JW: Well, I would say that there wasn’t a line of sight into the fact that a pandemic was going to accelerate what was happening, but we were certainly starting to read through the tea leaves that things were changing and that a lot of what we see today isn’t a huge surprise to me. It’s just that the pace of change of how we got here is quite a surprise.

DA: Fair enough, fair enough. So why do you think, again, based on that trajectory and going from the corporate side into commercial real estate proper, why do you think you were so uniquely suited to this opportunity? What helped you to become successful?

JW: Sure. Well, when I think about it, human resources means that I was somewhat drawn to wanting to help people and I think that that’s ultimately why I wanted human resources. I actually had an internship in college where I was doing a lot of strategic work for Textron, actually, where I was doing much of the succession planning for the executive ranks there and helping with that and it really led me to understand how you can get into an organization, look at the people side of things, and really change the trajectory, potentially, of people’s lives and of the organization when different decisions are being made. When I really get into HR, I realize that some of the more nuts and bolts associated with it aren’t quite as exciting or interesting as that and so that’s why I decided to change. But at the core of it, was really wanting to help people and then from a real estate perspective, I just find the entire world of commercial real estate fascinating. I mean, there are so many facets of commercial real estate to the different asset types and sectors that you can focus on, to the different industries that are tenants in all these different spaces, and then to all the different specialties that make all these different spaces run. So you can literally do anything that you want in commercial real estate, and it’s fascinating and so what I find interesting is that when I put those two things together, it’s how I ended up where I am now. Where, yes, I am focused on commercial real estate and the impact that commercial real estate and the behaviors and trends of tenants are taking to impact the world today. But ultimately, where my research is rooted is really in how people are behaving differently and therefore using the built environment differently and so the fact that I have that kind of almost interest of a sociologist where I’m approaching these different things from a tenant side of things and then trying to draw insights into how that’s gonna impact the commercial real estate markets, I think that really did make me uniquely suited to where I’m sitting today.

DA: Right, amazing. I love that focus on people. I’m gonna ask a question a little bit later on around what skill sets commercial real estate needs for the future. So we’re gonna park this thought, but I love the fact that you brought the focus on people to what 10 years ago, I think people, it was real estate, real estate, real estate and I think what we’ve learned the most from going through this period of the pandemic is that it’s really all about the people. So I will talk more about that for sure. Today, I’m really interested in sort of discussing how CRE is gonna continue to evolve. It’s all about meeting people’s needs and then ultimately how technology can enhance that customer experience and help make what I like to say places destinations of choice, places where people wanna be. So I think we can probably both agree that the office’s core purpose has fundamentally changed, right? It’s no longer just about the space. It’s about creating experiences and ultimately making people feel valued, connected, supported. I’m sure these are a lot of things that you’ve been thinking about for a very long time and now that we have flexible and distributed work models, really reshaping expectations, I think we need to think about how we can ultimately move from just providing square footage to providing spaces that are more meaningful. So I think the winners in this whole transformation are gonna be those that seamlessly mix the two, experience and workplace functionality. So I’d love to hear your thoughts, sort of a big intro, but what are your thoughts on how the industry and maybe your business in particular are adapting to this transformation?

JW: Well, there’s certainly a lot of change at play right now. You know, if I think about when I came into this role 10 years ago, quite literally one of the first tasks that I was given was to research what was happening and what we called there as a shared workplace and that was really, you know, what the iteration of the co-working spaces was at that point and we weren’t sure what to call it at the time and so we were calling it shared workplace. It was impossible to get data in this space 10 years ago and so we kind of went off a lot of anecdotes and what we were learning about the space then. But I knew at that point that there was something changing in the commercial real estate world that was never gonna make it the same. Now, throughout the 10 years that, you know, brought us to today, that space obviously ramped up quite quickly, reached a peak, and now has plateaued out a little bit but I think it’s been a real testament to just the change that the whole entire industry is going through. Because if we remember back before the pandemic, when the commercial real estate markets were doing exceptionally well, the office market was on really a 10-year growth period, rents were at peaks, vacancies were at lows, and landlords and investors themselves just thought that there was really not gonna be any kind of blip in the demand that was coming and so at that time, although what we know now to be the co-working operators and their shared service providers were growing at quite a rapid pace, there was a lot of consternation in the market around, is this just a fad? Is it really gonna last? And at the core of it, at the core of the argument behind it was really, is this a lucrative investment to make? Is it an investment that is gonna actually drive the value of your building? And there wasn’t a lot of research behind being able to say, yes, it will and so therefore, a lot of those that hold the purse strings of the industry were very eager to kind of just push it aside and say, this might be okay for a small segment of the industry, but it’s really nothing that’s ever gonna drive lasting change. Well, then you fast forward through the pandemic and now you see an entire world of tenant demand that is shifting. I am not ever gonna suggest that tenant demand for the long-term leases of the large lease spaces is gonna completely dry up, but I think that it is gonna be few and far between based on what we saw before the pandemic, right? And we see that happening in the numbers today. Most of the transactions that are happening in the office market today are in the 20,000 square foot and under range. That is the velocity of what’s driving the market today and yes, there are still 100,000 and more square foot deals being done, but nowhere near to the tune of what was happening before the pandemic and I think that a lot of this space that is coming into the market to be transacted is also looking at the more flexible end of the market and therefore you see a lot of these shared workplace providers and operators that are really growing in terms of their maturity in the market and their placement in the market and they, yes, have right-sized over the last couple of years, but they’re back pretty much on a growth trajectory and you see a lot of the more progressive landlords that have large global portfolios that are actually getting into this game themselves and so the whole basis of commercial real estate from an office perspective that used to be built on really set it and forget it, 90% of my building is made up of long-term leases, is really shifting right now and I think that that shared workplace model or that flexible workplace model, I’ll call it, is at the basis of a lot of that and when you look at what the base of that industry was to begin with, it was a people-centric industry. It was giving people that wouldn’t typically have access to commercial real estate, Class A spaces, access to them at a reasonable cost and with a really great tenant experience and I think that that’s what we’re now poised to offer a lot more of the tenant market today because of these shifts that we’ve seen over the last five years.

DA: Right, really fascinating. So that demand for, again, really unique spaces, flexible spaces, a variety of types of spaces, coupled with the experience, that seems to be a winning formula going forward. Just observations around the purpose of space or the purpose of office. How do you see that influencing real estate decisions that are being made today?

JW: Greatly. So a lot of the work that I do is studying tenant behavior and it’s not easy to do that because you can’t necessarily go into a database and understand if the direction of rents and vacancies and leasing transactions are going one direction, it means that tenant behavior means why. There’s a lot of variation to what is driving tenant behavior today and so what we do is we do an occupier survey every year where we go out and we actually survey many of the corporate real estate executives in the Fortune 500 firms that are driving global portfolio decisions on behalf of their organizations and we ask them a series of 20 questions that varies from year to year around what is driving their intentions and their sentiment and ultimately their behaviors in the market and what we know to be true today is that what is driving a lot of their transactions and a lot of their portfolio strategy is yes, cost management, because that has always been a string and frankly, a lot of them report up to the CFO, so that will always be a string. However, there is more and more push towards understanding and realizing that the people-centric workplace is at the heart of a lot of their decisions and what you see is a lot of organizations that are coming to the table not only with corporate real estate, but also with IT and human resources to make joint decisions on these portfolio strategies that are so important and so that is certainly shaping how decisions are being made. Now, generally how we’re seeing that play out in the market today is there’s a lot of uncertainty around space demand. I will say that the height of the uncertainty I think is past us. I’d say about three years ago, we were probably in that height of uncertainty and during that time, we saw transactions that were much smaller on average than they were before the pandemic. We got to nearly 30% smaller transactions in that timeframe than were typically transacted before the pandemic and when those organizations and tenants were designing space and are designing space, they’re designing it to be much more collaborative in nature. Now, I think that many look at that and think, oh, that’s dangerous territory to be in because not everybody wants to come in and not have their own space or control over their space and my argument is that actually these new work styles and these new ways of designing space actually give the occupant that engages with that space, the employees of the company, more command over their day and their space because they might not be coming in to a six by six cube where they have family pictures on it, but they have an entire floor plan, sometimes multiple floors, that they can kind of skate between during the day that has many different functions to it and you can decide on what function to use depending on the time or the day or the task at hand. So I think that there’s a purpose of more collaborative styles that work is being driven or space is being designed for right now. However, that doesn’t mean that that’s at the expense of privacy because if anything, I think especially over the last year, we’ve seen the pendulum shift towards designing space that does take into account that privacy that people need to either hold meetings that are confidential in nature or that are just private in nature or to do heads down focused work because not all of that can happen at home. So the purpose of the office is clearly shifting. We see it in the numbers and we see it in our client sentiment and the way that they’re designing their space.

DA: Yeah, it makes total sense. I know that going from cubicles, there was this notion of hoteling and that has really not fared well, but what you’ve just described, and I love the expression you use, skating between different types of functionality depending upon what it is you need to do during the course of the day, I think can create so that sense of connection and ownership. But the idea of signing into a desk and where it’s still a desk and then it feels like, well, it’s not my desk anymore. I think that’s what created that tension which was not sustainable. Correct, correct. But these new kinds of spaces and environments that allow you to move and sort of create the type of experience you need at any point during the day or any given day, that is tremendously exciting.

JW: It is, it is and I think that you just hit on kind of the crux of the challenge that a lot of these occupiers are having when they’re managing this space is that you don’t want to make it feel so locked down that people can’t make choices in real time during their day, but you also need to make it so that you can plan towards the type of occupancy that’s going to be in a space any given day and be able to measure that. So there’s a little bit of a back and forth that I don’t think that anybody has quite cracked that code yet as to how to make things natural and serendipitous in the behaviors that people have and allow them to have those kinds of interactions while also allowing there to be enough control where the organization itself can plan.

DA: That’s right. You’ve still got to be able to function. So to that end, you know, we’re a technology company. We’re all thinking a lot about technology, certainly in commercial real estate. So, you know, moving forward, I think people are going to expect this sort of one-stop, seamless, a more personalized digital experience, something that they can use that will help them to, to your point, manage, navigate, interact and so ultimately customers, you know, customers of real estate within the property, they’re going to look to building technology to help, you know, empower that connectedness, foster productivity, and just help make things easier and better for them. So with customer experience and engagement being just so important, we believe that it’s one interaction at a time. You know, how do we look at technology and, you know, one interaction, you know, make it better. The next interaction, make it better and then cumulatively over time, we’re just impacting that, that total customer journey. So what are your thoughts around what’s working? What can we be doing better? What, what, how does technology enable customer experience and, and what perhaps is missing altogether right now?

JW: From a technology perspective in commercial real estate, I look at it from a couple different lenses, because when you think about your customer of commercial real estate, and I’m really talking mostly office, there are two. There is the actual corporation organization itself that is leasing that space that has a set of expectations that they have and then there is their occupant in the form of their employee or client even that is coming to visit the space that has their own set of expectations about what they expect and I do think that there are technologies that are vastly different from each other that support both. You know, from the actual tenant and experience of the organization that is engaging in that particular lease, I think that there’s a lot that has to do depending on your size, just around sustainability of operations and getting access to data and metrics from the building systems and making sure that you have connected systems. That’s a world that I am not an expert in, but I definitely know that the world is moving fast in that direction and that tenant expectations because of their own responsibilities that they have to their own shareholder is a lot in terms of what they expect to get data from and make decisions off of to be the best corporate citizen that they can and make decisions that are rooted in that data, which is so important, especially to the CFOs and the CEOs that they’re all reporting up into. So that’s really important. But then when it comes to the actual employee, the ones that can frankly make that space more sticky with the organization, because if employees are highly engaged and happy with their space, then when that renewal comes up, they are more likely to renew that lease versus go look somewhere else. It really just has to do with employee happiness over anything else and that’s where I think there isn’t a lot happening from a technology standpoint. I always said, here we are with mobile phones in our hand that can solve any issue that we have and often can preempt our needs before we even know that we have them. Yet you seem to walk through the doors sometimes of your organization and your lease space and it’s like all of that personalization of technology ends. You kind of sign on to a corporate system and then you’re beholden to kind of all those rules and regulations of that particular firewall that you’re inside of. I believe that there is a space for building apps to connect the tenant experience better. What I’m a little bit confused about, I will be honest with you right now, is when I asked this question to our actual corporate real estate executives in that occupier survey and say what technologies are you mostly engaged with right now or do you feel are furthering your tenant experience? The building apps one is a minority of respondents and I can’t quite figure that out. The only thing that I can think of is that there’s really not a building app out there yet that is trying to really solve at the base level just the convenience and seamlessness and ease solutions that these tenants actually need. Because ultimately you don’t need an app that has tons of bells and whistles and that can do all of this crazy stuff. You just need an app that’s going to either connect you to the community outside your building, connect you to the community inside your building, and ultimately make your experience better. Now, I think a base of that, of how to get people to use the app is definitely have the badging system through the app, right? I think that if you can do that, then that takes care of the necessity of using that app and then from there, oh yes, yes.

DA: But not necessarily to your point, the uptake, not necessarily the surprise and delight, not necessarily the man, I love this.

JW: Correct. But once you get them in using it, then you have to make sure that you get to that space of that surprise and delight where they know that there is a dollar coffee on the corner that can get delivered to them and they’re connected to that through the app or that there are people in the building that are part of their social network that they didn’t even know work in that building and then they’re drawn together. So there are different ways of I think connecting people and experiences in buildings that we are just on the bleeding edge of right now and really haven’t even begun to dive deep on. But that is what I think is needed to really make tenants more sticky with their buildings today.

DA: Well, I really appreciate that sentiment. I think that to your point, again, this goes back to where your career began, which is an understanding of people. I think that originally players in this space were very focused on building tech for buildings, but guess what? It should be tech for people. So they’re the real asset. So really appreciate your comments and it helps to get my mind going and certainly is aligned with a lot of what we’re thinking about as we play in this space and know that we’re at the early innings and we’re not there yet and there’s more that we need to do. So you’ve given me a lot of food for thought there. You know, along with others, I’m sure yourself, I believe the reinvention of commercial real estate is that the reinvention that’s going through this period of time is really extraordinary and represents significant opportunity, right? When there’s upheaval, there’s opportunity. So if I was to give you an unlimited budget and resources, what three new initiatives, one, two or three, whatever you like, would you undertake to position your business for success and ensure relevance in this new future of work story going forward? Let’s say three to five years out, what would you like to be doing that you’re not doing right now?

JW: Well, three is a lot, but I have, I think one is really sticky that I’ve been thinking of for a while, but the other couple are at the base level, I would say what we just talked about, the building app. If we could really dig in and build, especially with all the sort of futuristic AI that we could build into it, not me, but I’m sure some very smart developer that I think that that is a clear point of contact that we need to be bringing into this industry to help make tenants more sticky. So that goes without saying. Number two, I would, with my research hat on, love to conduct some longitudinal research around different work styles of employees, following them through their journey, depending on the policy that their organizations have and really be able to come up with some great research around the impact that the office has on that employee journey and also on the success of that company. Because I think that you can Google anything you want today and find out any answer you want to the argument that is closest to your belief. But I don’t think that there’s any research out there yet that is really driving a good argument around why the world of flexibility is truly the future. So I would love to be able to do that and have five years to be able to do that and get those results. But ultimately what would directly impact our industry that I think would be very interesting is to take the world of flex a step beyond where it is today. So some of the more progressive landlords that I talk to really talk about space as an ecosystem and although many of their buildings are still rooted in long-term leases, they’re also fully resolved to the understanding that this hospitality aspect of the office is really important and they’re doing things like building high-end restaurants, tenant bars, athletic facilities, shared meeting spaces, which isn’t just a conference room in the basement but beautiful views, fully serviced, access to the greatest technology, and also have different levels of flex within their building. I’d like to take that a step further and actually see a building that you as a tenant become a member of the building. So there’s no more long-term lease. It is just that I am signed up to be a member of this building where I get a certain amount of usage of this building that is based on either hours or people that come through the door, whatever it might be, and I have access to that whole building, which has different form and function depending on the floor and the wing, and I have an app that connects me with that building and connects my people with that building and then feeds back to me how my people are using that space. I think that that would be incredibly interesting. I would think that you would get a lot of different companies that end up working together and side by side that end up seeing a lot of synergies with each other, almost like an incubator space that’s unintentional, and I think that it is just far more efficient and effective use of space once companies really get to the point where they’re understanding that the office is a piece of their ecosystem, not their entire ecosystem. So if I had the ability to experiment with unlimited resources and budget for three to five years, then I would definitely buy a building in one of our greatest cities and just try that out.

DA: Well, I love it. That’s certainly turning the industry upside down. That membership could also extend to buildings within a portfolio, perhaps buildings in different cities. So why just be a member in one building? Perhaps, right?

JW: I do agree with that, and I thought a lot about that, and I think that there’s a segment of the population where that works really, really well for. However, one thing that I’ve come to realize throughout my time in this role is that people are creatures who have it, and they do like to visit the same places all the time, and unless their job is one, which there is a segment where people’s jobs take them all over the place, then that is an absolute great aspect to have, and I know a lot of landlords are already doing that today also.

DA: I love it. Brilliant. Let’s take a short commercial break, and we’ll be right back.

JW: Great.

COMMERCIAL BREAK

DA: And now I’d like to welcome back to the show Julie Whelan, Senior Vice President, Global Head of Occupier Thought Leadership at CBRE. Thanks again for being with us today.

JW: Thanks again for having me.

DA: All right. So guest after guest, and I think we’ve touched on it on this episode today, but guest after guest on this episode have echoed the same sentiment, particularly since the pandemic, that each and every person who enters the building is now viewed as our customer, not just the person that signs the lease every five years or 10 years. So this dramatically changes the game and now every occupant, every occupier has a more important voice in how they consume spaces and places and experiences within their buildings and I think we’re finally at a moment in time where building owners understand that and they know that they need to think more like the hotel industry. Hotel industry welcomes people into their building each and every day, and sometimes it’s for one night. So I think we have a lot to learn from the hotel and perhaps the restaurant industry as well in terms of the notion of hospitality and I think office buildings need to evolve and we’re starting to see that. Certainly there’s been the great talk about the amenitization of buildings, but I don’t necessarily believe that every building needs to create amenity floors and the reality is that not all buildings can. Certainly class A or triple A can, but not every building can, not every building can afford the capex to do so. But I do believe that this notion of hospitality can go across all asset classes, all asset types, buildings that are old, buildings that are new, buildings that are small, buildings that are large. So I think we need to win over our customer each and every day, one customer at a time and I think we can create these really vibrant communities. So I’d love your reaction to that sort of whole sentiment around how office buildings need to be more hospitable and what that means for the industry.

JW: Mm-hmm. So, you know, when you say more hospitable, what does that mean for every building? And that is a question that many, many landlords are grappling with today, especially in an environment where building values are not as great as they were, access to capital is not as easy as it was and many are left questioning what the demand cycle is going to look like for them over the next five to 10 years and so when you think about, well, do I have to put in the best technology and the greatest, you know, shared service centers and whatever it might be, that’s daunting to many and what we talk a lot about to landlords is saying, pay attention to the ecosystem of the neighborhood that you’re in, because a lot of times the neighborhood is going to provide a lot of that for you. If you’re in what we call vibrant mixed-use neighborhoods, which are neighborhoods that have people living there and working there, and there have restaurants and leisure and transportation options, and everything is within walking distance, you know, those are great neighborhoods where you might not even need to put in the food and beverage component. You might not need to put in the meeting space if you know that there’s a flex operator across the street. You just might need to connect your people to that more and so I think being very, very aware of the surroundings around you and the type of hospitality that you need to bring is really important. You know, when we think of the term CRE, it’s commercial real estate, but it can also be customer relationship engagement, right? And I think that that’s ultimately what landlords need to do the best and that’s what every single landlord, regardless of size or access to capital or current status needs to do is have that customer relationship engagement where you know the people in your buildings, because ultimately that is the most inexpensive and probably impactful thing for you to do.

DA: I agree and I think that’s where the notion of hospitality does not necessarily, you know, equate to big budget and I think there are things that we can do that are hospitable that are actually, you know, little or no cost. I asked this question of someone else, and they suggested, well, why not between, you know, 8.30am and 9.15am or 9.30am, what if every member of the building operation team came down to the lobby and welcomed people in the building? They’re all in the building. They were just, they’re very task-focused at that time. But what if they actually came to the building and just simply greeted people for that, you know, 30 minutes to 60 minutes? What impact would that have on their building community? Yeah, I think it would be huge and I’m not sure there’s a significant cost associated with that.

JW: There’s not, but there is, you know, personality types that I think that that’s something that also, you know, is an interesting conundrum that we’re against right now is often you hired your building operations people to be that. They knew the building systems better than anybody else and that was not a skill that you could easily train. Now, today, a lot of that can happen through technology or off-site or God knows, you know, how they’re doing it and so that building operations staff does need to have more of those stock skills than I think that they’ve had in the past and so I do think there’s probably a generational workforce change that’s happening there where these building owners are probably hiring for a little bit of a different skill set right now.

DA: Right, for sure. Agreed, agreed. You know, we all bring our different experiences and backgrounds and expertise to this wonderful industry and the world of work, the world of office, the future of work. What else do you think we need to be thinking about that would have an impact on how buildings can continue to play a critically important role in this much larger workplace ecosystem from ESG to IoT, from ROI to M&A? Like, what else are you thinking about? What’s top of mind?

JW: Well, I’m heavily focused right now on what we consider to be shaping tomorrow’s cities. So that’s the idea that cities are in a state of transformation. I believe that we need to accelerate that pace of change that we’re seeing in order to keep them relevant and the reality is that the majority of the built environment is built in cities. It’s not like 50 years ago when a lot of it was coming out of the ground and so now it needs to find its new place and its new role in these cities to keep them vibrant and I think that one of the ways to do that is to really increase community engagement for some of these. So we talk a lot about what I’ve already mentioned a couple of times, these vibrant mixed use neighborhoods. Well, if you’re a large building owner in these vibrant mixed use neighborhoods, you have a responsibility to do more than just be a passive participant in that neighborhood that’s bringing maybe a good clientele through the tenant base that you have and even a couple of years ago, the big question and discussion, and it still is, is placemaking, right? So make sure that the outside of your building is well lit and feels safe and has places for people to sit and now I’d like to further that a little bit more and say that there’s an element of community engagement that I think that these building owners can actually create that’s more than just community engagement for the closed community that’s within the building. But with buildings being used less and less of the week by their actual occupants that are leasing space because how work styles have changed, can we open these buildings up to serve the community more? I remember 10, 15 years ago when I was commissioning a new building for the corporate real estate organization that I worked for, we brought different art installations from the community into the lobby and cycled those around as a way to engage the community and showcase the culture of that community and that’s just the tip of the iceberg of what I think a lot of these building owners can do to actually welcome the community in, make the spaces used on more of a regular basis, and just make that building feel a greater part of the ecosystem of that neighborhood that’s giving to it, not just taking from it.

DA: 100%, shameless plug for Hilo. We right from the get-go always thought that buildings were not silos and an app for the building is not what people need. An app that includes the building but also reaches out to the community will really be a game changer and so we have a community directory of local businesses, we promote local offers and incentives and promotions, we connect to local BIAs or BIDs to promote the different events and programming that’s in the area. So I am with you wholeheartedly. There’s a tremendous opportunity there and I think we’re still looking to crack that nut. So I hope to circle back with you and continue that part of the conversation. Our closing speed round is an opportunity to get to know you, Julie, a little bit better. So I’m going to ask some pointed questions. Looking back, what is one piece of advice that you wish someone had given you when you first started your career?

JW: I would say that I wish that somebody had told me that you can’t make too many mistakes in your first 10 years and that you should pay close attention to what makes you happy and what doesn’t give you so much happiness and be ready and okay with making a lot of changes during that first decade.

DA: That’s great for great insights for our listeners. Any favorite books or podcasts that have positively impacted your approach to either work or life?

JW: Well, I wouldn’t be a good colleague if I didn’t plug the weekly take of CBRE, where Spencer Levy has a weekly podcast on all real estate related items that are often very relevant to the current times. I know this week he just did one on insurance and risk, given the tragedy of the wildfires in LA. So that is one that I do try to listen to because it definitely broadens my horizons on real estate.

DA: Amazing. Name one way in which technology has improved how you live or work.

JW: Well, this may sound cliche, especially right now, but I am definitely just coming into this world of learning how to use sort of chat GPT and other AI on my daily activities and even just, I’m planning to go to Ireland with my husband this summer and even just creating some test itineraries to get my wheels spinning is incredibly easy and I think is really a life changer. So I would say that.

DA: Finding the positive. I love that. So as commercial estate continues to evolve and we’ve touched on this throughout, there’s been a theme here around people. What skills do you think are going to become even more sought after by commercial estate owners and operators as they look to deliver their business, their service, you know, to remain vibrant and relevant? I think there’s going to be a lot of new skills required. What are you seeing? What are you thinking?

JW: So I would agree. I think that honestly, the soft skills are more important than ever. You know, I was recently just talking to a dean of students at a private school around here in Boston, and I was questioning them about the pace of change in business and, you know, what it means for their students coming out and he said, I really make sure that our students leave understanding the impact that they want to have in society and then understanding the path that they may want to take to make that impact and I love that answer and I think that that has a lot to do with commercial real estate also, where we need to understand the impact that we want to make on our society through our built environment and then the path to take there and some of that has to do with the technical skills of the engineers and the new technologies that are going into this. But those are all very specific, not necessarily commercial real estate related fields. They’re going to come from other places into this field. I think from our field’s perspective, you really need to have the soft skills of critical thinking and being able to engage with tenants at all levels of organization, from the most junior intern that walks through your buildings to the CEO that is ultimately approving, you know, the multi-million dollar 10 year lease that, you know, is what you’re hoping to get. So I think it’s that critical thinking and soft skills of relationship management that are going to be more important than ever in our industry.

DA: That really relates to, I just read a LinkedIn post earlier where someone was asking, you know, does a CFO have to be a CPA? And there was an example of someone that was just appointed CFO of a company that is not unrelated to your notion of wanting to dig more into chat GBT, who does not have a CPA and yet is now in this role because of those skills you just talked about. So great insight. If you were not doing what you’re doing right now, i.e. not in real estate, maybe not even in HR, what do you think you’d be doing instead? What would be that fantasy, that dream opportunity that, you know, maybe you would do if you were less practical?

JW: So if I was less practical, my dream opportunity would honestly be probably owning a florist shop, like a real modern one. That’s pretty cool because some of them are pretty still old and antiquated, but I absolutely love flowers. I find it very relaxing to make bouquets and have it on the kitchen table every week and that’s what I would do. 100%.

DA: Amazing. Okay. Well, we’ll park that. We’ll, we’ll wait. We’ll see if that entrepreneurial spirit, um, you know, flourishes at any moment in time and that’s where you had, listen, Julie, thank you so much for joining me on the program today. It was a great conversation. I learned a lot. I know our listeners will as well. Um, I hope that we can continue to connect and chat. I think there’s lots of us to lots for us to continue to talk about and, um, I really appreciate your time today.

JW: Great. Thank you so much for having me.

DA: Okay. Bye now. 

That’s a wrap on today’s episode of TEN. I want to thank Julie for joining me on the program. If you enjoyed this episode, don’t forget to subscribe and leave a review. It helps others find the show. Thank you for listening and until next time I wish you all continued success in building community where you work and live.