Luis [00:00:20]:
Welcome ladies and gentlemen, to another episode of the Distant Job podcast, your Pod podcast about building and leading awesome remote teams. I am your host Luis, and today with me I have Vivian Hogero. Vivian is an empowerment coach and a Nomad entrepreneur. Welcome, Vivian.
Vivien [00:00:40]:
Thank you Luis, for having me here. It’s a pleasure to meet you.
Luis [00:00:44]:
It’s a pleasure having you on the show. Thank you so much for doing this. Please tell our listeners a bit more about who you are and what you do.
Vivien [00:00:53]:
Sure. So I’ve been a tech leader for more than a decade, nearly two decade before switching to actually from managing team to empower people in 2020. COVID it a lot of things happened into my life. Lost my father, got redeemed, lost my job, and I had to go through a transition of rebuilding myself. And from that transition, I created the One Freedom Framework, which is a coaching framework that I use and help people basically transform their life or actually improve their life as leaders, as person, as entrepreneur, through a concept of freedom first. And that’s basically what I’ve been doing for several years. I’ve been on from Jet, I’ve been certified, I have been getting some diplomas here and there to complete all of that knowledge, to show that everything I do is to empower people, is to help people with the right knowledge.
Luis [00:01:57]:
Nice. Okay, so I already have a note to get back to, but for now, tell me a bit about your relationship with remote work. How remote work started for you and empowered your career? You said you were a tech leader. Were that remote positions or did the remote position come after?
Vivien [00:02:16]:
Yeah, that’s a good question. It’s a bit of both and a bit of all at the same time. The way is my career started first into more traditional It, then gaming. Then basically I moved from France to Germany, worked for gaming companies which had remote workflows. So we were basically used to work with people from a bit everywhere. And then I moved just out of.
Luis [00:02:44]:
Curiosity because I worked in the gaming space for a long time. So I’m curious, just personally curious.
Vivien [00:02:51]:
Yes. So I did bigpoint Aria games. Game?
Luis [00:02:56]:
Oh, nice. Yeah, I know a couple of those. So cool. And you did remote work, some part of remote work, at least in those gaming companies.
Vivien [00:03:07]:
Yes. Yeah, we had people a bit everywhere. I did also some VR work with a VR company where yeah, that was an interesting technology. That was an interesting time there. But then, yeah, I moved to Indonesia, where I worked for Decacacon Gojack. I worked for Bukalapa smartphone and IO Connect. And all of those or most of those big part of my teams were actually remote people. So myself, I was either in Indonesia or even though I still work and help with IO Connect, and then I’m basically in Taiwan or traveling the world as you know, because I was in India last week and helping those people, which are a bit everywhere. Like, I have clients in United States, Germany, Europe, France, Indonesia, India, a bit here and there, and my own personal team, because I can’t do what I do without people. Of course, my personal team is in Philippine, Venezuela, and Indonesia.
Luis [00:04:14]:
Yeah, nice. Okay, so you said something that’s very interesting that you said that you switched from managing to empowering. Right. Take us through what that means. Right. What do you mean by switching from managing to empowering?
Vivien [00:04:31]:
Yeah, so managing is basically giving tasks to people. Sorry. It’s basically bringing those small iteration and saying to people, okay, this is what I need you to do. This is what I want you to do. While empowering people is and this is actually true for leaders, this is one switch that is really important is when you speak from managing to leadership is leadership is, this is where we need to go. Know how will you do it? And 90% of the time they have an idea of how to do it, but it’s not clear then your role is to help them get that clear, empower them to do the work, trust them and mentor them and coach them so they can actually deliver what they need to deliver. So that’s a big of a shift. And then the shift become even bigger when you’re a coach. Because what people misunderstand about a coach is a coach never give you advice. A coach give you strategy, solution, listen to you, help you brainstorm, give you a space, but never give you advice. So that’s the next shift.
Luis [00:05:44]:
Yeah, I totally understand. So when you’re doing that again, I don’t know how it is in the markets that you act on, but what I see a lot, especially in the North American market, is that people are looking for solutions, right. And you’re saying basically, no, it’s up to you to come with the solutions. I will create the space.
Vivien [00:06:16]:
For you.
Luis [00:06:17]:
To find the solution. Right. So how do you go about changing that mindset? What do you usually say to people that come, vivian, I need a solution. I have a challenge, I need a solution. What do you usually tell them?
Vivien [00:06:30]:
Yeah, that’s a good question because this is really the challenge of being a coach. This is really one of the core challenges. People want solutions, which, well, you’re not helping them. If you give them a solution, you’re not helping them. You’re basically putting the problem a bit further because it’s the next problem. They will again ask you and then problem after they will again ask you and ask you and ask you. And then is that dependent on you? Which is not your role. Your role is not to make people dependent. Your role is to provide people with the knowledge they need to actually find a solution. So generally, how I start that is, I say, okay, let’s think about your problem. Tell me, what do you see as solutions right now? And there is two way. Either they give me some solution that they see and then we work around them and try to expand that vision and try to make them see that problem from different aspect. Or they’re like, I don’t have solution, I don’t know. And then generally, I will try to make them think by having them look at the problem differently and taking different angles and perspective. Like as entrepreneur, we always have our own vision of things. We know how we want things to be, we know what we want to achieve, but we forget often to look at it from the other people visions. How is a client, how are the people that don’t execute what doesn’t end to term of marketing, for example, or in terms of budget, finance, all of that. And so you bring them the framework of thinking. And that’s the first step when you have won that battle, because I call that the first battle in the law of trust, of course that they remove that mindset of oh, spoot fin me that solution. Then the dynamic become completely different. You create a space where they will use you in the right way that you can really empower them and give them tools, framework of thinking, frameworks of solutioning, frameworks of communication that would be beneficial for them.
Luis [00:08:49]:
Got it. I guess I want to ask about your teams then, right? Can you tell me a story? You mentioned that you have a team spread, a fully remote team, right? You said Philippines and what else?
Vivien [00:09:10]:
Philippine, Venezuela, Indonesia.
Luis [00:09:12]:
Okay, got it. So that’s actually kind of similar to my marketing team that Salsa spread. My marketing team is in South America and India. So there’s definitely a clash of cultures. But we managed to make it work in our benefit. Right. And how do you apply this framework to working with people from these places to working with the team that you built?
Vivien [00:09:48]:
That’s a good point. So my team, Funelia NAF, is only woman. Okay. It’s 100% woman team. Yeah. We have actually one person that is an external SEO team that we are using where we have a man. That’s interesting.
Luis [00:10:05]:
By the way, let’s open up parentheses there because why do you think that is? Because that’s not exactly my experience, but close enough, right? When I started doing remote work and creating my remote team, it’s not only women, but there’s like three men, right? In a ten people team.
Vivien [00:10:24]:
Yeah. I have my vision of Singh. I can’t give you statistic about it, but I have my vision of Singh. Why? My team being entirely woman is a bit different of the tech team where I was leading, which is majority of men, for example, is the communication doesn’t work the same way. And then that’s inheritance of the way of thinking and it’s nothing about necessarily where you are coming from or what your education, but mostly on are you more emotional person type or are you more and more rational type of person? So all of that is taken into account in the way I communicate with every one of my member of the team. For example, my VA is an eyelid rational person, where the person I have in the social media would be much more emotional. So the conversation will be different drastically. And that’s a really important point, is to understand how the people that you’re working with work. And I have to admit, as being a coach, I have a huge advantage on that because my work is to understand what you think and to help you on your thinking. So that gave me a huge advantage on that. But the biggest challenge, as you said, was culture. I have one person in Philippine, one in Indonesia, one in Venezuela. Three different cultures.
Luis [00:12:01]:
Yeah.
Vivien [00:12:01]:
I am born in France and raised most of my life. There four different cultures. So we don’t necessarily always have the same vision of things. So communication is a key point. And on that we were discussing about that, Luis, like tools. Tools are the backbone of any remote company on that you cannot work well together if you don’t have the right. SOPs the right tools, and you don’t necessarily need a ton of them, but you need to have the proper communication and organizational tool.
Luis [00:12:38]:
Yeah. So how do you balance that right? Especially with people in so much different time zones? First, I guess, how did you figure out that was the best tool to use? And feel free to share the tools you use if you feel comfortable with that and you think it’s interesting.
Vivien [00:13:00]:
For several things. We had some test and trial. I have to say I’ve tested a lot of different tools. But for communication, for example, we’re using mostly slack that work well for synchronous and asynchronous communication. Then we have, like every team nearly, we have zoom meetings for the team, which allow us something really important, is to see each other’s. This is psychologically fundamental. This is like, in your brain, in your behavioral this is fundamental to see the people that you’re working with. And this is a big mistake that a lot of companies do is they don’t really care about that. Yeah.
Luis [00:13:43]:
Because rationally, it’s what you say about the rational and the emotional. Right. Rationally, it doesn’t make a lot of sense. Right. It seems a waste of time, rationally. But whatever, subconsciously or for some reason, it does make a difference. Right. You worked in gaming. I usually call that the NPC factor. Right. When you stay long enough without your colleagues looking like humans, looking like living, breathing humans, you kind of start to act like they’re NPCs in a video game. Does this make sense?
Vivien [00:14:21]:
Oh, yeah, completely. And I will go a step further and this is something that I’m teaching in the leadership class, is when people don’t see your hands, they don’t trust you. Your hands. Yes. This is your rip.
Luis [00:14:38]:
That’s interesting.
Vivien [00:14:39]:
Yes. It’s actually in Google meeting and zoom meetings, if people don’t see your hand, they trust you less. And that is due to the fact that hands are threats. So our reptilian brain still attach the fact that we don’t see your hands to a lesser level of trust and a higher level of threat.
Luis [00:15:01]:
I see. That’s a good tip. I’m going to start having my zoom meetings like a James Bond villain, right. With the hands crossed in front of me.
Vivien [00:15:11]:
Yeah. That’s why I’m really careful when I have meetings and talk, because I do also talks online. I did one for university in India recently on AI. I’m really careful that the people can see my hands. Basically, my burst also just to cut at the level where they can see my hands and my arms. Because then this trust factor increased. And it’s crazy. It’s a little thing, but your trust factor increased dramatically if you do that regularly. Yeah.
Luis [00:15:42]:
That’s actually a very interesting tidbit. That’s interesting. All right. We were talking about your usual set up with the team. So you have these meetings, these video meetings that you say are quite important to develop trust. Right. To reduce the NPC factor. How often did you say you have them?
Vivien [00:16:01]:
So I have one big weekly meeting with everyone on the team, and then I would have one on ones, depending on what is either every day or every other day, depending on the project we are currently working. For example, we are redoing the website currently. This means that every day I have one meeting with my web designer web developer every day.
Luis [00:16:26]:
Got it. I’m actually interested because I’ve interviewed some people in your area before coaching and speaking, and I find that very few have teams. Right. Usually this is more of a solopreneur business. Some even avoid right. Altogether having a team. Now, you have a small team, right? And maybe that’s the way you want it. I mean, surely I personally prefer small teams. But you do have a team, so I assume this was an actual decision that you decided that you want to have a team. Can you tell me the story of why that happened? What was your thought process behind it?
Vivien [00:17:06]:
Oh, yeah, that’s a really good question. So, yes, in my sphere, most of the people don’t have a team. And some of them is because they are worried that it will cut their profits or they don’t make enough money. They think for it, which I can understand. But for example, I know another coach in the United States. We will actually coach for Google and coach for other companies. And she also has a team. And we were discussing about it and the time where you need a team is in the lifetime of a company is when you know you cannot do everything by yourself at the proper quality. And I used to do the website. My current website has been entirely done by me. Everything that I do before was previously done by me. But really early on, for example, social media was something that I don’t have the time. I need help to create assets. I’m not good at it. It’s taking too much time. I would rather focus on building classes, on building the framework for people, on writing the book that I’m writing currently. All of those kind of things for me, have more value than the creation of the asset by itself. Then I also have a company in Germany and I work, as I said, with IO Connect, and I worked as a coach. So I basically works twelve to 16 hours, receive around 300 emails per day with all the spamming that we receive all the time. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I need a VA to manage my mail, my calendar, and to do some of my tasks that I can delegate. So that’s every position that I have happened at a certain point in time, depending on the need of where I was. And I’m not afraid to invest money because for me, this is an investment. This is me investing in the company, investing in my time to gain back that freedom and to be able to invest that freedom into something more important and more valuable for the people I serve.
Luis [00:19:14]:
Yeah, that definitely makes sense. So when did you feel, right, you said that when you need a team is when you feel you cannot do everything by yourself, right, at quality. But that point is obviously different for everyone and is somewhat subjective. Can you tell me the story of when you figured that out? When was it that you decided what was the day like, right? What sparked the decision? What was the situation that made you go, okay, I need to do my first hire. And by the way, what was your first hire?
Vivien [00:19:51]:
My first hire was my VM, my assistant. She was my first hire. And I will give you a trick on how I hired her because I’m sure this will be beneficial for a lot of people. But nice, just to answer your question, is I said I have 300 emails a day. I have five mailbox to manage three companies at the same time, which two of mine and one, I work with three calendars. I’m traveling a lot, so there is a lot of hotel to book, plane to book. Then there is all the accounting to be sure that it’s proper for the tax and all of that. So all of that was taking me five to 6 hours a week that I didn’t have, which is like, okay, with those five or 6 hours, I could took a part time. That should be enough. Actually, it was more like 10 hours. But I could take it part time. That’s enough. But no, the question is, do I want to take a part time, or do I want to take someone that I will get for the long term and then find on the 30 hours that have more value to extract from those and build? And my decision was clear. I took someone full time. Because, no, she’s managing a lot more than just that. She’s my personal assistant for so many things. But, yeah, the start was like, I don’t have those hours, those hours, I need to regain them. What do I do? Do I burn out and work 20 hours, not 16 hours a day or 24 hours a day at the end? Yeah, exactly. So that’s where this came from. And there’s a trick. This, you will love it. Okay, so when I hired her, I did a lot of research on Philippines virtual assistants and other countries. And then there was those websites like, okay, we can provide you pools of people. And I’m like, how much does that cost? Look at the budget. And I was like, I don’t trust you to choose my person, so I will do it myself. And I post this ad on LinkedIn. And I did the full ad, like a company will do, okay, this is your mission. This is what you will be to do on daily, daily basis. This is your extended blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so on LinkedIn, I post that on LinkedIn jobs. But at the end, I wrote a small thing, which here is the link to apply. People who do not apply with that link and not fill all the answers will not be considered.
Luis [00:22:39]:
Yeah, interesting. Funny, because I always do a similar thing, right. When I post a job description, I always include a PS, and I don’t consider people who don’t reply to the PS exactly.
Vivien [00:22:57]:
But so what I did is actually all my criteria was in an editable form, and the people would have to basically fill the airtable form on 100 people. Only one person did. Wow. This means that 99% of the people don’t even read.
Luis [00:23:17]:
Yeah, I’ve had more luck with you. I found that more than 1% of the people read the PS. But, yeah, it’s definitely on the low end, for sure, right?
Vivien [00:23:31]:
Yes. Which mean that well, I had, like, three people in total replying to the PS on the full ad. But that mean that you are basically cleaning a lot of the people that are applying just through that small text. And for a VA, it’s extremely important to be detail oriented. Yeah, because this is like, if you do accounting, for example, she works on my accounting to be sure that all the invoice are stored in the system, that we have a clean accounting. You can’t mess up that. The tax won’t let you mess up your accounting. So it was for me, one of the critical point, and it basically took me two weeks to hire someone and yeah, really easy that way.
Luis [00:24:21]:
Yeah, those are some good tips. Okay, so now you have your business. You’re obviously working a lot to pay the bills. You have your virtual assistant, right? When did you feel that you graduated from a guy working a lot with a virtual assistant and an a real business?
Vivien [00:24:47]:
I think we never really graduate from that as an entrepreneur. We just switch our direction and focus. But I don’t think an entrepreneur really stopped working ever. For me, the really important point, and this is what I teach also is about the freedom. The freedom to allocate your time. The freedom to have time also for your family, for your wife, spouse, your kids, whatever you have. For example, when I have my son with me, I’m not going to work. This is a no go. So that was a big boost of my freedom on that. I know that the business continue to work in certain ways, that things progress if I’m not around for one of two days, and that’s fine before as an entrepreneur is like, okay, no, I can’t stop, I can’t stop, I can’t stop, I can’t take a break, I have to do this, I have to do that. Oh, there is so many things. Yeah, no, there is always so many things. But at least I can delegate part of it and say, okay, the critical part that I have set up a process for, I know they’re going to continue to work.
Luis [00:26:07]:
Yeah. So how much of your business, what percentage of your business do you feel runs like that? Because obviously you are a coach. People expect you in presence Live for at least most of most of the most of the time. But how do you ensure that at least some part of your business is working while you’re not?
Vivien [00:26:35]:
Yeah, this is the thing. A lot of what I do right now is still one on one or group coaching. So those are clearly running with me in it. But a lot of the supporting elements that are needed and when we look at supporting element, you can look at social media, you can look at your website, your traffic, your blog, your SEO, all of that. All that I would say hidden work that is already processed. This is already organized. We have tools, we have everything to go through that. So this is already there. No, I don’t really give online classes. Sorry, I don’t really give online classes right now. Too much. Yes, this is something I’m building the new classes, especially on leadership, we have one called Unleash the Leader Within. We have the one freedom also class that will start soon. So all of those will be running as online classes. But I still do want to have the one on one. I do want to have the personal connection. Because for me, that’s where I learned the most from my client. And my client learned the most from me.
Luis [00:27:58]:
Yeah, definitely. Completely understand that. Right. So you did all of this, right? You did this reinventing yourself since COVID time to now, right? I usually say that 2020 was the year that lasted ten years because it seemed to never end. Right. I entered 2020 as a young man and I left the old man. That’s how I felt.
Vivien [00:28:30]:
Right.
Luis [00:28:31]:
But the reality is it wasn’t that time ago. We are going through trouble times, right? There’s layoffs, especially where I move in the tech industry. And you’ve also moved a lot. There’s been layoffs every month. Right. Some people are having lots of people are potentially having to restart their lives and not necessarily from the steadiest platform. Right. I always tell people I switched careers a couple of times in my life. And I always tell people, don’t rush it, right. Save money, have six months worth of expenses in the bank before you quit your job, don’t do anything crazy, et cetera. Some people just don’t have that luxury these times. Some people are let go these days with very short notice and it’s either reinvent or die. Right. So what do you think kept you going during those trouble times? How did you find the mental space and the physical energy to go and build this business that seems to be doing very well for yourself?
Vivien [00:29:44]:
Well, this is a really good question in many levels. First thing is, as a business entrepreneur, I never believe that the business do well enough. You can always do more. I’m sure you know the feeling. But yeah, for me, in 2020, as I said, I lost my father to COVID. Couldn’t even go to France to bury him because of all the COVID issues and travels and all of that. Then divorced my ex wife. That was difficult and took long time with my son. I have a nearly five years old son now. And you lost your job, find a kind of a job, lost it again. It was back and forth a lot during that time. So it was really challenging and that’s what happened. It’s really all those challenge you either break or you grow, you cannot be in the middle, doesn’t work. So for me, I really decided that, no, I have my son, I have a partner, I have my family. As challenging as the times where there is only one way, it’s forward. And then I was like, okay, but what do I want to do? It’s great to be forward. It’s great to go through all of that and learn a lot and become a better person. But do I really just become a better person and stay in the same life? Or can I bring more? And I always was interested into psychology, into spirituality, into how the brain works, and always wanted to go to that space and then I’m like, well, it’s time. It’s no or never.
Luis [00:31:53]:
Yeah.
Vivien [00:31:53]:
I’m nearly 40. I have invented myself like you millions of time. I’ve done a lot of different jobs in a lot of different industries, and I just was presented with the opportunity to be bringing value. That’s a beautiful thing to do. It’s an amazing place to be when you bring value to people, when you change life. One of my clients in Germany, for example, we started coaching in December, and he was having marriage issue. He was not feeling when it is work. He was questioning everything. And by end of January, his marriage has never been better. No. He has his own YouTube channel that he’s starting, he has his financial channel that he’s building. His job is going great. He’s completely expanding himself and just being able to help people to do that. Man, I have not known better feelings, to be honest.
Luis [00:33:04]:
Nice. Okay, what was the start like? Obviously, you’re saying that you are interested in these things, psychology, neurology, et cetera. You needed to learn, but at the same time, you also needed a paycheck. Right. There’s that stress always there. Right. So what was the initial hustle like? What was your process? Did you try to find clients? A lot of people, for example, these days, start testing their business before they have a product, just to see if there demand.
Vivien [00:33:41]:
Right.
Luis [00:33:41]:
What was your process for starting your business from scratch?
Vivien [00:33:45]:
Like? Yeah, honestly, I had the luxury because my divorce just finished at that time, and I got some money back from one of the house. We separate, sold the house, get out of money. And I decided, okay, I’m going to invest that, and I’m going to start getting the training with JJT. So I did the training with them for like, three months and something got my certification, and then I’m like, okay, I have three more months and I need to start the business. And that’s how it started. It’s just I was in a fortunate position to have this buffer. Yeah, no. Is the business doing as good as I want right now? No, it’s a new business. And my vision for it is not just being coaching. There is a lot of vision behind, like, the One Freedom Framework that I’m building day to day progressing. The next version will actually be offered as a training for coaches that want to actually learn it. So this is not just me being an employment coach on my corner. We have built with other coaches the ICC, which is International Coaches Collective, which is a group of coaches from all over the world that meet every week and train themselves, exchange knowledge and grow our networking. So it started by me, but the goal is so much bigger guys, and that require a lot of investment, a lot of time, and also to not be in a hurry. That’s one of the things that. A lot of business owner. When they start, they are in a hurry to make as much profit as possible to grow the company right away. Where I’m more building the foundation. I’m making the money, but I’m building the foundation through making that money to expand as the different area that this company is built for.
Luis [00:35:44]:
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Okay, so I want to be respectful of your time. We’ve been going for a while but enjoying the conversation a lot. I want to start some rapid fire questions though. You don’t need to answer rapid fire. You can take as long as you’d like. So my first question is you have a small team, but obviously it really depends on what the answer is. But if you had a possibility of buying one item, right? Not money, not a money equivalent like a gift card. Just one item for everyone in your team, what would you buy them?
Vivien [00:36:21]:
And you need to be the same item for everyone.
Luis [00:36:23]:
Yeah, you need to buy in bulk. In your case, bulk is like four, but yes, pack of four, right?
Vivien [00:36:33]:
That’s a good question. I would say a good internet connection for everyone.
Luis [00:36:40]:
Okay, can’t argue with that. I love that.
Vivien [00:36:45]:
This is our backbone. We need to communicate connection.
Luis [00:36:50]:
Yes. Okay, so what about for yourself? What purchase have you made in the last six months that has considerably improved your work lifestyle?
Vivien [00:37:03]:
Oh, that’s an easy one. I bought a Remarkable, so I’m a person with ADHD, so the iPad was my enemy. Too many notification, impossible to focus. It was horrible. So I sold my iPad, bought a Remarkable and I love it, man. I have been working with it for six months now. I basically take notes, send them to my assistant to basically take a formatting properly or I sign contract, review documents, all of that on the Remarkable. If I don’t need, I don’t use my laptop, I use my Remarkable or I use my phone.
Luis [00:37:44]:
That’s a big favorite of the Distant Job podcast guests. Right? I keep being on the fence, but there’s been a lot of previous guests that also really swear by it. I have the opposite issue. Right. I tried quitting paper, but I can’t. There’s just something about pen on paper that really makes me think better.
Vivien [00:38:07]:
Yes, that is exactly the reason why I switched to Rocket ball. I had the same issues.
Luis [00:38:13]:
Yeah.
Vivien [00:38:14]:
And you have to find a way to try it because you will understand the feeling of it is actually so close to feeling of writing from paper that your brain associates kind of the same feeling.
Luis [00:38:27]:
Nice.
Vivien [00:38:27]:
It’s not the same, but at the same time it feels the same. So it’s kind of a weird thing, but love it.
Luis [00:38:32]:
Nice. That’s really cool. That’s really cool. I also read a lot of ebooks, so it would be nice to be able to annotate right, more easily. I have to say, I really like the notations feature in the Amazon Kindle app and the Apple’s ibook app. I think that for noting books, they’re great, but it would be nice to be able to do it on a real book and then just scribble it by hand.
Vivien [00:38:59]:
Yeah. So there is actually a Kindle that just got out that has the same features of the remarkable, but also integrate the Kindle system in it. And a friend of mine, when I was in India added and I tried it.
Luis [00:39:15]:
Yeah. The writing is feeling good.
Vivien [00:39:18]:
Well, the system is great. The writing not as good as remarkable. So we actually changed the tip of this pen with a remarkable tip, and it’s improved it a bit, but it’s still not as good as remarkable.
Luis [00:39:33]:
Yeah. Well, that’s a shame. That’s a shame. But yeah, good advice. So let’s talk about I don’t know if you gift books, but if you gift books, what are your most gifted books?
Vivien [00:39:46]:
Hmm. So many Ikigai, which is a book about how Japanese center their life around their purpose. So that’s such a great book. Thinking like a Mount by J. Shetty definitely one of my favorite, which I’m actually going to meet him this month. I’m going to get that sign.
Luis [00:40:16]:
Yeah, you should. I’ve read that book as well. I liked it a lot.
Vivien [00:40:22]:
Yeah. And I’m waiting for his new books about love that I’m actually going to get also this month when I meet him. So I’m really curious about reading that one, but yeah, I would say for Entrepreneur one also is 4 Hours a Week yeah. By Tim Ferriss. Who doesn’t know that one? Come on. This is your basic. Of course, this is your basic.
Luis [00:40:47]:
Yeah, that’s a great one.
Vivien [00:40:50]:
Yeah. I would say that that would be some of the top books that I have.
Luis [00:40:55]:
No, that’s a nice, very good reading list. Definitely. All right, so to end, right, let’s say that you are hosting a dinner, right? And in attendance are going to be people responsible for the future of work. People that are decision makers at some of the biggest companies in the world, particularly Tech. Right. The twist is that you’re hosting the dinner in a Chinese restaurant. So as the host, you get to choose the message inside the fortune cookie. Why is that message?
Vivien [00:41:29]:
Oh, break more rules.
Luis [00:41:39]:
Break more rules. Okay. That’s a good fortune cookie message. So, yeah, break more rules.
Vivien [00:41:47]:
Yes. Because in computer science is saying you either break a rule or bypass a rule when you want to do something. In entrepreneurship, if you don’t break rules. And by rules, I don’t mean laws or things like that.
Luis [00:42:06]:
Yeah, of course. People do your taxes. Right?
Vivien [00:42:09]:
Yeah. I mean, not the kind of rule.
Luis [00:42:12]:
Breaking that we mean.
Vivien [00:42:13]:
No breaking rules, but more about breaking the rule of society, about how we see things, how we see certain product or see certain features. How we see UIUX. For example, if we stick to the rule of the 90s in UIUX, can you imagine how ugly the website will be nowadays? Like imagine Amazon staying in the would be completely insane.
Luis [00:42:40]:
Yeah you’ve worked in the gaming space, right?
Vivien [00:42:44]:
Yeah. Oh, my God.
Luis [00:42:45]:
For example, today I have to say today I don’t enjoy video games so much because interface, right, UX and UI, it’s all the same in all games, right? They figured some best practices and they’re afraid to deviate from it, right?
Vivien [00:43:03]:
Yeah, there is still some game that experiment on it and they exist but I don’t know, we have been stereotyped and sterilized. I say in the gaming industry a lot. Even I have a friend of mine who’s working on his own game to compete with PUBG. His interface is great, it’s beautiful, but it’s so close. I’m missing this innovation in VR, for example, there’s so much innovation in that space. I had the luxury to actually see things that are still in development in front of university in Berlin. Crazy things like actors filmed into a scene, into a green scene and then you could basically walk around them and they will act and everything but the whole environment around them is created nice in three D and so you can walk inside the movie which is completely insane. I have seen operation table with 3d model of the person boat body on the screen that was allowing the doctor nurse to see where the operation needed to be. And all of a sudden so there is so many. Things that are happening in those kind of spheres. But on the other side, we’re not going to grow too much in game right now. There is no much change. Yeah, and we can take a rule. Okay, let’s look at Tesla. Tesla completely broke the model of how a car should be. Yeah, in many, many ways they invented door and all, they invented the dashboard, they invented the way we drive by having this AI system that actually can tell you a lot of different things.
Luis [00:45:08]:
The way they make their car, the way their floor are built right from the traditional assembly life. Yeah.
Vivien [00:45:19]:
They have completely broken the floor down and say okay, we’re going to redo that freaking rules, we don’t care, let’s redo it, let’s do it better and they did and it’s working. I’ve been inside the Tesla and most of the people in this listening to us most probably I let once in the Tesla it’s clearly a different car from your traditional standard car, this Reinvention and Samsung for example with a flip also that was another invention with a flat screen opening. All of those rule breaking system, rule breaking moment are growth. So break the rule guys, don’t limit yourself because society or someone tell you this is not how you should do it.
Luis [00:46:06]:
Yeah, no, that is great advice, thank you for sharing. We’re ending on a strong note here. So, Vivian, thank you so much for being part of the show. Thank you so much for being here. Now it’s time to tell our listeners where they can continue the conversation with you, where they can find more about you, what you do, your business and what your business can offer them.
Vivien [00:46:33]:
Sure. So they can easily find [email protected] or Instagram. Vivianrogero, Facebook, LinkedIn, you basically can find me everywhere. Just type my name. I’m also an author for Brains magazine. I have been awarded Brains 500 recently. If I type my name in Google, you can’t miss me.
Luis [00:46:55]:
We’ll link to also links on the Show Notes, of course, so you can go to the show notes and click. All right. This was a pleasure. Thank you so much for being a guest.
Vivien [00:47:05]:
Thank you, Louis. It was a great moment with you. I really enjoyed it.
Luis [00:47:08]:
Thank you. Same. Likewise. And thank you, listeners, for being part of the Distant Job Podcast, your podcast about building and leading awesome remote teams. See you next week.
