Why I Love Mondays With Jimmie Brennan -RFP 59 Transcript
Jimmie Brennan (00:00): If what you’re offering in your office and your work environment isn’t inspiring and doesn’t excite people, they can stay in their bedroom in their pajamas and work from their laptop. And if they can do that, they will. So I think it’s on us as real estate advisors, on landlords, and on business owners to provide an environment their staff are genuinely excited about and genuinely proud of, so they say, “You know what? I don’t mind going to the office. Actually, I quite like going to the office.”
Gordon Lamphere (00:37): Hi, I’m Gordon Lamphere, and welcome to The Real Finds Podcast, the podcast where we have real conversations with key entrepreneurs, activists, and researchers shaping the real estate industry and, as a result, our world. On today’s podcast, we’ll be speaking with Jimmie Brennan. Jimmie is the founder of Love Mondays Office Space, an office consultancy focused on helping businesses and their employees fall in love with their workspaces. In this episode, we explore how flexible offices, meaningful amenities, and a focus on culture are transforming what work feels like, and why providing environments people actually love is a necessity in the modern workspace world. It’s well worth a listen for anyone involved in the workspace game. Jimmie, thanks for hopping on the podcast today.
Jimmie Brennan (01:33): Thank you.
Falling Into, and in Love With, Flex Office Space
Gordon Lamphere (01:35): So why real estate?
Jimmie Brennan (01:38): Wow, that’s a question. I’ll be honest: I sort of landed in it, but ever since I did, I’ve absolutely loved it. It’s worth pointing out the different types of real estate. You’ve got commercial and residential, and we’re on the commercial side. I specialize in the flex, or serviced, office market. I’ve found it so fascinating: the different styles and trends, the ways operators try to differentiate themselves, and the changes in what people want. When I started, it was literally four walls and a desk. I’m sure everybody’s heard of WeWork now and knows what they offer. And some of the buildings I deal with over here are something else. There’s a building in Waterloo designed around, or inspired by, Alice in Wonderland. There’s an eight-foot white rabbit in reception, and Tweedledee and Tweedledum smiling in one of the meeting rooms. It’s really crazy. People like different things, and that’s what I find fascinating. As long as something piques my interest, I’ll stick with it. Like I said, I fell into it and then fell in love with it.
Why Love Mondays?
Gordon Lamphere (03:01): You talked about falling in love just now, but why do you love Mondays? I mean, who was it, Garfield the cat, who hates Mondays? Why do you love Mondays?
Jimmie Brennan (03:17): The story is part of everything the company represents. When I first started working, I spent four or five years in the leisure industry, and there was a guy there named Jeff. I won’t try to imitate his South African accent, because it would be bad, even if it would be hilarious. He had a wonderful work environment. He loved the people, he loved his members, he loved everything about it. And he said, “The day I wake up and don’t feel like that is the day I quit. The same damn day.” I can replay that in my head all the time. It really stuck with me and resonated with me.
When I worked at that company, I loved the staff I worked with. We were all quite young. We used to go out and hang out a bunch, and it was a really fun crowd. I loved the job, but I also loved the environment. I worked in a leisure center. I’d work out before work and go to the sauna after, shower before my shift, and I could play tennis or go swimming. Everything was there. It was fantastic. People say, “Do what you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life.” That’s how it was for me. Even on my days off, I’d still go there, because it was my gym and I enjoyed it. And that was primarily because of the environment I was in.
So why are our offices any different? You hear everyone, particularly on a sunny Sunday afternoon in the pub with a pint, say, “It’s Monday tomorrow. I’ve got work, so I’d better not have another one.” Why aren’t we saying, “It’s Monday tomorrow. I can go see Gordon. We can go to the gym at lunchtime together and see what he’s benching this week. After work, I’ll grab a drink with so-and-so, and I’ll come in early and grab a coffee with someone else”? Why is that element missing? It’s because what you’re offering in your office and work environment isn’t inspiring and doesn’t excite people. They can stay in their bedroom in their pajamas and work from their laptop, and if they can, they will. So I think it’s on us as real estate advisors, on landlords, and on business owners to provide an environment staff are genuinely excited about and proud of, so they say, “You know what?
Jimmie Brennan (05:40): I don’t mind going to the office. Actually, I quite like it, because I’ve got a gym, I’ve got this and that, it’s an easy commute, and there are great food options around at lunchtime.” All the things we humans love. That’s why. And look, if you don’t like the industry you’re in, change it. If you don’t like the company you’re at, you can change that too. But it’s on business owners, landlords, and real estate advisors to really shape the market and provide spaces people love. That’s why the company is called Love Mondays Office Space, and the hashtag is #LoveMondaysAgain. Nobody should ever be saying, “It’s Monday, I don’t want to get up tomorrow.” That starts to border on mental health, which is a whole other thing. We should be supporting people.
Let’s have environments we love, somewhere exciting, where our name is on the wall and we like inviting customers down. When you’re out with friends on the weekend, you can say, “My office is great. We’ve got a sauna in the basement and a lovely roof terrace where I eat lunch in the summer.” I say summer, but in London we get about two weeks of it. You’re in Illinois, so hopefully you get better weather than we do. But whether it’s a lovely roof terrace, a courtyard, or whatever you like, it should be part of your office space. It should not be four walls, blue carpet, and a desk. We’ve all seen the film Office Space, right? A cult film. That whole film is everything that’s wrong with an office. So let’s have the opposite, and then we’ll love it instead of hating it.
How to Build an Office People Love
Gordon Lamphere (07:18): We’ve definitely got your why. What’s the how? How do we get to an office we love? What are the key elements of offices that inspire excitement and joy, and give people a reason to come in and love Mondays?
Jimmie Brennan (07:38): A lot of it is how connected bosses are with their teams. At Google or Microsoft, with literally thousands of employees, it’s extremely difficult for leadership to know what every employee wants and likes. But most companies aren’t Microsoft. Those are the top 1 percent. So let’s talk about most companies, the small and midsize businesses that are the lifeblood of what makes work in Britain work, and I’m sure in America too: companies employing twenty, fifty, or a hundred people. It’s about understanding those people and providing for their needs.
Location is always going to be key, but here in London, transport is fantastic, so location is never a huge problem. I’m using London as an example, but Manchester and Birmingham are great, and in the States, New York, Washington, and other cities are really well connected. That’s the easy bit. Then it’s understanding what you’re asking of your staff, what you want them to do, and how your space makes them productive.
For instance, we’re doing a podcast, and as I mentioned before we started, I’ve come to one of the buildings I work with today because it has a podcast studio. It would be silly of me to sit at home with a pair of twenty-pound headphones that sometimes work, sometimes don’t, and run out of battery after five minutes. They’ve got a full setup here. How many companies with a social media presence need podcast rooms or editing suites? This particular provider, Boutique Workplace Company, shout-out to them, decided to put in a fully soundproofed, working podcast studio. You can see the TV behind me, the headphones, the mics. So that makes the space productive for that part of your business.
What else do people want? If your team is health-conscious, make sure the building has facilities that support that. We also hear a lot about B Corp. I don’t know how big B Corp is in America, but it’s quite a big thing over here, with its sustainability credentials. A lot of the buildings we work with now pursue B Corp certification themselves.
Jimmie Brennan (09:59): They’ve been through the process, they understand it, and they can connect with you on a human level, and you feel that. If you were ever over here in the UK and I took you around four or five buildings, you’d be able to tell which ones belong to the same company just by walking through the doors, because you feel that instant connection. They really care, and they really provide.
Right-Sizing Around How People Actually Work
My role with Love Mondays is to have these conversations with business owners when they’re looking for office space: “Gordon, your company has 50 people. How many days a week are you actually in the office? What’s important to your staff? What does your current space not provide that you’d like it to?” Then I find solutions that support that. If you have a hybrid policy and most people are in three days and home two, can you introduce a rota system? Can we take an office for 30 or 35 people instead of 50, but for the same budget?
Then you get a much higher-quality space with all these features, which makes staff want to come in, because they’ll be more productive, they’ll enjoy the water-cooler moments and the facilities, and there are phone booths and meeting rooms they can pop into whenever they need for quick catch-ups. Now they won’t want to sit in their bedroom in their pajamas. They’ll enjoy the office. So it’s really important that we uncover that connection and that buildings are designed with it in mind. But it’s even more important that people like you and me understand which buildings provide that and can articulate it to people looking for office space. It’s absolutely ludicrous to just say, “There’s an office. Take that one, it’s great, it’s cheap.” Cheap doesn’t work. Cheap works only a tiny fraction of the time.
Hybrid Schedules: Start With Why
Gordon Lamphere (11:52): I think you definitely get what you pay for with office space. I want to go back to something you mentioned: flexible work schedules. We’ve been working with a number of clients to find schedules that work. As flex work has risen, how are you seeing businesses adapt their schedules? What kinds of schedules work for most businesses? Or is it what we’ve been seeing in our market, that every business is unique, and some need one day a week while others need five?
Jimmie Brennan (12:35): The first piece of advice I’d give any business owner looking at this is to stop believing the media. The media sensationalizes, chases headlines, and ultimately sells advertising space. So don’t worry about it.
Gordon Lamphere (12:48): I think that’s one thing everyone on this podcast, regardless of ideology, will tell you: do not believe the media.
Jimmie Brennan (12:57): Exactly. You’re right that some people say they only come in one day a week, some two days, and others want to be in five. The key element is why. Why does that work for your business? Why do you only want to be in one day a week? Often when you talk to people who say that, it’s a budget issue. The business owner is scared of overcommitting on spending and having staff not use the space, wasting money that could be reinvested elsewhere in the business. Real estate is expensive. After people, it’s usually the next biggest cost in a business, so it has to be right.
Understanding that why, and understanding the flexibility available, matters. In my part of the market, flexible and serviced offices, we’re seeing a lot of bigger companies move toward hybrid working. They’re still taking big spaces, whole floors or half floors in serviced buildings, 3,000, 5,000, or 7,000 square feet, because they’re huge companies employing who knows how many people. But for them, it represents a saving, and the contract’s flexibility lets them scale up when they need to. If something’s working, they can increase it. If it’s not, it’s a much shorter-term contract than a traditional lease in our market.
What Is a Serviced Office?
Gordon Lamphere (14:28): Can you briefly explain what a serviced building is? A number of our listeners stateside might not have heard that term, though it equates to a couple of different terms used in New York, Chicago, and LA.
Jimmie Brennan (14:44): Just this week, I was speaking with someone in South Carolina and had to do exactly this. The analogy people seem to like is that a serviced or flexible office is like an all-inclusive holiday. You turn up, and everything’s there: your drinks and food are included, and the rooms are cleaned. A lease is more like a self-catering holiday, where you book a villa but have to buy all the food yourself, and there’s no cleaner coming by every day to change your towels.
So think of a serviced office like an all-inclusive holiday. You turn up with your laptop on day one, plug in, and away you go. Furniture is included, all your bills are included, and there’s someone at reception to help you, sign for parcels, and welcome guests. You get a lot of shared facilities. In a traditional lease, you’d have to account for your own meeting rooms, breakout space, and kitchenettes. In a serviced office, you can still have your own, but a lot of it, like kitchens, restrooms, and corridors, is shared. There’s also a variety of meeting rooms you can book ad hoc. If you take a ten-person boardroom, you’re paying for it all the time, whether it’s used or not, and 90 percent of the time you’ll find that boardroom either isn’t being used or has two people sitting in it. The number of times I’ve walked into a boardroom with just two people in it! You don’t need a boardroom for that. You need a booth.
One of my oldest clients is quite a big UK charity with seven or eight locations. They’ve always used a ratio of 1.3 or 1.4 staff per desk at every location, because they embrace hybrid working. That lets them get a better-quality building and use these shared facilities, and they find that really useful. They were doing that long before hybrid working, and before COVID reshaped the working world. That was their
Jimmie Brennan (16:55): model. So when COVID hit, they said, “No problem. We’re already set up for working from home. We’ll keep going.” Their staff were okay and looked after, and it helped with work-life balance and all the other good things people enjoy. That ratio worked really well for them. If a location had fifty people, they’d take only thirty or thirty-five desks, and on the days all fifty were in, they’d book the boardroom, use the breakout space, or work from the rota.
The key with a serviced office is definitely the flexibility and the facilities. If you want better facilities but don’t want to pay for them full-time, look at serviced space. And if you need flexibility because your company is growing and you don’t know how big you’ll be twelve months from now, or you have projects or fluctuating headcount, that’s another big reason to consider flexible and serviced offices.
Which Amenities Actually Matter
Gordon Lamphere (17:51): Now that we’ve covered serviced offices, what services actually matter? There are a lot of innovative amenities out there. We’ve talked to landlords considering things like podcast studios, and then we talk to tenants across the market. Some markets, like London, I’m sure, or downtown Chicago, want that. In other markets, people say, “We really don’t care about that. We’d just like a gym.” What innovative amenities work, and, recognizing that some of this is market-specific, which amenities have you found aren’t necessary, at least in London?
Jimmie Brennan (18:39): That’s a really good question. In my mind, I split amenities into two or three categories. The first is what actually affects day-to-day work: meeting rooms and phone booths, for example. They’re really important because companies use them, benefit from them, and they affect how people work. People will choose an office in a building because it has them.
Something like a podcast studio or a gym is more of a nice-to-have. We wouldn’t pick a building purely because it has a gym, but if we’re torn between two buildings and one has a gym and the other doesn’t, we’ll pick the one with the gym. Phone booths, on the other hand, are essential. And for me personally, good-quality breakout space is the most essential thing, because I’ve been to buildings that say, “Yes, we’ve got a breakout space,” and it’s a tea point the size of a bathroom with one stool. If somebody’s making a cup of tea while someone else is trying to take a phone call, that’s never going to work. The noise alone makes it impossible.
If you zone off your breakout area and make it a nice, open space, it works. A lot of UK companies design their breakout areas with American diner-style booths around the edges, and they work really well. They’re great for lunch, but also for quick catch-ups and one-on-ones. When you’ve got three or four of them dotted around with people sitting in them, it creates a real atmosphere, a positive buzz in the office. Humans, even the most introverted, still want some kind of personal connection. When you walk in and there’s a bit of excitement and buzz in the air, it lifts you.
I can see you’ve got a Bulls jersey in the background. If you’re a big basketball fan, and I’m a soccer fan, when you go to the stadium and the crowd is really up for it and singing, it transfers to the court, and the players play better. If the crowd is flat, it’s a nothing game, and the team isn’t performing, the crowd starts booing or getting on their backs, and they play worse. In football, we call the crowd the twelfth man.
Jimmie Brennan (21:03): So for me, it’s the right breakout space. Take any office you’ve ever been to. Jimmie and Gordon sit at their desks and work, but when Jimmie wants to phone a client, he gets up and walks around, and Gordon wanders over and leans on someone’s desk. We create breakout spaces naturally. So if you have a really positive, well-designed breakout space, with phone booths, semi-private booths, places to eat lunch, and places to work alone, that has a real impact on the team. That’s where you can start using space to save costs, because maybe you don’t need to take as much.
Gyms, absolutely: a lot of people ask for them over here. But I’ll tell you the big thing people ask for, and I’m a big fan of it: pet-friendly offices, where you can bring your dog to work. A lot of buildings still say no pets allowed. But if the dog is house-trained and you’re responsible for it, that’s absolutely fine. We’re not talking about bringing in a pack of rabid Rottweilers to run amok. Susan in accounts wants to bring in her Chihuahua because it’s her companion. I don’t think that’s a huge deal. If the dog is yapping all day, maybe I’d feel differently, but that’s on the owner. We get asked for pet-friendly offices a lot.
Showers in the building are a given. If a building isn’t 24/7, doesn’t have showers, or doesn’t have bike racks, and we have a lot of cyclists in the UK, those are big no-nos. People rule buildings out for that right off the bat and won’t even go look at them. A gym, meanwhile, is a nice-to-have. There are even two buildings in London I know of that have built saunas into the offices, one in Chancery Lane and one in the West End near Tottenham Court Road. That’s a lovely thing to have. If you’ve had a stressful week and just want to sit in the sauna for ten minutes, that’s fantastic. What a perk. But I don’t know anyone who has signed for a building purely because it has a sauna.
Post-2020 Shifts: Beyond Ping-Pong and Beer Taps
Gordon Lamphere (23:15): Unless you’re dealing with someone from the Baltics, a Swede, or a Finn, I’m not sure a sauna is going to be a deal breaker. But you mentioned deal breakers, and one we’ve seen is pets. As a millennial, I know people who see their pets as their little fur babies, and I think a lot of landlords will be looking at how to address changes in our society and move toward a more future-friendly office model. What other forward-looking shifts have you seen in the office market post-2020?
Jimmie Brennan (24:09): When I first joined the industry, it was very much four walls, and everyone paid for location. Location was key: How close were you to the station? Was it a good-looking building from the outside, with plenty of glass? Then the WeWork bombshell dropped: “Hold on a minute, we can have pool tables, ping-pong, beer taps, and all these wonderful things.” They were the new kids on the block, and everyone wanted that. Fast-forward to now, and people are saying, “We want some of those nice things, but we also need the more practical stuff.”
I hardly dare say it, because tomorrow somebody will invent something and make me look silly, but I think we’ve reached the edge of the amenities we can put in buildings. Aside from combined co-living and co-working space, which I’m honestly not a fan of, because I wouldn’t want to live where I work, there’s no switch-off time for your brain, and then we’re effectively machines. So I think we may have hit the edge of amenities.
What we need to think about is how spaces are designed, whether that’s a big open floor plate or, equally, a really poky space with lots of little nooks and crannies that aren’t usable. That needs real thought when laying out a space with different zones. Every office has the person who never takes their headphones off and stares at their computer all day. They normally work in IT or accounts, right? They want to be left alone and talk to as few people as humanly possible. Then there are chatterboxes like me who want to be around as many people as possible. It’s important to have different areas for them to work.
Tech in the Building
I think the next big thing, and we’re already seeing it, and I don’t want to sound corny, is tech and AI and how they come into buildings. One of the most exciting things I’ve seen was in the Wells Fargo building here in the UK. This was next level, and I’m sure the tech has moved on a lot since then. Everyone had swipe-card access to get in, and each person’s card was pre-programmed
Jimmie Brennan (26:33): to that individual and also worked as a tracker while they were in the building. That worked two ways. First, if I booked a meeting room but wasn’t using it and you needed one, you could look at a live floor plan and see whether I was in it. If Jimmie had booked the room for four o’clock and wasn’t there, great, you could use it. So there was more use of the spaces people wanted, and less waste.
But it went further. If you like the office really warm, say 28 degrees, sorry, you guys use Fahrenheit, and I like it at 16 Celsius, and we had a meeting together, the system would average the preferences of the people in the room and preset the temperature so it was at a middle level when we walked in. It would also tell you about outdoor emissions, so you’d know whether to open or close the windows to get clean air in the building. It had all these wonderful bits of tech, and I find things like that fascinating.
Looking at flex versus traditional again: say a client is considering 3,000 square feet because they have 20 to 30 people and need meeting rooms and breakout areas. If you have tech like this showing that of their four meeting rooms, only one, the small one, is used 80 percent of the time, and the others are hardly used, you can advise them: “Don’t take those meeting rooms. Go to a building with shared facilities, take space for your people and the one meeting room you use all the time, and book the others as you need them.” They save money on rent, spend a little of it back on meeting rooms, or maybe negotiate. With serviced office deals over here, we often negotiate meeting room credits or packages. They save a lot of cash because they’re not paying rent on unused space. But that all depends on tech, because otherwise you have no way to monitor what’s used and what isn’t. So I think the tech revolution in real estate is yet to come, and I’m excited for what it brings. There will be challenges, but it’s exciting.
Hoteling, Personalization, and Moneyball
Gordon Lamphere (28:40): I couldn’t agree more. We actually have a guest coming on at the end of next week who runs a Silicon Valley business doing non-invasive, non-individualized monitoring of how employees use workspaces, and then improving the workspace based on that. I think we’ll be in a totally different world in how we use space once we start getting real data. We’ve been operating in a touchy-feely world for a long time without hard data, and that will make our jobs both more interesting and more effective, but also more challenging.
One big challenge I’m curious about is personalizing office space. You mentioned rotating desks and hoteling. How have you seen that play out with workforces? I can look out my window and see Zebra Technologies, which has done hoteling. I’ve talked to businesses like Zurich Insurance that do hoteling as well. And some businesses in our market have tried hoteling and had complete employee fallout, with people losing their minds over not having personal space. What are you seeing in terms of personalizing office space and catering to this changing world?
Jimmie Brennan (30:29): I think it links back to what you just said about data. I’m a big fan of the film Moneyball. I hope you’ve seen it. It’s not the statistics and data themselves, but how you use and interpret them. Often people look at stats and use them to prove their point without looking at the other 90 percent they’re not talking about.
When it comes to personalized space, take basketball and the Chicago Bulls. I’m not a basketball fan, but I know who Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls are. We’ve all watched The Last Dance. What a fantastic documentary. But there are still the Lakers, and plenty of people like the Lakers. And I know the San Antonio Spurs, only because I’m a Tottenham Spurs fan in soccer, so I figured the name would do. I don’t know if they’re any good. People are always going to want different things.
When it comes to data, and this ties back to what we said about the media, too many small business owners use what I call ego metrics. They see something in The Times saying 80 percent of successful business owners have this in their office, so they decide to have it too. That’s not what will make you successful. The graft and work you put in is what makes you successful. That’s just something those owners have in common. I’m not saying the thing isn’t important, but when it comes to personalizing your office, it should be exactly that: personal. And it should be done in a way that lets you adapt and change. If you design your office or building one particular way and then there’s a massive shift like COVID, with people moving to hybrid and working from home a lot more, well, the dinosaurs went extinct because they didn’t evolve. You have to be able to evolve.
The biggest question I get when people move from a traditional lease to a serviced office is, “What about personalization? I don’t want to look too startup-y.” And I tell them you can paint the walls whatever color you want and put up your logo.
Jimmie Brennan (32:45): You can have plants in the office, different furniture, or bring your own. Short of putting in a double garage or a swimming pool, you can do what you want. So I think personalization is great. But I go back to my earlier point: how does it affect the team? I hear people say you have to have a clear-desk policy. I have a wife and a child, and I want a picture of them on my desk, because I love seeing my daughter’s photo. Are you going to make me clear that every night? Come on. Let’s trust people.
I can see your office behind you right now. You’ve personalized it for you, it works for you, you’ve got some achievements there, which is great, and it’s something that inspires you. Great, do that. If your colleague wants the complete opposite, flowers on their desk, let them have it. I encourage personalization, and the buildings I work with encourage it too. What you tend to find is that people pick buildings based on the atmosphere when they walk in: does it align with how they’d design their own office?
WeWork is known for being quite tech-friendly, so if someone’s in tech, they probably want a WeWork-esque space. There’s a company over here called Argyll that would describe itself as casually corporate, so if you’re in finance or a slightly more corporate world, that’s probably more for you. And there’s everything in between. You mentioned hotel-style offices. There are companies over here like One Avenue and Beaumont that are hotel-esque because their owners and founders come from the hotel industry, so they bring that approach. Understand what your people want, stay close to them, and look at what’s on-brand for your image. I like a smart-casual image. I think you’ve got a mix of modern and professional. I don’t need to wear a suit and tie every day. I’m not a lawyer. But I’m also not a shorts-and-T-shirt guy. I’m not, unfortunately, working from a beach in California.
US vs. UK: London’s Advanced Flex Market
Gordon Lamphere (35:11): Well, we’re not all in California, and that’s a very different market. What do you see as the differences between markets like the US and the UK? We’ve had a few UK guests on in the past to talk about housing and other issues. For an American business considering the UK, what are the biggest differences between the two markets?
Jimmie Brennan (35:46): Aside from the weather? It rains a lot. No, I’m joking.
Gordon Lamphere (35:48): Yeah.
Jimmie Brennan (35:50): I’ve been fortunate to work with quite a few American businesses, some very big ones, that have come to the UK looking for office space. One of them, many years ago, and I’m sure they won’t mind me mentioning them, was Graebel Relocation. I don’t know if you know them, but I know they’re quite big in the States.
Jimmie Brennan (36:13): I helped them find an office when they started out here. They were in The Shard. For them, it was about having a very prominent space. The address mattered because of the image it presented to their clients, and they scaled up and up. They’re a fantastic company. Their whole board flew in from America, I think they’re based near Denver, along with their wives, and I was walking around London with twenty Americans, talking and shaking hands. They were lovely people, I got on really well with them, and it was great to work with them. Then there are the people I spoke with earlier this week from South Carolina, a very different business, just looking for something comfortable for their staff and not the top of the market. So there are differences and similarities.
The biggest difference I’ve seen, and this applies not just to America but to Europe and the rest of the world, is that the UK serviced office market, particularly London, is the most advanced serviced and flexible office market in the world. There are more serviced and flexible operators and buildings here than anywhere else. When WeWork started flooding the New York market in particular, it was, “Wow, what’s this? This is the new toy, the buzzword,” and everyone was looking. But a lot of well-established companies said, “We don’t want WeWork,” and assumed that serviced office meant WeWork. WeWork is a fantastic product, and it has its market. Regus, or IWG, is another global player you’ll have heard of. But I could rattle off Canvas, Spacemade, Second Home, Boutique Workplace, and Office Space in Town, companies you’ve probably never heard of. If you saw how different they are, you’d see that if you want a really professional, high-end image, you can have it, and if you want a startup environment, you can have that too. It’s not that there are so many differences. It’s about opening people’s eyes to the possibilities.
Jimmie Brennan (38:33): Whether it’s your house, your car, or your mortgage, people want flexibility, and it’s no different for a business. If it hasn’t taken hold in the US yet, it will at some stage: the flexibility to grow within a contract, not overcommit, and not have to sign up for five or ten years plus all the upfront costs. Just do a year or two and see how things go. That revolution will come to every market, because businesses will demand it, and it’s the norm over here now. People go to traditional landlords for five-year leases and ask, “Can I get a break at one year?” The landlords say no, because that’s not what a traditional lease is. But tenants are used to it in serviced space. I tell people, “With a lease, you’re committing to a minimum of three years. If you want a break at one year, go serviced.”
How Long Flex Commitments Run
Gordon Lamphere (39:27): I think there will be increasing tension in every market between landlords seeking longer-term stability and tenants seeing more flexibility. Where have you generally seen that break land? For serviced space, is it typically a year? For non-serviced space, you mentioned three years. Where’s that flexible line?
Jimmie Brennan (39:57): Historically in the flexible and serviced market, people signed twelve-month commitments. Over the last twelve to eighteen months in the UK, we’ve definitely seen companies grow more confident, not only in themselves but in the market, and stretch to slightly longer commitments of eighteen to twenty-four months. I’d say twelve to eighteen months is now the most common contract length. That said, a deal I did this week is for six months, because the company only needs it for six months as project space. No problem at all.
For me, the sweet spot is twelve months, because you get the trade-off between negotiating power on rent and flexibility. You don’t want to move your company every five minutes. Everyone knows it’s a hassle to pack up thirty desk chairs and computers and move people from building A to building B. It costs money and time. But equally, if you outgrow a space, it no longer suits your needs, there’s an issue with the building, or business goes really well or not so well, you need to be able to adapt, whether that’s moving to a cheaper building, a better building, or another location.
I had a client that was always in the City. They did recruitment for banking, and the City of London is our financial district. Then one year they said, “We’ve got a tech arm to the business now, so we want to go to Farringdon, where it’s a bit more techy, and the transport links are actually better for a lot of our staff.” They did eighteen months in Farringdon and then decided to go back to the City. Fine, whatever. But you do see people do that. So I’d always recommend twelve months, or eighteen months for slightly larger companies and people who want to be a bit more settled. I tend not to recommend going beyond eighteen months unless it’s a really well-established company with good visibility into the next two or three years. If headcount is likely to grow or shrink by more than one or two people, don’t commit to anything longer,
Jimmie Brennan (42:20): because you just don’t know, and you’d be overcommitting when you may want the flexibility.
The Final Four: Flexible, Amenity-Rich, and People-Centric
Gordon Lamphere (42:25): That’s very different from the traditional American lease. Something else we do a little differently is our Real Finds Final Four, our last roundup, where we learn a little more about you, where the market is going, and who we should bring on next. My first question, and one of my favorites: where do you see office space going in general, ten years out?
Jimmie Brennan (42:59): Ten years out, as I said, technology will play a huge part. The more tech in these offices, giving people real data and looking at how it can help the way people work, the better, along with things like podcast studios for people in creative industries or who want their own podcasts. People are also looking at bigger and bigger buildings. In London, we have a lot of townhouses. They’re great and full of character, but they don’t lend themselves to expanding and growing businesses, because they’re listed. You can’t just knock down walls. There are rules and regulations. Whereas in a lot of the big buildings, like The Shard, you can remove and put up walls quite easily, because there are fewer restrictions on a building that isn’t listed. So I think the future is flexible.
I think the future is also amenity-rich buildings. Even with the cheap buildings that aren’t amenity-rich, people will say, “I know it’s cheap, but I’m still not going for it, because it’s not good enough.” It’s not just the business that needs it. Employees are making demands. We live in a very different world from ten years ago, where employees are much more vocal about what they want and how the workplace should be. There’s a lot of merit in that. I’m not saying I agree with all of it, but they make some really good points about how to make space better for different people. For example, a lot of people now identify as neurodivergent, so how do spaces account for that? Do they have quiet rooms and phone booths? I’ve seen buildings adding prayer rooms for people of different faiths, and rooms for new mothers. I think that’s phenomenal. So I think the future is flexible and a lot more people-centric, and that’s key. I see that growing, and the more tech can play a positive role and guide us toward trends, the better it will be.
Advice for Young Professionals: You’re Exactly Where You’re Meant to Be
Gordon Lamphere (44:59): Speaking of trends, we all go through trends, changes, and seasons in our lives. If you could step back in time to young Jimmie and give him one piece of advice, what would it be?
Jimmie Brennan (45:18): Someone asked me this the other day, or it was a LinkedIn post. There are loads of things I’d like to tell young Jimmie, but one thing my dad told me is definitely important: you are exactly where you’re meant to be at any given moment in time. Life is emotional, so try to keep those emotions in check as much as you can. Don’t let them rule you. I think Tom Hanks put it best on a podcast: this too shall pass. All of that is so relevant. You are exactly where you’re meant to be, when you’re meant to be there. Life has a definite start and end, and everything in the middle is just a ride, so enjoy it. There will be ups, downs, roundabouts, loop-the-loops, backflips, all sorts. Try not to get too high or too low. Just ride it out, because you’re exactly where you’re meant to be, when you’re meant to be there, and you will get through.
Book Recommendations: Simon Sinek and The Chimp Paradox
Gordon Lamphere (46:23): We’ve definitely enjoyed having you on so far. One thing we always enjoy is a book, podcast, or something our listeners can pick up and enjoy. What book about real estate, or about life, would you recommend?
Jimmie Brennan (46:43): For books about life, 100 percent, a guy who’s a bit of a guru for me is Simon Sinek. I don’t know if you know him. I have a lot of his books. Start With Why is a fantastic book. I also have a few of his others, like Leaders Eat Last. Every time I listen to Simon Sinek, I think, “Why can’t you just run the world? If more people were like you, we’d be fine.” I love the guy. Any book by him.
The other book I really enjoy, which really helped me and which I’ve recommended to my mum, my dad, and my brother, is The Chimp Paradox. It’s by Professor Steve something or other. I can’t remember his name. It’s definitely a self-help, self-learning book. It talks about our emotions and says we all have a mental chimp, and when something doesn’t go our way, the chimp screams and shouts, and that’s why we react emotionally. If you give your chimp a name, and mine’s called Dave, then every time something goes wrong, you say, “Hey, Dave, here’s a banana. Back in your box and behave yourself.” Your emotions stay in check. Honestly, it’s another great book. Neither is about real estate, more about life and everything else, but I think all these things bleed into each other.
Who Should Be Our Next Guest?
Gordon Lamphere (47:59): They definitely do, and we definitely don’t want to upset Dave with this last question. But it’s absolutely important for our podcast, and it’s the whole reason we do it. We think the men and women in the arena have the most insightful ideas about who to reach out to next. Who should we bring on the podcast next?
Jimmie Brennan (48:21): I knew this question was coming, because you prepped me for it, and I have three answers. If it were a dream guest, anyone at all, I already mentioned Simon Sinek. That would be amazing, the dream guy.
Gordon Lamphere (48:39): I think he’s a hard get, but we can try.
Jimmie Brennan (48:42): In the real estate industry, and I’m very UK-focused, being in the UK myself, there’s a guy who was previously my boss. I called him my work dad for a long time, and I’m very pleased to say he’s now a friend. His name is Michael Dobitsky. He worked on my side of the fence for a long time, and he’s now at a tech firm that puts technology into serviced office buildings in particular. He’s an encyclopedia of real estate knowledge and has a really unique way of looking at things. I’d 100 percent recommend having a chat with him, and I can make the intro if you like. And the last one, because if I don’t say this I won’t have a home to go back to, is my wife, Kiri. She works on the other side of the industry. I mentioned that there are brokers and there are providers. She works for a provider and has been in the industry five or six years, so she’s had a very different experience of it than I have. Her name is Kiri Norton Brennan. If I don’t mention her, I’ll probably get divorced and kicked out.
Gordon Lamphere (49:48): I’m happy if you can make all those intros. And if you can hook us up with Simon, that’s great as well.
Jimmie Brennan (49:54): Simon, if you’re listening, please give us a shout. We love you.
How to Reach Jimmie Brennan
Gordon Lamphere (49:59): The last question is also very important: if someone listened to the podcast today and thought, “I really want to get in touch with Jimmie,” what’s the best way to do that?
Jimmie Brennan (50:10): You can grab me on LinkedIn. I’m very active. Send me a DM. It’s me, not a bot. I know AI is out there, but I’ll respond personally. You can also email me through my website, lovemondaysofficespace.com. And something I’d encourage everyone to do, if they have five minutes and are interested in what we’ve been talking about: under the Resources tab on my website, there’s a dream office quiz designed to take under a minute. You answer three very simple A, B, or C questions, and it recommends some options based on your answers. It’s unique to everyone, and I’ve spent a lot of time developing it. If you’re interested in the difference between serviced, flexible offices and leased offices, it takes a minute of your time, and I think people would find it very interesting. So head there, hit me up on LinkedIn, Jimmie Brennan, or drop me an email through the website, and it’ll get to me. I’ll respond, I promise.
Gordon Lamphere (51:13): Jimmie, thank you so much for hopping on the podcast today. We have to have you on in the future.
Jimmie Brennan (51:17): Lovely. I appreciate you having me. It’s been a pleasure.
Gordon Lamphere (51:20): Thanks again to Jimmie. We appreciate his insights. If you enjoyed the podcast, please give us a like, a five-star rating, and a review. Your comments, interactions, and subscriptions truly matter and help us continue to bring on quality guests. You can find us on YouTube, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. I’m Gordon Lamphere with The Real Finds Podcast. Thank you for listening.
Van Vlissingen and Co. has been the Midwest’s oldest commercial real estate brokerage, development, and management firm since 1879, and today is independently ranked the #1 commercial real estate agency in Chicagoland, home to the #1 independently ranked agent, Gordon Lamphere, and the region’s #1 ranked commercial property management team. If you own, manage, or invest in energy-adjacent, mixed-use, or transit-oriented property across Lake County, the North Shore, the Northwest and O’Hare corridors, DuPage and the I-88 corridor, Will County, or southern Wisconsin’s Pleasant Prairie, Kenosha, and Racine markets, contact Van Vlissingen and Co. at 📞 847-634-2300 or 🌐 vvco.com. For a market-wide view of where these dynamics sit today, see our State of the Chicagoland Commercial Real Estate Market for Q3 2026.