Why We Should Have Moved Sooner

Back in the fall of 2007, we were in a shared office in Chelsea and were craving our own space. I received an email that a sublease was available right around the corner. I raced over with our GM at the time, full of excitement, to check the space out. When we walked in, we didn’t see the office for the dingy space that it was, with chipped concrete floors, hanging wires and a 100 percent lack of natural light. We saw a space of our own. (I think we called it “very lofty.”) A handshake and a sublease agreement later, we had our own office. Sure it was all gray and the bathrooms… well, that’s not really fit for print. But it was ours.

As the ‘07-‘08 winter set in and the heat didn’t work every day, we fooled ourselves into thinking that these were temporary problems that would get resolved. But the bathrooms got even… We never said it, but we really didn’t invite clients over to meet in our makeshift conference room—what if they had to go to the bathroom?

©iStockphoto.com/jekershner7

Then, in 2008, we ramped up our hiring. In January 2008, I hired Daria Meoli as our managing editor (now executive editor). When I told her that I was going to write this blog about our last office, she said, “When I walked into the office for the first time, I thought you were going to kill me. It looked like the basement in Silence of the Lambs. It was only that you told me that you grew up in Jersey that I decided to stay for the interview.” Fortunately, Daria, who is also from Jersey, saw past the gray and saw the opportunity at NY Report.

But this post is really not about Daria. It is about those 150+ sales candidates that I interviewed that walked in and decided, before they met me, that there was no way in hell they were going to work in that office. I bet some of them were really good, too. Of course, they never told me that they would never work there, but they weren’t interested in meeting again either. I didn’t read between the lines. And I should have.  

You see, finding, recruiting, and motivating great salespeople is one of the most important things that I do because we are in a very sales-intensive business. And as I have said many, many times, great salespeople are few and far between. There is no question in my mind that I lost out on good people, not because of comp or lack of opportunity, but because our office space did not represent our image, product, or growth potential.

Fortunately, I did find a couple of salespeople who did see the opportunity through the gray. More importantly, my team loves our new office space. I am sure that it is helping morale. And happy team members are productive team members.

[Editor’s note: The above photo is not actually of our old office space, but it’s not far off.]

PS – Last year at our Beyond Motivation event, our panelists talked about “Employer Brand” and how important it is to have a very positive one and convey that.  On March 8^th 2012 we will be producing a webinar titled Become the Employer of Choice for Top Talent. I will not only moderate the webinar, but I will be taking notes very carefully.