324. How Murray Clark is Creating an Ecosystem of Live, Work and Experience through Neighbourgood
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TRANSCRIPTION
324. How Murray Clark is Creating an Ecosystem of Live, Work and Experience through Neighbourgood
00:00:00,"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 a thought provoking operator,"
00:00:26,"case studies and inspirational interviews with industry thought leaders to help you confidently stay on top of what's important and what you can apply to your own role in the Coworking industry. Welcome to the Everything Coworking podcast. This is your host, Jamie Russo. I think you're gonna love this podcast. Hopefully you love all of the episodes. What I love doing is mixing it up and giving you different perspectives and different examples of what's happening in the industry."
00:00:59,"So I think this one does just that. So I'd love when we get kind of into like a detailed case study like, you know, how are you doing this? What are you doing for that? This one is bigger picture and if you are like me, you will be just really wowed by how grand Murray and his team are thinking about what they're creating."
00:01:24,"They're going for this like citywide ecosystem approach around living, working, and experiences. So I got him to walk me through like a use case for someone who uses their live product, which was really helpful to kinda get a better sense of what it looks like to experience what they're up to. Super interesting. So Murray, I won't go into great detail."
00:01:47,"Murray was maybe in our first ever live cohort of the Coworking, Startup School. We used to run it as a workshop and I remember it being very late for him and it must have been before he had kids. So he would join, you know, quite late in in his, you know, kitchen or whatever. And I remember at the time thinking,"
00:02:06,"yeah, this guy is working on a different model. Everyone else in the group was pretty kind of traditional Coworking space and he, I knew he was, was onto something different and he sure is and he shares his story. So he's based in Cape Town, South Africa and then kind of crazy small, small world. He's, his second city is Redwood City,"
00:02:31,"California, which is 20 minutes from where I live. So it was really fun for me to hear what he's up to after five years I think. So anyway, without further ado, here is Murray and his story and his big vision for Neighbourgood. Okay. I am here with Murray Clark. He is the CEO and Co-founder of Neighbourgood and Murray's in in South Africa."
00:03:00,"And he popped up in the Facebook group and said something about Redwood City, which is 20 minutes for me. And Murray was one of our first Coworking Startup School students. I like when I was looking for your email address, I think it's said 2018, is that, does that sound right? It was a Long time ago and I'm happy to be part of your alumni."
00:03:21,"I know you were so original. I was like, why have we not kept touch? I was like, I guess maybe the time zones, I don't know. And here you are. So I sent you a note and I was like, I'm not even gonna send you a list of questions. I just wanna know what are you up to? And then did you have,"
00:03:36,"how old is your son? He is one year and three months. So he's keeping Keeping So he's new, He's super new and he is keeping us really busy. He's an amazing little boy and we are very in love with him so it's awesome to, it it's being a parent changes your life so it's really cool experience. And then our other child is the company that we started together With."
00:04:01,"You and your wife? Yes, my, myself, my wife Kim who heads up our brand and our other co-founders St. John. And we started Navy Good in the middle of Covid in I would say June of 2020. Okay. About two years after we met. Oh, okay. So yeah, tell me, was this your tell? Yes."
00:04:24,"Te tell me about the business model. Was this the original business model and I, 'cause I remember, I think you must've been doing our sessions like practically in the middle of your night 'cause of the time differences is a little bit Challenging. They were so late and I'm sort of getting used to it now 'cause we have a full team on the ground in the Bay area."
00:04:43,"So I'm used to late afternoon or late Okay. Main calls and getting used to the time zone. And I think if we we're gonna run a global company, we need to get used to the early mornings and the late evenings and the use of technology. Yeah, yeah. So it's been the, a really incredible journey filled with so many learnings. Okay."
00:05:04,"So start from, what did you used to do then? What was the sort of co, because I know you're not strict Coworking, I don't know exactly what model. So walk us through the story and then I, what I really wanna do is fast forward to what are you doing in the Bay Area, but we'll go in order. We'll Go in order."
00:05:24,"I mean I think I've always had a lab for the built environment. I was lucky enough to grow up around building sites. My late father was a building contractor, so had him to look up to. So he had a big influence on my life just generally in business. And we started off in entry level residential. I got the property bag when I was about 18 years old and started selling houses,"
00:05:50,"which is a great place to learn the real estate space. And that progressed into small buying and selling of apartments into smaller developments which progressed and progressed and over time as you hone your craft, so the, you know, time plus a lot of effort and persistence, you tend to get a little bit better and better. Ne never necessarily easier, but,"
00:06:15,"and so then in 2008 changed direction a little bit after my father passed away and started looking at convenience shopping centers as a potential area for investment. And we built charter bike 45 convenience centers in an Iran, South Africa in urban and rural townships anchored by the Walmarts of the world and things like that. So heaps of ground up construction work. But I've always looked at the built-in environment quite differently I think potentially because we are sort of a next generation of entrepreneurs coming through the system that are thinking about sustainability and just the world in a slightly different way to how people might have thought about it 20, 30, 40 years ago."
00:07:02,"And the impact that the built environment can have in the world that we live in. And we started developing concepts that we felt were better for community and better for supporting local and better for sustainable principles. And initially it was something that we built out called Big Box, which was an entrepreneurial development platform that we, we would find fund educated, mentor young entrepreneurs within a township setting."
00:07:33,"And those were the initial learnings within a retail setting that progressed into a brand that we built called Good, which you might remember, I don't know if it was built for or after our time together. And Good was the evolution of Big Box and it has become the evolution of what Ood is today. And it, it was really the integration of a series of themes living,"
00:07:57,"working, mixed use wellness within a single space. And that's when we started developing proficiency in the cowork space because we just saw the world moving towards these very collaborative community centered spaces that offer a series of mixed uses. And I think what ood has become, which takes us to June of 2020, is where we see the future going in terms of physical space and the optimization of space generally."
00:08:29,"And it's really a connected city product offering that focuses on lifestyle cities like Cape Town and others like them where we have set up a propco and an opco across living and working themes laid with experience. So those are the three products, living workspace and experience in a single product offering in an all city all access passport. So the rationale is that if you are from Holland and you are visiting Cape Town and you want to spend one to three months here,"
00:09:09,"Airbnb is not necessarily the right platform for you to find community. Yeah, it can solve your accommodation problem, but it's not gonna necessarily solve your ability to find people that are like-minded, connect with one another. The experience of it might be quite different depending on the space that you let. And so what we felt is that off of the macro, which is a massive migration of the way people are moving to lifestyle cities following the end of Covid and the way we all live and work these days,"
00:09:40,"combined with the opportunity to repurpose buildings across the world, which is a massive problem for landlords globally, given the structural shifts in the world of physical real estate, we felt like neighborhood could solve both of those problems. And that's really connecting living workspaces and experiences in a density format in lifestyle cities like Cape Town and then threading the golden needle through each building with an all access passport so that you can use all our common spaces,"
00:10:13,"all our workspaces, all our work clubs, connect with an entire community of a few thousand people across the city within a single brand essentially, if that makes sense. So it's broadly a mixed use product offering that integrates everything you ever need as a remote worker, a digital nomad, or a young professional within any age category really that provides a really cool consistent experience."
00:10:41,"And Helpsss landlords solve problems to fill their buildings, which are a lot harder to fill these days than they were 20 years ago. Hey, I am interrupting this episode for any of you that are thinking about or are already working on starting a Coworking space, which would be 2024 at this point if you're just getting started, I wanna make sure you know we have updated the format of our Coworking Startup School."
00:11:11,"We are now running it live. Although you don't have to attend live, you can get all the content and resources and the roadmap without attending live, but we think that is the absolute best way to get the support that you need and build your own Coworking community as you're getting started. So we've split the Coworking Startup School into two phases and we've been running phase one,"
00:11:38,"which we call validate your plan. And we really, really want folks to clearly know their numbers before they commit to a lease. We even have folks that already own buildings that are going through phase one to make sure they get everything right before they actually commit to their layouts and start construction. So phase one is really around knowing who your target customer is,"
00:12:04,"making sure you have the right size of space that aligns with your goals, and then figuring out your product mix, your floor plan and your pricing and then putting that all together so that you have a pro forma that you can take to the bank, as they say literally and figuratively. We also have pitch deck and business plan templates and we run these workshops live."
00:12:31,"So you're actually, we have prep work that you're doing offline as homework. We try to keep that pretty reasonable. We want you to be able to complete this work and make a go no go decision. And if you have draft floor plans and things that you're trying to like finalize and take to contractors or get plans approved on, we want you to be able to do that pretty quickly."
00:12:52,"So we run this across five weeks, which gives you a little bit of time to catch up on your homework and we run live sessions with live coaches so that we can get your questions answered and walk you through as we go. But you're work shopping, you're doing the work on the calls unless you've already done some of the work and then you're getting feedback on that work on the calls."
00:13:13,"Again, you don't have to come live, but we've designed it so that you get expert support and again you meet others who are going through the same process and we do it pretty quickly. So phase one, validate your model is running our next session, we have scheduled to start at the very beginning of January and that's a ways away if you're listening to this when we just launch it."
00:13:37,"So you can register anytime and get the content immediately so you can start working on it. If we have enough folks register, we will move up the live date. So we like to have a little cohort that we can run through the pl through the program. So if we get folks who are registering, then we can move up the date of the start of the first live session."
00:13:59,"We've set it for the second week in January. So to get more details on that, go to Everything Coworking Everything Coworking dot com slash start. Now back to our episode. So we built out 19 buildings since launching three years ago. We have about a thousand odd units across living and working spaces. We have been lucky enough to get to break even through a lot of hard work by an incredible team of about 135 people now."
00:14:33,"And yeah, I think what we've been able to do is build a product that people love and that is a work in progress still. I mean every customer has his or hers own requirements, but what we've seen is when you're building out a density product offering and neighborhood is really about at its core, bringing good to neighborhoods and thinking about the world with more sustainability,"
00:14:57,"with more love, with more kindness, with more warmth and like, especially in these times, we think that's more important now than ever before. Bringing those hospitality themes and all of those themes into physical space and then making that part of the customer experience and then making sure that's across the whole city. Because when you are 28 years old and you're coming to Cape Town for three months,"
00:15:20,"the experience is not just our buildings, it's the entire city. And so for us, that's been a massive part of our strategy. It also has massive benefit to efficiency because we have cluster management across 19 buildings. So I can have you around our buildings in Cape Town within an hour and a half or 19 of them. It means we can use stronger management teams within smaller geographies with a higher density of buildings in that area."
00:15:51,"It means we can create higher levels of brand density. So because we're in this pocket of the city and now into Redwood City and a few others, and I'll tell you about that and our rationale there as well because it's, we have some really good partners there. You see the brand all the time, you interact with the brand all the time and even if you aren't living and working with us,"
00:16:13,"you are using our cafes, you are joining our three yoga classes, you are coming up, you know, you're doing walks with us, up Table Mountain, you're attending our entrepreneurial events. So the brand experience overall is a, a broadly mixed use city one. And it's not just about living in working spaces. And that's rarely in summary from our early days where we started seeing the world going wrapped up into a citywide product offering that we now think is scalable into other cities."
00:16:48,"I think to talk to scale, it'll be sustainable. We will leverage OCO and Propco principles to do that. We, our property people ourselves, so we understand the process of acquiring assets that may be underloved, which is our focus, helping create cultural relevance once again using our brand and product to do that and, and bringing hopefully a lot of good to the neighborhood and doing so."
00:17:15,"So Papaka obviously has limitations because there's a significant amount of capital required and if you are looking at global scale, that's something that has to happen on a city by city basis and it requires a separate pocket of capital. Proco investors are very different to vc and so there's different capital requirements for both. Opco is really where scale will come. And I would say that we own in Cape Town 50% of our buildings and operate 50% of our buildings in revenue share or hybrid disagreements,"
00:17:49,"which is a, a very asset light approach to the way we work. But we do see the value in Propco as well because we're able to generate net asset value through the process of reposition being able to buy assets and, and taking them through that process and, and essentially taking that value to balance sheet by sorting our cash flows, et cetera. In terms of the us,"
00:18:13,"which is our most exciting prospect at the moment and scale generally, we will follow the same process that we have undertaken in Cape Town. So that's focused on building a density model, not just one building, but 15, 20, 30, 40 buildings connected within a, a geography and our product. You can stay with us for a day or you can stay with us for 12 months."
00:18:37,"The choice is really yours. We super hybrid. And the same goes to say for our workspaces, we have a slightly different view on workspace generally we, we like the idea of bringing in the cost down substantially to a point where it's very affordable for us. We've always seen workspaces within the context of our product as a place that can, that interaction happens,"
00:19:01,"that community happens and we really wanted to be as accessible as possible to a very broad market, which is easier said than done because I think for a freelancer or an entrepreneur, you know, is $350 a desk affordable, what we want to try and do is bring it right down to say a hundred dollars a month within a really cool space, connect the dots across our buildings within a living and working set setting,"
00:19:27,"layer that with experience so that you have access to a beautiful community across the city and then just make it this like living breathing ecosystem within cities rather than being too far and wide. We've obviously seen in the market the likes of WeWork and Sonder and Selena come under pressure because of their lease model, breakneck space pace at which they've been able to grow. And I have a lot of admiration for all of those brands,"
00:19:59,"but what we've seen is how important sustainability is and structuring deals correctly is that satisfy both landlord risk and operator profit and time requirement. So that's been super important for us, which is where we see more management agreements and or sort of hybrid lease where there's a waterfall in place to satisfy landlord minimum income requirements. But that shift still needs to come both on in terms of modeling for workspace and living."
00:20:27,"You know, landlords are still landlords and their, their first and biggest priorities is to protect the capital value of their assets. And when they start having to take operational risk, then it's start, you know, you really have to start looking at the jockey more and more, which is I think not just a landlord risk, but a banking risk as well."
00:20:45,"I mean it's a life risk generally you back people. So that's gonna be really interesting for us as we continue to expand, I think we will look at 2, 3, 4, maybe five cities in the US and build out density in each city partnering with some incredible people and landlords who have access to a large footprint of properties and problems to solve either vacancy or they're looking to integrate the Neighbourgood product offering across their city,"
00:21:16,"linking living workspace and experience within a core product offering. So that's our strategy and it's all gonna be about building an incredibly good team of people who share in our vision and mission to bring good to the world. And I'm excited to see what the future holds. I mean it's an incredible vision. I mean I have like bits and pieces in my brain of kind of what you were looking at the beginning and this is grand."
00:21:46,"I mean, it's such a giant scale. I it's amazing. It's really interesting. Would you say some of this was amplified due to covid or was like, did you have an, was this part of the vision from the beginning or how much did it evolve? You know, I think that vision is incremental. So you have a vision at the end of the tunnel,"
00:22:10,"but sometimes it's not always a hundred percent clear. Yeah. But you know the direction that you're going and you have a gut feeling and there's, you might need to turn left or right along the way, but in the end there's, there were always these themes and we were always thinking about the world with a view to create a better, more sustainable reflection of what the built environment should look like."
00:22:31,"What I didn't realize in, in, in building out our initial versions of what neighborhood is now is that it doesn't all need to be in the same building. It can be across a city at a product level. That's what I'm picturing. Like you had sort of this contained mixed use, Correct, yes. Example, Yeah. Yeah. And so what what we've done is extended the net a lot wider and we've looked at the way people move within cities and how people spend their lives or people and what the requirements are for those people who are,"
00:23:10,"our core market segment is a fairly transient working professional who's thinking about travel as a big part of their life, who's thinking about maybe spending three to six months in Cape Town or living here for a period of their life or living in Miami or living in Melbourne, Australia or London or wherever it might be. And, and we're essentially building infrastructure for, for the living,"
00:23:31,"working in lifestyle requirements. So that's essentially what we are doing wrapped up as a brand, delivering it as a product, which essentially solves their problem because now they have access to a community of a few thousand people within a city across anything they need. So living, working, lifestyle related needs at a price that's affordable. And then on the other side of the table,"
00:23:56,"we are solving problems for landlords because we aren't just a property manager, we're a brand which is important and we're a brand that for every location we're able to roll out. So the value proposition gets a lot better because with density. Yeah. So the USP gets a lot better, if that makes sense. So that's the progress and I'm sure if we sit and have a conversation in two years time,"
00:24:22,"I, we would've learned about and would've, it would've evolved a little bit more. But yeah, we're excited about it. I don't think there's anything that I've seen like it, there's versions of it, there's a lot of really cool workspace companies and there's a lot of really cool experience companies and there's a lot of really cool residential companies, but NNN none that have connected the three and that's gonna be the opportunity,"
00:24:47,"but the challenge as well as how do we connect those three core pillars within a connected city product offering in a way that is simplified and easy to manage and optimize. And yeah, so that's gonna be our, the channel, but we've been able to do it in Cape Town and we are doing it quite quickly in Redwood, which is a really interesting market for us."
00:25:09,"It's very different to Cape Town. Yeah. So let's use that as a case study. So you can tell me how, so I'm guessing you found some or some partner found you and said, let's replicate this. Yeah, So I found them. Okay. Yes. I think as new business goes, a lot of it is just reaching out and convincing people from the other side of the world to bring our brand from Cape Town to the US wasn't an easy feat,"
00:25:36,"but the, the brand and product makes sense in the world that we live in. E even if it isn't Cape Town, I think what we did is created a really cool proof of concept across say our and and the customer is very similar. Hey there, I'm jumping in again this time. I am speaking to those of you that have, are either getting ready to hire a Community Manager or who have a Community Manager and you would like to support their training and development."
00:26:10,"We know how challenging it can be for co-working space operators to create their own training and development material to support their community managers. And this is so important in terms of onboarding new community managers and supporting the growth of your existing community managers. And we're getting towards the end of the year, what a great holiday gift end of year gift to give to your Community Manager."
00:26:37,"So the platform is really around a couple of things. One is access to a community of like-minded folks. We have a very active Slack group with really wonderful questions that are posed every single day. And we find that's one of the biggest values. We have community managers from all over the world and this is an excellent group of community managers that have invested time and effort into getting better at that role."
00:27:05,"And they are the kind of folks that you want your Community Manager to be by and hanging out with and they know their stuff or sometimes they don't and they ask questions and we help them out. So I'm in the group, we have coaches that are in the group to support them. So we love when they ask questions for things they need help with because the other aspect of the program is really around helping them get resources they need to make their jobs easier and to learn things that they can use in their role to be better at their job."
00:27:36,"So we provide some done for you resources like Google business posts, detailed event ideas, et cetera, that they can just kind of grab and go and use. And we also provide monthly resources that add to our training library so they can do our certification. And then we have a lot of electives that help them kind of get better at all the things that that go with the role."
00:28:03,"So the, our community managers wear a lot of hats. So we break our content into industry knowledge for new community managers, community building operations, sales and marketing and leadership. So the leadership bucket is great for our more advanced community managers. We also have virtual office and digital mail training and coffee training for anybody who needs to know how to use commercial coffee brewers."
00:28:32,"So we have some of the, I'm just gonna give you kind of a sampling of content that we have. So in our community building modules, we have hosting your first member events, building community with budget friendly events, member events, swipe files, our sales and marketing modules. We have tour training, we have the training on the full Coworking sales funnel so they understand what that looks like."
00:29:01,"We have social media planning frameworks. We have, what else do we have? Three simple steps to an effective marketing newsletter. These are just some of our samples. Ooh, these are some of our best utilized topics. Demystifying the process of letting your Coworking members use your address for their Google business listing, how to close a tour operations modules, how to set up automations,"
00:29:30,"how to do a new member onboarding audit. Simple ways to use AI to boost your productivity. We have over 40 courses in the program, so we cover kind of higher level topics and then we also cover things that are timely, like the CMRA updates, Google business updates, et cetera. So we get together monthly to do official training and we also host a best practice sharing call,"
00:29:58,"which is one of the fan favorites of the group and the Slack group. So if you have any questions at all about the program, don't hesitate to reach out. You can learn more and register at Everything Coworking dot com slash Community Manager. Now back to our episode. So all of us, whether we are American, south African or Australian, are all thinking about the same themes in the way we live."
00:30:24,"We are all thinking about wellness, we're all thinking about community, we are all thinking about purpose, we are all thinking about these things that matter. So while there might be slight cultural differences, the common denominators are all the same. And we all looking for flexibility and we all looking for really cool. So I felt confident knowing that we had built out a brand that people can identify with."
00:30:48,"And what's important is knowing that there's no cookie cutting approach to execution. And that context is different wherever you go. Not just at a building level but at a human level. So, and no person is the same and no building is the same. So we need to be adaptable in how we present product within context with a series of underpin values that are present everywhere."
00:31:14,"Rather than taking a Cape Town product and putting in redwood and hoping that it works in Redwood. What you've got massive employers and Facebook and Oracle. Yeah, so some seriously big Companies. Yeah, I mean people listening it's, I don't know, a half hour, maybe 40 minutes south of San Francisco. I, depending on traffic, but it's straight down the peninsula and it's just north of,"
00:31:41,"I think it's just north of Right. Facebook or a goal. I mean all the giant Apples a little further, you know south? Yes. But Google, I mean you name them. Yeah, they're down there. Stanford, I mean we went to Stanford and you just, you get blown away. I mean you watch these Yeah. You know,"
00:31:58,"YouTube videos people are speaking on from Stanford and like now you're there. It's like, what the heck? But the fundamentals of, it's very entrepreneurial, it's very family orientated as a city. Yeah. There's really great schools. Yeah, there's a lot of civic pride in the area. Cape Town is very different. It's like nomadic, it's transient, it's people visiting from all over the world."
00:32:22,"Okay. Redwood is a little bit more family related. There is pressure on affordability for housing and I think that's just generally across the whole Bay Area and not just Red City. Yeah, I would say pre pre covid we were, and maybe that still is the case, the thing that's changed is a lot of those big companies have much broader remote work policies because it used to be,"
00:32:45,"yes, there essentially was no remote work. Correct. And so everybody had to go to the campus creating like massive traffic problems, very little housing is so expensive and there's just a giant lack of it. There's no in, you know, no inventory. No, yeah. Yeah. I would guess that's lightened a little bit, but yeah. 'cause of the remote work policies."
00:33:09,"But Yeah, so, so there's definitely an undersupply, but at the same time I think that it seems like there's a lot of people coming back to the office. Yeah. Which has been interesting for us to observe generally since Covid and that migration back to the office or back to at least sort some sort of hybrid setting. In respect to our strategy for Redwood,"
00:33:31,"I would say 70 to 80% will be a collaborative social living in a co-living setting where we manage properties for and on behalf of landlords like we have for our property partners on the ground, connecting the dots as we go, integrating a work club as soon as possible, which we hope will open in January of about 10 thou, 10,000 square feet with a view to,"
00:33:55,"to increase it slowly, less insular offices, more open, slow, large, fun community centric for our customer. For your right. And yeah. Yeah. And, and there's a number of reasons for that. I think we've just observed a lot around the world. What works, what doesn't work. And what we need to lean in is, is to our theme,"
00:34:15,"which is way more access, accessibility, affordability, inclusiveness, making it affordable at a rate that everyone can afford once a month with free coffee, with community, with events and activations. Ideally we could bring that cost on from say a hundred dollars, but I think then we will be, it is a margin thin business at the, at those sort of levels."
00:34:37,"But at the same time, you don't incorporate, you don't have to incur significant tenant for tight costs because it is primarily F, F, and E and it's more the low, large, less of a workspace. We do manage full workspaces in Cape Town and, and they've been really successful. But we find that the customer that serves our business, and I'm separating the financial modeling from it because it's really amazing to have big tenants as well."
00:35:03,"And we can definitely manage big buildings within a city, filled with normal corporate companies. But our target customer, which brings culture to space, is actually the freelance young entrepreneur people who will walk past and smile at you and and like and interact and all these things. I'm not saying corporates don't do that, but broad broadly speaking, we really want the customer who is spending their hard earned money at $400 and we are giving them as much value for that as possible."
00:35:35,"And then at the same time, bringing as many affordable residential spaces across the city as possible. And then making sure the community is amazing and that people have access to events, access to health and wellness, yoga classes, Pilates, everything that we can do supporting local business in that process. So rather than trying to run it all ourselves, be a platform for community and micro communities,"
00:36:04,"which has been a, a big part of our strategy in Cape Town. It's not all about Neighbourgood, it's about building these beautiful micro communities within our own spaces that can thrive on their own merits. If that makes sense. So that's been really important for us as well. So who, how do you grow that community in in, yeah. How does that happen on site sort of in,"
00:36:26,"I'm guessing the core is the residential piece and then you're extending it out. Does that so, so it's definitely organically, but it with a city focus. So if you look at our online, our social media strategy, it's geared to the whole city. It's anyone who wants to attend our cafes, our events, our class, any, anything. So we go after everyone in the city and in that community and we make it free and accessible because community is hard to find within a city setting."
00:36:57,"So we've sort of wrapped a circle around Redwood City and we said, what do the people of Redwood City actually want? And we'll get pushback initially because people see us as property developers and property developments have a notorious reputation for essentially just trying to extract value and, and Right. You know, it's difficult because obviously it's a generalization, but a lot of it is also true."
00:37:20,"We want to be a, a way more sustainable next generation property company that hopefully leaves the world a better place than we found it and bring, and in the process of doing that, bring as much good as possible. So first and foremost, extending the net far and wide, not just making it about our members, like bringing a citywide community, which is important."
00:37:42,"And then at the asset level, making it real and authentic. I think not trying to force it on people's throats, in the end the customer will tell you what they want. And if we are trying to force community by having, you know, too many events or things that we haven't really discussed with them, that that's something that we've learned our lesson in the past,"
00:38:02,"making it contextually appropriate as possible. Building micro communities within spaces. So it's not necessarily just about Neighbourgood. As I said, there's so many talented people who have a skill set to host networking events or functions around what they do, be it design classes or something that has value and, and everyone is interested in so many different things. So it's hard to create a one size fits all."
00:38:28,"It really needs to be real authentic and appropriate for the communities within each space. And then we obviously the leverage, not the leverage, the network effect of being able to connect multiple buildings in a city mean that the, the ability to create community is a lot easier to find because there's so many more people to draw from. Okay. So what does it look,"
00:38:52,"walk me through like a user experience. Like you can use Cape Town since it exists. Like if I come, you know, then what, you know, I come for, I don't know, six months so I stay, how do I get, so we introduce, We pick you up at the airport in a limousine and I'm only joking, you have to catch an,"
00:39:16,"you have to catch an Uber to our space. So initially we hope that you will find us through a personal recommendation. Okay. Yeah. That was part of my right. How do you attract, yeah, okay. Personal recommendation and it's probably based on, on personal Housing recommendation is our Yeah, Yeah. It's our biggest compliment and definitely where we are focused predominantly is we find that 'cause of the time zone,"
00:39:39,"there's a lot of Europeans who know us, we are sort of the dom not, I wouldn't say dominant, but the most, well-known co-living and workspace product offering in Cape Town. And the density helps that I think that you would either find us, if you are looking for a living space and you wanted to come to Cape Town first and foremost, if you can find us a recommendation,"
00:39:59,"that would be amazing. If not, you can also find us on any of the aggregators. So we, you can find us@hooking.com, Airbnb and any of the big guys for us that is a cost of doing business and the aggregators are too strong not to use. Yeah, we are not lucky enough in the workspace, in the workspace setting to have those powerful,"
00:40:19,"not that I'm aware of at least those sort of aggregators for our customers, but we would use, there's Some, they're, they're not as central and strong. Yeah. Interesting. Yep. Okay. It is probably an opportunity to be honest if there was a global sort of dominant 'cause if I think about the power of booking.com in a residential setting for short stay,"
00:40:39,"I know Airbnb's looking at more longer stays as well, but my goodness, they already have a foothold on the market. So you'd find us there. We are obsessed with like defining the narrative around an end-to-end customer experience from the communication which, which talks to Navy good as a brand and what our values are, we don't take ourselves too seriously. You'll find the communication you receive is fairly lighthearted."
00:41:03,"It's designed to elevate your mood and who you are as a person. We wanna lift your up and bring joy to life as much as possible and bring as much good to who you are. So it won't be functional and what you receive from us at a communication level. We will try and make it as simple and seamless as possible by booking online on our system or through our act,"
00:41:24,"which launches in November, which we are really excited about. You'll arrive in Cape Town and there'll be a big beautiful mountain in the background and a sunset going down, which is part of the experience. And whether you get to a space on a lim in a limousine or at an Uber, you'll be received with as much kindness and warmth as possible from our extremely competent and loving front of house team."
00:41:50,"And you would have the opportunity to opt in to our citywide WhatsApp groups or communication groups where you can join any one of our events and on any day. And there's so many all the time in our room, you'll be, there'll be really cool welcome packs with handwritten notes and a lot of hospitality detail that's super important to the hospitality experience. You'll have access to all of our workspaces in the city."
00:42:18,"So if you have work to do, it'll be free for you to enter. And so that's super important for anyone who's staying here for a longer period than just sort of yeah, leisure stay. Especially if they bring their 18 month old with them. 100%. Exactly. So we'll have a cot ready for you if you want as well. And then the experience is really the city,"
00:42:42,"you know, I think that's what's important for us is city and the community. So connected city and community and underlying values and just like adopting those values for the period of time that you're with us. And hopefully being able to share the good news as you go back eventually when that happens. I think it, it is a very thoughtfully designed customer experience that has taken us a long time to put together that it's still a work in progress all the time."
00:43:12,"There's always a human factor. We are not trying to necessarily be technology only and when humans are involved, it things happen. But we try and get it right 85 to 90% of the time and hopefully we take good care of you in your stay and you come back, which would be our biggest compliment yet is a returning guest who stays with us for a few days or a few months or six months."
00:43:37,"So that is customer experience in summary. So When I check in, so I get access to workspace, which is amazing. And then how do I get connected to the, and then the WhatsApp groups. Is there any other way that I get connected to like the food and beverage that's a part of the network? Like are those sort of recommendations or like how,"
00:44:00,"what does that look like? Yeah, So we have a really cool retro version of the neighborhood Yellow pages. So we have a, we have lots of fun in the process of curating city specific and neighborhood specific content. Our favorite recommendations where we think you should go community groups, micro communities that we think you should join running clubs that we're associated with so that you don't have to go looking for that."
00:44:26,"Yeah. It's a safe space and you feel Like you have an invitation like 100%. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. Yeah. Yeah. And it just, you can choose what makes sense to you, whether it's joining the Running Lake club that we have a really cool collaboration with in Cape Town that runs and it's just like such a cool community of amazing people or you want to join something else that sort of is more interesting to you."
00:44:50,"If you're not a runner, maybe it's a writing club or a design club or just a walkup table mountain or you want to visit sort of the, the famous or run your city market, which is Cape Town's best food and beverage market on a Saturday there'll be a, a group for you to connect with or if you just want join, you know,"
00:45:08,"first Thursdays, which is happens once a month and it's like a really massive event on Cape Town's Breeze Street, which is an incredible space to be on first Thursdays. So there's just something happening all the time that you can choose based on your, once we also that that we've recently acquired a, a business that's been really interesting to us, which is an ex a travel and experience company,"
00:45:33,"which gives you access to peer recommendations that you can read content delivered by local Cape Townians who share a whole bunch of really cool things. And so that will all happen on our app as well if you want to look online. But the magic really happens in the physical and when you interact with the communities across our spaces and experiences. But the app will help you find the physical because it's Correct."
00:46:00,"Correct. It's not Easy. Yeah, no it's not. It's totally not easy. So, okay, so Redwood City, is it one, are you coordinating with multiple asset owners or is it one asset owner that has multiple buildings that you're gonna start With? At the, at the moment it's one who own, they own three buildings. Okay. With access to other opportunities,"
00:46:23,"we're looking at the workspace, which is an independent property owner. We are fairly agnostic to the one common con, common denominator is that people need to be good people. So we choose to work with good landlords and good people who share our value system. I was gonna Say the alignment of values. Like if they look at your vision and they're like,"
00:46:41,"yeah, we're not no thanks then that's, yeah. I mean they have to be pretty committed to, I mean completely It's about your vision. Yeah, yeah. Completely. And your brand. I mean it's unique. It's, so, it's probably somewhat easy to screen people who are in 100%. Yeah. I think our focus will not be necessarily just around Redwood City."
00:47:02,"It'll be around the whole Bay Area. Yeah. It's Super dense. We wanna be everywhere. It's super Geographic. 'cause I don't know what the population of Redwood City is, 30,000. It's like a small town, but it's so dense. You go from one 30,000 to another 30 thou, it's very dense. Yeah. And these like little communities I know."
00:47:22,"We'll we need to open a work club there. There's, There's, there's such a, you know, we have the like Regis and spaces and there's just not a lot of local, so MySpace was in Palo Alto, which is right next door to Redwood City. Okay. There's nothing in Redwood City that I'm aware of. There is, there's another operator who is very premium that's in Menlo Park."
00:47:46,"It's a beautiful space, very premium. There's just not a lot of workspace. I mean it's really interesting because the peninsula is so dense, it's because real estate is so expensive. Is my theory Expensive? So yes. I think it has to be part of a bigger vision to your point, if you're trying to make it accessible. Yeah. What is that?"
00:48:04,"You know, what is that like? So that's Exciting. There's vac, there's vacancy and so I think there are problems to solve for landlords, especially in the office and commercial sector. I don't think that we are gonna go back to sort of pre 2015 times where you could just command any price. Oh No. Even here, I mean I look around and I think who's ever taking that space?"
00:48:28,"And there's a lot of talk about, you know, conversion. So is your model an opportunity to convert like commercial to residential? I know that's structurally can be really challenging, but is that something you consider or, Yes, I think we could look at hybrid buildings that offer a series of mixed uses. I think that depending on the building's nature, residential is one option."
00:48:56,"Collaborative workspace that are, and buildings that are highly amenitized where it's not just functional A, B or C grade offices is interesting to us as well. And taking it through the conversion, making it culturally relevant. Again, I think that the level of conversion or adaptive reuse that needs to happen globally is so significant. Yeah. I don't think anyone knows how much space needs to be changed."
00:49:25,"I see that in the US there are, the government has released like debt, debt strategies to help landlords reposition assets from office to residential to help solve the problem. But what people undervalue is how important the operator is to making the magic happen. Oh, a hundred percent. When you say people, is that a landlord? Like who, who undervalues that?"
00:49:52,"Yeah, I think, you know, property owners are specific animals and there are generally managing numbers as you get the, you get people who are more intrinsically involved who you know really, like you will, you can pick up the phone and phone them, but generally speaking, 90% of big landlords have a limited bandwidth to operationally get involved at the asset level."
00:50:16,"Oh yeah. And, and, and the problem is that the solution requires it you, so you either have to have an amazing operator that you partner with or you need to do it yourself, which is far harder to do. And property managers in any space are not necessarily property managers are functional themselves. They collect rent, they send an invoice, they're good at technical maintenance."
00:50:40,"They aren't hospitality people and community people. And you really need all of these things Yeah. Including the the unsexy stuff. Yeah. To be a more sort of sustainable version and bring cultural relevance. And I keep using that word because it's No, I love it. Actually, when you said it I was like, yeah, I mean that really s strikes a chord."
00:51:03,"Yeah, Yeah. You just have to define personalities and, and you can't, there has to be that soul in the building that operates in the day to day and that human face and that that kindness and that warmth that we seek about, which is super important. And it's just a living bre breathing organism that has a personality and it people interact with it on the day-to-day."
00:51:29,"And I think that is the solution and not just making it look cool, if that makes sense. Or having a gym in the basement or you know, a paddle court or something like that, or a ball court or, those are things that you need to have as well and amenities. But to bring it to life, the people factor is necessary,"
00:51:51,"which I think is harder to get right than landlords may think it is. Oh, a hundred percent. I mean, yeah, speak speaking to the choir, I think you're a hundred percent right and I think it's so rare when we see it. I was in Washington DC for the GWA conference and toured Tishman Spire. I don't know if you've been through some of their properties."
00:52:10,"I think they get it. You know, they are real, like in DC they had a property, so they have a studio is their workspace brand. And then across the street they have a pretty big class a building. They have this amazing food hall in the, you know, retail level. And food of course is, but they really committed the,"
00:52:31,"you know, the whole ground floor real estate to this food hall, but also all this community space where you can sit with your laptop, you can have a meeting with somebody who's upstairs. Like it's so like a very simple example. Yes. No, it's awesome. So activated and like authentic feeling to your point, you just feel this like vibrancy when you go in,"
00:52:55,"which is so unique. Yeah, it's unique point. It's like you really, and I, we met some of the property managers and or as I guess they were asset managers, which it's sort of unique. They just really get it right, understand it, what that feeling is that you're going for and how to put the pieces together. They're also in that food hall doing aggregated buying for the vendors."
00:53:19,"Wow. So they're like really? Yeah, I mean just a lot of thoughtful things to try to make it really sustainable for the vendors to be there. That's amazing. Yeah. But it's so like, I can think of so few of those, and interestingly in the Bay area, given how like tech, you know, technologically advanced, it's just,"
00:53:38,"there's not a lot of it. And the built environment is pretty uninspiring on the peninsula. So it's interesting. I think it'll, I think there's a lot of opportunity for what you're doing. I think it's really completely exciting. Yeah. And so many people come and you think about all the people and like, and young engineers who come to work for Google or Facebook who,"
00:53:59,"you know, I think are probably exactly your profile. You how do they get integrated into the community? Yeah. So there's a, Those mixed use environments that you're talking about are definitely the exception rather than the rule. Yeah. It's hard to find. Pont City is another one in, in Atlanta that stands out for me as an exceptionally well executed mixed use development that has a really great combination of food."
00:54:23,"I know industrious or upstairs, there's, you know, beautiful rooftop space and it's surrounded by the, the belt line, which is incredible. That is the future of where physical space should go and hopefully we can play in that space within a citywide network if we can. Yeah, it's, yeah, it's incredible. So I can't Okay. You have to promise that you'll let me know when you're gonna be in town so I can,"
00:54:48,"of course. I'll, Yeah. So you mentioned workspace in January. What, yeah, I mean what's a broad timeline? Is this over years that it takes you to sort of implement this or? No, I think scale can come a lot quicker now. I think the reality is because we're using Opco to enter into management agreements, you know, it takes us about 60 to 90 days to open a space from signing a,"
00:55:13,"an agreement. So I don't think that scale will be an issue at all. I think we'll have our workspace open really quickly in Redwood City, but we wouldn't open a second in Redwood City. We might clip on another 40 or 50 residential buildings. Yeah. But we don't necessarily see a, a massive need for multiple workspaces in Redwood. It's just too small."
00:55:32,"We would rather end up open in Palo Alto in San Francisco, in really cool neighborhoods across the Bay Area. Wait, wait a minute. For San Francisco. But there's plenty of space. I'm not, not sure about the the humans, but I know I've seen that as well. Yeah, We'll get there. We'll get there. Make your way up the peninsula and then San Francisco."
00:55:53,"Okay. I I might ask you for some guidance in terms of Places. I was gonna say I'm always happy to chat about local. Local, thank you. Local. And, and I have two, I have I'll send you after we record. I have two other ideas for you in terms of, I'm, I'm such a sucker for trying to solve problems that I look at San Francisco as one big opportunity."
00:56:12,"I'm like, how can we adaptively use this whole city? But I think it's a harder problem to solve than for one company that's for sure. But To totally could get. And I do think right, that's kind of what they're looking at. Like how do we just totally reinvent this thing in a very different, and certainly San Francisco's very liberal, you know,"
00:56:33,"in, in all the ways. Yeah. And very sort of progressive and thinking that way. So Yeah. It's funny, I was listening to a podcast the other day about the difference between entrepreneurs and business owners and entrepreneurs like are born looking at those gaps, right? Like they see problems and I could tell that's how your brain thinks. Like you just see big problems."
00:56:55,"Problems You solved. Yeah, I know. And Then what's next? How do we solve the next thing I know. Yeah. My, a friend of mine who's an entrepreneur that I spend some time chatting to in a podcast that we've just launched as well, Your own podcast now We've just launched it and it'll be launching in November. It's called The Real Good Podcast by Neighbourgood."
00:57:14,"And it's a, a real estate entrepreneurial podcast. Okay. Send the link when it's up so we can share it In. I'll do that. You I love that. Thank you. I appreciate, but he was saying that as entrepreneurs we are permanently frustrated ally because like we basically Exactly. We wake up every day, like we never a hundred percent happy with what's going on because we always wanna try and make things better."
00:57:37,"And I'm like, is that gonna be my life? I think so for the rest of my life. But yeah, so, so tell me about your, hopefully you can, Is your wife wired the same way? Or h how do your personalities, She's, she is less than cursed with a left and a right brain. And so that is probably the,"
00:57:56,"some of the most talented people in the world have both. And fortunately she has it because like she's exceptionally detailed, but at the same time exceptionally creative and talented. So totally, Really rare. Really rare. Wow. Super rare. Yeah. And so she's built anything that the brand touches. So anything from our website to the product offering in real time to all the small details that make the customer experience as good as it is."
00:58:25,"And you know, she's definitely someone who has been integral to the process and we work exceptionally well together, which is awesome because I think, yeah, you Last journey is hopefully a good one. And it's been a really incredible experience building something from the ground up with her and St. John, who's also an amazing mind himself and an entire management team now that has,"
00:58:48,"we've slowly built over time Yeah. That I think as competent as they could ever be, and a team across all of our locations who really believe in the product offering and in what we are building together. So yeah, it's when you, I think when your vision and your mission are, are clearly defined and relatable and you can identify with the product offering and you can believe in adaptive reuse and bringing good to the world and like you,"
00:59:17,"you accept that sometimes things are never perfect, but you are always pushing in the, in the right direction. You know, even when we make mistakes as a, as sort of three and a half year old company, which I'm sure we'll do even if we were 20 or 30 years old, it's just much easier to get up every day and fight for what we're building."
00:59:35,"So that's been an awesome experience, you know, moving out of like functional company, running into more purpose-driven, you know, real estate space in a very mixed use setting doing, you know, cool new stuff within a connected city product offering. Yeah. Incredible. Okay, so we, I promise you we'd be done so you could do bath time and probably have to do bath time and bedtime and then take another round of like Exactly."
01:00:01,"Meetings and Calls. That might work well for a while. Yes. And I have to go, it's Halloween here. Do you celebrate Halloween Cape Town? We do, yeah, we do. Yeah. But I'll be in bed by that stage. Yeah. Yeah. So I have to see if my daughter in her Barbie costume needs a ride to school,"
01:00:20,"so. Okay. Sweet. Okay. Thank you for taking the time to share this. It's such a pleasure. Incr, I mean, incredible. So now I'm going to, you know, keep my eyes on everything you're doing and thank you so much. Yes. If you have time, next time you're in town, I'll let me know. Thanks."
01:00:36,"I will, for sure. Otherwise, I'll de my team are there and maybe totally Anybody. I'll meet anybody. Okay, awesome. And you have to let know when the workspace opens for sure. I'll definitely, I'll let you know. Thank you for having us, and well done on everything you guys are doing and look forward to connecting again soon."
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