SPEAKER_01 0:00

Um, guys, welcome back to the Sunbelt Developers Podcast. My name is Tim Wright. I am a broker at Kushman Wakefield. And I'm I'm joined today by another broker at Kushman Wakefield, my buddy Zach Bean out of Dallas. And um we have the pleasure to interview a great in the office-based world, Jason McCann. Uh Jason is the founder of Very Desk or Very. You're probably familiar with their standing desk and now 300 plus products. So I mean it's it's really incredible. I'm really excited about this conversation just to hear the whole story. Uh Jason's actually a landlord now. He's gotten into the office investing game and um curious to get his take on the market. I know in Dallas y'all are just running away with it right now, and it's like 400,000 feet getting signed here and there and everywhere. And um just it's hard to hard to sell office space over there, right? A little better than it has been the last five or six years. But um, yeah, man. Well, Jason, thank thanks so much for for doing this and jumping in. I'd love for you to just kind of tell us a little bit of your background and uh for those that that don't know you, um, give us the the high of it.

SPEAKER_00 1:06

Yeah, the the at the high level growing up in the Galveston area, but ended up here in the Dallas market back in the late 90s during the dot-com crash. Uh, my business partner and I met and opened up a dot-com kind of when the whole dot-com thing was happening. And unfortunately built a dot com like everybody that was driving a lot of revenue, but we weren't profitable. So we did end up going bus there, but um ended up working with my business partner and helping him run his company. And you may know the Jemmy Industries for the big mouth billy bass singing fish that he created, and all those inflatables that you see out there on people's yards. And so uh Dan Stool is chairman of that company, is actually chairman of Very as well. And so um he's a great entrepreneur and been a great business partner and been a lot of fun to build this great business with. And so we've been able to do that and literally walked into Dan's office one day, and I was president of Jemmy, and he's you know chairman, and he's standing there at a cardboard box with back pain and talking about he needed a standing desk, and that turned into something really, really big now. With we've got four or five million users of our products all across the globe, so it's been an incredible journey.

SPEAKER_01 2:15

Wow. That's amazing. I I'm curious, did y'all invent the giant skeleton that's in everybody's yard now?

SPEAKER_00 2:23

Yes, that is uh that's Jemmy. So they've yeah, they've they have created uh Jemmy will create a thousand new products a year that they'll bring to market for Christmas and Halloween. And so if you go into a Home Depot, Lowe's or Walmart, uh Roger and Dan and the team are literally transforming it. And really LED lighting. So all the Mickey Mouse lights that project on your house, all that stuff is them. So yes, they make the holidays worth celebrating.

SPEAKER_02 2:50

There might be a skeleton or two in the lobbies of our buildings during Halloween that are you know 15 feet tall, so it's always pretty fun every time there's a holiday rolling around.

SPEAKER_01 3:01

So you'll have plenty, plenty to choose from. Yeah, my brother's a big fan of those. I think he bought three of them and they're all over his yard. But they I mean they've they run away. I mean, what is it, like 500 bucks for one of those? I know, it's much more affordable. Much more affordable. They didn't. Okay. Very cool. Well, um, okay, so you're you're helping with this, and you started getting into office furniture. Y'all made this uh standing desk. I think I so I I I told you I was listening to the Powers podcast, and you told this story about being on an airplane and some some magazine ad that kind of helped y'all take off. I'd love to hear that story.

SPEAKER_00 3:39

Yeah, we um, you know, we were standing at his cardboard, you know, at the cardboard box and trying to really, you know, what have we got here? And our assistant Rosemary at the time was supporting both of it. She's online on Google. This is back in 2012, trying to find Dan a standing desk and really couldn't find one. And so one day Dan walked in, he's like, I got an idea for a product. So as he started to describe something, I grabbed our industrial designer and literally the three of us sat there and we it was like a I got to be like an orchestra conductor and pull this idea out of Dan's mind. Could it just slide on the desk? And he wanted to keep this old banker type maroon mahogany thing he had that he was working behind. He's like, I just want this to go on top and just pull up the handles. And so, as we're working through this idea, this prototype, well, we're still running a huge Christmas and Halloween business. And so we work, we got our prototypes, got the ideas, and we're catch a plane. And Dan and I never really fly together. It was kind of one of those things you're like, I don't know, we just didn't, because it's a 24-hour trip. So we never ever sat together and flew. We were always on different planes and traveling at different times. But this happened to be the one time we were sitting there next to each other and we're passing back and forth a Wall Street Journal on the trip. And in it, Dr. Levine from the Mayo Clinic says, sitting is the new smoking. And we're like, this is a sign from God. There's something magical here. And at that, we land, we're working on the Christmas and Halloween product. Do you guys have the standing desk ready? You know, we got our prototypes and we want to see this thing, and it just shows up. And for us, it's like a newborn, so beautiful to us. But everybody else looked at this thing as rickety and wobbly and not perfect, but it's beauty in the eye of the beholders. And we saw something magical here. And we brought the prototypes in and we started testing them in our office, and people started to love it, you know, and they're like, Oh, I feel better, Dan. I feel I was like, I was like, I didn't think about standing up all day, but I was like, oh, this is actually kind of nice. You know, meetings are faster, and you just feel more energy when you get to sit and stand throughout the day. And the employees that we took it from, because we only had a few prototypes and we're showing it, started to say, Oh, I'm a little tired. I wish I had the standing desk back. And I was kind of like, Am I is it the bullshit meter going off, or is this something really happening here? We got something. And so at that moment, as an entrepreneur, as a business person, you got to get it outside your four walls and share it and hit the battlefield of commerce and get real feedback. And that's where here in the Dallas Fort Worth area, we're able to get feedback from Veriz and all these great companies.

SPEAKER_01 6:00

And we then we knew we're Are you um the treadmill guy at at the desk too?

SPEAKER_00 6:06

Um I haven't been able to do yet. I'm not. It was interesting. As we first started to do it, it was kind of like you know, you start in this really, it was around health and wellness. And we recognized that healthy people wanted to get healthier. And so the treadmill thing, but what we realize is very few people can do that all day. Just like you shouldn't stand all day. You need to have the flexibility to change. And so the treadmill desk seemed to work better for people that have it in a station or like a centralized area, or for an executive that may have one spot set up where he or she can walk for periods of the day, versus 200 people in an office and everybody's got a treadmill at their desk. It becomes almost like a hazard inside these organizations. So we learned that in like 2014, 2015, 2016, as we started to get more and more desks out there. And so there's a ton of companies out there that sell treadmills, and there's a lot of people that use them. Um, I'm not one of those that can walk, I can walk and talk, but I just don't do it at my desk. But there's a lot of people that do, but we don't we don't sell this.

SPEAKER_01 7:06

All right. Well, I, you know, I'd I'd hate for you to go through and tell like the entire story again. I think it was really well documented on the Powers Podcast. We can totally do that. I I have a number of questions I want to ask you. I know that you're really into AI. You're probably one of you know one of the executive leaders that's really on the edge of it and and pushing the envelope and I think challenging yourself to continue to learn how to implement in your own workflows and how you're doing it in across your company. And um would love to get into that. Um I think there was uh let me let me bring up my notes here. There was there was another one, you had this Oprah moment when y'all got this award for the fastest growing company where you like gave out 800-something desks or something. I'd I'd love to hear a bit more about that. Um Zach tells me you you're a painter, and there was we talked about this a second ago. You you have this painting behind you that um this is your you said running man.

SPEAKER_00 8:03

Yes, this is this is my uh I'm you know, I'm a John Gordon fan, and you kind of end up in that one word a year moment. Um you know, and you if you can rally around one year. And so a couple years ago, I was like, I gotta run more. And so I painted this, my running man, to remind me to get out there and run as much as possible and keep running. Um, and so that's my running man painting. But yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:27

How much time are you spending painting these days?

SPEAKER_00 8:31

Are you it's yeah, it's it's you know, it could be a few hours every week. It just sort of depends. It's I've got paint on my hands right now. I painted for a couple hours this morning, and I I love to get in there and attack some canvases, and it's a fun hobby. I started really back during COVID, and I'd done some tag art back in the 90s, you know, and I always like sketching, but it's fun to get in there and attack. And then what's been nice is we had all these buildings that we were starting to buy and built one, and we had a bunch of white walls and blank space, and they were, you know, this is all in 2016, 2018, 2019, and started that journey started happening, and my team came in and said, Hey, we need some art on the walls. And they were talking to these people. I was like, Oh, it's expensive. I know a really cheap artist, and my wife would love to get these canvases out of the garage and my house. And so I started bringing in my splatter paint as as uh my kids used to call it. And so I would, you know, bring it in and we hung it on the walls. And somebody walked by one day and said, Hey, are you selling the paintings? And it felt a little transactional in my mind. I was kind of like, Oh, I don't I don't want you to pay me. Why don't you just make a donation to Metrocrest, the the food bank here? Um, I knew Tracy Eubanks was over there and trying to raise money for a capital campaign and working with some great architects to build a building. I said, Hey, and they wrote like a $1,250 check. And it felt amazing that my art was able to go out there and help provide some value to them. And then I've raised over $150,000 now just donating my paintings to nonprofits, plus they hang in our buildings, plus some other art that gets to hang in our buildings. So it's been it's been a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_02 10:12

Plus, they hang in some brokers' offices. Uh there's a couple here that have them hanging in their in their offices where they've asked Jason to commission paintings for them, so it's pretty cool. Uh, but man, I I'll just tell you, it's made a world of difference in some of our buildings. Like you said, you're going down a corridor that's just got a white hallway, and now you've got all these cool paintings, it just adds a lot of interest, and um, it's been cool to see. I I have no idea how you have the time to do it though, Jason. You you're a man of many talents, and when you told us the other day that that painting took you 12, 13 hours, I mean, yeah, it's awesome. It's really cool. It's therapy. It's therapy, yeah. Definitely.

SPEAKER_01 10:50

Zach, you need one. We're gonna get your painting.

SPEAKER_02 10:53

You can tell by the wall behind me. I definitely uh definitely need one here. That's it. He just got promotions, so you know. Yeah. Yeah, I was gonna say Jason's a big reader too. I feel like continually reading books, posting about what you're reading, implementing that in your leadership. I was telling uh Tim, um, you're just I don't know where you it's almost like you have more hours in the day than most people uh to be able to do some of these things, as well as manage your company, manage the real estate. So it's really cool. What have you been reading lately that has been just on top of your mind as far as just like something that maybe's made made you think or things that you're implementing in your business?

SPEAKER_00 11:28

Yeah, I kind of I kind of look at reading as always like what is the gap you know you have right now that you're trying to fill. And so um if you're in that sort of scrappy mindset, I always love what Ryan Holliday's got, you know, the obstacle is the way, the stoic stuff, or in and I have the Marcus Aurelius book literally on my nightstand. I will just flip to it. It's that and the Bible are literally on my nightstand. And sometimes I will just flip to something and I don't even know what it'll be, the book of Matthew, or I'm flipping through what Marcus said, and it's just a quote in there, a little bit of a nudge in the morning or in the evening when I'm just trying to like let the brain relax. Um, and so I I think about those things. I had uh Ryan Holliday puts out a great book list all the time. Um, and so I uh he had recommended I'd seen the movie years ago, but the road, and I did that on a drive the other day. I was going down to visit my dad in the Houston area, and it was just, you know, you can put Audible on it for me about 1.5, and it was just a great reminder that you do carry the fire, grit, resilience, and power. And so that was just a great little four-hour blast there. Um, you know, you've got Amanda Schneider's book. I just shared one with you, Zach, as a matter of you just thinking about the future of work and trying to navigate that. And there's some others that are classics, like there's an art and somebody had recommended the other day, and I just ordered an old copy of it by Duffy, which is on the future of work written 20 years ago and navigating some things that we're talking about right now as we think about those things. So I try to blend it with sort of traditional like business stuff, and I love what Patrick Lincioni has written. And so I I'll go back to his books, you know, and you talk about the ideal team player or the five dysfunctions of a team. But I was going through some stuff on the ideal team player and hungry, humble, and smart, and honing in on those principles as I'm getting to go up and meet with Patrick and his team in September. And so I'm just I I lean on some over and over again, and others I just tap into. But it's a lot of it's business stuff or motivational, you know. And I'm not a I'm not a big um, I actually I don't do a lot of podcasts, I do more of the books just the way I do it, or I do tidbits of of short, brief stories, just the way my brain works. Um, and that helps me a lot from that standpoint.

SPEAKER_01 13:56

How do you go about finding what you're gonna read?

SPEAKER_00 14:00

Yeah, so it a lot of it's recommendations from people that, you know, it's kind of like y'all asking me, and I always tell people it's like, what are you looking for right now? Like I was meeting with a young executive the other day, and I could tell he was looking for leadership coaching and training. And so I and I will reach out to friends and just ask, what are you what are you reading and what are you connecting on right now? That's and they'll send me books and things that we're all sharing with each other. And I think that's just kind of you know how how I get it. There's a few um authors out there um that'll send out their lists and stuff, and I quickly take a glance at it. Um and so that's just that's how I find myself.

SPEAKER_01 14:39

That's good. That's really good. Um I so big fan of AI, and I've started really really getting into quad co-work. And um I I'm just I'm curious what you're doing these days on workflow. And it's been maybe a couple months since I don't know. I think you were on Powers back in April or or March, and I know you had a bunch of stuff. I just feel like with how fast AI is changing, it's like every couple months there's new capabilities, there's new models, and probably new things that you're utilizing it for. I'm curious what um how you're implementing it or what we've got new things we're trying.

SPEAKER_00 15:17

Yeah, we've got an entire team working on it. And so I would say the team started pushing me into AI very early on, um, probably almost a year ago, I'm guessing on the timeline here, um, and started to, you know, with the language learning models, and these are the things that go out. And then I started to personally mess around with oh, ChatGPT and what's going on, and and Claude and some others. And so that those two things started happening. So for us, we started to the low-hanging fruit, and we're seeing a lot of that on the process innovation. It's like, oh, these tools, a lot my team is using in Claude was able to help just process stuff and take people's work days down, you know, knock out eight hours here on some of these mundane tasks here and for our teams in in Taiwan as well. And so that was sort of the process side. Then it became sort of, well, how does the how do we help drive revenue? And I think we're all looking for that. And so visualization tools became the next thing. It was like, hey, we've got space planning design, and we do it for all of our clients as they're navigating either spaces within our building. So inside of our bear space, we can do a quick test fit, and we're using the Revit files and doing all the layout. But sometimes people can't visualize what that actually looks like. I mean, y'all are in the real estate business and you kind of can walk into a blank space and see it. So now we've been able to amp up the visualization tools to make it almost feel like it's really real, and that has helped a lot. And so it's helped on the the various space buildings, but also we have transformed, I think, over 6,000 offices across the country. And a lot of it, again, was the Revit files, and you're looking at the CAD files and all the designs for the clients. But now we can take it a step further. Now it's got photorealistic, it's got people interacting, and so those tools are helping our sales team members communicate better with clients, with our A and D firms that we work with. And so those visualization tools, and some of it's built on Nana Banana and all the latest platforms, some of they're testing on some new things, but that's starting to really work. And then you're starting to see um all the financial modeling has been unbelievable in Claude. And so you're looking at our inventory and forecasting and all the data side of it. And even when I take our leasing and what's the NOI and all that stuff, and I can take what Zach's given me, and I can actually dump it into my little model on the other side and double check everything that y'all are telling me, which is a fast way for me to learn too as a building owner. Um, we also we were out there looking at, we put a uh bid in on a building with y'all, and we're working with the team, and we didn't we didn't get it, but at least it was able for us to do quicker modeling that I think is way faster than it was just two years, you know, just a year ago. And so all these different things I think are are happening. We're learning a lot very, very quickly, and we're gonna continue to push it like everybody is. And so process innovation, visualization tools, and the third area is really getting our sales team better qualified leads. And so, as you think about the marketing efforts that we're going, the advertising that we're doing on TV, on online, we're able to get more and more better data about what's resonating with consumers, leveraging our third-party firms like our ad agency at PMG, and leveraging the AI tools that are there. We can quickly test ads that are working and not working. And so all these things are all happening really fast across it. And the other thing is we've been able, we've got two AI developers we brought on board. So I see we're making on top of the team that's got to lean into it. So we've added two more personnel that are just focused on developing, plus, we've got seven or eight people developing, plus another 40 in the company at least are on the front lines leveraging, building out models in their areas. Oh, it's yeah, it's probably over well over 50 people, over a third, um, are doing it now. Everybody's got access to it, but you've got 50 that are really hardcore in it. So it's I just see the flywheel effect continuing to kick in across the organization.

SPEAKER_01 19:15

How do you all handle just token usage? And I'm sure you've got enterprise subscriptions going. Uh have y'all bumped up against usage?

SPEAKER_00 19:23

No, we've been limited. We're like now. You've got to be doing a lot. We're full throttle.

SPEAKER_01 19:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:28

I I kind of look at we're in the we're in the innovation ideation. You know, you think about you got to innovate and ideate and explore as we think about those things, and you kind of innovate or die, is my mindset. So this is one of those areas we haven't hit the nobody's it hasn't broken the bank yet.

SPEAKER_01 19:45

So that I No, it's I we've all seen those headlines where it's like some some developer left you know Claude running in circles and it you know burned half a million dollars or maybe more than that on the on the budget.

SPEAKER_00 19:56

I'm assuming my guys have the checks and balances back there because it nothing's nothing's cracked, nothing's broken the bank.

SPEAKER_01 20:02

No, that's good. Um yeah, I just I'm thinking it this past week, you know, from talking from a sales standpoint. So I'm a tenant rep, Zach's, you know, landlord rep doing you know, helping you lease buildings, but I'm constantly trying to find new tenants or whatnot. So just this past week, took canvassing, like going to buildings, I take a picture of a directory, and I took probably 10 pictures of directories that day. I threw it all into a folder, and I just told Claude, here's exactly what I'm looking for. And it made like this whole map, and it was like, here's your like top five hot leads, here's the warm leads, and um mapped it all out. Here's like, you know, all this group got investment, or this group just expanded. They added five new offices. So it's uh I was blown away by the the product. Or like you just there's no limits, you just just test it out, like see how how far it can actually go.

SPEAKER_02 20:55

And we're using it too on the agency side as well. I mean, you can take a rent rule now and you can drop it into Cloud and you can create a template of what a stacking plant should look like, and it will auto-populate to a T with back-end expirations, with back-end rent escalations. I mean, everything will be uniform or even like tenor profile.

SPEAKER_01 21:16

Like, hey, give me how how are these companies doing? How's like headcount growth? How's credit? Like, I'm sure they can help with that. Oh, yeah, it's amazing. Um just on the visual note, there was a a sublease we had with um a pretty notable software group. Everything had to be really confidential. And I normally take my drone through spaces and like fly around and create like a nice video. So they were like, no drone, no video, you can take a couple pictures and that's it. And my video guy grabbed the pictures and made them look like a a very seamless video, like like dolly shots, everything was smooth. And it was like, you know, if it's a conference room and it was panning, it would probably put an extra whiteboard on the wall or something like that. predict what the rest of the space looked like, but you can't tell. I mean it's it's unbelievable. It's like a three minute video.

SPEAKER_00 22:06

But I think that's what we've all got to continue to do. Is it right now we're still figuring it out, but it it's definitely a tool that's going to make everybody more productive. It's going to make the re you know the the visualization for the for the clients on both sides. It's going to help create a win-win faster for everybody. And so I think all those things are positives. Allows a quick test fit because a lot of people just can't quite feel it until they see it and even until you build it sometimes. But at least these tools will continue to help ultimately drive down costs and and help clients.

SPEAKER_01 22:40

So it's going to be a win-win. So question for you as an office broker, Zach, also being an office broker, I you have a very, very unique perspective on both the market and workplace. You've you've mastered one portion of the commercial real estate world which is furniture and workplace solutions. And you probably would say, no, I haven't mastered it yet. We're constantly refining, of course, but you have a very interesting perspective on how people purchase furniture and how they utilize it. But now you're a landlord and you're seeing how people make leasing decisions and term length and how much space they're taking. And I'm I'm just very curious what maybe you've seen in the last 24 months and where where do you see maybe the next 36 months of both um both companies decisions to lease space and then what trends you're seeing and how they're utilizing space.

SPEAKER_00 23:31

Yeah. So we had at 1.1 million square feet of class A space here in in DFW and now we've got 6000 one of our buildings was sold. And so it's been an interesting dynamic here. I think when we came into the market in 2017-2018 we just assumed our our hypothesis was two to three year leases, fully furnished spaces, low TI, because we would do no regret investments into the building we put a power system into the ceiling. We'd have power drop from the ceiling we'd have walls that move we were just trying to crack the code on what the future of work looked like we had done work at Google and Meta and all these great companies and seen what they were thinking. And again this was all pre-COVID as the world shifted and everything you know got totally disrupted we're like oh it tested a lot of our theories out there and some worked some didn't but what what's happened here in the last 24 months I think is leasing terms have gotten much longer. And so we've gone into a market where oh it's no longer three to five it's like seven, 10, 12. We've signed a few 12-year leases, which has been incredible. And I didn't anticipate those the other thing on the flip side we've also got um uh we call it suites but uh the industry might call it co-working but we have individual offices but it kind of in a in a different way because in our building in South Lake it's about 3500 square feet we had a floor that Microsoft had leased during COVID and we had it fully in and had knock rooms and all these things. They didn't end up occupying it very often. And so when their lease ended we had this space and so we just put up our walls and our walls we call them quick flex walls but it's a seven and a half feet they move and we can move them around the space and then we built some a little bit of no regret some some offices and meeting rooms and we just turned it on and it immediately leased. And so that also inside of a building and that was 2000 square feet in less than nine months all the rooms filled up and so we're like wow some of those also were 20 person companies that just wanted like a one or you know a one year lease but now they're moving into a larger space inside our building. So it becomes this feeder program. Some became space for our current tenants that came down into it. And so I think what we're seeing is inside these ecosystems there's a demand for a little bit of everything. And so you think about longer term leases a little more traditional you know as people are thinking about it. But they do want the space to be able to change over time. And so we think about building X percent and it's different for everybody of collision points, meeting spaces break areas the investment inside of the of the office space then we use our furniture and our furniture the way we design it is it's so it can move and so we've created let's say a cube systems furniture but a cube system that's basically eight parts and so we can move it and change it over a weekend. So if a client comes in and through MA they're adding 25 people to an organization we can actually come in and transform it for them the power drops from the ceiling the data comes in and they can walk in on Monday and 20 more stations are done. So we think of space as a service as it's evolving. And so we've been able to sell product to co-working operators to building owners we're also seeing building owners come to us and they may get a four-year lease or a five year lease and they want it fully furnished we're able to provide financing it's through a through a third party but they can basically lease the furniture and bundle it in to the building and then at the end of the term this company comes in and takes care of it. It just all disappears so I I think flexibility is not going anywhere. People do want long-term leases there's a there's a market for that seven to 10 to 12 year leases that's not going anywhere. There's also this market for three to five year leases at a at a premium price there's also a market for what people would call co-working or suites for executive offices and that whole ecosystem can feed up inside the portfolio for these asset owners the key is can the capital markets reward that you know as they think about an entire building if if if the building owners decide to sell it but the whole system works. And so we've been proving it ourselves and then we've been able to do business now with lots of people on the furniture side but we're proving it ourselves you know we bought the building in South Lake in 2019 from Blackstone as they were exiting the market and this was 90% of the vacancy in South Lake was our building sat on 22 acres it's the most gorgeous thing when you pull up it's got you know pine trees because of the way the old creek bed it's gorgeous. And we couldn't believe nobody wanted to lease this thing I was still learning the difference between a single tenant building and a multi-tenant building like I'm that ignorant person but my business partner Dan knew and thank God we had y'all on board to help talk that through and we worked with Corgan and and it was a great partnership. But that allowed us to learn and we invested the you know the $20 million to bring this thing to life and multi-tenant it and then we learned throughout all these leases that there's this ecosystem and it works inside the building and so we're over 80% and we'll probably be at 100 by the end of the year just with the activity in the market. And so that's kind of I see the market happening and I see the ecosystem continuing to evolve here in in the area.

SPEAKER_01 29:03

Yeah. How involved you get from I mean from the leasing standpoint but also you have a furniture company and you kind of alluded to this but I mean do you give people a discount on very furniture like hey we we can get you all hooked up and set up pretty easily what that dynamic is.

SPEAKER_00 29:22

Yeah so we do it turnkey so our our business model in the furniture industry I didn't realize this back in 2013 2014. We almost said shit this is too hard because everybody's the you know the the big guys steel case and H and I all sell through dealers they all have this opaque pricing model list and discount they got gift cards and golf trips and all these things and it's real like confusing and it's like sometimes it's like 80% off list. It's no there's no price list. It's just it's crazy. And in 2014 we're like okay but Tesla's Elon's building something different in the automotive industry he's selling direct why don't we just sell the Verades direct and so we ended up through luck or whatever selling our product directly to the end user. And so that's kind of been our mindset is that ultimately the future is going to be a direct relationship with the brands. That's just how life works. We just think ultimately Amazon was going to do it Wafer is going to why why doesn't very try to do it and so that's what Dan and I were talking through and Craig and everybody and it's well you can have a direct relationship. And so that's worked well for us. And we've been a disruptor out there and we've been able to transform you know we've driven well over 2 billion plus on our way to three plus in in top line revenue and got millions and millions of users of our product all over but it's all been this direct relationship. And when the clients like we did a project for Southwest Airlines way back and they're like hey you've got to come give us a space plan I was like I didn't what's a space plan? Like it was just what? And you know so we hired a kid out of Texas Tech and he created the first space plan for us and then they said you got to come install the furniture I'm like we make everything so you can install it. And that got us and we literally just showed up and we installed the furniture ourselves. So that got us into the installation services. And so I think having that direct relationship gives you the feedback and allows you to navigate your business. And so we've been able to do that with the offices. So we're able to say hey we come in we can offer it fully furnished and transform the space and bundle it into the lease and we just think that's part of how the model's gonna ultimately be not everybody agrees with it today but we've proven that it can work and long term we see it as that's how the the service will be. And then when you need highly customized that's available if you need you know if you need something short term that's available. And so it I think the ecosystem will ultimately be that way and we'll see if we're right or wrong someday.

SPEAKER_02 31:49

And and it's interesting because as part of our leases you know you have groups that say hey I need to be in in like three months as we all know when you're thinking about building out space, the permitting process, the design, CDs I mean it can be impossible but with this furniture solution, I mean we've moved in tenants of 20 to 30 thousand square feet within 45 days from execution of a lease. Because we're able to you know Jason and team were really forward thinking and putting in a lot of the infrastructure with ceiling tiles, lights, grid, power, all these things the drop downs, polished concrete floors and so just everything else that we have to do as far as just making that space ready and available for the tenant is really sign the lease, getting the program right and then of course if they want a sheetrock wall or two or conference rooms we can allow allowances on longer leases but that if that made people be able to move really quick and has been extremely effective and we've signed 10 year deals that moved in in 45 days after release execution which is it's amazing somewhat unheard of I feel like it is I mean we normally tell people seven months maybe eight what design to build and all that.

SPEAKER_00 33:02

Yeah we tell them to be safe four months is perfect because then they can build anything like that's the sweet spot. But yeah that to have that ability and that flexibility and the other thing is you think about for asset owners that have an ecosystem inside their portfolio um we can hold house executives in one area while we get the rest of the space one of our long leases that um the team did for us the executive kind of took over our office because they wanted to test the market and see if they even wanted to be inside of the South Lake market and recruit talent and they weren't sure and they started with the 5,000 and now they've got over 5000 square feet with us. Just kind of took one of our suites double checked that I everything we said was true because the gym's 10,000 square feet and the traffic's amazing and the is cover part like all the little stuff that you say but they got to sort of try before they buy and boom that's turned into a great lease. We've had others come in and say hey we want to use somebody else's furniture which at first I was you know my ego kind of was like what you know that's not even possible. But I also took a step back as an entrepreneur as a and just said well let's see what they choose and why. And it was just interesting you know they they they chose some stuff their employees actually preferred ours but it was allowing us an opportunity to just learn okay this is what somebody else's perspective that's less than 5% of our portfolio or it's a super high tech thing that we just don't make. And so it's just been interesting for us to learn the industry from the client side to understand how the tenant's perspective, what are they thinking about, what's important to them because for them it's recruiting and retaining talent, right? It's how am I gonna how is my company going to navigate change over the next five years because some disruption's gonna happen. So how do I put flexibility into my space into my lease and to to do those things and then us as a as a building owner so we say hey we have to make this work for everybody. How do we work with a great partner on property management and get all those things right? How do we you know we've added EV chargers to our buildings you know for the for the cars and we're just learning right it's like okay so they they're it's just been it's been great.

SPEAKER_01 35:13

What's been your appetite to buy more buildings and just some context in Atlanta there's there's been some wealthy individuals that have been able to to buy a handful of buildings but there's still there still is that kind of pretend extend hangover in in the capital markets where there's there's owners that are kind of testing values they're they're putting buildings on the market and trying to get a number that they need to at least you know get out at a maybe to save some of their basis but um I'm I'm curious like I'm sure Zach is sending you plenty of stuff but uh I'm curious what the capital markets are doing out in Texas just with all the it's hot I mean it's it's hot here.

SPEAKER_00 35:51

You know I think for us we have we know when it's right like we can walk in and feel it. You know we've we like I said we've made a couple bids we just haven't gotten any and we would focus here in DFW you know if there was somebody in Atlanta that y'all loved that wanted to do something with us we just that's not my market that I personally know. And so but our brand carries a lot of cachet and so we've had people approach us we haven't done anything yet outside the market but could they leverage our brand and what we do and we may play a smaller part with somebody that's really trying to rethink could we build something big here? Because again it's the it's the details to you that convergence of and y'all know this really well of hospitality amenities blended with workspace. You got to get that right my my undergrad was in hotel restaurant management at the University of Houston and so and I was I was in the nightclub industry and what you recognize in the nightclub industry is getting the energy just right. And so if you get the energy just right everybody's having a good time. And so in an office building we always talk about like you know in our buildings even our headquarters at when we had even at Jemmy's headquarters is always getting the energy right for the employees because you're recruiting right people are coming in to interview and if it feels good it smells good in the lobby like oh this is kind of nice there's somebody great at the front that greets you and get you a coffee or whatever. It's like how do we have those moments in our buildings and so we've been very highly amenitized on the hospitality side so I've got great team members number one but you walk in there's music playing when you walk up so if you go up to a a great restaurant or nightclub like there's music kind of happening like oh I can't wait to get in there. So we have music pumping when you're coming out now it's not like a nightclub DJ but today it's Friday so it's probably some 80s or 90s. Maybe some James Taylor from the 70s will drop on the loop today but but as you walk up to the building there's energy as you walk into the lobby there's music I didn't know what biophilia was until an ATT workplace strategy person walked our building and she's like where is your biophilia I was like I don't ma'am I don't even know what you're talking about. Got to bring nature plants into the space yeah plants so Natura HQ comes in and they got the plants are here and they changed the space that was a long time that was 10 years ago but it was just like we learned all these things so you get the plants right and the music in our in our building in South Lake we have a you know uh third party that runs the coffee bar and so liberation's in there and they got the breeze and everything here in our building in Capel it's only 180,000 it doesn't make sense but we've got this these two killer machines drip coffee you can make your own latte just hit a button it's got all the sweeteners and everything so you've got that you've got the bevy uh water machines you can get your bubbly with a little bit of watermelon flavor or still water like it's all there self-served and the grab and go marketplace is great and then all the all the drivers DoorDash everybody drops into one clean little area you got dry cleaning drop off it's like this but it's all hospitality amenities and then to go over the board on the gym so my thing about the gyms was like it can't be like a a low-end fairfield's two broken treadmills it's got to be like nice like the nice stuff and so we've got a 3500 square foot gym here our building itself like has a 10,000 square foot gym. Larry Norris former trainers train high network people in our gym like they're in there we got physical therapy in the gym like it's a it's legit and when you walk in the in the locker rooms it's got towel service there's shampoo and stuff and in the in the stall like it's got enough room to change it's not it's like not awkward at all. And the restrooms all have music playing so that's not awkward. Buildings just those little details they don't want to spend the money it's like put music everywhere get the energy just right grip great people and all of a sudden the crowd builds a crowd and it starts to just there they start recruiting. I think that's been our best other recruiting tool be other CEOs that reach out to Zach and everybody are like hey I've got somebody I want to to put their company in our building it with us and it's God that's that's what you want.

SPEAKER_01 39:52

That's special I think of is the Chick-fil-A and energy and y'all you'll have created in it an atmosphere that that really really works. What you said a term earlier you said was it no regrets investments? Did I say that right?

SPEAKER_00 40:06

Yeah or yeah just a no regret I love that yeah you think about we look at a building and you're like wow could anybody else move in here what are those no regret investments that we would deploy and so in our building in um Southlake it already uh Blackstone already put in a brand new drop ceiling so we made sure it had all the latest LEDs but then we just like God we don't want to rip out the ceiling but we kind of like open areas so in certain areas we did open it up for some of the the walking areas but instead we we put a 10 by 10 power grid into the ceiling and the power just drops down and so we can kind of and it hides you just unclick it and it disappears but we now have this no regret infrastructure and then we took where are the natural spaces for some of the meeting rooms and collaboration areas and invested in those we worked with Eurist to create a state of the art cafe. So now we have great menus in the mornings and lunch and all of that like those are no regret for us because we think about it like what would we want when we walk in there? And then what would the next company want? And what would the next what are those no regret investments that you're willing to make we started to the some of the pine trees were like wow at some point you know when the arborist was out there well in 15 years this one, this one this one we're like wow so let's plant the trees now for 15 years from now. So the next generation of trees are already planted out there with all the Texas native plants so this ecosystem will run beyond my lifetime in my mind. And so I think that's how we think about no regret investing.

SPEAKER_01 41:34

That's awesome.

SPEAKER_02 41:35

Zach you're about to say something I was just going to piggyback what Jason said regarding the amenities something that people have come to really enjoy about both buildings and I feel like you're seeing it more and more now with more renovations is just a lot of common area touchdown points. I mean both properties every property that Jason's owned they've put just a lot of just meeting places within the common area. I mean our common area may be larger than our factor states right because we all talk about common area factor and you know we we do put a cap on that because if we didn't it would it would really juice those rentable square footages but you know the idea being that the employees have a place to get out of their office and go hang out within the amenity base and it doesn't feel awkward or weird. I mean when you're walking South Lake and you're going end to end all these tours they look around they say oh this is just these are just places we can sit and hang out and it's just you see people just using them all the time. I mean it it really creates an a unique energy to the buildings and again I think that that was very forward thinking now we're seeing a lot of renovations but this was five six seven years ago and just really making it a space where people wanted to be outside of their their office and not be at their Cube which again I think is just really played well and it shows really really well on the tours.

SPEAKER_01 42:55

Jason what are you seeing like what's what are the trends in workplace design? I'll I'll give you one one that I'm seeing a lot I and I've I keep telling people I'm like walls are back. And I know walls might be a cuss word in your in your world because y'all have your own wall system but it seems like everybody went home and they started working on Teams calls and then now they're back in the office and they're still on Teams calls and they need private spaces to do that. So it seems I mean just more and more we get test fits. It's like hey we need we need more you know breakout rooms we need more huddle we need conference and um it might not be everybody has their own private office but that seems to be a lot more of a demand.

SPEAKER_00 43:33

Yeah I think um flexibility is here to stay and so whether you whether you're hybrid three to five days a week you know three or four days a week we've got like the gap is in our in our building here in Capel. They've got team members because we're in DFW that are flying in from all over the country because their main hubs are on the west coast to east coast and they drop in here, they're here for a few days. So flexibility and having those suites available are meeting spaces collaboration spaces spaces that can have 50 to 100 people For training and education areas that might be common to the building and allow everybody to use it versus it's inside the office, I think is important. We are seeing more and more sheetrock spaces, but again, it and thinking about the sizes, is it a team room or an office? And it could be both, and flexing it over time. And so we think about it as like, well, let's figure out a few sizes that start to work. And so our teams continue to tweak what sizes those are. But what are those sizes? Because ultimately this might be an office or this might be a team room, or it's a little bit of both. And it just depends on the week or the day. And so, how do we think about space as a service evolving? Um, we did recognize we had all these people say, What do you have cubes? Like the cube also kind of came back with the because of sound, you know, and also I just want a little bit of privacy. And so we started to try to work with some of the big cube manufacturers that are out there, and they're like, oh, it's 1800 parts and it's this price, and lead time. Like, oh my God. So we just kind of invented our own, and we just kind of quick connect them, and you and I, because I I can't build anything, and I can build everything we make. So I just snap them together, the power runs through, the data runs through, and you just move like literally it can be space division and just create areas that tuck around soft seating and breakout areas. So think of it, or it can actually be more dense for a call center, or it can be flex. So we think of it as space has to have these no-regret bones of the space that you've got built out. So you've got your break areas, your restrooms, your meeting areas, your collaboration areas, a bank of offices or spots, some pods that may drop in, whether it's a pod like we sell, or people pre-build individual Zoom or team rooms. Because again, if you're in an open plan, sometimes you need 45 minutes of heads-down space to concentrate with your clawed partner on your project that you're working on. And so, but in the open plan too, you know, you so we and you got to take the call with mom, you can drop into a space and do that. And so I see people continuing to have those touchdown spots throughout their spaces as well.

SPEAKER_01 46:03

Okay, so you're your man of faith. I think that's you don't shy away from that. I I really wanted to ask you just how you've been able to manage so many people and how do you handle stressful decisions. I'm curious how that how that played into just how you lead. And I I've heard some some there was this fintech CEO I met once, and he was like, whenever something comes up, I just I crawl under my desk and I pray. And he's like, he goes and finds a desk, and that's where he like has his moment. I'm curious how, and there's some people who are like, I'll do a three-day fast. I need like a full reset. And there might not be any magic that you do, it might just be a way that you live your life. But I'm I'm curious how how that's played into how you've been able to grow a company and um just how you keep grounded.

SPEAKER_00 46:51

Yeah, I think um we we obviously had the most incredible growth, fastest growing company in DFW, and unbelievably blessed. Um and then God had another plan, life had another plan. We went for it and doubled down and opened showrooms across the country, and COVID hit right as we were leading into full office and disrupting the entire furniture industry. And our work from home business, thank God we were in Texas and we had our e-commerce business that kept us alive, but it challenged us on our business model. As we were going through it, it was like, well, people don't need to walk into a 3,000 square foot showroom on the third floor of an office building and see four salespeople sitting here. Like, that's not what this is about. We can leverage today's technology with virtual and have a virtual tour, and people will fly into Dallas and see our stuff and like we just reimagine the model. But I think about, you know, as as I was laying there every night, very stressed out as a CEO, and you go through this all the time in life with your kids and all those things. And I was like, oh, I'm just the way my brain works, it just starts running. And so, you know, my wife said, if you're all stressed out, you know, every night, I what do you how do your people feel? And what I realized as an introvert, um, Lencioni talks about this a lot, as a CEO, you're the chief reminding officer. And so you've got to communicate with clarity what's going on in your mind and how are you gonna get your team through the storm? Because no communication is a choice, but that doesn't help anybody. Even if it's tough communication, tough love, like we're gonna get through. We may be like scrappy pirates and we're eating the rats, but we're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna make it to the shore and we're gonna get through this thing, whatever this storm is. So to take this beautiful sailboat that we had, and we hit a hurricane during 2020, but so we're able to navigate all those changes. But I I tell my team, you know, I don't take it lightly, the decisions, you know, they will say the CEO job is amazing and the title's great, but it's really it's it can be very lonely. It's uh, you know, because you you do carry all those families that are are their livelihoods are based upon the decisions you make, and you make the best decision you can for the families. And so I I think about it, you know, there's books um that that talk about you know getting it out of your mind and into your heart and whether you believe that's God or the energy that you personally carry, like you try to force yourself to speak from the heart, to to put it into your heart and and in your breathing and meditation. You know, I just try to put it in here and trust this. And so whenever I trust this, and I'm touching my chest right now, so whenever I touch, whenever I trust this, I usually get it as close as I can. Every time I've kind of I'm not sure, I I get it wrong. And so I I continue to do that. I do the I make the best decisions I can. It's not always perfect, it's you know, it's hard. Um, but I think, you know, I I think we do, I I think I've I think I've done a good job, you know. Maybe somebody else would have fired me 15 times, but we've navigated it through and we're we've served so many, right? We have transformed thousands of companies. We've impacted lots of people that say that, you know, that I mean the number one word they write when they write about our product is love. And that's what you realize is you're creating lifelong fans out there and you're helping them get healthier and happier, more productive, but you're helping them build the company of their dreams through the services that you're provided. So you're a steward of that, and you're helping all these great families navigate their careers, navigate building the business, you know, their lives, and you're coaching and mentoring and doing the best you can to grow. And so you do all those things, and then you get, you know, you get to give and serve. And so we've been able to take even like some of our furniture, and so we might have less than 1% of our stuff gets returned, but we ended up with like a bunch of veradus at one point, and we started giving them away. And so once in a while we get some stuff, we will give it to nonprofits, and we've given away over $8 million worth of product to nonprofits, so you're serving the community and some volunteer time off that we give out to our teams or it's like all those things I think about, and you wrestle with it all the time. Um, we just had a men's health panel downstairs for Men's Health Month, and five of our uh men that inside the organization got up there, and you would call it being very vulnerable about life and having conversations. And there's 60 or 70 people in the audience, all of our team, you know, our team that was in that afternoon, and men, women, you know, some tears and happy, and you know, but just the stories that they shared just reminds me we're doing a lot of things right. Everybody's doing the best they can, and we're navigating business, life, and we're all on the journey together. So I think about that at I'm 56 now. So my my perspective of hoping that I've got at least 44 more laps here, maybe 54 if we get to 110. But whatever that is, it's like, what is the impact? And that's my word of the year is impact. What is the impact I can make in their lives? Um, what is the impact they can make then in the community? And that ripple effect I hope will carry on. And those are the things I think about when I'm making decisions.

SPEAKER_01 52:02

I think that's special. And and it shows, I mean, the the fruit of what you've you've put together, and um, I think just intentionality, people can tell. And um, did you include the eat the rats in one of your emails to the team?

SPEAKER_00 52:18

It's been a it's been a rallying. I would say, well, we hit it when we had about 20 employees, our website was crashing, and we were in Sky Mall magazine, we're the number one selling item, people ripping out pages, our website. We can't even ship, like the we're out there every night at 10 o'clock slapping FedEx, it's going crazy. And I said, hey, got everybody in the room and say, hey, this is like, and I have not ran an Iron Man like my CFO has, so we'll give Craig the shout out. But I'm like, hey, this is like an Iron Man, and we've hit the water, and it's fucking cold, and it's gonna hurt and it's burning, but we've only hit the water. And if you think this is hard, the next two legs are gonna be even worse. So if you can't handle this water right now sloshing around in your mouth, then just tap out and I will help you find another job. I will be your best reference and I will get you something. Don't worry about it. And nobody quit. Like all 20 of them were like, wow, the website suddenly started working, and we started shipping, and the container showed up, and oh my goodness.

SPEAKER_01 53:20

But that's a good speech. That kind of gets me fired up right now.

SPEAKER_00 53:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 53:23

So if you're you've got we've got a road ahead.

SPEAKER_00 53:26

It's that water's cold, but just keep paddling. You're gonna get there.

SPEAKER_01 53:31

Are you gonna do an Iron Man at some point?

SPEAKER_00 53:33

Uh I hope I do something, you know. I need to get a I need to get to get a marathon. I support runners like Zach, the the real runners, but I I'm a I'm a trotter out there. And so um I haven't done the big one yet, but I'm like, you know, I'm getting there.

SPEAKER_01 53:50

So I quit running for six months after my first marathon. Yeah. I just said, this is it. This is done. I remember I had like tears running down my face at mile 20. I uh I had a kidney stone that Monday pass. I got sick because I went to the hospital and I didn't think I was gonna run it. It was on a Saturday. No, it was on a Sunday. I woke up Saturday feeling pretty good. And um, you know, if if you don't run, your legs get cold. And my IT band started flaring up on like mile 14. So I had like knives in my knees for like two hours. I remember like I had my airpods in, so I called my wife. I was like, I don't know what I'm gonna do. I think I'm gonna quit. She's like, don't do it, just keep going. And uh it was a very emotional four and a half hour experience. But I do remember on mile 25, there was a guy that I passed who was not wearing shoes and he had some blood on his feet because you don't run 26 miles without shoes without you know a couple of cuts. But I saw that and I was like, all right, I'm good. I can do it through. I don't know, I don't know why he was doing it without shoes, but um he felt like he needed to. So Jason, this has been really awesome. I I'm I appreciate you guys reaching out.

SPEAKER_00 54:56

This is fun.

SPEAKER_01 54:57

Yeah, thank you. We'll have to have you come be a a landlord. We we've got a lot of amazing buildings here, and you know, some landlords are are figuring it out. They're figuring out that there's hospitality that'll get you new tenants.

SPEAKER_00 55:08

We're happy to host any of them, you know, if they just want to pop in and see what we're doing and see if there's something. But yeah, we're uh we love Atlanta, so love to we're doing a lot of business here, so we'd love to help any of them.

SPEAKER_01 55:19

Good deal.

SPEAKER_00 55:20

Zach, you got anything else?

SPEAKER_02 55:22

No, I'm just gonna say thank you, Tim, for uh for reaching out and uh your podcast is great, man. It's been cool to cool to follow what you're doing, and thanks for letting us be a part. And Jason, thanks for making time too. My pleasure.

SPEAKER_01 55:34

No, it's been awesome. Jason, you're our first virtual episode ever. Really? I I was I fought I fought so hard to not do anything virtual. But um, I know you we were planning on coming out and actually visiting you, and we were gonna line up, you know, four or five different interviews. But I had well, I just have to do it. I it it's bumping up. My wife and I are about to have our second kid. Hey, congrats. She's just like, thank you, thank you. She's like, please don't don't leave right now. Like just hang around. We've got a year and a half old. Yeah, don't leave right now.

SPEAKER_00 56:04

But next time you're in town, we'll do a catch up.

SPEAKER_01 56:07

Please. That'd be awesome. Good deal.

SPEAKER_00 56:09

Thank you so much. Thanks again.

SPEAKER_01 56:11

Yeah, we'll we'll definitely have to do it again soon. Thank you, Ted. Appreciate you soon. Thanks, Jason. Thanks, Bill.