Cushman and Wakefield is a real estate company located in the heart of Prague. It is a public company that was founded in the United States. They now have 400 offices in over 70 different countries around the world and employing 52,000 people.
I truly think I would have enjoyed this presentation more if it had been the first one we listened to. It wasn’t that I found it uninteresting, but it was at the tail end of five other companies that were much more interesting.
Richard Hogg, who is a partner and Head of Professional Services for Cushman and Wakefield in Czech Republic as well as Slovakia lead the presentation and tour. Although Hogg seemed to be putting forth his best effort, this presentation was by far the least engaging of all the companies we studied. I attributed this to a few different reasons, the first being that it was at the end of the program. The first two companies we visited while in Germany were highly interesting and interactive. Although real estate companies are necessary and commonly applicable it is a bit difficult to find as much excitement in them after touring companies such as a BMW assembly plant or GE’s 3D printing facility. So, before we even entered Cushman and Wakefield our frame of reference was a bit skewed.
Another contributing factor to the group’s lack of enthusiasm to Cushman & Wakefield’s presentation was the overall atmosphere. The content of the presentation was a bit redundant; we were given a history of Prague which would have been interesting but we had already heard it from previous presenters. The information being presented was unique to Prague and that aspect of it was quite interesting. However, real estate in general is something that is not based off a new technology or an innovative idea. That being said, when comparing the context of this presentation to the program’s previous presentations, the bar was already set high.
Beyond the content of this presentation not being as dynamic and/or interactive as the others, there were environmental factors that played a role as well. The room was very small and uncomfortably warm. The slides on the presentation were extremely wordy and many of them did not seem to be applicable to our group. It seemed that this slideshow was a generic presentation that was attempting to be adapted in order to be presented to our group. The presenter had to skip over several slides or pause to read information within the paragraph on a particular slide, making the majority of the presentation minimally engaging.
As a teacher, I am constantly having to analyze my audience to evaluate their level of engagement and understanding. As I sat listening to the presenter I made a mental note to myself to be sure that in my own presentations going forward, to make myself aware of the body language from the audience. Dr. Baker even commented afterward that he wished the presenter had noticed us all fanning ourselves and struggling to give our full attention to the presentation. The ability to read your audience is crucial in ensuring best practice is being used in teaching and is applicable to any public speaking role.
I am a strong believer in the ideology that everything happens for a reason. I often try to remind myself of this when I find myself in situations that are less than ideal or seem unbeneficial. In this particular moment, the Cushman and Wakefield presentation seemed like it was both. It was at this time that I tried to remind myself that everything happens for a reason and that there may be something valuable in this experience. Hogg continued on about the different types of commercial real estate the company was involved with. He started discussing a new concept called office sharing that was still somewhat in its experimental stages.
In order for companies to reduce overhead costs, real estate spaces have begun being leased out to several firms that are able to function with some flexibility. The presentation did not go much deeper into this idea but it was enough to spark an idea for a project I was working on. In the MBA program for UNCW, participants are assigned a group project in which they partner with a local start-up company. This Learning Alliance course is based around a Growth and Profit project which begins in Marketing and continues over the duration of the summer semesters. Each group researches the history of their partner company and analyzes their marketing approaches, their target customer market as well as their challenges and successes. Based on this information, each group is to provide feedback on the companies’ current standing and generate a strategic approach to benefit each company moving forward.
The company my group was assigned for this Growth and Profit project is called INVESTinNC. INVESTinNC is an educational platform created to inform North Carolina-based small business owners and potential investors about new opportunities to participate in investment crowdfunding under the recently enacted NC PACES Act. Historically, only a select pool of wealthy individuals and businesses have been able to participate in capital raises. With the passing of the NC PACES Act, which was passed unanimously by the General Assembly and signed by the Governor in 2016, and went into effect with the publication of the rules by the North Carolina Securities Division of the Secretary of State’s office on April 1st, 2017, the door has been opened for a much larger pool of potential investors to support local business via investment crowdfunding. Investment crowdfunding is the process of funding a project or venture by raising small amounts of money from many people, typically via the internet.
INVESTinNC is in a unique position within their field as their functionality depends on reaching and maintaining two different target markets; Investors are needed equally as much as issuers are needed. In this aspect, investors and issuers also represent supply and demand. Their challenges are similar to those faced by Uber when they first started out. In order to attract riders, you need drivers; in order to attract drivers, you need riders. The biggest challenge for our Growth and Profit project has been what recommendations to provide for INVESTinNC to attract issuers and investors.
Picturing these shared office spaces being developed by Cushman and Wakefield made my thoughts go to INVESTinNC and the partnership they provide to entrepreneurs. Besides the obvious incentive of gaining capital, the other attraction for issuers to sign on with INVESTinNC is that they will receive financial consulting and other business advice from the experts at INVESTinNC. Perhaps these shared office spaces are the missing link for INVESTinNC. Providing a collaborative office space with significantly lower rent costs (since office space is shared), may be exactly that is needed to help local entrepreneurs get to the next step in the business process.
If INVESTinNC could provide this space that allows business owners access to an office where they are able to have face to face conversations with experiences consultants they would in turn provide some confidence for potential investors. Since returning from the IBS program I have presented the idea to my team. They agreed that this is an innovative idea to suggest to INVESTinNC and we are currently incorporating it into our Growth and Profit project.
