December 2, 2025 • 48 mins
🟪 Join 500+ Smart Entrepreneurs ➤ https://www.gabemarusca.com and learn each week for free, how to build client acquisition systems that scale revenue and impact, without burning out or breaking down.
Eric Dingler has spent over 30 years building and leading teams, and his approach to remote team leadership cuts through the noise. In this episode, he reveals why good managers often run businesses into the ground while great managers succeed because they refuse to change—and what that counterintuitive principle actually means for your team.
Eric breaks down the invisible mechanics of recruiting and operating a remote team, drawing from five years of transitioning his leadership expertise from in-person to distributed work. This isn't about remote work tips or productivity hacks. It's about the fundamental leadership skills required to build a team that functions without constant oversight.
The hiring framework that separates adults from people who need constant management determines your operational capacity and reveals why leadership isn't about getting it right, but about making adjustments—a reframe that changes everything about decision-making. Eric brings clarity to leading remote versus in-person teams through team laboratories where he experimented with different approaches to recruiting, training, and leadership, uncovering why talented managers can become organizational liabilities and whether you're building systems or just managing activity. If you've struggled to scale your team, wondered why your hiring process keeps producing the wrong people, or questioned whether remote work can actually deliver results, this episode deconstructs the systems that work—no motivational content, no philosophy debates, just field-tested principles for building authority through operational competence.
🟪 About the Guest
Eric Dingler - Leadership expert with over 30 years of experience in team building, recruitment systems, and remote operations. Spent five years transitioning leadership frameworks from in-person to distributed teams.
🟪 Timestamps
(00:00) Introducing Eric Dingler
(01:26) Is the Future Remote?
(02:12) Differences Between Remote and In-Person Leadership
(04:28) Building a Remote Team Culture
(10:23) Recruitment and Onboarding Strategies
(16:21) Ensuring Remote Team Performance
(20:40) Balancing Flexibility and Accountability
(21:45) The Role of Leadership vs. Management
(24:57) Principles of Remote Work
(27:01) Remote Work in Various Industries
(29:13) Hiring Strategies for Remote Teams
(35:41) Project-Based vs. Hourly Work
(37:55) Personal Journey and Purpose
(43:29) Best Ever Advice Eric Got
🟪 Key Topics Discussed
- Why "hire adults, not babies" is more than a hiring slogan—it's an operational framework
- The leadership skill that matters more than getting decisions right
- What separates remote team success from remote team chaos
- Why great managers succeed by refusing to change (and what that actually means)
- The recruitment and training systems that produce self-sufficient team members
🟪 Connect with Eric Dingler
- Website: https://ericdingler.com/inthewild
🟪 Connect with Gabe Marusca
- Website: https://www.gabemarusca.com
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@gabemarusca
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabemarusca/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gabemarusca/
- X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/gabemarusca
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/maruscagabe/
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
If your team can't work remote, it's not your team's fault, it's
your leadership capacity. Meet Eric Dingler with over 30
years of experience building andleading teams.
And for 15 years he ran a summercamp which gave him 15 team
laboratories to experiment with different approaches to
recruiting, training and leadership.
For the last five years, he has transitioned those skills from
(00:22):
in person teams to his remote team.
A good manager will run a business into the ground.
That's the sign of a good manager.
A great manager will ruin a company because they don't
change. In today's episode, we dive into
how to recruit and operate a remote team, what leadership
(00:43):
skills you need in order to be successful in leading a remote
team, and the benefits of leading a remote team comparing
to an in person one. Leadership isn't about getting
it right. Leadership is about making
adjustments. If you ever wonder why remote
teams are so successful and you want to learn how to build your
own, this episode is for you. Eric, I truly believe that you
(01:08):
live in a world where you cannotkeep people inside the cubicle
and expect them to perform. And even that pandemic made
remote work popular. A lot of us live a remote
lifestyle and work remotely for way longer than that.
Why do you believe this is the future?
(01:29):
Well, I like you said, I think people, a lot of people got the
taste of it. And there's a lot of people that
have been living a remote lifestyle successfully and more
and more of them are living thatout loud through social media.
And so there's this, this new desire that people have that
they they want that it's not foreverybody, but I think it's for
(01:51):
the vast majority of people. And so I think the more we can
do to help leaders transition tounderstanding leading a remote
team is different than leading an in person team, that's when
we'll see more and more success happen for people in the remote
workspace. And what's the big difference
(02:14):
between leading a remote team from one on site?
Well, great question. So for 15 years I ran a summer
camp in the United States. And so all of my team was local,
but I also got this chance to every year.
It was like having these 15 little laboratories, you know, I
(02:34):
got to experiment every year andgrow and develop my leadership.
And so now I've transitioned to leading a full remote team.
And the difference is my mindsethad to change on expectations.
I have to be more intentional todevelop culture because culture
(02:55):
Trump's vision. So you can have the greatest
vision for your company to achieve great things, but the
culture is going to really determine the quality of the
journey and the speed of the journey.
So as a leader leading a remote team, you have to be way more
intentional developing culture, developing people.
You have to get comfortable being asynchronous.
(03:19):
You know, there's, there's all this stuff you have to let go of
the concept of time equaling results and outcomes equaling
results. So really what it comes down to,
Gabe, in my opinion, in my experience as well, is your
leadership capacity, is the capacity of your business.
And this is true everywhere. Your business, your marriage,
(03:42):
your parenting, none of them cango beyond the capacity of your
own personal leadership skills. So when you learn to lead
better, you live better. And so for leaders to transition
to leading remote team successfully, you have to grow
as a leader. It starts with you not finding
the right people. One of the things I the way I
(04:04):
tell it to people is you have toask yourself, are you the leader
that the team you want to lead wants to follow?
So it's, it starts with the leaders first.
So to me, it all comes back to leadership.
And that's the reality, right? Because otherwise it's almost
impossible to build a successfulbusiness, to put together a
successful team and especially to lead that team remotely.
(04:28):
And if any leaders that are the brain to start this journey of
transitioning to remote work andbuilding a remote team, what
would you your advice for them in order to build that culture
and ensure that they just don't deal with faceless employees
(04:49):
that's they never meet in personor they don't have any sort of
connection with? Right.
So one, I think it's important to understand that there is a
difference between hiring a freelancer and a team member if
you have a physical building. So let's say you own a
restaurant, OK? And so that's a location and
you've got, you know, cooks and dishwashers and servers and all
(05:13):
that. You have a team that comes to
work every day, but you also have the repairman that you call
from time to time when a piece of equipment in the kitchen
breaks down. So you have these contractors,
but that's a different relationship than your team.
And so in remote work, it's kindof the same thing.
We have people that we use as contractors to come in and do
(05:37):
specific things at different times, but then we also have a
team and you have to define thatdifferently.
And then the next thing I would say is if you have only worked
in in person environments, what I recommend is we call it the
principle behind the practice. You know, so you have to ask
(05:57):
yourself, well, what made an in person team work is going to be
the same thing that makes a remote team work, but you have
to contextualize it. So, for example, the break room,
yeah, a lot of in place, you know, companies and teams, they
have that break room that peoplego to.
You know, they can go in and grab a cup of coffee and they go
(06:20):
in and sit down and they have lunch and, you know, they take
their 15 minute break there. And that's when you find out,
oh, you went to that concert. Oh, I like that kind of music.
And you know, oh, that would be great.
And that's where you start developing these relationships
that then help feed a healthy culture.
And so we have a virtual break room for our team.
(06:42):
And so from time to time, I go in and I load different barcodes
for different regions of the world, but I'll load in
Starbucks because everybody on my team, India, El Salvador, the
United States, Bulgaria, Ukraine, they've all got
Starbucks. OK.
So I'll go in and preload Starbucks gift cards from
(07:04):
different regions of the world. And I put those barcodes in our
virtual break room. And so our team can go to their
local Starbucks and grab a coffee and scan the code and we
pay for it just as if we were paying for coffee in a break
room. But they have to post a selfie
of themselves and join their cupof coffee.
(07:24):
And then what happens is people start to like, oh, what kind of
coffee do you have? Oh, we, we can't get that kind
of coffee here. And so you start having this
whole conversation about it, or we'll go in once a week and
we'll ask people, you know, we'll ask in the team, you know,
anybody doing anything differentthis weekend?
Or we'll have photo scavenger hunts and it'll be like, you
(07:47):
know, we'll have a everybody post a picture of, you know,
your favorite grocery store. Because if you're on an in
person team, you're probably allused to already seeing the same
things that the people you're working with see.
You know, it's you're seeing thesame town, you're seeing the
same streets when you live in the Ukraine and you live in El
(08:11):
Salvador, you're not seeing any of the same stores and things
like that. So to post a picture of, oh, you
know, I like to shop at Tesco and you know, oh, I like to shop
at the Piggly Wiggly, you know, whatever it is, those kinds of
things start to humanize the experience.
So that's just one example. And I love this example because
(08:31):
indeed, bringing real life experiences into a virtual world
is not easy. And you find a way to do it.
And I think it's not just smart,but it's a way for people to
understand more about the culture of their colleagues, to
understand more about their habits, where they enjoy, what
(08:51):
type of coffee they enjoy at Starbucks, other things.
And I think bringing this human connection into the conversation
is super powerful because at theend of the day, you cannot just
build a team, have a virtual Zoom meeting once a week and
expect them to perform. You need to make them feel part
(09:12):
of something. And on that note, like how do
you ensure that a remote team performs as well as a in person
team? Even so, personally I know that
actually those remotes usually perform better than those on
site, but that's another. Yeah.
Well, we eventually realized wasa bit of a framework and so we
(09:34):
call it, you know, ROD 2 and so it's recruit on board, delegate,
develop. And so you need to have a system
for all four of those leaders fix systems.
We don't fix people. We influence people.
But in business and in leadership, it's never a people
(09:58):
problem. It's always a systems problem.
So, you know, I'll talk to people and they're like, oh, I
could never do that with my team.
I got to be on them like a hawk.If I let up for just an inch,
they take a kilometer. Like, you know, I can't, you
know, And I'm like, wow, you've hired the wrong people.
And so you have a hiring problem.
(10:19):
You have a recruitment systems issue and so it starts with the
recruiting. We are very slow to hire.
You're if somebody joins our team, not now, this isn't a
freelancer, this is joining the team.
If you join the team, you're going to do 3 different
interviews with three different people and one person on the
(10:41):
team is interviewing you about your character.
What kind of character do you have?
Do you tell the truth even when it you don't want to?
You know, you keep your word or do you care about others you
know like this? We want to know your character.
That's the first thing we hire for.
We have some things we do to test when we post a position
(11:03):
description. Last week we posted a job.
We had 38 applicants. 2 of them answered all of the questions
that we asked in the position description.
Most everybody else said oh I read the position description,
I'm a perfect fit. Well wait a second.
(11:23):
If you read the job description,you would know that you were
supposed to tell us your favorite candy bar.
So you just told me you read thejob description, but you never
told me your favorite candy bar.So either you lied and didn't
read the job description or you're lying about how good your
English is because you didn't understand what I wrote.
(11:45):
And again, I don't care if you don't have great English for
most of our positions. I I don't really care, but I
need you to be truthful about your abilities and capabilities.
So we only interviewed those twopeople and we hired one of them
because we want character first,then we look for chemistry.
So a SEC, you're going to go to a second interview.
(12:06):
And so recently we just hired a junior web developer.
Well, this junior web developer is going to work for our
Director of Web Services, Peter.Well, we had our Director of
Digital Marketing Services, Paola, who knows Peter real well
because they've worked together now for a while.
She interviewed the candidates for our junior web developer and
(12:29):
she was just looking to see, is this person going to get along
with Peter? Is Peter going to get along with
him? She was interviewing them for
chemistry. Are you going to fit in with us?
Because life is short. If you don't fit in with us,
then don't work with it. Go, you know, get a job
somewhere else. You know, we don't.
We're, you know, it's just we want people that have a good fit
(12:49):
with us. And then the final interview is
your competency. And really what we're looking
for there is not what you know, but can you learn, you know, how
fast can you learn? Can you do you, are you
intuitively a problem solver andthat kind of stuff.
So that's what we're looking for.
When you have a system like thisthat is very intentional to
(13:16):
hiring people that align with your core values that want to be
part of the mission moving towards your vision, you're
going to hire the right people and you're going to eliminate
90% of your headaches. And so you have to have a clear
vision mission. Core values vision is that's
(13:37):
where we're headed. It it vision lets you tell your
team we're taking that mountain or you were going to the depths
of that ocean of this like you paint a picture of where you're
headed. The mission is the vehicle you
take. So for my I own a digital
marketing agency, that's my business.
Well, we see a world full of successful business owners that
(13:59):
leverage their margin to contribute to ending human
suffering around the world. That's why we do what we do.
We want our clients to have success and then we want to
influence them to take some of that success and donate it to a
missionary, donate it to one of their favorite causes.
(14:20):
You know, like if if you're passionate about, you know,
helping people get clean water, donate your access to that.
If you're passionate about humansuffering or human trafficking,
get involved with that. But that's our vision to help
businesses get successful, to contribute to ending human
suffering that they're passionate about.
Our mission is we do that as a digital marketing agency.
(14:43):
That's the vehicle we're in. We, you know, we work with
coachable business owners. So it's, you know, we've got our
whole, our whole mission, our mission, our core values are how
we behave inside the vehicle, which is our mission.
We spent 10 days in the Amazon jungle.
I was completely offline, but mycompany ran just fine because my
(15:05):
team had embraced and lived our core values.
So they were behaving and operating and making decisions
inside our vehicle, which is ourdigital marketing agency, moving
us towards helping businesses besuccessful.
As a leader, you have to have that in place, a vision,
(15:25):
mission, core values, and then you recruit people to be a part
of that. I'm telling you right now, Gabe,
you're going to have the most fun you've ever had in business
when you get that all that right.
Yeah. And I love this playbook because
when someone truly dive into it,understand it and apply to their
own business, them becoming a leader that people are attracted
(15:50):
to, want to be part of that mission is so much easier.
And you mentioned there that youspent a lot of time in the
Amazon jungle and your business was still running.
And one of the reason why some leaders want to build remote
teams is to have this flexibility of travelling, of
working from wherever. And there are any other things
(16:12):
they should look at when they are making this move if they
want to leave a location independent lifestyle and still
be able to run their business remotely.
Yeah. So, you know, once you onboard
your team, I love frameworks andsystems because again, it's
always a systems problem. So I'm obsessed about our
systems. When you recruit the right
(16:33):
people you're going to have, it's going to be easier for you
to have the freedom you have to onboard them the right way.
We, none of us have time to stopwhat we're doing.
I can't take a week off of work to train a new employee.
So we've developed a self onboarding.
All of our team trained themselves their first week and
(16:56):
we have an entire system and process for it, the self
onboarding dashboard. Then we have systems for
delegation and everybody has their job function.
Those are the tasks they have todo working in the business, you
know, so day in, day out, one ofour team, they're responsible
(17:16):
for putting together and sendingclient reports.
So they have to do that. That's their job.
But then there are other things that we do to work on the
business. So improving an SOP or updating
a system, you know, making something in the company better.
Well, I delegate those to different people on the team
(17:39):
depending upon their strengths. Nobody ever has more than six.
We call it the six by 6. Nobody leads more than six
people direct reports and nobodyhas more than six tasks at a
time that they're responsible for.
So this make sure that you're not overwhelming people.
I've got a way that I can open this Google doc or Google
(18:01):
Spreadsheet. I open and I can instantly see
what's on everybody's plate. And then every week our team has
to submit a report that lets us know what was the workload like
this week, what was their moraleand what was their stress like.
And I track that so I can see how are we trending as a
company? Is everybody feeling their
(18:21):
workload is balanced? Is everybody having a high
morale? Is their stress slow?
You know, 'cause that's the health of the team.
I used to be able to gauge that by just walking around.
Well, I can't do that when my team is across, you know, you
know, six time zones, you know, and I'm in one place.
I can't do that. So, so we measure that and now
(18:44):
we know that people have the right amount delegated to them.
They're equipped to accomplish the thing they've been
delegated. And we measure outcomes, not
hours. I don't care how many hours you
work as long as the job gets done.
Now, I don't want you to work more hours than you know, I
don't want anybody working 80 hours a week.
(19:05):
One of our core values is familybefore work.
So I want our team to have the flexibility to, you know, be
involved in their kids lives andtheir spouses, you know, like
it's family before work. Let's go back to client reports.
If you're responsible to send, you know, 25 client reports this
week, you have to send 25 clientreports this week.
(19:27):
Now, if that means you're working Saturday because you
chose and took Tuesday off, that's fine.
I don't care as long as the outcome happens.
And then you just got to trust your people.
Hire adults. Don't hire people that have to
be baby. It really comes back to
recruiting. It's that's so important.
And then the final D of ROD 2, the final D is you have to
(19:50):
continuously be developing. I'm constantly reminding our
team about our mission, our vision, our core values.
You know, I'm constantly celebrating with them, the
winds, because what gets rewarded gets repeated.
So if if you want your team to keep doing something, celebrate
it the first time it happens andthen let them know specifically
(20:15):
that you know, you appreciate itand value it.
And because what gets rewarded gets repeated.
So it's all part of those four systems?
Is why I'm able to take time offand be completely unplugged from
the company. We've recruited well, we've
onboarded the right way, we've delegated the right things at
the right times, and we're developing people all in the
(20:37):
right direction. So that's the framework I think
it takes. And you mentioned there are huge
benefits that a remote employee has, like being able to be
flexible, still doing their job,but having more time for the
family, having flexibility around the schedule rather than
stick to the traditional, I don't know, 9 to 5 schedule,
(21:01):
which it's outdated. That's the reality.
And still some leaders out therehave this friction like if they
don't work five days a week, they won't perform, they won't
do their job and so on. And indeed, you mentioned
they're like higher, first of all, grown-ups, like adults.
(21:21):
And that's some kids that did you want to play employee role
and to want to work remotely. And not to say that some kids
out there don't have capabilities of doing it, but
often it's unlikely. And they're still having this
friction. Like what can you tell them in
order to see the broader pictureof this powerful movement?
(21:45):
I think a reason we're seeing somany companies pivot back to
requiring their team to go into the office is they we were all
forced to jump to remote in the pandemic and leaders weren't in
place to help the change. What I have seen, the places
(22:09):
that have struggled, they have alot of managers and not enough
leaders. See, a good manager will run a
business into the ground. That's the sign of a good
manager. A great manager will ruin a
company. That's how you know you've got a
great manager because they don'tchange.
(22:30):
This is the system. This is how we do it.
We write 4 blog posts a day. I'm going to manage our content
strategy. A good manager five years ago
would still be managing their company's content strategy.
The exact same today. That's a great manager, and you
need people to manage that kind of stuff.
(22:51):
A leader comes in from time to time and says, you know, I'm
noticing a shift in the culture.It's not just the blogging
anymore. In fact, 4 blog is a day, maybe
too much, maybe it's one a day. Plus we need to repurpose and
now we need to also be sharing the content here and here.
And they come back and they get the manager to buy on and the
manager goes, OK, let's do that,I'll do it that way.
(23:13):
All right, T And they go in and they rally the team and this is
how we're going to do it. And they just keep the SO PS
going and you know, everything is happening just that way.
And then the leaders looks at the landscape, figures out
what's coming in, and the leadercomes in and says, hey, listen,
we're going to continue to pivotbecause leadership isn't about
getting it right. Leadership is about making
adjustments. Management is all about
(23:36):
consistency, progress, moving things forward.
And I have had managers get veryoffended by this.
And I'm not meaning to offend. I think management is crucially
important. We have management like we have
to have. We have to manage the systems,
but you also have to have leadership.
(23:56):
And a lot of companies, they're very heavy management and
they're low on leadership or theleadership is siloed.
And the leadership may be all focused on, you know, R&D.
It's all about research and development, new things and new
initiatives and all of that kindof stuff.
And they're not going back and putting leadership to their
(24:19):
people systems because they're so focused on leading at the,
you know, the 50,000 foot level that they don't come back down.
It's why the show Undercover Boss was so impactful.
It brought leaders who were great at leading at a 50,000
foot level, and it brought him back down to the street where
(24:41):
their managers were doing exactly what they were told to
do five years ago. And they just kept doing it over
and over and over again because that's what a manager does.
And that's great and wonderful. And I celebrate that.
The issue comes back to leadership though.
So that's why I think the biggest thing is, so I think for
companies to pivot, you have to step back and go to the
(25:03):
principal behind the practice again, like, OK, what worked
here can work remote. We just have to figure out
what's the human nature here because I'm Gabe.
There are three things you want.There are three things I want.
And to get very philosophical, if we're not going to share them
(25:25):
here on this podcast, you know you can't if you want it your
podcast. But if I asked you to name your
two biggest regrets in life, youdon't have to.
But if I ask you to name your two biggest regrets, I guarantee
you that the root of that regretthat both of them would be
because you made a decision thatyou thought was going to make
(25:49):
you significant, accepted by others or bring you security.
We are always chasing significant acceptance and
security. It drives every decision we
make. And so your team needs to feel
significant, accepted and secure.
If you aren't speaking into thatand guiding that and then making
(26:14):
sure So what managers and leaders they have to ask, well,
what makes me feel significant, accepted and secure?
Well, security comes from knowing things are getting done.
Well. If you're used to managing
things get done by 40 hours a week, then you're always going
to expect that. And then you're going to get
nervous when you can't measure how many hours a team is working
(26:36):
and what if they're taking advantage of it?
But if you change to, I feel secure when these five things
get delivered every week and suddenly that's what you're
measuring, you're going to stop caring about the hours.
And so there's a lot to it and acompany needs to here's I have a
(26:59):
very successful business where 100% remote works.
Not in every industry. You can't be remote and have a
restaurant. You got to have, you got to have
cooks coming in. Like like obviously it doesn't
work in every, I don't want my brain surgeon.
I don't need a brain surgeon. But if I needed a brain surgeon,
I don't want him to be remote. You know, like I, I wanted to be
(27:19):
there. So obviously it's not in every
industry, but for so many remoteworks.
So if it's not working, it's your leadership capacity.
Again, it comes back. You'll never outgrow your
leadership capacity. If your team can't work remote,
it's not your team's fault if itwas long as it works in your
(27:40):
industry. If your team can't work remote,
it's not your team's fault, it'syour leadership capacity.
Your capacity as a leader needs to elevate, and then you're
going to be able to elevate yourteam into being remote.
Indeed. And there are different types of
leaders, right? And I want to go into that in a
second, But before that, you mentioned there's something
(28:02):
about six years ago, I attend the remote First conference,
it's called running remote. And I met their lawyers, doctors
and many other type of professions that back then I had
no idea that are able to be doneremotely.
And that was six years ago. Recently I saw something that I
(28:23):
think in China, they managed to remotely have a, I'm not sure if
it was a heart surgery or a brain surgery without basically
having doctors in the room with the patient.
And I was blown away in seems a bit crazy and so on.
But in the same time, I think weare going towards a place where
(28:45):
a lot of the traditional jobs, of course, with the exception of
some of those that you mention like restaurants.
But even restaurants, if you think about it, a lot of things
can be automated, right? Even cooking foods and will be
probably not a huge, I don't know, culinary experience or
Michelin star restaurant and so on.
But still for basic probably food processing and so on,
(29:08):
robots and automatic remote teams, you'll be able to achieve
it. But going back to leaders,
because there are leaders like you that are building full time
teams and there's some people like me that are focusing
strictly on contractors or freelancers if you want, rather
than having full time employees aboard.
(29:30):
And in terms of leadership, there are any differences
between those two in the way of approaching and hiring?
Yeah. Well, and it depends upon the
length of the relationship, you know, and the level of
involvement. But you know, right now we
launched a new service, fractional CMO service.
And with that, we've had a few new clients come on and we need
(29:54):
to set up some Google tag tracking, Google Tag manager and
stuff like that. And it's just, my team is just,
they're at capacity, but I need to get this done.
So we needed to bring in an extra person that can handle
this in that situation. I'm looking for somebody with a
proven track record. Now what I do is this, I hire
(30:16):
two people. So I hire a consultant that
knows really well how to do this, that because of their
experience, they demand a high hourly wage.
As a freelancer, I have no problem with that.
But then we also will hire somebody a little bit more in an
entry level to do fulfillment. And the reason we do that is we
(30:39):
want to leverage our success to help others.
That's our whole vision. Somebody had to give me my first
chance, you know, years ago to build a website for them.
We hire almost all of our team and freelancers through up work.
There's lots of things I like about that platform, but I like
hiring entry level roles there because I want to give people a
(31:01):
chance. I want to help a young new,
maybe not even young, but a new freelance.
I want to help them build their portfolio.
So I have no problem with that. But I also need somebody that
can monitor them and coach them when I don't have the capacity
to do it. So I often will hire 2
freelancer, I'll hire a consultant to give you no
(31:21):
guidance and just to make sure everything is right.
And then I'll hire the fulfilment freelancer, you know,
so the consultant, I may pay, you know, 75100 a $150.00 an
hour and then the fulfillment may be in the six to $20.00 an
hour depending upon this, this skill and what not.
So I'm really hiring there for an outcome.
(31:43):
It's not going to be an ongoing relationship.
So we don't go through the threeinterviews.
You know, it's just it's a lot quicker now.
We still do the same way we do still test people's character to
make sure they don't lie to us to get the job.
Every time we post a job, we getpeople reaching out to us via
e-mail and on LinkedIn because they saw, I saw your job post on
(32:07):
upward, even though we have it so it doesn't.
So open search, I'll never hire somebody like that because
you're violating Upworks terms of use.
So if you're going to violate their terms of use, what's going
to keep you from violating any that I might have?
So you're never going to get a job for me trying to violating
(32:27):
somebody else's policies. It's just not going to happen.
So if you're a freelancer listening, don't violate
policies, that's bad. But yeah, I would say that's a
big difference in the recruiting.
It's we're not going through as many hoops to get on to the
team. That's a big one.
And then besides that, it's, youknow, you don't do the self on
(32:47):
boarding like we don't have you learn our project management
system. We don't have you learn our
culture, our core values, our vision, our mission.
You don't get access to the break room.
You know, we don't do all of that because we're not looking
to have that level of relationship.
To be honest. We're like our team.
(33:08):
We don't have to do it anymore when one of our team, when one
of their kids has a birthday, weend up getting pictures.
But they're just like, you know,and we've got a lot of young
people on our team and a lot of young families.
And in the last year we've had three newborns from our team.
And so we just got and we love that.
(33:29):
That's really cool to see and it's exciting.
And they post picture, we get pictures on our virtual break
room the same day they're in thehospital that grandma and
grandpa and aunts and uncles getpictures.
We've really become, you know, we're not a family.
And I don't say that I don't want that to be the case.
Every family has too much dysfunction.
(33:50):
So we honestly, we want to be healthier than the a typical
family. So we don't say we're a family.
We're A-Team. And so anyway, but yes, I don't
know if that's answering your question or not.
I hope I am. Yeah, yes it did because not
only that selfishly thinking of myself, you give me such a good
tip there into hiring 2 individuals that supposed to do
(34:13):
the same job, but one from a almost like a leadership or
managing perspective and the other one to execute since first
I never thought about that. You heard that I I hire
contractors for the past nine years.
And I think it's a smart approach because indeed, if you
hire entry level, we'll never beable to at some point they will,
(34:36):
but at the beginning, they'll never be able to manage that
task efficiently themselves without someone else overseeing
them. And in the same time, like this
mindset of do not micro manage to allow them to do their job in
their own time. And it's one of the reasons, for
example, personally, I kind of avoid hiring someone on an
(34:57):
hourly basis. Yes, in in my perspective, there
are two things like if they are so good and fast at what they
do, they'll penalize themselves because they will achieve the
outcome very fast. If they are bad at what they do
and slow, they'll penalize myself or whoever hire them.
And instead of that, like if there are specific outcomes, if
(35:20):
that's possible, because sometimes it's not possible.
But if there are specific outcomes that needs to be
achieved, there is one of codes that you agree upon and that's
how we proceed about it. And exactly on that point, like
what's your take on hourly ratesand when should be used and when
should be avoided? Yeah, that's good.
(35:42):
Rarely do we do an hourly rate. It's almost always project
based. But I always have a rough idea
or I'll ask somebody that does have a rough idea, like we're
going to set up some server sidetracking.
Now some of your audience is going to hear that and know
exactly what I'm talking. I have no idea what that means.
(36:03):
We've never done it before as a company either.
Like I, I don't know and I don'tneed to know how.
That's why I hire one person. That's the consultant.
There's been times we've hired people to do things like I don't
know yet, even check and see if they're doing it right.
And so that's why I hire somebody that does know to kind
of be that consultant. I'm trying to think if there's a
(36:24):
time we have hired hourly. I think we always, I think we
always land on a project becauseone of the things I like about
Upwork is being able to also break it down in the milestones
and then I can pre fund it. So the contractor sees it and
(36:45):
but then I don't release the funds until they deliver.
That's one of my favorite features in in there.
I think it protects them and me,and then if we hire someone, we
maintain the relationship for two years and up work because
that's their terms of use and I want to live in that.
But I also don't have to suddenly figure out how to pay
(37:05):
someone in Bangladesh. You're still with us in two
years on the team, then we can move into a relationship where
you're on payroll when we help you set up a wise or revolute or
whatever it is. And then we can do bank
transfers. But for the first two years, I
just don't worry about it. And I people are like, whoa, but
what about the fees? Well, if I was hiring people in
(37:26):
the states, I'd have to be paying taxes like the cost of
doing business. Build a bridge and get over it.
If you're that worried about because I know people have been
complaining lately about the contract origination fee.
OK. If you're that worried about it,
you're not charging enough for your service, like charge more,
have more profit and you'll be fine.
(37:47):
So I can't think of anybody we've hired and probably the
last two years that have been based on hours.
Nice. And when it comes to yourself,
your team, your purpose in what you do, what you'll tell those
listening why are doing this? Why am I doing it?
That's a good question. I love to teach.
(38:09):
As you know, anybody that's listening to this podcast is can
tell I've done the vast majorityof the speaking.
I love the sound of my own voice, but only if I'm saying
words that I think are going to help people.
I love to teach. I love to teach.
When I ran the summer camp man, the first two weeks of the
summer was staff training. Those are my favorite two weeks
(38:30):
of the year. I love helping people go, huh, I
never saw that before, just likeyou did a little bit ago, Like,
hey, you help me personally withthis idea of hiring somebody.
Like I've not thought about that.
Like right there. I'm like, hey, interviews done,
let's wrap up. That was the win.
Like I just get energy out of helping people step up their
(38:52):
game. I want to help people live
better. After I went in the summer camp,
we transitioned from summer camp.
It was a church camp. I went into local church
pastoring and my wife and I, we planted a church and we then we
wanted to adopt. And so we adopted two of our
four children internationally and we needed to come up with
(39:13):
$50,000 to fund the adoption. And I was like, I'm like, you
know, how am I going to make an extra 50 grand as a pastor?
And so I knew how to build websites.
So I started building websites for people to raise money as a
on a side hustle to fund our adoption.
And then I learned how to sell maintenance plans.
And so I started doing monthly recurring revenue.
(39:34):
And when we brought our kids home, we did it debt free.
And so my wife and I then decided to start a nonprofit and
keep the business going to fund the nonprofit to help others
achieve their adoption dreams. And then it just kept and
finally we realized like, hey, let's take our business and help
other business owners be successful as they can with
(39:57):
their business. And I could have done it
through, you know, maybe coaching or something, but I
wasn't a business, I was a pastor.
What value can I give you to runyour business?
I, you know, I'm a pastor. I can't do that.
But I knew marketing and I really knew leadership.
And so I was like, we can help businesses with their marketing,
bring more customers back to them, bring more of their own
(40:18):
customers back and then bring more new customers in and help
them have more successful businesses and then.
Model to them what we do with our own nonprofit and once a
year we can have a, a special training for our clients on how
to set up a nonprofit that your business can put money into that
(40:41):
then you can use that to give topeople in your community and
things like that. So we can influence people to do
that. And so it's all about
influencing others to stop looking at their life inside
their four walls and ask, how can I make it?
You know, what's my purpose? I want to make a difference.
I want to help people live theirpurpose.
(41:03):
So that's why I do it. And that's why we were so
passionate to have a team. I love having a team and taking
them and going after, you know, a big crazy vision together that
excites me. And it's obvious, it's so
visible on you. If anyone is, it's watching now.
It's obvious that they're so passionate about it and if those
(41:25):
watching or listening to us right now and there isn't it
with this where they can get in touch with you in order to get
help. Well, I'm a lot prideful and so
I I have a big ego. So I have my vanity URL.
So just my name ericdingler.com.So Eric, just to see for Eric
and then Dingler Dingle r.com and what I've done for you and
(41:50):
your audience is if they go to ericdingler.com/in the wild,
they it's just, it's just like alink tree and you know, it's got
my picture and you know, it's got your, your picture on it.
So they know they're in the right place and then they can
download our self onboarding dashboard.
(42:11):
So we've put together that what we do, that training the way we
have our team train themselves. There's a short video that shows
you how to use the tool and thenideas on how you can start
building your own onboarding dashboard.
So then as you start to hire, continue to hire, you don't have
to stop what you're doing. You can say, hey, here's do this
(42:34):
and then they'll be ready to be on your team.
So we're going to make that available for your listeners.
I have a podcast on leadership, the Eric Dingler Leadership
podcast. Again, I'm a little prideful,
but and I just I love the talk. My podcast used to be called the
Digital Nomad Entrepreneur Podcast.
And the first, like, yeah, the first like because your podcast
(42:56):
used to have. The So Nomads Entrepreneur.
Yeah. So yeah.
So it used to be the digital nomad entrepreneur and I, so my
first like, I don't know, 40 episodes or so are all on
building a location independent business.
But then I did pivot and to now it's just more focused on
leadership leading, but very specifically leading a remote
(43:19):
team. And so that that's the Eric
Ingler Leadership Podcast. And make sure if you're watching
or listening to check the show in hospital because the links
will be there as well. And Eric, I would like to first
of all, thank you for joining metoday.
And secondly, to conclude with aquestion to what was the best
(43:39):
ever advice that someone else gave to you?
The best business advice I was ever given was real estate
agents don't build the houses they sell.
I used to try to sell websites and build websites.
And when we decided to leave church that, you know, leading
(44:00):
the church and go into, you know, equipping our nonprofit
through the business, I got a business coach because I didn't
know what I was doing. I always have a coach.
And so I, I got a business coachAnd one of the first thing he
said was, you know, why are you building the websites?
He's like, real estate agents don't build the houses they
sell. And that was a massive mind
shift for me. And so I slowly, you know, the
(44:23):
first person I hired Peter from Bulgaria was just like 20 hours
a week. It was just really part time,
wasn't even, I don't even think it was 20 hours a week.
And it was just to help me. And he didn't really know much,
but I needed somebody to help with tickets and just keep
things moving. And that was five years ago.
And he's now our director of webservices and leads our entire
(44:47):
web dev team and designers. And he's just, he's phenomenal.
And him and I've had a blast these last five years.
But he was the first team memberfor in transit studios.
But so that would be the business advice.
Real estate agents don't build the houses.
They sell and so use a team. Absolutely and even that I never
(45:09):
hire full time with the exception of my wife, but we are
in the same business basically. I resonated that because for
more than I think 7 years I was still building the websites
myself. I was a web designer and
developer as well. And at some points I said the
same realization, like what I'm doing here, like I cannot run
(45:32):
the business and be trapping thebusiness in the same time.
And it took a while, unfortunately, but in the same
time, it was a fun thing for me to do to put my creativity to
work. But yeah, I think when you truly
understand that your goal as a leader is different than the one
of you executing certain things in your business, your
(45:55):
perspective and business will start to shift in a positive
way. So build a team the way you
want, but build one that it's working for you, for your goals,
for your passions. And if you can do that remotely,
it's even better. Trust us, yes.
Absolutely, absolutely. And with that game, I just want
(46:15):
to say like, it's your business.You get to define success.
I tell people all the time, I'm coaching a guy right now and you
know, he was like, I, but I really like still building the
websites. I'm like, that's fine.
The other way to look at it is contractors that build houses
don't sell houses. So why don't we help you build a
(46:36):
team that manages your lead Gen.?
Because he hates the lead Gen. and the lead conversion.
You know, the project man. Like he doesn't like that kind
of stuff. And I'm like, so let's build a
team that does that. And you can keep building
websites. Now you can only build so many
websites at it at one time. But his goal is he's like, I, I
(46:57):
just want a business that's like150 to $200,000 a year.
And 7060% of that is, is profit.You can do that.
You can do that as a web designer comfortably.
You can get to 100,000. This Is Us dollars 100,100 and
$50,000 a year. That's fine.
(47:17):
I wanted to grow a business thatwas able to take $1,000,000 a
year and donate it to other causes.
That was my, that's my and my wife's goal.
Personal goal is to be able to once it, to be able every year
to be able to give away $1,000,000.
I can't do that on $150,000 business and I can't do that
standing behind to the keyboard,you know, typing, you know,
(47:40):
creating code, you know, for every client website.
So I had to go that way because my dream was different than your
dream. So you're absolutely right, Gabe
Build. I love how you said it.
Build a team that works for you the way you want to.
That's absolutely genius. This was Eric Dingler on
Authority in the Wild. Thank you so much for tuning in.
If your team can't work remote, it's not your team's fault, it's
your leadership capacity. Meet Eric Dingler with over 30
years of experience building andleading teams.
And for 15 years he ran a summercamp which gave him 15 team
laboratories to experiment with different approaches to
recruiting, training and leadership.
For the last five years, he has transitioned those skills from
(00:22):
in person teams to his remote team.
A good manager will run a business into the ground.
That's the sign of a good manager.
A great manager will ruin a company because they don't
change. In today's episode, we dive into
how to recruit and operate a remote team, what leadership
(00:43):
skills you need in order to be successful in leading a remote
team, and the benefits of leading a remote team comparing
to an in person one. Leadership isn't about getting
it right. Leadership is about making
adjustments. If you ever wonder why remote
teams are so successful and you want to learn how to build your
own, this episode is for you. Eric, I truly believe that you
(01:08):
live in a world where you cannotkeep people inside the cubicle
and expect them to perform. And even that pandemic made
remote work popular. A lot of us live a remote
lifestyle and work remotely for way longer than that.
Why do you believe this is the future?
(01:29):
Well, I like you said, I think people, a lot of people got the
taste of it. And there's a lot of people that
have been living a remote lifestyle successfully and more
and more of them are living thatout loud through social media.
And so there's this, this new desire that people have that
they they want that it's not foreverybody, but I think it's for
(01:51):
the vast majority of people. And so I think the more we can
do to help leaders transition tounderstanding leading a remote
team is different than leading an in person team, that's when
we'll see more and more success happen for people in the remote
workspace. And what's the big difference
(02:14):
between leading a remote team from one on site?
Well, great question. So for 15 years I ran a summer
camp in the United States. And so all of my team was local,
but I also got this chance to every year.
It was like having these 15 little laboratories, you know, I
(02:34):
got to experiment every year andgrow and develop my leadership.
And so now I've transitioned to leading a full remote team.
And the difference is my mindsethad to change on expectations.
I have to be more intentional todevelop culture because culture
(02:55):
Trump's vision. So you can have the greatest
vision for your company to achieve great things, but the
culture is going to really determine the quality of the
journey and the speed of the journey.
So as a leader leading a remote team, you have to be way more
intentional developing culture, developing people.
You have to get comfortable being asynchronous.
(03:19):
You know, there's, there's all this stuff you have to let go of
the concept of time equaling results and outcomes equaling
results. So really what it comes down to,
Gabe, in my opinion, in my experience as well, is your
leadership capacity, is the capacity of your business.
And this is true everywhere. Your business, your marriage,
(03:42):
your parenting, none of them cango beyond the capacity of your
own personal leadership skills. So when you learn to lead
better, you live better. And so for leaders to transition
to leading remote team successfully, you have to grow
as a leader. It starts with you not finding
the right people. One of the things I the way I
(04:04):
tell it to people is you have toask yourself, are you the leader
that the team you want to lead wants to follow?
So it's, it starts with the leaders first.
So to me, it all comes back to leadership.
And that's the reality, right? Because otherwise it's almost
impossible to build a successfulbusiness, to put together a
successful team and especially to lead that team remotely.
(04:28):
And if any leaders that are the brain to start this journey of
transitioning to remote work andbuilding a remote team, what
would you your advice for them in order to build that culture
and ensure that they just don't deal with faceless employees
(04:49):
that's they never meet in personor they don't have any sort of
connection with? Right.
So one, I think it's important to understand that there is a
difference between hiring a freelancer and a team member if
you have a physical building. So let's say you own a
restaurant, OK? And so that's a location and
you've got, you know, cooks and dishwashers and servers and all
(05:13):
that. You have a team that comes to
work every day, but you also have the repairman that you call
from time to time when a piece of equipment in the kitchen
breaks down. So you have these contractors,
but that's a different relationship than your team.
And so in remote work, it's kindof the same thing.
We have people that we use as contractors to come in and do
(05:37):
specific things at different times, but then we also have a
team and you have to define thatdifferently.
And then the next thing I would say is if you have only worked
in in person environments, what I recommend is we call it the
principle behind the practice. You know, so you have to ask
(05:57):
yourself, well, what made an in person team work is going to be
the same thing that makes a remote team work, but you have
to contextualize it. So, for example, the break room,
yeah, a lot of in place, you know, companies and teams, they
have that break room that peoplego to.
You know, they can go in and grab a cup of coffee and they go
(06:20):
in and sit down and they have lunch and, you know, they take
their 15 minute break there. And that's when you find out,
oh, you went to that concert. Oh, I like that kind of music.
And you know, oh, that would be great.
And that's where you start developing these relationships
that then help feed a healthy culture.
And so we have a virtual break room for our team.
(06:42):
And so from time to time, I go in and I load different barcodes
for different regions of the world, but I'll load in
Starbucks because everybody on my team, India, El Salvador, the
United States, Bulgaria, Ukraine, they've all got
Starbucks. OK.
So I'll go in and preload Starbucks gift cards from
(07:04):
different regions of the world. And I put those barcodes in our
virtual break room. And so our team can go to their
local Starbucks and grab a coffee and scan the code and we
pay for it just as if we were paying for coffee in a break
room. But they have to post a selfie
of themselves and join their cupof coffee.
(07:24):
And then what happens is people start to like, oh, what kind of
coffee do you have? Oh, we, we can't get that kind
of coffee here. And so you start having this
whole conversation about it, or we'll go in once a week and
we'll ask people, you know, we'll ask in the team, you know,
anybody doing anything differentthis weekend?
Or we'll have photo scavenger hunts and it'll be like, you
(07:47):
know, we'll have a everybody post a picture of, you know,
your favorite grocery store. Because if you're on an in
person team, you're probably allused to already seeing the same
things that the people you're working with see.
You know, it's you're seeing thesame town, you're seeing the
same streets when you live in the Ukraine and you live in El
(08:11):
Salvador, you're not seeing any of the same stores and things
like that. So to post a picture of, oh, you
know, I like to shop at Tesco and you know, oh, I like to shop
at the Piggly Wiggly, you know, whatever it is, those kinds of
things start to humanize the experience.
So that's just one example. And I love this example because
(08:31):
indeed, bringing real life experiences into a virtual world
is not easy. And you find a way to do it.
And I think it's not just smart,but it's a way for people to
understand more about the culture of their colleagues, to
understand more about their habits, where they enjoy, what
(08:51):
type of coffee they enjoy at Starbucks, other things.
And I think bringing this human connection into the conversation
is super powerful because at theend of the day, you cannot just
build a team, have a virtual Zoom meeting once a week and
expect them to perform. You need to make them feel part
(09:12):
of something. And on that note, like how do
you ensure that a remote team performs as well as a in person
team? Even so, personally I know that
actually those remotes usually perform better than those on
site, but that's another. Yeah.
Well, we eventually realized wasa bit of a framework and so we
(09:34):
call it, you know, ROD 2 and so it's recruit on board, delegate,
develop. And so you need to have a system
for all four of those leaders fix systems.
We don't fix people. We influence people.
But in business and in leadership, it's never a people
(09:58):
problem. It's always a systems problem.
So, you know, I'll talk to people and they're like, oh, I
could never do that with my team.
I got to be on them like a hawk.If I let up for just an inch,
they take a kilometer. Like, you know, I can't, you
know, And I'm like, wow, you've hired the wrong people.
And so you have a hiring problem.
(10:19):
You have a recruitment systems issue and so it starts with the
recruiting. We are very slow to hire.
You're if somebody joins our team, not now, this isn't a
freelancer, this is joining the team.
If you join the team, you're going to do 3 different
interviews with three different people and one person on the
(10:41):
team is interviewing you about your character.
What kind of character do you have?
Do you tell the truth even when it you don't want to?
You know, you keep your word or do you care about others you
know like this? We want to know your character.
That's the first thing we hire for.
We have some things we do to test when we post a position
(11:03):
description. Last week we posted a job.
We had 38 applicants. 2 of them answered all of the questions
that we asked in the position description.
Most everybody else said oh I read the position description,
I'm a perfect fit. Well wait a second.
(11:23):
If you read the job description,you would know that you were
supposed to tell us your favorite candy bar.
So you just told me you read thejob description, but you never
told me your favorite candy bar.So either you lied and didn't
read the job description or you're lying about how good your
English is because you didn't understand what I wrote.
(11:45):
And again, I don't care if you don't have great English for
most of our positions. I I don't really care, but I
need you to be truthful about your abilities and capabilities.
So we only interviewed those twopeople and we hired one of them
because we want character first,then we look for chemistry.
So a SEC, you're going to go to a second interview.
(12:06):
And so recently we just hired a junior web developer.
Well, this junior web developer is going to work for our
Director of Web Services, Peter.Well, we had our Director of
Digital Marketing Services, Paola, who knows Peter real well
because they've worked together now for a while.
She interviewed the candidates for our junior web developer and
(12:29):
she was just looking to see, is this person going to get along
with Peter? Is Peter going to get along with
him? She was interviewing them for
chemistry. Are you going to fit in with us?
Because life is short. If you don't fit in with us,
then don't work with it. Go, you know, get a job
somewhere else. You know, we don't.
We're, you know, it's just we want people that have a good fit
(12:49):
with us. And then the final interview is
your competency. And really what we're looking
for there is not what you know, but can you learn, you know, how
fast can you learn? Can you do you, are you
intuitively a problem solver andthat kind of stuff.
So that's what we're looking for.
When you have a system like thisthat is very intentional to
(13:16):
hiring people that align with your core values that want to be
part of the mission moving towards your vision, you're
going to hire the right people and you're going to eliminate
90% of your headaches. And so you have to have a clear
vision mission. Core values vision is that's
(13:37):
where we're headed. It it vision lets you tell your
team we're taking that mountain or you were going to the depths
of that ocean of this like you paint a picture of where you're
headed. The mission is the vehicle you
take. So for my I own a digital
marketing agency, that's my business.
Well, we see a world full of successful business owners that
(13:59):
leverage their margin to contribute to ending human
suffering around the world. That's why we do what we do.
We want our clients to have success and then we want to
influence them to take some of that success and donate it to a
missionary, donate it to one of their favorite causes.
(14:20):
You know, like if if you're passionate about, you know,
helping people get clean water, donate your access to that.
If you're passionate about humansuffering or human trafficking,
get involved with that. But that's our vision to help
businesses get successful, to contribute to ending human
suffering that they're passionate about.
Our mission is we do that as a digital marketing agency.
(14:43):
That's the vehicle we're in. We, you know, we work with
coachable business owners. So it's, you know, we've got our
whole, our whole mission, our mission, our core values are how
we behave inside the vehicle, which is our mission.
We spent 10 days in the Amazon jungle.
I was completely offline, but mycompany ran just fine because my
(15:05):
team had embraced and lived our core values.
So they were behaving and operating and making decisions
inside our vehicle, which is ourdigital marketing agency, moving
us towards helping businesses besuccessful.
As a leader, you have to have that in place, a vision,
(15:25):
mission, core values, and then you recruit people to be a part
of that. I'm telling you right now, Gabe,
you're going to have the most fun you've ever had in business
when you get that all that right.
Yeah. And I love this playbook because
when someone truly dive into it,understand it and apply to their
own business, them becoming a leader that people are attracted
(15:50):
to, want to be part of that mission is so much easier.
And you mentioned there that youspent a lot of time in the
Amazon jungle and your business was still running.
And one of the reason why some leaders want to build remote
teams is to have this flexibility of travelling, of
working from wherever. And there are any other things
(16:12):
they should look at when they are making this move if they
want to leave a location independent lifestyle and still
be able to run their business remotely.
Yeah. So, you know, once you onboard
your team, I love frameworks andsystems because again, it's
always a systems problem. So I'm obsessed about our
systems. When you recruit the right
(16:33):
people you're going to have, it's going to be easier for you
to have the freedom you have to onboard them the right way.
We, none of us have time to stopwhat we're doing.
I can't take a week off of work to train a new employee.
So we've developed a self onboarding.
All of our team trained themselves their first week and
(16:56):
we have an entire system and process for it, the self
onboarding dashboard. Then we have systems for
delegation and everybody has their job function.
Those are the tasks they have todo working in the business, you
know, so day in, day out, one ofour team, they're responsible
(17:16):
for putting together and sendingclient reports.
So they have to do that. That's their job.
But then there are other things that we do to work on the
business. So improving an SOP or updating
a system, you know, making something in the company better.
Well, I delegate those to different people on the team
(17:39):
depending upon their strengths. Nobody ever has more than six.
We call it the six by 6. Nobody leads more than six
people direct reports and nobodyhas more than six tasks at a
time that they're responsible for.
So this make sure that you're not overwhelming people.
I've got a way that I can open this Google doc or Google
(18:01):
Spreadsheet. I open and I can instantly see
what's on everybody's plate. And then every week our team has
to submit a report that lets us know what was the workload like
this week, what was their moraleand what was their stress like.
And I track that so I can see how are we trending as a
company? Is everybody feeling their
(18:21):
workload is balanced? Is everybody having a high
morale? Is their stress slow?
You know, 'cause that's the health of the team.
I used to be able to gauge that by just walking around.
Well, I can't do that when my team is across, you know, you
know, six time zones, you know, and I'm in one place.
I can't do that. So, so we measure that and now
(18:44):
we know that people have the right amount delegated to them.
They're equipped to accomplish the thing they've been
delegated. And we measure outcomes, not
hours. I don't care how many hours you
work as long as the job gets done.
Now, I don't want you to work more hours than you know, I
don't want anybody working 80 hours a week.
(19:05):
One of our core values is familybefore work.
So I want our team to have the flexibility to, you know, be
involved in their kids lives andtheir spouses, you know, like
it's family before work. Let's go back to client reports.
If you're responsible to send, you know, 25 client reports this
week, you have to send 25 clientreports this week.
(19:27):
Now, if that means you're working Saturday because you
chose and took Tuesday off, that's fine.
I don't care as long as the outcome happens.
And then you just got to trust your people.
Hire adults. Don't hire people that have to
be baby. It really comes back to
recruiting. It's that's so important.
And then the final D of ROD 2, the final D is you have to
(19:50):
continuously be developing. I'm constantly reminding our
team about our mission, our vision, our core values.
You know, I'm constantly celebrating with them, the
winds, because what gets rewarded gets repeated.
So if if you want your team to keep doing something, celebrate
it the first time it happens andthen let them know specifically
(20:15):
that you know, you appreciate itand value it.
And because what gets rewarded gets repeated.
So it's all part of those four systems?
Is why I'm able to take time offand be completely unplugged from
the company. We've recruited well, we've
onboarded the right way, we've delegated the right things at
the right times, and we're developing people all in the
(20:37):
right direction. So that's the framework I think
it takes. And you mentioned there are huge
benefits that a remote employee has, like being able to be
flexible, still doing their job,but having more time for the
family, having flexibility around the schedule rather than
stick to the traditional, I don't know, 9 to 5 schedule,
(21:01):
which it's outdated. That's the reality.
And still some leaders out therehave this friction like if they
don't work five days a week, they won't perform, they won't
do their job and so on. And indeed, you mentioned
they're like higher, first of all, grown-ups, like adults.
(21:21):
And that's some kids that did you want to play employee role
and to want to work remotely. And not to say that some kids
out there don't have capabilities of doing it, but
often it's unlikely. And they're still having this
friction. Like what can you tell them in
order to see the broader pictureof this powerful movement?
(21:45):
I think a reason we're seeing somany companies pivot back to
requiring their team to go into the office is they we were all
forced to jump to remote in the pandemic and leaders weren't in
place to help the change. What I have seen, the places
(22:09):
that have struggled, they have alot of managers and not enough
leaders. See, a good manager will run a
business into the ground. That's the sign of a good
manager. A great manager will ruin a
company. That's how you know you've got a
great manager because they don'tchange.
(22:30):
This is the system. This is how we do it.
We write 4 blog posts a day. I'm going to manage our content
strategy. A good manager five years ago
would still be managing their company's content strategy.
The exact same today. That's a great manager, and you
need people to manage that kind of stuff.
(22:51):
A leader comes in from time to time and says, you know, I'm
noticing a shift in the culture.It's not just the blogging
anymore. In fact, 4 blog is a day, maybe
too much, maybe it's one a day. Plus we need to repurpose and
now we need to also be sharing the content here and here.
And they come back and they get the manager to buy on and the
manager goes, OK, let's do that,I'll do it that way.
(23:13):
All right, T And they go in and they rally the team and this is
how we're going to do it. And they just keep the SO PS
going and you know, everything is happening just that way.
And then the leaders looks at the landscape, figures out
what's coming in, and the leadercomes in and says, hey, listen,
we're going to continue to pivotbecause leadership isn't about
getting it right. Leadership is about making
adjustments. Management is all about
(23:36):
consistency, progress, moving things forward.
And I have had managers get veryoffended by this.
And I'm not meaning to offend. I think management is crucially
important. We have management like we have
to have. We have to manage the systems,
but you also have to have leadership.
(23:56):
And a lot of companies, they're very heavy management and
they're low on leadership or theleadership is siloed.
And the leadership may be all focused on, you know, R&D.
It's all about research and development, new things and new
initiatives and all of that kindof stuff.
And they're not going back and putting leadership to their
(24:19):
people systems because they're so focused on leading at the,
you know, the 50,000 foot level that they don't come back down.
It's why the show Undercover Boss was so impactful.
It brought leaders who were great at leading at a 50,000
foot level, and it brought him back down to the street where
(24:41):
their managers were doing exactly what they were told to
do five years ago. And they just kept doing it over
and over and over again because that's what a manager does.
And that's great and wonderful. And I celebrate that.
The issue comes back to leadership though.
So that's why I think the biggest thing is, so I think for
companies to pivot, you have to step back and go to the
(25:03):
principal behind the practice again, like, OK, what worked
here can work remote. We just have to figure out
what's the human nature here because I'm Gabe.
There are three things you want.There are three things I want.
And to get very philosophical, if we're not going to share them
(25:25):
here on this podcast, you know you can't if you want it your
podcast. But if I asked you to name your
two biggest regrets in life, youdon't have to.
But if I ask you to name your two biggest regrets, I guarantee
you that the root of that regretthat both of them would be
because you made a decision thatyou thought was going to make
(25:49):
you significant, accepted by others or bring you security.
We are always chasing significant acceptance and
security. It drives every decision we
make. And so your team needs to feel
significant, accepted and secure.
If you aren't speaking into thatand guiding that and then making
(26:14):
sure So what managers and leaders they have to ask, well,
what makes me feel significant, accepted and secure?
Well, security comes from knowing things are getting done.
Well. If you're used to managing
things get done by 40 hours a week, then you're always going
to expect that. And then you're going to get
nervous when you can't measure how many hours a team is working
(26:36):
and what if they're taking advantage of it?
But if you change to, I feel secure when these five things
get delivered every week and suddenly that's what you're
measuring, you're going to stop caring about the hours.
And so there's a lot to it and acompany needs to here's I have a
(26:59):
very successful business where 100% remote works.
Not in every industry. You can't be remote and have a
restaurant. You got to have, you got to have
cooks coming in. Like like obviously it doesn't
work in every, I don't want my brain surgeon.
I don't need a brain surgeon. But if I needed a brain surgeon,
I don't want him to be remote. You know, like I, I wanted to be
(27:19):
there. So obviously it's not in every
industry, but for so many remoteworks.
So if it's not working, it's your leadership capacity.
Again, it comes back. You'll never outgrow your
leadership capacity. If your team can't work remote,
it's not your team's fault if itwas long as it works in your
(27:40):
industry. If your team can't work remote,
it's not your team's fault, it'syour leadership capacity.
Your capacity as a leader needs to elevate, and then you're
going to be able to elevate yourteam into being remote.
Indeed. And there are different types of
leaders, right? And I want to go into that in a
second, But before that, you mentioned there's something
(28:02):
about six years ago, I attend the remote First conference,
it's called running remote. And I met their lawyers, doctors
and many other type of professions that back then I had
no idea that are able to be doneremotely.
And that was six years ago. Recently I saw something that I
(28:23):
think in China, they managed to remotely have a, I'm not sure if
it was a heart surgery or a brain surgery without basically
having doctors in the room with the patient.
And I was blown away in seems a bit crazy and so on.
But in the same time, I think weare going towards a place where
(28:45):
a lot of the traditional jobs, of course, with the exception of
some of those that you mention like restaurants.
But even restaurants, if you think about it, a lot of things
can be automated, right? Even cooking foods and will be
probably not a huge, I don't know, culinary experience or
Michelin star restaurant and so on.
But still for basic probably food processing and so on,
(29:08):
robots and automatic remote teams, you'll be able to achieve
it. But going back to leaders,
because there are leaders like you that are building full time
teams and there's some people like me that are focusing
strictly on contractors or freelancers if you want, rather
than having full time employees aboard.
(29:30):
And in terms of leadership, there are any differences
between those two in the way of approaching and hiring?
Yeah. Well, and it depends upon the
length of the relationship, you know, and the level of
involvement. But you know, right now we
launched a new service, fractional CMO service.
And with that, we've had a few new clients come on and we need
(29:54):
to set up some Google tag tracking, Google Tag manager and
stuff like that. And it's just, my team is just,
they're at capacity, but I need to get this done.
So we needed to bring in an extra person that can handle
this in that situation. I'm looking for somebody with a
proven track record. Now what I do is this, I hire
(30:16):
two people. So I hire a consultant that
knows really well how to do this, that because of their
experience, they demand a high hourly wage.
As a freelancer, I have no problem with that.
But then we also will hire somebody a little bit more in an
entry level to do fulfillment. And the reason we do that is we
(30:39):
want to leverage our success to help others.
That's our whole vision. Somebody had to give me my first
chance, you know, years ago to build a website for them.
We hire almost all of our team and freelancers through up work.
There's lots of things I like about that platform, but I like
hiring entry level roles there because I want to give people a
(31:01):
chance. I want to help a young new,
maybe not even young, but a new freelance.
I want to help them build their portfolio.
So I have no problem with that. But I also need somebody that
can monitor them and coach them when I don't have the capacity
to do it. So I often will hire 2
freelancer, I'll hire a consultant to give you no
(31:21):
guidance and just to make sure everything is right.
And then I'll hire the fulfilment freelancer, you know,
so the consultant, I may pay, you know, 75100 a $150.00 an
hour and then the fulfillment may be in the six to $20.00 an
hour depending upon this, this skill and what not.
So I'm really hiring there for an outcome.
(31:43):
It's not going to be an ongoing relationship.
So we don't go through the threeinterviews.
You know, it's just it's a lot quicker now.
We still do the same way we do still test people's character to
make sure they don't lie to us to get the job.
Every time we post a job, we getpeople reaching out to us via
e-mail and on LinkedIn because they saw, I saw your job post on
(32:07):
upward, even though we have it so it doesn't.
So open search, I'll never hire somebody like that because
you're violating Upworks terms of use.
So if you're going to violate their terms of use, what's going
to keep you from violating any that I might have?
So you're never going to get a job for me trying to violating
(32:27):
somebody else's policies. It's just not going to happen.
So if you're a freelancer listening, don't violate
policies, that's bad. But yeah, I would say that's a
big difference in the recruiting.
It's we're not going through as many hoops to get on to the
team. That's a big one.
And then besides that, it's, youknow, you don't do the self on
(32:47):
boarding like we don't have you learn our project management
system. We don't have you learn our
culture, our core values, our vision, our mission.
You don't get access to the break room.
You know, we don't do all of that because we're not looking
to have that level of relationship.
To be honest. We're like our team.
(33:08):
We don't have to do it anymore when one of our team, when one
of their kids has a birthday, weend up getting pictures.
But they're just like, you know,and we've got a lot of young
people on our team and a lot of young families.
And in the last year we've had three newborns from our team.
And so we just got and we love that.
(33:29):
That's really cool to see and it's exciting.
And they post picture, we get pictures on our virtual break
room the same day they're in thehospital that grandma and
grandpa and aunts and uncles getpictures.
We've really become, you know, we're not a family.
And I don't say that I don't want that to be the case.
Every family has too much dysfunction.
(33:50):
So we honestly, we want to be healthier than the a typical
family. So we don't say we're a family.
We're A-Team. And so anyway, but yes, I don't
know if that's answering your question or not.
I hope I am. Yeah, yes it did because not
only that selfishly thinking of myself, you give me such a good
tip there into hiring 2 individuals that supposed to do
(34:13):
the same job, but one from a almost like a leadership or
managing perspective and the other one to execute since first
I never thought about that. You heard that I I hire
contractors for the past nine years.
And I think it's a smart approach because indeed, if you
hire entry level, we'll never beable to at some point they will,
(34:36):
but at the beginning, they'll never be able to manage that
task efficiently themselves without someone else overseeing
them. And in the same time, like this
mindset of do not micro manage to allow them to do their job in
their own time. And it's one of the reasons, for
example, personally, I kind of avoid hiring someone on an
(34:57):
hourly basis. Yes, in in my perspective, there
are two things like if they are so good and fast at what they
do, they'll penalize themselves because they will achieve the
outcome very fast. If they are bad at what they do
and slow, they'll penalize myself or whoever hire them.
And instead of that, like if there are specific outcomes, if
(35:20):
that's possible, because sometimes it's not possible.
But if there are specific outcomes that needs to be
achieved, there is one of codes that you agree upon and that's
how we proceed about it. And exactly on that point, like
what's your take on hourly ratesand when should be used and when
should be avoided? Yeah, that's good.
(35:42):
Rarely do we do an hourly rate. It's almost always project
based. But I always have a rough idea
or I'll ask somebody that does have a rough idea, like we're
going to set up some server sidetracking.
Now some of your audience is going to hear that and know
exactly what I'm talking. I have no idea what that means.
(36:03):
We've never done it before as a company either.
Like I, I don't know and I don'tneed to know how.
That's why I hire one person. That's the consultant.
There's been times we've hired people to do things like I don't
know yet, even check and see if they're doing it right.
And so that's why I hire somebody that does know to kind
of be that consultant. I'm trying to think if there's a
(36:24):
time we have hired hourly. I think we always, I think we
always land on a project becauseone of the things I like about
Upwork is being able to also break it down in the milestones
and then I can pre fund it. So the contractor sees it and
(36:45):
but then I don't release the funds until they deliver.
That's one of my favorite features in in there.
I think it protects them and me,and then if we hire someone, we
maintain the relationship for two years and up work because
that's their terms of use and I want to live in that.
But I also don't have to suddenly figure out how to pay
(37:05):
someone in Bangladesh. You're still with us in two
years on the team, then we can move into a relationship where
you're on payroll when we help you set up a wise or revolute or
whatever it is. And then we can do bank
transfers. But for the first two years, I
just don't worry about it. And I people are like, whoa, but
what about the fees? Well, if I was hiring people in
(37:26):
the states, I'd have to be paying taxes like the cost of
doing business. Build a bridge and get over it.
If you're that worried about because I know people have been
complaining lately about the contract origination fee.
OK. If you're that worried about it,
you're not charging enough for your service, like charge more,
have more profit and you'll be fine.
(37:47):
So I can't think of anybody we've hired and probably the
last two years that have been based on hours.
Nice. And when it comes to yourself,
your team, your purpose in what you do, what you'll tell those
listening why are doing this? Why am I doing it?
That's a good question. I love to teach.
(38:09):
As you know, anybody that's listening to this podcast is can
tell I've done the vast majorityof the speaking.
I love the sound of my own voice, but only if I'm saying
words that I think are going to help people.
I love to teach. I love to teach.
When I ran the summer camp man, the first two weeks of the
summer was staff training. Those are my favorite two weeks
(38:30):
of the year. I love helping people go, huh, I
never saw that before, just likeyou did a little bit ago, Like,
hey, you help me personally withthis idea of hiring somebody.
Like I've not thought about that.
Like right there. I'm like, hey, interviews done,
let's wrap up. That was the win.
Like I just get energy out of helping people step up their
(38:52):
game. I want to help people live
better. After I went in the summer camp,
we transitioned from summer camp.
It was a church camp. I went into local church
pastoring and my wife and I, we planted a church and we then we
wanted to adopt. And so we adopted two of our
four children internationally and we needed to come up with
(39:13):
$50,000 to fund the adoption. And I was like, I'm like, you
know, how am I going to make an extra 50 grand as a pastor?
And so I knew how to build websites.
So I started building websites for people to raise money as a
on a side hustle to fund our adoption.
And then I learned how to sell maintenance plans.
And so I started doing monthly recurring revenue.
(39:34):
And when we brought our kids home, we did it debt free.
And so my wife and I then decided to start a nonprofit and
keep the business going to fund the nonprofit to help others
achieve their adoption dreams. And then it just kept and
finally we realized like, hey, let's take our business and help
other business owners be successful as they can with
(39:57):
their business. And I could have done it
through, you know, maybe coaching or something, but I
wasn't a business, I was a pastor.
What value can I give you to runyour business?
I, you know, I'm a pastor. I can't do that.
But I knew marketing and I really knew leadership.
And so I was like, we can help businesses with their marketing,
bring more customers back to them, bring more of their own
(40:18):
customers back and then bring more new customers in and help
them have more successful businesses and then.
Model to them what we do with our own nonprofit and once a
year we can have a, a special training for our clients on how
to set up a nonprofit that your business can put money into that
(40:41):
then you can use that to give topeople in your community and
things like that. So we can influence people to do
that. And so it's all about
influencing others to stop looking at their life inside
their four walls and ask, how can I make it?
You know, what's my purpose? I want to make a difference.
I want to help people live theirpurpose.
(41:03):
So that's why I do it. And that's why we were so
passionate to have a team. I love having a team and taking
them and going after, you know, a big crazy vision together that
excites me. And it's obvious, it's so
visible on you. If anyone is, it's watching now.
It's obvious that they're so passionate about it and if those
(41:25):
watching or listening to us right now and there isn't it
with this where they can get in touch with you in order to get
help. Well, I'm a lot prideful and so
I I have a big ego. So I have my vanity URL.
So just my name ericdingler.com.So Eric, just to see for Eric
and then Dingler Dingle r.com and what I've done for you and
(41:50):
your audience is if they go to ericdingler.com/in the wild,
they it's just, it's just like alink tree and you know, it's got
my picture and you know, it's got your, your picture on it.
So they know they're in the right place and then they can
download our self onboarding dashboard.
(42:11):
So we've put together that what we do, that training the way we
have our team train themselves. There's a short video that shows
you how to use the tool and thenideas on how you can start
building your own onboarding dashboard.
So then as you start to hire, continue to hire, you don't have
to stop what you're doing. You can say, hey, here's do this
(42:34):
and then they'll be ready to be on your team.
So we're going to make that available for your listeners.
I have a podcast on leadership, the Eric Dingler Leadership
podcast. Again, I'm a little prideful,
but and I just I love the talk. My podcast used to be called the
Digital Nomad Entrepreneur Podcast.
And the first, like, yeah, the first like because your podcast
(42:56):
used to have. The So Nomads Entrepreneur.
Yeah. So yeah.
So it used to be the digital nomad entrepreneur and I, so my
first like, I don't know, 40 episodes or so are all on
building a location independent business.
But then I did pivot and to now it's just more focused on
leadership leading, but very specifically leading a remote
(43:19):
team. And so that that's the Eric
Ingler Leadership Podcast. And make sure if you're watching
or listening to check the show in hospital because the links
will be there as well. And Eric, I would like to first
of all, thank you for joining metoday.
And secondly, to conclude with aquestion to what was the best
(43:39):
ever advice that someone else gave to you?
The best business advice I was ever given was real estate
agents don't build the houses they sell.
I used to try to sell websites and build websites.
And when we decided to leave church that, you know, leading
(44:00):
the church and go into, you know, equipping our nonprofit
through the business, I got a business coach because I didn't
know what I was doing. I always have a coach.
And so I, I got a business coachAnd one of the first thing he
said was, you know, why are you building the websites?
He's like, real estate agents don't build the houses they
sell. And that was a massive mind
shift for me. And so I slowly, you know, the
(44:23):
first person I hired Peter from Bulgaria was just like 20 hours
a week. It was just really part time,
wasn't even, I don't even think it was 20 hours a week.
And it was just to help me. And he didn't really know much,
but I needed somebody to help with tickets and just keep
things moving. And that was five years ago.
And he's now our director of webservices and leads our entire
(44:47):
web dev team and designers. And he's just, he's phenomenal.
And him and I've had a blast these last five years.
But he was the first team memberfor in transit studios.
But so that would be the business advice.
Real estate agents don't build the houses.
They sell and so use a team. Absolutely and even that I never
(45:09):
hire full time with the exception of my wife, but we are
in the same business basically. I resonated that because for
more than I think 7 years I was still building the websites
myself. I was a web designer and
developer as well. And at some points I said the
same realization, like what I'm doing here, like I cannot run
(45:32):
the business and be trapping thebusiness in the same time.
And it took a while, unfortunately, but in the same
time, it was a fun thing for me to do to put my creativity to
work. But yeah, I think when you truly
understand that your goal as a leader is different than the one
of you executing certain things in your business, your
(45:55):
perspective and business will start to shift in a positive
way. So build a team the way you
want, but build one that it's working for you, for your goals,
for your passions. And if you can do that remotely,
it's even better. Trust us, yes.
Absolutely, absolutely. And with that game, I just want
(46:15):
to say like, it's your business.You get to define success.
I tell people all the time, I'm coaching a guy right now and you
know, he was like, I, but I really like still building the
websites. I'm like, that's fine.
The other way to look at it is contractors that build houses
don't sell houses. So why don't we help you build a
(46:36):
team that manages your lead Gen.?
Because he hates the lead Gen. and the lead conversion.
You know, the project man. Like he doesn't like that kind
of stuff. And I'm like, so let's build a
team that does that. And you can keep building
websites. Now you can only build so many
websites at it at one time. But his goal is he's like, I, I
(46:57):
just want a business that's like150 to $200,000 a year.
And 7060% of that is, is profit.You can do that.
You can do that as a web designer comfortably.
You can get to 100,000. This Is Us dollars 100,100 and
$50,000 a year. That's fine.
(47:17):
I wanted to grow a business thatwas able to take $1,000,000 a
year and donate it to other causes.
That was my, that's my and my wife's goal.
Personal goal is to be able to once it, to be able every year
to be able to give away $1,000,000.
I can't do that on $150,000 business and I can't do that
standing behind to the keyboard,you know, typing, you know,
(47:40):
creating code, you know, for every client website.
So I had to go that way because my dream was different than your
dream. So you're absolutely right, Gabe
Build. I love how you said it.
Build a team that works for you the way you want to.
That's absolutely genius. This was Eric Dingler on
Authority in the Wild. Thank you so much for tuning in.
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