240. Why Coworking Spaces Should Leverage Lead Aggregators

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240. Why Coworking Spaces Should Leverage Lead Aggregators

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, Some to the Everything Coworking podcast. This is your host. Jamie Russo. Thank you for joining me today. I am here with a guest that was last done on episode number 38.

00:00:40 And I think we talked on the episode what year? That was, it was a very long time ago. So it's time for some updates. And my guest is Hector Kolonas, founder of Syncaroo, and also founder of included.co and Syncaroo didn't exist on our last interview. Syncaroo solves the problem of helping coworking spaces list on lead aggregator sites, but without listing on each site individually.

00:01:09 So put in your data once and Syncaroo then sends it to any other platform that they are sinked with in terms of lead aggregators. They also do some work with brokers and they have a function that works with the Google business profile. So it's trying to solve the problem of you have a community manager or an operations manager. Who's also charged with marketing.

00:01:39 And for some of you being on lead aggregator sites is an important marketing tool, but your Community Manager doesn't have time to keep all of the listings updated individually. So sinker comes in and does that all at once. And I feel like we should do an episode on lead aggregators in general because they're becoming so much more prevalent. Some of them have been around for a very long time.

00:02:04 LiquidSpace for example, has been around for over 10 years, but there are probably dozens of them now. So when I say lead aggregators, I'm talking about the folks that do a lot of SEO and Google work to try to get in front of the end user either before they get to your site or in a way that you just don't have access to.

00:02:29 So LiquidSpace up suite up flex let's use up flex as an example, since that's pretty current news, they just announced an exclusive partnership with WeWork. So I'm still trying to sort through exactly what it looks like, but from what I can tell, it looks like we work will lift all of its inventory on up flex and use up flex as the platform that allows any,

00:02:55 we work enterprise customers to book on, we work to book, we work desks or offices, or, you know, whatever products and also have access to anyone else who is in that network. So that's kind of an interesting move. I think we work, I don't know how that works from a monetary standpoint, who takes the cut on that, which is the part I don't understand.

00:03:20 So we'll get some more detail on that, but LiquidSpace does something similar. We heard a big announcement, you know, late last year LiquidSpace desk pass is another one and we work, we're all given and we were not a lead aggregator per se, in this sort of example, with up flex, they probably tow the line a little bit. So LiquidSpace sorry for the,

00:03:50 the GSA announcement was what I was referring to the general services administration, which is the largest office space user in the United States. They announced a partnership with LiquidSpace and desk pass and then separately, a couple of operators, but that they would essentially be funneling leads there, folks from their system that needs space through those platforms because the government needs a single point of,

00:04:22 you know, or in this case, four planes of payment, right? So the, the prob problem, one of the problems that a LiquidSpace or an up flex solves for the end user is, Hey, all my employees can choose where they want to work, but I get billed by one platform. And then, you know, so the transaction happens on a LiquidSpace or an up flex or an up suite.

00:04:44 And the operator gets paid by those platforms. And the payment goes to those platforms. So if employees are booking at a hundred different coworking operators, that the government doesn't have to send checks or send checks, they don't have to make credit card payments, but then reconcile that in their system, on the backend to a hundred different operators, it happens through,

00:05:06 you know, one aggregator who can, they can make one payment to. So, you know, there's the ease of search, there's ease of payment. I, so I've been studying the short-term rental market a lot. I'm interested in doing an Airbnb and there are so many parallels to Coworking. And I listened to a podcast with these two women who talk a lot about how you need to have your own website and your own Instagram site for your Airbnb.

00:05:40 And I think that's an interesting recommendation, certainly in Coworking, we have to do that, but in the short-term rental market, something like 90% of bookings go through Airbnb and VRBO, you know, in a couple of the other smaller ones, although I don't even know who the other ones, they don't go direct. You know, the consumer behavior is to go to Airbnb.

00:06:02 The consumer behavior is not to Google short-term rental in Tucson, right? So it is possible that the Coworking market shifts in that direction. At some point, it is not there yet at this point. The important thing to remember is that anybody who's local to you is a likely to find you through a Google business search. So don't forget about your Google business listing,

00:06:31 which sinker helps with. I don't think it does all aspects. You have to maintain some of it yourself, but it helps to sync some of the information that goes across those platforms. So, you know, your local user who might be a business owner or an entrepreneur is looking Coworking near me, and then your Google listing pops up. And then hopefully they go to your website and your sales funnel kicks in.

00:06:53 But if you have a remote worker that's nearby, when they learn about Coworking, it might be through their HR group who says, Hey, you have this perk. Here's how you look for space. You use this link and it goes to up flex or LiquidSpace or one or the other, or desk pass or dishonor, or there are dozens of them and that's their window,

00:07:17 you know, that's their, their path to your business, not your Google business listing. So that may start to shift more now for some of you who are in smaller markets, maybe that doesn't happen for a long time or ever. And I know, you know, there's lots of folks will say, oh, I don't ever get leads from LiquidSpace.

00:07:38 It is still pretty market-specific, you know, if you're in a smaller market and I think this is changing as people move, right? So as people move to smaller markets, because now they can, then these lead aggregator sites may drive more demand in your direction, but probably assume the lead aggregator business is most important. If you're in or near a major city or secondary city,

00:08:06 if you're in a very small market, then there's probably just not enough traffic and enough demand for those sites to send you a lot of action. But there are some, I will mention, I've had a couple of big wins from folks in my Flight Group program who are using peer space, peer space. Didn't used to be in a lot of markets,

00:08:26 but people here and there would, would get a lot of wins from them. One of the women is in Houston and one's in Tucson. So they're expanding and I would consider them to be a lead aggregator. They mostly place folks are looking to host events. So you may have the ability to sell events on your website, but Google is picking up the Peerspace lead before they're picking up your lead.

00:08:52 So don't stop doing SEO. Don't start doing your own marketing, but you know, if you're not in a very small or rural market, you want to be figuring out how to get, kind of get listed on these aggregator sites. And sinker is a great option because without sinker Ru, again, you have to list individually on each of the site,

00:09:13 which can be exhausting for you or your team. So, anyway, again, we could do a long discussion about legal lead aggregators and kind of what's changing there. And maybe we will do that shortly, but I just wanted to give that as an intro to my discussion with Hector. So without further ado, I will jump right into my conversation with Hector.

00:09:37 Welcome. I have another repeat guest. I have Hector Colonus and he is the founder of sinker Ru. And he curates this week in Coworking, which is a newsletter. He, a weekly newsletter. He also previously founded, included.co, which is a Coworking perks program. We are going to do a catch-up because Hector and I were just chatting. And the last time he was on the podcast,

00:10:06 was it in 2017, early 2017, Hector was episode 38, the early days. And this will be in the two 40 ish range. So it's been some time you've your company has evolved. Your personal life has, has evolved. I'm super excited cause you have one of those unique perspectives, sort of macro and micro perspectives on the industry. So I'm looking forward to catching up.

00:10:36 So speaking of catching up, catch us up both personally and professionally, since the last time we chatted. Well, firstly, thanks for having me. It's great to be back. It's just amazing. 250 something episodes in between the two. Been fantastic to see all the great work you've done in your communities have done. So between that time from my side yet,

00:10:58 there's a lot, that's changed one, one kind of point to note on the intro. I co-founded sinker group. So I, I co-founder with Robert Croft, who is my co-founder at the company, but a bit of kind of backstory or update on the backstory. Last time we spoke, we had, we had launched this company called included.co. We run the Coworking pucks programs,

00:11:23 I think at the time around 50 to 60 coworking spaces worldwide, which just started working with an American spaces. And I told you about this in the podcast about this dream. I had to move to America to, to lead the company from here. Well, now I'm in America. The family is growing. We're based here. Included now represents at least 780 coworking spaces worldwide.

00:11:48 We power pucks programs embedded in nexus better than Office RnD. It is now run by Joanne at full for who is based out in, in Germany. She leaves the, the day-to-day operations. And I've spent a lot of my time shifting to what we're building at Syncaroo, noticing that how people discover the right space or the right space at the right time for the right job,

00:12:15 just hasn't evolved quick enough for the way the world is working and the world, the way the world is changing, how it works. So bids back in November, I looked at know, what was the challenges put out an open call on my blog spoke to a whole lot of really amazing people around the industry. And I ended up co-founding Cinco road to tackle what we think is one of the biggest challenges in the day-to-day running of co-working spaces today on five years from now.

00:12:43 So right in the meantime, while you're doing all of this innovative work, you have a four and a half month old son named Augie, came into the world and shook things up a little bit. When you and I were corresponding, I was like, Hector, I don't know how you do all the things that you do. And you know, you're a new dad,

00:13:01 so congrats on that. But yeah. And congrats on staying sane. And so, yeah. Tell us about sinker Ru you saw a problem and you want to solve it. I'm guessing this is not the last problem you'll solve in the industry. So yeah. What does it solve? How does it work? All the things. And then I'll, I'll poke around with some follow-up questions.

00:13:26 So I think the main, the main thing I noticed was coworking space. I spent a lot of a time finding the perfect people to run their communities. People who have the best personal skills, they have some fluency with computers. They understand the business and hospitality side on what they don't hire people to do is copy information from one system to another. Like it's just a very bad use of those people's time who could be improving the employee,

00:13:55 the tenant experience, improving the, the visitor experience, which is improving the way the space operates. So I initially looked at w why isn't there a way for all these management systems to update the abundance of online directories that exist for coworking spaces. And one of the things we found is that because there was no independent unified mechanism for all these different systems to talk to each other that wasn't fully owned or influenced by any of the platforms or the management systems.

00:14:34 So we set out to build what we believe is the middleware solutions or a system that sits between solutions, but also a global distribution system for the inventory and the booking flow of our flex spaces. Now we came up and we started working on this in 2019. We knew that in the future, the frequency, quantity and value of transactions would skyrocket for coworking spaces.

00:15:05 If you want to drive back to 2019 with me, we, at that time had, you know, most sales were for short term, one month passes, a slight increase in day passes shift. Now to sort of 2021, we have governments giving access to their entire employee base. We have entire multinational banks giving apps to their employees. We have the,

00:15:30 you know, some of the world's largest commercial brokerages giving remotes or drop-in access to their, to their clients, to the client clients, et cetera. So what does that mean? It just, if the, if the Community Manager had to update all these different systems, we're talking about hundreds of hours a year. If we then have to think about for every transaction,

00:15:53 something needs to be copied from one system into a system and then access granted, and then meeting room booked and all these things that need to happen for every single one of these transactions. What happens when, you know, the next 5 million people want to use a coworking space for three hours a day, or as they move throughout a city or, you know,

00:16:13 be close to their, their kid's school in the afternoon, but be close to clients in the morning. And the only way for us to facilitate is to automate those pieces are the most exhausting and boring pieces of the whole transaction, but it was just completely broken. So we spent a year behind the scenes connecting a whole bunch of different systems, and we then rolled out in the middle of last year.

00:16:37 I private beta. So we're inviting spaces who are either using nexus cobalt Office, RnD desk works. And hopefully as soon as census to jump in and start automating these processes, automating how they're not only updating these platforms, but also how they're getting their bookings, sync it back into their centralized management system. So they can know who's coming, where they came from,

00:17:01 do some business intelligence on that. And I realized I've been talking for a way too long. So any questions on that? The questions are building up Hector. So it's good. We'll give you a break and have some water. Okay. When you say systems, give us some examples of like the, yeah. The, the inbound systems and yeah,

00:17:24 let's start there. Cool. So I'm trying to think if I should go more hype. No, we won't go up. They will go for actual examples. And then I'll say why we've chosen those as our pilots. So we've got things like Google business listings, right? I know really important to you. Very, very, very, very important for coworking spaces,

00:17:43 right? We, we sink through the, the opening hours on some, some critical information to grow a business. Now it's fine if you have one space, but if you have a hundred spaces, keeping that stuff up to date, it's a whole job, Especially because that platform has expanded, you can put products up, right? There's, there's more inventory.

00:18:02 Yeah. It's different. It has evolved, which is great, but you're right. Another whole system to keep it Exactly right. And then we've got up flex cloud VO. We're waiting for flow desk, poss flow costs. And I think three more who are busy finishing their integrations. We've also got a brokers portal broker system. So instead of sending out,

00:18:26 you know, those emails that you have to keep sending out to the big brokers or the independent brokers in your area who keep saying, we have 30% desk Senator availability right now you lose this client. We've basically designed a mechanism where you can give independent operator, independent brokers, a snapshot of your availability now, and for the next three months. So they don't have to email back and forth to say,

00:18:52 Hey, we have a client instead. They're like, we see you have availability for a 10 person office. We'd like to book a for our client. Can we come and do a viewing? That's saved what maybe five emails per request adds up to hundreds of emails From being taken off the list. One of the biggest complaints I often hear is I felt like I responded right away,

00:19:11 like moved on RA. So our idea is to give brokers more, more tools. We're seeing it now from, from all the other brokers. They're also noticing this. We're seeing, you know, everyone from absent young to JLL, Colliers, they're all investing in their own tech stacks for getting in this inventory. So integrating with them. But there's also independent boutique brokers who re get Coworking,

00:19:36 really get the differences and the nuances between spaces who are increasingly getting more and more traffic, but they haven't got the budgets to build entire tech stack. So we're giving them tools to be able to work with, you know, however many spaces they want to work with and get the data they need to close sales foster, obviously, that's, that's the end goal.

00:19:57 Other than that, we've got a bro, we got a local website widgets. So you can create as many little snapshots of your inventory. You can give that to your local coffee, shop your local chamber of commerce, whoever you've built, kind of partnerships with. They put it inside their own websites and they will stay automatically updated. So every time you build upon a ship,

00:20:18 you have another live feed of your inventory to their customer base. And that's, that's proven very, very popular. I, we, we built it as kind of something that one customer needed and more and more spaces are like, well, why wouldn't I, instead of just giving them five fixtures and our current pricing, give them this little widget that they can put on their website and it will always show what's available what the pricing is.

00:20:41 And you don't have to worry about outdated things. I'm being a little bit the internet. Hey, I just wanted 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. If you're working on opening a coworking space,

00:21:03 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, I want to make sure you know,

00:21:25 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.

00:21:53 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.

00:22:25 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. So that's, that's just a snapshot of kind of what, what we're thinking today. We've got another 60 platforms in development or, Well, I was going to say there's so many, I think you were involved in the flex office event in the fall that officer indeed did.

00:22:53 And I, in my talk, I had a slide of like all the lead sources and it's like, it feels like it's never ending there. You know, there's so many folks who kind of want to play in that arena. And it's hard to know. I get asked all the time, which one should I be on? Right. And so I,

00:23:12 and you're probably a better person to ask that question too, but it used to be so without sinker Ru, right, the answer would be okay if right, if you only have the capacity to do five of them, which was a real challenge to your point, right? You can only commit you have to sorta 80, 20 this. And so then you don't really know if you're missing leads from other lead sources,

00:23:36 but you can only do so much. So if you're going to pick five, pick these, so the ultimate vision of sinker Ru is you don't have to pick, enter it here and it'll sync to any, do the, does the operator have to opt in to the lead sources? They have to sort of make that. Okay. So once you've sort of created an account,

00:23:56 you just have to go through that one time and then it all sinks. Yeah, Correct. So the, the whole idea is we don't like spaces, a leaving money on the table. We don't like people who might be perfect for co-working space, not knowing that it exists or a landlord or wherever it is. We'll just, don't like the idea of having to pick winners when you don't know what they're all working on.

00:24:23 There is this big notion right now. Right? I feel that way too much. I don't know. There's so many new ones and they, maybe they're getting this great lead flow. I, you know, it's, it sort of takes a while for that to flow through. And, and also it's market dependent. I tell people that too, I'm like,

00:24:39 okay, well, if I, if I had to pick, I would look at these, but you also kind of have to test because it's market dependent. Yeah. Yep. And that testing takes time away from other things. So even though you're not, you know, you're not losing leads, you're losing opportunities from walk-ins or upselling to members and referrals,

00:24:56 Organic or paid marketing. But I love that you do the Google business profile because that's not just other lead sources. That's your own marketing. Yeah. Yeah. So we have this, this notion that we speak to all of the operators who join our beta about it's a framework that we move away from this idea of a tech stack and what technology they should be using in their space to this idea of thinking of a coworking space or any,

00:25:21 any shared workspace from the idea of an operational stack, what are the businesses, products, services, and teams that you need to build into your, your, your stack so that you bring people from the marketing world, the marketing channels, through to your lead generation, into your sales, and then hold them in your hospitality core. So this is a,

00:25:43 this is funny. An idea of you have these different layers on the furthest out is your marketing. It's normally outbound is normally things like Google business, widgets, things like that. Things like just promote what's available. And then you got your, your lead generation, your aggregators, your booking platforms, your PR that is more engaged with generating leads. And then you've got your sales,

00:26:08 your brokerages, your CRM, those kinds of stuff. And then in the middle, you go hospitality. Anything that your customer touches, that's where you got to focus on is how quickly you can get the most customers into that core to drive up your revenues. And that is how we, we normally recommend that spaces. Think about the shift in don't just pick solutions that do everything.

00:26:32 All right. Look at those stacks and pick the things that you can add that give you to X, you know, returns, or at least one, even if it's not, as long as it's not creating a deficit, you should be listed that you should, because as you said, you don't know what they're doing, right. We're seeing, you know,

00:26:50 London right now is probably the hot spot for aggregated aggregated competition. Right now we're seeing entire tubes, the, the subway, the underground being taken over by guerrilla campaigns for some of the apps we're seeing interesting town criers being brought into the city into areas and screaming about apps. We're seeing acquisitions. We're seeing, you know, there's so much so many different apps and we don't know who they're,

00:27:18 what they're each targeting. Obviously there's a lot more that has to be done. I think from the, the aggregative sides to be more transparent about who they're serving, and hopefully we can help them without over the next few months. But the idea is if you're a space is I is catering to corporate bookings. Drop-in booking things like that. There are some players in that field,

00:27:42 but that doesn't mean that the others won't shift into that. And then if they do shift into that and you're knowing their platform, then you've had that. You have that gap again. Right? So our goal, yeah, as you said, is to allow people to list everywhere and know that everything stays up to date, but we do put the control in the operator's hands.

00:28:01 So they have full control from, from their sinker root system, which resources are shared with which, which brokers, which platforms, which aggregators, which so it's not that they have to give all their information to every platform. We're seeing a lot of kind of merge acquisitions happening now on the aggregator side, which means down the line, we might see a competitor investing or owning one of the platforms.

00:28:27 So you have to kind of choose how much information you give to them to still get the leads, but not enough that you kind of spill, spill your guts, spill your black book. So we've always focused on operator data protection first, and then looked at how we can use those settings and those controls to give, to drive up revenues and reach,

00:28:50 instead of just saying, well, you have to get all your information otherwise you can't get. So an example, just being, I don't have to list all my offices or I don't have to write, I don't have to put all my inventory out. I could sort of pick and choose, or some people say, I don't want to list my offices.

00:29:05 I can sell my offices myself. I don't want to pay the 10% or, you know, whatever fee. I also want to highlight a point that you made all of the end users that didn't use to be in the Coworking ecosystem. And the fact that this is a struggle for operators. And, you know, I used to sort of be in the camp of everybody needs a full-time membership.

00:29:29 That's how the model works now. And now we see, I have a good friend, for example, who works for Zendesk. And she said, oh, we all got $300 a month stipends, Coworking. And I'm like, that's awesome. Except that's not an office. Right. That's like, depending on the market, it is not even a dedicated desk.

00:29:53 So like how, what's the, how are they going to use that? You know, does she want five days in an office? Does she want to, you know, a half a day in a meeting room? Like, how is she going to spend that? And I think what you're saying is right, and where is she going to spend it?

00:30:09 Is she going direct to you? Or has the employer said, you got to go through X platform. Yep. Right. And so on the operator and being able to handle the D that like demand of like these bite size or, you know, whatever that looks like, because we didn't want to use to have the, you know, sort of high maintenance part to super part,

00:30:32 you know, part-time but there's, that market is so we'll be big. I think we have a quite, I'm guessing you have more insight, you know, into those transactions that are happening than I do. I get the sense, like, we're still at the very beginning of that. Like actually, cause even you said, you know, COVID spikes and some people are just like,

00:30:53 we're not quite there yet. And it's a really new behavior for that user to learn. But it's like, the potential is so high right now for that to happen. Yeah. Yeah. I think, I think you hit a really important points on the head there that operators need to really understand the people who are choosing where and how, and when to work have never had to pick before they don't know anything about us,

00:31:21 the aggregators, what was popular in 2019 radio, nothing. Right. So they're turning to their friends on Instagram. They're turning to the folks on Tik TOK. They're looking at, you know, where they get invited to for meetings or events or what, and they pick it up. So I think it's really, really important for people to realize that the decision makers have changed.

00:31:44 It's either team leaders or independence or individuals. And It could exactly. But I mean, you're also getting this idea where a lot of operators they're like, okay, go use the $300 stipend. It's easier for us to do. Cause we just assign it to you. It's going to be a FOSS at the next tax time, not this one, but the next one people have to define whether that's the income or not,

00:32:08 even though it's a stipend. So are we going to see a lot more organizations shift to kind of centralizing that you can use the coworking space as much as you want, use the credit, whatever, but we need the account one place to show us, you know, what people are using, but also that with those accounts to show us the data,

00:32:27 right? If I'm, if I'm an employer and I have 10,000 employees around the world, I want to see where people are congregating. If they were given unlimited choice. If we see that we had an office in Manhattan, we don't need an office in Manhattan because everyone's congregating in Brooklyn or congregating and Jersey city, why not get a team membership, Georgia city and lower that monthly cost,

00:32:47 right? So you got to make really, really interesting shifts to your workspace strategy, being more kind of responsive, as opposed as opposed to predictive. Whereas before we had this idea where you had to go and get a Coworking membership, 30 people, and I hope that everyone can commute in there. I mean, when I got into Coworking on the kind of ad BMB for Coworking side,

00:33:08 I was very, very prominent in London. And we all the number one question is what, what, what use stations is it close to? What's the, what's the transportation we need to make sure our employees can get in from zone four. Whereas now if you can give people full, unlimited rein to go pick where they want to work and then open offices where you see them already congregating,

00:33:29 it changes the whole acquisition strategy, right? And basically the world of well as the world of work changes the way we as operators aware as, as, as a, as a, as a ecosystem of of business, have to change how we interact. It's not just that it's, it's an unnecessary overhead to have a day member. That day member might be a CW executive.

00:33:54 They might then bring in 30 people next week and then, you know, open an office there and take an entire floor. You never know who's using these day passes, et cetera. So yeah, it's just going to change everything and you have to be listed everywhere. You have to make sure you have fluid experiences. Everyone has a uniform on a first citizen experience because I think that's what happens a lot of times.

00:34:16 I mean, we saw it with Phil when he booked the space in New York, he needed to get in and the alarm went off like a full-time member would never have that problem. Right. They would have been some, some system in place, but because it came through an app, the person didn't see it, whatever there was a delay, we can't risk that because if he was a C-level executive or it was,

00:34:35 you know, at some point that space is essentially blacklisted for something that was outside of their control. And so these things are happening day in, day out, and we just have to be better at automating the systems so that we can capture the opportunity as opposed to letting it become a liability or risk. So walk me through sort of the full workflow.

00:34:59 Is it that if someone, if a lead comes in and books through sinker, like where does that experience and, and yeah. What do they get funneled into? So today, no one can book on Syncaroo, right? That's a very important distinction to make. We are not competing with any of the aggregators or brokers. Anyone, no problem to say.

00:35:24 Cause a lot of folks ask us like, oh, why, why don't you just do the bookings? Because that's not our business, we're a tech company. We're only focused on data, data synchronization. So let's say Like the spokes are all the yes, you said yes. Yeah. So they booking comes through a integrated system. That's say one of the booking platforms before the booking is confirmed,

00:35:45 we do a whole bunch of checks. We make sure that it's within operating hours. There's Community Manager on, on side, based on the data we have. There's no internal bookings. There's no external bookings from any other app for that time. All these green lights go through. Okay. Approve the booking that happens in a couple of maybe a hundred milliseconds.

00:36:04 So really instantaneous for the end experience, but protecting the operator from the most annoying parts about having a booking request that booking is confirmed, it then gets piped back into their next, that is Office RnD, whatever it is, management system, the same way as an internal member, it will say that it came through by a sinker, a buyer X app,

00:36:25 and it doesn't go into calendar a something. It goes right into the management system. So that the person who walks in at the front door first and welcomes the guests, knows exactly what to find information. And that's pretty much where we were we're ended right now. We have clients who are making that a richer, more seamless experience for other pieces. But right now we just want to make sure that those inbound,

00:36:48 that inbound demand, those bookings, those entire new ways of using workspaces can be serviced without extra map. And tell me if I'm wrong. The another aspect of the value of that workflow is that if that booking goes into Office RnD and I have a bunch of, you know, things that are triggered and officer and B, that all happened in Office,

00:37:14 I don't have to figure out like, oh, I have to manually do it. Cause they came from this place. Exactly. So what we, what we realized when we started looking into this is most people's center of truth or their operations runs through their monitoring system. That's where they keep everything up to date because that's the way it, if we're honest,

00:37:30 that's where I love this. The center of truth is such a great way to, to put it Because everything else is connected to that. Your automations, your invoicing, everything else has nobody connected to that. The big piece that's missing is all these different people who want to help fill your space. And they just weren't able to connect into that scent into,

00:37:51 into that, that, that hub into your hospitality core. We want to enable that and then, you know, help you expand out from that. So it's, as you said, it's the things you would have normally done automated for a member can still be done. They'll just be done now for people using the ends of connected apps. Yep. I know.

00:38:11 I it's. I love it. It's makes complete sense. I feel like there's something else I wanted to point out there bookings. Yeah. It'll come back to me in a second. So the, yeah, I lost my thought on that. No problem. So what do you see kind of bigger picture aggregator movement. What do you, how do you refer to them?

00:38:46 Aggregators lead gen companies, brokers, all of the above. I feel like it's good to, to talk about the terminology because I'll get new folks. Sometimes you're like what? You know, so Exactly. So I mean, we, we, we always lean back on the operational stack, so they're either marketing lead generation or sales platforms. Sometimes they blur between them.

00:39:13 But that's how you can clearly distinguish whether it's purely outbound marketing, but it's something that generates a lead or something that actually charges the customer and then you have to invoice afterwards. So that's how we differentiate the three things. I forgot what the question was after that. Oh yeah. Just the terminology of brokers we gen yeah. Then you're asking the soul of what,

00:39:38 what do I see? What are the big shifts, right? Where we're not, we're not where the puck is now, but where the puck is going. Right. And I, I think the way that the next five to 10 million people interact with coworking space on a daily basis, the mechanisms that will enable that haven't been built yet. I truly believe that we're going to see desk bookings from their watches.

00:40:05 We're going to see desk bookings from their Google calendars. Are there any kinds of, we're going to see, you know, it's going to become as seamless as ordering an Uber through Google maps, it's going to be as seamless as, you know, ordering a delivery from a restaurant through their website, but delivered by our, I thought there's going to be so many ways that the future employee,

00:40:29 the future workforce will interact with physical space that I just don't think have been built purely because there wasn't a data infrastructure to connect the physical world with the digital world. We're seeing a lot of shifts. Now we're seeing a lot of momentum moving towards corporate bookings team accounts, centralized billing is a huge opportunity. We're also seeing, you know, platforms launched purely for the creator economy platforms launched purely for,

00:40:58 you know, specific really, really niche communities. And that that's, it sounds weird, but you know, if you get the best, YouTube is all using one app, all needing the same set of criteria, all booking through one out that becomes a whole new market. There's a whole new way for people to engage with a physical space. And then you've got,

00:41:17 e-commerce all these people need someone to take photos. They need some to do review. They need somebody to do a meetings. Why, why isn't there a desk booking mechanism behind Etsy, right? Or a pop-up system where they can show there's many ways that the world will interact with physical flex space. And I think we're at that tip. Now we're going to start seeing so much more innovation.

00:41:43 We're going to say so much more newcomers come into the sector who will cause higher niches, you know, before Airbnb renting out your house, didn't make any, any sense to someone who was a complete stranger. Right? And I think we're at that budge. Now we have the, we have the inventory, we have the operational experience. We have a lot of experienced platforms out there.

00:42:08 And now we have newcomers. We have people who are booking space for the first time. A lot of people who launched some of the most popular aggregators right now felt the frustration of trying to book space when they first entered the market. So what's going to happen is the P the newer generations of workers who have entirely new ways of thinking of interacting with the space are probably gonna find the same frustrations they're going to find.

00:42:35 Well, I think we can do a better, why don't we build an app that lets people book by the minute, by the hour or whatever it is. And that's where I think it's going. I think we're going to see a lot more consolidation or that CLO of the, a lot of aggregators who were from, let's say, version three and Coworking consolidating,

00:42:52 and then we're going to do this new version, this new breed of, of integrations, deep integrations into, you know, core corporate commercial booking platforms. And it's just going to be, it's just going to be fascinating. And 2022 is going to be probably the year where we see really interesting things happening on the booking element of our coworking spaces. So I'm curious what your sort of intuitive,

00:43:19 intuitive side says about human behavior around leaving the house. So I was, I was talking to one of the aggregators and he made this point that gave me some pause. You know, he said that Coworking used to kind of compete with the office. It was like the cooler better office. He's like, and now it kind of is the office, right?

00:43:45 Because, because the reference point is home for everyone. And he was just kind of, you know, will people go, you know, will they, would they leave the house? Would they do that? And I think one of the things that's happening is sorry, I went to this San Francisco work tech conference and you know, all of these work tech is just,

00:44:10 it's very like corporate real estate folks and HR and all the people who are making policy around where people work. And I mean, my takeaway was like, wow, people are really anchoring on working at home. And I think partly that's because they don't feel like they can advocate for the middle ground. Right. It's it's, you know, home is as far as I can sort of push right now,

00:44:36 but I'd rather be at home than at work. So, yeah, I just am curious, like we get really excited about all the potential demand. What's your sense as to, I mean, I think we have to, there's essentially two things that are happening right at 20 20, 20, 21, a lot of the narrative was work from home or work from the office.

00:44:56 There was no mention of this work near home. Third places, you know, working from a coworking space two days a week. And the, the HQ, although in our circles, the hybrid idea or the hub and spoke thing was talked about endlessly. But no one really explained that to the public. Once again, going back to the decision makers,

00:45:21 like if they don't know that they can choose that because every week is telling them home or office, if I have to worry about childcare or whatever it is, I'm going to choose home because that makes them most of, and I hate commuting. Everyone hates commuting, right? Like it's such a dead time. I mean, I like going for a walk around in the morning instead of commuting,

00:45:40 but having to do the commute outside of my preference is absolutely infuriating to many people. We're seeing it all over the world. I think that's the one fixing that narrative has to happen. Right? People have to understand that they have this flexibility. And the second is it comes down to the employers. It comes down to them, making it easy that someone doesn't have to ask permission.

00:46:06 They don't have to go through an application process. They can be given access to space and use it as, and when they want, because what happens then is we're seeing a lot of case studies. Now companies like Spotify, where in their internal Spotify and slack, I think were the two leading examples. They would invite other coworkers to come to the office so they can hang out and work on projects.

00:46:31 I want to say the office, I'm saying the coworking space, that's nearest to them. We're coordinating a centralized point that they can all commute to for specific projects or on specific days, or maybe on a Friday. And they will go for a drink afterwards. So the social source of ideas is still there. It just has to be looked at from a different type.

00:46:49 Like the idea of corporate culture is completely changing for those companies, celebrating those, those gathers those people who bring together your, your employees to a central place and giving them the tools to make it really easy for someone to decide. I mean, if I have to pick between sitting on my desk or go find a space, do a viewing, make a request,

00:47:11 asked my boss if I can use that, oh, it's $50 more. Okay. Calculate whether I want to spend $600 a year a year. Yeah. And The less decisions that have to make the better and that that's, that's where it's going to get to. I think we're going to, we're going to see that really opening people's eyes because for a long time,

00:47:34 a lot of people wanted to work from home. And then they did pre pandemic dies and they realized how they want to go look. That's why Coworking exploded. That was where we all go into this from. And we're, as we shift away from that, that, that duality either work from home or work from the office, people will start experiments.

00:47:56 It they'll start. As I said, rebuilding their days based on the outside of work stuff, where is soccer practice today? Where is that client meeting? Where do I went on and meet my friends for dinner off duty and then picking locations based on those things as a cause. I mean, a laptop can plug in any way, as long as the infrastructure is built and provides the same experience,

00:48:22 regardless of where you are, you have that freedom. And I think that's where we're going to get to is freeing the knowledge workers to pick how to structure their day. Now, I wish it could be possible for all workers everywhere, but right now is, you know, we're talking about desk-based work. And I think that if that freedom is given,

00:48:41 we're going to see that, that, that demand start to surge. But it's a messaging thing right now. It's just about explaining that you, you can work not in the office, but not from home. Yeah. Somebody needs to run that campaign for us. I suppose, all of the aggregators, you know, all the platforms that you're bringing together will their incentive to help do that for the industry.

00:49:09 Exactly. I mean that, that's what their job is, right? Their job is to generate those leads and generate that, that, that, that idea of, of remote flexible freedom to pick, to work where you want to work and not this idea of you're going to sit on the beach, sipping Mai Tai's instead of doing your work, right.

00:49:25 There's, there's this really weird remote digital nomad idea that was propagated in the last 10 years. And it's up to the aggregators and the booking platforms and the brokers, and even the employers to promote the true image. And it's not what we had in 2020. It's not what we had early 20, 21. It's not this being forced to work from your one bedroom in Manhattan,

00:49:46 right? And that that's going to take time because if you speak to the employers, they're still trying to figure out what it all means. And the more we can mix employers and Coworking, the better that narrative will become. The more they can experience it themselves, the better than our it will become. And that that's how we all win. I love it.

00:50:07 Hector, thank you for taking the time to do this. We need to not have 200 episodes go by before we do this again. And I think there will be probably some exponential shifts in the marketplace in the next year or so. So I hope we can do this again. So I have a bunch of links for you in the show notes, your personal sites,

00:50:32 and grew this weekend, Coworking, your awesome newsletter that highlights like all the, do not miss things that happened in the industry every week. So if you want to connect with Hector, find the newsletter. You can do that in the show notes. Hector, anything I missed before we wrap up? Nope. That's everything. Awesome. Thank you very much again for having me.

00:50:55 And yes, that's, that's aim for a hundred next time at the right. I'm going to, I'm going to put you in the calendar. Thanks Hector. Hey there, thanks for sticking with us through the end of the episode, don't forget to subscribe on your favorite podcast player. And if you were enjoying the podcast, please go leave us a review.

00:51:19 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. You can join us for podcast, videos, and Q and a videos and other things that we post to the channel.

00:51:42 We'd love to see you there.

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