GCUC Podcast Recap: Bill Bennett

Running 3.8M square feet in 34 cities and 45 locations successfully through a global pandemic has its own unique challenges.

Join Bill Bennett, Founder at Expansive, as he gives us the inside scoop on all things real estate, the industry’s missing piece, the coworking trinity that comes together to form the solutions that exist for productive workspace, and more in this episode of the GCUC Podcast.

Learn how to meet demand in the new world with these juicy sound bites:

Life is best when you’re busy. I have a passion for running a business, my family, and Kellogg. It’s certainly a challenge to figure out how to take care of myself sometimes. -Bill Bennett, Founder at Expansive

I think for sure it’s a dip. It is just a question of how resilient the economy is to an increase in interest rates and whether there’s any sort of big shocks that determines how big and long a recession is. -Bill Bennett, Founder at Expansive

With any type of real estate, it’s really about demand. We have seen a large pick up since covid hit its depths in 2021. Last year was the fastest year of growth, as a company, in terms of absorption and growth of EBITA. -Bill Bennett, Founder at Expansive

The office world of real estate is totally disjointed right now and financing is largely not available. This conundrum exists out there between what the future is, what the present is, and how supply, demand, and capital come together to form the solutions that exist for productive workspace and coworking that is needed. -Bill Bennett, Founder at Expansive

Real estate is a very fragmented experience, depending on where you are in the country. In great markets like ATX, where we are full, you wish you had five buildings, but in challenged markets like DC or Chicago, it’s a much different experience. So it is hard to totally generalize but I would say coworking is on the right side of history and is the in demand product for the future. -Bill Bennett, Founder at Expansive

It’s a really hard business and totally different than running an office business. An apartment and a hotel had a baby and it’s being run as office space. -Bill Bennett, Founder at Expansive

What we’ve experienced is the markets that perform the strongest are the ones that have the best combination of limited supply, significant demand from professional service and satellite enterprise users and a reasonable price. -Bill Bennett, Founder at Expansive

The wave of the future is larger coworking spaces that can accommodate whatever uses and needs people want to experience. -Bill Bennett, Founder at Expansive

In the coworking industry, I do see that the arms race continues and the people, firms, and locations that are able to upgrade their offering are the ones that are winning a disproportionate share of demand. -Bill Bennett, Founder at Expansive

Adapting and innovating to the changes that are happening in the world. A lot of people are in the hope mindset that it’s going to come back like it was before. I don’t think that’s how its going to play out so the ability for the industry to be flexible, adapt, and give clients whatever it is that they want to make the space productive again is a key piece. -Bill Bennett, Founder at Expansive

The nature of community and belonging and creating a vibrant coworking space that existed precovid is not the same thing in today’s world and the going forward world. That’s a function of people using the space as more of a hybrid like nature with more training events, other uses of the space with a differing mix of customers, and less of the hardcore five day a week user experience. -Bill Bennett, Founder at Expansive

I don’t think many people in our industry have figured it out, gotten it right, or even really knows what its going to be or what it looks like or what clients want it to be. -Bill Bennett, Founder at Expansive

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