"I'm a missionary, not a mercenary" Freddie Fforde CEO of Patch

The rise in demand for local working spaces is very visible. It's unfortunate that the category was tarnished by WeWork founder Adam Neumann, whose fortune is dwarfed only by the lack of ethics displayed in building it. But it doesn't need to be so.

An alternative would be to start to consciously build workspaces not only based on a pound per square foot and the distance to the nearest Waitrose, but rather on the basis of the communities in which they're located, and how they can best serve and integrate with those communities.

That's very much the ethos behind Patch, a company building working spaces founded by my guest today, Freddie Fforde.

Patch locations are designed and built on a foundation of community contribution, local and ethical sourcing, a local scholarship programme (early days), in-kind charity donations, 100 year thinking, equality of opportunity, sustainable design, and values which have been very clearly thought through and implemented.

Three simple values:
- Near, reflecting the desire to allow people to work in their local community;
- Balanced, reflecting the flexibility to allow everyone to balance their lives appropriately without having work location be the key driver;
- Build to last, reflecting Freddie's intent that the decisions the company and its team makes should be ones for a company that will last over 100 years.

It's a wonderful set of values. We discuss how Freddie came to them, how they come alive in the company, and his vision for bringing Patch not only to the obvious affluent locations, but to all high streets in the UK's towns.

As one of his investors with a background in the area says, " I'm only investing if you agree with me. We're not done until we're in Wigan."

(I discuss with Freddie after the recording that they shouldn't be done even when they're in Wigan. I'd like to see one open up in Gaza!)

This is a rich episode where we also discuss topics of privilege and the fact that although you can't change your background if it is privileged (which in the UK the vast majority of us have), you can become aware of that privilege and use it to help.

Freddie's a thoughtful founder. Enjoy this episode.

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I host a weekly online workshop with CEOs of SMEs (10 to 100 employees approx) about scaling up, allowing them to step back and do more strategic work, and doing it in line with their values. Max 6 per session so we can have a real conversation.

If you'd like to join me, find a date that works for you here. They aren't charged for - you and I will both get value from the conversation.

Only CEOs / MDs apply - strictly peer-level conversation.

Transcript

0:00

Welcome to the Karmic Capitalist podcast, stories of companies that are doing capitalism better. The reputation of co working spaces was dealt a heavy blow by the machinations of WeWork founder Adam Newman, a man whose financial reward was dwarfed only by the lack of ethics he displayed in gaining it. Which is a real shame, because the need for community based working locations is both real and on the rise. But these locations to be envisioned with local communities at their heart. And that's exactly what Freddie Ford is building with his company, Patch. Freddie doesn't see Patch as a Coworking facility, but rather as a community space which has Coworking as just one of its facets. Patch locations are selected and created on a foundation of community contribution of local and ethical sourcing, an embryonic local scholarship program in kind charity donations, 100 year thinking, equality of opportunities and sustainable design values which have been very clearly thought through and implemented. It's a wonderful vision which I explore with Freddie in this episode of The Karmic Capitalist. Enjoy the show. So, hello and welcome to the episode of Karmic Capitalist. And I am delighted today to have with me Freddie Fforde, who is the founder of Patch, which he'll tell us about in a minute. Interested? First of all, obviously, what is Patch? What does it do? We'll go to the backstory later. But just what's the offering? What is patch? So, Patch is a community space on the high street. We offer places for people to work, primarily upstairs. We have a variety of flexible, affordable work options from one day a month through to an office and everything in between. But in addition, we have lots of different ways that people can come in and engage on the ground floor. We have retail, we have cafe that's run by a local operator. We've got this podcast studio. There's a boardroom. There's quite an exciting, fully featured public kind of academy space for learning, for events with everything from a cinema club to ceramics classes. So it's really supposed to be a place that everyone in a community can come together and have. And therein you've nailed why I've asked you to come on the podcast. And by the way, I should say by full disclosure, I have signed up for the Patch here in Twickenham. And that's a big deal, actually, because there have been sort of co working locations or rental offices around and I've never really bought into the model. But the reason, and again, disclosure, why I chose to come here is because I loved the local aspect, the focus on local, focus on community. And I could see that weave its way through an awful lot of the things that the office was talking about before it even opened, hence why I signed up to here rather than a WeWork. And let's not go into the whole WeWork story, but I'm intrigued because obviously I'm privileged to have that choice in terms of where I go. And there is this thing about choosing to work with ethical businesses because they're ethical, or choosing to work with ethical businesses because they break businesses that happen to be ethical. And I wonder, Freddie, in terms of you signing up and this is correct me if I'm wrong is this the second or third location now? This is the third only jasto, our second opened six weeks ago. This opened three weeks ago. In terms of the demographic of the companies that you attract, are they mostly motivated by the ethical component or they just love the offering? I'm sure there's a bit of both. I think there's a range, but I might just pull back at one level and kind of emphasize that we do offer high quality workspace. We do offer a variety of those types of environment. But I think on the sort of ethical point, it's a very broad topic and means a lot of different things. But for us, it means an accessible place on the high street that has an offer. Whoever you are, whatever age you are, whatever your background, whatever your interests are, whatever day of the week, there's something for you to do here. And I think it's interesting. We don't really think of ourselves as a workspace. It is two thirds of the buildings that we operate, and it is the center of our economic model. But I guess tying it back to your question, I think the reason that we attract people like the Karmic capitalists and others is because there is this kind of integrated view of community that we're trying to create here. So you mentioned that you didn't want to be in other co working, let's say, office environments. Well, we don't really think of ourselves in those categories anyway, even though that's one of the services that we provide. We think of ourselves much more like retail or we actually try to kind of try to explore this new idea of a category that we think of as work near home. So it's a bit of office that actually unbundles your life a bit and allows you to come in and drop off your kids, leave early, go for a run, go for a swim at lunchtime. Whatever the variety of your mode of living is, we're just part of that seamless, I guess, fabric that you can dip in and dip out of rather than saying over there is a sort of B, one class building, which is an office. So to answer the question directly, yeah, we have a full range, but there's no kind of vertical theme. Let's say we have people in tech or we have people in banking or whatever. The thing that binds people is that they all live within a couple of. Miles, more or less. And they all, I think, as you articulated, understand that we're trying to do something a bit more. We have great designed offices, we have great facilities but fundamentally I think that there is something about the membership where people want to know that they're somehow contributing back to something that's bigger than just the desk that they're working from. But there's a sort of shared value set and they know that there's a number of things that we do throughout the business which convert their pound into maybe better uses than perhaps just flowing back. Shareholders? Absolutely no. And it's interesting and I'll be interested in a second we'll go into how the model came about. But I remember right at the start of Lockdown writing, actually I wrote an article that I thought the workplace would be reconfigured, that business owners would have to do a lot of thinking about it because where offices had a sense of community, where the community was of people who worked for the same company, increasingly I saw with remote being proven. What would end up happening is that that dimension of community where people get their community during work would shift away from the company they work for to the location that they happen to be in. And again, not to say I was prescient, but for me that was my way back in the early days. For me that was almost the new lifeline that I could see being thrown to the high street is that we would go back to local work, albeit that your employer actually now wasn't a local employer, but could easily be someone in the city or in Manhattan or anywhere else. And so your model seems to very much embrace that philosophically as well as in terms of actual, in practical terms. Yeah, I agree. And I think you were both prescient in that. You were right. I think this is where the world was going. But I also just think, if I may, you were very normal in that aspect because you're a human being. And I think absolutely what we think of this shift as is in part it's enabled by technology. I don't think this is really a COVID phenomenon. I think COVID accelerated this trend and we stand on the shoulders of giants, coworking and shared space has been developed and iterated on over many many decades. But I think what I think the main shift has been over the last couple of years has been the sort of dawning reality for individuals like yourself and like so many others that we speak to, that actually the power is in our hands as individuals and we're able to move to a more human centered, more needs based design. So I've never met anyone who's got out of bed in the morning and said oh, I can't wait to go to that A one unit on the corner for a coffee before I then go and get on the train to do that commute that I love before I then go to the B one class office. Not a way that we think. What we think is I need to wake up. I have needs. I might have family, I might have exercise needs. I need to feed myself. And at some point during this day, I want to be productive in what I'm doing and I'll do some work. And when you break it down into those fragments and you try and rebuild around the components of what you need to serve a productive and happy life, it doesn't look like the kind of old world imposed upon you of that kind of very structured and formulaic, one size fits all. And as I say, I think it's an underlying technology trend. I mean, here we are sitting in a podcast studio, but frankly, we could be in other parts of the world and have exactly the same output. Right. So I think it's kind of been a long term coming and I just think there's been this dawning realization now that actually we don't have to do this activity just because that's how it was done before. That excuse no longer holds. Yeah, and it's a blend. You mentioned we could be doing it in another way, and in reality, all of my episodes have been done in that other way. But actually, there is something special about just you, Freddie, but something special about having a human flesh and bone in front of me to be having this conversation with. It's different, as you say. It allows for the mix, it allows for what works. Freddie, intrigued how you came up with the model or how you got here, what your own journey was to setting this up. How did that come about? So Patch is now about three years old. I started the business around my kitchen table, Kichet, in June 2020. You didn't have a garage then? No, far from it. Very small flat. Very small flat. London prices being what they are. I mean, another interesting impact of the pandemic. Of course, people have more freedom to live in other places, but really, the idea goes back quite a long way because I think I've received a lot of very helpful advice from other people. And startups entrepreneurs always been an interest area of mine. And I think one of the main themes that I really held onto and dug deep before I started Patch was really, you've got to find something that you really are mission driven and care about and will not sleep, will not rest until that outcome is achieved. Because the number one reason that people drop out of startups is because, frankly, it's just too hard. And you know, this it's an unbelievably difficult thing, particularly in an operationally heavy business, particularly during COVID And there are all these challenges, you don't know what they are. You've got to have a fundamental, deep seated, almost emotional drive. And for me, that emotional drive comes from my experience growing up in a single parent household, having seen the lack of opportunity or the barriers to opportunity that were placed in front of my mum, trying to raise me and my brother whilst also having to do work. And the original concept that started formulating my mind once my first job was in management consulting and I started to meet more and more return to work mothers and just sort of struck me. I mean, this is sort of obviously blindingly obvious to anyone who's a parent and particularly mothers, but for me it was where I sort of reconnected with that emotional seed that I hadn't quite realized had been planted and seeing people leave and struggle to get back to work. And I felt very unpersonally, unbothered by those experiences and so felt like that was something that I could maybe contribute. So the original concept was, well, how could you solve for young mums returning your parents more broadly, returning to work? And that's a huge topic, a huge challenge for lots of reasons. Noodle on that, didn't quite figure it out as some idea of a nursery and a cowork. But the thing that I realized at this time, around 2017, I was working in startups at the time, was that actually one of the biggest ways that you can chisel away at that problem wasn't necessarily directly set up a nursery, but actually the thing that kept coming up in interviews was the commute. It's the distance away from children, it's the lack of flexibility, it's not wanting to take your baby into a nursery that's in the middle of a city. And it was really the commute that came up again and again and of course, land values and everything else, frankly, is cheaper outside of major cities. And so I started to noodle on that idea and think what I ended up with was, well, actually, return to work parents are a segment of a much larger group of people, which are people who have to commute. Jackson is a huge group of people, huge population. And it's sort of dawned on me actually, that if you live outside of and I sort of paraphrase slightly, but if you live outside of London, Manchester, Glasgow, Birmingham, you're kind of then judged by how close you are to one of those places. Whereas it doesn't obviously take a genius to figure out that talent is normally distributed, opportunity is not. And it dawned on me, of course, that there are hundreds, if not thousands, of locations around the country where conversations just like this with members throughout the building, 100 members or so at the moment, just as talented, just as interesting, just as motivated, just as passionate to exhibit their talents and to come together and to create things. And actually coming back to our previous comment, no longer needing to commute is a perfect excuse to come together and actually create local huts. And so that's kind of where the idea came from. And as I say, it kind of branched into this idea of work near home, which is well, if you can work near where you live and kind of achieve those kind of economic benefits rather than taking them all away and down the train line, then actually there's a whole world of your life that comes with that. So you work near home, but then you buy your coffee near home, you spend more time with your children near home, you look after your mental and your physical health and actually take away the commute and this whole life can be relocated. And as you say, at a time when higher high streets have been struggling. Yeah. And it's fascinating because it's clearly, thankfully, been something that's been a dawning realization on a number of businesses in terms of what those obstacles are. For someone who doesn't have the luxury of being able to spend 10 hours at work, which let's not hide from the fact that for many males and I say that I will probably get flamed by it, for many dads, sometimes it was an escape. And I can go and spend 2 hours to work. Do 8 hours at work, 2 hours coming back. But the flip side of that is somebody's left literally holding the baby. And I think there's been a dawning realization on quite how many doors are closed in that model, including, and you mentioned the word opportunities. And it's one of the things that intrigued me with Patch, which I will come back to, is that community integration, because, as you said, it isn't just about coworking. There is a lot more to it and you don't even see yourself in that space. But coming back to your own sort of inspirations for it. So you had a personal thing there which was I've seen in my own mum how opportunities get closed up for her in terms of just having to bring me up, which is a real thing. You do come across and you mentioned the word sort of being mission driven, you do come across as someone who is very deeply driven by that as a mission. And I will challenge you, I'll come back to I will challenge you on the fact that that's the way that that's what you need right now. I think that for certain people that's. What we need, that's what I need. There are others who it's simply here's a financial commercial opportunity, I think I can exploit the bejesus out of it. So I'm going to go and do that. Social costs to be damned. What in you do you think made? Is there anything in particular that made that whole mission and calling very strong for you? Yeah, I mean it's very self reflective, it's very kind of naval gazey to an extent. I can make all sorts of assumptions but who knows? I can speculate basically but yeah, it's highly skewed. I mean, come back to similar thing. I spent a lot of time with my mum growing up and she's a great mum, might sound a bit gooey, but my mum loves me, right, and my parents love me. And I think that showed me so much about what kind of care means. We talk internally a lot about culture of care. That's something that we like to pervade throughout our products and how we operate. But I think both she and my dad, in different ways, instilled, basically, just a sense of fairness. I think that there's another thing that I've reflected on a lot, which is the perspective I've had on my own privilege. So I think ambassadors may have jumped to this conclusion just by the way I speak, but I was privately educated, I had lots of kind of nice trappings of that, of kind of relative wealth, not extreme wealth, but enough. But going into detail, growing up, there were definitely two perspectives I had, and I would sort of sometimes come home from a boarding school experience surrounded by a group of one type, and then very much not have that experience coming home. Again, not to accentuate this or to make claims, but I just think it struck me as weird and unfair that everyone else was going off on repeated sort of skiing holidays and somehow they thought that that was normal and that wasn't always the case to me, or even when I did do that. Again, it was one side of the family had and one side of the family kind of didn't really have in the same way, to be clear. I was always comfortable, but it was just I think there's probably some sort of kind of, I don't know, reverse guilt or whatever you want to call it, but just being aware of that opportunity. And it took me a while to really understand that, I think. And I think at university particularly, again, went to a very kind of privileged environment and ended up becoming the president of the Students'Union and through exposure to lots of different people and some really wonderful experiences there, ended up spending the whole of that year, which amazingly is a job, an employed job, focusing on widening access. And I remember going to some of the most impoverished schools in Scotland in Fifth, where I went to university, and I was advised, don't go because they're not going to take you seriously. And that kind of became a bit of a joke. So I'd go to the widening access conversations, I'd open my mouth and the kids would fall out laughing. But along with the support team that I went with, some of whom came from those areas, that was sort of the point. We made a double act and say, well, here I am with these other people, we're at the same university, we respect each other, we've had the same opportunity, had the same access, and actually, it's not scary or strange that we come from different places. The point is, everyone is welcome. Yeah, a few different perspectives there, but yeah, I guess it's motivating, isn't it, to know that you're helping other people. Well, and I think it's interesting because you raise a point there. I spoke in an earlier podcast to a founder and VP of operations of a technology consultancy in Washington DC. And the VP of Operations eventually VP of Culture. There was a black woman and the company led its entire persona, even as a technology consultancy with antiracism being the core of what they were doing. And it was interesting because one of the points that she raised was effectively how many things white males don't see, just don't see, recall. To my mind, I can't remember the author who wrote about the fish swimming in water where the two young fish pass an older fish and the older fish says to the younger fish, water's fresh today, isn't it? And they go past each other and eventually one of the younger fish says to the other one, what's water? But essentially it's where the world is built around or no, when I say the world, the world here, certainly in the west and London, is built around the white males privilege effectively and again, not open that kind of forums. It's very hard for us to see it. And I say us as a Palestinian who happens to be white. And I've been through there have been all kinds of odd things there in terms of that background and how I've been told to hide it and so on. But when I just turn up as a guy who happens to be white, there seems to be no issues. When I turn up as a guy who happens to be Palestinian, things crop up. And I think one of the things certainly for me when I opened it was realizing that difference between if I'd been born, if I was still living in Palestine, like my cousins, I would have a very different experience under occupation and harshness than I do here. And I think that raised the privilege. And it's interesting because it sounds like in a different way, you got to that same place of interacting with people who didn't have that and by virtue of seeing that, you get to the realization of what you actually do have. Yeah, I spend probably like a lot of people in, as you say, my kind of privileged, in a way, like blind could say position, not knowing what water is exactly. And I think probably like a lot of people in my position, there's been a huge amount of people who've basically born the brunt of, if you will, educating me in ways that, as you say, I just didn't know, I didn't see the water. And I've got lots of good friends who have helped me understand things that weren't obvious and been very patient and so on. And obviously huge distance yet to go. We talk internally quite a lot about accessibility and diversity. We make a real effort both from the very top so structure of the organization, right, from the investors through to the team think very carefully about these things. And I say these things, I mean, not to minimize, but there's a very broad category that we're talking about here. And I am aware of the I don't think it's a contradiction, but let's say I'm aware of the I'm just aware, let's say, of being the sort of white male founder with all the privilege, talking about wanting to open up access to opportunity and so on, I can't change who I am and should anyone, right? But I hope that through the way that we practice our business and the way that I learn, and that we learn, we can continue on a journey that makes Patch a more inclusive and accessible place. And I think a big part of that is me acknowledging internally to the team and in the right way, to externally the position that I'm in and that we're in. And we want to improve constantly on lots of things, but often, as I say, you can't change who you are. So it's about direction of travel, not kind of where you start. So that diversity aspect is key. And I think you've got three locations going in areas which are quite diverse. I mean, as a local of Twickenham, twickenham is actually quite different from Richmond, which is five minutes away by car. It's quite different from Whitton, which is three minutes away by car, very different from Houndslow, which is twelve minutes away by car. But it has its own local makeup. And I think coming back to your precept that Patch isn't a quote unquote co working space. It is a space that engages local community. I'm interested in terms of that community engagement beyond local businesses. In the three locations that you have, have you had the time to explore what that looks like? How you engage with people who aren't just me coming into rent office space, and if so, what does that look like? Yeah, it's fundamental to our operation. As I say. You could broadly think about Patch in two chunks. There's a Patch work effectively, which is the workspace we've discussed upstairs. And then there's Patch public effectively on the ground floor, which is that environment. It's a series of different formats, configurations of space that we offer up for different uses. So we're in a podcast studio. We're going to upgrade this into being a kind of video production suite. We think about photography, virtual wellness, but actually the anchor of the spaces at the front, and in particular, a room that we have, or two areas we have. One is called Patch Academy, which is a brightly colored, sort of fun featured, glass walled, prominent meeting space with a projector with tables that flip up with bright, colorful chairs. And that's designed to be an accessible environment to have a meeting effectively without kind of a stuffiness, without formality. And that's partly designed to make it accessible. Come back to that in a moment. And the other is Market, which is an open area. It's kind of connected to the cafe, it's sort of slightly noisier, slightly more crowded and the workspace, we effectively, we operate, we deliver that product, the public space, we tone set, we put a couple of things in a quarter, say. But really the success and the use that space is judged entirely by what people bring in. So we say that we have the space, you bring the ideas. And I think the measure of that success is what events are actually coming into the space. So we don't say that's a business suite, we say we call it Academy, we call it Market. It's colorful, it's bright. And what I've been really impressed, I mean, it's far exceeded my expectation is the variety, the quality and specifically the diversity of groups that feel like Patch is their home. We're clearly setting a brand tone, a message that says, you are welcome, come in, let's do something, and I'll give you some examples. So, picking up on the previous discussion around diversity and background in Essex, in our Chancellor location, where we've been operating the longest and we have the most experience, we have three or possibly four regular networking groups, and they're all run by and for women, which is an interesting angle in that a lot of business groups don't have. Maybe that kind of focal point of enabling a group that might find it harder to access. The Essex Cultural Diversity Project chooses to chose Patch as its location to meet the Princess Trust hold events with US charity devoted to helping young people access work opportunity. We've hosted events around Pride, we've hosted events around, I believe we had a Black History Month focused cultural event that's run by the Council. So in terms of the events that are happening at Patch, we are not forcing these things to happen. As I say, we've got to create a platform that makes Patch the natural choice for those places and of course, they reinforce each other. So as these groups see themselves represented and reflected in that space, so more come and it becomes something of a safe space. We're also helping locally to develop the Women's Safety Charter in Charleston, Essex, which is sort of simplified, a daytime version of Ask Angela, which is about educating and informing people to provide safe spaces around town. We have children's parties, children's events and so on. And in terms of the diversity of other activities that take place, we have a tiered pricing model. So if you want to rent one of the areas that I've mentioned, you can pay a rate per hour and that's yours. You do it as you will or you can pay a share of your income. And so that works really well for small craft groups. So we have a lot of crochet and knitting groups in shelter. Don't ask me why. And they pay a portion of their proceeds which, if you look at it bluntly, is like lots of making for us. I mean, it's a few pounds, but it allows that group to come in and feel confident and proud of what they do, as opposed to saying, oh, who are you? It's not commercial, therefore it doesn't matter. So in a way, the measure of success is not the pound, it's about growing that broader message. And we also offer a lot of space for free. In fact, the building we're sitting in here in Twickenham is part funded by the council. It aligns very closely. I mean, we would do it anyway. It was just wonderful to meet the council where they had helped support the funding of the building and they want all sorts of measured social outputs, which we are doing anyway. So we're now beginning to develop a scholarships program so that's free and discounted spaces for probably, we think, for young people who otherwise wouldn't be able to access the world of work. So again, there are different vectors here, different ways in which we can talk about accessibility on different angles, if you will. But I think the thing that, as I say, that's made me the most proud has been how patch has been an obvious people have been obviously coming to us inbounding we support the food bank in High Wickham. We're still early stages here in different areas, but yeah, that's a side of the business we want to grow. I'm guessing here there's probably about 13, maybe 35 years between you and I in age and this has quite a social drive. And you mentioned the word mission and in fact, when we spoke previously, you said you mentioned a phrase for second one mine, missionary rather than mercenary in terms of your approach. My generation grew up believing that business was about business is about business, it's about business, it's about profitability, it's about P L and it's not know. Today we're saying profitability is not important. But today, increasingly, certainly in your generation and in some of mine, who thankfully are beginning to see the light in a slightly different way, realizing that it's not just about profit. Profit is an enabler rather than the ultimate goal. And I'm intrigued, you've started with this very missionary kind of thinking in the people that you interact with. Does this look like something strange that you should be having such a social drive to the business that you've got? Because you see the camps and you see them now. When people talk about business, even today, especially things that are coming from the. East Coast and the US. That make their way across to us here where people talk about fake it till you make it. Spot the opportunity. It doesn't really matter what comes out off the back of it because technology is an enabler, and you can use technology to make a lot of money. We're also seeing at the same time the same generation coming up and saying actually, you know what, business needs to be about more than that. Capitalism is a broken model. Some will say it's a model that's had its time, others say it's just a model that needs fixing. I'm sensing you sit in the latter camp and you mentioned to me you're sort of your long term view previously. Just talk me through that sort of 100 year thinking and how that plays out in terms of more than the PNL. Yeah. So this is not an area that I'm by any means an expert in. I have sort of opinions on it like I have opinions on lots of things but I know that there's a lot more well researched and developed work and there are great kind of resources here. But I guess responding to your question based on my limited experience taking last point first, we have three values in the business. They are near balance and built to last. Near is about encouraging and enabling local business. Balance is about helping people achieve balance in their lives. But built to last is about building a company that will outlive our grandchildren. We'll certainly outlive our grandchildren, which sort of 100 and 2150 year time frame, which sounds pretty grandiose and a bit silly. But what it does is it helps me frame, or helps everyone frame our decisions internally about making sure that effectively the good that we think that we are building in the world continues to be a good after we long after we've gone. Which is a way of, I guess, justifying the amount of effort that we've put into the work that we do, knowing that it will have a 150 year plus kind of payoff if you're doing recurring payoff, I hope. But I also think it's a strong motivation, as you say, for the people that we're hiring into the business, our generation. I'm 34 years old. The people who are going to build this business at the same age as me, or younger, frankly, because I want to be doing this for next 20, 30, 40 years. And I think it's a great thing that we have. There's lots to be upset about or scared of, but in the age that we live in. But there's a huge amount to be enthusiastic about and I'm very much an optimist and my optimistic belief is that my generation and below have sort of kind of pretty, it seems collectively and I don't have the data to hand accepted and understood that we're all in this together. Resources are finite and ultimately if you extract those resources for your own personal gain, then in a way you'll have and that gain is not repaid back into the common pool. You will have less resources to mine in the future, if that makes sense. And actually if we all do well. We all do well. I'm not sure I phrased that very well. But I think there's also I mean, again, I'm not an expert, but I hope there is something to say for the abundance of kind of the abundance of quality of life metrics. I think for more and more people we don't struggle in the same for everyone in the same way. But globally you'd say it's averagely true that we don't struggle for the same way we do for basic shelter, food, water and education the way that we used to. And so hopefully humanity has kind of thought about other things. Yeah. And I think that's interesting because I want to drill in a little bit on that last value, swears, especially that sort of built to last. And it's interesting when I walk into the patch here in Twickenham just for those who most people listening to this won't have seen it, but there are a number of books up front which are being sold and those who listened to my podcast before, where there's usually a stack of books behind me in the podcast episode, probably 90% of the books that are being sold here are in my bookshelf. But that's not a coincidence because it is a different way of thinking about capitalism. It's the books by figueras and the world that we're building and they are looking at from that long term perspective we mentioned in terms of successful businesses, obviously, Amazon, they always had the empty chair, the famous empty chair in every Amazon meeting which represents the customer. I always think, wouldn't it be far more interesting to have your leadership meetings or your board meetings, whereas the empty chair represents the future generations who don't have voice today by definition, but who we have to think about. And I was very struck when I was talking to you prior to us doing this by you were mentioning that sort of a hundred year timeline and I think I mentioned to you at the time, it reminds me of the First Nations thinking, certainly in North America, where decisions are made based on what happens seven generations down the line, which is generations 30 years. That's two centuries down the line. You make your decision on that basis. I would ask in a way, who is it you're doing it for? Because if your horizon is very, very short term, it might be difficult, general to argue that you're doing it for anyone else other than yourself because you don't really care what the side effects are of what you're doing because by that point you're living on your yacht or whatever it is you want to do. So I think it's a way of justifying it's probably more of an input. Right. It's a way of making sure that we end up at the place we want to be. Which is really meaning it when we say this isn't about making ourselves look or feel good over the next 510 years. This is about building a good thing. If I believe that Patch is a good thing, as I do, and I sell that emotionally to my family and then I sell it to my friends, and then I sell it to investors, I would be being dishonest if I didn't want that to be the case forever. Or the articulation of Patch may change, but our mission is to create opportunity for people, work and community on every UK high street. And I want that to be true and to be delivered for many, many years to come. And that is the message that I'm bringing everyone around me to buy into. And it takes a lot of people to build patch. I'm not building patch. I'm explaining kind of what I would like us to do. And a lot of people are getting behind and helping us get there, including myself, including our members, investors and so on. And, yeah, I just think it would be dishonest if I didn't believe that that should be true in perpetuity. And therefore that's one way of trying to keep us honest, to make sure that we are to say, not building this for short term personal gain, but we are building this for, as I say, kind of long term benefit in perpetuity. And does that turn up in actual on the ground decision making? Yes. I'm being intrigued to know how that happens because it's always, for me, that connection between our wonderful Aspiration and what we do day to day. We're touching on kind of organizational design and corporate culture and values and so on, which is hard because we are evolving a lot. We have 14 people now, sort of 318 months ago. So I'm also learning about this. But I think what I really have found so useful about those three values near balance and built to last, is they're so short, they're so simple, they're so powerful, they're easy to remember. And because they're easy to remember, they come up in conversation all the time. So we had a conversation internally the other day about share options. So everyone who works for the company has an option to buy a share. They are effectively shareholders in the business. And the first slide on why are we doing this, what's this conversation about? Well, let's go to our values for reference. The two relevant values there were balance and Dr. Hubs. We talk about the values on a sort of Friday checkout call we have every week this section where we see the values attributed this week. So I guess more tangibly. You think about buildings. Buildings. This building was here before my grandparents were born and it will probably be here after my grandchildren born. And so property is a very long term game and it has the tactical applications, right? So the obvious tactical application is it costs a lot of money to fit out a building. This was in a really bad state of disrepair when we moved in. We had to basically bring it right back to almost starting point, replace electrics, replace the air conditioning. The boiler was going to explode. I mean, it was all lots of that would have been inconvenient. It would have been inconvenient, which is why the radiators don't actually function in case anyone wants it. But we've left them in place just in case we need to put one in. But I'm now tactically thinking about, okay, well, how can we create a kind of environment of this standard and this quality in a way that makes business sense? Right. That has a long tail, that comment. Right. But I think gets the point is how we find finance and build community around our buildings. Know is a very important question. And it's why when we move into locations, the first thing we do is we interrogate. I was going to say we kind of interrogate the local environment and rigorously go through and figure out, right, who do we need to talk to? Who's there in the council, who's in the business improvement district, who's in the voluntary service, who are the local actors and people who can help us understand what it means to be in Twickenham so that we can make decisions around the building design, around what goes into the front area, what books we provide is relevant in that area. Because again, this community was here before and will be here after us. We are guests and it'll take us a long time to earn our place as neighbors. And once we've earned that place, we have to fight for every day. Yeah, absolutely. And that's a really enlightened way to look at it. I love that when I look at company values and how they translate and in fact, a lot of the work that I do with my own clients is I actually take each one of those values and say, well, what are the key functions of this organization? Let's pick them up. There's five or six of them. And I just create a matrix that simply says for each one of those key functions, how does this value show up? And that makes it really tangible in terms of them not being the poster on the wall or the fancy about us page, but actually being a thing that informs the job that each one of us does on a daily basis. And I think when you've got those three values that you have, and especially I do keep homing in on the built to last because I think they're all great, but the built to last for me is the one that has the largest future impact and in some ways almost enables the other two. It almost underpins the other two values. Yeah, they do seem to work quite well together. But I think the real test to your listeners or to anyone really is you ask any member of the patch team what our values are. I would very much believe that it'll be able to repeat that immediately. But how does that look like when we have ten sites, 50 sites, 100 sites, can we still maintain? And I think that's going to be our challenge over time is how do we this is great, our conversation, but we've got three sites and I'm very aware that in order to fulfill ambition, to be on every UK high street, all sorts of challenges are going to emerge. But I think it starts by pointing in the right direction early on, setting those values very clearly, because it's this team that we have now, it's the culture that we set today that will inform all the people that come up. Yeah. And I think it's standard in the evolution of companies, when they're relatively early on, the values of the organizations are very much informed by the values of the founders. And I don't think usually you need to do much more work than that because you interact with everybody and so they get what the values are. There's a great book we've all read and that I'm pushing through the company and the phrase, I think, sums it up. The title of the book, which is What You Do is Who You Are by Anthony Horowitz. I'm sure you're horowitz, right? Ben Horowitz. And it's beautiful. It's kind of, as you say, you can make all sorts of claims, but what you do is Who You Are. I think it just encapsulates it perfectly. Yeah, no, it does, absolutely. So, Freddie, you talked about getting up to every high street. What's the plan from here? What are you guys looking at next? As far and as fast and as good as we possibly can. I come from tech startup background and you sort of, within reason, kind of put marketing spend behind something in the code, copy and paste and you can scale very quickly. I don't have a background in property and I'm learning just how much more complicated and more slow it is. And not always without reason. Sometimes without reason, but sometimes with good reason. And so for us, it's just about both delivering on the promise that we have in our existing site. So never making a claim, saying something that's great, moving on, and then things fall over, it's about developing. These are really the three things that we have an incredible team at Patch and in particular, we've got very clear priorities. And I guess what I'm referring to there the operational qualities led by Ben, our head of operations, that's about to say, delivering the promise that we've described today. There's the product. Our head of product is Paloma Strelitz, a very interesting woman in her and whom we're pushing the envelope on. What does the public retail offer mean? Let's really unpick that. How many of our products should be sourced locally? Is the operation realistic? How much? There's an honesty market upstairs in the workspace, again, featuring locally sourced products and kind of small businesses. We've decided to donate those profits to charity. What does it mean to take the Patch public as a Patch experience out of the building? What does it mean to take it online? How can we? I mentioned virtual wellness earlier, and so on and so constantly pushing what the Patch product is, the concepts we've talked about, but how it articulates and how it articulates in different ways. I'm going to look at two or three different sites in the north of England, very different places to where we are sitting today. Some of those elements will be relevant. Some of us won't. And the third is about growth. And I had a property, jesse, I mean, all very accomplished people throughout the team, but Jesse and I are working on securing new locations, and sometimes that's a commercial transaction with a commercial landlord. And typically they are landlords and developers who are very aligned socially. We've been very impressed by some of the people we've met, actually. They are taking a hit, or they are bearing additional cost in some way to bring us in, because they understand and care about what we're doing, which is really great from a carmichapitalist perspective. But increasingly, local authorities, our mission very clearly aligns with their objectives of regenerating town high streets. One of the things I'm interested in is how the Patch product stacks up economically in different environments. I mean, to be kind of candid, not every high street is the same. Not every local area, local town has the same economic certainty, let's say, for us building a business. But the mission isn't create opportunity for people working for communities on the high streets that can afford it. It's on every UK high street. That would be some mission. We have a discovery process we're going through about, well, how can we one of my investors said, I'm only investing if you agree with me. We're not done until we're in Wigan. And he has knowledge of Wigan as being a particularly challenged place in this context. Apologize for Wigan. I've not been but I've been in touch with the MP in Hull, and we're talking to people and crew, and there are just levels of scale. I'm quite proud that we're in Chelmsford, High, Wickham and Twickenham at the moment. These are affluent places, to be clear, but there are many more affluent, obviously affluent London commuter towns, let's say. And I'm quite proud that we've been able to pick spaces that make us feel comfortable from a commercial perspective, but aren't the sort of absolute obvious home runs, because I think it sends an important message about our aspirations. So, yeah, growth. Every UK high street, figuring out how to get there. Different models, but quite a few things in the pipeline at the moment, which too early to talk about, but, yeah, quite excited about wanting to get to a point where we can double each year. Feeling like that's not far off. You mentioned high Wickham affluent area. Yes, it is, but in the very near high Wickham are very not affluent areas as well. Well, High Wickham is a very mixed place in that regard. But Marlowe, not too far out, is an only affluent area. And Hemel hempstead and Burkhampstead are very two different places. They're very close to each other and so on. But we celebrate that variety. We don't hide from it. We don't have a perspective on it other than we want to be a place where everyone can come together. Yeah. No, I think this is where it comes back to what we're talking about in terms of your community outreach and how you engage with the local community. Because actually, I think even in Marlowe, even at Marlowex, there are areas which. Are very definitely not every community. And I think that's what can be unfair. I apologize to Marlowe, but I think it can be too easy to say, well, Winchester, St. Auburn, that it's only written, and it's just not true. Yeah, absolutely. And I think we can be part of yeah. Part of our job, I think, is to make sure that we go to, say, marlowe and make sure that we serve all of marlowe and we don't serve the bits of marlowe that pay. The bills or maybe use the bits that pay the bills to enable you to serve the rest of. You know, you can see that in our model somewhat today. Here in twickenham. You can come in. There is free workspace on the ground floor, and we have a cafe, and it's a local independent operator. We ask people to buy a coffee from the cafe. But there are literally two fully functioned, high quality, ergonomic workstations which are totally free. Twenty four, seven. And that's our way of saying, here is an offer. The price point is 24 pounds, if you want to start once a month. So finding that blend where people can come in and get access, whilst also not torpedoing ourselves economically is a challenge, but one that would feel like we started in the right way. Yeah. And in reality, also, I suspect the model will evolve to some locations, effectively funding other locations. Because even though micro level, I think at a macro level, the more you scale out, the more you'll find that Marlowe will fund Wigan. I would not be surprised if it ends up being the other way around. I think that there is a huge there's an oversimplification, again, not an expert, but there is an oversimplification of and here we are doing it right now. Right. Marlowe versus Wigan. I haven't been to Wigan. What right do I have to talk about Wigan? The point is that Wigan and other places around the UK all have their own unique contributions to make. And I think there is a laziness, frankly, particularly here. We are sitting in the outskirts of London, particularly from the southeast, particularly from Londoners, to sort of assume that places far away that sound troubled in some way have nothing to offer. And I would be unsurprised, actually if a mature patch at 5150 sites, whatever, and these are all aspirations, we may never get beyond three, but I would not be surprised if it is actually the, if I can say, like less obvious areas that actually perform the best, because I think they are underpriced. But come back to the original belief. The original belief of patch is that talent is evenly distributed. So I believe that there are just as talented people in the locations. That might not be obvious, but everyone else sort of overlooked it and therefore the price of the property and the price of operating is very low. And I think actually you might find the margin is greater. And if that is true, that could be an amazing message. An amazing message that we are missing out by overlooking the 40 million people who we don't think live in the rich enough places and it might just help us turn our assumptions on our head. Wouldn't that be amazing? I'm going to make it my own personal mission to get you to open the least obvious place. You don't do the UK, I'm going to get you to open one up in Gaza. Challenge accepted. I don't commit to a timeline. UK. And Garth, what a message that would be. Freddie, thank you so much for making the time. It's been a fascinating conversation. Who should be on the lookout for patch and how do they find it? Well, there's anyone, really. I mean, you're welcome to go to our website. We have a Register interest button on the homepage and the idea is click that, tell us you want a patch near you and we'll add it to the list. We have a sort of voting mechanism. We're drawn to areas where we've got lots of people. I mean, funny enough, Kendall has a burgeoning patch demand. There's lots of people in Kendall, apparently, who want to patch. So in that regard, anyone www.patch.org register know and you'll get our mailouts and hopefully we'll open up near you. In terms of people who can walk into a patch today, chelmsford in Essex, high Wickham in Buckinghamshire and Twickenham on the London Surrey border are all places you can walk into. And I hope that there are more and more opportunities to interact with patch online. That's something we're just starting to think about. As I've mentioned before, we support local makers and craftspeople. In fact, if you're in any of those three areas, we have a Christmas market coming up in each of those sites, middle late November, as you'll see it on our social media and it's our Aspiration. But people that we meet, and makers that we meet through events like that can then perhaps form some form of kind of online exposure for them, as well, but early days on. That fantastic, Freddie. Thank you so much for making the time. Very much appreciated. And good luck with the mission. Thank you very much.