In this episode of The Gold Mine Podcast we interviewed Ruby Beauchamp, the founder of No Hands Coworking. Ruby shares her journey of starting the co-working space in downtown Auburn, California, and discusses her passion for collaborative spaces. She emphasizes the value of marketing, networking, and getting involved in the community, while also highlighting the benefits of working in a co-working environment. The conversation concludes with a focus on the importance of starting small and organic growth, as well as the resources and support available for entrepreneurs.
Ruby Beauchamp is the founder of No Hands Co-Working, a shared workspace in downtown Auburn, California. She opened it after identifying a glaring gap in the community — a place where remote workers, freelancers, and entrepreneurs could work productively without the noise of a coffee shop or the isolation of a home office. What started as a casual idea turned into a full business in less than a year, built on a shoestring budget, a storage unit full of auctioned office furniture, and a lot of faith that it would work out.
Ruby was working as a shop assistant for an engineer, sanding and painting kinetic art pieces, when she started binge-listening to a podcast called Everything Co-Working. She had been introduced to co-working years earlier while attending college in Portland — a city where shared workspaces are everywhere — and had always loved the concept. Back in Auburn, she mentioned the idea to a few people, nobody really got it, but her friend Genevieve did. A few months later, Genevieve followed up asking if Ruby had ever found a space for her co-working idea. That nudge was all it took.
Ruby started cold-calling every broker with a “for lease” sign in the area. She toured spaces all over North Auburn and Old Town before eventually landing on the current location — which she initially dismissed as too far from downtown. The anxiety she felt thinking someone else might snap it up tipped her off that she was more attached than she realized. She signed the lease in June but didn’t open until October, giving her a runway to prepare.
Before she even had a space locked in, Genevieve told her about a Bay Area company auctioning off all their furniture. Ruby low-balled every item, drove down, hauled it all back, and stored it in a high school AG barn — then on a trailer in a yard under a tarp when the barn was needed for a school event. The furniture was real before the business was. As Ruby puts it, she kind of went backwards into the whole thing.
To fund the buildout, Ruby spent a month climbing trees to harvest pine cones for her uncle’s reforestation business. She hoped to make a thousand dollars. She made ten thousand. That became her entire startup budget. First priority: Wi-Fi. Second priority: electronic door locks. With those two things in place, she opened — one month after her lease kicked in. Everything else — the kitchenette, the paint, the conference tables, the phone booth — came gradually as money allowed.
Ruby started marketing on Instagram and Facebook before the walls were painted, posting photos of an empty raw space. She got her first member to sign up in July — three months before opening. The lesson: you can sell something before it exists, as long as you can deliver by the time it matters. Don’t wait until everything is perfect to start talking about what you’re building.
No Hands is a shared workspace in downtown Auburn offering day passes, punch cards (5 or 10 days), and monthly memberships with 24/7 access. There’s a conference room with a large TV and whiteboard, a phone booth for private calls, a kitchenette, and fast Wi-Fi throughout. The space also hosts community events — everything from breath work and candle making to philosophy meetups and city planning sessions. If you have an event that fits 18–20 people, the conference room is available to rent.
Ruby didn’t set out to be passionate about office space — she’s passionate about bringing people together. The co-working model creates proximity between people who would never otherwise meet: engineers, accountants, web designers, startup founders, real estate professionals, and production artists all working under the same roof. That proximity creates referrals, collaboration, and the kind of casual peer support that’s hard to manufacture intentionally. Cody notes that moving ABV into No Hands was one of the better business decisions they’d made in years — not for the desk space, but for the people.
Marketing. Ruby’s own honest answer — and she gives it knowing it’s also her advice. As a self-described introvert, consistently putting herself and the business out there is a challenge she still works through. Her take: do it anyway, keep doing it, accept the trial and error, and don’t overthink what people think of you.