S3E13: YMI Talking to Terry Wallace from Venture X

The wait is over. Today’s episode is live! 

We sat down with Terry Wallace from Venture X Bethlehem to talk about his journey from commuting across state lines to building a thriving coworking space in the Lehigh Valley.

Our conversation with Terry dives into his journey as an entrepreneur, the vision behind Venture X, and how he’s helping shape the future of work right here in our community.

Check it out now wherever you get your podcasts.

For more info on YMI insurance visit our website at ymiagency.com

Or give us a call at 610-868-8762 to see how we can better protect your business and family.

Transcript

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I set out to kill the commute. That's what it was. When I decided I wanted to do a co-working space, I thought, again, pre-COVID, I'm going to bring the finest of Fifth Avenue to the Lehigh Valley. We're going to put a couple of locations up here. Some percentage of those people that are traveling in and out of New York or Philly or Jersey, whatever it might be, they will leap at the opportunity to work at even a nicer, more beautiful, more, I'll say it's better service space. Then they're traveling two hours a day to get to, and we'll be right in the backyard. Welcome to Why Am I Talking? A podcast where the guests are so good, you'll wonder why the host is even talking. In each episode, you will hear one of the leaders of the Lehigh Valley's vibrant business hub. They will tell you the keys to their success, the mistakes they've made, and what they have in store for the future. Here is the host of Why Am I Talking? from Why Am I Insurance, Jimmy Hanachuk. All right, that is me and Jimmy Hanachuk with another episode. And dare I say, one of the best episodes yet. Very good episode. So good. It's Terry Wallace, Venture X. He is, as I said, the man. He's incredibly humble. He is for all that he's done in his life. He has like the craziest career path ever. Yeah. Dream careers for sure. For sure. And he's, like you said, done such incredible things, worked for such incredible companies. But each step of the way, just like giving praise to the people around him and the things that he did. Yeah. So I was impressed by that. Do you remember the first time we met? Yeah, the first time we met in person was there at Ventura for my interview. We did our interviews there. And so this was kind of, like you said, a full circle moment. Yeah, definitely. It was cool. It's such a cool space. That's why we have the interviews there, as I said on the podcast. I was wondering that. We tricked you. Now you're stuck here. But he does a great job there. Yeah, it's a really cool space. I love how the stairs are like in the middle and the way he was talking about the architecture and everything. And it sounds like he did most of that. Yeah, he designed it. Yeah, he's definitely cooler than me. I gotta work on this. Um, but very cool. I mean, let's, let's jump in. Yeah. Yeah. We're gonna jump in. Um, this episode with Terry Wallace is great. His story is incredible and what he does in Lehigh Valley and what he does for it is amazing. Yeah, definitely. Here we go. Here we go. This is an episode I have been trying to do since season one. Um, Terry Wallace is. The man, I think it's fair to say. He is the head of VentureX. If you have been near Bethlehem, you know of Terry. You've probably met with him and you've probably realized he is just the most down-to-earth and nice human being, besides all of the incredible things that he does. So, Terry, let me start off by just saying thank you for coming on here. Yeah, thank you for having me. Absolutely. Let's start with Venture X. Give Venture X a plug. It is the coolest space. I'm going to actually, can I give it a plug real quick? Good, good. So Emily here, Emily is our marketing manager. We interviewed her here in this space and that's probably why you're here. You're like, oh, YMI has really cool office space. I did think it was very cool. I was confused when I first walked in because I was like, where's YMI? But then I figured it out and it's a really cool space for sure. Yeah, we tricked her. That's how we get all of our employees here. But it is a cool space. So give it a little plug and what makes it unique? Yeah, so a number of things, but I would just give you a little more context. So we're a co-working space. We have 50 offices in here, multiple conference rooms, pockets, space, event space. It's truly all inclusive. So everything, our members, everything from gourmet coffee, tea, beer, wine, to enterprise level technology, we help with marketing, we provide space for private space, open space, whatever it might be. However we can support the creation or the growth of your business, we're on board. My goal is that all our members get to the point where our members say their businesses are more successful because they are here. We currently have 154, to be exact, businesses that work out of this location in one shape or form. Wow. Yeah, yeah. Now that's everything from an individual who, we've got a person who works at Meta. Now obviously, Meta is not housed within Venturex here in Bethlehem. However, we consider that one company, as in Meta, and then one member. We have about 250 members. Okay. As individuals. So we've got all kinds of organizations in here. We've got video game companies, social media marketing firms, we've got lawyers, we've got a very large plumbing company, we've got electricians, we have, my goodness, I'm just thinking you're looking around, we've got settlement companies, we've got real estate agents, we've got, you name it. Yeah. We've had speech pathologists, we've had bookkeepers, we've had two venture capital firms. Honestly, I could go on forever. Yeah. When I first started, was thinking about opening up the VentureX here in the Lehigh Valley, I was thinking kind of a late adopter area where we'll get. certain community staple businesses, insurance firms. The cool guys. The real cool guys. Financial planners, some attorneys, you know, this way. And I was struck by the diversity and breadth of businesses that are around here. We have five businesses that this is their first location in the United States. Wow. Yes, yes. Just stunning. I didn't expect that. We have the spin-off of Olympus Corporation. And so it's funny, my thought would have been, it would have been much on the smaller scale, right? Like startups, individuals. And so just the breadth that you have here is incredible. Yeah. Yeah. Walk me through, I mean, what it takes to become a member. Also, did you say there is beer for members? Yes. We're gonna run you out of business pretty soon, Terry. And wine. And wine. Yes, yes, yes. I actually used to have a broader liquor options downstairs, but I realized that was a little expensive and people leaned into it a little bit. But anyway, so we just go with beer and wine at this point in time. That's great. And so what does membership look like? How does someone become a member and what do they get with that membership? Sure, it's real easy. We can get someone up and running the same day they walk in. Now, it depends on my occupancy. very fortunate because I'm right now about 95% occupied. Wow. So as far as offices go, if someone came to me and said they need a 10-person office suite, I would not be able to offer that. Right. We do have that, but they're full at this point in time. If I have the office space, we can get them started that day. Literally, they sign a DocuSign agreement. We get them up and running. We do months, or for offices, I do 12-month agreements. I'd like to some point get two months a month. It's just, I'm not, I don't have that breadth and scale yet, where I can absorb that type of thing. But our other memberships, you don't have to have an office. The majority of our members actually don't have private lockable office space here. They're what we refer to either as shared desk members or dedicated desk members. What they get is 24/7 access to the place. All of our members have an app on their phone. Press the app, it actually literally opens the doors for you. You can come in 24/7. You can schedule conference room space, you can schedule event space, podcast studio usage, whatever it might be, you can do that right off of our app. You can pay your invoices off that. It's also a social dynamic. You can put all your information out there. You can see information about other members if they choose to put it out there. And mind you, we're talking about 250 people, again, 154 companies. So it's not a massive network yet. We're working on that. So membership, really, what I'm selling is flexibility. We have different members that use this space in just... tremendous variety of ways. We have some businesses that come in, they've got office space, and they kind of nine to five. They come in every day in the morning, they get settled, they do their work, but at the end of the day, they head out. We have other members that really lean into, I'll say, a much more social dynamic here, certainly professional and working dynamic. One thing I also mentioned, we have up to 10 events a month, and that's everything from attorneys that talk about the needs of small businesses, to we have we have fashion shows we've had doggy fashion shows we have wine tasting beer tasting you know all these type of things chamber events chamber I've been to them we have a number of chamber events we have um events from the veterans and military council here we've had a wedding here one of our members asked to get married get out yes wow uh which really struck me at first I thought I'm sure you want to get married and I thought Wow, what a wonderful, what a wonderful thing to ask. And of course my answer was, hell yeah, the answer is always yes and then we'll figure it out. We've had baby showers, we've had bridal showers. We've had, you name it, we have all kinds of events here. Now we really do try and stick that to our members. But we certainly will open the doors to non-members as well for events. But the membership, it's quite fluid. Whether you're paying $300 a month for a ShareDesk membership or significantly more than that for a 10-person office suite, all of your people have 24/7 access. and it covers everything. You'll never see a utility bill, you'll never see a cleaning bill, unlimited printing, enterprise technology. Again, the beer, the wine. That's where my head is, yeah. There's like 800 directions I wanna run in right now. The first is the wedding. To me, when you walk in here, it's stunning. I don't know if you would agree, Emily, but it's all state-of-the-art. The design is so cool. It does not shock me that someone would look at this space and say, Yeah, I could have a wedding there. You come into an insurance office, and it's a much different feeling, right? Whereas if you're trying to attract a younger generation, and you could show them this, I mean, it does two things, right? It is first off, like, look, it's a really cool space and you get all these amenities. But then also this is like the heartbeat of Bethlehem almost, considering the magnitude of the different businesses you have. You have large plumbers, you have small startups, you have all these different people. people coming and meeting. Imagine putting a young commercial producer or a young person who wants to learn the business in a space like this. It's just really kind of the center of a lot of things. We have a couple of member firms that have come in here too, I can think of specifically, and one of their main decision, one of the main reasons they moved in was to attract talent. Yeah. I'll go back a little bit. Thank you for your mention of the steps of the place. It's not everything, but it is a big thing. And what I said when I was working with the architects, I said, I don't want, I need three wows when people walk in the place. And we definitely have them. For anyone who's been in here, I don't know that anyone would disagree. And I'm not just saying that. People literally say wow as we go on tours and we walk through the place, and that is very much by design. For a couple things, that's not just an ego thing. It's a business, it's part of the business model. It's the flexibility, but it's also a place where people want to go. Not only do they want to go, they want to go, they know that it's going to draw people to their organization. I've been in here at night cleaning up or doing whatever it might be. We've had members here that have come in and brought in their parents to see where they work. Wow. they go up to zest or something like that. And they'll walk in, they just want to show their family where they work. That's huge. That's huge. I'm not worried about trying to draw people to a place like this, because it draws people in and up, just from the aesthetics perspective. Now that's the first layer. After that, then it's got to be the vibrancy of the individuals and the businesses that are here. And that comes over time as we start to fill the business out. I don't orchestrate that in any way. I just want to make that real clear. It's not certain businesses we get in, or I'm not targeting tech only, or whatever it might be. Absolutely not. If this space makes good sense for your business, let's do it. Yeah, let's do it. And that's worked out really well. Yeah. And so, you know, we came in here and I asked the front desk, I said, wow, busy day today. And she said, this is actually pretty quiet. And so, you know, you've got tons of people in here. You're 95% occupancy. It's always been easy and good for you, right? Oh, sorry. I recommend this to everyone. And I'm making a joke because when did you start VentureX? Yeah, I was planning to open up March of 2020, which for anyone who can obviously can think all the way back to then, that's really when COVID landed. Yeah. There was so much confusion. You know, none of us knew what was going on, how long this thing was going to last, how it was going to be handled. I had done almost all the construction in 2019. We were getting close to finalizing construction in that time period. Of the office that I had, I had about 20 already reserved with money down. Wow. Which I thought to myself as a business owner, and any of your listeners will understand this, thought I may open up day one in the black. That'll be amazing. It's just almost unheard of it to start a business like that. COVID hits. I opened, delays my opening six months, and then all those folks backed out, which understandably, I sat empty for almost about two and a half years, more than two years. It was, it was brutal. I don't know how much deep, how deep you want to get into the business aspect, but I'll say my overhead here is not nothing. No, I wouldn't think so. My revenue for that, let's just say two years was nothing. Wow. So like, how are you keeping calm during this period of time? Because I'd be losing it. Oh man, let me tell you, I would, I would say I wasn't. Yeah. I lost a lot of sleep. I lost a ton of sleep. But you never gave up on the idea. No, you know, a couple of reasons for that. I was very bullish on this idea before COVID. I was I'm over the just beyond bullish on this idea now. I would even say during COVID, it was a little difficult when I was in here and the place was virtually empty and, you know, the bills didn't stop coming, you know, and they were big. And, you know, we could talk about that down the road here a little bit if you want, but how it kind of navigated that time period. Yeah, it was brutal. It was brutal. But I knew conceptually that idea was the right one. I knew the area was right. And let me also state this for any of your listeners who may not be aware. This wasn't my idea. Coworking's been around for quite some time. IWG Regis has a multi-billion dollar company, has places all over the world. I think we do it better, but we can talk about that. Then of course there was WeWork. I actually worked at WeWork for a number of years. WeWork is a phenomenal company that just completely changed commercial office space, just completely changed globally. Also a phenomenal company. Certainly has its ups and downs and complexities, as many companies do. Certainly on a much smaller scale, I set out to focus on the Lehigh Valley. So not my idea, but I think the time, well, the place, the offering that we have, there are a number of things that we do do differently here that I think work very well. I think going above and beyond on the aesthetics is very important. The service here, the folks that we have working here, I'm a little biased, but our team's phenomenal. It's phenomenal. That was my takeaway. So when we had the interviews here was I'm a needy person and a demanding person, and no one batted an eye. They jumped on everything. We did a podcast here, actually, because you have all the podcast equipment. We're doing it here because we have all the podcast equipment. And just getting that set up was so easy, and everyone is just willing to jump in. You do have something different with the staff here, you've done a great job with that. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Other thing I would say is our offering is truly all-inclusive, and I've gone through my list already. Most places, and I don't think it's wrong, it's just a different approach, I mentioned Regis earlier, It's different. You pay one thing's price for a membership, another for the office. If you're going to drink coffee, that's a different price. If you want secure Wi-Fi, that's an additional price. Again, if you're printing, you're charged for every page. Right. I'm not saying that's the, we're better. We're certainly different 'cause that actually would work well for some people. There's no doubt about it. So I think that offering helps out quite a bit as well. Yeah, and what I've realized is also, as we got more full, the inertia to be here gets stronger and stronger. We have a lot of events. We have a lot of dynamic activity here. There's always something going on. We have two businesses that have been started, two's not a huge number, but it's certainly not, it's not nothing, that have started from business owners in here who met here and have spun off another business. Yeah, so I suspect we're going to start seeing a lot more of those as we get. I'm pretty much out of capacity here, but the plan is to get additional locations more. My initial goal was 1,000 businesses, an ecosystem, 1,000 businesses in the Lehigh Valley. Yeah. We will get there. It's going to take longer than I would have liked. Back to your point, your question about when I started. Yeah, COVID was rough. Back in 2019, I actually started, I signed three leases for a very large space for a building that hadn't been built yet in Easton. This building, which had been built, and a building that hadn't been built yet in Allentown. Wow. Now, both of those buildings froze for a number of years for obvious reasons, so I was able to unplug from those. The plan was after two years, we have three locations up and running. Here we are five years into it. I've still got one, but we're going to have more growth soon. Let's dive into that. I was going to save that for the end, but I think we've teased it up. What's coming next? Next is Allentown. Really? Yes, yes, yes. So I'm very, very excited about that. The waterfront property in the Allentown, we're going to be looking to move into the waterfront full floor there. It is just For those who aren't aware of it, it's right across the river from Coca-Cola Park. Just a stunning, beautiful building. The work, it's owned by the Chandles. The work that they've done on the river's bank and edge there is just phenomenal. It's worth just going down there to kind of take a little wander around. Their plans to continue to extend in that area are just tremendous. Wonderful people. work, you know, negotiating, dealing, working with them has been a very good, positive, good experience. Yeah, they've got great plans and and I'm very excited about that. Yeah, that is a very cool place. So what is the setup? Is it similar to this? Like, what is it going to look like? Yeah, it's going to be very similar to this. Again, got to kind of got to nail it with the aesthetics, a place that people just love to go, are very proud to be there. I'm going to do a more common area space there. Okay. Part of that is the general broader plans and the number of apartments and things in the area. We're going to have a ton of people within a very, very short walking distance. It's not necessarily the case here in Bethlehem. We certainly have people in walking distance, but the number of people we'll have within a very short walking distance there is going to be very, it's going to be high. Yeah. So what I'm, what I, What we will experience is those shared desk memberships. Someone who's looking for a wonderful place to work, just get out of their house, I think we're gonna have a high number of those folks, and we wanna make sure we have good space for them. And it's not just the space, we gotta make sure the sound works in the space, and we gotta make sure there's that right level of, it's not gonna be pure privacy, but there's layers of that privacy in the sound, and we'll work all that through, a lot more smaller offices, what I learned through this experience was, Boy, I tell you, people want ones and twos, ones and twos. And I only have five in this space. We have a waiting list on our ones. We have a waiting list on our twos. What I found is the small ones work real well and the large ones work real well. The ones in the middle get a little tricky because we're all on Zooms and calls and things like that. So the little ones make sense. The bigger ones make more sense. But those, I'll say middle office are a little trickier if you've got a bunch of people in there all on a call at the same time. But we've learned A lot. I've learned A lot. No doubt about it. And I'm very, very excited to continue. Yeah, so you get to put those learnings into the new location. and make it even better than this one, if that's possible. Yes. We're gonna figure it out. Yes. So who's Terry Wallace? Who's Terry Wallace? Where did you come from? How do you get to VentureX? Yeah, I'll go way back. So I grew up in a military family. Wonderful family. We moved every other year-ish my entire life. We looked all over the US. Lived in New Zealand as a young child. My first couple of years of school were in New Zealand. My high school years were in Australia. My father was stationed at the embassy there. So lived in Australia for those years, very formidable years. It's kind of like that 14 to 17 year old timeframe. Moved back to the US on my own because my folks were still there. My father was finishing his duty, so to speak. Came back, lived with guardians here because I wasn't 18 yet. Wonderful people. And I did my senior year of high school in the United States. And then tried to figure out what was next. I actually enlisted in the Marine Corps. I spent a couple years in the Marine Corps, which was phenomenal during that same time I was going to get my undergraduate degree. The idea was the Marine Corps was gonna be, that was it. That was gonna be my life since I was 14 years old. And that came from living in Australia. The Marines, for those who don't know, guard our embassies all over the world. So I would see, as this young boy, I would see these Marines and just think, my God, those are the sharks alive. I don't know what that is, but I want to feed that. So anyway, my goal was to make the Marine Corps my life. I enlisted and enjoyed it. I couldn't think of a bad word to say about the Marine Corps if you gave me a year, other than maybe its reason for existence, you know, but just a phenomenal organization. I decided not to take that path, tried to figure out the civilian world, and I thought, what's similar? Police work. So I became a police officer, I'll say the western suburbs area of Philadelphia, and I was a police officer before... Radnor, Pennsylvania? Yeah, Radnor, PA. As someone who went to Villanova, I know those police officers very well. And they're exceptional. They're very nice, yeah. So I did that for a number of years. I enjoyed another one. Boy, just, that's a difficult job. Let me just put it out there. And fellows have done that for 10, 15, 20 plus years. You know, I did just under five years, very difficult job. Another example of just extraordinary humans, extraordinary, some of the finest people I've ever met, bar none. That job was difficult, this is back in the '90s, so it was very difficult back then. I can't even fathom doing that job nowadays, just credit to every single one of them. Um, I decided I wanted something. I wouldn't say more. I wanted something different, but I didn't really have life experiences to tell me what that was. So I thought, you know what? I'm going to go back to school. So I went back to school to get my MBA business. That's what I want. I'll be a business mogul, you know, whatever that was. Um, I was talking to professors along the way. And I used to say, I want business boot camp. I want to drink from the fire hose. I feel like I'm behind. I feel like I'm behind. That I was in some race with somebody, you know, which certainly wasn't the right way to think about things at the time, but it's how I was thinking about things. And several of my professors said the same thing. Business management consulting. That's where you're going to. You're going to grind it out. You have to work big hours, but you're going to get that experience fast. So I interviewed with a whole bunch of management consulting firms. I have, still to this day, I have a three-ring binder at home with 34 rejection letters. Wow. One of them from the firm that I actually ended up with is Deloitte Consulting. Deloitte, another phenomenal organization. exceptional organization. I was going to say that is like, I feel like one of the dream jobs coming out of the MBA is a consulting gig at Deloitte. Yeah. How did you get that? Like what did you do to get yourself there? I didn't, I took the roundabout way. So I went and I, this is back. for phones or whatever. I literally went through the yellow papers and pages and I found an office. And I went there and ended up meeting with some people, asked for their time. And I could tell they didn't know what the hell to do with this guy. Marine police officer wants to be a management consultant, what the heck to do with this fella? I bounced around from phone calls to phone calls. I eventually landed with a partner that was in New York. She was at One World Financial Center, not Trade Center, Financial Red Cross. I went into New York to meet with a fellow. We had a long, long meeting and he said to me, he had this project and it was with NYMEX, New York Mercantile Exchange. So that's a trading floor. They don't do it like this anymore, but they're screaming and yelling and throwing the tabs, buy, sell, buy, sell. So they had this training program. He's like, boy, you'd be perfect because these fellows are all rough around the edges, you've had that kind of experience, it makes sense, but I need someone with formal training experience and didn't get the job. And I left. I went back to I got my MBA from Rosemont. I went back to Rosemont and I applied for a accelerated degree course where I would be the instructor. So I instructed on negotiation and mediation skills. It was a five week course. I went through the interview process. I was the instructor did that after I did that. I set a meeting up with him. I went back to New York and I said, Here it is. I have a formal training experience. He hired me on the spot. Wow. So I was at Deloitte for a few years. Fantastic firm. Boy, let me tell you, you'll put in the hours at those places. You'll put in the hours. And I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it. It was a lot of travel and it was a lot of work. Then, just to speed the story here, one of our clients was Pfizer. Everyone's familiar with Pfizer. an opportunity came available to me at Pfizer. I left Deloitte, went to Pfizer. I worked at Pfizer for about 13 years. Wow. Had a wonderful run at Pfizer. I was very honored, very honored and privileged to have a great career there. My last four years there, I led global HR operations, which was a phenomenal role. I was working with people all over the globe, traveling nonstop, nonstop, nonstop. That was fantastic. And I'll go back a little bit. When I was at Deloitte, I realized my career objective, and it took me a while to think of this through, but it sounds short and sweet, but it took some time to really hammer it out. I wanted to be the head of HR for a global company with a noble purpose. So that was my objective. So that's what moved me over to Pfizer. And I had my career trajectory at Pfizer. I was getting closer and closer and closer. But that's a big move at Pfizer. I then got a call from a headhunter, told me about this funny little startup called WeWork. Yeah. And so I'd be interested in this organization. I went, I interviewed with this organization and I was just blown away. It was nothing I was used to. Yeah. Right. So Marine Corps or police officer Deloitte. Deloitte is just. incredibly sophisticated, rigorous, thoughtful organization, then Pfizer, the same, just incredibly sophisticated organization and the way things get done, the decision matrix and all this type of good stuff. And then bam, I'm interviewing, I'm part of this company and it was a snowstorm, I remember, in New York, I'm asked to meet with the founder at the time, I jumped at the back of this, Black escalated and I drive around, we drive around New York for about, I don't know, 45 minutes, an hour with this very interesting human being. And at the end of the drive, he said, yep, I need you. Let's do this thing. Anyway, I was at WeWork for a few years. WeWork was just an absolute juggernaut. Just the growth there is. unbelievable. If anyone's interested, there's movies out on the whole TV and different types of things about it. I don't know that they've all done we work that justice is deserved. Because there's the headline, right? Grab onto the headline. They get into the founder's crazy or this, that, and the other thing or whatever it might be. I wouldn't dispute much of that, but at the end of the day, this was a company that just nothing was They could just accomplish anything. It was so fast. I mean, this is a small startup that was leasing properties all over the globe, major construction sites, hiring thousands of people all over the globe. It was just, I mean, it was nonstop. It was 24/7. Yeah. Anyway, my time there came to an end and I decided, I had two objectives. I wanted my own business and I was done traveling because I had had a global role at that point in time for more than 15 years. Which what that meant was my home here with my wife, my daughter, my family. But honestly, I knew nothing about the Lehigh Valley. When you said your home here, was that in the Lehigh Valley? Yeah. How did that happen? My wife was born and raised here. So when I was at Pfizer, we lived in Connecticut, which is where the R&D headquarters advisor is. And I work so much at some point, my wife Michelle just said, That's it. I want to live back home. Eastern Lehigh Valley. So boom, we bought a house back here, but I was still traveling, doing my thing. Coming back to where I was, I said, Look, I'm done traveling. I love to travel, very much so, but it was at the point, you know, For all of my daughter's life, I left Sunday and I came home late Friday. Yeah. So I was, honestly, a day and a half, a week I was home. And that was for her entire life. Yeah. So, you know, whether that was right thing to do, wrong thing to do, I'm not gonna debate that. We all make decisions in our life. But I figured at this point in time, this was 2019, 2019, I said, that's it. I'm done. I'm done traveling and I want my own business. I was in a position at that point. to do that. So I thought, what do I want to do? And I took three months off to just blue sky. What would I want to do? And I had this short list of companies. I just kept getting drawn back to this. Of course, it was influenced by my time at WeWork. WeWork was just a stunning company. The growth, the dynamic, what was taking place, the explosion of entrepreneurship and startups and side hustles and the whole thing that's been going on for quite some time now. I'm like, man. And I'll also add this, I knew firsthand the difficulty and the challenges of living somewhere, but working in a different state. You know, we have a lot of people in the Isle Valley, they work in Philly or Jersey or New York. Now this is pre-COVID.

And I remember catching these buses and the bus, you know, 5: 33:53

15 out of this place, and I wouldn't get back until 11 o'clock. And they were all packed. These buses were packed. And what I can tell you is not one of those people, not one, enjoyed that community, enjoyed spending two, three, if there's accidents on 78 or whatever, maybe four hours a day or more just going, just to get to work. They're not luxury buses. No, no, no, no. And then there were the trains and the planes and the people were driving. My point there was, I set out to kill the commute. That's what it was. When I decided I wanted to do a co-working space, I thought, again, pre-COVID, I'm gonna bring the finest of Fifth Avenue to Lehigh Valley, we're gonna put a couple locations up here. Like some percentage of those people that are traveling in and out of New York or Philly or Jersey, whatever it might be, they will leap at the opportunity to work at even a nicer, more beautiful, more, I'll say better service space than they're traveling two hours a day to get to. And we'll be right in their backyard with three locations well placed in the Lehigh Valley. What I want to say that we are the finest of Fifth Avenue and If you live in the Lehigh Valley, you're no more than 15 minutes from one of our locations. So that was the big plan. COVID had different plans, so I didn't kill the commute. COVID did a competitive job with that. But anyway, that's what brought me all the way to opening this location. And now we're slowly watching that dream become a reality here. I mean, you've got Allentown coming up, Easton, I'm sure it's just a matter of time. Yeah, eventually, we just got to make sure we've got to find the right building, right building, right location. It's location, location, location, right? It is really important to what you do. Very, very much so. Yeah. We somehow have burned through our time and it's killing me. I've enjoyed every minute of this conversation. I have 25 more questions for you. Let's do this. We are sponsored in season 3 by Z Craft Coffee. They're incredible, their coffee's amazing. You go there, you get delicious food, you get coffee, but sometimes sip happens when you're having that coffee. Sometimes something embarrassing happens. When is a time that something embarrassing happened to you? So, I was trying to think about this one, it took me a while, but I'm gonna throw this one out there. It was quite some time ago, I mentioned about the Marine Corps earlier, I was in Paris Island, which for those of you who don't know, that's initial basic training for the for for the Marine Corps and it is it is not an enjoyable experience put it that way um it's it's quite it's it's quite a life experience anyway I was with my platoon and you picture all these young guys you know half of scared to death trying to figure out what's going on people screaming yelling all over the place yeah I'm in a chow hall um and uh with my crew I get up to go get a a drink um and This is a time period for, I don't know, two, 2 1/2 months, at least at that point in time. It was just all guys, guys, guys, guys, guys. Yeah. And all of a sudden... Bam, I hear a woman's voice, which just was so strange to hear in that environment. So I spun around and there was a female drill instructor. For those of you who don't know, these are the Marines that train other Marines. They are the finest of the Marines. These people are no joke. So I spin around and I see this female drill instructor. And she's a stunning person. And all of a sudden, the orders came to all of us that we had to put our heads down. So literally, for all the male Marines, you had to put your head down on the table so you couldn't see this platoon of female Marines that was going to be coming through. I was standing up off to the side, and for whatever reason, I was just locked on looking at this person. And I'm noticing she's getting closer and closer and closer to me. And I'm thinking, this is strange. She's getting really close to me. And then it hits me and the horror hits me. Holy shit, she's coming at me. And she came over and she lit me up. She screamed at me. It's so bad, I didn't even know what to do with myself. It was, I've had some mass chewings in my life. That was far and away the worst one I've ever had. And I didn't know what to do with myself, and I was very embarrassed. Yeah, all right, sip happened for sure there, yes. Thank you for sharing that. Is there anything that we didn't hit that we should hit? Anything that you want to talk about before we do wrap this up? I'll throw a couple of things. A quick shout out to Lane and Zeke, that's wonderful. They're your sponsors. They're fantastic at our food and everything. I can't say enough about them and what they do. Other things? Do you go to the Chef event? No. Okay. I know what you're talking about. I think we're gonna go this year. That sounds nice. Yeah, sounds good. Maybe I'll go. Yeah, I'll see you next. I don't know, we're here, we're growing. I'm very excited to continue to grow. Again, my objective is 1,000 businesses, an ecosystem of 1,000 businesses here in the Lehigh Valley. When I first said that, I thought to myself, that's a big number. You gotta make this big lofty goal, you know? Boy, that's so attainable it's not even funny. We're, like I said, creeping towards 160 here. The Allentown location will easily get to 3, 350, and then we're halfway there. And I'm very excited to continue to grow. The Lehigh Valley is fantastic. I like it, I see great vibrancy, and it's very dynamic. There's a lot going on here, and we're all just getting started. I think we are. That would be a good note to end it on, but I'm not ending it on that. Because you used the word before, and I think it's true, and it ties into what you just said, which is inertia, right? When I was talking before, there's such a gravity to this location. Yes, where it's located, but it is... the talent that you've attracted here. It is the businesses that you've attracted. It's the vibes, the amenities, the staff, it just kind of attracts things to itself at this point. And so I do think you've put a great thing together that will continue to grow, as you said, and continue to attract. Like you have the events here and it showcases the location and people see it. And so I think that inertia, that gravity is real. And I do, I don't think it'll take you long to get to that thousand. I appreciate it. I agree. Good, Well, thank you, Terry. I'm so glad we were able to finally do this. This is the perfect space for podcasting. You guys make it so easy here. So thank you for having us. Yeah, thank you. Absolutely. Thanks for listening to another episode of the Why Am I Talking podcast. If you enjoyed this and want to hear more content from amazing personalities in the Valley, please subscribe, leave a rating, and drop us a quick review.