289. The Future Workplace is Creative Cubes

Resources Mentioned in this Podcast:

Everything Coworking Featured Resources:

TRANSCRIPTION

289. The Future Workplace is Creative Cubes

00:00:02 Welcome to the Everything Coworking podcast, where every week I keep you updated on the latest trends and how-tos in Coworking. I owned and operated Coworking spaces for eight years and then served as the executive director of the Global Workspace Association for five years. And today I work with hundreds of operators and community managers every month, allowing me to bring you thought provoking operator,

00:00:29 case studies and inspirational interviews with industry thought leaders to help you confidently stay on top of what's important and what you can apply to your own role in the Coworking industry. Welcome to the Everything Coworking podcast. This is your host, Jamie Russo. I have been looking forward to this podcast since I booked it. Tobi Skovron is the founder and CEO of Creative Cubes in Melbourne,

00:01:01 Australia. And I think he has created what is the future of Work. It's Built, he has built it, and it may be that I am the ideal customer for what he's built, and you'll hear him describe it and talk about how it fits the flow of his life and of his members. He has a great personal story. It was really fun to hear his story.

00:01:24 I could tell by the research I'd done on him online that he is just a really multi-passionate, energetic entrepreneur who is just going after pursuing relentlessly the vision that he has. And it was really fun to hear him share. And I do think he just has figured out, you know, what people want. He's combined amazing, beautiful design in the right locations.

00:01:51 He's very, very picky about where he locates. He still signs lease. He is well capitalized, I think. And so he has the ability to do that. Food, beverage events, extreme hospitality. He gives some examples of how his happiness team serves as members and it's pretty best in class. And I think we will see more of this model because I think it's what people want.

00:02:17 And when I think about, I think we have some time before, you know, this level of experience is all people will settle for, but I think we might get there at some point. There are lots of segments of folks out there, but you know, Tobi says he wants to, you know, deliver the best he he wants, you know,

00:02:35 to be the best. And I think he absolutely is right now. But I think there's gonna be con some convergence in the industry to that approach of creating an ecosystem, a significant hospitality and food and beverage approach. He does mention his food and beverage, you know, for the general membership even calls it a lost leader, but it contributes, it has great margin when it contributes to his event business.

00:03:00 So they do catering for their events and they do pretty significant events. So I think there's a lot of aspects of his model that we're going to see more of and more folks doing. So I think he's really innovative. He's been working on this for a long time, pre Covid and you know, there's a, a little bit of vision and a little bit of timing and a little bit of luck involved in,

00:03:23 you know, what he's put together. He also shares, yeah, Shaquille O'Neal visit one of his Creative Cubes spaces and do a talk. So he has a pretty incredible network, but a very humble guy. It was a real treat to talk with him. And you are also going to enjoy this conversation. Welcome I have with me today, Tobi Skovron.

00:03:47 Did I get that right? That's exactly it. Jamie. Thank you. Okay. I can't believe our paths like have not crossed. And I think I started seeing your shack posts on LinkedIn. I was like, have I not talked to this guy? So I messaged you back in the fall and was like, we need to connect. And you were speaking at Salesforce,

00:04:05 so you're in Melbourne, is that right? Yeah, Melbourne is straight out, yes. Yeah, Your spaces are gorgeous. So I have so many questions free, you know. Okay. So you're, I mean, one of the things you do is you create and operate co-working spaces, you do a number of other things. So, okay. Can we start with your story first?

00:04:27 You, you lived in Los Angeles for a little while? Yeah. Okay. Proudly, I think. I think actually when people say, you know, like where you're from? My heart is in Southern California. It's in Los Angeles. My two kids were born there. Oh, is that right? Okay. Yeah. I lived there for just shy of a decade.

00:04:46 We were supposed to be there for one to two years. Oh, that's Upstate a long time. Okay. I looked at your like LinkedIn and it looked like a shorter, I must not have read it wrong. Okay. 10 years is a long time. Yeah. Yeah. 10 years Southern California. My LinkedIn probably shows that I was running an Australian business as well,

00:05:02 because at The same time. So that's probably what confused me, because you're a multi-passionate, like serial entrepreneur. Yes, yes. So you're the, I should've I left out your, I mean, you're the CEO of Creative Cubes is your space, but Yes. So we'll kind of back into your story. So yes, how did you end up in la?

00:05:19 What did you do there? And then we'll get into market working story. Yeah. It's kind of wild, right? So, but it's all connected and it'll make sense in the next three to four minutes. Right. Okay. So Wild Entrepreneur, extremely passionate about making positive impact on the world. My first business, my first aha moment was I moved from Sydney,

00:05:40 Australia to Melbourne, Australia, which is about southern California to Northern California. It's an hour, hour Flight. And to be with my girlfriend at the time who we just talked about 20 years together now 15, almost 16 years married. And I bought her a dog. It was, was sort of like before you have kids, a lot of people kind of,

00:06:00 at least I was a statistic to getting, getting a dog and Yeah, totally. That Becomes, he Totally, he totally did that. Although for, for me, it was a test for my husband, which he fully knew. I was like, can this guy take care of something? Let's see. Well, similar test for me only that I ended up building a business out of it.

00:06:21 Simone, my wife, said Toes. I lived in a one bedroom apartment and I, and she said, toes, we just need a patch of backyard on our balcony. And that was the eureka moment for me. And I created a product called Pet Lou, which is potty in Australia, lube toilet. It's a grass potty system for dogs to go to the toilet.

00:06:39 It was a printer paper in cartridge business model. So for every LU market I was selling training, replacement grasses, absorber materials, cleaning aids, chemical free degradable, eco-friendly, and was supposed to be positive for people, pets, and the planet, despite the fact that I was dealing with the not so nice end of the pit. Right. And so that journey was a 10 year journey.

00:07:04 After about six years operating in Australia, we started to get real demand from the United States. And so I moved to the US as part of our US expansion. We were pretty established here in Australia. And it was an opportunity for my wife and I in 2008, a year after we got married to sort of live and trade and work and be abroad and grow together.

00:07:27 And so we were lying on the couch one Sunday afternoon and she goes, Hey, do you wanna go live overseas? And I'm like, yes. I, I never really thought about it. She's like, all right, let's just play this wild, you know, conversation out. If you could go anywhere, where would you want to go? And I'd go,

00:07:45 where would you want to go? Because I'm a very shouss hospitable, the women in my world, which we can talk about later, are always trying to be observing to them and my women in the world. I'm talking about my mom, my two sisters, my two daughters, my wife, my two sister-in-laws, my mother-in-law. Oh my gosh, okay.

00:08:02 And she goes, no, I asked you first. And I said, all right, on the count of three, you tell me, I'll tell you. She said, la I said, Los Angeles. Okay. So within about a six month period, we kind of wrapped everything up, put a GM into our Australian operations, and I moved abroad at the peak of the global financial crisis and started working my US business had outsourced at Logistics Center in Reno,

00:08:29 Nevada. And we were supplying Petco, Petmart, sky, more front gate, Amazon two and half thousand independent retailers. But my, so my logistics center was actually a third party operation. And so, so long as I was connected to the internet, I was in business, you know, I had cloud technology, Salesforce products. I could speak to my warehouse digitally via the,

00:08:54 via the technology that I implemented. And so, so long as my laptop was open or I had a computer or I had connection to the internet, sometimes it was just on the phone. I was open for business. The downside to running this fast-paced business was to save money. Cause the business was exploding, but I never really had any money. It was always the classic another shipment,

00:09:17 right? Yeah. Yeah. So things were going great, but like the growth was stripping any liquid that I had outta my pocket straight away. And so to save some money, I basically, like my North American headquarters beyond my logistics center was actually a third bedroom in my Venice Beach apartment. And so newly married, living in Southern California, I bought my dogs from Australia.

00:09:42 You know, you know, we lived in this nice condo complex, Venice Beach just on the, on the doorstep where the basketball is, the Lakers in downtown, just off the 10 freeway. Things were really good with one exception. And that was, my wife and I were the only two that knew each other there and then, and so out of me because she would come in and go,

00:10:00 Hey, do you wanna go for a bike ride? Do you wanna go walk? I'm like, darling, I like baby. I'm working. Like, yeah, I'm here, but I'm not Here. Right, right. But don't see me. Right. Yeah. But like equally, equally, she would wait all day for me to finish because there was no one else.

00:10:15 Like, she couldn't call her friends and her mom, her sisters and this and that and hang out because it was just me and her. And so, and she couldn't work because she was a spouse and my visa enabled us, but her visa didn't. Oh, Interesting. She was okay. There was some logistical and political challenges there. So out of need,

00:10:31 pure need to compartmentalize work and play, I found a two person private office in a Coworking space in Santa Monica, which was a couple miles off the street. There used to be the old Google headquarters of Los Angeles, they moved out and some guy, they moved to Venice, they, some guy took it over, converted into a Coworking space. Travis Koic found an Uber,

00:10:56 like he had Uber overflow in that space. We had Snapchat employees renting some space periodically. There are some incredibly talented people. And as an entrepreneur, I found my TRIBE as an entrepreneur. It was, I've got a beautiful wife with beautiful dogs. We're living in Southern California, life is great, but these guys, these guys I connect with on a whole different level from entrepreneurship perspective.

00:11:24 And so indirectly that part of my life came alive and I fell in love with community. I fell in love with being surrounded by like-minded, go get on people I Enjoy love Perfect Coworking space member. Yeah, it was ex That space in the community. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. And so fast forward, And that was early cuz 2007, I think Jerome Chang,

00:11:49 I don't think that was a blank spaces, but Jerome, you opened right around, right around Then. Not far. So I was on sixth in Arizona, and Jerome I think was on Second Street because he was right. Third, third Street prom. Yeah, yeah. I went to, yeah, it was a place called Rock Wheel Centers. They had bunch of,

00:12:08 yeah, they had A bunch of around anymore, but I remember them. Yep. Yeah, I don't think so. But yeah, so I was part of Rock from its inception. I stayed there for a bunch of years. I think a lot of the success that I had at Pelu was directly attributed to being around that community and being inspired and motivated.

00:12:26 I successfully exited my business in 2012, started another business, which was off the back of what Travis was doing with Uber. I started an on-demand dog walking business called Zingy, which got acquired by rover.com outta Seattle very quickly. And it was time for us to come home. You know, we, like my two year stint was now at, at a decade and my kids,

00:12:49 you Have two children, right? Yeah. I wanted my kids to be around their grandparents while their grandparents were still here and my, their aunts and cousins and sisters and this and that. And so I moved home. And so my wife like, to us, what are you gonna do to support our growing family? And I was like, I want to do my own version of Rock,

00:13:08 I want to call it. And it took me a little while and it didn't happen in a minute. I was actually festering this for many years before I actually left Los Angeles. And I did day passes in Jerome Spaces and I did cross campus and rock, and I never actually went to WeWork because WeWork wasn't a thing when I first started out. WeWork kind of kind of came a lot later.

00:13:30 Yeah, yeah, yeah. In fact, there was a mass exodus from Rock to WeWork when they opened, but I never, genuinely not to shit on anyone. I, I never really understood or valued the WeWork product. WeWork were very New York, which were tight spaces, whereas Rock was like really open and I felt like I was in business class versus coach,

00:13:51 just as a comparison not to, again, I think WeWork, it's fantastic for our sector. Yep. Hi, This is Josh Fried CEO of Proximity. When we started Proximity, we did it for one reason. We didn't like how hard it was to run our Coworking spaces. At first we tried testing different space management software on the market. And look,

00:14:10 we found that we had to use multiple software solutions. Then we spent way too much time trying to sync them all together. And then we spent even more time training our staff and worse yet, our members on how to use this overcomplicated solution. We ended up going circles, attempting to manage our software instead of letting software do what it's supposed to, which is help run our business.

00:14:31 Our members were frustrated, we were frustrated, we just didn't think it should be so hard to operate a Coworking space. So we built our own solution to make Coworking spaces easier to manage all packaged up in one, easy to use platform, refined by feedback from hundreds of Coworking spaces over the last five years. Proximity software is simple for operators and best of all members,

00:14:55 and it is backed by our award-winning US-based customer support team. It's time to stop settling for overcomplicated software, get software that was actually purpose built for Coworking by Coworking space operators. See for yourself, our team is available to chat with Everything Coworking podcast listeners and you can schedule your call today at proximity dos face slash Jamie. And it's so interesting. I mean,

00:15:20 I tell people this all the time, it's like if you live in a studio in Manhattan, then having your own 36 square foot office outside of the home is luxurious. So correct market that makes sense. Product market fit, right? But for you, that wasn't what you wanted. Well, For me, yeah. Well, so for me, it actually took me back to my pet days,

00:15:40 which is, Hey, what's working in Australia has to work in the US and then you get to the US and you're like, no, no, no, the price point's different, the volumes different. The supply chain logistics are different. The mess, we speak English, but we actually do speak two different languages, right? And so there's this level of interpretation.

00:15:55 I think what for WeWork, the relevance there is they took what worked in New York. Yeah, they slammed it into every major city. But when it comes to Southern California, people really like spaces and, and I just, it hasn't worked that well here in Australia either because the product is not localized. It's, it worked in New York where great in New York,

00:16:15 let's, we're the biggest landlord in New York, let's go do this. Yeah. I mean, it's a challenge of scale, right? And yeah, localizing scale like that, and obviously their history of infusion of cash that needed to be spent quickly. So anyway, back to so, so That, so, so that bought me, that bought me full circle where it's kinda like,

00:16:32 Hey, I don't think I would've had half the success that I did have unless I would've gone into rock. And how can I help people out here in my spaces and places achieve, you know, their own success and, and help them be their own goat? You know, Michael Jordan's a huge inspiration for me as a kid. Be your own goat.

00:16:49 Don't just look up to Michael Jordan as a goat, right? So that led me back to Australia. We currently have five locations around 150,000 square feet of space across those five locations. They're big, they're big operations. We've got another five locations sort of in the works. Two of them are under construction at the moment. Okay. Three are in de in deep conversation.

00:17:11 And really for me, it's not about trying to be the biggest guy on the planet, it's actually about where can I add value and impact to local communities and people that help them get to their own rockstar level, right? And so, so long as we as an organization can continue deliver at a high value and a high clip in terms of deliverables,

00:17:32 we'll continue to expand. But the day that we are fraying and we're not what we were when we first started and we kind of morph into something different, then I, I'm cool with just kind of staying at that level. I, I'm not trying to flip, I'm just trying to be here. I'm trying to be in the moment moment. I'm trying to help play my role build community.

00:17:52 And also then like we've got a bunch of different business units. So when you say, you know, Jamie like Tobi, you're involved in a whole bunch of things. They actually all tie back to the same purpose. You know, I've got Orange Theory franchises, so I've got a bunch of those and they're vertically integrated into Creative Cubes. So not in this building,

00:18:10 although just on the other side here, there is some vacancy coming up that I, I may look to capitalize on. But in our other buildings, we've got Orange Theory on the ground floor, and then you come upstairs and you're into Creative Cubes. Then when you're in Creative Cubes, we have a cafe brand that we, we founded and and run called Timber and Greens,

00:18:27 where you can get, you know, high quality food, local produce, there's a whole bunch of things around that that enable you to continue to do your best work. Right? And then we have event spaces there. You're describing my dream life, by the way. Yeah, well I'll just add the cherry on top. We have dream that we have event spaces which get booked out like all day,

00:18:49 every day. Sometimes we have three events in a day. And the great Shaquille O'Neal came and hung out and we did a, an event for our, for our community whereby Shaq came and we had an hour fireside chat as part of his down under tour. And we've got Alan Iverson coming next. And there's a guy that I spoke to the other day,

00:19:12 Harry Styles, I don't know him personally, but a friend of mine got on the phone and said, Hey, this is Harry, can you take him around? He's coming to Australia. Seriously. So like, wait, how? No, seriously, how do you get Shaq in your Coworking space? I mean, people have great speakers, but I'm thinking you've said a whole new bar.

00:19:28 Yeah, Sort of. I actually, it's all about fundamentals. And the number one value for me, actually, my top three values, number one is relationships. Number two is relationships. Number three is relationships. And so I honor those relationships wherever I can and that serves me. And then in turn I get to serve community. So Shaquille was a investor in a friend of mine's company.

00:19:54 They had an amazing successful exit. I asked for an intro, I didn't get the intro, I just got Shaq's phone number and email address and said, go out of Yourself, do it yourself. Yeah, go, good Luck. Get a response. Yeah. And I hit, he responded to my cold message. And it was many years in the making because Covid got in the way,

00:20:14 but Oh, interesting. Okay. It, it was exhilarating and, and Shaquille in front of the whole community declared that, you know, we're gonna go do some stuff together, credit cubes he wants to invest into. And I'm yet to actually circle with him on that conversation because I mean, it's, it's top of mind. It'd be amazing to do that.

00:20:32 But equally, we've got so much going on right now that it could be a distraction at the same time. And I think he's got a lot going on as well. So while he may be listening to this, I'd love to have that conversation. I might text and message him later, but the reality is we've both got a lot going on, so we'll see what happens in the future.

00:20:49 Okay. And just a little bit of a squirrel, but what were you doing at Salesforce and how do you get an invite to speak at Salesforce? So for Dreamforce Creative Cubes is our Salesforce, yeah, it was Dreamforce, San Francisco. It was exhilarating four days, not my first Dreamforce, but the first Dreamforce that I was privileged enough to be a keynote speaker and a guest speaker for how did I get there?

00:21:12 Salesforce is, we're in the business of enabling the future of work. I think a lot of the stuff that we do, a lot of the stuff that we can do is enabled by cloud tech and not being fixed to a premises where my offices, I mean this may not make sense to anyone that's millennial or older, but back in the day, if you wanted to be on the internet,

00:21:38 you had to go to a company and be on a server and, and then the Blackberry came out and you had to get authenticated. Now you just have your username and password to these secure cloud products and the way you go. And, and so for us, Jamie like Creative Cubes, I want the best or nothing at all times. I want my members to experience amazing.

00:21:58 I want my members, I'm not sure if you can see that, but that says Happiness at Work. We have a division here called the Happiness Team that is all about that onsite concierge. And so when it came to, alright, how do we want to build and what do we want to build on, Salesforce was just an, a global leader.

00:22:15 And so a previous customer of theirs, I basically went to Salesforce and built my, my business. They loved what we were doing and how we were doing it. Then in turn built relationships with our account manager who introduced us to key marketing and, and, and senior executives. Salesforce are huge in the enterprise space. They're not very big in the Startup and scale up,

00:22:40 but most of my customer base here are, we actually have four different customer. We have startups scale up, small, medium enterprise, and then we have large enterprise, right? And sort of like large enterprise and SME or SMB make about 80% of our community here. And so Salesforce are like, Hey, we love what you're about. You know,

00:23:01 Tobi being Tobi, you know, I've got a bit of a following. They enable us as an organization to become a trailblazer. And part of trailblazing is they get to share the creative Cube story to their customers to demonstrate what their products do, To enable what Their customers are doing with their products to enable success. Right? And then I think, again,

00:23:20 come back to those relationships holding them in high regard. You know, I'm never here to serve myself. My success will be a bright product of enabling everybody else. And so Salesforce and the crew at Salesforce has so many of them, they come to me with opportunities, I serve them to the best of my ability. And then there's just this infinite loop of perpetual growth and opportunity that comes off of that.

00:23:46 But I'm there because I don't believe that I could do what I'm doing without their technology and services. And I speak with authenticity and genuineness about how that has been transformative for all of my members who've got about nearly 5,000 members here at Creative Cubes and all of the wow moments that we get and all of the five Star reviews, even the four star reviews,

00:24:11 all of that is enabled from understanding who our customer is. And Salesforce of course, so many amazing tools and pieces of technology that when you dissect and lean in like we do, enables us to build amazing products and services, which then gives us this flywheel effect for new locations and people lining up to, to become members here at Creek Kids. So I'm curious about,

00:24:38 I don't wanna spend time talking about how painful Covid was. I'm sure it was, but so I'm curious about, you know, what is business like now and this ecosystem that you've built. Was that just kind of a natural approach for you, given how you wanted to serve? Because it feels very just what people want today, right? And and you have it already,

00:25:01 the food and Bev, the hospitality. So yeah, I'd love to have you just kind of talk about that approach. Yeah, So from the outset, the DNA is, I'm an entrepreneur. I'm trying to be at the tip of the spear from an early adoption perspective. You know, I was very early into the Apple gear when Dropbox came out,

00:25:20 I was there then G-Suite, I, I came and came off and went to G-Suite off exist. I'm right there in terms of technology. I'm an EV driver largely. I, I've been an EV driver for nearly three years and there's mass adoption of that. Now, I just knew in my heart that the world is going to get to where I'm,

00:25:41 I'm already at, right? In terms of, in terms of the way people work, pause there, open the second stream. The second stream is that for me as an entrepreneur, there is no on off switch. It's just on, you know, I walk away from stuff and I'm thinking, I wake up at two o'clock in the morning and I get on,

00:26:00 get and jot something down. I go to the gym because my day is full of stress and full of pain and full of challenges. But I know that if I put my health at the center of what I do, then I can deliver outside of the stu or outside of the gym or the studio and be the best version that I can be for my team and equally for my kids and my wife,

00:26:20 right? And so there's no on off switch. So I wanted to build something that was lifestyle driven. So I didn't want to go to the city for the record, I never wore a suit and tie at my wedding. I rocked up in a shirt, an open shirt, and some slacks was considering flip flops. But I like my shoes. So it,

00:26:36 it didn't go there, but I wanted it to be lifestyle driven. So I set up in the suburbs, close to the beaches, close to homes, close to epicenters. And like one of our most popular building is right opposite a farmer's market. And it's very, very popular. It's all year round, all week round farmer's market. We sit across the road on the fifth floor,

00:26:56 40,000 square feet. So I wanted to build something whereby I didn't have to, cause I felt like I was suppressing myself with this on off switch, right? I wanted to build something that enabled me to just be me and just do. And if it's two o'clock in the morning or it's, it's 11 o'clock in the, it doesn't matter. Like,

00:27:15 so I did that and then the pain of covid is very real, right? We have a premier, a governor here in Victoria that in no uncertain terms said, go to the office and you will die. This covid thing's gonna kill you. And so we're in the office business or go to the gym and you're gonna die there too. And so we're in the gym business,

00:27:36 don't eat from the cafe. It's, you know, people are touching food. Oh shit. Like where do you, and then the last thing is, you know, high scale events. Don't, don't go to a stadium because you could die there as well, right? And so that was very, very painful. But glass is always half full.

00:27:52 So while it was very scary in the very early days, what I stayed true to was one, one of my major investors, Jeff Harris, who founded Flight Center Booster says like is an incredible, incredible guy. Used to call me at like 7:00 AM on a Sunday morning, right? Odd time. And you go, Tobi, what's news Jeff? I'm kind of sleeping man,

00:28:16 but what's news? I'm weathering the storm. He's like, Tobi, just stay at it. Just stay at it. I've got your back. Just keep going. So I had people like Jeff and Brad, his son and I had other people, Jason and James and my leadership team going, guys just keep going. And so with Covid somewhat in the rear view mirror,

00:28:34 what's happened is the traditional office, traditional lease, the traditional way of going about commercial real estate has taken a massive beating. And because of uncertainty and because of everyone was forced to, forced to work from home, but not everyone can work from home. What's happened is we've become on target on point with where the world's kind of moved to, which is,

00:28:59 hey, I want space that I can do my best work, compartmentalize cause I've got kids or a family, or I work for a large company, my home internet doesn't work. I'm a housemate. I would just want a space where I can do my best work and go home. And so the value of the office has lost its, its true value,

00:29:14 right? You know, companies that were peacocking with these elaborate office spaces on in downtown neighborhood or downtown, no one cares for that anymore, right? What people care about is local and community and experience and a whole bunch of things other than getting on the train and commuting two hours to get to downtown to sit in office where like it's just not got the color and the richness of culture and this energy about it.

00:29:43 And so the migration to flex, the migration to what we do at Core is very on point. And I just, there's two things that I rest on. One good people win in the end and I've always like, again, this is not about me, but this is trying to serve the community. So I feel like the world and the inertia has been good to me from that standpoint.

00:30:03 And two, technology is advancing so quickly that like, I don't want to sound too, too much information, but like I can reply to a pretty serious email while I'm sitting on the toilet. That toilet, that toilet doesn't have to be in a, in an office, right? Yeah. So Bit of good luck being in the right place at the right time.

00:30:22 But the thesis of of where we're at is has stayed true from 2016 when we started the company. So Right. Food and Bev. So is food and Bev a a big profit generator for you? Or does it just support the ecosystem? I'm actually not. I'm an intermittent faster personally. I also fast. I do Mondays and Fridays. I'm a 24 hour faster.

00:30:45 And you do Orange Theory? Yeah. Yeah. Mondays, Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays I do Orange theory six o'clock in the morning, Mondays and Fridays I do 24 hour fast. I do it cause it's just got such great mental health clarity. And then every other day is sort of 7:00 PM finished dinner and donate to lunchtime. So food in bed for me is not something I'm wildly passionate about.

00:31:08 But we do have, here in Melbourne, Australia, we do have what has been dubbed by the street as coffee snobs. And so I don't drink coffee either, but like my community loves it and so I want them to have the best. Yeah. So instead of outsourcing it to somebody, I was like, screw it, I'll just do it myself.

00:31:28 And so we do a little bit of, you know, sandwiches and salads and some cheeky stuff as well. But predominantly it's, and we do, we do a big, big revenues in our event space catering, when people are hiring our event space, you know, there's an email that says audio carrying here, you know, those numbers are, are astronomical,

00:31:47 but really it's just about to support, it's supporting the infrastructure. It's also giving the customer or the prospect a reason to buy, you know, or versus a reason not to. So it's kinda like, yeah, we've got amazing office space, but you have to go outside, pock have to go outside to Get your almond milk cappuccino. Yep. Yes.

00:32:05 Just giving them a reason, you know, I'm hopeful that they will be, you know, profit centers, but really it's a lost leader deliver happiness at work. That's, that's really all I Care about. Although to your point, if so, does it support the event business? So the margin is there for that business, just not the overall.

00:32:22 Yep. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Well the point, point of sale, like, hey, can I order a flat white cappuccino, whatever you order, Mond milk, whatever, that's near, near enough to break even. But, but what puts the business on steroids in that or what puts that business unit on steroids is our event Catering. Yep.

00:32:40 Yep. That makes perfect sense. Okay. And talk about the Happiness Team. Your happiness team gets mentioned repeatedly in your Google reviews and I was like, this guy has it figured out. When did the Yeah, so come into play. It's been since day one. In fact, this is my little Happiness at Work logo that we've, Oh, I was just thinking like for anybody,

00:33:00 so we post this to YouTube when you said, okay, talking about, you know, lifestyle and I was like, and he's wearing a sweatshirt with a he smiley face. We're, we're about to, we're about to unleash our merch range. Oh, I love it. Okay. I mean, we have some real brand evangelists here at Creative Cube.

00:33:20 We have people that are like, they come here to work, but they come here because they want to be here to work. Yeah. You know, it's not something that they're sort of being dragged in to do. They, they show up and they, you know, we put on a ton of community events and sometimes we have to kick people out cause they just wanna stay on.

00:33:36 Right? And so you Don't have to go home, but you can't stay here. No, the event's done or the event was done an hour ago. Right. The cleanest need to come in guys, we have to like see tomorrow's of style. And it's like, no, no, no, let's kick on down the street or something like that.

00:33:51 But so Happiness team is something that I cooked up from a brand mission, vision perspective. And then very early on, my chief of staff, who was not my chief of staff, Sade Maio, she's actually an Angelina show. She was born and raised in Southern California. She worked in Vegas at some of the biggest hotels in v i P concierge.

00:34:14 And she moved to Australia to be with her significant other. And somehow we ended up connecting. We had a shared love for Los Angeles, not a shared love for Vegas, but a, you know, mutual understanding of Vegas. And, and we got together and we literally cooked up the brand promise together on my kitchen table. And we came straight out of the gates building one version,

00:34:45 1.0 of the product with the happiness team. And they are the onsite concierge. Like we treat this place like a hotel where they're, they're onsite concierge, they're curate the space, they connect, they are connectors, they are intuitively in sync with our members. They know when Billy needs Jill and Jill needs Bob. And this one needs that one because they're troubleshooting this,

00:35:09 that, and the other. They can connect people to do great business together. They put on community events, they bring in key speakers. I was responsible for Shaquille, but they're brought in some other incredible talented people. We've done, you know, painting nights together. We've done a whole bunch of business classes and courses that have helped companies here engage with some really top talent.

00:35:34 We have pwc, so Pricewaterhouse Cooper's affectionate, known as pwc, we have them delivering free services inside Creative Cube. So they've got office space here and they send their rookie talent through to just work here free of charge to sort of, it is lead gen for them, but really it's, it's, for us, it's sort of like just a support mechanism for some of the early stage ventures.

00:35:58 Yeah. So like those relationships. And so the happiness team, their number one mandate is deliver happiness. Sometimes it is, we know that Andy's daughter is doing X, y, Z on the weekend and they come in and, Hey Andy, how did Sarah go? And oh my god, I God, like she was amazing. Or you know,

00:36:19 it might be, you know, one of our members is one of big, big accounts. So we go and deliver a box of chocolates to their office or a bunch of flowers on a birthday or an anniversary or, you know, they, they do make up, if you're a two person team, there might be 3, 4, 5 on your team. They're not gonna come and sit in your office,

00:36:37 but they're gonna help navigate or make you look great in front of clients. Right now I'm, I'm using in a, a meeting room. These are member customer facing meeting rooms. So when our member's customer shows up, they're greeted by the happiness team. Oh, we Jamie we knew, knew you were coming to see Henry, can I get you a cup of coffee?

00:36:57 Henry's booked this XYZ meeting room, I'll get you a coffee, take a seat. The toilet's over here, Henry will be with you in a minute. They jump on Slack. Hey Henry, your guest is here. Bang. And so that's an amazing experience for Henry's guest. That's an amazing experience for Henry's company as an example, by the way.

00:37:16 And so then there's this infinite loop of that, right? It's so simple and yet so meaningful and not that easy to execute. So do you train that or do you hire for that or A little bit of both. So we've got our brand standards. Yeah, you can see it like, so part of our onboarding process when we get new talent to come to Creative Cubes is they go through like a three step interview with the people and culture team.

00:37:46 If they get through those three gates, then they'll end up meeting the leadership team. And then there's a decision on whether or not that's a collective decision on whether or not that person's got it. I've gone into some meetings and met the person, looked them straight in the eye and literally walked out and said, you got my vote. Like, like I don't,

00:38:06 I don't need to sit here for 45 minutes and, and learn this, this person's special. Make, you know, make whatever happen happen. And then equally, I've been in those meeting rooms where I'm trying to give benefit of the doubt to the candidate, but I just can't see it. Yeah. It's not my decision. We've got an incredible team with Alicia and Sade's,

00:38:25 chief of staff. Alicia runs our people and culture team. And then if they get through all of that, then there's the, the last check, which is the decision which comes from the team. So if they pass three interviews, they meet leadership, team leadership says yes, they then do a paid training. They do a paid day here with the happiness team,

00:38:45 and then the happiness team can say, nah, that person's not, nah, no. Yes. Or alternatively yes, like, light it up. So, and then from there we've got brand standards onboarding training like Alicia. And what she does from a people and culture perspective is world class. And so then we bring that person or that candidate into our family.

00:39:03 I don't wanna steal Benioff's Ohana, but we bring them into our Ohana and, and really make them part of, you know, help them become part of the family and integrate them. And, and then our, my job is not to hire people to tell 'em what to do. My job is to hire people so they can tell me what I gotta do to help them do their best work.

00:39:21 Right? And so I'm a CEO that moves mountains for my team and wants to make sure that my team feel supported. I'm not a guy that likes to sit in an ivory tower, you know, pushing stuff on a spreadsheet, trying to make millions of dollars. I'm, I'm a guy that likes to be on the street with his team and, and lead by example to that point we have this Slack channel,

00:39:43 which is pretty cool, called the OTF crew, which is Orange Theory Fitness Crew. I think there's about 19 staff that are OTF members. They get a little bit of a discount because they're cube's employee. But the reality is I'm governed by the mandates of the franchise agreement. And so this morning, just as a great example, you know, last year and the team were talking about doing orange theory and then doing cold showers.

00:40:07 And so I leveled up this morning and said, guys, I've been ice bathing. And so there's this whole transcript that goes on for about 45 minutes between 19 people about ice bathing and leveling up. And then now people are throwing their videos onto there going, Hey, I did it. I feel great. And so like, hey, I was the one the sort of sort of like pierced the skin and then the rest of the team sort of like jumped through,

00:40:29 right? So it's good culture and people are respected and they love coming here and I just, I'm just here to serve them and they're here to serve the community and that's why it works so well. 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 wanna invite you to join me for my free masterclass.

00:40:53 Three behind the scene Secrets to Opening a Coworking Space. If you're working on opening a Coworking space, I wanna 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 include some q and a. If you'd like to join me, you can register at Everything Coworking dot com slash masterclass.

00:41:18 If you already have a Coworking space, I wanna 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,

00:41:45 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 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 Manager just can work through any challenges that they're having or opportunities get ideas from other community managers,

00:42:18 build their own peer network. 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 slash Community Manager. So it seems to me the other upside to what you've created is that maybe it's not super easy, but you're attracting people who are sort of also wanna serve and so they wanna be a part of what you're creating versus having to like sort of bribe people to come for you in Yeah,

00:42:49 no quite location. Yeah. No, no, no. Exactly. Like there's no shortage of opportunities look for us to hire, which is great. It's challenging out there, right? In some parts we've come through Covid, but now we're looking at recessions and depressions and this and that. Like it's, it's not fun. It's a dark, there's darkness out there as well,

00:43:06 right? So it's not me, it's really not me. It's the happiness team. They are here enjoying their body of work. Yeah. They are kicking goals and the community recognizes that and writes the reviews about them, not about me. I'm just a guy that leads and I take that very seriously and I take that and wanna make sure that people know that I want to lead by example.

00:43:36 Not let's not do what I say, but it's do as I do. Right? And so that for me is my whole world. That's the epicenter. And hopefully along the way I inspire people to wanna bring good culture to their organizations. What we do here with the happiness team in a very indirect way, but a somewhat deliberate way. Like we end up becoming the culture of that company,

00:43:59 even though we're not in their company. They sort of adopt us. And so I said to my daughter, modeling can't change. Yeah. I can't change the world by myself, but hopefully I can inspire people to sort of run at the same beat and continue to do good. Right? We we're not here for a long time, so let's have a good time while we're here.

00:44:17 Right. So I read, I did a podcast on a few books that made a big impact and one of 'em was 4,000 weeks. We have 4,000 weeks generally on the planet. I know. So you gotta do it every day matters every day. The other one is, one of the other ones was Unreasonable Hospitality. Have you read it? I have not,

00:44:36 no. Okay. Put it on your list. Although I feel like you might have a book in you. It's, I mean, some of the things you, it's, it's amazing. It's The Will Gadara, it's his is the author. He worked for Danny Meyer and he ran 11 Madison. Anyway, it's, it's really, it's really, really good.

00:44:55 And I don't see, I think your model is pretty unique. And I wonder is it also unique in Australia? You know, the hub's doing the Hub has food and bev and when I give myself some thinking time about where the industry is going, I don't see how you could win without going to where you're going because how do you, I don't know,

00:45:18 I, maybe it's because I'm your ideal member and I want what, what you do, but I just, I worry about the industry sort of riding this like sort of midterm wave of people needing flexible office space and not sort of seeing like where we're going in the end. Yeah, yeah. So I mean, there's so much to unpack there. Firstly,

00:45:40 Bradco, who's the CEO of Pop Australia, he's an absolute gentleman. Someone that I, I have true respect for. He and I have been working very closely together. We, I know, you know, G C U C, which is Liz. Liz and Stormy. And, and and actually was on text with Liz. I should have Slack this morning with Liz.

00:45:57 We're catching up next week. But Brad and I and a couple of other operators have built, built out a industry body called fwa, which is Flexible Workspace Australia. And so Brad served a Huge undertaking. I was on the huge Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I was the executive director of the Global Workspace Association for five years. And Fiona had chatted.

00:46:16 I knew she was working on that. I Knew Fiona's amazing. Yeah, exactly. So when I look at Brad and what he's doing, when I look at what Fiona's doing, when I look at Michael at Benson, our Workplace 365 and what they're doing, even looking at WeWork like, you know, to the exterior, like we look like competitors,

00:46:32 but behind the scenes we're all collaborating and sharing and, you know, serving each other as well. Right? So Brad specifically, cause you called it out, like he has a very different product with a very different customer base. And I think he has a bit of a different focus in terms of how his product delivers, right. In terms of the other 297 operators that are part of fwa,

00:46:57 it's quite interesting because we all have a very different lens on what the future of work looks like. Some people are there because they've offloaded half their workforce and they're, they're stuck in this lease and they've gotta sort of monetize or sort of cut some of their costs. And then there's other operators like Fiona, like Brad, like myself, like Michael, and many,

00:47:17 many others. I'm not trying to alienate anyone that are No, no. This is our professional Yeah. Operation, right? And so for us, again, it comes back to what I said, like the first two minutes of the show. Like, I don't want this, I don't wanna have a reason to just not be here. I'm hungry.

00:47:37 I've gotta go like, go get something, or I've gotta go to the gym and work out and I'll come back like, no, no, just, just do it all here. You know, I'm not saying that you shouldn't not do it all here, but equally like, I'm just trying to give, what I really, really want Jamie is I want,

00:47:51 in a decade's time, I want to turn around and say we built 3, 4, 5, 6, 700 million business that, that is called Creative Cubes. And everything that we gave to our members was everything that we used for ourselves to get there. And so we're giving you everything that we need to, to enable. We're giving you Salesforce, I'm giving you Orange Theory, I'm giving you boot and Bev,

00:48:18 I'm bringing Shaquille out to, to help get your mindset into the mind of a champion and understand what he went through. And you know, we're doing all these amazing things. We, we've partnered with Peloton here at this specific building. We built a Peloton room called the Move Room. This is why your wife got one for, wait, her birth,

00:48:36 was it birthday Anniversary? She, she, yeah, it was for her birthday. She was first. So I bought it for her to have it. Our home, we have a little studio in our backyard where she goes every morning to to to work out. And she loved it and she's like, Tobes, this would be amazing for Creative Cubes.

00:48:54 Someone that just wants to blow our steam for half an hour. We have all the showers and the towels and the this and that. She's like, convert one of your officers or five of your offices into some sort of room like this. So we went to Peloton and said, Hey, my wife thinks a lot of you, I now need to serve her and how many Pelotons can we get?

00:49:11 And then we actually ended up in this building as well, getting Lululemon. So Lululemon, Australia, New Zealand are headquartered out of Creative Cubes, Collingwood, which is where I'm dialing in from today. And so Lululemon have bought a company called Mirror, which is a trainer inside the mirror. And so they saw our Peloton room and they're like, Hey, can we put a couple of mirrors in here for the community to use as well?

00:49:37 And so it's like, absolutely. So look, I I think that, like for me, I wanna be the best. I don't want to cut any corners less interested in trying to save $2 for the sake of, you know, making extra margin or cutting something out. I don't wanna lose anything, but I'd rather deliver the best and be known for being the best and give my membership and,

00:49:59 and the community the best. And so that's just the vision here. And I think Brad does something very similar in his own lens and Fiona does something for her community equally to that. But for those that are sort of trying to, and I think landlords are like, we'll just take some desks in a space and people can use it by the hour.

00:50:18 How high could it be? Like it is a really, really challenging business. We've got four or 5,000 people coming in and out of the property every day, properties every day. And the happiness team of there are sort of like, like, okay, you gotta go over here. Or The landlord does, does not have a happiness team. It's a tough business.

00:50:36 It's a really tough Business. Huge operational lift separate from the culture piece and the member experience. A hundred percent. So are you still signing leases versus So very interestingly, I mean, we've got some stuff in the pipe that was committed to, which are traditional leases. There's a couple things on that. Jamie like management agreements are something that we don't really entertain.

00:50:59 We don't entertain them because like you're just gonna give half of our hard work away to someone where I could just pay them what they want and I can just be the master of my domain and future. But we do have some partnerships coming up. So, you know, we're opening Sydney later this year, which is our first jump out of our current state and over the border.

00:51:23 And we partnered with the city of Sydney, which is literally like city of San Francisco. We, we partnered with the city. Maybe that's what San Francisco needs. I don't know what San Francisco needs to get outta this. It's coming. No, it's coming because like, let me take you on the journey here. Okay. We partnered with the city of Sydney to deliver a green tech climate,

00:51:47 tech green energy workspace in place for companies that have a green mandate or e s G as part of who they are a part of their identity or they're working on stuff to try and improve. Coincidentally the space that we've partnered with them on is inside Salesforce Tower, pure coincidence. So we've got four floors out of like an 80 floor story building. Salesforce know that we're in the tower.

00:52:14 Salesforce know who we are, they understand our mission and vision in partnership with the city of Sydney. It overlooks the Harbor bridge in the Opera house. Any, you know, poster card photo you've seen of city, that's exactly where we're gonna be. And the crew here at Salesforce are like, Hey, if you can get this right in Sydney, maybe we roll you to all Salesforce towers across the planet.

00:52:38 Right? So it's a huge undertaking. Hopefully that then solves San Francisco at least being one of those. There's a tower here that could use Right now, I'm not sure whether or not that that comes to fruition, but, so we are interested in those sorts of partnerships where there's a rent incentive and there's a whole bunch of things. I'm not actually signing any lease.

00:52:58 Yep. If I don't get the demands that we think then, you know, that they, there's a whole bunch of recourses on the c like there's, there's a whole bunch of stuff. But like those sorts of partnerships I'm interested in. If the landlord wants to come to me and say, Hey, let's go 50 50 on a jv, I need to understand what they're gonna bring to the partnership beyond the property.

00:53:18 And I'll be honest, not every property works for us, right? Oh, 100%. Yeah. I think we're probably about to maybe enter a situation where there are landlords who wanna do it because they have a property that just is not compelling to anyone. And so Yep. They'll do the deals, but it'll be too hard. It, it still won't work.

00:53:40 Yep. Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, for us, we, I mean there's a, there's a formula and an algorithm around where we actually like, you know, lay roots. Unfortunately for us, but also fortunately for brand and experience, you know, I have to kiss a hundred frogs to find that one princess. Right? And so that's painful on my side because I'm just really excited and bullish about the whole thing.

00:54:03 But equally, I understand the formula behind the having the logo on the top of the door there, because if it fails, like it's not a thousand bucks, you know, or like a, a $50,000 pay. It's, it's, it's mega millions and it could be devastating. So we've gotta be very, very, very, we have to have total conviction around where we open.

00:54:27 Otherwise you are, you are on the money. Like it's, it may not work. And I can't put my brand reputation, my relationships at risk just, it just doesn't work. Okay. So we have to wrap up. Tell me a little bit about the ladies in your life. Yes. Two girls. So, yeah. Well, so not just two girls.

00:54:47 I think I got about like 15. Fortunately for me, and unfortunately for me, my, I lost my dad when I was, he got sick when I was 14 and passed away when I was 16. So I became the man of the house. I grew up, my mom never looked at another man. The love of her life passed on.

00:55:05 And, and that was, that was ano, that's, you know, that's all that was of interest to her. So I grew up in a single mom home, unfortunately, but equally fortunately, and I grew up with two incredible sisters. I ended up marrying a girl that's got two amazing sisters and an amazing mom. And then we went on to have two kids of our own,

00:55:26 and my sister-in-laws, and a whole bunch of others have got as well, we're predominantly a girl, family, Boy, dogs. And So, I don't know how crude I can be on this, but yes, I have one boy dog, and he has no balls. So he doesn't know me either. No. Right. So like, I'm still on my own.

00:55:47 I, I threaten to buy a tiger or a lion, Something very manly and masculine and Yeah. But look, I love it that way. I'm a girl, dad, through and through. I equally get a lot of attention because I am the only guy, my daughters and I like, I sat down last night at our, we have a kitchen island,

00:56:08 and it was just the four of us. And I sat down and I looked at my two kids and I looked at my wife and I just said, you guys know this is my happy place, right? Aw. And they're like, yes, dad, you tell us all the time. We know. I'm like, this for me is like,

00:56:22 that's all I need. But I've got a little girl, her name's Madison, 11 years old. As we film this or as we record this, I think she'll become one day, maybe become one of your American presidents. She's wildly patriotic about being American. Great. So there's, she's real a citizen because they were born. Okay. That's kind of cool for them.

00:56:42 Yeah, I think that's really cool. She is super smart. She's been here before. She's got this old gentle soul about her. She's incredibly talented. I don't say that because I love her and she's my daughter, but she legitimately she'll take on the world and dominate whatever she wants to do with that singing, DJing, acting, dancing, or a president,

00:57:03 but win that. We haven't got a political bone in our body, and I think that will kill her soul. So Maddie's amazing. And then I have Harper who turns eight on Saturday. I keep saying to her, she's only a four-year-old. She is drop dead. Beautiful. Aw. So while she doesn't have the same hunger and go get him as Maddie,

00:57:22 she's gonna do just fine, because she's just, she's just stunning. She looks like my wife, and she'll just be fine no matter what happens. And then there's my wife who's just the absolute, I, I don't wanna call her the queen, but, and a princess does, doesn't justify her, but she's amazing. And she enables me, Jamie,

00:57:39 she enables me to do what I do. When the times are tough, she's there with a hand on my back Going, you're sometimes not easy to be married to. I disagree with that comment. Oh, you do. Well, the always on right is a special personality. But when I say always on, it's not just about work, right?

00:57:57 I'm always on for my family. I slot stuff onto my calendar that requires me to stay home till midday, you know, so that I can be at a school function or whatever always on is whenever my head's off the pillow, it's game time, but it's not 50 50 work to play. Some days it's all family, and some days it's all work and sometimes it's a mix,

00:58:20 right? But what's really important, my wife taught me this very early on, is it's not good enough for you to be present as in physically here. You need to be present. And as a father and a husband, that as a father that didn't have a present father, because he passed, it's something that I take very seriously and something that I means a lot to me,

00:58:40 to, I feel privileged to be able to be a father and a husband. And so, just like my work, it's always on. I feel like I run on two treadmills, but I've got the energy and passion for both sides of the fence. And it works in terms of her Simone, you know, like there are some dark days in entrepreneurship land.

00:59:00 I'm more dark then, then bright, and I'm very lucky to have SIM's hand in my back to just say, keep going. You know? When I don't have the momentum in my legs, she'll just come in behind and just gimme that push, that restarts that engine. And she's just, she's just a great, great great mom and a gr an incredible wife.

00:59:18 And I don't know, I, I reckon one day she's gonna wake up and come out of this like fog and go, who are you? And how did I get here? But until that happens, I, I feel very lucky to have it. Life is good. It's challenging, but it's, I wouldn't want, I, I'm not asking for easy.

00:59:35 I'm asking for possible. I love it. Well, I feel privileged that I got some of your time today, so thank, I could ask you a million more questions, but we're gonna draw the line here for now. Thank you for sharing your story. It was lovely to meet you and get to know a little bit about your business and about you personally.

00:59:52 Yeah, likewise. I appreciate the opportunity. And next time in the Bay Area. Yes. I'll hollow for sure. I Know. Hopefully our paths will cross next time. For sure. Thank you for listening to today's episode. If you like what you heard, tell a friend, hit that subscribe button and leave us a rating and review. It makes a huge difference in helping others like you find us.

01:00:17 If you like to learn more about our education and coaching programs, head over to Everything Coworking dot com. We'll see you next week.

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