#6 – Update March 2019 – How is it to work in a 100% remote organization like Great

Summary

Expect to learn:

– Where is Great today?

– What kind of people are we hiring?

– What’s the downside of a transparent organization?

Transcript

[00:00:02] Hi, welcome to the monthly update of the Becoming Great podcast, where we talk about how to build this great organization and great right now.

[00:00:13] It’s like a rocket ship.

[00:00:17] It’s ready to take off. It’s moving slowly at the moment, but there’s a lot of force going into it.

[00:00:25] And the reason we’re taking off is because now we’re starting to put everything after more of our meetings have been transparent. Is this a way for us to recruit new members? So if you want to know about transparency organizations, would you want to work great on call? This would be perfect. At the summit, the sugar.

[00:00:49] You look confused. And he disappears. So today there will be an Eric podcast. It’s a monologue of a man who right now feels like he’s a. Totally. Talking with a calm voice here.

[00:01:06] Mark hired Laura, dude. All right. Let’s go. So, Eric, how are you doing today?

[00:01:15] I’m heading in the right direction. I can see I’ve been quite sick. I’ve been going through some personal traumatic situations. You know, I feel like I’m opening the drapes a little bit. It’s still a win today, but there is some coming in. So I feel like I can open it a little bit further.

[00:01:34] And I’m on my way out into the exciting world again, but still not quite there.

[00:01:40] So we’ll see. I’m getting better. I’m not. Sixty five percent out of 100 in terms of life energy right now. So it’s good. Good ish. Oh, you, my friend.

[00:01:51] Well, I just like you are going through one of the many joys of the Swedish winter. A pretty bad ass cold. It has. It’s been a intense battle for a couple of days now. It still has my voice in captivity. But I’ve been impressed that it has been a worthy foe this cold. But just like you, I’m coming out of the other end and I’m starting to feel like my life force is coming back. My curiosity is coming back. And so I kind of liked this part of being sick when life is returning, so. Eighty 85 percent.

[00:02:27] Like it’s part of being sick. I like that. Yeah, you could read that in denial.

[00:02:32] He also managed to needle me, Eric, because you live in Malta. See what you said? I look out and the sun is coming in through the drapes. That is actually happening for you. We have. Yes. It’s just miss her out here. But let me ask you this. Are you missing living in Sweden at all? And in that case, what are you missing?

[00:02:51] The only thing I really am. Well, I miss two things with Sweden and a main one being family and friends. Most of my close peoples to live in Sweden one way or another. So that’s by far the biggest thing I’m missing. Second one being how easy it is to find everything that I need in Sweden, which is a bit of a hassle here from organic food or vitamin supplements to whenever something breaks down. In Sweden, I know what store to go to because you can go to one store and they will have everything here.

[00:03:26] It’s like, OK, you need to go to the corner there and hopefully they open and probably they’re not open. And then someone will tell you a meal.

[00:03:35] You have to go to this one day and then you have to drive through all the traffic and do this and that. And then you come there and then say, no, we don’t have that. And then it goes on.

[00:03:45] And that would be very frustrating for me. I’m kind of a straightforward guy. So. So I would get very frustrated by that.

[00:03:55] Yeah, it’s frustrating, but it’s worth it. I mean, it’s time it comes. I think this goes for every every country where it’s sunny and warm means that for the last couple of thousand years, if you were living there, life was quite easy. You didn’t have to be structure. You didn’t have to do these things. If you were living in Sweden and you were lazy, you would die in Sweden. A thousand years ago, it was no playground.

[00:04:22] So you would die. So we were kind of forced into cooperation, forced into making sure this and this and this work, forced into working all year just to prepare for winter.

[00:04:30] Yeah. And you and I got those genes. Yeah, that’s that’s I’m very proud of that. My granddad, his work ethic is immaculate. And by that I mean he’s he’s not doing anything else at any point towards something.

[00:04:46] The question is that a good or a bad thing? But I’ve got like 70 percent of it, so I’m happy. That’s probably the perfect ratio.

[00:04:54] I mean, like we spoke within in the last episode, like, OK, work life balance, health. Probably a good thing to not work. Hundred percent.

[00:05:02] If you only do one thing, you don’t need balance. Plus, that’s just logic. All right. Let’s switch gears here, because like I said in the intro, we are going to do an update today about what is going on with great and moving forward. We are going to do this update every month, but we haven’t done it so far. So this one is going to be special. Oh, right, brother. So we’re going to do this for the entire year. So what is star? You’re being two months, OK, two months. Yeah, well, it’s double your money for this one. So what is the biggest thing that I’ve changed for you reading great over the last year?

[00:05:49] So does it take a super quick recap from last year, because Greg has one way or another been going on for like a year and one way or another been going on for two months. So all of 2000 and 18 can be wrapped up in figuring things out. I would say like drawing things up in my head and in your heads and like what we actually want to do. But we didn’t quite get started with with anything. We were laying a foundation. So the biggest change happened from New Year’s, I would say.

[00:06:20] I decided to to publish everything and actually start getting things going.

[00:06:25] That’s suddenly the ball that has been on this. We’ve been pushing it up a hill for a long time, kind of a little bit of the time. And now we reached up over the hill and then it just started to go really, really quickly down the hill without us really keeping control of whatsoever.

[00:06:42] So it feels like the biggest change has been that things are actually happening at a high pace.

[00:06:49] I’d say I do agree with that. It feels like a snowball has started to roll since we started to put out all of our meetings public. And for me and I guess you during this podcast. But why do you think the perception have changed? When we do stuff publicly, because we didn’t have the meetings before you and I did have these kind of conversations before.

[00:07:13] What is it that I’ve changed?

[00:07:17] I think both in me and probably in the rest of everyone else as well. We we feel held accountable to whoever is watching us like they need to happen. A lot of things since the last time I feel that way, I want to perform. I want to improve. I want to tell people what’s what’s going on and why. So I think there is a lot of those elements that get it started and it feels real as well. It’s like, OK, we did this this week, now doing this. Now this is happening. So there is there is a lot of things going on with it. How do you feel about it?

[00:07:53] Mm hmm. I think you wrapped up.

[00:07:57] Well, I feel also it feels more real. Just the idea that someone might be watching that is making me want to perform a little bit extra. And I still want to be me and do the work that we’re doing. But, you know, put a shirt on this morning.

[00:08:13] Look, are you trying to make me feel bad for always wearing training gear when I come to the show because I’m going straight.

[00:08:19] You look great when you get to hold the speech at the Nobel winner one day the Peace Prize go started, Berman. I want that. I want that. Holy place.

[00:08:26] Yeah. Yeah. That’s the hoodie. It’s the sweatpants. Yeah, it’s there like 12, 20 year old, the top floor. Whatever the word is for that in English.

[00:08:39] Yeah. Yeah. Are you listening to on iTunes or something like that. Eric is wearing a black suit tie and he’s looking super professional. That’s what we do here. It’s great.

[00:08:50] Yeah, but let me start in a completely different direction from where we are and talk a little bit of why we are where we are.

[00:08:57] Because I think that makes makes a lot of sense. So we’re basically haven’t started anything when it comes to developing a product. We haven’t started anything when it comes to making money or doing whatever it is that companies usually do. So whenever whenever I’ve thought about creating a company before and I think this goes for everyone else, the kind of first ideas is, OK, how do we start to make money or what is it that will be money? In a sense. And we are very, very far from that. We haven’t started. We know how that’s going to happen, but we haven’t even struck the first body in the ground and started building something. SPADE That’s the spot. ADAM But you know this. The thing they do when they start building a house or the raid that shut your road or something. Shovel. Yeah. I think the first one. We haven’t even done that yet. And the reason for that is that we have so many things we want to figure out in terms of how we want to do salaries, how we want to do titles, how we want to work in all of these different time zones. And taking a completely different approach that I would say only works if you have a very long time horizons working for.

[00:10:14] And I think that what we’re doing right now is basically building a platform for recruitment. It’s the reason one of the reasons I would say the main reason for me to publish these calls to do the podcast and all of these things is to reach the people who wants to get engaged and help those with us. So we’re basically building a recruitment platform and a way to reach people before we even have a commercial product, which is a very weird way of doing things.

[00:10:43] So right now the idea is to create this idea and this dream and then talk about it as open up publicly and as on as many places as possible. And then that would allow people that want to live out that dream. That vision to come and find us.

[00:11:00] Yeah. You could put it that way. Definitely.

[00:11:03] Yes. One of the things that we’re looking for right now is someone to be in charge of building the entire commercial product. And I could do that. I’ve done that before. But if I do that, that will take my time away from pretty much everything else. And I think that I’m more valuable in podcasts, in marketing, in all of these things that I am in product development.

[00:11:28] So and to find that person is really hard. And this is one way of finding that person, because we want someone who really love our approach and really want to be part of something that is very different. And if we just start approaching people with these kind of jobs already out there, a lot of them will will not really resonate with what we’re doing.

[00:11:53] And why do you think that one dress in it, too? Because if you go out and you if you approach someone with this idea, do you think it would be more difficult for them to resonate with idea than if they found us through a podcast, for example, and they hear the vision themself?

[00:12:10] Yes, I think so.

[00:12:12] When we’re putting this kind of content out, there are people start hearing it the first time and maybe that person listens to one more thing, one more thing, one more thing. And they heard five different things that we’ve been doing before. They even have our first contact.

[00:12:24] They will have a completely different approach to what it is that we’re doing. If we start talking to product people in general and very senior people, we want someone here who would be able to build a team to 50 or 100 people. They have very likely been working in an office environment for the last 15 years or something. So just the fact that we want to be completely remote is is very different and will probably scare many of them away or they they will not be interested in that kind of setup. And same thing goes for creating everything built on trust. So there is no way we were not timing anyone working in this in this company. We’re not keeping track of what is actually being put in. And that’s a very different approach. So to be able to be a manager in a team where none of the things that they’ve done before will kind of apply is probably also something that would cut a lot of them away. So I’m guessing that 90 percent of the people who are qualified for this job would not really resonate with how we want to do things or might not work with how they see things in general. So if we start looking for this person is might be very likely that we hire someone, but they didn’t quite believe in what it was or how it turned out. But if there is people approaching us, which happens a lot right now, there’s a lot of people e-mailing us all the time to get jobs. They do that because they really believe in these things that are already true believers or part of the message just from watching or listening to things we’ve been doing.

[00:14:01] So I think that it it shifts from one not all 10 of the people we could approach actually liking this to probably nine out of 10 really liking this.

[00:14:14] When you talk about a product, what kind of product are you talking about? And what would this person actually do?

[00:14:22] So first weeks at the job would basically be to figure out which of our product legs we will be working on. So we went through this in another podcast with a different pillars of what we want to do. Let’s just wrap that up super quickly. One pillar will be basically what we’re doing now, talking about organizations in a very transparent way.

[00:14:42] One will be about clarifying what is charity and how can charity be done in the most efficient way. One will be about life hacks and what this all the information. Basically like school. What do we believe would be very valuable for the world to know? Kind of. And one would be a commercial product where we will generate money both to fund the other three legs, but also to donate everything away.

[00:15:07] So the further we use to clarify for the listening, if you are interested in finding out more about what great will become and exactly how those four pillars works.

[00:15:17] I recommend that you go back and check out our podcast that is called The Four Pillars of Great or something similar to that. We can link it probably. And if this is a YouTube video.

[00:15:28] Yeah, perfect. Yeah. So basically first we get the job would be to start mopping up. How could these pillars look and then make a decision? Where do we want to start? So that responsibility would be on the product person and we would all be very much involved.

[00:15:45] But the person who should build it, who will build it, should also be the one kind of making that decision and going with what they believe.

[00:15:53] But I guess this could be confusing because imagine you have someone that says, all right, I think I’m a good leader. Could I know some stuff about shared or I know a lot about casino, but how could I build a shared product if I had been working in Casino before and vice versa? Those legs are so different. It seems weird that the same person would would choose which pillar to work on.

[00:16:18] I don’t think they need to know either charity or casino, to be honest. What what someone needs to know is how can I build a team with tech? So they did build some kind of a tech product before, regardless if that’s a taxi app or a social media platform or whatever that is. They have been building teams that work with tech. They either haven’t worked a lot with the with remote organizations or they’re very much in love with the idea of a remote organization. So that’s something that’s that they’re passionate about. I have not built a remote tech things. I don’t know how to do that myself. So it would be awesome to find someone who’s already done that and can do those kind of things. And when it comes to the casino knowledge or the charity knowledge, that’s something that we already have in-house or can easily find find outside of this.

[00:17:13] So it’s more about how do you build a product with a good user experience? How do you track what a visitor is doing in these products and you take it from there and being able to motivate and build a team.

[00:17:27] All right.

[00:17:29] Okay. Then I understand better what kind of qualities this person need to have. And so the history of this person. What did you. You said someone to build a tech product before. Was there something else that you think is important?

[00:17:41] What about experience or age or won’t be the perfect person?

[00:17:48] I think the person is around 40 years old. I think the person is. Born into technology in a sense, so I think that if you’re older than 40, you’re not born into the Internet. You’ve barely done down that. You kind of. You were this person where the first one had an email address. He was the first at a funeral home, kind of among his friends were the first thing he did when his. When he got kids was setting up some kind of a social media platform for them. Kind of. That’s like the foundation site. If Elon Musk and Bill Gates had a love child, this would be their love child to someone who’s passionate about technology to start with. I think that’s because that’s something that I’m missing in this as well. I think I can do a lot of the leaders side in these kind of things, but I don’t have that technical passion.

[00:18:42] And you mean she and she obviously. But when I think about a nerd, I think of a guy.

[00:18:47] For some reason, I mean, he she obviously we can go with a. I would love it. I would love it as a woman. Yeah, I think that would be amazing. I think that would be so beneficial in so many ways. So we can go.

[00:19:00] And she she she it’s just really hard to say he she he, she, he, she.

[00:19:04] So he got this amazing word in Swedish hen, which is in mix of the two. He and she saw a fish or something.

[00:19:13] Ok, so let’s I think I understand what kind of person you’re looking for. If this person wants to or is interested in this job or if you listening might know someone that could be a good match, what do you think that person should do?

[00:19:34] I think they should start by just listening to things that we have been doing and reading what we are doing and see if this is something that resonates, because what we’re doing is very different from from the organizations I’ve been involved with before and from what I read out there. So I think that whoever might be interested in this will either love what we’re doing or not. And if they love what we’re doing, then they should reach out to us. And if they don’t? Yeah, well, then it’s a better match. Just move on.

[00:20:08] So this way of recruiting someone is quite different from let’s say you went to headhunting. Is that what it’s called? Head on? Yeah, I’m trying to find someone. And I guess this would be difficult to do unless there are certain values in the organization that people can relate to. So this is a way that probably works very well for great. But what kind of downsides do you see with this approach? Because in some ways, surely it must be better to hire a headhunting firm that is find someone for us because we haven’t started yet.

[00:20:39] What kind of dancers do you see? Well, I’m thinking what upside, of course, is is this is a cheaper way to do it.

[00:20:48] But when you pay for it, I guess you can reach a larger database of potential people. And then, of course, time it could go quicker. That firm might know someone that is available right now. They have a higher reach of people, so the recruitment goes faster.

[00:21:10] So the kind of people that you can reach with a headhunting firm in general, the people that they are aware of. Where do you think they are in their their lives right now in terms of jobs?

[00:21:23] They’re looking to trade up.

[00:21:25] Yeah, yeah, I think so, too. And what’s the downside with a person like that?

[00:21:31] They want a high salary. They might want to trade up. Even if they get the job. But great. And we are looking for people that want to stay a long time.

[00:21:43] Yes, yes and yes. And also, they are unsatisfied with where they are. So there is more likely that they will take a job even if it doesn’t feel like a perfect fit. So they might be easier to recruit, but they might also not really be as in love with it as it is compared to finding, let’s say you and you listen to our podcast because a friend recommended you love your job. You’re already very passionate about it. But you listen to this is like, wow, this is what I want to do. The kind of commitment that you would bring in and the passion you would bring in would be completely different. It will be a lot harder to get you on board because you have so much to lose. But at the same time, you will come from a content place in your life. You probably come from very good relationships with all the people who’ve been working with. And you will jump into this strong in confidence. Instead of like, oh, I wanted to get out of this for a while. So I think that headhunting companies and this is just my impression of things. They’re not necessarily true, but they can reach all the people who wants to switch jobs, because those are the people who get in contact with headhunting companies. If you put out a work ad on a jobs Web site, you will only find the people looking for a job. You will not find the people who might be the perfect fit, but already like their jobs. So you will find that people who are the least content with their current situation, who is it’s likely that they’re underperforming in a way. So they might not be as highly qualified or as socially skilled or whatever it might be in general, because that wouldn’t bring them on a website like that. Does this make sense?

[00:23:27] Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. So, yeah, I understand completely the question, what was the downside?

[00:23:35] This is one of the upsides. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the downsides I’ll give you my my view of that as well. So the first one is being time. It’s gonna take a lot more time to do this. We’re basically building a platform for recruitment and learning this on the job. It’s gonna take a lot of time. Hopefully we’ll have a big snowball of content in a couple of years, but people will find it all the time. So then it’s the opposite. Then after that, they will be very quickly. But it’s tough to get started. It means that we are not making any money for a long time because we’re not finding a product person and we’re not developing something. So every day without that person. Is it a postponing the entire project in a sense?

[00:24:17] It’s very tempered. Maybe it would be sheep don’t just pay extra to hire someone now to get the product started.

[00:24:24] Yeah, they probably would. If we found the right person. That’s the thing. So it’s very likely that if we found someone right now, they might come from a less contentious place. They might be one of those 90 percent of the people who might not really resonate with what we’re doing. So they might not be as long lived in the organization as someone we would find six months from now.

[00:24:45] But we can change them. Eric? She had changed her, can turn them into whatever it is that we want them to be.

[00:24:54] Yeah, I’m sure it’s possible there might be. The best thing might be to really hope for someone and get it started straight away. And I’m not sure we’re doing this right. We’re doing something very different from what I know. I have zero experience doing what we’re doing right now, but I believe in it.

[00:25:13] At what point do we get too much excited and give up?

[00:25:21] Good question.

[00:25:22] I think that I will give this a year, so trying this strategy for about all of this year. If we get nowhere closer to to finding that person, then we probably need to reconsider.

[00:25:42] All right. So we’re building a recruitment platform right now to find one person and needle in a haystack. But imagine someone else is listening to this podcast and thinking, well, I want to work it. Great. What would you say to them? Are we looking for other kinds of people?

[00:26:01] We get e-mails every day, more or less from people who want to be involved.

[00:26:05] And we’ve kind of been a.

[00:26:09] Bottleneck situation that we need this one person to start building. And the reason for that is that I’ve done it the other way before. So I started with hiring a lot of union people and then putting a manager on top of them.

[00:26:22] And before that was when you built, I mean.

[00:26:25] Yes. So what I did then was I hired a lot of junior people because I couldn’t afford senior people. And then when we could afford it, I had to put a bus on top of them, which means that this team didn’t necessarily like the boss. Quite a few people in this team felt that they should be the boss and the manager wouldn’t have built the team in the way that I did. So we ended up in a lot of different tricky situations to kind of solve.

[00:26:53] The opposite of that would be finding a manager who will build a team that that manager wants to have. Who all the people recruit wants to work for that person because that’s why they took the job. They had the interview with that person and that manager get to decide on the strategy for for his or her team and take it from there. So it is a completely different situation. There’s so much less conflict.

[00:27:20] But still, I guess you have an idea what kind of people this one manager would hire. So maybe a great one to have a job for them now. But imagine when we do find a manager, then I guess a certain type of people would be interesting for our company.

[00:27:35] Yes. If Sterling has some kind of waitlist or something, they should keep.

[00:27:40] I mean, sent in some way. We have a database with all the series of people reaching out. So we store that for now and we get back to. So we’re having a document in trouble. This 2 management tool that we have where we store up. OK, this is Emil Eckhart. He applied at this time for this kind of thing. He’s doing this. This is his LinkedIn. So we have all of those stored up. So if you email, too. I don’t think we have a good e-mail setup for this at the moment. So send it to Erik. That’s great. That’s common. I’ll make sure it happens. It ends up in the right place.

[00:28:14] All right. Do you have anything more to add a recruitment before we move on?

[00:28:19] I mean, what’s your gut feeling about about all of these things, this is all based on my my previous experience and my crazy ideas. How do you feel coming from the outside seeing this, you know?

[00:28:31] I guess that gut feelings comes from just the sum of all your experiences. You’re not really sure where it’s coming from because it’s just a mix of thoughts and emotions. Everything you’ve been through and I haven’t been through the pains that I assume there must come from building a team and then finding a manager. And it’s very difficult for me to put myself into that situation. But what I feel now is that my personal I want to get started. That’s why I really want to find this person and see their organization grow. So I’m excited and at the same time, I think we’re currently six people out great and I think that’s a good playground, a sandbox to try out new stuff, trying out cello, trying out slack, trying out transparency. So even though I’m eager to move on and want to see this organization grow, I think this is a time in the development of this organization that when looking back at it, I’m gonna miss this time. You could say it was still a little playful. This is the equivalent to the semi year old before.

[00:29:39] Last year I felt like we were four year old at that time. Nothing cool is really happening. Yeah, you don’t. You barely remember it. But now are you starting to get a life? You have a personality. Things are happening. You get friends. So I like this seven year old party figure. Next part is kind of adolescence that is more tricky. I think you’re on to something.

[00:30:01] And I think there’s also then ties in to the way I see the need for this person. And when I would be stressed. So let’s say we’re a seven year old now and it’s okay for seven year old doesn’t accomplish anything. It doesn’t really do anything. But let’s say a year from now where 13 or whatever, where a teenager and you kind of need to start performing at some stage and taking some responsibility and make some things happen. So if if we don’t have this person in place, I would probably have to step into that role myself and feel, yeah, I need to step this up and do those kind of things, which means that I wouldn’t be able to podcast and do all of these things that I truly believe in as a recruitment platform for the purpose of great. I wouldn’t have to build a team. I would probably need to travel a lot to get those people sorted out and all of these things. And. I would feel stressed out for not accomplishing anything if I’m a teenager. Right now. It’s fine to be in the playground. It’s fine to create this. And you learn so much from playing. I mean, that’s the way kids learn things. So that’s the state that we’re in. I think it’s it’s actually a very good analogy for this.

[00:31:12] All right. What would you do with a time machine?

[00:31:17] I wouldn’t use it. I really like nothing.

[00:31:21] You know, I would use it to go back 35 minutes in time because we talked about what it’s the problems we’ve been having. And in the beginning of the podcast, we talked about transparency and having all of our meetings open, but we didn’t. We sort of made that into a fairytale situation where everything is good and dandy. But what kind of problems have we run into? In which way is the transparency and openness making this into a worse job?

[00:31:49] I think the most interesting situation for me and this has been seeing the rest of the team’s emotional journeys in this. So I’ve been in front of the camera. I’ve been doing quite a lot of things for quite a long time. So I’ve I’ve been the one who’s crazy enough to suggest these stakes and feel that I’m comfortable with it. So everyone else should be. So how does your emotional connection to this, Ben?

[00:32:16] Well. Mostly it’s been.

[00:32:26] This is something that I wanted to do before this year started, because one of the things I realized I was struggling with the most last year was vulnerability and specifically going out and putting stuff out there, even though it’s worse than I would like it to be. So this has been a tough pubic for me in many ways. But at some points, I have been outside of my comfort zone out into the panic zone. For example, when we were live streaming on on Instagram.

[00:32:55] So me and Eric, we tried to livestream on our Instagram’s and on Facebook and that felt very painful for me.

[00:33:03] I didn’t like that. And one thing that I noticed is that I went out away from trying to give value to great. And in our meetings and with even with my conversation with Eric, I went away from trying to learn with Eric, and instead I wanted to entertain some imagined listener. So I became a character of myself. I lost I lost authenticity. And I still find that challenging. I still feel like my voice is changing and the cameras on. I’m not the same now as I am if I’m just having a normal conversation with Eric.

[00:33:44] Oh, for sure. That’s definitely one of the of the biggest downsides of it.

[00:33:49] Do you feel that it gets you get more invested at.

[00:33:56] Not stressed because I can I enjoyed it. It’s enough adrenaline to make me better, but not so much that I get stressed at this point.

[00:34:08] So how do you feel stepping into the coals when you’re on a low energy, no, when you’ve been feeling sick. Has it been a good or a bad thing that it’s been recorded?

[00:34:16] That is true, actually. Because right now I’m feeling a bit.

[00:34:20] Conscious of the fact that, all right, I’m snoring every one minute, then I’m using myself and I can imagine that would be very annoying for someone listening and that is stifling me a little bit. And if this was just you and me talking, I wouldn’t care. I wouldn’t even mute myself.

[00:34:39] Thank you, my friend. Yes, it is some voice in my head thinking about more than our conversation.

[00:34:50] Ok, so.

[00:34:53] There is obviously an emotional barrier doing this and it’s challenging for for many. So how do you feel this feels for someone else to come into what we’re doing right now? So we’ve been six people doing this journey together. The seventh person enjoys it. We’ll have no choice but to just be part of it. How would you feel stepping into that community in first day in the office? For us is basically a first day being recorded and posted online.

[00:35:24] Depending on the person, I could imagine that it’s actually adding a lot more exciting because imagine now you’re a person that you’re going to new work environment. And this everyone is like this, but on a different scale. There are six other people. I’m the new person coming in. I want to sort of find out what is going on here. I don’t want to take up too much space. Maybe I feel like I would like for these people to like me. And it’s not even in any other way. But everyone needs that validation. Now, imagine if instead of six people, you have six people and then another thousand or ten thousand people watching. That would, I guess, compound that effect for most people. Yeah, and it’s recorded. Any fuckup that you do will be there for life. Yeah, I would look at it at the Christmas party. The great Christmas.

[00:36:17] Yeah. Yeah. Let’s do it. It’s important. Tar and tar and feathers. It’s a great show.

[00:36:25] But there’s another reason why I think that we would struggle to recruit in a normal way. Because if if you’re just telling this story, we publish all our meetings in a recruitment meeting, that’s like what the fuck is in? I think a lot of people would be horrified to do this. I’m I know that two years ago I would be horrified to do this. So I think that this is another reason why regular recruitment wouldn’t really work for us, because the downside is very big.

[00:36:56] So you’re saying that we are missing out or working with people that have stage fright? Probably.

[00:37:05] I think that we’re missing out on a lot of talent doing this, doing it this way. There’s a lot of people who would be able to add a lot of value that would not want to be part of this. And they might love the the product idea. They might love the mission and my level of these things. But they would be terrified to do that and therefore wouldn’t take the job.

[00:37:29] If you look at a contract degree and if you look at the staff as a whole, how much do you think? The transparency. I have put a filter on us. How much do you think that the staff can’t really be themselves? Because they are self-aware or self conscious?

[00:37:48] Very little right now, and I think. My impression is in our team meetings now, nobody really thinks about the fact that it’s being recorded. And if they do very little, I don’t think people mind much now. So. And I think that we will have a company where most people it’s not like we’re a super, super clinic state company. We want that all the attention. We want that. We want to see this. If you’re looking at every single individual in our team, we have some people who are more shy. Some people who are more extroverted. So. And still, I feel that people are very comfortable as it is right now. So I think that when someone joins in and is a part of this for a month or two, I think that they will be very comfortable. This is just my impression. I’m sorry. It could be dead wrong here. But it is just the first kind of calls. And knowing that this will happen, should I take this job or not before I even try doing that? I think that can can create a barrier for a lot of people.

[00:38:54] And do you have a plan to lower this barrier and reach even those people that have stage fright?

[00:39:02] Now, we might need to come up with it if we see this as a big problem in the future. But we don’t have a plan for it at the moment.

[00:39:10] Let’s think about that. You or me, maybe we’ll come up with a solution in a year or so.

[00:39:14] So, yeah, I mean, one way could be that. I mean, it could be quite simple. You could have your camera off on weekly calls. You could not participate. The first month of weekly calls and just have other kinds of calls to kind of get you prepared for it. The calls could be voluntary, like you can watch the recording afterwards if you feel you don’t want to do this. So there are lots of these ways we could easily bridge over this problem.

[00:39:49] I think that’s worth putting out there because I could imagine there is a percentage of the population that have a very warm heart, wants to do good, are inspired by our organization, but feels like not that work environment feels too scary for me right now.

[00:40:04] You know, things are too. And we might need to rethink this further ahead. We might actually want to keep our team as small as possible and use remote consultants and stuff was actually not doing these calls and not really a part of the core rate.

[00:40:21] So, for example, we could have a developing company in somewhere who develops all the technical things, but we’re just outsourcing them. So we’re paying them by the hour rather than having them as a part of.

[00:40:35] Great to be able to keep this team very, very lean, very efficient, very friendly and family like in many ways.

[00:40:46] You know, when you were seven years old and you thought you had problems and then you became a 30 year old and you really had problems. Right. I can imagine the transparency is exactly one of those things, like how are you transparent with 50 people in the organization? I’m looking forward to the podcast in a couple of years when we have third zero problems.

[00:41:08] Teenager, you know, the love, drama and stuff like that. I had a couple of those situations back in the days when the in the office with Katrina.

[00:41:18] So one of the things where Katrina is based in Malta and Maldives, a very small country. So in a lot of the people that we hired came in from other countries and started working for us. And most of them were in their 20s. So and obviously, we wanted them to be big friends with each other’s names based on malls. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Cárdenas, based in Malta, is small country and I knew that.

[00:41:43] Good job. I said that you said it. Did he say that? I wanted to clarify. I said that. So thank you for paying attention. My good friend.

[00:41:54] So either way, it’s based in Malta. Very small country. People coming in for abroad. They’re in their 20s. And we want them to make friends with each other. We want them to make friends within the company rather than with a lot of people outside of the company, because then it’s more likely they would leave. And we want a close environment. So we took them to Malta and we gave them alcohol and parties. That is good for getting to know each other. We’re making friends. It’s also good for making babies.

[00:42:22] So. So it was a long.

[00:42:27] No, no real babies, but a lot of love drama. So that’s I guess that’s the real teenage problems when someone is in love with someone who is actually with someone else.

[00:42:37] And yeah, we can make a whole episode about this. It would be fun.

[00:42:42] Yeah. I’m not going to spoil that much early. That’s going to say that there’s been a lot of love.

[00:42:51] Are you ready to move on? Sure. Cool. So within this year, what would you say are the biggest successes that we have made with great.

[00:43:05] Think just where we are right now. Getting started with with coming to this point, publishing all these things, taking up to these things where how comfortable actually everyone is in front of the camera or recording these meetings. I feel that people really enjoy themselves.

[00:43:24] So I think that’s that’s a big part of.

[00:43:29] Of the success and what kind of effects have you seen outside of great from doing things this way is?

[00:43:40] Now let’s get back to that one. So.

[00:43:45] If from what we’re doing. I mean, for me, the biggest success is the fact that people feel so, so comfortable. The fact that you started this call more or less by saying that you felt that this was something you really wanted to grow within and you were really uncomfortable putting things out there.

[00:44:01] The fact that you’re willing to just share that two months into this project dish, three months in is to me a very big success. It’s like way bigger than than what we could have accomplished outside or getting newspapers or whatever it is. So I think that. To me, that’s big because we actually created some.

[00:44:31] A big emotional safety situation. People feel safe. I mean, when I the other day we have this Facebook group where we have feedback and stuff and Frederick, who is part of creating that group. He just changed the name without consulting anyone. And then he turned it into a better name and just the fact that he felt safe enough to do that.

[00:44:52] Without consulting me, who would in most organizations would be viewed as a dictator kind of in this perspective.

[00:45:03] You should always ask. And that’s two months in another quarter.

[00:45:07] So that’s the biggest things for me. What what’s been the biggest thing for you? Company. Organization or.

[00:45:16] Right now, I’m just thinking that I find it interesting how you view that as the biggest success of great, because that to me shows the that the goals with this organization is very different from most organization.

[00:45:31] If we think of the development and well-being of our employees as the biggest success.

[00:45:43] So maybe that’s that’s in itself that we managed to land on that so early is one of the biggest things that we could have accomplished.

[00:45:53] And that’s cool because that is an indicator of what kind of metrics we measure a successor. And I think that’s very healthy. But then again, because I love to be the devil’s advocate, what what do you think is the downside of that? Those frameworks for success? How do you think that is stopping us from moving forward in different directions? And do you think it is?

[00:46:19] I mean, we could have gone a long way by now if we would have tried to do it the same way I’ve done it before. We would probably have. So I bought great up come January last year. It’s 13 months ago in 13 months. We could have built a product. We could have stopped making money. We could have done a lot of things in the old way. We could have stopped donating a lot of money right now and actually making a profit. So there’s so many things like this that we simply are not. We’re losing a lot of money every month right now because we have no income and a lot of costs.

[00:46:56] So that’s obviously a big, big downside of doing it this way. I believe that the future is just so much brighter doing it this way. But it’s once again, it’s my guess. It’s I’ve never done this before. I can be completely wrong doing this.

[00:47:10] And how much do you think it affects those ways of thinking, the fact that greater purpose is not to make money?

[00:47:20] How do you mean? Great. Will donate its profits. So do you think that makes profits into less of a metric for success?

[00:47:33] Yeah, definitely. Which is in one way bat, because we want to donate as much as possible, and that’s the best way to make what one of the best ways to make a difference. So it’s definitely bad in one way that that’s not as big of a metric.

[00:47:49] But I think that it’s so important that that we are feeling well, that we are motivated what we’re doing, that we’re having fun doing all these things, that I think that by focusing less on money in the long term, there will be more money.

[00:48:06] So we spoke about your your poker playing in the last episode of the podcast. How you felt that you. You played so much poker that if you would have rested more and just taking care of yourself more for a couple of extra hours out of the poker playing, you probably made a lot more money from the poker playing. You did because you would have higher focus. You would have enjoyed it more and all of these things.

[00:48:28] So I think that this is a similar situation that if you would have focused less on making money then and more on being healthy, he would have made more money. And I think this is a similar situation that if we focus less on making money and more on enjoying this, doing something we believe in and making progress in in other areas, there will be more money at the end of the road. And I don’t know this. This is just my gut feeling and my core belief and the foundation of the entire company.

[00:49:03] Oh, yeah, it sure makes the journey more enjoyable for sure the people at the Great Train.

[00:49:10] Yeah, for sure. It’s a good train to be on. So I asked before. What’s the biggest successes outside of. Great.

[00:49:17] Yeah. Do you see any big successes outside of great.

[00:49:22] I see a huge success coming from your networking.

[00:49:27] What do you mean? I see articles being written and I see you being able to share these podcasts. So we have got an article written about us, about our transparency and we have articles written about us, about the responsibility we want to take in when it comes to gambling, or at least we are admitting responsibility when it comes to gambling.

[00:49:53] And those things are obviously benefiting our opportunities to recruit.

[00:50:01] If we’re so strict like this on purpose, then those would be strong successes. I think so for sure. Would you like to summarize what I what have happened that you think is the most important?

[00:50:11] Yes. So what I’ve been doing in terms of networking is that I’ve been connecting to a lot of journalists and content writers in places on LinkedIn. And then I share a lot of the things that we do, which is quite extreme.

[00:50:30] Well, it’s very extreme in some ways. And with the idea of if I’m connected to all of these journalists and stuff, some of them might be interested in the conversations that pop up. And to me, this is something I’ve never done before. I haven’t tried this strategy before. This is completely new. But it has worked very well.

[00:50:50] So our goal with one of the goals with Great is that we will create a lot of media attention around charity, around how to create other organizations, around transparency and all these things. So the media will do a lot of good thanks to things that we are talking about. And this has now shown to be a proof of concept in a sense, where already there’s been four or five news articles written around transparency and our thought about that and responsibility in terms of gambling and our thoughts about that.

[00:51:21] So we get media attention too great. Which leads to more listeners on the podcast, potential recruitments and all of these things. But it does also lead to people actually talking about these topics that we believe are important and create their own opinions and thoughts. And hopefully there will be more articles, articles written about this outside of great. That has nothing to do with us. But maybe talk about transparency and or maybe talk about responsible gambling. Just thanks to things that we’ve done. So there is a lot of ripple effects coming from this. So to me, this is a proof of concept that what we are doing is something that people want to talk about and want to read about, and the way that we are doing it gets the attention of journalists and in a good way.

[00:52:11] I agree. For me, as someone that is not exactly understanding what’s going on, it’s very exciting to follow and to see the activity that Great’s tentacles are reaching out there and is having effects outside of this organization. And I think that is one of the more exciting parts about this year. It feels like before we were in the dark doing our our own thing. And now we’re we’re more out playing in the world.

[00:52:41] Yeah. And we’re sharing what we’re doing and people are curious.

[00:52:45] So it makes it a lot more fun to just do this podcast when people are talking about it. So then they’re actually one of the articles came from the podcast. We did a couple of weeks ago about taking responsibility for gambling. And that became a big news article that a lot of people read and shared. And that said, it comes from this podcast as well.

[00:53:06] So it shows the value of doing this for us and it makes it more fun.

[00:53:11] Yeah, and I’m sure we’re going to explore that specific article about responsible gambling much more in depth. So my question is, what kind of downsides do you see with the way we are, with the way media can see the transparency that we have and downsides with articles and not focusing on that specific one? But in general.

[00:53:37] I think the main downside that I feel is stress level that I can be or anyone here can be put in a situation where there is a journalist putting a microphone in front of their face and say, hey, answer these questions. And that’s an uncomfortable situation, especially when there are sensitive topics and you don’t know the agenda of the journalist. So I’ve been in situations before where I’ve done an interview and the journalists just have a different agenda and wants to make me look bad. So they take some of my answers away and kind of add some other content around it.

[00:54:14] And it’s just really tricky. So it adds a stress level of how will this be perceived, what will people think? What will the industry think about the things that we’re doing? What what does my friend think about this? My friends. So there are all I think that’s the main downside of this. I don’t see many other downsides about it, to be honest. I think that being transparent, being honest, having the intentions we do. It’s just good that people talk about it. So other than the personal stress.

[00:54:56] I think it’s I would feel a lot of insight about that too. In your situation. I would or I would have.

[00:55:04] It’s just a recent I think social media is tough in general.

[00:55:06] When I put something out there, and especially if it’s an opinion, then the I know the response on that would affect me and creating side in some ways, even though it’s majority, the majority of the response is positive. It would create anxiety.

[00:55:28] Yeah, because we’re focused on the problems. So if nine people say that something is good when people say your your lives, you suck. I hate this and this and this. It’s I mean, I think most people, including myself, is very tuned to hear the negative and not the positive.

[00:55:46] So how much anxiety is not causing it right now?

[00:55:51] And when has it been the worst?

[00:55:55] A lot less now than it did a couple of years ago when I were in similar situations, and I think the main reason for that is that now I can take responsibility for everything I say and I’m not kind of dragging anyone else into it. So before I was a part of a big company with Tina and a lot of other owners and people around that, if I said something, it has an impact on everyone else.

[00:56:18] And that was a lot harder. I didn’t know I had to follow a lot of law, so I didn’t know about like it was stock listed company, which means that it’s regulated in many ways. But you can and cannot say, I didn’t know these rules fully, so it was hard to to interpret what what am I allowed to do?

[00:56:37] Right. For now, it feels like I can take responsibility for anything I say. I’m the only one who’s gonna suffer from this as me if I mess up. And sure, there will be a lot of people have opinions about what I say, but I don’t really mind that much because it’s strangers on the Internet and that’s a lot easier to deal with them than other people. So what’s going on right now is also like so with this article, as we mentioned, we speak about responsible gambling and taking responsibility for the gambling industry. And as far as I know, no one has spoken about it in the way that we did in an article. And half of my friends and colleagues or people I know are from this industry and a lot of them have not had positive responses to it. And then that’s a very stressful way, because I’m kind of putting something out there that’s like, hey, guys, you should look at this. And some of them don’t want to look at it says very provoking. And I become a symbol for provoking.

[00:57:54] Yes, see that you become the messenger of something unwanted. Yeah, it’s not a popular it’s not a healthier position to be in. I mean, one of the one of the curses of being a founder of companies that you have to make unpopular decisions. Right. Yeah.

[00:58:14] Yeah, for sure. So in a way, you become a party pooper.

[00:58:21] No, no, no one wants to be around the guy who say, Hey, guys, this sucks. Even if it’s true, no one’s too to be around that guy.

[00:58:30] Well, it’s easier to look away, though, to look at the party pooper. Yeah. Yeah, that’s that’s a big part of it.

[00:58:37] So if we are we have a couple more things to have happen this year. But I suggest that we have a final question. So I suggest we start wrapping up and I would take them at the next monthly update. Okay. You do have something I want to wrap this topic up with before I.

[00:58:58] We’re having a lot of fun. I think that’s worth mentioning. I think that this has been the by far most fun two months in in my business career. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So you think that’s so essential in terms of progress as well? We have learned so much. I feel that I’ve grown so much both in terms of business, but also in terms of personal relationships and all these things that’s been in very intense learning period. And I enjoyed it a lot.

[00:59:34] I feel like I’m on a rocket ship with this company. Like my personality, it’s on a rocket ship doing things publicly like this. That’s perfect. I really enjoy it. How would you like to wrap this up? All right.

[00:59:47] We are coming towards the end. And now it’s time for the WHO.

[00:59:51] The great genie is here. You can grant your wishes. He will have two wishes for you today. The first one is that the great genie, you will remove your biggest problem you have right now in the organization.

[01:00:03] What would you like to genie to remove?

[01:00:08] The challenge of finding a products person so actually have that president in place, cool shoes.

[01:00:16] It’s Obama. He’s here. Oh, shit. And the second. Which you get from the great Jimmy is he will grant you a wish. Something that would add the most magical thing you could add to the company right now.

[01:00:32] Sort of the reverse of the first question.

[01:00:36] Wouldn’t that be the same thing adding one person?

[01:00:39] But this could be something more. I’ll take 10 more wishes out of this. It should. I grant you 10 more wishes. And you cannot wish for more wishes.

[01:00:53] Well, Mike, my two main concerns is finding this product. Guy or girl or trans, her product individual. And the second one being, I want to come up with a way of making salaries work so that everyone feels fairly treated. For now, into infinity and still feels very committed and engaged and based on that. That’s my two biggest challenges. As of today, and I think the salary challenge will be a big one ourselves in a long time.

[01:01:33] I think so, too. All right.

[01:01:36] Do you have something to add before we wrap up these two months?

[01:01:41] Okay. Cause you’re a genie. A genie comes out. You get zero wishes. Instead, you get a question.

[01:01:49] Oh, no. Would you wrap up these two months?

[01:01:51] The genie asks this two months have been the great rocket ship.

[01:01:56] And you know, when a rocket ship is you’re about to take off is a lot of our energy is going in there and it’s making a lot of sound. Science moves really, really slowly. But it is taking off.

[01:02:08] And I think I really enjoy this intense part where we get to rocket ship going. And I also think we’re gonna really like it when we know how to do this podcast becomes routine, it becomes easy, it becomes seamless, it becomes flowing. And we are sailing out there in space. And like you said, no one can hear, you know, that was before it progressed. But we’re going to space her for going into space, right.

[01:02:33] With the space where everyone can hear you scream because we’re screaming so highly loud. Yeah. All right. Well, thank you for tuning in. And much love from the Grateful Dead.

[01:02:48] Hey, you. Yes, you. If you think we suck at this, we want your feedback. Please send us an e-mail to [email protected]. Sia.