Exploring Life & Business with Lauren James of Little Way Coworking

Today we’d like to introduce you to Lauren James.

Hi Lauren, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
I’ve always been an entrepreneur. As a child I remember handwriting workout plans and walking up and down my street selling bags of popcorn and grapes to my neighbors along with the workout plans. I’ve always been able to see a need and creatively fill it.
When I became a mom, I fully leaned into the Pinterest mom life. I wanted to be a stay at home mom and I was for a while — but then, as life does, things changed. I became a single mom of a 3 month old and a 3 year old, in the middle of grad school. I found myself needing to work and not wanting to put my kids in daycare. So this idea was really born out of necessity. I thought I’d just create a space for me, and other parents to work, and have childcrae onsite – similar to a gym or kids ministry at a church.
So, Little Way Coworking is a shared community workspace designed for parents of preschoolers and younger, with our Little Lab on-site, which is a program developed with social-emotional learning and early literacy in mind. In our Little Lab, your kids are supervised, stimulated, and growing while you work just steps away. We just opened in Lawrenceville in May!

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Absolutely not! First, building a business with two toddlers in tow is not exactly for the faint at heart. And even though I’d dabbled in the entrepreneur world — I was a personal chef for a while in my early 20s — I had never owned a storefront. I didn’t know exactly what I was doing. I didn’t know the forms I had to fill out or the rules around things like a certificate of occupancy. I had the hardest time figuring out what kind of insurance covered us since we are such a hybrid design. But I had faith, audacity, and optimism, and I made connections with people in the city.
But there were hard moments, things happened like the basement flooding and then finding mold or a tree falling on the roof. Figuring out the security system and accidentally amassing $100 in fees because we called the police out too many times. A squatter in the basement haha. I was just resourceful and optimistic and probably protected a little by my own naivety. And in the end, it all worked out, and we were stronger and more prepared for it!

Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
Little Way Coworking is a shared community workspace space designed specifically for parents of preschoolers and younger – children ages 0 to 6. We are tucked inside a little white house in downtown Lawrenceville, in the middle of the square, which was very intentional. We wanted the space to feel like a home, not an office and be a hub for the community.
Parents come in for 3-hour work blocks, mornings or afternoons Monday through Thursday and Saturday mornings, while their kids are in the Little Lab. The Little Lab is built around a “Weekly Wondering” — a question like “what does it mean to be brave?” — explored through children’s picture books, a connected craft, and sensory play. Our guides are trained in social and emotional learning, background checked, and CPR certified and they genuinely LOVE children and have the same vision to increase childhood literacy by the time kids enter kindergarten.
Membership is month-to-month and allows access for up to two adults and one child. One visit a week starts at $185/month, two visits a week is $349/month. For non-members, drop-ins start at $43 a visit as long as space allows. We also have the Little Studio — a creative workspace stocked with a printer, Cricut, laminator, and binding tools for small business owners and creatives, plus a podcast recording area that can also be utilized for small team meetings.
What we are most proud of is being a space designed not just to produce work, but to serve families holistically. When your work block is done and you close the laptop, you can walk over, pick up your kid, and actually hear about their day because you no longer have a running list in your mind.
Beyond coworking, we host Moms Groups: small groups of up to seven women, grouped by season of life and parenting stage, who build community, hear from guest speakers, and explore their stage of motherhood together. We also host a quarterly Community Playdate open to the whole neighborhood and Daddy’s Day Out!
We serve freelancers, remote workers, small business owners, graduate students, side hustlers — anyone building something meaningful who also happens to be raising small humans.

If you had to, what characteristic of yours would you give the most credit to?
Resourcefulness is probably the first thing that comes to mind. It’s what got Little Way off the ground in the first place. I didn’t wait until I had everything figured out, or until I had the perfect answer, I just went for it and made it work. So resourcefulness is what keeps it moving when things get hard. But close behind that is how we treat people, not just our members but also our staff. I believe deeply in hospitality and in making every person who walks through the door feel like a guest of honor. I believe that if you treat your staff well, they will treat your vision well, and everything will grow from that place. Outside of them being people who work in my business, I want to be a dream maker for my staff. I want to be someone who sees what they’re capable of and creates space for them to grow into it, because one day they aren’t going to work at Little Way and I still want them to succeed! When your team feels that, it shows up in everything. And underneath all of it is my faith in God.

Pricing:

• Memberships Start at $184 a month (includes 1 child and up to 2 adults in the same family)
• Drop In Sessions – $43

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.littlewayatl.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/littlewayatl
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61584659184605&sk=directory_names