Colliers International

We've had another client of mine fly in from Toronto, so you're slightly closer than he is, but I appreciate it nonetheless.

So Ricky was on our pod a few years back talking about his Hatton real estate story, the exit to Colliers and how that all went.

So what we're going to do today is move on from that and talk about your transition, life transition and business transition and just, yeah, get into some of the changes that have happened in your life over the past.

Six years,

crazy.

So let's talk about post exit.

You had an earn out period at Colliers, which you worked in.

And then towards the end of that earn out period, you started to think about what was next for your life.

Data centres just don't need to be near places where many humans live.

um you know it's a major residential area walleye creek and uh the data center is just completely the wrong place to go i i think it was probably a little bit of kite flying myself personally and i think that uh you know the the company hopefully is realizing that uh it's time they actually pull that kite down um because it is totally inappropriate um the data center um well quite apart from issues like use of electricity and water and all the rest of it which is subject to state and federal concerns.

There's noise, there's heat, and it's just not a useful use of that piece of land.

That piece of land is...

All will be forgiven, basically, in terms of not having done adequate public consultation early, if in fact they do listen to the public now.

And then, of course, number two, they'll be able to say, you know, we ourselves have got public statements.

We, the company, have got public statements around environmental protection.

And we are now going to choose to act consistently with that.

And it also mentioned in the question that they've also emerged from bankruptcy in 2024.

So really rewriting that, I did an interview with David Harrell at Colliers.

And even in New York, there are landlords who will not touch a co-working space operator or let them into their building because of an experience at WeWork.

and moments like this reference in jeopardy help us all build a bigger industry but on that note i want to jump over to a debate that's happening online over in the german markets we had joanna fall respond to a blog post by tobias coleva from a recent co-working conference where Tobias mentioned that co-working has now hit its grown-up phase, and it's more about yields.

And then at nearly 50, he hit a wall that success couldn't fix.

Craig Robinson is a former C-suite executive who served as chief growth officer for Industrious, CEO of Global Corporate Services at Newmark and president of the U.S. region at Colliers International.

He also led a division at WeWork focused on designing spaces for happiness and human connection.

And today he's an executive coach.

You know, we really love the entrepreneurial platform.

Colliers is a great company, but it was just a great opportunity.

We knew in a major market like Chicago, there was room for another good quality brokerage firm.

We like all the standards and what Lee has built on.

Let's have a look at the world of business rates in England.

What changes could we see? What could they mean for industries already facing rising costs? I've got John Webber with us, who's head of rating at property consultancy firm Colliers, to lay out what the scene is for business rates right now.

John, good morning.

Morning, Sean.

It's stopping her investing in that business, which will create more jobs.

And what you've got, which is why I talk about this whack-a-mole business rates policy – is that you can give one and then you're going to layer it on somebody else.

And so if you look at hotels, you know, we've got a big hotels agency side at Colliers.

And if you look at the margins on hotels, it's massively reduced over the last year.

Hi, my name is David Harrell.

I'm an office leasing broker with Colliers here in New York City.

You mentioned you started your career in the legal field.

Tell us a little bit about your what we call your coworking story.