E07 | From Side Hustles to Startups: Stephen Hargett on Building wrkspace and Embracing the Nonlinear Path

Stephen Hargett’s path into entrepreneurship wasn’t planned—it was earned through persistence, hustle, and a relentless openness to saying yes to what came next.

In this episode, Stephen shares his deeply personal and refreshingly candid journey to founding wrkspace, a "workspace-as-a-service" platform offering fully managed space solutions for teams, events, and collaborators. But before co-founding wrkspace, Stephen was figuring things out one step at a time—from moonlighting as a boarding school teacher to making 1,000 cold calls a day at a pre-IPO startup, to working at Apple during the iPhone 4 launch (and, yes, emailing Steve Jobs).

Through it all, Stephen learned how to navigate ambiguity, stay mission-aligned, and build community—and wrkspace is the product of those lessons.

Here’s what’s covered:

• What wrkSpace is and how it's redefining flexible space as a service
• The nonlinear career path: Apple, Tesla, education, and tech startups
• Learning about stock options (and what he wishes he’d known earlier)
• The realities of rejection before getting a shot
• Building skills through cold calls, customer empathy, and grit
• How the startup bug caught him (and never let go)
• Leading with transparency and building a culture of resilience
• Why scrappiness and curiosity are core founder traits

Learn more about wrkspace: https://www.wrkspace.app/