April 2, 2025 • 44 mins
Join us for a new episode featuring Suman Siva, the CEO of Marco Experiences, as he shares his inspiring journey from consultant to entrepreneur in the dynamic world of experience design with Kaleem Clarkson and guest co-host Jeff Frick! With a robust background that includes his tenure at Bain & Company and significant investment experience with SoftBank, Suman’s unique blend of consulting, investing, and passion for consumer experiences has shaped his approach to building meaningful connections in the workplace.
We dive deep into Suman's transition to entrepreneurship, sparked by his early experiences with startups like Scoop Technologies. His enthusiasm for technology and direct-to-consumer ventures set the stage for the creation of Marco, a platform dedicated to organizing retreats and offsites that foster genuine employee connections.
Initially launched as a consumer-focused experience marketplace, Marco had to pivot to virtual events as businesses sought ways to connect remote teams during the COVID-19 pandemic. As restrictions were lifted, Marco shifted back to in-person events, where Suman emphasized the importance of creating opportunities for employee connection. With 80% of companies now operating in a hybrid model, he believes that intentional in-person interactions are crucial for building trust and camaraderie among remote teams.
The significance of intentionality in designing impactful offsite experiences does not go under the table! Drawing from research conducted by industry experts like Brian Elliott and insights from the Future Forum, Suman shares with us how brief quarterly in-person interactions can significantly enhance productivity and employee engagement.
As remote work continues to shape workplace dynamics, the ongoing challenges of loneliness and collaboration faced by remote employees stay present: 60% of remote workers experience connection issues!
Discover more about the vital role of experience design in enhancing employee connection, the concept of a "social connection strategy," and building community within organizations. Suman's insights challenge traditional notions of workplace relationships, advocating for a community-centered approach that promotes respect and collaboration while acknowledging the diverse tapestry of individuals within the workforce.
Tune in to gain valuable perspectives on how to foster genuine connections in today’s remote and hybrid work environment and learn how thoughtful experience design can transform your organization's culture and performance. Whether you're a leader seeking to enhance your team's dynamics or an employee striving for deeper connections at work, it’s time to put on your headphones and equip yourself with the insights and strategies needed to thrive in the modern workplace!
Learn more about Suman:
- Suman’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/suman-siva-64b0712b/
- Marco Experiences’ Webpage: https://www.marcoexperiences.com/
More about us:
- Remotely One’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/remotelyone
- Remotely One’s Webpage: https://www.remotelyone.com/
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Kaleem (00:00):
What is Build A Boob, bro?
(00:01):
I mean, like, what is up withthat?
You know what I mean?
Like, I don't understand.
What is Build A Boob, dawg?
Suman (00:07):
Build a boop.
I don't even, I actually haveseen it before, so I, I get the
reference.
I have not partaken.
I have not.
Jeff (00:14):
do you don't, uh, do every experience to do like a QA test
to make sure it's, uh,
Suman (00:20):
I should.
Jeff (00:21):
the, for the,
Suman (00:22):
We do get good.
We do get good feedback on that.
Although it's, it is certainlyone of one, I would say the
build a brood of experiences.
Jeff (00:31):
Well, cause we know where the, cause we know where two and
three go.
So we probably don't want to gothere.
Suman (00:40):
That's
Kaleem (00:40):
That's the best thing ever.
So you,
Jeff (00:47):
Hey, Welcome back everybody.
Jeff Frick here coming to youfrom remotely one.
That's right.
I'm a guest host here for thesecond time.
I'm pretty excited about it withmy esteemed host, Kaleem
Clarkson.
Kaleem.
Great to see this morning.
Kaleem (00:59):
Oh yeah, man.
It's Jeff.
Thank you.
Thank you so much, sir, forstepping in for our brother and
Rick.
Why he, you know, Rick getbetter, sir.
Get your back better.
But I'm so excited to have youon man.
We got a professional shout outto you and your podcast work 20
X X.
So check that out listeners andviewers.
Cause it's damn good.
So, love it, man.
(01:20):
Thank you for being on bro.
Thank you.
Jeff (01:22):
My pleasure.
But today is all about remotelyone.
So if you have been watchingremotely one, you like the show,
go to rate this podcast.
com slash remotely one, andplease leave a review just one
more time.
So you got that rate thispodcast.
com one word slash remotely one.
If you did that, that would begreat.
Terrific.
Since 2015, Rick and Kaleem havebuilt an amazing community of
(01:46):
remote professionals, over 3000slack members, which is amazing.
5, 000 email subscribers.
It's free.
Check it out at remotely one.
com.
So, uh, Kaleem over to you.
Tell us a little bit about ourguest.
Kaleem (02:02):
Oh, Jeff, you know, you know, you know that I get real
nerved up.
I get so nerved up with ourguests, Jeff, because they just
make me understand how little Iam and how lack of lack of
productivity that I have.
In addition, I have to wearthese special shirts.
I wear these special shirts,Jeff, that have like maxi pads
(02:24):
underneath them so that I don'tsweat so that I don't sweat
through my shirt.
So I don't mind.
So today, today's guest is nodifferent.
Jeff.
Today's guests, they areoriginally from Charlotte, North
Carolina, the queen city.
Okay.
Okay.
Charlotte.
And they currently reside in thecity, AKA New York city.
Let's see.
What else do we have?
Oh, here we go.
(02:45):
This is the beginning of mefeeling, you know, incompetent.
Our guest today, Jeff graduatedfrom Vanderbilt.
So.
They
Jeff (02:53):
Call that the Stanford of the sec or the Northwestern of
the sec.
Suman (02:57):
I think that might be Duke, but yeah.
Kaleem (02:59):
isn't it called, isn't it called the Hidden Ivy League
or is it part the Hidden or theSouthern Ivy League actually.
Um, and he studied economics
Jeff (03:07):
They still have to play Alabama and football though.
It's rough.
Kaleem (03:10):
That is true.
That is true.
Oh, our guest started off someof their professional career
with a friend of ours from theshow, Rob Sato at Scoop
Technologies and the Flex Index.
Shout out to Rob.
Rob, what's up man?
How you doing?
Jeff (03:24):
Kicking tail with the flex index.
Kaleem (03:26):
something most people don't know about our guest,
Jeff.
He has a twin brother that hehas.
He says he has a dad bod, butbrother, I have a dad bod.
It's okay, bro.
Dad bods are cool.
It's cool.
It's the new, it's the newcoolness, man.
Um, he has a twin brother.
Our guest plays the piano in.
An instrument, which is anIndian drum called the tabla
(03:51):
really interesting.
So
Jeff (03:53):
Have you played that before?
Kaleem (03:55):
now I play the guitar, never played the tabla.
Maybe you could teach me.
Oh, and our guests, they went toburning man last year, AKA
burning my guest.
Did you have to throw your muddyclothes away?
Suman (04:07):
Definitely a portion of that.
Yes, definitely.
Kaleem (04:10):
The dirt, they're in the trash.
Oh, that's so awesome that youwent, I gotta get out there one
year.
Let's see.
So something else about ourguests.
Our guest was a senior associateconsultant at this tiny, tiny
little firm, Jeff.
this company is called Bain andcompany.
No big deal.
Just one of the big three andthe big three.
What's that McKenzie.
(04:32):
What's the other one?
Uh, Boston Consulting Group andBanning Company.
So again, Jeff, what the hell amI doing with my life?
Jeff, what are we doing?
Jeff (04:40):
Something in the water.
Kaleem (04:41):
I know, I guess know some shits.
Then he just decides to justsay, I'm going to, I'm going to
bolt.
I'm going to bolt.
I'm good.
Then they decide I'm going toget into the other side of the,
the, the.
Startup business.
The VC world decides to becomean investor, an advisor in the
Bay area, just doing big things,Jeff, just doing big things.
And then last but not least,last but not least, our guests,
(05:06):
they are the co founder.
And CEO of Marco experiences,which is a platform that helps
companies plan their off sitesand retreats.
So listeners and viewers, pleasegive a warm welcome to Sue.
(05:33):
Let's go.
Woo! Let's go, baby.
Settle down, studio audience.
Just
Jeff (05:37):
Give that man a new shirt.
Kaleem (05:40):
studio audience, please chill.
Sorry about that.
Come on.
Our studio audience gets firedup.
Sorry about that.
Thank you for joining us, man.
Thank you for joining us.
Suman (05:49):
Pleasure to be here.
Love the energy, Kaleem.
You're coming in hot on a Fridaymorning or afternoon, depending
on where you are in the country.
So,
Kaleem (05:56):
Yeah, we gotta do it, man.
Gotta do it.
Thank you.
Jeff (05:59):
Greatest intros in the biz.
That's certainly for sure.
Subban, I want to, let's jumpinto it.
So you were.
Clip it along at Bain doingsmart things with smart people
and big companies.
And then suddenly you decided totake a slight detour and join
our friend, Rob, as a cleanmentioned over at the flex
index, how did you decide toleave the big world in the big
(06:19):
business?
And didn't get, uh, get your toewet in the startup world.
Suman (06:23):
Yeah, actually, so Rob used to work at Bain as well.
And so I was working at Baindoing consulting and I was
working at Walmart, which is thebiggest company, massive
company.
And I kind of, uh, always hadthis kind of desire to get work
at a startup.
This is, by the way, this ispreflex index, Rob, Scoop was
initially a B2B carpoolingproduct.
(06:44):
So they, they help companieswith mobility.
And so basically I think it waslike 10 people in San Francisco.
So, um, whenever they're,there's kind of a first taste of
where I guess you live, uh, PaloAlto now, Jeff, but moved over
to SF and was there kind ofhelping his chief of staff,
everything from, you know,building out their financial
plan to moving plants and movingoffices for Rob, and so he's
(07:06):
still an advisor.
I'm like, Oh, actually, so, uh,I've had the pleasure to kind of
keep in touch with him over theyears.
And obviously he's now a topLincoln influencer in the future
of work.
And he's done a lot of amazingthings with regards to kind of
like building out the flex indexand we can talk more about that.
But yeah, that's how I initiallygot linked up with Rob.
Kaleem (07:23):
That's really cool, man.
So I need to just go back towhen you and Rob were at Bain
and Company.
So we've had a few people on theshow that have been at either
McKinsey or any of the other bigthree consulting firms.
What was that experience likefirst off?
Oh, do you remember yourinterview question?
That's the first question.
Do you remember your interviewquestion by any chance?
(07:44):
And then number two, like, whatis that experience like?
And like, what did you reallytake from the consulting
experience as far as education?
Okay.
Suman (07:54):
consulting, it's one of those things.
It's like, there's actuallymeans about this.
It's kind of people don't evenknow what the job means, right?
It's like, what does aconsultant do?
And I think there's actuallythere's truth to that.
But what I think 1 thing aboutconsulting is you kind of learn
how to think and solve problemsessentially.
So going to your question, likethe way you interview for
consulting firms is like a casestudy.
(08:15):
So essentially, Absolutely.
It's like, Hey, there's thisbusiness problem and what
they're kind of testing for islike, can have structured
thinking?
Can you kind of like figure outfrom first principles, like how
to solve a problem, which Iwould say Rob is phenomenal at.
The first, I don't remember thefirst interview question, but I
remember the guy thatinterviewed me was one of those
fascinating guys.
This guy, Nick Padlow, and hewas an army Ranger and he was
(08:36):
also went to Stanford forbusiness school, but he was a,
Professional poker player aswell.
And he was like a weird,eccentric, super smart,
charismatic guy.
And we just like hit it off.
I don't know.
There's certain interviews youdo and you're like, this was
this kind of clicked.
And so I still remember heactually went on to become an
entrepreneur and do a bunch ofinteresting kind of things.
(08:57):
But I remember the person whointerviewed me, not necessarily
the question itself, but yeah,exactly.
yeah, exactly.
Jeff (09:07):
How many manhole covers in Manhattan?
Kaleem (09:09):
Yeah.
Suman (09:10):
Yeah,
Jeff (09:16):
and you went down another kind of traditional course,
which is on the investment side.
And you jumped over into theinvestment and even got to spend
some time at SoftBank VisionFund, which at that time is one
of the biggest, most importantinvestors out there on the tech
space.
So what did you learn kind of inyour time on the investment
side?
Kaleem (09:34):
Unbelievable.
Suman (09:35):
so I initially started off at a firm called Castaneda
and now it's called Stride andthey're a consumer, basically, I
love, I love brands, uh, whetherthat we obviously focus on
businesses B2B now, but theywere the former Neiman Marcus
family office.
So invested in, you know,brands, fashion, food and
beverage, beauty, that sort ofthing.
So I love kind of, um, brandsand kind of brand equity, which
(09:57):
is something too important tokind of Marco.
Now, and then basically I waslike, all right, I want to go
into tech in some capacity.
So I was working with consumer.
I worked, I went over to softbank and joined kind of pretty
early.
I was one of the first moneyfolks.
On the investment team, workingon the consumer technology and
prop tech or real estate techgroup and so Stop bank was I
(10:18):
mean we could do a whole podcaston that to be honest, right?
It was a hundred billion dollarfirm.
The initial year was like, youknow it was could have been I
mean, I actually joked thatthere should be kind of a movie
about this But you go there Itwas like 20 people.
We got a ton of money to deployin the first year was, you know,
just really, I would say gettinga lot of exposure to some of the
most interesting people inSilicon Valley and just be a
(10:40):
super young person, but becauseof the fund, you got tremendous
access.
So meeting incredible founderswho were creating kind of
category defining companies.
And to be honest, a lot of what.
I found there was, I was like,it looks like, people on the
other side of the table aredoing more interesting work.
I think, the venture ecosystem,is super important and capital
(11:00):
is important.
And obviously SoftBank made somegood investments, made, some
wild investments that I think.
Masa was probably ahead of histime in terms of thinking about
the importance of AI, which isobviously super relevant now.
But he was always talking aboutkind of the importance of AI as
an investor in NVIDIA.
And so basically I didn't knowwhat I was doing.
I was at SoftBank and I waslike, all right, I want to go
start this company.
(11:20):
And I was working in consumertech, spent a lot of time within
travel and experiences is kindof a category.
Invested in a company called getyour guide, which is a
competitive trip advisor.
It's an experience platform.
It's kind of like, all right, Iwant to get you something in
this space.
Didn't have co founder at thetime.
Didn't have really much ofanything.
And so went out.
Luckily, I was in San Francisco.
So it was able to meet Nick, myco founder and start working on
(11:42):
markup.
So
Kaleem (11:45):
Interesting.
Interesting.
So just out of curiosity, beforeyou started your company, and
we'll talk about that in asecond, what was your initial
spark that got you involved withthe remote work?
What was your first remote workexperience?
Like, do you remember?
Suman (12:03):
Well, you know, what's funny is we started Marco right
before COVID.
So initially it wasn't focusedon remote work, but it was
focused on experiences.
Right.
So it was actually consumerfacing.
And then I remember COVIDhappens and Nick and I, Nick, my
co founder were in Tahoeactually.
And we were like, all the skiresorts start shutting down.
And no one really knew what likewas going to happen.
(12:25):
It's like, is this going to be aweekend thing?
Is this going to be a couple ofweeks?
Is this going to be.
What happened is couple ofyears, and I don't think anyone
foresaw that the way we live andwork would just fundamentally
change overnight, like, even thefact that we're doing this
podcast recording super normallyover zoom or Riverside or
whatever platform that's notnormal.
And now 80 percent of companiesare remote.
(12:47):
Our hybrid and the way we workis, is kind of fundamentally
changed.
What happened actually, and thenthe reason for kind of pivoting
Marcos, we basically were tryingto back to square one, figuring
out what we're going to do, andwe started doing like virtual
events to support kind ofcreators, hosts in the local
kind of community and someone,we just basically had a text
list and we would just, peoplewere, you remember, we're so
(13:08):
bored that they would really doanything.
And so we were just doing theseevents and there's a couple of
funny stories from that period.
But someone worked at like anold school tech company.
I forget.
It was like work or somethinglike Cisco.
And they were like, Hey, likeour team hasn't seen each other.
Would you do this?
Would you do this for our team?
And we're like, Oh, that'sinteresting.
you're like, yeah, we're justlike on zoom all day.
We, we don't get to kind of likedo anything social or kind of
(13:30):
engage with one another.
So then we kind of started doingthis.
We had a PDF with basically 10hosts that you could just kind
of book.
And people started.
A lot of companies leaned in andthey're like, okay, we need some
way to connect our employees.
So that was the first experienceof people kind of asking for
some way to connect.
Jeff (13:47):
It's pretty interesting.
Brian Elliot from the future forhim, you know, one of his great
lines is remote.
It doesn't mean never together.
And, you know, it's even moreimportant and more intentional
than the time you are together.
You're spending time buildingtrust and building relationships
and strengthening the team andmove all your crap work to
async.
But I'm curious, everyone waskind of struggling in those
(14:08):
early COVID days.
You know, they're doing zoommeetings and zoom cocktails and
zoom happy hours and zoom familydays.
How did you start to think aboutexperiences first digitally?
And then I don't want to justsay we have to get to people
together.
Obviously there were therestrictions.
So together still wasn't anoption in early COVID.
How did it kind of evolve intoa, to more than just getting
(14:31):
together on a zoom call?
Suman (14:33):
totally.
And so Brian, we do for Marco,we do a webinar, called turning
companies into communities.
He's been a guest on there with,Chrissy Arnold, who, when he was
at Slack, they had, you'refamiliar with this, something
called the future forum.
They're publishing a bunch oflike amazing research.
around remote work and how tocollaborate more effectively.
Obviously, slack is one of the,you know, we live in slack.
(14:54):
It's amazing collaboration tool.
However, both of them will talkabout how, as you said, Jeff
remote doesn't mean nevertogether.
Right.
So I think philosophically humanbeings are just like social
creatures.
So Kaleem, we met an event.
We met at HR transform.
Right.
And I actually think thatmeeting and developing kind of
(15:15):
empathy and kind of just like,Making friends, honestly, with
folks that you work with ordeveloping some like common
understanding just allows you todo better work.
Like I always say thattransactional work or just like
the productivity of work is alot easier.
Now you have so many tools thatare collaborative, whether it's
like notion or Slack or whateverit is to like, get your work
(15:37):
done more effectively.
But if I'm working with you onsomething and I don't know where
you're coming from, I don't knowif you have a family or kits or
like, what's stressing you outon a personal level or just
like, don't have that empathy, Idon't just think there's a lot
of data that supports this.
You're not going to do as good.
Your work isn't going to be asgood, right?
So that is philosophically, Ithink, something that's super
(15:58):
important, and then I would say,like, in the beginning of covid,
the only way you could gettogether with zoom.
Right?
And we actually, our company haspivoted and focused on group
travel kind of onsites, offsites, retreats, and the reason
for that, and any dean at lastyear and do a lot of like, great
research on this that folks haveall kind of.
Yeah.
Seen in the space around they'vemeasured the impact of kind of,
(16:22):
you know, say you're doing aquarterly gathering or something
like that.
Your scores of employeeconnection improved by 30, 40
percent and then they go downafter time.
But those moments are likesuper.
And you can tie that toproductivity.
It's not just employeeconnection, but there's actually
like business outcomes that comeout of that.
So long winded answer, but
Kaleem (16:41):
Yeah.
I mean, it was, it was, it wasgood answers.
Good answer.
And it actually made me thinkabout, so if I'm getting the
timelines, correct, you started,Marco experiences as a company
that did like in person eventsbefore the pandemic started.
Right.
Is that accurate?
Suman (16:59):
we, we, yeah, we basically started, Marco is
there's a company called partyfull or you may know Luma, which
is like a.
Basically like a Facebookevents, like super lightweight,
text based social events productwhere you can book experiences
on a marketplace as well.
That was like the initial kindof thing.
So it's always been called Marcoand it's always been around kind
of the, I would say likeexperiences kind of space.
(17:22):
and then it was kind of likevirtual and then in
Kaleem (17:25):
Uh oh.
Like, cause you're all ready togo and then all of a sudden
there's a thing.
Uh oh.
So then you had to kind oftransition.
And now you're kind of back tobeing able to help people plan
their experiences in person.
My question is kind of back toconnection again.
I know I talk about this all thetime.
So people, I'm sorry if you'rehearing it again, but shout out
(17:46):
to buffer for the, doing theirstate of remote works that
they've been doing since like2016, maybe I think they've been
doing those state of remoteworks for a while and in every
one, they ask relatively thesame questions as far as what
are your biggest challenges andthe most recent one, or the 2023
version, when you add up all thechallenges, Difficulty
(18:07):
collaborating, difficulty,connecting with my teammates,
difficulty with loneliness.
When you add up all of theseconnections, it comes out to
about 68%, I think, no, 60percent of all of the challenges
that people have or aroundconnection, like literally like
those are their challenges.
(18:29):
So as a company that Is leadingthe charge in this space.
How much advice do you provideyour clients as far as building
the week out for thoseintentional connections?
I know a lot of people planthese off sites and load them up
with work, work, work, and shoutout to chase warranting.
(18:49):
He's talked a lot about thiswith do us as far as what their
percentages are of work versusfun.
So what type of assistance.
Do you provide, you know,organizations, especially remote
or hybrid organizations toreally be intentional about the
connection side of it?
Suman (19:09):
Yeah.
I think it's a great question.
So I think we always talk aboutlike intentional experiences at
Marco and the way I describe itis in some ways.
You're kind of in this like longdistance relationship with folks
that, by the way, even if you'reremote or hybrid or in person
now, a lot of companies havedifferent hubs.
So you might be on a sales teamand you're actually working with
(19:29):
folks that are in differentgeographies.
So you're actually, even if youwouldn't be qualified as a
remote company, everyone has.
Yeah,
Kaleem (19:37):
you could be fully onsite.
You could be fully onsite and indifferent locations is your
point.
You could say we don't allowremote work, but all these
people in different hubs,technically they're working
remotely.
Suman (19:47):
Yeah, for sure.
So there's, from an advicestandpoint, we are as much
learning from companies.
They're doing the doing, youknow, doing these the right way.
We're kind of learning along theway as much as we are providing
advice is what I would say iseveryone's trying to figure it
out.
And we're in this period wherecompanies are just starting to
develop.
You know, during COVID, no onecould see each other.
Now people there's a period ofexperimentation where people are
(20:10):
like, okay, cool.
We're going to invest in kind ofthese kinds of gatherings.
And now you have like companieslike Atlassian Dropbox that are
developing strategies aroundlike frequency cadence.
format, right?
Whether it's like, okay, cool.
This is how often we dosomething with the full company.
This is functional level,leadership team level, new hires
and so forth.
From a content perspective, itis a classic kind of, the
(20:35):
initial kind of reaction will belike, cool.
We only see sort of let's jam ina bunch of stuff here in these
three days, which especially youhave to think about some people
are introverted.
Some people are extroverted.
Everyone is exhausted andprobably has to travel.
They may be leaving behind kitsand so forth.
So then that is actually not thebest use of time in terms of
just like getting as much thingsto do and possible.
We'll be right back after thesewords.
(20:58):
2020 was no joke.
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(21:21):
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I'm Rick Haney, and if you're abusiness owner looking for a
creative voice in yourmarketing, look no further.
I'll tell your story the way youwant it told.
(22:50):
Follow along at Remotely We AreOne, or visit my website at
rickhaney.
me for more information.
And now, back to the show.
And Brian, actually, we talked about this when we
chatted, but we do somethingcalled kind of experience design
where it's like, what is cool?
We can book you a hotel.
(23:10):
We can handle vendors and soforth, but also there's almost
like a psychology aspects aroundhow does the near, like, we also
talk about like the airporttest, which is how do you get.
An employee, when they're headedback down to the airport to be
like, that was an exceptionaluse of time.
And it actually isn't like aboondoggle where you're just
like having a bunch of drinksand having a bunch of fun, but
(23:31):
it's also not something whereyou're just like heads down on
your laptop all the time.
So there's different ways youcan kind of structure and
program the time when you'retogether.
And I think it should be.
Based on it could be, you know,there's obviously like your
things and where you're eating,you're drinking, there's
collaborative work you can do.
(23:51):
So there's work around like,hey, I got to build a slide deck
or write some code or whatever.
You can do that prettyeffectively asynchronously.
Right?
But what you can't do.
Is maybe having like a productkind of jam session or, getting
old school whiteboarding, whichI still am a kind of big fan of
right or delivering somestrategic message and getting
people excited about somethingor doing something around like
(24:13):
team connection, which is a verybroad phrase, but something that
is kind of work related, butit's actually about like
understanding how someone Showsup at work, what their strengths
are, you know, how do youeffectively communicate with
them?
So we basically have a wholeplatform or product around this,
where you basically build out anitinerary and there's templates
around what you might want todo, how do you structure the
(24:34):
time and it will actually tellyou how to do that.
Most effectively, and we havepeople that will help.
So
Kaleem (24:41):
Oh, you called it experienced design consultants
available to help people.
Suman (24:45):
yeah, so we have, yeah, so court Roberts leads
experience design.
She has a background as afacilitator as coach and she'll,
you know, and we work with othercompanies as well.
If you need to book likefacilitator or session or
something like that, but we canalso our big thing at market was
combining product and technologywith like, a high level of
support service and human beingsas well.
(25:06):
So,
Kaleem (25:07):
man.
Kudos to you, bro.
Wow.
Jeff (25:11):
So it's interesting.
People are always trying todefine the right word that
describes the relationshipbetween people in the company
and the company.
And, some people will say it'slike a family and, you know,
people have a lot of pushback onit's a family and there's all
kinds of different words.
Your guys tagline is turningcompanies into communities.
And helping companies bringtogether.
(25:31):
How do you see communities asthe right defining
characteristic and what is itabout a community that's the
right amount of intimacy, but,you know, something short of a
family?
Kaleem (25:41):
Well
Suman (25:41):
Yeah.
So there's a guy, Chris Shembra,who, he's a, he's an author.
He's a speaker.
He's an awesome guy.
He's a gratitude expert is whatpeople call him.
So he's written a book, a coupleof books called gratitude
through hard times.
And I think gratitude and pastais another one.
So he talks about in his books,he's a big kind of community
fan.
(26:01):
And he talks about the originalword company was from two Latin
words, which means come, whichmeans together.
And ponies, which means bread.
So the original word for acompany was people coming
together to break bread.
Then it's translated into peoplecoming together with a shared
objective or a mission could be,you know, to build a product or
a service or whatever it is.
But by the way, a professionalsports team is a community as
(26:24):
well, right?
And their fans are communitiesas well.
You can think about them ascustomers, right?
So a community doesn't have tobe this like kind of kumbaya
family where you're all kind oflike, friends and that sort of
thing.
Kaleem (26:35):
Just going to burn in man.
Yeah.
Like you, we don't likecommunity going to burn in man
with tents and all that stuff.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I get it.
I get it.
Suman (26:42):
well, so no, the reason I went to Burning Man is like, I
think Burning Man is one of themost interesting experiments on
community that exists in ourgeneration.
Right?
Because if you go there, there's10 kind of like guidelines.
One of them is like, leave notrace, for example.
So everyone is picking up trash.
The whole thing is like, youcannot like leave any trash.
So like, you talk about mud,despite all of that, And each
(27:02):
camp has their own kind of likeguidelines.
So you have to like work shifts,you have to contribute.
Everyone comes there and it'spart of the build process.
So like that is also one of thereasons I was like, that is a
super interesting example of acommunity that comes together
and builds a full city.
In the period of a couple ofweeks.
So it is a fascinating kind ofexample.
So Mark Levy, who's the head ofglobal employee experience at
(27:24):
Airbnb, and he's also an advisorat Marco and he, at Airbnb, they
actually coined the phraseemployee experience, and he
talks about like four types ofconnection that was important to
Airbnb, and I might get some ofthese wrong, but it's like
connection between the companyand the employees, the to the
employees, the employees to thecustomers and the employees to
the community.
Jeff (27:44):
You hit it.
I got them written down righthere.
You nailed it.
Suman (27:47):
so, so yeah, not to be like a consultant and there's a
framework, but like, this canrelate to any company, like you,
if you're trying to solve thisbig problem and you're super
high achieving and you're likemore kind of hard line, you're
like we got to crush it.
That doesn't mean that you don'tneed that level of connection.
The connection could lookdifferent.
Right.
But think about a company likeopen AI, which is absolutely
crushing it.
They have to think about theircommunity, which is cool.
(28:10):
How do we have the, theleadership of the company kind
of deliver the message thatemployees are working on, how do
employees work together,cohesively, how are they going
out and selling the customersand how do we get people to
like, you know, in the broadercommunity, kind of get, come
along with the vision.
So it doesn't matter whatcompany you're in.
If you're just like, thisdoesn't matter.
We don't have to invest in kindof connection.
(28:31):
That doesn't make any sense tome personally, but
Kaleem (28:35):
Community connection.
I love that.
That's one thing, you know,working with a client where
we're trying to move away fromfamily as business term, you
know, cause you can't,
Suman (28:46):
yeah,
Kaleem (28:46):
I mean, I guess you could fire your family, but.
Really you can't, I guess.
So, yeah, we're trying to,trying to step away from that.
I think one of the things thatwe're kind of leaning into is if
you are going to use family,maybe say family first or people
first, right.
Like, um, but I really love yourtagline to, um, you know,
transitioning to communitiesbecause it really is community.
(29:11):
If you really think about it,you're all getting together.
Communities, all people, allcoming together for a common
thing and then you're moving itforward.
So
Suman (29:19):
yeah.
The also like you spend like 70%of your life at work.
So something like, I forget theexact amount of time or hours,
but you spend a tremendous ofyour life at time, of your time,
like waking hours at work, soyou don't have to necessarily
like, like the people you workwith and wanna go for dinner or
drinks afterwards.
(29:39):
By the way, I think that's agood thing.
Right.
It's not a bad thing.
It's a good thing.
You might as well, like in mymind, she was like, I might as
well, I don't be best friendswith everyone.
Yeah, that's not true, but I'veplenty of great friendships that
I've built at work, but you dohave to respect each other,
right, in order to do good work.
And so that's, that's, I think,a non negotiable, but.
Jeff (29:58):
So I'm curious on your feedback forms.
What is the thing when they'regoing to the airport that they
say was the most impactful thingof the week?
You know, I think of Brian, whenhe talks about his offsites with
his teams, he talks about thecooking and making meals
together and, the spending time.
Is there, you know, two or threethings that are just consistent
winners and bringing peopletogether and building a sense of
belonging.
Suman (30:19):
Yeah, I think it's all a means to an end.
So you could do something that'slike really fun.
But then the objective of thatis to share some type of mement
with someone, right?
That could be work related toyou solving a really complicated
problem, right?
Some of the most effectiveoffsets, even for our personal
team, is we're coming together.
(30:40):
And we do like kind of productideation sessions with our team
and bring in cross functionalfolks so they can create
something that then we'll gobuild that has been kind of
extremely, people get superexcited about that, but anything
I would say the biggest impactis like you meet someone new,
you share like an authentic kindof experience with that.
(31:01):
Brian talks about this too, bythe way, I think, Zillow charter
works just published this.
Where the natural inclination ofsomeone, if you're with a big
group, you're going to like, andyou're friends with clean, when
you go to these types of things,you're going to hang out with
clean, you know?
Yeah.
So then ways to kind of likecreate.
Kind of structured serendipitywhere it's like you actually
(31:23):
interact with someone thatyou're on the sales team and
you're talking to someone on theengineering team that is great.
And we just did a webinar oncross functional collaboration.
And 1 of the great things is wehad Weller, who's a senior
engineer at Marco, Hannah is onthe product operations team, and
then Allie Brown, who's on thesupply team.
And they're now, they work superwell together.
They're collaborating superwell, but all of that, like
(31:45):
Hannah actually met Weller atone of these offsites that we
did, developed a friendship withhim.
He's a Brazilian.
So he used to not be superconfident going and like just
chatting with someone becauseEnglish isn't his kind of first
language.
And now he's, they're workingsuper well together.
So that actually manifests inlike business results because
now they're working together andthey're friendly and they, it's
(32:05):
going super well.
So, I
Kaleem (32:13):
you're right.
I've mentioned this before, butthere's a book, I might get the
title wrong, but like, Why AreAll The Black kits Sitting At
The One Table?
And that basically is, it's verysimilar, right?
Like, you know what you know,and you kind of gravitate
towards the people that you're,you have some sort of
relationship with.
I do want to kind of ask youyour opinion.
I have a feeling now you'regoing to answer, but I gotta ask
(32:34):
you anyway.
You know, so at Blend we talk alot about connection because
again, that's 60 percent of thechallenges that companies have
around connections.
So, you know, as we'reconsulting with them and helping
them improve their employeeexperience, that's a big
challenge.
So we kind of coined thisconcept of, you know, creating a
social connection strategy.
This idea that you have, youknow, we kind of group these
(32:56):
connections in the three bigbuckets.
You have professionalconnections, mentors,
colleagues, coworkers, etcetera.
You have lifestyle connections,which are hobbies, things,
friendships that you do.
And then intimate connections,which, you know, people get a
little wary of a little bit whenyou're talking about intimate
Intimate, connections, right?
So romantic relationships,religions and intimate
(33:18):
relationship, politics is anintimate relationship, but they
are there, right?
What do you think the role is ofthe organization and the
company?
Especially in a remote companyspecifically.
What do you think the role isfor a company to ensure that
their employees have theseconnections and does Marco
(33:40):
experiences provideopportunities for people to kind
of learn about the culture of acommunity?
Right.
Learn about these other thingsjust outside of work, because
everybody's focused on how can Ijust know my coworkers?
What, what about those otherconnections?
Suman (33:56):
Well, I would say we don't just focus on social
connections and I'll answer yourquestion.
But my kind of thing is like,even just to take a step back,
if you're a remote or hybrid orin office, we also are kind of
like ambivalent towards thatbecause the whole reason you
have office space in the firstplace, by the way, is so your
employees connect.
Yeah.
Like, so
Kaleem (34:15):
We forgot about, that.
We forgot about
Suman (34:17):
no, so like we, we did this whole thing on like the ROI
of like gatherings and what theanalysis shows is Companies on
average spend like, especiallyin the Bay area, maybe one and a
half to three K per employee permonth on rent, furniture,
consumables, all the stuffthat's like associated with an
office.
Now you're spending less.
And so, cause people are like,well, I don't, should I really
be investing in this like, inpeople are investing more in
(34:38):
team travel, but the reason islike, by the way, on the net,
you're probably saving money.
Right?
So you got to think about yourbudget and your ROI on like this
spend ultimately one of the bigreasons you spend on this kind
of stuff.
Is to connect, like that isliterally why you pay for office
space actually.
Right.
So you can be in the same baseand deal with people and begin
work done and so forth.
(34:59):
So for Marco, like it could bework related, right?
Like we do plenty of thingswhere it's like a sales kickoff
or a leadership team offsite,which is like, that could be
super work related from aconnection standpoint.
However, even within thatcontainer, you're like, cool,
there should be to your point,different types of kind of
connection.
I think that's really up to thecompany, to be honest.
(35:21):
Like you could, like, you thinkabout Brian Armstrong at
Coinbase, he's like, we're nottalking about politics or kind
of religion or these types ofissues within the workplace.
I actually kind of probably amon towards that side of the coin
in terms of like, the workplaceshouldn't necessarily be a
conduit to like, talk aboutpolitics or something that like,
actually, you should have aplace.
(35:42):
And the reason is like, Youshould have a company where
people are allowed to havedifferent points of view, I
think, right?
I think there definitely isvalue from a just culture and
education standpoint to dothings around celebrating each
other's history and culture andso forth.
That's a positive, right?
Cause that is more just likecelebration and allowing you to
like show up as your true selfwithin work, which is a big part
(36:05):
of your life, right?
So that stuff's great, right?
Like, and there's no negative.
Thing to celebrating blackhistory month or I'm Indian,
like bring an Indian food to therest.
It's like, that's great.
Right.
Cause that's a part of, um, youknow, your identity and you
should be able to share that.
I guess to answer your question,I think a company should be able
to decide what that looks like,right.
And there are a certain minimumviable kind of like you should
(36:28):
invest in social connectionbecause there actually are
business outcomes that come outof that, because like there's a
Harvard business school, didthis paper where People, your
attention and your productivityand all these factors are like
way more likely to be high ifyou have a best friend at work.
Right.
So if someone's like, well, Idon't actually give a shit.
Like, why do you need to befriends with people at work?
Kaleem (36:47):
Seven, seven times more engagement.
I think there's the stat I usethat in my slides.
It's seven times moreengagement.
If you have a best friend atwork, it's crazy.
Suman (36:55):
Yeah.
So we talked to like peopleleaders, but also finance teams,
like CFO, right?
Okay.
Well, I'm going to do this.
And I'm like, cool.
Well, there's actually a lot ofbusiness value to like investing
thoughtfully in these types ofthings.
Like Bain, for example, isalways like glass door, best
place to work, all this kind ofstuff.
The first thing you do at Bainis you go to something called
associate consultant training.
It's always in Cape Cod and it'sglobal.
(37:17):
So Bain has a ton of differentoffices.
I didn't work directly with Rob,he was in the New York office, I
was in the Texas office.
But I have developedfriendships, relationships, been
in weddings, invested in, hadpeople invest in my company that
I met at Bain.
So it is like, that's, and bythe way, like,
Kaleem (37:33):
new higher cohorts, new higher cohorts are critical.
Yes.
Suman (37:37):
yeah, but then you think about like, oh, why invest in
this stuff?
It's like now I'll talk aboutBain during this podcast and
people are like, Oh,interesting.
I'm a college person I'mthinking about going to work at
a consulting firm.
So you develop a certainaffinity And if you're like an
executive down the road andyou're like, I got to hire a
consultant and you enjoyed yourtime there, who are you going to
choose?
You're going to choose thatfirm, right?
So it's short sighted to, Imean, every company should
(38:00):
decide, but you should thinkabout kind of that stuff and
figure out the right balance foryour company.
Kaleem (38:06):
Makes sense.
What is
Jeff (38:07):
All right.
So when we're getting towardsthe end of our time, so we have
the hard question for you, tellus what comical or inspiring
moment you had while workingremotely,
Suman (38:19):
Yeah.
So the first time I was workingremotely was when I was wearing
on Marco, right.
So.
It's actually funny because thisis for an event we were doing
for Bing.
And so initially when you'restarting a startup, you got
Kaleem (38:29):
right.
Suman (38:29):
to look like an idiot.
And in this case, I look like anidiot, but so we, so I remember
we, we basically were doingthese like cooking classes and I
was like working to likemanually ship these kits with
this.
Like the chef who she basicallydidn't have it dialed in terms
of like shipping food kits.
(38:50):
So then I'm working with thisjunior person at Bain, and it's
actually the head of thetechnology practice at Bain, all
these like senior partners.
And then they would basicallyship them meat and it gets
spoiled.
And then I'm like, Oh, crap.
And then I'm getting this womanthat I was working with was
like, assuming like all that.
This is terrible.
Like what's happening.
And I was like, I'm going tolike, Instacart everyone food.
(39:11):
They're like, we don't want anymore of this spoiled meat.
We are, we, you got it.
They were like, let's just do acocktail making class.
So then I hit up Kate and I'mlike, this is a disaster.
She, this is actually a funnystory.
So
Jeff (39:23):
How many people, How many kits were you sending out?
Suman (39:26):
this, it's like 20 kits or something
Kaleem (39:29):
So, So, just, just, they opened the kits and it's spoiled
Jeff (39:32):
It's just rotten
Suman (39:33):
the, the meat is just, okay.
Yeah.
So by the way, just to beextremely clear, now we've had
our hosts and for any of theseexperiences, people have figured
out the shipping thing.
So let's just make that superquick.
So then, I call Kate and I'mlike, we gotta like, Just do
this cocktail making class.
I don't know.
We'll figure it out.
She responds and she's like, Imet her, my, her, her father had
a construction site in SanFrancisco.
(39:54):
She had thrown out her back atthe construction site that day.
So she's like, I can't like moveor walk.
So I just grabbed everything inmy apartment, like all the booze
and the utensils I had.
And I was like, I'm going to goto her restaurant.
And I am not a mixologist.
I was like, I'm going to do thisclass.
I think I'll figure it out.
And so, and these are,
Kaleem (40:14):
spoiled me already.
so
Jeff (40:15):
To keep it simple, gin and tonic.
Suman (40:18):
yeah, so we, exactly.
So then we had a, this guy, um,on our, Kevin Blake, who's a
magician, And he made like, hemade a ton of money on our
platform during COVID.
He's an exceptional magician.
It sounds kind of kitschy, buthe's like a badass.
Like he's, so I called him and Iwas like, Hey man, I need a
favor.
Like we have something, we havethis event and like, we can't do
(40:39):
it.
Are you available?
He's like, when is it?
I'm like, it's in like 15minutes.
And he's like, okay, I'm goingto go to my studio.
And so then we get, I get to thething and I turned on the zoom
and I was like, so this is allpart of the experience.
You thought you were doing acooking class, you're doing a
magic show, and here we haveKevin Blake, and he gets on and
he crushes it.
Kaleem (41:01):
Well, what
Suman (41:01):
was
Kaleem (41:02):
with the drinks?
What did you do with the drinks?
Cause you, you grabbed,
Suman (41:04):
I had to have a drink after that experience, that's
for sure.
So I
Kaleem (41:09):
that's,
Suman (41:09):
drink because I have like 10 stories, I have like 10, 10
similar stories.
Jeff (41:18):
They didn't even, they didn't even know about the
mixology chapter that just kindof slipped in and out before
they even
Suman (41:24):
They didn't, no one really knows about this story.
Yeah.
So I was sweating bullets.
I'm like, Oh my God.
And then the partner, thepartner's like bringing their
kits in there, like, this is socool.
But that was a stressfulexperience for sure.
Kaleem (41:37):
Your former company.
Wow.
What is, what a story, bro.
Thank you for sharing
Jeff (41:42):
Lemonade out of lemons.
I love it.
Suman (41:45):
Yeah, it worked out it could it could have I mean could
you imagine if Kevin wouldn'tthat would have been a disaster
Kaleem (41:51):
Well, you had the drinks ready to go.
You had the drinks ready to
Suman (41:54):
Yeah,
Kaleem (41:54):
have,
Suman (41:55):
yeah Jeff it would've been here's how you make a chin
tuck Yeah.
Jeff (42:03):
and got sick after the fact.
I mean, there's all kinds
Kaleem (42:05):
well done.
Jeff (42:06):
bad things that could happen.
Kaleem (42:07):
Well, you figured it out.
You figured it out.
Got to pivot.
Jeff (42:11):
That's why I tell people dancing is important.
You got to learn to dance.
You got to be comfortablebecause stuff changes.
All right.
So where can people find you?
Where can they reach out?
Where can they learn more aboutMarco experiences?
Suman (42:23):
Yeah.
You can go to markoexperiences.
com first and foremost.
I'm active on LinkedIn, so youcan search Suman Siva, S U M A N
Siva, S I V A.
On LinkedIn, Twitter, all this,all the things, but yeah, check
us out at marcoexperiences.
com.
We help companies save time,money, make their group
experiences off sites on sitesbetter, more effective.
So hit us up and, uh, appreciateyour time guys.
(42:45):
This is fun.
Kaleem (42:47):
Oh man.
Thank you so much, bro.
We'll definitely make it out toone of those experiences.
I want to check it out.
So I appreciate you coming onThe
Suman (42:53):
The Turkey one.
We got
Kaleem (42:54):
Yeah.
Suman (42:55):
one coming up right up for
Jeff (42:56):
I'm bringing a deck of cards.
I'm bringing a deck of cards.
Kaleem (42:59):
Awesome.
Suman, thank you so much.
We'll talk to you all soon.
Peace.
What is Build A Boob, bro?
(00:01):
I mean, like, what is up withthat?
You know what I mean?
Like, I don't understand.
What is Build A Boob, dawg?
Suman (00:07):
Build a boop.
I don't even, I actually haveseen it before, so I, I get the
reference.
I have not partaken.
I have not.
Jeff (00:14):
do you don't, uh, do every experience to do like a QA test
to make sure it's, uh,
Suman (00:20):
I should.
Jeff (00:21):
the, for the,
Suman (00:22):
We do get good.
We do get good feedback on that.
Although it's, it is certainlyone of one, I would say the
build a brood of experiences.
Jeff (00:31):
Well, cause we know where the, cause we know where two and
three go.
So we probably don't want to gothere.
Suman (00:40):
That's
Kaleem (00:40):
That's the best thing ever.
So you,
Jeff (00:47):
Hey, Welcome back everybody.
Jeff Frick here coming to youfrom remotely one.
That's right.
I'm a guest host here for thesecond time.
I'm pretty excited about it withmy esteemed host, Kaleem
Clarkson.
Kaleem.
Great to see this morning.
Kaleem (00:59):
Oh yeah, man.
It's Jeff.
Thank you.
Thank you so much, sir, forstepping in for our brother and
Rick.
Why he, you know, Rick getbetter, sir.
Get your back better.
But I'm so excited to have youon man.
We got a professional shout outto you and your podcast work 20
X X.
So check that out listeners andviewers.
Cause it's damn good.
So, love it, man.
(01:20):
Thank you for being on bro.
Thank you.
Jeff (01:22):
My pleasure.
But today is all about remotelyone.
So if you have been watchingremotely one, you like the show,
go to rate this podcast.
com slash remotely one, andplease leave a review just one
more time.
So you got that rate thispodcast.
com one word slash remotely one.
If you did that, that would begreat.
Terrific.
Since 2015, Rick and Kaleem havebuilt an amazing community of
(01:46):
remote professionals, over 3000slack members, which is amazing.
5, 000 email subscribers.
It's free.
Check it out at remotely one.
com.
So, uh, Kaleem over to you.
Tell us a little bit about ourguest.
Kaleem (02:02):
Oh, Jeff, you know, you know, you know that I get real
nerved up.
I get so nerved up with ourguests, Jeff, because they just
make me understand how little Iam and how lack of lack of
productivity that I have.
In addition, I have to wearthese special shirts.
I wear these special shirts,Jeff, that have like maxi pads
(02:24):
underneath them so that I don'tsweat so that I don't sweat
through my shirt.
So I don't mind.
So today, today's guest is nodifferent.
Jeff.
Today's guests, they areoriginally from Charlotte, North
Carolina, the queen city.
Okay.
Okay.
Charlotte.
And they currently reside in thecity, AKA New York city.
Let's see.
What else do we have?
Oh, here we go.
(02:45):
This is the beginning of mefeeling, you know, incompetent.
Our guest today, Jeff graduatedfrom Vanderbilt.
So.
They
Jeff (02:53):
Call that the Stanford of the sec or the Northwestern of
the sec.
Suman (02:57):
I think that might be Duke, but yeah.
Kaleem (02:59):
isn't it called, isn't it called the Hidden Ivy League
or is it part the Hidden or theSouthern Ivy League actually.
Um, and he studied economics
Jeff (03:07):
They still have to play Alabama and football though.
It's rough.
Kaleem (03:10):
That is true.
That is true.
Oh, our guest started off someof their professional career
with a friend of ours from theshow, Rob Sato at Scoop
Technologies and the Flex Index.
Shout out to Rob.
Rob, what's up man?
How you doing?
Jeff (03:24):
Kicking tail with the flex index.
Kaleem (03:26):
something most people don't know about our guest,
Jeff.
He has a twin brother that hehas.
He says he has a dad bod, butbrother, I have a dad bod.
It's okay, bro.
Dad bods are cool.
It's cool.
It's the new, it's the newcoolness, man.
Um, he has a twin brother.
Our guest plays the piano in.
An instrument, which is anIndian drum called the tabla
(03:51):
really interesting.
So
Jeff (03:53):
Have you played that before?
Kaleem (03:55):
now I play the guitar, never played the tabla.
Maybe you could teach me.
Oh, and our guests, they went toburning man last year, AKA
burning my guest.
Did you have to throw your muddyclothes away?
Suman (04:07):
Definitely a portion of that.
Yes, definitely.
Kaleem (04:10):
The dirt, they're in the trash.
Oh, that's so awesome that youwent, I gotta get out there one
year.
Let's see.
So something else about ourguests.
Our guest was a senior associateconsultant at this tiny, tiny
little firm, Jeff.
this company is called Bain andcompany.
No big deal.
Just one of the big three andthe big three.
What's that McKenzie.
(04:32):
What's the other one?
Uh, Boston Consulting Group andBanning Company.
So again, Jeff, what the hell amI doing with my life?
Jeff, what are we doing?
Jeff (04:40):
Something in the water.
Kaleem (04:41):
I know, I guess know some shits.
Then he just decides to justsay, I'm going to, I'm going to
bolt.
I'm going to bolt.
I'm good.
Then they decide I'm going toget into the other side of the,
the, the.
Startup business.
The VC world decides to becomean investor, an advisor in the
Bay area, just doing big things,Jeff, just doing big things.
And then last but not least,last but not least, our guests,
(05:06):
they are the co founder.
And CEO of Marco experiences,which is a platform that helps
companies plan their off sitesand retreats.
So listeners and viewers, pleasegive a warm welcome to Sue.
(05:33):
Let's go.
Woo! Let's go, baby.
Settle down, studio audience.
Just
Jeff (05:37):
Give that man a new shirt.
Kaleem (05:40):
studio audience, please chill.
Sorry about that.
Come on.
Our studio audience gets firedup.
Sorry about that.
Thank you for joining us, man.
Thank you for joining us.
Suman (05:49):
Pleasure to be here.
Love the energy, Kaleem.
You're coming in hot on a Fridaymorning or afternoon, depending
on where you are in the country.
So,
Kaleem (05:56):
Yeah, we gotta do it, man.
Gotta do it.
Thank you.
Jeff (05:59):
Greatest intros in the biz.
That's certainly for sure.
Subban, I want to, let's jumpinto it.
So you were.
Clip it along at Bain doingsmart things with smart people
and big companies.
And then suddenly you decided totake a slight detour and join
our friend, Rob, as a cleanmentioned over at the flex
index, how did you decide toleave the big world in the big
(06:19):
business?
And didn't get, uh, get your toewet in the startup world.
Suman (06:23):
Yeah, actually, so Rob used to work at Bain as well.
And so I was working at Baindoing consulting and I was
working at Walmart, which is thebiggest company, massive
company.
And I kind of, uh, always hadthis kind of desire to get work
at a startup.
This is, by the way, this ispreflex index, Rob, Scoop was
initially a B2B carpoolingproduct.
(06:44):
So they, they help companieswith mobility.
And so basically I think it waslike 10 people in San Francisco.
So, um, whenever they're,there's kind of a first taste of
where I guess you live, uh, PaloAlto now, Jeff, but moved over
to SF and was there kind ofhelping his chief of staff,
everything from, you know,building out their financial
plan to moving plants and movingoffices for Rob, and so he's
(07:06):
still an advisor.
I'm like, Oh, actually, so, uh,I've had the pleasure to kind of
keep in touch with him over theyears.
And obviously he's now a topLincoln influencer in the future
of work.
And he's done a lot of amazingthings with regards to kind of
like building out the flex indexand we can talk more about that.
But yeah, that's how I initiallygot linked up with Rob.
Kaleem (07:23):
That's really cool, man.
So I need to just go back towhen you and Rob were at Bain
and Company.
So we've had a few people on theshow that have been at either
McKinsey or any of the other bigthree consulting firms.
What was that experience likefirst off?
Oh, do you remember yourinterview question?
That's the first question.
Do you remember your interviewquestion by any chance?
(07:44):
And then number two, like, whatis that experience like?
And like, what did you reallytake from the consulting
experience as far as education?
Okay.
Suman (07:54):
consulting, it's one of those things.
It's like, there's actuallymeans about this.
It's kind of people don't evenknow what the job means, right?
It's like, what does aconsultant do?
And I think there's actuallythere's truth to that.
But what I think 1 thing aboutconsulting is you kind of learn
how to think and solve problemsessentially.
So going to your question, likethe way you interview for
consulting firms is like a casestudy.
(08:15):
So essentially, Absolutely.
It's like, Hey, there's thisbusiness problem and what
they're kind of testing for islike, can have structured
thinking?
Can you kind of like figure outfrom first principles, like how
to solve a problem, which Iwould say Rob is phenomenal at.
The first, I don't remember thefirst interview question, but I
remember the guy thatinterviewed me was one of those
fascinating guys.
This guy, Nick Padlow, and hewas an army Ranger and he was
(08:36):
also went to Stanford forbusiness school, but he was a,
Professional poker player aswell.
And he was like a weird,eccentric, super smart,
charismatic guy.
And we just like hit it off.
I don't know.
There's certain interviews youdo and you're like, this was
this kind of clicked.
And so I still remember heactually went on to become an
entrepreneur and do a bunch ofinteresting kind of things.
(08:57):
But I remember the person whointerviewed me, not necessarily
the question itself, but yeah,exactly.
yeah, exactly.
Jeff (09:07):
How many manhole covers in Manhattan?
Kaleem (09:09):
Yeah.
Suman (09:10):
Yeah,
Jeff (09:16):
and you went down another kind of traditional course,
which is on the investment side.
And you jumped over into theinvestment and even got to spend
some time at SoftBank VisionFund, which at that time is one
of the biggest, most importantinvestors out there on the tech
space.
So what did you learn kind of inyour time on the investment
side?
Kaleem (09:34):
Unbelievable.
Suman (09:35):
so I initially started off at a firm called Castaneda
and now it's called Stride andthey're a consumer, basically, I
love, I love brands, uh, whetherthat we obviously focus on
businesses B2B now, but theywere the former Neiman Marcus
family office.
So invested in, you know,brands, fashion, food and
beverage, beauty, that sort ofthing.
So I love kind of, um, brandsand kind of brand equity, which
(09:57):
is something too important tokind of Marco.
Now, and then basically I waslike, all right, I want to go
into tech in some capacity.
So I was working with consumer.
I worked, I went over to softbank and joined kind of pretty
early.
I was one of the first moneyfolks.
On the investment team, workingon the consumer technology and
prop tech or real estate techgroup and so Stop bank was I
(10:18):
mean we could do a whole podcaston that to be honest, right?
It was a hundred billion dollarfirm.
The initial year was like, youknow it was could have been I
mean, I actually joked thatthere should be kind of a movie
about this But you go there Itwas like 20 people.
We got a ton of money to deployin the first year was, you know,
just really, I would say gettinga lot of exposure to some of the
most interesting people inSilicon Valley and just be a
(10:40):
super young person, but becauseof the fund, you got tremendous
access.
So meeting incredible founderswho were creating kind of
category defining companies.
And to be honest, a lot of what.
I found there was, I was like,it looks like, people on the
other side of the table aredoing more interesting work.
I think, the venture ecosystem,is super important and capital
(11:00):
is important.
And obviously SoftBank made somegood investments, made, some
wild investments that I think.
Masa was probably ahead of histime in terms of thinking about
the importance of AI, which isobviously super relevant now.
But he was always talking aboutkind of the importance of AI as
an investor in NVIDIA.
And so basically I didn't knowwhat I was doing.
I was at SoftBank and I waslike, all right, I want to go
start this company.
(11:20):
And I was working in consumertech, spent a lot of time within
travel and experiences is kindof a category.
Invested in a company called getyour guide, which is a
competitive trip advisor.
It's an experience platform.
It's kind of like, all right, Iwant to get you something in
this space.
Didn't have co founder at thetime.
Didn't have really much ofanything.
And so went out.
Luckily, I was in San Francisco.
So it was able to meet Nick, myco founder and start working on
(11:42):
markup.
So
Kaleem (11:45):
Interesting.
Interesting.
So just out of curiosity, beforeyou started your company, and
we'll talk about that in asecond, what was your initial
spark that got you involved withthe remote work?
What was your first remote workexperience?
Like, do you remember?
Suman (12:03):
Well, you know, what's funny is we started Marco right
before COVID.
So initially it wasn't focusedon remote work, but it was
focused on experiences.
Right.
So it was actually consumerfacing.
And then I remember COVIDhappens and Nick and I, Nick, my
co founder were in Tahoeactually.
And we were like, all the skiresorts start shutting down.
And no one really knew what likewas going to happen.
(12:25):
It's like, is this going to be aweekend thing?
Is this going to be a couple ofweeks?
Is this going to be.
What happened is couple ofyears, and I don't think anyone
foresaw that the way we live andwork would just fundamentally
change overnight, like, even thefact that we're doing this
podcast recording super normallyover zoom or Riverside or
whatever platform that's notnormal.
And now 80 percent of companiesare remote.
(12:47):
Our hybrid and the way we workis, is kind of fundamentally
changed.
What happened actually, and thenthe reason for kind of pivoting
Marcos, we basically were tryingto back to square one, figuring
out what we're going to do, andwe started doing like virtual
events to support kind ofcreators, hosts in the local
kind of community and someone,we just basically had a text
list and we would just, peoplewere, you remember, we're so
(13:08):
bored that they would really doanything.
And so we were just doing theseevents and there's a couple of
funny stories from that period.
But someone worked at like anold school tech company.
I forget.
It was like work or somethinglike Cisco.
And they were like, Hey, likeour team hasn't seen each other.
Would you do this?
Would you do this for our team?
And we're like, Oh, that'sinteresting.
you're like, yeah, we're justlike on zoom all day.
We, we don't get to kind of likedo anything social or kind of
(13:30):
engage with one another.
So then we kind of started doingthis.
We had a PDF with basically 10hosts that you could just kind
of book.
And people started.
A lot of companies leaned in andthey're like, okay, we need some
way to connect our employees.
So that was the first experienceof people kind of asking for
some way to connect.
Jeff (13:47):
It's pretty interesting.
Brian Elliot from the future forhim, you know, one of his great
lines is remote.
It doesn't mean never together.
And, you know, it's even moreimportant and more intentional
than the time you are together.
You're spending time buildingtrust and building relationships
and strengthening the team andmove all your crap work to
async.
But I'm curious, everyone waskind of struggling in those
(14:08):
early COVID days.
You know, they're doing zoommeetings and zoom cocktails and
zoom happy hours and zoom familydays.
How did you start to think aboutexperiences first digitally?
And then I don't want to justsay we have to get to people
together.
Obviously there were therestrictions.
So together still wasn't anoption in early COVID.
How did it kind of evolve intoa, to more than just getting
(14:31):
together on a zoom call?
Suman (14:33):
totally.
And so Brian, we do for Marco,we do a webinar, called turning
companies into communities.
He's been a guest on there with,Chrissy Arnold, who, when he was
at Slack, they had, you'refamiliar with this, something
called the future forum.
They're publishing a bunch oflike amazing research.
around remote work and how tocollaborate more effectively.
Obviously, slack is one of the,you know, we live in slack.
(14:54):
It's amazing collaboration tool.
However, both of them will talkabout how, as you said, Jeff
remote doesn't mean nevertogether.
Right.
So I think philosophically humanbeings are just like social
creatures.
So Kaleem, we met an event.
We met at HR transform.
Right.
And I actually think thatmeeting and developing kind of
(15:15):
empathy and kind of just like,Making friends, honestly, with
folks that you work with ordeveloping some like common
understanding just allows you todo better work.
Like I always say thattransactional work or just like
the productivity of work is alot easier.
Now you have so many tools thatare collaborative, whether it's
like notion or Slack or whateverit is to like, get your work
(15:37):
done more effectively.
But if I'm working with you onsomething and I don't know where
you're coming from, I don't knowif you have a family or kits or
like, what's stressing you outon a personal level or just
like, don't have that empathy, Idon't just think there's a lot
of data that supports this.
You're not going to do as good.
Your work isn't going to be asgood, right?
So that is philosophically, Ithink, something that's super
(15:58):
important, and then I would say,like, in the beginning of covid,
the only way you could gettogether with zoom.
Right?
And we actually, our company haspivoted and focused on group
travel kind of onsites, offsites, retreats, and the reason
for that, and any dean at lastyear and do a lot of like, great
research on this that folks haveall kind of.
Yeah.
Seen in the space around they'vemeasured the impact of kind of,
(16:22):
you know, say you're doing aquarterly gathering or something
like that.
Your scores of employeeconnection improved by 30, 40
percent and then they go downafter time.
But those moments are likesuper.
And you can tie that toproductivity.
It's not just employeeconnection, but there's actually
like business outcomes that comeout of that.
So long winded answer, but
Kaleem (16:41):
Yeah.
I mean, it was, it was, it wasgood answers.
Good answer.
And it actually made me thinkabout, so if I'm getting the
timelines, correct, you started,Marco experiences as a company
that did like in person eventsbefore the pandemic started.
Right.
Is that accurate?
Suman (16:59):
we, we, yeah, we basically started, Marco is
there's a company called partyfull or you may know Luma, which
is like a.
Basically like a Facebookevents, like super lightweight,
text based social events productwhere you can book experiences
on a marketplace as well.
That was like the initial kindof thing.
So it's always been called Marcoand it's always been around kind
of the, I would say likeexperiences kind of space.
(17:22):
and then it was kind of likevirtual and then in
Kaleem (17:25):
Uh oh.
Like, cause you're all ready togo and then all of a sudden
there's a thing.
Uh oh.
So then you had to kind oftransition.
And now you're kind of back tobeing able to help people plan
their experiences in person.
My question is kind of back toconnection again.
I know I talk about this all thetime.
So people, I'm sorry if you'rehearing it again, but shout out
(17:46):
to buffer for the, doing theirstate of remote works that
they've been doing since like2016, maybe I think they've been
doing those state of remoteworks for a while and in every
one, they ask relatively thesame questions as far as what
are your biggest challenges andthe most recent one, or the 2023
version, when you add up all thechallenges, Difficulty
(18:07):
collaborating, difficulty,connecting with my teammates,
difficulty with loneliness.
When you add up all of theseconnections, it comes out to
about 68%, I think, no, 60percent of all of the challenges
that people have or aroundconnection, like literally like
those are their challenges.
(18:29):
So as a company that Is leadingthe charge in this space.
How much advice do you provideyour clients as far as building
the week out for thoseintentional connections?
I know a lot of people planthese off sites and load them up
with work, work, work, and shoutout to chase warranting.
(18:49):
He's talked a lot about thiswith do us as far as what their
percentages are of work versusfun.
So what type of assistance.
Do you provide, you know,organizations, especially remote
or hybrid organizations toreally be intentional about the
connection side of it?
Suman (19:09):
Yeah.
I think it's a great question.
So I think we always talk aboutlike intentional experiences at
Marco and the way I describe itis in some ways.
You're kind of in this like longdistance relationship with folks
that, by the way, even if you'reremote or hybrid or in person
now, a lot of companies havedifferent hubs.
So you might be on a sales teamand you're actually working with
(19:29):
folks that are in differentgeographies.
So you're actually, even if youwouldn't be qualified as a
remote company, everyone has.
Yeah,
Kaleem (19:37):
you could be fully onsite.
You could be fully onsite and indifferent locations is your
point.
You could say we don't allowremote work, but all these
people in different hubs,technically they're working
remotely.
Suman (19:47):
Yeah, for sure.
So there's, from an advicestandpoint, we are as much
learning from companies.
They're doing the doing, youknow, doing these the right way.
We're kind of learning along theway as much as we are providing
advice is what I would say iseveryone's trying to figure it
out.
And we're in this period wherecompanies are just starting to
develop.
You know, during COVID, no onecould see each other.
Now people there's a period ofexperimentation where people are
(20:10):
like, okay, cool.
We're going to invest in kind ofthese kinds of gatherings.
And now you have like companieslike Atlassian Dropbox that are
developing strategies aroundlike frequency cadence.
format, right?
Whether it's like, okay, cool.
This is how often we dosomething with the full company.
This is functional level,leadership team level, new hires
and so forth.
From a content perspective, itis a classic kind of, the
(20:35):
initial kind of reaction will belike, cool.
We only see sort of let's jam ina bunch of stuff here in these
three days, which especially youhave to think about some people
are introverted.
Some people are extroverted.
Everyone is exhausted andprobably has to travel.
They may be leaving behind kitsand so forth.
So then that is actually not thebest use of time in terms of
just like getting as much thingsto do and possible.
We'll be right back after thesewords.
(20:58):
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And now, back to the show.
And Brian, actually, we talked about this when we
chatted, but we do somethingcalled kind of experience design
where it's like, what is cool?
We can book you a hotel.
(23:10):
We can handle vendors and soforth, but also there's almost
like a psychology aspects aroundhow does the near, like, we also
talk about like the airporttest, which is how do you get.
An employee, when they're headedback down to the airport to be
like, that was an exceptionaluse of time.
And it actually isn't like aboondoggle where you're just
like having a bunch of drinksand having a bunch of fun, but
(23:31):
it's also not something whereyou're just like heads down on
your laptop all the time.
So there's different ways youcan kind of structure and
program the time when you'retogether.
And I think it should be.
Based on it could be, you know,there's obviously like your
things and where you're eating,you're drinking, there's
collaborative work you can do.
(23:51):
So there's work around like,hey, I got to build a slide deck
or write some code or whatever.
You can do that prettyeffectively asynchronously.
Right?
But what you can't do.
Is maybe having like a productkind of jam session or, getting
old school whiteboarding, whichI still am a kind of big fan of
right or delivering somestrategic message and getting
people excited about somethingor doing something around like
(24:13):
team connection, which is a verybroad phrase, but something that
is kind of work related, butit's actually about like
understanding how someone Showsup at work, what their strengths
are, you know, how do youeffectively communicate with
them?
So we basically have a wholeplatform or product around this,
where you basically build out anitinerary and there's templates
around what you might want todo, how do you structure the
(24:34):
time and it will actually tellyou how to do that.
Most effectively, and we havepeople that will help.
So
Kaleem (24:41):
Oh, you called it experienced design consultants
available to help people.
Suman (24:45):
yeah, so we have, yeah, so court Roberts leads
experience design.
She has a background as afacilitator as coach and she'll,
you know, and we work with othercompanies as well.
If you need to book likefacilitator or session or
something like that, but we canalso our big thing at market was
combining product and technologywith like, a high level of
support service and human beingsas well.
(25:06):
So,
Kaleem (25:07):
man.
Kudos to you, bro.
Wow.
Jeff (25:11):
So it's interesting.
People are always trying todefine the right word that
describes the relationshipbetween people in the company
and the company.
And, some people will say it'slike a family and, you know,
people have a lot of pushback onit's a family and there's all
kinds of different words.
Your guys tagline is turningcompanies into communities.
And helping companies bringtogether.
(25:31):
How do you see communities asthe right defining
characteristic and what is itabout a community that's the
right amount of intimacy, but,you know, something short of a
family?
Kaleem (25:41):
Well
Suman (25:41):
Yeah.
So there's a guy, Chris Shembra,who, he's a, he's an author.
He's a speaker.
He's an awesome guy.
He's a gratitude expert is whatpeople call him.
So he's written a book, a coupleof books called gratitude
through hard times.
And I think gratitude and pastais another one.
So he talks about in his books,he's a big kind of community
fan.
(26:01):
And he talks about the originalword company was from two Latin
words, which means come, whichmeans together.
And ponies, which means bread.
So the original word for acompany was people coming
together to break bread.
Then it's translated into peoplecoming together with a shared
objective or a mission could be,you know, to build a product or
a service or whatever it is.
But by the way, a professionalsports team is a community as
(26:24):
well, right?
And their fans are communitiesas well.
You can think about them ascustomers, right?
So a community doesn't have tobe this like kind of kumbaya
family where you're all kind oflike, friends and that sort of
thing.
Kaleem (26:35):
Just going to burn in man.
Yeah.
Like you, we don't likecommunity going to burn in man
with tents and all that stuff.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I get it.
I get it.
Suman (26:42):
well, so no, the reason I went to Burning Man is like, I
think Burning Man is one of themost interesting experiments on
community that exists in ourgeneration.
Right?
Because if you go there, there's10 kind of like guidelines.
One of them is like, leave notrace, for example.
So everyone is picking up trash.
The whole thing is like, youcannot like leave any trash.
So like, you talk about mud,despite all of that, And each
(27:02):
camp has their own kind of likeguidelines.
So you have to like work shifts,you have to contribute.
Everyone comes there and it'spart of the build process.
So like that is also one of thereasons I was like, that is a
super interesting example of acommunity that comes together
and builds a full city.
In the period of a couple ofweeks.
So it is a fascinating kind ofexample.
So Mark Levy, who's the head ofglobal employee experience at
(27:24):
Airbnb, and he's also an advisorat Marco and he, at Airbnb, they
actually coined the phraseemployee experience, and he
talks about like four types ofconnection that was important to
Airbnb, and I might get some ofthese wrong, but it's like
connection between the companyand the employees, the to the
employees, the employees to thecustomers and the employees to
the community.
Jeff (27:44):
You hit it.
I got them written down righthere.
You nailed it.
Suman (27:47):
so, so yeah, not to be like a consultant and there's a
framework, but like, this canrelate to any company, like you,
if you're trying to solve thisbig problem and you're super
high achieving and you're likemore kind of hard line, you're
like we got to crush it.
That doesn't mean that you don'tneed that level of connection.
The connection could lookdifferent.
Right.
But think about a company likeopen AI, which is absolutely
crushing it.
They have to think about theircommunity, which is cool.
(28:10):
How do we have the, theleadership of the company kind
of deliver the message thatemployees are working on, how do
employees work together,cohesively, how are they going
out and selling the customersand how do we get people to
like, you know, in the broadercommunity, kind of get, come
along with the vision.
So it doesn't matter whatcompany you're in.
If you're just like, thisdoesn't matter.
We don't have to invest in kindof connection.
(28:31):
That doesn't make any sense tome personally, but
Kaleem (28:35):
Community connection.
I love that.
That's one thing, you know,working with a client where
we're trying to move away fromfamily as business term, you
know, cause you can't,
Suman (28:46):
yeah,
Kaleem (28:46):
I mean, I guess you could fire your family, but.
Really you can't, I guess.
So, yeah, we're trying to,trying to step away from that.
I think one of the things thatwe're kind of leaning into is if
you are going to use family,maybe say family first or people
first, right.
Like, um, but I really love yourtagline to, um, you know,
transitioning to communitiesbecause it really is community.
(29:11):
If you really think about it,you're all getting together.
Communities, all people, allcoming together for a common
thing and then you're moving itforward.
So
Suman (29:19):
yeah.
The also like you spend like 70%of your life at work.
So something like, I forget theexact amount of time or hours,
but you spend a tremendous ofyour life at time, of your time,
like waking hours at work, soyou don't have to necessarily
like, like the people you workwith and wanna go for dinner or
drinks afterwards.
(29:39):
By the way, I think that's agood thing.
Right.
It's not a bad thing.
It's a good thing.
You might as well, like in mymind, she was like, I might as
well, I don't be best friendswith everyone.
Yeah, that's not true, but I'veplenty of great friendships that
I've built at work, but you dohave to respect each other,
right, in order to do good work.
And so that's, that's, I think,a non negotiable, but.
Jeff (29:58):
So I'm curious on your feedback forms.
What is the thing when they'regoing to the airport that they
say was the most impactful thingof the week?
You know, I think of Brian, whenhe talks about his offsites with
his teams, he talks about thecooking and making meals
together and, the spending time.
Is there, you know, two or threethings that are just consistent
winners and bringing peopletogether and building a sense of
belonging.
Suman (30:19):
Yeah, I think it's all a means to an end.
So you could do something that'slike really fun.
But then the objective of thatis to share some type of mement
with someone, right?
That could be work related toyou solving a really complicated
problem, right?
Some of the most effectiveoffsets, even for our personal
team, is we're coming together.
(30:40):
And we do like kind of productideation sessions with our team
and bring in cross functionalfolks so they can create
something that then we'll gobuild that has been kind of
extremely, people get superexcited about that, but anything
I would say the biggest impactis like you meet someone new,
you share like an authentic kindof experience with that.
(31:01):
Brian talks about this too, bythe way, I think, Zillow charter
works just published this.
Where the natural inclination ofsomeone, if you're with a big
group, you're going to like, andyou're friends with clean, when
you go to these types of things,you're going to hang out with
clean, you know?
Yeah.
So then ways to kind of likecreate.
Kind of structured serendipitywhere it's like you actually
(31:23):
interact with someone thatyou're on the sales team and
you're talking to someone on theengineering team that is great.
And we just did a webinar oncross functional collaboration.
And 1 of the great things is wehad Weller, who's a senior
engineer at Marco, Hannah is onthe product operations team, and
then Allie Brown, who's on thesupply team.
And they're now, they work superwell together.
They're collaborating superwell, but all of that, like
(31:45):
Hannah actually met Weller atone of these offsites that we
did, developed a friendship withhim.
He's a Brazilian.
So he used to not be superconfident going and like just
chatting with someone becauseEnglish isn't his kind of first
language.
And now he's, they're workingsuper well together.
So that actually manifests inlike business results because
now they're working together andthey're friendly and they, it's
(32:05):
going super well.
So, I
Kaleem (32:13):
you're right.
I've mentioned this before, butthere's a book, I might get the
title wrong, but like, Why AreAll The Black kits Sitting At
The One Table?
And that basically is, it's verysimilar, right?
Like, you know what you know,and you kind of gravitate
towards the people that you're,you have some sort of
relationship with.
I do want to kind of ask youyour opinion.
I have a feeling now you'regoing to answer, but I gotta ask
(32:34):
you anyway.
You know, so at Blend we talk alot about connection because
again, that's 60 percent of thechallenges that companies have
around connections.
So, you know, as we'reconsulting with them and helping
them improve their employeeexperience, that's a big
challenge.
So we kind of coined thisconcept of, you know, creating a
social connection strategy.
This idea that you have, youknow, we kind of group these
(32:56):
connections in the three bigbuckets.
You have professionalconnections, mentors,
colleagues, coworkers, etcetera.
You have lifestyle connections,which are hobbies, things,
friendships that you do.
And then intimate connections,which, you know, people get a
little wary of a little bit whenyou're talking about intimate
Intimate, connections, right?
So romantic relationships,religions and intimate
(33:18):
relationship, politics is anintimate relationship, but they
are there, right?
What do you think the role is ofthe organization and the
company?
Especially in a remote companyspecifically.
What do you think the role isfor a company to ensure that
their employees have theseconnections and does Marco
(33:40):
experiences provideopportunities for people to kind
of learn about the culture of acommunity?
Right.
Learn about these other thingsjust outside of work, because
everybody's focused on how can Ijust know my coworkers?
What, what about those otherconnections?
Suman (33:56):
Well, I would say we don't just focus on social
connections and I'll answer yourquestion.
But my kind of thing is like,even just to take a step back,
if you're a remote or hybrid orin office, we also are kind of
like ambivalent towards thatbecause the whole reason you
have office space in the firstplace, by the way, is so your
employees connect.
Yeah.
Like, so
Kaleem (34:15):
We forgot about, that.
We forgot about
Suman (34:17):
no, so like we, we did this whole thing on like the ROI
of like gatherings and what theanalysis shows is Companies on
average spend like, especiallyin the Bay area, maybe one and a
half to three K per employee permonth on rent, furniture,
consumables, all the stuffthat's like associated with an
office.
Now you're spending less.
And so, cause people are like,well, I don't, should I really
be investing in this like, inpeople are investing more in
(34:38):
team travel, but the reason islike, by the way, on the net,
you're probably saving money.
Right?
So you got to think about yourbudget and your ROI on like this
spend ultimately one of the bigreasons you spend on this kind
of stuff.
Is to connect, like that isliterally why you pay for office
space actually.
Right.
So you can be in the same baseand deal with people and begin
work done and so forth.
(34:59):
So for Marco, like it could bework related, right?
Like we do plenty of thingswhere it's like a sales kickoff
or a leadership team offsite,which is like, that could be
super work related from aconnection standpoint.
However, even within thatcontainer, you're like, cool,
there should be to your point,different types of kind of
connection.
I think that's really up to thecompany, to be honest.
(35:21):
Like you could, like, you thinkabout Brian Armstrong at
Coinbase, he's like, we're nottalking about politics or kind
of religion or these types ofissues within the workplace.
I actually kind of probably amon towards that side of the coin
in terms of like, the workplaceshouldn't necessarily be a
conduit to like, talk aboutpolitics or something that like,
actually, you should have aplace.
(35:42):
And the reason is like, Youshould have a company where
people are allowed to havedifferent points of view, I
think, right?
I think there definitely isvalue from a just culture and
education standpoint to dothings around celebrating each
other's history and culture andso forth.
That's a positive, right?
Cause that is more just likecelebration and allowing you to
like show up as your true selfwithin work, which is a big part
(36:05):
of your life, right?
So that stuff's great, right?
Like, and there's no negative.
Thing to celebrating blackhistory month or I'm Indian,
like bring an Indian food to therest.
It's like, that's great.
Right.
Cause that's a part of, um, youknow, your identity and you
should be able to share that.
I guess to answer your question,I think a company should be able
to decide what that looks like,right.
And there are a certain minimumviable kind of like you should
(36:28):
invest in social connectionbecause there actually are
business outcomes that come outof that, because like there's a
Harvard business school, didthis paper where People, your
attention and your productivityand all these factors are like
way more likely to be high ifyou have a best friend at work.
Right.
So if someone's like, well, Idon't actually give a shit.
Like, why do you need to befriends with people at work?
Kaleem (36:47):
Seven, seven times more engagement.
I think there's the stat I usethat in my slides.
It's seven times moreengagement.
If you have a best friend atwork, it's crazy.
Suman (36:55):
Yeah.
So we talked to like peopleleaders, but also finance teams,
like CFO, right?
Okay.
Well, I'm going to do this.
And I'm like, cool.
Well, there's actually a lot ofbusiness value to like investing
thoughtfully in these types ofthings.
Like Bain, for example, isalways like glass door, best
place to work, all this kind ofstuff.
The first thing you do at Bainis you go to something called
associate consultant training.
It's always in Cape Cod and it'sglobal.
(37:17):
So Bain has a ton of differentoffices.
I didn't work directly with Rob,he was in the New York office, I
was in the Texas office.
But I have developedfriendships, relationships, been
in weddings, invested in, hadpeople invest in my company that
I met at Bain.
So it is like, that's, and bythe way, like,
Kaleem (37:33):
new higher cohorts, new higher cohorts are critical.
Yes.
Suman (37:37):
yeah, but then you think about like, oh, why invest in
this stuff?
It's like now I'll talk aboutBain during this podcast and
people are like, Oh,interesting.
I'm a college person I'mthinking about going to work at
a consulting firm.
So you develop a certainaffinity And if you're like an
executive down the road andyou're like, I got to hire a
consultant and you enjoyed yourtime there, who are you going to
choose?
You're going to choose thatfirm, right?
So it's short sighted to, Imean, every company should
(38:00):
decide, but you should thinkabout kind of that stuff and
figure out the right balance foryour company.
Kaleem (38:06):
Makes sense.
What is
Jeff (38:07):
All right.
So when we're getting towardsthe end of our time, so we have
the hard question for you, tellus what comical or inspiring
moment you had while workingremotely,
Suman (38:19):
Yeah.
So the first time I was workingremotely was when I was wearing
on Marco, right.
So.
It's actually funny because thisis for an event we were doing
for Bing.
And so initially when you'restarting a startup, you got
Kaleem (38:29):
right.
Suman (38:29):
to look like an idiot.
And in this case, I look like anidiot, but so we, so I remember
we, we basically were doingthese like cooking classes and I
was like working to likemanually ship these kits with
this.
Like the chef who she basicallydidn't have it dialed in terms
of like shipping food kits.
(38:50):
So then I'm working with thisjunior person at Bain, and it's
actually the head of thetechnology practice at Bain, all
these like senior partners.
And then they would basicallyship them meat and it gets
spoiled.
And then I'm like, Oh, crap.
And then I'm getting this womanthat I was working with was
like, assuming like all that.
This is terrible.
Like what's happening.
And I was like, I'm going tolike, Instacart everyone food.
(39:11):
They're like, we don't want anymore of this spoiled meat.
We are, we, you got it.
They were like, let's just do acocktail making class.
So then I hit up Kate and I'mlike, this is a disaster.
She, this is actually a funnystory.
So
Jeff (39:23):
How many people, How many kits were you sending out?
Suman (39:26):
this, it's like 20 kits or something
Kaleem (39:29):
So, So, just, just, they opened the kits and it's spoiled
Jeff (39:32):
It's just rotten
Suman (39:33):
the, the meat is just, okay.
Yeah.
So by the way, just to beextremely clear, now we've had
our hosts and for any of theseexperiences, people have figured
out the shipping thing.
So let's just make that superquick.
So then, I call Kate and I'mlike, we gotta like, Just do
this cocktail making class.
I don't know.
We'll figure it out.
She responds and she's like, Imet her, my, her, her father had
a construction site in SanFrancisco.
(39:54):
She had thrown out her back atthe construction site that day.
So she's like, I can't like moveor walk.
So I just grabbed everything inmy apartment, like all the booze
and the utensils I had.
And I was like, I'm going to goto her restaurant.
And I am not a mixologist.
I was like, I'm going to do thisclass.
I think I'll figure it out.
And so, and these are,
Kaleem (40:14):
spoiled me already.
so
Jeff (40:15):
To keep it simple, gin and tonic.
Suman (40:18):
yeah, so we, exactly.
So then we had a, this guy, um,on our, Kevin Blake, who's a
magician, And he made like, hemade a ton of money on our
platform during COVID.
He's an exceptional magician.
It sounds kind of kitschy, buthe's like a badass.
Like he's, so I called him and Iwas like, Hey man, I need a
favor.
Like we have something, we havethis event and like, we can't do
(40:39):
it.
Are you available?
He's like, when is it?
I'm like, it's in like 15minutes.
And he's like, okay, I'm goingto go to my studio.
And so then we get, I get to thething and I turned on the zoom
and I was like, so this is allpart of the experience.
You thought you were doing acooking class, you're doing a
magic show, and here we haveKevin Blake, and he gets on and
he crushes it.
Kaleem (41:01):
Well, what
Suman (41:01):
was
Kaleem (41:02):
with the drinks?
What did you do with the drinks?
Cause you, you grabbed,
Suman (41:04):
I had to have a drink after that experience, that's
for sure.
So I
Kaleem (41:09):
that's,
Suman (41:09):
drink because I have like 10 stories, I have like 10, 10
similar stories.
Jeff (41:18):
They didn't even, they didn't even know about the
mixology chapter that just kindof slipped in and out before
they even
Suman (41:24):
They didn't, no one really knows about this story.
Yeah.
So I was sweating bullets.
I'm like, Oh my God.
And then the partner, thepartner's like bringing their
kits in there, like, this is socool.
But that was a stressfulexperience for sure.
Kaleem (41:37):
Your former company.
Wow.
What is, what a story, bro.
Thank you for sharing
Jeff (41:42):
Lemonade out of lemons.
I love it.
Suman (41:45):
Yeah, it worked out it could it could have I mean could
you imagine if Kevin wouldn'tthat would have been a disaster
Kaleem (41:51):
Well, you had the drinks ready to go.
You had the drinks ready to
Suman (41:54):
Yeah,
Kaleem (41:54):
have,
Suman (41:55):
yeah Jeff it would've been here's how you make a chin
tuck Yeah.
Jeff (42:03):
and got sick after the fact.
I mean, there's all kinds
Kaleem (42:05):
well done.
Jeff (42:06):
bad things that could happen.
Kaleem (42:07):
Well, you figured it out.
You figured it out.
Got to pivot.
Jeff (42:11):
That's why I tell people dancing is important.
You got to learn to dance.
You got to be comfortablebecause stuff changes.
All right.
So where can people find you?
Where can they reach out?
Where can they learn more aboutMarco experiences?
Suman (42:23):
Yeah.
You can go to markoexperiences.
com first and foremost.
I'm active on LinkedIn, so youcan search Suman Siva, S U M A N
Siva, S I V A.
On LinkedIn, Twitter, all this,all the things, but yeah, check
us out at marcoexperiences.
com.
We help companies save time,money, make their group
experiences off sites on sitesbetter, more effective.
So hit us up and, uh, appreciateyour time guys.
(42:45):
This is fun.
Kaleem (42:47):
Oh man.
Thank you so much, bro.
We'll definitely make it out toone of those experiences.
I want to check it out.
So I appreciate you coming onThe
Suman (42:53):
The Turkey one.
We got
Kaleem (42:54):
Yeah.
Suman (42:55):
one coming up right up for
Jeff (42:56):
I'm bringing a deck of cards.
I'm bringing a deck of cards.
Kaleem (42:59):
Awesome.
Suman, thank you so much.
We'll talk to you all soon.
Peace.
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