231. Highlights from the first FlexIndex with Miro, CEO of OfficeRnD

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231. Highlights from the first FlexIndex with Miro, CEO of OfficeRnD

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 co-working space owner and trend expert, Jamie Russo. Welcome to the Everything Coworking podcast. This is your host, Jamie Russo. So my guest today is Miro Miroslav. He is the CEO and co-founder of Office RnD, and he's on the show,

00:00:41 not just because we have lots of officer and D fans that listen, but also because his team has invested in leveraging the data that they have on their platform, all aggregated and anonymized, to help us take a look at some flex KPIs to help operators understand what their recovery rate looks like in comparison to a global benchmark and to help them make decisions about their business.

00:01:12 So this is the first iteration of Office RnD use of flex index. You can grab that at Office RnD dot com forward slash flex index. And we linked that up in the show notes for you as well. So he shares a walkthrough of the flex index, which I love to listen to instead of having to sit down and read through and the K five KPIs that they're tracking.

00:01:36 So I'm not going to make this intro along because I think we could just dive into a quick background on neuro and officer D and then a walk through the flex index and the KPIs that they're measuring. I am here today with the CEO and co-founder of Office R and D Miro Miroslav of Miro. Did I say your last name correctly? Yes,

00:02:07 no. Right. So this is a treat because well, you and I did a little kind of Coke keynote for your flex world conference this past October. And we get to hang out on the GWA calls. Miro is a board member this year on the global workspace association, but we don't get to sorta catch up. And, and I have some questions about your background that I want to get into.

00:02:34 So mural is joining us from Bulgaria and Mira. What time is it for you? It's in the evening 7:00 PM. 7:00 PM. So he's spending his like dinner after dinner time with us, which is also an honor because he has a new member of the family. How old is your baby now? Just 32 Days. 42 days. Real newborns. Yes.

00:03:06 Miro is living through new addendum. And we talked about that a little bit in the pre-chat. So he, he seems pretty coherent. So hopefully we'll do just fine. We'll cut you some slack Miro if, if, if you need it, but Miro Office R and D has a lot going on. So I want just for anybody who maybe isn't aware of what Office RnD is,

00:03:29 I would just kind of love to have you give a quick intro. I will mention that lots of my, I run a program called the Coworking Startup School. Lots of those members use officer and D I run a program, kind of a mastermind program for operators called the Flight Group. And lots of those folks use office R and D. We actually had our own Office RnD interest group running for awhile,

00:03:53 Panama stellar, who recently moved from Atlanta while she was at fireworks in Atlanta, and recently moved to industrious. She was running her interest groups. So lots of Office, RnD fans, probably listening, but yeah. Tell us a little bit about officer in D and then I would love to hear just like the short version of the backstory of how you started off as certainty.

00:04:18 Totally. First of all, Jamie, thank you so much for, for killing me here. It's a it's it's, it's always so good to see you and now it's, it's making actually tends to have a chat about that's what we're trying to do. And yeah, I just spent some time, so priestly about in the Indian, why we cited.

00:04:36 So I think probably, yeah, most of you know, that's, we're trying to build one of the leading flex space management platforms out there. We started 2015. Actually the very first idea was to build a platform. That's more like a corporate workplace management solution. That's was the very first idea because we came out of a relatively big software company and we told this,

00:05:05 this wasn't made properly. So we can, we can actually build something better to manage the workplace of a very fast changing dynamic company. And with that idea, we came to London because we were invited to join a, an accelerator. They are called pileups, which is proxy innovation labs. And we ended up in a coworking space called second home, which was incredible.

00:05:33 I think it was probably at the time, one of the most iconic spaces out there with the most beautiful design and, and a lot of hype around that. And we just fall in love with the concepts. Also we are coming both me and my co-founder who was also called mural for simplicity. Yeah. I forgot to mention them, but I remember when I first met your team,

00:05:56 I was like, wait, they're mural. That's the popular name here, but yeah. So we're coming from the software industry and we've, we, we thought we we've seen firsthand the change from a traditional software to software as a service. What's a huge impact. It made on whole world, not just the software industry, but the whole world dramatically change how people use software and the quality of software increased so much because when it is as a service,

00:06:34 you can change your software easily and get a better high quality software without buying the whole thing over and over again. So we saw the same concept in the coworking space, and we told that space as a service, it's so much better and offices service because it actually creates competition and it creates better service for the end customer. So the end customer can choose the space.

00:07:03 And if they're not satisfied, they can move to another space and so forth without the code of work, right. Like of the office, which was right. A big shift at that time. Yeah. So this is, this is just incredible. And we decided to, to focus our quotation on building our, our work or space management platform from a genetic,

00:07:27 let's say a workplace management into coworking space management and yeah. Ever since. So we've been, we've been focused on, on, on solving the problems of the core industry. There's so many. And then so big six, seven years down the road, we still have like a massive list of things to, to work on and to improve. It's an endless game,

00:07:52 but we're super excited where the industry is going. And obviously now it's with COVID despite the, the super difficult two years, we are extremely bullish about, about the future and where our industry is is, is Yeah. And I should have before I dove right into your intro part, that's what we're going to talk about today is you have sort of,

00:08:17 you know, committed to data analytics and sharing some of that with the industry to help give some insights around what's happening out there. So you've created a flex index, which we're going to talk about today, and I love the name and some specific KPIs that you're tracking that can help folks understand kind of where the industry is trending, where we're going. So in 2015,

00:08:42 that was a kind of a big bet. You showed up at a coworking space with sort of one angle on what you were doing. And then you said, we're going to place all of our bets on Coworking, which was still So it's attempt to gain all of our investors who is a very, very successful entrepreneur angel investor. He was joking with me that we mentioned to choose the worst industry,

00:09:10 the worst target market ever from the whole world, like could have been anything else, because there were probably just a few thousand spaces that around the world at that time. So when you do the March even, right, And that's at the investors, You can actually build a business around that, like any business whatsoever, especially in the software industry where the investment to build a software is then you'll certainly need enormous amount of customers to justify the,

00:09:45 the initial investment and all that. So yeah, they were joking with me not to be managed to just, yeah, choose the worst target customer ever. When you, when you put your slide up that says total addressable market, and right next to This same angel investor, person actually built the largest coworking space on the Balkans, which happens to these.

00:10:18 So here, and it's also where we have offices that team. So he ended up building the largest court space now with more than a thousand members. So yeah, I, of course I joke with him as well because Right. Does he use your software? Yes. Okay. Good, Difficult customer. They are. I bet. I totally bet they are.

00:10:50 Yeah. I mean, the market is growing. What are we up to now? 20,000? I should know this. Yeah. I think it's about the above that, although we also struggled to A Very dynamic, It is dynamic and there's a lot of growth in Asia. A lot of growth kind of, yeah. Outside of the U S so your users are worldwide.

00:11:20 Yes. So anybody anywhere in the world can use your software. Yeah. So you probably serve about 80, 90 countries, but I would say that's, I think about 50% of our customers are actually in the U S Okay. But 50% outside. And you have a significant team in Atlanta. Yes. Initiated by Michael Evarts. I love it. Lost me.

00:11:50 Why, why, why we have a, an that lands unconventional to, for a European-based Atlanta pick Atlanta? No one really understands the logic. Atlanta has, has had a quicker than average recovery rate from the pandemic. I think more people going, I see, you know, some of these comparisons, more people going back to the office and there's tech and there's entertainment.

00:12:18 There's a lot of, a lot happening there. So, And then SAS is booming there. They're now three, four unicorns. So the company There I'm a big calendar. So I I'm so kept actually with our completely random decision. Totally. Well, I li I think that's like part of the special thing about our industry, because so Michael efforts was a,

00:12:54 an officer in D user and he was like a super user and so passionate. And you guys did like a road trip. I remember him saying, oh, Office RnD is coming next week. They're going to hang out. And I was like, they're coming up to Atlanta to see Michael, that's a big commitment given, right. When you come to the U S Atlanta is not usual.

00:13:11 You're, you know, on the list of sites to see, and then, yeah, no. And then he joined the team, which I love, so, okay. So let's dive into the flex index. Hey, I just wanted to jump in really quickly before we continue with our discussion. If you're working on opening a coworking space, I want to invite you to join me for my free masterclass three behind the scenes secrets to opening a coworking space.

00:13:44 If you're working on opening a coworking 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 at Everything Coworking dot com forward slash masterclass. If you already have a coworking space,

00:14:08 I want to make sure you know, 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,

00:14:33 sales, and marketing, finance, and leadership. 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 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.

00:15:08 We also have a private slack group for the group. So if you're interested in learning more, you can go to Everything, Coworking dot com forward slash Community Manager. And yeah. Tell us kind of why you decided to do this. You know, what the KPIs you're measuring, give us kind of the, the intro to the, to the flex index.

00:15:29 And it is, will exp it's on the Office RnD website. It's really easy to find. We've also linked it up in the show notes. So you can just pop over to our website and get the link to the page as well. And you can download it. It's a PDF, and you can see all the data we're going through. Although mirror,

00:15:46 I was thinking last night. So I was late prepping for our podcast because I was out of the office last week and my daughter was at a math class. And I was like, okay, I need to read this. I need to put the dishes away. I need to do some gift wrapping. And I was like, this is why it's brilliant to put it on a podcast because we can give people the highlights and they could just multitask instead of having to go through the PDF,

00:16:09 which is also nicely done. So anyway, over to you, I'll let you walk through and I'll, I'll jump in when I want to dig into something. Yeah. So long story short, obviously COVID cap to, to, to our industry. And it was, it was such a massive event that at some point we started to ask ourselves, well,

00:16:35 what's actually the effects of COVID on our industry as a whole. So what really happens. And obviously we have a lot of data and that's collected in the platform about occupancy, bookings and utilization of different spaces. And at some point we decided that using this information in a completely aggregated and anonymous way can, can really help everyone out there to figure out if their space is,

00:17:13 is developing or moving according to, to the whole industry, to the benchmark, or is it not? And we told that by, by aggregating all of this information, we can help the entire industry get better and more advanced in how they think about their businesses and how they move forward. So we decided to hire data analysts very and build a proper data team so that we can seriously try to figure out and support what's happening in the industry and how it's developing,

00:17:56 how, how, how things are moving forward and how COVID also affected the industry. So we started tweets five KPIs just to start somewhere. We, we thought carefully, which KPIs to choose. And so far we settled on, on these five. So static occupancy of desks, then the revenue per available desk or workstation. So ref power, then these are more on the,

00:18:27 on the lets call them assignable spaces and then the bookable spaces. So we looked into meeting spaces. So bookings per meeting space, average booking duration for paid meeting space bookings, and then the total booking revenue per a meeting space. So the last three are the more dynamic use of space. And the first two are the more static kinds of occupancy and revenue based.

00:18:57 And that that's, that's the idea. It's, it's really to build out a fees for us that can help or the entire industry to, to see the bigger trends that they're happening. And also I'm hopeful that this can can be used in the future by landlords and developers that want to explore our industry and want to participate in, in my opinion, the best possible way through a management agreement and partnership with,

00:19:31 with Cora Catholic space operators and, and yeah. Work together to, to grow the whole flex space industry. So that's that, that, that was our idea. We want to try to build that regularly each month. So we'll see. It's very time consuming though. It's, it's a lot of, for, to, to pull it off. So we'll see how it goes so far.

00:19:59 It's been recepted very well, see a lot of huge interest. So we might end up doing it each month, or we were thinking about each quarter, but cause there is interests. We will probably do each month. Yeah. I know everybody wants the data, which, I mean, I think this is kind of what you're thinking. You serve so many operators,

00:20:25 but most of those operators, they may be multi-site operators. So they have some sense of their own portfolio and the differences, but most operators are kind of sitting in their little silo, looking around and saying, okay, you know, how am I doing compared to the guy down the street or the guy in another city? And I, you know,

00:20:44 this is such an interesting time because geographies, you know, returning or recovering at such different rates. So, so a question about, so tell me static desk occupancy is flat. What does that mean? What does that, what is that unit? So for us study this cultural currency basically means whether a desk being gay, dedicated desk or a private office desk is on that on a monthly or yearly membership or some sort of a contract that says it's occupied.

00:21:27 Yeah. Static means there is a membership or a contract for this desk. In particular, You can invent a specific sort of inventory desk, but not hot desks. So flex memberships not captured here. Totally not captured. So study this with the proceeds purely for four desks that are fully dedicated in some way or another. Got it. Okay. And then the revenue per available workspace,

00:22:04 same thing, the available workspace is defined as a dedicated inventory of, yeah, So that's a dedicated inventory of some sort, it's a single unit. So one desk desk, or some sort of, of a dedicated unit desk, workspace, workstation. And, and that's an aggregate view of, of the, the average revenue for available unit across the globe.

00:22:43 But that also considers the currencies and all that in a very advanced and properly. So we want to see the global trends that might actually be considered a flow of the index because it's a truly global index. So, and especially with COVID and you mentioned Jamie that the whole world was weird. So you've seen lock downs and in the same in one area and part of the world,

00:23:22 and at the same time, another area is completely wild and everything's open and working. But meanwhile, the California just reinstated a mask mandates for all indoor locations statewide. It was a good example of everything everything's open in Texas is booming and Melbourne and Australia, it's, it's completely all down and you cannot whatever league house, which is obviously very difficult for,

00:23:56 for the spaces. So when you consider it that it kind of has an implication on the global view of the index because it's kind of flattening things out a little. So in the future, we might consider also building more of a localized version versions of the index. So that can be probably more helpful, obviously, I think in the hotel industry and,

00:24:27 and so many other real estate industry, that there are very sophisticated and advanced, these things exist and they bring a tremendous value to the operators because you can through the assess where you are in terms of rates and occupancy and all that. So let's dive into your, the highlights of your findings, which are on the report that you produced. Do you want to kind of hit the highlights for us?

00:25:02 Totally. Yeah. So once we were seeing is, yeah, obviously there was a huge drop in a pill. So overall the index is a five components. So it's from zero to five average using the, the 2019 as a benchmark because it's a stable year. There is no COVID us around the globe. So we use it as a benchmark a year.

00:25:36 And then the five KPIs that we've put together, Meg, the index from zero to five. So if five is the average in 2019, so March, April, May, 2020, we've seen the drop from five to a 3.1, 3.2. So significant drop of how flex space has been used. And then it kind of stayed flat for a little while, actually for a year and more.

00:26:14 And then things started to significantly improve in March, 2021, and then going up ports from there to, from November this year as the last month, basically to 4.3. So we're getting very close to actually the pre pandemic levels. Our estimation is that we will see it's called the 40 Carvery or a recovery of the flex space industry to the same level since 2019,

00:26:50 we will probably see in Q1 next year, maybe March, of course, I mean, that is now only clone and more certainty around that, which I'm personally hopeful that it's not going to straight there's B of a problem as, as, as so many people think about Tornos, but still our estimate, our estimation is that by March things will pretty cover as a whole.

00:27:18 So from the five different KPIs, the desk occupancy was the least to flick trade actually. So the biggest drop was in March, 2021, but this was could actually going down ever since the pandemic cabins until It's interesting, isn't it? I mean, that's just kind of indicating the behavior of people sort of keeping desk memberships and then real delay in sort of that hitting the bottom.

00:27:54 Yeah, that's really interesting. I don't think that I would have Sort of looking at some it it's, it's also kind of relate that to, to the fact that all of our customers are also doing yearly contracts and especially in countries, the licensing agreements are that they're mostly yearly Miro actually. That's a great point. And I just didn't think about what I was looking at that.

00:28:21 Right. So who had been hooked in right? Slowly sort of unwinding that commitment. Yep. Yeah. Starting over right. People may. Yeah. We see that uptick starting like may fish. I mean kind of, you know, up, down, up, down for a little bit. Yeah. I think, I think things, things started to go seriously up and then Delta happened.

00:28:51 This is visible on every KPI that's, we've we've put together. So Delta in, I think March 21 was a big, big issue, but overall after that it's been, it's been on a positive trend. So all the KPI has been going up, including the, the occupancy and even the occupancy rates will likely be on par with, with 2019 even next month or,

00:29:29 or maybe very Well, the occupancy it's more stable. So it's, it's less. Yeah, it was seasoned those. So for example, the booking related things that are very seasonal as well. So certainly December will be slower. You can clearly see all of them being slow in December being slow in August a little bit of July and then very strong in October,

00:30:02 November. So yeah, the occupancy it's, it's more, it's more stable surprisingly or not at the revenue per available desk went down and actually the drop was or bigger than the, then the occupancy. So we assume that that's caused by people are adding more, getting more discounts or even free free memberships just to, to keep, to keep the customers.

00:30:37 So there is usually a saying that you can always keep your occupancy 100% wherever it's important at what price. So it's, it's important to, to keep the revenue flowing. We expect that this, this actually will grow significantly in the future to a certain degree that that things are recovering. But also I think now with, with the inflation and, and,

00:31:11 and re raising prices on, on all sorts of things, we, we believe the, the, the spaces should also start charging more. There's actually a great point. I work with a lot of operators who are very hesitant to raise their prices. If anyone's listening, January 1st is an ideal time. We're a little late in terms of giving notice, but as contracts renew,

00:31:37 yeah. I mean, the cost of everything is going up. I'm in California, our gas per gallon for the premium guests is $5 and 40 cents a gallon. So I was just in San Diego. It's not as bad in, in San Diego, but it's certainly not as bad in other parts of the, so I don't know what our particular issue is,

00:32:00 but certainly yes, the cost of doing business is going up. It's a global phenomenon, every everywhere, the electricity gas, construction materials, everything's going significantly up. So I'm sure the future of spaces so that they're coming to market next year, there costs to build, we actually bought higher. So the price inevitably should go higher. There is just no way to,

00:32:33 to stop that, The mindset piece of that. So I think it's, it's helpful to see this data because I think operators, when they're operating in a little bit of a, a bubble, they, you know, the pain that they felt as we see, you know, lowering price to get people to stay. And then living with that fear of,

00:32:54 if I changed my prices, will they go and they want to maintain that occupancy. So there's a lot of market dynamics happening right now because demand is also increasing. And, you know, some markets have less competition because spaces have gone out of business and it's taking time to add new Coworking or flex inventory, you know, to a market we've heard,

00:33:18 we've heard, you know, that about markets, particularly in the U S so, so I think this is helpful in giving folks perspective in what's happening around the world, right? Occupancy is going up revenue per available workspace is, is starting to creep up, although further from pre pandemic levels. If I'm looking at this right. 10% on the 2019 average,

00:33:43 which actually, yeah, if you, if you look at it, it's in the late 2019 was like that 10% from, from the Irish, the drop was, was more like 35%, which is significant for, for every business to yeah. To sustain. So it's good. It's going up not as fast as we were hoping to see, but steadily.

00:34:15 So yeah, I, I think a lot of, a lot more day take, she can be in the car at, on that point. And you mentioned something interesting. So obviously there is now a big difference in, in central city spaces versus suburban spaces in terms of occupancy rates and, and whatnot. So that also might be an interesting slice to have a look and maybe,

00:34:49 maybe help people make better decisions for, for, for planning more locations in the future, To your point, marrow I'm right. There are, you could spend a lot of your resources digging into this data. And yeah, I, so I love that you guys are kind of making the commitment to do this because there's not a lot of industry data.

00:35:15 Right. We have very few, do we have three, I think public companies in the space IWG surf Corp and we work. So there's not a lot of public data. And those are, you know, look different than independent operators with, you know, one to a few locations. So, And I think I w a G the only company that can put together something like this at the moment,

00:35:42 but they obviously want, because it's a huge advantage for the game data and advantage for everyone else and not having Yes. Thank you. Yeah. So right. I wouldn't even the, we work probably can not really make a good enough benchmark at the moment, because As big as we work is right there and is still low. Yep. Yeah. Yeah.

00:36:13 So the, the last three, three KPIs for all about booking. So we saw a massive drop. So, and of this without that makes total sense. I mean, if you're under lockdown, not working, making any bookings or, or whatsoever, especially the number of bookings for meeting space dropped from, from a high to, as low as 2020 points or 20%,

00:36:44 which is very dramatic utilization of the meeting spaces, then it kinda started to recover, but not so much there is fluctuations throughout the year, but still steady covering. So at the moment, it's at 70 something percent, which is, which is good. It's, it's, it's certainly recovering. And we believe if, doesn't explode that by Q1 at the end of Q1,

00:37:25 the three different booking related KPIs will climb to, to the benchmark of 2019. Obviously, I mean, meeting spaces is, is, is, is a type of, of, of space. That's more dynamic and certainly more prone to the circumstances. If even though people might keep their offices memberships, if they're not going to the, to the spaces,

00:37:59 obviously they're not booking meeting rooms and so forth Variable meeting room booking was just gone. Yeah, that's a huge job, but also a faster recovery that recovery trend just looks better than I maybe would have thought, even though we're still well below 2019. Yeah. Yeah. It's surprisingly not as bad as I thought too. Yeah. Although if you, if you look at it,

00:38:33 so, so many spaces, this was a, such a serious part of their, their top line and their revenue, and it stays for two years at 40% of what used to be a year ago, A hundred percent. Yeah. And that's very variable. Some spaces rely heavily on meeting room booking. So Yeah, actually like from, from just,

00:38:59 just, just observing some customers. And because obviously we spend a lot of time with them. We've seen a lot of meetings and was also converting to private offices and that type of changes are also happening. And it makes sense because private desk occupancy as we, so it's, it's so much more stable and also the demand for it. We don't have demand data.

00:39:26 So we don't know that well on that front, are there other people focusing on this, you're doing a great job. So, but certainly on the occupancy level, we see the end result of it. So the demand is there and I'm sure the demands for a meeting space as well now we'll come back as well. Something else that we are particularly excited about and want to develop in the future is,

00:39:57 is, is looking into more of the truly dynamic use of space, not just the static this to, but also the dynamic utilization related maybe to using Cod desks and unassigned sane desk memberships of all the different flavors from day passes, hourly passes to more of a monthly memberships and all that. Well, and there are more flavors than ever before, And even like they offices,

00:40:32 that's a huge trend. Like, And so that's not really captured the whole, like the office share the, or is it captured It's Not dedicated. It might be dedicated to a few people. Yes. That was one of the hot topics in our, in our slack channel for officer and D is how to use Office RnD, manage Office shares and,

00:40:58 you know, or by, you know, buy a bucket of hours because I mean, you, that's why, you know, your list. I is part of the reason I suspect your development list gets so long. It's COVID has really just changed. You know, I think dedicated space will remain, you know, the majority of the revenue for most spaces,

00:41:21 but to your point, okay, how do we make up for meeting room revenue? How do we, you know, get people into use flex space? And this KPI it occurs to be is not revenue based. It's just people using meeting rooms. So it could be members with credits or members booking and not paying. So we've got, you know,

00:41:42 folks taking zoom calls. And so that may be why this is recovering faster, but if you're the KPIs, So the revenue, by the way, that's number four, Kind of skipping ahead here. But Yeah, which That's actually better, that's recovering better than the, than the book than the bookings number. Yeah. It's surprising, but it's yeah.

00:42:16 It's, it's, what's, we're seeing, so the booking revenue per meeting space is, is, is it 8% from a plan what it used to be in 2019, which is, which has been encouraging it's coming, going back and seems to be, yeah. People are booking and paying for, for meeting spaces, which is which I also assume we,

00:42:44 we see a lot more corporate customers and talking to partners on the, on the aggregator marketplace side of things. So that the demand side, there is a lot more interest from, from corporates for, for meeting spaces or province offices. So we, we certainly probably see the result of that here. Yeah. And a lot of offices will certainly where I am still not open,

00:43:14 so people need to meet, you know, they need to do it, but, you know, I, so I emceed the work tech conference in San Francisco last week, which is really focused on corporate occupiers. There was one other flex person there. So we were not well-represented, but it's so interesting. Well, it's very specific to my geography,

00:43:41 right? Because Northern California is just very conservative and very slow moving, but the, you know, some Stripe, the, so I moderated a panel, the head of real estate for Stripe, but amazing woman. And she's has people all over the world and they're trying to figure out these policies of how to, you know, how to create an approach that works.

00:44:08 You know, it's super interesting to just to listen and Miro. I know you guys are helping, you mentioned, you know, we talked about the sort of Coworking market being small and you had so much demand for supporting, you know, corporate occupiers in their effort to, you know, go back to the office and book space and whatnot that you're probably seeing some of that too.

00:44:30 It's like, they're really trying to figure things out still. They don't know. And I think, right, we're, we're still maybe not getting much of that demand because it's just not there yet. Yeah. And I think a lot of It goes to pull it together. It's extremely difficult from a corporate view. I'd just, even at our scale of a current than 20 people,

00:44:55 it's so difficult to establish a rule that makes sense. It's usable and, and, and, and, and people like it Exactly. It's killed thousands of people I cannot say. Totally. And that was kind of her. She was like, look, I, you know, we're trying a lot of things and we're iterating. So 20, 22 is going to be,

00:45:20 we're going to roll some things out and see how it goes. And we might have to, you know, to, to sort of pivot their approach because they're really trying to, to figure out, she seemed very onboard with flex. And I think they use a lot of flex in smaller markets. But the other just sort of sense I got was that corporate employees really like to be at home.

00:45:45 Like they don't have to go to the office. And I think those of us who really love Coworking are like, why wouldn't you go to a coworking space if you could. And I think we're just still not getting that demand. I think it's still in front of us because the corporate users still don't know about flex. And they're so happy to not have to go to the corporate office.

00:46:08 They're just like at home. And some of them are solving the problem of, you know, whatever cleaners come and dogs bark at, you know, some of them are roommates and I can't be at home. Right. But it's just like the overall sense I got was just like Yetis people really like working at home. So I thought, okay, well,

00:46:27 so it's going to be awhile before, you know, we start to, but you know, the meeting space, the how do we get them to experience, you know, what you described, you know, at second home, like, beautiful. Like, why wouldn't you want to go there? You know? But it's, I think it's still in front of us.

00:46:43 Humans are really like, slow to change. Yeah, no, totally. It sits in front of us. And we were still yet to see this, this, this really comforting into corporate users consuming flex and coworking spaces at scale. I think we've seen just a little of it now, but there is so much more, and especially on yeah. Booking meeting rooms for a day,

00:47:11 meet private offices for a data, that kind of stuff, because yeah, well, corporate employees will work from home, but at the same time, I mean, you have to work with your team from time to time. I mean, I don't know, I'm, I'm, I'm lost at home nowadays. I just cannot eat anymore. I want to see people and they want to work with the team and,

00:47:38 and, and just be out there and, and, and brainstorm and have the community around me. It's, it's so much nicer. I'm totally in that camp, which is why I was like, wait, really? I think it's just a different, because we get to really make that ultimate choice for ourselves. And so, but I also think like for co-working spaces,

00:48:00 like keep chasing the people who make the decision, you know, because the, the corporate decision I think is pretty binary still. It's like, you're either going to the office or you're at home. And so this sort of in the middle we'll, we'll get there, but Yeah, straight to capture that also in, in, in the flex index going forward,

00:48:20 we will try to see if we can dig out data to keep an eye on, on, on these trends. This is, this is really the idea here to, to see and spot trends that are useful for, for the day industry and, and can make some help some people to, to make better, better. So by their business. So they called to be able to dig out some of these going forward of these trends in a,

00:48:52 in a, in a more visible and, and justifiable away. Yeah, well, right. And that could be a full-time gig for somebody making software. But the one KPI that you're tracking that we didn't go through is just duration of meeting space. So that looks like that, you know, maybe didn't change a ton, took a while to come back,

00:49:15 but that's almost back. Yeah. Which is, that's also positive. So it's sales people actually are spending now a good time in, in meetings in the office, which is very positive, like from, from 60% down from a hundred to 40 now back to 93%, it's a very steady and, and, and good recovery. So people are going out to the office and,

00:49:45 and spending good time in, in meeting spaces with other people. Yeah. And this is paid meeting space. So I think that's really positive too. So this is not just a member who booked their, your space and to sit for five hours on zoom and not, and not pay for that space. So hopefully if you're using Office RnD, your members are at least using credits and I'm getting,

00:50:11 you know, And then it was a joke about the habits of working that you can really get the worst of both worlds. So if you go to the office and your whole day on zoom, You know, I keep talking about my, on the podcast. I have a neighbor that works for Facebook, and she's like my little like window into what's happening in these big companies.

00:50:33 That's exactly what she's doing. She there's an office that's, she didn't use to have access to. That is closer, much closer to where we live instead of driving all the way to Menlo park, where Facebook is, but she just goes there and she says, well, the office is open. The gym is open. I don't think the food maybe was open yet.

00:50:56 So she said she walks down the halls and all the meeting rooms are full of people like on zoom. And that's a really international company. So I think they're on zoom a lot anyway, you know, so, but she, yeah, it makes her happier to go into the office and sit on zoom than sitting at home on zoom. Cause she likes to see the amenities that are starting to open.

00:51:19 I think she could, you know, I mean, Facebook has a lot of amenities, which was also kind of a big discussion and I need to find a way to translate this to, to Coworking. Just like, you know, the amenities that the big companies are kind of putting in place to compel people to come it's, you know, it's,

00:51:38 it's pretty meaningful. So I'm not sure what, If you figured this out, that's gonna be huge. I'm also from a company point of view, since we are in a, in a, in a coworking space and we want to have the same amenities that Facebook is offering. So, but we don't have the, the, the people resource to actually pull this off and make it available to police.

00:52:04 So if the space can do that, it's huge. Yeah. And you're in a big space, so they may have the scale to be able to do some of those things. Yep. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They are there to train. Yeah. But it's not easy. Yeah. Yeah. Miro, anything else you want to draw attention to before we wrap up?

00:52:30 No, I think overall it's, I'm, I'm very positive, very bullish. As I mentioned, I'm also very open to feedback. We'd love to hear your thoughts on KPIs on, on, on data that you want to see here that can really support your business better. So if you, if you have any, any thoughts and feedback for the flex index,

00:52:58 feel free to reach out to me directly dot com or our team. We are all very open to hear a bit to each other by out, and, and, and, and sure we can listen well and hear your feedback Miro. That's a very nice offer, and I'm sure that your inbox will be full of suggestions for pretty loves data, right?

00:53:26 It's just like, you know, suggestions on software, your yeah. The, the work that you do is never ending you. Right? You get one thing checked off the list and then something gets added to the list. I think it's the same thing probably with, with slicing data. So that's a great offer. I'll put Miro’s email address in the show notes,

00:53:47 and then we'll link to the flex index, which if you're listening and want to go find it, it's at Office RnD dot com forward slash flex index. And you can download the beautiful, easy to read PDF and get your eyeballs on the data that we just talk through. Well, Miro I'm going to let you go it is now after eight o'clock and you need to get some sleep and have a nap before you have to get up in the middle of the night to help.

00:54:17 Thank you for sharing. You're kidding me, Jamie. It's nice to discuss all of these. Yeah. Yeah. It's super helpful perspective. And please thank your team who is working so hard, your new team members on pulling the data and pulling the insights. We really appreciate it. Right. Well, thank you. Thanks Miro. Hey there, thanks for sticking with us through the end of the episode,

00:54:47 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.

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