INTRO
Ethan: Hello and welcome. My name is Ethan Glessich. I'm the founder and managing director of Kognitive. In this video, I interview Stefan Klumpp, the founder of Zemantics Ventures. Now, I wanted to interview Stefan because for many years he's run fully remote or hybrid workforces long before the arrival of COVID. And I thought his experience might be useful for other companies who are now considering moving into some form of a remote workforce. He certainly delivered on that promise, sharing his personal anecdotes, challenges and success stories, even how he ran a number of businesses while traveling all over the world for five years from a camper van, of all things.
Stefan has a background in electrical engineering and economics and finance. He has more degrees than I can count from World renowned universities such as Yale, MIT, quantic and more. He started his career in self-driving car research in what has now become the Google Waymo project at Stanford University in San Francisco before he decided to set up Zemantics or Zemantics Ventures. There are two main branches of semantics mobile jazz, which is focused on digital innovation across all industries, and Bugfender, which provides development tools and software for engineers.
Stefan is a passionate entrepreneur who is involved in a broad variety of ventures, and he has a wealth of hands on practical experience. So I'm sure you're going to be in for a treat today hearing his insights. So without further ado, let's get into my conversation with Stefan Klumpp.
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INTERVIEW
Ethan: Well, Stefan, thank you very much for joining me this evening or this afternoon or this morning where you are. Where are you at the moment?
Stefan: I am at the moment in Austria, in the Austrian alps, to be precise.
Ethan: OK very nice. The opposite side of the world to me. I'm in Melbourne, Australia, and today we're going to be talking a lot about working from home and working remotely, because I know a lot of businesses, a lot of people are working through these changes at the moment. And I know that you've run a number of companies completely remote for many years. So I thought there might be some really interesting insights in there that would be useful for other people. But before we delve into that, there's something that I really want to know, and that is, how long have you been running around in van life? How long was the van life chapter of your life?
Stefan: It was five years, five years, almost full time, yeah. So in the European time or climate zone, it was from more or less March until November, for four or five years. And then it got too cold for my taste.
Ethan: And what was it? Is that what you like least about van life, was the cold?
Stefan: No, not necessarily. I mean, I also went winter camping sometimes, especially I was in the mountains for skiing. But for that you have to go on campsites. And what I like most about the van life was the freedom now going on campsites and especially countries like Spain and Portugal and also Croatia. We could just, you know, camp anywhere and no one really cares. I mean, not in all places, but there are many, many places where you could just park close to the beach or on the beach. And that's what I like most about it.
[4:30] How Mobile Jazz first started
Ethan: And is that what inspired you to build the team 100% remote, this passion for van life, or did that come afterwards?
Stefan: I think the van life came later, although I was already camping and also winter camping with my parents when I was like a child and teenager. Yeah, but for the company and the business, I think it all just came naturally because I wasn't even planning to be an entrepreneur or a business person or any of that. It just all happened and fell into its place.
Ethan: So how was it that you I remember was it maybe last week you said something to me about how it all started? Did I am I remembering correctly? How was it that you started in or transition to a fully remote workforce?
Stefan: Well, the business or that I started to start a business was really more that I was moving to Spain at the time. It was 2008 or 9 at the time where the Euro crisis crisis hit. And in general, I also didn't speak Spain and I just wanted to move to Spain because of the good weather and everything. And I just didn't manage to get any kind of jobs. So I was in survival mode. I slept in a tiny, tiny room with a mattress and then a small desk. And I just looked for opportunities. And I was interested in Mobile development. And I started a group in Barcelona to connect with other people, which was called mobile app developers Barcelona. And from that it happened that I got my, my first work and even back then everyone was saying, what are you doing? You're crazy. You studied electrical engineering. You should be able to get a job very easily. Go back to Germany or other places to the US where I used to live before. And I just wanted to live in Barcelona because I liked it there and I tried this new thing, mobile app development.
And initially it was really a fight. It was tough for one and a half, two years, but then all of a sudden companies got interested in it and wanted to develop mobile applications. And then I started working as a freelancer for maybe three years, also became CTO of one of my client companies. And then I started Mobile Jazz together with a partner because we just got more and more work and I couldn't handle it alone anymore. We started to hire people and we had an office at a friend's place in Barcelona.
[6:13] Why we transitioned to a remote workforce
And after I would say two years. It happened. I mean, I was the leading person who still continued to travel even though I was living in Barcelona and working remotely. But it also happened that more and more people just work from home, started to travel as well, went with me to Thailand or Cape Town and we had remote setups there. And at some point, we had a situation in Barcelona where people had to go to the office to open the door for the cleaning lady once per week. And that was when we decided, OK, we just don't need the office anymore and we shut it down.
Ethan: Right? so if you're going to the office to open it for the cleaning lady, that's probably a signal that it's good time to transition. Which is probably ironic. Ironically, not much of a change from the situation that a lot of people find themselves in now, where in fact, they're not even going to the office anymore to open it for the cleaning lady. It's just it's just lockdown mode.
[7:13] Unexpected change when transitioning to fully remote
In those early days or maybe even later. I'm curious to kind of understand. Were there any hiccups in that transition to working remotely? I mean, maybe at the start, if there's only a few of you, it's sort of organic and natural. But along that journey, either at the start or as you've grown to a larger team of 20 or 30 different people, I know you've been managing remotely. Correct me if I'm wrong in different ways, shapes and forms. Have there been any hiccups in that process that you've experienced?
Stefan: I wouldn't say necessarily hiccups, but we noticed a huge change once the whole team was remote. So in the beginning, when a big chunk of team was in Barcelona and another big chunk was remote in different places, it always happened that the people who were remote, they just didn't feel that much being part of the family and participating in the social life of our company, which was a big part, I would say, is still very, very important.
Ethan: If it's Barca, if it's Barcelona, then it's bound to be a big part, right?
Stefan: Exactly and at some point then when we made the shift to fully remote, I mean, we didn't think about it, but the feedback was really from those people who were remote before or remote only before that. It's that they feel so much more integrated and happier. And yeah, everything changed. I mean, even though it's tougher to be social online for those people who were remote for them, it made a huge difference to the positive side.
Ethan: Wow so that's really interesting. What you're saying is when you transitioned away from having part of the team in the office and part of the team fully remotely for the people who were completely remote, that had a very positive impact.
Stefan: Yeah, exactly.
Ethan: What about the people who were in the office? What happened? Because they would have then started to lose some of that Barcelona and vibe that connection that they had. Did you see did you see a transition or any changes in your culture or teams back then?
Stefan: Yeah, that for sure. I mean, I love the remote part, but I also miss the office part. I mean, there was just such a big amount of social stuff going on, be it doing barbecues, playing games together, going out, having dinner, you know, everything around that is definitely missing. And we usually before covid, we run a lot of events like five, six, seven events per year where we meet up and we don't have to now, which is also not great. But yeah, for those people it made a huge shift.
I personally didn't notice that much because I have gone remote also a couple of years before the closed down the office. So I was actually one of those people who was already remote.
Yeah but then also what happened naturally is that many people weren't actually from Barcelona, but they moved there because they were like me. They were interested in to figure out what is Barcelona all about. And at many or a couple of years there, they also just decided, OK, if I don't need to be here anymore, if the office is not here anymore, I just tried to move back to my family again because I missed them or I go and explore other countries and I went to Southeast Asia or South Africa or wherever, or they decided they're fed up with the city and they just buy a house for cheap somewhere in the countryside outside of Barcelona.
Ethan: Yeah interesting. And in that transition when you're going from, OK, I've got part of the team who are fully remote, a team that part in the office and now you're transitioning to completely remote.
Did I did I hear before you said something like prior to covid, you would get it as a fully remote workforce. You were getting together like five, six, seven times a year, physically in-person at specific locations.
Stefan: Yeah, that's correct. I mean, we did that before covid, but we also did that when we had an office. So that was part of our team or company culture right from the beginning. And it all started, I think it was 2014 when we went to Thailand, and I think we were one of the really, really first remote companies to do that, to go to another country. And we, we always write blog posts about that. We have a very lively blog and the first blog post was actually about going to Thailand and describing all that and very much detail on how to set it up for other companies to do it. And that went hugely viral. Like millions of visitors with that blog post was discussed Twitter, Facebook, hacker news, all kinds of sites, mostly with very, very positive feedback. But then also you got get all the haters on the internet. How you can do that as a company? How is it even possible? Are you guys even working? You're scamming your clients, you're pretending to work and you're in Thailand. Wow yeah, the typical hate stuff on the internet. But it made us a little bit internet famous and also helped us a lot with our reputation, mostly for other engineers and designers to join our company. So at that time we had like a huge inflow of applications. I can't remember the exact number, but I think in the first days after publishing it was like 100 or more applications per day just coming in.
Ethan: Wow.
Stefan: Yeah, that was huge.
Ethan: Wow. Well, that, that highlights the desire and the need and the value in the marketplace that a fully remote workforce can provide. I mean, you've got staff who if once you've publicised that back back then, obviously, and now you're inundated with applications and the blog post goes viral. I mean, the mechanisms beneath that would have to be that that's something that people really want.
Stefan: Yeah exactly.
Ethan: So as you've as you've built the team over the years, you know, how have you... so in terms of building trust and engagement and culture, I understand you've got these 5 to 7 events , and Thailand sounds like a lot of fun. Maybe next one I'll subscribe to, they will be great.
Is there anything else that you do? Or is there any advice that you'd have to other business owners that are thinking about doing it? But they're like, well, we're in COVID. We've been locked up for six months. Maybe we'll just stay this way. But they really value their culture and they're concerned about, well, if we go to fully remote, we've all been a bit isolated in COVID and it's not the same as the office. I don't know about this. Like what sort of advice would you give to people like that?
Stefan: Yeah, I mean, we do a couple of things with a caveat, though, I have to say. I mean, we are a very nerdy company, but mostly engineers. And also our designers, I would say, are quite nerdy. So it's a very specific niche that we're in. And I understand that not all companies can do what we do, but we do get together a lot online. Even before COVID and the lockdown, all that.
We have a mandatory weekly meeting we call the weekly MJ for Mobile Jazz, and we just get together for an hour. We have a shared Google Sheet and everyone puts in what they want to share and everyone gets around maybe 5 minutes and we have discussions about it. We share company updates and such things. So this is really just an event where everyone gets together and can share what they did in their free time, company time, if they went hiking, if they went on holidays, if they learned something new. And so on.
And what we also have is we have a little cooler bot and that matches randomly each week people. So everyone meets every week someone else and you have a chat like we do now for around 15 minutes, maybe sometimes longer. Sometimes people even chat for an hour if they have something interesting to share. And that also helps to, to connect people who usually don't work together because they're in different projects or different skill sets and yes, such things.
And then what we also do, so these two things are mandatory. And then of course all the project related meetings, which are the mandatory because we can't avoid them because that's the actual word part. Yeah and then we also have voluntarily something that's called MJ talk. It's kind of like a Ted Talk where also people just share stuff they know or they invite someone else they know who is a specialist on some topic or they make them on our presentation or half an hour presentation about the latest holidays or trip around the world or new things challenges they're trying to achieve in life. Yeah, so we share a lot of stuff online.
Ethan: OK and what what's the mechanism that you're sharing it through? Have you set up like a collaboration platform? You're using something like Slack? Do you find that the technology actually plays an important part in making that work? Have you tried different tools, for example?
Stefan: Yes, we tried many, many different tools. And we have a saying at the company because every once in a while, someone comes up with a new tool and says, this is so much better. It's also a problem. And we usually say the tool is not the problem or the tool is not a solution to the problem, because many times it's just people not being organised or don't have the mindset or the willingness to do something.
But of course, the tools are technology help, although I wouldn't call it that much technology anymore or not new technology because it has been around for decades now. You know, even though everyone talks about Zoom and whatever, I mean, you had Skype and video calls ten, 15, even longer years ago. Yeah, but it definitely helps to have that and also have a chat. But before Slack there was I can't remember what we used, Hip Chat I think it was called from Atlassian. Then before that there was the IRC protocol. I mean, I was using that as a teenager, you know, and even though chat has more functionality, the core of it is just, you know, writing and reading text. And that has been around for 20, 30 years.
Ethan: Yeah yeah, exactly. Well, that's interesting. I thought I thought as a tech company, the technology would have played a large role. But it's interesting that you say that's not the solution to the problem. It's really understanding the human behaviour and working on that.
[17:41] Building trust in a remote workplace
What about trust? So know, I've spoken to a few business owners and some of them have said things to me like, how do I know my staff are productive at home? How do I know that it's not about surfing all the time? I as previously they were in the office, so they had some level of visibility, if you will. But how do you approach trust and keeping people aligned and tracking towards the important objectives for the business?
Stefan: Yeah, it's a very important point and again, I don't think I can give a general answer because we are a relatively small company and it would be very, very different to 1,000 or more people, corporate or even hundreds people, corporate company with a very complete company culture. But when it's small, you still see kind of what everyone is doing, you know, even myself at the top and being involved in running and starting other companies and doing partnerships. I still through those meetings that we have. I kind of understand what everyone is doing.
And trust goes both ways. You know, for someone to trust, you have to give them trust in the first place. You have to take a risk. And that's what we do in the end. Then if someone doesn't fulfil the trust requirement, you don't you know, we don't want to check the hours what they work. We don't want to check if they go surfing or skiing. We actually encourage people to do that as often as they can. But what we expect is that people just get done what they need to get done and that at the highest quality possible. So if they just neglect that and focus on skiing and surfing or whatever, you would notice it quite quickly, especially because we're still a small team.
Ethan: And that's interesting you say that. And I think that still applies to a large team, too. It's just that we're a large organisation, but it's just that each manager will have if they have that connection with the team, then the manager would have that visibility and their manager would have visibility over that group of managers. And they obviously can't have visibility over everybody. If you've got those key managers that are engaged in that way, I imagine that same sort of that same philosophy would cascade down . Do you have any tricks or goals or how do you manage it?
Stefan: Yeah just to go to the other point about the management and that kind of thing, In theory, I would agree with you, in practice though, you know, in a company there's always one or a few people who actually are the driving force and the leadership behind it. And the more you have a bigger company and middle management, all that, you start to acquire people who don't care that much or have different priorities. Maybe they also just see work as a means to make money and not like a passion as it is for most of us, I would say. And the more of those people you get to company culture just changes, you know? And then the people who actually care a lot, who have drive and all that, they start fighting about it. But at some point you also can't fight the fight anymore because protection of employees, you can't fire them that easily anymore. And then those people start to leave. And the culture or the original spirit of the company dilutes more and more over time. That's while I do agree with you. It should be possible in theory and practice and also from experience and what everyone tells me having who has worked in a bigger corporation, it's just not true in practice.
Ethan: Yeah, I guess what you're saying is it can be true in parts of the business, but as soon as you start getting people that aren't necessarily passionate about the purpose of the business in a leadership role, then those pockets really start to disseminate. So I guess in a remote... Sorry, go ahead.
Stefan: I just want to say in our case, because I'm also focusing on more other companies, other pieces of the puzzle. So for Mobile Jazz, just the company that we started originally, I'm trying to train and mentor people to become those kind of leaders, those kind of driving forces. But I also see that it makes, even for our company culture, a big difference if someone grew up doing that. Or if someone just was chosen to be to run the company, you know. So even for us, it's difficult. And for bigger companies, I think even more.
Ethan: So how do you go about either instilling that passion to ensure that you have people that are of that mindset, if you will, so that you maintain that robust culture and it's a very positive state. Or hire people that have it that come into the team to be able to lead some of the smaller teams, if you will. How do you go about that?
Stefan: Yeah, I would say that's my biggest challenge as a founder of a company, because it's difficult to instil passion in people that either are passionate or not, but it's hard to. I mean, you can motivate them or try to motivate them. And usually everyone is motivated to take a step up and do something or start a new company with you. But if it's not true, passion and excitement, they just don't have the endurance of what it takes. And also dealing with the bad stuff, you know, people don't see all the shit I have to deal with company politics being yet a nanny of people and that kind of stuff. So yeah, for me it, I found that it's really the biggest challenge.
And then the other side is, is that you could just hire someone. I think that it's even more difficult. Yes, you find people. And we also, at some point in the beginning of a company thought we need to hire a CEO because we are all tech people and we have no idea about business. But then you hire these people who have no clue what they are doing and from my own experience and many other people I talk to, usually that fails. I mean, you need someone who is just a founder who is at least initially the driving force.
And then for hiring them as well. I mean, if I would be asked to join a company as a CEO, yes, I could do that. But also that passion actually comes from building something from scratch on my own. You know, if I just would be hired somewhere else, I probably also wouldn't have the same passion. So it is very difficult to find people to take over your, you know, what you started initially, your baby.
Ethan: Yeah, exactly. And I guess that's well that's one of the major challenges in all businesses is kind of aligning the, you know, the hearts of people in the business to the bigger vision of what the business is trying to achieve. That sort of emotional alignment.
Stefan: Vision is a very good. Sorry.
Ethan: No, go ahead.
Stefan: No, it just wanted to say vision is a very good word, because when I was growing up, I always read these business books and listening on podcasts to leaders or watching Ted talks, and everyone was talking about their vision and I never really understood what it meant. But now that I'm actually looking for someone who could help us take over the company, I see that many, many people don't have that vision. I mean, at least not in the business sense. And I also thought I never had a vision because I didn't understand what it meant. But actually, vision is really just having to force to do something. And I wouldn't even say foresight, but really more the dream of doing something, even if the dream fulfils or changes. But yeah, that kind of that dream. And passion and many people don't have that. And I also think they don't need to because they have other priorities and other visions and yeah.
Ethan: Yeah, but they're seeing a future. There's a future, there's a dream, there's a vision, there's something that you hold in your mind for the future and then strive towards that. So I take what you mean there.
How do you go about aligning the team. So we've got the emotional alignment, right? So I get that and the passion in those challenges. But I mean intellectually, I mean you've got this vision of what you're wanting to achieve, this dream, this aspiration, this direction, and you've got all these employees that are coming along for the ride, but they're all spread out all around the world. So how do you go about aligning them to that vision to really help you champion that into the future? Is there... Is there for example, do you have got a goal setting process that you do on an annual basis or quarterly basis, a monthly basis? Is it more project driven work? But the project work, I imagine, wouldn't be as deeply connected to the vision that you have for the future. So yeah. Because keeping people on the same page is difficult when they're in the room. I imagine that keeping people on the same page when they're in different rooms, in different continents, then the I imagine the challenge could start to go up exponentially.
Stefan: Yeah, I mean, there are different management styles and I would say my style and also with our management team is really more to try to bring people on board. I mean, with the bigger global vision, I think I'm mostly leading that and having the ideas and pushing them forward. Many of it also failed. I mean, we started like 10 or 15 internal projects, which we tried to make products out of it and bring it to business, bring it to market. And most of them failed. So I would say I'm also not always right with my vision, but in general, my management style is to bring people on board, try to motivate them.
And then there are certain things, especially which is our bread and butter, which is for Mobile Jazz, the consulting business where we do client work. And there our vision is just to have two mantras. One is passion for excellence, and the other one is to deliver beyond expectations. And that is basically the philosophy we try to follow. I mean, they sound quite abstract, but we try to build more concrete and tangible models around that.
And with those kind of things is, yes, we have the vision there and we are open to bring people on board. But also at some point after repeating and repeating and repeating it, we also have to take consequences. So if people don't get it, don't want to get it, don't want to be on board, just want to do their own thing. They may also say Mobile Jazz is not the right place for them. And be part and usually or always in friendly ways. But I think everyone also understands that we have certain requirements, certain standards that are quite high, and if people don't meet those, then it's time to move on.
[28:40] How do you approach performance management of a remote team?
Ethan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That makes sense. Well, what you're kind of linking that to is sort of performance management, right? How do you manage the performance of employees or remote for a remote workforce and. What's what's your approach to, to managing the performance of employees? Like, how do know if an employee is underperforming or what do you do if they are? Do you have review processes or frequent conversations? What's your approach to performance management?
Stefan: Now, I think that comes back partly to the vision again. So my vision is really more on the business and the bigger future and all the dreams and aspirations I have. But then our management team, which is quite technical or actually strongly technical, I would say the best technical people in our team, they have visions that are more on the technical side in terms of internal tools, in terms of what frameworks to use, in terms of what the future brings, what new technologies they are. And they kind of create that vision and we generally share a lot. We have another call on Friday, which I don't participate, which is very, very technical. We're also the team just gives it a lot of feedback or shares new ideas. And because of that, we quickly see, first of all, who is participating, who is on board, joining that technological vision.
But then also because you ask for performance, again, it's trust. We trust people to perform and do and learn or whatever is needed to do the job in the best way. But after a while you just notice it, you know, and especially if everything is technical and the management team, you have the best technical people. I mean the first, they're the first to notice. Yeah and then our approach to that is usually to talk with people about it. We have an office hour every week. So every week another person to whom we talk and we speak about all those topics and usually try to bring people up to speed. We explain to them how we see them, they explain to us how they see their situation. And we just try to create we call the growth path and the growth path for the next upcoming year or the year, the next 12 months from now on. And we just decide, OK, what are the goals we have for them in the company and what they also have and try to make a plan for it.
Ethan: OK, interesting. I know a lot of companies are going to be sort of working through transitions with their performance management process, be it with their goal setting process, be it with the way that they're operating internally as they're moving into either a hybrid remote environment or a fully remote environment. And I know that your transition was quite seamless and it was early on in the founding story. So it was quite, quite a simple process. But with what you've learnt over there, how many years have you been fully remote now or leading a fully remote workforce?
Stefan: Well, I don't even know the answer. We started I started 2008 or nine, then Mobile Jazz. We set up, I think 2012 and then. Maybe three or four years later.
Ethan: OK, so it's a seven, seven years, six, seven, eight years in that realm. So I'm sure that over that time you've had a broad variety of different experiences with these remote teams. For for a manager who was now considering, you know, business leader, business owner who was considering transitioning their team to fully remote or partially remote. What sort of advice would you give to them about how to approach it, whether it be sequencing, whether it be culturally like imagine right now said, look, I'm about to do this and I've got a team of 10 or a company of 50 with a series of managers. What advice would you give to me to kind of try and make it as seamless as possible for me and avoid some of the challenges that you could foresee having been going at it for so long?
Stefan: Yeah, I think it's hard to give a general answer because we are quite lucky and have a very homogeneous team of engineers and designers. The moment you have different kinds of people, different kind of cultures around work because we also have many different cultures, but just people with different mindsets and different values, I think it becomes harder. But it is also for them already hard in a regular company.
But my advice would really to focus on the social aspect, because that's what we see completely lacking now. Not because of being a remote company, but because of the lockdown. And people in general don't have social contact. But also for us, we can't meet anymore. We haven't met at all in the last year, but we usually met again 6 to 7 times per year. So do is much social without I would say annoying people and it's hard to find the balance between the two because everyone is fed up about having Zoom meetings or in general video calls and they just don't want to waste their time on meetings that are useless for just to have another fake kind of social event.
Yeah, I would. I mean, it's hard to give the advice because it works for us and I don't know if it works for others, but I would go with the basics. Just having events once per week where you share, then those one on one calls. What we also do is we play video games together, and I think that's actually the best part of it. Also, some other people are now starting a book club. I heard, where they meet, I don't know, once per week, once per month, where they read a book together and discuss their book. Those kind of things.
Ethan: So what... do you think that because it's obviously worked well for you guys. And I understand the demographic and the niche, the market that you're talking about, you're also hinting that maybe it's not going to a fully remote workforce, is not going to be effective for many business types. What's your sort of general thoughts and feelings there about, you know, there's accountants and there's lawyers, and there's marketing agencies, there's professional a whole variety of professional services and a whole variety of other industries where it might be a manufacturing company. But a big percentage of that is office based. So what are your thoughts about the industries of what about that and of what about a complete remote workforce? Industries where you can see it could work seamlessly and industries where you think, yeah, this is going to hit some major challenges. Do you have any thoughts?
Stefan: Yeah I mean, where it's obvious that it does work is to tech industry because people just love being in front of their computer and it's a big part of their life in a virtual world. Yeah then the exact opposite on the other side of the spectrum is where it's so obvious that it's super hard to do it virtual or online or remote. All the jobs they need to go to places, be handymen, car mechanic. Yeah, all that kind of stuff. I mean, it just doesn't make sense to even speak about it, what the future brings. And it's another question because many of those things in the near or far future. Eventually will be replaced by machine, by robots. I mean, that's just the evolution of technology. But then everything in between, everyone that uses a computer to work or a phone to work, to have calls, in theory, all of that could be remote, and in theory, there shouldn't be a problem. But I think the problem is really the mindset and all the nerdy people, the geeks, the technological people that have been doing that from the beginning because they love doing it and have been playing video games since everyone always having, you know, a conversation early in days on Skype, now on Discord or whatever they're streaming. I mean, it's in their DNA. They're doing this natively. But all the other people in other office jobs, they also could do it in theory, but it's just not their mindset yet, you know, in a way of working. And that's if they want to do it. I mean, if the future is more remote work, then it will happen. And the people who adopt faster, I mean, for them it's easier and they are also in a better position I think generally.
Ethan: So I can see a new screening question coming in to, you know, accounting firms and law firms in the hiring process. So as an applicant applies to a job, I think the first question should be, do you play video games? And if the answer's yes, yes, then they get through. And if no, then they're out because they have that tendency.
Stefan: I mean, but that's interesting. I just want to say, I mean, while it's all possible, I think the biggest challenge there is actually that a big part of the social life for many, many people was actually the work life. Many people find they're the friends at work. They move to a new city, they find their friends there. They then form, if they're workmates, they start going out, then they start playing soccer together or whatever they find there. The girlfriend, future wife.
Ethan: Yeah, it happened to me in Barcelona.
Stefan: And all that we don't have anymore, in remote. But I wouldn't say it doesn't make it possible, but it makes it a lot harder. And people actually go to work and enjoy work, not necessarily, I would say for many, not so because they love the actual work, but they just like the social part of it and, and having something meaningful in life, which is totally, totally valuable.
Ethan: Yeah you take that away, then the work's not valuable.
Stefan: Exactly, exactly.
Ethan: What about productivity? Let's talk productivity because, you know, I'm ridiculously passionate about it and I know that it's also a passion of yours. How do you try and keep productivity levels of a remote workforce high or is there anything that you do from a productivity lens to try and keep people performing at their best?
Stefan: Yeah, in our case, it just happened because there was no other way, because we grew with such a demand from the client side that we always had way more work that we could handle. And it was difficult to handle the stress. And because of we were always focused on how we can minimise the stress for everyone, myself, the management team, everyone working in the company, we always looked how to improve things, how to be efficient, how to be productive. But because of that level of stress and sometimes it was a positive stress, I would say, I think people didn't have a choice for productivity.
Nevertheless, there are certain things that we see and they always come along or creep in all the time. It could just be things that someone, especially the engineers, are very, very focused and doing things, their things for hours and with Slack, it's just so easy to interrupt someone. You know, when you work in an office physically, you see someone as focused after headphones on, you can see their concentrate and you just don't interrupt them. Now, being remote, you don't see that anymore. And for every tiny detail, people just started writing a Slack message, you know? And then everyone gets this notification and they're distracted and then they need to go, well, first of all, they probably want to help those people because it's just nice to help. And I want to help. But then an hour or two hours passed and I need to go back and do their thing, which they were super focused, and it takes them at least 5 minutes, but sometimes maybe even an hour to get back into the same state of mind that they were before.
So for me personally, I always recommend it to everyone. Turn off all notifications, you know, be it Whatsapp, be it your phone ringing, be it calendar notifications, be it Slack notifications, whatever. The only notifications I personally use is for the reminders. So the Apple reminders app and I set myself reminders only for very important things like a meeting or call I have. And that's the only thing that interrupts me. Other than that, nothing interrupts. I mean, that helps me a lot. Then another point is also trying to work asynchronously. We use Asana for that, but any tool basically works for the tool is not the problem or the solution, and we just try to have as much stuff that we want to communicate or that get done in Asana, not in slack, not in emails, not having calls.
Ethan: Right. All the work organised in Asana, all of the chat in Slack. So you try and separate them, minimise all the potential interruptions, and you mandate things because I'm ridiculously passionate about focus. And we run workshops, particularly in programs of over 4 months, just talking about focus, because I'm so focused on focus. Do you mandate different behaviours with tools or different ways of using Slack, like turning off notifications or using different signals? Is that mandated throughout the teams or is it more an advice? This is how we work here, but each individual can still choose how they manage their own, their own. I mean, notification settings.
Stefan: Yeah, somewhere in between. So in one side I strongly believe and in my way of doing things, but because I see it works super well. And I see how other people are struggling. And I see how changing the mindset or behaviour could have a huge impact. But on the other side, I also don't want to be the boss who is super bossy and tells people to do everything and micromanage them. But I bring it up many, many times, especially in our weekly meeting. I just remind them about it. I try to explain them to benefits and only if people misbehave a lot and just don't get it. I speak to them directly and I tell them to please change their behaviour.
But especially in Slack, because Slack is made for chat, we try to use it in a way where it's not interruptive because that's a bad part of chat and try to use it in a way where interruption is not a problem. So if we collaborate, if two people are trying to work together and try to fix a piece of code, a bug or whatever it is, or collaborate on new design, then we either have a call or they work together in the chat room. But we're the only speak to 2 to 3 to four of them and they don't interrupt other people. Then of course, we have coffee rooms, gaming rooms, music rooms, and I have them all on mute. So I go there only and check if I just need a break and want to see what's going on. But I also don't want to get disrupted by them.
Ethan: And what about one thing that I've noticed personally with the shift in COVID is the change in the daily routine. And my own personal motivation levels, which have fluctuated more in lockdown than they had previously. And I don't know what the reason is for it, but I have noticed some parts of my daily routines, like what's happening when I get up and then move through the day where I was in an office or at a client's location. There were sort of routines. I had some routines that would occur daily, but a lot of that routine was also forced by the office and the environment. Have you have you got any sort of experience with that personally or with the team about when you have people that are completely remote? There's no common routines anymore, is there? It's all kind of everybody does their own thing. Do you let them do their own thing? Is there any advice, support that you give to them to help them manage that? What's what's been your experience?
Stefan: Yeah, I think it comes back to not wanting to be bossy, but still sharing your own experience with other people because you think it works for you and it could work for them. And I'm very much the same way. I'm very much on focus, on productivity. But I also take my time to enjoy to play video games. But in order to do that, I need to have the time where I have 100% focus and I have a ton ton of routine things based around personal life, but also work life. And I can explain them in detail if you're interested, but generally I do share them a lot. For example, in the MJ talk we do chat about those kinds of things. And share different kind of routines. And my experience is in the beginning, when you talk about it, people are making jokes behind your back about you because you seem to be like this kind of spiritual kind of person or whatever.
Ethan: What is it? What are your routines? Come on, share your routines. And then.
Stefan: Well, my routines are actually quite simple. I mean, they are not even that spiritual. I just it's a very pragmatic. I get up, I do a 5 minute plank.
Ethan: So 5 minutes just planking on the ground. Yeah Yeah. Pretty intense. 5 minutes, huh? It doesn't sound like long, but with a 1 minute plank and I'm puffing, so that's a long time.
Stefan: Yeah yeah, I take a cold shower. So these two things are
Ethan: how long?
Stefan: How long?
Ethan: How long have you cold shower?
Stefan: The cold shower is not that long. Maybe half a minute. A minute. But I also practice... that's another topic. I practice ice bathing and I can do over five minutes in an ice cold river. So the shower is not a problem anymore. But these two things are just my mandatory thing after I get up because they're, you know, they don't take more than 10 minutes in total. And I'm already set up for the day. And that's more really about the energy level for myself. I see that's a huge boost.
But then work wise or planning wise, what I do already in the evening before I go through all my tasks and let me see have a piece of paper here where I wrote them down on paper. So everything that is digital, where all my life is, I still go back to pen and paper and write down what I want to do the next day as the most important thing. Because otherwise, I mean, I have so much stuff to do or could do. It's not even that I have to do, but I have to choose my priorities and I put them on paper. And that's I do it in the evening before or the next morning and just go through the list and decide what is the most important.
And then also part of the routine is to set up Apple reminders, as I mentioned before, because I don't get notifications from my calendar or calls or anything. I just check what is important for me today and I set the reminders for that. And that could even be, you know, I want to go rock climbing at that time. So I set a reminder, an hour before that I start having lunch, preparing my stuff so that I just don't have a rush. Because sometimes in work I'm also so much in the zone that I don't check the time and I completely missed it. So whatever is important to me, even if it's just going rock climbing or skiing or surfing, I also put it in there.
Ethan: Yeah so your Apple will reminders, that is your sacred sacred place, huh?
Stefan: It is, Yeah. I mean, it could be any reminder tool, but I just have chosen one tool that is intrusive and everything else is just in the background. Non-disruptive.
Ethan: Yeah, very nice. Very nice. Is there any other productivity working from home, running a business, insights that you think could be useful for other people that we haven't discussed today?
Stefan: Yeah, there are probably many. Just getting that in top of my head right now as kind of difficult because for me, so, so normal already.
Ethan: Are you thinking are you nervous about the fact that. I mean, your blog post went viral and you generated all that demand with people wanting to work for the business because it was a very attractive value proposition that you were providing. And for a long time, society has had the mindset that can't do that. That's why you had haters responding like, oh, you're just taking clients' money and going to the beach and you should be ashamed of yourself. And now the whole world is seeing, no, no, you can run businesses like this. And previously that was a competitive advantage that you had in your recruitment process. You can get the great talent. What are your thoughts now that this is becoming more of a mainstream thing? Because that's part of been part of your big value proposition? Is that something that you're concerned about with the pitches that you're.
Stefan: Yeah, I'm not only concerned, we experience it real life. For us, it was always quite easy to hire because that we had this huge value proposition. Also because we were able to hire internationally for most people we pay, I would say, above average or even really, really good salaries. I mean, in some countries, double or triple of what they would earn locally. Of course, that's not the same in the US, so that's still above what we can pay. But generally, yes, so we are we're in a super competitive super, what's the word for it? Yeah, we were able to acquire new talent easily. But now last year we saw that it was much more difficult because all of a sudden, everyone was remote. So people who worked for Google and just didn't work there anymore because they want something new and a change. They got that change, at least for now, that they work from home. You know, they still have to do with the company politics, even as with company at Google, but they have to change for now and their new excitement. So we saw that there was just last year it was very, very difficult.
Also, the remote work doesn't help anymore because everyone is remote. And then the big value proposition was the events we were doing. So we were going skiing, we were going, we went surfing, kite surfing, hiking, you name it. You know, we did everything. We spent two months in Thailand and Cape Town and other places and that we just couldn't offer anymore last year. You know, of course, we say we are doing that, but we also say from the beginning is probably not going to happen in the near future because of the lockdown, because of COVID. People are just happy for now, you know, being away from the big corporate office and being at home and spending time with their family and doing their work. But I hope that after, I don't know, maybe a couple more months or this year or another year, people start to get bored again. I mean, it sounds a bit bad, but they get bored at their corporate job again, as they used to be in the past, and see companies like us as a new, interesting work environment again.
Ethan: It's a really interesting state of the market. It's unbelievably difficult to predict as to how it's going to transition. But do you see a new norm that's emerging, which will be in a semi-remote, fully remote for a significant percentage of the companies out there? Or do you see it's going to this is a massive change. And we're going to swing back and be more or less like it was before, but maybe a little bit more remote?
Stefan: Yeah I mean, it's hard to say to give a global prediction. I see two extremes, I would say. One extreme is really all the tech people. They love being remote and it also works quite well with the way they work. But then you also see all the other people who are fed up of being at home for two reasons. They're missing the social life at work, but also they hate is a strong word, but they complain about being with their family all day long. You know, they're not used to that. And maybe they had a happy family life. But now being together in a small apartment with the children, it's just not that healthy. I mean, I don't have to experience myself yet, but from talking to other people, it seems these two points are the biggest issue of remote work. You know, it has nothing to do with the actual work, but it's really just the social life at work that they're missing or the overwhelming social life and closeness that people experience at home now.
Ethan: That's interesting you say that, because I wonder if there was a way that you could create those social elements that weren't necessarily through the work environment, like someone who had that in another state. But I guess then the benefits of having it with your work colleagues is the collaboration, the ideation. There's a whole series of secondary benefits that you get when it is work colleagues, that you're in that state. It's very, very, very, very, very interesting.
I'm curious to understand that. I know this won't be the case for us and that we'll be having many more conversations over many more years. But imagine this is, and for some people who listen to this, it probably will be the only time that they hear from you. So imagine this is the only time we're going to speak. And you have one opportunity to impart something of utmost importance to me. And not about working from home. Not what... whatever is in your reminder list, somewhere in your... whatever is sort of a lesson that you've learned, something that's a gift that you can give to somebody else. In this case me . That I can then take with me. What is the most important thing that you've learned so far on the planet?
Stefan: Ouufff. There are many things and most of them probably, you know, if you read some of or actually all of those self-help books, you know, it sounds like so cliche because it's so obvious, but nevertheless, people don't follow it. But I think the most important things are really the basic things of a human life. And a little bit what extends from that to having good relationships with people. A nice enjoy life, being healthy and having excitement in your life on something you work on. You know, everyone talks about passion, but I don't even talk about the word anymore because people don't get it unless you have it. So you don't even understand what it means.
Yeah, but really the basics, having balance, taking care of yourself. Money is important, but not that important. And people think if you just figure out how to live a good life with the things that are kind of free or. Yeah, I think that matters much, much more. I would say it revolves around that. Yeah I mean, I'm not, I love philosophy, but I'm not a philosopher, so I'm not good in putting it into words. But I would say it's really just the basic human needs and giving them more attention because everyone is focused on career making money, pushing themselves and also love pushing myself as well. But I also do have a lot of balance and value other things in life. And that give me that gives me the energy to excel at other things, business related or even sports related.
Ethan: Thank you. I am. It's kind of a reminder for me to start to spend some more time on some of those other things. Maybe tomorrow I'll put an alarm in my calendar. Mine's a calendar, so I don't have the Apple alerts, but go rock climbing or something like that. That's very rewarding. Well, thank you for changing gears with me, Stefan, and stepping up there to a high level. And thank you for sharing this time with me today and your insights through this experience. I think it's incredibly useful to hear from people who have been through similar situations before. Like you said, it doesn't always mean it's exactly the same, but those insights can be a great place to start to experiment with and find out what is going to work best for you. So I really appreciate you... you making the time. Is there anything else? Is there anything else that you wanted to talk about or anything else that you wanted to say today?
Stefan: Yeah you asked me in the beginning if I want to promote something. I don't really want to or need to promote anything. I'm just happy to share what I have learned in life. But there's one thing I can definitely add to that. We have a company handbook for people at Mobile Jazz who are onboarding to the company. So new employees and that is also available to the public. So if you Google, Mobile Jazz company handbook, and I can also give you the link.
Ethan: I'll put a link to it.
Stefan: People can download it. And a lot of the stuff that I talked about, how we run the company, I would say actually everything and even more that we talked about today is in there.
Ethan: Beautiful, beautiful, fantastic. Well, where can people find you? What's what's the best way? If someone would like to reach out and learn more, is there a Twitter handle or your website or one of your company websites? What's what's the best way? And I'll put all the details in the notes afterwards.
Stefan: I think I have all the major online profiles from five years ago now. There are a lot new friends and I never signed up and I also don't use the old ones anymore. So I have Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, whatever, but I hardly ever log on to it. Twitter, you can message me there. So it's just my name and I just get an email or you can email me directly like stefan@mobilejazz.com and also send it to you so you can put in show notes.
Ethan: Beautiful thank you very much. I look forward to delving through that handbook in more detail. It was a skim read for me, so I'm going to go back to it and revise it in a lot of detail. And thank you very much.
Stefan: I thank you as well, Ethan. It's been great speaking.
Ethan: Thanks, Stefan.
