Erick Humbser 29:17
Well, I think one opportunity that we have is reconfiguring the workspace, you know, like, again, one of the big things that I’m working on is like, Well, I have to basically rethink the entire office, how is the office going to look? So I have to figure out a way of how to accommodate teams that might not have the same needs as they did before, you know, and they’re all teams that might have more needs. So then you have to basically choose Well, what teams might be a priority for the business as far as you know, creating a product or sales or whatnot. And then you have four teams that are basically just transforming to Probably 95%, you know, remote, you know, so then then what do I do with that space? And and how am I going to change the office? You know, do I need that many conference rooms? Well, do I have to figure that out? How much electrical infrastructure do I need? Now? How much data infrastructure doing? How many, even even the day porters or janitorial crews? Do I need to get more because of the, you know, cleaning standards? and what not to do? Or maybe not? What is the food program going to look like? How can I provide anything for people working from home? Or what’s the cost of that, you know, which is probably very high? Yeah. So we have to rethink everything. And there were a lot of things that we were, like already working on before the pandemic, that now we have to study and be like, well, do we really need to do this? You know, so the challenge, I think, right now is like, Well, I have this piece of real estate, how can I transform it in a way that, you know, it’s going to be as efficient as possible for those who are working there? But also, how can I make it into maybe collaborating spaces and whatnot, inclusive? For those who don’t come to the office often? Or who are not going to come back to the office at all? Right, you know, and so, there is a lot of conversations, obviously, between teams, as of like, and facilities, right? And, well, this is what I can offer you, or this is where we think things are going, you know, but there is also this elephant in the room, which is, well, I can offer you anything you want. But then we are going back to the employee behavior, right? What if like, that in today’s 95%, remote, now, they decided they want to go to the office right now is 50% of the way to the office, and I already read it, you know, the entire space. As far as space planning, well, that’s a problem, right? So because that would have an issue, or that would present issues to the to the neighboring team that already was moved into that area. So it is kind of like a delicate puzzle to work with. You know, because there is nothing that you can promise, I think you can do your best to make teams and employees and and I guess users, if you want to call your employees, users or customers, you want to make them happy as much as you can. But you know, the lack of information and the ambiguity of the situation, in a lot of cases is pushing you to take some risks, some educated risks, and then you just have to wait, you kind of basically have to raise your shoulders and be like, Alright, let’s see what’s gonna happen, you know, and you have to be ready for that. One thing that I know for certain is that the employee type is changing, and some things are going to shrink. I know that for sure, I know that a lot of people are going to be like, a lot of people, right, less conforming, you know, so they are already gone. They’re like, Well, you know, I am working remotely, and I’m not coming back, you know, and when I work on a flight, you know, whatever state.
So I know that the behavior is still gonna be towards, you know, people migrating somewhere else. But, you know, we still hiring people, we still like, the company is not going to stop, you know, there’s this kind of business continuity that and these companies like, Cisco, Google, Facebook, like all these large companies, they already have this in place, which we know that business has to continue, no matter what you know, like that there is there is a pandemic, we still moving on, you know, there’s an earthquake, we’re still moving on, there is like, nothing is gone. So it’s just kind of like the government, there is a continuity of forming, you know, an entire program or some facilities happens to be, you know, one of those key players that, make sure that no matter what, you still have to move the pieces, and you still have to evolve with the times regardless how fast and complex, the changes are coming, you just have to adapt with them. But is is is stressful, is I think it’s tough, because, again, the data is is a moving target. But we just have to deal with it. You know, there’s not you don’t have any other option. So that is very exciting. I think that, that the fact that for me, again, I think it’s very personally, it’s difficult to work with ambiguity, but at the same time, it’s, I like the challenge of knowing that I have to still moving forward, I have to still redesign the office, I have to still, you know, have to if somebody asked him to build something new office, well, I still have to do it, you know, like, there is no push back in that respect. It’s like, let’s keep moving forward. You know, and, and there are going to be problems that are going to come in the future as we opened office, where we face them when they come. But that doesn’t mean that we should just like well, we don’t have enough data and let’s not do anything, that would be that would be you know, very critical to so. So yeah, there is there is a challenge the ambiguity and the fact that you are basically redesigning very Very large buildings like the inside of the building, you’re redesigning everything, you know, like, space planning is where probably most facilities managers are doing today, you know, and, and maybe adding all the things because away from the office now you also have to understand like, well, how are these people going to get to the office? You know, what if they don’t want to take public transportation? What if we don’t have enough parking? Well, do we have now to have a shouting? shadow, you know, implemented for this one office? You know, and already a lot of companies already have that. But people want to feel safe jumping into shadow, because it’s basically the same as public transit, transportation. So how are we going to do that? You know, I think, for example, transportation before COVID. I think the question in our end was like, the last mile, how do we make sure that people doesn’t have to deal with a truck traffic and commute from the last mile? That wasn’t the whole thing last mile? You know? Well, now it’s not now it’s from the employees home to the office. Now we have to solve for that. Yeah. And so, yeah, there is not only problems that we have within inside of the premises, but we also have to solve the logistics of everything at this point, you know, and solving for transportation is a big deal for some companies, you know, and massive, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Greg Owens 36:24
You know, then you’re right about the business continuity, right. Like, in companies like Cisco sat on the airplane with a guy that owned factories in he was, I won, he owned factories that made chips for Cisco. And, and I don’t remember exactly what he made, but they made parts for Cisco. And he was told by Cisco, to in all his factories were in China, he was told by Cisco during the last administration, when all the tariffs and all those problems was to start identifying other countries to build factories that don’t have the same political challenges as China was having. And here’s the money to build the factories. I was blown away by that. That’s like, that’s a really, you know, forward thinking on the part of companies like Cisco and big companies. And there’s, you were saying it, there’s some super smart people in there that are looking at every single thing that’s going on right now and trying to make the best decisions to keep that business continuity going forward.
Erick Humbser 37:30
Yeah, I mean, you know, when, when I started working for Cisco, I was incredibly surprised of how many different teams they had for juice for that, you know, like, we have a pandemic team is great. Like, if anything goes wrong, I, or if I have any questions regarding this, what is happening now, or if I need an approval for anything, I go to them, you know, like, I don’t have those answers. I go to the pandemic team. I mean, I think Cisco even has a program for a volcanic explosions or something like that, which I mean, we’re in California. So, yeah, I, it is crazy, because I think are everything, you know, like, and yeah, Cisco has been around for a long time. But you also have to think that these are organizations that in some cases, like Google, or Facebook, or, or let’s say, alphabet, and Facebook, or some or Apple, you know, that their market cap is as big as some are bigger than some countries, you know, so the level of organization that these these corporations have is, is, is incredible, you know, like, I think that the normal person walking down the street would never think about those things. Like I didn’t before I was in Cisco, you know, and, and I now I understand the entire process much, much better. And I’m what makes sense, you know, like, you have 80,000 employees, that definitely depend on you, but you also have a product that, you know, is utilized basically, in the entire world, you know, so, well, if you don’t want to go down as a company with, just because you didn’t think I would one thing, you didn’t think that maybe a pandemic could come around, and we weren’t ready for this, you know, everybody, for all those people have to think about those things. It’s pretty incredible. You know, it’s mind blowing, if you put it into perspective.
Greg Owens 39:17
I read a book on this, it’s, it’s, it’s called Black Swan, it was a really good book about about the the the inevitable, like unpredictable, predictable event that could happen. Right. So I think one of the examples was like, the insurance companies insuring a casino, right? Never had in their books, like somebody’s trying to blow the casino up. Right? You know, because that would shut down, shut down the entire casino floor and then you know, like a terrorist attack on a casino. And that did actually happen. So it’s like something that they didn’t think of right but they’re happy just just sitting around trying to think of like, Well, what about this What if scenario and this one that but I guess I get it for sure see Cisco doing that, right, like, in a big way?
Erick Humbser 40:04
Well, we have different teams like corporate security that I guess all they think is about, like, worst case scenario, right? Right, or what could happen and, and, and they’re, they’re pretty great because they really give us guidance on not only security, but like, before the pandemic, they will bring, like entire teams just to just to have, like, we had a security week, and they will teach you like, all kinds of things that were super cool, right? about not only like what to do in this week, but also like, self awareness, you know, like, making sure that you know, what your environment looks like, and little things like that one week was was pretty cool. But yeah, I think, as you’re saying, we have to ask organizations, we have to think about everything that could happen, you know, like, everything, so, and some of your employees have to be very well trained for, you know, some of these situations, you know, like, we have an emergency response team that is trained twice a year, and, you know, you have a little certification, with all the things that this team, and the classes are the same, actually, you know, proof can provide for you, and obviously, it’s voluntary, and you can do sign up for the party. And, you know, like, if there’s a fire, you know, what to do, if there’s an earthquake, you know, what to do, if somebody gets hurt, you know, like, you know, what to do, somebody gets cut, you know, what to do, you know, like, they teach you everything, you know, which is pretty cool.
Greg Owens 41:32
Yeah, useful life skills to write not just inside any telephony,
Erick Humbser 41:36
yeah. You know, like, yeah, like how to deal with, you know, somebody, you know, how to resuscitate somebody, basically, you know, like, the digital stuff, which is great, and a lot of people are very intuitive, you know, so. And then these, these companies provide this for you pretty much for free. And I think it’s great, you know, I think it’s great. And they have these initiatives. And, you know, that’s another thing that we have to reveal, for example, they are team, you know, once we come back to the office, and we have to start working on the office and emergency systems and all that, or procedures, not systems. So, so yeah, I, these companies are pretty credible, in my opinion, you know, as far as like, the detail that they put in, and the degree of art, that there is behind everything that we do is pretty, pretty amazing.
Greg Owens 42:30
Yeah, that’s a great, it’s amazing. I love that, because I hear a lot people talking about the bad things that corporations do, right. And they’re always like, the big, big, bad corporate, sort of, you know, and now they’re not paying taxes and things like that, but we forget about all these endless little things, that they’re able to provide the learning opportunities to learn the opportunity to advance sort of everybody, right, because they’re, they’re teaching these good, good life skills in so many ways.
Erick Humbser 42:59
Well, yeah, you’re absolutely right. I mean, yeah, there is a lot of people that can complain about the big corporations and, and, and maybe the fact that, in some cases, they get some tax breaks and whatnot, but in reality, I mean, you have these companies that are providing jobs to hundreds of 1000s of people, you know, well paying jobs and and then if you multiply that, or average that, per family, I mean, that the number of people that are get the benefit from from from these corporations is pretty, pretty large. And we all pay taxes on that as well. And, and in addition to that, the technology that they bring with them, you know, like they’re the companies for like alphabet, I mean, every juice, imagine how many business units Google has, you know, how many business units Cisco has, and and you can go on like apple and, you know,
Greg Owens 43:54
yeah, look at the App Store, right. It’s billion dollars in little. I mean, Uber basically is an app race Airbnb app. It’s amazing. That that was,
Erick Humbser 44:05
I didn’t even think about somebody, right? Uh, you know, and then, yeah, Uber, for example, right is a huge corporation. They hire, you know, hundreds of 1000s of people. Some of them are obviously over employed, and some are, some are subcontractors like the drivers. But at the same time, you also see that, yeah, thanks to the application, that business exists.
Greg Owens 44:28
Exactly. I didn’t even think about that. But yeah, you’re absolutely right. You know, I have friends that have small companies that have app businesses, you know, that would not exist without that platform, right. That created apps just for that platform, which Yeah, it’s it’s mind boggling to think that the reach that the companies can have, and even with my own company, as you were talking, I was like, Oh, yeah, I forget, I sometimes forget. There’s, um, I think the last time we counted, there’s like, 60 Kids Under my employees, right? Like, we, when we, when we would have our Christmas breakfast we would go around and how many kids and how old are the kids and just kind of get a feel for it. And every year, I like to sort of know what the number is right. And it’s our we’re supporting 60 kids out there that are, that are learning and flourishing. And, you know, and we providing this opportunity for these guys and gals to be able to work.
Erick Humbser 45:26
Yeah, absolutely. I think, I think just to think that, you know, that their companies are evil, just because they’re too big, or whatever. I think he’s a very narrow minded way of seeing things. You know, like, I personally think that tech totally changed my, my professional life and my life in general. You know, there’s obviously a lot of things that could be fixed, I guess, for sure. Oh, I yeah. But I don’t think that, can I put this in? If you think is evil, then it might be a necessary evil? I don’t know. You know, but I think, as you’re saying that rich, that this these large companies have, you know, not only on the tech industry, you know, because you also have for retailers, like like Walmart, for example, that employs so many people, you know, and we could have a lot of question marks on on Walmart or whatever. But the reality is that, you know, that the benefit that they create, on the level of the, you know, average citizen is pretty, pretty large. And some people don’t actually stop to think about that, you know, I have so much respect for business owners and, and for, you know, business are very well structured, because, because as you’re saying, the average that, you know, like your business, for example, the reach that you have, you know, goes beyond not only the employee that you hire, but everybody around that employee as well, you know, that’s pretty, that’s pretty sweet.
Greg Owens 46:58
It is pretty sweet. Yeah, yeah, I would love it. As we come towards the end of this podcast with you here today, I want to just hear about your path to becoming a facilities manager. You know, for a lot of people, it’s, it’s not necessarily always a direct path, right. But it’s, and, and I’ve been trying to, like, shine a spotlight on facilities management, the industry, the different types of business opportunities and employment opportunities within the industry. Because I think for some people, it’s a great direction for them to go, right. And for myself, like I’m a painting contractor, and I own my own business, which has been a great thing for me, because I, I’m never bored. I’m always on the move, looking at new projects all the time. And a lot of ways that sort of a facilities manager does they have to be a generalist they have to look at, they have to know so much about a whole building. And the people like you were talking earlier, the human behavior that will go into that building, and how they’ll respond so they can get their best work done. Right. And what’s your path to becoming a facilities manager?
Erick Humbser 48:05
Well, my path is, is a It’s a long story, but it’s a it’s a good story, I think. You know, I immigrated from Peru about 20 years ago. And as an immigrant, ideally, a job that you can imagine, right, like, if I had to paint a house, I would paint it if I had to, to, I don’t know, I’ve done I was a Lampre with these people are like the people that are getting containers and emptier containers, you know, manually, you put stuff on pallets and then a forklift, forklift come around and take stuff out. I’ve done it all. And one of the jobs that I was doing, I was a delivery guy for banks. So we’ll go to banks and get the check deposits and take it to this warehouse somewhere in in one in in Orange County. And so my day job totally sucked. So I was I used to work from basically 6am till 6pm every day, from Monday, through Saturday, and then one day, I got a phone call from my dad, he told me that my mom was sick. So I was like, I went to my boss and I was like, Listen, I want to go through and see my mom, like you were like, I can only give you one week off. So we’re like, Alright, I quit. So I left. And I went to Peru. And when I came back, obviously I was unemployed. So I back in those days, you know, Yellow Pages was still a thing. So I looked in the Yellow Pages for like, hiring agencies and I found one that was like, a few miles away from where I lived in test. No, that was in Santa Ana. So I went there and they were like, you know, a, you know, the company upstairs. They need somebody to help them out with the files. I was like, Alright, can you shop tomorrow, so I went the next day. And they were like, Alright, so we need help sorting all our property management and due diligence documents down in the dungeon. dungeon. What the dungeon was actually the The storage space under the parking structure of this building. It was super humid, they were roaches. It was moldy. They were, you know, it was bad. But anyways, I took the job and I organize everything. And one thing that I did I everything that I did, and we put every single box, I, I wrote down everything on a notepad and you know, just just for my own sake. And then when I was done organizing everything I get like two weeks later, I told the lady that I was basically going to wear me out. I was like, Hey, you know, you hear you have I used took some notes. And she was like, Oh, great. Why don’t you come next week and put this into Excel, I have no idea what to expect was what I want to ensure I show up on Monday, and you know, I’ll help you out. So it took me like two weeks to get it down to three. Well, I had to figure it out. So first, you know, I didn’t tell him that. But when they saw the file, they actually liked it. So then they were like, Hey, we need help in the mailroom Can you help us out because the the guy who just run the mailroom broke his leg. So they needed somebody. So that was like, so then I organized a mailroom and everything well, long story short, from that, I ended up like, in charge of the mailroom, with the guy that came back. And then I move myself up into like, office supervisor, like a year later, because I ended up hiring me, and and then they opened like a new office. And then, you know, I was basically the office manager for the new office. And then from there, I guess my next title was facilities coordinator. And then I moved into facilities manager at one point A few years later. So that was a kind of like the beginning, like, you know, very nutshell how things started. You know, and as you’re saying, one of the things that I really, really liked, what I was doing is that there was never a dull moment, you know, there was always something going on. And, and, and that flexibility and agility of the job really, really kept me more motivated to keep doing more and more and more. And so yeah, that’s how it started. And then I also did real estate and property management. And when I moved here to the way I ended up working in tech, you know, like, I did real estate first. And that didn’t work very well for me. And then I started working in tech, and then, you know, the entire because I when I was working down in Orange County, that culture was completely different. But then when I came into tech, I understood like how cool the business model of tech was, you know, and I understood, like the dynamic of this new environment. And I thought,
Greg Owens 52:44
What year was that, that you got into tech?
Erick Humbser 52:48
This was 2017, I believe? Oh, yeah. Yeah, somewhere in 2016 2017. And, and I don’t think I would change industries, I believe, you know, I think I’m gonna stay in and take us for as long as I am, into this industry and facilities of this line of work, I’m gonna stay in tech, because of how fast moving, you know, tech companies are, I really like that there is not these companies evolve really, really fast, there is always something going on, there is always moves going on there is always And besides, you know, the fact that you have to do maintenance, you know, to to the properties and whatnot, there is always something that you have to pay attention, and they have a lot of more layers, like they have employee experience, they have, you know, just infrastructure and you have space planning and you have moving and you have, you know, the entire tactical side of the job as well, you know, then you have to understand like, how age like words and electrical and data and you know, all that you have to know a little bit of everything, you know, and so yeah, I you know, it is funny, because, you know, when I’m asked
about
how do I behave when when there is a fast moving change in a company? My answer always is like we are the change in all the facilities represents the change because everything has to get final through facilities, if anything has to get done in that respect. So it’s a fascinating career. You know, I I’m not sure if it’s for everybody, but if you if you want something dynamic, if you want something that moves fast, if you want something that is rewarding, and if you want to make people happy with all sorts of your job, serious might be for you, you know? Yeah.
Greg Owens 54:45
And how would you suggest somebody if they wanted to change careers or if they were, you know, new, new new looking at a new career. To enter into facilities manager would you suggest your path of starting down in a dungeon and work You
Erick Humbser 55:01
know, my father was mostly coincidence, I think that if I had to do it again, I would be obviously more smart about it, you know, the circumstances obviously are different now. But I think a good foot in the door could be if in some cases could be, you know, you can serve as an executive assistant is, is a good way, as an office coordinator is a good way as well, you know, but you have to learn like you really, really, really, I think, if you’re open to learn, you can, you can actually move fast into the industry, you know, like, if I need a facilities coordinator, I really don’t need those people to be very technical in their knowledge, I just need somebody who I can train on that can understand things pretty pretty quickly. So I think that you don’t have to go to start from a male player or a mailroom clerk, you know, you can start in a coordinator position right out of college, and then move into this, you know, and, and I think the path could be awfully faster than most most people would think, if you’re willing to learn. If you’re curious about things, if you’re, if you’re one of those people that figure things out pretty quickly, you’re gonna move yourself, you know, pretty fast. Another thing that you have to be good at is your people skills, and managing things, you know, because you’re not only managing your team, but you’re also managing vendors and contractors, you have to have some sort of skill, people skill in order to kind of have situations as well, you know, because you’re sharing contracts, you’re negotiating. Yeah, you know,
Greg Owens 56:43
any employees too, right? Because like, I see that all the time also, right, like,
Erick Humbser 56:47
Well, yeah, you’re interacting with the entire with the entire business, you know, and, and the entire hierarchy of the business, because you’re going to be talking with the people on top, and you’re going to be talking with everybody in the bottom. And my suggestion for that is like treat everybody the same, you know, like, yes, there’s got to be some urgency, when when, if an executive ask you for something, well, that that’s, that’s just common sense. But in reality, if you are consistent on how you behave, and how you treat everybody, you are going to do well, you know, until there is a lot of different things that you need in order to be successful in this line of work. But I think, you know, a good start is those small admin roles that are gonna teach you something about how an office operate, and then you can take it from there, you know,
Greg Owens 57:36
right, right. Yeah. Well, Erick, this is been a super fun conversation talking to you about these subjects. And it’d be interesting to see what happens here, how, you know, and then in the near future, right, in the next few months, when there’s so much more What’s going on? How is what would be the best way for people to reach out to you and would LinkedIn be the best way?
Erick Humbser 57:59
Yeah, LinkedIn, I don’t do social media, believe it or not, believe it or not, so I, I do have a Facebook account. And I have, you know, but I never use those accounts like I never reach them. So LinkedIn is the best way to reach reach. So my name is Erick, E-R-I-C-K, Humbser, H-U-M-B-S-E-R, and you can find me there some more active on LinkedIn than any other platform,
Greg Owens 58:22
for sure. And thank you so much for being on the Watching Paint Dry podcast. been a pleasure. Thank you for inviting me. It’s been super fun.
Speaker 1 58:31
Thanks for listening to the Watching Paint Dry podcast. We’ll see you again next time and be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes.