224. Is Your Coworking Space Really Ready for Enterprise Clients? With Phill Kirschner, Formerly W/ Jll & Wework

Resources Mentioned in this Podcast:

Everything Coworking Featured Resources:

TRANSCRIPTION

224. Is Your Coworking Space Really Ready for Enterprise Clients? With Phill Kirschner, Formerly W/ Jll & Wework

00:00:01 Welcome to the everything coworking 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 co-working podcast. This is your host. Jamie Russo. Thank you for joining us. My guest today, Phil Kirschner, you might have seen him on LinkedIn if you're out and about on LinkedIn,

00:00:39 he posts a lot. I think he might be most active on Twitter, which I find to be totally overwhelming. He has a really interesting journey through the world of caring about where and how we work. He started out kind of in it, and then ended up in as head of workplace strategy at credit Suisse switched over to Jones, Lang LaSalle into workplace strategy.

00:01:03 Consulting ended up at WIWORK for almost three years as a VP of enterprise experience and workplace strategy, and is now at McKinsey in their real estate people in organizational change group. So he not only has this really cool sort of evolution through the world of work, but he also really likes coworking. So he could talk about a lot of things and we'll have to have him back on again.

00:01:28 But in this particular episode, we dive into an experience. He had trying to use a local co-working space. He's in Manhattan trying to use it to take a call. He had a meeting at a coffee shop nearby, and I was trying to figure out how do I be on time for this meeting and get my call taken care of? Well, the call was bright and early in the morning,

00:01:48 eight or eight 30, he shares the details. So you're probably jumping ahead. There's probably a spoiler alert happening around some of the challenges he faced trying to get into a coworking space early in the morning without being a member. And it just prompted him to think, okay, what are some of the operational processes that operators need to think about in order to play a meaningful role in this on demand workspace movement?

00:02:16 So we chat about that today and feel, you know, talks about what he's up to and what he's seeing in the industry. So I think you're really going to enjoy this episode. Welcome. I am here today with Phil Kirschner. He is senior expert with McKinsey's real estate and organizational transformation practices. Phil, that is a mouthful. So we'll get you all the time.

00:02:39 Totally. We'll get you to tell us and you know, real normal people words what exactly it is that you do, but you're, you're joining us from Manhattan and you have some good stories to share with us today. So welcome. Thank you for doing that. And while I was scrolling through your Twitter feed and doing a little like pre-interview research, I noticed that you said you were six foot five in real life.

00:03:02 Is that true that you stand back? No. And people have noticed that with my, my standing desk after, you know, months of talking to me, just in a box and I had more than one client go like, oh, the, the top of that door is rather close to your head. Like it's true. Yeah. So we were just talking about whether we had,

00:03:20 or had not in fact met in real life. And we think we've at least been in the same room before. Yes. Yeah, Yeah. Yes. The before times. Exactly. So, okay. Let's, we're going to talk, w we'll give a little preview of what we're talking, we're going to talk about today. Cause then I want to back up and start of talk about how did,

00:03:39 how did you get to where you are today? Because I suspect there are some interesting kind of twists and turns there, but you shared on Twitter, a story which Hector Colonus wrote a little blog post about, about an experience you had trying to use an on-demand workspace and we'll do a spoiler alert, the alert you set the alarm off. So we're going to zoom out and talk about like,

00:04:03 yeah, why does that matter? And your article that you wrote about it, or maybe you wrote it a year ago about remote teams functioning inside of coworking spaces and what maybe an operator thinks the dynamics are and what are, it's actually kind of happening potentially among that team, which is super interesting. And I think relevant to my audience because we spend a lot of time talking about how to attract those folks and like,

00:04:30 when are they coming and how do we, how do we get there? And so, but then not really, maybe even understanding the dynamics of what happens, you know, when they come. And so I think this will be a really interesting conversation. So you started out in your computer science major at wash U If you're a science, a technologist by training,

00:04:50 when it information security first was not doing anything even remotely close to real estate or Place job Was first like real jars information security. Yeah. Yes. It risk project manager. I was like, Hmm. Okay. So how did you become a workspace workplace? People nerd. So, I mean, it's, I started at credit Suisse. I got hired there out of college and was doing information security,

00:05:16 including, but not limited to, like, I was that guy on people's first day who was like, please don't share your password for years. Then I moved through just like through a friend internally, a mentor into an expense efficiency group, which has all the rage around like 2007, 2008, you know, sitting with colleagues, all, looking at different kinds of things that the bank was spending money on.

00:05:41 So there were real estate people like near me, but I had nothing to do with that. I looked after consulting and, and other forms of like outsource services. And the thing that was really common about both of those parts of my career is that it it's like a lot of problem solving. I was running around from business to business, to business saying,

00:05:56 Hey, like I have to have a risk question or a cost question, but I'm not trying to be so doctrinaire is to just say like, no, help me understand, like how you actually work so that I can see all this in context and like make some recommendations and like lead you up the mountain. And there's a better way. It's either like less risky or more cost-efficient whenever that is.

00:06:16 And so that was about a decade into my career. Took was fortunate to be able to like live abroad for a year and then took a sabbatical, came back after three months and was looking for like something new and the head of the expense manager group that I was in basically just been handed this problem, an opportunity to try to explore like new ways of working in the office.

00:06:37 There was a consulting firm that doesn't exist anymore called DEGW that had provided a report to the CFO saying, you know, there's lots of things that are, that are broken about your workplace. Like it's more empty than you think it is. People have complaints about technology and facilities. And this is a real problem because like surprise, you're competing almost as much now with Google,

00:06:58 as you are like with Goldman Sachs, like half of your employee base. And this is absolutely true for any large financial services firm. These days, like half of them would, would like self identify as a technologist. So you're competing with two completely different it's people. And there's a lot of opportunity and our recommendation that consulting firms like you should try mobility,

00:07:19 like have people share in the office, but in exchange for reducing the footprint and making it more efficient, you can plow some of those savings into making that environment that they're sharing better. And the kind of key moment that I guess like sort of changed my career was like, you know, here's this big report. And the logical thing to do at the time would have been to hand it to the head of corporate real estate and facilities.

00:07:40 Like this is a space project, but frankly he didn't love the idea. Like he just was, came from, we do things, desks and offices the old way. So the head of the CFO gave it to the head of expense management who I think intuitively understood from other expense programs. This isn't something you could just put it as a policy, like send everyone,

00:08:01 send everyone home on Friday and come back on Monday, be like, congratulations, we're sharing things. Now you had to do the work from a change management perspective and investment in order to achieve what ultimately was like 20, 30, 40% capacity increases by taking away all this inefficiency with people happier and more likely to stay and all that. But like, yeah,

00:08:24 if you didn't do the legwork, it wasn't gonna work. And he scrapped together a little team of people to like build these pilots and test it out. And I was very fortunate that I think he saw, I'd spent a lot of time running around the shared services organization. Like I knew the HR people and the ops people and the legal people and the technical people were sort of trusted<inaudible> to the one of the early pilots and basically said,

00:08:50 look, go, go for a week and like, hang out and understand this, read all the like, go dig. You just go with like, read everything you can about what other companies are doing in this space. And if you, if you were like 150% into it and no less, like you could have this job and I was a complete,

00:09:07 you know, completely converted immediately. And yeah, like of all the places we had pilots funded originally, which is Zurich, Singapore in London, the America's was not one of those locations simply because they had a real estate was still there. And the essential was, well, nothing's going to happen soon here because that guy doesn't like it. So my first job was really around,

00:09:31 like, because it was in a cost manager group, make it so that we don't have to call the consultants ever again, to be able to measure how we're doing. Okay. So I got really deep into just like, how do people do workplace surveys and observation studies? And like, what's the science behind some of this stuff to help us build a case for change and measure the results of the pilots that we were doing.

00:09:53 So I kind of went research first and just like that started me on a huge reading tour. It's like anything, I get my hands on and anyone I could meet. And I guess relative, relative to this conversation, many of those people whose names I was like passed or bumped into or found in my network were either like other clients of that consulting firm forward-thinking designer types who were really mean workplace people in the co-working industry,

00:10:21 frankly, who had like the intuitive sense that I think so. Yeah, there weren't a lot of there weren't a lot of people in boring corporates who had something to say about like the, the dynamics of space with different kinds of people and sharing and community and experience. Like there just, wasn't a lot of really good examples, especially for people that wanted to talk about it.

00:10:47 But anyone involved in coworking was like, not only do I want to talk about it, like, please come to my house. I want to give you a tour. I want to talk all about this all the time. So I met a bunch of people like, like you in your circles and started reading the reports in the articles about the Nate.

00:11:03 Yeah. Like what I think of now is little C coworking. Like the life it's better to work alone together. Right. Ideas. Yeah. So that's kind of, that's sort of where I started. I can continue like on the journey, but you know, if we, so we did it, we fast forward four, something years after that,

00:11:26 we had a large global program, 15, 20,000 people in large shared environments in a couple different countries, like demonstrably positive results, not just from the spacial efficiency, but higher engagement, like better retention people, you know, meeting and interacting with others. More like happier, everything better, like just like across the board. And like, there were still things we were working on,

00:11:49 but we got it off the ground and was involved with the large strategy project, like in New York. And then once we got over that lease, I was like looking for something new to do. I'd been there 13 years, 14 years, long time for the first, a long time. And I was fortunate that someone who was involved with that original consulting team that I'd say close with,

00:12:12 hired me to JLL, so to switch sides and be a consultant and advise to other corporates how largely like workplace mobility. It, because I was in New York, it was always like the boring companies, right? It's not that the Googles and the Facebooks and the west coast where the, the workplace strategy was largely over a meditation, which is awesome and super experiential,

00:12:35 but they didn't have the same capital constraints as like a professional services firm or a bank saying like, I have to make this workplace feel better, but I can't like have my cake and eat it too in order to get that right. There's no, we're not eating cake. Right. Right. Like it's full use a trade. You tell people, listen like you,

00:12:51 there are things about this environment. You don't like, I can spend some money to fix those things, but you can't also have a giant private office that's empty all the time. Like that. Just you can't can you trade? So did that for two and a half, three years developing strategies and like leading change programs. And co-working like is a big thread through all of this.

00:13:13 To me, not only because 20, you know, 15, 16, 17, you started to hear more about coworking in an enterprise context. Then like not only with the marketplaces, like a liquid space at the bigger players, like Regis and rework and you know, people asking like, what's the point about communities? And look, you can, you can look at some of these corporate examples,

00:13:35 but also you should look into co-work like this, there is something there that Cubans like, like we like community and oh, why do those spaces feel, feel so good is because they're run like a hospitality center, which your office isn't, that's the difference. It's pretty simple. And you can go walk into any Corrigan location, basically anywhere of any size.

00:13:57 And like, you will get a sense of what I'm talking about. It's not black magic. Like go see it for yourself. Yeah. And really enjoyed my time there, like was loving it. And then, you know, my job was to sell consulting services. So clever me, I went to go try to sell consulting services to, we work in 2017 and didn't realize I was being interviewed.

00:14:18 So they hired me to help found and grow their workplace strategy practice, which was basically a consulting function aimed at large corporates to help them understand, translate like what they knew to help sell. We work spaces and services. But we started most of our time actually in the development and the growth of the powered by we business. So that was like, when you go to you design,

00:14:45 build operations and community within a client site that actually allowed us to be a little bit more strategic because you're going to someone's like headquarters instead of having them come to you. But yeah, we did, we did a lot of tours and translating the 30 year designing construction lead for a big company, shows up with the arms crossed saying, you know, what are you kombucha chugging teenagers going to tell me about workplace that I don't already know in my hundred page design and construction guideline.

00:15:18 And we brought a lot of the, sort of the science of the space behind it. And a lot of exposing a lot of the detail that allowed we work to not only build as fast as it did, but how quickly we learned or like, yeah, I would say like, you don't understand our portfolio changes so fast and fearless and any one of our locations is so much more diverse from a population perspective that when we study like the little Petri dish,

00:15:44 we're learning more about, what's like uniquely human demand for workplace. And so by, you know, coming into our platform, like you are going to inherit all that, that work. We have all of these people, the ethnographers and the data scientists that you just don't have in your real estate organization. We know more than you I'm like come on in the water's nice basically.

00:16:03 And largely worked like obviously with the explosive growth and success and ultimate unwind a little bit, but it was compelling. And I think it's forever changed, you know, the, these groups perception of the delivery space. And from your perspective, to your point, the, the unbelievable sort of growth trajectory that we work with on at that time was an incredible learning opportunity for people like you,

00:16:32 who are kind of watching. And I think people will have their arguments about we work not being a tech company, but access to a lot of data right. And learning. And that, that was a big part of, I would guess what your group was doing and, and trying to figure out, Yeah, I said a lot, like, no,

00:16:53 we may not be as much of a tech company as Adam and others would have you believe, but we are way more of a data company than you realize. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yes. That was the sense I got from kind of right. Insider folks who would know people like you would say, yeah, what they're doing is pretty incredible internally.

00:17:12 And yeah. We had a reason for everything the most. I say it's still like the most common question I got from anybody executives coming into tour. We worked at headquarters building, which is filled with WeWork employees, not a member building was like, you know, it's, it's like a 10 o'clock on a Tuesday. I can still see the elevator.

00:17:33 I walked out. I was like, I haven't even taken off my coat. The door is right there. Why does it feel the way that it feels right now? Like what is this feeling? And I think they were always really uncomfortable using that word to describe something about an office, but then I'm like, I never used that word back in my place.

00:17:51 What is going on? And the fact that we had answers for a lot of those stories from like either the culture of our employees themselves, like you couldn't just take it all the, we work employees and replace it with, with like banking employees and have it feel the same. Like there's something about the age, the energy, the dress code, all of that stuff.

00:18:13 But the community team and the music and the barista being able to be like that thing is there for exactly this reason. Or like, if I take you a floor down, you'll see the older version of that was at a different place and it's still there. We didn't pay to move it. But like, we all see it. Like, Nope,

00:18:27 we never do that again. That was terrible idea. Yeah. It we'll wear that mistake and be like, Nope, this is so you get the new, like just the fact that we had answers and stories, I think was always so surprising, A huge advantage to be at an operator with that type of scale, because the, you know, the market's very fragmented and all the independent operators listening are like,

00:18:47 yeah, mistakes are really hard for us to manage. We don't get a lot of opportunities to iterate. So, Yeah. Right. So it was, yeah, it was impressive. And so, you know, it didn't, it didn't end the way we all thought it was going to. So I laughed in the sort of spring of 2020 and spent a year consulting independently to occupiers on like the return strategy.

00:19:08 And what's the post pandemic workplace and was fortunate enough at like early in that process to get introduced to now my colleagues, McKinsey, who had a sort of new and growing real estate practice that historically was, it was an industry vertical. So like providing business strategy to people whose business just happened to be real estate, either invest in space or I build space or operate space.

00:19:37 I space just like we have healthcare teams that like advise hospitals or public service fees. They advice like state governments, right. Just, it was like strategy work for the real estate industry, but along comes COVID. And now all the questions are just as much about real estate as a function, as it is about the real estate industry. So in trying to grow,

00:20:01 you know, capabilities around that, I was introduced to them and unfortunately started at the beginning of the summer. And the intersection of the group that I sit with is also is a much more longstanding set of practices and McKinsey around like organizational transformation and change and leadership and, or design this kind of what I think is like bread and butter, organizational performance advice that's been around for decades.

00:20:27 But my colleagues there who are unbelievably brilliant, also like never got space questions. Right, right. Interplay. Yeah. So I sit sort of in that gray space between both the, the kind of leadership and employee behaviors and the impact on the space decisions that we will make for our future sort of portfolios. So I'm still very new, but What's your position on the question that I keep saying pop up on the LinkedIn feeds.

00:20:57 I see folks arguing like this is, this is not really a remote work conversation. It's who has the power of choice who gets to, you know, who gets to manage the choice of how the work gets done or the day is spent. Yes, that's true. Yeah. I mean, for first and foremost, I think one of the first things I said at the beginning COVID was like,

00:21:23 COVID has accelerated a trend. I think we were already on, yeah. It is not dramatically knocked us left or right of the path that we were already on. And I remember like I've been archiving workplace articles and reports for years now, like enormous database and went at the beginning of all this to sort of look for something pandemic related and was shocked,

00:21:51 but like depressingly defined something. I had written in 2015 to give to my boss at the time, like describing where I thought this future was going to go. And, and like how flexible workplace in greater uptake of remote work, like would be an enabling function for future potential, like pandemic preparedness. And it's like, oh no, wait, You mentioned a pandemic.

00:22:15 Oh Yes, yes. And I wrote about it's on LinkedIn. You can see the verbatim document, but it was selling the same like choice and workplace flexibility and coworking and greater gig work and automation. Like those topics are still there. Like everyone has woken up and become a workplace strategist now, which is a little weird. That's like my nerdy thing that I think about is now everyone's dinner conversation,

00:22:39 but I think employees have wanted largely more flexibility than they've had for a long time. And all COVID has really shown us is the house isn't gonna fall apart when we have it. Yeah. And I think it's given people this sense that they have the right to demand it. Yes. The employees for sure have all the power right now that is materializing in a couple of different ways.

00:23:03 Like one of the more significant pieces of research that McKinsey has just put out is actually about this, like the great like attraction or attrition problem that there's an enormous pent up demand a potential for people to leave, especially where they're seeking, you know, the feeling of feeling like heard and authentic and be themselves and aligned with mission while the employers are obsessing about the numbers.

00:23:31 But I don't think working virtually or remotely most of the time is for everybody, but it's for enough people that now the world is your oyster. And if you're like, if you're good and whatever you want your employer isn't going to provide, or isn't yet those opportunities are all over the place. So the power is really in the, in the, the hands of the,

00:23:53 of the talent and especially like, yeah, if you're really good at the thing that you do. And if the thing that you do is virtually ready, and there are great many tasks that do not have to be in person. Most of the time, the employers who lean into that stand to gain a tremendous amount, not just by widening the net for their town action,

00:24:14 but also those populations tend to be more diverse. We're talking to women, people of color. Like everybody wins a little bit. If you wanna embrace it. Hey, I just wanted to jump in really quickly before we continue with our discussion. If you're working on opening a co-working space, I want to invite you to join me for my free masterclass three behind the scenes secrets to opening a coworking space.

00:24:42 If you're working on opening a co-working space, I want to share the three decisions that I've seen successful operators make when they're creating their coworking business. The masterclass is totally free. It's about an hour and includes some Q and a. If you'd like to join me, you can register@everythingcoworking.com forward slash masterclass. If you already have a coworking space, I want to make sure you know,

00:25:06 about community manager, university, community manager, university is a training and development platform for community managers. And it can be for owner operators. It has content training resources, templates from day one to general manager. The platform includes many courses that cover the major buckets of the community manager role from community management, operations, sales, and marketing, finance, and leadership.

00:25:34 The content is laid out in a graduated learning path. So the community manager can identify what content is most relevant to them, depending on their experience and kind of jump in from there. We provide a live brand new training every single month for the community manager group. We also host a live Q and a call every single month so that the community managers can work through any challenges that they're having or opportunities get ideas from other community managers build their own peer network.

00:26:06 We also have a private slack group for the group. So if you're interested in learning more, you can go to everything. coworking.com forward slash community manager. So I don't know if this is a good example, but PWC just announced, you know, right. Everybody can be virtual. And I get anxious. I haven't read a lot of articles that have much detail in there.

00:26:29 You said, you just said, you know, working remotely all the time is not for most people. And I could not agree more. Anybody who listens to podcasts, you've laid on my husband's down the hall. Like I see him all the time now all the time. And I've, I feel like claustrophobic in my house. I need to leave the house.

00:26:47 So I joined a coworking space last week and I've been leaving the house when I can. But so the coworking operators listening are like 44,000 people who, you know, might have through our doors. So tell us your, you know, the, the quick, you know, Twitter story, you work in Manhattan. Sometimes you work from home. Sometimes you go meet clients.

00:27:11 Sometimes you go, you know, do a workspace and you're pretty savvy about how to leverage. Oh, you think I'm the most savvy in this case? Yes. In, in my home city needed to take a call before it in person meeting and made that realization relatively late at night, like 10 o'clock the night before have access to multiple aggregators. Just because I,

00:27:41 I always look to try like this, this is not anything that has to do with McKinsey. Like as my employer, like, this is a predates McKenzie. I just have these tools and I don't mind using it credits I had or paying like for these one-off. So I was like, okay, great. Part of town that like, you know,

00:27:59 my, like I knew intellectually there weren't like, we weren't so many of the larger operators. So I'm like, okay, I need to use an aggregator to find a smaller site that I'm not going to know. Fine. Usually aggregator like found a site, two blocks from where I needed to be opening early, like eight, eight or eight 30 on my roof,

00:28:18 like early enough in the morning. And it was a great, I could book it for an hour. Like before I go got a confirmation email with details in it more than I would've thought actually like very thoughtful information Part right there. Exactly. I can't even get to the front door if you know Yeah. Information about details about the building entry that I was not expecting.

00:28:43 Yeah. And not just like how to find the building, but just like, if you can't get in the front door, here's how it was right there. And emails like amazing. So I showed up the building like five minutes and Vince couldn't get in the front door. It was like, ah, you know, I know, figured it out and walked right in.

00:28:56 No problems went and found the door for the, you know, the logo, the site. And it could see through the glass doors and opaque doors, it was like, okay, just gonna try to go in. And I knew I was like two minutes early, but like, I want to get set somewhere for my call. And I opened the door and the alarm went off immediately and I'm like,

00:29:19 oh no. So then I went all the way in realized like the lights are off. Nobody is there no one, I see the, you know, the security panel. They were like, what am I going to Guess? And I'm like, I have two minutes until this phone call. So I left. And like, there was no, there was nothing to see here thinking the cops don't show.

00:29:42 I have no idea. So I left and took my call, like from a stoop, like a good new Yorker and he was fine. But then I went and like tweeted about this experience that you'd like the, it is irrelevant to who the aggregator isn't, it's a relevant who the site is. It's saying like, I am the best possible person who knew how to work this system.

00:30:02 And some thing went wrong where sure enough, like I did report, I told the aggregator who checked in with the operator and found out that like exact logical thing that happened, which was the person who was supposed to have been there, got stuck in a subway, like underground. Right. And you know, and I did book the night before to be there at exactly opening moment,

00:30:25 which is not common maybe, but like all those circumstances put together led to a problem. And there's nothing I could do in the moment. And my thought, in addition to just getting on the call was like, gosh, you know, like heaven forbid, this happens to someone at a big company, like a PWC, everyone else who has new found freedom and maybe told by their employer,

00:30:47 Hey, we've partnered with aggregator a, B and C. You can like download it on your phone. We've bought unlimited credits. Like it's all super seamless. Just go, you know, find the dot on the map that you want. And just like book in. And there are still a good Cillian things that could go wrong that are outside of the control of that companies like facilities team.

00:31:10 And, and my, my point of Twitter was just like, whose fault is it? And the, from the employee's perspective, they literally don't care. Don't care. Don't know, shouldn't have to care, but they feel like I've been wronged in some way. The world wronged me right now. And heaven forbid someone who's like influential. Cause you never know what the big company like that,

00:31:34 that the one person that happens to happens to be like dinner buddies with the head of something and they just go, oh, I tried this whole application, dolphin failed, remote work failed. And then everybody gets called back to the office. Right. Right. Even if it happens, you know, to two people and both of them tell their manager and then the manager tells HR like,

00:31:55 forget it. This doesn't work. Nobody can get anything done Snowballs. And people start throwing things at the wall that, and I was like, oh no, this could happen. And that's like the challenge of being out in the real world where you don't control everything from doors and spills and alarms. Yeah. But it's like the workflow piece of, you know,

00:32:17 again, all the operators and even, you know, more sophisticated advanced operators who may be used to these scenarios. Right. Thinking through the workflow and right. Maybe you don't allow, you know, non-members access at eight 30, right. When you open up, maybe you block that on the aggregate First time, the change management around it, it just like,

00:32:40 you know, you are entering a system where there's a little bit of unpredictability and how do you get employees have a very formal like culture to say, listen, like, you're, you were floating a little bit in scrappy land. Like even if the place is class a building class safe operator, right. Like you're floating a little between a bunch of people who are stitching together,

00:32:58 an experience for you where I think it's, it's not too dissimilar than like business travel in a way, but all it is so common that like, we all know how to navigate that. You know, our Expectations are pretty aligned with how that's, How the reality, you know, planes being delayed or a hotel room trying to check in early. There's just like,

00:33:18 you know, you kinda know how to work that system. This is a new system for piano. So it needs a lot of handholding at the beginning. Yeah. Well, so I mean, even kind of on a deeper level, your article that I think you said he wrote a year ago was I thought even more insightful about, okay. Even if you can get everybody signed up and you've got with the credits and just the way,

00:33:39 and I, I want, I'm curious how you think this will go, because I do think for many operators understanding how the coworking decision gets made at a real, you know, at a corporate level is, is new. Although I wonder if that's shifting to your point, if it's shifting more to the individual, so you made the point in the article that like,

00:33:59 look the real estate corporate real estate team, you know, or with HR, whatever sort of picks the, you know, the operators that are, you know, they're going to use and they, they mix or make the decisions. Right. So it didn't use to be, and I wonder if this is happening more that you would say, okay,

00:34:18 you all get credits, just Google and find the place near you and do your own like consumer research and pick something. Right. It used to be that there's some group that says, okay, we have a master service agreement with so-and-so and that's where you go. And so you figure it out. So the real estate group is doing the shopping and they're not on Google my business.

00:34:37 Correct. Right, right. There are some sales team who's, you know, getting in front of them or they're oh, JLL consultant is helping them, you know, navigate, however it may be, but it's not sort of done from a consumer perspective, which can cause the challenges that you talked about in your article. So I'd love for you to kind of outline that scenario.

00:34:58 And is that, do you think that's going to shift because the choice is being more consumerized or will we still struggle a little bit with not having It's like, it's two paths, it's two paths collided. Right. So one path corporates have been using flex based coworking serviced offices, like increasingly over the years, for sure. For little requirements that like,

00:35:25 oh, I have to have 10 people in Columbus, Ohio for some legal reason. I got to Regis. I go to some small player like that. Fine. But they've all, you know, they all sit their own seats. There's nothing complicated about it. Like it's just a tiny office. They understand like we're not going to lease space for this little thing and it's fine.

00:35:42 And the experience was, you know, it was like, it's fine. It's literally, it's a serviced office. It's not gonna work. We were, comes along. You know, industrious comes along bigger players reach to like in spaces who now can meet larger requirements. So yeah, I can house 50 people or a hundred people and have a nice little sprinkling of,

00:36:06 of experience on top of it. Like you can have your private space and the real good sit in a desk and we'll negotiate about how dense it is or not. But fundamentally saying, we can, we can house bigger groups of people now, which is very difficult for like a little operator to do. And they'll sell unexperienced to say, you know,

00:36:25 I remember like IBM sort of famously a couple years ago, took down a whole building from, we work in New York. And I remember being on a panel with one of the real estate leads at the time, or like an event. And someone said, Hey, you know, why did, why did you move? Like, why didn't you take a whole building if we work?

00:36:40 And he, his first response was we had to put a lot of people somewhere on short notice. And he was in New York. That's very difficult to do. And then like, you know, the mic got passed and he was like, wait, hold on. He was like, wait, I didn't quite complete that thought he goes, no, it's easy to find a lot of space for a lot of people in New York city on short notice.

00:36:58 There's like no shortage of surplus or like sublet space around even in the before times. Right? Like that wasn't hard problem was it goes, we IBM like big employer in our offices. It's quite nice. We think a lot about spirits. I could not take people who had formerly been at a relatively high experience office and drop them in someone else's crummy sublet.

00:37:18 So if you rephrase that to say, where can I put a lot of people relatively quickly where the experience is sufficiently high enough that those people do not equitable. Yeah. Ooh, coffee, tea, water, community. They were like, oh, tick, does it look and feel and smell like exactly every other IBM office. But like, this is quite nice,

00:37:37 which is all you need. He was like, that made a difference at the time, but still traditional occupancy. My desk, my office. Yeah. No crazy mobility stuff. So that's like kind of path. One is happening past two was the more progressive providers that were toying with mobility and sharing and oversubscription and hoteling and hot desking, whatever you want to call it in their own turf.

00:38:05 The credit Suisse's a lot of banks out of pharmaceutical and life sciences companies, again, largely not the big tech companies, but they were doing this and slowly starting to come to, we work with this question of like, oh, well, I'm doing like sharing here. And experience is really important. And you guys deliver really experiential workplaces. Like, can I bring my sharing program pre COVID to your turf?

00:38:33 And that realization of like some client starting to come along saying, I want to make you the flex provider part of my weirdo sharing program that I'm doing internally. Can you be part of my program? And like that colliding with a statement that I heard someone make it reworks leadership at the time of like, oh, if you design, like when we designed beautiful space,

00:39:00 they made this huge leap to the experience will be amazing. And I immediately went like scribbled and you show the article right on this thing on the whiteboard, which I later took a picture of and wrote an article about after I left of like, no, no, we designed a space. And then someone in one of these companies makes the decision about in theory,

00:39:20 how it's supposed to be occupied. If they decide who gets desk, who gets an office who shares, who doesn't, we don't write those rules, they write the rules. We may not even know what the rules are. So then the rules get set. Then there's like how the users choose to follow the rules or not. And the bane of anyone who's ever run a mobility program,

00:39:42 like within a large enterprise in their space is the difference between what they say, here's how you were supposed to behave and how people actually behave. Same thing for wary. Right? You have house rules, please. Don't, you know, be nice. Don't lick your neighbor. Like don't cook things in the open take conference calls. Yeah. So then,

00:40:04 so you say, please behave this way then the, the, the members or employees, or ever act in a certain way and the way that the people act then influence how the space is utilized. So now you've shifted from, instead of looking at the person you're looking at the seat and like, okay, if the, if the prevailing behavior in this neighborhood is thus,

00:40:27 this seat, or this seat does, or doesn't get used, or it's getting used too much or too little, and the way it feels in the space, the ultimate experience is really the result of that. Is it busy? Is it not? Can I find the things that I want or can't I, does it work or does it not work?

00:40:45 And that's like two or three big leaps from how it was originally designed? So my, the problem that I saw happening was copy comes along, takes like a nice 20% office. You know, maybe it gets a few extra keys or whatever, but then we, as the operator have no control over what they would then tell the people who were told,

00:41:07 go show up there. They might be oversubscribed. They might not the rules of the road that they might have been told might be different than the prevailing house rules. Or they might misunderstand, can I sit in community space or not? Like, if there's any mystery, like translation problem anywhere, and that person shows up and something goes wrong, they would then do what we're trained to do.

00:41:30 And like any other hospitality context, which is like, go see the host. So like March off to the community desk and say, this sucks. Something sucks too busy, too loud to something there's too many too quiet, too, whatever, too hot, too cold, too hot, too cold. It's now your problem. Joe's in my seat,

00:41:50 in my seat. And then that poor community manager by and large, especially if it's an enterprise and I don't know how it works with a similar shop, but if they got so far as to be like, oh, you're from IBM. Or like some other large corporation, they might even find out in the little CRM, like, like I'm not,

00:42:09 I'm not supposed to talk to you, but like, you're asking me a contractual question about, oh, can I spend money on this or can I grow or shrink or do a be like, I'm not your enterprise sales person. So, so I'm also limited a little bit in what I'm allowed to do. And I also have no idea what you've been told before you walked in the door here.

00:42:33 And to your point, just forgetting the sharing and everything else for that person. It was not a consumer decision to be math person, half a work away, half a world away who decided I'm going to close down my office, I'm going to move everybody into Regis or something. And that person might show up on day one, chest grumpy, because they used to be uptown another downtown like that,

00:42:57 you know, the poor community managers, nothing to do with that decision, but this person walks in grumpy and now it's their problem. But they're like, I cannot influence your corporate occupancy decision. So there's like, that was the problem I was describing, but where all this has come together now is because of COVID real estate teams are more likely to look to flexible pools of occupancy to solve the fact that they don't know what the future holds.

00:43:23 So I think there's, there's a demand increase now for space that can kick the can. So, so like, and you know, there's more spaces and their experiential and amazing. And so they're looking to flex operators to help like solve a temporary problem. And because they're now like, oh, not, everyone's going to be around all the time. The words like hoteling and sharing are coming up a lot more so saying,

00:43:45 oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I will just, my office in Chicago will be some coworking space and in Chicago and I'm going to put 20 people in 10 seats and it may be from a company that was never exploring that kind of sharing stuff before. Yeah. The ones who were having intuition about the change requirements and how you think about utilization, they're a little bit more prepared,

00:44:04 but I think a lot of companies are gonna both be running to flex yeah. And running to sharing at the same time. And that is gonna exacerbate this problem. And, and maybe the last thing we'll say, what I am hopeful for in this future is where, where will the, the large corporates, like let the leash out a little bit and give the power to the teams.

00:44:28 Yeah. Where if a team is told, Hey, like the marketing team in Chicago, and we actually had an example of this, we work at a financial services company where it was, I think actually the marketing, some kind of creative team was actively trying to like leave the headquarters. They're like this isn't for us. That's not how we roll.

00:44:49 That's not how we roll. And like, we don't talk to anyone else in this building. Really. We're not that big. We can, we try to attract a different kind of person, different kinds of equipment, all this stuff, like kind of just want to go and, and sort of put down an Amex somewhere and just book a book,

00:45:04 a space. And if they did that, they then become like most normals are coworking members of where the decision maker, the CEO, someone high up in that like small company was on the tour, walked around, met the community manager, made the decision about the location, the amenities, the space, everything he made, all the decisions. So not only do they know if there was a decision that in the end,

00:45:25 like turned out not to be so great thing. Like I made this decision, so that's on me. But like they were part of it. Even just meeting the community team, like we're in it. Someone who gets dropped there is very different. So the answer hopefully is allowing the team to make decisions. Because right now we're all working on our own.

00:45:44 And the company's used to planning everything centrally it's somewhere in the middle is the answer. Give people, the aggregators, give people a little bit of like currency to spend it's there. Like it's not nearly as much as we used to, but to come full circle to the only thing it has to be, it has to be coated with. It's still an enormous amount of like change manager and leadership to say like,

00:46:05 we're going to give you huge autonomy on space, like never had before. But with that responsibility comes a little bit of a bunch of footnotes. Like, you know, you're, you're now going to take on a risk that our facilities, people used to shield you from. We over-service, we promised you never had to deal with it. That doesn't mean that you weren't too hot,

00:46:23 too cold. And the things weren't like, couldn't be better, but you're now going to be taking on a lot more of the primary risk of the experience. And we're not, we will help you when we can help you, but we're not going to be there in the moment. And are you okay with that? Right. It's like it support right.

00:46:39 We can log in remotely, but we can't come. I can't come. And like, you want the flexibility. We want to give you the flexibility. But, and the jury, the jury is like super out on that. Whether people are going to push the power down to the teams and let them make those decisions. And it's really hard to do now because the companies that need to do that still have the big office.

00:47:03 Yeah. It's very hard for them to swallow. I will give you extra money to explore coworking while I still have a big tower over here. If the tower just poof like went away, they might be like, oh yeah, I can slide you a couple hundred bucks a month because I used to pay a couple thousand bucks over there. So in the middle ground is a tricky town companies don't have,

00:47:23 aren't like covered by that. But the big companies are, and we will struggle with it for a few years, I think. Yeah. So in the meantime, I mean, so PWC just sends 44,000 people home. Although I guess to your point, they're not doing that immediately either. They still have real estate. It'll be Typically they're not going to change their real estate.

00:47:43 Yeah. Yeah. And maybe it's not as bad for professional services for them because They're so Well, they never, they never had enough. Yeah. They they're so out and about, which is to say that they never had one seat per person. Anyway, in fact, they might get massively Oversubscribed, AA, PWC, McKinsey, same thing. We are normal.

00:48:04 The clusters of energy are usually with the clients. Yeah. So we do not have room if they were to all come running back to the mothership and say, we want to all set up shop here, no professional services or accounting, but like none of us have the room in our main offices to support that period. So we all have the same problem now of like,

00:48:23 is it remote? Is it just do some clients want us back? Which clients want us back? How often do we do flex? Did we not? Whereas a normal company where everyone was in the office four or five days a week, as opposed to out of the office, four or five days a week, they're the ones are really like, I had a seat for everyone and they're empty.

00:48:41 Right. What do I do now? Exactly. Yup. Who gets the power? How do you write the credit card? Who, so, okay. Well, so I mean, what's, what's an action item, you know, if you're, if you're an operator and we are, I think we are seeing a trend of more operators learning to scale to accommodate,

00:49:04 I think, or, you know, we'll start to be able to take on those larger requirements. Yeah. What do they think about, is there a way to be a part of that change management? Is there a role that needs to exist? That's not the sales manager, not the community manager, but the, you know, relation. I don't.

00:49:24 Yeah. W is there a, Yeah, that mean, I think step one is just, is awareness. And we used to do this with the community teams. We were, could we found out like, Hey, you know, in incoming, here comes a company that like, you don't know this, but you know, there are governing principles around their workplace.

00:49:45 Just that like, keep in mind, like not only did this group of people probably get put here by someone that didn't make the decision themselves. And hopefully they liked the decision, right? Like optimistically, they like it, but they didn't make it. And you have to realize, especially if, you know, community managers, a lot of them around we work like we're young,

00:50:07 like had never really been in the work world that long Navigated the corporate navigated, What were came from like a little startup. I mean, like, you just have to, as long as you say, just like this person is walking in is subject to governing principles and policies and things they might've been told that might influence what they think is supposed to be happening here.

00:50:32 And if you just lead with that, like assume that they may be operating under different rules and that you are going to have to help them find like the middle ground and really amp up the hospitality about that. Like that understanding what that, just that knowledge is is yeah. Again. Right. And then we would try to do some basic training around sort of workplace change management.

00:50:54 And it's a little bit of hospitality, but just like in the show, me, you know, me hospitality sense or like, just, just realize that this person is being governed by something. Always keep that in mind when you were trying to check the reaction and that, you know, they've even told like, no, you cannot use the coworking sites,

00:51:15 like issue, resolution, whatever app. Like they submit something through their help desk, which gets backdoored all the way around it. That that may be unavoidable, which means you may not hear about issues that fast. You have to deal with like help desk. Who's calling and be like, oh, are you, you know, I can't, there's so many ways it could go and it's going to take a long time for the enterprises to like,

00:51:37 trust your process to say, oh, I'm just going to like, take everything wholesale. I want the app. I want it all. Yeah. Just like, know that about that person and try to understand it as quickly as you can and let them understand your position relative to that system. So listen, if you help me understand right together, we're together,

00:52:02 we're in it together because yeah. The perfect situation in these cases is where was it? I think it was Zappos originally, or they were sort of famous for the amount of autonomy that their support folks had.<inaudible> it. Now you can spend you, you know, the person on the customer support, you can spend X, hundreds of dollars like unchecked.

00:52:23 Yeah. Then come back to us later and listen, like, we'll learn from whatever happened. We'll try to fix the root issue, but like solve for the customer right now. And, you know, do these, do the arrangements themselves have to have to be changed a little bit to say to the company, like we're going to empower our community people to solve problems for your employees in the moment which might incur cost,

00:52:46 which could be like, I book you into an empty space for a day. There's overflow. I'm not going to worry about why there's overflow right now. Maybe a bunch of interns showed up. No idea, but I'm going to ask you all happy right now and make you a happy right now and then work it out after and what, who pays or doesn't,

00:53:04 you know, like, do you have to push back upstream to be like, I can be your hospitality engine. I can think of this. Well, what is the experience that you want this to be? And if you want it to be more white glove, I have to have some autonomy to do things. I sure as hell the facilities person in that person's like main headquarters when they see a visibly upset,

00:53:23 like senior person, they're just going to it. Yeah. And worry about the ticket later. So it was easier said than done, but that's just like, if you're, if you're outsourcing your experience of your employees, to me, I have to know that you're doing that like clearly understood and have some autonomy to, to fix things. Yeah. Yeah.

00:53:44 I mean, it's a little bit of a culture shift. I think, you know, the industrious is in the, we work. So I've probably been doing this from day one and Yes and no, they're not scaled to do it. Like in it. We talk about like, does every building, if a, if a building has more than X percentage of like enterprise clients.

00:54:04 So it sort of the idea on the table once the same, when, when do you have to change the gearing ratio of the staff to add another body whose job is Karen feeding of the enterprise clients? Like, and to just know that that's something you have to do when it crosses a certain threshold, because we work certainly had buildings that would be like a hundred percent large enterprises,

00:54:28 but it might be like four different clients and they, they need different things, Different cultures, different, different cultures. And just like, when do you have to gear up? And like, that might change the price for your being like, yeah, you want this to be a positive experience. So I have to have like an extra concierge sort of around yeah.

00:54:47 To be butting their head into your business and making sure they understand these governing policies. Who's important to like, oh, Mary in the corner over there, like quiet little Mary actually runs like a 5,000 person organization. And if she gets upset one phone call came over. Right. They won't know that unless they have time to spend in like really go get to know them,

00:55:07 but it takes more bodies and it's hard to just have automatically. So I think we weren't, like we knew it, but those ideas where it, you know, he's embraced just because it's like, I can't, how do I fund that? Right. Because the rest of the building have to pay for that. Do I charge just my enterprise is more like,

00:55:21 how do you do that at scale? We're still working on the answers to that. We're working on The answers. Yeah. I'm excited to see, but that's the big one is just understand. I think, understanding the governance from Where do you to McKinsey clients that are struggling with flexibility, where do you tell them to start So early? Like, and I I'm honestly learning,

00:55:50 like I used to sort of sell real estate workplace consultancy now truth where we're selling real estate and it organizational behavior and flexibility advice off the back of broader strategy. Yeah. That's really, the power for McKinsey is engaging on like, what are the moments that matter the role of place in the pursuit of your business objectives? And I do find myself saying a lot,

00:56:10 just like to non real estate people, the availability, the explosion in supply of space that could be consumed flexibly either with intent, for longterm strategy or even just to try something. They don't think about that. That's like very new for them. So even just floating the idea out into the ether to say that, that crazy idea of Oak could you co-locate to people or try different kinds of configuration of space.

00:56:33 Like this is the first time in history. Really, you can fail fast a little bit. You could like take a flex space. You can rent furniture. When I say those two things that just sounds like black magic. Yeah. Try something. And hopefully it, especially for the operator, you love it. You stay becomes part of your strategy,

00:56:53 but like no one has the right idea. Now everyone is going to get something wrong. So it's about like test and learn and measure, measure, measure, measure, measure, then understand like where, where are those? The moments that the collisions, the group that like really really matter and then lean into them, like when you discover what they are,

00:57:11 but AB testing on space, it was like not AB testing or fail fast. Those, those phrases would make a traditional facility managers melt. Yeah. Like it's possible. You can do it now. So just trying to advocate for don't think that space is as static as it used to be. So I'm curious about the measuring. I mean, you have experienced in some pretty,

00:57:40 like just significant, you know, analytics around utilization, what would you recommend an operator that's going to serve or potentially serve enterprise groups? What should they be prepared to sort of report, measure, observe, and sort of make that a competency? Are we, are we there yet or do we need to get there? Yeah, I think that the basics is,

00:58:04 you know, who walked in, did they show up for stuff? Did things break tickets? Right. Badge ins attendance, like, okay, that's it. We work with certainly aiming at the idea of, you know, we've, we've wired the box to the gills sensors everywhere or camera. And he sat in that booth for two hours and then he moved Not even the name,

00:58:29 but you just say like, we control the whole environment. We have built an ecosystem that is very detailed in its ability to like report on what's going on and you know, for the, for an extra cost of a dollar a month or whatever, like we will just expose all this information to you to know when someone says, oh, it's too crowded.

00:58:50 That, and the answer isn't necessarily, oh, the box, his face that you took is too small. It's that the configuration of the things in your boxes incorrect. If we were to take one, you know, take out a bank of this and replace it with a bank of that, it's going to solve your utilization problem. We know that,

00:59:05 and that, that can be messaged to employees as a net positive and the challenge for any kind of utilization, like a traditional space, when companies would say, oh, we're going to do like sensors or this and that. And it's all going to be to deliver a better workplace experience. Most employees are like, that's bull. You want to know how many of us are here?

00:59:28 Like, because you, you cannot demonstrate to me that you doing anything productive with that information. That makes my experience better. But, but I was super surprised to find at credit Suisse, like at one point we were doing really sophisticated utilization reporting because they had moved from laptops to terminals, to sort of common and in the high security world. And we mapped all the terminals and the network addresses to the desks.

00:59:55 So we could actually could actually tell down to the name who was logging in where, and, you know, we never exposed the names and I didn't really care, frankly, but we would go to like the group level and could tell like utilization by certain areas over the course of the day, I could tell like which users moved around during the day,

01:00:13 or did not physically through the hallway, but like logged in there and then logged in here, which desks had users from different departments that use them versus the ones that just sat and were like, this is mine. And you know, you would have said like, oh, this is a massive invasion of privacy. But because the environment was shared and flexible,

01:00:34 the employees knew they could come to us and say, Hey, like yesterday the dynamics in my little zone changed like way more people what happened. And because we had this data, you could like, it was like an instant replay, like, all right. Let's I have no idea I wasn't there. And I have no reason, but to trust you,

01:00:53 like not trust you let's look at the tape. And once we could see, oh, you know, this group or that group, someone moved or shifted, or someone came to the floor that wasn't supposed to be there or interns or whatever. Just the fact that we're like, oh, there's a reason I can now address it. Which is like,

01:01:09 just tell someone, Hey, go six feet that way, or back at desk or change this resume, whatever. But they're like, cool, cool. I'm so glad you have this data because we're actively using it to make my experience as good as it possibly can with the understanding that like, we're not going to go back to not sharing. Like,

01:01:26 efficiency's a thing it's going well, people are happy, but we're always looking for opportunities to fine tune. And I think the benefit in flex space is that like, you kind of have that because the nature of the agreement is not so long-term and static. And typically the furniture is not as bolted to the floor. And like it's a bank. If you could,

01:01:45 you know, provide a lot of advanced analytics, both to the individual member and the decision maker to say the reason this is all there is because if you say, oh, it's too much, it's too little it's this and that. Like, I do actually have the ability to move things around or make changes. At least let's say over the weekend,

01:02:03 it's not as big a deal with the big, heavy bolted to the floor. Traditional environment. Can't make a change. I can change it. So I'm offering this data and you hopefully are okay in knowing that the data is being gathered, because if there's a problem, can objectives react to it? It's not what you said, what I said. So there's an opportunity there.

01:02:24 And I understand it's expensive to make like a smart building, but with whatever tricks to be able to say, I can really help you fine tune what's in your box or how big the box is. That can be really engaging. Cause mostly players have, would struggle to do that on their own turf. Yep. A hundred percent. So I can talk to you all day long,

01:02:47 but now I'm noticing that it is quitting time for you. Yeah. Right? Yeah. To equity temporary for more calls, but We'll have to do this again. I suspect you are learning and observing lots of interesting trends and insights in terms of yeah. What are enterprise users thinking and what's happening. You also just have such a unique lens because you've done corporate,

01:03:10 you've done consulting, you've done operators. So the pieces fit together differently for you than, than the average person. Yeah. And, and because I don't have a design degree, I'm not constantly trying to pick like a, like I don't, I don't have that voice in the back of my head, but I am fascinated by the collision between like the big enterprise and the availability of the little space and that it doesn't always have to be the big name operator because it won't work in all cases.

01:03:37 And if you give people the retail decision, I think a lot of them will actually seek the smaller, more specialized localized spaces, either sorta semi-permanently or, or for whatever use we like variety, You know? And we liked the human connection. I worked a couple of times recently and toured a global bland brand whose name we will not reference and the community manager,

01:04:04 although I'm not going to use that term. She toured me. And she asked me two questions in our time together. Can I show you any other office size? And when would you like to start? I mean, I was like, are you a human or a robot? Like, I'm a person. And I thought, you know, I mean,

01:04:28 even the enterprise, like I just need to get out of my house. I need to make some zoom calls. I need to, you know, I don't need to network and I'm not trying to get business from you. I'm just, you know, are humans right. Who want experience and connection? And you know, someone would tell them like their shoes are cute.

01:04:47 I mean, whatever it is Yes. That will a hundred percent get me to stay somewhere that my shoes, my shoes. Yeah, no, you're totally right. And like, that's a training thing and it's, It's a cultural thing I think. And I think in this case, a cultural thing, but I think the local operators will often win on that all day long.

01:05:14 They should just be like, we have, we like the people around here and the, the enterprises that were the most successful, I think we were the relatively smaller teams and it's something to do with the decision and had like a super open door policy. Be like, we are here, we love this space. We may be higher from this space.

01:05:34 We participate in events and everyone's like, oh, those, like we thought they were a bunch of like boring insurance pros, but actually like, they're awesome. They came to like pumpkin carving last week. There's a cool, And then they don't have to do that right. To do that, like Yeah. Here and especially, yeah, the delivery would go on forever,

01:05:52 but the, you know, virtual events and wanting to like keep people connected. Like it doesn't have to be necessarily your event. I will feel positive about my employer. If I have access to stuff, it doesn't have to be their stuff. They're okay with it being like my local coworking providers, pumpkin carving, we hope that. Great. Fantastic.

01:06:13 So Phil, how often do you go into the office? Jewish times a week now it's weird because it, because again, like normal times, yeah. Most of my colleagues are either not in New York or were super mobile before, so it was never going to be the five day a week. And I have little kids and still trying to like sort of navigate what I like drop them off.

01:06:36 And is there easier to go in any day? Big, beautiful office downtown, but yeah, two-ish at the moment. Yeah. Has your travel started to pick up A little almost again, the clients out there. Right. And it's more, it's more for, it's more for events than it is for like actual Yeah. Yeah. We'll get there.

01:06:58 Okay. Thank you. We will. Okay. Thank you for it's Thursday. Happy hour time for you or pick up the kids or have dinner. I don't think they're here. Okay. Thank you for spending your time and sharing your perspective. Appreciate it. Absolutely. Well, we will connect again soon. Hey there, thanks for sticking with us through the end of the episode,

01:07:21 don't forget to subscribe on your favorite podcast player. And if you were enjoying the podcast, please go leave us a review. It helps other folks find the podcast who are thinking about starting a coworking space or already operating a coworking space and are looking to stay up to speed on tips and trends. And we started a YouTube channel. We'd love to have you catch us on video.

01:07:49 You can join us for podcast, videos, and Q and a videos and other things that we post to the channel. We'd love to see.

For the full show notes of this episode, click here.

Want to join our coworking conversation in the Everything Coworking Facebook Group? Find us here!

Looking for a specific episode? Go to the episode index here.

Jamie RussoComment