One of my tenants recently told me I should have been an academic. This came up after she appeared in my doorway and asked if she could bounce a few things off me.
I was incredibly flattered, but it occurred to me that, while it is true I spend a lot of time thinking about the real estate industry, what she actually experienced was the value of community and repeat interactions.
This is what tenants get when participating in shared office spaces. Tenants develop relationships that not only help them identify who to ask what, but also simply give them the channels and opportunities to have these conversations.
There is often an inherent barrier to picking up the phone, seemingly even more so with every successive generation.
Furthermore, a lot of “auxiliary” conversation is missed in an email. An individual can email a colleague a question, but the answer will only be to the question asked. Very rarely will colleagues have meandering conversations via online communications.
However, the format of a shared office is also key. In smaller shared office spaces, tenants have opportunities to meet and get to know one another in a way that is harder in larger spaces that often span multiple floors. It is much easier to have regular conversations with 50 people than it is more than 300!
Normally we think of this sort of amenity benefiting smaller startups and individuals. However, as many companies transition to a hub-and-spoke office structure, these companies may start to see secondary benefits of participating in a shared office community as well. Connections made across companies may enormously benefit each other.
It reminds me of the cross-discipline push universities now encourage. There is a story I heard while at MIT Sloan of a few finance professors working on a model to price stock options. I do not remember how the connection was made, but at one point these professors spoke to someone in the physics department who commented “that is just Brownian motion,” and the Option Pricing Model was born.
Building1 – Shared Offices is open for business and welcomes everyone from individuals to large corporations. We have focused on mindful design and practices to mitigate COVID exposure and maintain a professional yet comfortable atmosphere.
We are available for tours, so reach out and schedule one today. We would love to meet you!
Lesley McAdams
Lesley is the founder of Building1 – Shared Offices, a small-scale professional shared office designed to create and foster community. She is also the founder of RM Real Estate Investment Management, a developer and N.C. real estate agency. Lesley is an active developer in the Triangle region with projects ranging from single-asset to planned residential communities. Additionally, Lesley acts as a broker and advisor to commercial and residential real estate clients and investors. She graduated from Stanford University with a B.A. in Economics and MIT Sloan School of Management with an MBA concentrating in Financial Engineering.
