The AI-Powered CMO: Insights on Remote Leadership and Innovation

Transcript

Peter Ivanov [00:00:03]:
Hello, and welcome to the virtual power teams podcast. And today, we have an exciting guest, Peter Murphy Lewis. He joins us from Kansas, but he’s a citizen of the world and larger than life individual. He’s a fractional CMO, chief marketing officer, and he will explain what fractional means. But he’s also a podcaster. He’s a TV host. He’s entrepreneur. He helps entrepreneurs and companies to grow, as I said, larger than life.

Peter Ivanov [00:00:32]:
Peter, welcome to the podcast, and please tell us with your own words who you are and what you do.

Peter Murphy Lewis [00:00:38]:
Excited to be here, Peter. Great name. From a professional point of view, I’m usually brought in when CEOs have analysis paralysis with too much marketing data. As you mentioned, fractional CMO, that is a freelancer, chief marketing officer. Chief marketing officers in the United States make 300,000 to $600,000, oftentimes getting a piece of equity depending on how long they stay. Companies that usually hire me can’t afford that or they’re afraid to pay someone full time and have that person, you know, leave in 6 months. So they rent me. They rent my strategy and my ideas and my experience for 5 to 15 hours per week, usually for 6 to 18 months to solve a very serious problem.

Peter Murphy Lewis [00:01:20]:
So I’ve worked with banks. I’ve worked with zoos. I actually live inside of a zoo, Peter, so we can talk about that, later, and and and guide their mark their marketing strategy. Worked with AI companies, a lot of software companies, a lot of b to b, and then my first experience in entrepreneurship was I started a b two c travel company in South America in 2007.

Peter Ivanov [00:01:41]:
Alright. Fantastic. You must be very productive, you know, to deliver, to make an impact with so few hours a week. Are you using AI, or what’s the secret of your productivity?

Peter Murphy Lewis [00:01:52]:
I well, I don’t know if AI is the secret, but it is a pillar, of my productivity. So I’ve used I’m an early adapter in almost everything with technology. AI is definitely a huge part of it. I just got out of a call with a stand a stand up call with with with with my right hand woman and project manager, and I said, we just onboarded some interns 2 weeks ago, and I realized that they are not using AI correctly. Can we set up a training on Tuesday? And she, you know, she said to me, she goes, well, what are the basics that we should teach them? And I said, why don’t we start with how you start every every project with AI, to kind of frame the scope and create a have a creative brief. Secondly, you how do you use improve the prompts to improve that process as you start to work with it? And then how do you use prompts and AI to question everything that you’ve done so that it’s a finished file a published product. And I said if they start with those three things, their life is gonna get significantly easier.

Peter Ivanov [00:02:55]:
Yes. Thank you. And we will deep dive in those internship. Looks like a key vehicle in your delivery machine. But one question I usually ask entrepreneurs like yourself, when was this decisive moment in your life when you decided now I am going to do what I do? When was this moment in time?

Peter Murphy Lewis [00:03:18]:
My wife and my mother would say that I haven’t had that precise moment. I’m still trying to figure out what I wanna be when I grow up. So I’ve worn many different hats. Up until the age of 27 years old, I was gonna be a diplomat. I was a full time professor at the University of Chile. I was a political correspondent for CNN in South America. From about 27 till about 37 years old for 10 years, I was a full time entrepreneur creating brands in the travel space in South America that grew to, you know, to to 7 7 figures in revenue of 4 different cities and eventually sold that company. And then I became a TV host, and now I’m a fractional CMO with a consultancy with about 15 people on my team working with, you know, medium sized portfolio of clients.

Peter Murphy Lewis [00:04:11]:
I don’t know what I’m gonna do, Peter. Hopefully, this conversation will will give me that precise moment.

Peter Ivanov [00:04:16]:
Okay. So let’s see if we have a awakening moment of truth. You’ve mentioned internships in onboarding. 2 very hot words in this war for talent times, and then onboarding being key for, you know, sweating the people you have and keeping engagement. We 2 x aspects we could explore which are beneficial for this audience. On one hand is remote because, if I understand correctly, your, team and interns are, remote. So how do you ensure this remote synergy and you can really deliver with a remote team? And second question I’ll ask it now is, how do you deal with these internships, and how you onboard people remotely so they could be effective and there is a strong cohesion and then fit into the team. And you’ve mentioned the AI onboarding as such, but up to you now.

Peter Ivanov [00:05:11]:
What’s kind of secret of your remote team, your leadership secret, and then how you deal with the internship and their onboarding?

Peter Murphy Lewis [00:05:21]:
So a lot of questions that packed in there. So I’ll start and feel free to interrupt at any point, Peter. So I get Alright. I I I like interruptions when I do public speaking. I like questions in the middle, not at the end. So feel free to jump in. I think that the secret to my success or my team’s success or strategic Pete’s success over the last 15 years of working with interns is probably around the filtering process, the application process. 2nd, it’s probably the onboarding process.

Peter Murphy Lewis [00:05:59]:
3rd, it’s intimately tied strategically tied to skilling people up, and then probably 4th is feedback. Mhmm. The I would say those are kind of the 4 elements, and I wish that I had those better structured. I am writing a book right now on the process around building remote teams specifically with interns. I think that it’s a unique place for marketing, and it works, and it helps companies that need to grow quickly. So I don’t have it perfect, but hopefully, in 6 months, it will be it will be perfect. And maybe you can help me fine tune it today.

Peter Ivanov [00:06:35]:
Okay. Okay. I have 2 books on remote teams, virtual teams, translated to 6 languages for my big surprise because I’m a master of mathematics. I’m a numbers guys guy, but somehow my passion about remote teams kind of transpired into the books. Tell me, out of these 15 people, how many are interns? Mhmm.

Peter Murphy Lewis [00:06:56]:
Every single person on the team started off as an intern with me except for 1. There’s one person from Romania who did not start as an intern. Every single other person started as intern with me. So my right hand woman who helps me with branding and strategy, she was an intern in June of 2020, and now she oversees all branding and strategy with my clients. My right hand kind of project manager, general manager, she was an intern. She’s from Mexico, and she started in 2022, and everyone else is an intern. So my ads people are interns. My copywriters are interns.

Peter Murphy Lewis [00:07:30]:
My SEO experts were interns.

Peter Ivanov [00:07:33]:
I guess many entrepreneurs are facing this issue. When they start growing, they need new people, and they reach out remote. And, in turn, it’s a very flexible way to start. You mentioned the 4 pillars. Let’s just look a little bit. The first one, if I remember correctly, was, the application process and selecting and kind of matchmaking to your roles. What do you do there differently so it’s it’s it works in the end?

Peter Murphy Lewis [00:08:00]:
There are probably a couple of different elements to it that make it make it successful. The first one is the copy, the images, the video, the call to action, what we ask of you to do. So our job application is written from the very beginning to attract you. I find that most job applications are dissuasive, and they don’t want you to apply. So they make it look difficult. They they look boring. They look like a job application from 1995. Looks like a place I would never wanna work at.

Peter Murphy Lewis [00:08:30]:
So I have a picture of me skydiving in my job app in the job application where my hands are like this. I don’t know why my hands were lifted up in the air, and I and I look like a squirrel. So in the job application, it says, if you feel comfortable making fun of the CEO of this company when he did his first skydiving and he looks like a squirrel, then this culture is for you. There is a podcast where they are forced if they’re gonna apply, they are supposed to listen to the podcast, which would be, like, them listening to me and you so they get a feel for the energy of the team for why I’m passionate about this project. And then in their job application, if they send a loom of 3 things that they learned about the company and the way that we approach solving problems, and then a question that you would have for Peter after listening to the podcast. So that that podcast warms you up to who I am and my style, but also it allows me to make sure that I pay attention to what what motivates you and what you like when you send that in. And and then I would say we fill the copy lets people know that this might be the hardest thing that they’ve done up until the up till this point in their professional career that we’re looking for a players. We let them know what’s gonna be hard, but we let them know that for 6 months of their time, with a minimum stipend, we’re gonna teach them in NBA and marketing.

Peter Murphy Lewis [00:09:44]:
So we try to filter out any b players by dissuading them from applying because we tell them how hard it is. And when you tell an a player how hard something is, their competitive nature comes out, and and we really don’t have very many people that we have to filter out. Our last job our last internship application was about a month ago. We chose 387 applicants who signed up for an internship for 6 months for a very small stipend where they’re gonna have to work their bus off.

Peter Ivanov [00:10:13]:
Mhmm. Amazing. Amazing. Very engaging, very modern approach.

Peter Murphy Lewis [00:10:18]:
You’re an expert. What could I what could I do better? I feel like I feel like after you give me some feedback, I’m gonna have, 360 applicants.

Peter Ivanov [00:10:27]:
No. I love that. I’m not an expert in, like, onboarding people or or finding the right people, but, the elements that you mentioned, disengagement, there is now I’m not sure if you use AI, but IBM Watson have a number of applications for HR services, the whole life cycle from, selecting, then onboarding, then developing, then career development, and so on. And, this, showing the people in advance how it looks, how it feels to work for the company was a key, distinguish at what you do with the podcast and so on. And then raising the bar and using their competitive nature and challenging them upfront, All this is is, is brilliant and and very modern, so nothing to add actually. Spot on. And then, in fact, some of the onboarding starts in the selection process, but what do you do in the onboarding? So it is effective, and I think this is, really the challenge of many companies with the remote first. You know, onboarding is key, and sometimes not being able to spend time looking to the eyes of the managers, of your peers becomes a challenge.

Peter Ivanov [00:11:34]:
How did you resolve that? You call it like remote synergy.

Peter Murphy Lewis [00:11:38]:
This has evolved over time, but kind of the gist of what I’ve done from the beginning that works is we try to get we try to manage expectations before day 1. And so the day that we accept them, they receive a very long email from me or my right hand woman, Lina, getting them very excited. We tell them this is really hard. We tell them how many people applied. We tell them that they made it. We tell them we check their references, which we do. We don’t need any intern that we haven’t checked their references. And then we tell them specifically, if they’re ready to accept it, and we reemphasize how hard it’s gonna be.

Peter Murphy Lewis [00:12:14]:
That’s 6 months. We tell them no quitting early. If they quit early, we tell their their references that they quit early so that it’ll impact them. So we put a little bit accountability in there. And then we let them know, reply saying, yes. You’re excited. And 2, what is the thing that you have to do before you start on onboarding on day 1? Which in my experience, an intern who doesn’t have much experience in marketing, the most challenging thing at the beginning is learning the new project management tool. So we tell them to go sign up for our project management tool.

Peter Murphy Lewis [00:12:42]:
At this time, it’s monday.com, but I’ve used Asana and Trello and Basecamp. So it doesn’t really matter. So I say, go spend 3 hours, log in with your personal email, take the tutorials, get familiar with the with the jargon, how to move things around, the workflow. Because I said, when you’re moving on a when you’re working across 10 to 20 clients with a team of 15 people, things move so fast that this is gonna be the scariest thing your first 5 days. And if you can get rid of this fear before you start, everything else is gonna be easy. So that they get going on that. On day 1, then it is about encouragement. It’s letting them know that we’re gonna be on their side, and we assign them one project to start to figure out what their skill set is.

Peter Murphy Lewis [00:13:26]:
And this project we assign to them is something that has already been done so they can see what success looks like. They have SOP. They have someone who’s gonna support them and train them, which is usually a previous intern or some type of manager. And then we tell them how many hours it should take, and we let them know, don’t spend 8 hours on this. Spend 4 hours on this. And we let them know what we’re trying to determine is what they’re good at so we can coach them up to their strengths, not to their weaknesses. So if they fail at the specific project, we immediately know they’re not gonna be a writer or they’re not gonna be able to do copywriting or they’re not gonna be creative at ads or they can’t help out with videos or they can’t ever do customer research type of thing. So we we let them know that we’re trying to figure out what they’re great at, so that we can help them contribute from the beginning.

Peter Murphy Lewis [00:14:09]:
And then the extra the next item that I would add to it, Peter, that I think is Nuance, is every intern is expected to fill out about a 5 question survey at the end of their workday for their 1st 30 days of working that strategic peak. Mhmm. And in that survey, I’m trying to determine their love language. One of the most important books that I’ve ever read is the 5 languages of love.

Peter Ivanov [00:14:33]:
Yes.

Peter Murphy Lewis [00:14:33]:
And I’m trying to figure out what is the way that this person wants me to motivate them? How do they wanna feel appreciated? So the way that I try to determine that is I say, if you had to compliment yourself today for one thing that you did well, what would it be and what were the words you would use? And that intern says something along the lines of, you know what? I was I feel very happy with how organized I was with the project management tool, and that I felt comfortable speaking up and asking a question in front of my peers because I was a little bit nervous. Okay. So I’m starting to figure out that person spent a lot of time on the tool, which is what I asked. So this person is anxious. This person is prepared. This person’s organized. I already start to figure out what they’re gonna be good at, and then I figure out how how they want to feel, right I’m I’m thinking Spanish. Sorry, Peter.

Peter Murphy Lewis [00:15:28]:
I speak Spanish at home with my wife from South America. So how how they want to be praised, and and it’s it’s a little bit of pressure in front of their team. It’s the ability to speak up that they might be afraid of judgment. And then the other questions have to do if tomorrow, you were to work a 100% on your own without anybody over overseeing you, what is something that you feel comfortable with that you think you could contribute to the team immediately? And the person might say, oh, you know what? I felt really comfortable with the way they talked about customer research or competitor research or around SEO, or I already know how to write blogs. I can help. So the person’s already telling me and my managers what they can do tomorrow and start to contribute, and that’s gonna make them feel already integrated to the team. And there’s a couple other questions, but they’re iterations of that. And, oh, I think the other item, Peter, and I think this has to do with part of your methodology, which is around building trust, is I force them from day 1 on every single survey to critique something about their onboarding for the 1st 30 days.

Peter Ivanov [00:16:25]:
Mhmm.

Peter Murphy Lewis [00:16:26]:
So I say, this cannot be left blank If you had to improve the way that you’ve been onboarded today, what is one thing that could be done better?

Peter Ivanov [00:16:36]:
Yes.

Peter Murphy Lewis [00:16:36]:
And then I’ll put in parentheses, would do you wish there would have been less text, more video? Do you wish you would have had someone reply to your Slack messages more quickly? Do you wish someone would have been more polite? Do you wish someone would have, given you a book to support you? And if the person you knew in the 1st 2 or 3 days, interns don’t feel comfortable critiquing because they know that I’m reading it and that the manager is reading it. I will take a screenshot, and I will put it into a group Slack message saying, this person and I won’t say the name usually, and I’ll say, this person doesn’t feel comfortable critiquing their onboarding. If we were perfect at this, we wouldn’t be here working with interns or I would be a multibillionaire. I love this part of it, and I need to improve. If you don’t feel comfortable critiquing me in the way that we’re onboarding, you might not be a great cultural fit. Tomorrow, I need you to critique me. And so the team needs to feel comfortable questioning me. Now it shows.

Peter Ivanov [00:17:28]:
Wow. Fantastic. These are very advanced, things you’re doing. Usually, you know, we build trust initially looking at a little bit in the past. You know, people present themselves with a live journey, which builds a lot of credibility. You know, people discover similarities and so on. I have a, like, a flash intro of 4 questions where people can ask each other, and then, again, they build connection and trust. But, what you do with, like, current you know, every day having the survey very specific to the point here and now, is is a great way to kind of engage those people.

Peter Ivanov [00:18:09]:
How do you deal with those data? Do you somehow structure it and have a profile for each and every one and maybe some trends and maybe some groups with similar? Is there any profiling happening based on these, surveys for you, and is it full transparent? What do you do with those data?

Peter Murphy Lewis [00:18:24]:
There’s qualitative profiling. So somebody on my team, usually the first person who receives the notification on, you know, Google spreadsheet, takes a screenshot of that person’s survey and puts it into our Slack group for only intern managers. And there’s 2 to 4 people that are managing in there, and it’ll say something like, Rebecca’s survey today, and then the person will make a small observation. Like, hey, Elijah. Rebecca said that she felt a little bit lost with the SEO blog that you assigned to her. Can you reach out to her and let her know, ask her how she needs to feel supported? Hey, Peter. Rebecca says that she’s interested in business development. She wants to do anything that’s possible to work next to you for 30 minutes to an hour a day.

Peter Murphy Lewis [00:19:06]:
Are there any project management are there any business development projects that you’re working on that she could come in and sit in as a silent observer? And then you could analyze if she might be able to contribute. Perfect. And then that and so that’s that screenshot is happening with every intern every single day. So we onboarded 3 interns 2 weeks ago. So for the last 14 days, there’s been 3 screenshots, and we’re tagging some manager about some type of observation, something analog anecdotal, and then we’ll start to figure out who that person how they’re motivated, what they’re gonna be good at, what they’re scared, what they’re not good at, and we’ll try to move them off those projects.

Peter Ivanov [00:19:39]:
Excellent. Excellent. So you’re very responsive, very agile, you know, working on their words, and you you kind of build credibility. But, again, these massive screenshots, you could even put AI to discover some trends and sentiments and so on. Are you doing some analysis? Or for now, it’s just the management who is

Peter Murphy Lewis [00:19:59]:
I’m not, but I’m glad you asked me. I feel like, as a as a believer, as a cult member of AI, I should be using it better. I think I’m gonna make a note as we’re speaking that to figure out how I’d rather do that. If you have any suggestions, please let me know.

Peter Ivanov [00:20:15]:
Now this is your data. This is your asset. You could do it anytime. And as your team grows and maybe some people come and leave, you could, have a valuable insights, which you integrate. And maybe some of it I’m a big fan of full transparency. For sure, there are things that has to remain confidential between 2 people and so on. But for the most of it, transparency is key, and I wonder if you could play it, you know, having an open culture. Many of the remote first companies, which seems to be your case, do you have an office? Do you have any people going to the office or everybody’s fully remote?

Peter Murphy Lewis [00:20:50]:
Everybody’s remote. Like, right now Yes. I think I’m the only person in the United States. Have 2 people in Pakistan, 1 person in Bangladesh, 1 in Toronto, Canada, Mexico, Germany, Kenya Yes. Chile, Argentina. Everybody’s remote. I’ve met of of my full time members, I’ve made an effort to meet, them. I went to the wedding of 1, met 1 recently in in Europe, but we don’t have an office.

Peter Ivanov [00:21:18]:
Okay. Many many of the fully remote companies, some of them even 1,000 plus employees, they kind of live this full transparency culture, which means, you know, the P and L is fully transparent. Any strategic decisions, the full rationale is transparent to the people and so on. And those insights, which not everyone does as you do, you know, every day a survey and acting upon, that’s another opportunity to build the open culture, which in the end drives engagement and commitment from the people. So I’m just sharing what what the bigger kind of boys and girls doing. And, you mentioned they have somebody to support them. Is this like a formal mentoring or like a buddy? Or how formal is it, this support that they get from individual person, which is also a very popular model? I’m just curious how you implemented that.

Peter Murphy Lewis [00:22:08]:
So we have a daily check-in with the manager of the interns. Ideally, the manager of those interns, which is more like a buddy system, is an intern from the previous generation. So right now, with the 3 interns that are being onboarded, their manager, who checks in with them every single day is Mara, and she is an intern from Italy 6 months ago, and she’s fantastic. I brought her on full time at the end of the internship. And so she knows what I expect. She knows the culture. She knows how to create the culture. It’s the first time she’s overseeing people, so she’s learning to be a manager, and she’s being skilled up in real time.

Peter Murphy Lewis [00:22:44]:
But she did it recently, you know, with somebody 6 months ago, so it’s really, really fresh. And then for anything anything that is not self guided, some type of project that is new ish, that an intern is is developing or creating, they have a direct manager for that project. So, like, the example of the business business development, I have an intern, Danielle, who’s interested in that project. So now she’s working, you know, an hour daily with me, and I’m giving her feedback every single day. There’s a person who’s helping me sell my TV show and the documentary that I’ve recently done. He’s from Chile, so he gets, you know, 30 minutes of my time every day to get feedback because those are things that require a little bit more hand holding. If the process is designed and SOP is done, it’s managed in a kind of a group setting. So maybe the content writer overseeing all 3 interns at the same time, not a 1 on 1.

Peter Ivanov [00:23:36]:
Mhmm. Mhmm. And the the managers of the interns, as you said, is he kind of overseeing all interns and he’s their buddy or they have some other project based, expertise based buddies or mentors?

Peter Murphy Lewis [00:23:50]:
Currently, the way that we divide up the team is if you are a writer or if you’re not a writer.

Peter Ivanov [00:23:57]:
Mhmm.

Peter Murphy Lewis [00:23:57]:
And each one of those have their own managers. Now we make everyone who comes in even at not as a writer, learn to write a blog in an SEO optimized format that would be able to rank so that you go through it because it might be one of the hardest things that you learn at my internship. You might never get something published, but you need to go through the legwork, the the hard work that everyone else is doing, and then you get split off into where you are. And that’s kind of that’s just the way that we divide up our team between generalists and then writers.

Peter Ivanov [00:24:26]:
Okay. Okay. Excellent. Just a question. Are you using VR at all? I know many remote teams, they have check ins like on Zoom, but they also have another check-in, which is more personal, most gamified on on VR. And, for example, PwC after COVID, they employ, like, 2,000 people every year, sort of. And, onboarding is a big issue, and they use VR to kind of onboard to listen to the CEO and OC level. They recorded video in VR, so they feel and there is some even interactive elements.

Peter Ivanov [00:25:04]:
You could ask question to the CEO without taking his time, which for your size, you know, they get you directly. But have you are you using VR in any creative ways to improve performance?

Peter Murphy Lewis [00:25:15]:
I’m I’m not. I I like the idea. We do in about once a month, we do some gamification Zoom calls that are more cultural based, more getting to know you, and those are very competitive. As I told you, we we look for a players. So everybody’s trying to win, whether it be some type of pain man or some type of history or some type of, you know, inventing names or 20 questions, but haven’t in haven’t implied, implemented VR yet. It’s a good idea.

Peter Ivanov [00:25:43]:
Okay. Excellent. One aspect, is now getting very popular. After Google Project Aristotle, which they analyze their best teams, their best performing teams, and they were looking for the common feature, common characteristics. Not sure if you know about this project. It’s been, like, 5, 6 years ago. And they come up without any exception. All their best performing teams, they have psychological safety.

Peter Ivanov [00:26:08]:
You know, people feel safe enough to take risks, not being afraid that they will be laughed at, demoted, fired, and they feel safe enough to show vulnerability. And if you have this safety, you unleash performance. Now one of the ways to kind of make people feel safe is to make mistake or, even failure okay. So to turn it into learning opportunities. And some companies do so called fuck up Fridays where they share, you know, what didn’t work per plan, but what they learned. Do you have anything in this space to kind of make people feel safe and and turn into performance?

Peter Murphy Lewis [00:26:48]:
Yeah. I love the question. I think that this is, something that I’ve improved over time into kind of a to a procedure or to an SOP and part of part of our culture. I think there’s a number of ways that we do it. The first way that I try to do it is I try to share my mistakes. And, right, I I make 2 to 4, not egregious, but 2 to 4 serious mistakes that do not look like something a manager or a CEO would do per week. Right? Like, one could be a grammatical error. 1 could be send it to the wrong segment of an email.

Peter Murphy Lewis [00:27:23]:
1 could be, not checking my marketing scorecard, and we had a dip in a keyword that we should have optimized a blog, or we had some type of mistake in a subtitle on a YouTube video went out. So something that you would think an entry level person would do, and I was the person overseeing it, so it shouldn’t have been done. And I share that. I share it for people to learn. I say why I’m sharing it. I share it for people to laugh. Right? Because I laugh at myself. The second thing that I think that I do along those lines is we emphasize how important it is for people to fail, to fail quickly.

Peter Murphy Lewis [00:27:58]:
We tell them that they will never be given something that if they fail, that it’ll be critical to the organization that they’ll either lose their job or that we’ll lose a client or that it’ll make somebody lose revenue. Right? Mhmm. So let them know that they’re they’re expected to fail, and I will tell them the way that I’m gonna get them comfortable with that failure muscle is I will give them a limited amount of time. So yesterday, I’m creating a new content, marketing project or a content machine around YouTube for one of the private equity clients that I work with, And we’re taking trending news from today. We’re recording a video on it today live, and it’s going live on YouTube and in LinkedIn live. And then it needs to go to the editor, and the editor needs to cut up short clips that are gonna be posted within 2 hours. And yesterday, I gave them my first test for him to do. I’ve been testing, this the format for a while, and I said, here’s how it’s gonna be.

Peter Murphy Lewis [00:28:52]:
In 2 weeks from now, you’re only gonna have 60 minutes to record this. I’m not gonna give more than an hour of your time to do it based around how important this project is and how fast it how fast it meets the urgency. So right now, the first test, I want you to put on a timer as soon as we get off this call, and you’re gonna have 60 minutes. I wanna see your best version. And I don’t care how bad it is. I need you to get comfortable knowing that we’re gonna put out a product that is not perfectly polished. And so today, you might be be giving me something that’s b plus, and in 3 weeks, it might be b plus. A year from now, it might be an a plus, but only 1 hour.

Peter Murphy Lewis [00:29:27]:
And that 60 minute limit I give to almost every new intern, and I tell them why it’s being given to them because I need to see that they feel comfortable with something that’s not great.

Peter Ivanov [00:29:39]:
Mhmm.

Peter Murphy Lewis [00:29:40]:
Absolutely. And I have one more, Peter.

Peter Ivanov [00:29:42]:
Yes.

Peter Murphy Lewis [00:29:42]:
Once somebody’s been with us for about a month or 2 and they start making mistakes, I will ask them for to them to share it in the Slack channel around mistakes and share hey, guys. I’m sharing a mistake. I’m getting comfortable. I know Peter shares his mistakes every single week here. This is mine. This is embarrassing, and get comfortable laughing at themselves and sharing it with everyone else.

Peter Ivanov [00:30:04]:
Excellent. Excellent. And when they share mistake, are they sharing what they learned from it? Is there, like, a a format, to kind of turn it into more learning opportunity?

Peter Murphy Lewis [00:30:15]:
Mhmm. No. I think that that I think that’s a good takeaway for me is, you know, like, share your mistake, explain why why it is a mistake, explain how you should have done it better, and then what you learned from it. I think I could you know, just like I have a survey at the end of every day, I could maybe have those 3 questions for them when you share something in in the failure channel.

Peter Ivanov [00:30:34]:
Yes. Yes. And I understand this is asynchronous. Right? They share on the Slack and people comment. Okay. Cool. You know, sometimes they do once a week, once every 2 weeks also synchronous meeting for, like, 1 hour. Maybe the top 5 from the channel, it could be more deep dive.

Peter Ivanov [00:30:51]:
It’s more like cross functional or kind of more important for the organization and touches multiple clients. It could be a bit of a brainstorming on the learning. Because synchronous, you know, it’s for remote is is a bit difficult, but it’s it builds in the end report and trust, and it has another level of of commitment. Mhmm. Excellent. So let’s have a look. You have, quite a dynamic business with, you know, many interns and so on. What was your most exotic or exciting experience in the remote team? Something that’s a good story to tell.

Peter Murphy Lewis [00:31:30]:
Oh, I think it’s probably about a year and a half ago. My my project manager, general manager of strategic Pete, got married in Mexico to a German guy, and she invited, my wife and me to the wedding. I’d never met her. And, obviously, you know, when we decided to go, we knew that there was a chance that we wouldn’t be able to see her beforehand, because she has a lot of, you know, a lot of events going on. I’m I’m probably the least important person at the wedding. Mhmm. And even though I’m her boss and was previous her her her internship mentor and so forth, So I met her 5 minutes after they said their vows.

Peter Ivanov [00:32:16]:
Okay.

Peter Murphy Lewis [00:32:17]:
And the hug was unforgettable. We since have seen each other. Again, we worked for the last month, we worked together in Scotland, and and that was just magical. I mean, it’s unforgettable, and and I’m sure it was important to her, but it was unforgettable for for me and my wife.

Peter Ivanov [00:32:34]:
Yes. Amazing. I always in my book, I have always this delightful moment, and I lived it myself when people build a lot of bonding but never met physically. You know? They spend time on video and so on. And the moment they they see each other, and they’re surprised by the hate hate and so on, and then they hug each other, and they have this ultimate kind of feeling, you know, and in the end, finally, you know, you could embrace this person. So it is usually a highlight.

Peter Murphy Lewis [00:33:03]:
I have a I have another study. I worked with, an intern at a previous private equity turnaround project that I did. I hired her, and she ended up becoming kind of my right hand woman in marketing. And I went to go meet her, and it was so funny because my stereotype of her from working with her for 2 years on Zoom is that she’s the hardest working, the most amount of grit, the most amount of ambition you could ever imagine, a person who would work with me on a Saturday or Sunday. No questions asked, to get projects done or to be creative or use energy outside of the kind of the busy workday. And when I met her in person, she is beautiful like a model. She looks very high maintenance. She looks like a person who doesn’t know how to tie her own shoes nor has she carried her own luggage.

Peter Murphy Lewis [00:33:52]:
She just looked like the most uppity, perfect model person who had never worked, and it did. If I hadn’t met her in person, I don’t think I would have hired her because I thought she would have been lazy and spoiled, and she was the complete opposite. So, the the the book did not match its cover, and I’m glad that’s the case. And I told her that’s I told her that story.

Peter Ivanov [00:34:13]:
That’s a great story. That’s a great story. Thanks for sharing, Peter. Let’s look in the leadership skills leadership skills for the future now being more remote and more digital. What what do you think are the top leadership skills in the digital age?

Peter Murphy Lewis [00:34:32]:
Oh, I think I think it has to do beginning at the beginning with trust. Being able to emanate, radiate, radiate trust via Zoom, via Slack is really hard. It’s really, really hard. And I think that’s why there’s a lot of people who are going back to, you know, forced in office meetings and making their employees come back, and it’s because they they might be amazing leaders in person. It’s a different skill set to do it remotely.

Peter Ivanov [00:35:10]:
Yes.

Peter Murphy Lewis [00:35:10]:
And it can be learned. I don’t think that every I don’t think that I was probably born with remote leadership skills. I think I’ve probably learned it in the last, you know, 10 years more so since COVID. In the last 4 years, I probably perfected it or or skilled skilled up in it. I think that, trust and rapport, digitally speaking, is probably the most important leadership skill.

Peter Ivanov [00:35:34]:
Mhmm. Mhmm. And what’s your take? You’ve mentioned quite a few things that you do in this direction, but, what are your top three ways to kind of build trust and report remotely?

Peter Murphy Lewis [00:35:48]:
I would say from the be from the beginning, what I see over and over, I see CEOs getting wrong when I start to engage with them. So my 1st month or 2 months when I start working with a new client and they have they struggle with remote culture or they bring me on to oversee part of their team is CEOs do not put in the time at the beginning. That 1st week, you you need to have a touch point where you see the person’s face. It can’t be over email. It can’t be on a project management tool. It cannot be on Slack. You need to create some type of rapport where you laugh with that person Mhmm. Where the person sees the CEO confused or the CEO not organized.

Peter Murphy Lewis [00:36:30]:
You need to see the CEO like a human being. That that rapport, I think, needs to be done daily no matter how much how much time that money costs if you want to onboard a CMO like myself or bring on a team where the intern’s gonna wanna be committed to work with you for the next 4 or 5 years, like I have, I think that’s the first mistake that I see, is a little bit of face to face time and trying to do everything over video onboarding or Slack messages. People need to hear you and feel you like a person.

Peter Ivanov [00:37:01]:
Yes. Yes. This is goes in this vulnerability showing vulnerability and then building trust and psychological safety. And leading by example that you share of failures is great. And, also, the questionnaires that you do the surveys every day, it shows attention and not just, you know, they fill it in, but there is a management team who responds in a agile way. So all this is, great. I’m just a provocative kind of you mentioned several times my rant hand woman and so on. I wonder what is your gender diversity in your team? Is it fluid, or is it more stable? How is it currently from the 15 people?

Peter Murphy Lewis [00:37:40]:
That’s a good question. You know, my team always jokes that it’s really hard for a guy to make it on my team. Currently, the makeup of my team, it doesn’t reflect that, but I do tend to prefer working with female interns, and I think it might have to do with kind of 3 three elements. I find that at the age of 22 to 26 years old, which are the usually interns, the the the female that’s interested in marketing, is a fast learner, gets remote culture just because they might be empathetic, so they get they’re more comfortable being vulnerable faster than a 20 to 26 year old or 28 year old. And and when I say this, it sounds like I’m speaking only about women, but I’m also speaking kind of about myself, who I was at 22 to 28. So I’m not if you’re a if you’re a man out there and you listen to this and you don’t identify it, don’t worry. I’m kind of speaking about myself. Mhmm.

Peter Murphy Lewis [00:38:46]:
So you might be the exception of the rule. I was not. And and so I think that that is why I tend to if I were gonna look at a 100 applicants, I would say I would probably choose 60 females, and 40 males that would that would make it pass pass that filter.

Peter Ivanov [00:39:02]:
Yes. Yes. I I have 5 daughters, by the way. And on my teams, because I was IT manager long years, I was head of IT for EMEA for a big multinational, and I always inherited, like, a male dominated team. And by the time I left and we had some awards, it was, like, 6040. And it worked for me, I think, remote, kind of I don’t want to be stereotypical, but some of the qualities required, as you said, empathetic and so on, come more, in the in the female kind of format. And even Harvard did a kind of study and research what makes teams smarter, and they number one factor was the ability to read emotions of, the other, to read them in the right way. So in this case, you could build upon ideas and so on.

Peter Ivanov [00:39:55]:
Otherwise, the IQ of the group is not the average of the IQs, and sometimes you have very smart people. The ability to read emotions makes it like IQ. It’s not like n times if you have empty members. It’s even more if people could read emotions. And, again, for kind of evolutionary reasons, sometimes, you know, the female come with with a better skill set in this space. So

Peter Murphy Lewis [00:40:21]:
One other element I would add to it that I was that your kind of observation made me think of, the other element that I think is important for growth in a remote team, especially with interns, people that that you don’t know yet. Right? Like, they haven’t proven themselves professionally. They don’t have a resume that that you didn’t hire them because they have a resume. You hire them because of the application process and their grit and their interest Mhmm. And their vulnerability is the ability at the beginning to overcommunicate. Yes. And I say this to my interns at the beginning. I say, the 1st month, I’m not gonna know who you are, what you’re good at, what you’re bad at, what you’re afraid of, what, you know, what you wanna do, what you wanna do that you’re actually gonna be good at.

Peter Murphy Lewis [00:41:09]:
I don’t know these things. And so I say, the first 30 days, I need you to overcommunicate everything to me and to your managers. And I will tell you when you don’t need when you can shut up and you can save time. You can dedicate the time you’re using to overcommunicate to me to actually be, you know, generating content or contributing to the team. And it’s over communication. I feel that women are innately naturally better at, and it is is it’s, you know, it’s stereotypical to sit in sit in a room and watch guys talk about our feelings. We feel much more comfortable talking about, you know, a a football match or, you know, the the fish that we caught yesterday instead of how frustrating or how difficult our day was, and listen to the female in the other room, and they’re way more comfortable. So, that over communication works really well on a team that you can’t be in a room and I can’t read your body language in the same way or see you leave the room and how frustrated you are with the meeting.

Peter Murphy Lewis [00:42:05]:
Oftentimes, a female would tell me.

Peter Ivanov [00:42:07]:
Yes. Amazing. I was in Bali in 2 2019 speaking on an event called running remote. Since then, I’ve been attending regularly, and there was a question. What’s the number one skill to lead remote workers? And 500 founders of remote companies were using Slido and this word cloud. And in the end, the big word in the center was overcommunicate for the reasons you explained. So well done. Also, don’t just give the task.

Peter Ivanov [00:42:35]:
Tell them why we do what we do and and what is the overall goal that this task would contribute. But, yes, this is very important. And for why and what, you know, some companies use video, and then they put put it in a, like, an asynchronous channel. You explain for the month, for example, what is the strategic goal and so on. So they’re a smart way, but on the why and on the what, leaders, as employees, are expected to overcommunicate. This is the glue that make remote teams effective. Now last question, you may take your crystal ball out. What do you think is the future of, yes, of remote teams? I’m and like the future of work, would it be more remote? What are your visionary insights?

Peter Murphy Lewis [00:43:21]:
Well, I haven’t thought about this, Peter. I guess, to to start it, I think, to be honest and vulnerable is I don’t know. I sit on the board of a couple organizations that have been resistant to remote, from the very beginning, and I don’t ever see them embracing remote in the next 5 or 10 years, even though I’m a big proponent of the benefits, you know, the scalability, working in different hours, working with people who think differently than us. I work, you know, I work I work with people of all religions, all races, all cultures, and I love the fact that they think differently than me and I think that contributes to our success. So I feel like I’m torn because the larger businesses that I work with, they are moving away from remote. And the smaller, more agile startups, venture capital, everyone is embracing remote, and the tools that I see, are moving towards remote. Right? Like, I I currently work with a private equity company in the online business space. So we buy online businesses.

Peter Murphy Lewis [00:44:41]:
We take a credit investors’ capital. We buy those assets. We find a portfolio manager, and then we pay quarterly dividends. Mhmm. All of those companies that we are buying, every single one of them is remote. Every single one. Right? We’ve purchased 45 different assets in the last 3 years. Mhmm.

Peter Murphy Lewis [00:44:58]:
And all of them are remote, and all of these are profitable companies. Right? They’re they’re not venture capital. So Yeah. I I I feel like the there’s 2 tides that are going opposite directions, and and I don’t know what the next 3 point o of remote culture looks like. I I think that you could answer it better than I.

Peter Ivanov [00:45:18]:
No. Thank you. Thank you. I, I forgot my crystal ball today, but I believe, yes, I believe, there will be more kind of scaling companies and they embrace remote, and over time, that would, that would thrive. And, also, the remote companies that I know, as I mentioned, 1,000 plus, they’re remote. They don’t have an office, but they do at least 2 retreats per year. 1 is, like, all hands. The other is functional.

Peter Ivanov [00:45:46]:
So there is still some connection, and it becomes key if you use the time wisely. So remote first, but with, like, human elements, and many of them could be done asynchronously and and remotely and still having a close connection. Peter That makes sense. Thank you so much. Very practical, very insightful. I fully enjoyed, and I wish you good luck growing My pleasure. Your business as well as your clients’ businesses and with fun and vulnerability.

Peter Murphy Lewis [00:46:17]:
Thank you so much, Peter. Pleasure.