339. John Egan, Director of Operations at Lucid Private Offices on Hiring, Bringing Joy to the Community Manager Role, and All the Camp Analogies
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TRANSCRIPTION
339. John Egan, Director of Operations at Lucid Private Offices on Hiring, Bringing Joy to the Community Manager Role, and All the Camp Analogies
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 are gonna love this episode. It is with John Egan, director of Operations at Lucid Private Offices. We talk about hiring,"
00:01:01,"bringing joy to the Community Manager role. And John used to run a camp, so he uses a lot of camp analogies, which he says drives his team nuts, but I think you're gonna enjoy them. So Lucid used to be work suites and I interviewed the founder Flip Powder Howard. He was the co-founder actually, but the CEO now back almost exactly four years ago,"
00:01:28,"which is nuts. That episode went live on March 4th, 2020. I definitely thought it was more recently than that. So we're gonna link to that episode in the show notes, which you can get on your phone or on our website. And that's a great one to listen to if you wanna hear about the Lucid just kind of broader business model. Flip was flip powered as the CEO as I mentioned,"
00:01:55,"he was on a panel that I moderated at Juicy last year and it was fantastic. He was on there. Olathe from Common Desk, although Olathe has recently departed after WeWork acquisition and Kane Wilmont. And it was an excellent panel. If I do say so myself, not, probably not. Nothing to do with the moderation, but to do with the panelists."
00:02:20,"And one thing I love about Flip and the team, they're just super, just willing to share, willing to help. Just, I love their culture, I really enjoy their team. I met John at Juicy in Seattle and he came over and let me know he'd been through our Community Manager program. He, it was before he took the job and he wanted to learn about the industry and thought that was a way to kind of get up to speed."
00:02:43,"And I loved that about him. So he's been through the program, which is an honor and I had not really known his story, so it was really great to get to know his story. So without further ado, here's my conversation with John. Welcome. I am here with John Egan, who is the director of Operations at Lucid Private Offices. And he's calling in from the Las Colinas office,"
00:03:13,"which I've been in, which you reminded me of. Yeah, it's really nice. I love the, like the lobby and the colors and the kind of common areas. It's very nice. Yeah. Pretty cool. We moved in this one in close one in Las Colinas that was more of an industrial park, is one of our first locations. Okay."
00:03:28,"And moved here in, let's see, no, October of 2022. Okay. We've been here just about two years long. Two years, okay. Very nice. Yeah. Yeah. Great location. Two floors and about 25,000 square feet. So yes, we'll get the, the, the sort of portfolio discussion out of the way is 25,000 square feet kind of your typical floor plate now."
00:03:57,"Yeah, that's about it. We have one opening in North Dallas that just secretly got released or whatever, however you wanna say, got released. That'll be a little more, I think that's 32, 33, something like that. That's juicy. That's Wow. Yeah. Yeah. That's a big one. That one's actually on a super cool building. We gotta put our logo on it right on 75 and Ooh,"
00:04:19,"nice. And ignore us, you know, that sort Of thing. Nice. Totally. Not a big deal. It's cool. You have how many locations in you're sort of most, mostly Dallas, Houston, but now you've got Atlanta and Phoenix. Yes. How many locations are you up Are 17 in Dallas? Five in Houston. We're just about to open our third."
00:04:38,"We got COL this week of our third one in Atlanta in Buckhead. And then we have two opening in Phoenix. Two in Phoenix. Yeah. I'll have to talk about that. Phoenix is an interesting market. It's growing fast, but there's a decent amount of supply there. Hmm. There is. These two were great. Fantastic location that Flip had really been working on and heard kinda soft nose for a while and then they called back like,"
00:05:02,"actually, we'll take your Yes. Deal. Let's go. So, okay. And typically Flip likes to sign leases. Correct. We have some older deal management deals that are still in place and they're operating fine for us, but we prefer leases. Yeah. Pls the upside. Yeah. It, it, there's, you know, there's good and bad of both."
00:05:22,"Yeah. Both aspects of it. And ownership deal. In fact, I'm doing a session at Juicy with John Herring on that. Both of us have, we just, we get along real well and, and that's kind of fun to look at it. It's a lot less capital upfront. Of course. Yeah. A lot less at risk managing the risk of not,"
00:05:40,"not putting that, but at the End. But John comes from an ownership model they like to owns. Yeah. No, I, that's gonna be a great session. I love the sort of deal structure topics because Right. There's pluses and minuses for everything and Yeah. Some people can't buy the building, so we'll do a deal or build the building or whatever Yeah."
00:05:58,"Like steps into it. Yeah. Flip has really, really worked that this is kind of bridging the middle, that you're evaluating risk. You still have the business that's growing as an, as an asset itself, but it's not brick and mortar that, you know, you have a $370,000 HVAC deal that you didn't budget for that. You know, there's no,"
00:06:17,"no one's gonna pay that. You know, the, the landlord pays that for us, you know, in our deal. So that, that's, it's, it's evaluating risk. It works. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So tell us about your background. So I, I'm trying to remember what I met, did I meet you at a GW conference or a juicy conference?"
00:06:33,"We, we met in a juicy conference. Okay. Flip was bragging about me. How great I am. Yes. He was doing that. So That's why I was like, I feel like it's, 'cause Flip was Yeah. Talking about how amazing you are. Wait, in Seattle we met in Seattle, okay. Yeah. In Seattle. That's right."
00:06:46,"Yeah. And it, like right after the pandemic, I remember being so excited to like, see humans. Yeah. And you might have been one of the first people I saw probably 'cause Flip was sitting in the like lobby. 'cause he doesn't go to sessions, so That's right. That's right. Okay. How, how can we, you know,"
00:07:02,"how can he let his hair be shown if he's like sitting in session, you know, he doesn't, Okay. How do you know Flip? That might be a good place. Yeah. Yes. Tell us the story. So I grew up in New York. Actually. I grew up like one town over from Shlomo and David in like, new New York suburbs."
00:07:19,"It's, it's a small Okay, now, now I'm east in Texas, but kind of funny it was. But yeah, I went to college in Pennsylvania. I met my wife. We have been married 24 years. We have six children, one boy and five girls. First part of my career I got my master's in pastoral ministry and worked in churches and Catholic churches."
00:07:37,"And then moved to Texas to take over a, what was then a struggling Catholic summer camp. It was living on a line of credit. I had a ministry experience. My, my dad was an elevator construc put the elevators in the world, in the World Trade Center in many buildings in New York. It was like, like grew up. He's an electrician,"
00:07:58,"you know, we're just handy people. And my wife's very handy. She does art and she does, she actually does a lot of R art for, for our Lucid now in, and that's kinda, oh, we get to that part in the story here. Okay. But she's very handy and built stuff. So we built the camp and rebuilt like all the cabins and a pool and dining hall."
00:08:17,"Right. And used your children as, as absolutely free labor. Yeah. We, we built a chapel and my like 9-year-old son at the time was like stuffing insulation into the ceiling and like on the scissor lift and nail guns and all this cool stuff. Like, then we built a, you know, 13,000 square foot dining hall and just really redid it."
00:08:38,"And now it's one of the largest Catholic camps in the country. It's called the Pines Catholic Camp. So we're there for 12 years. Oh wow. Okay. Flip was On our Board part of year. Yeah. Wait, flip was on your board, you just said? Yeah, so he came out to camp and brought his kids and, and you know,"
00:08:53,"he, he has seven kids, so he beat me by one. Basically I'm a Protestant, it's okay. You know, he calls me that. So he and I became really good friends and, you know, vacationed and really had lots of fun together over the years. And we've had all sorts of staff challenges. And he was just a, a resource,"
00:09:10,"a, a friend I'd call if I was struggling in my career or not thinking about different ideas. Yeah. He was, he would always tell me stories of, you know, successes and failures he's had in his life. And we became really close. So a certain point he invited Rona my wife to do some work for him doing some interior design and art."
00:09:29,"And he just kind of kept employing her. And I left The Pines at a certain point and went to work for New York Life and got all my financial degrees and licenses I should say. And, you know, one of those things that doing insurance and financial products, like you have to have a wealth of connections. Like that's, that's part of it."
00:09:50,"Just having people to call. Yeah. And I had like 900 numbers in my phone from kids that worked for me for camp and Oh, everyone needed Retirement Plans and Yeah. Life insurance, all this other stuff. So did that for a couple of years. Ronna was working for Flip and had her own interior design business. And I was actually the first day of the year in I guess 22."
00:10:13,"And I was like, new year and I'm kind of coming in this new New year, new me. Yeah. New Year, new me. I'm like, I've gotta call some people that have some money. And I'm like going through my list, like, okay, you know, I've never called Flip about doing financial stuff with them, but like,"
00:10:28,"I'm gonna call my trainer and like, how do I get a call? Like, he's a friend of mine. Like, I've been on vacation with him and he's like, you know, so I call him and I call my manager. I'm like, how do you do this call to someone who's like this close to you? And he has the money."
00:10:41,"I don't wanna sound like I'm trying to grab something, but you know, they're both like, he'll take your call. I'm like, okay. So literally driving from my office to, or driving from a friend's house to my office. I'm like, I wanna get to my office. I'm gonna call. And I look down at my phone and it says,"
00:10:55,"flip Howard. I'm like, I hadn't talked to him in months. I'm like, oh my gosh. Like, gosh, how, you know, he's calling me like, Lord's telling me something. And because I was gonna say, there's a higher power of sending a message here. Gosh. I'm like, it just, I'm supposed To call you."
00:11:09,"And not the message your boss wanted to hear, I'm guessing. Totally. Absolutely not. So then, but we changed messages that day and he said, you know, like, I've been thinking about you and just wanna see if you'd be interested in coming in as our COO. And I'm like, wow. Like I was actually gonna call, did you see That coming?"
00:11:25,"Yeah. Like I was no way that I, I I thought that was in there. I'm like, well, let me talk to you. Like, let me think about this. And you said we have to move to Dallas. I was in Tyler, which is East Texas. Oh yeah. And we had a Coworking space go through our Startup school from Tyler."
00:11:39,"I know. Oh, did, I'd never heard of Tyler, Texas. It was called The Hub. They closed. Oh wow. On story, they, they set up in an old gym. I know that place. Yeah. Okay. And yeah, they came to me after they'd decided, you know, they were ready getting ready to open."
00:11:54,"So it was a tricky model, but a great, yeah. Great team. I'm interrupting for a second. Are you working on starting a Coworking space? I often emphasize how important the planning stage is. You've heard me say most unrecoverable issues happen well before you open your doors and they are related to the size of your space, your real estate deal,"
00:12:21,"and a few other things. If you think you are going to pick your favorite Coworking space and reverse engineer what you think you see happening in there, and then pick your own paint colors and your favorite furniture, you are in for a surprise. This business is really about making the right fundamental decisions that align with your individual personal and financial goals. So we wanna help you avoid the mistakes that a lot of operators make in planning and launching that can really set you back in terms of time and finances."
00:12:59,"So we have got your back, we have created a free training to help you really get behind the three key decisions that we think are the most critical for you to get right when you're designing your Coworking business. The model, not the colors, the model. And these insights come from years of operating, designing the model for two different locations, and then my work with hundreds of operators as they work on their businesses."
00:13:31,"So grab your spot in our training class, you can watch it anytime it's totally on demand. And start your Coworking journey with confidence and the right strategies in place. You can grab that training at Everything Coworking dot com slash masterclass. Anyway, sorry. So you were in Tyler, so you'd have to move everyone. So yeah. So he said, yeah,"
00:13:54,"you know, we, we won't you move to Dallas. And I was like, okay, we're open to that. It was mid school year. I said we, you know, went home to our girls like, Hey, do you guys wanna wait till the end of the school year? 'cause we're moving to Dallas. You're like, let's go right now."
00:14:06,"So this is like, we're leaving our, you know, two point whatever percent interest rate. And it wasn't, wasn't pretty letting that go, but it's okay. And we moved out to Keller and we, we loved it. So we, we just kind of, we reshaped the vision for the business and really taking a lot of the things that we had at camp."
00:14:25,"We had great success. We were growing 15, 18% every year, every summer. At about, by the end we were leaving, we had 1700. And I started, no, excuse me, 12, 1200 campers when I started there and left with 3000 campers this summer. Wow. Yeah. It was in a New dining hall and a new,"
00:14:43,"In a new dining hall pool, bath houses, furnished campus. Everything, everything was changed. Yeah. So if you ever need to know anything about bed bugs or your listeners, if I me on LinkedIn, I'm a super expert in it, so I'll tell you whatever to do. This is, I feel like the, the insurance finance, like all that,"
00:14:59,"that was like a blip on the like, like what doesn't fit here? W was that ever gonna be your long term, do you think? Well, It was, it was definitely, I, I feel like the Lord was really moving me to say, preparing me for this. It was understanding p and l statements. Oh, interesting. Business side."
00:15:16,"Like, like, okay, I understand. Yeah. And then he's, you're able to speak the language with a lot more of your clients coming from a nonprofit world. Flip would say he, he would've never stolen me from the camp because it would've been like, you know, like, yeah. In this, on this board and why would I take the guy who's the executive director?"
00:15:33,"And then so he said, oh, but you're with, you know, finance, I'll do that. Like, let you learn all that and then come on. And it's been great actually. Really, I, I feel like that prepped me to, you know, be where I am today. It's interesting, right. Sometimes we don't know why or how the puzzle pieces are gonna fit."
00:15:53,"You have to like do the next thing and have some faith. Right. It's, yeah. Life is fascinating in that way. Yeah. Yeah. That it, it was a great two years and it built incredible relationships. I I always say like, you wanna know who your friends are, start a business, you know, like that's really see people like,"
00:16:09,"oh, I don't wanna talk, like I'm not selling you whatever you like. Yeah. And some people like, but I'd Love to work role. Right. You're selling, I mean there's a lot of value to that in business. Yeah. I worked for CarMax for a year and in fact that's a fantastic company. And I use, I use many things I learned in that,"
00:16:27,"in this probably 20 something years later. Really. It's, it's cool. It's the same stuff, you know. Yeah, totally. Okay. So, okay. Yeah, this is super interesting. Okay, so you, well let's talk about it. So I'm interested, you're in an ops role, so tell me about your role. Like what's your,"
00:16:47,"what are your overall responsibilities in your kind of day to day? It's actually very similar to running a summer camp. I, I will often call her managers. I don't do it as much anymore, but like the counselors, like, no, things are like locations and like we have support staff, which is like the receptionist Yeah. Between coordinators. It's,"
00:17:05,"it's actually really, really fun if we think of it like that. And, and our team's very sick of me using camp story Camp analogies. Yeah. One time Get band camp. No, I, oh, you got me. You can edit that one out. That's fine. No, that's great. No, that's, it is hilarious how often,"
00:17:24,"like, we overcome problems and, and it's just the same stuff that's, you know, we're kicking drunk clients out. Just we kick the bullies out. You know, dealing with disgruntled parents is just like dealing with disgruntled clients who don't like the billing or the wifi or the HVAC or whatever. It's deescalating having a great conversation, hearing their problem and them walking away saying,"
00:17:48,"glad I talked to John, I'm glad I talked to that manager. Or the regional director or whoever we have in that situation. Just, you know, we say this is like secular ministry. You are helping people feed their families by providing some office space. Yeah. A good place. You know, flip says location matters and that, that's, that's important."
00:18:05,"And where you're doing something in a place of beauty, you feel inspired, you know, working around other people that you may not be doing, you know, insurance or you know, a therapist or you know, financial advisor, whatever the, the deal is they're doing. But you see people working, you think like, you know, I wonder what they're doing in there."
00:18:21,"That's why we like a lot of glass, you know, the lucid the light coming and that that, that, that presents something cool that you feel inspired by being around good people. So my job is doing all the onboarding of clients, having our, our a great staff. There's, there's turnover. It's not six figures right from the beginning. So lots of people use this as stepping stone."
00:18:41,"Yeah. And we're fine with that. We, we in fact say that. Oh, but You have some team members that have been there for a long time. Me Too. We do. It's just Wild. Yeah. We do our executive team, half of them are made up from people who started answering phones very beginning, you know. Yeah."
00:18:55,"It's really fun being with Andrea and Deb and Chelsea and Eli and Tasha and like, just a fantastic team. People, you know, 15, 18 years with Blip. They're, they're committed to him. And that was what made me say like the hair. Yeah. I was in a career like, yeah, no ceiling of what my salary could be."
00:19:13,"And you are like, I trust him. Like I, he, he's a great person. And then you get into the industry and you see like, oh yeah, he's really well respected. Not just a, a good friend of mine, but really someone who we all look to. We can still fight with them, we can still disagree. He'll have the final say,"
00:19:31,"but we can still disagree with them. So yeah. It, we do lots of furniture choices too. So helping people get the right furniture. It's not just, you know, one four-legged desk Ah-Huh. One that's complicated. It sure is. When you don't know how uncomplicated the other one is. It's kind of nice, you know, it facilities,"
00:19:54,"we have a staff of about 80 total, but probably 60 of them are on operations. Yep. So, and we have our own operating system for phones. And so we don't use any of the out of the box ones. So we have our own Wow. Program. Yeah. Wow. Wait, do you offer phone answering services? We do."
00:20:12,"Do you outsource that or you do that internally? No, we do It in house. I didn't know that. We've had Flip on the podcast and I'll put it, I'll link to it in the show notes 'cause he's, yeah. I, I, I have, so I just have to say I have so much respect from, for the brand and the business because it's,"
00:20:29,"it's, I mean, it's a, it's a great bus. Like, I, I always love like love, love to sit, you know, with your team and just like, sort of figure out like, what's the secret sauce here? Because you just run a really good profitable business that, you know, is expanding without any crazy outside funding,"
00:20:48,"without any, you know, fake promises of, I was just like a really great business with a really great team. And we'll talk about the culture in a minute, but, and how, wait, wait. Do you, do you remember when the first location opened? What year it was? It's 2000. 2000. Okay. Which is also a great story."
00:21:04,"Which we will, I covered with Flip, but we won't cover it here. But I, I love the backstory. Okay. That's wild. Twenty four four Years's Mail, phone, it and all of our, we, we have really good relationships with landlords for the most part that, you know, when there are issues we're, you know, we're good clients to them side the table."
00:21:26,"Yeah. They wanna work with us, you know. Yeah. That sort of thing. We go in like Flip went into Arizona and it was an easy sell. People want private, upscale, nice looking, you know, we're gonna centers. It's gonna say people, we have nice looking people too. Nice looking center. They're gonna bring great people in to activate those spaces."
00:21:43,"And he, he's good, he's good at, at schmoozing with landlords and, and getting the right right locations. Totally. I wanna be flipping my next life. I'm just saying 'cause he runs this great business, but like, where, what could he not come to recently? He was like, oh, we had a, he was invited to a meeting I was invited to in San Francisco."
00:21:59,"He's like skiing in some other country with one of his kids. He's like, can't make it. I know. Tough life flip. Yeah. It was like a two day trip. Like, come on In and out. Yeah. That guy. Well, it's easier. He's, yeah, he's figured it out. Hey there, I'm jumping in again this time."
00:22:22,"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. And this is so important in terms of onboarding new community managers and supporting the growth of your existing community managers."
00:22:53,"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. And we find that's one of the biggest values."
00:23:19,"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 and they ask questions and we help them out."
00:23:41,"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."
00:24:00,"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,"
00:24:26,"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."
00:24:57,"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,"
00:25:23,"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,"
00:25:53,"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,"
00:26:19,"and we also host a best practice sharing call, 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. Okay. So I'm super, I I'm very excited to get to get to hear your,"
00:26:45,"your background. 'cause I didn't know the, you know, the backstory, but one of the reasons I reached out is because you posted to LinkedIn one day about joy, and joy being one of Luc's core values. And that just really struck me. And so I was like, I gotta talk to John on the podcast. Can you Yeah. Share a little bit about that?"
00:27:04,"And I'm curious, like you're, you're doing operations, but obviously you bring something, you bring a really unique background to the company. So Yeah. Talk about like the, the this joy concept and your core values and what you bring from your background. Yeah. So we're, we're really upfront with people, even even from the interview, even from the first interview about what some of our expectations are."
00:27:27,"We wanna bring the right people on board. The, the stickiness, the retention. I would say the, the mom and pops do just way better job than we ever do because everyone knows the guy or the girl that's at the front desk or the, and that may be the owner. The owner, yeah. You know, it's like, oh gosh,"
00:27:43,"it wouldn't break her heart if I left. Like right. I wanna do business with her. Yeah. So we have this structure where we have these big buildings. They're gorgeous build outs. And in the beginning everyone knew Flip, like he was the guy. Ah, and just like we know him and we have this great connection with him. And at camp it was,"
00:28:00,"my name was Big Tuna. I, you, my office has spun the wrong way. I have this big sign says Big Tuna. That was what everyone knew me at camp. And there was a great connection, like, oh gosh, I Summer wouldn't be the same without seeing big Tuna. And I get to be their confirmation sponsor and parents invite me over to visit,"
00:28:18,"you know, all this great connection of the guy from summer camp. And it was that in the beginning we really are are saying like, Hey, we're, we're growing as a business model, but we still want that mom and pop feel where everyone knows the, the guy or the girl at the front desk that she's going to take care of you."
00:28:35,"I'll just say she, 'cause they're like 80% she, but we have some great guys in there too. And I, so I'm from New York. I usually say, I'm gonna say guys, so guys, okay. Whoever's in the front desk. So we try and create that. So when we're onboarding people, we're interviewing to bring the right people into our culture."
00:28:51,"We have to look for certain innate built very visible characteristics of this person that's gonna represent our brand. So when someone comes in for a tour, like, I wanna work with her, she's incredible. Like she's, you know, the, the iest person overwhelmingly outward joy. So we, we tell people right from the interview, how, how is that easy at camp to say,"
00:29:15,"Hey, you know, when you're greeting cars, they're pulling in and dropping off their 8-year-old who's kind of tearing up like, yeah, you wanna overwhelm that mom or dad with, with joy. Like, oh, she's gonna be fine. You know, that sort of thing. So we have that first impression of what you're seeing. We focus a lot in,"
00:29:34,"in doing build outs that when you step off the elevator, like, oh gosh, this is awesome. Yeah. That first impression is really, really important. Going back to camp, y'all are feeling like my managers, I'll, I'll do the camp analogy, but we would notice significantly, like nine out of 10 kids that would go home from homesickness rode in on the bus."
00:29:55,"They came to our business office in Dallas and the first impression was like our accountant and like, oh, here log John Egan. Okay, get on this bus here. And then like, for two hours, they're like, I'm gonna miss my mom. This, this is gonna suck. They've, they're steeped in this like, not so great feeling for while,"
00:30:11,"while until Yeah. Hinge. Totally. Then they get off the bus and it's cheery as these like 20-year-old girl and guys are like, it's Still can't overcome. Yeah. Yeah. So like by Sunday night they're like, can I call my mom? I wanna go home. So we talk the opposite in Coworking, that, that first we're spent a lot of money to get that lead to become a tour."
00:30:30,"We call 'em visits, but that lead to come in for a visit, hundreds, maybe even over a thousand dollars per person to come in and say, what is that gonna look like? So yes, the aesthetic, the build out, the reception area, having enough space, but not too much space. But then that person behind the front desk,"
00:30:49,"they gotta look good. Your you're, you're dressed nice, your hair's nice, you know, make up whatever. But then the outward joy can you show that person like, I'm so happy you're here. Us in Coworking, our, our big battle is what we're seeing. People that are turning in notice are saying, nah, I don't use it."
00:31:09,"Well how do we create that stickiness? 'cause you, you have this excitement about, you know, joining a gym in January one, right. And by, you know, March 12th, you're like, Ugh, I haven't been there in four weeks. I may as well cancel it. Like if the, the girl saying, Hey, come to Beachbody at five in the morning and texting you and saying,"
00:31:27,"you know, do this. All right, I better go. I I did sign up for a reason. We use that analogy a lot. Like you at the front desk, the manager of the center have to be the resource to say, you made an investment in your business to get this, you know, 120 square foot office, come in,"
00:31:42,"like, come to the happy hours. You, you do, you're a, you know, a, a new attorney or a, or a insurance sales. Like, you gotta meet this other guy that does this, that like, you are that resource for them to create a better business model for everyone. So we're, we're that outward join, like,"
00:32:00,"you're not scared to like, ah, I don't wanna text this guy. Like, you're probably not gonna be the right fit. You know, like you should be saying everyone's name when they come in. Yeah. Good morning, Jamie. Good to you. Like no restraint on that. Yeah. That's really interesting. We, you know, I run the Community Manager program and to your point,"
00:32:18,"lots of, we do have a, we have some men and we embrace them. The Not too tight, I hope That's right. Yeah. I think her name is Michelle from Work Lodge and she talked about, I love this word, it's not exactly what you're talking about, but she said they like to balance their team so that they have one like galvanizer and that person is show no fear around like walking through the office."
00:32:46,"Hey, it's, you know, we're having a member breakfast, or Hey, you gotta meet Joe. And it's, she, I love that term, but you can picture that person. It's kind of what you're describing. Like, yeah, it doesn't bother me at all to text people and say, Hey, we haven't seen you in two weeks."
00:33:02,"What's going on, Fred? That's a specific personality that doesn't have that any sort of like, you know, ego, anxiety, whatever it is around like, doing that outreach and it's just such a good fit. But well how do, so how do you, how do you screen for that? Okay. So a couple of questions we use. So I I love that."
00:33:21,"I love e even if, 'cause you want someone that still has prioritization in organization. Yes. Right. Other stuff. Like, just someone that's super joyful that can knock on doors like happy hour, like, you know, my 19-year-old could do that. Not paying the bills either. Yeah, Yeah, yeah. Totally. So, and then also saying like,"
00:33:37,"Hey, your rent's late, you know, so there's two sides of Yeah. Having that, that personality that you're confident in saying that. But one of the manageries used to say, you gotta pay your rent 'cause your rent pays me. You know, like, I love that boldness too. Like, great, you know, if you, you don't pay flip,"
00:33:53,"he can't pay me. So like yeah. How do we look for it? So what I use a lot of questions that we used to use in camp interviews. I, I I plagiarized a little bit. So one of them is we say like, do you have a best friend? Okay. Someone says, no, I really don't have a best friend."
00:34:10,"Probably not gonna be a good fit for this. Most people, I'd say 90%, 90 plus percent say yes if, if they say no. Sometimes it's quantified. Like, well I have a lot of girlfriends, I have a lot of guy friends. Like, okay, but can you narrow it down to one, like pick one again? It's can you make decisions on,"
00:34:27,"on, on the spot. Okay. If I were to ask your best friend, what is your best quality Jamie, how would you answer that question? If I were to ask your best friend, what's your best quality? What would they say? Oh geez. You're being like a geo up there. I'm putting you on there. Go. There we go."
00:34:44,"Darn it. What would they say? I think like, yeah, really like connected to them. Like, you know, wanna know like what's going on with them, how are they feeling? Like, just like in tune, you know? And there if they wanna celebrate something or you know, or need some support. So just yeah, like that connection,"
00:35:06,"which is we were talking about maybe before we hit record is not that easy these days. Yeah, absolutely. And, and that would be a perfect answer. We'd be looking for you. I would be a great Community Manager Someone at our Dallas Galleria Towers location. It's beautiful. No, it, it is, it's like, it's gonna tell you like,"
00:35:24,"how does this person get along with even their closest friends? I, I sometimes do, I think you even talked with this in, in the Community Manager University, which I did. I didn't graduate from it, but I watched all your videos. One of them was tell me about your house or that might have been on one of your podcasts. Oh yes."
00:35:38,"How was your organized? If I was in your kitchen? Yes. Would you say what, how is it organized or, oh, my house is a mess, but my business life is, you know what? Your business life is probably not organized. So like I love that. I think that's a fun one. It kind of gets into it."
00:35:51,"I like to just get into a conversation with them that, you know, could they pass that airplane test? Would you take a two or three hour airplane ride with them? And no AirPods like, okay, I would, you know, that, that sort of thing. Yeah. Just really like getting to know them and, and it can carry on a good conversation."
00:36:09,"Yeah. Yeah. So can you, I would just love your perspective 'cause it's a hard, it's a challenging problem around that tension that you brought up. Like, we need them to be like really compelling to members and we need them to be very organized and be able to on follow all the processes. Yeah. How do, how do you sort of solve for that?"
00:36:28,"Again, a lot of times it is, what do I throw it out again in interviews? That's kind of where I am. And then regionals do the coaching and, and all the rubrics of kind of what we need to get better at. Okay. So, and, and that's maybe what listeners might be listening. Like, I don't even know how to hire the right people."
00:36:44,"I, I I say here's our core values. Pick one or two that maybe speak to you that you say like, I like that one. Or I I've experienced that hospitality or owner mentality is one of my favorites as well. And then talk to me on that. Like, and maybe when you want to grow in, so I'm always interested, it doesn't matter to me which one they pick again."
00:37:04,"Can they make decisions on their own? Someone's like, ah, I like all of them. Can I just, you know, tick them off and, and check them off? Like, okay, that's fine. But I, I love to hear, you know, where they've had issues in the past either with organization. Like, I wouldn't call myself organized."
00:37:20,"You're probably not gonna pass this interview. You know, like, yeah, people are gonna be organized, you know, can follow simple directions. Flip likes. I, like, I'll say flip likes, but he's the boss. Like nothing on the countertops. Like very clean space. Totally. No candy dish, no succulent plant or you know, a,"
00:37:38,"a sign that says there's happy hour. Like, just come in and make it very clean. So can I give you a direction? How do you take coaching? Can you emotionally do it? Are you gonna cry to your boyfriend on the drive home? Like, you know, Talia yelled at me today. Like, no, she didn't, she told you to answer the phones with a smile on your face."
00:37:55,"So really the the ideas that we wanna create, we introduce it in the interview. I read countenance and, and, and body language and, and even tone of how they're hearing and responding to me. They can be too much or they can be too little and, and that's gonna kind of get us to be where those people are. I think one of the challenges is when someone comes in and we have to coach them,"
00:38:21,"it's easy to coach someone like, Hey, can I show you how to reorganize your email box? Deb is awesome at it. She'll get on 20 minute zoom with you and you know, screen share and boom, you go from 700 inbox to 30, keep it under 50. You know, that, that sort of thing. The joy one is hard to coach Jamie."
00:38:39,"I I, I'd say we probably probably have let go of folks, But Right. You can't Right, you can't produce joy. Yeah, yeah. Slip through. Like, and it's really hard like, Hey, I've asked you to smile and there's a, there's a weird, weird tension with that. Yeah. Like, You know, like it,"
00:38:58,"there's a, there's a weird tension. Like, I need you to show this, that, that that's part of the experience that we're doing. Yeah. And maybe some of the stress gets to them a little more. I Don't know. Wait, so do you, you find people can produce joy in an interview, but then maybe it doesn't, it's not persistent."
00:39:16,"Yeah. And that's Tricky, right? Yeah, It is. And, and maybe I'm coming into hopeful 'cause like Yeah, yeah. Resume. There's that confirmation bias. I would like Yes. To hire someone. It would be really convenient if it was you. I see the joy. I see it. You're in ah, I know. Or you know,"
00:39:33,"they worked at, you know, a a, a very fancy hotel or or a Right. Or a great restaurant or something like that. Yeah. Oh Heck yeah. Like on paper you're like, this is it. Yeah. Oh yeah. It's, or they have the look like just in their eyes, but then, you know, they're, they're lips aren't smiling."
00:39:51,"You know, it's, it's, it's interesting. But find the right people really does sell the center. Yeah. When someone comes in and you can tell in the first couple of minutes if they can afford it, but, you know, if they want to do the work with us, that that's really important for us to do that. Yeah. We're,"
00:40:06,"we're, we're growing. It's still having a lot of turnover. That's, that's always Gary V on LinkedIn. I don't, I I don't even know how to pronounce his last name, but he always talks, you know what I'm talking Chu Yeah, Gary Vaynerchuk. Yeah. Yeah. I think he's a Jersey guy too. He is. He's Not Jet but you,"
00:40:21,"yeah, He's a Jets fan like myself. Which is like the hardest, like, Oh is he? My husband is also, did we talk about this? My husband, I think he's a Giants fan, right? No, he's a Jetson Mets. Oh, Oh, Jetson Mets. That's Oh, Jamie my heart. Come visit you, you Get the patch."
00:40:39,"I'm gonna come out to California. It's a hard life. It's a, it's a hard life. Yeah. Wow. You don't talk about the Jets a lot 'cause they're, it's hard to, but yeah, he, well he grew up on Long Island. His parents were from Greenpoint and so I think that's where that comes from. And he's stuck with it,"
00:40:54,"so Too funny. Yeah. Yeah. And now you're in Texas and you're still hanging in there anyway. Yeah, We went to the Jets Cowboys game and they lost like 40 to nothing or so. It's Horrible. Yeah, exactly. My Daughter said, dad, you've never even seen the Jets in the Super Bowl like seven years before I was born."
00:41:09,"They were in the Super Bowl. So painful. Painful. I could go on on that. But the, the, I forget what I'm talking about This. Oh wait, we were talking. Wait. Oh, Gary V on LinkedIn. I don't think I follow him in on LinkedIn. I'll have to Oh, he's Great. One of the things he talks about is like,"
00:41:23,"hey, there's no secret to hiring the right people. He said, I've had people go through like seven interviews and oh gosh, this is the right person and they're fired after three days. Like, it, you just move on. It's nothing personal. You just have to run the process. That's, and then you just have to know sometimes you're gonna get it wrong."
00:41:39,"It's hard. 'cause I I but I sense that you have a good, you're very intentional. You probably got a lot of experience from your camp role. Do you look for, if somebody has camp counselor on their resume? Oh my gosh, are you all in on that? That is, if, if I'm, I'm listen listeners listen to this."
00:41:56,"The, the decision making, the processing deescalating teamwork, the, the long hours and low pay, like to understand the value of, of what, what working towards a mission is, is all about. If someone worked at camp, I always tell my kids that work for me now, they're all like thirties and forties now, but like they, when they worked for me,"
00:42:19,"like, put this on your resume. Talk about examples. Like, hey, when have you overcome something? Well, lemme tell you about a camp I worked at. Because if you connect with that person giving the interview, like, oh, I was a camp guy. I was a camp girl. Oh, you were? Where'd you go? I totally Get it."
00:42:31,"That sort thing. Like, wow, wow, wow. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you know, late nights and swine flu and bedbugs and you know, like the cabin disasters, the dining hall flooding and all this stuff. Like, well, we're gonna get through this. You know, that, that is such a great skillset. So hiring people that have a,"
00:42:49,"an experience in campus. Oh gosh, they're worth Their weight. Go. So have any of your kids been camp counselors? My my son was a support staff. He did that for one summer and then my daughter was A-C-I-T-A counselor in training. Okay. Like Joel. So I have one who's, he's an electrician now. And then my oldest daughter is at Arkansas."
00:43:10,"I need an electrician in the family. That's useful. It's awesome. So he, yeah, he's done so much work for us. He's now hooking an air conditioner up in our garage right now. Like Okay, great. Yeah. It's so awesome. Yeah. Praise God. Yeah, Perfect. Totally. And I wanna meet your wife. Wait,"
00:43:27,"so you did, you mentioned your wife does some like, artwork in the space. Yeah, so like all of our galleries in our boardroom, ronna egan design.com, she has her, her website, some of her picture of what Flip has commissioned her, but some huge pieces. In fact, she was in his office one time and saw this large art in his office and she commented on it."
00:43:49,"He told this story of like, I wish I could, you know, build that or something. She kept, she said, I could do that for you. And he said, all right, well I'll commission you, paint me something. And then painted her one. And he's like, well, okay, I want, I want those in our boardrooms in our McKinney Craig ranch,"
00:44:05,"one in North Dallas. She did like, everything is more and more creative, a lot of different mediums. She bought like this like history of the office where she poured what is the a poon, like the acrylic clear acrylic over old phones and Oh computers and computers and laptops and all this cool stuff that like 3D are, it really needs stuff, but a lot of big pieces like grapevine chest one that's like 12 feet long and eight feet tall or something."
00:44:34,"Just really fun. That's Hard artwork I think is so incredible. We had a member in my Palo Alto space that imported, she supported Indian artists, like artists from India. From India, yes. Wow. And she had some pieces in, she would rotate through sometimes and it was amazing, like the transformation of how it felt to just have like real art that wasn't sort of,"
00:44:56,"you know, from whatever, a catalog or wherever people get Yeah. Corporate art, you know, like real art. Incredible. Wow. That idea, just seeing some different colors and, and different mediums and 3D texture stuff you wanna touch, you know, it real. Yeah. It's fun. She really enjoys it. She works for a designer up in Pennsylvania full-time and then does art at night and morning and raising six kids."
00:45:18,"Well really? Yeah, this I cannot, I don't like You should have heard of the podcast. She, she's much more interesting than I am, but she's, yeah. We only have four at home now, so. Right. Well that's what flip says. Flip was like, well, you know, the older ones kind of take care of the younger ones now."
00:45:34,"It's like no big deal. Okay. I mean, I have one and can barely keep up with like gymnastics schedules and you know, this and that and, And how old? Oh, she's 12. 12, yeah. Sixth grade. Okay. Yeah. Right. In the same time. It's good times sixth grade. I cannot imagine life with five girls plus your wife in 10th."
00:45:55,"Yeah. It, it, it really is. It it's a lot of joy. They are, they're loud, but it's a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun. They're, they're, they keep us very full of energy. Yeah. We, we one and they all have different personalities. One of them pays, does the dishes, all the dishes at our house for 20 bucks a week."
00:46:12,"This is like the best deal ever. She's like, I want Lululemon skirts and we don't have money for Lululemon at the time. So I mean, I know my daughters start, she in that conversation this morning, I was like, okay, we're, there's gonna have to be some sort of value exchange here. Yes. If we're getting into Yeah,"
00:46:28,"we need, I need, you know, to update my wardrobe. We don't need to touch the dishes and she just doesn't, it is a fair trade Flip talks about that. Even commerce Great. You know, they, you go to McDonald's and you pay the guy five bucks your sandwich, it gives Right. That's a fair trade. We and we want that in office space as well."
00:46:45,"I, it works with my 13-year-old as well. It's like, I don't want the di I don't wanna do the dishes. It is worth it for me to do that. I like it. And it teaches right. It teaches them the value of Yeah. This is how life works. Totally. Yeah. I love it. Yeah. So are you gonna be out at the Juicy conference?"
00:47:02,"I am. Are you going? Oh yeah. Oh good. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, good. Really excited. I have not booked a place to stay. I have my Flight. Yeah, I'm gonna get on that. Where are you staying? Flip? I don't remember the name of the hotel, but Flip and Luke Wills and I, we Yeah."
00:47:16,"Gotta bunk up. So we, we share a room and we Nice bro out. Last night at the MGM for GWAI had this, we, we had this big suite that was very fun. It was, we hardly went to sleep, but it Was fun. Does like to have a good time at the conferences. He does. I should have Luke on again too."
00:47:33,"He's been on pretty recently, but not since he's been at Lucid. So you guys have such a fun team and he's doing great. He's like super involved in the Atlanta market. I always see him posting about like Atlanta Coworking Day and he's all over it. Yeah. He's been like a, a total blessing to our team doing outbound Yeah. Marketing and yeah."
00:47:55,"Get messages from me, which I'm, you know, whoever I am. But it kind of means something like, oh, the director of operations call, you know that, that works. Actually brought our marketing a director from The Pines from the camp over here. He does our marketing too, so. Oh, Nice. That's fun. Okay. Yeah."
00:48:09,"Yeah. Anthony Gerhardt, he, he, he worked with me and, and Flip for five or six years at the camp and actually several of the counselors now work for us as managers and, and ccs and facility team. All sorts of people that have kind of come in. I love it. Yeah. Yeah. Real excited. So a great team."
00:48:27,"Yeah. Luke shared a little bit of, that's why I should have him on a talk about, I, I just, I, I mean I think that's the other fun thing about your business is not everybody, well your brand and, and, and Lucid is you've got the scale to do some pretty fun things. You know, you've got a great team."
00:48:44,"You can, you sort of have this like executive team, you know, level of talent. Luke shared some really cool, to your point, like outbound Stuffy was doing on LinkedIn and I was like, Ooh, this is interesting. You know, but you've got sort of some resources to support, you know, some of that learning and experimentation and flip shared some really fun insights about like weeks that have holidays in them and how sales go down and like,"
00:49:11,"just sort of the analytics he is doing, like looking at, you know, in between ski trips to, you know, Europe or whatever. He's, he's looking at the numbers. Some of the new Yeah, we're always looking at numbers and, and yeah. One of the things we, we have really been working on and, and jury's still out on on this,"
00:49:30,"is creating the most flexible office agreements or service agreements in, in the industry. Flip Brother Taylor was our sales director for a few years and he's Awesome. Oh, is he, is he not there anymore? He's Not there anymore. You know where our sales manager is? Ooh. Flip power, Flip in. Okay. He did. So even as president,"
00:49:51,"CEO owner of the company really wanted to, you know, get his fingerprints back in everything in the company and like, I wanna lead the sales team, so, okay. It's awesome. So yeah. Has some support and we're, we're all creative and we have the, a group of cx our, our client experience team. Okay. That help out with like virtual office sales,"
00:50:08,"we call them sale team six, isn't that the best name ever? Yeah. Sale team six, like I wish I created that was flip, but he, but doing that but creating some flexible agreements. So we have one that's like a, you know, 60 day out, you pay a little over premium and then like, I'm only committing for 60 days."
00:50:26,"Well you're committing for a year. Okay. Okay. But at any point you say, Hey, oh, I got an Now Yeah. An out here's, we pay 10% premium and then we have an ultraflex that is, you know, zero down. Yeah, yeah. That day. So again, more premium. It's been good and bad. There's been maybe more churn with it,"
00:50:45,"but would they have ever signed with us either? Right. That's kind of kind of exciting. The, the revenue we're drawing from the premiums has been pretty good. Interesting. It is a, it is interesting. I, we'll see once it's a year in to see Yeah. You know, how it's washed out. But I love in this industry,"
00:51:02,"I mean, you guys have been doing this for 24 years and so you're still like, okay, how can we innovate on this a little bit? Yeah. What's new, what's next? Okay. So that, so that'll be my final question. Okay. What are you most excited about right now in the industry? Well, I, I I love,"
00:51:19,"just like in camp, and here I go back to that again. But the competition is not really competition. We, we know that the rising tide lifts all boat. Yeah. So we want others to succeed. Even the evil empire companies like that, that they're gonna go to those companies and say, oh, this actually sucks. Let me try another one."
00:51:39,"These look cooler or these match my group. You know, we had a client, that great client at our location in the Woodlands that created a space that was a Coworking space for just lawyers. Like if they're not gonna get in our space. Rachel. Rachel, I know Rachel. Oh, you know that. Oh, you do. Logical. Yeah."
00:51:58,"Yes. So like, they're, they're great folks. Like, and, and you know, our, our idea was like, Hey, that's, I hope you succeed. And he may have people that, you know, he could send over to us. And if some we don't have the right, you know, motif in us, I send 'em to him."
00:52:12,"That, that, that sort of could work. Yeah. You know, collaboratively. I, I, I love that. If that continues and people are having good experiences in camp, if someone had a bad experience in camp, sometimes you'd write that off. And it could be for any business type experience that you're, you know, making a substantial investment in."
00:52:31,"We, we want them to be good experiences in this. You know, we have an idea in our company that, that the world to be a better place if there was lucid private offices in every major city. And Yeah. We had hundreds and hundreds of people that are coming in and feeling expired, wanting to, to work, being around other people,"
00:52:47,"building friendships, you know, especially post covid. Yeah. Just a guise. Especially, you know, to, to make friends with other guys. It's, it's so much to say, would you want to, you know, get a drink after work or like, you want, just try that burger place with me. Yeah. It's weird. But you're never gonna do that if you're at home."
00:53:06,"Right. The old, since you'd have that, people aren't going to Lion's Club and, and, and Right. Things Like that. To, to create nights at Columbus or whatever, you know, church numbers down, everything's down even after Covid. Like, this is a great experience to be able to build some community and, and, you know,"
00:53:23,"go home like, I made a friend today. You know, like, this is great. You know, like that, that sort of maybe even do business with people. Like we will wanna create that, that experience wherever we can. So in new markets, you know, we bring the right people in that are gonna help create good communities, professional communities,"
00:53:39,"not just hacky sack and beer pong and stuff. We, we, you know, really doing business with people. That's, that's what we wanna create. That, that's what I'm excited for. I love it. Yeah. Thanks for taking the time to do this and I can't wait to see you in a few weeks. Yeah. In Salt Lake City."
00:53:54,"And if anybody's listening and wants to meet John in person flips hosting a party. No, we're, We're leading a session on, or a panel on the finance of Coworking awesome management deals. And yeah. Liz and Stormy have been putting together a great, great lineup. Yeah. I'm on Tuesday. Tuesday morning. Are you Tuesday or Wednesday? I'm Wednesday morning."
00:54:15,"Okay. I think I'm Tuesday morning. And Gio informed me that he's flying in Tuesday morning of like, Just for your session. Look at that. Well, I mean, in time for our session, I hope because we're at like 10 30 or something. I was like, maybe you'll be my plan B. I need a plan B. Okay."
00:54:34,"No, You might get recruited. No, You could get flip. If you could get flip into the room, he might do it, but I doubt he'll even step footage. What would be a good one? He'll be in the lobby. Yeah. Flipping his hair. Anyway, great to see you. Can't wait to see you in Salt Lake,"
00:54:49,"and thanks for making the time and sharing your perspective and your story. All right. God bless you, Jamie. Thanks so much. Thank you for listening to today's episode. If you like what you heard, tell a friend, hit that subscribe button and leave us a rating and review. It makes a huge difference in helping others like you find us."
00:55:10,"If you'd like to learn more about our education and coaching programs, head over to Everything Coworking dot com. We'll see you next week."
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