294. Insights from the Q4 2022 Hybrid Workplace Index Issue

Resources Mentioned in this Episode:

Everything Coworking Featured Resources:

TRANSCRIPTION

294. Insights from the Q4 2022 Hybrid Workplace Index Issue

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. Thank you for joining me. So glad you are here this week. Lots going on. Okay, a couple of things I wanna make sure we cover.

00:00:59 I need to book my Flight. I got an Airbnb booked for the Juicy Conference in Chicago. I love Chicago. You know, I lived there for 15 years. It's probably my favorite. It is my favorite city. So if you're there, if you're going, please send me a note. I can't tell you the number of times I go to these things and then I kinda look at the list afterwards and I'm like,

00:01:21 how did I not talk to this person? So please send me a note. I wanna connect. I don't, I probably won't do a lot of content. I'll probably sit in the hallway and talk to you. So I am speaking on day one though, which is Wednesday, April 19th. First thing in the morning, I'm hosting a panel on KPIs,

00:01:39 key Performance Indicators. So would love to see you there. Would love to have you in the audience for that and would love to connect. So please send me an email DM on Instagram or Facebook or whatever and let me know that you'll be there. And if you are not there, I do have a couple of codes or a couple of uses of a code if you are trying to get there,

00:02:01 but aren't sure. So also send us a DM on that. Okay, what else is happening? Lots of, I've had lots and lots of advisory calls scheduled. Most people in the state of Florida. I host a podcast with Giovanni PE called Flex Uncensored. And we are working together on one project in Florida and I pulled my demographics and he pulled some more detailed demographics.

00:02:28 He's like, look, pretty much anything in Florida, good to go. So not, you know, a hundred percent the case, you gotta do your due diligence. But Florida is hopping and growing. So we've had, I have had several advisory calls with existing operators, landlords who are getting approached by I W G for management agreements and are,

00:02:48 you know, all of the above looking to expand. We just had a group join the Coworking, Startup School from Florida. We also had someone join from Cyprus. So if you're all listening, welcome. We're excited to have you in the program. So if you are thinking about starting a Coworking space, we'd love to see you in the Coworking Startup School.

00:03:06 My interview today is with Mark Gilbreath and I love on the podcast to kind of do big picture content. So what are the trends that's happening across the industry? Because as an operator you only know what you see, but how do you know if what you see is normal or typical in quotes, it might be typical for your market, but just kind of picking your head up and knowing what's happening around the industry,

00:03:31 what are the larger trends is really important to help you evaluate how your business is doing and and how you're responding as the industry continues to evolve. This is Mark's third time on the podcast. I think. I always enjoy talking with him. He is really, really engaged and has been for over a decade now in the flex office industry. So he always has some good,

00:03:52 like what's next? What are people thinking about, you know, kind of behind the scenes stuff. So he will also be a juicy in Chicago. So I'm looking forward to connecting with him live. I think he is also speaking, I think he, I can't remember if he mentioned that during art recording. What else before we dive into Mark? Personally,

00:04:10 I live in Northern California. It's been raining cats and dogs constantly. And we have a cabin on the north side of Lake Tahoe and we've had some very significant water damage from ice dams this year, which has been a huge pain. So we've had to clear the roof a couple times and we're still at risk. We had to rip out a lot of drywall and a lot of insulation and we can't fix it all until the snow melts.

00:04:34 And I think that Palisades or North Star just said they got seven feet in the last week. I think that's what they said. So my husband and I are on rotation. He is there this week shoveling. He has shoveled feet upon feet of snow at this point. At least he's getting to the powder. It's very challenging when we're not there and we then we show up and there's four feet of snow and it's crunchy and icy.

00:04:58 So I am next in line to go and hoping to get a little skiing in and it's a CrossFit open for my CrossFit listeners. I hope you're enjoying the fun. The CrossFit open is only three weeks and I keep thinking I've done it, you know, a bunch of years now and it used to be five weeks and five weeks is a really long time to be in like competitive mindset.

00:05:20 So three weeks is good and I've been super lucky during this open cuz I'm getting some very good workouts for me. So I'm doing pretty well, which is fun. It's always fun to do well, but I'm also recognizing it is a whole bunch of luck, you know, and some skill because I'm just getting lucky. I'm getting lucky that there are no heavy deadlifts because heavy deadlifts are like heavy deadlifts and chest to bars Wreck me.

00:05:46 So we'll see what Workout three is. But for all of you who are having fun and doing that, I hope things are going well and you're enjoying the process. It's always a journey, a mental journey and a physical journey. Okay, so here we go. I'm just gonna mention, I always forget to do this. I forget to introduce myself to groups that I speak to.

00:06:05 Oh, I got to, I think I already mentioned this, I got to speak to the Australian Flexible Workspace Community Manager Group, which is super fun. And I did remember to introduce myself to them cuz I knew they wouldn't know who I was. Anyway, if you're ever curious about any of the resources we mentioned or the programs that we offer, everything's on the website under work with us.

00:06:24 So you can go there and see book a call or get involved in one of our ongoing programs. We have programs for pre-launch operators, community managers or owner operators. And then we have an operator membership as well. And we're about to reboot the management agreement course. So hang tight for that. Okay, so now into our interview with Mark Gilbreath. Welcome.

00:06:48 I have a very repeat guest Mark. I should see how many times you've been on because you have a standing invite. Anytime you wanna be on the podcast, you're always a fan favorite. Mark is the CEO and founder of LiquidSpace and the publisher of the Hybrid Workplace Index. We are on issue number two, so we'll have to do a little bit of catch-up.

00:07:09 But thank you for making time to do this and share your insights. I think it's been three times Jamie and I'm delighted to be back. It's always a pleasure. Thank you. Yeah, well I know you're, and I love talking shop with you, so I was finally like, okay Mark, I'll hit record and we'll make our conversation public. So,

00:07:28 okay. You've been having some fun on LinkedIn. Yeah, You po Well, anytime you po you know, you posted about the index, you get some good comments and a couple of challenges on like, Ooh, I'd like to see this, which I thought was fun. Yeah. And then we might have to sneak in just a little conversation about your reflections on Dave Karen's post and sort of the back of the envelope,

00:07:48 you know, Costa Flex. So tell us about the index and kind of the goal and what it covers and let's dive into some highlights. Yeah, sure. So it was November, this past fall when we issued the first edition of what we intend to be a quarterly publication of a set of indices. We crafted three indexes to provide some additional data insights on some topics that we thought were really important and relevant for the industry as a whole as it relates to work and workplace.

00:08:23 And frankly, not to be petty, but to, to provide an additional lens into the whole what the fuck is happening with work and workplace discussion, which has been largely kind of monopolized by people obsessing on the castle systems. You know, return to the office index, which I, which I commend them on. You know, they're a company that sells access control technology.

00:08:44 Yeah. They've got a large customer base, It just swipes. I know I'm guilty also of quoting them. Yeah, Yeah. And Well, the swipes on Monday and Friday are like 12%, you know? Yeah, Yeah, yeah. And, and for those, for, for those in your audience that aren't, aren't familiar with that Castle or Kessley Systems has done a great job of making transparent the data that they're able to collect from their large installed base of building access systems.

00:09:06 And with that, they're able to see some real hard data around how many people are showing up in New York City or in San Francisco, Minneapolis, you know, with their buildings as a statistical sample. I'm a huge fan of what they've done just from a, from a marketing impact standpoint. I, I think Totally. I was just thinking, I was like,

00:09:22 that's was probably like the most boring, like got nothing to say company and then Covid happened and somebody sitting at their desk was like, but wait, people care about this. Yeah. And, and I think the measure of that, I, I, I think as of a couple months ago, they had been referenced in 900 media articles. They've got more back links than like,

00:09:45 And or television discussions. Like, and so they're so they become an authority, I think deservedly but, but deservedly on a piece of the landscape. Yeah, right. Everyone has their own definition of what hybrid means, but here's ours, I'd love to hear yours Jamie, but like our definition of hybrid workplace, or the way we use that term is it is now this continuum of the places where people carry out work,

00:10:10 individuals, teams, and organizations. And it includes, you know, the headquarters or traditional portfolios that apps like Castle had some view into. But it also includes of course, that world that you and I care so intimately about, which is the whole ecosystem of flex spaces. And it includes home, right? That is workplace. Now by our definition,

00:10:29 it's all of those places, not one or the other or any one of the three. It's, it's all of those. And so the thing that was missing from the conversation we felt was, well, what the heck is happening in the flex component? Yeah. And, And there's so little data in this industry, which is, you know, it could be a longer conversation,

00:10:48 but, so I love that you've put some resources around sharing the data that you can share cuz it's so critical to your point to kind of represent that other perspective. So we went into our, so our authority comes from the fact that we went into our marketplace cuz our, our marketplace is this commercial entity that has accumulated millions of transactions over now almost 11 years.

00:11:12 And, and in that transactional history in, in particular over the last three years when so much has changed, we've got statistically relevant insights on a global basis in terms of not just how many people are walking into office buildings, but rather who's booking what and where, how much are they spending with, what frequency are they booking and What days of the week.

00:11:33 I thought that was interesting, you know? Yeah. And so we draw a lot of inspiration from the folks at Kessel and others in other industries that have done indexes. And we said, okay, we're gonna, so we approached it and said, well, we'll we'll show a three year time series cuz we think actually as we stand here right now,

00:11:49 it's kind of relevant to look back at what did the world look like in 2019. Yeah. Seems like a long time ago. But, but in 2019, of course Flex was a growing thing. The office market was raging, everybody went to the office to do work. And so that, we thought that was a good baseline. And then we sort of show and look at the,

00:12:06 and try to try to illuminate some of the patterns that are presenting themselves in terms of what happened when the pandemic struck, what happened as the waves of the pandemic played out. And then what's been happening here in particular in the last, you know, four or five quarters, which I think we generally sort of look at as a, a post pandemic period.

00:12:24 And we're, we're tracking cost, we're tracking activity level, and we're also tracking the mix of activity in terms of what kind of work are people doing, are they collaborating, are they concentrating? And those three indices and some other deep dives that we did in this particular edition, we're trying to open up a conversation that'll be interesting to a variety of people in the industry.

00:12:45 You might be a space operator with certain questions, you might be a big enterprise with other questions. And so we're trying to welcome inquiry and a conversation. Yeah. And I will insert quickly here, I will link to where you can download this on the LiquidSpace website right in the show notes. So whatever your podcast app is, if you just open sort of the detail of the episode,

00:13:05 you can grab it or send yourself a note to, you know, grab it on your desktop so you can get a copy of it and read through it and generate your own insights. Okay. What was most exciting or surprising to you in terms of some of the insights that you pulled from, from this update? So top headlines, engagement, i e what's the intensity of use as compared to pre pandemic?

00:13:29 We finally surpassed the pre pandemic level. Yep. So if we normalized, if we, if we measure against what was the activity level of the typical user of our marketplace doing hybrid work, we, we've now surpassed that now and it's been a, a six quarter trend of recovery on that, but it passed. Yeah. Yep. I know you can see kind of on the,

00:13:48 if you draw the line like up into the right. Yep. And that's to be expected. And I think we're just in the, if I was to predict what are the next four quarters gonna look like, I think we're gonna see accelerating intensity on that engagement index. We also popped into foreign territory, so to speak, on the flexible office cost index.

00:14:06 So Yeah. So walk me through, can you just explain maybe in a little bit more detail what that is and what yeah. What it's representing? Sure. So the third of pre-IND index is in this package is what we call the, the posi or the flexible office cost index. This is looking at the average cost of a hybrid workplace transaction in our marketplace.

00:14:26 So the cost to the end user. So if I book a meeting room or book a day office, the cost to me. Okay. Absolutely. So it's a general Yeah. Kinda like the consumer price index, right? This, this is a generalized index, but it's looking, it's looking specifically at on demand transactions of all types. So it's inclusive of the day passes book,

00:14:46 the meeting rooms book in all markets in all territories and all, all customer types. So it's the macro index. If that number goes up, that means either spaces are costing more and people are paying more for them. Yep. And or could be a combination. Well and or people are buying more expensive things, so, Okay. Larger meeting rooms or Yeah.

00:15:07 Okay. Great point. Yep. Yep. So if, if the CPI goes up, you know, if the consumer price index goes up, it might be because people are buying new cars, not refrigerators. Yep. Or it could be going up because inflation is pushing the prices of all, all goods up. Yeah. What we think is happening,

00:15:22 given the insights that we can drill in on is that, yeah, the asking prices of flexible office spaces of all types are trending upward. You know, collaboration space costs went up 14% quarter over quarter. If we looked at that subcategory concentration spaces, so a desk or a private office went up 11%. And so in general, we're seeing something that I think has been predicted for some time,

00:15:45 which is there's gonna be some inflationary pressure on flexible office inventory on the cost around that. So is it inflation, is it operators trying to keep pace with inflation or is it a like supply demand demand? Yeah, exactly. Well Or some combination of those things. I mean, and also willing, It's a tricky environment to kind of parse that out.

00:16:07 We could talk later if we want about that LinkedIn post I put out this weekend, which sort of dove into sort of the real economics of flex versus traditional real estate. I think it's relevant to, to talking about the index, I'll sort of summarize for a moment now. Yeah. Operators are charging more for flexible office and customers are paying more for it.

00:16:26 The good news for both parties I think is that on a comparative basis relative to the real dollars that companies are paying for the traditional real estate that they still hold, it is still a dramatically lower cost way to support the productivity and the workplace needs of your employees dramatically. So, Hey, I just wanted to jump in really quickly before we continue with our discussion.

00:16:51 If you're working on opening a Coworking space, I wanna invite you to join me for my free masterclass. 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 includes some q and a.

00:17:15 If you'd like to join me, you can register at Everything Coworking dot com slash masterclass. 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,

00:17:49 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 can work through any challenges that they're having or opportunities get ideas from other community managers,

00:18:21 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, I sent you an email about my friend whose name I will not mention his company because I made the mistake of doing that somewhere. And I'm sure he got this like,

00:18:41 but I, you know, I said Mark, you know, I have this person, I think he was estimating, right? Like based on the number of people who actually use this fixed asset that they have, it was like a thousand dollars per employee that went into the office. You know, it's just like so ludicrous. So to your point when you're comparing that like a liquid,

00:19:01 I was like, you need to be on LiquidSpace, you need to do everything on demand. And the his cost would pull plummet on a Yeah. Per, you know, instant per per booking basis. I mean, Well do you mind if I share this example that I put on LinkedIn because I think Yeah, that would be perfect. I thought it was,

00:19:16 was really interesting. I was like, well this is fun. Yeah. So for your audience, LiquidSpace is a marketplace where individuals, whether they are employees of big companies or whether they're freelancers, can, you know, search fine and book space to do work wherever they might need to anywhere in the world. Today, more recently, last two years,

00:19:33 we've also been selling a management platform to companies of all sizes and companies are using that platform to create hybrid workplace programs for their employees and actually invite or even enforce that their employees use our platform when they need flexible office space. As I mentioned in a LinkedIn post on this, this past weekend, that yes, our friend Dave Karen's inspired, but I was drawn into a,

00:19:53 a workshop session with one of our larger clients that's a Fortune 100 organization that has chosen our platform to support their large employee base globally. So they're, so they have a statistically relevant activity level, they're using the platform a lot and they got a lot of employees. And the problem or the, the workshop topic that we were drawn into by our customer who's a workplace leader,

00:20:17 was he's tasked internally with trying to help the company in finance and leadership kind of understand kind of the efficiency and the ROI of their hybrid workplace program. And, you know, three years ago workplace was just their substantial lease portfolio and now they've got this scaling hybrid program and their motivation to do that was to control cost and to try to enhance employee experience.

00:20:41 Cuz they had employees that were becoming more distributed, but they were struggling with how do we make the comparison? Well on our traditional portfolio, we think about total burden cost per employee. We think about dollars per square foot and, and on our LiquidSpace power platform, you know, we're paying for space by the drink and we're paying per transaction, how should we think about equating it?

00:20:58 So we workshop and just pulled all the data forward and chose to make a comparison at the level of what's the real cost per sort of day serve, right? So if Jamie goes to the headquarters location on a given day or if she's assigned to that headquarters location and presumed to go there every day, what, what's that costing? And then if, if Jamie alternatively was to use a hybrid experience as her,

00:21:22 you know, day of work, what, what's that costing? So it ended up making for an apples to apples compare. So the numbers, right? We modeled the cost of their existing portfolio and we chose to model two things. We, we chose to model the fantasy scenario, which is if every available seat that was designed and intended to be filled was filled every hour of the day that it was intended to be filled,

00:21:45 which is all the work week, you know, what, what would the effective cost per day be? So what's the theoretical fantasy max efficiency? And that answer was $48 and 77 cents. Okay, cool. That's, that's Like a per person per day rate. Yeah. Cost per day, per person theoretical limit of space delivered. Now in reality for this particular nameless client who I think is representative of most companies of that size,

00:22:11 their actual cost per deliver day as a function of their real observed occupancy level. So they, they have, they, they have monitoring tools to track show up is $375 in a few pennies. Okay? So that's what it's cost to them per day at a serve real estate to employees. And then the fun part was, okay, what, what is the real cost that they're experiencing in terms of their scaling hybrid program?

00:22:31 It's $21 and 65 cents. Right? So back to the compare their actual observed cost to delight their employees and let them work from anywhere, you know, together and alone is less than half the cost of what the theoretical fantasy outcome might be. Be beq and it's one 17th the cost of what they're actually experiencing. So back to the flexible office cost index in this quarter's report,

00:22:58 yeah, costs are going up but, but we are nowhere near the point where the cost of flexible office should be a deterrent for companies who are seeking to optimize employee experience and reduce, dramatically reduce their overall real estate costs. There's still enormous headroom. And so if you're a cf, as I mentioned in their LinkedIn post, if you're a CFO or a chief people officer and you're looking at the satisfaction levels of the employees working in flex and you're looking at the economics of these two,

00:23:29 it's gonna screen to you, oh well we need to, we need to level that out. We need to keep downsizing, not eliminate, but keep downsizing our traditional stuff cuz no one's coming in at the levels that they were before And they're voting with their feet, right? Yeah. And we can afford to rebalance. So I think, I think we're early in that that rebalancing It's an an interesting time because not only is it what the employee wants,

00:23:49 it's less expensive. It's, it's not like the employee has said, I want this really expensive benefit that I need you to give me and I demand it. It's the exact opposite. I want this thing which might be a meeting room near home or an office or a desk where I can just like go concentrate and, and it's more economical for you to provide that to me.

00:24:10 So yeah, that's correct win. And then maybe to the third index that we haven't talked about that's in the report that folks can download and we call it the H W I, the hybrid sort of work index. And that one is looking at for what types of space and for what activities are people spending money. And that index looks at, we look at all of the transaction types and we infer whether it's for concentration or for collaboration.

00:24:32 And that index is continuing on a trend that has been on and it's continued, you know, the dollars, the allocation of spend, which is heavily driven by enterprises using our platform continues to move in the direction of collaboration. It's 77% of the spend. And I'll stress, like, I feel really good about that one for numerous reasons, including the,

00:24:53 the fact that when given choice and when people are acting with their feet, when they're trusted with choice, they're doing the very thing which is coming together with their colleagues to collaborate. A lot of the naysayers about flexibility and choice are warning us against or scaremongering or even some CEOs, you better mandate your employees come back to the office because if you don't,

00:25:13 you know, culture's gonna disappear. You know, collaboration can only happen at the office. Collaboration can only happen at the office that you've leased for 10 years. Please sign another lease. No collaboration can and does happen in all sorts of places and trust your damn employees to know that they appreciate it. The data's here. Yeah. When given the choice people are choosing Yeah.

00:25:33 For, for obvious reasons. It's, it's delightful and effective on multiple levels to spend time. Exactly. I had at the GWA conference, I had Morgan Burns from Rome in Atlanta on my panel and she was like, yeah, we have these people coming in. They're so thrilled to be together. They're so thrilled, thrilled to have the choice about where they meet.

00:25:53 And Rome is a, to your point, like a delightful experience. How fun to go someplace closer to home probably are more centralized and great amenities and beautiful meeting spaces that have all the tech you need. And so, right. I love that perspective for both that argument and also from an operator perspective to be able to see those trends I think is super helpful.

00:26:12 I mean, the pricing trends I thought were interesting. So there are big operators that do dynamic pricing, so they're probably kind of leading the charge on let's make sure that supply and demand equation is right. But you know, if you're a more independent operator and you don't really know, here's the data for you that's going up and people are paying it and usage is going,

00:26:32 you know, it's all kind of trending up into the right. And then also to figure out, okay, what do these people want to wanna do? How can I serve them? And if I'm opening a new location, do I lean into meeting, you know, or collaboration spaces or do I lean into concentration spaces? So, you know, your data shows that some of the on demand is really leaning towards collaboration,

00:26:52 which is, you know, I think a lot of operators would be less hesitant because it's variable income, right? Historically like more variable, maybe less predictable. But today we're seeing that demand rise and I think people who lean into that, especially for larger meetings are winning. Yeah, absolutely. Another trend that's not illustrated in this particular report, but sits behind that activity is something that's now reemerging.

00:27:21 It was familiar in 2019. It's, it's now showing real green shoots, which is many of our enterprise clients who stepped back into workplace using our platform to enable the booking of space on demand are now using the data insights that they're deriving about their own teams, that our platform provides them. They're using that information to identify places in situations where they need to now graduate from on demand to some blend of on-demand and dedicated spaces.

00:27:50 And so we are seeing play out month and quarter by quarter the reeducation of workplace and real estate and HR leaders around what are the new rhythms of work and workplace and how do I rebuild the right hybrid workplace spectrum. Some of it might be home forever. I think it will be, some of it will be on demand spaces frequently or perhaps forever. We're,

00:28:13 we're now seeing an an uptick or faster tempo of hubs being placed back in. But a preference from a lot of big companies to do that on flexible terms, not slide back into the 10 year lease too quickly. Yep. So collaboration for a lot of situations becomes the, the first beachhead, if you will, that might lead to that deeper and more intentional relationship that goes with a longer term space.

00:28:33 And that's exciting as well. Yeah. Okay. This may be a little out of scope, but it just brought to mind a conversation you and I had had in person, which is, not everyone is familiar with flex, right? So your like larger occupiers are probably trying to figure that out too. Like how do we educate our people on what it looks like to work in a flex space and you know that it's available and what are the use cases and trying to like the change management aspect of that,

00:29:00 if I'm an operator, you may be too removed from this, but like if you had a couple of pieces of advice, like how as an operator, when you have those folks start to use your space, maybe it's for a meeting and they're totally new to, you know, flex and on demand, what are some of the things they should do to create a positive experience so that these users return?

00:29:20 Yeah, like I think, so regardless of what you're selling, whether it's a digital experience or a physical space, I think there's something precious about the first user experience. Yeah. Right. Or the out-of-box experience, whether that's unpacking your new Apple product and it's that out-of-box experience or whether it is, you know, walking into that hotel you've never stayed at before for the first time.

00:29:42 Like your, your senses are heightened, right? Your sensitivity is heightened. And so if you're Everything Coworking, you know, groupy constituent and you're thinking that question you just voice to me, I'd be hyper focused on that first user experience, which means pay attention. Like this person that just booked, you know, a collaboration event or a meeting room at your space through LiquidSpace or any other platform for that matter,

00:30:04 pay attention. If it's their first time there, then you've got a special opportunity. When that customer's sensitivities are higher, they're probably a little less sure, they might be a little nervous, it might be their very first time back into flex your first time with you. And look, you're gonna imprint on them something really powerful if you, if you engage them because we know that,

00:30:24 I mean, you know what the Coworking what your audience, what this wonderful ecosystem that you and I play in kind of brought to the workplace discussion over the last 10 years is experience matters, right? Community matters, the human dimension matters. It's not just a chair in a room with the right temperature going on, it's much more than that nuanced, right?

00:30:44 And that front the house experience, I think matters so much all of the time, but especially so if it's that customer lending the first time. Yeah. So there's a, there's an off the cuff reaction to your question. Totally. No, I think that's a, a great perspective and you know, a takeaway I might give is, you know,

00:31:01 if you're listening, talk to your team about that, be intentional about it and recognize when those folks have a little, little star on the reservation that that might be a new one and might warrant a little more surprise and delight in their visit. I was talking to a mutual friend of ours on this very topic this morning actually, of how a lot of operators don't distinguish between an internal member booking a meeting room versus somebody off the street.

00:31:27 And if it's an internal member, they know the lay of the land, they know where the coffee is. They, you know, they, they know where the wifi code is on the wall Yeah. Or what have you. Right? They, they know all those things. And, and so that's a, that's an opportunity and you do need to distinguish and,

00:31:40 and furthermore what you and I are just riffing on was if it's the first time a user or a new customer to your location, you need to double double click on that. So there's a really special experience for, for out of the box first, first time use. There's probably a still hospitality forward experience if it's a repeat user, but still somebody who's drop in.

00:31:58 And then, not that you should ignore your members by any means, but, but you know, they don't need the same human touch necessarily. They're, they're, they're on autopilot. Yep. Yeah, they are, they're comfortable New tools and your workflows Yeah. And the new folks. Yeah. So your Op, your ops playbook, yeah. I mean your operations playbook ought to distinguish between those different personas.

00:32:16 Yep. I think that's still the biggest opportunity in this industry though. And I would love to hear your perspective on that. Like the friend that I mentioned who knew he was spending, you know, a thousand dollars a tape per person to use this fixed office, like just simply didn't know about, I was like, look, it's global. You can have global solutions that you manage and so the decision makers still don't know.

00:32:38 And then the end user, you know, just like what we were talking about, like folks who just have never still been in a flex space like that is wide open in terms of what, how that will impact our industry. Yeah. I mean, I guess maybe as a, a wrap up point Yeah. What do you think? Are you optimistic about that opportunity?

00:32:57 Is it a hard problem? Give us your, Well you used, I mean you came from a corporate background as well, or an enterprise background yourself and you used the term a couple minutes ago of change management. And I think yes, change management is needed in particular within these larger organizations, but not only with them at a couple of levels. Change management,

00:33:16 number one, whether you work for a big company or a small Startup or just yourself, people over the last three years have gotten really accustomed settled, I might say, into working just at home or just remotely. And for many, that's not the optimal outcome, but they're settled in that various pieces of friction have built up around them that are, you know,

00:33:37 they're an object at rest. They're gonna stay at rest unless they're acting on less and Courts that's yes, that's Newton, right? And so, you know, change management is about, you know, applying some empathetic sports to try to, you know, shift them to some other mode. So either motion or some other place. And I think one type of change management that's happening that I think is gonna fail is companies mandating you have to come back to the office five days a week or you have to come back to the office Tuesday,

00:34:04 Wednesday, Thursday. Like, that's just time and time again. We're, we're hearing the stories of how that's not working. But it is true that patterns and friction have built up and that friction can be anxiety about venturing back out of the house. It can be social stress associated with, I'm not used to working in the politics of this. It can be the perceived hassle factor,

00:34:26 real or imagined. Yep. I didn't have to think before, I didn't have to think about what to wear or how I look. Right. What am I gonna eat for lunch? Yeah. Where am I gonna get the coffee? Yeah. Yep. It's so simple. Those pieces of friction are real. I mean the, the perception is reality.

00:34:42 They are real in the minds of the user base that we wanna welcome back. And so we have to counterbalance that with eliminating those points of friction as much as possible and also putting out the compelling why. Yeah. We've gotta start, start telling the stories about and reminding people of how delightful it is Yeah. To have those in-person experiences. We gotta learn how to tell those stories.

00:35:04 And those stories are both about productivity, but they're also about the soft stuff. It's also about, you know, shooting the shit with a colleague. It's about the stuff that happens after work. It's the serendipity, I mean the name of one of our mutual friends. But I mean, serendipity is a part of the magic of together. And so,

00:35:20 so change management is needed with individual people we wanna attract. And then also within the companies that employ these folks and in a lot of those companies, what you and I do and the world that you and I play in Jamie, you know, Coworking Flex is, it's unfamiliar to most, it's unknown to to some, but most people have seen as we work documentary or I've heard the story,

00:35:40 but Unfamiliar is a great way To put it. It's unfamiliar. Yep. And so, and that's where I think where we've chosen to put our focus as a company here in this post pandemic period is we're, you know, extremely focused on supporting companies of all size in being that empathetic change management sort of force. Like we're giving the tools and the education to companies to be able to enable choice with their employees and then help,

00:36:07 help nudge those employees to find whatever their new balance should be. And that's hard for an individual Coworking space in an individual market to do. Probably unrealistic for them to be the ones that do that, that's not their job. Yeah. I think it's the job for folks like us and others that are taking on that particular slice of the market. Yeah.

00:36:26 Yeah, I think so hopefully we'll see more of that and see the, the up into the right trend on your next report. So thanks for creating the report, thank you to your team and for delivering that. We'll take all the, all the industry data we can get. And again, that link will be in the show notes so you can download it.

00:36:42 And thanks for taking the time to share your perspective and highlights. Thanks Jamie. Have a great day. 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. If you'd like to learn more about our education and coaching programs,

00:37:07 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