TEN Takeaways from Glenn Felson, Author of PropTech and the Future of Real Estate
ICYMI: HILO’s David Abrams hosted Glenn Felson, a new voice on tech in CRE and author of PropTech and the Future of Real Estate. Here are some of our takeaways:
Get prospects on the phone
Glenn shares his background working at Realogy Real Estate Services, initially starting in contract administration and then moving to a sales position. He acknowledges that this is where he learned that it was his true calling. He shares that “where other people hated to make cold calls, I loved it, I loved that instant gratification of getting somebody on the phone and closing them.” He exceeded his targets and was moved up in the organization after the first year, ultimately ending as Vice President of Franchise Sales.
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Be bold if you want the job
When Glenn was recruited to join Kastle Systems as their President, he says that he didn’t know anything about their industry of Access Control, CCTV and Visitor Management. He explains it was a foray into commercial real estate, and taught him how different it is from his previous roles in residential. Glenn then learned about a company called Breather. He picked up the phone and called their CEO to ask for a job. “He also looked at me like I had 10 heads cause he had never met me before, but we spent some time together, he believed in me, he brought me on the team and the rest is history.”
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Find managers who believe in you
When asked about how he was uniquely suited to his current opportunity, Glenn first shares with David how he has a unique perspective on the industry since he has worked in many facets of it. “I’ve been in franchising, residential, commercial, Flex, SaaS… I’ve been a buyer of SaaS, seller of SaaS. So I really understand a lot of different unique perspectives.” Glenn says that he owes a lot of his success to people that believed in him along the way. “I owe most of my success to other people just really believing in me.”
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Learn from everyone you can
“The other thing is that I’ve also learned a lot from folks that have worked for me. My philosophy has always been to hire people that are smarter than me.” Glenn explains that he has learned from people that he’s worked for, as well as from those who have worked for him. “I really just try to spend as much time learning as much as I can from everybody.” At HILO, we share our weekly learning on our Monday morning team huddles, and each member has valuable information to contribute every week.
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Hybrid is the future of office
Of course the COVID-19 pandemic has changed the way we do business, and especially how it relates to where folks are working. Acknowledging that he was someone who always wanted to be in an office, Glenn believes the future of the workplace will require a hybrid approach. “People want to work in the office, they want to work at home. They want to work in offices that are closer to their home.”
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Tenants need ONE app
Glenn sees technology as the focus for how we will define and deliver Tenant Experience in 2021, and he believes a strong technology platform will integrate building access, visitor management, community and more. He says, “Nobody wants to log into 15 different apps in order to enter their building and to do what they do. So in my mind, the perfect tenant experience app is one pane of glass that integrates with all the different best in class solutions that are out there.” We happen to know a great Tenant Experience solution that does exactly that!
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Culture is key
Looking at some of the challenges we are facing in the pandemic, Glenn tells David that he has been interviewing for a new role virtually, and that it is a challenging task to determine the corporate culture without meeting face-to-face. “Culture is the most important piece of any company, and that’s really what I’ve struggled to get an understanding of a company without physically being in the office and meeting people face-to-face.
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Make time for family
As part of our speed round at the end of each podcast interview, David asks our guests what they are doing when they are not working. Glenn says, “Playing with my kids, where we play football in the house which drives my wife insane, but the boys love it”. We love this too. One of the silver linings to working from home for many is the ability to spend more time with family, and football in the house sounds like a great time.
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We would like to thank Glenn Felson for joining us on the TEN podcast and for sharing his experiences from early beginnings in commercial real estate, to now exploring new opportunities, without geographic boundaries. If you’d like to hear more of Glenn’s interview, click here. Stay tuned for more episodes and takeaways from leading professionals and industry experts who all have something to say about tenant experience in the built world, and the impact that technology is having on the largest asset class in the world, commercial real estate. Until then, wishing you all continued success in building community where you work or live.
