GCUC Podcast - Paul Keursten, Co-founder of Workshop17

Speaker A: Foreign. Hey everybody, welcome back to the Juicy podcast. My name is Liz Elam. I'm the founder of Juicy, the global co working unconference conference. And if you've been in this industry more for more than five minutes, you know I love a good origin story. So today's guest is one that starts in utrecht, Netherlands in 2008, which for context is before most of you have ever even heard about the word co working. Paul Kirsten went on to relocate his co working space from the Netherlands to South Africa where he co founded Workshop 17 to nearly sell it to WeWork for a billion rand right before COVID hit and then build it into a 16 location operation that is now playing a continental game across across Africa. I've been wanting to get Paul on the show for a while and I'm so excited to have him here also because he's helping us bring Juicy to Africa, which we are so excited about. With Antoinette and Paul's help, Juicy's going to Africa for the first time this September. So buckle up. This is going to be a great podcast. Welcome Paul. It's so great to see you. How are you?

Speaker B: I'm, um, good, Liz, it's great to see you and it's wonderful to be on your podcast and I'm enjoying um, the initiative that you took and bringing a co working together.

Speaker A: Yeah, I'm so, so excited to have you here. So one of the things in my life that I believe is that my morning routine is very important how I start my day. I always get up a little early, I drink coffee, I pray, I meditate and I get good with the day before it starts. So I always like to ask other people what their morning routine is like.

Speaker B: Yeah, I have a fixed morning routine at least six mornings in a week. Um, I get up about 6:00 in the morning usually, um, and by 6:30 I go out for my morning run, um, which is not too long. It's like a 4 Ah K run, usually in the weekend, sometimes a bit longer. And in my morning run, um, I listen to podcasts, I used to take up my AirPods and I listen to podcasts, um, every morning. And it does a few things for me. It gets all my systems going early morning, um, it gets inspiration, um, up sometimes I hear something and I take it away in my thought and then I rejoin the podcast again. So it's running, it's physical, but it's almost meditative and it's also inspiring. So it's for me a very important start of the day. Um, every Morning, it's cold or it's hot or it's raining or not. Um, I'll do it. Um, and I need it for Good for you.

Speaker A: That's awesome. Yeah, yeah. That's so good. I have to walk every day because I have dogs, which you may be hearing in the background because they're trying to murder each other right now. But, um, yeah, very important now. My. Now I have to ask, what's your favorite podcast?

Speaker B: So it would be going. There's a few I listen to and wanted many of you will know. It's the diary of CEO. Um, I like his way of podcasting. And what I do is I listen. I listen to, um, the one of Rongan Chatterley, which is Feel better, Live More, which is all about health and how you take care of your health. And as a semi South African, um, I also listen to Trevor Noah's podcast, what Now? Quite often.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: But it's also sometimes very, very thoughtful and thought provoking and I listen to whatever comes up. And one of the things, um, that happened when TV got to the background and we all use Netflix and YouTube, um, we always choose what we listen to and what we see or what we watch. And I'll just, uh, let the podcast download automatically and I listen to what comes forth. So I let myself be surprised by what I hear sometimes. Here's stuff that I wouldn't choose, but in the end I'm happy to have listened to because it gave me some new insight or it introduced me to a topic that I otherwise wouldn't have chosen. So I do that deliberately to broaden my scope and not only focus on what I think I'm interested in, but also let it wander. And the running, doing it while running is actually an ideal situation to do that.

Speaker A: Um, I love that idea.

Speaker B: Yeah, that's it.

Speaker A: That's awesome. We actually this year at Juicy, for a lot of years at Juicy, we were always, um, as I always say it is, we were talking to us about us. And this year I bought in a lot of what I call adjacent speakers. So people who weren't necessarily in coworking or had anything to do with co working just to inspire people and get people thinking differently. And it worked really, really well.

Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. I like that you do that. I think usually, um, the best, the fresh ideas come from a perspective that was disconnect, not connected to what you were in. It is what you need. It's what innovation needs. It's what brings things around. And I think it's why coworking existed. So if you bring, if you think of office classically as a space, a cubicle or a little space with a door, then community doesn't even feature in your thinking. So when community entered the thinking about workspace, co working could become a thing.

Speaker A: I love it. I love it. Okay, so you were running a co working space in 2008 before most people had ever even heard the word co working. What did you see back then that was like, oh, this is the future of work?

Speaker B: Well, I was um, partner in a consulting firm which is Kesson Smith, the learning company, um, which we were running for quite some time, um, since 96. And we always had an office that became a meeting place and not a sea of desks, another row of offices with doors. As a consultant, you're always around and you're always moving around. And we created a company that was more community. We had about, at the end, about 50 people, but we didn't have any management. It was a community M and that community needed a space to come together. And not a space where the partners sit in corner offices and the secretary sit in front, but a space that looks like a home for us. So that's what we created. We had people at that point in time. We gave all our new staff, um, a work from home allowance so that they could buy a nice desk. We gave them a laptop, we gave them a mobile phone which was a little bit bigger than nowadays the mobile phone, all of it, um, and we gave them a fax machine, um, which maybe some people don't even know anymore what that is. But it was really about, um, already a different way of working. So the basic principle is that the way we work has changed and you don't have to sit near a machine or near the production factory to do the knowledge work that many of us are doing. Why do lurk spaces that still look the same as they've done 40, 50 years ago? And no one wants to come to the office and sit in a cubicle. No one gets excited. I love my cubicle because it has such nice ones. So, um, offices were still something. Ah, as a factory. There was actually models like a factory and if you walked in it was all shades of gray, ah, and beige. And we said, well, office should actually look like a home. So I set out to create an office space for ourselves with an Italian style cafe as the front, which is a meeting place with a coffee machine that not a button coffee coming out or like um, um, instant coffee, but with a proper cafe machine. At that point in time, this was way before 2008, just for ourselves and it was a meeting space. So we also decided to put furniture in that doesn't look like office furniture. Which was quite hard at that point in time because now there's lots of uh, uh, different things in the past 20 years that came along. At that point in time you couldn't really find a comfortable chair to work that doesn't look like an office chair. But we managed. And what we found is that lots of clients love to come and stayed at our office to work. And that underpinned the idea that um, people are longing for different place to work. And a lot of things happen not in the formal meetings, but they happen in that cafe. So we wouldn't have barista, all our staff learned to make coffee and we would be the barista for our guests ourselves. And conversations start there.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: Uh, the importance of informal conversations, the importance of unplanned meetings, the importance of feeling comfortable so you feel easy to share as a person and not playing a role behind your facade or behind your function or being functional. That's where the magic happened. And that sparked the idea when we could buy the building that we were in, saying I don't want to become a landlord and rent spaces out. And actually it shouldn't be. That office is your square meters. What if the whole office is yours? Um, and you can just choose wherever you want to be in the whole building?

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: And don't divide, um, the use of space in square meters, but in time. So it's about access of time. And the one day you want to sit at the top of the building because it's quiet. And the other day you want to sit at the bottom because it's lively and people come along and you have your inspiration and your checkups. So that was the whole thinking about, um, it shouldn't be an ugly office space, it should be a beautiful space. It should feel like home. Um, it should make unplanned meetings and exchanges that actually spark a new idea or a new possibility possible. It should make you feel alive. It should be beautiful because no one should work in an ugly place. Everyone deserves a beautiful place to work in. And you should feel human because if you're just human and not your function or your position or the junior or the senior or the boss or the startup, um, then everyone is the same. You create a level playing field where people feel comfortable enough to share their questions or to share their doubts or to share something home and to get inspired and feel connected. And that's where the whole idea started. I didn't think about coworking. That term didn't really, as you said, the term didn't really feature at that point in time. I just want to create such an environment where people love to come and work. Work is such an important part of our life. Let's have a pleasant environment you'll really live in.

Speaker A: I love it. And now you moved. So you moved in 2012 to South Africa and you started a new business, Workshop 17. And now that has over 4,500 members, over 250 businesses call that home. I think you have 16 locations and more on the way. Um, so how did you go from one location to over 16 in the works?

Speaker B: Yeah, um, it's an overnight success that's 14 years in the making, but exactly.

Speaker A: Yeah. I just had my 50th event and I've been at Juicy since 2012.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's been, um. So when we started here in 2012, I've moved here with my family and I met Mark Zeftel, my co founder.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: And what struck me in South Africa is, um, there's so much interesting things happening and there's also so much needed. Um, but there is so little places that are, that are not political, where people can come together in the way that we just spoke about. Because you are you. Whether you are rich or poor, experience or startup, black or white, whatever you are, you're there and you meet people because you are you. And um, because you're ordering a coffee next to each other and the CEO then starts speaking to someone who's tinkering in augmented reality. So we felt there's a need of need to create that and that's where we started here in the inner city in Johannesburg. Very grungy place at the point in time, um, and Mark and I started and just trying to figure out how does it work here. Um, and we had a thousand square meter then, so not too big. We put all our money in there. Um, no one here really understood co working or what it was. And we said, well, we need to put our money where our mouth is and let's just make it happen. Um, which is what we did. And after three years we were running, um, we got a visit from the VA Waterfront in Cape Town and they wanted to create an innovation space for companies at the Waterfront and for the people who don't know the Waterfront in Cape Town, um, it's one of the most prestigious locations in South Africa and it's um, the most visited place in Africa. It has per Year more visitors than the pyramids in Cairo. It has 20 million visitors, 25 million visitors a year. So we were two startup entrepreneurs in the inner city of Joburg invited to come and do the same thing in the most visited location at, uh, the foot of Table Mountain, um, on the harbor. Um, so we pinched ourselves and we said, let's do this. And we started at the waterfront together with the VA, who was our partner, um, who owns the waterfront. And we wanted to create something of relevance. So not only touristic, but what relevance can we offer? And can we create a space where solutions for Africa can be incubated, have a bit of chance to grow or to come alive? And because it's such a visited space, it's also a kind of a nice meeting point between Africa and the world. Because most many people from the US or from Europe, when they come to South Africa, they certainly come to Cape Town. They will certainly visit the waterfront. So it's a very open space. There's no doors even. There's a market outside. So we, there's lots of people walking by and it's a very visible place. We did that. We grew there. And then the idea was like, this worked very well. Can we not create a network of locations so we can build the community stronger? Um, and, um, that's what we did. And then we grew from there to where we are now.

Speaker A: Amazing. So, um, I'm fascinated by the 2019 moment where WeWork was about to acquire you guys for around a billion rand. And then the deal fell apart and two weeks later, Covid hit. So take me inside that moment and what did you do next?

Speaker B: Okay, so we were, and I think many of us in the cowork, it's not an easy business to run and it's not an easy business to make profitable.

Speaker A: Exactly.

Speaker B: So we knew we needed scale to make a bit of a margin because we also wanted to keep our prices accessible, especially in a country like South Africa where there's such big divide between rich and poor. Um, we wanted to be an aspirational place, but an accessible place. So our prices were. Anyone who's half serious could afford to come in, at least on a part time basis. Um, and we wanted everyone to feel comfortable, whether you come from a township or whether you come from one of the rich areas, and just meet and be together in one space where everyone feels comfortable. So we needed scale to do that, which we were building. We had, I think, 2019. We were about five locations at that point in time. And just before that, I think a Year before that, uh, WeWork came into the country in South Africa and everyone thought, oh, now the big people are coming in, the small guys like us. Um, aren't you scared? Well, actually not. We need more people to come in to bring this concept to awareness. And us as a small company, we worked with their big machine, um, also in marketing and publications. Also brought much more focus to. This is a kind of solution that is not just for startups or for alternatives. This is actually solution for everywhere, for a much wider community. So we actually, it helped us and it helped to put up, um, everything on the market. And we were, um, we were mentioned in quite a few articles as one of the leading local, um, providers, um, or local operators. So it helped us a little bit. And then WeWork, um, landed successfully here and they were in preparation of their um, listing. They just wanted to grow in their terms, nuclear. That's, I remember that term that came. We want to go nuclear. And um, could we maybe buy you? Because you already built these locations, you built 2,000 members. Um, why can we not integrate you into WeWork? So we spoke about that. Um, we said, well, that's fine, um, let's discuss it if you're serious. But if your valuation applies to you as you think it applies to you, then it should apply to us in a kind of a similar way. Even if, um.

Speaker A: I like that, I like that. That's a good tactic.

Speaker B: We were. So we had, we had talks about it and obviously everyone knows the story about WeWork and the valuation, whatever, everyone can think about it, what we, what they think. Um, but obviously, um, the valuation was very high. I know Mark, my partner and I said, well, look, if, if that's what they go for, they should treat us in the same way with some discount because we're not public. Um, but. And if it fails, if, if they cannot make it happen, then we buy it back at a lower rate later on. But we weren't very serious negotiations, very close to, um, to a deal. We were waiting for the South African country manager to come in for the final decisions and then the IPO document came out and that was it. That obviously got the reaction that it got. Um, and that was the end of the deal. So we were almost wealthy. And then Covid hit. We were almost bankrupt. So it was an interesting roller coaster.

Speaker A: Amazing.

Speaker B: Yeah, we had, um, with COVID um, I don't know what the situation in different countries are. Ah, but in South Africa it was locked up. So Covid entered the country two weeks later. We needed to lock all our doors, no one could come in for three months. Now, in the CO working, we know that we work in flexible contracts. We work with, um, a lot of companies that were also struggling. So at that point in time, it was the choice to either go bankrupt, say, well, we can't make it because if you're in leases that we were at that point in time, um, and our members couldn't pay, I went struggling, you were quickly default. So we had to restructure very, very fast. And we took a principle on when the principal is a community principle. We actually communicated to all our members, look, Covid's hit. We all struggling. We want to get through it and we want you to get through it. If you can pay out and your business and you can pay us and your business doing well, please pay us, because otherwise we won't survive. If you can't pay us, even if you're in a contract, but you can't pay us, talk to us, we'll make a plan. So we helped the people who couldn't pay. The people who could pay paid us. We went to all our landlords saying, look, if you want us to be there after Covid and you would still want an occupier in your space, you must help us through this. So the principle of let's get through this together helped us and build a lot of goodwill also in the community. Where others said, well, if you're in a contract, you need to pay. We said, well, if you're in a contract but you're struggling, we don't. You don't need to pay. If you can't, or you pay a little bit or you pay, let's do whatever we can. And it was very stressful, I won't lie about that. But we went through it with, um, no forced, um, um, court terminations of our staff. We wanted our staff to survive, we wanted the members to survive. Um, and we restructured with the landlords mainly to management agreement contracts, which obviously at that point in time hurt the landlord for the short term. But after Covid, when coworking and flexible workspaces became much more popular, it actually became. It worked out well for. Also for them. But now sometimes they got more revenue than they had before in a normal lease. Um, it gave us a lot of loyalty with our members who said, well, if you treat us with disrespect when you're struggling, we will sustain with you, bring loyalty back. It's cemented to community. And, um, I think it's a principle that we live by It's a principle of care and a principle of reciprocity. And, um, I strongly believe that that is, in the long run, better for everyone than the principle of this contract of winning or losing.

Speaker A: 100%. 100%. I think you absolutely nailed that. Hey, guys. Just breaking in, you shouldn't have to think about your co working. Software Workspace Geek keeps your operations running with dependable tools and predictable pricing. So your focus stays where it belongs, growing your business and serving your community. Learn more@workspacegeek.com or click the link in the show notes to book a quick call with a member of their team. Your first month is free if you sign up by October 1st. Now back to the show. And then one of the things I read that you talked about before, before is losing your soul as you grow, which is interesting. At one point, um, I was talking with Adam Newman from WeWork and I was like, well, how are you going to scale community? And he was like, that's what I'm going to hire you for. I was like, that's not the right solution. Um, but I'm curious. I said, well, I didn't, I didn't want to go work for Adam Newman because I wanted to build my dream, not his.

Speaker B: M. Yeah, good point.

Speaker A: And it was a good call.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: So how are you, how are you scaling community?

Speaker B: You don't scale community. You nurture culture.

Speaker A: M. And love that answer.

Speaker B: Being authentic and being personal. So I do believe it's a community, uh, is a combination of personal interactions. And we are in hospitality industry as co working, I think. Um, so our teams are very, very key to it. And it means that the way we run our own, uh, company should mirror what we want to see in the community. We can't have a strong hierarchical company as Workshop 17 with command and control structures and lots of reporting and formalities if we want to bring it, if we want to facilitate, uh, a community in, in our member base. So we need to run ourselves basically as a community. And it means being very personal and having a strong culture base and strong values that you work from. Um, and after Covid, we really spent time with all our staff that were still with us at that point in time. About 40 people. We said, what makes you come to work every day and what will make your day every day, huh? Based on that, we formulated three principles that I still speak about with every new staff that we hire. And I personally welcome every staff member to work for 17, um, and share these principles and also ask them, are we living up to them? Where are we?

Speaker A: Not

Speaker B: it's about really valuing your culture, but. And based on principles and not on rules and letting people be their authentic selves from, from the principle. And that's. And the principles will tell you very quickly what they are. It's first one is, um, we provide service with a heart. So obviously in the service hospitality industry, but you bring your heart, which means that we don't have strict uniforms, we don't have, um, lots of protocols. Every location will welcome a new member in a little bit different way because they put their own heart into it and their own personality. And the other way to formulate that principle is we want to make, we create as many beautiful moments in a day as possible for our members, for our colleagues and for ourselves. Because, um, everything that's important in life, we use the word beautiful. You don't want to come home and say, well, I had a very efficient day, but you want to say something beautiful. Something beautiful happened today. And that's not about the design of the space. That's about like an encounter that was a beautiful moment or, uh, someone that touches you, you will say, that was beautiful. So it's that kind of thing. So that's the first one. The second one is everyone owns their job and supports everyone else's. It's principle of responsibility and support and working together. And the third one is we celebrate and acknowledge everyone deserves to be seen. Our, uh, members deserve to be seen and, um, our staff too. And I think there's more to say about these. But a few principles. If you keep them honest and you live them every day, I was actually surprised how they stay. Even though you scale quite a bit. Not because you roll something out. You can't roll out culture. It doesn't work like that.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: But you can live within every little moment that you have.

Speaker A: I've heard a lot of people's principles over the years and this is the best that I've ever heard. They're great. And I find that also with beauty. If you look for it, you'll find it, but if you're not looking for it, you won't find it. And um, so I love that so much. So thank you for sharing those. Um, real quick, I want to get to one point. We're almost out of time. How does this happen? Okay, you recently. Well, I don't know how recent it was actually, but you partnered with Kofisi. Is that how you say it? Kofisi? Um, for 22 spaces across Africa. What's going on there? You taking over Are you going international? Are we going to find you in London? Will you be a juicy uk?

Speaker B: Who knows? Who knows? Um, so if you look at the landscape in co working Africa is very barely um, serviced. And um, there's a reason I think for that. It's not an easy continent to work with. Africa is another country, it's a continent, there's different rules, different cultures. It's so diverse. Um, and when we, when we were invited to come to Nairobi, um, at the same time I met Michael, the founder of Kofisi who's also hospitality led design led, um, co working brand. They're already in seven other countries but we don't have any. They're not in the countries that we are and we are not in the country that they are. So true to the core principles. Well why us coming to do the same as you do in your. Why don't we work together? Because Africa is not so easy to unlock. Together we now are close to 30 locations, about 10 countries and that's growing. So then we create. So the partnership, very simple. Every Cofisi member can use Workshop 17. Every Workshop 17 member can use Cofisi. International companies can come to us, we can coordinate access for them in these 10 countries and they're growing every year. Uh, and it's basically unlocking Africa with a high quality design, hospitality led, respectful work environment in a continent that, that quite soon will have one third of the work in the continent that has one third of the world's workforce. Most of the young people are in. Where do they work? How do we. We can't let South Africa be because it's difficult or Africa be because it's difficult and diverse. We need to unlock it in some way and it's, and um, working together with Kofisi has been a great journey, um, to start doing that and we're growing from there.

Speaker A: I'm so excited about that and I'm so excited to bring Juicy to Africa because it is a giant continent of opportunity and we need that diversity in the world. I, I mean that is, that's where it's at and I think I'm hoping this is the first of many, many juicy Africas and that we're able to learn from you guys and hopefully help, help you guys grow and thrive because that's, that's what Juicy all about is helping co working grow and thrive. That's what we want to do and we want to help future pro business. Okay, I literally only have time for like one more question, but I have so many questions. I'M actually, if you don't mind, I'm going to go a little over because I'm fascinated by the digital wallet. So if you can tell our listeners what the digital wallet is and do you think individual memberships are going to become obsolete or is this just a new layer?

Speaker B: Well it's, it's um, especially driven by Mark Sefton, my, my co founder. We've developed our own software since almost, since inception. So we're not a software company but we've developed a software based on how we evolve and what we see that's needed from our members and from ourselves as an operator. And one of the elements is quite critical is the internal wallets. So we can create um, internal currencies that work with that people can work. So there's different kind of wallets and you can grow them. There is space credits which you can use to do hot desking, book meeting rooms M so it gives you access to space, which comes quite interesting. Um, so we have memberships that are not individual but like a corporate that has offices or just works virtually can have a corporate membership and can decide how many of their staff can use Workshop 17 on their account. They can allocate credits to different people. And so we have like a big company of 350 people being on our uh, on our platform and those teams will work all from home, but sometimes they have a team day that come together and they book it together. The company pays for it. The second wallet is um, the stuff credits which you can use to buy a lunch, buy your coffees, buy snacks, anything that you can buy. Um, and those wallets have quite interesting architecture. So in the past the company would support the restaurant at their premises so that staff could have lunches there. Now obviously we have restaurants and we have um, cafes in all our locations. So instead of having a restaurant that you need to fit out as a company, you can give your staff daily allowances. Um, so we give our staff a daily allowance um, to get something from the cafe and they can use it or not. And if they don't use it it falls away. So you can manage it on a daily basis, on a weekly basis, on a monthly basis. So it becomes a very flexible arrangement. You can add to that, um, we're talking about shuttle services, concierge added services. We have healthcare, um, services like an online clinic that people can quickly call, they can get your medication from it. So the wallets give you access to a whole lot of convenience where you don't need to pay. And as a company decide how much a person should pay individually and how much as a company, you provide for your stock and the wallets manage all of that. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker A: Very smart. Very smart. Okay, I have to ask one final question. Deciding between two. Oh, you know what? I'm going to give you a choice. Here's your first one. If you go back and give yourself one piece of advice before opening workshop, uh, 17, what would it be? Or what's the one thing happening right now in coworking globally, not just Africa, that people aren't paying enough attention to?

Speaker B: Well, uh, I can answer the first one in a very short sentence and I'll elaborate the second one and then

Speaker A: you can go to the second. Okay. Yay.

Speaker B: I would advise myself to not start.

Speaker A: It's really.

Speaker B: It's tough, but I'm happy I did. So if you would know what it takes to get where we are, I would not have done it. And I'm happy I didn't know it, really, because the journey is so worthwhile. But there's much easier ways to build a business. And that's true.

Speaker A: That is very true.

Speaker B: I have found that it's such a rich journey. Um, but it's not for everyone. It's tough one.

Speaker A: It's hard.

Speaker B: I love it.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: The fact that the element that it doesn't get enough attention is that, um, co working shouldn't be only for people with laptops. We should look at all kinds of different professions and we're looking into some of it at the moment to expand our horizon because it's about sharing scarce resources. So where else can we improve the quality of. Of work, the quality of entrepreneurship, um, and access to building something for yourself or building solutions for the world by sharing. By using what we've learned in the cowork to share resources in a way that gives people access to resources they couldn't afford by themselves. You can think of laboratories, uh, anything with equipment. I'm not thinking about the fab labs, but think about medical facilities in terms of. Instead of hospital, for instance, is actually a co working environment, but it's never seen like so. So I wonder if you look at it with a coworking, how would you make a hospital a much nicer environment than usually hospitals are at the moment? Um, you can think of industry, you can think of anything where you share e resources that you cannot, as an individual don't have to own or shouldn't have to own.

Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. Love it. Love it. Paul, thank you so much for this conversation and for your time. I can uh, tell. We're going to be. We're going to be friends for a long time. Like, we're very aligned on so much. And thank you for being so honest about the hard stuff, the we work story, the COVID pivot, what it actually takes to lose your soul as you scale, and what the real talk of the industry needs more of. And I love that you shared your principles. They were fantastic. And I want everyone to be looking for beautiful moments. It's so beautiful. If you want to dig more into Workshop 17 is building, you can head to Workshop 17 CO ZA. And if you're in South Africa, you need to go visit their spaces. Um, from everything I've seen, seems like they're doing everything right. Yes. And Mauritius. And, um, that's a wrap for today. I can't wait to meet you in person at Juicy Africa. Thank you so much for your support. And, um, you can also join us in London in October. We'd love to have you there as well. And then we just announced yesterday, Miami for juicy USA for 2027, one of the great cities here.

Speaker B: Oh, wow.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: So you're busy so building something special?

Speaker A: Yeah, I am. I'm trying. Well, you know, it's a big world. I got a lot to do. All right, everybody, if you love this episode, please share it with somebody in the co working world who needs to hear like it and follow us and we will see you next time. Thanks again, Paul.

Speaker B: Thanks, Liz. See you soon here.

Speaker A: See you soon. Hey, don't go just yet. You need to know about our upcoming events. In September 16th and 17th, we are going to be in Cape Town doing Juicy Africa for the first time. You can find a link to ticketing in our show notes, but it is Africa, Juicy Co. And in October, we're going to be back in London at, uh, together for Juicy UK. That's October 8th and 9th. You don't want to miss this one. It's in London and it is fantastic. And you can find those tickets at, uh, UK Juicy Go. And I hope you enjoy the podcast.