Jonathan Johnson 11:50
I was. So I was a military brat, my family. My mom and dad were both in the army. I was born in Panama. I lived in Germany as a youth.
Culture shock for me.
Greg Owens 12:00
Right? So you moved around so much. And you you just sort of that was just normal, right? Was there anything about being in England in that time and learning about buildings that was shocking to you, or different in that way?
Jonathan Johnson 12:14
Nothing shocking. I guess the biggest thing that was shocking to me that there was so much there were so many jobs, and it was such a highly valued field, whereas in the US, it’s kind of looked at, like I tell some people, they’re like, Oh, are you like a janitor? Or are you like, I wouldn’t and no disrespect to the cleaning crews and janitors, that’s also like part of my crew. And you know, I love them, and they want to be that that’s, that’s there’s nothing wrong in that. But in the US, sometimes people can kind of almost without even effort look down upon it. Whereas in the UK, it’s, it’s, it’s a proven track, a lot of people want to go into it. It’s they they see the value. And so it’s just looked at as a, which is why they have the program there, right. It’s in the you know, even them talking about it really excited me about facilities management, because it’s like, look down the buildings, do you have a really big part of how you how you manage these things?
Greg Owens 13:01
Yeah, I know, I find that true with I’m a painting contractor. Right. And so you know, you tell people your paint your licensed painting contractor here in California, and they’re kind of like what like, like, that’s no big deal, like, but in Europe, it’s a much bigger deal. I’m also a general contractor, and I’ll say I’m a general contractor. Oh, wow. That’s great. Like, and I’m like, it was just a test, right. I mean, I can build a skyscraper.
Jonathan Johnson 13:29
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think that’s, that’s, that’s true across the board, right. Like I said, I I know, cleaners who are making more money than I could ever, you know, run cleaning companies, we’ve made more money than I could ever even imagine. People still have a tendency of just being like, Oh, you know, cleaner painter, facilities guy, and it’s just like, wow, they’re, they’re pretty, you know,
Katrina Stevenson 13:49
especially now to the whole, you know, COVID thing. It’s like, boom,
Greg Owens 13:55
yeah, yeah. So and, and how has, like your job shifted, changed that kind of thing. In this time, like, how long you’ve been at Pandora?
Jonathan Johnson 14:05
Also, I’ve been here about a year and four months now. So that’s too too long.
Greg Owens 14:10
Right? Right. So you kind of just got started in like learning all the things that you need to sort of learn about a building and and they’re like, Oh, yeah, hey, did with this pandemic now?
Jonathan Johnson 14:20
Yeah. Well, I think with with this is, you know, I think I’ve learned or everybody’s probably learned the importance of, you know, business continuity. I think, ultimately, a lot of startups, especially a lot of like, manufacturing companies, stuff like that. They were prepared because they they’re prepared for anything, it’s because they want to move their operations, they can’t afford to have a minute of downtime. Or they think a lot of startups were like, well, I hey, we can you know, if there’s an earthquake, we know what to do, but even then it’s all kind of like, not really fleshed out this, nobody’s really dealt with it in the last like, you know, 1020 years. So I, you know, business continuity was a big part of it. That just kind of it and then strategic and then understood That the facilities management field, I thought it was just gonna collapse. And I was just like, oh, everybody’s gonna get fired all these things. And certainly there are some folks that were like more focused on events that kind of got, you know, hey, look, you know, not not here, essentially, but like across the board, right, all events and and kind of phased out because there weren’t any events. But from a facility standpoint, I saw an increase in demand for like, just strategic thinking on how to how to get back to work, how to do business continuity, and all these different things. Right, right. And then you also have the added dimension of security there too. And it’s all with security and that kind of thing, and, and make people feel safe, when they’re coming in, if they come back to work and that kind of thing. Exactly. And you have, you know, this has also been a crazy year for, you know, just unrest in certain cities. And so, you know, you never know, if it’s a peaceful protest, if it’s a, you know, a riot if it’s just looting if it’s people from the area or not from the area. So it’s been it’s been an interesting year, for sure. For sure. For a security added facility standpoint.
Greg Owens 16:03
Right. Yeah. And, you know, that’s, that’s so true. Because like, like downtown Oakland is sort of a mecca for some chaos at times, let’s say, right. And, and then in this year, more so than ever before. Right? What was your role during some of that civil unrest? And what was your like? Like, are you called in at two o’clock in the morning saying, hey, this peaceful protest is now changed? And we need? Yeah.
Jonathan Johnson 16:31
Yeah, I think it’s just kind of, it’s just about being in the know, you know, any city is just, there’s so many different moving parts. So understanding like what the local governments doing, what are local, you know, police doing, you know, who’s who is who are the contacts, working with the local building security, I’m for it, we’re fortunate enough that most of our buildings have local security in there as well. And these folks are usually community folks who’ve been in the community for a long time. So they know a lot about what’s going on. And you know, I think also too, we’ve been very fortunate that most of our locations are far enough, outside of, you know, where most of the stuff is going on. And then at night, nobody’s at the office, obviously. And so we, you know, we just do a good job about trying to secure anything we think might be valuable for us. But you know, it’s sometimes it’s just the cost of doing business is, you know, things like this happen. But I think it’s also going to have an effect on how people select real estate in the future. Because, you know, now, do you if you have a documented series of protests in a certain area, and they all turned violent. Now, do you move your office 10 miles down the road, you decide to leave that area altogether? You know, what’s your, what’s your outlook on that at that point, right?
Greg Owens 17:44
Because business wants to keep that continue that moving, right? And they’re like, Hey, this is a great spot, right? But man, every every year, at certain times, we have these protests that just shut us down. This is not good. And we don’t know. And I think it’s proven like this, um, pandemic has proven that even legacy companies that never thought they could work from home or working from home. Right.
Jonathan Johnson 18:09
Right. And I think I think it’s always been a case where people could work from home, but it’s a it’s a control thing I’ve always seen, it’s, you know, a lot of people like, I hired these people, I want to, I want them to be here, I want to see them. But I think we’re now realizing that like, yeah, you hired them for a good reason. They’re very talented individuals. And, you know, now I don’t have to make a conference room seat. 10, right, you could invite 20 people on a zoom call if you wanted to. So in certain ways, it’s been very beneficial. But I do know, some people that are, you know, burnt out and want us, they’re very social butterfly people, and they want to come into the office, and they want to hug their friends and so forth. And, and so I think it’s, it’s, it’s got its pros and cons, but it’s definitely workable, for sure.
Greg Owens 18:52
Yeah, I know, with my company we, we’ve been trying to do with painters, right. And now now painters are not the same caliber of people as like engineers in a building, like, it’s just a different, they’re not in front of computers all the time and that kind of thing. And we’ve been doing a zoom call for our safety meetings and different stuff and getting the painters to come on and they’re on their cell phones and trucks at job sites and that kind of stuff. But we were man, we had our first like, I think it was like, four weeks ago now we had our first like, in person was so good to see everybody and they and we you know, we social distance, we had food for them, you know, we had like burritos that they could take and you know, we can keep it all they stayed in their pods, you know, and, and it was just really good to have that sort of hands on especially when it comes to like safety, right? Like, yeah, you can it’s hard to tell people like hey, this is how you’re gonna set up a ladder and this is how you’re gonna do this thing and you’re not physically touching the equipment or watching them move kind of thing.
Jonathan Johnson 19:49
Yeah, I fell fall asleep at several safety meetings, computer safety meetings, because nobody was there right? Not Not now. But like in my past in the military. We do a lot of computer based training and I was just like
Greg Owens 20:00
Yeah, yeah, you get good, you get good at like acting like in the military, you can get that, like, I’m paying attention, but my eyes are closed.
Jonathan Johnson 20:08
Yeah, you’re running on fumes at certain times, and you know, there’s computer safety things to take. And you know, all it takes is somebody to stub their toe, and there’s a safety video for,
Greg Owens 20:20
um, any like. So you mentioned, studios. So Pandora has studios, they’re at, at at their location.
Jonathan Johnson 20:30
So that Oakland but you know, Sirius XM is huge on kind of, you know, programming, and then kind of having multiple different kind of shows more of a traditional radio style than a podcast, which is you see, like, and most folks are doing so, yeah, I think most a lot of our offices, we have studios, where people, you know, we’re can have guests and so forth. We’re not taking, like most of them are not taking guests. Currently, they’re still doing zoom meetings. But again, there’s a lot of equipment that can go into producing a show. So sometimes we need to have that extra equipment, rather than just kind of running it through a zoom meeting or so forth and
Greg Owens 21:07
so forth. Right, right. And were you involved in, in that continuity of making sure like the home workforce had all the things that they could they could be they could they need and use and that kind of stuff.
Jonathan Johnson 21:20
Yeah, so I mean, all our offices are still closed right now. But we’re still kind of trying to meet demands for things that people need from the office, and we work heavily with the IT department, we work heavily with HR, and just trying to work with all these different cross functional teams and making sure that we’re we’re limiting the amount of times that we’re having to kind of have people come in and do these things, but also making sure that everybody can do their work efficiently and effectively from home.
Greg Owens 21:48
And with the election coming up, um, Tuesday here, any concerns about protests, if something goes away, like Oakland doesn’t want to see it go?
Jonathan Johnson 21:59
Yeah, you know, I think I think, um, I think we’re concerned with either results, right, you know, I think there could be unrest, because we have offices across the nation, you know, and they’re, obviously different areas are pro different.
Greg Owens 22:16
Today in Tennessee, you’re gonna be worried about the other direction and guns like,
Jonathan Johnson 22:20
yeah, quite possibly, you don’t know. So I think it’s one of those things where we think that it’s going to be a few days of just on unknown variables. And so we’re just taking as many precautions as we can. And we’re fortunate that like, nobody’s coming into the office, except number central personnel. And so we’re not really, we’re not really monitoring too heavily on that. But you know, from, I think we’re mostly concerned not to about like, crazy damage, but mostly just kind of like graffiti and, and roads being shut down, and so forth like that. So I think I think we’ll be good. And we have a lot of plans. We’re also working with a lot with the buildings and property managers of buildings and the security in the buildings who have provided us with what they plan to do. And so we’re just kind of incorporating all that and making sure that we can go forth and, and do good things with that. But it’s it should be an interesting, it’s, it’s probably going to be the most interesting election, ever. And I you know, I thought I said that before years ago,
Katrina Stevenson 23:18
I sent the same thing.
Jonathan Johnson 23:19
Yeah, here we are. So it’s in I can’t call it and I you know, I don’t want to.
Greg Owens 23:26
Yeah, yeah, anything can happen, right. It’s kind of a surprise, last time around and a lot of ways.
Jonathan Johnson 23:33
Right, right. When I reminds me Katrina, like we made, we’ve got to make sure we’re not sending any painters into the city next week. Right? Like, because because, right, yeah, cuz like, I don’t I’m not I haven’t been watching. I stopped watching the news back in August. Because, right, like, I mean, I just pay attention to what friends are saying that kind of stuff. But it can get you in trouble when you’re not doing next. And all of a sudden, you’re like sending people into the city when there’s protests going on. And then there’s, that can be problematic, right? Yeah. I mean, they could block, you know, damaged vehicles, that block block the access or egress and then you know, all it takes is one thing to lead to another, and then you know, somebody that always gets hit in the highway. So, yeah, it’s a very, I’m gonna send my team home and, you know, ensure that they’re not having to kind of ride bars or kind of go through those kind of areas where I know, they might catch some issues, because, you know, even from that standpoint, I still want to get to their families and have dinner at a reasonable time, as well. Right. So,
Greg Owens 24:33
yeah, and you mentioned it earlier, too, because like when it came to like, the protests or something that I was noticing was like, you know, like, especially for the bigger cities is a lot of people coming from the surrounding areas that don’t actually live in those in those cities just to be like a part of the energy in a way right. And and maybe they’re not necessarily as what politically minded or anything like that they just came to like See what the chaos can be right? Or watch the car wreck? And basically,
Jonathan Johnson 25:04
exactly Moran?
Greg Owens 25:06
Yeah, people from Moran over here.
Jonathan Johnson 25:10
You care less about that. It’s not your it’s not your air your neighborhood, so you care less about it. And so it’s one of those things where, you know, it’s rarely locals that are, that are kind of, you know, damaging their because they’d be damaging their own businesses damaging their own streets damaging their own vehicles. So
Greg Owens 25:26
yeah, it is, that’s always the worry is just kind of like, who shows up? What is it going to be? Because, you know, I think sometimes these are like really great protests, and that, you know, it’s really good movement and so forth. But in other cases, you know, we just have to prepare for the worst. Right, right. And then, um, so it’s something we also focus on this podcast a bit is, because there’s a whole career like track in facilities management that I find really fascinating and interesting. I mean, I’m a painting contractor. But in a lot of ways, like, what I do every day is similar to what facilities managers does every day is like, You’re, you’re moving around, you’re not stuck at a desk all day long. And you’re problem solving, like, there’s never a dull moment in a lot of ways of like what’s coming up, and how do you fix this? And how do you sometimes it’s like, what’s the temporary fix? And then what’s the long term strategic planning processes that we can put in place to, you know, eliminate these kinds of things? What would you say to people that are considering becoming a facilities manager, or security?
Jonathan Johnson 26:27
Yeah, I’d say problem solving is the biggest, if you like to problem solve, I love problem solving, I love trying to figure things out, you know, then this is the job for you. It’s one of those things where no day is ever the same. There’s a day where like, I can tally 20,000 steps. And then there’s a day where I’m in front of the computer, like just, you know, for 10 hours, right? So it’s one of those things if you like, you know, wearing a lot of hats, if you like being a generalist, you know, and you like, kind of solving problems in a unique manner. You know, even like this, all this return to work and COVID stuff, like, we’re asked to solve these problems on like, Well, what does the What does the headquarters look like? Now? That is it? Is it big? Is it small? Do we have conference rooms, do we not and you know, you have the ability to kind of have that power to to move these things around and try things and see what works. And so it’s a very fulfilling job in that sense, where you can you can join, you can learn the ropes, and then you you have decision making prowess at an earlier time in your career, then maybe if you were a salesperson, where you have to kind of climb the ladder and do all these different things. So yeah, I would say that those are the biggest things, I would say, you know, would be alerting to that from a security standpoint, again, you know, background and security, you know, helping and safe safety for people, you know, liking things like doing CPR, training, and stuff like that, you know, that goes a big way as well, if you like those kind of things, and you’ll really enjoy the security. But again, it’s one of those things where it’s not for everyone, because you know, I could get a call at 2am in the morning, or I somebody could burn down a building, unfortunately, and then you know, that’s that’s a, you know, very tedious and, you know, crazy process. So, you know, it’s one of the and then again, your while you have those decisions, making skills, you’re also going to be held accountable, earlier on to as well. So, if you’re not bringing it, if you’re not learning from your mistakes, you know, quickly, it can be a job that is, you know, where you feel getting, you feel a lot of pressure, because a lot of people are expecting you to do amazing things. And you know, you might not be at that level yet. So right. ridotto responsibility is really high. A lot of responsibility. Yeah, I mean, cuz you’re in charge of a lot of different people safety, you know, very valuable businesses, very valuable things. And so if you’re not someone who likes to protect those things, or you’re very wishy washy around, you know, it’s it’s very precision, right? It’s sometimes it can feel very active and like we’re, you know, we’re just putting out fires everywhere, but at the end of the day, it’s got to be very precision or, you know, things bad things can happen to like, you know, really good businesses.