).png)
You Can't Afford Me
Making the leap from employment to entrepreneurship can be a scary time. The biggest fear people have is the unknown. Here on the “You Can’t Afford Me Podast” we speak with hustlers and innovators on how to make the most of your journey. If you have questions we have answers.
You Can't Afford Me
Your Office Isn’t Broken, It’s Boring: Make Meetings Not Suck
What if your meeting room could lower cortisol, sharpen attention, and make hard conversations easier? We sit down with Christian Markow of Lost Office to explore the overlooked science of workspace design—how plants, light, materials, scent, and music quietly rewire how teams think, feel, and collaborate.
Christian traces his path from English major to global brand strategist, sharing hard-won lessons from experience design with organizations like Chick-fil-A and major consumer brands. We break down what truly differentiates a business once quality and pricing are comparable: how you behave, the details you sweat, and the way your space tells a story. From biophilic design that measurably boosts focus to lighting temperatures that reduce fatigue, Christian explains practical upgrades leaders can make this month for meaningful ROI on productivity and morale.
We also tackle AI with a clear stance: use it to clear the busywork, not to replace judgment. Christian shares a Socratic approach to AI that asks better questions, preserves human taste, and amplifies craft. The result is faster starts and higher finishes—more time for originality, culture, and the tiny touches customers remember. Rounding it out, we get real about burnout and presence, trading the myth of daily balance for weekly rhythms that protect deep work and family time.
Ready to rethink your office as a performance tool? Tune in for an actionable playbook on biophilic design, lighting science, neurodiversity, and AI-enabled creativity. If this conversation sparked a change you’ll try, share it with a friend, leave a quick review, and hit subscribe so you never miss what’s next.
www.themrpreneur.com
In the fast-paced world of business, your digital marketing strategy shouldn't be a burden. At Enzo Media Firm, we make it effortless. We specialize in empowering medium to large businesses with comprehensive digital marketing solutions, from dynamic video marketing and podcast production to advanced web development and social media strategies. Every client at Enzo Media Firm is paired with a dedicated account manager. Your guide through the digital landscape, ensuring personalized attention and tailor-made strategies. And with monthly meetings with our creative team, we keep your marketing aligned with your vision, even if you're short on time. Enzo Media Firm, where marketing is just not simplified. It's personalized, effective, and designed for your success. Discover the ease of digital marketing with us. Visit www.enzoMediaFirm.com to get started. Welcome to the You Can't Afford Me Podcast, where we skip the fluff and dive straight into the ground. Real entrepreneurs, real struggle, and the unfiltered journey behind today. Let's get into it. Hey guys, thanks for joining us on another episode of the You Can't Afford Me podcast. So it's not often that I walk into a space and my jaw just drops. My team was filming for great nonprofit here locally in Unison, and this location was hosting the event, and I heard so many people just talking about how beautiful the space was, how it flowed, the feng shui, like all those fancy terms you hear. And uh one of the developers, one of the owners, uh was able to meet him while I was at the event, and I was like, dude, we gotta talk, man. Like the science he was giving me behind this space and everything. I was like, yeah, we we need to chat a little bit. So uh today on the podcast, we got Christian. Christian, how you doing, buddy?
SPEAKER_02:Good, how are you? Thanks for having me.
SPEAKER_00:For sure, for sure. So, real quick, just give everybody a quick rundown who you are and what you do.
SPEAKER_02:I can do that. I am one of the founders of uh Lost Office Collaborative, and like you said, it is uh team deep workspace, but it's uh also designed uh kind of around an idea of like quasi-consulting and coaching as well. So we help help help teams as much as we give them space.
SPEAKER_00:Nice, nice. All right, so let's let's go all the way back before this business that you're involved in. What was your start? Where did you grow up? Did you go to school for this? Like talk us through it.
SPEAKER_02:I don't think they have school for this.
SPEAKER_00:Um school of hard knocks.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, right, right. Uh I grew up in Richmond, Richmond, Virginia. Uh came from a family of like small business owners. My dad was part of back before our times, Marco Florist, immigrants that came from the Ukraine and started a kickstand uh flower shop in the farmers market, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah. Um so all to say that's important because I think I've always had this idea of uh small business in my blood, growing up and watching a family kind of do the hard work that you need to do to sustain a business um for yourself and your family.
SPEAKER_00:I'm so glad you said that because I always tell people that I think entrepreneurship is in your blood. You either have it or you don't.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. I I think that's largely true. I mean, you either you either want to do it or you don't. You know, and neither is bad or good. Yeah. Right. Um, but yeah, fast forward to you know the school years. Now, I mean, I graduated as a uh English major with a concentration in creative writing. I always wanted to be a writer and a storyteller, and non-traditionally kind of zigged and zagged through different types of careers. I worked in a magazine publisher in Orlando for a while, um, and then found my way into nonprofit. I worked at uh United Way actually, found my way back up here uh after that. Um, then worked at a public relations uh firm back in the day. It was Carter Raleigh Thomas and now it's Padilla uh locally. Moved over to creative consulting. Uh, if anyone watching the podcast was around 10, 15 years ago, they'll remember Play and Andy Stefanovich. Oh, yeah. Yeah, so I worked there uh and then we got acquired by this global brand and growth consultancy called Profit and did everything from concepting the cosmopolitan of Las Vegas and the restaurants and bars and overall experience there to doing experience design work for Chick-fil-A, doing product concepting for places like Pepsi and Campbell's and uh worked for big banks, big insurance companies, etc. etc. Yeah. Left uh because that's when the bug hit. Um I wanted to do something where I felt like the work that we did was more uh intimate and meaningful for our clients, and that we didn't just like leave them with you know the infamous like 90-page PowerPoint decks and ideas that you never know what happens to them. Uh so we started Joe Smith, myself, and uh at the time my business partner Barry Saunders. And that went really great, successful, got acquired um uh here locally by Padilla. And uh that team is still there, but the bug hit again. And uh and myself and my business partner Mark Brown kind of saw like and felt very in very real ways this gap uh in the world for places that were solely designed to bring people together in meaningful ways. And so we center that around you know, businesses and corporations and teams that are trying to like meet whether it's an off-site, a strategic planning session, a board meeting, or whatever. But the the offerings out there that exist for people to kind of get away are either way too you know, resorty, yeah, way too conference-centry, way too meeting roomy, um, or it's the corporate campus and or the room inside your building. Yeah, and none of them get your brain in the right state of mind. They don't get you the tools and the support you need to have the right conversations. So I think that from a technical level and then from a philosophical level, like I think when we first met, I told you the same thing. Mark and I both have seen the world and everyone in the world kind of like going the wrong way from each other as human beings. We're all going this way. We're finding camps and separating from each other individually, we're all kind of isolating a little bit more every day, and we need to find ways to pull people back together.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:So that that was kind of the inspiration for Lost Office.
SPEAKER_00:So that's uh that's a colorful career path that you that you had. Um let's go back. So in the marketing space, so you you were you said you were an English major in college? Yes, yes. So what what took you from majoring in English to getting into the marketing space?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, that's a good question. Well, I mean, naturally, I think in marketing and brand strategy and those kinds of things, you're you're creating stories.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Right? You're you're trying to share and tell a story. So I had always been on the creative side, yeah, and the development of narrative, story, message, those kinds of things. And then to me, the natural manif the kind of transition from that into concepting work and innovation work for clients was like every space is a story, every experience, every company has a story that they tell, not just by their products and service, but the way you experience the human beings and the space itself. Absolutely. So to me, like it was it was natural to move from a liberal arts degree that was, you know, solely focused on like putting things together, words and sentences together, tell a story to doing the same thing with pieces and parts of a business.
SPEAKER_00:Talk about what it was like working, because you you dropped some pretty major brand names uh in your story. So you said Campbell, or some of the other big ones you named?
SPEAKER_02:Uh Chick-fil-A. Chick-fil-A Chick-fil-A, that was the one I call by. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So what were you doing on these projects with with major companies like that?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it it it varied. Um, you know, for for an organization.
SPEAKER_00:Well, I should first ask, do you still have a Chick-fil-A hookup? You got some free chicken sandwiches? Every once in a while, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Every once in a while. I can find a way. I can find a way. If I can't, I'll just buy you one. Um yeah, for an organization like uh Chick-fil-A, we were doing work helping them with basically experience uh design, service design, rethinking like their uh their drive-thru experience, which has a lot of pressure on it.
SPEAKER_00:Um they literally have like I I've said it multiple times, I'm sure most people in America have said like Chick-fil-A should be running like the DMV and like different like if everybody if everything could run as smoothly as Chick-fil-A, this world would be a much better place.
SPEAKER_02:And they and they work hard at it, you know. So and and you can see some of the manifestations of work that we did like years ago, like starts to show up three, four years later. Like there's a couple of drive-throughs that were retrofits in the city here where it was inspired by some of the work we did with their team. They're so was that more of the layout in terms of like how you have the double lanes for pulling in, or was it like it's all that it's that, it's the service model, it's the yeah, the flow, how it all kind of happens. Yeah, so we would help teams kind of like not just like like come up with that concept specifically, but really define the problem, yeah. Go through the process of of invention around the different ways you could like address the what the problem was they were dealing with, and then create all the pieces and parts and the details around that.
SPEAKER_00:So being being that your mind kind of caters to because it's not often I talk to somebody where like this is why I love talking to different humans, is because like our brains all work completely different. Yeah, and like how what you're describing in terms of like strategy and the customer experience, like my brain has never gone. I've been in business for myself for 10 years, my brain has never gone there. Of course, I've thought about customer service and things, but like scientifically, the way you're getting into this. So, like, let's say uh a brand new company starting, let's say it's a service-based business, so it could be a plumber, electrician, a media firm, whatever it is. Um, what are three tips you give people in terms of like making sure that their clients have a good experience?
SPEAKER_02:That's good. That's good. Um, I'd say, you know, I I think about it in layers. Fundamentally, like it doesn't matter what you do with your your experience or your your philosophy, your culture. If your baseline product isn't good, yeah, forget about it, right? Um, and they're they're organizations that forget that they focus so much on the brand or the all those kinds of things. They forget, like, man, just like back to the Chick-fil-a example. It's like make sure the two pickles on the bottom of the sandwich are perfectly placed, right? Make sure that the chicken is hot and that it's cooked well, like all that kind of stuff.
SPEAKER_00:Like you can say it's my pleasure all day, but if the food sucks, I'm not coming back.
SPEAKER_02:Right, you're not coming back. So, so baseline is always gut checked that your qual that your product is high quality, whether it's a service or a product, just keep the processes in place or put processes in place that help you evaluate that on a regular basis. Um, but then yeah, I think one of the things that we're firm believers in that um that I think help people differentiate themselves in a very crowded market, doesn't matter if you're, you know, you know um a plumber or a grocery store owner or working for a big corporation or you know, starting like a whole new like AI startup, they all face the same problem, which is there are a hundred others of you in your neighborhood. Yep. And once you've got that base product right and your pricings are generally the same, then the question becomes who do I like better? Yeah. And then that's where experience strategy kind of comes into play, which is really kind of a stake of claim on how you behave and the how you show up is different than your competitors. And it's memorable.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And that's what we focus on too, is that I always use this phrase like in the in the um kind of the entrepreneur startup world, everyone's looking for a unicorn company, right? Someone that's gonna make them a billion dollars.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, the next Uber or Facebook or whatever.
SPEAKER_02:Guess what? That's 0.001% of the companies that get that get created. Yep. The rest of them have to fight on differentiation. And to fight on differentiation, you gotta be thinking about what makes us stand out and what makes us different. So that's everything from you know the personality of your brand, the way you show up from a fit and finish perspective, right? But also like the human beings. And how do you how do you like create a culture of people that that behave in a way that both feels good to you internally, but also feels good to your customer. Absolutely. And that's gonna be different, yeah, you know, for for every company.
SPEAKER_00:Steve Steve Jobs is like the goat of entrepreneurs to me. He's the one I study the most. Um, and he talked about how when he leveled up Apple during his second tenure when he came back after they kicked him off the first time and came back. Um, his primary focus wasn't, you know, he was a designer, he was a creative, but his number one focus was acquiring the best possible people he could to come work at Apple. And he said that made all the difference. That's what took Apple to the next stratosphere is focusing on the people and the personalities. Because at the end of the day, like, you know, someone can find another company like us that can film video for them or produce a podcast or whatever it is, but um, people never forget how you make them feel.
SPEAKER_02:Right.
SPEAKER_00:And if you give them the right experience and they feel good about it, why would they not come back?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, there's also something else that I remember them talking about, and I'm sure the organization has changed a bit since then, but rumor or not, I've believed that I read that they never used to really do uh like customer focus groups for their products. No, because the the thought was like you customers that know they don't know what they want. Well, you get and you get everyone around the table, it's like let's build something that we would want. Yeah. Right? And that we would love. And if we can do that, we're kind of our customer. Yep. So insular, but also kind of you know, important is like the obsession of commitment to like quality and just the the love of the product.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. I mean, he became obsessed with that. You even think of the box when you open up your iPhone and how the box feels when you're opening and the packaging and the little stickers and that vacuum feel is there for me. Yes, and everybody loves that first time, like you pull the seal off your new iPhone. Like it's just a whole experience that you get there.
SPEAKER_02:Which gets to my last and and third piece, which is details. And you know, you had kind of talked about the space uh over at Lost Office, and and I always tell people every single thing in that in that space was chosen for a reason. Yeah. Like we didn't just like say, oh, just put something in that corner. Yeah. Like the books are all chosen for a reason, right? The colors. So in any any business that we ever work with, we always talk about like the details because the details is where you know authenticity and humanity lie. Like that's where the real stuff is. Yeah. And you can see through it when it's not real. Like you can see it when the details aren't there.
SPEAKER_00:What what is it that you like with someone with your experience? I mean, obviously starting up businesses and and working for these major corporations. What is it about Richmond that is drawing you here in the business community?
SPEAKER_02:You know, at one point in my life, I was like, should I go live somewhere else? And I did, right? I moved, moved down to Orlando, and I'm glad I did that. I met my wife down there, we came back, right? Yeah. Came back to it's too hot. Um it's pretty hot in Virginia now. It is now. It's all creeping up. Um, I think that the the the beautiful thing about Richmond, Virginia, um, is that you know, I feel like every every like interesting creative city's got like a flavor. Like I think about like you know, Austin, and they they talk about you know, Austin weird, or you know, Portland's got kind of its own flavor. And I feel like in Richmond, there's a lot of creativity and a lot of innovation and a lot of startups happening, but there is kind of like a practical, kind of like more human vibe here, yeah. That um it just feels like more real.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. People like to connect here. Like when we're doing business with people in Richmond, we want to get to know you. Let's go out to dinner, let's go play around the golf, like let's really get to know each other.
SPEAKER_02:And it's just it's it's it's not so forced. Yeah. Right. And so I think that and and you can see Richmond kind of on this great trajectory, a little slower maybe than other places, but you know, sometimes with slow comes greatness. Yeah. Um, because you take time to really build your roots well. And you just see Richmond kind of turning into this really like, you know, small maybe, but but very sturdy and solid, like startup, creative community, small businesses community, just a great, great town.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. I mean, you got one of the most creative universities in VCU. Yeah. Uh you got companies like, you know, on a much higher scale in the marketing space, the Martin Agency. You got a couple Fortune 500 companies just sitting downtown, like in our backyard. You got your Capital Ones, you got your Dominion Energies, you got UNOS, which transplants all the organs for the entire country. Like, it's all downtown Richmond. Like, Richmond's got a lot going on. It does. Yeah. And the festivals and and business seminars now that we're starting to see. Um, yeah, I'm excited for for where Richmond is right now. Yeah. Um, all right, let's talk about the Lost Office. So, first off, how'd you come up with that name?
SPEAKER_02:Uh Lost Office, we we went through probably 200, 300, 400. Of course. Um, but I think what landed us on Lost Office was we wanted, you know, I there's a philosophy in naming, which is like not everyone's gonna like it. Some people think it's bad, some people think it's good. We just want to remember it.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Right? So as long as it's memorable, I don't care if you like it or not, you'll eventually like it.
SPEAKER_00:Yep.
SPEAKER_02:Right.
SPEAKER_00:Um name's just a name until you give it meaning.
SPEAKER_02:Right? It's a herald. Yeah. Um, but but the idea of Lost Office was pretty simple, which was um in in the world of teams and corporations and organizations, everyone's always feeling like they're missing that utopian like office or corporate or team experience. Right? They go into the office and they're like, oh, why can't it be like this place that feels like an office should?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And they can't find it, right? So we kind of named it after that. Like, this is the law office that you feel like is lost. So Lost Office was born. Like that.
SPEAKER_00:Now describe for the people that are listening. I want you to describe what this space looks like. Um, because true, truly, I'll say if you're in the Richmond area, you need to come experience this, you need to see this firsthand. Um, but kind of paint a picture for people what this space looks like.
SPEAKER_02:Okay. So um just from a functional perspective, the space is designed for teams. It's not co-working, it's not like offices, it's designed for teams to come and use the space for a day or a week or however long they need it, right? Um but but if you walk through the doors, we've often heard people say, for some reason my shoulders just dropped and I don't know why. So imagine walking in into you know our front doors and all of a sudden kind of the mood around you just changes, right? Our space is is what I would call like calm but energetic colors, a lot of greens and natural organic colors, mushroom colors, those kinds of things on the walls. We have well over 200 live plants throughout the space that we have a massive ladder that we have to get up to and take care of. So imagine like plants kind of in a very elegant way taking over every room in their own way.
SPEAKER_00:And we're gonna dive more into the plants if I keep going. Okay.
SPEAKER_02:Um and and then when you when you look at all the furnishings inside, everything feels looks comfortable. Yes. Uh but you can't really pinpoint where it's from, right? It's got a global feel to it. It doesn't feel like it's very, you know, North American or European or Asian or hipster or whatever. It just has a vibe that feels like I'm somewhere different. Um the scent is is distinct and intentional. Um it feels fresh and energizing, but also it feels like like outside. Yeah. Um there's light music playing in the background. Sometimes it's real music, sometimes it's ambient, sometimes there's something in there that's intended to like sync up your brain somehow. Um but uh a lot of you know, stone, a lot of uh a wood, um, and a lot of um interesting small things around the space that capture your attention for a moment. Yeah. Um and big, huge 18-foot ceilings in every single room with uh plants hanging from the ceilings and chandeliers that were handmade by small Etsy, you know, artisans in the Ukraine and Malaysia. Um, and uh a general kind of like lighting that just feels warm and friendly and inviting.
SPEAKER_00:Like the science, and those are the pieces I want to break down because like when you and I had like five, 10 minutes to chat briefly, like you're breaking down the science of the lighting there with the plants and everything like that. So, first let's start with the plants because I I found this fascinating. And this is when I was like, dude, I gotta talk to this guy more. Uh so I think I had mentioned to you when we were briefly talking that I saw this on an episode of uh uh Gray's Anatomy, where in the hospital they built a plant room. So if anybody was feeling stressed, it was this room that they went into, and it literally felt like you're walking into a jungle, like just plants wall to wall to wall. Talk to us about the science with plants and what live plants do to human beings when you're working in a space that has plants.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, there's actually a lot of great science and research on plants. There are some great studies on uh that were done in hospitals that demonstrated that uh patients who were in rooms that had plant life andor a window for them to be able to view nature healed faster. Right. Uh there's some great studies, um, I think out of the Netherlands uh that showed that people who had plants in their offices, and when I say plants, I don't mean like just a little small plant, like in the corner. They had like enough of them, um, more than just one. But when they were near plants, um it showed that their stress levels drop by about 10% and their ability to focus increased by about the same amount. And we all need that in the workforce. And then there's just the pure like scientific reality or just the structural reality of a plant is that it is producing oxygen for you and it's pulling in the stuff that you don't need, the carbon um dioxide, right? Um, so they're natural cleansers, and certain plants are better at it than other ones. Yeah. Um, but uh but they're there to kind of purify the air too.
SPEAKER_00:Are you trying to reach decision makers, entrepreneurs, and sales professionals? Then you can't afford me is your next marketing move. With six episodes a month and a growing audience of CEOs and industry leaders, your brand won't just be heard, it'll be remembered. Advertisers can place audio ads on our podcasts and even secure visual placements in our full-length YouTube videos. This is where smart brands earn attention. Lock in your ad spot today before your competitor does. Email Sam at NzomediaFirm.com to receive more information. So for I should have told my team before you got here, man, get these fake plans. Let's get the real plans for Chris and get in here.
SPEAKER_02:You got you've got you got 'em. But yeah, I mean, and so we use them because of the science behind them. Yeah, they add beauty to the space, but part of that shoulder drop, yeah. Part of that shoulder drop comes from this immediate sense of and and of feeling like all of a sudden I'm I'm connecting in a way that I didn't realize I needed to. The the the kind of the history of the human DNA, right, is that 200,000 years ago, um, we lived in the forests and we you and we hid from our predators, right? And and the trees uh the that protected us, um, certain kinds of trees like cypress emitted certain chemicals or elements in them that protected that tree from bacteria and insects, but it also became something that when we smelled it, it helped de stress us. The science behind Hinoki cypress um and the essential oil inside of that is that it actually reduces your cortisol levels. It will lower your cortisol levels when you inhale it. Not like immediately, but like like within a day or two.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Right? So there's very real data behind plant life that shows that it can impact the your productivity, your ability to focus, your sense of kind of like just like uh stress level. So it's it's it's something that we don't necessarily take. Uh I don't say we don't take it seriously, but we take it for granted. Yeah. Like so then you see corporations and they have like a plant in the corner, and that person that comes by and waters it every once a week, right? It's like, well, that's nowhere near enough.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Right. So give us an example. Let's say, just for easy math, let's say a business has a thousand square foot office.
SPEAKER_02:Oh my gosh. How many plants?
SPEAKER_00:How many plants roughly should they have in that building?
SPEAKER_02:That is a good question. I don't know if I've ever done that, Matt. I I think about it more like from a visualization. So, for example, where you are right now, like you've got a plant right there in the corner, but it's a nice size plant. But if you added two more beside it, then all of a sudden it would start to feel substantial, right? And then you would feel the impact of that being next to you more so than than even you do right now.
SPEAKER_00:And honestly, don't even recognize that it's there right now.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and I I do, right? But but but that alone, like, and to me, it's more about like substance. Yeah. Right? You want it to be significant enough that it doesn't just feel like decoration. It feels like, like you said, like you're almost like immersed in it a little bit.
SPEAKER_00:It's got a purpose.
SPEAKER_02:Overkill, you know, you got an app problem you gotta worry about, right? Like you gotta be careful about how far you go.
SPEAKER_00:Plus, somebody's gotta keep them alive.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, someone's gotta keep them alive.
SPEAKER_00:Let's let's talk about the lighting piece. So we've nerded out on the play and stuff. Talk to me about the lighting and like how the different hues and temperatures, like I understand this obviously, somewhat being in uh production, but um the way you described it is like I always a lot of people like will joke with us when they get here to our office because if you go in all the individual offices, everybody's office is pretty dim. Like we use a lot of natural light, like, and I have accent lights and stuff in my office. And a lot of people walk in here, like, why is it so dark in here? And I'm like, this is the only way as creatives, like we typically work. Like, we don't like the I call them the hospital lights overhead where it's just got that bad tungsten light on there. So talk about the science behind lighting and how that affects productivity.
SPEAKER_02:Um, so let's start with temperature, which you're very well aware of being in the kind of company you are. But like when you think about temperatures in a range, and people will see them like on the shelves at Home Depot or Lowe's, like and the ranges will be down in the 2000s or up in the five plus, right? And so the difference is warm light versus like broad daylight, super white light. There is science, and this super white light has more blue in it, and then down here it's got more kind of red tones in it. Yep. Um there is science that shows that the brighter white lights help create attentiveness, which is true, right? There is uh that kind of and you feel it in TVs with blue lights and microphones and stuff, and it kind of keeps you alert. There's a point where that becomes bad. Yeah. Because it also increases your stress levels and become hyper attentive. Yeah. Right. And so then you can't concentrate. So there's a careful balance. You go way too low when you're lighting temperature, and it becomes almost like too sleepy. Yeah. Right. And so you have to kind of manage where that sweet spot is. Um, but that said, you know, there is to us a sweet spot in like the 2500 to 3500 space where it feels warm but still has some energy to it, right? So it gives you enough kind of like feeling of like natural light that it feels it feels kind of like energizing. Then you've got this other layer of the type of lighting. And I think the the issue of fluorescence is kind of quickly starting to leave like fluorescent light. Lighting is probably the worst invention in the world because it flickers at a really high rate.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, we have to adjust cameras, like the shutter speed of the camera. If we're filming, like you can see a flicker and you have to change the shutter speed to match it.
SPEAKER_02:That I did not know. Yeah. Yeah. And so, like, if you're if you're in a building with fluorescent light, that is gonna make it really hard for you to concentrate. And it has for decades.
SPEAKER_00:And there's something also with I used to work in the mental health space. Autistic kids, if you have that kind of lighting around them, it's very hard for them to focus because they're actually like hearing the light, like they can hear the flicker and like it's just visually messing them up.
SPEAKER_02:That is so true. My my daughter is on the spectrum and she's super sensitive to a lot of things. So noise, light, yeah, all those kinds of things affect her. And so, yeah, like finding those those those even tempered moments is is so important. Yeah. Which is you bring up a really great point. One of the things we also try and be thoughtful of is kind of neurodiversity in a space. You know, like I I have ADHD, um, which kind of got me down this path of trying to understand like the neuroscience of how the brain works. Yeah. But um for me, if I sit in a chair that doesn't move for too long, you'll start to see me move. I probably I probably don't even realize that I've moved probably three or four times already here. Right. And I move my hands a lot because of that. So we try and accommodate for that. You know, lighting's a part of that, but the the way that you kind of think about furnishings in a space also do that. Um, so yeah, sorry, tangent, but yeah, back to the lighting. Um natural light, if you can get it, yeah, hugely important. It's the best. Um, and then if you can't, it's about managing your lighting temperatures as much as you can. LEDs have definitely been a massive innovation allowing us to do that without costing, you know, um an arm and a leg. Yeah. So it's an it's almost like a layup opportunity to improve the kind of like the the productivity inside your building is to be thinking about how where the lighting is is working and where it's not.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And this is something I hope every business owner is like truly locked in on this conversation because you know, if I look at just throwing out a number, let's say I spent 400 bucks in plants, but productivity with my team went up 50%.
SPEAKER_02:That's a hell of a return. You nailed it. Yeah. People do not, and in there in in honesty, companies are not trying to make those associations. Yeah. Right? So let's take a building that's, you know, what 20,000, 100,000 square feet, right? And you're trying to fill that space with plants. The there were some studies back when kind of the idea of biophilia, biophilic design came online. Um, I want to say back in the 60s and even before that, but in the 60s or 70s, um I'm gonna get it wrong, but I think it was ING Bank in the Netherlands that took four or five years to build their first corporate office off of biophilic design, and their entire kind of like lobby area was just like nature. Yeah. They actually had data that showed that productivity overall in the organization increased because of the plant life.
SPEAKER_00:And people probably were looking forward to coming to work, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And they actually had uh team or or team members or employees would volunteer to take care of the plants uh in the in the first floor level.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:So there is data out there that demonstrates the direct correlation between uh plant life or organic materials in a space and its impact on productivity. Most people don't, they they think it's like a joke, yeah, right? Or they don't they don't take it seriously. But yes, very real.
SPEAKER_00:And it's it's those little things. Like the things I've learned as I've gotten older and and grown in business a little bit more is that the uber successful people that you know we all well, that some of us strive to attain certain levels, all they did was change some minute things in their life. Like at one point I had uh as a black dude, man, my hair grows so fast. Like it's literally like every week, if not every other week, that I need to do it. You don't have to be black to have your hair grow really fast. I'm gonna tell you that right now. But it's like when I first started dating my wife, because she's not black, she was like, geez, you're gonna get another haircut again? I'm like, that's how fast my hair grows. Like, I don't know what to tell you. So a life hack that I had for a while, I had a barber come by here at my office and cut my hair. And during that scheduled time, it normally takes like an hour to cut my hair and do the beard, um, I'm meeting with my team. So my team would come there, guys cut my hair. I'm not gonna have two birds on one street. That's brilliant. Versus before, like, okay, 30-minute drive to the barber shop, hour cut, 30 minutes back. That's two hours of my day, and I wasn't able to do anything business-wise. Now I got him coming to me and I can do that life hack. So I think like finding these my new things where it's like, yeah, the way I used to think about people who paid for somebody to cut their grass, I'm like, how lazy is your ass? You can't go out on a Saturday and just cut the grass for an hour, hour and a half. Then I started to realize, well, okay, well, if I can go out and earn 150 bucks an hour, why would I do a job that I could pay somebody else$20 an hour to do?
SPEAKER_03:Right.
SPEAKER_00:It's not saving money. Like I'd be more productive if I put my time and energy somewhere else and allowed someone else to handle this task. Um, so I think once you start, it's almost like when you're when you're putting together an NBA championship team.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Like I tell my team all the time, like, I'm like, hey guys, when I come to you and I'm saying X, Y, and Z or hey, we need to do X, we need to do this, it's not saying that you guys are doing a bad job. But do you think when the Warriors with Steph Curry and that whole team, when they won their first championship, that Steve Kerr came back the next year and just said, okay, guys, just keep doing what you did last year. Good work. He's fine-tuning, okay, this worked last year, but now we're gonna do this, and like we're gonna open up Steph this way and do X, Y, and Z. So I think like all these things that you're talking about, how a business can fine-tune their environment, like people just have no idea what a life hack that is. So many things, so many things.
SPEAKER_02:I mean, I was talking to someone about, you know, it's funny. Years ago, I um did this, I don't know, I went on this weird tirade and talked about like water and how important water was. And I'm literally now uh seriously talking about how important water is to uh your ability to think, right, and to be productive.
SPEAKER_00:I'm thinking about getting a filter for our shower. I read a study on that and like talking about if you filter the water that's coming through the shower, how that affects your skin and your personality and all that stuff. Like, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:But just putting water, most people don't hydrate well.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Right? And that just it's like it's like oil in a car. Right? If your oil gets too viscous and it starts to slow down, it gums up the engine, right? And next thing you know, the engine's locking up. Exactly. You don't have enough fluid in your body, you don't put enough water in your body, your blood starts to gum up, it slows everything down in your brain, like your brain waves are slowing down.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:So little teeny hacks that we don't realize have massive impact on our ability to be creative, our ability to be strategic, to have to use our critical brains, right, to just be able to focus. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:When you're driving a Ferrari, you don't go to Walmart to get an oil change. Like there's very specific things you need to take it to the next level. And you take it seriously. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Right? Your your body should be a Ferrari, Ferrari, not not a no no offense, but it should not be a Ford S. Think of your body as a Ferrari, not a Ford Escort.
SPEAKER_00:Absolutely.
SPEAKER_02:Treat it well. Have you have you written a book or thinking about writing a book? Because if you haven't, man, you need to. I'm working on one. Um, we've got two things going on. So I'm I'm starting a book. It's called uh Happy Brains, Better Work. And uh about halfway through, and it kind of breaks down the brain into um the neuroscientific, the real brain is very complicated, very complex, I should say. I try and break it down into two quadrants, two spaces and four quadrants. So there's the doing brain and the being brain, uh, and then and then in each of those you've got kind of like the the creative and critical brain, and then you've got the the coping brain and the community brain. And each one of those requires kind of different inputs, right, or influences to allow it to kind of be its best self. And so I always think about it as it's not like a disk assessment or one of these like personality assessments where you're this type of person. It's more about kind of getting an understanding of what capacity is left to take advantage of in any of those brain states and when should you be trying to like amplify them or juice them up. So the book's kind of about that. It's the stuff we're talking about, but at a much deeper level. Yeah. Um and at the same time, we're also working on um an a new platform for innovation uh over at Lost Office called The Architect, uh, which is taking our kind of like our brain science around collaborative behaviors and those kinds of things in and integrating um kind of tools and AI and its ability to help you kind of create things, um, but embedding it into the space so that the technology feels very organic in the space. I know that's a very obtuse explanation of what we're doing, but just think like like future forward Jetsons like stuff that we're working on.
SPEAKER_00:So you're all right, let's let's park it on the AI subject here for a second. So I I feel comfortable sharing this story. I had so I I'm the old guy here in my office. Like average age of my staff is like 22, 23. Most of my staff are still on their parents' health insurance right now. Um we brought it up in a in one of our weekly meetings. Uh, I got to talking about AI, and I I basically told the team, like, hey, it's it's on you guys. You you need to start researching. I I'm gonna bring information to the table, but um, this isn't gonna work if like Sam's the only one like driving this AI chat. Uh for instance, like this podcast that we're recording right now, for them to take the footage from these two cameras, the mixing board, mix all that together, make the final cuts, produce the final video, and do reels and all these different things. I used to take my guys four hours to do.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Now with two uh AI software uh applications that we use, this whole process takes them 20 minutes now.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So it's like, why would you not? But the my point with that story, one of the elder staff, I would say at that point, he was probably like 25, 26, uh, he came in my office. He was like, Man, I gotta tell you, like, I actually took offense to you talking about the AI stuff. I was like, what are you talking about, man? He's like, Well, that's uh that's an attack on my career, that's an attack on my job. I was like, pause, man. First off, I'm not talking about AI just here at Enzo Media Firm. I'm talking about AI in the world. If you want to be a videographer, a creative, a director, whatever it is, and you're running away from AI and you think that your job's gonna be safe because of that, buddy, nothing but luck to you. Because that's that's not the case. And I always look at it from the perspective of like when you had the horse and buggy and uh uh Henry Forr started to mass produce vehicles, and everybody's like, oh, none of the jobs are gonna be left because machines are gonna take it. No, it just enhances the job. We're gonna do with all the horses. Yeah, it's just enhanced, we're gonna make more glue. Right. Like it just enhances the job. Same thing with the internet. When the internet came out, oh my god, this is gonna replace so much. No. So give us your thoughts on AI and where things are going.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I I think that um I think you're spot on in terms of not running away from AI. Um, I think that the technology is moving faster than anything we've experienced before. So that that is certainly a pressure point, right?
SPEAKER_00:Remember like a year ago, you see those AI videos, and it was like AI generated, and like the person would have like eight fingers on one hand. Yeah. Now you can't tell the thing. Now they only have six fingers. Yeah, right. It's getting much better. But there's a joke going around now, like, you know, because there'll be like a news reporter and a UFO's coming out the ocean. I saw one of those the other day, and the caption was like, Man, our grandparents aren't gonna know the difference between real and fake news anymore.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. So here, here, here's, and I think that's the most important kind of space, is what you're talking about. And one of the things that we're thinking about for like the architect, which is um if we don't start now to think about how we engage as human beings with AI, pretty soon everyone's gonna forget what good looks like. And what I mean by that is that um the more we rely on the technology to tell us the answer, yeah, the less we use our critical brains, our creative brains, and the more we say task complete, yeah, push it out the door. Yep. And you're gonna start to see kind of like a lot of sameness in the world, right? It is on us, and and we have kind of a philosophy, it's a Socratic learning philosophy. So the Socrates or the idea of Socratic um learning philosophy is Socrates would teach his students um by asking questions, engaging in discussion, right? And by doing that, um he could get the student to learn better and faster and with more depth. So the way that we're thinking about AI and the way we're training the AI that's embedded in our process and our tools is using a Socratic methodology. So we want we want it to be asking questions and challenging people to think.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And then in hand in hand with that, you know, if you're talking about what does good copy look like, what does good design look like, what does good strategy look like, what is good business financial model look like. We need to know what those things look like when they're good versus bad. So you have to figure out how AI is gonna help um cultivate that. And we have to also figure out how to get people who are using it to to take the all this time that they now have, right? All of the things that were process oriented, like have are being taken over by this massive taskmaster of AI. There's good in that, and the evil in it is that we'll forget how those tasks were done. Yep. So what you can do is start to perfect the art of understanding what good looks like in you know, film and videography. Like you can spend more time like mastering the creative techniques, using the tool to do the job, but like really thinking about the beauty now that you've got the time, like to really think about the beauty of what you want to create when before you're like, oh, we don't have enough time to do that. Yep, absolutely. No different in the business world, right? You can really like think hard about your pricing strategy or approving your product because you got a tool now that's gonna get all this kind of busy work out of the way for you. Yep, absolutely. So I think to me, like people should start thinking about now how to lean in, right? Lean into AI in a in a in a really strong way, like really try and learn it, like curiosity and grit, go after it, but then get it to free up all those things are getting in the way of you self-educating and perfecting your art form. And you know what? If you want to keep like, you know, making things by hand by God, do it, right? Yeah, there's beauty in that.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that stuff will continue to have value, like because once everything's digital and it's it's being crafted by a machine or something like that, when someone sees something that's handcrafted, you're gonna know the difference between that and something that's like generally manufactured.
SPEAKER_02:Completely.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So like that, yeah, that thought process. And I I look at it as from the perspective of I love how the some of those menial tasks that it's just like, okay, let's just get AI to take care of this or it frees up my mind for something else. But I share this in a talk I gave the other the other week. Um, anytime I'm going online to buy something, I get on ChatGPT and say, hey, find every discount code you can for this website. I'm about to purchase something here. And then it gives me a discount code every time, and I always save money. So it's like little things like that where it's like, okay, before I would have had to search Google and take the next slide. And you would have spent two hours doing it. Yeah, and then 90% of the codes it would have given me wouldn't have worked. Like ChatGPT now can kick out something that quick and we're good to go. But also getting people to see that like we use this as a conversation starter. So when we're thinking of creative ideas for a client's project or something like that, hey, here's the client, let me input all the information, here's their brand, here's their voice, boom, give me some ideas on this. It generally does not kick out something where we're like thousand percent we're going with every single thing that's said. It's like, no, this gave us a strong base to work off of. It would have taken us 20, 30 minutes to get that base to the before. Now we're starting at a place where now it's only gonna take us another five, 10 minutes to build off that idea and create an organic concept.
SPEAKER_02:And and the trick is you're still using your creative, or the the the key there is that you're still using your creative muscle. You're just starting here instead of here. Yep. Right. And so now you spend more time being creative in the detail. Yep. Right? Or the the stuff really matters.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, but I I I can see it's happened over the years where um, I'm not sure how you're old your kids are. Mine are five and four. So they're much older. I'm looking forward to those years. Uh, but like now with the kids, like they'll bring over their tablet and they're like, Dad, I want to get on YouTube kids or something. And then every now and then it pops up like a math question. So like little kids can't get into adult. And I find myself nine times out of ten opening up my iPhone, going to the calculator, and be like, what's nine times eight? Like, I can't remember this off the top of my head. So I think we've gotten to that point where it's like some of the like critical thinking piece, but at the same token, too, I'm like, you know, when you look at it in the school setting, is it really worth the time to have our kids memorize who the first 20 presidents of the United States were, or should we just show them how to search for that online? Like, what's the value of them knowing that? Like, if somebody stops you on the street, puts a gun in your head, and be like, who's the 14th president of the United States? Like, that's never gonna happen. Right. Like, let's spend time thinking about more critical things that are actually gonna revolve our minds.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I think I think there's this specialization of the brain going on, which is like, yeah, like do you need to know all 14 presidents? No. But the context of history of our country, you should know.
SPEAKER_00:Thousand percent.
SPEAKER_02:Right? Thousand percent. Um so so yeah, and and like, do you need to know what nine times four is? No, right? Your brain, our brains are still limited in their capacity to retain information. So it's almost like you're switching it from some of these things that were important in one age because you had to do it in order to like, you know, make your business work or get your task done. Yep. Now that you've got tools for that, it's no different than having had tools in the past, right? Like when the Gutenberg press came out, all of a sudden people didn't have to handwrite anymore and subscribe. That means that they could spend more time creating writing instead of writing writing. Yep. Right? Um, so we're just redirecting our brains to focus on different things. Yeah. And it's hard to let go of those things that felt so critical and important to us as children, right? And now we're seeing our generation come up as like, why aren't you learning that? Well, but they're also learning things that we never had to learn.
SPEAKER_00:Exactly, exactly. And I'm thinking too, where I heard this, you remember the artist Khalise, she wrote, My milkshake brings up most of the So Khalise is actually genius. Like, she actually lives in Africa now, which Africa is something I've been studying big time because Africa is actually the fastest growing continent in terms of population in the world right now. I think within the next five years, they're gonna have the largest demographic of like teenagers or something like that. Yeah, and the natural resources and things that are in Africa are abundant, like it's just crazy. But she was on a podcast I was listening to where uh she likes to travel a lot and she wants to give her her kids like these worldly experiences. So she determined that early on she was gonna homeschool her kids. Um, she revealed in her most recent podcast that her son is actually being taught by AI right now, and immediately like you can hear the jaws drop in the room. Like, oh my god, are you serious? Like, why would you allow your kid to be taught by a computer? And the way she described it, first off, class sessions are like two hours a day, which when you really think about it, are our brains really retaining, like having a kid in school from like 7:30 a.m. to 3.30, how much are you really retaining in that amount of time? Um, because as adults, like I gotta get up from my desk, God knows how many times, like to make sure I keep focusing can stay on track. Um, but she talked about how it curates the education just for the kid. So if there's a lesson, let's say he's learning about math that day, and he does not understand something, it's not just gonna move on and brush past it. It will ask, what is it about this that you don't understand? Okay, now I'm gonna go back to this and explain it a different way in the in a manner that you're gonna understand. To me, that is genius. Yeah. Like, even learn whether it's learning a new language as an adult or whatever, but like I think people just have to get used to the idea that the world is changing, it doesn't have to be the way you and I grew up with it, and be willing to accept that because the ones who gets to I always look at Blockbuster and Netflix. Do you want to be Blockbuster or do you want to be Netflix? Yeah, like Blockbuster should literally be one of the largest companies in the world. It changed two years too too slow, right? And even when I I got to hear a talk from uh one of the original founders of Netflix, he actually came to Richmond one time for a chamber meeting and he talked about it. And there were moments where number one, Netflix actually wanted Blockbuster to purchase them. Blockbuster refused. Then the tides started to shift, and Netflix became the big boy. Netflix came to them and said, Well, hey, we'll buy you. And Blockbuster was like, nah, get out of here. Like, we're the OG, we're not going out like that. And even to the point where Blockbuster knew they were going bankrupt, Netflix extended the Allah branch one more time. Like, hey, we're willing to buy you. You don't have to go out like this. And they said, Nope, like the Titanic, I'm going down with the sinking chip. It makes no sense. No sense whatsoever.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Um, sorry, now I just went off on a tangent. Um, let me ask you this as we wrap up. Uh, one thing I always like to ask entrepreneurs is to me, there's no such thing as work-life balance when you're an entrepreneur. Like, our minds are constantly going. Um, I think it's just, you know, moving certain things at different periods. Uh, how has that been like for you? With because it sounds like you're like me on a much higher intellectual level in terms of like the way your brain just doesn't stop. Seriously. But the way your brain doesn't stop, it's like you're probably walking into a room, same way I walk into a room, and like I'm seeing visually, like, okay, if I was filming this, I'd film it this way, blah, blah, blah. And like a million thoughts are going through my head, and nobody is none the wiser what I'm thinking. So you probably walk into a room and be like, oh, I'd change that lighting, I'd move those plants over there, I'd add more, I'd put this book over here, blah, blah, blah.
SPEAKER_02:That team needs help. Yeah, all that.
SPEAKER_00:So talk to us about the balance with home life and work life.
SPEAKER_02:Uh, it has always been hard, I think, for me, um, because and it feels feels bad to say it. Sometimes I when I find joy in the work, it doesn't feel like work. Yeah, like you just want to keep doing it because it's you're fascinated by it, right? Um, but you can when you're in that mode, you will burn yourself out and you won't know it. And you're probably very well, and anyone who's an entrepreneur probably feels that. Like you don't want to admit that you're burnt out. Because you could just a couple more hours, a couple more days. I had a uh uh a boss tell me a long time ago, um Mike Mobile. If you're watching this, Mike, this is for you, told me a long time ago you need to think about work life balance, not as a daily thing, but as a weekly thing and as a monthly thing, and not to say that you need to like work a hundred hours every week. Yeah. But he said, give yourself the grace of seeing life as um bigger than a day. And and make sure that when you do that, that you are giving yourself the time with your family that you and your family deserve. So when you are with your family, be with your family. Yeah. And I think I try and take that to heart. And I know I my my wife, Lisa, is listening to this right now. She'll be like, mm-hmm. Keep working.
SPEAKER_00:My my wife probably says that.
SPEAKER_02:But when you when you are with your family and you are with your friends, be with them. Yeah. Right? Be in the moment. And you gotta let so in order to do that, you have always trying to think about like what do I need to do to allow myself to shut down and give myself that permission or be or strong arm myself into being in that space. Yeah. And sometimes it takes like 24 hours, yeah, right, to be like, okay, I'm calming down. Anxiety levels around what I was just working on, I'm letting them go. And then you kind of get into the zone and just let it go for a while.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that reminds me of uh recently, or not recently, I guess in the past year, LeBron James uh got the highest uh scoring title uh passing Kareem Abdul Jabbar. And I'll the thing I remember about that, because MJ is my goat, not LeBron. He ain't even close. LeBron may be top five for me, he ain't number one. But amazing photo. Bron's hitting that final shot, crowd of I don't know, 20,000 people. Every person you see in that picture is sitting there with their cell phone up, capturing the moment like this. And there is one gentleman in that photo who is just standing there with his hands in his pocket, living in the moment. Yeah, and it was Phil Knight of Nike. He was the only one in that picture that did not have a cell phone in his hand. Which to me is also crazy the way we think about this, because like you think about like the last time you were out like for Fourth of July and you saw fireworks, everybody's pulling out their cell phone on the corner. When do you ever go back and pull out your phone and be like, oh, let me watch those that fireworks show from 2022? You never do. So just live in the moment. Because guess what? If you didn't capture it, somebody else did. And if you want to go on YouTube later and catch it, it's there. But yeah, that that point of like just living in the moment, and that's honestly been probably one of the hardest things for me as an entrepreneur is like fully detaching because especially I I think it all started to change once I became a father.
SPEAKER_02:I was gonna say, and as a story capturer, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And when when you realize that, like, you know, some of these moments that were in, you're you may not ever have a situation like this again. And it's like living this moment, but I also reflect as a father, and I never want my children, well, say they're on a podcast interview one day and they're like, hey, how was your dad like with you growing up? Like, was he present? Oh yeah, he was there, but he wasn't really there. Yeah, like I didn't I don't ever want my kids to say something about like something like that about me. I want to make sure I'm present in those moments.
SPEAKER_02:Well, I will say, last note to that, it's it it is the the parallel between the phone situation that has made it so easy for us to always be pulling out that phone. Same situation. Use your phone, take a picture, no, put it away. That's it, right? Find that one or two moments where you're gonna do it, and then stop trying to capture everything. That's just like life. It's like fine, like do that that work thing, even if you're on vacation and you need an hour. Guess what? Get up early before everyone else gets up. Yep, get it done, close the laptop, and then go be.
SPEAKER_00:Yep, go be in the moment. Yep, that's a it's a good lesson for me to hear because I'm going on vacation next week with the family to Myrtle for a week. And I I'm the one that likes business and pleasure is a perfect vacation for me. Like, I I it's impossible for me to sit still more than three days at a time. I just can't do it. So, like to me, my wife always jokes about this, but I'm like, hey, if I can get somebody to fly me out, like I'm talking to this company now, they're uh maybe flying me to Vegas for a conference in uh in October. And I'm like, if I can get somebody to pay for me to go out, I flatten my gums for an hour, and then I got the next 48 hours to do whatever we want, that is a perfect vacation to me.
SPEAKER_02:Like, well, that is a a perfect vacation that was enabled by a business opportunity.
SPEAKER_00:So the vacation is still the vacation. Yeah, that's very true. That's very true. Um, last thing, let me ask you this before we close. Like, if someone wanted to, because the skill set you have, honestly, I meet a lot of people, and I've never met someone that has broken down like the lighting and the environment and the plants and all these different things. Do you will you work with people on a consultant basis or anything like that? Like if somebody's listening to this right now, because I'm often the type where I'm like, that sounds like a great idea, even if somebody shows me how to do it, I don't have time for that shit. Yeah, can I just hire you and get this done?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, we do it. We do um, we kind of think of ourselves in two ways. So we work with innovation teams and organizations, probably as a core, but organizations in general, helping them kind of think through their collaborative capability. So we think about the human level stuff. Yeah. And we obviously have skill set in that. And then from a physical space perspective, often we think of ourselves as almost like an intermediary between architectural firm and even interior design firm and organization. Yeah. Because somewhere we often find that that translation gets missed. And that's not to say that architectural firms and interior design organizations don't understand what I'm talking about, they do. But the difference is that we live and breathe what the client does in terms of how they work. And we have seen and kind of shouldered up in those experiences. So we can make a very real connection between all of these, you know, environmental manifestations in space and the reality of what's doable, affordable, but also practically like useful versus it's a great idea, it would be beautifully beautiful aesthetically, but is it really going to do anything to enable your team's productivity? So we do. And we've done that with a with a couple of different organizations so far.
SPEAKER_00:Awesome. Awesome. Alright, if people want to get in touch with you guys, they want to learn about you, they want to come check out the space, where can they go to get more information?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I would say uh you can uh certainly go to lostoffice.co um and and start there. Um and then you can always reach out to me, Christian Marco. Uh that's uh C Marco, M-A-R-K-O W at lostoffice.co, or Mark Brown at Lostoffice. That's M Mbrown at lostoffice.co. Good stuff. And uh and we'll hook you up. Good stuff. We love to talk, we love coffee.
SPEAKER_00:Dude, this was an awesome conversation, man. Thanks so much for seeing us. I appreciate it.
SPEAKER_02:I appreciate it. I loved it too. Thank you very much.
SPEAKER_00:We'll see you guys on the next episode. Are you an aspiring entrepreneur? Our one-on-one coaching tailor strategies to your unique business goals. Dive into interactive workshops fostering skills essential for success. Looking for an inspirational speaker for your next event? Book Mr. Preneur to elevate your gathering. Visit www.themisterpreneur.com to learn more and embark on your path to entrepreneurial success. Mr. Preneur, empowering your entrepreneurial spirit.