From Hubspot to Databox: Strategies for Building A Global team with CEO, Peter Caputa - ep. 074

In this insightful podcast episode, hosts Rick and Kaleem delve into various aspects of workplace culture, personal resilience, and career experiences within the tech sector, guided by their esteemed guest, Peter Caputa, CEO of Databox. Peter's journey unfolds as he shares anecdotes highlighting the importance of resilience, stemming from his family's experience building their own house, instilling in him values of determination and perseverance from a young age.

Transitioning seamlessly into a reflection on his tenure at HubSpot, Peter reminisces about the company's early days characterized by a flexible and informal work culture. Despite the lack of strict policies, the aggressive goals at HubSpot often led to long working hours, leaving little time for vacations—a testament to the demanding nature of the tech industry.

The conversation shifts gracefully towards Peter's company, Databox, a performance analytics software for businesses. Peter elucidates how Databox simplifies performance monitoring, goal setting, and predictive analysis by aggregating data from various sources. Operating with a hybrid model, Databox boasts teams in Slovenia and remote teams globally, emphasizing flexibility and inclusivity in its approach to remote work.

Delving deeper into the discussion, Peter underscores the challenges and benefits of remote work, emphasizing the importance of workplace flexibility and cultural inclusivity. Databox's commitment to fostering a sense of community among remote teams is evident through virtual events and holiday celebrations, ensuring that all team members feel valued and connected.

Tune in and gain valuable insights into Databox's strategic approach to remote work, emphasizing flexibility, inclusivity, and community building among remote teams. Peter's reflections on navigating the fast-paced tech industry underscore the importance of resilience and perseverance in achieving success, making this episode a must-listen for anyone interested in the evolving landscape of remote work and tech entrepreneurship.

Learn more about Peter:

• Peter’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pc4media/
• Databox: https://databox.com/

Transcript

Kaleem: 0:35

He just disappeared.

Rick: 0:36

Oh,

Peter: 0:36

Just get a drink, get my drink. So I'm not,

Kaleem: 0:38

I thought you were fucking with me again, like, yo, it's, it's actually your connection claim. Don't question my shit.

Rick: 0:45

Get it together, guy.

Kaleem: 0:46

come to find out, I reached out to, like, Comcast immediately after that, cause, I was like, what are we gonna do, Rick? This is fucked. You know, like, this has never happened, and I was like, it was weird because we were talking and you'd be delayed. So I was like, is this dude just not impressed at all right now? I mean, he's pissed. And, And, I didn't know that we were lagging yet. It was just like, you're like, yeah.

Peter: 1:09

What's a little crazy is, I've been using Riverside for a while. I've recorded like 10 podcasts in the last two months. And. The first eight were fine, and then this Monday, I tried to do some, and I had the same problem. Today it's working fine, but, I don't know what's going

Kaleem: 1:28

me. No, so come to find out. I called him and my internet, man, was all fucking broken. It was me.

Peter: 1:35

It was your internet? Okay.

Kaleem: 1:36

yeah, I was all the talking

Rick: 1:38

Well, you're fired.

Kaleem: 1:41

I was talking

Rick: 1:42

Next!

Kaleem: 1:43

It was my freaking internet, man.

Rick: 1:51

Welcome back everybody to Remotely One. I'm your co host Rick Haney, joined by my esteemed colleague Kaleem Clarkson. How you doing today, brother?

Kaleem: 2:01

Rick. Rick, I'm feeling great, man. I'm feeling great, baby. Here we

Rick: 2:06

Oh, boy. Ha ha, he's got it, he's got it. I'll tell you what, man. We have been fired up for a while now. I haven't had a cup of coffee. In over two weeks, thanks to that Magic Mind stuff, I'll be totally honest. I'm doing twice the work in half the time. I'm sleeping better. How's it been working for you, man? I can see you're all fired up already.

Kaleem: 2:25

I'm always fired up, but let me tell you, baby, it's that magic for that mind, you

Rick: 2:31

Magic for your mind!

Kaleem: 2:33

I mean, I'm serious, man. I feel like my mind has become magic. This is like not a joke. It does what it says it does. I'm in that flow state, Rick. I'm in that flow state. And you know what's best about it, Rick? You know what's best about It

Rick: 2:45

go ahead.

Kaleem: 2:46

It lasts all day. all day. No crash. And unlike, you know, coffee and Adderall, if you've ever had to take it, I can go to sleep at night dog. No

Rick: 2:59

I'll tell you what, if I were to put a, my own spin on this, I would say there's not enough o's and smooths for what it does for me, I'll be honest. It's amazing how something with No caffeine and natural ingredients can set your tone for your entire day. I mean, there's no joke. No, no, no, no, no.

Kaleem: 3:18

question, you're going to give this shit away or what?

Rick: 3:20

well, I'd like to offer it. I mean, hey. We're salespeople here, right.

Kaleem: 3:24

All right. tell them how they can get it, Rick. Tell them how they can get it. preach to them.

Rick: 3:27

You gotta go to Magic mind.com/remotely. One, get up to 56% off your subscription in the next 10 days, or 20% off your one-time purchase with our code remotely. One 20. That's. All one word, R E M O T E L Y O N E, two zero. And with that out of the way, Kaleem, give us a tease or two about today's guests.

Kaleem: 3:51

Oh, brother, brother, brother, brother, brother. Today's guest makes me really nervous. Like I know I'm nervous every week and I say this every episode, Rick, but today's guests I'm extra nervous because I know this person and I've seen them transform,

Rick: 4:06

Well, I'll be honest, too. I mean, I'm nervous. He's got that icy cold stare. and I, you know, if I look too long, I know

Kaleem: 4:11

stare. Our guests first, Rick, they're originally from Pennsylvania. They now reside just outside of bean town, baba, right out there, side of bean town. If you're not familiar.

Rick: 4:23

Selfie. No.

Peter: 4:27

Not in Southland.

Rick: 4:29

Oh, you're not in Southie, huh? Okay. Well, you gotta be near cap's Lickers, I hope.

Kaleem: 4:34

guess don't give away your location. Don't give it away guest. Okay, so Rick, I went to Worcester State University, AKA, the Lances shout out, woo State. And our guest today, they went to our rival school, Worcester Polytech Institute, AKA, what's the initials guest?

Peter: 4:53

WPI.

Kaleem: 4:54

Ah, damn WPI! Damn them! I never got a chance to beat those damn smart engineers. We lost to them every year. I'm still salty about that.

Rick: 5:04

What'd you lose to him in

Kaleem: 5:05

Oh, we lost to them in football, bro. I mean, yeah, yeah, yeah. We also lost to MIT, so sometimes it hurts your, you know, your ego when, you know, someone with glasses on cuts you and knocks you over. You're like, damn, they knew that hypotenuse angle and knocked me out. And that's true.

Rick: 5:21

it's been, decades, so you should let that go.

Peter: 5:24

A lot of decades. Yeah.

Kaleem: 5:27

us, guest. Don't age us. I met our guest in 2001. Well, so I guess I just aged ourselves, right? Um, I met our guest in 2001 when he was the founder of a software called WizSpark. It was an event planning software, Rick. So it was kind of like, meetup. com before meetup even existed. Pretty cool. but Rick, you can't judge a book by its cover. Like, you know, our guest today, they are esteemed. They have all these accolades, but you can't judge a book by its cover. You can't judge somebody. Our guest, Rick, huge fan of Tool. And Wu Tang Clan.

Rick: 6:05

Wu Tang Clan. I would, I would, I'm not surprised by Tool, Wu Tang? I'm a little taken back by that. But

Kaleem: 6:10

Cash rules everything around me. Cream, get the money. Not a dollar bill, y'all. That's my man right there

Rick: 6:18

And there goes half the show.

Peter: 6:19

I'm not going to sing it because it won't come out right, but Triumph is my favorite

Kaleem: 6:24

Ohhh. Triumph. It's 2020 or whatever you said in the beginning. I love that song. Um, our guests today, they were the 15th employee of a little small marketing company out of Cambridge, Mass. You might've heard of their name, but they were the 15th employee at you ready, Rick?

Rick: 6:44

I don't know. I

Kaleem: 6:45

HubSpot HubSpot What? Yes. Yeah. What exactly? 15 where he, where they were the VP of sales. And you know what, Rick, they basically became famous as the inbound marketing experts. So all you people out there that read any blogs back in the day about writing a blog and capturing leads, this person right here. You have to think. So let's give him, let's give them a round of applause, Rick, for inbound marketing. Woo! Thank you. They've been an advisor to some startups. You may have heard of them, such as Drift, Pandadoc, PartnerStack, and Pantheon. Which, by the way, we have their co founder Josh on our show, Episode 60. So go check that out.

Rick: 7:30

Right on.

Kaleem: 7:31

They are currently the CEO of Databox, which is a data platform, plain and simple. Listeners and viewers, please give a warm welcome to Peter Caputo!

Rick: 7:48

Oh, yeah. All right.

Kaleem: 7:51

go! Woo! Let's go, baby! Studio audience is excited!

Rick: 7:56

Oh, listen to

Kaleem: 7:57

down. Shh. Shh. Shh. Shh. Settle

Rick: 8:02

is a public space, people. Simmer.

Kaleem: 8:04

space. Whoo. Hey,

Rick: 8:05

show, Pete. Good to see ya. heh.

Peter: 8:07

Rick. You too. Colleen, that was definitely the second best intro I've ever gotten. The first one was when we Attempted to record this the first time, but the internet wasn't working.

Rick: 8:18

ha ha! I love it.

Kaleem: 8:19

you know what? We attempted to record it because your internet kept dropping on us. Wasn't it your

Rick: 8:23

Yeah.

Peter: 8:23

my internet? Yeah, right. Sure,

Rick: 8:31

uh, you shared some personal stuff, one of which was a story about commuting with your dad every day and I'm hoping that our audience can, can, we can revisit that again cause I thought that

Kaleem: 8:42

Yeah.

Rick: 8:42

touching.

Peter: 8:43

sure.

Rick: 8:44

Yeah, tell us a little bit more about that if you don't mind.

Peter: 8:46

I can't remember how it came up, but you know, all we have to do is extend the intro like eight more years back and we'll cover it cover my whole life. So you might as well just rewind the clock.

Rick: 8:57

do it. do it.

Peter: 8:59

uh,

Kaleem: 8:59

podcast will be just

Peter: 9:01

yeah, I think, I think that you guys asked me, like, something related to, um, I don't know, working hard or achieving goals or something like that. And I gave credit to my dad for my parents, really, but my dad who, um, when I was in middle school, they bought, they sold the house. We moved into my grandparents basement and they started building. We bought a piece of property in an area where my parents wanted to live. And, uh, I started building a house. But like, we didn't really have the money to build a house.

Rick: 9:30

Mm.

Peter: 9:31

So my dad literally spent four years, working nights and weekends, building the house. we got really close to moving in, and we weren't quite there, but I was going into ninth grade. And so my parents said, Hey, you know, it'd be great if you started in that school that you're going to be in high school for. And I said, okay. And I thought it was a good idea too, as I was leaving a, you know, a parochial eighth grade school and would have had to go to a new high school anyways. And so, I would commute with my dad in the morning. He would drop me off at the bus stop like way early and then he would drive the rest of the way to work. it would be an hour drive in the morning. And then he dropped me off at the bus stop, which would be another like 45 minutes to an hour to get to school. So my commute was really long. And then my dad, of course, I'd even longer commute to work. And then at night or after school, I would come home and the house wasn't finished. So this is in Pennsylvania where it gets fairly cold. And so I would, do my homework over a kerosene heater in a small room because the small room contained the heat, cause the house wasn't fully enclosed yet. Either. So, that's my story of hardship. I know there's other people that have plenty more hardship than I have, but what it taught me I think is just the idea of setting a goal and achieving it and kind of dealing with the uncomfortableness sometimes of the situation, because, what my parents did, they built a house that later sold for a million dollars. Um, and, you know, my dad did it with a hammer and nails and there was very little that we hired someone to do. So it was a great experience, growing up.

Rick: 11:07

Yeah, Perseverance, that's the name of the game. Perseverance,

Kaleem: 11:10

that audience? Not only did he have to walk uphill both ways, but this dude had to do homework over a kerosene heater. Y'all don't know nothing about that. So yeah,

Peter: 11:22

Well, this is gonna make it sound a little weird, but there wasn't actually a covered bridge between my, um, bus stop and the house and the winter that I was, you know, we were commuting, they actually decided to replace The floor of the cover bridge was made out of wood planks. And so, in the winter when it was ice and snow, I literally had to like walk through a, frozen Creek, flowing of, you know, flowing water to get home. So, so like that is the story that you hear back in the day. I had to do this to get to school. But, literally had that was, of course it was the nineties. I'm not that old just to put that out there.

Kaleem: 11:57

Right, right, right. What's hilarious is I loved it. Like, like be your kids. Dad, dad, can I have some allowance? You don't know shit. You don't know anything about hardship. Did you walk through a frozen Creek? You don't know. Yeah, I love it. I love it.

Rick: 12:13

You haven't had an education until you've been beaten up by a hobo on the way to school, son.

Peter: 12:19

I do remember, I remember like my dad saying something like that. I think it was like a year later after he moved in the house and I made some new friends, thankfully, and wanted to go to the movies. I said, dad, can I borrow 20 bucks for, to go to the movies? And he flipped out and he's like, I don't have 20 bucks to give you, but it's like either, either I give you 20 bucks to go to the movie or I buy lunch this week. So I think even after he moved into the house. Like there was still, you know, challenges. And so it taught me to be, self sufficient, certainly got it,

Kaleem: 12:48

yeah, humbled humbled. So I have to admit I'm one of your biggest fans. I a long time ago. I was like, I'm not going to comment on this stuff. I'm trying to hold off because I was just watching you advance your career from afar. It's always interesting watching your College colleagues become professionals, you know, and it's been a real fun journey watching, you know what I mean? Cause I mean, we were all professionals in college. I'm not going to, I'm not going to put you on blast right now. I'm not going to tell you all your employees, all the crazy shit you used to do. I won't do that. But, the 13th employee at HubSpot, 15. Sorry. I assume that they're probably their valuation has to be close to a billion dollars at this point.

Peter: 13:35

2, 2. 4, something like that. Yeah. Two more than two.

Kaleem: 13:39

he knows, 2. 2 billion dollars.

Peter: 13:41

that I check it every

Kaleem: 13:43

Yeah, right, right. So when you reflect, can you tell me what it was like, Your first few years at HubSpot, as far as, you know, what the attitude kind of was towards remote work and workplace flexibility. And then can you talk about what the differences were like when you left HubSpot and like how many employees it was? Can you just talk about that initial phase to the growth stage? We'd love to, love to hear some things about that.

Peter: 14:14

Sure. So when I joined, there obviously weren't that many people. We didn't have any policies really. For the first few years, we would ask Halligan as the CEO, like, what about this? What's, you know, what's our vacation policy? What's the policy about working from home, that kind of stuff. And his response was always use good judgment. And that was it. That was like, we literally didn't have a document for policies or anything.

Kaleem: 14:36

right, right.

Peter: 14:37

We had an employment contract and pretty much that was it. So there really wasn't any rules, around working from home. I lived in Worcester still at the time and the office was in Cambridge. So most of the days I went in, I commuted, hour and a half, sometimes in the morning, depending on what time I left sometimes

Kaleem: 14:55

two and a half, depending on

Peter: 14:57

occasionally too. Yeah, exactly. So, I did work from home. Sometimes I can't remember how often it was. I think I might've worked from home a few days a week, like when I was an individual contributor, whereas I was in sales basically. And so, but I do remember going in, I just can't remember how often. And then as I became a manager and the director and I would go in a lot more often because there would be very few days where I wouldn't be meeting with somebody. And we had a pretty strong in office culture for the first few years. Because there was a lot of things changing all the time. And I think it became hard to do that unless you're hard to manage through that. And that's your person. So we had a lot of people in the office, pretty much everybody had a desk even the people that only came in,

Kaleem: 15:42

year is this,

Peter: 15:43

joined in 2007. So that would have been like, say like 2007 through 2011, 12, pretty much. We moved offices, right? We went from the small. It's called the Cambridge Innovation Center is a small like co working place where I don't know, maybe that grew to that crew to accommodate maybe 50, 70 people or something like that. And then we ended up moving into a building where we rented like one floor and then two floors and three floors and the whole thing. So yeah, there was, it was a pretty in office culture. It was also a lot of young people that lived in the city. So they liked the office. There were some large alcohol tabs in the evenings, especially at the end of the month, or in the beginning of month after celebrating the end of the month, things like that. So there was a lot of in office stuff. I think over the years, HubSpot became much more remote, and much more flexible, especially for individuals. I still went in when I was working there quite a bit. The last year I wasn't, I didn't have any direct reports. I was kind of in a phase out role. And so I worked from home. Most of the time I went in to see Halligan every once in a while when he. Would try to convince me to take on a new project. It was quite flexible by the end. I think I still have lots of friends there and. It's very very flexible now. I think they even downsized the offices. I think they got rid of one of the big office building that we're renting and moved into another one that was, you know, slightly bigger and still had space because most people aren't coming in five days a week, they also started hiring sales more remotely, as well so there's a lot of people that don't live around here. Um, so

Rick: 17:16

Mm.

Peter: 17:17

to go to.

Rick: 17:17

Yeah.

Peter: 17:18

so I think they fully transitioned.

Rick: 17:20

Yeah.

Peter: 17:21

the other thing about HubSpot, especially in the early days, is that the goals were very aggressive, especially in sales. And there really wasn't a lot of time to goof off, so like, yeah, this unlimited vacation policy and the reason we had unlimited vacation policy is because nobody wanted to track it, or pay out unused vacation. So we have this unlimited vacation policy, but then our goals are really aggressive. So, there really wasn't enough time to take much vacation. I think it took some, you know, maybe two weeks off a year. So I think it was a, like more laissez faire than the typical company, but also really aggressive goals. So there was a lot of work. I worked well more than 60 hours week, um,

Rick: 17:59

Oh my gosh.

Peter: 18:01

for the first, I don't know, five, six years, at least.

18:04

We'll be right back after these words. 2020 was no joke. It changed the game for everyone. Workplace flexibility is no longer a perk, but an expectation. In fact, a recent study showed that a flexible schedule is more important than salary. Yeah, you heard that right? Employees want choices over cash. If you're a startup or a small business that doesn't have a remote work strategy, stop what you're doing right now and complete our free tree assessment at blendmeinc. com. Since 2013, blendmeinc. com has been helping small businesses improve the remote employee experience. Let's stay local, but compete global. Visit us at blendmeinc. com. That's blendmeinc. com. Ever wonder how certain ads catch your attention or get stuck in your head? It's because the person voicing it knows how to tell the story. Maybe they're telling you to STUMBLE OVER TO SULLIVAN ST. PATRICK'S DAY FOR GREEN BEERS, IRISH CAR BOMBS, AND CON BEEF ALL FREAKIN DAY! Don't miss the deal of a lifetime this President's Day at Callahan Ford. Savings like these should be unconstitutional. Or maybe Or, here at Brooks Brothers Mortuary, we put the fun in funeral. Everyone is just dying to join us. All right, well that's a bit much, but for you, I'll do it. I'm Rick Haney, and if you're a business owner looking for a creative voice in your marketing, look no further. I'll tell your story the way you want it told. Follow along at RemotelyWeAreOne or visit my website at rickhaney. me for more information. And now, back to the show.

Rick: 20:11

So you're now the CEO of Databox. Can you explain to our audience, you know, walk us through a typical day. What is it exactly that you do? That all of you guys do? Databox,

Peter: 20:21

Personally or what data box does

Kaleem: 20:23

data box

Peter: 20:24

what the data box is, a performance analytics software for businesses. So the problem that we solve for companies is that they use lots of different tools, have lots of data for data stored in different places and therefore it's difficult to get your hands around, how your company's performing at any given time. So what our tool does is hooks into all the other tools that they use, pulls out the data, pulls out the performance data, and then allows that our users, our customers to create dashboards, create reports, set goals, benchmark their performance against similar companies, predict the future performance, et cetera, et cetera. So that they can more effectively monitor and map performance, whether, you know, whether they're trying to grow, whether they're trying to improve margins, whatever it is whatever the metrics that matter to them or to their teams, they can see it all and track it all and report all of it out of the data box.

Kaleem: 21:15

Oh, yeah, I think it's great as a genius idea. I kind of look at it as like it's kind of like Zapier As far as like how many different tools that you can connect to, but it's like a dashboard, you know, I'm not trying to simplify it, but like, I just think it's cool. It's cool that you can connect to all these different tools. You can connect to your email, you can connect to anything, MailChimp, anything that you use in, in build dashboards. So I think it's super impactful for any. person who wants to see progress of what you're doing and you can just create your customized dashboards with like a click of a button, low code, no code dashboards at your fingertips. That's for free, sir. That's for free, sir. We get you on that.

Rick: 21:58

Now is Databox fully remote? Are you guys a remote first organization, or?

Peter: 22:02

No, we're hybrid in that, uh, we have an office that we rent in peti, Slovenia, city in Slovenia, in Europe,

Rick: 22:14

Okay.

Peter: 22:15

where all of our product and engineering are. All of our, um, like people, ops, HR is, and then some of other teams. Um, But for the most part, our marketing team, sales team, customers, success team, et cetera, are all remote. There's four of us here in the U S and then we have people in all different countries. Therefore we're remote. We, for the first time ever, we got, everyone that could make it together for a retreat, which we did in the Canary Islands in Spain,

Kaleem: 22:45

Nice.

Peter: 22:45

uh, which was, yes, it was beautiful. It was nice to see everyone. And I've been to the office several times, of course to meet the team there and spend time with them, but

Rick: 22:53

Nice.

Peter: 22:54

not everybody gets that opportunity. So this was the

Kaleem: 22:56

yeah.

Peter: 22:57

where we got everybody.

Kaleem: 23:00

Did you, did y'all film it? Did you guys film it or keep it private?

Peter: 23:03

We didn't film the whole thing. We didn't film going in the ocean or having wine at the at the winery. But, we filmed a lot of it and yes, we internally, we have all of it. And then we, I think we shared clips and stuff, publicly,

Kaleem: 23:18

That's pretty cool. So Pete, let me ask you a question. So you become the CEO of Databox, right? So you leave HubSpot, which in my mind was, I couldn't believe it when I saw it. Um, so you become the CEO of Databox. How did you kind of make a decision of how you were going to, you know, implement or provide workplace flexibility to your employees. How did you come to some sort of decision to do that?

Peter: 23:44

um, it kind of just happened. So the founders are from Slovenia. The one founder was here, he's like president of the company. So as an officer of the company, he's on the board. And he run from a management perspective, he runs the product engineering as well as people ops and finance. so he was here for a while. And then he did move back right before COVID to Slovenia and we always had an office in Slovenia. So all the product engineering team always went into the office. Uh, we had a small office in Boston here where a few of us would go with the first few hires that I made. We're all local. So we would go to that office. But then what happened is, one of the, one of the hires up here moved home to Pennsylvania. She went to school in Boston and that's how she ended up working with us. But then she moved to Pennsylvania, back to Pennsylvania. And then I ended up hiring a marketing director. It was in Connecticut. So we just ended up kind of going remote here. And then, when we hired a VP of sales and service, he was like on the other side of Boston. So it really made little sense for us both to commute like an hour to go to an office. They were the only two left here. He went remote and then when we started building out the customer success and the sales organization, it just made sense to hire the right people instead of worrying about hiring people in a geographic area, especially since we didn't have an office here. So we just started hiring in different geographic areas. We have kind of concentrations of people in different countries. But we're pretty, it's still like, still have, you know, random people in different countries as well. And so it just made sense to like have global positions and open global positions and hire globally for a while,

Rick: 25:17

Mm

Peter: 25:17

with.

Kaleem: 25:18

Mm.

Peter: 25:18

So it wasn't like a decision we just made one day and said, Hey, we're going to do this. We, it just kind of happened. What is unique, I think about what we have and maybe not too unique. I'm sure there's plenty of other companies like it, but the unique challenge that our setup presents is that we do have. Like an in office culture specifically for the product and engineering team. And then we have a remote culture for, sales marketing, customer service, et cetera. So like the, we've had to set up guidelines on what the rules are and they're slightly different. So it's a little challenging, I think, to say, Hey, you have to be in the office four days a week to someone when meanwhile, someone can work from home for five days a week. Although we've, that's what we've done and it works. then there's like, because there's people in different countries, sometimes on the same team, it's also challenging. Like we have to manage vacations differently. And, for certain teams where we need coverage, like with our customer support team, we need certain coverage during the day. So like there's people that are working different hours. So there's a lot of different like little things that we'd had to set up, which. Which, I think in some cases felt feels unfair to people, but I think makes sense for the individual teams and functions.

Rick: 26:28

yeah, so, you know, I'm wondering, as far as challenges go, you know, you're always looking to hire the right people. What are some of the challenges and the things that you ran into over the years, in regard to, you know, being a remote company, you know. How does being remote help you find the right people?

Peter: 26:46

It allows for the talent to be anywhere. So if you need somebody that does something specific and you can say the globe is my pool of people like, yeah, you get more options. It also very frankly has allowed us to control for costs because we can hire people that are similarly skilled in different areas where their cost of living is significantly lower and, you know, we can pay less. So it allows us to have a pretty big team for the size of our company. Which is, it's kind of necessary for the complexity of our product. As we do need to provide a lot of support, even though the cost of our product isn't too high. So, hiring internationally at lower cost has allowed us to build the company. And I think we would really struggle to build this company in the U. S., at least to the product quality and service quality that we provide. Now, in fact, many reasons why people buy us and stick with us is because of the service level we provide. And I know our competitors aren't able to match that. Because they're based in geographies where they can't afford to offer the service that we do.

Kaleem: 27:48

So you said something very interesting. And I think with hybrid companies like data box, like the true hybrid kudos to you for kind of, creating that environment, I think before the pandemic, I think There wasn't really a term used for hybrid, but if I were to try to define hybrid, I feel like, you know, like in sports, you have like the spirit of the game, you know, the unwritten rules, right? I feel like your version of hybrid is kind of like the true spirit of what people meant. You have a whole bunch of people that are going into the office X amount of days or whatever, but then you have a subset that are fully remote. Hence. Hybrid. It's not about days in office, which the pandemic kind of created that days in office situation, right? so something that we definitely help organizations with is dealing with these two separate monocultures of You know in office culture versus remote culture and you hinted on that a little bit And I think with a lot of organizations you hinted at It's sometimes difficult To have two sets of rules for two different people, cause you know, people don't think it's fair, but how were you able to mitigate those feelings? Like you said, a lot of things you did were not intentional. So kudos to you for just being successful on chance. Cause I would not advise any company to do what you did. We didn't have a plan. We just did it and it worked

Peter: 29:16

The founder came over here and ended up raising money from venture capital firms in Boston, like it's been always his goal to build a really big software company. And so he knew that coming to us would give him access to capital and talent that he wouldn't be able to find where he's from. And so I think that circumstance kind of created this in a way, right, where, um, how do we mitigate those issues? Yeah, I can give you one, one example that's simple, but caused issues. so in Slovenia, like every country, they have their own customs and in some of these Baltic, Baltic, right? Uh, the countries near the Mediterranean, I think, uh. They have very specific customs, and there are certain holiday customs at Christmas that they follow, right? And we have people on our team who aren't even Catholics, um, in our other religions. And so every year they would do this santa thing, and I didn't realize Santa's not religious, but like, it was the fact that it was Christmas focused, certainly made it the connection. And so they do the Santa thing where all the kids from the employees that, the team members that were local would come in and get a present for Santa and they'd hang out and they'd have, You know, a few drinks or whatever, and it was pretty low key. It wasn't extravagant, but still something that they did that wasn't available to other teams. So we did two things to try to compensate for that. One, we provide a budget to every team member to buy a present for their child. So that way at the holidays, that's one, actually three things. To, um, we also provide a budget for any other teams that can get together that. So if there's like, we have like maybe 15 people in Serbia, a few people in Columbia. And so we basically said, Hey, there's the budget that we spend on this event. So you can have this budget to get together with your teammates. And if you want to bring your children and do that too, you can. So we basically made a budget. And if there's somebody that's in a country or location where it's not convenient to go to their team, we just said, Hey, you have some budget to do this. and then the other thing that we did is we also started at an annual tradition of having a holiday virtual event where we hired a company to come in and do like a kind of game showy, fun thing where we spend an hour or two together and do a little breakout thing and stuff like that. So just to kind of not talk about work for two hours with everybody virtually and give everybody a chance to kind of meet somebody that they probably don't work with on a regular basis. So those are some of the things that we did to try to bring, and we continue with that tradition. It didn't seem to make sense to not have that tradition in Slovenia in that office. aNd so, but by incorporating everybody else into it, it gives everybody an opportunity to kind of participate a little bit with it.

Kaleem: 31:51

Well done. I got one quick question and you can answer it as quickly as you like before Rick's final question. Um, workplace flexibility.

Peter: 32:00

Mm hmm.

Kaleem: 32:01

Right? We've experienced it. Everyone in the world, I think, has experienced some, some version of it since, you know, 2020, which is crazy. It's coming on four years. do you feel like workplace flexibility Will be a key component in an organization's kind of strategic advantage or strategic goals. Like, where do you see this heading? Lots of return to offices right now in the U. S. What's your thoughts on moving forward in workplace flexibility?

Peter: 32:31

Uh, yeah, I don't, I think it's like the rabbit's out of the hat. It's not going anywhere. For us, like it was, it's not even practical to consider going back to an office, even part time in the U S let alone full time

Kaleem: 32:44

Mm, mm.

Peter: 32:45

I think. Like, you know, just look at my peers, my, my wife, even like her workplace where there's flexibility, they're allowed to work from home in certain days and they can kind of pick what those days are and that gives her flexibility to go volunteer at the library if she wants, or, you know, go to a sporting event and watch my son play a game. Or on an errand during lunch, you know, nearby. So I think, yeah. It's re it'll be really tough for most companies, especially, you know, office jobs, jobs that are done behind a computer. I think it'll be very unlikely that there's many companies that completely mandate back to work five days a week. I think there'll always be some flexibility around, around that stuff. I don't know. I'm sure there are, you know, better than I am sure there are companies that said, Nope, everybody back in the office. Um, but I feel like that's a hard sell for a lot of people, a lot of employees these days, and people will look for jobs with.

Rick: 33:36

Certainly. Yeah. So, So, Pete, tell us about a comical or inspiring moment you've had while working remotely.

Peter: 33:46

I don't know. I don't know if it's like, you probably get this one all the time, but

Kaleem: 33:50

No, wait, don't preface it. We don't know.

Peter: 33:53

I'm always surprised, um, by the height of my coworkers when I meet them in person.

Rick: 33:59

I've never heard that!

Peter: 34:01

You haven't, Oh, I thought this was a common thing. So I've hired people and like worked with them for years without knowing their actual height. It's not something you collect on an HR form. Right. So no idea what the height is. And then, and so I'll go to the office or in the case of the retreat, I'd go there. I'm like, wow, you're a lot shorter than I thought. Or like, you're a lot taller than I thought. Like you'd get, you could get someone's general like shape, size, everything else. But

Kaleem: 34:25

Right.

Peter: 34:25

height is impossible on Zoom. so that one gets me every time. Definitely. Like there's a guy on my team. He runs, our customers, uh, support organization. And he's like six, two, six, three. I'm like, wow, you, anybody's like a skinny kind of guy. So I had no idea it was. Anyways,

Rick: 34:44

These are the true insights we look for on Remotely Won.

Kaleem: 34:47

Yes.

Peter: 34:50

Yes.

Kaleem: 34:52

So for everybody who doesn't know Peter is a solid for four feet nine inches. Okay, so four feet nine

Peter: 34:59

I'm 5'7 and 3 quarters.

Kaleem: 35:02

Hey, bro. I'm only like an inch taller than you bro. We're like almost the same height dawg.

Rick: 35:09

with blocks under his feet so he can reach the pedals.

Kaleem: 35:13

We're like to say almost the same height. That's great, man.

Rick: 35:16

That's amazing. Pete, where can our listeners and viewers find you?

Peter: 35:20

On LinkedIn is my preferred social network. I'm very active on LinkedIn as Kaleem knows. So yeah, I'm constantly publishing. I try to get back to everyone unless you're like, you know, connecting with me just to sell me your service, then I'm going to block you. Just like I do in my email inbox, but otherwise, I try to be congenial with people and see how I can help.

Rick: 35:41

Well, thank you so much for joining us. I learned so much from you. Thankfully the internet held out today, so that's good.

Kaleem: 35:47

Yes. It was my internet, but thank you, Pete. I appreciate it, man. to keep following you and, it's awesome to, to to see what you're doing. So thanks for coming on, man. Really

Peter: 35:56

looking forward to

Rick: 35:57

Yeah.

Peter: 35:58

NEO concert, Colleen. When's that?

Rick: 36:01

Oh, wow.

Kaleem: 36:02

not sure, you know, geez, I'm not sure when that's coming.

Peter: 36:07

So that's, I think for your listeners, we should tell this story. So we met, um, you were running an organization called Concerts for Charity and you hooked up with my company, Wizzpark, which I hate saying the name, but, and we helped you with the marketing of that concert at the, uh, Worcester train station, right?

Kaleem: 36:27

wasn't the train station?

Peter: 36:28

I think it was at the train station. It's a beautiful train station for people that don't know the Worcester train station. It's like this beautiful old building that they completely refurbished, uh, has a huge

Kaleem: 36:37

Man.

Peter: 36:38

um,

Kaleem: 36:39

I thought I was

Peter: 36:39

have a concert.

Kaleem: 36:39

rock star promoter back then, Pete. Thought I was going to be a rock star promoter.

Peter: 36:43

know. Yup.

Kaleem: 36:45

That's awesome. Alright

Rick: 36:47

Yeah.

Kaleem: 36:48

times. I appreciate you.

Rick: 36:50

Good luck on

Kaleem: 36:50

luck on your webinar. All right, man. I'll talk to you later.