women who are also innovating and scaling their businesses, I did some reflection. The idea we have is timely, appropriate, beautiful and looks to the future. The finesse is missing in the messaging, and perhaps the audience. I have enthusiasm for all of the amazing things that can be made in a maker space. That vision will come to life someday and I will be a part of it.
During the accelerator I kept colliding with the words pivot, focus, start small. I have a grand and glorious vision for the Maker Space of my dreams, and when I am able to fully articulate what I am thinking, there is a resounding agreement. Those of us immersed in the Maker experience understand the need and infinite use cases for a maker space. Explaining that to someone from the outside will make you (me) sound a tad un-focused. I am not a patient person, when I finally decide upon something I want it is very hard for me to let go and save it for later. It has taken years for me to take this leap, years of conversations with others about our frustrations in needing more space, needing tools that are out of reach for a sole proprietor. This last six months I’ve been carefully looking within, crunching numbers, and learning as fast as I can. This space is viable and going to happen, but it will take laser like focus. I am also a Creative person… Which means that focus happens in bursts of inconvenient timing and intensity.
To get to the grand and glorious, big maker space, I am starting with a smaller version. A co-working, tool-sharing, robotics lab where I will work on my robots and will share the building and tools with two other small businesses in need of access to prototyping tools, office space and a small conference room /classroom. We will still have community rental access to the laser cutters and other tools as well as rental access to the conference room, when they are not being utilized by the co-working group.
