204. Zubin Canteenwalla, COO of Saltbox on Their Co-Warehousing Model

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204. Zubin Canteenwalla, COO of Saltbox on Their Co-Warehousing Model

00:00:01 Welcome to the everything co-working podcast, where you learn what you need to know about how the world wants to work. And now your host coworking space owner and trend expert. Jamie Russo, Welcome to the everything coworking podcast. This is Jamie Russo. Thank you for joining me today. Today's guest is Zubin canteen Wala, and I think you're going to be really interested in this episode because co warehousing is,

00:00:42 is the new black. I think he is the COO for saltbox. They just raised $10 million in funding, not their first round of funding. They are open in Atlanta and Dallas and expanding next to Seattle. It's a really interesting model. They bring folks that need entrepreneurs who work with physical goods and give them flexible warehouse space and logistics support. And they layer on additional services,

00:01:13 including labor, eventually, you know, other fulfillment services and certainly coworking amenities and community. So they, you know, run a model. That sounds pretty basic in terms of shared warehousing space, but they can really make a big impact on the members that they serve in terms of helping them advance their businesses, going from the garage to shared warehousing, which is a huge gap in the market.

00:01:43 So I think it's really interesting to even if you run kind of a standard co-working model to hear what are other folks doing, how are they adding value? What types of relationships do they have with their landlord? So saltbox runs on a management or creative partnership, you know, type of model Zubin his background. He comes from industrious, he ran real estate at industrious.

00:02:05 And then before that he was with common, which is a co-living provider. So he brings kind of a long running, you know, framework for what's possible. And what's evolving in these different types of models. So his story is really interesting. He shares the salt box model, you know, sort of who they serve, what problems they're solving, you know,

00:02:29 what their model looks like compared to traditional coworking, what their management agreement approach looks like, kind of at a high level. So I think you're really gonna enjoy this conversation. I definitely did a big shout out to Giovanni who connected me to Zubin really quickly before we dive in, we've just released our 20, 21 co-working tech and tools guide. If you don't have it yet,

00:02:53 grab your copy at everything. Go working.com forward slash tech and tools. 2021, a few episodes ago, I did a kind of a deep dive run through of the results, but you can grab the actual physical guide with all the sections, make your checklist run through, see, you know, what you're missing under each bucket. So grab your copy at everything.

00:03:14 coworking.com forward slash tech and tools 2021. And now I'll dive into my conversation with Zubin Zubin. Thank you for joining me today. I'm here with Dubin canteen wallet. He is the COO of saltbox, which is co warehousing for modern commerce. So as humans going to tell us about the model and about his background and how he got to salt box and where they're going,

00:03:40 but Zubin Giovanni, pelvic Cine introduced us. And I think there's a lot of excitement around co warehousing and sort of coworking, but in a different sector of commercial real estate. And so I'm excited to hear what saltbox is up to and your perspective on the industry. Cause you have a fairly unique background. So thanks for taking the time. I'm sure you are busy these days.

00:04:05 You just raised around a funding. So I suspect there are a lot of growth plans on your plate. So thank you for joining us today. Great To be here, appreciate the offer to chat. You Are at your home office in New Jersey. Yeah. I love it. Your color, by the way, we're about to paint our office and we're doing like a dark Navy,

00:04:28 which looks kind of like, what do you have that there, This was, this was done for all the people who sit on calls with me and had the Sara visual for the first time We, we just turned a guestroom into a second office. Cause now my husband is home all the time. And he was like, he has some birds in his background and he was like,

00:04:50 we need to remove the birds and I get a shelf. So that's a, that's our next project. So I'd love to hear a little bit about sort of your story and your background and how you ended up at salt box and then let's dive into the saltbox model. Yeah, I can, I can start pretty high level and then kind of getting to kind of the more specific aspect of the journey that's relevant to the conversation.

00:05:18 So I've been in startups pretty much since, since day one started as an operator and then went into venture capital for about six or seven years, investing in clean tech and then sustainability and all different types of business models that fall under those themes really wanted to get back into building a company. And I hadn't really had the direct experience. I'd been more of a junior operator earlier in my career,

00:05:38 so left and found a company called alt school, which was sort of at that time, trying to build a school system across the U S I, I joined aim for the moon, raise a ton of money, build, hire a bunch of really great people from industries, primarily tech related, and then try and do something that's really difficult. And so long story short,

00:06:03 it's really difficult to build a school system, but it got me exposed to kind of this world of like, you know, brick and mortar needs, consumer tech. And like when you kind of consumer experience offered, how do you deliver against that promise? You know, partly like how do you, you know, I launched New York for them to help them open up two schools in New York.

00:06:23 And how do you handle local operations versus central operations? And, and so, you know, basically took that experience. I, I, you know, got introduced to the founder of a company called common, which was sort of new at the time during this thing around co-living, hadn't heard of co-living didn't know what it was. Didn't know if I would be interested in it,

00:06:41 but it was basically like a continuation of what I'd thought I was doing set AltaVault, which was taking a, kind of a brick and mortar type business, trying to add some at the time we talked a lot about community, but trying to add some like services and kind of, you know, sort of differentiation to how the product was perceived by our tenants and,

00:07:01 and build it into a national brand. And so I spent several years there starting with a few people who were kind of sales and marketing and then, and then kind of growing out, you know, the entire kind of member life cycle from, you know, after they enter our website, what do we do with them as a sales team? What happens?

00:07:20 How, how do they onboard them into a, a property? How do we manage their experience within the property? How do we manage the physical property itself themes? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And, you know, the business is growing. So we have to think about people operations within this operation. So, you know, we sort of, it's kind of interesting what these businesses like at that time,

00:07:42 like we were too naive to realize what we were doing is we were just building the property management company. We were just doing it against this particular type of living called co-living. But the moment I think we started to realize like co-living is just like really, really hard property management. Totally fair. The property Piece is the easy part, right? It's the hospitality and the,

00:08:03 you know, getting the member insights right. And running all of that. That's hard. Yeah. I mean a lot to dive into on like, whether like, you know, the mentality was certainly around, like, let's bring me your consumer delight layer to this, you know, property management industry. The reality though, for the business, which is important for,

00:08:20 for any of these businesses is like people, people leave because you aren't cleaning their space well, or because you aren't addressing their billing concern or because, you know, you, you know, you, you set the wrong expectations to them about what the experience we like. It's not. And then all this stuff on top of it for me is a luxury you create if you've got the services.

00:08:39 Great. So that was sort of, you know, early mentality. Common is like, let's get really good at like services and do it at scale, which implied building kind of a central operating engine. And then, and then we started to take on kind of traditional multi-family buildings to help grow the company. And that's setting it continued in that direction,

00:08:56 quite aggressively that basically expand their footprint is by taking on, you know, existing multi-family buildings as a way of being a better operator for those buildings. Is there A model, all managed services? They don't own the asset. They manage, Okay. An operator, at least it's hard, but I w when I was there, I think they've stayed true to that where they will either be in,

00:09:19 I guess initially it was at least based business, but very early transitioned to management agreements and, and sort of, you know, being a more of a, I guess, Alliance partner with the, the owner. And so that was also my first foray into, you know, managed the management agreements and the relationship that the operators have with real estate owners and real estate capital.

00:09:41 And so I was approaching it from more of the standpoint of like the operator of the properties. So I had a very kind of, you know, different experience there than really had what I had had industrials, which is my next step, where I ran the real estate team at industrious. And so it was kind of, kind of interesting coming from an operator's perspective,

00:09:59 because, you know, at common, you are the recipient of real estate and you work closely with real estate to make sure, you know, there's alignment around underwriting and like the right types of partners, right. Locations. But it's kind of like giving me the keys to the castle when you give me responsibility for making those decisions for the company, because now I can do things the way I want it to as an operator.

00:10:22 And so that was sort of the objective at industrials was, you know, they had already shifted to, to management agreements. By the time I got there, the question was like, how did we grow quickly? And how do we go like responsibly? And like, you know, that was a lot of lessons in a very short period of time,

00:10:37 but, you know, how do you take these these businesses and, and help them both position management agreements the right way, but also understand how to take risks and manage risk, you know, in a, you know, a world where you have venture capital fueling these businesses and the need to grow quickly, like, you know, real estate isn't designed to move at the pace of it is not Often particularly with the management agreement model.

00:11:01 Right. I mean, one of the trade-offs there is, you know, how right, how quickly can you move w to get those deals done versus a traditional lease, although the traditional leaf processes also not moving at the speed of light. Yeah, Exactly. And so you have, it's kind of like if you look at the stakeholders in the world of these,

00:11:19 these operators, on one hand, you've got, you know, the, the investors who are, you know, pushing risks and like that's their businesses. They need to create outsized returns. So risk is something they need the operators put in the middle of real estate partners and real estate, capital, or lenders who are in some cases, very adverse to taking risks.

00:11:38 And so it's sort of like balancing, balancing those stakeholders, which is just, for me, it was fascinating to be a part of that You had that mindset from your VC days, which is, is it fairly unusual for somebody to leave venture capital and operate that true? I, I mean, I've heard her heard many sorts of people leaving, but I think we have to,

00:12:00 we each have our own reasons for wanting to leave. And I think, you know, mine was really around, you know, proving to myself that I could, I could do it myself and also vendor. Capital's a bit of a lonely sport as well. You're not really in a team situation. And like, kind of in the thick of it,

00:12:16 you kind of like, you know, advise companies and sit on boards and like you check in with them frequently, but you're not sharing the successes and failures in the same ones. So for better or worse, I like to live the pain. So, so yeah, so wasn't industrious, I hope it hit the left as a result of that consulted last summer to a variety of different kinds of real estate driven companies all around the theme of kind of flexibility.

00:12:44 So did short-term rentals was a modular architecture company and saltbox was one of the companies that I was advising. So just got really close to the team and they're very small, but very ambitious and exciting, and we can get into it, but like very, very different approach to kind of be the member operator relationship that got me very excited about what they're doing.

00:13:06 So I'm curious, you joined a team during COVID August, October. I started advising them back in may or June last year and then joined October formula. Yeah. So where is the rest of the team located? We're all over, but the heart of the company was in Atlanta. And so the three co-founders are based there. And yeah, I think this is now a normal kind of COVID story of,

00:13:32 I, I hadn't met them in the beginning. I only met Tyler to the CEO maybe a month ago for the first time, also for personal reason, I haven't traveled. So I haven't actually been to the salt box yet, which is something I'm solving in two weeks now. So very excited to kind of get down there, but the, the team is starting to become a larger and widespread we're hiring,

00:13:54 you know, sort of all over the country for, for what we call kind of our more kind of central roles. And then the location staff will be where the salt box is open. Yes. So talk to us about the saltbox model. We've had a couple of fed palletized on, I'm not sure if you're familiar with some of the kind of more local brands e-com spaces work is,

00:14:16 is in Atlanta kind of a smaller version of, of what you're doing. And so I think we know a little bit about the model, but yeah, I'd love to hear the salt box story. Yeah. The business and dare to serve primarily the, kind of the SMB eCommerce merchants. And these are the companies that we all have experiences with daily that sell on Etsy or eBay,

00:14:37 or they use kind of Shopify as the front end. And there are at least from what I've, I've seen like hundreds of thousands of these businesses for having us. It's crazy. Like, just think about all the products you can buy. There's there's real businesses behind these. And they range in size from like the sole entrepreneur who just started a product and launched out of their home to companies that have,

00:14:57 you know, millions in revenue and are, you know, operating and they're trying to grow. And so salt box was really there to say, well, these businesses is one-on-one common problem that they have is they don't really have a great way of interfacing with the real estate world. And so what we see is a lot of our members come from essentially working from home,

00:15:15 keeping their inventory in their garage, or I was going to ask you, where did they come? That's what I was picturing. They come from the garage because there seems like such an enormous gap from, I mean, similar to coworking, right? If you have a, you know, you run a little business, there's a huge gap between home or coffee shop and signing a five-year lease.

00:15:37 And for, for co warehousing or warehousing, I guess you're looking at probably a real minute, a big minimum requirement for space. That is a big jump for them from garage to what's Next. Yeah. It's partly a big commitment. It's also the similar issue that COVID in salt is that you can't find small spaces. Like where do you find like a 200 square foot warehouse suites or a 5,000 square foot suite?

00:16:02 Like it doesn't exist. There's no channel to go and find it other than Craigslist. And so, so yeah, the salt box is basically, it's a warehouse we operate and we turn it into small spaces. That's like the simplest, you know, explanation of what, what we do, but it gets a lot more interesting as we start to understand,

00:16:17 like, you know, the pain points that these businesses have are creating an opportunity for us to glare in like real kind of, you know, operational logistics services to, to help them run their business, which, you know, ranges from, we have flexible storage, that's available to them onsite and offsite. We have, you know, a team we call kind of their force or elastic workforce.

00:16:39 This is basically like trained warehouse staff that are able to handle basic functions or projects, or in some cases, members have actually programmed programmed them into their business. They, they basically use our app to, to, to hire them five hours a day, every day for specific kind of operational functions. And so we're able to offer our kind of economies of scale to benefit them.

00:17:01 And then we are, we're starting to get into some, some testing around actually fulfillment for, for members. So, you know, it's, you know, we've started, started to hear early, you know, success stories of like the, you know, the entrepreneur who moves in and they can focus on product development or customer acquisition. And we kind of all the messy kind of logistics business.

00:17:23 And so like the, the analogy that's made a lot of sense to me is like the, you know, that the same way these businesses use Shopify as kind of the front end of their business to build a storefront to the shopping cart. Like there's a big opportunity for saltbox on the backend of their business to both like, you know, help them be successful.

00:17:41 But it also creates a very tight integration between us as the operator and them as the, the member, which from a real estate partner standpoint, you know, predictable, stable, you know, revenue. And so we offer this benefit of being a, a flex operator, but we have an opportunity to have really strong kind of, sort of stickiness with our members and,

00:18:03 and, you know, lifetime value with these, these groups. So when I interviewed e-comm spaces, they said they lost zero members through COVID because their members need their space. And I thought, you know, wow, that's really powerful that you're serving them, you know, in a way that, you know, is really fundamental to their business. They probably,

00:18:27 it's hard for them to go to you and go back to the garage. Right? Yeah. They can't just pick up their laptop and work from home at the end of the day, their businesses exist in the physical physical world. And so, yeah, just, just the same as they had, we had near a hundred percent occupancy, not only that we had a waitlist group through COVID,

00:18:44 so I'm definitely a different experience from what I'd seen, another kind of real estate asset classes, but I think partly speaks to, you know, the, the, the, the benefit that he does have from operating within a saltbox, but also just like, you know, the, the, the trends that are happening around, you know, digital kind of retail and,

00:19:05 and how that's, you know, creating an army of these small, small businesses to serve that demand. So again, the theme of your careers, I find so interesting because you saw this happen in residential real estate and then commercial office, and now, you know, warehousing and it's right. All sort of similar, like, wow, it's, life-changing when you layer services over things that were just kind of commodities before,

00:19:31 or that people just simply didn't have access to. So I'm curious about your customer acquisition, if people don't know, like, do you struggle with sort of the coworking challenge of, well, your biggest competition is that people don't know you exist. Yeah. Is the, is that a struggle for your model? Yeah, it's the same, you know,

00:19:57 hopefully it's all differently. I mean, I imagine it'll resolve differently, but it's the same challenge challenge of, there's not an existing channel for, you know, these companies to go out. And first of all, know that space exists, but also find, find these spaces. And so you have to create like a direct acquisition model, and that involves,

00:20:15 you know, early starting with paid spend or, you know, sort of benefiting from the halo effect of Sargent Atlanta and having our co-founders based in Atlanta, but you have to make the sort of scalable and predictable, and that involves a real, real investment in creating these channels. And then you have, you know, local strategies that we'll have to test around community engagement,

00:20:34 small business groups, working with local brokers and educating them on what we do. And downers, I guess, a somewhat predictable pattern of like, you know, how do you, how do you have to, how do you build this? But, you know, for each of these businesses, it's a challenge in the early days. Yeah. Because with coworking in the commercial space,

00:20:55 at least people are, there are people who look for office space. Right. And so to your point, do people even know there's an option to get out of the garage beyond? Yeah. How does that look? Do they go to a broker first? Do they, so I'm curious about your broker program. Is that something you brought from industrious or was that in place?

00:21:13 I don't see often That was in place. They figured out quite a few things before, before I got here. But, but again, it's like, you, you can say you have a broker program and you can, you can handle it reactively. It's just, how do you, how do you manage a broker program if you find it's a serious way for,

00:21:30 for building demand. And so it's gonna, you know, take thinking through is as a function and as a specific function we have to build out, is there a team behind it, did their investment find it right now? It's still, we're still in those like, you know, very early days where like you just need to hit some singles and doubles and that's good enough to hit our goals,

00:21:49 but, you know, we're quickly, you know, beacon to add to what's happening the second half of this year or next year, and starting to get much more, much more thoughtful about how we build this company. So you also run a management agreement model for saltbox. Is that right? Yeah, I would say, I guess a hybrid strategy,

00:22:11 which is, I think the premium the way I think these businesses need to consider, like the way they they grow is like, there is not a kind of a, one size fits all approach. You're really solving a problem for, for your real estate partners. And you have to be able to tailor your business and the way you partner with those businesses or partner with them based on their specific kind of pain points.

00:22:34 And so, you know, the way you, you work with the Reed is very different from the way you work with a, you know, regionally focused, you know, GP that's going out and, you know, acquiring assets. And so we have primarily focused on, on management agreements, which to me is a catch all term for the profit sharing management agreements are kind of what people think of,

00:22:57 but there's also a revenue share, which are more, I guess, technically it's a lease, but it's another way of sort of producing you're reducing the liability or risk for as an operator, but also creating more shared incentives between kind of the, the operator end and real estate. But again, you've got to figure out like how to, how to maneuver against these,

00:23:18 these different structures. And so we always like talk about having two customer groups here. We have our members, but we also have our, our real estate partners and we need products for both. And so that's the, that's the way we were kind of danced and, and management agreements themselves create a lot of, you know, challenges for the business as well.

00:23:34 So we have to think, you know, about the, you know, the structures, the risks, the operating constraints that it creates and, and make sure we don't create a, you know, a, a kind of, you know, nester problems that we have two years from now, when we look back at our portfolio from the state, like,

00:23:51 you know, what, what do we create here? Like, this is really complicated and difficult to manage. So we can, we can solve that because we've, we've had the experiences we can say from day one, this is the right way to, you know, these are the things we want to focus on. That's priorities to achieve in these partnership discussions.

00:24:11 And these are things that we can, you know, be fine with. So don't need to do software. So I'm curious, industrious obviously had success with management agreements, but they can be challenging to do depending on the asset owner and their capital structure. And is that the, is that a similar challenge in the industrial sort of asset class? Yes and no,

00:24:37 it's a similar challenge that we'll, we'll run into the, our, our approach has been, we've been very, very careful about selecting right now only a handful of partners that we're working with. And our strategy is a little bit different from, from co-working. And that the, the partners that we're we're working with are acquiring industrial assets. And then we have a,

00:24:57 basically a programmatic management agreement or revenue share agreement with them. But so, you know, we've already like figured out what that partner, okay. How, how do we want to structure this portfolio of locations that we're going to build with you? And then now the focus was not on finding more partners or basically creating more structures. It's like, just go execute,

00:25:17 find these buildings, find good locations, and we're able to move very quickly with, with right now only three partners. And so there's a lot more focus that we can bring. It also means we will have only essentially three types of operating agreements for, for our portfolio in these early days, which again, appealing back to my operator days as a,

00:25:37 it's amazing for a significant lower the, the, you know, the, the pain, but also the cost of kind of managing this portfolio. So we've been, we've been fortunate to have really great relationships with these partners and are sort of not taking it for granted that we're a little bit ahead of where we should be from that standpoint. Yeah. So the,

00:25:59 your first Atlanta, Dallas, and then Seattle, does the, will the model be focused in major markets or does this, you know, how far does it extend outside of major markets? So for now what's your guests. Yeah, I think so. I think we've, we've said publicly, you know, in the next four to five years, we want about a hundred locations around the country.

00:26:24 So that will probably pull us out of major markets. It's just the question of when we go into those markets. And so we have really spent a lot of time thinking about how we build out our network, you know, which are the first cities that we want to go into, which are the partners that are going to help take us into those cities.

00:26:39 And then, you know, finding the right sub markets addresses within Metro areas is another kind of art slash science that we have to figure out. So I think for now, like again, I said, it's kind of, we're in the world of like, you know, batting singles and doubles. So like we can pick like Seattle and Los Angeles and Denver and,

00:26:58 you know, New York or, you know, other other kind of major centers. I know that we'll be be okay. It's just, you know, at some point we need to test the model and, you know, second tier third tier cities. And I think part of that could also just be opportunistically. We just find an amazing building and there's a lot of reasons to go through it.

00:27:15 I think also as we really link into the fulfillment side of our, our model, then that'll, that'll introduce some strategic reasons why by having some salt boxes in certain regions or certain, certain cities might become very important to us or to, to our members specifically. So that's all top on My list for you would be on the fulfillment and deals with carriers.

00:27:43 Like I just ordered two items from Etsy and we were just talking about this at dinner last night, took weeks to get them. One was a pair of bookends and one was a pair of earrings for my daughter. And literally I ordered them both on April 26 it's May 17th. I mean, you know, I just was like, where have these been?

00:28:02 And I think they shipped them. It's just like, you know, so I thought, oh, they're probably shipping on the slow boat. Cause they're making their own individual, you know, there's no group pricing right. With ups or FedEx and yeah, just a personal pain point. I could imagine it's easy for you to solve when you bring all those folks together.

00:28:22 Yeah. I, like I said, it's sort of our economies of scales can be helpful to these, these businesses. And then, you know, as we talk about, you know, getting into fulfillment or really kind of building, you know, services that solve problems for, for members, that's going to pull us deeper into areas like, you know,

00:28:38 actual, like shipping or partnerships beyond kind of the traditional carriers to help offer our businesses better, better choices. One other quick question about the consumer side of the model or the yeah. Your, your customer is I see no pricing on your website. I couldn't find it anyway. And so I was curious, is it more of a consultative sell where you bring someone in and you say,

00:29:04 okay, what's your business? What do you, you know, you can't really have a, you know, a package that you offer on them. Yeah. I mean, you've stumbled into the fact that we're a startup, but we don't do everything as well as we will six months from now. I'm not thinking, I Thought, oh, this is very strategic.

00:29:19 That's what I thought. No. So there might be no strategy. It should be on the website. It may have been taken off as a result of some iteration that we made. So yeah, it's, there, there is going to be, there is education that has to happen through kind of the, the marketing and sales funnel that these members follow.

00:29:34 But there definitely is going to have to be like, you know, pricing or introduction at some point. Yeah. So I always, I'm constantly talking on the podcast, like, look, people who didn't know about coworking may not know like what's a flex desk or a dedicated desk. Right. And so I kind of like the, the consultative selling,

00:29:53 like get them in the space and show them all the things that are possible and create a package. I mean, maybe you feel like you have to have starting point so that they're willing to come in, but I could see in your case, but just a lot of layers that you could add to what you're providing, you know? So I think,

00:30:11 yeah, Yeah. It's interesting. I mean, it was literally a conversation this morning around when do you introduce the, you know, the services that we're selling and if that's something you want to educate them on at the beginning, because that might in itself convince someone to move into a soft box or is that too much to kind of overwhelm overwhelm? And like,

00:30:27 this is, this is not like a, this is a co-working specific problem. This is a, you know, sales development problem. And then this is where we can like, you know, bring in expertise outside of like even, you know, the flex or real estate world, let's say like, you know, how do you do this at kind of your SMB,

00:30:45 you know, enterprise software company. And like, that's a great way to like, think about how to do it here. And that's my favorite thing to do is I feel like sometimes we're all drinking our own Kool-Aid and well, how does so-and-so do? And everybody sells, you know, the same sort of package of, and when you take a step back and you say,

00:31:03 well, is that how the right consumer buys, you know, what language do they understand? I will say it in case you're feeling anxious about your website. The, I mean, the text under your website is very simple and straightforward. And to me it's so clear if someone, you know, does find you, you know, purpose-built spaces for entrepreneurs,

00:31:21 with physical goods, where entrepreneurs, you work with physical goods, get the flexible warehouse space and logistics support. They need, plus the coworking amenities and community they want. But, you know, it's just like, look, that's me. What do you know when I, if I was that nurse and when I come to your website, oh, that's,

00:31:36 you know, that's me, which is so critical. A lot of folks, I think really miss that, just super clear direct messaging. And I'm sure, you know, websites under your list of, well, what is, yeah, what is next you? So you raised $10 million, which is not the first round of funding. What's on the,

00:31:54 what's on the list for growth. So There's sort of a near term aspect to that. And then, then the longer term in the near term, it it's, we're, we're in the middle of filling our Dallas location, which opened up a couple months ago. So just keep, keep our heads down and focus on that. Like filling that on,

00:32:09 on time, which looks like we're, we're on pace to do will be the most helpful thing that we can do for real estate acquisition side. So that's priority number one, you know, focusing a lot on this logistics kind of fulfillment product development is also very, very important for us given that it's a, it's a meaningful driver of value to, to our members.

00:32:27 And it's, you know, for us too, we think about where this, this goes in three, five years. And, and I think like the, the conversation about where to place your business is, is a decision between like, not to, I guess, the spirits coworking, but a little bit of a commodity decision, right? Like,

00:32:48 you know, it's do I want to work in this place at this price or this place at this price? And like, you know, if you showed up at an industrious or we work, they're both nice places to work different snacks, different kinds of like, you know, feel on a day to day basis. Right. Different custom wallpaper. Yeah,

00:33:03 exactly. Wait, but for us, like true differentiation will be around, you know, these, these, these services that we're providing. And these are services that are, that will be kind of like core to our members, businesses and critical to do really, really well, because if we're actually in the way of like, you know, handling product for them and fulfilling orders for them,

00:33:23 if we have team members who are performing functions for them, like that's mission critical to, to our members. So we're being very thoughtful about how to, you know, sort of plan tested out. We've got some really great product people here who are sort of walking through, you know, the member experience with, with some, some members have chosen for some of these early products and do it well.

00:33:44 And that's, you know, kind of a launching pad for more things that we can do. So that's another big area of focus. And then the last one is really around, you know, real estate acquisition, design, construction, like, you know, that, that all you can't take for granted those well, even with, you know, sort of the early success we've had on the partner side,

00:34:00 you've got to execute against those partnerships and deliver the buildings in good conditions on time, on budget. You know, all the things you've got to do with the real estate company. It's not that we, you know, there a debate about whether, how much of a real estate company we are, but it's, it's important to kind of recognize that it's really important for our partners.

00:34:18 So those are objectives. And then we were going ahead into 2022 and, and, and starting to build the, you know, the operational infrastructure we need so that we can do this. Well, we can hire, you know, really well across, you know, all the cities that we need to be in and build the right system. So we can,

00:34:38 you know, manage kind of control the experience and know what's happening in the corners of our, our networks. So we got lots, lots happening. My main focus these days is really getting out there, interviewing as many people about the different functions we're doing and, and try it on and try and convince people to be a part of this. Yeah.

00:34:57 I saw you have a long list of job openings on the website. Tell us a little bit about, you know, share any secret sauce, but you mentioned an app where members can hire and what else do they do in the app? Yeah. So it's evolving, I think right now it's, you know, pull up your, your membership information billing.

00:35:18 You can choose kind of, we offer equipment rental or, or space space looking for conference rooms, photography, studios, onsite. So simple functions like that. Then we get into this<inaudible> product line where they can basically, you know, see who's available, book them for 15 minutes during the, or, you know, reserve them for several hours a day every day.

00:35:41 And then, you know, as we start to get, you know, right now fulfillment's very kind of, you know, hands-on from, from our standpoint. But like, if we are looking at their, their shopping cart and thinking about our own staffing availability and you know, what's happening with their own inventory like that, that there's a kind of a layer of software that may need to be built that will tie into other great software solutions that are out there as well.

00:36:06 So yeah. Looking, looking at making some, some good investments there, since it, it does kind of managing a critical part of our process going forward. So that's a custom built app. Yeah. So another competency that I've shared here right. And trying to develop among the team, cause that's also right. Make no small plans when you're building your own technology.

00:36:30 So I, yeah, I, it's such an interesting model because it seems so simple when you just think about co warehousing. And then when you think about everything, you can layer into what you provide. You can have a real impact on how somebody grows their business, which is to your point. I think we like to think about that in coworking.

00:36:51 It's harder. It's harder to really execute because you can't sit next to somebody and coach them through their day and you can offer sort of light, you know, virtual assistant services and things like that. But you can really, in your model kind of go deep on what their business evolution looks like. That's neat. Yeah. And I think be the other challenge,

00:37:13 I think, I think coworking does a good job of that. Like I had that common, we had teams working out of industrial spaces. So I had firsthand experience like what, what, what it was like to, to work. And they were, they were happy. I loved visiting those offices, but it's, as an operator it's really hard to measure like,

00:37:27 are you, where are you actually influencing the experience? Are you making it better? You know, whatever your objective is. Versus I think here we'll know, like we'll have really strong feedback loops about what we're, we're actually accomplishing with these, these members. And it's just a, it's a different environment that we're, that we're in. Which I think for me means this is a,

00:37:46 this is going to be a different type of company than kind of even like the term cohort housing. I think there's a little bit sort of sells the idea short. Okay. Totally it undersells what's what's possible. Yup. Yeah. Well, yes. I think, yes. There's a lot of terminology challenges in our industry that I think people would like to fix,

00:38:07 but right. Get you got other things on the plate. Well, I appreciate you sharing what you're up to and kind of the story and a little background of what you're hoping to accomplish. I look forward to following the next couple of years. They're going to be exciting. You've picked some exciting, you know, Nisha's to jump into never a dull moment as,

00:38:28 as these evolve. Definitely. No, it's been fun. I appreciate the conversation. Yeah. Well, thanks for joining us. We'll have to revisit in a, you know, a year or two and see where things are at. Thanks for the times. You've been excellent.

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