Lauren James built Little Way Coworking in Lawrenceville, Georgia, after the flu cost her pay and childcare struggles cost her a job. Now moms on her staff can bring their kids to work, and sick days come with a stipend instead of a smaller check.
Lauren James understood the rule.
“I understood the policy: you don’t work, you don’t get paid,” she said.
At the time, James was a single mom and the only caregiver for a 3-year-old and a 1-year-old. She was living on a student loan refund and the $900 a month she earned working at the school her kids attended.
Then all three of them got the flu. James ran a 104-degree fever for two days and lost her voice while caring for two sick little ones. She called it “probably the worst sickness I had ever experienced.”
They recovered. Her paycheck didn’t. At the end of the month, it came up $200 short because of the work she missed, and rent was due the next day.
A move bought her a few extra weeks to cover the gap. James said the experience left her with more than a money problem to solve. It changed how she wanted to treat the people she would one day employ.
A different kind of handbook
A few weeks later, James started Little Way Coworking. She wrote a promise into the company handbook: when someone is already down, Little Way won’t make the burden heavier.
“If one of my employees is sick, she probably has more expenses that week, not fewer,” James said. “She may need to see a doctor or, at the very least, buy medicine, so instead of docking her pay, I give her a small sick-day stipend to help.”
Moms on her staff can also bring their children to work.
Months later, James’ own childcare issues cost her the school job contract altogether. She said the loss “made the connection between childcare and a woman’s ability to earn even more tangible for me.”
A few months after opening Little Way, she got sick again. This time, she stayed home and rested with her kids while her staff “held down the fort.”
How Little Way works
Little Way bills itself as Gwinnett County’s only family-friendly coworking space with onsite childcare, according to its website. Parents book three-hour work blocks, in the morning or afternoon, Monday through Thursday. While they work, their children, ages 0 to 6, spend the same block in the Little Reading Lab, where staff called Story Guides lead stories, crafts and play built around one big idea each week. Parents stay onsite the whole time.
Signature memberships cost $355 a month for eight work blocks. Mini memberships start at $185 a month for four. Little Way shares updates on Instagram.
Bigger than one business
James’ story lines up with national numbers.
Caregiving, including the cost of child care, was the top reason women voluntarily left the workforce in 2025, according to Catalyst, a nonprofit focused on women in the workplace. Among women who quit, 42% cited caregiving concerns. More than 400,000 women left the U.S. workforce in the first half of 2025, and mothers of young children saw their steepest decline in more than 40 years, a University of Kansas analysis of federal data found, CBS News reported.
In Georgia, infant care averages $11,863 a year, more than in-state tuition at a four-year public college, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
Paid sick leave is far from guaranteed, especially for low-wage workers. Eighty percent of private industry workers had access to paid sick leave in 2025, but only 41% of workers in the lowest-paid tenth did, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In the South Atlantic region, which includes Georgia, 72% of private industry workers had access, BLS data shows.
What The Virtuous Creative’s survey shows
The Virtuous Creative’s ongoing survey of Christian women entrepreneurs points to the same pressures. Of the 30 women who have responded so far, eight said balancing business with family or personal life is one of their biggest challenges, and seven said managing their time and energy.
Thirteen said access to funding or capital is a top challenge, the same barrier James wants to lower for moms.
Many are also building alone. Twenty-six of the 30 said they want deeper community, mostly work in isolation or didn’t know a community for Christian women entrepreneurs existed. Little Way’s pitch to parents leans on community, with a “built-in village” included in membership.
Faith runs through their decisions, too. Twenty-seven of the 30 said they felt called by God or that faith influenced their decision to start a business.
Entrepreneurship on training wheels
James wants to take the idea further.
“If traditional entrepreneurship requires women to have significant capital, take on debt, or somehow create enough margin to learn everything while already carrying the responsibilities of motherhood, I want to see what another way could look like,” she said.
She describes what she’s building as “entrepreneurship on training wheels.” Women would step into an existing Little Way model, learn how to run and grow a real business, and do it with relatively low capital and without taking on significant debt.
Faith behind the policy
James sees her business choices as stewardship.
“My faith gave me the boldness and conviction to do something different and to choose to value people over profit,” she said.
She points to Proverbs, with its repeated calls for just weights, fair treatment, generosity and care for people who are vulnerable. She also points to Jesus.
“Jesus was willing to flip tables when the systems people had accepted were placing burdens on others,” James said. “So entrepreneurship gives us an opportunity to look at the practices we’ve inherited, ask who they’re serving and who they’re burdening, and do something different. It’s ministry.”
She wants other women building businesses to feel free to break from old rules.
“We don’t have to recreate the same workplaces we struggled to fit into,” she said. “I’m giving myself and others the permission to do things differently.”
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