23 June 2023
Thank you for joining me for the second issue of Whip Roundup, your favorite source of interesting ideas and clever thoughts.
Whip Roundup will help you whip up an interesting conversation, give you snap commentary on recent news, and spur your curiosity as we head into the weekend.
Whip up an interesting conversation
Talk to your friends and colleagues about TikTok.
- The US state of Montana became the first US state to ban TikTok, citing, among other concerns, the app’s ability to spy on Americans.
- Next time you’re talking to friends and colleagues about TikTok, remind them that “…we do have an alternative…”.
That’s what TikTok’s CEO Shou Chew said himself in written testimony to congress. He was talking about alternatives to banning the app, but India (more than four times the population of the US,) banned TikTok in 2020, to little long-term effect.
Indians just gravitated to alternatives like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and domestic TikTok-esque apps Moj & MX TakaTak. Besides, with TikTok eclipsing Facebook Instagram, and Facebook eclipsing MySpace before that, is banning TikTok even relevant?
I’m sure the cool kids have already moved on to the next hot app… which is why we don’t know about it.
Snap commentaryWorking from home Commercial real estate or How to survive the coming winter in everyone’s favorite “notoriously cyclical” industry.
It’s obvious the reason all these CEOs want butts in seats is because they’re spending a fortune on their office leases. How can we parse the work from home revolution when the dust hasn’t even settled?
- On one hand* you have Charlie Munger, Berkshire Hathaway’s vice-chair and Warren Buffett’s old friend, saying bad commercial real estate (CRE) loans are the latest risk to the banking sector. On the other hand, you have office brokers saying, “the worst [is] behind us….”
- That’s what office brokerage firm JLL’s CEO Christian Ulbrich recently said on CNBC. When asked about the 50% of companies planning to downsize their offices, he said not to worry, that leaves 50% of companies that will expand!!! “Or stay the same,” the host gently reminded him.
If the CEOs got rid of their expensive leases, would they care where their employees worked? Probably not. The sooner we can get past this work from home / return to office divide, the better everyone’s mental health, and society’s economic health, will be.
- Instead of badgering their employees to get back to the office, CEOs should ask their real estate brokers, who, remember, are “experts,” to act like it. This means saying the true but unpopular thing. Real estate is a relationship business. People hire you because 1. they like you and 2. because they trust you to close the deal. People don’t hire you because you tell them everything is fine when it’s obviously not.
- Real estate brokers should be more realistic. By saying “the world’s changed, but let’s figure this out together” they may just find a way to make money at every point in the cycle.
Spurring curiosity
Becoming Jackson Pollock.
- If you’re dreaming of a more creative life but stuck in a vortex of Microsoft Teams calls, Slack messages and Concur expense reports, try becoming Jackson Pollock. Re-energize your stale childhood art skills without being recklessly messy and causing chaos. After a bit of practice, I’m sure you’ll surpass my very obvious martini with an olive and a twist.
Don’t worry, there is no risk, success is guaranteed, and I’m sure you’ll get the hang of it 🙂
Thanks for reading to the end of Whip Roundup.
This space is reserved for the top thinkers… the masterminds, the theorists, the dreamers, the wanderlusters, and the nomads, people like you who care about how the world is put together and how we fit in it.
Whip Roundup is a periodical for valued friends & colleagues. Please share your comments, corrections, and complaints at woconnor@whipconsulting.com.
Yours truly,
Bill O’Connor
From the previous edition:
I love feedback.
Feedback included “this is great!” (thank you Joe!) and “…it feels a tad US centric…” (yes Chris, everyone in the states is desperate to know how Largs, North Ayshire, Scotland and Hong Kong compare on weatherspark.com’s Beach/Pool score… which is why I included it :-).
Actual content from the previous edition:
- Whip up a conversation: Talk to your clients and colleagues about remote work as a business risk. Silicon Valley Bank, which collapsed recently, worried that their remote working culture was a business risk. (Paywall, let me know if you’d like a copy of the article.)
- Snap commentary: What geopolitical tensions? China buys record quantities of American corn and expands into Korea to take advantage of American subsidies.
- Spurring curiosity: Plan your next holiday with Weather Spark’s Tourism & Beach/Pool Scores.
*It’s not just Charlie Munger saying there’s trouble in commercial real estate. In the United States, only 48% of employees showed up at their offices for the week of 5 June 2023. The Chief Investment Officer for global investment and advisory firm Guggenheim Partners Anne Walsh said “we’re likely going into a real estate recession…”. For Chris readers who think Whip Roundup is too US-centric, and that Asia is immune from America’s WFH/RTO problems, Asia Pacific CRE investment volumes plunged by half in Q1 2023, MSCI sees “a broad range of aggregated physical climate risks across real estate in selected Asia-Pacific cities,” and Vanguard’s Asia Pacific focused Vanguard Global ex-U.S. Real Estate ETF is down over 33% in the last two years. Go figure.