GCUC Podcast Recap: Antony Slumbers

With a multitude of definitions, space as a service and real estate goes much deeper than just offering a steel box. Antony Slumbers, Founder at antonyslumbers.com, talks about knowing your starting point, how distributed work threw a much needed wrench into the history and traditions of the corporate space, the big reason behind why hybrid work initiatives fail, building solutions, and how space as a service can help in this episode of the GCUC Podcast.

Learn how to build back better with these juicy soundbites:

It’s a terrific time to visit London at the moment. If you come to London, you have to spend time in our pubs. You’ll find them full. If you go to a restaurant, you’ll find the restaurant full. If you go into a flex coworking type place, you’ll find that pretty buzzy. If you go into a traditional corporate office – you won’t. -Antony Slumbers, Founder at antonyslumbers.com

People still want to come together, but they don’t necessarily want to come together in a 9-5, 5 days a week. Which is why you’re finding people in all the hospitality, humancentric type places but not in the corporate types. -Antony Slumbers, Founder at antonyslumbers.com

We really lost our tolerance for commuting, and we’ve lost our tolerance for going to the office just because you go to the office. It needs to have a purpose, there needs to be a reason. That’s what employers are not understanding. -Liz Elam, Founder at GCUC

The whole thing drives me absolutely nuts because it seems so self-evident that what would a rational person do but go to somewhere where they can do whatever it is that they want/need to do better than somewhere else. -Antony Slumbers, Founder at antonyslumbers.com

You stand outside a pub in London, and they’ll be people all out on the streets drinking. You’ll hear “oh, they’re not working”. Of course, they’re working! That’s the point. They’ve come in to meet people. That is work. That’s what we need to do. -Antony Slumbers, Founder at antonyslumbers.com

I recommend to any company that if you don’t know what to do, go take a massive survey of your people and ask them where do you want to work, when do you want to work, how do you want to work. Companies do it and they don’t like the results, or the results are confusing to them. So, they just say ok come in MWF. -Liz Elam, Founder at GCUC

I’m actually very pro-office. I’m very pro people being together, and creatively working off each other. But I’m not pro just the notion of it. -Antony Slumbers, Founder at antonyslumbers.com

The starting point is, you have to understand what individuals, teams, departments, and the company needs. Do you have what you need to do your job? When do you need to get together, what kind of space do you need? -Antony Slumbers, Founder at antonyslumbers.com

Space as a service has two definitions, The overused one is: thinking about it as procuring office space on demand. The much more important one, says what it is on the tin: space that provides you with the services you need that enable you to do whatever it is that you need to do. -Antony Slumbers, Founder at antonyslumbers.com

I think it’s likely to be 90% of space will be as a service by 2025. As a service means how it is operated, in service of your people. There’s physical offices and then there’s a human service layer on top of the physical office. -Antony Slumbers, Founder at antonyslumbers.com

Flex is: I will sell you space in a flexible manner and doesn’t necessarily have any services. It’s just space. Coworking is absolutely focused on community and focused on providing services, as well. -Liz Elam, Founder at GCUC

I’m hearing lots of genuine good talk about mental health. As societies, we are sort of in this liminal moment. We’ve gone mobile, we’ve gone distributed, we’ve adopted social media. We understand all the good bits, but we are starting to learn the downsides of social media. -Antony Slumbers, Founder at antonyslumbers.com

Everything has consequences. We, as societies, haven’t really learned to adapt to these consequences yet. That’s why I think you’ll find mental wellness becoming a really big thing particularly if we stick to distributed working. We are starting to develop understanding symptoms and cause and what to do about it and build it into our spaces -Antony Slumbers, Founder at antonyslumbers.com

People are confusing wellness with physical wellness, and they think if they’ve addressed physical wellness then they can check that box. I’m here to tell you that’s not the case, that is one part of the equation. Addressing our physical health is a known entity. What is not a known entity is that we all have to prioritize our mental health. -Liz Elam, Founder at GCUC

The requirement of any company is not to have an office. It’s actually to have a productive workforce. Nirvana for a company is to have the most productive workforce you could possibly imagine. You ain’t gonna get there unless you enable them to be happy and healthy which gets you to productive. -Antony Slumbers, Founder at antonyslumbers.com

Talk about anxiety, talk about depression, talk about addiction, and bring it forward because that’s what everyone can relate to. Connecting people is the secret sauce of the coworking industry. -Liz Elam, Founder at GCUC

I’m massively hopeful for the future because we need better air quality, we need better offices, we need better everything. We know we need better everything and better everything is good for everybody. It’s super tough for the younger generations but they’re saying ‘nah, there’s gotta be better things to do’. They’re concentrating more on I wanna be happy, I wanna be healthy, I want to be productive, and I want to earn some money, as well. -Antony Slumbers, Founder at antonyslumbers.com

Attention GCUC members: Use coupon code GCUC10 for a 10% discount to Antony’s ‘#SpaceasaService: The Trillion Dollar Hashtag’ 4-week online course starting September 12, 2022.
Full details at trilliondollarhashtag.com. The full syllabus is on the website or directly HERE.

Click HERE to listen to the full podcast with Liz Elam and Antony Slumbers. It’s juicy!