336. Real Estate Disruption: Seth Rosenblum on Adapting to Market Needs Through Coworking and Co-Warehousing
Resources Mentioned in this Episode:
Everything Coworking Featured Resources:
Masterclass: 3 Behind-the-Scenes Secrets to Opening a Coworking Space
TRANSCRIPTION
336. Real Estate Disruption: Seth Rosenblum on Adapting to Market Needs Through Coworking and Co-Warehousing
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. You know, I love all my episodes. This one is a little bit different. I think you're really going to enjoy this perspective."
00:00:52,"Seth Rosenblum is the managing director at Hone Coworks and principal at the Rosen Bloom Companies. They have real estate across many assets. Seth calls it an entrepreneurial sickness, the interest in, you know, testing and trying and experimenting with so many different asset classes. As a non real estate person, I find his background to be really interesting and his mindset around kind of innovating in his portfolio to be just kind of unusual."
00:01:27,"He, as a, as a smaller owner, they have half a million square feet of office space, so not very small, but they're really thinking ahead. It just, Seth makes it sound like, you know, it was just really clear they were getting feedback. And interestingly, you know, he's like, well, you know, you talk about landlords and asset owners,"
00:01:46,"he's like, we think of ourselves as operators. You know, they operate real estate and they're really hands-on. So they were just, you know, kind of really seeing in, in the, you know, interaction with potential tenants and probably existing tenants who were thinking about their space, what they were looking for. And it seemed pretty natural to them that the trend was towards a smaller space."
00:02:09,"And he has, you know, class A office buildings, even in a smaller market. So they're in Albany, New York, which is the capital of New York, but it's a smaller market and they're in suburban Albany. So, you know, kind of an interesting market, not a Miami, not not in Austin. And Seth and his team are just really focused on innovating."
00:02:30,"So I met Seth at a GWA conference. His team has been through our Coworking, or sorry, our community Coworking, Community, Manager University program. And I think, I can't remember who it was, somebody said, Hey, you know, Seth is getting into co warehousing and I find co warehousing to be really interesting, you know, sort of adjacent to Coworking."
00:02:53,"They have a lot of things in common. So I wanted to chat with him about that project and what that's gonna look like and you know, why they're doing it. And again, smaller market and they think there's gonna be a lot of demand. So they're pre-selling right now, and I think they're opening in March, he said. So Seth shares a lot of details."
00:03:11,"We might have to have them back on because we blew through our hour together pretty quickly and didn't get into some of the questions that we had on the list. So Seth may be a repeat podcast guest. So anyway, without further ado, here is Seth's story. Although, wait, one quick thing. If you happen to be listening to this before our funding masterclass on February 15th,"
00:03:39,"you can still register. The link is in the show notes, which is on your phone, and you can also find it Everything Coworking dot com slash masterclass. And we're gonna talk about a bunch of ways that folks are funding Coworking spaces, some that you may have thought of, some that hopefully are new and provide a new perspective. And Giovanni Palini,"
00:03:59,"my co-host on the Flex Uncensored podcast will also be joining me. He also is really in tune with what's happening in the marketplace. So we're gonna try to share and try to help those that are thinking about starting their first base or expanding. Okay. Now onto our interview. Welcome. I am here with Seth Rosenblum. He is the managing director at Home Coworks and principal at the Rosenblum Companies."
00:04:25,"Seth, thank you for taking the time to do this and for all the investments you made in your acoustics for today. I appreciate it. Thank you. I have, I have all kinds of acoustic treatments, all kinds of makeshift things for my national podcast debut, so Totally. Well, you might be, I'm ready, tempted to start your own podcast now that you have the mic."
00:04:42,"Oof. Okay. Don't go there. Yeah, no, not yet. You just upgraded your, your Zoom game. Okay. So you're in, are you in Albany proper? Tell me where you're located. Yeah, so we're in suburban Albany. Yeah, just right outside of Albany proper. Our properties tend to cluster around the airport and the, the area between the cities that make up the Albany Schenectady Troy Metro area."
00:05:05,"Got it. Okay. Yeah, a former upstate New Yorker. There aren't that many in the industry. I think I might know all of them at this point. There's, there's a few that I don't know as well. Yeah, well, you were smart enough to, to up your skiing game by moving out west, so I, I envy you for that."
00:05:21,"Wait, are you a skier? I, I'm an aspiring skier. I, I may or may not have banged up a part of my body skiing on Sunday, So. Oh, okay. Where do you ski? Usually at Gore, right here near Albany. Okay. It's like an hour 20 away, so Yeah, Yeah, yeah. You can day trip it."
00:05:38,"Absolutely. Yeah. Getting, getting the kids into it, getting me into it in my forties has been good. So it's, Wait, are you, you're a new skier Kind of? Yeah. Yeah. I did it like a few times growing up, but I, I got really serious about it in 2020. I needed that, like reprieve needed that outdoor Yeah."
00:05:52,"Time. We, we ran out of the hiking, you know, once the weather got not conducive to hiking, for most of us, it was like, okay, we need something. And yeah, it became the, the every Sunday activity now, so, yeah. Okay. Nice. You'll have to come out west. I, I will,"
00:06:07,"I'm, I'm ready to visit whenever you, We have invitation Comes Have some like New York friends, we had them actually stay with us recently, and I, we were like reminiscing about the first moment when we experienced like real powder instead of the ice. I learned, have I talked about this in the podcast, like night skiing in at Greek Peak, which I don't even know where Greek Peak technically is,"
00:06:32,"but we would get bused there and we would ski from like six to 9:00 PM It was so cold. I don't know why I liked it. I, I have no idea, but I did. Yeah, it's, I've, I've done it before, but I don't think I would do that now. My kids do that for ski club and Yeah, yeah,"
00:06:46,"Yeah. Exactly. That's what it was called. It's called, yes. Nothing, nothing Good happens. Yeah, my daughter broke or fractured her clavicle two weeks ago. Oh no. And there's been, there's been a clavicle break on three out of four weeks of the Albany High School ski club, so yeah. Yes. No, Nothing good happens in that Skiing."
00:07:06,"No. Oh my gosh. Okay. Okay. Okay. So back to our, our professional discussion here. Yeah. So you, okay. You were, we were emailing about conferences first we'll start with Did I did, did you, you started attending GWA conferences? That must be how I got to know you, kind of, yeah, Yeah."
00:07:27,"I mean, you're, you, you know, your national reputation Yeah. And your podcast and all of that, you know, I think kind of preceded my conference foray, but yeah, I think it was 2019 that I went to GWA in DC and Oh, nice. Met you and a whole bunch of other people now who I, I kind of am fortunate to be on a first name basis with,"
00:07:46,"even though I haven't been a regular attendee at all the different conferences. And it's, it's just great. It's a really supportive community. Okay. I love it. So, but your background is really real estate. So tell us about, tell us about what you do. Yeah, yeah. So, grew up with real estate, I guess it's a second generation business,"
00:08:04,"the Rosenberg companies that I'm in now. And my father started it basically when I was a baby. It was a second career for him. And I grew up seeing, okay, dad has office buildings, he's really proud of them. They were kind of boring to me as I was coming to age because he just did such a good job that nothing ever went wrong."
00:08:22,"So it, it was like this, you wanted A little more drama or what I, I guess, yeah, he sort of wrapped up development, you know, kind of by early nineties. And, you know, it, it had, we had great occupancy, great reputation. We were really known for quality. We still are. That's something I'm really proud to,"
00:08:39,"you know, carry on his legacy. And I know he's very proud of, of me and the team here and everything we do. But, you know, office, traditional office, as we call it now, that's really, that was the thing in the eighties and early nineties, you know, building in the suburbs, greenfield development very comparatively to today,"
00:08:55,"very easy to kind of get that done. You know, fill up buildings, companies releasing space. They were moving out of downtown, they were growing, they were adding, you know, onsite headcounts. A lot of these were companies that did, did business with the state tech companies, et cetera. And it was just, you know, he had a really good run."
00:09:12,"And then as I came of age, went to college, I thought I would probably not go into real estate. Never really thought that was exactly cool. Never thought I'd be back in Albany. I was a techie at heart. I was in high school, I was building websites before a lot of people knew what websites were. Okay. And, you know,"
00:09:29,"doing that as a consultant for businesses and, you know, helping them with their networks and things like that. And it was kind of my last year in college in Boston that the, the real estate bug started to like creep back into my veins. And it was like, wait a minute. There are some classes in this. Maybe, maybe I'll see what's out there."
00:09:46,"I'm just curious. And then I started to see, well there's, there's a whole world of real estate finance, and there's a whole world of urban development being in a, a, you know, pretty progressive development environment in Boston and seeing what, what's happening in bigger cities, in bigger markets got exposed to some different product types like multifamily retail. And I said,"
00:10:07,"you know what, I'm gonna try this out. And it, it happened to coincide with the whole.com bust. This was 2001. And so not a great time to be like looking for a job in tech in Boston. Yep. So I, I feel very fortunate, very blessed that I, I kind of made that little early pivot. Spent a few years doing property management in Boston and spent a few years doing brokerage."
00:10:27,"Ended up doing Rep not working for the family business. No, no, no, no. There was no, you know, telling dad not, not gonna be back in Albany anytime whatsoever. Followed my wife to dc, ended up working for Cresa in tenant rep for a few years there. Okay. Found that really interesting and successful. And 2005 had an opportunity for a year to try Albany."
00:10:50,"I had been helping my father on the side with some of his leasing strategy and finance and things like that. And, you know, long story short, I had had this one year opportunity that has since turned into an 18 year opportunity and back Exactly. And started talking to brokers, started talking to developers, and there was this overwhelming sense of being,"
00:11:10,"you know, albany's a tertiary market as we call it. It sounds, it sounds really bad. I don't know, I'd like to think of us as an aspiring secondary market, but really, Yeah, I was gonna say, that does surprise me that that, you know, I mean, it's the capital of the state. It's a capital city."
00:11:23,"But you know, you look at the size of our office market, you look the size of our, our metro area, you know, we're, we're not at a level of, you know, a lot of the other midsize cities. And so there was this overwhelming sense when I would talk to people and it kind of like we would say today,"
00:11:37,"like, we can't have nice things, was kind of a, you know, why can't we have nice things? And that's, that's what I kept feeling. And it was a little, a little depressing. Everyone was talking like they were 20 years in the past, and, and it's still unfortunately, you know, in some cases is the case here."
00:11:51,"And, and I felt like, alright, we've got this office portfolio, we're fighting with everyone over the table scraps of tenants. We're, we're, you know, this one built a building and now they can justify charging a dollar a square foot more that one, you know, cut their costs so they can steal our tenant for 25 cents a square foot less or 50 cents a square foot less."
00:12:12,"And there was this whole sense of like, what's going on? You know, thetis are escalating, construction costs going up. That was a thing, you know, 15 years ago we were seeing our profit margins go down. And so, you know, my father was a great mentor. I mean, he really taught me a lot about deal making,"
00:12:29,"you know, is a great mentor, you know, customer service foundation of, you know, great values for our company, equality, et cetera. And, you know, we started kind of looking at, all right, how do we diversify? And so our first, our first attempt was we did a co condo project in downtown. It was 2009 also that was not well timed what was going on in the market."
00:12:52,"Yeah. And I found it pretty exhausting. But the one thing I learned from that, many things I've learned, but the one big thing that's been transformational is to really build up a great team. You know, we were very kind of skeleton crew, about eight or nine people now. We're now we're over 40 people. I brought in someone who,"
00:13:10,"Jeff Morrell as my right hand. He was a VP initially, now he's a partner in principal. And I think the, the synergy of what we've accomplished together and what we've done by bringing in great managers and great people, it's really allowed us to grow. So now, so multi, so multifamily, I always find it really interesting when, when people start in one sort of class of real estate,"
00:13:32,"like office and then try multifamily, and now you've done Coworking, which is still office and some co warehousing. So is like, how do you, what makes you wanna sort of experiment? Like how do you, how do you think of that? Like sort of a, it's a foundational business and you can sort of go, you know, go into other,"
00:13:53,"do they call it like a class of assets? Yeah, I mean, I, I think it's, to answer your question in one word, it's kind of like a sickness, I guess. It's Okay. Serial entrepreneurship within one larger industry, I guess is really what it comes down to. Okay. It's hard. I mean, I'm not gonna lie."
00:14:09,"It's, it's really like when you have One, it looks really hard. I mean, that's fine. One of the reasons I wanted to talk to you, I was like, I have no, and I think a lot of folks who listen, although there are certainly a lot more asset owners post Covid VID paying attention to flex, I think we're really starting to flip the switch."
00:14:25,"So I think your story will be, will be interesting. But for those of us who have never like created, developed real estate, like the idea of going and building a multi-family apartment building is like, it's, it's such a huge undertaking. Hey, I am interrupting this episode for any of you that are thinking about, or are already working on starting a Coworking space,"
00:14:52,"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. 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."
00:15:22,"So we've split the Coworking Startup School into two phases. And we've been running phase one, 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."
00:15:49,"So phase one is really around knowing who your target customer is, 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."
00:16:16,"We also have pitch deck and business plan templates, and we run these workshops live. 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,"
00:16:41,"we want you to be able to do that pretty quickly. 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,"
00:17:00,"unless you've already done some of the work and then you're getting feedback on that work on the calls. 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. Phase one, validate your model is running our next session,"
00:17:20,"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. 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,"
00:17:42,"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. We've said 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. Yeah. So I mean,"
00:18:05,"yes and no. Like the, the, I I think the, the hard part for us has been as we've moved toward the hospitality aspect, and I think we'll probably, yeah, we'll probably get into that a little bit in terms of the operations and, and all of that. You know, our office legacy, we, we were always a hands-on operator."
00:18:22,"So I guess that's, that's kind of a first, like, just for this conversation, like you use the term asset owner a lot and I, I never, it's funny, when I first heard it, I'm like, are we asset owners? What are we? Yeah, Well, yeah, what, yeah, But you know, we consider yourself to be,"
00:18:36,"but you, we always came from this sort of like family business. We run our office portfolio, we know the people who do the maintenance, we know the tenants. When the phone rings, I might answer it, and it might be, it's probably somebody we know on a first name basis. So, so it's kind of yes and no. Like,"
00:18:51,"like definitely a big pivot. But you know, the personal touch with the tenants, I think when you talk about institutional asset owners and companies that are used to being more, you know, financial and then maybe they third party out their property management. Yep. You know, that's a whole different kind of pivot into cowork. And we're used to being operators."
00:19:08,"We're used to, you know, running the buildings, you know, seeing what's going on. If there's a cleaning issue, you know, we're the ones taking care of it with our vendor. So I guess in that case, less in that sense, less of a pivot. Yeah. You know, but it really, like for us, it started off as a diversification play."
00:19:24,"Like we knew office was not gonna be the be all and end all we knew. I I remember working with a tenant in 2005 that was sending most of their employees to work remotely. Okay. So this whole, you know, work from home thing, this has been going on for Yeah. For close to two decades now. Yeah. Yeah. You just,"
00:19:43,"but a lot of, okay, so I, I like to know this is good sort of market research that you resonate with the term operator, not just like, well, yeah, we own buildings, we operate the buildings, and we have a team very much You have a beautiful website, by the way, when I was looking at it yesterday,"
00:19:57,"I was like, this is really, thank you. Yeah. You get such a good vibe from it. And these photos of your team are just really fantastic. It's like so Really authentic actually. And I don't know. I love it. So thank you first of all. Yeah. I mean that, that's actually a great synergy because it's one of the members in our Coworking space who happens to be a headshot photographer."
00:20:19,"Okay. And so we were able to, headshots are very creatively make a deal with Andrew Elder who did those photos. So that was nice. That was great. Okay. But yeah, you know, it's, we started pivoting, you know, from just office to saying, all right, let's get into industrial. That seems like a logical play."
00:20:36,"Self storage as well. Yep. Got a little more operating, you have a lot more, a lot more customers in a self storage facility. And then multifamily and, you know, it started off as a great financial strategy. I think we learned as we got into like, like just a couple years before Covid, just how challenging it would be operationally to have all these different product types."
00:20:55,"And they all run on different software platforms. Okay. And they all have different sales cycles and marketing cycles and all of that, but like Industrial self storage or, I mean, totally different. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. And I, and I think interestingly, Coworking has a lot more in common with multifamily from a, from a sales cycle standpoint than it does with traditional office."
00:21:17,"You know, you're not, you're, you're dealing with people over the course of a few weeks and they're buying decision and they're usually finding you online. Both of those things are true with multifamily, with traditional office, it's a lot more relationship driven. These deals are taking, you know, six to 12 months if not longer, you know, to happen."
00:21:33,"So, so that I, I think is helpful to us that we're in a lot of different, we're dabbling in a lot of different things. You know, our accounting departments used to doing things a lot of different ways as needed. Our marketing team, we have this, this backbone of shared services that can allow us to be in all these different businesses and still keep some of our sanity."
00:21:51,"Yeah. So you do a lot of, you're doing that in-house? Yes. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, so you're, you're ear mouths are not on, you're not pretending the world is not changing and you decide to working. Yeah. Yeah. Tell us what that business looks like and how, how it's been treating you."
00:22:11,"Yeah. So we found ourselves, you know, we, as we grew and diversified, you know, we found that we, we were still operating a lot of office space. It, it makes up about a third of our portfolio, about half a million square feet in seven buildings in, in near Albany. And I think we noticed a few patterns emerging about five,"
00:22:31,"six years ago. One was that we were constantly saying no to users when they needed a lot of flexibility or they needed move in ready space. It, it came up a few times where we, we either said no and almost said yes, or in a couple cases I said, all right, you know, let's, let's just say yes and see if we can adapt to this and see what the,"
00:22:51,"what the pros and cons are. Maybe we had a small space that someone moved out of. Maybe there's a space where someone was willing to leave furniture behind. Those were always kind of nos in our traditional landlord business model. And a lot of our spaces were already small. They were maybe like one to 3000 square feet. That was kind of a sweet spot for us."
00:23:09,"And but you would lease, Lease those on longer term? That was still like a five year lease. Yeah. So the goal was always like five to 10 years. Yeah. And then maybe if it doesn't need work, we'll do a three year lease. Yeah. That, that's sort of the traditional office Yeah. You know, mindset that we would have in a,"
00:23:25,"in a, you know, class, a small market kind of situation. But Yep. You know, what we would run into is, is alright, some of these spaces, the buildings have been updated, we're taking care of them, we're repaving the parking lot, updating the lobby, put, putting in nice new lea leaming, new bathrooms, et cetera."
00:23:41,"But we would get to the space and we would get to this kind of marketing paradigm of, okay, we're gonna build this out for you and you're gonna take a five year lease as a tenant. And it wasn't working for the smaller users because we were finding they need space now, or they need space a month or two from now. Yep. They don't wanna commit and they're growing."
00:24:00,"So they don't wanna commit to signing their life away for a five year lease if they might outgrow it in a year or two. And I was showing them these spaces that, that, you know, again, the buildings were nice, but the spaces were, were really disinvested. You know, we had spaces that were built in the early nineties where the offices were 250 square feet in size."
00:24:20,"Well, nobody needs a 250 square foot office today. So, and then, you know, thetis are going up and up and up. So now the five year lease is already a problem to give a tenant what they really want. Tenants are looking for more customization that's been a thing for 10 or 15 years. And quality, you know, they would walk in our office and see,"
00:24:38,"hey, we have these nice glass walls. Yeah, exactly. We have decorative lighting. Yeah. And beautiful bright colored carpet tiles and things like that. And they would say, well, can we get that? I'd say, well, no, the building standard is you get these boring wood doors and you get these, this plain old carpet, we,"
00:24:53,"we'll do new carpet, but it's gonna be the basic. And then you get to pay extra if you want something that's really in keeping upgrade The current, the upgrade. Right. But the problem is, is ti costs are going up. And so for you to pay and fund the ti you're not profitable on that lease until year three. You know?"
00:25:11,"I mean Exactly. Exactly. So Yeah, I mean, I've learned a lot of that over time in geo, you know, helps. And I, it's just like, oh, I see. Because from the tenant perspective, right? You want what you want and you don't understand the deal. You think, oh, these guys own the buildings,"
00:25:25,"they're swimming in cash and they can, you know, why don't they pay for it? And it's, it's like the ROI isn't there for you either. It's really Right. Yeah. Right, right. And it only came together like a couple years into the Coworking business. We started home coworks, our first location opens in mid 2020. And really like,"
00:25:44,"it was maybe like a year into that where it finally clicked and resonated that, wait a minute, why are we even thinking about building so many spaces unique to a user? Why don't we just find out what 80% of the users want, build spaces as much as possible that are tailored to them. And then, you know, just play to that,"
00:26:03,"that plug and play market that needs space. So, you know, that, that led us around. Now when we get a small space that comes on the market, we don't, we don't market it as, we will build this to your vision. We market that. We market it as a, you know, ready-made space that's furnished, that's service that has,"
00:26:21,"you know, a, a nice generic build out to it. And then it works for a lot of users. And so they kind of can take it the way it is. So yeah, it was a really big paradigm shift for us coming from, you know, 40 years of running office buildings this way, me having, you know, 15 plus years doing office deals of different types."
00:26:38,"But it's been, it's been exciting and, and beneficial I think for us, us. But, you know, you're early to the party. I mean, you're one of the few, I will still use the term asset owner. Like, like for, you know, you're coming from the, I own, you know, a lot of square footage of office space and I'm gonna,"
00:26:56,"you know, shift some of that portfolio to flexibility. I mean, you use the GWA conference is an example. There are not a lot of Seth’s running around yet. Right, right. But, you know, that's good for people like me who are interested in the industry and wanna see Yeah. What other ways we can, you know, explore doing flexible space because the lingo is totally different."
00:27:20,"You know, when I talk to you or when I talk to, you know, a handful of community managers or you know, multi-location space owners, you know, they're, they're thinking differently. They're, they're really thinking about hospitality. They're thinking about, you know, not just what is the person who signs the lease need, but what are, what are the people who actually use the space need?"
00:27:38,"And so that's, it's very helpful for us. So what does the Coworking portfolio look like now? What are you doing mostly small offices? You, you know, you mentioned sort of trying to figure out what do 80% of the, you know, people need, what does that look like? And is that shifting changing over time? So for us,"
00:27:57,"we, we built out two private office focused Coworking spaces. I guess that's, that's how I would describe them to someone outside of the industry. I think to you, they would just be great Coworking spaces. Okay. And we built our first location, completed it in 2020. We have sort of two clusters of office buildings. One's more of a,"
00:28:17,"a, a little office park, and the other is more of a, you know, airport centric cluster of buildings. And we decided it made sense to do a second location. They're, they're diverse enough. And we also happened to have the right space that was the right size and the right location and the right building and said, all right, let's,"
00:28:33,"let's do a second location. So the portfolio, it's, it's a 12,000 square foot and a 14,000 square foot Coworking space. And they have the usual array of, you know, some open space that serves as amenities for the members. Private offices sized for one to nine people per office, meeting rooms, privacy booths, et cetera. It's a pretty full service model."
00:28:55,"You know, we, we kind of aspire to industrious in terms of how they look and feel and how the people operate within the space and the kinds of companies and decor and all of that. You know, maybe dialed it down a little bit just to make it relevant to a suburban, you know, small market kind of, kind of feel. But,"
00:29:12,"you know, they're bright, they're airy, they're friendly, they smell good. We've got nice music pumping through. We do some events. Yeah. Yeah. So that's, that's what we have for our Home Coworks product lineup. We have added some small suites. We're, we're labeling them jump suites in strategic locations when spaces come up within the rest of the office portfolio,"
00:29:31,"not necessarily adjacent to the, the main home location. Okay. But, but within the same park or, or locale. And then our latest thing is that we're moving into flexible Warehouse. We launched a new brand called Launch Box. And Launch Box is a small warehouse suite product. And that's, you know, that's our newest piece of the lineup."
00:29:56,"I can't remember who told me you were getting into that. And I was like, so see, it's, I it is, it's, I mean, you're very entrepreneurial, you know, within the real estate. I can see how it could be fun and tempting to do all these product classes. Okay. So talk about that. How did you get to know about it?"
00:30:13,"What made you think, yeah, let's do it. What kind of sort of validation of the, of the demand in the market did you do? Give us the Yeah. Scoop. Yeah, sure. So, you know, again, it's the diversification plus the sickness that I mentioned, right? It's like, hey, there's, there's opportunity. You know,"
00:30:31,"people need this product, why shouldn't we be the first ones to do it? Right? And so it's, it's hard. There's a lot to unpack. There's a lot to figure out with any new business. You know, starting with the design and continuing to operations and everything else. We happened. We just so happened to have put a 60,000 square foot warehouse building under contract in late 2019 when we were still building our first Coworking space."
00:31:00,"And I stumbled upon an article that was about saltbox and it was this new, new thing back then. They were opening their first location, et cetera. And I said, this is really interesting co warehousing, what's this? And then we start googling and we get our, get Our little team together. I'm not even open on the Coworking, but I'm all in on the co what's,"
00:31:19,"And so the, the most interesting thing was was it's like, wait a minute. So this is designed to carve up into small spaces and it's designed and it's, it's gotta be in a convenient retail centric location. Clearly, you know, they're building out very nice upscale warehouse space. And we just so happened to be under contract to buy this building that's right next to the airport,"
00:31:40,"pretty much dead center in our region. And it was very obsolete in terms of how it was built for your typical distribution warehouse. It had, has kind of low ceilings, 20 foot column spacing, kind of limited loading the loading's all concentrated in one wing and a lot of office space. It was a manufacturing facility. Okay. And so, you know,"
00:32:02,"things took a minute to, to take off in terms of our business plan. We were busy with Coworking, busy with launching some other, other projects, had an opportunity during Covid to actually let a, not-for-profit, use the space and, and help the community for a little over a year. And so we kind of, kind of took it slow with this latest rollout,"
00:32:21,"studied the market, looked at what wear space and Saltbox talked to some of the great operators out there, you know, visited some of these spaces, learned what they're doing. And, you know, we, we thought our region needs this. You know, it's, it's, we have a great creative economy here. The only you asked about validating demand."
00:32:38,"I mean, the only, the only real validator we had is that there are 4,000, 4,000 small businesses within a 15 mile radius of this building. And so we kind of looked at that, looked at the fact that we have a great creative economy here. Yeah. There's a lot of programs to, to sort of jumpstart manufacturing in upstate New York. There's a lot of tech centers here with nanotechnology,"
00:33:04,"research chip manufacturing, et cetera. And so there all of those companies, you know, need some sort of vendor base and client base. And we were seeing a little of that on the office side. We were starting to also, as our research continued, we were starting to see that we designed these awesome Coworking spaces. They're really not so awesome if you have stuff,"
00:33:25,"right. They're really totally, Yeah. I guess the answer I give people when someone asks like, where can I put my stuff? Or the things I'm bringing with me from my office as well. We really designed these spaces for knowledge workers is kind of the nicest way to put it. Yeah. Bring your laptop, bring your monitor. Maybe bring like a really small set of files."
00:33:43,"But Yeah, we've made the office look really nice. We don't really want your clutter. We really don't actually, we try not to say that, but, you know, and, and some of them bring their file cabinet and we just kind of wink and nod and say, all right, that's okay if that's, if you want to pay, you know,"
00:33:59,"these premium rates for storing stuff, that's okay. 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. We know how challenging it can be for Coworking space operators to create their own training and development material to support their community managers."
00:34:30,"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. 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."
00:35:02,"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. 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."
00:35:24,"And they ask questions and we help them out. So I am 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."
00:35:45,"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 kinda get better at all the things that,"
00:36:11,"that go with the role. 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."
00:36:42,"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,"
00:37:08,"so they understand what that looks like. 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,"
00:37:38,"how to set up automations, 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,"
00:38:08,"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 forward slash Community Manager. Now back to our episode. So, you know, we realize there's this need for companies that have the physical product."
00:38:30,"You know, we were seeing Saltbox really position themselves toward e-commerce and that sounds, sounds and sounded pretty exciting toward us. And so we, we, we looked at it and said, Hey, there's, there's demand here. There's a need for this product. And we just so happen to have the right building for it, which is never the reason to get into a flexible space business."
00:38:49,"By the way, man can. So many of our conversations with other office landlords is like, oh, I have this space I can't rent. Maybe it should be Coworking. I'm sure this is a call you get daily. Do you get that call daily? This Is why I'm so, I mean, really, I think you are an anomaly in terms of when even call,"
00:39:07,"I'm sure there are other folks who operate like you do, but I mean, the calls I get are like, I, yes, I have this building. It may not be that great. I'm thinking about Coworking 'cause I can't do anything else with it. And heck no. I don't want anything to do with operating. Find me an operator. You know,"
00:39:25,"they just wanna convert it. And then they don't realize how much it'll cost to convert it, you know, to chunk it up and make it consumer friendly. I mean, you built, you built a true Coworking business that is designed to attract, you know, a a demanding end user. You didn't just kind of take space that you had and start charging,"
00:39:48,"you know, by the office that some of the mindset that I see come in. I mean, you're really attacking these businesses from scratch and doing all your due diligence and, and building out those businesses, you know, from scratch, not just sort of repurposing existing space on the cheap. Right. So yes, I And, and then the fact that you're like,"
00:40:08,"and we'll operate this thing. So you're, you're operating the, okay. Yep. Yeah. So I'm not, I'm not gonna pretend we didn't go through all those progressions and machinations and, and the other one is, can we start really small? Let's do this 3000 square feet and see how it goes, and then we'll add on. And that also,"
00:40:24,"like, you know, we quickly realized once, if we're gonna commit to this, we need to commit to a staff, we need to commit to the amenities. Yeah. And so, yeah. Yeah. We, it took, it took us a while, maybe, maybe longer than it should have, but we figured it out. Yeah. Yeah."
00:40:41,"So, okay. Talk about the co What model are you pursuing for the, wait, is it open? So it's opening March 1st. Okay. We're, we've been busy pre-leasing, we're putting kind of finishing construction touches on it. Okay. But we're, we're almost there for Launch Box. Yep. Yeah. I love the name. It's, It's a space."
00:41:01,"Thank you. Yeah. It's, it's kind of got this interesting pun thing going on with Launch Box. And you can literally launch boxes, which is great from the space. It's not just, right. So it's like a big box from which things launch, but then little boxes also kind of launch out of a loading dock every day. So Yeah."
00:41:19,"No, it's, it's great. All one word. It's all one word. Yeah. No, no spaces. And then we have these, we have these lovely launch box lunchboxes as our swag, so we can kind of play on words that way too. But yeah, it's, Okay. So what are, yeah, what are the services? What,"
00:41:35,"what is it? Because there's, there's kind of a spectrum of how these get operated and it's still kind of new, right? I mean, Yeah. Yeah. So one thing we've learned is, you know, and, and we could talk more about this on the, on the Coworking office side if you're interested, but we're, I think our,"
00:41:54,"our expertise as we've pulled, pulled ourselves toward the hospitality end of the spectrum. Yes. Let's talk about that. Yes. We kind of, we kind of have achieved like the almost community part of the expertise, but not, not the full on like high community, high events, high social kind of environment on the office side. I don't think our market really wants that."
00:42:17,"Yeah, to a great degree. We, we've tested it and you know, what we found is largely our audience is suburban and professional and, you know, they're, they're, they're fine with having a member breakfast. A few people come when we do a happy hour, but we don't get a ton of that. And so I think, and,"
00:42:34,"and, and some of that may be our members and our location and our geography, but some of that may just be us, right? So at the end of the day, we are asset owners. We're, we're space operators. We're good at keeping the buildings clean and well maintained when it comes to like, like a high event centric kind of model and a high community centric kind of model."
00:42:52,"That's where we start to really struggle and strain. And so I, I think sticking to what we're good at, so to kind of transition that to, to the warehouse side, we don't come from like a third party logistics kind of Yeah. Environment either, right. You know, we're not, and we don't come from like a maker incubator kind of environment."
00:43:10,"That's not an expertise that Jeff and I as leaders of the company have. That's not, we don't have somebody on our management team who has a passion or a, a network around those kind of things. So at the end of the day, we're a space-based model, you know, launch Box, home Coworks. They're both, they're both spaces. And then we layer on the service,"
00:43:27,"we layer on the hospitality within reason. And so I think where we are with Launch Box right now is we'll help members with receiving, we'll help members with making sure that there's daily pickups for outbound shipments. We've created that infrastructure of, hey, it's a fully climate controlled warehouse and we have pallet jacks you can borrow and hand trucks and all of those things that members need is shared equipment."
00:43:54,"All the basics that we're used to in Coworking, coffee, snacks, wifi throughout the whole warehouse and the office. You know, all of those things are in place. We've gotten pretty good at that kind of stuff. You know, what we're not really trying to get good at right now is the marketing advice for e-commerce people. That's, that's a need that's out there."
00:44:14,"How do you market your product? How do you price it? How do you get it to market? And then also the third party logistics, if we, again, we're in the business of, of space. And so our target consumer for launch box is really a one pl it's a first party logistics. Yep. Right. I, I want my stuff and this is my stuff and I want to touch it and I wanna Yep."
00:44:36,"Lock the door and not have anybody touch it when Yeah. I don't wanna Touch and I don't want my garage touch and you won't let me bring it to the Coworking space. So, Exactly. Or even our self storage spaces, right. Don't have power in parking and all of those things that people need to go spend a chunk of their day working with stuff or bringing in employees."
00:44:52,"So, so that's, you know, that's where the need is on the co warehousing side. I know some of the groups that are doing this nationally, they're, they're finding that there's probably more profit in the three pl. That's not something we're really focused on right now. We've brought in a couple local partners, or really affiliates, I guess you would call them,"
00:45:10,"people we can refer our members to if they're looking to take a piece of their product line and three pl it. Yep. Or if they wanna receive a large quantity of something offsite, and then maybe have parts of it brought to, to launch box so that they can work with it or assemble it, et cetera. You know, we're looking to develop kind of friendships and referral sources for that."
00:45:29,"We don't really think three PL itself is something we can excel at right now. It sounds super intense. We did the, how I did this on co warehousing, which I don't know if you attended, I found it to be so interesting, this spectrum that they were playing on. And we had, I think we only had one group that was doing three pl."
00:45:50,"And I was like, you know, right. It's, it's really a different business. I mean, to your point, it's real, it's kind of Coworking. I mean it, you know, I consider co warehousing to your point, sort of solves like an adjacent problem. It's a different consumer. They have stuff and, and you know, a product based business."
00:46:10,"But there, there's some overlap there. But the three PL is like, you know, a lot of technology, a lot of, yeah. Different aspects of that business. So what if I am a member? Yeah. And I, I, I would say like Saltbox, even, like, they, they seem to be probably the most visionary in the co warehousing space."
00:46:27,"And I've had a couple great conversations with Tyler Screven, and he's, he's awesome and, and you know, very thoughtful and very intentional about how he's doing things. And if you look at, if you look at their website, three years ago, it was really talking about space. And now it's like logistics and services. And by the way, we also have space."
00:46:45,"Interesting. So there's been, I'm intuiting that there's probably a little bit more profit at play on the, on the logistics side. We just, that's not our expertise. There's other people here who do that. Okay. So while you have the entrepreneurial sickness, you try to stay in, in your lane, at least for Now. Yes. It's,"
00:47:03,"it's about space. Yeah. Space is what we do. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So are you pre-selling that space? Have you started to meet members? We have, yeah. Yeah, we have, we have a really strong sales effort going on right now because it's, it's a totally unknown product. Yeah. And I think we found this,"
00:47:20,"we still find this with Coworking, with Coworking In Albany. People don't necessarily understand who it's for or what it is. This is like, like unheard of. I mean, people can, at least, even if they picture a Coworking space as being more open or social or co than working. Yep. Yeah. With co warehousing, people really don't know what it is."
00:47:37,"And, and you try to put, we, we landed on small warehouse suites as our moniker. Okay. You know, we debated the small, but at the end of the day, like it really is for someone who's looking for small Yeah. We target 150 to a thousand square feet. Yeah. And then we had to put in suites, because if you don't call it a suite,"
00:47:56,"well then you say shared warehouse and Well, what does that mean? What's that? Yeah. Is that like a big open warehouse and my pallet is on one shelf and Jamie's pallet is on the shelf above that. That doesn't really speak to our product. Yeah. So we went with suites, which in, in our business never would've been what we use."
00:48:12,"But then the word flex doesn't make sense. I've got brokers and other real estate developers. When you use the Word flex, the flex word is the problem. Yes. Yes. Yeah. I always thought of flex is like an industrial building that has office and warehouse Of people. Wilmont is always like, flex is such a tough word because all the brokers,"
00:48:28,"we teach a broker course for Avis and Young, and he is like, all the brokers think it Oh Yeah, oh yeah, Yeah. Of, of exactly that product, which I had never really paid much attention to. So now Yeah, exactly. But in the industry. Yep. Yeah, exactly. So that's, you know, that's where we've landed with that."
00:48:46,"And yeah, we are, we're talking to members. We have a, an intensive marketing effort, an intensive sales effort kind of to reach out to these small businesses and people who might be selling things online where we can identify some local component where they're tied to our region. That's a big target for us. You know, even small contractors, some of them are ones we work with."
00:49:06,"Interestingly, this, this building that we repurposed, it was a, it was an old gritty industrial building. They actually, they actually used it to test and manufacture locomotive. Turbochargers. And so this building was full of grease and grid and wreaked of fossil fuel. And now it's this beautiful gleaming net zero, all electric, you know, carbon neutral,"
00:49:27,"beautiful shiny LED lit building with clean floors. Yeah. But actually the company we hired to do the industrial cleaning has signed on as one of our first members. So that's pretty cool that they're That's totally cool. Use this as a, as a depot for their little cleaning business. And Interesting, I mean, that's an example I would not have thought of,"
00:49:45,"which is why I think the marketing is interesting because the users probably know who they are. You just have to, right. Like when they see that solution, they're like, Ooh, that's me. You just have to Exactly. Use their language and figure out like where, what are they looking, how do I get in front of them? Yeah,"
00:50:01,"Exactly. And it's a small business and it's a woman-owned business. So I think it's just, it's great when we can like, take our aspirations to redevelop buildings and make old new again and upcycle and, and also kind of partner with businesses that are growing and that are, you know, making, making their space a place where they can improve their business and hire employees and serve the local community and all of that."
00:50:25,"And, and we've seen a lot of that, you know, aside from that, like we have a couple of tenants that are in the clean energy sector, which is really kind of cool. And upcoming members, I should say. We don't, we actually don't call them tenants. We call, call them tenants on the other side of the house."
00:50:39,"But a couple of our members are, are in those sectors, you know, as well as e-commerce. So it's really, it's really starting to take off. So in their shared, in their unit, do they, is the office space in the unit or is it separate? So kind of both or either or. Okay. That's what we're picturing having been to some of the other spaces in other markets,"
00:51:02,"it seems like a lot of users like the idea of just setting up a little desk, having their labeling station. Shipping station, yeah. Whatever slash office Right. In their unit, it's fully climate controlled. Wifi is there throughout the lighting is great. So somebody could really work right in their unit Yeah. If they want to. Yep. We also have an office space,"
00:51:23,"a, a, a, we have a, a flex lounge area and cafe. So someone can, if they don't wanna necessarily rent another space and bolt that on for their business. They can just grab their laptop and go work out in the cafe area. That's amenities for everyone. And then on the second floor of one wing of the building, we've built out about a dozen private offices,"
00:51:44,"one to one to six people in size. So there, if somebody has an office team and wants to actually have that as their little mini headquarters on the other wing of the building, we built out four office suites. And so those are furnished service spaces. They come with desks, they come with chairs just like a Coworking space. Yep. The internet's there,"
00:52:03,"the kitchen is there for you. We're not, at that point when you're in an office suite, we're not brewing the coffee for you. Yep, yep. We're not restocking your printer. You, you kind of provide your own pods for your coffee maker that we provide you. You know, you, you run that little space yourself, but we clean it every day and we're there on site."
00:52:21,"And if you need to grab a cup of coffee because you ran out in your space, you could just walk over the, the cafe and it's, it's there for you. But we're, we're setting those up as ready to go spaces. And so our, our sweet spot for those is like the user who needs a one to three year agreement. We're not looking for that five to 10 year deal."
00:52:39,"We're not looking for a build out, we're not looking for any real upfront commitments, you know, we're just making it accessible and agile. So Yeah. I feel like the, the co warehousing users are so interesting. I mean, how much time do you spend in the, do you office out of the Coworking space, how much time do you spend in the in,"
00:53:00,"in the trenches? Me personally? Well, I, in the beginning I had to, we actually, that, that was really necessary for me to feel like I could supervise our first Community Manager. Yeah. Understand. I really felt like I had, What are they doing all day to be there? Yeah. Yeah. And also it was 2020,"
00:53:14,"so there weren't a lot of people there. Yeah. So it was like I could, I could fill one office and make it seem slightly more lively. So yeah. So, so at home I definitely was there, pivoted back to our corporate office, which happens to be right across the hall a few months later, you know, at, at our flexible warehouse space."
00:53:33,"At Launch Box. I'm there for tours, you know, based on relationships and things like that. I'm not, I'm not office and there right now, I'm, I might try it might be a good idea. No, I was just curious. I, I think that user's really interesting. So you probably get all sorts of fun, you know,"
00:53:48,"different, a huge variety of, of businesses. Okay. I'm looking at my questions. Yeah. To see what else. Yeah. And I think as a space owner, it's, it's definitely important to be in touch with the staff that are on site. You know, I'm, I'm there all the time. I, I go there to get my coffee,"
00:54:06,"I make sure to chat with our community managers on site and our director of community operations very frequently so that we're, we're kind of keeping a pulse on this because it's the, the product development here is, is constant. There's always innovation and change and Yeah. It's not the kind of thing that we set and forget, like an apartment building. Okay."
00:54:25,"There's, there's things to unpack there when we transitioned our business to multifamily, but it's a pretty established industry. Yeah. There's a pretty established way of doing things and Yeah. Systems you use, there's choices you can make as an operator about how you do things, but it doesn't change as often. So it's a lot, it's a lot more complex running a space operation."
00:54:45,"So what is this, how does this impact your, your team? So you mentioned about 40 people, probably some of them are sort of maybe dedicated to roles that don't necessarily span the, the variety in the portfolio, but is it, do you think it's good for retention? Is it fun for them to sort of have, like, have the product development happening and Yeah."
00:55:05,"Okay, now we're doing co loaded. Okay. S let's figure this out. I, I would say that's a really loaded question when you talk about retention and it's like, I, I don't know. You know, it's, it's baked into our core values that, that we seek continuous improvement. We like, we like doing new things most days of the week,"
00:55:22,"you know, when it comes to Alright, people stressing out because they're doing really new things to them Yeah. For, for them that can be really challenging. Yeah. You know, some of our team members, you know, they're, they're aspiring to grow, but maybe not the way like an entrepreneur who has equity or who started businesses before. You've talked about this a little bit in some of your recent casts about,"
00:55:44,"you know, starting a business and having a partner and things like that. And it's like, you know, a lot of our team, they're, they're great middle management and they're, they're better than great middle management, but getting them into the mindset of, hey, we're gonna go do something new and it's gonna be scary and exciting and we might have to make decisions on the fly."
00:56:00,"And trying to do that in a more corporate structure where alright, maybe they don't fully wanna own that decision Yeah. Or wanna have some backup or some buffer on those decisions. So we, we end up having a lot of, a lot of launch meetings, you know, a lot of, lot of internal emails with, you know, a little bit more bureaucracy that I think we'd like in the long run,"
00:56:18,"but in the short run, okay. Until we get it going, there's just a lot of, a lot of dialogue. There's a lot of support. You know, there's a lot of, a lot of group think, which I think can be good when you're doing something new, you know, and then ultimately I think what we, what we've gotten good at as we've diversified,"
00:56:32,"we weren't good at this six, seven years ago when we started doing new things. I think we stayed in that hole. Everybody chases the ball kind of thing for too long. Now, I think we've gotten a lot better at saying, all right, let's define who's accountable for what. Let's define what decisions can be made by a Community Manager at the site level."
00:56:50,"Let's de define what things can be made at our, our product level. We have, we have set up our flexible space division, so to speak. That's an internal term. Again, we don't call it flex externally to encompass both our, our Coworking and, and co warehousing brands. Okay. So we have one director who's handling all of that."
00:57:10,"We have one unified job description for a Community Manager that it, it sprinkles in enough of the warehousey stuff that we can kind of say all you are working in the same role, even if you happen to be assigned to an office space versus a warehousing space. So one thing we've really started to value is that standardization, those SOPs. Yeah. I'm great at making the on the fly decisions."
00:57:30,"I'm not that great at sitting down and writing the SOPs, but I really, really value it. Imagine that. So it's, Yeah, I don't know. It's, but I really, you know, having the people on the team who have that diligence, that attention to detail to kind of put that together, you know, and then, and then kind of also be willing to coach them to break it when necessary so that we can evolve the business model or get those,"
00:57:51,"get those round pegs to fit into the square hole in the beginning when we're trying to figure out what our market is and what our members really need and all of that. So, So I'm curious, again, I'm sort of contrasting a little bit to, you know, folks who, who aren't maybe is into the operational aspect of, of your fundamentally in real estate."
00:58:13,"You've layered a lot of things on top of that. How, what, how do you, how have you sort of evolved or what are some of the things you do to grow as a leader? So one of the things we've really, as I touched on kind of the accountabilities and things like that, we've really embraced EOS as an operating paradigm. And so I think that has forced me to grow as a leader in some ways to kind of set up these boundaries and say,"
00:58:41,"all right, I'm not gonna just dive in and, and mess with whatever is being done at the site level because they have clear operational goals on a weekly basis. They have metrics that we can look at. And I can kind of fall back on that as a, as a pretty hands-on kind of guy and, and you know, having learned from my father running a small business like,"
00:59:02,"hey, we're, we're hands-on people. Like, we really care. Yeah. We really want to know that those details are taken care of properly. But, you know, it's allowed me to kind of think about being in charge without being in control. So, or is it the other way around? I don't know. Maybe it's being in control without being in charge."
00:59:19,"Yeah. I don't know. I think it's being in charge without being in control anyway. It's, it's the not micro piece of that. It's the macro piece of that is what we're, what we're going for. So are you the visionary between you and your, wait, tell me your partner's name. Jeff. Yeah. Yes. So, alright."
00:59:34,"So that's the interesting part that that's the part where we don't fully buy into, we buy into like 90% of the, of the platform. I I think we're both co visionary. Okay. Sounds slightly dangerous, I'm just saying. But It is, and we, and we, we do have to kind of be very intentional about that piece. And if there's any like EOS implementers listening,"
00:59:53,"I'm gonna get in big trouble. But it's, it's like we, we each have like a, like a, like a side of the business. Jeff focuses on our business growth and new product development, community relations, et cetera. And he has teams under them that, under him that do the development, the marketing and, and those kind of growth focus things."
01:00:12,"And then I handle like finance and operations. Those are my two teams. So it's a little bit of a, of a, a clear Division though, so Yeah. But it's working because it's allowing, it's allowing our managers to really thrive. It's allowing our managers to, to get direct access to senior leadership, but also have their own domain where they run their little area."
01:00:34,"And so being able to kind of have one direct report who runs our multifamily and one who runs commercial, another one who does our financing and proformas and things like that, and another who runs our accounting and make sure that the money gets collected and all that. Like, it's, it's really, really good kind of having these, these sort of mini silos that allow us to operate all these,"
01:00:54,"all these shared service platforms. Yeah. And EI suspect EOS also keeps things in check a little bit because when you bring a new project to the table, you have a structure within that that it has to sort of work within. You can't, you know, throw 10 new rocks into a quarter Exactly. Without being thoughtful about the trickle down to the team."
01:01:18,"Exactly. You know, exactly. To your point earlier, like some of us love to do new things all the time and some of us like to understand what, you know, like, like a little consistency and a little predictability. Yeah. Yeah. And, and we value it. We truly do. I mean, we, we, we like the idea that our team can have a work-life balance."
01:01:35,"Yeah. We like that we can, you know, not burn ourselves out. Over this last year we had a couple delays on some projects with supply chain and things like that, and we ended up with two new properties delivering right at once. And our team has said to us, Hey, never again. Like, don't, don't, yeah. You know,"
01:01:51,"when we do these one and three year planning exercises, like make sure there's some staggering of these deliveries. So yeah, that's, that's the fine line of like, we can do new things but not bring on too much too soon and overwhelm the team. Yeah. Love it. Okay. We're at time. I could ask you 1 million more questions, so we might have to do this again wi what's the next conference that I'll get to see you at?"
01:02:15,"To be determined. Okay. Definitely, definitely we'll be having that on the radar. Okay, good. Good. Yeah. Yeah. I know, I think I'm doing, oh, I'm gonna do Salt Lake for Juicy GWAS in Phoenix this year. I might even do Nashville, so. Hmm. Doing the circuit. Yeah. Yeah. Salt Lake is tempting."
01:02:34,"The timing isn't good, but it's, it's very tempting. Okay. You could test out your, it's a little late for skiing maybe. Yeah. Park City's really nice if you go. Yeah, Yeah. You might have, was there speak up there. Okay. Was there a couple weeks ago? It was, yeah. Oh, you did?"
01:02:49,"Okay. Okay. Nice. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Wait, did you take the kids or did you just go on your own? I, I took a kid and then I would've taken another had she not gotten injured at ski club, so Yes. Oh yeah. She's so bummed. That's The worst. Yeah. Unfortunately. Yeah. Yeah."
01:03:04,"Nice. Okay, so yeah, you've had your taste of non east coast skiing. I love Park City Little Bit. It's a great town too. Okay, well thank you for doing this and sharing your story and, and until next time, thank you. Thank you Jamie. Really appreciate it. Thank you for listening to today's episode. If you like what you heard,"
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