Celebrity clients are typically hard to work with, EXCEPT this one.

Conan O'Brien at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival 03 (Source: Wikipedia)

Our company is based out of West Los Angeles, where many top celebrity clients live and work. Of course, since we are in the area, Hollywood does come calling once in a while.

We have been lucky enough to have worked with a good number of Hollywood elites, everyone from well recognized “A-List” celebrities to those just starting their entertainment career. Most of which have been your typical transaction, many were leases, some sales/acquisitions, with the main difference in working with them is that many times the client wants to remain confidential, which can create challenges.

A poster created by Mike Mitchell during the 2010 Tonight Show conflict displaying his "Coco" nickname (Source: Wikipedia)

A few years ago Team Coco was introduced to us, this is a company founded by one of the most famous comedians and T.V. show hosts in the world, Conan O’Brien.

At the time, they were moving out of their studio location, and looking for a new space that they could focus their podcast business on. The assignment was to find an office building they could either lease or purchase that was suitable for their needs, felt more like a home than an office, and offered some security.

O'Brien in the offices of the writers of The Simpsons, 1992 (Source: Wikipedia)

The challenge was that the employees’ homes were scattered across the greater Los Angeles area, with some (the executives)living on the westside of Los Angeles while other were in southern and eastern Los Angeles, this was going to be a challenge to make the entire team happy.

The assignment being so specific made it difficult in one way as there were not many properties currently on the market that offered everything they were looking for and we knew we needed to get on the phones and start finding off market properties.

This part of the assignment was easier as we knew exactly what the client needed so we could really narrow in on target properties.

Signature of Conan O'Brien (Source: Wikipedia)

Within a week we had our confidentiality agreements signed and were out doing showings, our first day was good but a bit stressful as it can be when you are first meeting clients and you want everything to go smoothly.

After the tour that first day we tweaked some of their requests which made it a little easier to narrow down on potential properties.

I would say the most entertaining part to the showings was when Conan would walk in and people see him for the first time, he knew people were excited/nervous and he handled it perfectly and people became at ease very quickly.

O'Brien at Al Udeid Air Base during "Conan in Qatar" (Source: Wikipedia)

In our experience, It’s unusual for the celebrity to attend the showings in the beginning, they will typically come by when you have it narrowed down to a one or two potential locations.

The process of narrowing down the location became simple and this is something that really stuck out to me and showed Conan’s empathy for his team, we had just toured a property in Venice that was absolutely perfect for what they were looking for, a small private office compound, that felt like a home.

We started to prepare an offer that evening that we would submit the next day. We never submitted that offer.

We received a call from Conan personally the next morning, stating that he had spoken to his assistant that was touring the space with us the other day, and apparently it had taken her over 2 hours to get home from this location.

His response, I can’t do this to my co-workers, we need to find a space that is more central to everyone.

We now had our new marching orders, and took those instructions and narrowed our search and started cold calling owners, reaching out to brokers searching for off market properties and we found a couple in an area that was fairly central to everyone, and still had all of the aspects of what they were looking for.

We toured a few properties and within a couple weeks we were under contract to purchase a building. Inspections went amazing and within a couple of months we closed and Team Coco was moving into their brand new office.

We have been back to the property a couple times and it really is the perfect space for their entire production crew so they should be set for many years to come.

It was an incredible experience to work with such a great group of people, especially ones that had the insight for their business to protect their employee’s time, and we are thankful for the experience.