Going Global: Team Travel, Tiny Confs, & Remote Lifestyle
This episode is sponsored by Indeed Prime. Indeed Prime helps software developers simplify their job search and land their dream job. Candidates get immediate exposure to the best tech companies with just one simple application to Indeed Prime. Companies on Prime's exclusive platform message candidates with salary and equity upfront. The average software developer gets five employer contacts and an average salary of a $125,000.
Brian Casel:Indeed Prime is a 100% free for candidates, no strings attached. And when you're hired, Indeed Prime gives you a $2,000 bonus to say thanks for using Prime. But if you use the Bootstrap web podcast link, you'll get a $5,000 bonus instead. So sign up now over at indeed.com/bootstrap. Hey.
Brian Casel:Hey. We're we're back for another episode of Bootstrap Web. Today, we've got a party episode for you guys. It's and, you know, pardon my my voice. I'm I'm a little bit sick here today.
Brian Casel:But but we've got everyone joining from all over the place. Jordan, where are you at today?
Jordan Gal:I am in Croatia currently. I'll I'll explain a bit more later.
Brian Casel:Yep. And we've got Dave Rotobog and, Craig Hewitt on the line here. What's up, fellas?
Speaker 3:Woo. Woo. Party in the house.
Jordan Gal:I think you have to state you have to state your location along along with the the hooting.
Speaker 3:Okay. Woo woo Colorado man. Colorado in the house.
Brian Casel:And Craig, where are you living at right now?
Speaker 4:We're in Annecy, France. So in the in the Alps.
Brian Casel:Beautiful. And and actually, we're supposed to get Brad Tunar on the line. He he might he might join us from from Nova Scotia, but we'll we'll see about that fifty fifty right now. But, you know, part of the reason we're getting us all together here today was to talk about big snow tiny comp because this thing is on once again, and we're going global this year.
Speaker 4:That's right. So Can we
Speaker 3:can we continue to call this tiny conf now since we have, like, three locations worldwide at this point?
Brian Casel:Well, the comps themselves are still pretty tiny. We're we're talking like ten, twelve people in a in a location.
Speaker 3:That's true.
Brian Casel:So That's Well, so, know, just for the official announcement here, if you guys are interested in skiing and snowboarding and hanging out, talking business for a couple days, and, you're willing to travel to any of these, Sugarbush, Vermont, Colorado, or France, I don't know if all the dates are firmed up yet, but I know that for Big Snow Tiny Conf East, the one happening in Sugarbush, Vermont, this is the fourth year running. That's gonna be happening February 2017. Brad, Tunar, and I organized that one, and and that was the original Big Snow Tiny Conf. We're gonna plan on releasing tickets for that on October 10. So it's coming right up.
Brian Casel:And if you think you might wanna be interested in that, you you definitely need to get on the email list right now and that's over at bigsnowtinyconf.com. We're literally only gonna be selling about five or six tickets because what we do is we we first sell to previous attendees from the from the previous years, and we only reserve about four or five spots for those people. And then we always keep about five spots open for new folks to join us. And so those tickets are gonna go on sale on on October 10, and if you're interested in that. So, Dave, I understand you're gonna be doing the second year running of the Colorado version of Big Snow Tiny Conf.
Brian Casel:And then for the first time this year, Craig, you'll be doing one in France. I think you and Brad are are are organizing that. So you guys wanna share any details on those?
Speaker 3:Yeah. Sure. So second year for Big Snow Tiny Conf out here in Colorado. We had a great time last year as of course you remember Brian coming out there and joining us as did a couple of others from Big Snow Tiny Conf East, which was cool. And we are gonna be doing it again.
Speaker 3:We have two sets of dates that we're playing around with at the moment. I'm trying to see if people wanna attend both east and west because there were a few, but it's looking like most folks are not coming from East this year. So I'll probably be running it concurrent with big snow tiny conf east, and that'll be February. And it'll be in Beaver Creek again this year.
Brian Casel:Beaver Creek was great. I really want to get back out to Colorado this year, but I've got other travel going on in January and stuff, so I just can't fit it in. But, yeah, that was that was a really good time.
Speaker 4:And so, for the event over here, I'd I'd been thinking about ever since we moved, which is about a month ago, but I had been thinking about doing kind of a mastermind small group retreat and, yeah, I mean, the idea of Big Snow Tiny Conf is is perfectly kind of in line with what I was thinking. And we're living, like I said, in the Alps, and we're about an hour away from Mont Blanc in Chamonix. So it's, it's the big huge ski area for Europe. So all the, you know, Prince Charles from England comes over here and stays in the winter and stuff, so it's the veil of Europe, if you will, or the Beaver Creek, I guess. Yeah.
Speaker 4:So we reserved a place today. We're gonna sell, seven spots. It's a little bit smaller than the ones you guys are putting on in The US, but it'll be great and the dates are January. If anybody wants information, it's linked through just the regular bigsnowtinyconf.com site, but if you wanna go direct, it's bigsnowtinyconfeurope.com and we'll release tickets the same time that Brian and Brad do.
Brian Casel:Very cool. Yeah. It's exciting. So you got the the the spot lined up?
Speaker 4:Oh, it's beautiful. Yeah. So we're you'll be able to walk right to to the lifts. It's right in the middle of town. It's it should be great.
Speaker 4:Yeah. Ski in, ski out.
Speaker 3:I've heard some fantastic things about Chamonix and, some friends of mine are climbers and they went over there, but they were also skiers. And they were in there in the summer and they were like, oh, man. Wish we could come back in the in the wintertime to ski. So I hope you guys have a great time over there. Looking forward to hearing about
Brian Casel:You know, for for anyone who's who's kinda new to this podcast, I mean, you you've probably heard, you know, longtime listeners have have heard us talk about Big Snow Tiny Conf for the last couple of years. So you may know, you know, what it's all about. But if you're new to this, you know, we call it a conference, but really it's it's just a kind of a small mastermind group. What we do in in Vermont is we we've been renting the same house which sleeps about 12 people, and we we sell 12 spots, and it's three days. And what we do is half days on the mountain and half days hanging out at the house and we do some attendee talks.
Brian Casel:We do a lot of just casual hanging out and talking business. A lot of talking and and hanging out on the on the chairlift and getting some getting some ski runs in. And we take in dinner. We we cooked dinner a couple times. We go out to the restaurant near the mountain.
Brian Casel:It's just a really good time, and it gets better every year, I think. So but, yeah, you know, it was interesting last year because it was the first time we had Colorado and Vermont going on, and I was able to actually attend both. And I think to a certain extent, they were they they had kind of a similar vibe, you know, kind of people and were, you know, talk same kind of business chats and things like that. But, obviously, you know, the scene in in Vermont is is very different from from out west.
Speaker 3:Yeah. There's a
Speaker 4:lot said there.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I like the idea of such a small like, it's basically a mastermind group, but a lot of times at a conference or even even you listen to someone's podcast episode and you hear them talk about a specific thing that you think applies to your situation that you wanna know more about, it's hard to nail someone down and be like, okay, that sounds great, but tell me how to do it for myself. And in in that type of a conference where you're kinda hanging out all day, you could you could just grab someone and say, okay. That sounds like it would work for me. Can we sit down for an hour and go through how to actually do it for my business?
Speaker 3:Jordan, so I would say that there's even one better than that. The thing that I really liked about Big Snow Tiny Conf was that if you wanted to brainstorm something with, you know, seven other smart people in the room at the same time, that was the perfect venue in which to do that. So it wasn't just one on one with this other person getting good ideas and going in-depth. You got all this other business experience that people could draw from. One particular guy that was at Big Snow Tiny Conf last year, he was kinda looking for an idea to do a business.
Speaker 3:And his whole talk where a lot of us gave a little attendee talk, he actually made it into a little mastermind. And what we did is we kinda ended up brainstorming the thing that he has now taken and run with this past year, and he's now generating revenue and making some successful stuff. His name was Prakash.
Brian Casel:Yeah. That's right. Prakash. Yeah. And and he reached out just a couple of months ago.
Brian Casel:And and based on the advice that he got from the group, he did put together a kind of a productized service around, like, a CTO as a service kind of thing for for Rails teams. And and he he got first clients, and and he was really kicking it off. So it was it was good to see.
Speaker 3:Nice. Yeah. If check you it out, it's called rubyappcare.com. So this this was a a an idea completely generated within the confines of Big Snow Tiny Conf. Like he came up there, he wasn't sure what he was gonna do.
Speaker 3:He sat down and said, this is kind of what I'm good at. This is where I'm at. This is where I'd like to go. And boom, within forty five minutes, we had this whole thing generated for him. And obviously it was something that he was passionate and interested about and he's turned it into something successful.
Speaker 3:So, you know, He you're looking for
Brian Casel:he was saying that that he was one of the lesser experienced entrepreneurs in the room. You know, I think everyone else has been running businesses and growing sometimes, you know, on their second or third business. That's been the trend in in terms of the the makeup of the group in in these last year or two. Of course, you know, we we still do keep it open to to folks who are who are just starting out too. But, yeah, it's it's really good because, like, I I like that it's like two or three days of extended conversations.
Brian Casel:You know? At MicroConf, you get the quick fifteen minute update with people in the hallway track, and and that's cool, and you get to catch up with a lot of people. But at a place like this, you could kinda really go deep even even with new people who you're meeting for the first time. By the second or third day, you know, whether it's catching up over over breakfast or on the chairlift or at dinner and the second or third conversation, then you can start to really actually like make some progress and think through some some stuff.
Speaker 4:I think the comfort level of having that much time with people really allows for some of those deep conversations too. Because I mean, my experience with a microconf or or a similar type deal is that it's so busy, and there's so many different people that you wanna talk to that you don't get the chance to let yourself be comfortable with that and and get into those more meaningful deep conversations. So, yeah, I'm super excited.
Brian Casel:The one complaint that I hear from people when we start talking about big snow tiny conf is it sounds awesome, but I don't ski or snowboard.
Speaker 3:Yeah. That's kind of a you know, it's half retreat, half mastermind, and we could have like big surf tiny conf, somebody had suggested
Brian Casel:We've been talking about that. Maybe doing like a beach tiny conf kind of thing or something.
Speaker 3:Ken Wallace, when I was talking with him from nights and weekends podcast at MicroConf, he was like, Hey, let's do big sail tiny conf where we all rent a big sailboat and he's got sailing credentials and experience. And I'm like, Oh, I don't know what the hell the hell to do that, but it sure sounds like fun to me. So there's all kinds of ways you could do this out there.
Speaker 4:So as a bit of a carrot, if we sell all the tickets, which I expect we will over here, we're gonna bring in a sommelier for one night to the house and have a sort of French wine exploration event. So talking about people who don't ski, if you just want to learn about French wine, that's gonna happen.
Brian Casel:All I gotta say is this better happen at least two more years after this. I I can't make it this year, but I'll be at the next one for sure.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Craig is keeping things real low key over there in the in in the French Alps.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Sommelier, I don't think we'll be having that at Beaver Creek. Although we will have I guess this year, we're gonna try to get the rental guys to come out and bring you rental ski boots and skis at the condos.
Brian Casel:Oh, that would be that's a good thing.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Was a valet service that they offered. We found out about it last year and we're like, oh shit, why didn't we do that? That's totally that makes total sense. And it doesn't cost any extra.
Speaker 3:I was like, you're kidding me.
Brian Casel:Oh wow.
Speaker 3:So I'm like done.
Brian Casel:Yeah. That's like an extra half an hour just waiting at the bottom of the mountain before you can start.
Speaker 3:Oh, totally.
Brian Casel:Yeah. So so, you know, why don't we kinda open this back up and not just talk about Big Snow attending comp, but another, you know, theme of what we want to get into today was just traveling in general. Jordan, what how about this? What are you doing out there
Speaker 5:right now?
Speaker 3:Please tell us.
Speaker 5:Yeah. So yeah. I think
Jordan Gal:it jives along with what we're talking about right now in all these different locations. You know, Craig is living in one place. Dave's living in another place. Brian all of us are right now, we're scattered across the globe. We're doing the podcast right now, which is the same thing that a lot of us do with our teams and talking on Slack and working remotely.
Jordan Gal:You know, we always talk about how travel is a good and worthy goal and it's worth a lot, right? When you don't work for the man, you you got to pay the price in a few different ways, you also get benefits in in certain ways. Travel is one of those great benefits. So with that said, I'm I'm actually traveling right now for like the the counter point. I'm traveling because I haven't seen I haven't been with the guys, my team, the Cardhook crew in too long.
Jordan Gal:We wanted to make more progress, we wanted to get on the same page and we wanted to have a little fun. It's it's important to like also have fun and and keep things enjoyable throughout the whole company. And Ben happened to be in Slovenia where Rock and Jan, Ben is over here for three weeks to work with them and to work on our process that I've been talking about the past few episodes. And I'm over there in Portland, and I was like, I just didn't feel as connected to them as I wanted to. And, you know, the idea came from my wife, which is where most of the good ideas come from.
Jordan Gal:And she just said, look, man. It sounds to me like what you need to do is you need to head over there. I decided that was a good idea. I look up flights, super cheap flights like two days later. So forty eight hours later, I'm I'm in Slovenia.
Jordan Gal:We spent the weekend there and had a good time together. That was like our team building portion. The guy surprised me and told me that they got an Airbnb like Villa in Croatia, which is like two and a half hours drive away. So we're basically in this beach town at like an Airbnb. It's and it's basically turned it into like a hacker pad.
Speaker 4:That So we're sounds
Jordan Gal:like watching the social network at night and kind of like like have beers during the day and just working like like eighteen hours a day. And it's amazing how much progress you can make when you're just all together and all super focused and everyone's like feeding off everyone everyone's energy. We have a week together here in Croatia and then the weekend in back in Slovenia and then I go back home.
Brian Casel:And then you're gonna rearrange your travel plans so that you could stay out there another four weeks.
Speaker 4:You just cut back
Jordan Gal:from all the thing about travel these days is if you do it with your family, at least for me, I got three kids now. I don't like being away from home. Don't like being away from my kids. I want to be home, want to be close to them. But this was a situation where it felt a lot like I was working for a big company and they were like, you need to go on a trip to this far flung office and you don't have a choice.
Jordan Gal:And you're like, alright, cool. I I got I can't I'm not gonna see my kids, not gonna see my wife for ten days, but that's what you got to do. So it felt very it felt like an obligation, but I'm not gonna complain about being on the Croatian coast like eating calamari and and working on the site.
Speaker 3:If you did, we wouldn't believe it.
Jordan Gal:Right, right, right. The business context is huge. So even just after three days, everything's more fun, everything's more energetic. Jan, I had never met in person. He just joined a few weeks ago.
Jordan Gal:I started full time full time two weeks ago. So to be able to get together and like spend ten days together so quickly, it changes the way you talk on Slack when you've met in person And it changes it even more if you've spent ten days hanging out together and eating and going to meals and laughing and
Speaker 4:Hey Jordan, did you have any goals or or sort of like, I don't wanna say framework of how you would approach the time together ahead of time or just kind of let it happen? No. So I think that's pretty unique for a a real small group.
Jordan Gal:So what's happened, we went from one full time developer to two and that's it is a huge difference. Right? All of a sudden, it's not just this very simple straightforward, hey, this is what we should be doing next. Now all of a sudden, it's make sure it's efficient, make sure it's focused, make sure people are working on the right things, make sure there isn't double work. So the nature of the company changed very dramatically over the past few weeks.
Jordan Gal:It went from Ben on product and helping me out on the marketing side and kind of being jack of all trades, so now Ben is like in a CTO role managing two full time developers and that required getting our shit straight. So that's been the focus over the past two weeks of just what is our system and now we have everything like straight from what's happening this sprint to what's in the backlog, what's in the icebox, what's up for QA, what's on staging, what's on development, what's being deployed, when is the things deployed. So it's like we've eliminated all this all this gray area. And what I wanted to do this week was get the marketing side to match that so that our whole company kind of had their shit straight and everything was very public and accountable and it worked in the same way, so we've got all of us in Trello, we've got everything kind of working together. Right.
Jordan Gal:What we wanted to do was basically map out what does the next month, two months, three months look like, and what can we do in person that is most valuable to do in person.
Brian Casel:Very cool. Hey. So just to give a quick update, we just welcomed Brad Tunar onto the call. So Brad, how's it going, buddy?
Speaker 5:Hey, guys. Good. Oh, man. Crazy crazy night last night. Let's just say it involved kids in a hospital.
Jordan Gal:Oh, Oh, jeez.
Speaker 3:Oh, man.
Speaker 5:I hope everyone's But everyone's fine. It's all cool, but just tired.
Brian Casel:Oh, man.
Speaker 3:And a good story somewhere in there. Yeah.
Speaker 5:Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Thanks for having me.
Brian Casel:So, you know, just to kinda backtrack, not not for too much. Obviously, we we talked about Big Snow Tiny Conf already quite a bit. But, you know, Brad, you and I have been organizing that since the beginning in in Vermont. I understand you'll be organizing it with Craig.
Speaker 5:Yeah. For the for the France version.
Brian Casel:Yep.
Speaker 5:Our our first ever intercontinental big snow tiny comp, I guess. Right?
Brian Casel:Yep. Yeah. So I told folks we'll be releasing some tickets on October 10. Not to spend too much time on it on it again, but, like, Brad, what what's your, like, big takeaway about big snow tiny comp and like doing it year after year and coming back again? Like what's what do you like best about it?
Speaker 5:Well, the snowboarding obviously, Brian.
Speaker 3:I mean,
Speaker 5:come on. It's I mean, the snowboarding obviously is is great. But just being able to talk business on the chairlift, I mean, I think that was my goal. That was like just combining the two, I think that is the most amazing part. But every year I get ideas and things that I take action on, that I come back from the conference and take action on.
Speaker 5:And so it's like the conference has literally had a big impact on my business. So I mean, there's there's all kinds of reasons, you know, that that we should have this thing. Right?
Brian Casel:And I guess just to kinda open it back up, you know, Jordan, like, you're out with your team right now, kinda traveling around. But I I think it's Craig, you're living in France. I I did about a seven month road trip with the family earlier earlier this year. I just booked a big trip to Asia. We'll be going in in December, January.
Brian Casel:Just this idea of travel for for me at least, think probably for a lot of us, that in itself is a goal of running a business like this and and building a a long term sustainable like living this kind of lifestyle. I think travel specifically is one of the big drivers of why I do this for a living. I we take plenty of time off to go enjoy travel and and and explore different places, but even just working while traveling, whether it's meeting up with your team or going out with your family and and and taking an extended multi week vacation with the understanding that, you know, some of these days or half of these days, I gotta open up the laptop and do a little bit of work and check-in and and work remotely. I mean, I just I just love this lifestyle. And and I was just hanging out with a bunch of my my longtime friends who I grew up with this past weekend who, you know, most of them don't don't live in this online world that we do.
Brian Casel:And, you know, when I talk about how, yeah, I just booked a a twenty seven night trip to Asia or, you know, we traveled around the country coast to coast last year. They they don't totally understand that.
Speaker 4:No. That's being that's being really gracious. I I think they have no concept of how it's possible.
Pippin Williamson:Right.
Speaker 4:Right?
Pippin Williamson:Right.
Speaker 4:I mean, they they they can't even conceive of of any part of it. I don't
Brian Casel:think. You get the reaction of you get the reaction of like, you're blowing my mind right now. Like, how is that possible?
Speaker 3:Right. So then it's two weeks a year that they get off or maybe three if they're lucky. Right? And then they go somewhere and do something. But this concept of mixing work and travel at the same time and being able to have those two be compatible in some way is sort of weird.
Speaker 3:Right?
Speaker 5:Yeah. I think I think that's true for our generation, but I wonder if, like, the younger generation sees it as normal because they grew up with all these technologies that makes this possible. You know.
Brian Casel:I think they would see it as more normal because I I think a lot of the younger generation is more much more open to entrepreneurship as they're coming out of college, you know, high school and college than our generation even was.
Jordan Gal:Their their employers, I think, are only gonna be slightly more open to it. But a larger percentage of the actual individual people will end up working for themselves and having the freedom built in or working remotely. But it's still it's mostly up to the employer. Like, it's the money is one thing, but it's not like we're all rolling in dough except for the guy in France. But it's
Brian Casel:not like we're
Speaker 3:Mister Suppose
Speaker 4:was great.
Jordan Gal:Vacations, not doing any work. It it's mostly a product of the fact that we can do it because there's no one telling us that we can't.
Brian Casel:Right. And I mean, you know, for for me and and like most people who do what we do, we we've been working a remote online lifestyle for years. I mean, everybody that I've ever worked with as, you know, ever since I I left the full time employment thing has been working remotely. I mean, Brad, you and I met because we teamed up on some on some freelance web development projects together. And you live in Canada.
Brian Casel:I live in I I lived in New York at the time. Like
Speaker 5:Yeah. That's right.
Brian Casel:Yeah. You know, just it just like by default, we work remotely all over the world. There's I've never really seriously looked at like, alright. I gotta find somebody local here here in Connecticut to to work with because I've got some projects. Like, that's that's just always been limiting.
Brian Casel:So this this whole lifestyle of of working in Slack and email and Skype and and Google Hangout calls and things like that. And then the realization that, like, you know, we've been working this way for years, but still just living in one place. You know? I mean, obviously, we we have settled down back in in Connecticut. We're raising kids here and everything, but but we do have this mentality of, you know, why not travel when we have the opportunity?
Speaker 4:I think the money is a good point on two levels. One is travel is not expensive, if you do it right. If you go out to dinner every night and you stay in a hotel, it's expensive, but if you stay at an Airbnb and grocery shop and live like a local, it's the same or cheaper than living your sort of regular life, especially overseas, and it doesn't have to be Southeast Asia where you can get by on 500 a month. So I think that traveling can be actually very cost efficient. We're spending less money here in a beautiful town in the Alps in France than we did in Louisiana.
Speaker 4:But what I also think that choosing the lifestyle has something to do with money too, so we should want and take advantage of the ability to travel. We also should aim to, you know, make it rain. I mean, I don't think anyone would make the choice to live this lifestyle to make the same money they made at their day job. So, that's kind of the two part criteria for me for, you know, making the decision is the ability to travel and the potential to have a very lucrative income.
Speaker 5:You know, I thought about hiring local people, because I mean, there's lots of reasons to do that, right? To support your local community, your local hire people locally, And and to have an office and, like, there's some days where I'm working at home by myself and I'm just like, oh, man. I could really use, you know, someone to bounce ideas off of in person. Yeah. Like in some like a quick interaction.
Speaker 5:You know, find those interactions really breed creativity, those in person interactions, which I mean goes back to why this conference is so great, right? To bounce ideas off of a group of web business founders and get that immediate feedback and read everyone's little facial expressions and everything as you're saying things. All of that, you'll lose that when you're working remotely by yourself. But then if you hired someone locally, you'd kind of be chained to your desk, right, in a way. And you wouldn't necessarily get to do, you know, 21 of travel, you know.
Speaker 5:So it's that's what I keep coming back to is that, you know, what happens if I move? What if we move? You know?
Brian Casel:Yeah. I I think having the the the team remote, I think they value it just as much as I value it. And, yeah, I think if if we had an office here and the people showed up in person, you know, most days a week, then I would feel that obligation that I would have to go into the office five days a week. You know, I I like to keep my schedule pretty flexible too.
Speaker 5:Right?
Speaker 4:Hey, Brad. Didn't you guys do a company retreat earlier this year also?
Speaker 5:Yeah. We do so we started with one company retreat last year. So 2015 we went to Miami for WordCamp Miami and that was the first time we had ever met in person and it was a great time. So we did, this year we did Vienna and then we decided after Vienna, I decided we're going to meet every six months. So the guys who are in Europe are going to meet in November in Scotland and the guys in North America are going to fly down to Philadelphia for WordCamp US.
Speaker 5:So that's the six month meet up and then we're going to have another retreat, you know, probably like May, in May next year. I started out with thinking like, no one's going to want it. We're working remotely for a reason. No one's going to want to spend a week meeting up and traveling is kind of where I started. Then when I brought it to the team, were like, oh yeah, everyone was on board with that.
Speaker 5:It was only me that was thinking that no one would be interested.
Brian Casel:I am curious about that to hear, you know, like both Jordan and and Brad, your takes on that. Because obviously, you work remotely all year long, but then you you get these, like, week long or two weeks sprints in where you're in person together. I've always I've always kinda wondered about, like, how is it more productive in that in that scenario? Or what happens that's that's different that actually requires you to ship more more code or get more progress done or or, like, what's the difference?
Jordan Gal:On on my end, it's the the team dynamic has a lot to do with it. So I'm the only guy in the marketing side and we have three guys on the tech and product side. And so when I get together with them, I like wanna bring my a game. I wanna like show them what I do when when we're not together. I wanna show them, you know, it's also I'm the CEO, so I I should like I'm bringing the energy.
Jordan Gal:So when we get together
Brian Casel:Does any of that stuff actually get in the way of productivity? Like, the the fact that you're in person meeting up, like, there's isn't there time devoted to just the social aspect of hanging out and, like, rather than actually working heads down on stuff?
Jordan Gal:It it's I don't think it's fully a negative.
Speaker 5:No. I
Brian Casel:don't I don't think it's a negative, but I but I do hear all the time that, like, when we get together for these team retreats, we actually get a lot of shit done. And I always find that interesting.
Jordan Gal:Look, when I when I we're at MicroConf and Ben is there and we're together, it's really like the experience of hanging out together and being in that environment and talking to people. But for this particular thing or when I like go to New York for a few days, it would feel like especially with the family, it feels like silly. I'm not gonna come over here just to hang out with these guys for a week. It's like I need to walk away with something that kind of made the trip worth it.
Speaker 3:Well, have a theory about why it worked for Brad at this point. And I think it centers around that you're attending an event that you're all passionate about and you can all get something out of. So you're going to these word camps. So there's something for you. There's a dynamic for you to discuss and there's a dynamic for you to all learn at the same time.
Speaker 3:And then you can also bring that immediately back into what you're working on with Migrate Pro and Datahawk and all these other projects that you guys have and immediately start collaborating on that. Right? So that I think that's that's something I wouldn't say it's unique to your team because, obviously, I could do the same thing with my plug ins as well. But like with Brian and audience ops, what is it that everybody could come to as a single event and learn from if you did that, if you weren't just doing say a corporate retreat?
Speaker 5:That's somewhat true, Dave, but I wouldn't say we get a lot out of the events actually. Unfortunately, we found that the events are actually more of a distraction, it takes away from team bonding and team just just interacting with the team. It's like going to a movie. Right? Instead of of hanging out.
Speaker 5:So what we've decided is that we're not gonna do it around an event next time. Our our whole our whole company is going to go somewhere. We're gonna pick a place and we're just gonna go.
Brian Casel:Like the event is the event is is worth going to just for the event or whether it's microconf or or word camps, but maybe have a separate retreat where the the main event is the hanging out with the the team.
Speaker 5:Yeah. That's that's right. That's right. So so the thing is about productivity. We're all developers on my team.
Speaker 5:So so this is more about like getting together and and guess hacking together. But we found out that we're not very good at that. Like, we'll all be sitting at a table and we'll get a little bit of work done or answer some support questions. But no one at the table really wants to start coding because when you start coding, you have all these things up in the air that you're thinking about at once. It requires quite a bit of focus and concentration.
Speaker 5:And then, you're at this table with all these other people and all of a sudden, someone just sparks up a conversation and you get sucked into it. And like everything that you had up in the air just falls to the floor. And then you have spend ten minutes picking up again. So it's for us, it wasn't like having everyone at the same table hasn't so far been very productive, but hopefully we're hoping that we can figure something out in the future to like so that we can work kind of at the same table together, and actually get some work done, you know?
Speaker 4:When you guys make that move, Brad, are you hoping to get more done, or just have like a more sort of enriching experience as a team?
Speaker 5:Yeah, that's just more about like just having more days, yeah, where we can do this kind of thing, where we can sit at the same table and get some work done and have more brainstorming sessions and maybe plan some, like, structured kind of brainstorming sessions and stuff. Yeah.
Brian Casel:I would love to get my whole team together for a retreat. The the problem has just been that that the team has grown has grown so large. Like, like, half the team are full time, but the other half are part time contractors who who are really part of the team. They're there, like, every day, but just still on a part time basis. You know, the challenge is when you have 20 plus people, it's hard to get and, you know, coming from not only across The US, but in different continents as well.
Brian Casel:It's I mean, the expense and the logistics just get out of control, especially as a kind of a young company. But the thing that I would wanna focus on if if we did something like that would be not the day to day stuff that we talk about in Slack, like what's, you know, what's the status of all these projects going on, but more the high level goals for the year and the big initiatives and, you know, talk through changes that we might make to to make to improve things in the company, improve operations or improve marketing or or, you know, improve the product somehow. I think that's that's what could come out of it.
Jordan Gal:I think that's generally the the most valuable thing you can do when you're in person instead of like working on tasks together. So I think what we're dealing with right now is a little bit unique in that. Even even though we're trying to get a bunch of tasks done, the most valuable part of this week will have been living together, having beers together, making dinner together, laughing, having a good time around the mountains in Slovenia. That will actually be the thing that propels and keeps us motivated and happy for the next few months and the tasks are like this little byproduct. So I think you're right and I think that's what Brad was saying about like doing it at an event.
Jordan Gal:If you can kind of have fun at an event and then spend a little bit of time together and kind of do it all, you know, it's like like if we all went to microconf and then just stayed an extra day or two, like you're already spending all the money to go and do the travel and you can kind of lump it in.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Might have to do that, by the way.
Speaker 5:Yeah. I think another thing you you should take into consideration when when doing company retreats is the if you have, like, a of a team made up of different roles, having like kind of mini retreats. Maybe that all your writers, you kind of thing. And that way, it's more focused and you're not you know kind of jumping around. Our company right now is just a bunch of developers and me, right?
Speaker 5:So it works out fine, everyone's on the same page, but I can imagine if like for example I hired someone dedicated to marketing for example. I think they would be kind of on the outside, know, of the group. They wouldn't really be participating in a lot of the conversations that would end up coming up, know. So, yeah, it could be tricky.
Speaker 4:One thing that we've seen to that point of potentially bringing it all together is when we have our group calls and we have, you know, for us, the audio team, the writing team, the production team all on the same call, they get a lot out of kinda seeing what the other hand is doing, if you will. So I can imagine in person that would be amplified maybe a little bit more, you know, where your development team and your marketing team might might understand each other a little better.
Brian Casel:I think us as the business owner, it's it's easy to have the wrong assumption that that although we know what's going on in all the different parts of the business, the individual people aren't necessarily aware of what what else is going on. And I think it's important to kinda share what people do every day. You know? Just to kind of change pace a little bit, you know, not to talk about working remotely and and with teams, but how about vacation? You know, mean, we're we're talking about travel.
Brian Casel:What about taking time off to go to go travel? I mean, for me, I I do have this itch where when we don't have some trip lined up in the calendar and booked in in the next two to three months, I start to get really kinda antsy. Like, what are we gonna book next? Where are we going next? And, you know, just the idea of, like, stay staying home and not having anything coming up to look forward to just really bothers me for some reason.
Brian Casel:I don't know if I'm the only one.
Speaker 5:I completely agree. I'm I've I have to chime in here because I I think it's so important for me anyway to have something to look forward to in the future. If I don't, it just happens. Like it just comes up. I start talking to my wife.
Speaker 5:I'm like, you know, where are we going four or five months, you know, let's go somewhere because I need to get through this winter. Yeah.
Brian Casel:It's true.
Speaker 4:Yeah. Yeah, I think it's important, I mean, I think you guys probably have touched on this on your show before, but I think as you know, entrepreneurs and business owners who work from home most of the time, it's important to take the time to sort of take care of yourself with, like, you know, fitness and eating right and also traveling and taking time off, and if you don't make it a priority and make time for it, then you you work all the time, and then that sucks. So, yeah, I think you have to be really intentional about structuring that time and taking it and and being away as much as possible.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And, you know, I think for me personally, only only very, very recently, like, think this year is the first time that I've actually been able to truly break myself away mentally when when I go away. Just yesterday, I I just got back from Vegas. I I spent the weekend hanging out with some some longtime friends of mine. And going into it, I I figured, you know what?
Brian Casel:I I got a four hour flight ahead of me. That that's gonna be some good time to get some some thinking, some like high level goal setting, and and maybe write down some some marketing plans for audience ops and and all this stuff. Like, it once I got on the plane and I'm heading to Vegas for for a friend's bachelor party, all of that just went out the window. Like, I opened up my my note app for for like a minute and then I just put it away and I didn't think about business for the next forty eight hours. I feel like I I I can actually finally disconnect for a little while.
Brian Casel:I mean, knowing that I'm coming back to plenty of of projects that are, you know, up in the air and and we're, you know, really moving ahead with a lot of stuff. But even, you know, now when I'm going out with with my family and and we're and we're taking trips, things have gotten to a point now where we have enough systems and enough projects that are that are moving forward. And and we've put the plans in place and now we're executing on those plans and and nothing's no amount of, you know, brainstorming while you're on a flight is really gonna change that. I think there's finally a bit of freedom. I mean, of course, business never truly leave you know, there are definitely plenty of times when I'm still thinking about business when I should be hanging out.
Brian Casel:But I don't know. I just feel like there's been a difference this past year from from previous years because we you know, we've always scheduled like two or three vacations a year. And and I've always had a bit of a hard time truly disconnecting myself even if just just mentally.
Speaker 5:I think the important bit is to when you're on vacation, focus on your next meal at all times. So when you're not eating the well, even when you're currently eating a meal, think about the next meal. And so just go to one one meal to the next and really focus on that.
Brian Casel:Well, I just think about that because I'm a fat expert.
Speaker 5:No, that's the right way to do it. That's the right way to vacation. That's true. Yeah,
Speaker 4:also think that, and it might be just that we've soaked in a little bit of this living over here, and we were on about eight week trip before we came back over here to live, but you'll never see someone, who's from Europe take a vacation less than a week. The idea of, like, going somewhere for the weekend just doesn't exist, and I think we've started looking at vacation that way, and it's fantastic. I mean, talked about money before, but cost wise, most of the cost of traveling is getting there, it's not staying there and what you do there. So as much as you can, kind of mindset wise, when you think about taking a trip, take two weeks. Brian, you're taking, what, three and a half weeks to to Asia, at the end of the year.
Speaker 4:I think that it it allows you to step back from work and get into a better mindset if you're gone for a long time, so you don't have all the stress of the fucking airport and all this kind of stuff that you have to go through when you're actually traveling, but being somewhere else for a week or two, really gets your mind right.
Brian Casel:Yeah. It's true. The longer trips are especially like you said earlier about if you if you take the mindset of we're going there and we're gonna live there for a little while. We're gonna we're gonna live day to day like locals, go food shopping, get an Airbnb.
Speaker 5:So I decided so I've been talking about with my wife about, you know, when she starts her writing period, she's doing a PhD, to go to Southeast Asia for three months and live, right? Because I love that idea of we we went to Australia, lived there for a year. Living somewhere is so much different than visiting somewhere because you really get to, you know, embed yourself in the culture. And I love it. But we we realized we were gonna keep our house here and, you know, all that stuff.
Speaker 5:But the the daycare situation, like, when we come back, like, the daycare, like, how do we get our kids back to day and there's just, like, all these little things that that kind of put a put a stop to it. Don't come back.
Speaker 7:Don't come
Brian Casel:back. If you're keeping the house if if you're keeping, you know, the the roots and you plan to come back, then it does make it more difficult. I mean, we we had sold our our place. We had a condo in in Norwalk and sold that, And so we didn't have that to tie us down. We we still had the intention of coming back to Connecticut in the near future and and kinda settle back down there, but we didn't have to keep things like, we were able to, like, you know, sell a car, sell the house, sell all of our stuff, put a lot of stuff in storage.
Brian Casel:And then You went
Speaker 5:for a year though. Right?
Brian Casel:Like Well, that was the original plan. We we ended up cutting it down to, like like, seven months. My wife is pregnant and we felt we we were gonna have the baby in in Colorado, but then we're like, yeah. It's just better to have you know, do that close to family in Connecticut. Right.
Speaker 5:Yeah. I mean, it makes sense if you're gonna go for that long. But for three months, it just doesn't make sense to, like, put all your stuff in storage, like, and then, you know, have to get a new another place when you get back. And the the day care thing is is the the biggest issue for us, is that, like, when we come back here, it's very difficult to get into a day care. So you basically lose your spot when you walk away.
Speaker 5:And so it's like it's like, you know, what do you do?
Brian Casel:Yeah. Like, right now, we just started my my two year old in daycare, but for the month that we go to Asia in December, January, like, we're we just have to pay for that. Like, we're we're paying for her daycare for that month, but she's just not gonna use it. I mean, that that's not super that's not very long. We we don't plan to homeschool our our kids or anything.
Brian Casel:We're just I don't know. We just feel like we're not set up for that. And so when they start school in a few years from now, like, you know, we're talking about just really spending every summer going somewhere for like two months living in different places. That's that's the that's the plan anyway.
Speaker 5:Oh, that's cool.
Brian Casel:If you send your kids to to school and don't homeschool, then you you are a little bit hampered by the by the school calendar. You know, you you can take a a short Christmas or winter vacation, you know, along the lines of the school vacations, but the summertime is really the the one break where you could do something for about two or three months. But for now, like our oldest is only two and a half. So we're trying to take advantage as much as we can, whether it's taking a month here or taking weeks whenever we want to, like doing the seven month trip earlier this year. It was know, we're trying to take advantage of it before we have the the school calendar in our way.
Speaker 4:Yeah. I think that you're touching on an important point is it's gotta be the right time in your life to take the really long trip, you know, and and, you know, selling the house, Brian, for you worked because it was the right time to just not have a place to tie you down for a while. And and the same thing was true for us when we sold our house and our car and almost all of our stuff to come over here. For us, the kids are here in public school in France, and they're learning French. The upside of traveling for us is, you know, our kids are gonna be bilingual by Christmas, you know, because they're they're they're four and almost six because they so they learn language so fast.
Speaker 4:I mean, we've been here a month, and our daughter's already telling us stuff that we don't know how to say in French. So, yeah, I mean, I think if if you're at the right stage in your life and your business, that to take advantage of like, Brad, you guys were in Australia for a year, it is such such a fantastic experience on so many levels. And if you have kids, it's a little harder, but they I mean, they love it. We've we had two bad days, maybe, with my older with my daughter. We had two hard days for her going to to school where she doesn't understand a word that they're saying.
Speaker 4:It's just it's been so much easier than than we thought. Yeah.
Brian Casel:It's amazing. Craig, I've been I've been curious, like well, I like, so you guys decided to to basically commit to a year of living in in France. Right? Enrolled your kids in school and everything. What what's the long term play for you guys?
Brian Casel:Are are you are you set on coming back to The US or are you considering staying there indefinitely or or what's the plan?
Speaker 4:We are I hope my parents aren't listening because they don't know, but we're we we we absolutely love it here, and we'd like to stay if we can. And that, you know, if we can depends on, you know, if Trump wins the election, and if, I mean, we have to renew our visa every year, but I don't anticipate that being an issue. Basically, we have to promise not to seek sort of local employment, which is, you know, I would never do that. But, yeah, so as long as we can stay and we can afford to stay, I think we will. It's a little hard to be away from, you know, the grandparents for the kids, but the upside of, you know, growing up truly bilingual for the kids and experiencing another culture, is really great, and for for my wife and I too.
Speaker 4:We've learned so much just being here for a month already. On the work front, it's a little harder. We're six hours ahead of East Coast time, so it's a little harder.
Brian Casel:Most of your team is in in The US. Mhmm.
Speaker 4:Yeah. Yeah. We have two guys here in Europe, but most of our team is in US. But, Brian, like you, I mean, you can appreciate this. I don't do a lot of day to day stuff, within the business, you know, the actual production line.
Speaker 4:So so I work in the morning, and it's actually kinda nice because I don't have 87 emails coming in. So I have all morning to work, basically, before the folks in, you know, Pennsylvania are awake. And then I kind of am part of the team in the afternoon, and then I hop on email for, like, an hour at night before bed to to kinda wrap that up. So, yeah, it's from that perspective, it's it's worked pretty well.
Brian Casel:Sweet.
Speaker 4:Yeah. But it's a bit of an adjustment. You know?
Brian Casel:Good stuff, fellas. Well, I think this is probably a good good time to to cut it off here. And so if if you haven't noticed by now, Jordan and Dave had to cut out a little bit early about ten, twenty minutes ago. But right now, you know you know, Brad, Craig, thanks for thanks for joining us, fellas. So once again, bigsnowtinycomp.com is where you can find information about about all three locations coming in 2017, and tickets for the East will will go on sale October 10.
Brian Casel:I think France as well. Mhmm. Yeah. Talk
Speaker 4:to Thanks, Brian. I appreciate it,
Speaker 3:man.
Speaker 8:Alright.
Speaker 5:Yeah. Thanks, guys.
Brian Casel:Bye. Hey. Just a quick reminder. This episode was sponsored by Indeed Prime. To
