On Striking the Perfect Balance Between People, Place, and Technology
“I think the tough part comes, is that you always have to be growing your skillset, you always have to be growing your craft, and you want to stay on the plateau, and by doing the same thing and being consistent every day. It's not. It's not always sexy and fun, but it's consistent, and that's what you need. That's the key.”
When Jon turned 43, he made a career out of being himself. He is an executive advisor, business coach, sales coaching, training, and management coaching, training keynotes, and Founder/Chief Executive Officer of The Jon Dwoskin Experience.
He's been called the “business whisperer” because he can see what you cannot see and hear what you cannot hear at your company. His passion extends to myriad non-profit organizations including sitting on the board of Hebrew Free Loan and, as an 18-year cancer survivor, being a mentor with Imerman Angels.
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Brett:
I'm excited about our next guest. He is focused on all things remote working right. He's the founder and CEO and a keynote speaker and a flexible work expert. In fact, he is the CEO of Alliance group of companies, an experienced speaker, strategist entrepreneur, and since 1979. He's been building flexible workspace companies under the Alliance brand, and as and its predecessor companies focusing on new ways of working that generally meet the needs of today's entrepreneurs and combining three fundamental components people place, and technology. This conversation probably can't be more timely right, given everything that's been going on with COVID-19 I'm excited to have Frank Cottle with me, Frank, how are you doing today?
Frank:
I'm doing just fine. Thank you, bro. Looking forward to our conversation.
Brett:
Excellent for our listeners to get to know you for the first time. Would you give us a little bit more about your story and your current focus?
Frank:
My story is probably like most entrepreneurs. I've had a variety of companies through the years. Our current company structures actually started almost 42 years ago, in your sector and your core sector and commercial real estate. We were a property company that built up a land banking theory for investment, where we would buy a piece of property on the edge of a large masterplan development and where we had excess entitlement. I might build a 50,000-foot building but I had 500,000 feet of right to build on the property that we took up, and we worked with Chevron land mobile land, Prudential land Trammell Crowe, the Irvine Company, Boston properties, ING summit properties all the big guys across California, Arizona, and Texas, and when we built or freestanding properties, custom-built properties that host and house what was then called executive suites of the era, and those sweets, were a little bit ahead of our time because we were very technology-oriented, and we learn to run executive suites, which at the time, and I think still today, what you see coworking in business owners still generate the most revenue per square foot of any commercial office model and existence.
That's where we started. We sold that portfolio in 1990 and started a new portfolio of leased properties. On a nationwide basis, I and two other partners, and built 195 projects during the years 1990 to 2000 and then sold that portfolio, and the reason I wanted to sell that portfolio is honestly I wanted to own the customer but not the facilities anymore. Technology had buggin bitten me, and it seemed that Expedia looked a lot better as a business model than Marriott if you get the drift, and so we have migrated ourselves today to managing global portfolios for companies of all sizes. We have operations in 54 countries from 1300 facilities through Alliance virtual on our publication, all work reaches about 33 million people a month now focused on the future of work.
Brett:
I want to dive into the biggest secret to striking the perfect balance between remote working with people place and technology, especially as it pertains to this new environment. We're going to have that here in a minute. But I want to take one other step back Frank, I believe we've all been given certain gifts in this life, and perhaps I want you to think about the earlier days, maybe the days when you were in college or maybe as a teenager, or perhaps even University, early days of your career, and I think we've been given certain gifts and some people call the strengths or superpowers. I believe they're God-given gifts and these gifts are to be given to us to be a blessing and help to others. I'm curious, what are those one or two gifts that you believe you were given? How does that help how and bless people today?
Frank:
Well, I'll use my college experiences. As an example of that, I was actually kicked out of college, I think 1968 69 is being sorted of turbulent years for a lot of students, and so I was asked to leave the college where I'd been attending, and I went down and spent some time without my parents knowing it, living in the Bahamas, working as a commercial diver. When I came back and had been kicked out of college, I had to face my dad, who had been paying for the whole thing the whole time, I was gone. It was a very expensive private college and, and my dad was sort of really comfortable farming and ranching and family and, and he looked at me and he said, Well, I guess, he got kicked out of school. Did you learn anything? And I said, quite simply, so that decisions have consequences, and he simply said, Good, and walked away, and I think that that one point was very pivotal to me to recognize that the decisions that we all make every day, do have consequences. Everything you do has a consequence, and to lead your life around recognizing your decision-making process and not be paralyzed by the consequences, but actually take and make decisions is a critical part of business growth.
Brett:
Having the wisdom, I'd say, to recognize when you made a mistake, and to shift and change, because decisions have consequences. Is that a fair summary?
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