Richard Smith, the Founder & CEO of Office Freedom, is a well-known entrepreneur, sharing his time between his main home in London and Boca Raton, Florida. With over 35 years and counting in his Real Estate career, which started in 1986, it was during his 7 years as a Central London office leasing specialist, by chance, Richard brokered a serviced office deal in Mayfair’s Berkeley Square in 1992.
He then realised there was a huge gap in the real estate market, ie that there were no brokers specialising in serviced offices/coworking space.
So in 1993, before the internet was mainstream, the world’s first flexspace broker was invented….
SOS (serviced office search) was born! SOS America was created in 2000 – headquartered in Boca Raton and presided over by Daniel Soffer who now has over 20 years with the company! SOS then rebranded to Office Freedom in 2018 and has evolved into the world’s longest established flexible office space aggregator, listing over 15,000 locations, in over 1000 cities, in over 150 countries.
Having now sourced offices for over 38,000 clients, Office Freedom work on all types of deals ranging from 1-50 desk deals for Start-Ups & SME’s to 50-500+ person transactions for large corporations. The most important ethos that is imprinted in the DNA of the company, a legacy of Richard’s training in his earlier career, is to negotiate the best possible terms and savings (by way of our no-fee tenant-rep service) on behalf of their clients, whilst simultaneously supporting 15,000 flex landlord locations on their platform by helping to reduce voids within the flexible workspace community. As most tenants have only heard of a handful of flex operators, Office Freedom pride themselves on giving an equal and impartial opportunity to flex providers of all shapes and sizes across the world.
Richard is a regular speaker at Corporate Real Estate events such as CoreNet, Future Offices & WorkTech – as well as on The Office Freedom Podcast – Flex with Richard Smith
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwPjx32i2w2Ar791vw0S7nw
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6782669371614470145/
Richard is also an early investor and director of CanO Water® www.canowater.com, a company that supports sustainability and the circular economy by producing water in a recyclable and resealable aluminium can as a solution to plastic pollution.
On a personal note, Richard has been married to Nicole for almost 25 years and has 3 children, would-be rapper Buddy 18, Digital Marketing entrepreneur Tyler 21 and Demi 23 (who does a fine job as a sales agent at Office Freedom).
In his spare time, Richard loves working in his home office, playing tennis & padel tennis, spending time in the gym, on Insta, watching Netflix and the English Premier League, he’s a huge soccer fan and a lifelong supporter of the mighty Arsenal FC.