February 5, 2025 • 43 mins
We are excited to present a fascinating new episode to kick off the year strong with some remote wisdom. This time, we sat down with Tony Jamous, CEO and co-founder of Oyster—a pioneering global employment platform. Joining our host Kaleem Clarkson for this insightful conversation is guest co-host, Jeff Frick. Together, they explore Tony's purpose-driven journey and how it shapes his approach to entrepreneurship, sustainable leadership, and remote work culture.
Tony’s entrepreneurial story began with the founding of Nexmo, a communications platform whose rapid growth eventually led to its acquisition first by Vonage and then by Ericsson for $6.5 billion. This experience, while financially rewarding, led Tony to reassess his priorities after seeing the toll intense work demands were taking on his health and well-being. This period of introspection inspired him to take a sabbatical and rethink his career goals. Determined to pursue a more meaningful path, Tony envisioned a platform that would enable economic freedom and allow individuals to access global employment while staying in their home communities. This vision led to the founding of Oyster, now valued at $1 billion and dedicated to providing cross-border employment solutions that empower individuals and benefit local economies.
A key aspect of Oyster’s mission is its focus on hiring talent from emerging markets, with 40% of its team now hailing from these regions—a significant increase from 30% just two years ago. This strategy goes beyond simply filling roles; it embodies a commitment to measurable social impact. By allowing companies to hire globally, Oyster directly invests in these economies through salaries and taxes, bolstering local development.
What values does Tony consider essential? At Oyster, diversity and inclusion are foundational, with operations spanning over 80 countries and a workforce representing more than 100 nationalities, achieving gender balance across top management and the board. Tony also dives into the topic of compensation within remote teams, highlighting Oyster’s three-zone pay system, designed to promote fair wages and reduce global income disparities. His insights reveal a profound commitment to sustainable leadership, inclusivity, and a progressive workplace culture. Through Oyster, he is championing a new model of employment that transcends borders and fosters global equality.
To top it off, Tony shares his philosophy of 'sustainable leadership‘, a concept that has become foundational to his approach to building and leading teams. Unlike traditional models focused solely on servant leadership or relentless growth, sustainable leadership prioritizes leaders’ well-being, enabling them to support their teams better. Inspired by the “oxygen mask” analogy, Tony emphasizes the need for leaders to care for themselves first to lead effectively. This approach promotes empathy-based management, which is especially relevant in today’s evolving remote work environment.
Tony’s mission is to democratize job opportunities worldwide and create a new employment model that drives social impact, especially in emerging economies. His dedication to building a more equitable global workforce and his principles of sustainable leadership make this episode a valuable roadmap for leaders seeking to align business success with positive social contributions. Start this year strong: put on your headphones and get your remote-work inspiration!
Learn more about Tony:
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.
Tony Jamous (00:00):
Hello, guys.
I'm
Kaleem (00:01):
How you doing, sir?
How you doing?
Tony Jamous (00:03):
doing amazing.
Kaleem (00:05):
Amazing is good.
Amazing amazing.
Tony Jamous (00:08):
amazing.
It's more than good.
Kaleem (00:10):
Yes.
Yes,
Jeff (00:11):
What time is it there on that side of the world?
Tony Jamous (00:14):
It is 6 p.
m.
in Cyprus.
Jeff (00:18):
Excellent.
Kaleem (00:19):
You're still looking fresh for 6 p.
m.
Sir.
I mean, like, did you just hopin the shower and get, you know,
just get ready for the show?
Tony Jamous (00:25):
Exactly what it is.
Kaleem (00:28):
Awesome, man.
Nice to finally meet you.
I've seen you around.
I've been following you for awhile.
I feel like I've known you foryears.
Um, actually, I want to ask you.
Do you know what Kaleem means?
Tony Jamous (00:39):
Kaleem is in Arabic, right?
Kaleem (00:41):
I Believe so.
Tony Jamous (00:42):
So Kaleem, mean the word.
Kaleem (00:46):
speaker, baby speaker
Jeff (00:49):
Nice.
I hope
Tony Jamous (00:50):
The word.
Kaleem (00:52):
Oh It's the word all my head my head My head.
Speaker.
Jeff (01:05):
Hey, welcome back everybody.
Jeff Frick here coming to youfrom remotely one.
I'm a guest host today, and I'mexcited to join my good buddy,
clean Clarkson to come on overand help him out to join
remotely one.
So Kaleem great to see you.
Kaleem (01:18):
Oh, great to see you, bro.
Thank you so much, by the way,man, the guest host, we got a
professional today, everyone.
We got a Rick.
You're professional too, bro.
Don't don't.
Don't, don't judge me.
Don't judge me here, Rick.
But we got a professional whohas his own podcast.
You got to check them out.
Shout out to work 20 X, Xpodcasts.
So go be sure to check Jeff outin his crew.
(01:39):
And once again, Jeff, Iappreciate you, bro.
I
Jeff (01:41):
My pleasure, but there's only one Rick and Rick.
We hope you get better.
I know you had some other thingsyou had to take care of today.
So, uh, thanks for having me onbefore we get jumping in here.
Just want to give us a littlefavor, give us a shout out on
rate.
This podcast.
com slash remotely one Rick andclean have been at this for a
while since 2015 remotely.
(02:01):
One is one of the largestcommunities of remote work
professionals with over 3000slack members at 5, 000 email
subscribers.
So good job to Rick and Kaleem.
That's pretty, pretty amazing.
It's free to join.
So go check it out at remotelyone.
com.
Calm.
So with that out of the way,Kaleem, tell us a little bit
about our guest today.
Kaleem (02:23):
Ooh, Jeff, Jeff, Jeff, Jeff.
You know what I'm saying?
When I do these intros, I justget so nervous because number
one, they just remind me of justhow little I am.
You know what I'm saying?
You know what I'm saying, Jeff?
Like, they're just like sointimidating.
Today's guest is no, nodifferent.
They're sitting there.
They're intimidating.
No, I'm just playing it.
They're super nice.
But our guest today.
(02:44):
All right, Jeff.
Our guest today is originallyfrom Lebanon.
Okay.
And they lived in France, wentto school in France and now
currently resides.
You ready for this?
I had an island called Cyprus.
Right in the Mediterranean andisland Jeff.
That's where
Jeff (03:01):
a person of the world
Kaleem (03:03):
a person of the world Our guest today also got their
bachelor's in computer scienceSo back in the day our guest was
coding some ish was coding someshit in the matrix Just like neo
was chillin neo in the matrix.
What do you think about neo?
Which pill which pill do you
Jeff (03:21):
which color which color
Kaleem (03:24):
Let's see.
Let's see.
Oh That kind of led our gueststo becoming really just a serial
startup entrepreneur, right?
So our guests created onecompany called Mblox, which was
acquired by another companycalled Cinch back in the day.
Then he didn't stop there.
He didn't stop there.
Moved on to another companycalled Paymo, which was acquired
(03:45):
by a little company we may allheard of.
Twilio.
Every developer has heard ofTwilio.
If you develop any apps, youalways plug it into the Twilio
API.
So that's a big company for someof y'all that don't know.
Jeff (03:58):
we all know we all get the Notifications coming out of
Twilio all the time.
So you know it more than youknow that you know it
Kaleem (04:05):
Yes, that is true.
That is true.
Oh, something that most peopledon't know about our guests and
guests.
I'm going to ask you real quick,Jeff, our guest has two
birthdays, one in July and onein August.
Real quick guest.
Why do you have two birthdaysreal quick?
Why do you have two birthdays?
Tony Jamous (04:23):
Be because the guy who was in charge of register me
and getting my birth certificatewhen I was born.
He went there and forgot when Iwas born.
And back then you had, there wasno phone lines, you couldn't
text somebody.
Right.
So he put the date of the dayand I'm so blessed to have two
birthdays and I get all theseamazing congratulations for like
(04:46):
10 days
Jeff (04:47):
probably great when you're five right to get to two setups
Kaleem (04:51):
One birthday in July and one in August.
They're not even in the samemonth, Jeff.
They're not even in the samemonth.
Okay.
Let's see our guest has writtenand been featured in you ready
for this list of publications,Inc magazine, fast company,
Forbes, and fortune.
Just a few Jeff, just a few.
Um, geez, let me get this towel,dog.
I'm nervous.
I'm sweating.
(05:11):
Our guest also is a LinkedIn topvoice for leadership.
Shout out, shout out to ourguests.
Last but not least, Jeff, lastbut not least.
Our guests, you ready for this?
Our guest is the co founder andCEO of Oyster, which is a global
employment platform that hasraised 225 million over the
(05:37):
years.
And it's currently has a 1billion valuation.
Whew.
Jeff (05:45):
The world is his oyster,
Kaleem (05:46):
oh, the world is his oyster.
I love it, Jeff.
I love it.
Listeners and viewers, pleasegive a warm welcome to Tony
Jamous Skoll! Skoll! Skoll! Woo!Settle down, studio audience.
(06:12):
Settle down.
They're too loud.
Sorry about that, Tony.
Sorry about that, Tony.
The studio audience is crazy.
They're crazy.
Tony Jamous (06:19):
prior.
Kaleem (06:23):
Thank you so much, sir, for joining us.
We appreciate you, man.
We appreciate you.
Jeff (06:27):
Welcome Tony, so let's jump into it.
So you As a clean, just saidmultiple time, startup founder,
multiple exits, multiple, youknow, selling the company, but
it wasn't all sweetness andhappiness and easy.
I know it was from thatexperience as part of the reason
that you started oyster.
And you started it with a littledifferent mission and a little
(06:48):
different kind of foundation.
I wonder if you can tell us asyou finished all the successful
exits.
You took a break and you decidedto do something else.
Give us a little background.
Tony Jamous (06:57):
Yeah.
So first, thank you guys forhaving me.
This is such a warmintroduction.
This is like the most funintroduction I've ever had on a
podcast.
So I
Kaleem (07:07):
sir.
We take that.
That's what we're trying to do,baby.
Tony Jamous (07:11):
love, I love these fun things because, you know, I
love to do this podcast becauseeven if I, like if I, if I screw
up.
Like there's nothing at stake,you know, it's like, so it's
like this best part of my workis to just have fun with amazing
people.
for giving me this
Kaleem (07:25):
You're making me ache.
Tony Jamous (07:27):
and, uh, to go back to Jeff's question.
So before starting Oyster,actually, 13 years ago, I
started a hyper gross technologycompany called Nexmo actually
was a competitor to Twilio.
We were the main competitor toTwilio.
I took the company public in mid2016 by doing a merger with
Vonage which led to itsacquisition by Ericsson for 6.
(07:48):
5 billion a few years ago.
So I left the business.
I've done my work in mid 2018.
And, uh, I was committed to takea break, to take a year off
sabbatical before I decide whatI'm going to do next, if I'm
going to do anything, because Idon't need, I didn't need it to
work.
And I had to go through a lot ofinner work, a lot of questions
(08:12):
about why I'm here on thisplanet.
I was really dedicated to mymental health.
And that's here because I hadall this money and then I was
feeling miserable in my life,right?
I was, our relationship were notgreat.
My health was not great.
I was this like typical founderwho burns out every three months
and work like nonstop, right?
(08:32):
So I needed to recalibrate,myself and understand why I'm
here on this planet.
And that led me to start Oysteras a mission driven company.
First and foremost.
On a mission to make the worldmore free and equal by
democratizing access to globaljob opportunities.
And as Kaleem mentioned, I hadto, I was forced to leave my
(08:55):
home country when I was in myteen years to France to study,
uh, to actually, to hope for abetter economical future.
You can call me an economicalrefugee.
And at that young age, leavingmy tribe, my community, my land,
was a very difficult experiencefor me.
I was on my own in a foreigncountry, and I had to really
(09:17):
succeed in order to give thatprotection for my family back
home.
So I created Oyster so thatpeople like me doesn't have to
go through this, doesn't have tofeel what I have, what I felt
and bring the opportunity tothem.
They can stay in theircommunity, they can stay in
their tribe and then amazing jobopportunities can be possible to
(09:38):
them by removing the barriersfor companies in the world to be
able to employ anyone anywhere.
The world is your oyster whenyou're looking for a job and the
world is your oyster when you'relooking for talent.
Jeff (09:50):
Tony, I wonder if before we get to Oyster, just to
reflect back on it, because fromthe outside, looking in, you
Kaleem (09:55):
BM is here.
Trey BM is
Jeff (09:56):
right?
You look like a huge success.
You made all this money.
You're an entrepreneur.
You built the company.
You IPO'd, you sold it.
Share for people that what thatactually takes.
Cause I think people only seethe, the silver lining.
They don't necessarily see it.
I don't necessarily understandthe effort and the sacrifices
that you have to make becauseyou still have the same 24 hours
a day as everybody else and yougot to make hard trade offs and
(10:19):
decisions.
So I wonder if you can share, Idon't want to say the dark side,
but people maybe don't reallyunderstand what it's all about
to be a CEO of a high growthcompany in a hyper competitive
market.
Tony Jamous (10:29):
Yeah, you have to be obsessed with what you do.
You have to be extremelydedicated and committed.
Quitting is not an option.
Although you have to say in manytimes in my career as a, as an
entrepreneur and a CEO of hypergross companies, like I wanted
to quit so many times, but youcannot quit.
And that makes you face Yourfears makes you face your makes
(10:51):
you clarify your purpose, makesyou align what you do is with
what you believe in.
And that keeps you going.
That keeps you going.
That enables you to have higherdegree of resilience and stamina
to overcome a lot of thesechallenges you face.
And the more you becomesuccessful, and the more your
business become bigger, thebigger the challenges you're
going to be faced with.
(11:12):
So, this is what I realized.
But actually, your ability todeal with these issues are also
become bigger, right?
So you become more experiencedand more capable.
Kaleem (11:22):
Interesting.
So change, you're talking aboutchange right there as the
organization grows.
Can you talk a little bit aboutsome of those challenges as
those companies were growingright before you decided to
sell?
What were some of the challengesthat you, common challenges, now
that you've, you know, Worked onthree companies.
What are some of the commonchallenges that you are dealing
(11:44):
with as you're beginning toscale from, you know, the seed
round to series A to series B?
Like, what are some of thecommon challenges that you
remember going through?
Tony Jamous (11:52):
Now, so, one of the major challenges is how do you
ensure that the team that youhave, your leadership team is
one that is fit for that phaseof the business, right?
So you hire people in thebeginning that are amazing to
get you from zero to one.
But then as a company grow andscale, you have to ensure that
(12:13):
these people can grow with theopportunity, can have an
experience, get to take themfrom one to 10 or one to a
hundred.
So that's a big challenge forentrepreneurs that are on a
hyper gross, right?
And zero, you know, zero to ahundred million of revenue in,
Less than five years in twocompanies.
I found it in the last 13 years.
So you always going to need toreplenish this leadership
(12:36):
structure.
You have to take care of it.
You have to always think aboutevolving it.
You have to lead and coach yourteam to grow.
You have to support them ontheir journey.
And you have to surround themwith the right environment and
the right skill set to help themgrow and be successful.
That's number one.
Number two is how do you keepthe growth engine going?
(12:56):
Like you, in order for you to beperceived as a high gross or
hyper gross company, you have tobe obsessed with growth.
You have to find new segments.
You have to find new techniquesof growing.
You have to find new ways ofacquiring customers.
You have to have new ways ofservicing this customer.
So you become more efficient andyou become more scalable.
And thirdly, one of the majorchallenges, especially in
(13:18):
technology is competitionbecause most competitors,
they're playing this game towin.
They want to kill you that theyare in that mindset.
So they come and they try tohire your people, give them more
salaries.
I try to say bad things aboutyou in the market.
And they, like most competitorsdon't play nice.
Kaleem (13:38):
It's gangster out there.
It's gangster out there is whatyou're saying.
Mamba mentality.
Everybody's out there trying tojust, you know, kill you.
Like you said, that's, that'scrazy.
Tony Jamous (13:48):
it's completely unnecessary because the market
is so big.
We live in an abandoned world,guys.
And so, so I like this conceptcalled the infinite game from
Simon Sinek.
I don't know if you've seen thislatest book about this topic.
It's like, guys, there's no needto beat the competition.
You have to beat yourself to bebetter every day.
(14:09):
But if you're obsessed with acompetition, you're going to
burn your energy and you'regoing to burn, you're going to
burn the market.
So I see a lot of that behavior.
I've always seen that like,aggressive behavior from the
competition that is completelyunnecessary just because, there
is a big ego, that is drivingwho's better and who's bigger,
which is makes no sense tonobody.
Jeff (14:31):
Yeah, you know, one of Simon's other things he loves to
talk about is the why, you know,that's his other big theme, you
know, what, why are you doingit?
And it's interesting to go fromspecifically high growth, which
was your lead adjective.
And some of those otheropportunities to, as you just
said, a mission drivenorganization.
So what is, Mission drivenactually mean, and how do you
make that a priority?
(14:53):
Cause you've still got investorsas Kaleem mentioned, they want
to get an ROI on their return.
You've got employees with stockpresumably and customers.
So how does mission drivenreally fit and how do you keep
that as a priority?
Tony Jamous (15:05):
so first, Jeff great question.
Why mission driven?
Because mission driven is betterfor business.
Mission driven enable you tosucceed more.
There's been 300 studies done inthe last 40 years that
correlate, that look at thecorrelation between financial
success and your ESG and CSRInitiatives in the business.
Okay, so there's no doubt beingmission driven makes you more
(15:28):
financially successful.
But it also enable you toattract better people.
Because people don't want toonly work for a company just for
a paycheck that is only has apurpose to make more money.
They want to work at a companythat makes them feel fulfilled.
They want to connect with thework they're doing.
They want to make a differencein this world.
So you get, you end up acquiringthe best talent in the world.
(15:51):
Thirdly, you get bettercustomers and more customers
because customers, again, theywant to buy from companies that
are aligned with their values.
So that's why, why missiondriven?
Because it's better forbusiness.
And secondly, your question,Jeff, was about, well, how do
you make it happen?
So, uh, the formula we crack atOyster is, is to align your
(16:12):
business model with your impact,and we just launched our impact
report last week.
We launched it every year thatenabled us to measure how many
team members we employ inemerging economies, how much
money we send in terms offoreign direct investments.
In the form of salary and taxes,which is communities that need
that money.
How many people are improvingtheir life with Oyster?
(16:34):
What is the lift in salariesthat they get working through
Oyster and working through nonOyster?
So we measure all of that.
And the beauty of our model isthat the more we grow our
revenue, the more we deliverimpact.
We have 40 percent of our teammembers in emerging economies.
That was 30 percent two yearsago.
So, uh, and then youoperationalize it.
(16:54):
You, you drive your strategywith it.
Our strategy is to be the bestof breed platform for cross
border employment.
Everything we do is for crossborder employment.
Every one of our rivals, they'redoing local HR.
They do local payroll.
They do local accounting.
Like, we're not interested inthat.
We are unique in our sense thatwe are here, although these are
(17:18):
very lucrative markets to gointo, right?
And they might grow faster thanus But we are driven by our
mission that drives our productroadmap and drive everything we
do
Kaleem (17:30):
Oh my gosh, you know, Tony, you are basically singing
what we're all talking about,like, and the fact that you just
explained it like that, it, it'sjust really great to hear you
have all of these companiesright now that are forcing their
employees back to the officethat are doing things that are
aren't necessarily aligning withtheir quote unquote mission.
(17:52):
You have companies, I'm notgoing to say their names, but
you have companies where theirwhole business is about
connecting maybe on video.
We all know who I'm talkingabout probably.
And then You're all coming backto the office that contradicts
the mission of your product.
What in the eff are you doing?
So so it was just really goodthe thing that we talked about
at blemming We're working withour clients and I just oh i'm
(18:14):
just so happy You said missiondriven because that's who we
want to work with too But likethe reality is there are two
things that you said that arecritical if you're going to be
mission mission driven You saidimpact and measure Ooh, look at
the bubbles.
Impact and measure.
If you do not measure, youcannot have impact.
(18:35):
You have to measure.
So thank you.
Tony Jamous (18:38):
You're welcome, Kaleem.
And I just want to say, thefuture of work is not in office,
hybrid, remote.
The future of work, in myopinion, is empathy based
management and leadership is tobe in touch with the real need
of your employees.
And by forcing employees tocommute back to the office, like
you're completely disconnectedfrom the real need of your
(18:59):
employees.
Like there's no need to addadditional burden from work on
their lives.
If it's completely unnecessary.
Jeff (19:09):
Yeah.
And just, I don't know that youcould update the numbers.
I saw somewhere, Tony, 600people in 80 countries, but I
think you said you're the onlyperson in the country in which
you reside.
So you guys are clearlypracticing what you preach.
I want to.
Shift gears a little bit becauseyou had another interesting
concept in terms of a leadershipphilosophy, which kind of is
similar to your mission, wherewe often hear of servant
(19:31):
leadership or serviceleadership, which is one of the
more progressive styles, whichthe idea of, you know, the boss
is there to use their resourcesto remove roadblocks to help
people get their job done.
You've got a slightly differenttwist that you call sustainable
leadership.
And what I found is reallyinteresting is the different
layers of sustainability thatyou've described, starting with
(19:52):
number one, which you always goback to the, you know, you get
on the airplane.
What's the 1st thing I tell youput your seatbelt on 1st or do
your own mask 1st before youhelp anyone else that needs
wonder if you can share a littlebit about the development of
your sustainable leadership andsome of those different layers
that all build upon themselvesto help you have a more
successful organization.
(20:14):
We'll be right back after thesewords.
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(22:20):
And now, back to the show.
Tony Jamous (22:22):
Sustainable leadership.
Jeff means for me is you have totake care of yourself as a
leader in order for you to beable to be present to your team.
If you're always in a reactivemode, you're not there for your
team.
If you're sending a Slackmessage at 2am in the morning to
them, you're You gotta actuallypush that pressure on them and
(22:43):
you're gonna pollute their livesunnecessarily Schedule it send
it to 2 a.
m.
But let it appear Next day at 9a.
m if you if you don't disconnectand take some time off and
recharge if you don't Show thatyou are human you're vulnerable
sometimes actually It happenedto me a few times at oyster
where I tell guys.
(23:03):
Hey, i'm burned out right nowYou I need my space.
I'm going to disappear for twodays.
Come back.
So that's what sustainableleadership is.
And I've been practicing sinceit's been amazing.
It's been amazing to really, useOyster as an opportunity to take
care of myself because I don'twant to burn out anymore as a
leader.
I don't need to do this.
I want to do this.
And if I want to do this, I wantto do it on my terms.
(23:26):
I want to be live where I wantto live.
I want to work where I want towork.
And I want to be grounded withpeople.
that are from everywhere in theworld.
We are, as we said, we are in 80countries, probably over 100
nationalities, gender equalacross the board, including
management team and on my board.
So that's what sustainableleadership is.
(23:46):
And I want to say like, my corebelief is that I believe in the
infinite potential of humans.
And I believe there is anenvironment in which you put
people in Then you unlock theirinfinite potential and you
unlock their growth.
And that environment is acombination of from one hand
about caring and nurturing andsupporting.
(24:08):
And from the other hand is aboutdaring and pushing the limit.
You have to do both at the sametime.
Kaleem (24:14):
let me ask you something about sustainability.
Cause like my first thought justwent to something that exists
past yourself.
that's where I thought you weregoing with that.
Um, but I, I wanted to ask you a
Tony Jamous (24:29):
no, no.
Can you, can you go deeper intothat?
Kaleem (24:32):
yeah, yeah.
I want, yeah.
So this idea that, you know,we're all trying to be
sustainability.
We're all doing this so that theearth is healthier after we die.
That's like the main objectiveof sustainability overall.
And I love this term of, um,because a lot of people will use
Succession planning.
Tony Jamous (24:52):
yeah,
Kaleem (24:52):
Um, but earlier when you talked about oyster scaling or
just actually start up scalingand the challenges that you're
dealing with when you're hiringin the beginning, can you talk a
little bit about what.
Learning and development or whatyou were doing with some of
those companies where youactually developed.
(25:14):
Your leaders to be able to takeon those new challenges as you
progress.
I feel like a lot of, especiallyfounders are reactive, right?
Like what you said, are reactiveand not thinking forward.
Can you talk about theimportance of development of
your team and your leadershipteam?
And can you talk about how youdo that from a remote
(25:35):
perspective,
Tony Jamous (25:36):
absolutely.
So, uh, you have to have clearprinciples and values.
So in our case, it's aboutbuilding trust is one of our
core values, thriving togetheris a core value as well, and
elevating talent.
is another core value.
And I look at my leaders and Icome and, I recognize them in
(26:00):
public and they're behavingwithin these values.
And when they're not, I go inprivate and give them some
feedback.
Kaleem (26:07):
Ooh, I love that.
Recognize in public.
Not criticize, but suggestprivately.
Tony Jamous (26:14):
Absolutely, absolutely.
Secondly, it's about modelingthe way.
I need to be the best leader inmy business for so that they can
see me how I lead and learn fromme.
You know, we all have these newmirror neurons, right?
So we can mimic, especially whenyou look at your boss, it's like
(26:35):
a child looking up to theirparents.
You want to be like them.
So by model, by actuallycleaning my energy system and
modeling the way in thisbehavior, I influence everybody
I interact with.
It's like, uh, I postedsomething on LinkedIn recently.
It's like going to work for mehere in my home office, when I
go downstairs into my homeoffice.
It's like entering a temple.
(26:57):
I clean myself, I clean myemotions, I ensure I am not in a
reactive mode, and I come and bepresent to my people.
I want to go back, Khalil, towhat you said around this, like
we're taking care of the planet,right?
Sustainability is taking care ofthe planet.
And there is something aboutthat is about what I call
(27:17):
consciousness development forleaders.
So you have to realize thatyou're not an independent
entity.
You are part of a bigger systemand you can all connected and
we're all one in order for youto, not only take care of your
people, but also to be moreconnected with your mission and
aligned with your purpose.
(27:37):
And that's the practice I'vebeen doing since I started
Oyster.
Actually, this is why I startedOyster because I was doing this
retreat that enabled me toexpand my consciousness and my
therapist told me, don't takeany important decisions for the
next 10 days.
So I went and incorporatedOyster the next day in November
(27:57):
2019 because I realized thatThat pain that I felt, it's not
only me that is feeling thatpain to immigrate and leave my
tribe, everybody in mysituation.
So I expanded my consciousnessto hundreds of millions of
people and realized actually Ican do something to help them.
Jeff (28:16):
I'm curious, Tony, I heard an interview with Toby Redshaw
and he talked about trying toget people to give marginal
effort and discretionary effortand the change in productivity
when someone is really in theboat and really pulling hard
versus showing up is huge.
It can be 10 X, it can be 10%.
It makes a huge difference.
Why do you think there's theresistance from kind of
(28:38):
traditional thinkers in seeingthat doing things the better way
is not only better for people'shealth and emotion and a bunch
of somewhat say softer sides,but it also has direct business
benefit because you get bettercontributions from the team.
You get a more diverseperspectives.
You get people leaning in andtrying to solve problems.
(28:59):
You push problem solving downcloser and decision making to
the people that are closest tothe problem.
What's the resistance and thehold back to doing it the way
that we've always done it versusembracing some of these new
concepts when there's datathat's pretty clear that it's
going to result in betterfinancial performance for the
organization as well.
Tony Jamous (29:19):
great question, Jeff.
In my opinion, this is linked tofear from leaders to fail.
Because this has worked the waythe old way we did this worked.
Why we need to change it.
I'm taking risk that is actuallycreating more anxiety for me.
And I need to run away from thatrisk.
(29:40):
Right?
So that's why consciousnessdevelopment is critical here.
Because when you do thisemotional development as a
leader, you become moresensitive to your inner
experience and you feel thatfear coming into your body.
And then you see, Oh, this isfear that's an illusion.
I don't have to react to thatfear.
I can take that risk.
I can expand and try new ways ofchanging, of improving my
(30:04):
business and improving mypeople.
Jeff (30:06):
Interesting.
And that's also I think just,you know, people just aren't
comfortable with vulnerabilityand being humble and that these
are actually great leadershiptraits and you don't need to
know all the right answers andit's okay to be wrong or to have
a question and ask someone who'sa more junior but is closer to
the problem what they think.
Tony Jamous (30:23):
That's actually Jeff also, uh, linked to the,
how we created leadership, theperception of leadership for the
last few thousand years,actually, since, since we had,
uh, Empires, right?
So what would happen?
I'm reading a book recentlycalled The Great Turning that
looks at the history of thehuman consciousness development
(30:43):
and specifically when it comesto leadership and 5, 000 years
ago and before we were living inharmony, we were living in
tribes and then when resourcesstarted to get scarce, we
started having fear and then oneof the tribes started to become
dominant and aggressive.
Yeah.
And start to dominate the othertribe.
(31:05):
And that created the modern wayof leading today, like in the
last few thousand years,accelerated in the last 50 years
is a system that's really aboutdominating not sharing power.
And, so leaders, we are like, Ifeel like I'm expected to be
aggressive that I'm some peoplecome to work with me.
(31:26):
and bringing in their old traumafrom their previous experiences,
and they expect me to be thistop down decision maker and this
aggressive leader.
And, I'm learning how to managethat.
I'm learning how to, I callthese energy systems.
One is the eagle.
That is my flight and flightresponse.
Eagle is like this, is apredator.
(31:48):
And the other one is a condor,the condor is which is like fly
higher than the eagle has abigger vision and is a
scavenger, like take care of theenvironment.
So depending on the situationI'm in, I'm learning how to show
up as an eagle or as a condor.
And this is a very likespiritual story that I, that
drives my behavior at work.
Kaleem (32:09):
It makes a lot, it makes a lot of sense.
Now, Tony, I got a question foryou.
It might be a littlecontroversial for you.
Maybe it is, maybe it isn't.
I mean, I don't know.
I mean, but you're in thebusiness of pay.
You're in the business of Youknow payment processing or
payroll should we say
Tony Jamous (32:26):
Yeah.
Kaleem (32:27):
I have a question about your opinion on location based
pay Versus location independentbased pay.
So for people who don't knowwhat that is Location based pay
is would be a company that wouldsay you move to san francisco
you get paid this amount But ifyou move to idaho You're gonna
get paid less.
(32:47):
Okay, so There is that that'slocation based pay Then there's
location independent base pay,which means, Hey, no matter
where you live in the wholeworld, we're going to pay you
the same amount of money, nomatter where you live.
So without me telling you how Ifeel about it, I'm just curious.
What's your take on it, sir?
(33:08):
What's
Tony Jamous (33:09):
Yeah, my take here, Kaleem, thank you for the
question.
My take that, uh, like, thisinequality that we see based on
the location is nothing morethan the result of this unequal
system that we created in thelast few thousand years.
And, like for me, like poverty,because I came from a very poor
(33:30):
background.
Poverty is an illusion.
It's like you, you, you, peoplemake you feel that you're poor.
It's a feeling, and it doesn'thave to exist.
So I believe that in the future,we want to drive the world to be
location independent.
Especially as we have remotework, we have knowledge work, we
(33:51):
have over a billion knowledgeworker coming into the workforce
in the next 10 years, mostlyfrom emerging economies.
So by removing the barriers forcompanies to tap into the global
talent pool, we create more,more equality in the system.
And we already see that thesalaries of remote workers,
let's take an Argentiniansoftware developer, uh, used to
be paid 1, 000 a 40K a year, andnow they are paid 120K a year.
(34:18):
It's still less, it's just halfof what they get paid in the Bay
Area.
Uh, but for these roles, forhigh demand roles that can be
done remotely, and there is moreand more of them.
Think about sales executive,customer service representative,
you can marketers, productmanagers, you accountant.
All of these job can bestandardized and be done from
(34:40):
any country.
You only need a laptop and agood interconnection.
Then we're gonna see that gapclosing.
So now how we do it at Oyster.
So at Oyster, we do locationbased.
But what we do is for we splitthe world into three zones.
Kaleem (34:55):
Ooh, the world.
Interesting.
Instead of getting granular tocountry, you do the world.
Tony Jamous (35:01):
Yeah,
Kaleem (35:02):
Well done.
Tony Jamous (35:03):
because we have people everywhere and, and, Now
our key is to make, the key isto make people feel that they
are treated fairly.
I don't, I don't know if youremember guys, this, uh, this
study they did with the monkeyswhere they, they put one monkey
in a cage and they gave them acucumber and nearby there's
another cage with a monkey andthey gave that banana and the
(35:25):
cucumber monkey was likeshouting and, and threw the
cucumber away.
If they, if they give both ofthem a banana or both of them a
cucumber, it is.
Right.
So this feeling of being treatedunfairly is ingrained in us.
It's like our animal brain.
So you need to be sensitive tothat.
So what we do at Oyster is we,uh, for the people that are in
(35:47):
expensive cities, we pay on 50%of the market.
But for the more we go intocountries that are, that have
lower cost of living, the morewe lift that percentage up.
So we pay people like 80% or90%.
Of what they would be worse in agiven country if they are from a
country that is on, more on thelow side when it comes to cost
(36:09):
of living.
And why we do that because westill, we're still operating in
the capitalistic system.
investors to report to.
Kaleem (36:16):
cost of living, you can't control the world's cost
of living.
So, you know, you're trying toadjust as best as you can, but I
mean, separating it by theworld.
I haven't heard that yet.
I'm sure there are companiesthat do that, but like, I think
your division is much higher andgives people more options than
(36:36):
you know going to down to thecountry level and in some cases
in the u.
s Even going down to the statestate level.
So what you're doing is amazing
Tony Jamous (36:44):
yeah,
Jeff (36:45):
So Tony, Pierre Nanterne used to be, he was also French
and used to be the CEO of acenter years ago.
Unfortunately, he passed away,too young, but one of the things
that he used to talk about isdemographics is the trend and
every other trend follows offdemographic trends because it's
big and it moves slowly andimpacts us all.
You're right on top of that.
And you've talked.
Briefly about kind of this,imbalance between demand for
(37:08):
talent and where the talent is.
And you're bridging that gapwith, by basically breaking down
the geographic divides.
The other piece that I've heardyou talk about that's
interesting is learning.
And the fact that with YouTubeand all these tools now, anyone,
anywhere, if they have the rightaccess can learn anything.
So we're getting to the end,Tony, we will ask all guests,
(37:29):
tell us a comical or inspiringmoment from your remote working
experience.
Tony Jamous (37:36):
Well, I don't know if it's embarrassing or not.
I'm actually proud of it.
I'm proud of it.
Uh,
Kaleem (37:41):
Okay.
Tony Jamous (37:43):
what is cool about remote work is I could be, I
could be on my headphonelistening to a Zoom call or in a
board meeting and putting somemusic in the background and
it'll be dancing, moving my hipshere.
They don't see I'm moving.
It'll keep my hips moving, keepsme mobile, keeps my energy
system Kaleem and, uh,
Kaleem (38:04):
Can you salsa?
Can you salsa?
Tony Jamous (38:06):
yeah, whatever, you know, we can do whatever.
Yes.
Kaleem (38:11):
Okay.
Okay.
I'm getting the visual.
I'm getting the visual of yourability to dance.
Okay.
Okay.
Tony Jamous (38:16):
That's why, that's why we only do one in person
board meeting a year.
The other three are virtual.
And it's a great way to actuallyreduce your stress level to keep
moving.
You know, in the past I used tohave like treadmill walking on,
but then I realized, you know,why I can actually, I can dance.
Why do you have to walk likestraight?
I can keep moving and keepshifting all this energy.
(38:37):
Yeah, it's been great.
Kaleem (38:39):
Wait, so, Let me get this, let me get this straight.
Are you telling me that in your,
Jeff (38:47):
Come on!
Kaleem (38:48):
I can sense it.
Are you telling me that in yourmeetings, you have your whole
company on and you're dancing,
Tony Jamous (38:54):
I'm dancing.
Like, like
Kaleem (38:56):
dancing, dancing, dancing.
Everything else is bullshit.
Tony Jamous (39:01):
Exactly.
Jeff (39:01):
There's so much power in the music to change your mood,
right?
Tony Jamous (39:04):
imagine like making such a big decision with the
board, right?
And then you're dancing.
Right?
That's a great way to manageyour stress.
Only possible if you work fromhome.
Unless you work in the dancingindustry.
That's not a story, but Uh,
Jeff (39:20):
do you get together with your team?
What's kind of your cadence foractually getting people
together?
Tony Jamous (39:26):
twice a year.
I mean, not the whole companybecause that's very expensive.
But my team, my leadership team,we meet twice a year.
Kaleem (39:32):
Back to dancing.
Hang on.
I'm sorry.
I'm still stuck on the dancingthing.
So wait, do you dance if you'reletting someone go?
Um,
Tony Jamous (39:42):
I haven't had that experience yet to dance and I
think someone, but I'll try it,I'll try it because you know,
it's like it's moving, shiftingyour emotional energy through
physically gets you to be morepresent and gets you to be, to
let the life to be lessreactive.
Yeah, because you're not this,like this fear or this sadness,
(40:04):
like they're not stuck in yourbody.
They're like releasing all thetime.
So it's actually, makes youbetter decision maker, makes you
be more compassionate to people.
Let's say if you're firingsomebody, then, yeah, I think
that, I recommend it to everyremote worker on this planet.
Yeah,
Kaleem (40:20):
it would be more of a slow dance.
Maybe you do more of a, youknow, more of a slow dance.
If you have to let someone go,you know what I'm saying?
Versus cause like sauces, youknow, you just, you just keep it
going.
You know what I mean?
Like, like that's too much.
I think that's too much.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Tony Jamous (40:36):
Oh, you know, and yeah,
Kaleem (40:38):
That is great.
That is unbelievable.
Well, thank you for sharing thatTony.
That's that's the first we'vedefinitely never had anyone on
the show.
Tell us that they dance.
While working remotely,especially a CEO of a company
your size.
So that is your meetings must befun as hell.
That's awesome.
Jeff (40:56):
Well, it tells you something that we're coming to
the end of our time.
We barely talked about thebusiness and all the great
things that you offer in thedetails and the nitty gritty.
But I think it really,highlights that it's the top
level things that are really themore important things.
And I think that the skills thatused to be described as soft
skills are actually the criticalskills that enable all the
detailed stuff that happens,happens under the cover.
So we could go forever.
(41:17):
I got pages of notes, butunfortunately the clock the
clock keeps ticking.
So Tony, how can people getahold of you?
Where can they reach out andconnect?
Tony Jamous (41:26):
can find me on LinkedIn.
Kaleem (41:28):
There it is.
Just search, just search forTony Jamus.
Yes.
And bonjour, vous?
That's all I know.
That's all I know.
Jeff (41:38):
Very good.
Kaleem (41:41):
Awesome.
Well, thank you so much forcoming on, Tony.
We really appreciate it.
Come back anytime and can't waitto, meet you in person for the
first time, but I guess I got togo to a Mediterranean Island to
do that.
Jeff (41:50):
That's a good trade.
Tony Jamous (41:51):
An invitation for you already.
Here we go.
Kaleem (41:55):
Awesome.
We'll talk to you soon, man.
Tony Jamous (41:57):
Thank you.
Kaleem (41:58):
Peace.
Hello, guys.
I'm
Kaleem (00:01):
How you doing, sir?
How you doing?
Tony Jamous (00:03):
doing amazing.
Kaleem (00:05):
Amazing is good.
Amazing amazing.
Tony Jamous (00:08):
amazing.
It's more than good.
Kaleem (00:10):
Yes.
Yes,
Jeff (00:11):
What time is it there on that side of the world?
Tony Jamous (00:14):
It is 6 p.
m.
in Cyprus.
Jeff (00:18):
Excellent.
Kaleem (00:19):
You're still looking fresh for 6 p.
m.
Sir.
I mean, like, did you just hopin the shower and get, you know,
just get ready for the show?
Tony Jamous (00:25):
Exactly what it is.
Kaleem (00:28):
Awesome, man.
Nice to finally meet you.
I've seen you around.
I've been following you for awhile.
I feel like I've known you foryears.
Um, actually, I want to ask you.
Do you know what Kaleem means?
Tony Jamous (00:39):
Kaleem is in Arabic, right?
Kaleem (00:41):
I Believe so.
Tony Jamous (00:42):
So Kaleem, mean the word.
Kaleem (00:46):
speaker, baby speaker
Jeff (00:49):
Nice.
I hope
Tony Jamous (00:50):
The word.
Kaleem (00:52):
Oh It's the word all my head my head My head.
Speaker.
Jeff (01:05):
Hey, welcome back everybody.
Jeff Frick here coming to youfrom remotely one.
I'm a guest host today, and I'mexcited to join my good buddy,
clean Clarkson to come on overand help him out to join
remotely one.
So Kaleem great to see you.
Kaleem (01:18):
Oh, great to see you, bro.
Thank you so much, by the way,man, the guest host, we got a
professional today, everyone.
We got a Rick.
You're professional too, bro.
Don't don't.
Don't, don't judge me.
Don't judge me here, Rick.
But we got a professional whohas his own podcast.
You got to check them out.
Shout out to work 20 X, Xpodcasts.
So go be sure to check Jeff outin his crew.
(01:39):
And once again, Jeff, Iappreciate you, bro.
I
Jeff (01:41):
My pleasure, but there's only one Rick and Rick.
We hope you get better.
I know you had some other thingsyou had to take care of today.
So, uh, thanks for having me onbefore we get jumping in here.
Just want to give us a littlefavor, give us a shout out on
rate.
This podcast.
com slash remotely one Rick andclean have been at this for a
while since 2015 remotely.
(02:01):
One is one of the largestcommunities of remote work
professionals with over 3000slack members at 5, 000 email
subscribers.
So good job to Rick and Kaleem.
That's pretty, pretty amazing.
It's free to join.
So go check it out at remotelyone.
com.
Calm.
So with that out of the way,Kaleem, tell us a little bit
about our guest today.
Kaleem (02:23):
Ooh, Jeff, Jeff, Jeff, Jeff.
You know what I'm saying?
When I do these intros, I justget so nervous because number
one, they just remind me of justhow little I am.
You know what I'm saying?
You know what I'm saying, Jeff?
Like, they're just like sointimidating.
Today's guest is no, nodifferent.
They're sitting there.
They're intimidating.
No, I'm just playing it.
They're super nice.
But our guest today.
(02:44):
All right, Jeff.
Our guest today is originallyfrom Lebanon.
Okay.
And they lived in France, wentto school in France and now
currently resides.
You ready for this?
I had an island called Cyprus.
Right in the Mediterranean andisland Jeff.
That's where
Jeff (03:01):
a person of the world
Kaleem (03:03):
a person of the world Our guest today also got their
bachelor's in computer scienceSo back in the day our guest was
coding some ish was coding someshit in the matrix Just like neo
was chillin neo in the matrix.
What do you think about neo?
Which pill which pill do you
Jeff (03:21):
which color which color
Kaleem (03:24):
Let's see.
Let's see.
Oh That kind of led our gueststo becoming really just a serial
startup entrepreneur, right?
So our guests created onecompany called Mblox, which was
acquired by another companycalled Cinch back in the day.
Then he didn't stop there.
He didn't stop there.
Moved on to another companycalled Paymo, which was acquired
(03:45):
by a little company we may allheard of.
Twilio.
Every developer has heard ofTwilio.
If you develop any apps, youalways plug it into the Twilio
API.
So that's a big company for someof y'all that don't know.
Jeff (03:58):
we all know we all get the Notifications coming out of
Twilio all the time.
So you know it more than youknow that you know it
Kaleem (04:05):
Yes, that is true.
That is true.
Oh, something that most peopledon't know about our guests and
guests.
I'm going to ask you real quick,Jeff, our guest has two
birthdays, one in July and onein August.
Real quick guest.
Why do you have two birthdaysreal quick?
Why do you have two birthdays?
Tony Jamous (04:23):
Be because the guy who was in charge of register me
and getting my birth certificatewhen I was born.
He went there and forgot when Iwas born.
And back then you had, there wasno phone lines, you couldn't
text somebody.
Right.
So he put the date of the dayand I'm so blessed to have two
birthdays and I get all theseamazing congratulations for like
(04:46):
10 days
Jeff (04:47):
probably great when you're five right to get to two setups
Kaleem (04:51):
One birthday in July and one in August.
They're not even in the samemonth, Jeff.
They're not even in the samemonth.
Okay.
Let's see our guest has writtenand been featured in you ready
for this list of publications,Inc magazine, fast company,
Forbes, and fortune.
Just a few Jeff, just a few.
Um, geez, let me get this towel,dog.
I'm nervous.
I'm sweating.
(05:11):
Our guest also is a LinkedIn topvoice for leadership.
Shout out, shout out to ourguests.
Last but not least, Jeff, lastbut not least.
Our guests, you ready for this?
Our guest is the co founder andCEO of Oyster, which is a global
employment platform that hasraised 225 million over the
(05:37):
years.
And it's currently has a 1billion valuation.
Whew.
Jeff (05:45):
The world is his oyster,
Kaleem (05:46):
oh, the world is his oyster.
I love it, Jeff.
I love it.
Listeners and viewers, pleasegive a warm welcome to Tony
Jamous Skoll! Skoll! Skoll! Woo!Settle down, studio audience.
(06:12):
Settle down.
They're too loud.
Sorry about that, Tony.
Sorry about that, Tony.
The studio audience is crazy.
They're crazy.
Tony Jamous (06:19):
prior.
Kaleem (06:23):
Thank you so much, sir, for joining us.
We appreciate you, man.
We appreciate you.
Jeff (06:27):
Welcome Tony, so let's jump into it.
So you As a clean, just saidmultiple time, startup founder,
multiple exits, multiple, youknow, selling the company, but
it wasn't all sweetness andhappiness and easy.
I know it was from thatexperience as part of the reason
that you started oyster.
And you started it with a littledifferent mission and a little
(06:48):
different kind of foundation.
I wonder if you can tell us asyou finished all the successful
exits.
You took a break and you decidedto do something else.
Give us a little background.
Tony Jamous (06:57):
Yeah.
So first, thank you guys forhaving me.
This is such a warmintroduction.
This is like the most funintroduction I've ever had on a
podcast.
So I
Kaleem (07:07):
sir.
We take that.
That's what we're trying to do,baby.
Tony Jamous (07:11):
love, I love these fun things because, you know, I
love to do this podcast becauseeven if I, like if I, if I screw
up.
Like there's nothing at stake,you know, it's like, so it's
like this best part of my workis to just have fun with amazing
people.
for giving me this
Kaleem (07:25):
You're making me ache.
Tony Jamous (07:27):
and, uh, to go back to Jeff's question.
So before starting Oyster,actually, 13 years ago, I
started a hyper gross technologycompany called Nexmo actually
was a competitor to Twilio.
We were the main competitor toTwilio.
I took the company public in mid2016 by doing a merger with
Vonage which led to itsacquisition by Ericsson for 6.
(07:48):
5 billion a few years ago.
So I left the business.
I've done my work in mid 2018.
And, uh, I was committed to takea break, to take a year off
sabbatical before I decide whatI'm going to do next, if I'm
going to do anything, because Idon't need, I didn't need it to
work.
And I had to go through a lot ofinner work, a lot of questions
(08:12):
about why I'm here on thisplanet.
I was really dedicated to mymental health.
And that's here because I hadall this money and then I was
feeling miserable in my life,right?
I was, our relationship were notgreat.
My health was not great.
I was this like typical founderwho burns out every three months
and work like nonstop, right?
(08:32):
So I needed to recalibrate,myself and understand why I'm
here on this planet.
And that led me to start Oysteras a mission driven company.
First and foremost.
On a mission to make the worldmore free and equal by
democratizing access to globaljob opportunities.
And as Kaleem mentioned, I hadto, I was forced to leave my
(08:55):
home country when I was in myteen years to France to study,
uh, to actually, to hope for abetter economical future.
You can call me an economicalrefugee.
And at that young age, leavingmy tribe, my community, my land,
was a very difficult experiencefor me.
I was on my own in a foreigncountry, and I had to really
(09:17):
succeed in order to give thatprotection for my family back
home.
So I created Oyster so thatpeople like me doesn't have to
go through this, doesn't have tofeel what I have, what I felt
and bring the opportunity tothem.
They can stay in theircommunity, they can stay in
their tribe and then amazing jobopportunities can be possible to
(09:38):
them by removing the barriersfor companies in the world to be
able to employ anyone anywhere.
The world is your oyster whenyou're looking for a job and the
world is your oyster when you'relooking for talent.
Jeff (09:50):
Tony, I wonder if before we get to Oyster, just to
reflect back on it, because fromthe outside, looking in, you
Kaleem (09:55):
BM is here.
Trey BM is
Jeff (09:56):
right?
You look like a huge success.
You made all this money.
You're an entrepreneur.
You built the company.
You IPO'd, you sold it.
Share for people that what thatactually takes.
Cause I think people only seethe, the silver lining.
They don't necessarily see it.
I don't necessarily understandthe effort and the sacrifices
that you have to make becauseyou still have the same 24 hours
a day as everybody else and yougot to make hard trade offs and
(10:19):
decisions.
So I wonder if you can share, Idon't want to say the dark side,
but people maybe don't reallyunderstand what it's all about
to be a CEO of a high growthcompany in a hyper competitive
market.
Tony Jamous (10:29):
Yeah, you have to be obsessed with what you do.
You have to be extremelydedicated and committed.
Quitting is not an option.
Although you have to say in manytimes in my career as a, as an
entrepreneur and a CEO of hypergross companies, like I wanted
to quit so many times, but youcannot quit.
And that makes you face Yourfears makes you face your makes
(10:51):
you clarify your purpose, makesyou align what you do is with
what you believe in.
And that keeps you going.
That keeps you going.
That enables you to have higherdegree of resilience and stamina
to overcome a lot of thesechallenges you face.
And the more you becomesuccessful, and the more your
business become bigger, thebigger the challenges you're
going to be faced with.
(11:12):
So, this is what I realized.
But actually, your ability todeal with these issues are also
become bigger, right?
So you become more experiencedand more capable.
Kaleem (11:22):
Interesting.
So change, you're talking aboutchange right there as the
organization grows.
Can you talk a little bit aboutsome of those challenges as
those companies were growingright before you decided to
sell?
What were some of the challengesthat you, common challenges, now
that you've, you know, Worked onthree companies.
What are some of the commonchallenges that you are dealing
(11:44):
with as you're beginning toscale from, you know, the seed
round to series A to series B?
Like, what are some of thecommon challenges that you
remember going through?
Tony Jamous (11:52):
Now, so, one of the major challenges is how do you
ensure that the team that youhave, your leadership team is
one that is fit for that phaseof the business, right?
So you hire people in thebeginning that are amazing to
get you from zero to one.
But then as a company grow andscale, you have to ensure that
(12:13):
these people can grow with theopportunity, can have an
experience, get to take themfrom one to 10 or one to a
hundred.
So that's a big challenge forentrepreneurs that are on a
hyper gross, right?
And zero, you know, zero to ahundred million of revenue in,
Less than five years in twocompanies.
I found it in the last 13 years.
So you always going to need toreplenish this leadership
(12:36):
structure.
You have to take care of it.
You have to always think aboutevolving it.
You have to lead and coach yourteam to grow.
You have to support them ontheir journey.
And you have to surround themwith the right environment and
the right skill set to help themgrow and be successful.
That's number one.
Number two is how do you keepthe growth engine going?
(12:56):
Like you, in order for you to beperceived as a high gross or
hyper gross company, you have tobe obsessed with growth.
You have to find new segments.
You have to find new techniquesof growing.
You have to find new ways ofacquiring customers.
You have to have new ways ofservicing this customer.
So you become more efficient andyou become more scalable.
And thirdly, one of the majorchallenges, especially in
(13:18):
technology is competitionbecause most competitors,
they're playing this game towin.
They want to kill you that theyare in that mindset.
So they come and they try tohire your people, give them more
salaries.
I try to say bad things aboutyou in the market.
And they, like most competitorsdon't play nice.
Kaleem (13:38):
It's gangster out there.
It's gangster out there is whatyou're saying.
Mamba mentality.
Everybody's out there trying tojust, you know, kill you.
Like you said, that's, that'scrazy.
Tony Jamous (13:48):
it's completely unnecessary because the market
is so big.
We live in an abandoned world,guys.
And so, so I like this conceptcalled the infinite game from
Simon Sinek.
I don't know if you've seen thislatest book about this topic.
It's like, guys, there's no needto beat the competition.
You have to beat yourself to bebetter every day.
(14:09):
But if you're obsessed with acompetition, you're going to
burn your energy and you'regoing to burn, you're going to
burn the market.
So I see a lot of that behavior.
I've always seen that like,aggressive behavior from the
competition that is completelyunnecessary just because, there
is a big ego, that is drivingwho's better and who's bigger,
which is makes no sense tonobody.
Jeff (14:31):
Yeah, you know, one of Simon's other things he loves to
talk about is the why, you know,that's his other big theme, you
know, what, why are you doingit?
And it's interesting to go fromspecifically high growth, which
was your lead adjective.
And some of those otheropportunities to, as you just
said, a mission drivenorganization.
So what is, Mission drivenactually mean, and how do you
make that a priority?
(14:53):
Cause you've still got investorsas Kaleem mentioned, they want
to get an ROI on their return.
You've got employees with stockpresumably and customers.
So how does mission drivenreally fit and how do you keep
that as a priority?
Tony Jamous (15:05):
so first, Jeff great question.
Why mission driven?
Because mission driven is betterfor business.
Mission driven enable you tosucceed more.
There's been 300 studies done inthe last 40 years that
correlate, that look at thecorrelation between financial
success and your ESG and CSRInitiatives in the business.
Okay, so there's no doubt beingmission driven makes you more
(15:28):
financially successful.
But it also enable you toattract better people.
Because people don't want toonly work for a company just for
a paycheck that is only has apurpose to make more money.
They want to work at a companythat makes them feel fulfilled.
They want to connect with thework they're doing.
They want to make a differencein this world.
So you get, you end up acquiringthe best talent in the world.
(15:51):
Thirdly, you get bettercustomers and more customers
because customers, again, theywant to buy from companies that
are aligned with their values.
So that's why, why missiondriven?
Because it's better forbusiness.
And secondly, your question,Jeff, was about, well, how do
you make it happen?
So, uh, the formula we crack atOyster is, is to align your
(16:12):
business model with your impact,and we just launched our impact
report last week.
We launched it every year thatenabled us to measure how many
team members we employ inemerging economies, how much
money we send in terms offoreign direct investments.
In the form of salary and taxes,which is communities that need
that money.
How many people are improvingtheir life with Oyster?
(16:34):
What is the lift in salariesthat they get working through
Oyster and working through nonOyster?
So we measure all of that.
And the beauty of our model isthat the more we grow our
revenue, the more we deliverimpact.
We have 40 percent of our teammembers in emerging economies.
That was 30 percent two yearsago.
So, uh, and then youoperationalize it.
(16:54):
You, you drive your strategywith it.
Our strategy is to be the bestof breed platform for cross
border employment.
Everything we do is for crossborder employment.
Every one of our rivals, they'redoing local HR.
They do local payroll.
They do local accounting.
Like, we're not interested inthat.
We are unique in our sense thatwe are here, although these are
(17:18):
very lucrative markets to gointo, right?
And they might grow faster thanus But we are driven by our
mission that drives our productroadmap and drive everything we
do
Kaleem (17:30):
Oh my gosh, you know, Tony, you are basically singing
what we're all talking about,like, and the fact that you just
explained it like that, it, it'sjust really great to hear you
have all of these companiesright now that are forcing their
employees back to the officethat are doing things that are
aren't necessarily aligning withtheir quote unquote mission.
(17:52):
You have companies, I'm notgoing to say their names, but
you have companies where theirwhole business is about
connecting maybe on video.
We all know who I'm talkingabout probably.
And then You're all coming backto the office that contradicts
the mission of your product.
What in the eff are you doing?
So so it was just really goodthe thing that we talked about
at blemming We're working withour clients and I just oh i'm
(18:14):
just so happy You said missiondriven because that's who we
want to work with too But likethe reality is there are two
things that you said that arecritical if you're going to be
mission mission driven You saidimpact and measure Ooh, look at
the bubbles.
Impact and measure.
If you do not measure, youcannot have impact.
(18:35):
You have to measure.
So thank you.
Tony Jamous (18:38):
You're welcome, Kaleem.
And I just want to say, thefuture of work is not in office,
hybrid, remote.
The future of work, in myopinion, is empathy based
management and leadership is tobe in touch with the real need
of your employees.
And by forcing employees tocommute back to the office, like
you're completely disconnectedfrom the real need of your
(18:59):
employees.
Like there's no need to addadditional burden from work on
their lives.
If it's completely unnecessary.
Jeff (19:09):
Yeah.
And just, I don't know that youcould update the numbers.
I saw somewhere, Tony, 600people in 80 countries, but I
think you said you're the onlyperson in the country in which
you reside.
So you guys are clearlypracticing what you preach.
I want to.
Shift gears a little bit becauseyou had another interesting
concept in terms of a leadershipphilosophy, which kind of is
similar to your mission, wherewe often hear of servant
(19:31):
leadership or serviceleadership, which is one of the
more progressive styles, whichthe idea of, you know, the boss
is there to use their resourcesto remove roadblocks to help
people get their job done.
You've got a slightly differenttwist that you call sustainable
leadership.
And what I found is reallyinteresting is the different
layers of sustainability thatyou've described, starting with
(19:52):
number one, which you always goback to the, you know, you get
on the airplane.
What's the 1st thing I tell youput your seatbelt on 1st or do
your own mask 1st before youhelp anyone else that needs
wonder if you can share a littlebit about the development of
your sustainable leadership andsome of those different layers
that all build upon themselvesto help you have a more
successful organization.
(20:14):
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(22:20):
And now, back to the show.
Tony Jamous (22:22):
Sustainable leadership.
Jeff means for me is you have totake care of yourself as a
leader in order for you to beable to be present to your team.
If you're always in a reactivemode, you're not there for your
team.
If you're sending a Slackmessage at 2am in the morning to
them, you're You gotta actuallypush that pressure on them and
(22:43):
you're gonna pollute their livesunnecessarily Schedule it send
it to 2 a.
m.
But let it appear Next day at 9a.
m if you if you don't disconnectand take some time off and
recharge if you don't Show thatyou are human you're vulnerable
sometimes actually It happenedto me a few times at oyster
where I tell guys.
(23:03):
Hey, i'm burned out right nowYou I need my space.
I'm going to disappear for twodays.
Come back.
So that's what sustainableleadership is.
And I've been practicing sinceit's been amazing.
It's been amazing to really, useOyster as an opportunity to take
care of myself because I don'twant to burn out anymore as a
leader.
I don't need to do this.
I want to do this.
And if I want to do this, I wantto do it on my terms.
(23:26):
I want to be live where I wantto live.
I want to work where I want towork.
And I want to be grounded withpeople.
that are from everywhere in theworld.
We are, as we said, we are in 80countries, probably over 100
nationalities, gender equalacross the board, including
management team and on my board.
So that's what sustainableleadership is.
(23:46):
And I want to say like, my corebelief is that I believe in the
infinite potential of humans.
And I believe there is anenvironment in which you put
people in Then you unlock theirinfinite potential and you
unlock their growth.
And that environment is acombination of from one hand
about caring and nurturing andsupporting.
(24:08):
And from the other hand is aboutdaring and pushing the limit.
You have to do both at the sametime.
Kaleem (24:14):
let me ask you something about sustainability.
Cause like my first thought justwent to something that exists
past yourself.
that's where I thought you weregoing with that.
Um, but I, I wanted to ask you a
Tony Jamous (24:29):
no, no.
Can you, can you go deeper intothat?
Kaleem (24:32):
yeah, yeah.
I want, yeah.
So this idea that, you know,we're all trying to be
sustainability.
We're all doing this so that theearth is healthier after we die.
That's like the main objectiveof sustainability overall.
And I love this term of, um,because a lot of people will use
Succession planning.
Tony Jamous (24:52):
yeah,
Kaleem (24:52):
Um, but earlier when you talked about oyster scaling or
just actually start up scalingand the challenges that you're
dealing with when you're hiringin the beginning, can you talk a
little bit about what.
Learning and development or whatyou were doing with some of
those companies where youactually developed.
(25:14):
Your leaders to be able to takeon those new challenges as you
progress.
I feel like a lot of, especiallyfounders are reactive, right?
Like what you said, are reactiveand not thinking forward.
Can you talk about theimportance of development of
your team and your leadershipteam?
And can you talk about how youdo that from a remote
(25:35):
perspective,
Tony Jamous (25:36):
absolutely.
So, uh, you have to have clearprinciples and values.
So in our case, it's aboutbuilding trust is one of our
core values, thriving togetheris a core value as well, and
elevating talent.
is another core value.
And I look at my leaders and Icome and, I recognize them in
(26:00):
public and they're behavingwithin these values.
And when they're not, I go inprivate and give them some
feedback.
Kaleem (26:07):
Ooh, I love that.
Recognize in public.
Not criticize, but suggestprivately.
Tony Jamous (26:14):
Absolutely, absolutely.
Secondly, it's about modelingthe way.
I need to be the best leader inmy business for so that they can
see me how I lead and learn fromme.
You know, we all have these newmirror neurons, right?
So we can mimic, especially whenyou look at your boss, it's like
(26:35):
a child looking up to theirparents.
You want to be like them.
So by model, by actuallycleaning my energy system and
modeling the way in thisbehavior, I influence everybody
I interact with.
It's like, uh, I postedsomething on LinkedIn recently.
It's like going to work for mehere in my home office, when I
go downstairs into my homeoffice.
It's like entering a temple.
(26:57):
I clean myself, I clean myemotions, I ensure I am not in a
reactive mode, and I come and bepresent to my people.
I want to go back, Khalil, towhat you said around this, like
we're taking care of the planet,right?
Sustainability is taking care ofthe planet.
And there is something aboutthat is about what I call
(27:17):
consciousness development forleaders.
So you have to realize thatyou're not an independent
entity.
You are part of a bigger systemand you can all connected and
we're all one in order for youto, not only take care of your
people, but also to be moreconnected with your mission and
aligned with your purpose.
(27:37):
And that's the practice I'vebeen doing since I started
Oyster.
Actually, this is why I startedOyster because I was doing this
retreat that enabled me toexpand my consciousness and my
therapist told me, don't takeany important decisions for the
next 10 days.
So I went and incorporatedOyster the next day in November
(27:57):
2019 because I realized thatThat pain that I felt, it's not
only me that is feeling thatpain to immigrate and leave my
tribe, everybody in mysituation.
So I expanded my consciousnessto hundreds of millions of
people and realized actually Ican do something to help them.
Jeff (28:16):
I'm curious, Tony, I heard an interview with Toby Redshaw
and he talked about trying toget people to give marginal
effort and discretionary effortand the change in productivity
when someone is really in theboat and really pulling hard
versus showing up is huge.
It can be 10 X, it can be 10%.
It makes a huge difference.
Why do you think there's theresistance from kind of
(28:38):
traditional thinkers in seeingthat doing things the better way
is not only better for people'shealth and emotion and a bunch
of somewhat say softer sides,but it also has direct business
benefit because you get bettercontributions from the team.
You get a more diverseperspectives.
You get people leaning in andtrying to solve problems.
(28:59):
You push problem solving downcloser and decision making to
the people that are closest tothe problem.
What's the resistance and thehold back to doing it the way
that we've always done it versusembracing some of these new
concepts when there's datathat's pretty clear that it's
going to result in betterfinancial performance for the
organization as well.
Tony Jamous (29:19):
great question, Jeff.
In my opinion, this is linked tofear from leaders to fail.
Because this has worked the waythe old way we did this worked.
Why we need to change it.
I'm taking risk that is actuallycreating more anxiety for me.
And I need to run away from thatrisk.
(29:40):
Right?
So that's why consciousnessdevelopment is critical here.
Because when you do thisemotional development as a
leader, you become moresensitive to your inner
experience and you feel thatfear coming into your body.
And then you see, Oh, this isfear that's an illusion.
I don't have to react to thatfear.
I can take that risk.
I can expand and try new ways ofchanging, of improving my
(30:04):
business and improving mypeople.
Jeff (30:06):
Interesting.
And that's also I think just,you know, people just aren't
comfortable with vulnerabilityand being humble and that these
are actually great leadershiptraits and you don't need to
know all the right answers andit's okay to be wrong or to have
a question and ask someone who'sa more junior but is closer to
the problem what they think.
Tony Jamous (30:23):
That's actually Jeff also, uh, linked to the,
how we created leadership, theperception of leadership for the
last few thousand years,actually, since, since we had,
uh, Empires, right?
So what would happen?
I'm reading a book recentlycalled The Great Turning that
looks at the history of thehuman consciousness development
(30:43):
and specifically when it comesto leadership and 5, 000 years
ago and before we were living inharmony, we were living in
tribes and then when resourcesstarted to get scarce, we
started having fear and then oneof the tribes started to become
dominant and aggressive.
Yeah.
And start to dominate the othertribe.
(31:05):
And that created the modern wayof leading today, like in the
last few thousand years,accelerated in the last 50 years
is a system that's really aboutdominating not sharing power.
And, so leaders, we are like, Ifeel like I'm expected to be
aggressive that I'm some peoplecome to work with me.
(31:26):
and bringing in their old traumafrom their previous experiences,
and they expect me to be thistop down decision maker and this
aggressive leader.
And, I'm learning how to managethat.
I'm learning how to, I callthese energy systems.
One is the eagle.
That is my flight and flightresponse.
Eagle is like this, is apredator.
(31:48):
And the other one is a condor,the condor is which is like fly
higher than the eagle has abigger vision and is a
scavenger, like take care of theenvironment.
So depending on the situationI'm in, I'm learning how to show
up as an eagle or as a condor.
And this is a very likespiritual story that I, that
drives my behavior at work.
Kaleem (32:09):
It makes a lot, it makes a lot of sense.
Now, Tony, I got a question foryou.
It might be a littlecontroversial for you.
Maybe it is, maybe it isn't.
I mean, I don't know.
I mean, but you're in thebusiness of pay.
You're in the business of Youknow payment processing or
payroll should we say
Tony Jamous (32:26):
Yeah.
Kaleem (32:27):
I have a question about your opinion on location based
pay Versus location independentbased pay.
So for people who don't knowwhat that is Location based pay
is would be a company that wouldsay you move to san francisco
you get paid this amount But ifyou move to idaho You're gonna
get paid less.
(32:47):
Okay, so There is that that'slocation based pay Then there's
location independent base pay,which means, Hey, no matter
where you live in the wholeworld, we're going to pay you
the same amount of money, nomatter where you live.
So without me telling you how Ifeel about it, I'm just curious.
What's your take on it, sir?
(33:08):
What's
Tony Jamous (33:09):
Yeah, my take here, Kaleem, thank you for the
question.
My take that, uh, like, thisinequality that we see based on
the location is nothing morethan the result of this unequal
system that we created in thelast few thousand years.
And, like for me, like poverty,because I came from a very poor
(33:30):
background.
Poverty is an illusion.
It's like you, you, you, peoplemake you feel that you're poor.
It's a feeling, and it doesn'thave to exist.
So I believe that in the future,we want to drive the world to be
location independent.
Especially as we have remotework, we have knowledge work, we
(33:51):
have over a billion knowledgeworker coming into the workforce
in the next 10 years, mostlyfrom emerging economies.
So by removing the barriers forcompanies to tap into the global
talent pool, we create more,more equality in the system.
And we already see that thesalaries of remote workers,
let's take an Argentiniansoftware developer, uh, used to
be paid 1, 000 a 40K a year, andnow they are paid 120K a year.
(34:18):
It's still less, it's just halfof what they get paid in the Bay
Area.
Uh, but for these roles, forhigh demand roles that can be
done remotely, and there is moreand more of them.
Think about sales executive,customer service representative,
you can marketers, productmanagers, you accountant.
All of these job can bestandardized and be done from
(34:40):
any country.
You only need a laptop and agood interconnection.
Then we're gonna see that gapclosing.
So now how we do it at Oyster.
So at Oyster, we do locationbased.
But what we do is for we splitthe world into three zones.
Kaleem (34:55):
Ooh, the world.
Interesting.
Instead of getting granular tocountry, you do the world.
Tony Jamous (35:01):
Yeah,
Kaleem (35:02):
Well done.
Tony Jamous (35:03):
because we have people everywhere and, and, Now
our key is to make, the key isto make people feel that they
are treated fairly.
I don't, I don't know if youremember guys, this, uh, this
study they did with the monkeyswhere they, they put one monkey
in a cage and they gave them acucumber and nearby there's
another cage with a monkey andthey gave that banana and the
(35:25):
cucumber monkey was likeshouting and, and threw the
cucumber away.
If they, if they give both ofthem a banana or both of them a
cucumber, it is.
Right.
So this feeling of being treatedunfairly is ingrained in us.
It's like our animal brain.
So you need to be sensitive tothat.
So what we do at Oyster is we,uh, for the people that are in
(35:47):
expensive cities, we pay on 50%of the market.
But for the more we go intocountries that are, that have
lower cost of living, the morewe lift that percentage up.
So we pay people like 80% or90%.
Of what they would be worse in agiven country if they are from a
country that is on, more on thelow side when it comes to cost
(36:09):
of living.
And why we do that because westill, we're still operating in
the capitalistic system.
investors to report to.
Kaleem (36:16):
cost of living, you can't control the world's cost
of living.
So, you know, you're trying toadjust as best as you can, but I
mean, separating it by theworld.
I haven't heard that yet.
I'm sure there are companiesthat do that, but like, I think
your division is much higher andgives people more options than
(36:36):
you know going to down to thecountry level and in some cases
in the u.
s Even going down to the statestate level.
So what you're doing is amazing
Tony Jamous (36:44):
yeah,
Jeff (36:45):
So Tony, Pierre Nanterne used to be, he was also French
and used to be the CEO of acenter years ago.
Unfortunately, he passed away,too young, but one of the things
that he used to talk about isdemographics is the trend and
every other trend follows offdemographic trends because it's
big and it moves slowly andimpacts us all.
You're right on top of that.
And you've talked.
Briefly about kind of this,imbalance between demand for
(37:08):
talent and where the talent is.
And you're bridging that gapwith, by basically breaking down
the geographic divides.
The other piece that I've heardyou talk about that's
interesting is learning.
And the fact that with YouTubeand all these tools now, anyone,
anywhere, if they have the rightaccess can learn anything.
So we're getting to the end,Tony, we will ask all guests,
(37:29):
tell us a comical or inspiringmoment from your remote working
experience.
Tony Jamous (37:36):
Well, I don't know if it's embarrassing or not.
I'm actually proud of it.
I'm proud of it.
Uh,
Kaleem (37:41):
Okay.
Tony Jamous (37:43):
what is cool about remote work is I could be, I
could be on my headphonelistening to a Zoom call or in a
board meeting and putting somemusic in the background and
it'll be dancing, moving my hipshere.
They don't see I'm moving.
It'll keep my hips moving, keepsme mobile, keeps my energy
system Kaleem and, uh,
Kaleem (38:04):
Can you salsa?
Can you salsa?
Tony Jamous (38:06):
yeah, whatever, you know, we can do whatever.
Yes.
Kaleem (38:11):
Okay.
Okay.
I'm getting the visual.
I'm getting the visual of yourability to dance.
Okay.
Okay.
Tony Jamous (38:16):
That's why, that's why we only do one in person
board meeting a year.
The other three are virtual.
And it's a great way to actuallyreduce your stress level to keep
moving.
You know, in the past I used tohave like treadmill walking on,
but then I realized, you know,why I can actually, I can dance.
Why do you have to walk likestraight?
I can keep moving and keepshifting all this energy.
(38:37):
Yeah, it's been great.
Kaleem (38:39):
Wait, so, Let me get this, let me get this straight.
Are you telling me that in your,
Jeff (38:47):
Come on!
Kaleem (38:48):
I can sense it.
Are you telling me that in yourmeetings, you have your whole
company on and you're dancing,
Tony Jamous (38:54):
I'm dancing.
Like, like
Kaleem (38:56):
dancing, dancing, dancing.
Everything else is bullshit.
Tony Jamous (39:01):
Exactly.
Jeff (39:01):
There's so much power in the music to change your mood,
right?
Tony Jamous (39:04):
imagine like making such a big decision with the
board, right?
And then you're dancing.
Right?
That's a great way to manageyour stress.
Only possible if you work fromhome.
Unless you work in the dancingindustry.
That's not a story, but Uh,
Jeff (39:20):
do you get together with your team?
What's kind of your cadence foractually getting people
together?
Tony Jamous (39:26):
twice a year.
I mean, not the whole companybecause that's very expensive.
But my team, my leadership team,we meet twice a year.
Kaleem (39:32):
Back to dancing.
Hang on.
I'm sorry.
I'm still stuck on the dancingthing.
So wait, do you dance if you'reletting someone go?
Um,
Tony Jamous (39:42):
I haven't had that experience yet to dance and I
think someone, but I'll try it,I'll try it because you know,
it's like it's moving, shiftingyour emotional energy through
physically gets you to be morepresent and gets you to be, to
let the life to be lessreactive.
Yeah, because you're not this,like this fear or this sadness,
(40:04):
like they're not stuck in yourbody.
They're like releasing all thetime.
So it's actually, makes youbetter decision maker, makes you
be more compassionate to people.
Let's say if you're firingsomebody, then, yeah, I think
that, I recommend it to everyremote worker on this planet.
Yeah,
Kaleem (40:20):
it would be more of a slow dance.
Maybe you do more of a, youknow, more of a slow dance.
If you have to let someone go,you know what I'm saying?
Versus cause like sauces, youknow, you just, you just keep it
going.
You know what I mean?
Like, like that's too much.
I think that's too much.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Tony Jamous (40:36):
Oh, you know, and yeah,
Kaleem (40:38):
That is great.
That is unbelievable.
Well, thank you for sharing thatTony.
That's that's the first we'vedefinitely never had anyone on
the show.
Tell us that they dance.
While working remotely,especially a CEO of a company
your size.
So that is your meetings must befun as hell.
That's awesome.
Jeff (40:56):
Well, it tells you something that we're coming to
the end of our time.
We barely talked about thebusiness and all the great
things that you offer in thedetails and the nitty gritty.
But I think it really,highlights that it's the top
level things that are really themore important things.
And I think that the skills thatused to be described as soft
skills are actually the criticalskills that enable all the
detailed stuff that happens,happens under the cover.
So we could go forever.
(41:17):
I got pages of notes, butunfortunately the clock the
clock keeps ticking.
So Tony, how can people getahold of you?
Where can they reach out andconnect?
Tony Jamous (41:26):
can find me on LinkedIn.
Kaleem (41:28):
There it is.
Just search, just search forTony Jamus.
Yes.
And bonjour, vous?
That's all I know.
That's all I know.
Jeff (41:38):
Very good.
Kaleem (41:41):
Awesome.
Well, thank you so much forcoming on, Tony.
We really appreciate it.
Come back anytime and can't waitto, meet you in person for the
first time, but I guess I got togo to a Mediterranean Island to
do that.
Jeff (41:50):
That's a good trade.
Tony Jamous (41:51):
An invitation for you already.
Here we go.
Kaleem (41:55):
Awesome.
We'll talk to you soon, man.
Tony Jamous (41:57):
Thank you.
Kaleem (41:58):
Peace.
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