Meet Nicole Gray, Founder & Community Manager at Boxed Community: A Virtual Co-Working Space For Creative Entrepreneurs

Boxed Community is a virtual coworking space for creative entrepreneurs.

We connect 4 days a week via Zoom and our Slack workspace through a variety of activities including deep work sessions, industry-specific networkers, monthly mental health and financial conversations, as well as skills development and personal growth workshops.

With Boxed Community you can realise your potential and get your life together with the help of an engaged community of like-minded individuals. You’ll find your tribe here and feel like you belong. We provide a melting pot of inclusion, information and opportunity. Boxed community is the hub for personal and business wellness. I believe this is the future of work.
 
 

 

How did you come up with the idea for the company?

 
During my time working in coworking spaces in London, I felt a lack of ongoing support in the start-up scene. Although support programs exist, they always had a start and finishing point following which the entrepreneur was left alone again; having to find new opportunities to build a
network and support system.

Going from incubator programmes to accelerator programs to coworking spaces ends up with us having to change communities and like-minded friends each time the program ends given that members relocate or the spaces close. At some stage, we just stop making deep
connections for fear of losing them. This is why I started Boxed Community. To create a safe space of ongoing learning, holistic support and consistent community.

So, I decided to branch out on my own with a more sustainable way of staying connected to fellow creative entrepreneurs, with a virtual version of a coworking space. Because of this, we are able to provide regular learning and networking activities around business and personal development that could be accessed anywhere in the world.
 

 

How has the company evolved during the pandemic?

 
In the past few years we have all been forced to make a mind-shift around working in the physical form to the virtual. The idea of remote work was very fantastical for most individuals, but the pandemic shot us into the future – learning to understand what does and doesn’t work in the digital nomad’s world.

We’ve had to adjust to even more people moving into entrepreneurship at a much faster pace due to mass retrenchments, which has motivated us to support them through our community and via ongoing support in which we’ve included one-on-one accountability coaching. This is generally quite an expensive service but at Boxed, we’ve opened it up as part of our membership so you don’t have to sell your kidney for that necessary one-to-one support.
 

What can we hope to see from Boxed Community in the future?

 
We’re extremely excited to have just opened applications for our first ever free 3-month startup program for UK creative business owners – Boxed Trailblazers! Over the course of 13 weeks, Trailblazers receive guidance and support in the areas of self-discipline, marketing, operations, finance, time management, leadership and more.