189. Daan Van Rossum, Chief Experience Officer at Dreamplex in Vietnam, on how they are designing coworking spaces that support members on their journeys to become better versions of themselves
Resources Mentioned in this Podcast:
Everything Coworking Featured Resources:
Masterclass: 3 Behind-the-Scenes Secrets to Opening a Coworking Space
Creative Coworking Partnerships: How to negotiate and structure management agreements from the landlord and operator perspective
TRANSCRIPTION
189. Daan Van Rossum, Chief Experience Officer at Dreamplex in Vietnam, on how they are designing coworking spaces that support members on their journeys to become better versions of themselves
00:00:01 Welcome to the everything co-working podcast, where you learn what you need to know about how the world wants to work. And now your host coworking space owner and trend expert, Jamie Russo, Welcome to the everything coworking podcast. This is your host, Jamie Rousseau. I have a confession for you. Ready. My confession is that sometimes I will record interviews and then I will wait a couple of weeks or three,
00:00:43 and then I will go back to record the intro to that episode. And by that time, my brain is completely full of other details. And I cannot remember how I want to introduce the episode. And that happened to this episode with Dan, who is the chief experience officer at dream Plex in Vietnam. So I had to go back and relisten to our interview and I will say I never liked listening to my own voice.
00:01:12 Believe it or not after all of these years of podcasting. So thank you for listening to it. And the episode was about an hour long. It's a long one, but let me tell you it is so worth it. I so enjoyed relisting to my interview with Dan. I have a lot of favorite episodes and this one is right up there. His story is so interesting.
00:01:34 And do you know what I love? I love listening to people who make you think differently about what's happening in the industry of coworking and the future of work. And Dan is one of those people. So you're going to love this conversation. So I'll just give you a couple of insights into my discussion with Dan. So Dan is an international guy. He worked for Ogilvy and lived in New York,
00:02:01 Chicago, Singapore, and ended up in Vietnam. And Dan has her really interesting background, which we talk about on the podcast. So he became very passionate about helping people sort of discover their best selves and be on a journey to self fulfillment and happiness. And this led him to coworking, right? Because we spend a heck of a lot of our day at work.
00:02:26 So he was really interested in how to create a better workplace and help people become better versions of themselves through their workplace and their experience at work. So he joined forces with dream Plex and they are really, really focused on understanding their members' needs and interests. What do they want? Not what do we think coworking is? And let's deliver that to them,
00:02:52 right? So they've done a lot of research. They did a big research project with the gen Z population and understanding their desire for meaning and purpose at work and their journey to become their best selves. And again, it's just a really great illustration of how not all coworking businesses are the same. And if you have this inkling that you could be doing something a little bit different with your membership and how you serve them.
00:03:17 This is a great episode to listen to dream Plex now has five locations and their latest locations are quite large and they're operating on management agreements. They serve later stage startups and enterprise customers that realize they need help creating a physical space and location that attracts and engages key talent. So I don't want to go on and on to introduce it. I want you to have time to listen to the episode,
00:03:44 but you know, if you're on a driver, walking the dogs, make sure you give yourself a couple of rounds of this to listen to the entire interview. I thought it was super interesting. And at one point, Dan was worried about boring the audience. And I said, you know what? I think my listeners are all nerding out on this,
00:04:03 just like we are. So I hope you enjoy my conversation with Dan before we dive into Dan real quick, a couple of things to share. So if you're a landlord or a coworking space operator, interested in a creative partnership structure to put a coworking space in a building that has their right upside for both parties, while being confident that you've covered all the,
00:04:27 who does what and who pays for what and what ifs before you commit, then you're probably trying to get up to speed on agreements like management agreements. So I get asked all the time for support on this topic. And I get asked for templates for operating agreements, for management, you know, relationships, and I've never done one myself. I understand them well.
00:04:51 I've spent a lot of time talking to folks who have done them, although not that many folks as we know have done these yet, but a lot of people think that, especially because of the pandemic, we will see more of these happenings. So I met Mike Abrams who has been on the podcast before, and I did a video Q and a with him.
00:05:11 And he has a really unique background. He's been a developer, he's been a landlord, he's negotiated management group agreements for co-working companies. So he comes with a built-in perspective of all parties, which is super, super helpful when you're talking about negotiating creative agreements. And we're kind of anchoring on the management agreement since that's, what's most familiar to folks, but there are a lot of creative approaches.
00:05:38 If you're looking to negotiate something that isn't a traditional lease. So we're, we are have developed a course. We're just kind of putting the final touches on it. And we're launching it the week of March 15th to our beta cohort. So if you are a coworking operator looking to expand through a creative deal structure or a landlord looking to offer flexible workspace in your building,
00:06:05 and you want to understand what's possible from both a strategic perspective and then a really tactical perspective, you know, what are the terms that we're negotiating? What are the options when it comes to those terms? How do we create that operating agreement so that everything's spelled out and expectations are super clear. We designed this course for you. You can get all the details at everything,
00:06:29 coworking.com forward slash management agreements. Again, we're launching our beta cohort cohort the week of March 15th, and we're going to limit seats for that first group. So if you're interested head over there, get the details and reserve your spot. So one more thing before we dive into Dan, we've been super busy over here on the everything coworking team for 2021. So we've launched another new program for those of you that are working on starting a coworking space,
00:06:58 or you're in your first, you know, one to three years of running a space and you have some core business competency competencies that you want to work on. So I've been helping operators start co-working spaces for years. I run a program called the coworking startup school, and I run groups for existing operators. They're kind of like mastermind groups. And I've had this desire to dive in on a more individual and in depth level to support folks and give them the exact tools and templates and detailed resources that they need.
00:07:34 I got some emails from the last week's podcast on customer acquisition that said, I know I need to work on this, but I don't, you know, I don't have the systems in place. I don't have the tools and processes. What do you have? You know, and I have a lot of that content across my programs, and I want to integrate it into one place and also provide some one-on-one coaching along with those resources.
00:08:00 So I've launched a new mentorship program. And right now I will be the primary mentor, but we're bringing on some team members to train them in our frameworks and our approaches to help you. So if you are looking to launch a space or you are looking to develop competencies around member acquisition, team management, operational excellence, community building, et cetera, we're here to support you.
00:08:26 So to learn more about the program, schedule a call with me. It's totally free to learn about the program. You can go to everything co-working dot com forward slash mentor to do that. Okay, here we go. Now, sit back and relax or put the leash on the dog or get on the treadmill or whatever you're going to do and enjoy my conversation with Dan van Rossum,
00:08:47 chief experience office, or for dream Plex in Vietnam. We're welcome. I am here today with a guests from around the world from me. And I love that because I have a lot of us guests and it's good to get out of the UOS focus and see what's happening around the rest of the world. And I'm especially interested in your story. Dan van Rossum from dream Plex in Vietnam is joining me today.
00:09:13 And Dan it's 10, 10 o'clock ish. Your time tomorrow for me. Yeah, it is tomorrow. So, you know, talking about the future of work from tomorrow, obviously very appropriately, it's a 9:14 AM here, so that's not too bad. It's earlier than I thought. Okay. It's six, 14:00 PM for me. So thank you for making the time to do this.
00:09:34 I'm really interested to hear your story. I asked Dan to give me the two minute story synopsis of his, of his years before we got started, because I don't know much of your story and I am looking forward to hearing it. So dream Plex has been on the GWA radar screen, and I've been just, you caught my attention and I started looking at what you were up to,
00:09:56 and I thought I'd love to hear your story and how your business model has evolved and kind of what you're up to. And you had the GWA community manager of the year, I think that's right. Yes. Lots of excitement around that. So congrats on that. So tell us, well, first we should, before we go any further, Dan is a new dad.
00:10:18 That was what we were, we were also just chatting about that son who is two months old today. So we're going to give Dan a pass, if any of his thoughts get, if he needs a moment to collect himself at any time, not getting as much sleep as usual, although you admitted to being one of those entrepreneurs that may not be committed to sleep more committed to the mission.
00:10:39 So, okay. So we'll, let's dive in, tell us new dad business, you know what, let's start with the how, instead of diving into the details on dream Plex. Cause I know I'll go off on tangents. Tell me the story leading up to dream Plex. You know, what are the experiences in your life that brought you there?
00:10:57 Sure. Well, first of all, thank you for, for having me. It's obviously a huge honor for us from Vietnam to be, to be representing here today on the podcast, the journey is a, it's a, it's a, is a long one, but to, to sort of like really summarize it. I, I started with a marketing agency called at Ogilvy.
00:11:14 I work with them in Amsterdam, which is where I'm from. And then I kind of like moved around the globe kind of taking new positions and also new places. So I moved with them from Amsterdam to New York, then to Chicago, then to Singapore and eventually to Vietnam. I mean, so basically, you know, in, in that I was really focused on digital transformation,
00:11:33 user experience, customer insights. So I really focused always on, you know, like who are the people that we're talking to, that we're selling to and how can we use that understanding to deliver a great TV commercial or a great interactive campaign or maybe a big kind of like multi-day multi-month or multi-year platform. And so basically you, at the end of almost 10 years of doing that,
00:11:56 I kind of wanted to break out. I wanted to do something for myself. I was already in Vietnam, it's an incredibly entrepreneurial market. So I decided to set up my own company and that basically focused on through both content and courses and products on helping young Vietnamese kind of find their passion in life and then building their life towards it really focused on kind of like self fulfillment and,
00:12:19 you know, like, what is it that, who am I really on? What do I want from life? And then obviously from there, it's a very easy bridge to, to flexible office or coworking because basically right at Warrick is basically where we do most of our, you know, personal development. That's really where we get to know, know ourselves more than maybe in any other facet of life,
00:12:41 maybe besides relationships. And so, you know, like we had this platform and we were talking to the owners of dream flex about, you know, is there some kind of logical link between what we're doing and what you're doing and because they want to do a lot more than just being sort of like a place where you had a chair, a desk,
00:12:57 wifi and coffee, you know, this kind of like fit well in terms of, you know, actually making it a very sort of like employee centric proposition. And so that's how it ended up. That's a dream flex. I saw that on your LinkedIn. So I was interested in dream flex and a poking through your LinkedIn profile, which we'll link to in the show notes for anybody.
00:13:16 And I was like, what is this who like, so fascinating, this idea of your tag in, in LinkedIn says journey to happiness. It has like a journey to happiness, like who does that? That's such an interesting concept, right? You, you do it. I love it. And I totally get your point about the workplace. My,
00:13:40 we won't talk about my story, but my origin story is similar and that I became super passionate about, you know, this idea of right. We spend most of our day at work. Right. And so that should be more fulfilling than it, than it was for me at the time and the place and the mojo and all the things that go with it should be amazing.
00:14:03 And so I just became kind of obsessed with dislike work should be better because we're there. Yeah, that's it. Yeah. And I think that's exactly sort of what we're yes. Even still at this time. I think that's what we talk about a lot. I think that like I open, you know, a lot of my presentations with Luke guys,
00:14:19 everyone here in this room is going to spend between 80 and 100,000 hours at work. You know, is that going to be something that we drag ourselves through that we just go through the motions just to get that paycheck at the end of the month? Or is there something more to it? Right. And how can actually companies kind of like create environments where they do help their employees to,
00:14:38 you know, get more out of it than just sort of like, you know, you put something in and then you guess you get the, the, the salary at the end of the month. And so that whole idea off, you know, what, what else could it be? Right. And, and, and, you know, we just completed a big study,
00:14:51 which we launched in December around gen Z in Vietnam. We know that about 25% of the total workforce in the next few years will be people born after 1997. I know that sounds very scary. You know, whenever I see applicants resumes coming in with like a two thousands on it, I'm like, Oh no, this is, this is too much.
00:15:10 But you know, you look at it. You know, one of the key findings was that for them, you know, it's really all about like growth and development. You know, they're less maybe than the generation before them focused on, you know, the stability of a job and the salary of a job. It really is more about a journey of discovery and,
00:15:26 and a journey of learning who they are and where they fit in. And I think the more that companies can kind of like tailor the entire work environments to that sort of desire, you know, the more effective they'll be. And, you know, for us, you know, we always go back to why do companies have an office or why do companies have a workplace?
00:15:44 It is because you want to attract the best people and then you want to engage them and get the most out of them. And then you want to retain them. You don't want them to, to leave to another company. And so the more I think that, you know, companies really focus on that employee as a person, not just as a little robot,
00:15:58 doing things, but as a real person with wants and needs and desires and then design the entire workplace experience around it. Yeah. The more effective they'll be in, in getting the best tenants in engaging them and retaining them. So that's kind of like what we've built, everything around is kind of wandering from that, that last thing that we just talked about Does the research that you did dive into how Jen C sees the need for place?
00:16:21 Like we've just gone through this whole, Oh, everybody's fine at home. You know, certainly that's a big theme in the U S and I wonder, yeah. What, what did your research say about the need for, for gathering and being together? So there's something really interesting. And I think this discussion is so fascinating, you know, for both of us and hopefully for the audience too,
00:16:41 because it's all about people, right? It's all about like real, like deep, underlying, like human needs and desires. And, you know, the research showed very similar. I think there's one thing that's very different about Vietnam, probably actually two things, right? First of all, like we're fully open. We actually controlled the virus. When I say we,
00:16:59 I mean, the governments control the virus really well. You know, we had, we border China to the North. So actually it would be very easy for us to be the first one to be completely overrun by the virus. But they were just like super quick in actioning. And we ended up only closing down for about two weeks in April last year.
00:17:17 And beyond that, nothing really has changed too much. We've only had about 1200 total cases from January last year when it broke out to now. So in about a year and we only have 35 casualties, so it is a very different situation. But the interesting thing is that to a degree, you know, we did all have to go into lockdown.
00:17:36 Companies did kind of have to rethink about, you know, if this is going to continue, like how can people do their work when they're not in the office? So we did have that sort of like transformation going on, but it is kind of a, sort of the post COVID workplace. We can see what it's like, just like in China right now.
00:17:52 What is it like that companies go through this whole kind of like challenging question of, you know, how should workplace work, then people come back to work and from the people themselves, I think this is the other thing that's really unique about the market. And also very similar in some countries around here is that that idea of you can just do your work from home is actually not true at all,
00:18:13 because these are people who would be living probably in a really small multi-generational home kids running around. You may be sitting with your laptop at the kitchen table. There's no air conditioning. There's probably not a stable wifi. So actually for them to be able to have a place to go and sit down and it's, you know, cozy and quiet and there's wifi.
00:18:34 And then there's the, of course the coffee also. But, but that sort of professional environment is actually much more important than in many markets where it's a lot of like thinking about sort of like working from home and the workplace. So that's one thing that makes it really different. And then in terms of this specific generation, a big thing that came out of this study is really about ways of working.
00:18:54 And there was a lot of, you know, people really want to work more on by themselves. So there's a little bit less of kind of like working in groups and getting together. Actually, that was one of the questions was, you know, like, how do you want to interact with your manager? And only 8% said, I prefer to do a face-to-face everyone else wants to do it over instant messaging.
00:19:15 So that's some interesting stuff there, but at the same time, even though they want to work more in individual way, they want to do the tasks in their own way, in their own pace. They still want to go to a place where naked and do it. So it's sort of like both sides is there. They do want to be in the office,
00:19:32 but it doesn't mean that just because they want to be in the office the entire time, they want to sit in a big, like open floor plan. They want to like run into people because they're also quite a little bit like timid and introverted. So they do want to have their own kind of like place to, to do focus work. So there's,
00:19:47 there's a lot of interesting things that, that came out of it. Yeah, no, I, yeah, that's super interesting. And that's why I love hearing other perspectives. Right? Your experience is very different from what we're seeing and especially some parts of the U S so thank you for that context. So tell me then about the model of dream Plex.
00:20:04 So you've overlaid your journey to happiness on to dream Plex. What is dream plaques? Who do they serve? What does it look like? Yeah, that, that's, that's a good question. So, so dream flex started in, in 2015 to about five and a half years ago as a, it was the first kind of like big commercial coworking space in Vietnam.
00:20:24 So our founder, like his whole background is in real estate and he saw kind of the opportunity. I think he actually had like a couple of floors opening up in a building that he owned and he saw the opportunity to not just lease it out to kind of like a single tenant and do due to normal, boring, real estate stuff. But basically embraced this idea of coworking.
00:20:44 He had seen it in another market and he thought like, Hey, we can bring this to Vietnam. This was also around the time that in Vietnam, this startup community really started to come up. And so there was a lot of, kind of like momentum around really small startup companies. People starting to bring investments into Vietnam, people starting to invest in Vietnamese companies.
00:21:03 And so that was really all happening in dream flex. Basically we even had a Barack Obama was doing a trade mission, I think like very shortly after we opened to Vietnam and he visited dream flex as the place to basically meet the local startup community. He just like a really inspiring speech. So, you know, Dallas got, I think like the first thing that really launched us into the spotlight,
00:21:23 they quickly opened the second location. And then when that second location was open-ended that also filled up quite quickly to locations of about 300 people, they kind of saw that, Hey, maybe there's like more of an opportunity here than just the, these like two smaller locations. Maybe just can build out into a network, you know, like where could we take this basically?
00:21:43 And so they brought on board Jonah, who is my partner in the business and the CEO of the company. And he basically has a background who set up a company almost 20 years ago in Vietnam. It was the first job websites back when like most companies didn't even have the internet. So he could tell you an interesting story about that. But basically like he had been doing,
00:22:05 you know, a lot of thinking and business building around this idea of, you know, like employee engagement, employee experience. And he really knew that the key need for companies wasn't just a place to work, but it was a place to create culture to, to bring their teams together, to create an exciting environment where people would love to come to work and where you can have a positive influence on those people's work lives.
00:22:27 And so he started building a team, he brought me on board again, really focusing on how can we reinvent the product further. And so since then we've opened three new locations. So we have two more insight on the latest one I opened last month. And then we have one in Hanoi in the North and we have currently more locations underway. So that's a,
00:22:48 that's sort of like dream in a, in a nutshell. So are your users or your members still startups or what does your member profile look? Yeah, so it's, it's definitely a mix right now. I would say that the new locations that we're launching this year, they're all like a multitude larger than the original location. So there will definitely be a lot more established companies.
00:23:08 A startups is also one of those things that, you know, you can have a two-person startup, you can have a 20,000 versus, right, right, right. In some people's minds, when they think about start, I was like, Oh, like someone like Google, I was like, yeah, yeah, Google. I was like a hundred thousand people,
00:23:20 you know? So I think that, yeah, yeah. In a way of course. Yeah. Like startups is still, it's still a big part of it. Probably probably a little bit more like later stage startups where there's already quite a bit of capital in, and again, where, you know, like other companies where they get to that point of like,
00:23:35 look when you are a founder, right. When you think about, you know, like you're a GWA team, you know, you're so close to them, you can inspire them. And you can say, Megan, come on, you got this. This has gotta be an amazing time. Year it's 2021. Let's go right. Then when you grow to like 10 people,
00:23:49 15 people, 20 people, 30 people, you start getting middle management and you start getting into, we need to be more process driven. We start thinking about all of these other things. It becomes a little bit less easy for the founder to be that sort of like the driving force and the motivated towards the entire team. And they start realizing, okay,
00:24:06 maybe I now need to think more strategically about, you know, who to hire, how do I hire them? What does my employer brand, how do I create a place that people love coming to? How am I looked upon in the market? And then again, like once those people are in, you know, these employees, like how do I get the most out of them?
00:24:22 I really have to start thinking about at a larger scale, how do you motivate 80 people, a hundred people who are obviously removed from the mission who weren't with me here on day one. And so that's very similar to the companies that we otherwise target. So I think in a way, you know, to focus really is on companies that get to that point where to really deliver a great employee experience,
00:24:41 which could be a huge competitive driver in attracting and engaging and retaining key talents in order to deliver that they say, I probably need a bit of help. And so I know I saw your interview with, with Jamie Hodari right. I think industrial is very much internationally, like a great example for us where they really don't just focus so much on sort of like the physical products,
00:25:00 but more of like, that is just one of the tools that you can have as a workplace provider to create an environment where companies can come in and say, look, help me take care of this issue, which is, you know, this is or nothing, but people, I need the best people. I need to engage them. I need to retain them.
00:25:17 And that's really what we want. We support them on. So, you know, yeah. It startups, but it's, it's really any company that kind of runs into that. So I would say really our big focus is anyone between 30 and 200 employees. Yeah. Complete sense. So what, how does that manifest? Is that programming? Is that,
00:25:34 what does that support? Yeah, so that's kind of like on a, on a couple of different layers and not to bore people to death, but It starts with people listening are nerds just like us. So I can share a little bit, obviously, you know, we, we, we cannot, even though, you know, we say it's,
00:25:57 it's so much more than the office, right? Like we always use Anthony slumbers quotes of companies don't want offices. They just want productive workforces. Right. They don't need to office the offices of costs. It's a nuisance, it's something you have to maintain is something you have to operate, but you do want the benefits of a great office. Right?
00:26:13 And so we do, even though we do all this programming, it does start with the physical place. And actually the way that we just launched our new location, the way that we're briefing designers and architects on the upcoming locations is very much with that idea in minds, don't come with an amazingly looking office, like don't come with an office that looks beautiful,
00:26:33 fantastic, modern, innovative, because the problem is that that sounds and looks really appealing, but the moment, and I'm sure anyone who's been to an office that that was really cool. You know, you go in there day one is super exciting. You go in there and day seven, super excited. And you go in there month. Three is like,
00:26:49 this is just the office, right. Regression through to mean, it's kind of becomes just noise around you. No, there is studies that say, right. People sort of like, they start glossing over things after a certain period of time. It's not very long to your point. It doesn't take lines. It'd be like old news. Yes. Not at all.
00:27:06 And so all of these things that I think some companies invest in these like really splashing environments, like, it doesn't matter how great it is. There's this like, you know, concept of hypnotic adaptation in psychology, right. That like the things that we crave the moment you've got a lot of it, it just becomes normal. And then, you know,
00:27:21 as with anything, right, that first doughnut is amazing, but donut number six, just kind of, okay, now I'm just doing it to not be unhappy basically. So, so, so again, right. Like the study of happiness, there's a lot of parallels there and with the workplace, but basically, you know, the brief, the designers is like,
00:27:38 don't come with something where basically we spent all of our money and energy into creating this beautiful box that people can sit in. But that is the same from today as six months from now, 12 months from now, really what we're focusing on is taking the physical workplace and saying, we know what we will do as an operator, as a workplace experience delivery operator to make it come to life every single day.
00:28:00 So the building has to be created in that way. Right. And so that means that there's a lot of integration of what we call agile design. So actually like every month we completely change the design of every single office building we have. And not just with Christmas and not just with like, Oh, it's it's summer, every single month we follow.
00:28:20 And, you know, I used to run a magazine. So I always had this like editorial view on kind of like how you, how you approach things every single month. Of course it's, if you would take the, the magazine analogy, it's the same magazine, right? So it's fast company or Vogue or whatever you want it to be. So there's some structure there,
00:28:37 but we constantly change it so that every time people come in, every couple of weeks, there's something new to see. And then on top of that, there's very much an integration. We call this building as a canvas. So it's actually like, there's always like posters that are being exchanged. Our get changes, furniture that changes. And we have all the announcements off the engagement that happens within the spaces.
00:28:58 And so this is where it really comes to life. When we're talking about supporting companies, first of all, that level of generating excitement. And of course with the gen Z generation and millennials contents, right? Because every time we do a refresh of the look, we see more posts, we see people taking selfies. There's always like a photo booth.
00:29:14 There's always a backdrop of take photos with. So we see a lot of content coming out of that. That's already something, a company on their own would never do. Right. And the only way that we can do it is because we have two amazing interior designers sitting centrally who do it for all the locations. So that's part of, kind of like making that something that a company couldn't deliver by themselves and making it feel exciting to come to the office,
00:29:35 because there's always something new that you wouldn't expect. And then we go into the programming side. So the locations are designed to everywhere in the location. There's the messaging. So there's digital screens, there's poster frames, kind of like if you would walk by a movie theater, you know, like what's coming up what's this week, what's next week. And so I think a lot of the times when you look at the old coworking model,
00:29:55 you would have like community party, right? So once a month we spent X, many dollars on doing unlimited craft beer and dah, dah, dah. But when you actually ask members, right, please, please come, please come. Right. But when you actually ask people, it's like, do you want to come to a community party? Especially here?
00:30:12 The answer usually is no, because people are quite introverted by nature here. They are really comfortable just like going into this like big open space to like, hang out with people. Networking is something that doesn't exist at all. And so we've kind of taken a step back, right. We've kind of taken a step back and said, why would you do a community party while did,
00:30:32 or is basically that you don't get value from a shared space. You don't get value from a coworking space unless you make connections, unless you meet other people. Right. So we thought about, okay, how can you deliver that without doing this kind of like pushing every once again, I'm making people feel super uncomfortable and like go in network, you know,
00:30:48 go and enjoy yourself. And so we just broke it down and we said, well, what do people really want? Right. So you just, and we did surveys and we collect data and we said, what are you really wants? Right. And then it's like, well, actually, like what I'm really interested in calligraphy, I'm really interested in sports.
00:31:04 I'm really interested in developing myself as a better product manager. Actually. I want to learn how to communicate better. And so we've basically taking all of that and putting everything that, you know, at a, again at a larger company, a strategic HR team would do basically trading and development wellbeing at work, social activities, creative workshops, all of that.
00:31:26 We just created as a layer on top of the physical environments. And then obviously not only from a messaging perspective, but also from where it happens, you know, constantly there's something going on, you're getting sampling. So you know what you could do, what kind of workshop you could attend. So it all kind of fits together. So that's, that's how we support the companies in their sort of mission to attract and engage and retain people.
00:31:47 Yeah. It's super, super interesting. I think you're, you know, much more forward thinking about this than most star. I don't know, brands in the States that are thinking that way. It's really interesting. I love the agile design concept. I think that it's fascinating. And I, I wonder if I will have to, yes. You'll be a case study at some point we could do a whole podcast on that.
00:32:11 And I mean, I think, and that's, you know, even just from the perspective, I mean, you have, you described a home situation where, you know, people are fairly compelled to come to the office, but you know, you think about Microsoft saying like, here's the problem. How do we get people to want to come to the office?
00:32:28 Right. You're solving that in a pretty interesting way. So that's fascinating. And the programming piece, I mean, you're really, I think coworking spaces broadly struggle with this, right? Like to your point, sort of our story is people are supposed to connect. And so we need to mash them together somehow and right. We need to make them come to things.
00:32:50 And that is success, right? To some extent there is truth in that, but your cultural example of like, look, that's not how people are comfortable interacting. And so you take consumer insights background from Ogilvy and saying, well, let's figure out what do they want to get out of coming to work? And work is such an interesting, you've made it more than a place to work.
00:33:11 You've made it a place where they can professionally develop or personally develop and learn calligraphy or find friends to play sports with. Or it's super interesting. And I think a lot of spaces really struggle with that approach. You know, what is a framework for programming and how do you get to what people actually want? I think most of the time we're just guessing,
00:33:32 right? We're simply like throwing things at the wall and just guessing, and maybe it works and maybe it doesn't and the members sort of appreciate the guessing, but you know, do we get it right? So you figured out sort of a systematic approach at understanding, and I'm sure there's trial and error and things you test and things that evolve There's there's way,
00:33:52 there's way more failure than, than, than winning. But I think that's, you know, that that's also kind of like, you know, bringing not only to consumer insight perspective, but also just to start a mentality of, you know, you build, measure, learn, you're just constantly figuring out you, you, you ride, you create,
00:34:07 you create a hypothesis of what do we think is going to work. And of course it hypothesis can be data-driven, but to a degree it's, Oh, there's always a little bit of leap between what the data is telling you. And then what do you really offer? You put something out there and then you see if it works or not. So,
00:34:20 and I think it's really not that difficult in this day and age to, to collect data, you know, to trial things, to see if it works, to get feedback. I think it's more, you know, I think one of the themes for us, especially from, from last year is really this idea of people want to personalize their work experience.
00:34:36 They don't want sort of deal. It's kind of like one size fits all the one community party or in companies, right? The one team team building events, the one training for months for everyone, that idea just doesn't work. So it really goes through kind of like a one size fits none where you really have to start breaking down in how, you know,
00:34:54 the best digital startups will do it. Right? Like how the best news or social feeds would do it, where you would actually break it down on a personal level. What would you want? So if I asked you, you know, like, what is it that something that you want to learn next year in 2021? What would you tell me?
00:35:10 And if I know it for you, then I not only know it for you, but I can also see it in an aggregate. And then I can see the trends and the interesting thing from the community perspective, right? If we're talking about it from that perspective, is that actually getting 20 people together in a room that like how we did it a couple of times last year that want to practice their English,
00:35:28 pronunciation builds way more community than a community party, because you're actually finding like-minded people you're not there in a room with a hundred trying to find, Oh, like who should I talk to? We actually put you in the room with the right people. So for us, it's always like, sort of like, it, it cuts both ways a or giving people a more personalized experience and they can do something they're actually interested in.
00:35:50 And because of that, you're putting them together with other people. And now you're making connections outside of your own company. You're making connections with people that otherwise, maybe you wouldn't have met because you may have seen them in the elevator, but why would you say hello? They're into calligraphy, right? You don't know that they're into football, but now you do.
00:36:08 So now the next time maybe you do have that conversation. Maybe you do say hello and always did that all helps grow your roots into the community, into sort of that location. And of course we do all of this because I truly believe that, you know, we can give people a better day at work. We can positively influence people's lives by creating an environment.
00:36:27 That's exciting to come back to every single day. But of course there's a business side to it too, which is that the more that people grow their roots into the community, the more that they feel at home in that location, the less likely they are to leave. And if you are talking about our kind of companies, you know, 20, 30,
00:36:43 40 people, you know, the majority of employees say, this is where I feel like I want to stay here. Because if I leave, I lose my benefits. We also do like benefit programs. I lose like the training and development program that I'm a part of, I lose the social activities, but also lose all the people that have now gotten to know.
00:37:01 And so it all clicks together. Right? And so I think this is kind of like, what's a, the CMO from Unilever always call us like, you know, doing good and doing good business. They really should go hand in hand. If you create a super compelling consumer product, they are happy. We are happy. Right. So I think like from an operator perspective,
00:37:18 it's kind of good to remember that it isn't kind of like a two sides, right? It's, it's really two sides of the same point. If we do something that works for them, it really should work for us as well. There is no competition. It's a heavy lift though, what you're doing. So is that priced into your mind? Yeah,
00:37:36 I'll be the first to say that, first of all, Dan advice Around once a month, but even the customized programming, I mean, what you're doing is probably somewhat possible because of your scale. Right. But it's, you've added, you've added complexity to the model. Is the return on that premium pricing or is it simply retention and attracting members?
00:38:00 Okay. So now we get into the real fun stuff. Right. And so I'm, I'm hoping that yeah, there will be something in here for other operators, students. I see somebody questions, right? Like this and this big coworking brands is opening up near me. How can I compete? Should I lower my price, et cetera, et cetera.
00:38:15 Right. So, you know, I think for us, first of all, we started doing this way before we had the skill to sustain it. It's a strategic investment that the company decided to make believing that this is going to be the way to differentiate. So actually we were basically spending this money before we had it. It was a strategic, the other thing too,
00:38:36 it, when you're talking about heavy lifting, it's also part of, it's not just something that people can copy, sort of like the thing you see or the thing that people eventually experienced. But because it also comes from people who are truly passionate about making work better about thinking about those hours that we all spend at work and how can we change that in a positive way?
00:38:54 So it also comes from, you know, we do spend like night and day on this, just because it's kind of like, we are the nerds that are really interested in this. So that's the artist side. But in terms of the business, you know, now that we've kind of built a little bit more to scale this year, if everything goes,
00:39:07 according to plan, we'll grow about 300% in terms of capacity, which will be my second reason not to sleep besides the newborn. But, but, but I guess it does result in like a clear price premium. And I think again, like sometimes we're so focused maybe as operators, like when I see some other questions on the forums, like, you know,
00:39:28 like how do I compete with this other coworking space? You know, how do I compete with this other like chain that's opening up near me? And I think maybe we should take a step back and say, well, what is the business that we're really in? Because sometimes we get kind of, kind of like caught into this idea of like our business is to create that kind of fun,
00:39:46 you know, maybe vibe-y office, but really companies. And again, going back to Anthony squad, I companies really don't want an office. Right? Like they really don't come to you for an office. So I think taking a step back and saying, what is the business we're really in, whether it's for freelancers, solopreneurs, small startups, or for companies,
00:40:04 they really don't come to you for dead desk. Right. They really come for something else. And the more that you can connect to that and design, whatever you need to do around that in terms of the programming, in terms of the activities, in terms of what the space looks like, then you'll start really resonating. And then you lose that whole kind of idea of,
00:40:21 Oh, we're competing with, you know, this or this chain, right. Because you are doing something unique that no one else is doing, because you're the only one so close to your members that you're able to adjust everything towards that. Yeah. My guess is that you're not sitting up at night worrying about what a competitor in quotes might be up to because you're so focused on your vision and what you see.
00:40:44 It doesn't matter what they're doing. Right. You see what you want to deliver and that super clear, I think that's really, it's super interesting. And, you know, I see for, like, I know that the industry is moving towards, you know, like, you know, I, I know, like I saw this on the forums too.
00:40:58 Like people are talking more about like enterprise and like, how do you target companies? And maybe I've always like served these freelancers and solopreneurs, but you know, it's, it's a lot of work because, you know, they, they stayed there for six months, 12 months. Then you have to find something new for that seed. It's a big machine that you have to kind of like build to make that work,
00:41:14 which especially at smaller scale. Exactly. Exactly. So I think, you know, when you're talking about, about, about companies, I actually see as our main competition, the one thing that does keep me up at night, the real competition is for companies to do it themselves. So I think that like, when we talk about like, water's our competition,
00:41:34 I think actually the flexible office market or to service office market, or co-working in Vietnam is small compared to the total office markets. So for office worrying, it's tiny. It's like, you know, in, in our case, it's 3% of markets is 5%. Yeah. Roughly the same year, even in major markets like New York, San Francisco, three to 4% London,
00:41:57 London maybe is a little higher, but it's tiny in as a part of the full commercial office market. And people are thinking about it being saturated. And you're like, well, I mean, right, not yet, If you, if you would, this is another thing that I took from Ogilvy. It's like define your category, right? Define the business you're in.
00:42:17 If you focus on I'm a co-working player. And so I could beat with coworking spaces then yeah. Maybe it's a really difficult thing to kind of differentiate or say, sell differentiates diff is the newborn, differentiate yourself to build a good proposition to get the customers in. But if you kind of zoom out and say, well, really what is the need that we're,
00:42:36 that we're serving, right? What is something that we're solving for companies? You know, really the main competition is that companies usually just do it themselves and they don't even consider this as an option, especially here. There's still so much education that needs to happen in the markets. So a company, their decision making process for their next office, which is a huge investment,
00:42:57 which is going to be hugely impactful under teams, usually as the following, a CEO or a country manager calls up the most junior HR person or a PA in our case often. And they say, please Google offices and this and this area in the city, and maybe talk to a broker and see what's available. And once we have a location, we're going to talk to a design and build firm.
00:43:18 We're going to ask them to do a little design. We're going to buy furniture. We're going to put it into the space. And a couple of months from now, we're going to do a big opening party with all of our employees and the office is done. Whereas obviously we know that it's like, literally it couldn't be further from that in terms of what you should be doing,
00:43:32 which is thinking about, first of all, like, no, the office isn't done on day one. That's when it starts, right. That's when you start to actually grow the office and grow the proposition and make it exciting, never done that's our unofficial slogan never done. But that whole process of basically like making this like incredibly important decision, making this incredibly important,
00:43:57 you know, investment for your company, signing up for a five-year lease 10 year lease buying the furniture, maybe working with a designer was really just focused on, you know, pushing a certain design solution because they don't invest a lot into the actual design process. Don't have time to think through, you know, activity-based planning or something like that. You're then locked for 10 years into this box.
00:44:19 And then the company, maybe two years into it starts realizing like, why aren't we like a Google? Why aren't we like a Microsoft in terms of these cool campuses that we're seeing? And these like really cool office buildings it's because in their whole process, we don't even appear on their, on their radar. So I think when we're talking about competition,
00:44:36 that's all of us should really be thinking about how do we break into a decision making process. Default is this is how it works. We just do it ourselves. And, you know, to your point about, you know, you described company between 30 and 200 people, you know, that size in particular, right? Maybe they're growing to your point.
00:44:55 Maybe they have a junior HR person. They just don't have the competency or the people, or they, they want what you're offering, but they, you know, they certainly would have struggled to do that themselves. That's always going to turn out, not that great because they're busy building a company. Right. They are not, they don't have the resources,
00:45:14 time or people to assign to that. So right away it could just sort of gets done at this really base level. But you're right. You're totally right. The competition is just that they think that they should do it themselves. Yeah. And, and I think Jamie, I think the other thing is that again, and don't know any better. So I don't think they are purposefully making decision to not go with an expert in workplace experience.
00:45:37 I don't think that consciously saying, I want to deny my team to have the opportunity to come into a workplace as being activated and renewed every single day, every single week, every single month. I don't think they're saying that. It said they literally don't know that that is out there. And so that doesn't, so that's the challenge, right? Like how do you break in into that kind of into that kind of process?
00:45:58 And, and I think, you know, just a lot of work to be done. That's why, like one of our other quotes that we always like ref almost like used as a mantra, which is Mark Dixon's quote about, you know, flexible offices and not an industry for the faint hearted. And we know it every day. Like this is if you want to get,
00:46:15 if you want to just like, get a good business going, if you want to make a lot of money, if you just wanna, you know, like do something simple and easy, you do not go into this business. You do not. And I think we saw it as in a market here. We had a lot of companies starting after the WIWORK valuation started going up and up and up.
00:46:33 And people basically just Googled. We work that went through a local kind of like a design and build firm. And they said just replicated that design. They found a local version of that lamp, that typical, we work desks that typical WeWork layout, they built it with the same idea for like, Oh, that seems like an amazing business. I can be worth $50 billion by having desks.
00:46:53 And by renting out a space, dividing it up into smaller pieces and like doing some furniture in there, putting a community manager at the front desk, that's it. And I can commend like five, $600 for a membership per month. Sounds amazing. And now obviously you see the other side of it where, you know, people are trying to sell their business,
00:47:10 offload their business, maybe closer than their shops, because it really isn't that easy. It's, it's so incredibly laborious. It's much harder. Yeah. It's much harder to execute and not simple to have a vision that, that you have. So I'm sure you mentioned kind of filling up quickly, your original locations kind of inbound demand. What does that well,
00:47:36 so, you know, you mentioned the thing that keeps you up at night is thinking like, you know, all the people who are out there doing this themselves, you mentioned research, what are some of the things you do that are sort of outbound, you know, education PR to try to help people understand that you're an option and to get in front of them before they go through that process themselves.
00:47:56 Yeah. Or, or be on their radar, you know, for whenever that next decision is. Right. Yeah. Cause there's obviously so many companies out there, you know, if we kind of like create that, you know, a conversation and people are aware, then whenever that, you know, the decision making process starts for them, if it's in six months or 12 months,
00:48:11 at least they know it's something to consider, they may Google it again. They may read a bit of what we do. And so basically I would say that like the biggest thing for us, I think in the last couple of months, specifically now moving into this model and moving more into these larger locations, you know, we're currently working on a site that is about a hundred thousand square feet that,
00:48:31 you know, would house probably up to like 3000 people. So when we are trying to fill those kinds of sites up, you know, we have to move a little bit away from just doing sort of like the performance marketing, which we, which we already did. And I think we did really, really well, probably, you know, better than a hundred people because we also had a team focused just on that,
00:48:48 but kind of like capturing demand. That's already out there now we really have to, like you said, you know, break into conversations, like get on people's radar that otherwise wouldn't even be thinking about this. And that is a lot of, of content. So we are doing our own original research, which is why we did this like huge gen Z study,
00:49:08 which we did with a local research agency, not just like a quick Facebook poll. You know, we really did like a multi-month research study. We package that into a white paper that we pushed online. We did some press around that. We did a big kind of like launch event where we invited business leaders from companies, obviously in our target audience that could come in and,
00:49:30 and hear the results of that study. We then did something really funny, which was kind of like a reverse panel. So usually on panel discussions, it's always the experts talking about something and we reversed it and we actually put the gen Z ears on the panel and we had like one moderator asking dumb questions and saying, okay, this is what the research is saying.
00:49:48 You know, can you give some color around that? Can you get some more context on that? Audience could ask questions. And like, actually, like I said, like us talking about like gen Z or, you know, like other trends, you know, we actually had the audience directly engaging with them kind of like almost like a photo. And obviously like the funny thing was that,
00:50:05 you know, like then we have people coming up to them afterwards and what we've heard multiple times. And I think this is where, you know, the marketing order BR side of it works is that they said that, look, I run a company with like 3000 people I have 90% is millennial and gen Z. Now it finally makes sense to me.
00:50:22 I just never understood them until you brought it to life with the research, the stories. And then they started asking more questions, like, tell me, so for your generation, like, how does this work? Why do you do days? Like, so you see that, you know, when you, again, like sort of like stepping into the marketing background,
00:50:38 right? If you want to reach a certain audience, what do they care about? What is top of mind for them? And for a lot of them, it is, I have these young athletes coming into the workplace. I don't know what to do with that. I don't know. I don't understand them As the CEO of a large company. I'm not going to call it town hall and show my vulnerability and say,
00:50:57 Oh, please, you know, tell me why you behave a certain way, or why are these things this way? So again, like starting with the, in this case, the consumer, the decision maker in minds, you know, what would they care about? So create content around that, then going out with that. So we started with that.
00:51:13 Then we found like a series of talks where we're taking different parts of the workplace experience. And again, putting it in front of, you know, really senior B2B decision makers, like senior HR leaders, COC suites, and talking about different facets of the opposite experience. So would at one really great event around female leadership, which is, you know,
00:51:32 a really big topic for a lot of people here. We didn't want about the physical design of the workplace, where we kind of had three competing views on stage. And it was a CRE broker, quite outspoken, one an architect focused on sustainability and a landlord. And we're basically like battling, you know, kind of like competing views of like, what should the workplace of the future look like?
00:51:52 I think that was like quite engaging. That was mostly focused on the brokerage community because obviously we work a lot with the CBRS and JLLs and sellers of this world. So we kind of had to pull them in again, but it just goes back to who we are trying to reach. What is truly relevant for them, not about your products, but what is relevant for them in a larger context,
00:52:10 and then create content around that. And this year we're basically embarking. We're going to create a really big platform throughout the entire year, a combination of online content, podcasts, articles, and conferences, and probably an award show at the end of the year, all about the best X. So highlighting companies that are doing an extremely well and what can smaller companies learn from that?
00:52:34 And then it just happens to be brought by us, but it's really focused on again, driving the conversation, you know, getting people to think which obviously COVID helps a lot. People are rethinking their real estate strategy. They are rethinking their office strategy. So now we can really push it and say, okay, now that you're ready, kind of like thinking about it.
00:52:51 Here's, here's one way here's one way. So yeah, a lot of that. Yeah, really interesting. I mean the, the a hundred thousand square feet is super interesting because do you find a challenge in sort of, do you have one open or is this one of them that's just opened or on the horizon? The largest one we currently have openness about 60,
00:53:14 65,000. Yeah. Even that one. So people it's like a campus, right. People don't won't yeah. You have people who would never know each other, like it's not right. We sort of think a lot about maybe the boutique coworking space where everybody knows your name, the whole, you know, thing. And so that's quite different, which makes what you're doing.
00:53:36 Maybe even more challenging because it's, you have to create it, I guess maybe that's where the programming comes in. You really have to create those serendipitous interactions because people could really pass in hallways or in elevators and just not, it could feel too big to sort of make the effort. Yeah. It's both the programming. It's also, I mean, first of all,
00:53:58 it's the design of the buildings. Of course you do have to design the physical space in a way that it, it allows for those casual collisions for people to run into each other, to have those conversations. It is of course, in programming, again, out of that, let's say, you know, that location we'll maybe have about 2000, 3000 people,
00:54:13 you know, getting those groups of 20, 30, 40 people together that has something in common is something that's really valuable, but also technology, right? So this is something that we haven't really talked about, but, you know, we are investing a lot in sort of like the tech layer on top of the physical layer on top of the hospitality layer on top of the engagement layer,
00:54:31 really gums like a tech layer that allows us to understand people individually and really taking the idea of in a smaller boutique space, what a great community manager would do. Like someone like Nancy, who would know people on an individual basis, and therefore can also give advice on what should we do in an aggregate, right? So, so what is the total sort of understanding and insight that we have about our members,
00:54:53 but when you get to that skill, you cannot do it, but that's perfectly fine because no Facebook doesn't know every single user on their platform and they lose all the data, they know everything, and they know more about you that probably you do yourself. So, so building that technology layer on top of that is actually really valuable. And so that allows us to basically do what I would call that community management at scale,
00:55:14 which is that you could have profiles of 3000 people and you start understanding them better with every interaction that they have with you. With every event that a tent, you can get a pretty good sense of like what they're into, what they're interested in, you know, what should you introduce to them? And therefore, like that really allows you to create still that personalized workplace experience that sort of like engagements,
00:55:34 even when you're at a larger scale. So the technology side we'll have to really do the heavy lifting on that Super interesting. But the scale is also what allows you, you know, in a, in a boutique coworking space, I'm not sure how many people want to learn calligraphy next year. Right? So when you have a larger sample size, you can,
00:55:52 you know, you could get more segmented. So that's really interesting. And that also, because I know you're really interested in sort of like the marketing side of it, right? So that obviously allows you also to do things like, and again, this isn't, you know, we are building like a huge technology layer. It's a huge investment. It's,
00:56:08 you know, very, again, another huge project to do. You don't have to go that far. I mean, you can just go into MailChimp when you can do like dynamic segments modules in your emails, right? So you can say that instead of emailing, let's say if you have a hundred people in your space, emailing every single one, a list of events is going to happen that month,
00:56:28 actually your hero event could change based on what you know about that person. And all you have to do is ask them once out of these five things, what are you most interested in? Then the next time you organize something that can be your hero event. That can be the thing that you push out alongside. Oh, and also we have this as this,
00:56:44 right? So I think that like the online, even in, in, in sort of like smaller spaces, the online tools, we have the digital tools we have to personalize the customize. It's still there. And I think it's just kind of all about this sort of like collaboration between, you know, what can you do digitally and what can you do as a person?
00:57:01 And I remember working on the very first like big CRM systems for big companies, probably about 10 years ago, we had this, that case study of British airways who would know that you're a frequent flyer and the flight attendants would know it because it was on their iPad. It was like very novel at that time. But because they knew that normally you're a frequent flyer.
00:57:20 Even if you would have a seat in economy, they would come up to you and say, we really appreciate your business. Here's, here's a drinker as a snack and make you look so good in front of maybe your family, because you're taking them out, not on a business trip, but on a, on a leisure trip. Right. Those kinds of things make people feel so special.
00:57:37 And that's obviously, you know, using a CRM, gathering all that information, you know, so that it's not just in the head of one community manager or you share it maybe between two or three people or as somebody that our scale tens of people that all then can feed in and can say, Oh, this person is like checking in. I see them checking in the lobby,
00:57:54 Oh, Hey, it's their birthday. Let's say happy birthday to them. Right. These things are all possible. Whether you're at 300 people or at, you know, at some point we should be about 30,000 people. Totally. Right. It just has to be something you care enough about to build into your processes. Right. And to train your team on.
00:58:11 So your community managers, what are their roles? What does their day look like? And what are their responsibilities? So again, like everything is like very kind of quickly evolving, right? So again, you know, five years ago, one coworking space about 250% capacity. You know, it was very as all startups. So you pre you pretty much have someone who just gets noticed startups and like very much in that world.
00:58:37 You know, now you're just talking to employees. Most of the people that work in our buildings didn't choose us. It was their boss that decided to put their time in a drink, blacks. They don't come to work for dream flex. Actually, most of our locations are very lightly branded. We really focus more on delivering a better office building rather than delivering a branded experience because first and foremost,
00:58:56 those people come to work for that company. So it has to be the company's brands. Sorry. It has to be a company's brands like front-end central. And so the community manager in those larger locations has a really interesting role. First of all, it's a lot of higher level relationship management. So actually working with the decision makers in those companies, we sort of see it a two different layers.
00:59:19 We have the people who are actually in, and then we have one or multiple people in a company. We call them the insiders. They are basically like a little bit like our ally into that company. So if we want to push out a new initiative, if we have a new event that we're trying to drum up, kind of like demand for,
00:59:35 we would not go obviously to the managing director or the country manager, but we would go through our insider basically, like it's literally influencer marketing into companies. And so we say like, Hey, you know, like before we open up the registration for this, let's say a football tournament, which we just did very successfully, like really fun. We want it to give your team the first chance to,
00:59:54 to be a part of it. And so, you know, we go to them, it's kind of like very much like insider, right? Like very much like, Oh, like before anything, like, you know, sneak peek, all of that. So really using sort of that as a way in, so that's a really important thing for the community managers to get to know those people.
01:00:11 And then I think there's just a certain segment of employees that actually love to be engaged and have maybe a little bit more extroverted that, you know, do want to hang out and they come to the front desk, they hang out. They're the ones that may be, instead of like, when we say good morning to them, when they come out of the elevator,
01:00:26 they don't just like quickly pass by and go to their office. Yeah. They may linger a bit. They may be more, you know, working in the cafe area and the social space is there just a bit more visible, but I think we also just have to be very sort of honest with ourselves and say probably 80% of people, as long as you deliver a good hospitality experience,
01:00:44 you don't have to deliver an amazing community experience because for them, they don't come to work to hang out. They don't come to work, to socialize with our staff. Right. They are just there to come to work for their company. And that's fine. But I think maybe more than community, it's really about engagement and maybe more than community, it's really about hospitality.
01:01:03 So the hospitality is something we can apply to everyone. Everyone should feel welcomed. They should feel like they belong in that location because of all the things that we're doing, that is the stuff that is sort of like we do for everyone. And the community is a little bit more kind of like often maybe, But the engagement piece is really interesting because it's sort of like,
01:01:23 you're right. You're maybe slightly less, well, I don't know if I can articulate it because it's, it's all part of the ecosystem. But if you can keep someone engaged because they're a part of your ecosystem, the decision-maker is thrilled with that because most people, at least in the U S any, you know, employee engagement survey I've ever seen is awful,
01:01:46 right. It's HR crawl under the desk and cry kind of bad. And so if you're achieving that, it's like you have a slightly different mission. You don't need people to make friends. You want them to be engaged, which is good for them. Good for the company. It's good for everybody in a different way. Yeah. Going back to the,
01:02:05 the sort of like the startup analogy or the, you know, what are really the big winners in sort of the social space, right? Maybe there's community was originally an important part of, you know, like a Facebook work tech talk, but it's really just the engagement, right. But community can be a tool indie engagement objective, right? So you could say it as like one of,
01:02:23 one of the ways to drive engagement is to connect people. One of the ways of driving engagement is to get like-minded people together. And that can be extremely valuable, right? When you think about like a location where maybe there's, let's say 40 or 50 companies, and they all have a junior HR person for them to have a network of other junior HR,
01:02:43 people is super valuable. So then community totally works. Right. But for maybe many other people, they don't really need to engage at that level. But we do need engagement from everyone because engagement is our biggest proxy for retention. That is going to be our biggest prediction for wetter or nots when the company would say, because we work with a lot of,
01:03:01 kind of like international companies who have maybe a local unit here, you know, maybe their international headquarters, they don't know how great we are. So someone in Singapore or in Hong Kong, or in Taiwan may say, I'm looking at it, the cost, you know, or maybe we want to roll it up into a bigger regional deal. Like, we want you to move to this and this space,
01:03:18 we want you to move through your own traditional office. We want you to move to this co-working player. Then if we do our job. Right. And I think Nancy is a great example of that, that all the employees basically like revolt, and they say, no way, we will not leave. And then it starts coming to life. Right.
01:03:32 Then you realize that, okay, we are doing something right. Because when the actual employees of the company, the people who are working in this space, who are experiencing the engagement to hospitality to community, if they say, no, we will not go, then you've done it. And so we we've had cases over the last year, especially during COVID,
01:03:50 when companies were saying, look, we need to find ways to save costs. You know, we know this may work strategically, but you know, we have to focus on, you know, we're how we're spending our money. And we really had employees stand up and say, we don't want to leave. Right. And I do think it really comes down to how we engaged our day.
01:04:07 And if we want to really now close the loop on the total theme, so they, how happy are they, right. If they are happy, if they get Part of their happiness from being in that space from being in that environment, from being with those people, from being an hour workshops in our classes and our yoga sessions, right. If there is that drives their happiness,
01:04:26 then that will be, one-on-one spends the data to, to, to the business side when maybe the company has a different idea than the employees themselves. Well, right. And I hope, I'm sure, you know, the engagement index is so critical because they know employee turnover is so expensive. Right. So retraining and having unengaged, the cost of disengagement is so high that they're better off to pay for di dream Plex.
01:04:50 So it's a good question. Totally. I always say it like in the grand scheme of things, actually, I'm working on, like, I'm sort of like an interactive calculator to put on the side. And we say, just put in your average retention, how many people leave on a given year? How many team members do you have? What is your total payroll?
01:05:06 And I can tell you how much money you could gain by not doing it yourself. So that's yeah. That's 100%. That's the, that's the bitch super interesting. This is fascinating. You're just thinking different. It's different. You're thinking in a different, I think evolved way, particularly For official job description. Think differently. What'd you do, you can make up your own title.
01:05:31 You can call yourself chief experience officer. I don't care, but just help us think differently, right? Like help us sort of not continue doing what we're doing, you know, because I don't think that, you know, you can be competitive. Even if you're competitive today. You're not competitive in a year from now. I do think you have to constantly relook at like,
01:05:47 what industry are we really in? What need are we really solving and what is the best way to do it? So it is constantly rethinking, constantly challenging the status quo even internally. So we think that this is the thing probably we're going to be proven wrong on about 30% of what we're doing. No problem. That's part of the product roadmap. That's part of the process of building measuring and learning and then optimizing over time.
01:06:08 So, but it is, yeah, it is kind of like constantly taking sort of the contrarian point of view. Well, and I love that you have a team that is aligned on that because I think, you know, a lot of operators, you know, either the team's not on the same page or it's a smaller operator and they, you know,
01:06:26 they're taking the risks on their own. And so for you to be able to do that and have the space, even though it keeps you up at night to think like that, I think it's such an intense Anyway, anyways, no problem. But this goes back to one of the main findings of the study was that, you know, like growth and development is number one for gen Z years.
01:06:45 But one of the other things is a sense of purpose, right? And I think the best companies in the world, they don't step into, you know, like, Oh, this is your title. This is your salary. Those things are important, but they're more point of parity for his subordinate differentiation the real differentiator, why people are so engaged in certain companies like a HubSpot,
01:07:02 for example, right. Great company, culture, buffer, great company, culture, even remotes, right? Why can't they do it? Because people feel like they are doing something purposeful. They're contributing something here just beyond the thing. So I don't go to them and say, you know, in our pitches, like in our job descriptions, we don't say,
01:07:20 you know, come here become a community manager, come here and become a marketing executive is like, no, no, no. I'm enjoying the team that is changing the way that Vietnam works. That is changing the way that offices are being seen and designed and delivered and the way that people spend their time at work. And then we go back to that stat of most people spend between 80,000 and 100,000 hours at work.
01:07:41 So if you are someone who wants to make a positive contribution to people's lives start here. Right. So that obviously is a very different approach to getting people in. And then yeah. Then you get people who are really aligned much more than just like, Oh, you know, this is what a community manager does. And you know, I hope you like it.
01:07:57 You know, it's just, Yeah, you're really thought, thought provoking. And not everyone is serving a segment where, you know, you have some unique aspects to your segment, but I think there's a lot to learn from the way you're, you're thinking. So, yeah. Well, I'll close out by saying, because I don't want to over time,
01:08:13 but I'll close. It may say no, but we, but we didn't start there. We created that segment. Like we didn't start with like, Oh, well you have this hugely differentiated product. And we serve these big companies. Now we started with three floors and existing office building where we serve startups and grew from there. So I think anyone can grow there.
01:08:31 It's just about like, what business are you in? What business do you want to be in? And how do you then design everything around it? Your team, your products, the kind of companies you're going to go after, how, how you service them, how you engage them, how you retain them, it's all possible because clearly we've gone through that whole journey.
01:08:47 We could have been of course, just a two, three location, coworking operator, no problem. But that doesn't get me excited. So, you know, Right. That would be too much sleep, too relaxing. What would I do with my life? Right. Exactly. Well, Dan we'll wrap there. I would love to stay connected. And have you give us an update,
01:09:10 you know, in a year or so, the journey you're on is really fascinating and I appreciate you sharing so many details because like I said, I think that the listeners are all nerding out, just like we are and really appreciate kind of the inside scoop on how you're thinking about things. So thank you for taking the time to do this. I appreciate it.
01:09:29 And look forward to following your journey. Sounds good. Thank you.
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