One Girl Band is making work fun
Championing community over competition, OGB has hit Glasgow
ANYONE who runs a business or works freelance knows it can be a lonely job.
Whilst on the outside, freelance life looks the epitome of freedom – choosing one’s own timetable, waking up at whatever time suits, no manager breathing down your neck – the reality is not so glamorous.
No-one knows this better than Lola Hoad, founder of One Girl Band (OGB) that last month set up its first ‘space’ on Glasgow’s Washington Street.
“I first started my company in 2015. As much as I was loving it, and thinking ‘I’ve got my dream here’, I was also just incredibly lonely and isolated. I was spending all day on social media.
“I honestly thought that I was doing something wrong. I should have been happy, but I wasn’t.”
Anyone who works freelance will know that working alone usually requires hours of sole-work in front of your computer at your kitchen table. For Lola, who is both an entrepreneur just starting out and a fully-fledged digital native, it made sense to take to social media to find other women who were in similar situations.
“I was connecting with amazing women on Instagram doing amazing things but feeling lonely and full of self-doubt, also feeling that they weren’t doing it right. I had this idea of getting them in the same room, off their phones and showing them we were all on the same boat doing the same thing, no matter what it looks like on social media.”
The OGB ‘space’ was a culmination of other entities. Lola initially started with meet ups, other like-minded entrepreneurs meeting up and having face to face contact, and then there was a podcast where Lola would share her business experiences. Within three months it was at capacity, and fast-forward to August 2019, is now located in Glasgow.
“There was such a need for a space like ours – for women in business to have a space where they can go, and didn’t feel they had to put on this charade of ‘my work is not just a hobby’.
“I found with mixed spaces there was an element of thinking that a woman with a business was just a hobby, something she did while her husband was out at work. That wasn’t the case – some women are doing amazing things, creating huge empires off their own back.”
“We needed somewhere affordable – co-working is a luxury, but it’s also a way of servicing the necessary human interaction that is so needed at any time.
The ‘space’ in Glasgow is light and airy, designed in collaboration with The Houseologists.
Not only does it provide a fantastic environment for women to work with other women (men, trans and non-binary people are welcomed through the doors also – it really is for everyone), OGB hosts regular business events and meet ups. It is a community rather than just a building, which is what OGB strives to achieve: community over competition.
“I wanted the space to be as reasonable and accessible as it could be.
“The creative scene in Glasgow is wonderful, as are the people. I really wanted to cultivate that community and create a space for women with businesses in Glasgow – which seems to be everyone. Everyone has a side-hustle.
“There is something so special about this place, and I think it proves that life isn’t all about London and down south. The creativity, the music: there are so many opportunities here to live the life that you want to live.
“It’s more chilled and authentic. People do what they do because they can.”
And with OGB, there is now a special space to cultivate and foster that authenticity – right here in the city.