RWL220 How a Childhood Gift Led to Tech Leadership and Remote Work Success w/ Co CEO of Chilli Piper

Alex:
0:00

today on the Remote Work Life podcast.

Alina Vandenburgh:
0:02

And the more I was climbing the corporate ladder, the more I understood that I was becoming more of a politician as opposed to more of a doer, which is the part that I liked the most. And I just didn't like who I was becoming. I talked differently, I behaved differently, I took different actions than what I would normally take and I hated it. I hated it to the point where I just couldn't go to work anymore.

Alex:
0:27

That was the voice of Alina Vandenberg, who is the CPO of Chili Piper, and what an extraordinary interview I had with her just the other day. It's Alex here from the Remote Work Life podcast. I hope you're doing well. That was a little segment of my wide reaching interview with Alina Vandenberg, as I mentioned, who is the CPO of Chili Piper. You can reach out to Chili Piper at chilipipercom and obviously we'll tell you a lot more about Chili Piper during today's interview.

Alex:
0:59

But, as I said, an extraordinary and captivating interview I had with Alina just the other day, where she talked about many things on well, about her journey towards entrepreneurship. She told me how she got into tech from an early age to eventually becoming CPO and founder of not just one but two tech businesses. In fact, she started as an entrepreneur in school. Can you believe it? She also told me about how her career journey developed and how she developed an affinity for entrepreneurship.

Alex:
1:35

She told me about her life growing up in communist Romania and the drivers that spurred her to start her first business while at school. How she escaped as well, how she escaped her corporate nine-to-five career and discovered that she was an entrepreneur. And she also talked through the steps that she took and that she went through in order to figure out her natural talents and passions. So no doubt you should stick around to listen to Alina's interview. Don't forget you can also see the video interview that I've posted now on remoteworklifeio. But until then, take a look, take a listen and I will speak to you on the other side.

Alina Vandenburgh:
2:17

Chili Piper has. We solve a very simple problem companies that need to have a form to qualify their prospects before they talk to them, and we enable that. We make sure that people that are qualified to talk to that business are talking to a sales rep or to an account manager or to a customer success person immediately, so that there's no wait time. There's a better experience for that particular person who comes into the website and the salesperson or the customer success person doesn't have to chase them to get to talk to them, which is kind of silly. So even though it sounds like a simple problem to solve, it's actually quite complex when you have businesses that have, I don't know, more than 10 sales reps or more than one way of qualifying the prospects, and we solve that for them. We have some other products as well, but this is the main. This is the main claim to fame, if I can say that.

Alex:
3:19

And it's one of those things where you think to yourself gosh, that's such a good idea, why? Why didn't I think of that? Because, at the end of the day, it's a. It's a problem that you know it's it's all about. It's a product that solves a problem, a human problem, which is the whole problem of communication and managing people's expectations in many ways, and the last thing you want when somebody comes to your website and fills out a form, you, the last thing you want is is uncertainty, isn't it? So I think chili pipe is great in that.

Alina Vandenburgh:
3:48

In that respect, yeah, you'd think that somebody would have sold it by now. Um it, we were surprised, as as you were surprised, and now companies like twilio and airbnb and um uh, intuit and many other companies are being enabled with Chili Piper and we're solving some other problems in that connection touchpoint. It's a lot of fun. I'm surprised every day of the complexity around it, but it's getting a more seamless process for sure, for both parties.

Alex:
4:27

I'm really interested in your story as well, alina, because you come from a technical background yourself and you've worked in computer science roles. You've done your. I suppose you've worked at the coalface in terms of doing those sorts of things. In fact, I heard as well you were bought a computer at quite a young age. Is that what sparked your interest in tech?

Alina Vandenburgh:
4:55

My dad is a nerd like me in that he likes to tinker with anything that comes out that's new and exciting. He has an entire wood shack full of tools and every time he sees something that he has not seen before, he buys it and tries it out, and he instilled that kind of same type of curiosity and excitement for new things in me as well. As soon as he could afford it was not easy for him as soon as he could afford to buy me a computer. He did, and he was very hands-off and said you know, you can discover it, you can figure out how this thing works. I did a lot of silly things at the beginning. I don't know if you remember that we had a hard time with storage on computers early days. We had like floppy disks and stuff and I figured out that I'm going to clean the space this for my computer and deleted all the configuration files that was like the first day, wow.

Alex:
5:55

So you completely wiped out your computer on the first day yeah, yeah that's incredible, and I suppose there's a few people who are here well, listening who and watching who may not have. May not have handled a floppy disk, but that's going back a few years ago. I can't remember the last time. I don't think my computer even has a. Well, it definitely doesn't have a disk drive. I know that for certain.

Alina Vandenburgh:
6:17

I don't have a.

Alex:
6:18

CD-ROM, either it's going back away, but I think that it sounds like that is what really piqued your interest in in in tech, and it's kind of um, tell me how you've built from, from there to becoming chief product officer then of Chili Piper. How's that all come about?

Alina Vandenburgh:
6:37

so I have this um interesting technology from my dad and then I have a very polar opposite from my mom which is an interesting in art and interesting in visuals and interesting in colors and shapes and and which goes very well with product. Because you have to when you build software in general, you have to have a sensitivity for the velvet and for the way the product is visually represented to the user, so that the two combination kind of went very well together. I didn't know at that time in school that product is even a thing. I don't think that kids in school are taught that product is even a career path still now, not still now not, no, no it's a very abstract thing.

Alina Vandenburgh:
7:24

I don't even know how to. I don't know how I would explain to a 10 year old what product is, but now that they get to experience their iPhones, with Snapchat and TikTok, they understand that there's somebody behind that product and they understand that somebody makes decisions on how that product behaves and what features go. So it becomes a little bit more tangible and understand. Okay, maybe I can be the decision maker for this product as well, and maybe I can. I can do it. It's again, it's abstract, but it's. It's more tangible now that they have phones in their hands.

Alex:
7:59

No, yeah, definitely, I think, even cause, obviously I've got children of my own and my oldest is. She's choosing her subjects now and she's thinking about university and even to this day I mean as much as they the schools say that they try I think they're way behind in terms of introducing children to technical aspects or even, you know, joining the dots between the artistic side of things and the technical side of things. There's still a long way to go in that respect, but it sounds like you were able to connect the dots yourself and it's built into a wonderful career. But I also get the feeling as well that you had a burning desire to be your own boss, rather than be be managed or at least, um, be in a workplace that you know somebody is actually telling you what to do. I think I always I get the feeling that you, you wanted to be that the person who was calling the shots. Is that? Am I right in saying that?

Alina Vandenburgh:
9:00

it's an interesting uh topic the the leadership and the entrepreneurship that gets built in Me and my sister. We have the same education, same type of parenting, same school teachers, same everything. And yet from very early on I had a very strong independent personality. I would not want to hold my mom's hand. I wanted to explore things. I wanted to be on my own and try things. I definitely have a very riskier type of personality. I am okay with risking things. I'm okay with losing everything things. I'm okay with losing any everything. I'm okay with um going to a certain extent that many of my friends probably are not comfortable with, and I don't know if I was just born like that or something just clicked and then I just became. I had this entrepreneur bug in me, but I can definitely see sign across the across the way that I was interested in starting things on my own. I always was, and I had a million odd jobs as a kid. That would reflect that.

Alex:
10:17

And you even were before your high school. You had your fingers in entrepreneurship. You were actually engrossed in entrepreneurship. Was it a lipstick business?

Alina Vandenburgh:
10:27

I think you mentioned yes, I, I had 40 sales reps that I was managing to me for, yeah, for cosmetics, and I also managed the bills for water and heat in my, in my building um, I was also teaching math classes, I was training some IT classes. I would add so many odd things. Very, very early on. I think I might have started around I don't know seven, eight, something like that.

Alex:
11:01

Very early on. Well, I think that I mean I like that. I mean I again, when it comes to my children, I try to get them to immerse themselves in as many things as possible, because that's that's the only way that you can really understand what you, you like and what you, you don't like. I think I don't know.

Alina Vandenburgh:
11:18

I was uh, I was driven for sure by economic issues at that time because we were in communist Romania and my parents were workers in factories and the means were definitely a problem, and that sparked my interest in starting things that would give me independence. It's very hard to get kids to be part of the same kind of environment, because usually these days they're surrounded by comfort. They have the food in the fridge, they have heat in the house and all of that. Sometimes I was missing essentials and that's what drove me to do things out of the box. And that's what drove me to do things out of the box. But it's definitely an interesting topic how to get kids to have more initiatives, even if they're comfortable.

Alex:
12:15

Yeah, it is a tricky one, and I hear what you're saying there, because there's so many, I think, lots of things nowadays that they've got everything they need. I guess, don't they to thrive? They don't necessarily want for that much. I'm speaking in quite general terms, but if you compare to what your situation was, and you know, I suppose in the society that we are now, western society especially I guess there's very little in terms of wants and needs for many kids. But okay, so you've, you know, gone into. You've had your entrepreneur streak at a young age. You've done your. You've had your team of 40 at a very young age as well. How did Chili Piper come about? How did that spark come, because obviously you're a co-founder as well? How did that relationshipiper come about? How did that spark come, because obviously you're a co-founder as well? How did that relationship start as well?

Alina Vandenburgh:
13:10

It didn't start immediately. I didn't understand that I was an entrepreneur. I did not understand that I was passionate about building something on my own. I started in a corporate job, like most of us and starting understanding how corporations function, and I was part of a big healthcare company, a big education company, big media, big finance company as well, and I was a bit of a bull in a Chinatown in that I didn't fully understand how politics within different corporations work. I knew that I wanted to be at the top, but I didn't quite understand at the beginning how that whole process works.

Alina Vandenburgh:
13:58

I obviously had to learn the hard way, but I've learned some good politician-like, I guess skills in how things can be managed and how you get things to happen and how you get things to move. And the more I explored that corporate path and the more I was climbing the corporate ladder, the more I understood that I was becoming more of a politician as opposed to more of a tour, which is the part that I liked the most, and I just didn't like who I was becoming. I talked differently, I behaved differently, I took different actions than what, what I would normally take, and I hated it. I hated it to the point where I just couldn't go to work anymore. I was like it's painful and I was making more money than I could ever imagine. I I I never imagined that I could. I could earn that much and I was not.

Alex:
14:51

But I was not happy so, when you were at that point where you're not happy, what, what kind of steps were you taking to to, uh, to kind of get yourself out of that situation? Because I mean, I've been in a similar situation to that myself, but I felt that, well, this is going back a few years ago now, but I don't know if you felt the same way. I felt as though you know I was. I was wondering who, who could I speak to? Who, in terms of you know, how can I get myself out of the situation? Or how can I stop feeling like this? What were you, what? What were the steps that you took to sort of remedy that?

Alina Vandenburgh:
15:24

I looked around me and I looked at the kind of people that were successful in the corporations that I was at and who was the CPO in that company, who was the chief technology officer or the CIO path which I was in. I obviously even aimed for being a CEO of a large enterprise and if the founder is not the CEO but somebody hired to manage that company, in many cases, at least in where I was, the passion for building something was gone. The drive drive was more for stock, for let's make this share worth more, um, let's make sure that the revenues are of a certain size. It was not about building something that was interesting, it was much more about shareholders value and I had a hard time making that my main mission. The cash, cash, cash, making it my main mission. It's really hard to be driven by that and that was hard for me. I said I cannot become that person, I cannot be that person.

Alex:
16:40

Yeah, and I think you've touched on a great point there, because I mean, there are people where that money is their main driver. But I think if you can't figure out or you're in a situation where your values are not quite aligned with the people that you're working with or the business that you're working in, that's the point at which you're unhappy. That's a trigger in itself that you should do something, that you should do something and you did. You were able to identify what was passionate, what your mission was, what was important to you, I guess, deep down inside, and take those steps to then be where you are now, I guess but I'm sure it wasn't all that easy. Did you have to go through different stages of understanding actually I like this, but I don't like that and crossing things off your list before you have to go through sort of different stages of understanding actually I like this, but I don't like that and sort of crossing things off your list before you got to where you are now?

Alina Vandenburgh:
17:30

yes, I definitely had to peel a lot of layers of to understanding who, what I really liked, what I was really passionate about, who, what I was really good at and what I was struggling with. And after a lot of self-reflection I found that the thing that I like the most is building software and I like to come up with interfaces that simplify complex processes. That's my talent and I should put it to work. I should not let it dormant in a closet and dust it off. And it's interesting because this talent of building software that is easy to use even though it solves for complex problems is not frequent. It's a rare talent. I'm currently hiring from product managers and product designers that can join our team, and it's not easy. We have hundreds and hundreds of candidates, and I have a little test that I give them too, and very few pass my test, like very, very, very few, I would say. One out of 200 barely goes to the next stage, and it's interesting that I didn't realize the scarcity of it, of this particular talent, and it goes back to what you said is that it's very hard to teach it in school. It's hard to understand talent, but it's needed because our society depends on technology quite a lot and it's going to become even more dependent on technology to solve complex problems. And as a result, I said you know what I'm just going to focus on, that I'm going to focus on this talent that I have.

Alina Vandenburgh:
19:09

And the fact that I went in enterprise was surprising for me. At first I thought I'm going to probably go to healthcare or to education, where I thought that I'm much easier to find the mission to maybe cure disease, or in healthcare, where you educate kids. I'm still very passionate about education. So the path of enterprise was a bit unexpected. But I understood that because of the scarcity of talent in solving complex problems, even fewer people go to enterprise software.

Alina Vandenburgh:
19:43

People are much more. If they have this talent, they're much more likely to go to enterprise software much more. People are much more if they have this talent, are much more likely to go to consumers products. That they're more they have an affinity for um. So it was interesting path. I was exposed to enterprise software because of the roles that I had and I always saw that they were clunky and hard to use and they were not solving my problems. They're not making my job easier and I said you know, there has to be somebody to have to make these jobs easier. There has to be somebody to solve, make people happier when they go to work and make their jobs easier. And I can.

Alex:
20:12

I can be that person I have the right exposure to, to solving their problems and I think you've highlighted a great point as another great point because I mean, I've interviewed um nick francis of help scout. I've interviewed um some of the some great leaders of not not just um tech leaders but people who, who, um really talk about understanding your yourself, understanding what problem it is you're trying to solve first, before you then talk about the skills you use or the skills that you want to use in order to solve that, that problem. Because a lot of people go about it the wrong way, like you've just alluded to. They they talk about all the skills that they have and all the the projects that they've worked on, but they don't, because they don't, they haven't necessarily gone through the path that you've gone through in actually using those products and or at least understanding what the problems are and then picking a problem to solve. And maybe even, I suppose, when you think about healthcare, healthcare is an obvious you know there's obvious problems that people can see in healthcare, but in enterprise I guess there's, there aren't obvious problems unless you've sort of really be part of it, part of those problems.

Alex:
21:21

So I love that and this is a valuable lesson if anybody's going to be applying to any of Alina's roles. Don't think about your product skills or your tech skills. First Think about the problem that you want to solve and, if you're not yet at the stage where you can apply to Alina's roles, go and work in tech and understand those problems, understand those products more and understand the problems behind those, those um, those products, so you can then present yourself as a candidate who can can solve them, um, and help elena out. So yeah, I love that. I love that that particular scenario. And going back to um elena, so you've you've identified yourself now that these are problems I want to solve. I'm going to to fast forward quite far, because I noticed a post of yours on LinkedIn it was around about 2015, 2016, where you talked about quitting your job right, and that's a pretty big milestone, I guess and building a startup. Tell me about that.

Alina Vandenburgh:
22:27

It was not easy, because you go from a lot of income to zero income, and at that time I did not have savings and so it was not. It was not an easy jump, but I could not do it anymore. I just could not continue that path. And at the same time my husband, who is a serial entrepreneur, kept insisting that I should join him, that I should join him, that I should join him because we have such complementary skills. I said you know what? I'll give it a try. I'll give it a try at least one year, and I'll give him everything that I have so that I don't regret it. And I've not looked back.

Alex:
23:07

I've not looked back ever since so you wouldn't go back into corporate life now.

Alina Vandenburgh:
23:12

No, I would rather live in a trailer and sing. I don't know, I cannot go back.

Alex:
23:19

Well, it sounds like you're on an upper trajectory with the business anyway, so it doesn't sound like you need to look back. It sounds like it's going in the right direction.

Alina Vandenburgh:
23:27

It's a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun Excellent. It sounds like it's going in the right direction. It's a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun, excellent. And I think that the reason why I like it so much is not because I'm no longer part of a machinery that the corporate system can feel like. It's because I have the opportunity to instill in our company the kind of values that I find important when working with others, in that, for instance, we don't have much hierarchy at Chili Piper. We probably will have to have some sort of hierarchy as we're hiring more people, but we have a very flat process right now and it feels like you're working with a lot of smart people and you're influencing each other in the right way when you're building things, and diversity is important for me, and kindness is important for me, and ownership is important for me, so that everybody can feel like they're they're contributing 100, not just a cog in the wheel and um.

Alex:
24:24

That's what makes things even more interesting no, I think so, and values as well. It's, it's, it's, it's just what makes me me tick. You know it's what kind of um it makes anybody ticker, if that's what I think most of the best. Uh, businesses when they're hiring, that's what really draws people in and gets them to really fall in love with their business and really understand. You know, get that business from from the get go and then they look at the. I mean, I think that's, that's, that's my, my feeling anyway, and I think your values are front and center on your website. You talk about um, help helping your, your team members, reach their full potential. You know innovating and having fun. Who knew you could have fun at work?

Alina Vandenburgh:
25:15

I know it's a crazy notion.

Alex:
25:20

I mean, I still don't think that people can get not people in general. But I mean, when I was working it wasn't funny. It just felt like I was there to sort of learn something and go home and go back the next day and it just, like you said, the hamster wheel, on and on and on. But for you it sounds like you're trying to that's. That's kind of baked in, that that whole aspect of fun and innovation is baked into to what you do and helping one another. Tell me more about that.

Alina Vandenburgh:
25:50

It's one of the values that comes from my co-founder the fun part and that's because, ever since I met him, he always puts a large smile on my face from the time I wake up until the time I go to bed. He's very funny and he always manages to find the most in the most obscure situation, the positive way to look at it, and um comes up with way in which we can find entertainment in in the most unusual circumstances. So the the fun value definitely comes from him. We think that we're spending so much time at work right, it's like almost our whole life. For me, especially, it's my entire weekday.

Alina Vandenburgh:
26:41

It's a shame to make it sad, right? Yeah, it would be a shame to not make the most out of it and find beauty in the things that we do, beauty in that positiveness and a learning opportunity in which maybe a client has a bad day and screams at us, for instance, and then we can learn that we can take that and make his day a bit better with something we can come up with, with a way to to entertain him as well. And it's important for us to to make things fun. Uh, for instance, one of the things that we did and I don't have a sample here. It we did this a little chili sauce because it's a play on our company name, and it says light a fire under your sass sass software as a service. But you can also put the letters in a different way. Uh, so we we use all the opportunities to to have fun for sure yeah, I mean I'm looking at your website as well now.

Alex:
27:41

I can see there's some, there's some pictures and it. You look, you guys look like you are having fun. I think you should bring that out more because I you know that that to me is the kind of vibe and the kind of that's the kind of atmosphere I want when I go to work. It's like I said I when I I mean I've been working now for the last what 20 years and half of that has been working for other people and it wasn't fun and you know they they tried as much as they can they could to kind of introduce the things like the perk, the pool table and the, you know, the free breakfast, and it all seemed very sort of um contrived, but with you guys, it's, it's, it's natural.

Alex:
28:23

So that's definitely one of you, that's a usp, that you, that is is difficult to um, it's really difficult to to demonstrate, but you guys are doing it really well so it's.

Alina Vandenburgh:
28:35

It's interesting because we're remote, um, so we cannot have those perks that you're talking about. Right, I cannot. We all work from wherever we want to. If you find a tennis court and you bring it on and then you play, that's the part of your time management. But within the meetings that we have, within the call that we have for when we meet in person, for sure we make the most out of it, and it becomes a bit more intense like that when you're meeting your colleagues less often. It's you you'll make sure that you make the most of that time in person that you have.

Alex:
29:10

Definitely. And you mentioned remote work and I think that in itself it just changes the game where work is concerned, because, again, I've worked in a co-located scenario. I'm not saying you can't have fun in those situations, but each to their own, and I mean I've had most of my fun working on a remote basis and that doesn't mean I've been isolating myself by any means, but it's still very much a team ethic there. But I think um, the remote work is is a gift that that helps in so many different ways and it's it's helping your team to grow as well.

Alina Vandenburgh:
29:42

Tell me more about your, your decision behind um going remote it was a very, very easy decision and that I definitely am passionate about discovering new places and traveling and learning about people's cultures and diversity and understanding how different motivations work on different parts of the planet and different problems different people face. And, um it, as soon as you become emerged in cultures that are different than yours, your mind kind of opens up and you understand issues in a global sense in a way that you wouldn't have. I can take a typical person who doesn't have, for instance, in us, that doesn't have a us passport, that hasn't traveled across outside of the us borders. It's hard for them to understand climate change. It's it's harder for them to understand, uh, why? Uh, an issue that comes from a political driven um uh campaign for something to happen in in, in, in iran or afghanistan.

Alina Vandenburgh:
30:54

All these things are very abstract. Yes, they're like they're, they're headlines in a newspaper, but they don't affect you, so they become completely irrelevant to your life, whereas when you travel and you've been to some of these places you've been to egypt, in the, in the, in the center. You've been to turkey, to istanbul. You've been to some of these places. You've been to Egypt, in the center. You've been to Turkey, to Istanbul, you've been to China, those stories. They become meaningful.

Alina Vandenburgh:
31:17

You understand how these people get affected and that it's not only you, your borders, that are affecting how you live. And because of that diversity, I feel like I'm a more, I'm a better person, and I would love if I can share that kind of growth that I've experienced by traveling to many other people. It's not so much about um, it's not so much about uh culture, but it's it's more of understanding how issues affect us all when we're doing something, how everybody gets affected, and I love to share that. And I'm really grateful that we're quite diverse right now. We're from so many countries and so many cities and, as a result, I feel like we're all learning from each other so much, so much and you've grown so quickly as well.

Alex:
32:12

I mean, I, I was um speaking to to Nicholas yesterday. Nicholas is the co-founder of um, chili Piper, and he was um. I was saying that I was reading an article. It was dated 2018 and, um, at that time, you had 28 people and right now you have 42. And would you say that working on a remote basis has enabled that growth?

Alina Vandenburgh:
32:41

Well, we have bigger goals than that. 40 is just the beginning. I would love to get employees in every country and then get to know how that culture can work. But for sure it's easier to find talent when you're not restricted by boundaries, especially now. I live in New York and New York is super competitive. There's Google, there's Amazon, there's Facebook fighting for tech talent, and a kid out of school here who has finished computer science can get upwards of $100,000 in salaries, and for a startup it's very hard to compete with tech giants like that, Whereas us we're not restricted. We can hire anywhere. We can hire anywhere we find talent and people that are willing to learn and get on a path of rocket ship.

Alex:
33:45

Yeah, it's a fast-moving, it's a fast pace. You've got there. What is the makeup of your, your, your team right now? Do you have a? I know you said you're quite flat in your structure, but I have you sort of segmented it into different departments as yet we have the engineers.

Alina Vandenburgh:
34:00

Like everybody, we, the the engineers that I have scrums with every day um, we have the sales team that is rapidly growing. We just hired a CMO and the CMO is hiring the marketing engine. So far we've functioned without marketing. I don't know how we did that. It's interesting because we put these job posts on and we advertise them on websites like we work remotely and things like that on and we advertise them on websites like we work remotely and things like that. And I try to advertise on female only distribution channels as well, but we still get a majority of applicants are male. I really want to get more female candidates. I try to spread as much as I can the the job post on on on this website so that we can get much more female representation.

Alex:
34:56

It's for sure in we're diverse in in culture, but we're not yet diverse in in female versus male, and I I'm I'm fighting to change that yeah, I mean I don't know if you read the website, but that's one thing that I'm passionate about also, because obviously there's a disparity where that's concerned isn't there, and I think there's so many different theories. Is it a pipeline issue?

Alina Vandenburgh:
35:26

It's a pipeline for us. For sure, 100%. Such a small percentage of female.

Alex:
35:29

For sure, 100, such a small percentage of email it really is such a small percentage, and it's, it's hiring in itself is is is difficult enough without trying to to find a needle in a haystack, isn't it? So it's, it's, um, it's, it's one of those things that I'm really passionate about and um, you know, if you are looking for a new role, I'd urge you to go and have a look at Chili Piper's website and speak to Alina and I'll share this out as far as I can as well, to hopefully drum up some support your way, alina, as well.

Alina Vandenburgh:
36:02

That'd be awesome. That'd be awesome. I have a very interesting recruiting process that I don't think anybody else has. I don't look at resumes. I do not look at schools. I don't even care if they went to school.

Alex:
36:19

Wow, okay.

Alina Vandenburgh:
36:21

I don't care how long they've been working. They could work 10 years or a month, I don't care. What I really care about is that they do well on my test, and my test is is very hard, as I was telling you, and it's interesting. I don't even look at their names, so I don't even know what country they come. I don't even know their gender. I don't know anything, I just look at the test is well done.

Alex:
36:46

I'm I'm really tempted to ask you what's on that test, but I'm sure you're not gonna. You're not that test, but I'm sure you're not gonna. You're not gonna divulge it, are you? You're not gonna, you're not gonna say, but that is very on you. I mean, there are aspects of that that are are kind of becoming more free, um used now. So, for example, no resumes and, you know, a blind interview essentially, but it's blind, blind completely. But I think the experience factor is is quite unusual, especially in remote, because a lot of people I've spoken to, a lot of the ceos, I've spoken to hiring managers, say that they ideally want people who have, you know, have some experience of whatever it is that they're going to be doing, because they don't necessarily want to be holding their hand or having to sort of guide them through certain steps. But yeah, that is unusual, but I'm intrigued, alina, I'm really intrigued well.

Alina Vandenburgh:
37:38

Well, it's, it's the skills. When you start work, it's having the right skills to to do the job really well, and those skills are not reflected in the resume or in anything else but your work. So that's the part that I'm testing with it, and it's a timed test that has some super hard questions and some super hard things to do within a super restricted time. So you have to be super greedy and super motivated and multitasking at the same time. So I think that's the reason why why it's harder than the normal recruiting process so other than we work remotely a bit of a plug, therefore.

Alex:
38:18

We were remotely. What other places are you advertising your roles and how are you trying to? How are you attracting people to the chili piper?

Alina Vandenburgh:
38:30

we have a network of recruiters as well in some countries. Um, we have some websites where we post. We also get a lot of applicants from linkedin. We are quite active on linkedin, um, not as uh, not as an uh outbound, but more because our salespeople post whenever they see something interesting and then somebody else sees their post and they say, oh, these people are having fun, versus our account executives. I don't know how they manage to find each other, but they love skiing and snowboarding, so they often post videos and pictures of them snowboarding and people wonder well, where do you work on top?

Alex:
39:11

of mountains.

Alina Vandenburgh:
39:14

It's an unusual post for a salesperson and similarly, we have our customer success team just decided to move to Colombia, so they post a lot of pictures in like super cool places and and at the carnival. So people are interested and and they say, oh, these people are not, do not have your typical nine to five to five jobs.

Alex:
39:37

I want to be part of it I think that's a big hook and, um, you know, uh, tax jar as well, tax jarcom. They they're going the same route in terms of they focus on their values as well and they focus on what they do outside of work, because, at the end of the day, you can get a million people that have got like a product manager CV or a marketing manager or a marketing director CV, but, at the end of the day, what really hooks people in, I guess, is the things like the travel, is the things like cooking, or is the things like the things that they share, the things that they have in common. Right, that's what draws people in.

Alina Vandenburgh:
40:19

Definitely there's an aspect of similarity in hobbies and passions. Obviously the community is very important for every one of us and being part of that community not on that business that you work timetable, but on your own timetable, so that I don't know if you have a kid and you want to pick them up at a certain time from school, there's no restriction on that, and if you want to cycle at 2 pm because that's when there are no, that's when there's no traffic. It definitely creates a different rhythm in people's life and a space for them to be passionate about things that they would not be passionate about otherwise.

Alex:
41:04

It's like I said before, it's a gift when you worked in a scenario, like I said, remote work doesn't suit everybody, but when you worked in a scenario that doesn't suit you, when you then move to a scenario that suits you, whether it be remote or not, but especially remote for me, it's a gift Because, like Alina said, you can do the things that you perhaps couldn't do if you were I don't know in a job that demanded that you work late, for example, and you know those sorts of things, and you didn't have a balance. So you've managed to strike a balance yourself, haven't you, alina? In terms of running two businesses, and you've had a little new arrival to your family quite recently as well.

Alina Vandenburgh:
41:49

I had a baby, which has changed a lot of things for sure. Um, back to back to your observation that remote work is not for everyone. It's indeed the case. We observe that not everybody can resist within this uh framework, because you definitely need to be a bit more self-disciplined and a little bit more self-aware, and it we had employees that got isolated and then they decided not to be part of community office or or do things outside of that staying at home and working and that can burn you out as well. So it's definitely not for everybody. You have to be very much aware of how you spend your time and how you get to interact with the world.

Alina Vandenburgh:
42:37

The part for me that clicked is that I have to work on things that are more creative, I guess, than your typical role, and ideas don't come to me when I sit at my desk. Ideas come to me when I walk. Ideas come to me when I bike, when I exercise, and I sometimes get stuck on something and I cannot proceed and I go and I do something. That's a bit more unusual. Boom, an idea comes to me. So for me it suits me very well.

Alina Vandenburgh:
43:10

I also don't like to do things that normally people like to do. I don't like to cook. Unfortunately, I like to eat, but I don't like to cook. I don't like to go shopping. Um, so, as a result, I I am really attached to the work that I do. I really like software and building software, and that's what I think about in the evening, that's what I think about in the weekends, so it's definitely, it definitely suits me. Um, well, now that I have a baby, and a child as well, I'm much more um intentional about my time, for sure. Yeah, um, in that I am very aware if I do something that's not beneficial for me or for him in his education, like scrolling mindlessly on social media or I don't know, staring at articles that are not going to make me a better person. It has changed things a bit, yeah.

Alex:
44:10

Yeah, and that intent is yeah, it doesn't suit everybody as bit. Yeah, yeah, and that intent is yeah, it doesn't suit everybody. As we've said, that intent is important. I think I I did a podcast the other day about looking after your your not just your mental health, because mental health is getting a lot of coverage right now, but I think, especially as as a somebody who works remotely because sometimes there's a habit, we sit down quite a lot, I guess, unless you have a sit-stand desk, for example you have to look after your physical health as well, the physical side of things, and especially, like you said, now you have a child Alina, I've got my children you have to be mentally and physically equipped to deal with all those different um scenarios.

Alex:
44:52

So you have to have know yourself, like kalina says, you have to know what you want to do, but then you have to have the discipline to to actually do those things. Don't just say you're going to go and exercise or go and ride your bike, um, or go for a walk. Do do it, um, and really find out what those passions are for you. And how has it been with you, um, uh, with, with your, with your, with your baby? How have you, how are you balancing everything?

Alina Vandenburgh:
45:19

I think I don't. I uh, I am lucky because I have my mom around and she's very good with my baby. So, as a result, I don't have that in the back of my mind, that it gives me the kind of peace of mind that I don't think any other organization would. I know that he's in good hands and my mom loves him and he loves her. So I'm lucky. I'm very lucky in that regard. I'm very aware of it and whenever I do spend time with him, I make sure that it's hyper quality time that we enjoy. We don't look at screens I don't even have a TV service at home, so there's no risk of that. We're doing a lot of outdoor activities. We make sure that we get a lot of air and vitamin D. Vitamin D is a hot topic these days.

Alex:
46:19

Oh yeah, so important.

Alina Vandenburgh:
46:24

There's definitely. I'm still trying to figure it all out how to best be a human and how to be good at this new game for me the parenting part. I'm reading a lot of books. I'm becoming very passionate about learning everything there is to know and all the scientific literature on the subject, but it's a fun path.

Alex:
46:48

Yeah, it is, and I think you learn as you go along. I think it's one of those roles that you can't there's no job description for it and there's no sort of, like you know, list of things to do now and this is what you should do at this scenario. You kind of you learn on the job, On the job.

Alina Vandenburgh:
47:06

Yeah.

Alex:
47:09

And that whole thing of balance. I think that word balance, I suppose it does put you, it puts people under pressure, doesn't it? Because it makes you think that everything should be sort of sort of like perfectly aligned. But for me, what I've learned is that the balance is is that everything is as happy as it can be, everything is sort of ticking along as it can be. That balance does change, you know, but it kind of you work it out, you work, you work it out eventually.

Alex:
47:36

So that's great and I, I admire you for what you're doing, elena, in terms of growing your business, um, you know, and, and your family, it's, it's and traveling and remote work. For me, you've got, you've got, you've got. You've got everything sorted out as far as I'm concerned. So I really admire what you're doing. So what is in the? I don't want to take up too much of time. I could ask you so many more questions, but, um, I don't want to take up too much of your time, but I wanted to ask you what's in, what's on the horizon for for chili piper, what? What are your plans for the up and coming months, next year or so?

Alina Vandenburgh:
48:12

well, first of all, I want to just step back for one second and just pinpoint something in that you are definitely a positive person and showing a lot of gratitude, and I think that's a super important, a super important value. We often forget that gratitude should be part of our everyday routine. It changes a lot of things and it allows us to view things in a new light. With that said, I think that, as I'm looking at the future of Chili Piper and our company, keeping that particular value is very important to me. At scale, making sure that people don't forget to be kind to one another, that we don't forget to be grateful of the things and seeing positiveness in our interactions, is going to be interesting to manage at scale. Keeping a self-starting orientation in everybody to have that kind of ownership where everybody can affect everything and there's no organizational structure, is going to be interesting at scale as well. So there's definitely a lot of thinking that we'll have to go through in terms of operations as we're scaling and how to keep that same fun attitude that we have towards work. At the same time, in order to sustain ourselves and in order to sustain our employees, we have to grow revenue as well, of course and that is important in everything that we do, we have to become sustainable and be economically viable, so we're going to look at how that can can change things as well.

Alina Vandenburgh:
50:13

Our products right now are all available to enterprise setup, so you have to talk to a rep to set you up because they're quite complex, but we're currently exploring ways in which we can make them available for self-service so that people can come in and just set themselves up. It's not it's not entirely easy, but for search and use cases it is if the company is smaller. So that's what, personally, I'm focusing on right now from a product perspective as well, and, as a result, I'm hiring super smart designers and product managers. So if you have anyone who's listening to the podcast, who wants to work from hawaii and to work from new zealand uh on cool, uh on hard problems go to our website and apply. Don't get scared of the test. Um, but yeah, those are the things that I'm thinking about that are on top of my mind well, guys, I did try to get as much as I could out of Alina about the test.

Alex:
51:12

I wasn't fortunate to do that, so what I will ask her, though what I will ask you, alina, is how can somebody make themselves an attractive potential hire to your business outside of their?

Alina Vandenburgh:
51:27

Well, yeah, I'll just leave the floor open to you it's not only chili piper, I think it's any organization, anybody trying to grow and then be a better uh, suitable candidate is exposure to as many diverse things as possible. It's very important that we get skills that are complementary to each other but also quite diverse, in that if you're, for instance, an engineer, you should definitely look into design, you should definitely look into interaction design, you should definitely understand product management as well, because that makes you a better engineer. Similarly, if you're a product manager, you should definitely understand a bit of javascript, a bit of java, a bit of a bit of all these languages, because then you can talk better to the engineers, understand their problems and understand where they're coming from. And it's the same for every role, as as soon as you can expose yourself and be curious just be curious about different areas of expertise you just become better. So I think that's a general thing that can apply to not only um, not only chili piper, but for any.

Alex:
52:37

Any other job that one can apply for is is arm yourself with diverse skill set absolutely, and yeah, I would agree with you because that's that what you've just said is reflected by many of the other people who are hiring and many of the CEOs. That is just that diversity of skills of thought of you know all, that's all critical thinking, yeah, yeah.

Alex:
52:58

Yeah Well, alina, it's been absolutely wonderful speaking to you. As I said, I've got lots more questions I'd like to ask, but I know you're busy. As I said, I've got lots more questions I'd like to ask, but I know you're busy. Anybody who's curious about Chili Piper and the jobs, please go to chilipipercom that's c-h-i-l-i. Pipercom and have a look at their jobs pages and check them out, and I recommend having a look and see what you can see. But, alina, thank you so much for joining me on the Remote Work Life podcast. I'll certainly be keeping an eye on what Chili Piper is doing and what you and Nicholas are doing. So all the best with it for the future.

Alina Vandenburgh:
53:41

Thank you, alex. I had a lot of fun you too, and let me know when the episode is up so that I can share it.

Alex:
53:50

I certainly will Thank you, Alina.

Alina Vandenburgh:
53:53

Bye-bye, bye.

Alex:
53:55

So there you have it. That was my interview there with Alina Vandenberg of Chili Piper. I hope you enjoyed that, and it's quite appropriate that we finish by talking about jobs, because I know right now there's lots of insecurity, there's lots of uncertainty around jobs and lots of people I know are being made redundant, which is really unfortunate because of the situation with the coronavirus and restrictions on work and the effects it's having upon business. I hope you're not in that situation yourself, but if you are, please continue to listen and watch out for future videos that I'm going to release, because I'm hoping that they can help. They'll help you in some way to, I guess, understand what you need to do if you are trying to transition from your current situation to a new situation, especially if you're trying to find remote work opportunities, because all the videos I'll be releasing there'll be around about 30 or so of them all the videos I'll be releasing will be interviews and conversations I've had with CEOs, leaders and experts within remote businesses, so they'll focus mainly on what it's like to work in a remote business, so that you, too, can know yourself what it's like. You know what to expect. I'll talk also, or we'll talk, about remote work, culture and communication and tech, all that sort of thing how to thrive while working from home that's going to be an important topic right now. So listen out for the videos, because I'll also be obviously covering bonafide remote businesses and there's lots of, I guess, quite dubious opportunities in inverted commas, dubious opportunities and businesses out there right now. So you can be sure that the ones I'll be covering will be bonafide business leaders and bonafide businesses. So look out for that. Look out for those videos as well as the audio.

Alex:
55:50

I'll be publishing the videos on remoteworklifeio and I'd urge you to follow the hashtag remote but together, so that you don't miss a beat, so you don't miss a video that will be published.

Alex:
56:05

And on a final note, I mean if you are experiencing uncertainty in your career, I just want to remind you that I help managers gain clarity and direction in their careers through one-to-one and group career coaching. And if you find yourself in a situation where you, or your team, in fact, have been made redundant, I work with coaching associates and we can help to put together a plan for you to help you to at least begin to think about and think about what you need to do to transition from where you are now to you know well, not first and foremost, but eventually you'll need to start to think about where you're headed in the future, and I and my team certainly can help you with that. But for now, that is all from me, from the Remote Work Life podcast. As I said, check out remoteworklifeio for future interviews. Follow the hashtag remote put together so you can stay up to date when new interviews are published, and I will speak with you soon.