Where Remote Work Fails

0:01Did you see the story about Sohan Parekh? How do you pronounce his last name? This is your kind. Sohan Parekh? Parekh? I'm probably getting it wrong. You don't know the story about this guy? No, I never heard of him. Okay. So, okay, first, let's finish the thread on the AI piece. But what Neil just mentioned, look, one sixth of a time. To build Carrot, by the way, I think it's probably around the same time. We're just much faster than before, right? You couldn't do this before. And so that means that the expectation for talent is gonna continue to get higher and your expectations have gotten higher too.

0:35And so the one thing I tell my team now, especially leadership is guys, if there's one thing I will micromanage to I'm dead is the talent bar. I'm gonna continue to raise that every single year and I will micromanage who we bring into because that is the one thing that I can control best. Oh, and by the way, I paid 500 bucks for this book where they interviewed Steve Jobs, Bill Gates. In fact, I think if I were to give you this book, you'd probably read it. In fact, I will bring it after I finish it because I think you'll actually read it. So it's interviews with Scott Cook from Intuit, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs.

1:04I think it was Bill Hewlett from Hewlett Packard. Something Hewlett, right? But it's like all these people. And there's like an Asian name in there. What's the name? It's Company of Giants, I think. It's 500-dollar book. Let's get the books on tape. Huh? I'll get the books on. It's not an Audible. It's not an Audible. It's not an Audible. Yeah, dude, it's not in print anymore. So if you go to Amazon, if you look it up, it's 500 bucks for the book. So I'll just let you borrow it. It's a quick read. I'll buy it. No, I don't think you can buy it.

1:31Company of Giants. Company? I'm going to do a book review on this too. And then I want to, as Neil's pulling this up, I want to talk about Soham Parekh. Do you see it? How much is it? In the Company of Giants? Yeah. Candid Conversations with the Visionaries of the Digital World? Yep. How much is it? $500. You're right. There you go. But guys, the value you're going to get from this if you are a leader and you're trying to grow, I believe is multiples of this. I always look at this as, can I get a 2X multiple on it? And if you can't get a 2X multiple on this, I don't know why you're listening to this podcast, but I think it's worth it.

2:04So do you buy it? I'm going to buy it. Let me tell you about this guy. Okay. This guy, Soham. So everyone was talking about him on X this week. So many people, he was preying on YC companies. He interviews really well. He's based in India. Okay. Okay. What he would do is he'd get a job at like, I don't know, any company, right? And they pay him like 150 to 200 grand. A Y Combinator company or any company? Mostly Y Combinator company. Okay. And so because he'd interview so well, he'd get the job. And then what he would do is he would have an army of people. He had like a dev shop in India where he basically was farming to work out to other people.

2:38And so many people hired him. And one guy reported him basically saying, hey, guys, there's this guy, Sohan Parak, and he's going around Silicon Valley, preying on companies. He's actually not doing work. And then all these founders started saying, oh, my God, we've hired him before. Oh, my God, we've hired this guy before. Oh, my God, this guy's actually employed with us right now. And so he actually appeared on a podcast yesterday saying like he was, you know, he needed to make ends meet or whatever. But my point of bringing this guy up is this is a consequence of remote work. Okay. Because earlier this week, one of our leaders, she worked remote before and then she went back into the office.

3:10Okay. And you know, they were like, went fully back into the office. Right. And this is the agency that she worked at. And then she's like, look, like, and we're back like remote. Right. And she's like, dude, it is so hard to get things done because like, you have to, even if you call me, it's not the same as I walk over to you and hey, hey, hey. how's this work over here? What are we doing over here? Or like getting a line because there's all these silos that start to happen. And then it's, I'm sure you have like, everyone has a neural link or something and we can all just be synced up all the time.

3:39I think this is the trade-off with remote work. It's just like, it's not, it's better or it's worse. It's just, you have more time to get together and I can walk over to you and bother you or you can walk over to me and bother me if I need something. Like even if, the good thing about you is like you'll call, but even that's not enough, I don't think. It's not the same. No, I had to ask my team on a thread because they were running an A-B test or they ran an A-B test with different modal signups. And I'm like, guys, this converts less than just sending them to the pricing page. I'm like, I've optimized the pricing page.

4:11So on a thread one day, because keep in mind, they're not in person, right? This has been going on for like two weeks, by the way, because they were going to get back to me on data, which, you know me, I don't do well with that. You don't do well with data? No, I don't do well with waiting two weeks. Oh, no. You don't do well with waiting a day. Yeah. So where is it? I just don't want to drag them forever. Okay. When are you going to fix the Uber pricing? And we're back to the old stuff. It's all green, guys. I'm looking at your screen. It's all Neil Taifig. Lower lifetime. Costs is 50K in revenue last week, right?

4:46He's like, yes, important. And then they send him a message. I'm like, yes, important to get this fixed. Costs is a lot. Don't get a response. This is 807. Question. How do we get it rolled back so we don't keep bleeding money? And I put their usernames, right? Yeah. 1049, nice. Okay, 11. But we can switch the easy ones first and not wait. Would we get to see? We're losing rev. He's like this. Wednesday morning, again, because I didn't get a response after 1127 in the afternoon on Tuesday. Wednesday morning, you know, any update on timing, getting people to the pricing page. And then they finally gave it to me.

5:21But like, how long was that interaction? A day and a half. But I could have just done it in person and gotten my answer because they know in person they had to tell me a response and they couldn't just. Like communication gets things done faster. Yes. Like especially if you're a leader in the company. And so that's where I think remote work fails. And that's why I think when you look at it, so I'm reading this book right now called Musk's Memos, and it's all emails that were made public. By Elon Musk? Yeah. And then he's basically like, yep, during COVID, like the decision, yep, we're going to be in office, guys.

5:53We're not going to do what other people are doing. Yep. If I need to sleep on the floor, I'm going to do that. If I need it, like, it's all about communication guys. I'm going to be working on the floor with you guys at the test light, like, like with the robots and everything. I know it's dangerous. I want to be there with you. And I want to prove to you that I'm that like, I'm willing to do whatever it takes to make this succeed. And you just see all the resilience that he's been through and all the pain. But this is one of those things where he knew intuitively that if they switch to remote, things would be a lot slower.

6:19And for the things that he's trying to do, you just can't do that. Yeah. on a side note if you're looking for a good office do you know where Novikov is? that restaurant? I haven't been to Novikov here okay so when I can do lunch next week I'm gonna go to Novikov? we'll go to Novikov I'll take you to Novikov yeah I think that was great okay you haven't been or you have the Miami one I went all the time so I know the food we'll go next week I'm back on Wednesday from Hong Kong oh Wednesday morning yeah I go to Hong Kong a lot like three four times a year at the state Pacific? Singapore? no I usually go in United They have really good flight timing.

6:52United? Yeah, because I can leave like 10 something usually in the morning. I have Starlink United now. They do? Yeah. Not on all flights. Not on all. I don't know yet. Yeah. You would know first. Yeah. But either way. So Novikov is the standard oil building in Beverly Hills. Hilton Highland, I believe, is the one who had a whole floor and they're moving up. It's one of the best buildings in all of Los Angeles for office space. Okay. Go on. It's available for rent. Are you getting one? It's too expensive for me. No, no, no, no, no. I would only split it with you, so it's cheaper for me. They have 9 ,000.

7:26The whole floor is 18. They have 9 ,000 square feet available. You can try to get half. I know someone who's getting half. You can get the other half, call it 9 ,000 square feet, 60-something thousand a month. Wow. That's expensive. That's expensive, yeah. But it's a great location, high quality office I prefer. What? WeWork. Yeah. That's what I do. 10 grand maximum. That's what I do. We work. Yeah. It's freaking great. And it's right next to the mall over here. It's great. The location's amazing. It's amazing. Yeah. And anyway, so point is, look, I just see a world. Like you saw Jamie Dimon talk about it.

8:03It's like, I just can't stand it anymore. Da, da, da. Right. And I'm just, I just think a lot of this stuff is going to go back to in person in office for people that are trying to be ambitious. Because why would you give up that edge? Yeah. And this is what I talk about with my CT all the time. Like it just, our rotation. By the way, with my mom passing, I wasn't able to show up to the office for a bit because there's so much stuff I've had to handle, right? But I can tell, and I haven't told him this yet, so Sean, if you're listening, but I can tell we're a lot slower now just because we're not in the office and we're not pushing each other.

8:34Yeah, I can see that. Yeah. If you don't have people who push in an organization, I think you're turning into the pusher. You are the pusher now. I don't think that was your personality a few years ago. I've always been a pusher for myself, not others. And so what I learned with my mom's passing is to be kind but firm, right? Actually, we should ask Noah. Noah, do you feel like in 2017 when you first joined, I was a pusher? Okay, when do you feel like I became a pusher? A couple years in. 2019. 2019. Okay, so two years in. Two years in. Yeah. Do you think there's a change now? No, I mean, you don't see me working.

9:08I'll see that. Yeah. I think there's stuff I still have. You're back to more structure, I would say. I don't know what that means, but continue. Yeah, so I think what Noah's getting at is you're pushing and you're figuring out where to push. You're not just pushing everyone all the time randomly. I think you're being strategic on where you're pushing. Is that what you're saying? I think if I see something wrong, I go after it, which is what you do immediately. If you see something off, you just go after it. That's why I still think in-person is better than virtual. It's really hard for us because our team is just so distributing.

9:48We have too many people. Were you in the office in San Diego? Not often, right? Before. No. So when we had the office in San Diego, I would go and visit every once in a while. But I have this weird thing where if I go into office, my productivity goes away. Interesting. I do not do well in an office environment. I start browsing the kitchen and seeing what snacks. I start walking around. I'm like, oh, what are people doing here? I look at the office. I start talking to random people. I just get very unproductive. Yeah. And what I found is when I used to go to the office in San Diego, I would hop in for whatever I need to.

10:27And then I'll go back to my hotel room because I used to stay at the Pendry, which was close enough. I hop back in bed. I know this sounds crazy. Put the covers over me. I would still be wearing clothes, not wear clothes, but I was switching to like PJs. No, switch back into pajamas. Yeah. Because like wear clothes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I would go to the office in Slack. Yeah. And when I say pajamas, it was like Lululemon shorts. Yeah. They were clean, not used for like working out, but like Lululemon shorts, the same white t-shirt. It's like what I'm wearing right now. These are my pajamas. Yeah.

10:56And then I would literally go into bed and then turn on the TV, like CNBC or pay-per-view movie, like whatever's latest and greatest out, you know? Yeah. And then I would have to keep rewinding the movie because I wasn't really paying attention because once you watch it once in a hotel room, you got to pay for it again. and I don't want to pay twice, but I'll just keep rewinding so I could keep, you know, fill up my day with the same movie so I'll only pay one time. And then eventually after like the four or five takes of watching would actually consume the movie because I'd get glimpses of it each time.

11:28And I would work in bed and I would find it just super productive and I get a lot done. So for me, having people virtually, I get a lot more done when they're in person. For example, Salo who runs marketing at NPD and all of our divisions, I work with him closely. At least once or twice a year, he flies to LA and we try to get important stuff done that may be harder for us to do virtually. How long is that? And he'll come for a week. No joke, I'll crank out most of this stuff in a few hours. And we do it over a few days. And he's like, yeah, let's work more together. I can't. And I'm like, cool, you go back to your hotel room.

12:10I'll go work. Yeah, you like your space. Not even space. I don't work well with a ton of people around me. I work very well as an individual contributor. When I first started my business, the overwhelm was real. I didn't have the tools to help me scale. If only I had Shopify from the start to handle all the behind-the-scenes work. Shopify is the platform behind millions of businesses globally, from huge names like Mattel and Gymshark to the smallest brands just getting started. The best part about it, it has everything you could need. Say you're ready to launch your own design studio. Shopify has hundreds of templates to create a beautiful store that matches your brand style.

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14:38And that's the thing, because even when you show me your text, you can tell that there's a reluctance to respond to you because it's a little scary when you're applying the pressure like that, right? Yeah. And people are not, I'll be honest, it's no offense to you or me, people aren't looking forward to our calls, right? The moment you're getting a call like that, it's like, oh shit, it's the boss, right? But like, if you're the boss and you're not doing that, that's kind of your fault. You have to be applying the pressure because nobody else is going to do it. Nobody else is incentivized as we are.

15:05So I was shown answer the public designs today of a version that's going to be launched in two months. I didn't know at the beginning of my calls can be launched in two months. Keep in mind, some of these people I'm talking to, I'm only talking to them like maybe like four or five times because some of them are newer to the team. So, and even if someone's been with our company for three years, it doesn't mean I talk to them because we have enough headcount where I, it doesn't mean they're not important. is more so I talk to the people I need to to get the tasks that I specifically am focused on done and when I'm talking to them they're showing me the new designs like what do you think I tell them the tweaks I'm like good job and then I'm like I got one question for you but I'll let you go through the rest of the design so they go through the designs I tell them the tweaks I want and they're like okay and like what's your question I'm like so when is this going to be launched and then they they laugh yeah and I'm like okay so when's it going to be launched yeah And they're like, we just showed you the design.

15:59We got to create the tech specs. Yeah. We got to do X, Y, and Z to figure out. And then they're like, half the team is maintaining the old code. The other team is working on the new stuff. And if we do it that way, because we got to maintain the old stuff, we think we can get it up in two months. And keep in mind, they went from, I need to break down the tech specs and everything before I give you a timeframe to, I was able to get a timeframe from them on the call. And I'm like, you already know the technology. You're already telling me you can migrate off of Ruby on Rails because you've already been successful at figuring out whatever code version.

16:36I'm not that technical over the last three days. And it's been working for them and it's been faster. So I said, why two months? And then of course, what do they do? They laugh. They're like, oh, there's so much. We got to rebuild all this. I was like, but you just said half the team is maintaining the old stuff. Why is half the team maintain the old stuff. Well, there's bugs and stuff and you may request change. I'm like, I won't request any changes. And they're like, well, Mike may request change. I'm like, Mike, will you request any changes? No, I'll forgo any changes. I'm like, what are really the bugs?

17:04Because I had you fix a lot of the bugs, call it 45-ish days ago, and that helped boost the revenue. And we saw maybe like a 7, 8 % during the beginning of the month and middle of the month. It was going all the way up to 12, but call it 7, 8 % by the end of month over month. Now, which is still good. I'll take that. That's good growth in 30 day period. I look at going into July. I haven't checked the July numbers today being July 4th, but we're on track for 2 % growth over the previous month and I'll push it, figure out how to get it higher. But the fourth, because it's a holiday will screw me over a little bit.

17:38and I was just like, where to fix most of the bugs? You're telling me it'll take you two months to launch. If I give you back having half the team focus on the old stuff, maybe I don't get it a month. Maybe I get it in 45 days. I didn't tell them that I'm hoping for a month. So why would I want them to focus on bugs when I can just get a whole new version of a new product with more features out in 30 days and all the bug fixes that they would have done on the old stuff would be useless because it's on old code. And then they would have had to focus on the new stuff. I'm like, take the pain for 30 to 45 days and get it out there.

18:14But yes, you and I are very direct. And I think it's how we get stuff done. And I think this is how I get progress. And the reason I prefer virtual, I'm not saying I want my team to be virtual. I know that's hypocritical of me. The reason I like virtual is when I'm working around a lot of people, people continually come up and ask me on stuff. And it's not as productive as me just focusing on what's important. And it's like, this will sound rude and I love the people I work with. I wanna work on what's the most important at that time, get it done, and then move on to the next thing that's the most important.

18:53In my eyes, I don't want people distracting me with other stuff. And that's actually the highest leverage thing you can do. So the curse for my situation right now is I have to actually operate, right? I would ideally prefer to be in your situation where I'm only working on the highest leverage thing for the company, but you have people things. There's a lot of my time spent on recruiting right now, which is arguably one of the highest leverage things I can do, but it is what it is. And so I think Neil has a great setup. I hope at some point Dharmesh Shah reveals what his setup looks like. But you know what's interesting?

19:26Going back to Elon's emails that he sends to his team to Tesla, SpaceX, everything, it's always the same emails. is guys, we need to work harder. Guys, we need to move faster. Guys, unfortunately, sorry, there's a layoff. And thank you for working so hard, right? It's like the same messages over and over. I know occasionally there's gonna be like a celebration one, but he's very consistent with these emails. And then a big thing that he does too, to your point on prioritization is it is, you know, when you go through your framework on, wait, why is this gonna take too much? You know, half the team spend on bugs.

19:54It's his Elon algorithm is, oh, how do you actually delete? How do you question all the requirements, which is what you're doing? You're actually running this. question everything and how do you start to delete and then you can add back later if you need to add back and then you can figure out okay what do you actually need to accelerate and then then you can figure out what you want to automate right yeah but that that is what you're like it's it's a hardcore focus and it's it's pushing people when they need to be pushed and then it's running this elon algorithm yeah i i can i can see the the process of really thinking things through because my team they're like well one of the reasons it's going to take two months to release it is We got to figure out all the limits with this AI stuff because it's much more costly than the traditional search data that we provide.

20:38I say, okay, but if someone pays, don't you pretty much give them the data and most of it? They're like, yes. So I'm like, just build that and then we'll figure out the limits. And they're like, yes, but if we figure out the limits and we give too much, it can end up just being very costly. I was like, sounds good. Just roll that out and we'll figure it out and we'll deal with the cost later on. You can figure out the pricing later. Yeah, I'm like, so if we want to make a change, can we make it in a few days? Like, yeah. I'm like, cool, I'll eat the cost for a few days if they're wrong. They're like, okay.

21:08And I'm like, yeah, let's go. You know what's helpful too? And I learned this kind of listening to how Michelin does marketing, you know, the tire company, right? Yeah. And so a big thing, what they learned, they obsessed, like if one of their workers loses like a minute, right? It actually ends up leading up to like thousands of years or something like that, right? because it goes throughout the entire company. And so when you optimize small things like this, it actually fixes the entire organization. It permeates through the entire organization. Again, guys, if you're a leader in the company, your job is to keep the temperature high because inevitably, if you just think about the laws of physics, the temperature always falls back to room temperature and that's why it's room temperature.

21:49One interesting thing about mission, do you know why they created the mission guide? Yeah, to get people to actually drive more so people actually buy more tires. That's right. Yeah. Most people don't know that. Michelin guide, when they're doing all these ratings, it was to get people to use their car more because yes, people have had cars for a long time, but when people first started getting cars, they didn't actually use them as much as they do today. You know, when they started, it was still mostly a horse-driven society, but they saw the car was going to blow up. And so they built into the future.

22:18And then all the time when people are like, oh, we should go into, because there's a lot of tire companies. It's like, oh, we should branch off into DC. They're like, nope, we're just going to focus on tires. because tires are going to be way bigger over time. And then they just focus on tires for the rest of their lives until they died. It was two brothers that did it. Oh, cool. Yeah. It's like a French company? French company. Yeah. And then they created like the fat like Michelin men. And then the Michelin man like eats like nails and eats like all these, they eat the obstacles and it protects you from obstacles.