Today we are joined by IFMA Global Board of Directors Chair Dean Stanberry and Mike Petrusky, host of the Workplace Innovator and Asset Champion podcast channels. Mike has hosted a combined count of over 475 podcast episodes featuring industry thought leaders and covering a wide range of topics affecting the FM profession and beyond. In this exclusive ConnectedFM podcast episode, recorded live at World Workplace 2023, we take a unique approach. Rather than Mike taking the interviewer's role, we flip the script and place him in the interviewee seat. Join us as we delve into the key insights and unexpected revelations he has gathered throughout his captivating journey as a podcast host.
Today we are joined by IFMA Global Board of Directors Chair Dean Stanberry and Mike Petrusky, host of the Workplace Innovator and Asset Champion podcast channels. Mike has hosted a combined count of over 475 podcast episodes featuring industry thought leaders and covering a wide range of topics affecting the FM profession and beyond. In this exclusive ConnectedFM podcast episode, recorded live at World Workplace 2023, we take a unique approach. Rather than Mike taking the interviewer's role, we flip the script and place him in the interviewee seat. Join us as we delve into the key insights and unexpected revelations he has gathered throughout his captivating journey as a podcast host.
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Mike Petrusky: [00:00:00] I realized very quickly that we all are FM innovators. We all have to be innovative and we have to sell our ideas inside of our organization. So you as an FM practitioner have to be innovative and sell much like these. Hardware companies do, but you have to sell your ideas internally to your leadership or to the budgeting committee, to your team or to the workforce.
You have to say, Hey, here's what we're trying to do.
Host: Welcome to Connected FM, a podcast connecting you to the latest insights, tools, and resources to help you succeed in facility management. This podcast is brought to you by IFMA. The leading professional association for facility managers. If you are ready to grow your network and advance in your career, go to IFMA.
org to get started. Today, we're joined by IFMA Global Board of Directors Chair, Dean Stanberry and Mike Petruski, host of the Workplace Innovator and Asset Champion podcast. In this exclusive episode recorded live at World Workplace 2023, we are [00:01:00] placing Mike in the interviewee seat. Join us as we delve into the key insights and unexpected revelations he has gathered throughout his captivating journey as a podcast host.
Now let's get into it. Ifma's
FMJ is written by and for workplace professionals. Articles offer practical takeaways and best practices to help you optimize your facilities. Visit ifma. org slash publications to explore the newest issue.
Dean Stanberry: Welcome to Ifma's Connected FM podcast. Today we're coming to you live from the expo floor on day one of the World Workplace Conference. This is a very special episode because today we're going to flip the script on our esteemed guest, you know, the Loennan only Mike Petreschi.
Mike Petrusky: Well, well, well, how the tables have turned or the turntables, as Michael Scott would say, [00:02:00] Hey, DJ Dean, can I call you that?
Sure. Thanks for having me on the show. And, uh, what it is to be in this seat, it's nerve wracking and it's exciting at the same time. Of course you have experienced this side of the table on my podcast, one of them. Yes. Mr. Episode 13 of the Asset Champion podcast. Absolutely. So great to see you again.
Thanks for having me.
Dean Stanberry: You're welcome. Well, let's get into it. So, Mike, we know all about your love of music and how you like to draw on that from your podcast guests. So let's dig a little deeper into your musical vault. I was trying to come up with a way to ask this question without offending groups of music fans, so here goes.
What genre of music appears least often on your playlist?
Mike Petrusky: Least often? Well, it's not because guests haven't brought it up, but because of my bias, we have Edited it out often and I don't want to offend anybody, but country music is probably my least favorite genre until [00:03:00] a thing happened to me, Dean in the 1990s, someone named Shania Twain came onto the scene.
And when I saw my first Shania video, I saw the. Potential for country music. I won't tell you why, but it's a great genre. I don't mean to offend anybody and Hey, we're here in Denver. So we have to sing a little Rocky mountain, high, Rocky mountain, Colorado, little John Denver, John Denver theme of this podcast.
Dean Stanberry: A little more obscure, but if you go look up Sonny Landreth, um, uh, he has a song called The Wind in Denver. Okay, I'll check it out. He's one of the greatest, uh, slide guitar players I've ever heard. I've not heard? Okay. So, so you'll have to check that out.
Mike Petrusky: All right. Everybody knows Dean Stanberry, guitar player, music aficionado.
One of the greatest guests I've had on that topic, so. It's a hobby
Dean Stanberry: for sure. I love it. Okay, let's move on. So, Mike. You, we all know you're a child of the 80s. Yes, sir. And that weighs heavily in the music that you know by heart. What are the artists or [00:04:00] songs that you can't go a week without listening to?
Mike Petrusky: Oh, this is easy, Dean. If you check my Spotify, you'll see all types of new wave 80s hit mixes and even deep dives into alternative 80s. But the band that everyone knows, I love, and can never live without, from Dublin, Ireland. You too. And I have to say, I have a new renewed interest in you too. They're about to open a residency at the sphere, that new venue in Las Vegas.
I don't know if you've seen the pictures. It looks incredible. I hope to get to see them there, but for those that may not know you to a lot of younger listeners, people who are like, what is this? That's an old classic rock band. Believe me, they still put out great stuff. And in recent years, I would suggest that you check out.
A song called the little things that give you away. It was on their songs of experience album. And we. It just speaks to that human condition, and the fact that it's Bono talking to his younger self, I could relate to it so [00:05:00] much, when it comes to like the anxiety that I sometimes face, and the challenges we all do, so I think you'd get something from that.
Dean Stanberry: So wow, Mike, thanks for those insights. For me, that would be Pink Floyd, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and Rush. Oh, sure. So definitely reaching back a little bit.
Mike Petrusky: Canada's finest. Yeah, and I've seen all the iterations of Pink Floyd as well, so.
Dean Stanberry: Amazing. For Gen Z listeners, try not to be too judgmental because someday your favorite artist will be considered classic era as well.
Another question you like to post to your guests is around their favorite inspirational quotes. Oh yeah. So tell us, Mike, is there a quote that you know by heart that you draw inspiration from on a daily basis?
Mike Petrusky: Wow. Yeah. Well, there's so many and I could literally spend the whole time with you quoting others, but there's one gentleman, a marketing guru named Seth Godin, who has been a go to source of wisdom and understanding and a quote from him that I started sharing years ago, probably [00:06:00] 2016, 2017, when I first started speaking at international facility management and other association conferences is really relevant today, even more than ever.
And it goes like this. It says. If what you did today wasn't hard, you did not add enough value because you didn't expose yourself to enough risk and fear. And if you think about that, and our 4FM community friends think about that, we're in this world that is changing dramatically and listen, it's not always going to be comfortable.
You're going to have to get out of your comfort zone and you're going to have to do something that's uncomfortable, which means exposing yourself to maybe falling on your face and falling fat, failing. Um, And if you do fail fast, I can mix in a bunch of quotes here, but yeah, if it wasn't hard, you're just basically leaning on your own, you know, existing skillset and you need to break out of that.
Dean Stanberry: Yeah, there's sort of a common theme when you work in operations, the way that you [00:07:00] operate is that you don't change anything because if it's working, don't mess with it, right? Ain't broke, don't fix it. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. So that's sort of the mantra of an operations role. But now we're in this state where new technologies are coming our way fast and furious, and those changes are going to come whether we like it or not.
And we're going to have to figure out how to wait, how to get that in there. That goes back to my data center operations days. Because you never wanted that mainframe to go down while the customer service reps were using it. Yeah. You didn't want to be on the CEO's lips for that reason. Let's not take too many risks, everybody.
Mike Petrusky: But at the same time. We got to keep trying things new and new things and trying new things and learning new things. And you mentioned that in your speech this morning, which was really inspirational.
Dean Stanberry: I'll remember that one too, because I know Seth Godin or know the know of him. So of all the interviews that you've conducted, is there a particular quote or response from an interviewee that has stood out for you?
Mike Petrusky: Yeah, and it's come up many times. I can't tell you [00:08:00] exactly the guests who first offered it, but you've heard it. It's from Teddy Roosevelt. Comparison is the thief of joy, and I think the first time I heard that quote was in the context of social media, and this is six, seven years ago, where we really saw the negative impacts of social media, and it was stealing the joy of so many of our young people, and so many of us, we just look at this Instagram filtered world, and it's not a real Accurate portrayal of people's human existence.
It's this fantasy, this utopia that makes it look like everybody else out there is having a much, much better time than we are and are much more successful. And, and that's what this kind of filtered view of the world it does. And it causes you to compare and it just takes the joy away from. All the things you have going on in your life, all of our blessings, so let's stop comparing ourselves to others.
Dean Stanberry: I think that actually goes back to something our keynote speaker said, too, on the internet, that a lot of what is there is intended to drive controversy. Yes. [00:09:00] Because, you know, that's the clickbait, if you will. The clickbait headlines, absolutely. It's not intended to be truthful, it's not intended to be accurate, it's intended to get your, get your attention.
Mike Petrusky: Attention seeking, yes. Yes. You've just summarized, you just summarized all social media platforms in one short sentence. Thanks, Dean. All right.
Dean Stanberry: Well, let's get into the details. All right. Mike, you started podcasting as a solo effort. With the FM Innovator Podcast, uh, which became the Workplace 2018. And because you clearly still had too much spare time on your hands, you launched a second show, the Asset Champion Podcast in 2020.
Tell us a bit about this journey, the number of episodes in each podcast so far, and what is the role that Eptura now plays as your sponsor?
Mike Petrusky: Oh, wow. Well, number of episodes. It's hard to calculate in a way, but not that hard, but you did say there'd be no math on this particular podcast. Oh, I'm sorry. [00:10:00] I'll just say I started as the FM Innovator.
We did 85 episodes. I remember that very clearly. And then I started when I joined iOffice in 2018. We did change it to Workplace Innovator. We're now at episode 275 and counting. It's a weekly show. And then the second show you reference is more of an operations and maintenance type focus show. And that's called Asset Champion, which has about 115 episodes.
So if you add those all up, it's a big number. But the bottom line is I'm just very fortunate to work now for Aptura. So Aptura is iOffice. It's iOffice plus SpaceIQ. That was the first merger that happened. And then we merged with Condeco and Archibus and Seriview and all these softwares, which now makes us the.
Epicenter of the future at work as in global work tech company, providing software solutions for people, workplaces, and assets to enable you to work your world. There you go. I heard that [00:11:00] opening that you hear on all the podcasts. So. More than a sponsor. They are my employer. I am the director of podcasts for Aptura, and I have the great fortune and blessing of coming to events like this and talking to wonderful people like you normally on the other side.
But thanks for asking.
Dean Stanberry: That's an impressive record. And we certainly look forward to your continued success because I am a regular listener. I'm always checking out who's on and who's, what they're talking about. And I enjoy the show, both shows very much.
Mike Petrusky: Thank you. I appreciate that very much.
Dean Stanberry: So let's see, as you've been doing your podcast for several years now, can you think of a topic or a trend?
That you heard about or noticed early on that has now exploded and become mainstream in this industry.
Mike Petrusky: Wow. Well, listen, the first thought that comes to mind is back when I started FM innovator, I didn't know what I was doing. And I thought when I was referring to FM innovators, I was talking about what we call our industry partners, all the people you see [00:12:00] here in the expo hall, trying to offer their innovative products and services, and they need to be giving the FMs, the.
Solutions they're looking for. And that's what I thought an FM innovator was someone who offered great value by sharing their product or service or expertise. Maybe they're a consultant. And then I realized very quickly that we all are FM innovators. We all have to be innovative and we have to sell our ideas inside of our organization.
So you, as an FM practitioner have to be innovative and sell much like these hardware companies do. Well, you have to sell your ideas internally to your leadership or to the budgeting committee, to your team or to the workforce, you have to say, Hey, here's what we're trying to do. So that was a big light bulb moment.
And then it became very clear that the trend in 2017, 2018 was moving away from the table stakes of great operations and maintenance, although it's forever going to be the foundation on which we build our career and our industry. But employee experience, the elevation of [00:13:00] the need to create a great employee experience, and now we call it a workplace experience, wherever you are as an employee, in your office, in your home office, in a third space, we have to be Innovative use technology, use strategies that allow us to deliver on the expectations of the people in our facilities.
Dean Stanberry: Yeah, that's a very interesting, you know, as a facility manager myself, that was a good part of my career. One thing that we have to look at is that, you know, facilities. Buildings of all types of FM's. You have an FM in any type of building. It doesn't matter what his purpose is. So when we talk about, you know, the workplace experience and things like that, predominantly that's the office environment.
And that probably accounts for about knowledge workers are about 24 percent of at least the U S workforce.
Mike Petrusky: Small minority. When not a, not a majority. That's right.
Dean Stanberry: So, you know, when we look at what we see on this expo [00:14:00] floor. There's a lot of targeted solutions. They're targeted to a particular industry because they have some innovation for that industry because healthcare is not the same as hospitality.
It's not the same as manufacturing. It's not the same as logistics and certainly not the same as office buildings. That's right. So, you know, that, that's the sort of one of the epiphanies I had early on is that there's an FM in every one of these buildings. 85, maybe 90 percent of what they do is common, but there's going to be 10, 15 percent that's unique.
Right. You know, and that's the part if you don't know it on day one, you're going to learn awfully quick.
Mike Petrusky: Exactly. Exactly. Well said.
Dean Stanberry: All right. Let's take another question here. So you worked in the industry for quite some time and you witnessed many aspects of the commercial real estate transitions. Has anything emerged that took you by surprise that you didn't really see coming?
Mike Petrusky: You mean besides the global pandemic of 2020? Because that is the first thing that comes to mind. I mean, but it's important that [00:15:00] we mention it here because here we are in 2023 and beyond. And what we learned throughout the past several years is that a lot of the things that we did see coming 2019 and earlier has just been accelerated in many ways, a lot of things that just kind of move forward faster than we thought they would, you know, the move towards digitization, the distributed workforce, the ability to use technology to create a great work environment in many places other than an office setting and the need for technology to help us continue to meet our Goals for sustainability and for maintenance and operations and caring for the people in our facilities and the highlight of the value of clean air and all these things.
I mean, they were all on our radar, right? Dean here at IFMA, especially before the pandemic, but it sure, it certainly really accelerated a lot of the adoption of technologies that people weren't maybe ready to try and they tried it and sometimes [00:16:00] it works. Sometimes it didn't. Or the ability to try new things and use a new strategy that maybe was hard to sell earlier on.
Change is hard because we always overestimate the value of what we currently have and underestimate the value of what we may gain by giving that up. So we were forced to give up a lot of stuff in 2020, and now we're kind of rebuilding maybe with more intention going forward.
Dean Stanberry: Yeah, that was, that's very insightful.
I think that's a great observation. So. The pandemic was, you know, of course, a surprise to most people. And, uh, I think coming out of it, you know, what are, there are things that we probably saw were important before, not so important now, and things that we didn't really prioritize are now high priority.
Yeah. Still learning. Still learning. Your perspective changes over time. Uh, looking ahead, what are the topics you're hoping to cover or prioritize in your podcast before we meet at World Workplace 2024 in San Antonio, Texas? Yes, [00:17:00] indeed. See how I worked in my shameless plug for IFMA?
Mike Petrusky: Remember the Alamo?
Yes. I love the shameless plugs. I do it on my show. As you know, I love to point people to join IFMA at the local level, their chapter, come to the World Workplace Conferences, Facility Fusion, one of my favorite. So yeah, I think that's where I look to continue to grow my podcasts and have more conversations around what it means to be a facility management and workplace leader in the future of work 2024 and beyond, because we all have an opportunity to evolve and meet the current needs of the built environment and of our people.
And the, the challenge is one that's going to be there, but we at IFMA and this community can absolutely handle it. We are here for each other, the education you need, the networking you need, the relationships that will help you, the partnerships that will deliver the services [00:18:00] and products you need. So more of that, more human inspiration, more things to help build up the FM community is what I hope to do.
And maybe invite some people from outside the industry to give us their view of what's going on. We've certainly become a part of their radar because the headlines throughout the pandemic experience was one of, Hey everybody, I've got an opinion about workplace, or I've got an opinion about return to offices, or what the purpose of the office is.
So everybody jumped into our domain without the expertise behind it. And really muddied the waters in many ways and kind of created that binary remote work forever versus return to office. And that's not the way we're going to solve any problems. Isn't that the internet in a nutshell?
Dean Stanberry: It's people talking about things they know nothing about.
Mike Petrusky: You again, you've summarized it much quicker than I did. That's awesome.
Dean Stanberry: So, Mike, this has been a lot of fun. I was thrilled that we were able to make this happen. As we kind of wrap this up, are there any insights that you would like to specifically share with our facility [00:19:00] management audience today? And tell us what it's like to be on the other side of the microphone.
Mike Petrusky: Well, it was easier than I thought, because you're a pro. Dean, you need to make this your profession. Are you coming for my job? No. This has been great, and I've enjoyed just the conversation. That's what it's all about, is people with a passion for facility management. Sharing their experiences, their insights.
And I think that if there's one message I could leave with the audience, it's, Hey, you have an incredible opportunity. Take the lead, let your voice be heard, get out of your comfort zone. I'll say that again. Be comfortable being uncomfortable because things are changing. They never stop changing and just lean into that discomfort and learn something new because it's a long journey.
And the fun is not trying to get to some end point, some destination. It's about learning. It's about asking questions and challenging the status quo. And I hope we'll do that and certainly join IFMA, be involved with IFMA and you'll find many new. Friends and [00:20:00] new opportunities to grow in your career. All right.
Dean Stanberry: There you have it folks. The famed Mike Petruski, gracing our airwaves with our insights on commercial real estate facilities, management, and of course, music. Yes, sir. Mike, I hope you enjoy the rest of the World Workplace 2023. And for our listeners, we hope you enjoy this special episode of the Connected FM podcast.
And with that, Mike, please close us out.
Mike Petrusky: Well, I had a great time, Dean. Thank you again. Thank you for the opportunity. And I hope in some small way we inspired the audience to be, join me, an FM innovator, a workplace innovator, and an asset champion.
Host: Thank you so much for listening. I hope you really enjoyed this episode. And as always, please don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe to the podcast for more incredible content.
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