On Striking the Perfect Balance Between People, Place and Technology with Frank Cottle

Frank Cottle is the founder and CEO of the Alliance group of companies, and an experienced speaker, strategist, entrepreneur, advisor, business leader, and investor.

Since 1979 he’s been building flexible workspace companies under the Alliance brand and its predecessor companies, focusing on new ways of working that genuinely meet the needs of today’s entrepreneurs by combining three fundamental components: people, place, and technology.

His primary areas of expertise include integrating flexible workspace models to assist with corporate real estate repositioning, investment banking, finance, workplace technology, and business leadership. He is a regular on the conference circuit and frequently consults with multinational firms to plan and formulate strategies for the future of work.

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Brett:

I’m excited about our next guest. He is focused on all things remote working right. He’s the founder and CEO and a keynote speaker and a flexible work expert. In fact, he is the CEO of Alliance group of companies, an experienced speaker, strategist entrepreneur, and since 1979. He’s been building flexible workspace companies under the Alliance brand. And as and its predecessor companies focusing on new ways of working that generally meet the needs of today’s entrepreneurs and combining three fundamental components people place and technology. This conversation probably can’t be more timely right, given everything that’s been going on with COVID-19 I’m excited to have Frank Cottle with me, Frank, how are you doing today?

Frank:

I’m doing just fine. Thank you, bro. Looking forward to our conversation.

Brett:

Excellent for our listeners to get to know you for the first time. Would you give us a little bit more about your story and your current focus?

Frank:

My story is probably like most entrepreneurs. I’ve had a variety of companies through the years. Our current company structures actually started almost 42 years ago, in your sector and your core sector and commercial real estate. We were a property company that built up a land banking theory for investment, where we would buy a piece of property on the edge of a large masterplan development and where we had excess entitlement. So I might build a 50,000-foot building but I had 500,000 feet of right to build on the property that we took up. And we worked with Chevron land mobile land, Prudential land Trammell Crowe, the Irvine Company, Boston properties, ING summit properties all the big guys across California, Arizona, and Texas. And when we built or freestanding properties, custom-built properties that host and house what was then called executive suites of the era. And those sweets, were a little bit ahead of our time because we were very technology-oriented. And we learn to run executive suites, which at the time, and I think still today, what you see coworking in business owners still generate the most revenue per square foot of any commercial office model and existence. So that’s where we started. We sold that portfolio in 1990 and started a new portfolio of leased properties. On a nationwide basis, I and two other partners. And we built 195 projects during the years 1990 to 2000 and then sold that portfolio. And the reason I wanted to sell that portfolio is honestly I wanted to own the customer but not the facilities any more. Technology had buggin bitten me, and it seemed that Expedia looked a lot better as a business model than Marriott, if you get the drift. And so we have migrated ourselves today to managing global portfolios for companies of all sizes. We have operations in 54 countries from 1300 facilities through Alliance virtual on our publication, all work reaches about 33 million people a month now focused on the future of work.

Brett:

Amazing I want to dive into the biggest secret to striking the perfect balance between remote working with people place and technology, especially as it pertains to this new environment. We’re going to have that here in a minute. But I want to take one other step back Frank, you know, I believe we’ve all been given certain gifts in this life. And perhaps I want you to think about the earlier days, maybe the days when you were in college or maybe as a teenager, or perhaps even University, early days of your career. And I think we’ve been given certain gifts and some people call the strengths or superpowers you know, I believe they’re their God-given gifts and these gifts to be given to us to be a blessing and help to others. So I’m curious, what are those one or two gifts that you believe you were given? And how does that help how you help and bless people today?

Frank:

Well, I’ll use my college experiences. As an example of that, I was actually kicked out of college, I think 1968 69 is being sorted of turbulent years for a lot of students. And so I was asked to leave the college where I’d been attending. And I went down and spent some time without my parents knowing it, living in the Bahamas, working as a commercial diver. When I came back and had been kicked out of college, I had to face my dad, who had been paying for the whole thing the whole time, I was gone. It was a very expensive private college and, and my dad was sort of really comfortable farming and ranching and family and, and he looked at me and he said, Well, I guess, he got kicked out of school. Did you learn anything? And I said, quite simply, so that decisions have consequences. And he simply said, Good, and walked away. And I think that that one point was very pivotal to me to recognize that the decisions that we all make every day, do have consequences. Everything you do has a consequence, and to lead your life around recognizing your decision-making process and not be paralyzed by the consequences, but actually take and make decisions is a critical part of business growth.

Brett:

Excellent. So having the wisdom, I’d say, to recognize when you made a mistake, and to shift and change, because decisions have consequences. Is that a fair summary?

Frank:

Well, I think so a little bit. You know, I went on from there to become a commercial diver, and worked for a couple of years for one of our, as a contractor to one of our federal agencies, and did kind of some interesting work for a couple of years and then got married. And my wife and I decided that interesting work wasn’t a good long-time career. So I started racing yachts instead, and race sailboats and yachts and work too, with another team to build a very large yacht brokerage between 70 and 80, which is what I exit when we started this company.

Brett:

Okay, so I think I’ve captured it. And I think it’s this. It’s adapting and building and perhaps in a new circumstance, which is going to connect this whole thing with this remote going remote. So your ability to create something on perhaps you weren’t, you’re planning on to college, to do the traditional route, things go haywire, you get kicked out of college, you’re in the Bahamas, and you’re going to see that as an opportunity to adapt and to learn and to grow something. Is that a fair summary?

Frank:

I guess. So. You know, I don’t know that I fit a lot of molds, honestly, I just do what I want, and then enjoy it and find the things that are challenging. And then I think, perseverance sticking at it, nothing is easy. If you’re really going to get good at it. And you have to learn and one of the things that I tell people in our company, and one of the things that I tell people when they ask, kind of the question you’re asking about me is how do I see myself and I just really want to be the very best of our industry. I want to learn every day and be able to apply what I learned. And I think that constant quest for knowledge is really what drives me more than anything else.

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