Amina Moreau: Intentionality, Optionality, Mindset | Work 20XX Ep19

Amina Moreau: Intentionality, Optionality, Mindset | Work 20XX Podcast with Jeff Frick Ep19

YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PXNTDO_la0&list=PLZURvMqWbYjmmJlwGj0L0jWbWdCej1Jlt&t=880s&ab_channel=TurntheLenswithJeffFrick -

‍

Spotify

https://open.spotify.com/episode/0RaCg1RiUy7khJIE4ZFuhn?si=c3675a10cd744ec7

‍

Transcript and show notes

https://www.work20xx.com/episodes - 

or wherever you podcast 

‍

Cold Open 

‍

All righty, got my coffee.

Got your coffee

Got your water, and we'll just count it down and go.

‍

Jeff Frick 

‍

Hey, welcome back, everybody. Jeff Frick here coming to you for another episode of Work 20XX

and I'm excited for this next guest. When we originally set up this interview we hadn't met, but through a bunch of activities that were happening in the Bay Area last week we actually had an opportunity to meet in person, which is pretty rare.

‍

And we have a shared affinity for Portland and psychology. So I think she's coming in all the way from Portland. We're welcoming in through the power of the Internet.

‍

She is Amina Moreau, Co-Founder and CEO of Radious.pro.

Amina, great to see you.

‍

Amina Moreau 

‍

Hey, Jeff.

It's great to be here and to meet you.

IRL, finally 

‍

Jeff

Yeah, in real life, exactly.

So let's just touch base on it briefly. So you were in town for a Purposeful Intent event, which was ground zero for remote work and future of work. Lot of folks that publish a lot and talk a lot. I'm just curious, you didn't come from this world. A lot of the people that were at the event were from the real estate world. There's people from the technology world, there's people from H.R. world You came at it from a completely different angle.

‍

How did you find yourself here at a center of the universe of of a Future of Work event? 

‍

Amina 

The future of work? Yeah.

‍

It definitely was a little bit of a left turn for me career wise, because during the pandemic, my goodness, everybody had so many pain points and I had a pain point that I needed to solve for myself and my family.

‍

And lo and behold, I found myself in the future of work conversation, which in some ways is a departure from everything I've done in the past. Because the previous companies that I've built and co-built were all in the creative space filmmaking, music licensing, working with ad agencies, marketing, etc. and then all of a sudden, vrumph - Real estate and future of work stuff

‍

At the same time, it is also fitting because I have been an employer my whole career and I have led teams that were in office. I've led teams that were fully remote and a mix of a whole whack of ways of working. And so in some sense, yeah, it was a bit of a left turn career wise.

‍

On the other hand, I feel quite at home because I've been thinking about this stuff for two decades already, just from a totally different angle, more from a user's perspective then from a thought leaders perspective in shaping the future of work. And now I'm really happy to be collaborating with some great people like yourself in shaping it. Yeah, it's great.

‍

Jeff 

And you got to lead some panels and then let's give people the 101 on What is Radious?

‍

You had a, a special event that I was fortunate to attend for the people that aren’t familiar give them the 101 what's Radious.pro all about.

‍

Amina

Yeah. Radious is, well I like to joke that it's kind of like Airbnb and WeWork had a baby except, you know, without all of the drama, 

‍

Jeff

That's a lot of drama 

‍

Amina 

Yeah, We We like to be drama free. We’re basically a network of on demand workspaces that are right in your neighborhood. So in essence, what we do is we take homes and other residential properties, which is a pretty unique thing because most office space platforms are commercial spaces, right? They're conference rooms and typical commercial buildings, but we're taking homes. So it really is the Airbnb model and we're making sure that the homes are outfitted with workplace amenities. White boards, sit-stand desks, AV for presentations, everything that you would expect in a conference room or a traditional office, but with all the comforts of home. And so it's a very different experience. But also, most critically, residences tend to be in residential areas and people are really having a tough time commuting to an office these days. And so we like to think that we're bringing the office to you. 

‍

Jeff

right, right And then is your customer, more the individual worker that's looking for a place to go work right now or are you trying to go to market more through companies and let them offer that as a service to their people?

‍

Amina

It is mostly a B2B platform or rather B-to-B-to-C. So our main customers are companies who are offering flexibility that may or may not have an office frankly but want to be able to offer their employees a place to go get some work life separation, to meet up in person without having to commute, and also offering a more unique experience. Now, I will say that we do allow people, individuals to book on our platform without a contract, and that's just a really great way for the community. To learn more about Radious while offering people a service that they love to use. But at the end of the day, our hope is that the more users we have on the platform, whether individuals or companies, the more word of mouth spreads and a working professional that maybe they have an Internet outage at their house and they need a private space to go do a Zoom call. They book a Radious space for the day, and then they're like, Oh, wow, this is awesome. Let me recommend this to my manager. And then we have a foot in the door with the company 

‍

Jeff

So it's interesting Ryan Anderson at MillerKnoll One of their reports talked about, three things best done, not at home that are usually done in an office, But I would imagine it's a similar type of application for what you have And his big three were, socialization, obviously, to get together and sometimes just to get together to get closer with people. The second one was collaboration. When it's a heavy collab type of activity. And then the third one which gets left out of most people's conversation is just heads down isolation work. I just need some quiet time and some private time and for a lot of reasons, a lot of people maybe don't have that option at home. So I could see, there’s you probably get a mix of those applications, I would imagine, within your customer base. 

‍

Amina 

Yes, we definitely do. And that last one, the distraction factor is really different for different people and different home environments Some people absolutely have a lot of distractions, whether it's kids or, the pile of laundry that's been nagging at them for a few days and, it's calling to them and even if it's not a noisy distraction, anything that pulls you away from your work is going to affect your productivity. But on the flip side, there are some people who don't have any distractions at home and actually find it more distracting to go to a traditional office, especially if it's an open floor plan. 

‍

And that's the beauty of what I think of the future of work is that it's full of diversity. Everybody has different needs and different desires. And I actually think that's a beautiful thing. Forcing people into a one size fits all A) doesn't work. And B) Why would you want to squash that diversity? That's what makes this planet a beautiful place to be right 

‍

To follow up on the three things you just mentioned. I have another three thing, three things to throw at you one of them is actually common in distractions, there are actually three major pain points to working from home. One of them is distractions. Not for everybody, but it is a big one. The second is isolation, which you kind of already alluded to. Get out of the office, or sorry, get out of home, go somewhere to meet up with colleagues or even people that you might not work with, but get that social outlet. And then the third is burnout, because when you work from home, you're living at the office. And so at the end of the day, it can be hard to disconnect. Now, maybe if you've been doing it for two or three months, that's that's fine. It's sustainable for a little while. But after three years of doing that, eventually it wears on you a little bit. So you might want to have an outlet to go to once in a while. 

‍

Jeff 

Yeah. I'll throw in our final, our third big three of the three distractions that Nick Bloom likes to talk about the refrigerator, the TV or the bed. He's like, one of them is going to get you eventually. Something's going to get ya 

‍

Amina

Yeah, absolutely. 

‍

Jeff

Now, what’s interesting you come at it. You come at it from the from being an Airbnb host. And so you come at it from a shared economy point of view as well as from the host point of view. And the residential point of view versus, say, a traditional commercial real estate or even a nontraditional real estate like a WeWork or flex space.

‍

 What's interesting is I saw you were on with Steve Todd, And Steve Todd also has another, big three that he likes to talk about. And he's one of the most progressive corporate real estate professionals out there He's one of the few people early on that said to his people at Nasdaq, I'll give you a credit card to go use flex space but I want to know what you use it for So that he could start to collect the data. And he is one of the very few to say, that’s a valuable trade. That's a really valuable trade. And one of the things he came back with was, if I want isolation, I want something close to home. I don't want to commute. Obviously commutes the biggest nightmare that's keeping people from the office or one of them. And then he said, if I want to be with the team, I want to be near someplace we can all get to easily right, is easy to commute maybe on public transit. Then if I want to showcase space and have a big customer meeting, that's when I want the downtown space or the Executive Briefing Center and the high ceilings, this idea of  space appropriate for the activities that you're trying to do, not only in a small, confined World, of activity-based space inside of a corporate structure. 

‍

But now you've expanded into almost like this portfolio of potential spaces beyond the corporate space to flex spaces. And then now when you take it out to the housing level, I mean, how many different properties do people pick from when they're in the platform? Say, I know you're in Portland, in Milwaukee, is it tens? Is it dozens? Is it hundreds? How many are in there?

‍

Amina 

It's hundreds now. And working on getting into the thousands and eventually into the millions. The idea is for Radious to become akin to the Airbnb of working. And people, people live all over the world and live in typically residential areas which are massively underserved by traditional co-working models. Because if you think about WeWork, for example, certainly not the only player out there with what I refer to as co-working 1.0. 

‍

Most of their buildings are located in city centers, but if people are having a tough time commuting for whatever reason and they tend to live in the burbs, which most people do, Then what are they going to what are what are the options that they're left with is working from home, which we've already discussed, has some downsides, but also has a great convenience factor. Absolutely. But isn't the be all end all to do for the rest of our lives? And so the plan for Radious is to expand quickly and to as many areas with as many properties as possible so that you could walk three doors down to your neighbor’s guest house turned office, meet up with a colleague, get some work-life separation and a social outlet just for the days that you need.

‍

In order to be able to really execute on that, we need to have a lot of spaces. Being on podcasts like this one certainly helps us grow.

‍

Jeff

Right, that’s good. Well, hopefully we can. Well, the other thing it’s interesting. I saw in getting ready for this you were in a pitch video, which I've always wondered why no one ever did this. 

‍

Give an elevator pitch actually in an elevator. And you did it. I think it was in Seattle. And it's like a 32-second ride up the elevator. And then you got to pitch to these three potential investors, and it was It was interesting watching it because when their light, Their eyes lit up instantly when you talked about the countercyclical nature of what you're offering to the host side, Because, the business application for a space host is almost exactly 180 degrees different than their traditional demand base.  I think that was pretty It was wild how they just grasped on that opportunity to see, wow, here's a real opportunity to take advantage of something that's just not being utilized very well.

‍

Amina

Yeah, and it makes sense because Kirby (Winfield), Who was one of the three judges, He had the biggest ‘aha’ moment and he comes from the short-term rental world. He sold a startup that was in that world and really understands the dynamics of short-term rentals, Airbnb, Vrbo types of platforms which are usually busiest on the weekends. Friday through Sunday. And so there are a lot of properties that are sitting vacant Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, which are workdays which are the days that Radious focuses on. 

‍

And so We are able to take a lot of underutilized space, help families with housing affordability, by the way because this does supplement either rent or mortgage payments that they're making every month. And offer something to companies and working professionals that they need, but they don't necessarily need every day. 

‍

And so we're able to save companies a ton of money because they never have to pay for unused real estate ever again while helping families supplement  their living expenses and so that's something that I'm really, really excited about for the platform.

‍

Jeff: 

Yeah, that's great. Well, and also just selfishly for them, the ability to manage this, they now have to add flex to their real estate portfolio. That's pretty clear because they're all reducing their primary footprints and they're reducing their HQs, etc. So some level of capacity has to be absorbed by flex.

‍

Yep, and so they have the ability. And I know we've talked briefly about, you've got a couple of different business models, a couple of different ways that they can buy is a really valuable asset for them to add in to this variability, flexibility portfolio to office, excuse me offer for their people is pretty cool.

‍

Amina

Yeah, I was talking to Nick Bloom the other day actually, and he's an economist by trade and he all of his research is around remote work trends, where the world is going, but he thinks about it from both a micro and a macro perspective. And he was telling me his point of view that companies in general often pay a premium for additional agility, the ability to pivot when things get tough.

‍

And Radious allows them to have that agility because you can just flex up or down based on requirements for office or meeting space, right, because it's not a fixed contract that you're locked into for five or ten years.

‍

No, it's by the day.

‍

So you have that agility. But here's the kicker. It's at a significantly lower price. And so instead of Nick's paying a premium for agility, you get that agility while saving a ton of money at the same time. And so it really is a no-brainer for companies, especially during an economic climate that is so unpredictable.

‍

Jeff

Right, right. Yeah, exactly. It's all about unpredictability. So I want to shift gears a little bit and talk about your entrepreneurial background and some of the stuff that you were doing before. You've described yourself as a 'Chronic Entrepreneur'.

‍

I have here highlighted in my notes and my other one that I thought was pretty funny. You said you're the average of a cynic and an idealist, which, divide that by two, and it comes out as a pragmatist.

‍

Yeah, you've got a history in film, you're talking about the classic story arcs and a hero's journey and all these communication things. How has that translated to your new role? And besides just  the serendipity of how it happened. How directly do those things impact your ability to execute here at Radious?

‍

Amina

Oh, so much. I feel like everything I did professionally and some personally over the course of my career has prepared me for this moment. It was like it was just like a training ground and now this is this is the big moment because the other companies that I was involved with, there were four others. I co-founded all of them. While they were in a very different space, they were creative services. And this is real estate future of work. 

‍

There were some major similarities, first of all, two of the other companies were marketplaces, so, where you have one audience on the supply side and one completely different audience on the demand side. So with Radious, for example, we have our hosts, they're property owners and property managers, and they have one set of priorities. Whereas on the demand side, we have companies and working professionals which have a completely different set of priorities. It's kind of like we're building two companies at the same time with two marketing plans, two sales approaches, everything is, almost everything is multiplied by two. But having done it twice before in a stock footage platform and a music licensing platform, same sort of dynamics, artists uploading music and footage, and then ad agencies, marketing departments downloading those assets for use. The dynamics are the same. And so the chicken and egg problem, all of the challenges, there's a lot of overlap. 

‍

And then my experience in storytelling and marketing in general has been instrumental in growing Radious as well, because at the end of the day, you can build the most beautiful, well-functioning platform and you can have the best spaces, but if you don't have a story behind them, if you can't get the word out, the whole idea of 'build it and they will come' maybe that worked a few decades ago, but these days there's so much noise out there. You need to know how to put out a strong signal. And I am so thankful to have 20 years of experience doing that because now is the moment practically every company on the planet is trying to figure out how to make flex remote, how to make the 'future of work' work for them.

‍

And this is Radious' moment to not just shine, but to come in and be a really meaningful solution for them. And without a good story, without that ability to put ourselves out there, it doesn't go anywhere.

‍

Jeff

Well, the other angle I would like you to speak to is career change and industry change. We're entering a time where, unlike my grandfather, where you worked in the same job for 25 years or 30 years and you got your pension plan. The world is changing very quickly. Everyone is going to have to reskill and change their careers, quote unquote, a number of times, over the course of their world. I had Tyler Sellhorn on. He went from being a high school math teacher to running remote for a blockchain company, which was a crazy story.

‍

So in terms of, what advice would you give to people who have to, whether you're forced to or whatever, you want to enter a new space. And even if some of the concepts are the same as you just outlined, there's new vocabulary, there's new people, there's new, this whole system. How do you help people or what would you say to people, facing the, unfortunately, the business I work in is not doing these well, I need to do something new. What would you tell them.

‍

Amina

Yeah, get comfortable with being uncomfortable. That's, that's advice number one. And number two is embrace a beginner's mindset and be a lifelong learner. One of the things that my previous 20 years of my career have taught me is how to be comfortable by being the least informed person in the room. And I'll tell you why. Because as a film director and a marketing consultant, I was doing a different project in a different industry, sometimes every month and one month it might be pharma. Another month it could be the energy sector. It was completely different from project to project. And I don't know everything about everything. News flash. And so what that meant was is that I had to effectively do a crash course in the subject to become educated enough about it to then advise my clients on how to tell their story in the most effective way possible. And so at the beginning of the project, I knew very little, and yet I still had to be an authority on how to tell that story. And so by adopting that beginner's mindset and that passion for learning, which heck, I mean,

‍

I got to learn so much about the world and how different industries work and how they impact all of these different systems. It was fascinating, but I got really comfortable being in a position where I don't really know. I don't understand this yet, but I had the confidence after having done it so many times, I could learn it and I can learn it quickly. And the same thing goes with my pivot to Radious two, three years ago.

‍

Interviewer: There were so many aspects of this business that I knew virtually nothing about. There were a lot of things I didn't know about, but there were some areas I was learning from scratch. But because I had spent 20 years learning how to learn, I wasn't scared off by it. And so for anybody that is contemplating a pivot in their career, get comfortable being uncomfortable and know that you can learn the ropes. And it might take a little while, but that's okay, too, because there probably isn't any rush.

‍

And you can do it.

‍

Jeff

That's great. I've done it myself a bunch of times, just you just have to, I love that beginner.

 You just have to have the beginner mindset. Just be excited about learning. I think the steepest part of learning curves is the most fun when you go from zero to something because it's so steep. You get so much information, before you get into the nuances and stuff. So I think that's great advice.

‍

I want to follow up on another piece that you talked about. You were doing creative stuff back in the late nineties. The first Internet bubble was all about marketplaces. it was starting with eBay and people selling their own stuff online, which was a really innovative concept. And there was chemical exchanges and, all these multiple exchanges which were, gonna say, let's leverage the power of the Internet to bring buyers and sellers together in a new virtual marketplace.

‍

The difficulty is, always, and you talked about it briefly, but I want you to dig into it more specifically, is the chicken and egg problem. You  don't have enough supply to get the demand excited. You don't have enough demand to get the supply started. It's a nascent market. You don't have any type of mass or movement or momentum. How do you approach trying just to kick start or get the flywheel going on a marketplace when you're not 100% set on either side?

‍

Amina

Yeah, you have to do it very carefully and intentionally. And of course, that sounds like a no brainer. But you also. You can't build any one side of the marketplace too quickly either. You have to keep them balanced throughout the journey. So really, you're asking two questions. How do you even just get it going from zero? But then once you get it going, how do you keep that balance? Because that's that’s a secondary challenge, and 

‍

And the part of it that the starting from zero part is that you just have to figure out which side of the marketplace has a most immediate need to solve the biggest pain point. What we realized about Radious, because the idea for this was born during the lockdowns of 2020, and so companies were just neck deep in unknowns and almost paralyzed by that and not really knowing how to move forward. And so we could talk to them about how they were thinking about things. But it was really clear that it was just like a big tornado of ideas and nobody knew what was going to happen.

‍

Whereas on the supply side, the hosting side, there were some really clear pain points that we could solve immediately. And so we started getting hosts hooked on the idea even before we had companies lined up because we explained how it would work theoretically, and there was no downside to starting on the platform because we didn't charge any fees. It was really easy to sign up. We did things like send a professional photographer to the space, really make it shine. So there was no reason to avoid signing up. So we made it very easy.

‍

And then once we got a few properties, then we had a bit of a proof of concept to then take to companies that we had already been talking to and becoming friendly with and now we say, "Hey, check, check this out. This is what we're thinking. What do you think about this? What feedback do you have?" The classic startup ‘test and iterate’ mantra. We would get that feedback, go back to the hosts and improve things and start recruiting more hosts. Oh, and now we have company interest. We would start getting letters of intent from companies saying, ‘Okay, as soon as you have a critical mass of spaces where we have employees, we will start using this.’

‍

Then we take that back to the properties and then they would get that much more motivated to list more, especially people who had more than one property like property managers. And it was just this ebb and flow. And then once you start getting bookings, once these hosts actually start making money, then they start talking about.

‍

And that flywheel starts to go and the customers start marketing the idea for you.

‍

Jeff

How many of your hosts also host for Airbnb or a different type of a service in that they're, they're competent hosts. This is not a brand new thing for them. And this is really almost like a line extension, if you will.

‍

Amina

It is, yeah, a good number of them. As we were first launching, about 85% of our hosts came from the short term rental industry already so they had the knowhow, they had the infrastructure, like keyless entry and cleaning crews and everything that you would need for an operation like that to run smoothly. The only thing that we really needed to educate them on was how do you outfit your space in a way that's really work friendly and not in the way that you already have for Airbnb, where you've got this little tiny, by the way, desk off in the corner so you can check a box? No. How do we make this a proper workstation where somebody could work comfortably for 8 hours? How do we create a presentation space with minimal effort and maximal reward for both the host and for the company that might be getting together to do a creative brief or something like that? So there was a little bit of education that went along with it, but there was already that foundation.

‍

Now, since then, things have changed a little bit because a lot of our hosts, they have issues with overnight hosting, which is what the rest of the industry does - Airbnb, Vrbo, they're all overnight platforms. We're not, we're just 9 to 5 or 8 to 6, which means that it eliminates a lot of risk for our hosts. So we now have plenty of hosts.

‍

That either stopped hosting on those other platforms or they never did. They always wanted to monetize their space in a creative way, but they didn't want to do the overnight thing. And for the first time ever, now they have a chance to with us.

‍

Jeff: 

And then what are the main improvements they have to make? If I've got a functioning short term rental space, but I want to get into this. obviously, I probably have, Comcast coming in or AT&T what are the main, investments people need to make? Not huge ones, but the minimum?

‍

Amina

So there are absolutely minimums just to qualify for the platform and then there are additional things you can add to either be able to charge more for your space or to be able to differentiate yourself from the other listings that are in your area and really stand out to companies. 

‍

The minimums are fast Internet and we have some definitions around what fast means. There needs to be either a workstation like a proper desk ‘or’ and I should say ‘and/or’ a meeting surface like a meeting table where teams can come together. There's got to be a bathroom, obviously, because the coffee fueling your workday has got to go somewhere and it's got to be comfortable. And now that means different things to different people. But our host success team works with every single property to make sure that they have what it takes to succeed on the platform.

‍

And then the additional things that you can add on that are really going to make your listing shine are things like an Apple TV or something as simple as an HDMI cable so that somebody could plug their laptop into your TV to do a slide presentation. Having a projector and a screen is even better. Having a sit-stand desk, having an outdoor meeting space where the Wi-Fi reaches. These are all things that make the experience better and are all search filters on our platform. So if you need one of those things, AC during a heat wave, which we're having right now, Jeff - Put that one on the top, Amina - but being able to tick those boxes. Right, and seeing only those properties that have what you need is really great.

‍

And the one other thing that I will add is that when you're doing a residential platform like this, you can get into some really quirky stuff, right? So we've only been talking about workplace amenities and we have some very normal spaces like new construction homes, mid-century modern, beautiful luxury home that you were just at in the woods.

‍

But we also have a 50-person Yurt that has all of the amenities of a conference room, but it's on a hobby farm. And so during your coffee breaks, you take a couple of apples out and feed the alpacas as part of their team-building experience, right?

‍

This is not something you're going to get at a traditional co-working space. But we like to say that Radious is co-working 2.0 where you're actually having really unique experiences with your team.

‍

Jeff

So don't give me the exact number. But how many variables are on that filter list? 10, 20, 30?

‍

Amina: 

Ahh, it's close to 20. 

‍

Jeff: 

That’s great. 

‍

Amina

We want it to be full. Like there's a lot of... there are a lot of choices. And because everybody has different needs at the same time, we don't want it to be so many that it's now overwhelming. So it's probably somewhere close to 15 to 20 different filters.

‍

It'll probably grow over time, but we'll probably have to actually categorize them and nest them a little bit, right? Because you could go overboard with that sort of thing.

‍

Jeff

I'm curious from some of your longest-term customers, what's the most surprising thing they've ever told you? Feedback wise?

‍

Amina: 

I would say there are actually two things that come to mind. One big surprise was when a manufacturing company became our first subscription customer. You don't think of manufacturing being all that flexible, right? You need to be at the facility to make whatever product you're making. But we learned that about a third of their employees are back office and it's too loud to think at the facility, and so about a third of their workforce needed a quiet place to go. And so they ended up joining Radious on a team membership that gave their employees access to book on their own without the boss's permission, so that any time they needed to focus, but specifically with other people, so they weren't just going to meet at their house, they had a place to go. So that was a big surprise for us.

‍

Another one that's kind of fun and quirky was there's an ad agency in Portland here that has been using our spaces regularly, but after the first time, I asked their CEO for some feedback and she said, "Great experience, love this and that and that, but it was kind of weird that there was a sign by the front door to remove our shoes."

‍

Jeff:

Was she the one in the property or was she reporting back for one of her employees?

‍

Amina: 

No, she was at the property with her employees.Yeah, so she actually experienced it firsthand. She's like, it was kind of weird to have like a team corporate meeting without our shoes on. And I was like, "Yeah, I could see that." I could see that.

‍

And then she went and booked like three, four, five more times. And then we touched base again about the experience. So she's like, "You know what, Amina? One thing that I really love about this platform is that I don't have to wear my shoes." And she was like, "Oh, that's right." I did say that. 

‍

And she reminded me of the fact that, a lot of our messaging is around how we have all of the amenities of the office. But a big part of that also is that we have all the comforts of home. And it's not just the shoe thing. We have operable windows. You can actually get fresh air. You're not locked into some corporate building where you're breathing recycled air and there's natural light and there's thermostat control. So if you're chilly on a winter day, you can actually turn it up. And these are the little things that we don't explicitly think of necessarily. But when they're at our fingertips, we're so thankful to have them.

‍

Jeff: 

It's interesting. I had Phil Kirschner on from McKinsey and talk about flexibility in manufacturing. He was talking about one of their clients who switched from eight-hour shifts and ten-hour shifts to four-hour shifts and six-hour shifts, and suddenly their application pool expanded dramatically. So just because it's always been the eight-hour shift, somebody got bright and said, "Let's break it up into smaller bits." And suddenly people that for whatever reason couldn't take that job. Suddenly they could. And literally, their application pool went up. Our friend Brian Elliott just posted a couple of days ago with Darren Murph going to Ford. Ford has 89,000 back office flex working employees. Which, you think manufacturing and they got to be in the factory to attach the door to the side of the car?

‍

But in fact, as you said, they have a lot, tens and tens and tens, almost 100,000 people who are in a position to work more flexibly.

‍

So I want to shift gears a little bit and talk about your awesome setup, which I've complimented

you on online a bunch of times. I used to spend way too much time trying to convince people

that since March 2020, you should invest in a nice set up because you're going to be on it a lot.

‍

Whether it's doing a podcast 

‍

Amina: 

You're talking about Zoom set up?

‍

Jeff: 

I'm talking about our Zoom setup.

I'm talking about  how great you look,

‍

To me, it's just crazy. We've got Zoom calls and meetings, which is how you're interfacing with people. You have stuff like this, fun stuff in podcasts, you've got presentations and QBRs and reviews, and one-on-ones and all this stuff. It's really hard to get people to invest in their home setups. And I've even been as bold to say, if you're a chief of staff for some CEO and you don't get them some decent equipment, I mean, you should get fired. I mean, this is important stuff and it's not that expensive. 

‍

So first off, your setup, your home setup looks phenomenal. You look terrific. 

‍

But we've talked about it before and you said you specifically tried to make it not too expensive, not too complicated, and really a simple solution. So I wonder if you can share a little bit, hilosophically and then, some details.

‍

Amina: 

Yeah, excluding my camera. 

‍

And I want to say that just because the camera that I have, it's not super cheap, but you can get cameras that produce this image quality for a very affordable price. The reason that I invested in something that's a little more expensive is because I use it for far more than just my webcam. It's sitting on my laptop right now because this is its idle state. But as we're shooting marketing photos on Tuesday, when we're at the Radious space, we're shooting photos of people having a wonderful co-working day. It’s critical, and I have a filmmaking and photography background, right? So I also take it on vacation.

‍

But you can buy a relatively inexpensive mirrorless camera. It's actually really the lens that makes the biggest difference - this background blur that you see here behind me, the books even, if I put my hand over here, it's blurry. That's real. That's not a synthetic zoom background. And it feels so much more authentic. And that comes less from the camera itself and more from the glass in front of it.

‍

But what you were talking about a moment ago about, the that it doesn't have to be really expensive. It really doesn't like I'm not using any sort of professional lighting. I'm just using professional lighting know-how. So what I have in this office is I've got a window to my left. I've got my second monitor with a white window open to provide a little bit of fill light. In fact, if I turn the brightness of it down, you'll see the lighting ratio change on my face.

‍

And as I bring it back up, you can see, and I chose that balance intentionally because the amount of shadow can be a metaphor for how dramatic the conversation is. And so I'm a lighting ratio that feels warm and inviting because I knew that that's how this conversation was going to feel.

‍

And so I'm taking it maybe a little further than the average executive needs to for their Zoom calls. 

‍

I also have a professional microphone, but I also have it out of frame, and that's very intentional. It is right here. It's touching the edge of my frame, but I don't have it in frame because I don't actually want this to feel like when I'm on a call with someone, I don't want it to feel like I'm interviewing them. I want it to feel like this is a two-way conversation because at the end of the day, friendship is a two-way street. And when we put something physical between us, then there's something between us. I don't want there to be anything between us.

‍

Again, I'm taking this a little bit farther, but, my mic I got for free as a gift and it's like maybe a $100 purchase. The external monitor I already had, the window was here, and I do have a floor lamp over there. I made an effort to put a daylight-colored bulb in it so I don't have different colors of light going all around the room. But that's it. 

‍

It's not really rocket science and it doesn't have to be expensive. It just requires a little bit of effort in the setup and thinking about it. 

‍

Jeff

Yeah, I just think it's so worthwhile, and, it really, it really shows all your stuff on LinkedIn. It just pops, right? Your, all your stuff just pops because of the clarity and the quality of the picture and,  the intentionality and the effort that you put forth really shines through in the finished product. If you will.

‍

Amina:

Well, and I appreciate that, Jeff because the other thing that I'm really adamant about is that first impressions matter. And I am building a company. People know that I have a film background, whether I'm talking to potential customers, potential partners, friends, investors, I take a lot of pride in the fact that I pay attention, I pay attention to detail. And as I'm growing this company with this fantastic team, we are doing this very intentionally. And if my presentation, whether on LinkedIn or on Zoom calls, looks half-assed, then what else am I doing that half-assed?

‍

And I, no founder can let perfection be the enemy of good. But let's at least try to reach good, right, right.

‍

Jeff: 

Yeah, well, the big one, the big one, you got to watch out is perfection is the enemy of completion.

‍

Amina: 

Catastrophic.

‍

Jeff: 

Is the worst of all.

‍

Amina: 

Okay, very good.

‍

Jeff: 

Going to give you the last word here before we turn the cameras off. I know you're in Portland. I know you're in Milwaukee. You had this cool little fun open house thing here earlier this week. I can't believe it was only a couple of days ago. Share a little bit, parting thoughts as to, we’re almost done with 2023. What does 2024 look like for Radious? What are some of your goals and what are you looking forward to?

‍

Amina:

Well, we are at the very beginning stages of expanding into our third market, which is very, very exciting for us because we have a lot of companies in markets that we’re not officially launched in that have been requesting the service. So expanding into a third market is one step in that direction. 

‍

The other thing that we're excited to be growing, which has already been active a little bit under the radar for the last few months, that we're going to be bringing more attention to over the next few months and then well into 2024 is a National Concierge Service which allows us to respond to demand anywhere in the country. So in the three markets that we serve, you can just go on our platform, browse great workspaces and book them. And it's as simple as that. But you can also get in touch with our team and A) we can get you access to some secret spaces that we have in those three markets that actually might not be live on the platform yet because we always have those that are in the middle of listing creation. But so many teams are distributed these days.

‍

The pandemic opened up your talent pool radius, which is by the way, a big reason why we named our company what we did. And it's exciting for us to be able to serve them, too. And so even right now, as we speak, we're responding to requests from companies that are actually HQ’d in some of the markets that we're in. But they have teams in Connecticut, in Boston, smaller town in New Jersey that we just did a concierge request for. And with just a couple of weeks of lead time because we have this robust waiting list of properties that are just bursting with excitement to be serving companies. Now, we're making that happen through the National Concierge service.

‍

Jeff

Awesome. Well, that's great. Well, Amina. I don’t know, did you get any money from the elevator guy? I don't know. Like Publishers Clearing House.

‍

Amina

Yeah, there were multiple rounds. I'll put it to you this way. That series got us a ton of exposure, which led to some very, very good things, investor wise and otherwise too.

‍

Jeff

Awesome. It was good, It was a good segment, and you won. So that's good. All right.

‍

Well, Amina, it was great to meet you last week and spend some time at one of the properties this week and to catch up the old school way. I guess now Zoom is the old school way since we got to meet in real life.

‍

Amina

Yes, that is. Yeah.

‍

Jeff 

So best to you and best to Radious and the team and look forward to watching the story evolve or unfold I should say. Evolve. Unfold. It's a long week. 

‍

Alright, she's Amina, I'm Jeff. You're watching Work 20XX. Thanks for watching and thanks for listening on the podcast. See you next time. Take care.

‍

Cold Close

Out - Thank you.

Thank you. That was fun. You are the most researched podcast host I have ever had the pleasure.

‍