Gustavo Diaz (Host): Welcome to another episode of Based on this
episode, we are interviewing Olga Munoz, the founder of The Landmark. Thank you for being here.
Olga Munoz: Thanks to you, Gustavo.
Gustavo Diaz (Host):
This is going to be a very entertaining episode. This is one part of our series of getting to know local founders and entrepreneurs on how they’re building their company from Puerto Rico.
So, who are you and what do you do?
Olga Munoz:
Oh, well, Olga Munoz is an entrepreneur and an architect. Olga has always have plans to succeed, succeed in life, work hard and whatever you do on and take your talents to the next level. Not only to help yourself, but also to help others. That’s a very, very important part of me.
Gustavo Diaz (Host):
Have you always had this success mindset?
Olga Munoz:
Since I was a little child? I mean, I think since I was like, wow, eight years old. I knew that I wanted A, B, C, education, education. And I knew that it just was about hard work.
Gustavo Diaz (Host):
So tell us about how you’ve been able to nurture and cultivate that desire and that success mindset. What have you done to get to the place that you are right now?
Olga Munoz:
Many sacrifices. I have to study hard all through my school years and through college. I went through college, married with a child, and went with doing my “Rebalidas” pregnant “lactando”.I passed my “Rebalida” that when I was twenty-nine years old. At twenty-eight and one day I had three children, one adopted child running a business. And, that’s where I was when I was twenty-nine years old.
Gustavo Diaz (Host):
This is the first minute of this episode and we already know that all you got is a complete badass entrepreneur, Holy ______ Fill In the blank.
Gustavo Diaz (Host):
So, OK, what did you study and how you’ve been? What happened after twenty-nine?
Olga Munoz:
Well, after twenty-nine, we start growing as an architect. As training. Yeah. Architecture. And after twenty, twenty-nine, the firm that I had with my partner and architect also we have architectural and engineering firm was growing like crazy. That’s was when in Puerto Rico during the nineties (1990’s) you couldn’t find architects, you couldn’t find draughtsman, you couldn’t find even laborers for construction. This is really was crazy during those days. So we came up to be even like the firm thirty-seven and we were second the second largest firm in Puerto Rico.
Gustavo Diaz (Host):
So. I’m a resident. I’ve lived here all my life or I’m here visiting, what are some of the most recognizable projects you’ve worked on?
Olga Munoz:
The last one, which is the one I’m very, very, very proud and put the bow on my career as that on the public career. And I will keep being an architect for all of my life is the Mall of San Juan. My firm was the local consortium for all of the civil engineering entitlements, coordination with the agencies, due diligence, you name it. It was very, very exciting. Five years job.
Gustavo Diaz (Host):
So basically we’re we’re seeing that there is another large mall, which is Plaza Las Americas and then there’s Mall Of San Juan. So you’ve built the second largest, if not the largest mall in all of Puerto Rico.
Olga Munoz:
Yes. Yes. You say well, it’s not the largest, but indeed it’s the most recent.
Gustavo Diaz (Host):
It’s the most recent one.
Olga Munoz:
And actually, my firm SMA, we before that Mall Of San Juan, the last mall built new in Puerto Rico was Beltz Factory Outlet. And we did that also! Our firm was all about retail. We did Sam’s, We did all the Walmart’s, all of the Costco, Home Depots, you name it. It was. It was, yeah. Wow.
Gustavo Diaz (Host): So the second the third largest mall bill today, the second, the second and the third recently built malls. Yeah. You guys did it. Yeah. You mentioned you were also doing the Wal-Mart and the cost of Costco.
Olga Munoz:
And the Sam’s and the Walgreens. And I’m telling you those days was a lot of construction,
Gustavo Diaz (Host):
You took this experience of engineering and architecture and just building a project that is so ambitious and so large like that and brought into the landmark this, who else composes your team and what skills they brought to complement your knowledge and wisdom?
Olga Munoz:
Ok, well, one of the key elements, key persons in my team is Mark Bedel. Mark Bedel is not only an investor, but he’s like a sweat-equity investor.
Olga Munoz:
Rolled up to sleeves and do the landscape and do whatever, polished the floor polish, whatever. So and he has been there with me on getting all of this. He has never been an entrepreneur. But to say, OK, it’s a good idea, let’s go. So that’s one person I would say the other person Ron Castro, which he is in strategic marketing. I went to him with the belief of the project. Ronnell, I want to do something different and I want to do a coworking space service office. Both inspire and hospitality, inspire about the experience, the experience, of high-end experience. So that Ronald. I was very lucky to have my son also involved here who worked during the construction and my daughter, she graduated from SCAD and she’s the color consultant and textile consultant for all of the interior. So and now Mariam Ricart is here. She’s my community manager and she brings a lot of experience from the hospitality end and sales & real estate.
Gustavo Diaz (Host):
And I do remember the dinner conversation, but Natyam also had experience in terms of like being part of startups in Silicon Valley and including working with one of the current IPOs, CEOs. (SNAPCHAT). But that’s another interview. OK, so you essentially have a whole team of six, seven people at most, and you decided to build this high-end coworking space. But you that is inspired do with hospitality, but the experience aspect of it.
Gustavo Diaz (Host): Why do you say that the landmark provides that experience, what is so special about it and this location?
Olga Munoz:
Well, it is indeed a magical place. This was billed as a company. This is from the eighteen seventies (1870’s). Next year will be celebrating one hundred and fifty years (150). So you’re very invited to that party. That’s going to be very good. Everybody’s invited. Yeah. Keep an eye on it.
Gustavo Diaz (Host):
You told me that this is the oldest, if not the second oldest property in all of Miramar. All of it is. Yes, yes. It was built when there was an actual ocean in front of Juan Ponce De Leon Avenue.
Olga Munoz:
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And then you come in here, you can feel the magic of it. Then he was transformed to house, then into a private mansion, and then it was offices. So you have to serve many, many purposes to many, many lives and many success stories. So, therefore, I take the building and I take the experience as an architect and I say, well, let’s do something special. Let’s do. The landmark, which the building itself is a landmark, but people can start their own mark here, they can establish themselves. And besides the environment and the service we provide, how warm the hospitality we bring, I think we take a very different approach to CoWorking. Very Different.
Olga Munoz:
I’m an entrepreneur. I live here, moving here. I don’t want to leave my mark. How can you come to a landmark? What are the pricing of the packages? So I can start building my mark today?
Olga Munoz:
Well, we have we would love to have anyone to come here, people to come here. You’re very welcome to check us out the landmark p dot com. And we do have a variety of packages we have seen from virtual offices for those that need an address, need their mail package to be handled, to day passes. They start around fifty dollars . Fifty is a virtual office. Hundreds of virtual office. Fifty said they pass. We offer packages of three days and five days for two hundred and seventy-five for five days. Then we have a dedicated desk for those that need a place that I want to leave my staff and those dedicated. These are also very competitive prices. There are four hundred and fifty, so our prices are really there and the market, the place is very high. Erm but we’re starting with us as for example, the offices there to people offices is fourteen hundred and we have two people, three for one thousand nine hundred. We have four teams of five, six, eight, and up tp 14.
Gustavo Diaz (Host):
So what is he, what is he, what is the maximum capacity that you can have physically in the landmark. Like twenty thirty people.
Olga Munoz:
No sixty actually. Sixty, sixty desks. Sixty decks. Because remember we have to two properties, we have, we have the main building the convent and then we have the Abarca House and there you have fourteen members on the ground level and eight members on the second level.
Gustavo Diaz (Host): OK, that’s incredible. Now.
Olga Munoz:
Well very well designed by an architect and still you got privacy, which is one of the important thing for us.
Gustavo Diaz (Host): And parking!
Olga Munoz: And parking. Yeah.
Gustavo Diaz (Host):
So let me let’s let’s run the numbers really fast. How much is the desk dedicated.
Olga Munoz:
Four hundred and seventy five.
Gustavo Diaz (Host):
So let’s run it up to four hundred dollars. So if you have space for 60 people, sort of sixty desk, four hundred dollars each, we’re saying that you’re going to be able to hit twenty-four thousand dollars a month, more or less at full occupancy. How have you, what have you found is the key to grow in private at this rate as a private company.
Olga Munoz:
Well actually it’s more than that because those four hundred dollars, four hundred and fifty are the dedicated this those are the less I have. My business model is on the offices and the offices start at seven hundred dollars per desk.
Gustavo Diaz (Host):
Ok, so we’re saying that at full occupancy, you’ll be hitting more than twenty-four thousand dollars a months.
Olga Munoz:
Oh yeah. Yep, yep, yep. I should, I should. Yeah I should. And, and also we have packages, some conference room which is a big need in Puerto Rico, especially for people that’s doing business here if you want to. We have our meetings space meaningful for people called the “Huddle Room”, the Blue Room, which holds six people. And we have the Main Chapel room, which is for ten people. And those are renting very well and continuously, continuously.
Gustavo Diaz (Host):
So right now you have one property, one one, one piece of real estate, and it has three different properties inside. Two of them are functioning. There’s a third one that I’m guessing you have future plans. Yes. When did you start construction and remodeling of this tour to coworking space?
Olga Munoz:
I would say that was last year end up being bigger than expected because of Hurricane Maria and the original plans. So but I would say. So summer last year, we took a little bit longer, but it was longer than we wanted, but there was a lot of love <3 into it <3
Gustavo Diaz (Host):
What has been your key to success? — To grow this company and to grow this coworking space right now,
Olga Munoz:
Believe in it. Believe and and and and provide a product that’s even beyond expectation on who’s coming in people comes to you say, wow, this is just as the photo. Wow. This is an even more beautiful presence. And typically you go to a coworking space and you see the fine photos and you go, “Ah OK”, no here we’re going to be delivering this service, deliver the product that we are saying we’re going to do.
Gustavo Diaz (Host):
What has been the biggest challenge and actually turning this dream into reality?
Olga Munoz:
Well opening it. We have we have a local agencies. That’s a little bit of that. And it really is really construction.There’s a lack of labor after Maria, and that had really delayed the construction, the availability of material glass. Everybody needed the same thing. Everybody needed windows, doors, glass, air-Conditioning.
Gustavo Diaz (Host):
So added to the lead time, that delayed the process. Yeah. OK, so the random question, if you weren’t an architect, what profession would you be?
Olga Munoz:
Hmmm, my second nature, a psychologist or sociologist, anthropologist somewhere in there that deals with people.
Gustavo Diaz (Host):
What advice would you give to your 20 year old self?
Olga Munoz: Their advice would be work hard because it pays out in satisfaction, not only money-wise, but because when you achieve something, when you have a plan and work for it, then and achieve it, the feeling is so great! It’s a feeling of satisfaction that, wow, it’s worth all of the nights you spend in architecture without a scene, you’re bad for five straight nights, so.
Gustavo Diaz (Host):
What is the best kept secret that you hold about Puerto Rico.
Olga Munoz: That I don’t that I don’t share with anybody?
Gustavo Diaz (Host): Mm hmm.
Olga Munoz: Well, it goes back to my infancy. We had a…
Gustavo Diaz (Host): Where were you born?
Olga Munoz: Well, I was born in Venezuela, actually, in our move to Puerto Rico. My family moved here in nineteen seventy-two (1972). And my father’s family is the one from Puerto Rico. My mother’s they’re Polish Venezuelan and they used to used to have a little “Casita De Campo” — A little country house that they had two bedroom, one bathroom and we all of the calls in and everybody stay there. But the beautiful part about that that even very few Puerto Rican know, is walking in one of those platanales, plantains fields. And you have the fog of the morning and you walking, walking on those roads and there is a “Cundeamor”. Cundeamor is a fruit flower that grows wild in the countryside.
Olga Munoz:
I haven’t seen it in years. I would love to go back there, but especially smell.
Gustavo Diaz (Host):
And you were able to find it in Puerto Rico, where?
Olga Munoz:
I can only tell in Naranjito! Let’s go to the barrio. It’s Is called Cerro Abajo
Gustavo Diaz (Host):
Cerro Abajo in Naranjito. So if I can ask another personal question, I think you’ve been building your whole life, you’ve gone through a period of going through college, working and just hustling and just constantly building and facing adversity.
Gustavo Diaz (Host):
What impacted your career path the most? What impacted of you the way that it formed you to who you are today?
Olga Munoz:
Hmm. Wow, that’s a good one Gustavo, do you guys have some wine over there?
Gustavo Diaz (Host): So I guess we can do an (Airbnb) experience.
Olga Munoz: Yeah, well, I think in life there are there are many things that impacts you right now umm on this position. Hmmm, I would say that what impacted most me was having a family and the responsibility of a family. Delivering for them, be an example for them. Just make sure that they have a great education, a good life. Its the family life that affected my career. That’s that now that you took in this allowed. But it was it was about giving the best to my family with the talents that I was given.
Gustavo Diaz (Host):
Incredible. So let’s go through a rapid fire. What’s your favorite word? Word? What is the word that you like?
Gustavo Diaz (Host): I yeah, I have eh um “albaricoque”.
Gustavo Diaz (Host): What… Does that mean?
Olga Munoz: Albaricoque is Apricot. Apricot.
Gustavo Diaz (Host): What a word that you dislike.
Olga Munoz: No.
Gustavo Diaz (Host): Why?
Gustavo Diaz (Host):
It’s negative. In life have to be yes, there’s always a way to get things done.
Gustavo Diaz (Host): What is the sound that you like?
Olga Munoz: The ocean, the waves of the ocean? Yeah.
Gustavo Diaz (Host): What is this sound that you dislike? Mm.
Olga Munoz:
Mm hmm. Metal. Something metallic.
Gustavo Diaz (Host):
What’s your favorite curse word?
Olga Munoz: “Carajo”
Gustavo Diaz (Host): What career would you never choose?
Olga Munoz: Accountant
Gustavo Diaz (Host): Why?
Olga Munoz:
Because you are working in the numbers of the past. You’re not working in the future accountants and my respect to them, my respect to them, but if I, I like to look to the future, not the past.
And and I would never be able to sit in the desk and do the same thing over and over. I just I, I need to move from areas. That’s why I love coworking also. It should have been existed before and but yeah, I don’t think I will be an accountant.
Gustavo Diaz (Host):
You like to work in the press and present and future working in the future is gonna learn from it and keep on going. Last question.
Mm hmm. If heaven exists, what do you think God will tell you when you’re standing in front of the pearly gates of heaven does exist for us and what he will be telling me. Oh, what is he telling you?
Olga Munoz:
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, all the Ajita welcome, I gave you a hard life.
What a good life. So I’m glad you made it here. I guess that’s it.
There you have it all. Munoz Venezuela. I’m going to the to come to Puerto Rico, teach yourself how to be an architect and go through life building and carving her own future. She’s responsible for building not only the most premier and high end coworking space in Miramar, which also stands as one of the first properties here, back when the ocean was just a couple blocks away and has also been responsible for building, designing and developing some of the some of the recent models and commercial real estate. So this is another type of base.
Happy that you joined us and happy that we were able to have this conversation.
Happy to have you here. And the landmark. Thank you all. Thank you.
And hopefully we’re going to have some experiences soon so you can come visit the landmark and maybe grab that glass of wine with Olga.
Thank you!
