Latest / Built to Perform / Built to Perform with James Hallworth – Ep.7: Michelle Andrew on Innovating Real Estate

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Built to Perform with James Hallworth – Ep.7: Michelle Andrew on Innovating Real Estate · Built to Perform

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's been a really good investment.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_02: You buy something, you hold it, you make money, and that's just how it's always worked, and that has not been the case.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_02: I think the rules of the game have changed a lot recently.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_02: Everyone's just trying to sell something to someone, but it's like how do you get people to actually like adopt and change behavior?
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: Hi Michelle and welcome to the Build to Perform podcast.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: It'd be great to have you on.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you, James.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_02: I feel quite honored.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_02: This is a heck of a setup that you have.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_02: And um yeah, thank you for having me.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: I'd like to just dive straight in and it'd be great to hear who you are and why you do what you do.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_02: Meche, Meesh.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so um my business is uh is Meche.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_02: I have a strategic growth consultancy.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_02: So what does that mean?
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_02: Um basically I work with um kind of a few different sides of the built environment, whether it's the tech side looking at how do you scale your commercial offering um to sell to enterprises or to real estate funds, whoever you might be trying to target, or from the more fund side, um even property management side, on like how do you build out your own tech stack or adopt new technology to sorry or adopt new technology to help you uh grow and change and and enter new markets.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_02: So very much growth focused.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_02: Um I kind of work with clients across across the gamut of from startup to companies that have been around for a long time and are looking to maybe go into a new market or adopt um a new practice.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_02: So it really just depends on on what people need.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: And you've got quite a varied background.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um and you've now seem to have made commercial real estate your your home.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um why do you choose why do you choose commercial real estate after looking at those different sectors?
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so if you go through my LinkedIn, it's uh yeah, it's a bit of a bit of a mind field, but it does all it does all really boil back to commercial at the end of the day.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_02: Like I started out out of university working for a very traditional um marketing agency selling uh advertising space on the back of loo doors in uh restaurants um and uh and clubs as well.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, so I cut my teeth in in really traditional sales, kind of selling advertising space, um, selling consumer packaged goods, um, and then went from that through to working in tourism.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_02: And that was for a luxury train that was through the uh the Rocky Mountaineer back in Vancouver.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and that was really cool.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_02: So what I used to do is I managed onboard hosts, and it was very much around um guest service and um giving kind of the the best that you could and basically being a tour guide, which is really, really quite fun.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but I also managed relationships with the between the trains, the hotels, and the um the bus and like tour operators.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_02: So um coming from my business background, it was it was a lot around building those kind of natural partnerships and and selling these luxury tourism packages.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_02: Um, then I ended up going into a startup that was um it was an incubator program that helped founders like rapidly create MVPs to take to market.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_02: So um we we worked finding the right kind of startups or nonprofits and and entrepreneurs to kind of build those products, and then we found um funding to go and take those to market, and that was all done actually within the WeWork ecosystem.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_02: So when WeWork was buying lots of different businesses and scaling up, um that was kind of my first foray, I'd say, into commercial real estate, um, was moving over to London and they were, you know, rapidly fitting out and designing all these different buildings all across London, where the company that I worked for would go in and we were one of those companies that made it look really busy so they could sell the space better.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and it was great for us because we had a good deal on rent, which was usually that we didn't have to actually pay very much at all, um, which is maybe explains why the business model didn't work so well for them.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_02: Um but uh but yeah, it meant I got to see really rapid um design build fit outs, and um from there the company was was acquired through when we work with again buying up all these different companies, and that's when I started working in the octopus ecosystem.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_02: Um so octopus investments have a ton of different funds, um, everything from energy, real estate, um, fiber, and also their fintech platforms.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_02: And within that ecosystem, I did a number of different things.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_02: So I was very lucky to have um the founder of that company be someone who really helped kind of mentor me and allowed me and saw that I was really good at going in and kind of rapidly helping build up a team or set a strategy, and that that worked really well for a number of different things that they invested in.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_02: Um, one of the more recent um funds I worked with uh was fiber and infrastructure, which was very much dealing with commercial real estate and property developers and getting in early into that design and build phase, even earlier into planning to make sure that that infrastructure is there so that when you go and you know manage a building, all everything's there to support it.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_02: And um yeah, I just picked up a lot of, I think I just picked up a lot of skills along the way.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_02: I've I've always been really a keen learner and curious as to how businesses work.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_02: And that's also allowed me to see a lot of different patterns and a look and kind of see the links between the different silos that we have in in this industry.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_02: Um and having basically kind of worked in different ones from you know, all the way from yeah, design build through to operations.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_02: Um and then even behind the scenes from there, I've just got a long history of sort of family in in this industry, which is maybe slightly influenced why I wanted to be on the on the real estate side um in general rather than the more creative industries I I had started out in.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_02: Long-winded introduction, sorry.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, no, it's great.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: I think it it's really useful to understand kind of why you people get into this weird industry.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_02: Well, it's there's so much to do.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_02: There's and there's so many different aspects of it.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_02: And I think people forget, you get sort of stuck in one area, but there's so much, like everything that we interact with, places we go, places we love, businesses we love, everyone needs, you know, you need a you need an office, you need a home, you need infrastructure, you need all these things.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_02: And the built environment is, I mean, it's pretty vast.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_02: So um, yeah, I I find it interesting and that there's a lot of opportunity.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_02: And so I keep hammering away.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: And so when advising on and also being in uh the commercial real estate industry, um kind of where do you think the industry is in terms of modernization and uh forward thinking um and innovation in comparison to say some of the other uh industries which you've experienced?
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_02: It's a good question.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_02: So again, I think it depends kind of where you are.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_02: I think what's interesting is a lot of the processes of like physically building a building are really outdated processes.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_02: And there's so many different things you could do along that journey.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_02: As we know, like in the UK, planning permissions, you know, things take a lot of time, um, you know, construction costs, like there's a lot of things that that become kind of out of hand as you're developing and building a project.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and along the way, there's data that gets lost, there's budgets that aren't held to, there's like cutting corners, and there's a lot of things that really do need to get fixed.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_02: But at the end of the day, I think there are lots of innovations coming through.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_02: We're seeing a lot more responsibility.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I think just having had to learn the hard way.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_02: And when you have to go and rectify things, like you then now come across like the Building Safeties Act, for instance, like there's there are a lot of things like forcing us to be more innovative to figure out how to operationalize better and faster.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_02: Um, it's just, I think the biggest barrier is actually just us humans ourselves in wanting to try to work differently, um, try to change and be kind of stubborn enough and like willing enough to to keep pushing that that like message through.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_02: Um but uh there's definitely innovation all like on all sides.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, there's so much interesting tech out there.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_02: Um with the rise of you know, even AI, like I'd like to think, you know, we're we're getting to a place that we can um automate a lot of the boring stuff that makes it really difficult to do our jobs.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, especially the like just the the day-to-day like entry of of data and like that, the fact that we lose stuff and then can't report on it later, like all of that hopefully becomes easier, and then we're able to free up time to find uh yeah, better ways of of working and and more more fun jobs as well.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_02: I think overall, as an industry, there is definitely momentum and an appetite to to innovate.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_02: It's just it's just the fear, I think, of of change that seems to stop people.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's an interesting industry, isn't it?
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: And one which doesn't like to move at a particularly fast speed, whether that's for its own benefit or not, or the people in it.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um it's funny, isn't it?
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's because of the historically real estate has been a really good investment.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_02: It's always been you buy something, you hold it, you make money, and that's just how it's always worked.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_02: And that has not been the case.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_02: Like I think the rules of the game have changed a lot recently.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_02: Umfices looking different, um, the amount of people coming in and out of offices, cities, glob, you know, globalization, and then that now like it seems like that's almost shrinking again.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so like the purpose of spaces has changed.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_02: And I think the the rate of technology at the moment, like how fast it's advancing, is also it's really hard to keep up and probably quite daunting, especially if you've been, if you're an industry veteran and you've been around for a long time, like it's knowing what to do, what when to make a change and what the right change is is tricky.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, we've there's also been there's a lot of tech in this industry that hasn't served a purpose or hasn't been designed to support the fact that there are so many different kind of silos and people and um processes and and stages, you know, the Reba stages, for instance, that you you kind of need to figure out how your your platform fits into a much bigger picture.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, historically, I think developers, owners, operators have have struggled to to find something that actually does work for for that.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_02: And so now we're in this position of of like reinovating and trying to do it properly.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: And also on the reverse ages thing, I think there's there's a slight nuance there, especially in the prop prop tech world, isn't it, that you're trying to you're trying to make a very different tech technology approach fit into a framework where it probably doesn't sit in that same sort of framework which we've been so used to using for however many years.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um and even when we've tried to mould it and create a different reeb stages for for technology input into buildings, smart buildings, etc., it still feels clunky, doesn't it?
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_02: It does.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_02: And like, I mean, maybe it's maybe it's the stages, maybe it's like just looking at how do we, yeah, how do we evolve this so that we're thinking about things earlier on.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_02: Um the problem is just when you're yeah, when you're building something, it takes a long time.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, less, I mean, I suppose with some of the retrofit projects in general, that's I mean, it's still gonna be a long time, but at least you've you've already got a you've got something there, you're not before you put shovels in the ground.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so perhaps there's like a bit more you can do in in that space.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_02: But then again, then again, like there's there's not a lot of shiny tech that can support the you know that sort of agenda of the the retrofit first.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_02: So um yeah, I think we're we're in like quite an interesting time.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_02: I find it quite exciting.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_02: It is daunting because we don't know what the future holds, but I think it's it's I think people are now realizing that change has to happen and it is already happening and starting to embrace it a little bit more.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_02: Um at least that's what I'm seeing.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know how how you what your view on that is, but I think from what I'm seeing, the paralysis about making decisions on change and innovation has reduced.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: I think people realize that they can't just sit back and hope for the best and watch the the early adopters you know move really fast.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: That being said, on the AI front, I think there's a lot of people talking probably a bit game, but the reality is across the industry, everyone's probably at a fairly similar position in terms of sorting themselves up and playing catch-up um and sorting out their data as the first step and then moving on to the more exciting stuff, right?
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, exactly.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_02: I think so like I there's a few different kinds of businesses that I that I'll that I work with within Mish, but there's a a company that I've done some work for that they have a directive around not hiring people because they want to, you know, they it's like prove that you can't do the job with AI.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_02: And I mean, I think that's come from a top-down approach of of a of a CFO thinking that that's gonna force everyone to innovate.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_02: Instead, it's like created a culture of fear, and uh rightly so.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_02: I think I think people are worried about their jobs in in that instance.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so not necessarily the right way to go about it.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_02: And then on the flip side, there's a lot of people who in their own day-to-day are probably utilizing AI tools to be more efficient in their own jobs, and that's like that sort of bottom-up approach.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_02: And I think I don't know which one's gonna have to, which one's gonna win, but I think it's actually more so like us in our daily lives deciding to use these tools to make ourselves a bit more um efficient or to to figure out like, yeah, how to work in different ways or ideate or whatever it might be.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_02: Um that's a great way to get some of that adoption, and then like the I think the the flip side of that is just make sure you're communicating that internally, obviously within a company, especially if it's there's information that you maybe don't want to feed into one of these platforms.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but also just that that way everyone knows and you can talk about what you're doing, and that fosters that collaboration, innovation, and change as well, just by being open about it.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I I completely agree.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's a really interesting point with the top-down and bottom-up approach, because actually generally speaking, the people as you move up the chain, there's going to be more people at the at a lower sector, I guess, um in the pyramid, and with that comes more exposure to different technologies, different opportunities, different ways to solve problems.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I think with AI and all the different tools which are becoming available, the exposure that one person might have at the top to all those technologies is going to be far reduced in comparison to the guys at the bottom, right?
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: So they've got to get better at listening and getting the feedback and hearing the opportunities which are available, which individuals might be utilizing for their own self, which can then be implemented across uh a wider, wider team.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, exactly.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_02: And that's when you get a sort of I would say that's a quite a narrow thing to say if you've not done that also in a really like in in the proper communication channels, just have that sort of directive from someone to say, you know, prove to me why someone why you need to hire someone in your team that it can't just be AI.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_02: It's like forcing everyone who might already be stretched in, you know, it's been a difficult climate in general.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_02: Teams don't have huge amounts of resources, and then saying, sorry, you can't you can't hire any help, figure out how to use AI.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_02: That's yeah, that would be quite demoralizing.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_02: And probably from someone who doesn't necessarily understand um what that would entail and how the business processes need to support that as well.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_02: Um yeah, it's one of the more like uh disappointing conversations I had to hear recently.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's it's not the approach which I think.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_02: It actually is not it wasn't even in real estate, so like of like yeah, no one's no one it wasn't there, so but it was quite quite interesting.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: That's cool.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um and then do you think you'll see the rise of the generalists again in that sense?
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: That actually people have been heading in a more specialism route, I guess, especially in commercial real estate, and actually with the tools which are becoming available, actually can they be more generous?
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: Can they do more with that tool?
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not about replacing people with AI or stopping bringing people in, but actually allowing people to have a more varied workflow, I guess.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, I mean the rise of the generalist is something I obviously like as someone who is like quite a generalist, I I definitely think that's happening more and more.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_02: However, I don't think specialism would ever really be replaced.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_02: You do you do need it.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_02: Like I know that um, you know, in some of the some of the stuff like on on the iBoss and like workman side, like you, you know, you need you need people who understand like build and building engineering.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_02: Like that's just I don't think I could learn that from just an AI.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_02: But like what I can say is there is more information available to everyone.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_02: So it is a lot easier to go and learn something.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I've always been someone who tries to learn as much as I can about different sections of the industry, and the value that I bring to clients is is that cross-industry knowledge and being able to kind of translate different problems that I hear about, and then you know, it's just useful insights that then others yeah, join in the dots.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_02: That's that is what I say, that is how I say it.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_02: Dot connecting.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: That's a big part of if we look at what your role is, it's it's joining those dots and helping companies be more strategic about either their growth or their go-to-market.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_02: Um is that the best way to describe kind of Yeah, so I get there'll be a lot of different kinds of tech platforms who might come to me and say, I've got this idea, or we're launching this product.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_02: And yeah, one of the things I can do is either help give them insights into what other markets are already doing, what they might be up against, um, or sh telling them who their competitors are or who they might compete with, um, and giving them kind of insights on the types of companies that might really value that type of product.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and that is from years of working with different types of companies, um, understanding the buying patterns, understanding the problems, um, and really getting to know a lot of different kinds of people.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I'm very relationship driven, so I do spend a lot of time networking and nurturing relationships that I have in the industry to then be able to use, like use that knowledge and effectively either short circuit things for a client, like help just get them to an answer faster, um, or at least be able to help them shape a strategy that will be more successful than maybe what they had originally thought, if that makes sense.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, 100%.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_00: And then on on that and commercial real estate and you know, go to market and or just getting a better strategic viewpoint of those companies in in the industry.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: What do you has it surprised you how how say little um uh uh commercial some of the commercial real estate companies which you've dealt with know about their competitors or what what's been like kind of like the biggest surprise in terms of when you're in this industry, kind of the the strategic and the go-to-market approach?
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, um it's a really good question.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_02: So I would say that the UK is very different than other markets I've worked in.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_02: Um the UK more because from a prop tech perspective, the UK is very much like asset by asset, but a lot of the owners of big, like a lot of the funds, a lot of the the real estate owners in general are from other countries.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_02: And where prop tech sometimes gets it wrong is is thinking that the person or the thing that they need to solve is is potentially even here.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_02: And it's actually maybe you need to figure out how you factor into like a wider problem that's already being solved in another country.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so I think this sort of fragmented um data, the the silos of different countries, and then the sort of desperate need to make everything kind of make sense across and get data out of like I'm always just quite surprised that you don't even know what's happening at building level, let alone your whole portfolio, is what I keep kind of uncovering with with some of the bigger funds.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_02: Um and yeah, that really did surprise me.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_02: Because I thought, of course, you're gonna you're gonna know what's going on, but to to kind of unpeel things and realize that there's been a lot of just like just silos and and and countries kind of creating their own ways of working, rightly so.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but that that has never really been fed into a full kind of strategy properly, which I think that's changing now.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_02: Um but I I was I was very surprised by that.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_02: But the UK is is is it as a market, you know, that we're way ahead in terms of technology adoption, but where it falls down, I think, is that because we're way ahead, it doesn't mean it's as easy to go into other markets and do the same thing.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_02: It might work here, but then they're not quite, they're not ready there or their priorities are different in it in another country.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_02: So where it might seem an obvious thing to go into other English speaking markets, for instance.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_02: Um I always say to clients like just because we all speak English doesn't mean we understand each other.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_02: Um and the priorities are really, really different.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, is that is a good example of that?
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_00: So I think from what you're saying with the UK we're quite inward looking.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: We don't look at the wider world globally.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I guess in terms of lifelike and that English speaking piece, the USA is quite similar, right?
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: They getting a prop tech or something from the UK and then translating it and putting it into the US is a very different story, right?
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_02: They just value things quite differently.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_02: Like I'd say I don't think the UK is super, super inward looking, but it's just the way that technology is bought and rolled out is on a much smaller scale.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_02: Like it'll be sort of building by building, or a few buildings here, a few buildings there.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that's also just partly because of the ownership.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_02: And there's a number of different types of um companies that have big monopolies in their own tech stacks, anyways.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_02: So it's it becomes a much more difficult thing to infiltrate like certain types of um buildings.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_02: Um if you're thinking of like some of the big commercial buildings we have in London, like there really are only a handful of like those super tall, you know, tall buildings, big towers with that have the infrastructure that could allow you to do really smart, interesting things with them.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_02: Um I think there's a a big opportunity in that sort of like middle layer of like assets that need to be retrofit and like older, um, that could be smart if you just put the right money into it.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and that's where I think there's, yes, just everyone should be looking kind of that way at the moment.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but in terms of just the shiny, the shiny buildings, like we just we're just not a huge market for it.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_02: And so you need to have a tech platform that can scale beyond, you know, one or two buildings if you're going to try to go into the US.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I mean, even some, you know, even Canada.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_02: Like, I mean, Canada is a small market in terms of people, but there's so much space, there's a lot of building, um, there's a lot of new, like everything's new because Canada has like very little history as we do.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_02: Like, I'm a Canadian.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, there's no there's no like old buildings, like when you walk through the city of London and you see something that's you know 600 years old and next to something that's 10 years old.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_02: Uh everything in Vancouver is like a shiny new skyscraper.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_02: So um, but shockingly, they're quite behind in their tech.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_02: So um yeah, so it's just kind of understanding how how you play into those markets and and that those decisions are made very differently.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_02: Whereas here it's building by building, um it's much bigger contracts, and the expectation of like a fast rollout is is much higher, I'd say, in North America or um I mean Australia, I think it's it's a bit more similar to here, but yeah.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_00: The the ownership model, right?
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_00: If you utilize, look at New York as a market in comparison to London as a market, London market now used to be kind of like a hundred big landlords owned probably like 90% of the buildings, right?
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_00: That's probably changed a lot recently because of just the changing ownership model in the UK, so it's probably got worse in that sense.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_00: So that fragmented approach is only kind of getting worse in that sense here.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas if you look at New York, you've probably got 10 landlords making up 90% of the ownership model of commercial real estate.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um that represents opportunity, but it also makes getting that opportunity a lot harder, right?
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it really does.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_02: And that's where yeah, the relationships being kind of being there, putting yourself in front of these people and kind of keeping keeping kind of um top of mind is really important.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_02: But even going back to what we were saying earlier, the the rules are changing.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_02: Like the fact that we've now got a lot more of a, you know, there's a return to office mandate for a lot of people, great, but leases are starting to look different because offices are looking a little bit different.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_02: So I think now that leasing is is shifting, there is more opportunity for tech as well to fit in because before, you know, if you had someone taking a lease on a building and it was 30 years, like why would you bother, you know, as the as the owner, why would I need to do anything to that building?
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_02: Like I've got someone in there for 30 years, I'll like worry about it in 29 years.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so I think with the fact that now there's a lot more of these like flex operators coming in, um, and even just that sort of shift around like build to rent and co-living and and like the spaces that have like are in those types of buildings, um, and that being a really interesting investment landscape at the moment, um, there's a lot more appetite for for new tech.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_00: And then going back to looking at the commercial real estate and the kind of the go-to market and the strategic approach, it's kind of what's common in the in prop tech probably is probably the best place to talk about, but also just in real estate in general.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_00: What's what's a common thing that people tend to get wrong?
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_02: A common thing people tend to get wrong.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, okay.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_02: And actually, that's actually quite an easy one.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_02: Um everyone's just trying to sell something to someone.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_02: And yes, I mean, that's in in business, in life, I think we're all trying to, you know, whether it's selling ourselves, you know, selling your children on brushing their teeth, uh, like could be there's there's there is an element of of selling that we all do, but it's like how do you get people to actually like adopt and change behavior?
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I find it really interesting that there's so much great tech out there, and oftentimes the second it's like sold or that contract is signed, that's yeah, they're all of a sudden not there and being held accountable to it.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_02: And I think it's like on both sides, like if I'm someone who's got a budget to go and buy a new piece of tech, um, I would hope that I'd done the due diligence due diligence and thought about how I'm gonna implement that into my business processes and like what that work through looks like, and that I've you know gotten enough buy-in and and that everyone's excited about it.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_02: So that's that would be on like sort of on me for as a buyer.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_02: But the seller, um, and I I know like we've we've spoken about this kind of thing before, but it's like you buy this bit of tech and then it's it's kind of on you if it's not working.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_02: And that that is, I think, quite unacceptable and has led to a lot of mistrust in prop tech.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so I'm just to clarify, yes, you're saying that the responsibility ends up being on the buyer rather than the person who's selling it, right?
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_00: To make sure it works.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, to make sure that it's actually working.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_02: So if so it's just there's what they get wrong is is what what tech gets wrong is is that it ends at the sale.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_02: Not like again, relationships are kind of at the heart of everything that I do.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_02: So I always think of things from from that angle.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_02: Um how do you retain, how do you, how do you make people trust you?
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_02: How do you change business behavior and like how do you measure that over time?
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_02: I think that's how you become really valuable.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and that's how you stay sticky as well.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and that's where I see prop tech getting it wrong quite often is I've got the solution, I'm gonna sell it to you, and that's that's sort of it.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it not across the board.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_02: It really depends on what it is, but more often than not, it's yeah, you become um either like you don't, it's not the tech's not working properly or it didn't solve the issue, or now you've got multiple systems trying to solve similar issues and the the problem still remains.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_02: And that's very much when tech, I think, tries to say it's trying to find a problem rather than understanding what the problems actually are and then and then helping with that.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_02: Um yeah, so that kind of client retention, customer success piece doesn't seem to be as uh normal in prop tech as it is in like say um Salesforce, like HubSpot, all these like you know, big enterprise tech, they understand that half of the battle is like keeping someone and making sure they're using it and looking at how to measure if someone's not using it as much and they are now a churn risk.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_02: Um so I think we as a as a as an industry as prop tech can definitely learn from what sort of the bigger tech companies have done.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_02: Even fintech, like you know, if you've got a if you're a bank or you've got an like an app, like how are you gonna make sure people are still engaging with you?
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_02: And and there's a lot of a lot of markers we could do to to make sure that adoption of of prop tech is steadier and not just bought and then ripped out again.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_02: And yeah, when we don't have a lot of money and a lot of resources, it's it's not not ideal.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_00: And then you obviously meant we talked about prop tech and it's do we think is that now a dirty word?
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_00: Is it a is it a web it's a word which I see quite a lot of people trying to avoid putting themselves in that bracket now?
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean we we've seen the discussion of retro tech, which is kind of you know climate tech.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, there's a lot of things that I think fall into prop tech that maybe other people call something else.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_02: Um I had always thought that that sort of energy management, energy tech, climate tech was really prop tech.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_02: Um some people would tell me that I'm wrong saying that.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_02: Um I think it's just a word.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_02: I I've there's a lot of people who will say that prop tech is a dirty word now.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_02: I think prop tech has just like a bit of a connotation of mistrust that like fintech doesn't have that for some reason.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_02: Um but prop tech does.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_02: And I don't know if that's just the sort of it's a very if it's just the sort of outdated way of thinking that prop tech is these shiny solutions that actually don't go very deep.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_02: And we do need to just think of it as tech and just our general ways that we work and and make things smoother, make buildings better, make better real estate investment decisions that then pay everyone's pensions.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_02: Like people forget, like there's so much that is riding on the built environment working really, really well, and we want real estate to do well, and we want the buildings to perform, and we want people to invest in buildings, and we want pension money to invest in buildings that you know are really, really good in the long term.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_02: And yeah, I think uh the the term prop tech, um yeah, it's got a bit of a it's got a bit of a bad rap these days.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, how do we fix it?
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_02: I actually don't know.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_02: We need to highlight more success stories of what's really worked.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_02: I think I think because there's uh a lot of competition in this industry in terms of competition for occupiers, competition for space, competition for um yields, and you know, it's just general strategy of a real estate fund, um, people don't share as much about what's really working or what's really not working.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_02: And I think if that mystery was sort of unveiled a bit more, then maybe um, yeah, there'd be like a good showcase for some of the projects that are doing really, really good work.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_02: Because I think the blanket statement that everyone's not doing a good job is is not fair.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I think there's definitely a lot of a lot of wins and a lot of really interesting case studies um that are pushing, you know, things like environmental awareness and energy savings and electrification forward.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_02: So um yeah, I'd like to see a lot more of that in the industry.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_02: Sharing and uh best practices, and then perhaps we can get to like a data standard that everyone can work towards the same standard.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_02: And then we could probably save ourselves a lot of uh a lot of work as well.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_00: That'd be pretty nice, isn't it?
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, just the the global property data standard, like open banking, but that'd be nice.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_00: It would be very nice.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, but also it's not just the wins as well, which I think is important.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_00: I think we're something it's probably full industry-wide, but in in the property tech side as well, I think we're really bad at it is we we don't share learnings, we think it's RIP and we're gonna hold on to something that's hold on to it.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_00: Either we want to stay that shiny ping and we want to have this magic illusion of no, we get it right 100% of the time, or it's just a case of we might have some learnings, but actually if we share that, then our competitors are gonna kinda know about this route and they're gonna be able to beat us, kind of thing.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I think actually the reality is it's showing that knowledge and showing the wins and losses, I think, also is really beneficial and will probably help with the idea of that transparency in the industry, right?
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, 100%.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_02: That's not something that I see that much either.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, generally, if I'm doing something like facilitating a roundtable or uh, which I've I've done a few times for for the Prop Tech Connect conference, um, I do try to get people to talk about the things that really didn't work.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_02: And and that's you do see people light up and engage because it is it is really helpful.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_02: And I think I don't know what it is about this industry and not sharing those failures, because there's a lot that's obviously that goes wrong.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I've I worked with um an infrastructure company that we went into a building that had wired, you know, it already achieved wired score platinum based on the planning that we got there, and someone had uh cemented through one of the intakes, which by default means that that is not a wired-score platinum building because you need two diverse intakes to have the fiber go in different areas.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and like that stuff happens all the time.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_02: And like people, it's it's insane that it happens, but it happens.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_02: And like you just um I like telling that story because it does just sometimes remind people like when you're wondering why something's delayed or what's the holdup, and like there are really like crazy physical things that have caused delays for a number of reasons, or it might be why your internet is slow, because yeah, someone there's like one tiny wire and someone put a cement through it.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but it just helps people to not do it in the future.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_02: And I think anytime we can, you know, ultimately, what is what is failure, what is it's it's learning.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_02: It's being able to learn, it's being able to iterate, and and I mean, I'm certainly not someone who pretends like I get it right all the time.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but I I am the first to to say if I got it wrong, and then I I always say if I fess, if I mess up, I fess up.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_02: That's the that's my my personal motto and one thing that I always uh like to remind other people to do as well.
• 36:20
  unknown: Yeah.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_00: And something which I we're trying to get better at is failing fast as well.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_00: And being open about that.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, exactly.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_00: Must touch on property events and uh conferences and whatnot.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, you've just launched this at the strategic attendee.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um and it's obviously a a point which you and me have discussed quite regularly, and that's kind of how we met is during on the conferences, isn't it?
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_00: On the conference circuit and maybe airing our frustrations, um, but also the positive stuff as well.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_00: But um I think what is a very quickly, what is the problem maybe in the property sector and prop tech event side of things with these events at the moment, would you say?
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so there's a lot of sorry and I'm not just blaming the events, right?
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um I'm also saying looking back at the people us as attendees, how can we get more value out of these events as well?
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_02: It's a good question.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_02: Um, yeah, the strategic strategic attendee.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_02: I can't even say it.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_02: The strategic attendee.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_02: Um, yeah, I went to about 50 events in the last two years, and I have been documenting it and figuring out like what makes a good event and what makes a bad event and why I go to certain events.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_02: Um ultimately there's so many property events.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_02: And I am also looking at it from the view of like I spend a lot of time in in the US and in Canada and here.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm looking at global events, and there's a lot to choose from.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_02: Um, they're not, and they're not all overly different, but there's reasons why I choose to go to certain ones and and ones that I that I haven't gone to.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and it's generally I look at who's I very much look at like who's who's going and what relationships I'm trying to build.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_02: And there are some events that have really, really good followings and really good um sponsors and an investment into those conferences.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_02: And so they kind of guarantee that there'll be certain types of people there and they're always there.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_02: And that's I go to maybe just nurture those relationships, but I certainly don't go to to learn anything new.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_02: Um not gonna not gonna like um name anything in particular, but they're you know, when it's a very sponsored event by certain companies, the content that you get is really, really curated to that company, let's say.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_02: Um and so yeah, you it's not the most innovative, it's not the most innovative place to be.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_02: So if you've gone to learn and develop, maybe not the right thing to do.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_02: Um on the flip side, there's lots of events out there that are more focused on, yeah, let's look at the in like the innovation in the industry and new trends and new tech.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_02: And I and that's quite forward-thinking, and I I love that.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_02: And those kinds of conferences I go to because I want to learn and I want to stay relevant and be able to offer insights to my clients, whether that's on things they could consider for their own tech stack or um building out an ecosystem or whatever.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_02: There's a lot of really interesting conferences that do look at really interesting emerging tech and and trends from a sort of micro and macro uh lens.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_02: The problem that I have in a lot of these conferences is, and this is not because I I don't want to this to come across like I'm some sort of pessimist, because I'm I'm actually really, really optimistic and I really care about the future, but people don't say much.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_02: They just don't, it's not deep.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_02: It's very surface level.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_02: And I know that there's only so much you can do on a panel where you've got 45 minutes and there's three people speaking and one person hosting, but it's often not, it's just not probing enough, or it's too um, it just feels very surface level.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_02: And then I feel like those kinds of conversations just keep everybody a bit stuck.
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_02: And you don't learn, you don't really get the value, and you didn't actually um like nothing moved the needle.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_02: And and that I find really annoying.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_02: But I do, I do have a whole process.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_02: That's partly why I have this workshop that I've built, is because I've figured out how to identify what conferences will be like that versus ones that are really trying to have like more deep, meaningful conversations where you can fix problems or learn how you might approach fixing a problem or finding solutions, whatever, whatever it is.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_02: So that's you know, where you can have more of these like smaller discussions, talking about wins, talking about losses, talking about things in a in a deeper way, rather than some of the just kind of high-level let's have a chat about what we think's happening.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_02: And then everyone says, like, I think we've all been having the same conversation for 10 years.
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_02: Um and now we've got AI.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_02: So now we're having like that conversation, but we've like added, let's discuss AI.
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but no one's really saying anything.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_02: If that makes sense.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, 100%.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_00: And you're not saying rolling out those conferences either.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's it's going them with the mindset of and eyes open as to why you're going to that event and what's the outcome gonna look like for you for all those different events, really, isn't it?
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, exactly.
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_02: So it's it's what's the goal of the event?
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_02: Like why am I going?
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_02: And is it just for FOMO?
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_02: Because our industry seems really good at like the FOMO thing.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_02: Um yeah, so it's just figuring out is it relationships, is it sales, is it partner ecosystem, is it CPD.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_02: I want to learn.
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, because then all of that will just mean it's a different, it looks different depending on what you choose.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_02: So so that's kind of how I've built out this this workshop.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_02: More just for myself, because I kept trying to figure out what the difference was.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_02: And I I think it was just going to the same going to conferences and then just being kind of told the same thing over and over again, and then speaking to people afterwards and finding out that you know nothing's really changed, nobody's really doing anything.
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_02: Like there's no result, it's just sort of lots of time and money and yeah, just not a lot of not a lot of value.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_00: So moving on to the big picture.
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um why do you feel change is required in commercial real estate and why is it so important?
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_02: I think that the way we work has changed so much over the last few years, and the pace of technological change is going so quickly that our commercial assets just they they are not necessarily built to support that.
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_02: So I think like owners and operators are very fast realizing that something needs to change.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_02: They need to be able to adapt the spaces to cater to to people working in different ways, or even like thinking of like the kind of compute power that you need to support some of the systems that we now work with.
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, you do need you need better infrastructure, you need you need better internet, you need you need like ways that the buildings themselves can be more efficient so that you're not just wasting all the resources.
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_02: And I think if you just look around like the big picture of the world today, companies and the countries that have the resource to be able to do the right thing really should be doing the right thing.
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_02: And that's you know, that's the UK, that's Canada, that's that's the the US, that's like that is Europe, that's we should be doing the right thing and trying to make our buildings work in a way that supports us for our new ways of working and in the future, but also just generally so our planet can be well taken care of.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_02: Because I think we've we've wasted a lot, and now we'll get to the point where we don't have the luxury of of not changing.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_02: So we should try to be as proactive as we can without that again sounding like doomsday.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_02: I promise I it's it meant it's exciting.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_02: Like I think the more that's having this conversation earlier actually with someone, like the more the AI advances, the more like we can get to this point of like in, you know, if we at what point do we have cures for cancer, at what point do we have like unlimited energy that we've been able to work out how we harness all of these really cool um technologies and make our lives a lot easier and find that abundance and find ways of of yeah, making making everything much more efficient, safe, healthy.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_02: Um, that's all possible.
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but yeah, we need to be able to support that and make sure that we've thought of of the the way that our own like patterns and and working behaviors and buildings are to to allow us to to get there.
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_00: And then finally, the question which I like to ask all my guests, um do you feel that commercial real estate requires evolution or revolution?
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_02: Ooh, it's a good one.
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_02: Evolution or revolution, both.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_02: I think we are in an evolution right now.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_02: I think that this whole working pattern that I was just speaking about, that's about embracing sorry, embracing different technology.
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_02: And I think we are in that evolution.
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_02: Um the revolution part I think that's also it's it's quietly, it's quietly happening behind the scenes.
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_02: Um but I think they're they're kind of both they're both necessary and they're both they're both happening.
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_00: Cool.
• 45:53
  SPEAKER_00: Well, thank you so much for coming on, Michelle.
• 45:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um really interesting chat, and we covered a lot.
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_00: Uh there's probably a lot more which we could have covered as well, and uh probably need another episode to go through that side of things, especially behind like the VC world and PE world.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_00: I'd love to talk about that in some depth, but um obviously we're limited in time.
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but it's great to see your passion for you know everything in in terms of sustainability, growth, innovation, and relationships, I think most importantly, in terms of um how we can be better at it um in the commercial real estate world.
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_00: So, once again, thank you so much for all your insights and coming on.
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_02: I really appreciate it, James, honestly.