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Palm Desert to Peru: Daniel Altenburg on Building Remote-First Teams
7 Plays9 days ago
In this episode of MustardHub Voices: Behind the Build, Curtis sits down with Daniel Altenburg, co-founder of ZipDev, a remote staffing company connecting U.S. and Canadian businesses with top talent across Latin America. Daniel shares his winding path from hospitality in Palm Desert to recruiting in Peru, and how a simple favor for a friend exposed a massive talent gap that sparked the idea for ZipDev. Today, ZipDev recruits across 16 countries and supports both fast-growing startups and established companies looking for long-term, culturally aligned talent.
Daniel also opens up about what it takes to build a meaningful culture inside fully distributed teams. He highlights the intentional touchpoints that keep people engaged when there’s no office to gather in. He and Curtis dive deep into the future of work, from hybrid models and AI to leadership traits that still matter most: authenticity, human connection, and treating remote team members like true members of the organization.
About Daniel:
Daniel Altenburg is the Co-Founder of Zipdev, a remote staffing company that helps U.S. and Canadian businesses scale with top talent from Latin America. Daniel’s journey started in hospitality and recruiting, where he learned that business is built on relationships, not transactions. Over the past decade, Zipdev has been recognized on the Inc. 5000 and by the Financial Times as one of the fastest-growing companies in the Americas. At his core, Daniel is driven by connection, whether it’s leading his team, serving entrepreneurs, or being present with his family.
Daniel is passionate about growth in all areas in life: always reading, learning, and pushing himself outside of his comfort zone.
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Transcript
Introduction to Voices Behind the Build
00:00:06
Speaker
Hello again. Welcome to Mustard Hub Voices Behind the Build. In these Fireside Chat episodes, I sit down with the people building, backing, and running better workplaces. I'm your host, Curtis Forbes. My guest today is Daniel Altenberg. Daniel is the co-founder of ZipDev, a remote staffing company that helps U.S. and Canadian businesses scale with top talent from Latin America.
00:00:29
Speaker
Daniel's journey started in hospitality and recruiting, where he learned that business is built on relationships, not transactions. and over the past decade, ZipDev has been recognized on the Inc. 5000 and by Financial Times as one of the fastest growing companies in the Americas.
Daniel Altenberg's Background and Motivation
00:00:46
Speaker
its core At his core, Daniel is driven by connection, whether it's leading his team, serving entrepreneurs, or being present with his family. Daniel's passionate about growth in all areas of life, always reading, learning, and pushing himself outside of his comfort zone.
00:01:03
Speaker
probably with all of those surfboards and and snowboards. ah And he's my guest today on Voices Behind the Build. Thanks so much for being here, Daniel.
00:01:15
Speaker
Thank you so much for having me. Yeah, you know, the surfboards, snowboards, and skateboards, got to stay cool for my little kids. You know, that's actually what I was just going to say. And I love that, ah that you're ah that you stay involved. So let's
Adapting to Remote Work Trends
00:01:31
Speaker
kind of jump in. More and more organizations are operating with distributed teams. I've been super excited about this conversation because...
00:01:40
Speaker
it's something I talk about a lot. And I know that in the next five years, probably over 60, maybe closer to 70% of the whole u s workforce, at least, and possibly, you know, globally is going to be involved in some capacity, even in the gig economy, right. In some capacity, might not be full-time might be part-time, but um you know, as the co-founder of zip dev,
00:02:04
Speaker
you're kind of at the forefront of this big change in the world of work. You've had extensive experience when it comes to staffing and recruiting. How did you, you know, end up in this world in the first
Career Beginnings and International Experience
00:02:16
Speaker
place? What attracted you to staffing and recruiting?
00:02:19
Speaker
ah Let's see here. Do you want the long story, the short story, the origin story? um Yeah. So i i'll start I'll start here and maybe we can kind of tie it together. But my mom,
00:02:34
Speaker
was an ah HR generalist at the Marriott for like 24 years. She missed it by like a few years. we would have gotten some sort of discount as family members if she would have hit 25. ah But bless her heart, she worked there for like 24 years. But so when I got my first job 16 out in Palm Desert at the JW Marriott, I got a job working in the cart barn and I was cleaning golf carts and then I would have the opportunity to clean golf clubs as people came off the cart, off the course.
00:03:00
Speaker
And it was a very lucrative job, like a very good job for somebody who was 16. So I was making a lot of tips. and a lot of my friends in high school also wanted a job at the Marriott. And so I quickly learned at a young age how to filter my friends because I didn't want to send my friends that were puffing on, you know, the devil's lettuce to my mom because then she'd be like, your friend so-and-so didn't pass a drug test.
00:03:25
Speaker
So I learned really quickly like how to vet and how to filter people before I sent them to my mom. And then fast forward fast ah fast forward to college, I went to San Diego State and I learned quickly that if i was on associated students that I would get priority registration. And so I took a role doing recruiting for the university. So I'd go to different you know ah different high schools in the community and I would talk to them about colleges. And because I did that, I got priority registration. So like all these things kind of happened.
00:03:56
Speaker
And then after college, I moved to Peru in 2008 and I got a job with a company called Universal Student Exchange. ah My idea of going to Peru was to perfect my Spanish. i had a lot of family there, so I thought I was going to go into this realm of immigration law.
00:04:12
Speaker
um But I didn't want to spend all my days and nights reading. And I like to read for pleasure, but to read like a thousand pages a week is a lot for anybody.
00:04:24
Speaker
And so I got this job with Universal Student Exchange where I was recruiting university students um and connecting them with clients in the US on a J1
Founding ZipDev: Connecting Talent Across Borders
00:04:32
Speaker
visa. So the clients I worked with were ski resorts, ah you know, Vail, Deer Valley, Mammoth. And so it was like a really cool opportunity. And I was selling the story of what it was like to live in the US as a college student when I just recently graduated. So I found a lot of success in that.
00:04:49
Speaker
And I quickly learned the power of, you know, experience share, the power of a story. um And so this whole idea of going down there and working with this J1 Visas kind of became the backseat. And then I kind of fell into this role of recruiting and account managing.
00:05:04
Speaker
And so that's more or less where it started. um During my time in Peru, I met my business partner, Michael, at an expat Thanksgiving. him and I just hit it off. I mean, before we when we started the conversation, we we said, you know, hey now, brown cow, right? And so living in Latin America, not a lot of people pick up your one-liners from the movies we've watched as kids. And so when Mike and I were in this expat Thanksgiving room, I had mentioned a couple one-liners. He laughed at it. And I was like, dude, you're my new best friend.
00:05:32
Speaker
Like we're gravitating. And so him and I became really tight in Peru. We played rugby together. He actually taught me the sport of rugby. And then we moved back to the US. He came back in 2012. I came back in 2013.
00:05:45
Speaker
I was working for a staffing agency doing you know the full desk, selling, recruiting, account managing. And then on the side, Mike had asked if i could help him find a profession if I could help him find a developer to build out a syllabus for his professional language learning business in Peru.
00:06:04
Speaker
i had the recruiter license. I spoke to a handful of candidates. We huddled up a couple days later. um I asked him what his budget was. ah He was running a business out of Proust, who was looking to spend, you know, 10 to 20 bucks an hour.
00:06:16
Speaker
Everybody I spoke with locally was looking for 150 to 200 bucks an hour. So that was like our aha moment of like, all right, what is everybody doing who doesn't necessarily have the buying power to compete with the Apples or Googles?
00:06:29
Speaker
You know, we knew people weren't just building businesses, ah you know, on their own. They had to have some sort of resources. And since we're here in San Diego, our proximity to Tijuana, you know, 20 minutes across the border. So, you know, we missed the Latin lifestyle. We missed the food. So we started venturing into Tijuana for some tacos and attended some startup events.
00:06:47
Speaker
And then just, I wouldn't say we were surprised, right? But we were just shocked at the amount of fluent English speakers, college educated people who were just on the other side of the border that didn't have the opportunity to work with U.S. customers because of the visa.
00:07:02
Speaker
And so that's where this whole idea of like, let's build a remote staffing agency to connect these people. That's where it all came from. I love that. I love the story, by the way. I mean, it's literally baked into your DNA from your like early childhood.
00:07:19
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. um And i've not not not many people really, I think... have that experience, you know, at however old you were, 15, 16 or whatever, that's going to translate into their success in their 20s or 30s or 40s or 50s or whatever it happens to be. So the story and the story is ah is quite compelling. So now you have ZipDev.
00:07:46
Speaker
kind of given me a good ah idea of what sort of drove you and your and your co-founder, right, to to entrepreneurship in ah in a way. Talk to us more about ZipDev, right? what What the company does. Is it typically sourced from right across the border in Mexico? is it Baja? or Do you have relationships with these folks when you go across the border, or is it all of Latin America?
00:08:08
Speaker
Great question. So when we started the business, it was predominantly T-Quantan. um and there's a funny story there so uh the latin american culture is a beautiful culture but um we struggled when we first started because everybody thought that the jobs we had posted were like ah it was a scam right because we didn't have an address you know everything was remote and they're like well i'm just going to send you my resume like how do we even know these clients are real so uh our first year we actually went into tijuana and we got an office space so we had like the big zip tab logo on the office space we had people coming in for interviews and then we started actually attacking the universities and we hired a handful of interns and so we did that for the first like year and a half and so that gave us the street credit and so that kind of ran its course after a couple years um and then our clients you know everything was remote and so we went from tijuana and we started thinking we like why don't we just open this up to like people in mexico city
00:09:04
Speaker
And we'll just you know give our clients a ah larger access of talent through Mexico City. So we opened up to Mexico City, found success there. And then it was like, well, why don't we open up to other cities in Mexico? And so went into Guadalajara, onto the Monterey.
00:09:18
Speaker
And then again, same thing happened. It was like, well, why are we stopping at Mexico?
The Impact of COVID-19 on Remote Work
00:09:22
Speaker
And so flash forward to today, we have team members in 16 different countries that we recruit from. um Our recruiting team is distributed all through Latin America.
00:09:31
Speaker
um And as long as you have, you know, good internet, you speak fluent English, we'll we'll represent you and get you connected with a client here in the US.
00:09:40
Speaker
That's amazing. That's, I mean, I, I can see the, there's obviously a huge need for those, for those things. So tell me about the kinds of organizations that come to, to zip dev. We don't, don't have to name any names here, but I'm kind of curious about the kinds of organizations that you work with.
00:09:55
Speaker
Why are you the choice for their staffing needs versus another service? Right. Um, you know, turn it right. Rather than like turning to up work or hiring directly.
00:10:06
Speaker
Totally great question. So um we we're not like a gig shop, right? I mean, there's there's definitely a place for some project work, right? You need something done like a Shutterfly or a book or a website, right? You only need somebody for a handful of hours. That's fantastic, right? I recommend going to Upwork or to Fiverr.
00:10:23
Speaker
ah But what we what we do is we're like a long term partner. And so we work with a handful of technology enabled companies. I mean, we obviously have a very diverse client portfolio.
00:10:34
Speaker
um but people will come to us for a couple reasons right the time zones is a huge thing right everybody works on us time zones um and then their cultural alignment so we really spend a lot of time understanding our clients core values or missions i mean everybody can say that but what we really dig into is management styles people's behaviors and we try to identify the right long-term fit um so that's kind of what's been helping us um You know, COVID was a huge blessing in disguise.
00:11:05
Speaker
Right. the Prior to COVID, the world was not really open to this remote concept. And so that was like my biggest struggle, you know, 2018, 2019 is I call clients, cold call them and be like, Hey, we've got all these awesome developers and team members in Latin America. You interested in the feedback I get is like, you know, I need them in house.
00:11:25
Speaker
I need to be able to have like a standup meeting. If I need a whiteboard, like they need to be here. And so the market or the area that we really had a lot of success in was startups. Startups ran lean. They didn't have the buying power. right They couldn't compete with buying an engineer or or recruiting an engineer who was you know getting an offer from Google or Apple.
00:11:44
Speaker
They didn't really have a lot. And a lot of these startups didn't want to give off you know equity in their company. So we had a lot of success with these startups. And then COVID hit. And as we all know, like the world kind of slowed down for a couple months, which is great. You know, I just had my second kid, you know, it was April. We're just kind of hanging out at home, you know, really just trying to figure out what we're doing every day.
00:12:03
Speaker
And then no joke, like June of 2020, like the phones just started ringing. You know, maybe not physical phones, but like, you what getting to say, like the phones, the emails just started going off and everybody was like, you got any more of those engineers? You know, it's kind of crazy.
00:12:17
Speaker
And so we went from, I think we had like six people on
Roles and Culture at ZipDev
00:12:21
Speaker
assignment and then it doubled to 12. Then it went to like 18 and to 20 and then to 25. And it was just this crazy growth and everybody needed all these people. and we just had this database.
00:12:32
Speaker
And so we were kind of just set up for success and, you know, timing is everything. um And it just hasn't really slowed down since then. And so now, you know, it's 2025, you know, everybody's remote, you know, we're doing this remote. We're not even in the same room.
00:12:46
Speaker
And so it's just become this kind of normal concept that we all are dealing with, which I think is killer, right? lot more time on my hands. You know, I have the freedom to you know pick my kids up from school.
00:12:57
Speaker
You know, my team members are are people that we work with. you know, they spend more time with their family, with their aging parents, right? Not not spending time in traffic. So it's a win-win for everybody.
00:13:09
Speaker
So, I mean, working with with remote talent on a schedule that I think seeks ah syncs up with your own its is probably pretty ah appealing to most leaders. You had mentioned that the time zone thing is you know really important to a lot of folks, which i I fully get and understand. So since you focus on connecting organizations with talent in Latin America, I'm assuming most of your clients are based here in the Americas. Is it US and Canada only?
00:13:36
Speaker
Yeah, we have a handful of Canadian clients, but the majority are are here in the US. US-based, yeah. Yeah, US-based. What kind of roles are these organizations looking to fill with ZipDev? Are there certain positions that are better suited for remote hiring or certain roles that are not good for remote workers?
00:13:56
Speaker
um I mean, pretty much anything can be done remote. you know Obviously, the food industry, hospitality industry, a lot of those positions like front of the house need to be in person. ah But we are starting to see a lot of self-checking, right? All this contactless stuff happening.
00:14:11
Speaker
um So the majority of our personnel, I would say about 80% of the people we have on assignment are technical people, right? So software engineers, QA, DevOps, you know mobile, front-end, back-end, you name it.
00:14:27
Speaker
And then the other 20% are non-tech. so we have marketing assistants, we have financial analysts, virtual assistants, customer service reps, you know, biz dev lead generators.
00:14:39
Speaker
So really just depends on what the client's needs are. And it also really kind of goes back to where they're located, right? I mean, I'm here in California, you know, it's expensive to hire people, right? You think about New York, you think, oh, some of these other emerging cities, like it gets ah very expensive to to hire people. And I'm not saying, you know, take all your your domestic employees and and send them offshore or not, not by any means.
00:15:02
Speaker
ah But it's an opportunity to help alleviate some of that workload. Right. And so you can keep your you know controllers on assignment and then bring on a, you know, an entry level finance person to take off some of their low hanging fruit.
00:15:16
Speaker
Right. That really helps with retention. That really helps with their, you know, life work balance. don't know that that hopefully that answered your question. Yeah. Yeah. No, that makes a lot of sense. So I'm actually going to take a small shift here.
00:15:31
Speaker
We're all about culture here at Mustard Hub. And it can be challenging for a lot of leaders, I think, to create and and sort of nurture culture. A big part of a healthy workplace culture, right, is having team members feel seen, feel appreciated, right, feel heard.
00:15:48
Speaker
um You know, you even participate in those water cooler moments. You know, obviously so much so much and so many teams these days are not in person, so it's hard to have those conversations those same kind of of meaningful moments within the organization. um Obviously, you don't need to say mustard hub here, but I'm curious if you have any thoughts on how leaders can do that for remote workers. so You obviously talk to organizations that are looking to hire team members. You talk about being a long-term partner, which to me indicates, right, we're we're hoping that this hire will work with
00:16:24
Speaker
this team for a long time and in order for that to happen, right, there has to be a really good and really healthy workplace culture. So what do you tell these business leaders? um You know, that is like my greatest challenge and that's to build a cool company culture in a remote environment.
00:16:46
Speaker
um I don't know if I've necessarily figured that out yet. um but what sparked this whole concept of like really having a cool company is is i worked for taylor guitars for a couple years i was their corporate recruiter and um man i have never ever seen anything like that place like the people that work there you know we were celebrating 20 25 year anniversaries you know the people lived and breathed the company they were all guitar players like it was just they were craftsmen like everybody loved it and
00:17:21
Speaker
I've never, never had ah sense of belonging like I've done there. And so when I started ZipDev, when I left Taylor Guitars to go full-time ZipDev, like that's what I wanted to create, something like that. And so, yeah, no, there's there's no denying it. It's a challenge, right? But people really love those touch points that you can offer them. So some of the things that we've done at ZipDev, you know, we we do...
00:17:46
Speaker
We do what we call Turn It Up Thursdays. So we have a Spotify playlist that we we wipe clean every Thursday morning. And then on Slack, we'll <unk> put it to a vote.
00:17:57
Speaker
And then the whole company. So we have about 200 people on assignment. And we have about 15 people on our internal team. And so we put it to a vote as to what people want to listen to. And so sometimes it's like a genre. Sometimes it's a theme. So like this week, it's all spooky songs.
00:18:12
Speaker
And everybody gets to like add their own version of whatever the theme is to that playlist. um And so we've been doing that now for three years. And to be honest, like my music playlist has never been cooler ever before because you get like heavy metal from, you know, Mexico and Argentina. And then you get like Cumbia and salsa from some of the Caribbean countries.
00:18:31
Speaker
So awesome, right? And you get to connect, you get to learn a little bit more about people. um right you get to learn who's like the big you know metalhead in the company right who's who's into like you know spanish r&b who's into pop right and so you get to learn these little things about people outside of like the surveys that we submit another thing we do is i lead a book club um it's voluntary so we pick a book typically a business book and then we read a chapter and then a group of us discuss it every friday at 10 30.
00:19:01
Speaker
so we spend about 30 minutes discussing the chapter, what we've learned about it. And it's also given us the opportunity have people open up and get vulnerable, right? I think we just spoke we just read, we're currently reading a book, Originals, but we just read the book, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. And usually I try to foster some sort of like vulnerability in it, right? Because in ah in a remote environment, like high trust and getting vulnerable will allow you to connect pretty quickly, right? Much better than you can in an office setting.
00:19:30
Speaker
And well, not much better, but it it helps since we're not in an office setting. And then we also do like lunch and learn. so the lunch and learns is same thing. It's voluntary. It's one Thursday every month.
00:19:41
Speaker
I think a few months back, we had a girl from Columbia. She did a lunch and learn on candle making. then the following month, it was followed up by somebody in Argentina who did something on DevOps. Right. And so it's just all over the place. But these are just cool little like touch points that you can get with people to really like see who they are authentically.
00:20:00
Speaker
and let them be them be their authentic selves. And I think that's really what the culture piece is about. is really interesting kind of direction that you took that because I'm curious now. So, so zip dev is, is, is basically an EOR, right? And, and it are, you're, you you um are the employer of record for 200 so on assignment.
00:20:23
Speaker
Correct. So we're the agency of record. So agency we're not the EOR. So we're the agency of record, which allows us to keep our costs down. And then we give everybody the full-time experience. So they, everyone gets, you know, their, their medical ah benefits, their,
00:20:38
Speaker
under active lifestyle benefits and things like that. Yeah. And so you you do engagement practices for the hundreds that, that you work with or that work on assignment with, ah with zip dev, including your internal team.
00:20:56
Speaker
Curious if you've seen what leaders do with those that they have on assignment for them. to keep those individuals really connected to those teams?
00:21:09
Speaker
Have you seen any any kind of... Yeah, you know, the the the really good leaders, the the the companies that we have a lot of success with, is they they treat them just like their own employees, right?
00:21:22
Speaker
Typically, if you've ever been a work setting, like there's always like this talk of like, oh, those are the contractors, right? Like, those are the contractors. You know, it's kind of like this like weird thing, but in the companies that we work with,
00:21:34
Speaker
The ones that find a lot of success and have high retention, like they're treated just as normal employees. Right. And so, yes, we might be the agency of record, but once they get, you know, integrated into that company, that company handles their day to day operations. And then essentially we just turn into an HR provider, like an HR extension.
00:21:51
Speaker
So we're conducting one-on-ones, we're fielding PTO requests, you know, we're getting devices out to them, you know, we're, we're setting them up for continuous learning programs. And so,
00:22:02
Speaker
So, yeah, so I guess the answer is, like, you got to treat these people as just, like, you know, a normal employee of your company. Yeah. Because they're building stuff for your company, too, you know? They're they're helping, they're building, they're sweating, they're they're stressing, right? like Yeah.
00:22:17
Speaker
Yeah. Do you find that folks, that when they when they come to ZipDev, are – in
Integrating and Engaging Remote Workers
00:22:24
Speaker
Just hiring. So I guess, how how do I ask this question?
00:22:29
Speaker
Are they essentially looking to outsource an entire team or just some individuals to help augment what they're already doing? Or maybe you have both. You have folks who have an entire team that's been outsourced to ZipDev and maybe you have some where it's just simply certain individuals to augment a team.
00:22:46
Speaker
Yeah, it's a little bit of both. um So, you know, an example is we have a couple of tech companies that we work with. And so The majority of their engineering team is here in the States. um And then they've scaled up with you know three, four or five people um to do DevOps and QA. So they all work handin- hand in hand.
00:23:05
Speaker
um And then we work with a couple other clients who have you know their direct they they have their account executives you know on the grounds here in the US, going to networking events, selling, and then they're just throwing deal flow over to their biz dev reps located in Latin America to handle the contracts.
00:23:23
Speaker
get those negotiated, get those executed. Right. So it's a little bit of both. um And then we also have other companies who just 100% their entire, you know, engineering team is distributed through Latin America, but then they have like their sales reps or the product owners, you know, different, different roles in the U S in the U S. Yeah. How does a leader measure engagement with a remote team?
00:23:47
Speaker
Is that something you've measured or or that you you personally have seen measured in particular ways that you feel like work well? You know, I can't speak for other companies as to how they manage engagement. We do conduct monthly one-on-ones with our assigned team members just to kind of keep a pulse on how things are going, right? Workloads, stress levels.
00:24:09
Speaker
uh bandwidth communication styles right just to kind of ensure like they're happy doing what they're doing yeah if there's ever anything that pops up you know if it dips you know if they say you know morale is it goes from a nine to a seven right that might be a reason for our talent success team to reach out to them and then kind of pry a little bit dig a little bit and if there's something there that you know we're not really sure about we'll broach that subject with the client right but have you ever had Sorry, go ahead. I was going to say, i think the engagement piece just speaks on retention, right? And so average, our team members stick around for like 27 months, right? And so that that itself speaks a lot.
00:24:50
Speaker
Yeah, you know, and and everyone's always like, why? I'm like, you know, it's it's a lot of reasons why, you know, for one, they're they're getting the taste of the American dream from the comforts of their own home. Right. um The remote work is awesome. I mean, I don't know if you've ever traveled like Mexico City or South Paulo, Brazil, but like traffic is insane.
00:25:09
Speaker
um So you get to work remote, so you're not spending all this time. And then you obviously get to find, it you know, your paycheck is a little bit more than what you would find domestically, like locally for them. Yeah. Right. So it's like a win-win for everybody.
00:25:20
Speaker
Do you, do you ever have, you know, team members or those that you, that you, you know, that are all working on assignment for you? you ever have come to you with some, you know, concerns or complaints that they're not feeling challenged or engaged by the teams that they're working with or for?
00:25:37
Speaker
100%. ah what i present I mean, we're in the business of people. So the one thing you know about people is they're not constant, right? People want to be challenged. People want to continue to grow and and learn. It doesn't mean that there aren't people who are just individual contributors who are happy just doing the same thing over and over again, um in which there's there's always a spot for them.
00:25:57
Speaker
But you know if if somebody isn't feeling challenged, like that's the moment in our one-on-ones where they can kind of raise their hand. So we also do another thing we do is um what we call the continuous learning bonus program.
00:26:11
Speaker
And so it's twice a year. And so what happens is the the team member on assignment will do an evaluation of themselves, like their skill sets and what they're really good at.
00:26:22
Speaker
And then they do an evaluation of kind of like the industry they're in. So if you're a software engineer, you know you would probably do an evaluation on your JavaScript skills, yeah your your Python, whatever. And then you would do kind of an evaluation on like where the industry is going. Like, oh there's this new product being launched or this new version of ah React coming out.
00:26:41
Speaker
And then what they'll do is they'll sit down with their manager at the company and then they'll look at both of those things. And then they'll come up with like a plan of what they want the team member to learn in the next like six to 12 months.
00:26:53
Speaker
And so let's just say a client knows they're rolling out like a new ah new app with a different kind of tech stack. Then they will let us know. And then we have ah access to a ton of different learning platforms. And so we'll put the team member on a continuous learning program.
00:27:09
Speaker
And it's all activity based. So it's like kind of gamified. So if you read a book, you get a point. If you do a practice project, it's like five points. You get a certification, it's five. And so each team member has to hit 15 activity points within a six month period.
00:27:23
Speaker
And if they do that, then we cut them a check for a bonus. Right. And so now, yeah, so one, now they're being challenged, right? They're learning something new. Two, they're sharpening their skill sets, becoming much more valuable for the client. And then three, it's like a retention piece on our end.
00:27:38
Speaker
Yeah. They're also becoming more valuable for you too. Totally. um So, I mean, it actually brings me to a really good, I think, good question and good
Future Workforce and Leadership Skills
00:27:47
Speaker
topic. I mean, as we think about the world of work today and then also in the near future, you know, what do you think is going to be important for tomorrow's workers? And I know that's a loaded question, right? Because we have AI to think about. We have a lot of these, this new technology that can, can, can,
00:28:07
Speaker
augment people's work, right? Can make people more efficient, can also replace some people's work. So I'm curious how you see, you know, how you see that. I've been to a ton of conferences over the last like two months, right? Obviously AI is like the biggest buzzword. actually just wrote a blog about my experience at HR tech and and the big buzzword. This was like back in but what we October. This was back in early September. And like the big buzzword was agentic AI.
00:28:36
Speaker
Agentec AI, everybody's talking about Agentec AI. And then the other one was an onboarding orchestration specialist. And so, you know, one of the topics is like, oh, AI is going to take our jobs, you know, and and a couple of these keynote speakers had mentioned like with every single revolution that we've had, yes, jobs go away, but new jobs are created. And I'm very confident that new jobs will be created. And so, for example, that onboarding orchestration specialist that they talked about, like I'd never heard about that.
00:29:02
Speaker
But it totally makes sense. It's somebody who's going to onboard these agents and ensure that they're doing the correct process for their job. And so I think the future is going to be where, you know, AI is going to make us much more efficient.
00:29:14
Speaker
um But you're also going to have, you know, human colleagues and probably also some like AI agents that you're working with too. Yeah. Yeah.
00:29:25
Speaker
That's interesting. What about leaders? I mean, in the near future, any other skills you think leaders are going to need to have in order to create more engaged workforce? You know, are there certain tools that need to be, you know, they need to be successful for building and retaining these satisfied teams?
00:29:39
Speaker
I think leaders, I mean, I can only speak for myself. So what I, and I, I think people are our biggest asset, right? I think that um there's no way I could eliminate the human touch out of my business. I'm in staffing, right? Like, yes, I could have a bot that would do, you know, the application. i could have an agent do, you know, the sourcing call. But like that just, I don't know, call me old school, but that just seems kind of weird to me that I wouldn't have the opportunity to talk to someone um and get a vibe. I think, you know, you i think i think what people want is to just be their authentic self.
00:30:18
Speaker
And as mentioned, like we do some of these culture things and it gives the people to just show up and be who they are, share who they are. And I think that that that's the piece. um So I think you know as a leader myself, I definitely want to Yeah, I definitely want people to, you know, be who they want to be, be their authentic self, you know, work, have a good life, have a good living, you know, use some tools to make your job as efficient as possible. You know, if you can use some tools and you're only working 30, 32 hours a week, it's go for it.
00:30:52
Speaker
You know, that's awesome. You know, I like that. Yep. I think that I, you know, sometimes I fit in that camp.
00:31:02
Speaker
You know, im curious, Aspects of people dynamics you think that are going to change as the business landscape evolves and there's more work that goes remote, right? We've already talked about the fact that like, you know, there's so many benefits, right? To to working remotely.
00:31:21
Speaker
And, but it does introduce, you know, ah ah change in people dynamics, right? Within this, within organizations, right? right How do you see that changing? I guess at the way beginning, we mentioned that so much of the workplace is going to go in that direction.
00:31:39
Speaker
any big predictions for what you see? ah you know i have been seeing a lot more things become like a hybrid model. but I think we're like a lot of companies are shifting back to this hybrid model, which I think is great.
00:31:54
Speaker
I love interacting with people. right i mean My business is fully remote, but um I love going to
Balancing Remote and In-Person Interaction
00:32:02
Speaker
conferences. I love networking. i love sitting in a room and hearing some thought leaders talk about cool things and it's my brain going and I can turn to my left and talk to someone and get their aspect of it. So i think that as you know as the the world continues to be flat right and become borderless,
00:32:22
Speaker
um I think that we just need to give people the opportunity to connect a little bit more on on whether that's like through a lunch and learn, whether that's through like a virtual coffee, whether that's like taking them to retreats.
00:32:34
Speaker
Right. I still think that human piece is still very much needed. How do you see your own work evolving in line with this? Probably my own here, I would think.
00:32:46
Speaker
Um, yeah, my, my, my, my world is getting busier. I'm i'm currently sitting in the growth seat. Um, so I'm, you know, as mentioned, I'm a recruiter by trade. So I was overseeing recruiting and customer success and account management for the longest time. And I just moved into the sales and marketing seat.
00:33:05
Speaker
Um, and I think a lot of my background in recruiting, just asking questions, getting to know people, um really helps in the world of
Staying Authentic in Business Communication
00:33:14
Speaker
sales. I think that my role will be changing because there's just a lot more tools.
00:33:20
Speaker
But also too, that's like another confusing part is there's so many different tools that come out like every week that it's hard to really keep up to date with everything. And so, um yeah, my only recommendation is like get somebody who's really good at ops and who's really interested in emerging tech.
00:33:37
Speaker
Yeah. You know, I always kind of like to end on, on this, um, on this, this question, this, this thought, you know, if, if you have a, if a, you know, business leader comes to you, you know, an entrepreneur or you you mentioned, obviously you work with a lot of startups.
00:33:56
Speaker
Um, so whether it's an entrepreneur, you know, or some, some sort of business leader asking for some really, you know, strong, advice, maybe, maybe the most single port, uh, important piece of advice you can give them about managing people. Well, especially those in a remote workforce, right. and Taking care of them, building that team, right. If you only had a minute, you're on an elevator up to the top floor and before the door opens and they walk out, what is that one thing that you tell them?
00:34:26
Speaker
um Let's see here. Yeah, no, this is great. um Let's see here ah real quickly. So yeah, we do service stars. We've moved into more like medium sized businesses over the last few years because the COVID thing.
00:34:43
Speaker
um When I talk to people, um you know, that i was actually having a call with, I had a call this morning with one of my sales reps and were just kind of just chit chatting.
00:34:56
Speaker
And, you know, he's been with our company for about a year, a year plus. And I was telling him that a lot, like we were going through some of the emails, he CCs me on some of the emails. And I'm like, like man, like, i love that you're doing the follow up.
00:35:11
Speaker
But a lot of the stuff is like, I can tell it's like g chat GPT or AI generated, right? It just seems so vanilla. And I think in this space that we're in right now with like, there's so much content coming at us, right? There's so much information. Like I'm getting pinged on LinkedIn and like, to be honest, like everything sounds the same.
00:35:34
Speaker
Whether it's like, hey, I didn't, you must be busy or your inbox is full. And it's like the M dashes, right? And you can just tell like what is just like a bot. And so I think the biggest thing right now is like really, really trying to figure out how to,
00:35:52
Speaker
portray your voice and your authenticity in some of these like 30 second window grabs. Right. And so, and I'm trying to figure that out now. And I'm not, you know, I'm not saying to like go and and write follow up email, the cuss word in it by any means, unless, you know, you have that rapport with someone, but that's like the biggest thing is like, how do you want, how does one like really highlight their authentic personal self in like this 30 second elevator pitch?
00:36:20
Speaker
Right. And then the second part is, you know, I've been doing this now for a very long time. I'm 41. um You know, I'm not really trying to give anyone an elevator pitch anymore.
00:36:31
Speaker
You know, if if I'm at a conference, like I'm just trying to become a friend with someone more first than anything. And I guess it's like, you know, any of the sales books would say like you're you're selling yourself. Right.
00:36:43
Speaker
But that's what it is. Like, i'm ah I'm not out here being like, hey, tell me about your hiring problems. Oh, hey, how many people have you hired? Like, that just kind of comes off way too selly. But it's like, if I'm at a conference, I'm going to be like, what do you think about that guy's perspective on agentic AI and where this is moving? And then, you know, through those discussions and conversations, oh, what? And then it's like, you know, 20 minutes into it, you're like, what do you even do? Like, oh, I run this type of business. Like, oh, cool. What do you do? Like, oh, I run a remote staffing agency. It's like, oh, dude, I'm actually looking for someone in this position. And that's kind of where, like,
00:37:12
Speaker
the magic happens. yeah right And so that would be my um my you know two cents of advice is just be yourself. you know People want to do business with people that they like. And in the world we're in now where there's so much content and so much just stuff being thrown at you and everyone's just hitting you up with same messaging, like just set yourself apart, just be your authentic self.
00:37:34
Speaker
I have to say, chat GPT really ruined it for me. And my creative use of the M dash, I had to quickly nix that from my, from my writing.
00:37:46
Speaker
Totally. You see that. and It's just an automatic, like next, you know? And so again, it's like, how do you have like that small little window? to show who you are.
00:37:56
Speaker
Right. And again, it might just be like taking the extra step to research and be like, Oh, you know, you're, you're, you live in Toronto. Cool. You know, go blue Jays, you know, I'm here in San Diego. So obviously, you know, we root for the Padres.
Conclusion and Farewell
00:38:09
Speaker
Well, Daniel, thank you so much for joining me, man. I really appreciate it. Um, it's been great sitting down to chat with you. No, likewise, Curtis, I appreciate your time. Thanks for asking the questions that you did and I wish you guys nothing but success.
00:38:24
Speaker
Yeah, same. Thanks all for tuning in to Mustard Hub Voices Behind the Build. Please like and share this episode. Drop by mustardhub.com to learn how we can help companies become destinations for workplace happiness and turn culture into a competitive edge. And be sure to sign up to be one of the first to get started with Mustard Hub for free when you visit.
00:38:44
Speaker
Until next time.