316. Behind the Scenes of the Work Club Experience at General Provision with Tim Hasse
Resources Mentioned in this Episode:
Everything Coworking Featured Resources:
Masterclass: 3 Behind-the-Scenes Secrets to Opening a Coworking Space
Creative Coworking Partnerships: How to negotiate and structure management agreements from the landlord and operator perspective
TRANSCRIPTION
316. Behind the Scenes of the Work Club Experience at General Provision with Tim Hasse
00:00:02,"Welcome to the Everything Coworking podcast, where every week I keep you updated on the latest trends and how toss 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 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."
00:00:47,"Welcome to the Everything Coworking Podcast. This is your host, Jamie Russo. My guest today is Tim Hasse. I saw him at Juicy back in April. I didn't actually see him, I just saw his profile, I think in the app or on a speaker description. I didn't actually see his panel. I can't remember why, but I was really interested in his model."
00:01:10,"I knew he was up to something a little bit different, and I think what he's up to is what we should be thinking about. I do think there will be many different segments of workspace going forward. The traditional model will probably still continue to work in many markets for many folks. But Tim really, I think, gets to the heart of the,"
00:01:39,"the things we should be thinking about going forward, about how the consumers are changing. And Tim's been doing this for a while. He's just been kind of flying under the radar, and we give credit to Liz Elam for pulling him on stage. But so he says a few things. I was just reviewing our discussion, which was actually a good, a good month ago."
00:01:59,"He says, we're really competing against people in their homes. If we can't bring people out of their house and into a better experience at gp, which is general provision, then people aren't going to churn, are going to churn. I think that should be a correction there. So the important aspect here is we're competing against people in their homes. There are people who need office space,"
00:02:22,"and so they will probably always be clients of traditional shared office space where you can go and rent an office. And then there are the rest of the folks who don't need office space. So what's the reason for them to leave home? And that's part of what general provision caters to. They do have office space. They're roughly 60% office space, although interestingly,"
00:02:45,"he thought they were kind of not a typical mix. Certainly there are shared office spaces that are 80% office space and with a little common area and a ca cafe. But the 60 40 mix of private space to open space is probably a little bit more typical than Tim thinks. But he, you know, his point is that they're really passionate about what he calls the Coworking collision magic,"
00:03:15,"you know, and since day one. And he thinks, you know, that doesn't happen when you only build offices in this space. He talks about that. So he says, we're not afraid to build in common area throughout the space. So he said, you know, he's kind of avoided being part of the industry discussion for a long time. And I think he's,"
00:03:33,"he's being somewhat careful about what he's like listening to in terms of the right way to do it. You know, he talks about how I, you know, talk a lot about the numbers in the business model, which I am really passionate about because I want people to be profitable, but I love sort of the healthy questioning of what works and some ability to experiment."
00:03:56,"So Tim has another company as a software company, and so this business is not going to make or break his ability to take care of his family. So he can experiment a little bit. And he talks about some of the lessons he's learned in the model over time, but he's very careful. So at first, I referred to general Provision as a social club,"
00:04:17,"and he would interrupted me. He's like, no, I wanna be really clear. We're not a social club, we're a work club. But he, he doesn't necessarily identify as a Coworking space because they offer Coworking, but it is also about more than just Coworking. It's about the community. They have a very heavy event schedule. They have, they make a good portion of revenue from events."
00:04:43,"And he says the mantra very early was that anybody could come in and out build us, but they'll never be able to out service us. And that's the culture that still lives on nine years later. So I think that is a mindset that is becoming more popular and more, we're thinking more about that service aspect. We talk a lot about, I was on Lizzie ELAMs podcast world,"
00:05:09,"it's not live yet, I don't think, although it might be live by the time you listen to this. And she, she said, true or false, Coworking is a real estate business. And you know, the, the popular answer to that is no, it's a hospitality business. And yet not everybody knows how to deliver on the hospitality side of it."
00:05:28,"I mean, that's fundamentally what a Community Manager is for. Although a Community Manager has so many roles that are not necessarily hospitality related, but, you know, operations related and marketing related and, and all of that. But Tim's team, and he has, he talks about the evolution of its staffing and how that's changed over time. Anyway, I'm not gonna,"
00:05:46,"I'm not gonna summarize the entire interview for you, but keep listening because I think it's a really important conversation. And I love, you know, Tim's thinking, and I love that he's sort of resisting, sort of jumping into sort of the, the mainstream way folks are thinking about the model. And I think that's really healthy. So I would love to hear,"
00:06:09,"you know, if you have a model that's a little bit, it's not that it's exactly non-traditional, it has a focus in a different area. Maybe if you have one of those models, I would love to chat. So send me a note. You're definitely gonna enjoy this conversation with Tim. So without further ado, here we are. I, okay."
00:06:31,"I am here with Tim Hasse. I would've said Haas. Tim, what is the origin of your last name? It's a German name. I think you would've been saying it correctly, but somewhere along the line, my family decided to Americanize it, I think. And it's Hasi. I don't know if that's correct. Yeah. Or Not. Ellis Island somewhere."
00:06:49,"Casa Yeah, yeah. My maiden name exactly. Is, is actually horrible. My maiden name is terrible. They, so my family says it this like, really awful way. And I went to London and I was like, that's my name. And they say it the right way here. I was like, who messed it up when they came here and said,"
00:07:06,"like, say it this horrible name or horrible way. Yeah. Okay. So Hesi. Okay. So you're in, are you born and raised in, you're, are you closer to Miami or Fort Lauderdale? We are in the heart of Fort Lauderdale. So I am here in downtown Fort Lauderdale, Florida downtown. I I actually split time in Nashville,"
00:07:27,"Tennessee, which is kind of part of the, the storyline here. Okay. I'll get, okay. Tell, tell me the Tim Story's Currently calling from our, our downtown location. Well, which part? Let's see. So Nashville is new Okay. For my family. And I, I'm a husband and father of three kids, three Kids. My wife is,"
00:07:47,"I have three children now. Baby boy is one year old. Just turned one. Okay. A seven year old girl, a three-year-old girl, and now our new baby boy. So we're done. Okay. That's enough. We had a lot, have a lot of children. Totally enough. But when we, we start saying a lot after two,"
00:08:03,"it became a lot. How many kids do you have? A lot. A lot. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. But Miami and Fort Lauderdale have been our home for a long time. My wife and I are both Floridians. We ended up in South Florida after college. So she's a working physician. She finished fellowship, a med school fellowship,"
00:08:21,"and then we were like, if we don't try something new, it might not ever happen, so let's jump somewhere else. And I have another company, I'm, I'm a tech guy by trade, and that's an important part parallel to this GP storyline here. But I, I've been running remote teams for a long time, and we had some clients in Nashville."
00:08:42,"Nashville or New York was kind of where we ended up deciding from whether Brooklyn or Nashville. And we ended up probably making the right, same, Same. I could see Focused, family focused choice. Right. But Nashville's been great, but I come back and forth. Right. So this has been a, a fun experiment. I, I happen to be down in Fort Lauderdale for the pod."
00:09:01,"We, we brought the, the whole family down for the last three weeks of summer. Oh, nice. So we're wrapping up summer here In Florida. Yeah. Who doesn't wanna spend summer in Florida? What's the temperature out there in the, apparently, Apparently tourists don't, right? This is like the opposite of season. It's quiet. So you're,"
00:09:14,"it's, it's, you're, you must have good air conditioning because if you're watching on YouTube, you have a great background. First of all, you are probably my most equipped guest ever. You've got the head, the slim headphones, the fancy mic. You got the GP t-shirt very seriously. You got, I could see just a nice little window of the space behind you."
00:09:34,"It's really perfect. Yeah. Well, you know, you Only have one shot with Jamie Reso. Totally. Make it good. Okay. So your wife practices in Nashville, is that right? That's correct. Yep. Okay. So I go back and forth. The family lives in Nashville. We live in Nashville, which she's still weird for us to say five years later."
00:09:53,"Yeah. But we come back and forth, probably not forever for us. I think we miss Florida and the ocean too much. But it's been a, it's been a really awesome change of pace for us. Yeah. Okay. So yes. Tell me, how did general provision come to happen? Tell us the story. Sure. Yeah. So we'll start from the beginning and see where it takes us."
00:10:15,"I am a tech guy by trade. I'm a designer. I went to school for design and digital art. I learned to code while I was in university. I had a career in agency life. And when I decided to do my own thing, at some point we needed our own office. Right? So the idea of Coworking was ex I was exposed to Coworking in 2008 or oh nine."
00:10:42,"I walked into a space in Seattle, Washington when I was doing some business travel. And that was OG Coworking, right? That was Coworking, No, it wasn't a WeWork. Coworking working, it wasn't a WeWork in ing. No, this, Yeah. No, no. This is, this is very early. Okay. And this was the purity period of Coworking where it was a,"
00:10:59,"Like, open floor plan id Warehouse, open floor plan, no offices. Okay. And that's space still exists, actually. Just looked them up because I, I, I figured I'd reference them, but they, they, they, I think they've traded, I actually saw them on gans swap at some point. And okay, there's a new operator there,"
00:11:12,"but it's a really cool space. And that was the first thing I ever, first time I was ever exposed to this, what is this? What's Coworking? But for me, I was traveling from my corporate life, and every time thereafter I would go to a new city. I was looking up according space because working outta the hotel versus going to one of these vibey spaces full of amazing people,"
00:11:32,"this is a no brainer. Yeah. So I fell in love with the business model, at least the, the experience. Maybe I had no idea what the business model was. None Of them were making money. But you loved it. Yeah, That's exactly right. So I recreated that non making money model when we needed an office. Right? So my software company we're a product studio."
00:11:53,"We built build apps. That's what I know. So I, I left my corporate life and launched a, a company and we were remote from day one. So in 2009, I built my first remote company. I loved the idea of remote work. However, it was also out of necessity because in Fort Lauderdale, Florida in 2009, developers, not a lot developers,"
00:12:14,"there was no giant, giant tech boom. Yet there wasn't a whole lot of talent. The community was nascent. And so when you're young, scrappy, and poor, you find creative ways to make things happen. So we opened up this space, we built our dream office. We, we, you know, picked up the hammer, no architect."
00:12:36,"It was a warehouse in the art and tech district. And we just created magic. And we had no business plan, no model. Me and a partner wanted to share an office. And we said, there's no tech community here yet, so we're gonna create it and we're gonna open our doors and we're just gonna host a bunch of events. And eventually,"
00:12:56,"if it offsets some rent, that would be great. So I was one of those guys, right. Agency owner who needed an office. Yeah. But it also felt like a calling, you know, I was at, at, at some point the, the product studio was doing well and we're humming along building apps for other people. And it,"
00:13:12,"it sometimes felt a little bit soulless. 'cause you can't always choose your client based Right. Clients and what the app is. You're building a really cool thing. Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes you're building amazing things. A lot of times you're building things that are, I mean, there's always an ethical choice that wasn't a problem. But it, it just didn't feel like we were always doing something bigger than ourselves."
00:13:28,"And the, the Coworking space, whatever that was, we didn't use the term back then, but general provision was this opportunity to do something bigger than ourselves and serve the community and do a lot of good. And so that's, that's how it began. And it was really passion for three or four years in the background, enter WeWork, enter Coworking,"
00:13:48,"enter the shift from open floor plan to this need of flexible private offices that we didn't have. But we weren't really sweating that in the beginning. Like I said, my original need was to offset some of our expense, turn our, yeah. Expense center into a profit center. And the problem is, we just kept selling out. You know, so people kept coming and we needed more desks and more space."
00:14:10,"So we kept taking warehouse bay after warehouse bay. We expanded four, four times in four years. Wow. And then I realized, I I, I actually have a business. I need to, I need to probably take this seriously. So you were renting, renting, continuing to rent. Currently, that's not something that was really based on strategy,"
00:14:30,"but more about opportunity. So we're currently sitting on triple net leases up until this point. We have a lot of my professional time on this business is in deal flow, looking at properties, negotiating deals, trying to find the right partner. So we're in the middle of quite a few management opportunities, management agreements. We, at this point are, are not really carving out a very strict formula."
00:14:59,"Right? Like, the right opportunity comes up as a triple net lease. We're gonna pursue it, go for it. If the right partnership comes up, we're gonna pursue it. If the right opportunity to buy property comes up, we're still small enough that we can say we're, we're interested in that. Yep. So we're not ruling out out any of those opportunities right now,"
00:15:15,"especially in this climate. I think there's, I mean, a lot of the, the, the things that keep me up at night, it just feels like we have such a unique moment in time that's, that we're on the precipice of. I don't exactly know what that's going to look like, but we want to be ready for it. And we love controlling the experience."
00:15:33,"So we're in a, I'm, I'm currently in our flagship downtown Ladale space, and this is a a hundred year old historic hotel. Know Oh wow. We love, we love being able to control end-to-end, right? You're coming into a gp, you're seeing our team in uniform, we're saying the right things. Doing the right things, and our members are delighted."
00:15:53,"And I think that something is definitely lost when you're key carting into the parking garage, key carting into the first floor. Yeah. Key carting into the elevator, and then a hundred percent Yeah. The GP experience. So we're, we're, we're trying to be as selective and disciplined as we can on that, but I think that with the opportunities coming our way,"
00:16:12,"we, we just need to keep an open mind. Yeah, I hear you. Yeah, we interviewed, actually, I think it was Chris Davies. He was also at Juicy Gio and I interviewed him and they own all their buildings, which is a great model to have. And he talked about how important it is for them to control the full experience,"
00:16:31,"which is for sure ideal if you can do it. But yeah. And the Fort Lauderdale real estate market is spicy right now. It's spicy. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's, you know, we have, it's, it's nice having relationships, right? I mean, I think that's one thing that we've learned as much as we want to grow and we're in growth mode."
00:16:49,"So I, I, I, you know, we've been diligence in Nashville for a long time because I've moved up there. So it's, it's an easy thing for me to, to put the research time into. But there's nothing like relationships, right? Yeah. And when you're committed and invested to an area, some of those conversations are a little bit easier to have."
00:17:07,"And not to say that we have any kind of secret sauce in that, but, you know, being here, you know, we're, we're coming up on operating year 10 next year. Ooh. And That's wild, huh? It's just, yeah. It's nice to know people. Yeah. Okay. So yeah, let's talk about you. You said it's not like there's secret sauce."
00:17:24,"I think you might have some secret sauce. So Yeah, let's, so the, I keyed in on, you have a, a headline on your website, the club for the anti office crowd. And I would love to hear kind of how you were thinking about like, the model and the why. And I think I used the term social club."
00:17:41,"You're like, I wanna be clear, it's a work club and the work is very important. And I was like, right, right. Okay, good. That's right. But the, I think this is such an interesting insight. I interviewed Ben Wright, who used to be, he was the founder of Up Suite, and he kind of used this,"
00:17:59,"he didn't use this phrase, which was maybe written by a good copywriter, but basically saying like, okay, well if people don't want to go to an office, then, like, what is Coworking? And, you know, how do you talk about it? And so when I saw your line, I was like, yeah, I, so,"
00:18:17,"okay, so what does it mean? Yeah, yeah. Tell us about the brand and the experience and Yeah. Who, who you serve and, and what you wanna be to people. Yeah. So I think I should first say that part of needing to explain this is because I'm starting to get more involved in the industry. And when I wasn't involved in the industry,"
00:18:42,"I know you were on stage and juicy. I mean, you're in, you're in now 10 years. Yeah, I was, well, you know, I, I, I tell the story that Liz grabbed me by the ear and yanked me after I was, you know, resisting for quite some time against your will time. I'm super grateful. It was a bit against my will,"
00:18:55,"and I'm so glad I came. And it, it was an awesome experience. But the, the closer that I get to the industry and learn from all of you, I realize how different we were from the beginning. And I mean that in the most loving way. It It good that you were kind of doing your own thing and creating your own Well,"
00:19:12,"You know, I I I, I like to tell myself that, you know, and I, I, of course, everyone thinks they're special, but we've just been doing a little bit of our own flavor of something for quite some time. And being able to trade notes with the industry has been super helpful. But it's also allowed me to realize that we need to keep in the groove that we have this difference."
00:19:29,"So let me explain a bit. We have been serving remote workers since day one. And the pandemic is what truly allowed us to kind of own that positioning. That the, there's a period in between where we're like, oh, well, maybe we are becoming a Coworking space, right? WeWork is booming, these other companies are booming. Maybe we are a Coworking space."
00:19:55,"Throughout the years, I've had offices, I, I won't name names, but my other company has been a, a customer, right? Okay. We've needed office in many cities. You know, at some point we had four offices in four different cities around the country. And I didn't have a GP built yet. So we were going to our colleagues,"
00:20:12,"right? And renting space. And so I would make my rounds as the owner of the, the tech company. And it was definitive that the experience that we were creating was very different than what I saw in the industry. And so the pandemic allowed us to really take ownership of that and really embrace what we had already kind of silently knew, which is that,"
00:20:34,"you know, we're trying to create an experience. And Coworking is, is a service of building the ideal remote work solution, right? It's not the only thing that we sell. It's a part of the value of membership. So when you're joining general provision, you're joining a private club. This is a club, and we provide Coworking, we provide space,"
00:20:57,"but that's just one piece of it. You know, there's this experiential layer, there's this highly valuable network of, of members that really work well together. There is a, a service level that is clear. Like I said, when you walk in the door, you're gonna see our hosts that are in sta, I'm sorry, in uniform name badged."
00:21:18,"You're going to sit down on your desk when you order from our app, we bring your food and drink to you. You're not going to press go on a curry cup. You know, this is a very, very experiential opportunity. And for us, since day one, we realized that even though we have competitors in the sense of office space, we're really competing against people in their homes."
00:21:39,"If we can't bring people out of their house and into a better experience at gp, then people aren't gonna churn, right? So our members need to have something to look forward to. So we're trying to build the ideal day of work. And that means that to us, that means we need to take care of mind, body, and soul. We have a,"
00:21:56,"a full wellness platform. We offer yoga and meditation, massage. We offer tons of meaningful programming. We bring in Amazon leading authors and speakers. And the entrepreneurship community is really a big part of who we cater to. And they're small businesses, right? So we're a club for remote work. We really focus on founders and creatives. We provide the tools to our members that really make them,"
00:22:24,"allow them to grow and thrive. And we're not afraid of the word remote work. That's something that I also learned in the industry, is a little bit of discomfort with remote work and hundred Percent, because I know, it's so interesting, It'ss. So it's, it's a weird discomfort. It's almost like they're a different class of people. It, I,"
00:22:43,"I don't get it fully, obviously this is what, what we've committed to, right? So, But, but also, like you guy, I mentioned a little bit started guy, right? You, you were that guy, and it's like, I'm, I'm still that guy, right? I still have team members all over the world. And what I,"
00:22:57,"what, what, what I've concluded post pandemic is that there was a cohort of people that did this before the pandemic, there is a huge boom of it during the pandemic. And there is a continued growth of this after. Yeah. We are not going anywhere. Remote work is, is here to stay. And I have to be opinionated to some degree because I'm making this a part of my life."
00:23:18,"But I I'm also employing 30 people around the world that agree. Right? And I'm just one teeny tiny company that has embraced this. And, you know, the, the, the industry that I come from in tech, you know, there's definitely some grumblings and, and the whole debate about how much should people come back, what is hybrid? All these conversations are,"
00:23:37,"are fascinating. But I'm here to tell you that remote work is, is here to stay. Yeah. I do wonder the class thing, remote work, people thinking about like enterprise, big companies, like the person who came out of their life. That's Exactly right. That, that's, yeah. I think that's the more uncomfortable conversation to, to navigate."
00:23:57,"And there's a decision maker there that that's, that's has to wrestle with that. And that's all valid. We serve small businesses, right? Big team for us, a team of 10. Yeah. We have a, a a healthy event business too, which is important. And I think all, all the things I'm learning from the industry, you know,"
00:24:12,"we are definitely, we've decided to make things more operationally intensive. You know, we have a full cafe program. We have a, like a very, very important and meaningful event business. And then we have, we put the, we put a lot of people on the ground. We staff our spaces. So they're highly serviced. And that's a lot."
00:24:30,"Yeah. That's, You've run an intimidating model for a lot of folks. And we couldn't start this way. Right? I think the reality is, you know, we're, we're 10 years into it, and we have a maturity as a company, the growth as a company that we can pull it off. So I totally understand the fear of doing this on day one."
00:24:46,"In fact, we couldn't do it on day on day one. I had a, a part-time volunteer intern, right? So it's, it's not, it's not the same. But, you know, now that we're pushing the membership count that we have, it's, it's a very different business model. And, and now that we know and have confidence of how we're positioned,"
00:25:01,"we, we know we can replicate it. Yeah. Okay. I have a bunch of questions. So I I am a little Sure. You run two companies, so you've some divided attention. But you mentioned, you know, okay, well we started with this kind of, you know, pure Coworking model, but people kept showing up and we had to get more space and people kept showing up."
00:25:22,"So you didn't have everything you have today. Why were people showing up? What was it that you were doing? What was the experience or the culture that made people keep showing up? The mantra very early was that anybody could come in and out build us, but they'll never be able to out service us. And that's the, the culture that still lives on,"
00:25:44,"you know, nine years later. And even though we're, you know, we won awards for our scrappy space and we're coolest office, I have a, I brought a, you Have a prop because We just, we just got named best, best of Fort Lauder best workspace again for third year in a row. All, let's say there are larger scale,"
00:26:05,"bigger buildings, nicer furniture, right? I mean, it's, it, but the way that you make your customers feel and your members feel is what matters. And that, that's how we've won. I mean, it's, it's very been, it's been very simple. And, and in fairness though, I'm, I, as much as I'm mouthing off,"
00:26:19,"it is still uncomfortable for me to brag, but it, it's been very intentional. Like, you know, there is a very, very tight feedback loop that we create internally to challenge the experience, right? Like, if this doesn't feel like it's working anymore, then we need to change it. And we're very intentional about ripping up that experience and starting afresh."
00:26:36,"But it's a, it's a just a hyper-focused approach towards the member experience, but doing right by them all the time. You asked about the beginning days. I think that there was a lot of, you know, there was a lot of open the door and don't worry about the money and the rest will work. You know, I mean, we've matured into the point where,"
00:26:55,"you know, you, you can still charge, you can still have that experience and that culture, but you, you gotta charge a fair price for what you're providing. Because now we're a legitimate business. But in fairness, those early days were a lot of come in the door, just get in here. And by any means necessary, we were hosting great events."
00:27:10,"We were galvanizing the tech community. We had our first win by we by way of landing a deal with a coding academy. So they kind of solidified Us. I saw some of your partnership list as I go. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, It helps out a lot. Helped out a lot. Yeah. Those are early wins and,"
00:27:26,"and replicable As we go to new markets, it's kind of the same formula. Well, there's nothing worse than an empty space, right? Like, that's right. So I, you know, I, there is a balance. You have to, you have to charge for the value, but also, yeah, there's something there to like, yeah,"
00:27:43,"let's get some people in the space and then, then we'll take their money and figuring that out. So, okay. At what point did you say like, okay, there's something here. Yeah. What was that decision process like? We're gonna get a little more like intentional operational. When did you add food and beverage? I, I love food and beverage."
00:28:06,"It's, yeah. What, what was the trigger for that? Well, we just knew we needed to capture more top line somehow. Right? And, you know, the food and beverage really isn't saving grace of our business by any means. It's 10%, it's more experiential. Yep. But there, I think coming from software, everything else seemed easy."
00:28:28,"It was a young naivete that I had, right? Like, you know, like, oh, well, you know, we can, you know, my, my other life was, you know, we're, we're, we're speaking in multiple coding languages and we're building bits, and they create magic on a screen that seems a lot easier than pouring coffee."
00:28:44,"I'm sorry, a lot more difficult than just pouring coffee, right? So, you know, and then you get into, oh, yeah, okay, there's a lot to these things. Now, I was passionate about coffee. We built a great coffee bar on day one in the original space. Okay. But we didn't staff it because we couldn't afford to."
00:29:00,"So it was kind of like a, we're coffee, we're a Volunteer Intern, we're gonna have the best equipment, but we're gonna teach this volunteer intern how to, how to serve some coffee. And that evolved over time. At some point, we committed to hiring a, a barista, and that barista was our Community Manager. So the staffing model has evolved since then."
00:29:18,"But once we, once we committed to this as a business and not a passion. So I, I, I was probably five years into it, four years into it, and we said, we're gonna outgrow the, there's, there's, there's a couple things at play. One, we're outgoing. The space, again, I'm on like the fourth lease negotiation Yeah."
00:29:34,"To expand and find more space. Additionally, there was a redevelopment plan in our original space. We were in the art and tech district. We knew at some point the area was gonna be redeveloped. So, and we had hundreds of members at the time that we needed to make sure that we weren't displaced. We knew at that point the model was,"
00:29:51,"was we had the confidence that I could grow this into new, new locations. So we took a, a big risk in taking down this space that I'm currently in, and big for us, because I was still bootstrapping at the time. And we jumped into it and built it out with offices. The real Coworking model. It was still a small space by definition."
00:30:11,"So we, we were up to 6,000 square feet in our original space. This space started off at 7,000 square feet. We took down the neighboring building recently. So this space is currently 12,000 square feet. But all that to say, once I signed a second lease, we knew that we needed to pack more opportunity for revenue. And that's event space and food and bev and catering for these larger scale retreats and events that we're hosting."
00:30:37,"And so we've gotten very, very good at delivering those operational challenges now. But we definitely under undercut the, the complexity in the beginning because, oh, it's just coffee. We'll figure it out. Right. But no, no regrets in, in doing it. Now, I almost wonder if that's one of those entrepreneurial things. Like, if you knew how hard it was,"
00:30:59,"no one would ever do any of this. So maybe the naive to like, oh, stuff in the real world is easy. Let's do coffee. And Yeah, that's exactly right. I, I mean, I get the sense, you know, you've been kind of like, I, I had a coach once who was like, you gotta just watch your own movie,"
00:31:18,"right? Like, don't be looking at the screen of somebody else's like life movie and get distracted by what they're doing. And that's kind of like, yeah, I haven't really gone to a lot of industry things. Could you? Probably to some extent. Well, I don't know. I'm curious. So when you made this the, you said real Coworking,"
00:31:34,"you know, we're making offices, and was there any like, philosophical challenge there? Or like, like what did that Yeah, yeah. What did that evolution, I'll Share, I'll share a very important observation that you might've seen this. You might believe this, but not a lot of people say it. And that is that, so we all know in the industry that,"
00:31:58,"and you know, you, you, you teach this as you should. But you know, the common area is, is not necessarily where the business is made. But we've become so good at it in our, in our business that it's very, very important. But, but more importantly to your phy philosophical question from being a customer at other Coworking spaces,"
00:32:18,"from observing and researching our space and others, there is a universal truth in that when you get comfortable in an office, some, there is a type of persona that will come in and out of the office without ever saying hi and bye to anybody else in the community. Right? I come in the back door, I sit at my desk, time to leave,"
00:32:42,"I'm out the door. And they haven't said anything to anybody. There's no value created in the community. The value created in the community comes from the magic of the common area. Yeah. And when you have a member that hasn't shown up, they've been on vacation or traveling for three weeks, and that, that first time they come in and they're reconnecting with other members,"
00:33:01,"you know, that's when the Coworking magic starts to proliferate. And so, knowing that from day one, and also walking into my first Coworking space in 2009, and it's just a warehouse, I, I refuse to let go of that. And the industry has said, Hey, look, you know, there's better ways or other ways, but the,"
00:33:20,"the, the Coworking collision magic that we've always talked about since day one, it doesn't happen when you just build offices in the space. Yeah. And so we're not afraid to build in common area throughout the space. We're lopsided by the Coworking definition. Yeah. What's your percentage of offices to open space? Yeah. So we're, there's 40, there's 40 units in this,"
00:33:43,"40 offices, private offices in this space. And I think that it's probably, I should know this quickly, but I think it's probably 60 40 here. Yeah. 60% is meeting, meeting rooms and office. And 40% is common area. Yeah. You're good. I like that model. Yeah. I mean, you're good. You're good. From my perspective,"
00:34:02,"I have spent a couple of weeks, like deep into programs and looking at the percentage, and that's kind of what I, yeah. I think you have to get there. Well, there, yeah. I think I worry about other models today, which is part of the reason I was like, I gotta have this guy on the podcast. 'cause I wanna hear what he's thinking."
00:34:26,"And it's, you know, post pandemic. I think people maybe always needed this, but I find myself, when I go places, like looking people in the eyeballs, right? Like, I gotta look at you, I want you to know that I see you because I think, you know, for two years or whatever, not in Florida, in Florida,"
00:34:51,"meanwhile in Florida, but, but you know, that lack of like human connection and then all these people working at home, and they're not like looking at anybody in the eyeballs like, I see you. And if you don't get that in a workspace, yeah, there's a certain segment, a certain profile who's just gonna roll into their office and roll back out."
00:35:11,"And they just need the productivity and they just need, so that's one model. There's, that's one model that can make money and can work with a certain segment of people. But I do wonder, like, do we just hit a point where, you know, there's like loneliness, pandemic and just people that doesn't work. That's not what people want anymore."
00:35:31,"So I'm really, I worry about that very traditional, we know on paper this makes money, but I don't know in five years is, is is that out of date? Because people just need more. And so what I think you've created something that's very intuitive to you, and I think that's the challenge with the model that you're running. Like, as someone who helps people launch spaces,"
00:35:56,"it's like individual, right? Like, I can't look at your model and tell someone else to go do it because they may fail miserably because it's just not in their d n a, it's in yours, which is really cool. And you just, it's like you knew it even though you hadn't seen it maybe somewhere else. You'd seen like little bits and pieces and you just pulled it all together."
00:36:18,"It was what you needed. But I think like humans need more of what you're doing, but not everybody. It's brave, it's brave to create what you're creating. And it's far more like hospitality and human focused than professional office furniture in a very dense, you know, floor model that makes money. Anyway, sorry for the long ramble, but I think it's love completely on my mind."
00:36:41,"I love it. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm thankful that you made the observation and, and well, I think that there's some validation coming on and that you invited me to the pod because I, I do think even though we have been defying the, the Coworking logic in this for a little bit of time, the, the fact that there are more and more people discussing what this club experience is,"
00:37:02,"or the social club or whatever that is, it, it is validating that this is happening in that way. And I told you, I'm, I'm opinionated in that you're in what you said to me that, you know, this feels intuitive to me. I'm solving my own problem in many ways. That's true. But I'm also looking at this from a 10 and 15 year time horizon and saying,"
00:37:24,"when Jen, what's next? Not with Gen Z Z, right? I think we z will be buying office space in 10 years. Yes. Right? Or we're, we're, I mean, like, they're, they're, I I think they, they are more equipped to know to, I think this is more natural, right? So our, we've skewed young,"
00:37:42,"we've been a young millennial community for a long time. And I think that even though I've seen my share of super young employees that have departed from my other business and said, listen, I, this is great in theory, but I haven't ever been mentored before in person. So I need to take a job with somebody who can actually Right. Say hi to me every day."
00:38:04,"Yeah, that's completely valid. But a couple years into your career you realize that this thing called flexible work and remote work is out there. And I think there's, you know, we're, we're all in on just seeing that continue to proliferate. So yes, it's intuitive because I come from that world. It also helps to be committed to brand and,"
00:38:26,"and user experience, which is not something that everybody can come to the table and just snap their fingers and create, right? This is, this is a part of our D n a. Yeah. And it helps to, it gives us a, a, a a, you know, a semi unfair starting point. Yeah. Yeah. I wonder if your,"
00:38:43,"your design background kind of plays into that, like you mentioned the user experience, like taking that out of the digital world and into, into the analog world. A Percent. I mean, we look, we, we look at the, the, you know, the, the end-to-end member experience, just like we do designing an app, right? Yeah."
00:38:59,"See, we, we have to think about the experience through that lens and because that's how we define it, and that's how we know. So yeah. So that's a very different starting point. But one, one last thing on that idea is that we also believe that we're serving a part of the employee stack, right? When we're talking about offices and we're talking about what our peers are focusing on,"
00:39:18,"the large box Coworking providers, they're serving a different part of the work stack, right? Yeah. They're serving a different, different part of the market. And I, I think that as we continue to serve this piece of the market, the larger providers are gonna need to pay more attention to, to, to this in some way. So, you know,"
00:39:38,"we don't know what that's gonna look like in, in five years, 10 years. But Yeah, I wonder, or not, I mean, I, You can't ignore that user. I was looking at a, an instant offices report earlier, which is interesting. I always love, you know, industry data and they were saying they're, you know,"
00:39:55,"they're, they're an online bro, they do a lot of things, but they're an online brokerage. And they were talking about how they're the, like the number of the requirement, say it the right way. Like the requirements they're getting in have larger desk require like a higher number of desk requirements. So say pre pandemic, you know, it was six,"
00:40:14,"now it's 10, or they used 25 and they gave a couple of references of like, you know, they put a hundred pe a hundred desk requirement into a big space in some major city. So that is one solution, but that's not who you serve. So That's right. I mean, that user is certainly coming down. We know that part,"
00:40:35,"right? Yeah. We, we certainly know that the traditional office lease is coming to flex, and that's, that's fantastic, right? Yeah. But that's not, that requirement is not displacing the remote worker that's next door in their apartment that needs to get the heck outta their house twice a week, Right? Yep. Yeah. In fact, we we're neighbor Adam Neuman is my neighbor."
00:40:54,"So I, I don't mean to name drop here, drop the front door. It's an interesting di dialogue. Yeah. Yeah. So one of the flow properties is next door. And there's a, you know, a a lot, a lot to unpack there, but we're very neighborly. In fact, we just hosted their, their team retreat. You know,"
00:41:11,"they just had their company-wide team retreat. 'cause this apartment building is like their crown jewel of their portfolio. Yeah. It's, it probably looks a lot like what they want their future platform to look like. Yeah. So we, we have, we have a very unique and interesting relationship. Grant Cardone is my other neighbor, Adam Newman is this neighbor. We're just in a really vibrant part of town."
00:41:30,"Wow. So all that to say, I don't know if you've seen some of the recent sound bites that the poor guy, everything makes the news, of course, but maybe not many people would appreciate me calling him a poor guy. But I Wish 70%. I like, I'll leave that alone. Yeah. 70%. Very Empathetic of You. Yeah,"
00:41:51,"yeah, that's right. 70% of his tenants are remote workers. Right. And so across all portfolio, 70% of these apartment residents work from home. Right. And that's not surprising to me. It, it, it, the way it was presented, I think it surprised them. And, you know, that is just a, a good indication that in the right markets,"
00:42:15,"obviously this doesn't scale to every city across the us but in the creative class economies of remote workers are not going anywhere. Yeah. And else, right. They need, that's Why you might buy back WeWork, right? We weren't they saying like, we'll see, which would be, we'll see. Hilarious. Yeah. Okay. What else do I wanna ask you about?"
00:42:35,"I gotta look at my, my, well, so I'm curious, who do you have business partner that works on the business with you? Like who makes, who, who makes sort of the strategic decisions? What does your team look like? Give us the, the behind the scenes. Yeah. So yeah, I have a couple small investors now,"
00:42:51,"but I'm, we're a super tiny team, so I have a couple great advisors, but the team dynamic, it, it's really me that, that's, that's making all the dumb decisions. And then I have a great team on the ground. So here's, here's also something worth, I think you might find interesting and challenging on this, but our team on the ground,"
00:43:09,"we call them club hosts. So we have grown to this service level where we hire and train baristas. They're called club hosts because they're serving other areas of the space. They're not just making lattes. Yeah. But they're also doing a great job executing every meeting room, booking every event. So we come in and train them to make sure that they have the level of expertise to serve,"
00:43:32,"to serve great coffee at our level. But outside of the host team, who kind of manages the, the, the member experience, we have a clubhouse manager, a membership director, and a Community Manager. Those three roles are really centralized. So when we're running other, other locations in this market, they'll scale over to the, to those locations as well."
00:43:54,"You know, our, our, we're gonna be leased up at some point soon, and my sales person needs something to sell. Right. So, you know, You gotta get our, a new Location, have the inventory for them. Yeah, that's right. That's right. And we really have a, a, a bit of a rub with the term Community Manager in,"
00:44:10,"in our industry because Okay. Tell me challenge away. No, I've, I've learned that there're overworked in most other spaces, right. They're doing too many things. Right. And I, and coming from tech, the Community Manager role has a bit of a different definition, actually a very different definition when you're actually, when you're, when you're, when you're working with,"
00:44:33,"with, with customers and on the marketing side and you're, you're building a community around a product. And so we have stripped that down and really focused that, that role on that. Right. This is the person that is really the biggest indicator of customer success Yeah. And member, member wins, right. Making the intros working hard to go to battle and,"
00:44:53,"and, and, you know, work hard to bring value to the membership for, for that member. And it's not their job to go out and sell membership, right. So they're not a sales role. It's strictly experiential. Well, that also does not usually come in one package. I'm great at nurturing. Exactly. And I am great at selling not usually in the same package."
00:45:12,"That's right. Yep. That, that role is the most impactful to attrition and churn. Right. Because they're, they're, they're serving our members. Yeah. At, at the business level. Right. Our hosts serve at the operational level. Our Community Manager serves at the business level and drives value that way. And we have a couple great vendors,"
00:45:31,"right? So we have yoga, massage, meditation, we have a, we we're, we're piloting a small group. We, we've hired a executive coach to, to be a facilitator for some small groups that are built into the membership. And that, you know, built, built in, we're sharing a small business community built Okay. Built in."
00:45:50,"Yeah. So we're, we're, it's, there'll be an, I'm sorry, there'll be an upsell for that as a pilot. We don't really have the perfect answer in how we're gonna offer it. It's, it's early right now, but it's been well received so far. So we're, that's another important part of the experience right now. It's a contractor though,"
00:46:10,"right? Yeah. Okay. I like it. Okay. So I totally agree with you. You could keep cha to keep trying to challenge something that I don't agree with. I what I think, you know, you mentioned you listen to the podcast, I'm sure there are times where you're like, yeah, I don't, I think the ch I,"
00:46:26,"I don't know, probably what I'm doing in our industry is like, you see things that work. My fear is always that I need people, I want people to make money, right? If you're not profitable, then you can't keep improving things. And so there are things that we know don't work like 100% open spaces for most people are never gonna make money through,"
00:46:47,"through this. So I, you know, lean into, okay, we know this works, but I do, I'm always like churning on things like what's not working and yeah. The like super standard model where people are not looking you in the eyeballs and the overworked, Community Manager who's in charge of, and I do this in my program, right?"
00:47:07,"Yes. In my program, we teach marketing and sales, we teach operations, we teach leadership, we teach all of the hats because a lot of them wear all the hats. And that's one of the things I keep thinking about a lot is does that role need to change? Which is, it's like you're doing too much. Well, it's, and how do you,"
00:47:26,"yeah. How do you make the model work? It's much for Us, right? Yeah. Yeah. I, I think for, for, you know, when, when you're starting out and you, and first of all, I was this role as an early founder too, right? I did it all. Right. Yeah. Right. You know,"
00:47:37,"I'm picking up, picking up the mop. I have to be the sale, I have to give the tours, I have to close the deal. Deal. Right. Put new members into the system. Yeah, That's that's right. But at some point, if you want to grow and you want to scale the business, we need experts, right?"
00:47:50,"Yeah. We need specialists. And the generalist ha has to fall off at a certain size. And it's really hard to, I mean, you know, one thing that I think is also observable that we've invested a lot in is the sales and marketing and sales and marketing through the lens of being a really highly proficient sales and marketing team. Right? You must be,"
00:48:10,"I was on your website and I was like, what? It's happening. You've got the little proof thing. And it's like, and Joe joined two hours ago and Luke joined six hours ago. And I was like, what? Thank you for noticing. Well, I was, are these people and what is their sales funnel and what is happening here?"
00:48:28,"Well, You can, and, but you can't go deep with that process. If that person that runs that process, It's also the Community. Manager Goes clean up, Totally clean up the conference room Before when there's a, and Then make the copy and then talk to members for 20 minutes and, right. That's right. But there is a business model challenge,"
00:48:45,"which is that you figured out a way, but at 7,000 feet, it's hard to have specialists. It's hard. A hundred Percent. Yeah. Until we hit a certain member count. Right? So I mean, the, the, you know, we have, I'm, I'm learning that we have an absurd amount of members compared to people our size."
00:49:06,"And Absurd is the best word to use. I looked at your website and I was like, I'm sorry, what? How is this happening? Yeah. And, and that becomes the challenge, right? We had to expand because like, there's too many people in the space, obviously it still needs to be productive. So you have to make decisions here."
00:49:22,"But you know, in the common area, we're running a gym model, right? This isn't a, I have 30 seats, so I have 30 memberships. No, this is my member comes twice a week. So we can exponentially that member count. Now I know the Right. Also, Also you have a product that people want to buy because selling open space is not that easy for a typical Coworking space."
00:49:47,"It depends on the market. It depends on a lot of things. Yeah. But you're selling an experience that, so you can oversell those seats, which is a huge advantage to your p l The Phil, the philosophy that I, I, once again, this is defying what works. It's not for everybody. But yeah, I, I come from SaaS."
00:50:06,"I come from a tech background. And as much as I have love building these spaces and this experience at 7,000 square feet, it's not a good business model, right? So we had to really flip this thing on its head and figure out how to turn this into a good business model. And so we're at the positioning now where we're fully embracing that space."
00:50:26,"Is the ancillary part of the VA value of the membership? Mm. Joining the platform, having connectivity, right? Excuse me, coming to our events. That's the value of the membership. Oh, and by the way, you have a place to go to work a couple days out of the week. And so now we have a limitless membership base,"
00:50:44,"right? The product is not defined by just realistic arbitrage. It's defined by me members on a SaaS platform on the app that we built. And that's, that's weird. It's unique for us. It's, it's not gonna work for everybody. It's not. I love it. So you did build the app? Did build the app. I mean, I'm a software guy,"
00:51:03,"right? Yes. So my team, my team built the app. We were very, very, and we did this over time. We were picking away at it over the years until we committed to a mobile experience. Our first app was a Slack app, but just to kind of give an indication of how much we valued the community, we resisted doing a mobile app because everybody was on Slack and all of our operations,"
00:51:23,"you know, like the, the, we, we invested a lot into really making a lot of value in the Slack community. And then we built a Slack app. So you can order coffee, book a room, do all your membership stuff in Slack, directly on top of Slack. Wow. Directly on Slack. And we did that for, we ran that for four years."
00:51:38,"And then we had enough members that were like, okay, the, the, the mobile experience now can be getting back to like, just controlling the end-to-end experience. We run kii at our doors and we love the access control, but I chose it because they have an a p I that I can build off of. So now we've removed Kii from the workflow and you're,"
00:51:55,"you're opening doors and booking rooms with the, the g p app that we built in-house. It is on top of Exodus. So like, it's a, there's a, an IP layer that's custom and unique to us, but we didn't wanna rebuild The backend, What's already been built a thousand times over. That's right. So the backend is for us is Exodus."
00:52:13,"And, you know, I have tons of opinions on the, the software ecosystem in our industry and, and the decision to make our own app is to just build a lot more of a remote control, make this easier. Even sometimes going to book a room. I think on the, the native platforms that are offered in the industry are still a little bit too cumbersome."
00:52:33,"So we're, we're fixing that with our mobile app. Your own, there's also unique IP on top of it, there's AI involved. We have a loyalty program. So every time you walk in the door, you order coffee, you book a room, you're getting points and you can use those points to, to do other things, which is, you know,"
00:52:48,"unique to us. And then we're also now offering that as a build out for other Coworking spaces. So my, my, my other company, my product studio is not selling that. So if anyone's interested, reach out to me. But we're gonna reserve some of our own ip, but we think this is a much better mobile experience for Coworking operators and they're members."
00:53:08,"Yeah. Okay. Well we, we might have to do a separate interview on, on that. I love that you resisted, I mean, there was an era where some of the, you know, multi-site operators wanted to build all their own tech and some did, and spent a lot of money, not just mobile, the whole thing. Like,"
00:53:26,"I wanna build the whole thing and I'm just like, oh god. And they are not tech, not come from a tech background. So Yeah. I wondered if you, you were tempted to do that. How Do you Yeah, not at all. I mean, starting from the ground up was not, was not an option. Just making what's unique was important and that's the strategy that we've implored."
00:53:44,"Yeah. Okay. So I'm curious, oh, we're almost out of town time. I knew that would happen. The, okay, so the people who are not in the space all the time, what does that look like? Are they mostly local? Do you, do you like, is there a Hundred percent local? Yeah, I mean we,"
00:54:01,"you know, we have a couple digital nomads when people that love our brand move away, a small percentage of them will stay on and just be a part of, just Can't let go the digital community. Okay. Which is amazing, right? It's amazing, right? Because there's tons of value, there's power and proximity, right? Like being able to,"
00:54:18,"you know, even building my other company the entire time, the, the power, I mean the Coworking power, right? The power of being able to always know that you have an accountant and a lawyer photographer in your network at all times that's willing to help you is an amazing piece of value, right? So that's a lot of times why people stick around even than I'm physically here,"
00:54:37,"but 100% of our members are, are local and we, we even, even, but I think you asked in the, some of the questions leading up to the call, how many of them are remote? They're, they're, a hundred percent of 'em are remote too, right? So they're local, but remote. And even when you have an office here,"
00:54:57,"right? Like you're, we're their office, but, you know, you're, you started as a remote worker for the most part before you came here. So that is, that's who we serve and the digital platform that is, is new. So I think we're, we we're excited about how far we can take the idea of proximity. The current strategy is that maybe we'll be able to validate some of our new markets with the digital platform first,"
00:55:23,"right? If we can tease that out to build a community and then it'll help us build a roadmap to, you know what, we need a clubhouse there in that city. I like it. Are you gonna give us the dish on what markets you're looking at? Are you thinking is is Nashville a natural? Nashville is definitely a, a natural. We're we've already done the time,"
00:55:45,"the diligence is there, is there, we've had a couple of deals fall through, so we, we definitely would love to be in Nashville, but We, we think that we can be, that's an easy decision because of my time spent there, but we're still, the, the path of least resistance is to have some overlapping brand impact here in south Florida."
00:56:07,"Yeah. And we're really neighborhood centric. So I think that even this market alone, we're looking to add two or more 2, 2, 2 to three more locations. We're, we still have some work to do in south Florida, but Tampa, Orlando, Jacksonville all make a lot of sense for us. Atlanta is the southeast is, we have a lot of time spent in the southeast,"
00:56:25,"but right now it's organic growth for the time being. So, you know, like the, the biggest thing that, you know, I woke up one day and I was 40 years old recently, and I was like, you know, this, this building spaces thing takes a long time. So we need to figure out how to change the model around so we can move quicker."
00:56:44,"And that's why this digital experience and the membership idea Yeah. Is, is really important because we, you know, I I I think that as much as I, we love building something tangible and, and the member experience of our clubhouses construction takes a long time. Yeah. And the Deals, I mean, you, you mentioned you spent a lot of time working on deals take forever."
00:57:03,"Yeah, That's right. I'm not getting any younger, so we, we need to be more creative. That's the conclusion. Conclusion we made. I love it. Okay. Tim, I could talk to you for hours so we might have to do this again. You've been super thought-provoking. I'm so glad you took the time to do this. I really appreciate it and hopefully,"
00:57:22,"hopefully we'll show up to some industry things so we can, we can stay caught up with what you're up to. That sounds great. Thank you so much for the invite and I, I really enjoyed this. Yeah, likewise."
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