199. Kris Elliot, COO of Expansive, On the Secrets to Their Google Reviews and How They're Shifting to Meet the Demand of Today's Flex Office Consumers

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48. Kris Elliott on Demystifying the Corporate Coworking Client

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TRANSCRIPTION

199. Kris Elliot, COO of Expansive, On the Secrets to Their Google Reviews and How They're Shifting to Meet the Demand of Today's Flex Office Consumers

00:00:02 Thank you for joining me today. And I said, I'm going to hit record. And Chris, just so you know, in the intro that I already recorded, I think I said, I hope you don't try to make yourself sound old because I think we're roughly the same age. And so let's not make us older than we are, but you were just saying you started in this industry in 1999 party,

00:00:29 like it's 1999, right. D 99. Yeah. I was in grad school right out of college. So that makes us look really young. Totally fabulous. Yep. Yep. 40 is the new 30. Absolutely. Yeah. So I started with Omni offices. My very, very first job was to write sales agreements for the sales team. I would take the sales agreements that they wrote on the carbon copy of documents.

00:00:55 Okay. Better than into the sales system. Now I did date myself there, but you know, they would, they would put them on my desk and I jokingly say that salespeople can't be bothered right. To type of their own agreements because they're busy selling. So we had a whole team at Omni who did that for you. We had 24 locations primarily based in Atlanta.

00:01:17 And we were the biggest, which is, which is funny. We didn't Regis, this was in Europe, there was a company called Vantis that we competed against, but it really was just really just Omni offices and HQ the franchise. Yeah. Okay. Yep. So we just bought my company in 2004, but HQ bought Omni and then Regis bought HQ in 2004.

00:01:42 And that's how I got to read. Yes. Massive consolidation back then. Yeah. And I stayed in corporate accounts pretty much my whole, my whole life until, yeah. I was a regional vice president for Regis for awhile in the end and then preferred office network, you know, as a corporate enterprise client company. And then, and then now expansive.

00:02:05 So the last time you were on the podcast was I think 2017, which is mind blowing. So anybody who wants to re-listen to Chris, it was actually a great episode and is a great kind of overview of how preferred office network works, which I think is even more relevant today, possibly given what we just went through. So episode number 48, if you want to go back and listen to that episode.

00:02:30 So Chris, I want to dive in. So you are now the COO of what is now expansive, which has gone through two name changes. So we're going to talk a little bit about rebranding, a little bit about your business model and how it shifted, you know, post 2020, and then a little bit about your net promoter relationship and your amazing Google,

00:02:50 my business reviews. And if we have time, a little bit about your corporate culture, which I think is really interesting. So first we need to start with the name change. So level to novel, to expansive and name changing is a big deal because you take an SEO hit, you gotta reeducate everybody. Talk about kind of what drove that and what it's been like to be in the middle of that.

00:03:12 I wonder if there are folks kind of thinking about that. Yeah. Yeah. I was actually, I read an article recently about all the companies who have changed their names recently and it's been, there's been several. So first of all, I love the name expansive. So I want to talk about that just a little bit. It expansive, truly tells the story about what we do and I don't know how many people know this,

00:03:37 but our company has a commercial leasing side, property management. We have a self storage business, a very robust parking business, which people don't think about, but there's a lot of money in that. And then an events business, which I'm really proud of that I run, I get a chance to do sales again. So that's really fun for me and all of these things,

00:03:58 right? So you walk through the doors of a building and you hear the word expansive and you think, okay, what is that? And in our world now, not only can our clients expand, right? Not only can you be a traditional tenant, take a commercial, lease a whole floor. You can be a smart suite client, which our enterprise clients love.

00:04:18 You can take a private office and upgrade or downgrade from there, but also think about this while you're there. You can have all of your corporate retreats on the rooftop patio and your self storage, right? All your documents can be in the self storage right there on site where you can reference them, you know, quickly, Right. When you downsize your office.

00:04:38 And you're like, what do I do with it? Right. Right. Yeah. And even, you know, the apartment complex is across the street, right? So now they, they need a storage unit for their Easter bunny and you know, their Christmas stuff. And they come in and they realize, wow, this company offers flexible office and I can,

00:04:55 I can move my office here or all of my staff. So it really truly, when you hear that story and you hear the word expansive, you hear this truly, this truly is an opportunity to be, you know, to blow up and to have all of these products under one umbrella. And so the name change, you know, there's, there's that piece,

00:05:17 the, the part about the name and actually it finally fitting who we are. Right. So we're really excited about that. This should be the last time. I hope that it is who initiated the name change, who is like this isn't right. It doesn't, we can talk honestly about the word coworking and how it, how it sort of had a super spreader vibe to it over the last few months.

00:05:46 And while we did a really good job during COVID of creating protection, we social distance, our lounges really well. We created new products. We actually refurnished all of our lounges moved all of our co-working clients into private offices. We've doubled our virtual office presence. So all of the things that I'm sure my colleagues in the industry all have also experienced, but the word coworking was tricky.

00:06:11 And, and I'll tell you the word coworking was tricky for our events business. So Sarah Wise, who works for me and is awesome, who runs events? You know, she would, she would schedule a wedding for a Saturday in Denver on the rooftop and the customer would come and see coworking on the door and feel like they didn't know where they were.

00:06:32 So we were all having these conversations internally as a company talking about, does the name novel coworking, which by the way, nobody pronounced novel correctly. I don't know why you put a book. Like you, you put novel coworking in a book, a novel, No, Val like Tarjay Rose. Yeah. That's crazy. It particularly drove bill crazy.

00:06:56 We all cringed every time it happened. So you've got that. You've got the name, doesn't fit, who we truly are. We wanted a bigger, more inclusive name and we wanted co-working out. And we wanted our events business to be able to be expansive of venues. Right. So now we've created an umbrella parent company called expansive expansive, right?

00:07:19 And in expansive you have expansive venues, you know, then you have the expanse of self storage product, the commercial leasing product, flexible office, which is called expansive workspace. And the word workspace is a great word. Yeah. And we, I love that word and I'm glad we can use it for the flexible product. Yeah. So I mean,

00:07:42 as much as it's a giant hassle right. And expensive, we have to rebrand our names. We put our names on the buildings too. We like, we like people to know this is ours. So we're trying to be as cost-effective as possible. And, you know, do our signage and smart ways. It gives you a chance to also update your colors,

00:08:06 which I love have you seen our new expansive branding? It's a teal and Navy blue, really good color, yellow backpacks go away. The I'll probably still use my yellow backpack. So we kept orange. We kept what we call laughing orange. That's the name of the color. It's a good color too. It's a happy color, but we kept that color in our branding,

00:08:29 but we'll, we'll transition to whites and grays and Navy and teal. And so I'm excited about that. Fun. Do you? I, yeah. I feel like the way you described it, I was just talking to Kane Wilma yesterday and we were trying to name something and we were stuck on the word coworking because it's not it's widely used. Right.

00:08:51 Especially by the media, it's, it doesn't really reflect, especially the model that you have. That's so inclusive and what a great time, because people's mindsets are shifting like this opportunity, you know, people talk about sort of the, you know, the 15 minute city and, and you guys have these amenities and all these things that people can do with your brand and near home.

00:09:13 And so it's, it's reflective of this big sort of paradigm shifted. It has been accelerated. So that's cool. You have how many locations now We have 43 and our flexible product is 39. I counted 30. Well, you're going to count. So we have 39 locations that have the flexible office product inside of it. Okay. And then we have four buildings that will ultimately add our flexible office product to when they gain some availability there.

00:09:44 Bill bought these buildings over time and they don't have any availability. They're full. So a lot of foot flex in there. We can't wait to add it, but so we have 39, we have 43 locations and 39 of them have coworking and flexible Office in flux workspace. Got it. Okay. Yeah. Can you talk about what your typical building looks like once you've gotten sort of the mix that is maybe what you're shooting for?

00:10:15 Yeah. That's a great question. Our, the way we build out our buildings, so we buy, we, we say we buy broken buildings and make them beautiful. And we really look for really incredible downtown locations that might be today in the center of all the action, right. In the best parts of town, or they might be just shy of the growth pattern.

00:10:40 Right. I think about 1630 Welton in Denver, this building wasn't quite where it was at when we bought it, but within a year or two, that the city embraced that building and all around that building. And now it's an amazing building. It's in a great location. It has an amazing rooftop patio. So we did, you know, we,

00:11:02 we did pick, well, we do a very good job of that. Our acquisitions team is excellent. So we buy these broken buildings and they might be 30 or 40% occupied. They might be 80% occupied. And then we recraft the stock, the stacking plan to, to create and put the lounge floor wherever we want it to be. And sometimes we have to pick a floor that we might not have picked.

00:11:27 So sometimes we have to pick the seven floor and we really wanted the ninth floor because it has better ceilings Heights or something like that. I think about Cincinnati, our Cincinnati lounge floor is amazing. It's the perfect floor. It has floor to ceiling windows. It's beautiful. And it happened to be a floor we could get for our lounge. So we try to accommodate our traditional tenants and also put our flexible product in the right,

00:11:49 in the right spot. And then over time, the traditional tenants vacate the building, we add the flexible office product to those floors. So we'll build a floor of suites. Our suites product is really hot. Our smart suites are, you know, elect our electric locks or smart touchpad enabled. We have Alexa in all of our suites, which are really cool.

00:12:14 So our clients really liked those. So we, we would build a lounge for, and at least one private office floor and one or two suites floors. Ideally, that's how we enter a market. Each of those floors has conference rooms. If we're going to put an event space in the building, we do that when we open like a Columbia South Carolina,

00:12:35 right now we're adding, we're taking the, we're taking the lounge floor. It has private offices all around it. And it is also right off of the rooftop off of the roof deck. So it worked out nicely for us in Colombia, because we were able to put the co-working lounge floor, flex flexible office lounge floor off of the patio. And then we build the flexible office product throughout the building,

00:13:00 as we get vacancies and as clients move out our favorite buildings, my favorite buildings, especially are those with a really great retail in the ground floor. So in Indianapolis, we have a Starbucks in our lobby and it's awesome. I mean really nice restaurants. People love that, right? So that, that would be ideal. We don't always have it,

00:13:24 but where we can, we try to, we try to have that. So is your philosophy always to start converting to flex? Or what, if you have a high credit tenant that wants the space, We will take it. We'll, we'll weigh the two options and take the best deal. And it depends on the TEI dollars and the price for flex and the occupancy of the flexible product.

00:13:51 So in Savannah right now, this is a good example. We have, we, we have a tremendous amount of demand and not enough vacancy to build the flexible office product. We're going to add two new floors there in the next couple of months. And we feel like it'll immediately sell. So in Savannah is a great example of a building that we could use more flexible office product,

00:14:17 the faster we can build it. We know we could sell it better. Yeah. But in a market like I'm thinking of Minneapolis would be a good market right now for this, if a good credit tenant like a bank or, you know, a quality tenant wanted to take a whole floor of commercial office space and sign a five-year lease. We would do that in that market.

00:14:42 And you, so you just to kind of back up for the audience, you always own the buildings. And then roughly how many square feet are buildings Arrange all they all vary, but we are buying bigger buildings now and we're finding more success in our larger footprint buildings. It is, we have buildings like 70 through Westman row in Chicago was our very first building.

00:15:07 We all love this building cause it's our first baby. And it's, it's adorable. It has, you know, a great sandwich shop in the lobby, the sandwich shop that's in the lobby. It is prepped. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. So far. But he likes that in Chicago and, and, and everything's novel. Every, everything is novel.

00:15:30 Everything's expansive, everything's flex, right? So you walk in the lobby of the building. You can go down to the basement, you're in this really cute lobby and you can take all five floors and be sweets products and private offices the entire way, but there's nothing else to build. So we've run out of the ability to convert the traditional office space and,

00:15:52 and gain new occupancy that we don't already have in this opportunity cost of not having any more spaces big. Whereas in Savannah, like I said, we're ready to go. We're going to build two new floors. And the revenue in that building will go through the roof when we, when we add those two new floors. So I would say, you know,

00:16:15 10 to 15 stories, that's probably our current sweet spot. This would be a better question for bill, but I need to get<inaudible>. Yeah. So I'm curious about your product mix. I'd love to have you describe a smart suite. I've seen your space in Denver, but I pre rooftop deck for sure. It was early. I must've, I think I was in town and bill was there and it was fairly,

00:16:46 I remember construction. So seeing some of it. So I remember touring what I think where you're smart sweets, but I'd love to hear you talk about any shifts post COVID or did your product mix turn out to be right on, you know, based on where we're going today, you're building the opportunity in your building is really what everybody's talking about now,

00:17:08 right? Like how do you give people ultimate flexibility, which is a little bit of, you know, is really what you're doing. Yeah. I will tell you, this is the reason I came to work here. You know, aside from, you know, clearly those persuasive skills, he is quite the salesman, but, and smart. And I,

00:17:28 I really am lucky to work for such a smart person. I like being educated and he's a professor and you know, all of that. But aside from that, I was selling enterprise clients into this product that bill and, and expansive had figured out how to, how to bring to market and nobody else was it. And here's this product called a smart suite and what is a smart suite?

00:17:53 So I came and toured and I thought, Oh, this is the future. This product is the future. And so now we're even doing something else. That's really cool. We're building clubs suites on top of our smart suites. So talking about the product mix for a second post COVID private offices are hot. Yeah. We still sell co-working memberships, but we fine tuned that product really,

00:18:18 really tight. We, we no longer offer 24 seven access to a coworking client. The price is higher. We don't have beer on tap anymore. We are, we're ratcheting up our professionalism and our grown-up office environment. I think everybody, I think everybody's moving in that direction. You know, maybe it was fad and maybe it's over and I'm happy to see as the COO,

00:18:41 I'll happy to see that It's easier to not have beer on tap. He's like your kegs at night, please, please lock your kids. Okay. And then, so that's private offices. And then, and then we had smart suite. So we kind of went from here to this great product called smart sweets. And a smart suite is perfect for an enterprise client where we have a lot of demand for these,

00:19:05 I think smart sweets, June and July, they're going to be on fire. They have private kitchen, excuse me, private kitchens. We try to make them accessible to the rooftops and the patios. So it's our best space. And we take care of those clients. You get your, your logo in the lobby, you get your name in the directory.

00:19:26 It's, it's, it's as close to being your building as it can be with somebody else paying the utility bills. Right. It has Alexa. I think I mentioned that in inside of all of our smart suites is a conference room dedicated solely to that company. And our clients are really excited about that right now. All of our conference rooms are Alexa enabled.

00:19:47 They have smart TVs. So you walk into the conference room, you can project, you can have your meetings there, you can bring your clients straight to your suite. And like I said, it has a private kitchen. So you avoid all of these common areas that I think people are still skeptical about. Yep. It's also just feels like your space,

00:20:07 right? Yeah. And for some folks, I was on a call with a gentleman in Tucson and he's like, you know, we have this group in our living room. They have a couple of offices, but he's like, they they're part of like a, you know, $3 billion company, whatever he's like. So he's like, they want to feel like they have their own space,

00:20:31 but they love the experience. So they're going to move them into a spec suite that's branded and you know, all the things. So they love the experience, but they have that like, Oh, we're grownups. And we would like, it's like, yeah, So right. And Jamie, we see this, we see our suite clients participate in our community events better than anybody.

00:20:51 Right. So I love that, That, cause I think that's probably one of the, and not everybody has to be in it for the community. Right. Because that's not just not always the case, but they're humans too. We love to meet new people and love to hang out. And yeah, It's true. I mean, you've got in a,

00:21:07 in a smart suite, you probably have people who travel, right. And then you have employees who don't travel, come to the office every day, but there might be fewer of those folks. And then you host a community event. We did an Easter egg hunt the other day. And I laughed at the pictures because the sweet clients were running around with Easter baskets.

00:21:25 It's adorable. But you know, they're looking for this golden egg because it was to the restaurant. The gift certificate was to the restaurant and the building that everyone loves is a Mediterranean food. So anyway, the, the sweet clients, I'm, I'm always really happy to see them participating in the community, down in the lounge, drinking coffee with the clients,

00:21:46 coming to our events, you know, participating in the app. So we share, we have a community app that we, we custom built and they share on the app just as well as our office clients who have their kitchen is the shared kitchen. Yeah. But they still do participate in all of that. So that's nice. And so to that end,

00:22:06 we built a club's suites product, and this is new and we've launched it. We are launching it in Columbia and Albany first. And what this will be is if you think about the Delta crown room, it's this private floor. That's just for you. It's an elite. And in a membership floor in these suites, don't have kitchens inside the suites,

00:22:28 but they have a kitchen of their own on the floor. So a club suite is a multiple offices and a conference room. And then this shared elite kitchen on the floor. So you still have to your point, this I'm up. I want my own space. And you still have that. You have one or two or three offices and a conference room,

00:22:52 typically one office in a conference room, like a bullpen space and then a private restroom on your floor. And then this private kitchen on your floor that only the spec only the club's suites clients can access Totally. Or like the Starwood model. Like when you go to a Marriott or whatever, and they have the club level floor or their containers of m&ms that I would eat too many of<inaudible>.

00:23:18 Well, let me say this. If there are any eminence, I don't know about it, but I'm sure they'll make their way up there from the, from the owner market, but they have their own refrigerators and, you know, a sink and just this ability to separate a little, like you said, but be part of the community and, and be in this shared environment that everything is plug and play.

00:23:40 Yeah. I'm ready to go for you. So who's who who's will be that sort user of that. Who's the ideal like, Oh, these people are a great fit for the club suite. What's their mind. I guess that's going to be an interesting question. My guess is it will be smaller, smart suites clients. It will be the clients who want that autonomy and this private environment,

00:24:03 this, this logo on the door, you know, their identity is theirs, but that they don't need as much space as what occurrence smart suite might have. And I'm curious to the smart sweets, I have to think you didn't sell many of those in 2020, We didn't sell as many smart sweets, but we didn't lose as many. Either people wanted to hang on to that.

00:24:27 They hung onto them and they had, they had flexible hours for their teams. And so it wasn't uncommon to see the accounts payable department in a smart suite for a big client from 5:00 PM to 9:00 PM. And I know this because we vary the hours for our community managers to be able to come in and do the mail and the packages. And we would see teams of people using their sweets,

00:24:50 but spreading out in their sweets. Yep. Okay. Yeah. We have started to sell smart suites again, the activity is on, so it it's very encouraging. Good. I feel like that enterprise user I shared in my newsletter yesterday, I have this neighbor who works for Facebook and long story short. She has this team. Half of them have never met in person.

00:25:11 They've now all been vaccinated. They wanted to meet. And she was like going through all these crazy options for where to meet. And I was like, Monica coworking space. They've great. Meeting rooms, coffee, white, you know, all the things she's like, well, I can't, I'm not allowed to meet yet. So I can't expense it.

00:25:28 And she's like, I'm not going to spend hundreds of dollars like meeting. And I was like, Oh, HR, You know, is still in some case rusting moving. Yeah. I mean, cause Facebook's headquartered in California. Right. And so we're moving a little slowly. Yeah. Listen, I'm going to tell you right now you tell Facebook they can rent Miami.

00:25:48 They can have it. They can come and meet at an expansive building. San Diego, San Jose for free. We would love to have, You know, it's so funny. You said that. Cause I, I did have that moment of, I wonder if someone would let them in for free because she had, she's never been in a coworking space.

00:26:07 Right. And now they're going to have this freedom to not be on campus. Yeah. I honestly send them to San Jose that place send them to San Jose. I play and free. Tell them Chris Elliot sent me, then it's no charge. Yeah. So it's good to hear that those decisions are being made. So are you sitting on any like 200 person team suites that yeah.

00:26:32 And will those, what's your outlook on those? The, we have some really big pending deals. And when I say pending we're we're to be creative and say, why don't we sign now and have a flexible start date? And to your point, I think, I think the slowdown is happening at the corporate office.<inaudible> exactly like Mike is ready to meet,

00:26:56 but it's like, well, we're not going to take your, we're not gonna expense your, your receipt. True. It's true. I think, I think as soon as we can get corporate on board with signing that people are ready to come back out and we talk, we've been talking internally with the operations team, we're going to do some Chick-fil-A training around my pleasure and this customer service experience.

00:27:18 And we're talking, we're talking a lot about emerging and emerge. Emerge is a great word right now. Right? It's we're talking about ourselves, right. I'm vaccinated. And I can't wait. I did a tour at Florida tour last week of five locations and I couldn't wait to get in there and, and see my team. And you know, to the extent that they'll hug you,

00:27:39 I tried since I like I'm a Southern in there. Some of them had it and some didn't no judgment, but, but yeah, I mean, I, I feel like we're ready to get back out. Both the employees are ready. The corporate context already clients are ready. I have a vendor right now that we've been doing business with. It's trying to get me to come have drinks with them.

00:28:02 And I mean, everybody's just tired of being at home. So I I'm, I'm very excited about the smart suites product. I I'm excited about clubs, sweets for people who are growing and having a really fast track towards a smart suite of their own. I'll be interested to see if clubs, suites, clients want their own private kitchen. Cause there's some responsibility that goes along with that.

00:28:25 Right. Where do you rather have the shared kitchen at we'll take care of for you? It'll be an interesting experiment. I'll I'll let you know next time, you know, in a couple of years, Love it. I think that's one of the fun things about what's happening now is, is the experimentation. And you're doing some of the more creative things.

00:28:44 I love the, the club suite idea. It's super interesting. So yes, we'll have to do a follow-up on that one. So I want to hit on, I originally reached out to you, this is kind of off the product mix topic. I was doing some training for my community manager university on Google reviews. And we had all these folks as kind of doing a little audit and I was like,

00:29:07 Oh no reviews in 2020. You know? Cause it's like, people are so focused on, you know, just dealing with what was happening in the world. And then I was looking for some good examples of who's got some good reviews and how are they leveraging them? And I was looking at novel and I was like, what's happening here? There's all this Slack.

00:29:27 And we're like Chris Elliott, people were so like authentic. And I love it particularly about you. You've I think done this unique job of creating a brand that is not traditional coworking in the sense of, you know, you have a professional membership, who's there to like get stuff done and make stuff happen. And yet people really, really love your,

00:29:53 your space. I mean, they love your staff. They love, I was like, Oh, I hope the staff doesn't leave. That's always the worst thing about having staff mentioned then Google reviews. So you mentioned kind of working with net promoter. I would just love to hear high level, you know, what's your approach to keeping members, you know,

00:30:12 reviewing the space and sharing and, and yeah. How did they love you so much? Well, thank you for saying that it's a full-time job, right? So first of all, you have to constantly seek client feedback. And I'm really proud of this at our company. We genuinely listened to what our clients tell us. And I'll give you an example.

00:30:37 We do a net promoter score every year. Now we started doing it in 2017, 2018, 1920. Our score is way better than it was in the beginning. And part of that is we do a better job, right? We focus on the client feedback and then we fix it. And this, this, I cannot stress enough. So many organizations ask their clients,

00:30:58 how can we do better? And then they do nothing with it, right? They really don't want to know how to be better. They just want to ask the question, cause you're supposed to ask the question, right? But like the way they're doing things, Yeah. They're not really going to change. And I'll tell you that something about one of our mottos is work hard,

00:31:16 stay humble. And this is truly the biggest way that we, that we exhibit humility. And that is, we want to know and we will fix it. We ask our clients. So this is the example I was going to give you. We have really great, a really great coffee vendor, either based in Chicago, the Chicago ones love them.

00:31:37 Cult dollop. We really liked them. And you know, we asked the question and we received a couple of years ago, some pretty negative feedback on our coffee. We were shocked. We buy $40,000 coffee machines, everything, right? We're like, what, how can this be? So, you know, we went to dollar and we said, what's happening.

00:31:59 And, and anyway, to make a long story short, it happened, there was so much feedback on it. We said, no, okay, no, no matter what we think of this coffee, we have to fix this. And so we did a whole case study with dollop and we learned that we were buying a more mild bean. Then this rich dark roast being that they also offer.

00:32:19 So we made two changes. We upgraded to the dark roast, bold bean, and we changed our machines from skim milk to whole milk to see if that will make a difference. Oh, it's good. That's good, Jamie. I mean, I'm upset that I didn't think about it. I'm very upset that I didn't think about it. Everything was full fat tastes better,

00:32:43 which is a silly, it was silly for us to try to be healthy. Right. But, but the, the truth is our clients love it and they've given us incredible feedback about it. And so I think that's just a, that's a relatable example of even though you are happy with something, you have to be willing to make a change and listen to your clients.

00:33:02 And we do, we take every single piece of feedback. We action, every single piece of feedback, even if it's to say, and I feel like Southwest airlines when I say this, but even if it's to say, thank you for your feedback, we're going to keep doing it our way we, we say it, you know, listen, It was an email And we say it.

00:33:26 So, and here's another, here's another thing I wanted to point out on this topic. So action. All of your client feedback ask, listen and take action. No matter what. And then secondly, it's a good trade, right? So our clients need us right now. And our clients have come to us and said, Hey, you know,

00:33:47 this happened in my business and would it be possible if I did this instead? Or I can't, I had 10 parking cards and parking is a business for us. And it's, it's a valuable business. I had 10 parking cards and I really only need one. And here's what happened. And you know, and so we'll say, I totally understand that that happened.

00:34:06 Let's do this. Let's get you out of those parking cards. And at the end of the conversation, did we delight you? You know, are you, are you happy with this resolution? And your client is most happy right there, Jamie? They're like, Oh my gosh, thank you. I didn't expect this. You, you exceeded my expectations.

00:34:25 Please put it in a Google review. Right. Please go online and tell the rest of our potential clients and our prospects that we did right by you. And they will, they will. So I sort of say to my team, asked for something in return. And that's a great thing to ask. I love that. And also being intentional about that process,

00:34:44 because if you don't train your team to ask in that moment, it will never happen. Yeah. Yep. No. The risk is when you do that, you also teach your client that this is the first place to go when I don't exceed your expectations. And so the second part of that is if we do get something wrong, we will hit that head on and I make these calls myself,

00:35:06 we'll call the client and say, we totally let you down. And I didn't know, I read about it on Google. I didn't know. And how can I, how can I fix this? And then at the end of solving their problem, which you always can do right at the end of solving their problems, I'll say now, will you consider taking down that Google review?

00:35:27 And a lot of times the client just wants to be heard, you know? And you heard him, I'm the COO. I called you personally, you have a co-working membership. And I called personally, you know, can we resolve this together? And can you take that down? And they will. So like you said, you have to throw all of your dignity out the window and you have to,

00:35:52 you have to ask, I love that. I love right. I'm going to fix this for you, but we need you to take that down. Can you take that down? Even just asking, right. And if they don't, they don't and asking in the moment, right. When they feel heard, I, we had a two truck plumber issue last week I was outside.

00:36:14 I'm like, you know, it's bad and there's two trucks, but they, Oh my gosh, these guys were amazing. You know, they explained everything and they involved cameras. Let's just say that like turn out. But they laughed. And I immediately to your point got a text that said, you know, so-and-so loves working for Kaci plumbing and he would love it.

00:36:36 If you left a review about your experience, you know, right. In my text. And to your point, I was so happy with that guy who fixed my problem. I did it immediately and interest super positive and other, otherwise, if they didn't ask and if they didn't send it right, then I probably never would have done it. Right.

00:36:54 I'm busy. I've got other things to do love them, but opportunities. That's a really, really good point. That's a really good point to get them right there. Yeah. The TA I was like, I put, I posted that in one of my groups and somebody said, Oh, my dentist does the same thing. And I was like,

00:37:11 Oh, we need to start text marketing. Can I have the plumbers in the dentist, like ahead of us in, It was a good experience at the dentist. That's what I want to know. That's a good fix something for you. Well, if they tell you have no problems, you're happy. Totally. Oh God, he's fine. Starts for you.

00:37:30 Even though you have nothing to do with my health and my teeth. Oh man. Well, I'll say this too. About the net promoter score campaign this year, our score is way up. It's not final. So I can't really give you a number. It might not be right. But I know that it's way up. And I thought, gosh,

00:37:51 there was a part of me that was considering not even running it because of COVID totally right. I was like, Let's just take a pass on that, Out of this. Yeah. And bill really, you know, he really wanted it to happen. And in his defense I'm so glad because it went really well. But also we did right by our clients.

00:38:12 You know, we, we did, I'm really proud of what we did. It was a tough year and everybody had a tough year, but we, we created resources like our payroll protection plan resources, where we taught our clients how to get that money. I don't think other people did that. And we, we get a lot of good props on that in the net promoter score campaign.

00:38:32 But the other thing we did is we went door to door. So the community managers are bonused on their net promoter score. Oh, interesting. Yeah. That goes a long way. And so they said, well, gosh, what if the elevator was down and the client was upset about it? And we said, look, then, then that's one piece of feedback,

00:38:52 but my phone's ringing Jamie, sorry. But also to say, you know, go door to door and talk to all of your clients and say, just like they do when I serve as my Audi, which I love my car. And I love my service department when I leave, they come out and they say, is there any reason you wouldn't give us five stars right then and there.

00:39:13 And if, if I come up with something, they fix it. Well, then you sort of feel like I better give them five stars. Yeah. I mean, how can I not? And, and that's what we teach to the community managers who, I mean, we truly do have the best team. I can't say enough good things about the community managers.

00:39:32 When I think about retiring and doing something like laying on a beach for the rest of my life, I think about how much I would miss this talented young group of people that just anything's possible. Right. And they'll go door to door and they'll knock on the door and they'll say, they'll say, Hey, you know, is there any reason why you wouldn't give me a 10?

00:39:53 And then we teach them how to that a nine and a 10 is the only thing that matters in a net promoter score. Right? If you get a nine or a 10, you're a promoter. But if you give me an eight, because the elevator was down, you're a passive and I don't get credit for that. And you got to tell people,

00:40:13 I mean, how many of us give an eight across the board? Because we just think, I don't really want to be giving this this review. Right. So tell people a nine or a 10 is the only thing that, that, that, you know, keeps you from being just sort of a neutral. And my team told me this year,

00:40:31 that made a big difference, teaching people that, you know, if you hate us and you give us a one through six, okay. Zero through six you'll you'll have made your point, but you know, Middleman<inaudible>. Yup. But to your point, I feel like that's like almost human nature to be like eight. Yeah. Yeah. It's totally.

00:40:53 And net promoter. I wish that promoter gave you credit for an eight as a good thing, because you know, people get a lot of AIDS, but, but that is the difference between somebody who's going to go tell their friends, buy from them. They're amazing. And just somebody who's like, it's an office and this is a commodity and this is our business.

00:41:11 And, you know, and so we did that this year and it, something paid off big and I can't wait to dig into it, but, but I, I do think it's, it's that piece of just ask for what you want our clients do. Right. Totally. I love that. And teaching your team and w I, I w if I ask my last question,

00:41:34 we are for sure, going to run out of time. So I'm going to save it for another episode, because I think there's so much interesting that you're doing, I would love to do an entire episode and just talk about your culture and some of the, you know, the yellow backpack and the, some of the things that they dive into. Some of the things that you've talked about today,

00:41:53 that I think, you know, make a really big difference and, you know, with your team and whatnot. So we'll save it. Cause we won't do it justice if we hit it now. So, you know, so I'm curious, what are you, what's your outlook on 2021? What are you most excited about or worried about, Oh gosh,

00:42:12 what am I worried about? That's a really good question. I'm going to tell you what I'm worried about. I hope I should say this. I'm worried about the flood Gates ripping off the hinges and the Gates being gone, and I run operations. Right. And here's, what's really fun that I didn't know about being the COO when I took this job.

00:42:37 And that is that operations means everything, right? I'm like, what does that mean? But, you know, I, and I'm bossy too. So I think part of this is self-inflicted, but even marketing is building a new website and we're, we're really creating our new brand. And who are we? And they're asking these amazing questions about who is expansive and what does the tagline look like?

00:43:02 And, you know, just so many really thought provoking messages coming from marketing. We have a new chief marketing officer who is brilliant. I'm just, I feel humbled and honored to be in her presence. She's so smart and she's brand new and everybody's in love already. So it's just total girl power. But anyway, I I'm involved in those marketing conversations because e-commerce is how the client journeys from the purchase of the website to,

00:43:35 to being in the center. And so I have to do that and, you know, property and, you know, just, I feel like everything touches operations. So I'm most worried about I'm trying to rush the rebrand, the center rebrand, and when our clients really come back and they're starting to, especially in the South and in Texas, I mean,

00:43:55 they're back, but as our clients come back, I want us to be ready for them. And I want us to do a really good job, servicing our clients and welcoming them back and just showing them how delighted we are to have them back. And I don't want minutia to get in the way of that. And I think it can, I think during COVID,

00:44:14 we all, we all set out to go spend our time wisely. I mean, we revamped the it platform and we did all of these things. And now we're still working on those things that our clients are coming back. And I'm like to the rest of the department heads in my company, my kids are back. I go, I gotta go do this other most important part of what we are,

00:44:36 who we are. So that's what I'm most worried about. I'm most excited about just normal, you know, having, having the client's back, having events, hearing people's stories about how their business survived. And you know, you, if you ask the question, you know, what did your company do that was unique and different during COVID and you're here and you made it and how'd you do that?

00:45:02 You've learned so much. Yeah, no, I'm excited about that. Awesome, Chris, thanks for, since I recognize you do have many, many things to use your time on every day. Thank you for taking the time out to share some of your experience and perspective and story with us. We appreciate all that you do to give back. And I know you do a lot in the industry to give back while you're,

00:45:27 you know, got a lot of things to be heads down about. So I love it that you find a way to balance that. Yeah. Well, you too, Jamie, thank you for bringing awareness to our industry. I, I think about it if I can't remember the days when I didn't know you in this industry, but those were days that existed.

00:45:46 And I just feel like we ha were way cooler. You know, I know I say this, but we're just much cooler than we used to be. And flexes people talk about us. And I have a really strong feeling that a lot of that is the awareness that you drive personally through your company and you, and you, chain-link all of us together to keep being Mark Gilbert and myself and William Edmonson and Willie and all my clients,

00:46:11 Michelle, and all of us, you know, we stay together because you guys bring us together. So thank you for that. Yeah. We all love to be together. I can't wait until we can actually, I was actually having a vision of what that's going to look like. I think it's going to be dangerous. So many hugs, speaking of flood Gates,

00:46:30 right? So many hugs and So many cocktails. Exactly. Well until then. Yeah. Thank you, Chris. Thank you, Jamie. Have a great day.

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