June 13, 2025 • 12 mins
In this episode, I’m diving into one of the biggest shifts in how we work: remote vs. in-office. After building a 9-figure company and leading high-performing teams, I’ve learned that where and how people work deeply impacts culture, momentum, and long-term success.
We’ll talk about what’s really lost when teams go fully remote, why in-person environments still matter for growth and collaboration, and how to think strategically about your career environment—especially if you want to move faster, build confidence, and stay connected.
If you’ve ever felt off-track or disconnected at work, this conversation is for you.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
S1 (00:00):
Welcome to business and the podcast for people making it
all happen. Running a successful business completely takes over your life,
but I'm a believer that there is still room for
some ands like health, wealth, beauty, and maybe even some fashion.
On this podcast, I'll share with you what's working for
scaling my nine figure business while keeping you up to
date on the latest trends, news and fun finds. This
(00:23):
is a place for business and let's dive in!
S2 (00:26):
Welcome to business. And one of the things I'm very
passionate about is getting people to work in an office.
We've spent millions of dollars in order to build great
offices where people enjoy working. We want people in office.
I believe that somebody inside my environment, I'm able to
more significantly impact than if they are just left on
their own in order to create their own environment, in
(00:47):
their own home, in a place that isn't inspiring to
them currently. So this episode is all about how you
stay firm on working in office, what the perks of
working in office are, and how you get the best
team members who want to help you work in office
and crush your goals. Let's dive in. The first reason
CEOs are done with remote work. It kills momentum. It
is so tempting to work remotely, I get it, there
(01:11):
is nothing that sounds nicer than being able to have
a pile of laundry that's actually getting done while you're
on a call and moving certain initiatives forward, but what
I found is that remote work actually slows your progress.
It doesn't make it faster, because all of a sudden,
that laundry list of things that you had to do,
you start slowly chipping away at those things, but you
don't ever get any one thing done to the full extent.
(01:33):
Your brain is scattered in multiple places and you're solving
multiple problems all at once. You're solving home personal fitness problems,
all while you're also trying to solve financial problems. If
you really want to make a lot of money, you
should spend the majority of your brainpower focused on your
financial related problems. Not trying to be more effective at home,
not trying to be more productive. Not trying to have
(01:54):
this perfectly run household. None of that makes you money
and it also slows you in your career. So if
you are feeling slow, unmotivated, or disconnected from your passions
and your goals, it might just be because you're working remotely.
Get back in office. And I have a feeling that
all of a sudden you're going to make progress on
the most important things and the things that don't matter.
(02:14):
They don't matter. Next is number two. CEOs know that
the secret to company culture is actually having people show
up and listen, I have tried. You see, I do
a daily team call every single morning, and this daily
call has as much energy as it can possibly have
for being a zoom call, but it doesn't replace real
in-person interactions. You don't make best friends. You don't run
(02:38):
up against people on a zoom call. You just see
them as screens. And sure, you may learn a little
bit about them just by them being in their home
and you being able to see different things that they're
interested in, plans that they have, books that they have.
We started our business in 2019, and the moment that
Covid hit, we moved to a remote work environment. And
what I can tell you is that as soon as
we went remote, our team members figured out ways to
(03:01):
meet in person and to do work in person. Not
because we forced them to, but because they wanted to.
People who are high performers want to be around other
people who are high performers. They met in person because
in-person matters. And the more that we move into a
digital age with AI generating images, which are very difficult
to determine whether or not they're real or fake, the
(03:22):
in-person contact for high performers changes everything. You can see energy,
you can see the tone, you can make eye contact.
And that is really hard to replicate virtually if you've
been feeling disengaged or uninspired at work. The missing ingredient
might be the proximity to the culture and fun energy
of the place that you work. I am so passionate
(03:44):
about this topic that I actually wrote an entire book
about it. It is called Start the Work and if
you go to start the work, I can get you
a free copy. Now back over to number three. Next
is number three. This is the one that CEOs never
say out loud. Remote work makes it way easier to quit.
You see, the number one reason why people stay in
(04:04):
an organization is because they have a work bestie. There's
somebody at work that they enjoy spending time with. They
enjoy hanging out with and having that in person person
allows the team to be more cohesive and gives a
reason to people to stay, especially when times are tough.
There's a contraction. There are issues in the business. The
people are what make the business actually work, and the
(04:27):
people are the reason that your best people stay. When
we made the shift after quarantine was over from remote
to in-person, there were definitely some employees who chose to leave,
and they chose to leave because they didn't have people
that they were connected to. But those who stayed, they
thrived because of their relationships and the personal connections that
they had with team members. You see, CEOs rely on
(04:50):
empathy and connection and employees, motivating each other to create
a working environment that attracts and retains top talent. The
best workplaces are the workplaces where you feel like you're
rubbing shoulders against people who are high performers, people who
you can learn from. So if you work remote and
you feel disconnected or unfulfilled, try to form new relationships
(05:12):
with your coworkers in person if you can. Next is
number four. Leaders can't fix what they can't see. Countless
problems go entirely unnoticed in a remote environment, and it's
very challenging for a senior leader to see what's going
on when the problem is not really visible. I remember
(05:34):
a specific team that I worked with when they were remote,
and the senior leader was confused as to why their
team members weren't actually hitting results. And week after week,
the senior team member became more and more frustrated because
their junior team members weren't doing what they wanted them
to do. And I said, have you looked at where
they're spending their time? And he's like, what do you mean?
How could I look at where they're spending their time?
(05:54):
It's like, well, pull up their calendars with them and
their one on ones and ask them where they're spending
their time. And when he did this the following week,
he was shocked to find out that the team members
were prioritizing two things taking approximately 50% of their time
that they didn't even need to do, which was causing
a significant lack of productivity. But you see, the senior
person couldn't see that this was happening because they couldn't
(06:17):
see that people were actually meeting about some project that
wasn't germane to what they were supposed to be doing.
They were meeting without the senior team member even knowing
about it. So the ability to see what's going on
in your environment when you're a leader allows you to
have instant feedback of whether or not somebody is spending
their time, right, or if they're spending their time in
the wrong places. And as you grow a business, it
(06:38):
becomes more and more important for your team members to
be solving the right problems. So this real time feedback
is the missing component. If you feel like your career
is not going anywhere. It's likely not because of a
lack of skill. It's a lack of visibility. Nobody knows
that you're solving the wrong problems, and nobody's guiding you
to solve better problems and more important problems. If you're
(07:00):
early in your career, embrace going into the office and
looking for an in-office role. You will grow so much
faster than your peers who think that it's really convenient
to have a remote job. Sure, it might be convenient,
and it sounds nice and it's the sexy thing to do,
but I can assure you they will not progress as
fast as you will. If you pick the right place
(07:22):
with the right team and take a lot of action
in order to make sure that you're moving the most
important things forward. Next is one of the biggest secrets
CEOs won't admit. They build beautiful offices because they understand
that your work environment shapes your dreams. You see, behind
me is one of our many beautiful office spaces. I
(07:43):
have meticulously picked out every color, every surface, every texture
inside this office. And I did it for two purposes.
The first, I wanted to give our clients an experience.
When they walk in the office. I wanted to represent
the quality of the work that we do. But the
second reason was to give my team members access to
something that they could touch, that they could feel that
they could be a part of every single day that
(08:04):
made their dreams feel like they're possible. When I first
started my career, I dreamed of having The Devil Wears
Prada moment, where she walks across the big entryway in
some gorgeous New York building, and she goes up this
beautiful elevator, and she's entering these glass doors with the
Vogue logo behind a very chic counter. And the office
(08:24):
just looked inspiring. It looked like someplace you'd want to
work and spend 12 hours a day or 14 hours
a day, because it was actually a cool place to be.
And when I was creating this office, I wanted that
same experience for my team members. And this is what
great CEOs do. JP Morgan just spent tens of millions
of dollars on their most recent build out, so that
they could have restaurants and different types of food, and
(08:45):
all sorts of different services available to their team members
to optimize their ability to work. Now, we've done this
in small ways and are continuing to iterate on this
for the sole purpose of having our team members have
an experience that they enjoy. Because your environment subconsciously reinforces identity,
and walking into a polished, high aesthetic space elevates your standards.
(09:06):
If you want to level up your output. Start by
working at big companies where you can feel the inspiration
and the energy inside that environment. That brings us to
the final insight, which is CEOs know that in office
work provides more job security for employees. You see, here
is the real data remote. First, startups grow 30% slower,
(09:27):
according to the Startup Genome report, and they are 40%
more likely to fail after early fundraising. And office based
companies are twice as likely to hit major growth milestones,
according to Crunchbase. So data never lies. It is so
easy in today's society to think that remote work is
just the greatest thing, and that this is the new
(09:48):
era and that this is what makes sense. But I
promise you that working remote is the fastest way for
you to get confused, for you to get insecure, and
for you not to make the progress that you want. Now,
there might be a handful of people out there who
can make remote work for them. I am not one
of those people. I need to interact with leaders. I
need to create energy. I need to see what is
happening in my environment, and I want to be around
(10:10):
people that are pushing me to the next level. That's
what nobody's talking about when they talk about remote work.
You in your bedroom, you in your office, you working
at your kitchen means you are stuck inside your existing environment.
There is no you going outside the environment outside of
your normal day to day routine tasks like going to
the grocery store, getting gas at the gas station so
(10:31):
you're not going in places that are going to make
you more money. You're in the exact same places, making
the same amount of money that you already make. In
order to make more money, nine times out of ten,
you have to leave where you are in order to
go someplace new to be uncomfortable, to connect with new people.
And you're not going to do that while sitting comfortably
in your home. In fact, you're going to get so
comfortable that it's going to be even harder for you
to go out and feel confident talking to people. It's
(10:53):
going to be even harder for you to go to
the networking event, because you have to change out of
your pajamas and everything feels like you're just not ready
for it, because you aren't actually ready for it. You
are compromising your growth for your comfort when you are
working remote. If you're in a certain phase of life
that requires you to do that, okay, cool, that makes sense.
But don't complain about not making more forward progression at
(11:14):
the same time as you're actually choosing comfort, because the
lack of forward progression is quite literally because you are
not putting yourself in uncomfortable situations with new people and
forcing yourself to do something over and over again that
you likely don't want to do in order to get
a great outcome. You see, when people choose to show
up in office and they work hard alongside other people
(11:34):
who are working hard, who they feel inspired by, their
chances of success increase remarkably. If you want job security.
You probably shouldn't work remote because those companies are more
likely to fail. So moving into a city in your
20s where you work for a big corporate company is
something that I strongly recommend. You'll not only connect with
people and make friends, but you'll have more job security
(11:56):
than remote work can ever give you, and you will
create more confidence in yourself by doing something that you
are incredibly uncomfortable doing. If you enjoyed this podcast, you
are going to definitely not want to miss out on
my new newsletter. It just dropped. I just started creating
this content and I am obsessed. Every single week in
your inbox I am going to send you business and
(12:18):
which is exactly what it sounds like. How do you
fit business and all of the other things in.
S3 (12:23):
Your life so that you are up to speed on fashion, beauty, wellness,
all things that really matter. If you want to subscribe
and get this special gift and weekly treat in your inbox,
go to carpenters.com. Forward slash.
Welcome to business and the podcast for people making it
all happen. Running a successful business completely takes over your life,
but I'm a believer that there is still room for
some ands like health, wealth, beauty, and maybe even some fashion.
On this podcast, I'll share with you what's working for
scaling my nine figure business while keeping you up to
date on the latest trends, news and fun finds. This
(00:23):
is a place for business and let's dive in!
S2 (00:26):
Welcome to business. And one of the things I'm very
passionate about is getting people to work in an office.
We've spent millions of dollars in order to build great
offices where people enjoy working. We want people in office.
I believe that somebody inside my environment, I'm able to
more significantly impact than if they are just left on
their own in order to create their own environment, in
(00:47):
their own home, in a place that isn't inspiring to
them currently. So this episode is all about how you
stay firm on working in office, what the perks of
working in office are, and how you get the best
team members who want to help you work in office
and crush your goals. Let's dive in. The first reason
CEOs are done with remote work. It kills momentum. It
is so tempting to work remotely, I get it, there
(01:11):
is nothing that sounds nicer than being able to have
a pile of laundry that's actually getting done while you're
on a call and moving certain initiatives forward, but what
I found is that remote work actually slows your progress.
It doesn't make it faster, because all of a sudden,
that laundry list of things that you had to do,
you start slowly chipping away at those things, but you
don't ever get any one thing done to the full extent.
(01:33):
Your brain is scattered in multiple places and you're solving
multiple problems all at once. You're solving home personal fitness problems,
all while you're also trying to solve financial problems. If
you really want to make a lot of money, you
should spend the majority of your brainpower focused on your
financial related problems. Not trying to be more effective at home,
not trying to be more productive. Not trying to have
(01:54):
this perfectly run household. None of that makes you money
and it also slows you in your career. So if
you are feeling slow, unmotivated, or disconnected from your passions
and your goals, it might just be because you're working remotely.
Get back in office. And I have a feeling that
all of a sudden you're going to make progress on
the most important things and the things that don't matter.
(02:14):
They don't matter. Next is number two. CEOs know that
the secret to company culture is actually having people show
up and listen, I have tried. You see, I do
a daily team call every single morning, and this daily
call has as much energy as it can possibly have
for being a zoom call, but it doesn't replace real
in-person interactions. You don't make best friends. You don't run
(02:38):
up against people on a zoom call. You just see
them as screens. And sure, you may learn a little
bit about them just by them being in their home
and you being able to see different things that they're
interested in, plans that they have, books that they have.
We started our business in 2019, and the moment that
Covid hit, we moved to a remote work environment. And
what I can tell you is that as soon as
we went remote, our team members figured out ways to
(03:01):
meet in person and to do work in person. Not
because we forced them to, but because they wanted to.
People who are high performers want to be around other
people who are high performers. They met in person because
in-person matters. And the more that we move into a
digital age with AI generating images, which are very difficult
to determine whether or not they're real or fake, the
(03:22):
in-person contact for high performers changes everything. You can see energy,
you can see the tone, you can make eye contact.
And that is really hard to replicate virtually if you've
been feeling disengaged or uninspired at work. The missing ingredient
might be the proximity to the culture and fun energy
of the place that you work. I am so passionate
(03:44):
about this topic that I actually wrote an entire book
about it. It is called Start the Work and if
you go to start the work, I can get you
a free copy. Now back over to number three. Next
is number three. This is the one that CEOs never
say out loud. Remote work makes it way easier to quit.
You see, the number one reason why people stay in
(04:04):
an organization is because they have a work bestie. There's
somebody at work that they enjoy spending time with. They
enjoy hanging out with and having that in person person
allows the team to be more cohesive and gives a
reason to people to stay, especially when times are tough.
There's a contraction. There are issues in the business. The
people are what make the business actually work, and the
(04:27):
people are the reason that your best people stay. When
we made the shift after quarantine was over from remote
to in-person, there were definitely some employees who chose to leave,
and they chose to leave because they didn't have people
that they were connected to. But those who stayed, they
thrived because of their relationships and the personal connections that
they had with team members. You see, CEOs rely on
(04:50):
empathy and connection and employees, motivating each other to create
a working environment that attracts and retains top talent. The
best workplaces are the workplaces where you feel like you're
rubbing shoulders against people who are high performers, people who
you can learn from. So if you work remote and
you feel disconnected or unfulfilled, try to form new relationships
(05:12):
with your coworkers in person if you can. Next is
number four. Leaders can't fix what they can't see. Countless
problems go entirely unnoticed in a remote environment, and it's
very challenging for a senior leader to see what's going
on when the problem is not really visible. I remember
(05:34):
a specific team that I worked with when they were remote,
and the senior leader was confused as to why their
team members weren't actually hitting results. And week after week,
the senior team member became more and more frustrated because
their junior team members weren't doing what they wanted them
to do. And I said, have you looked at where
they're spending their time? And he's like, what do you mean?
How could I look at where they're spending their time?
(05:54):
It's like, well, pull up their calendars with them and
their one on ones and ask them where they're spending
their time. And when he did this the following week,
he was shocked to find out that the team members
were prioritizing two things taking approximately 50% of their time
that they didn't even need to do, which was causing
a significant lack of productivity. But you see, the senior
person couldn't see that this was happening because they couldn't
(06:17):
see that people were actually meeting about some project that
wasn't germane to what they were supposed to be doing.
They were meeting without the senior team member even knowing
about it. So the ability to see what's going on
in your environment when you're a leader allows you to
have instant feedback of whether or not somebody is spending
their time, right, or if they're spending their time in
the wrong places. And as you grow a business, it
(06:38):
becomes more and more important for your team members to
be solving the right problems. So this real time feedback
is the missing component. If you feel like your career
is not going anywhere. It's likely not because of a
lack of skill. It's a lack of visibility. Nobody knows
that you're solving the wrong problems, and nobody's guiding you
to solve better problems and more important problems. If you're
(07:00):
early in your career, embrace going into the office and
looking for an in-office role. You will grow so much
faster than your peers who think that it's really convenient
to have a remote job. Sure, it might be convenient,
and it sounds nice and it's the sexy thing to do,
but I can assure you they will not progress as
fast as you will. If you pick the right place
(07:22):
with the right team and take a lot of action
in order to make sure that you're moving the most
important things forward. Next is one of the biggest secrets
CEOs won't admit. They build beautiful offices because they understand
that your work environment shapes your dreams. You see, behind
me is one of our many beautiful office spaces. I
(07:43):
have meticulously picked out every color, every surface, every texture
inside this office. And I did it for two purposes.
The first, I wanted to give our clients an experience.
When they walk in the office. I wanted to represent
the quality of the work that we do. But the
second reason was to give my team members access to
something that they could touch, that they could feel that
they could be a part of every single day that
(08:04):
made their dreams feel like they're possible. When I first
started my career, I dreamed of having The Devil Wears
Prada moment, where she walks across the big entryway in
some gorgeous New York building, and she goes up this
beautiful elevator, and she's entering these glass doors with the
Vogue logo behind a very chic counter. And the office
(08:24):
just looked inspiring. It looked like someplace you'd want to
work and spend 12 hours a day or 14 hours
a day, because it was actually a cool place to be.
And when I was creating this office, I wanted that
same experience for my team members. And this is what
great CEOs do. JP Morgan just spent tens of millions
of dollars on their most recent build out, so that
they could have restaurants and different types of food, and
(08:45):
all sorts of different services available to their team members
to optimize their ability to work. Now, we've done this
in small ways and are continuing to iterate on this
for the sole purpose of having our team members have
an experience that they enjoy. Because your environment subconsciously reinforces identity,
and walking into a polished, high aesthetic space elevates your standards.
(09:06):
If you want to level up your output. Start by
working at big companies where you can feel the inspiration
and the energy inside that environment. That brings us to
the final insight, which is CEOs know that in office
work provides more job security for employees. You see, here
is the real data remote. First, startups grow 30% slower,
(09:27):
according to the Startup Genome report, and they are 40%
more likely to fail after early fundraising. And office based
companies are twice as likely to hit major growth milestones,
according to Crunchbase. So data never lies. It is so
easy in today's society to think that remote work is
just the greatest thing, and that this is the new
(09:48):
era and that this is what makes sense. But I
promise you that working remote is the fastest way for
you to get confused, for you to get insecure, and
for you not to make the progress that you want. Now,
there might be a handful of people out there who
can make remote work for them. I am not one
of those people. I need to interact with leaders. I
need to create energy. I need to see what is
happening in my environment, and I want to be around
(10:10):
people that are pushing me to the next level. That's
what nobody's talking about when they talk about remote work.
You in your bedroom, you in your office, you working
at your kitchen means you are stuck inside your existing environment.
There is no you going outside the environment outside of
your normal day to day routine tasks like going to
the grocery store, getting gas at the gas station so
(10:31):
you're not going in places that are going to make
you more money. You're in the exact same places, making
the same amount of money that you already make. In
order to make more money, nine times out of ten,
you have to leave where you are in order to
go someplace new to be uncomfortable, to connect with new people.
And you're not going to do that while sitting comfortably
in your home. In fact, you're going to get so
comfortable that it's going to be even harder for you
to go out and feel confident talking to people. It's
(10:53):
going to be even harder for you to go to
the networking event, because you have to change out of
your pajamas and everything feels like you're just not ready
for it, because you aren't actually ready for it. You
are compromising your growth for your comfort when you are
working remote. If you're in a certain phase of life
that requires you to do that, okay, cool, that makes sense.
But don't complain about not making more forward progression at
(11:14):
the same time as you're actually choosing comfort, because the
lack of forward progression is quite literally because you are
not putting yourself in uncomfortable situations with new people and
forcing yourself to do something over and over again that
you likely don't want to do in order to get
a great outcome. You see, when people choose to show
up in office and they work hard alongside other people
(11:34):
who are working hard, who they feel inspired by, their
chances of success increase remarkably. If you want job security.
You probably shouldn't work remote because those companies are more
likely to fail. So moving into a city in your
20s where you work for a big corporate company is
something that I strongly recommend. You'll not only connect with
people and make friends, but you'll have more job security
(11:56):
than remote work can ever give you, and you will
create more confidence in yourself by doing something that you
are incredibly uncomfortable doing. If you enjoyed this podcast, you
are going to definitely not want to miss out on
my new newsletter. It just dropped. I just started creating
this content and I am obsessed. Every single week in
your inbox I am going to send you business and
(12:18):
which is exactly what it sounds like. How do you
fit business and all of the other things in.
S3 (12:23):
Your life so that you are up to speed on fashion, beauty, wellness,
all things that really matter. If you want to subscribe
and get this special gift and weekly treat in your inbox,
go to carpenters.com. Forward slash.
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