RWL036 Transforming Business Operations through Global Remote Teams w/ Andy Tryba

Future of Work

Alex Wilson-Campbell

0:00

Yeah, no, no. So we are going to continue to buy, you know as part of my.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

0:04

Think3 fund. We're going to continue to buy as many companies as humanly possible, right, and we're going to staff them with great remote teams from around the world. And, literally, you know, I view that as a big part of my competitive advantage on buying these companies is that I now know how to source and assemble these great teams and manage these great teams and put them into these companies, and it dramatically changes the trajectory of these companies when you just infuse it with better and better people. So I view that and I'm sure there will be other private equity firms that spring up that will end up doing the same thing but I believe that to be the absolute future of, you know, not only PE, but certainly VC and startups too. So you know. So we're just going to continue to buy. Companies are crazy. We're trying to go from. You know, I think we bought 30 companies last year or this year. We're trying to go to one a week next year and then we're trying to go to one a day by 2021.

Andy Tryba

1:08

That was the voice of andy treber, who is the remarkable ceo of crossovercom. But not only he is is he the ceo of crossovercom? He's also a serial entrepreneur as well and, as you heard from that little introduction there, a serial investor as well. And yes, you heard rightly, he's looking by the year 2021 to buy one company per day and staff those companies with remote talent. So he's somebody that's really at the forefront, as far as I'm concerned, in terms of driving the future of not just remote work but work in general.

Andy Tryba

1:41

So he's certainly one to to listen out for, and this podcast will just give you a little snippet, a little snapshot into not only his his philosophies on the future of work because he's very much a futurist as well but his ideas in terms of how to build trust with data and productivity, how to you know the future of work when it comes to management and the use of bots this is a very interesting topic that we touched upon during the conversation as well and his desire and ambition to assemble the best team anywhere in the world and you know that's no joke.

Andy Tryba

2:19

So listen up for this interview, I'd say, if you're, I guess, just have any particular interest in growing teams in what it takes really to gain trust in your Twitter handle in the show notes. So check Andy out as well. As usual, I always start out by really delving into the I suppose the the softer side when it comes to speaking to people like Andy. I wanted to know a bit bit about him, how he got to where he is and that's how I started off the interview. Enjoy.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

3:03

Enjoy. Yeah, so I grew up in Japan until I was about 13 or so, japanese mother and, you know, american father, and so I think that the Japan side of the world kind of deeply influenced kind of all the different things that I've done over the years. But then on my professional career, I guess I was at Intel for 14 years. I was at the US White House for a year under the previous administration.

Andy Tryba

3:25

I got to clarify that nowadays.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

3:28

And then since then I've kind of started a variety of different companies, sold some but kept some. But the remote work world and distributed teams has always been a big part of that, as well as the future of work.

Andy Tryba

3:42

And why is that? Why has remote been something that's been, I suppose, a recurring theme for you?

Alex Wilson-Campbell

3:48

Yeah, you know it really comes back to my time at Intel, where you know Intel's an interesting company, where you know you basically have to dig a big hole in the ground, throw about $15 billion into it and five years later, fingers crossed.

Andy Tryba

4:01

Hopefully you're right right.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

4:02

So you spend a lot of time thinking about the future and the products that I was working on was really all geared towards business.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

4:09

So we would do a bunch of studies of how teams would work together and how people would interact with technologies and therefore you'd see trends. And the first trend that, of course, is obvious now but is that all compute goes to the cloud? Okay, obvious, and then all software follows that. Another obvious one, but the one that I think that is still emerging that people don't realize is that with all software being in the cloud, in reality, since your job is interacting with all of those pieces of software to get work done nowadays, that really your job then goes to the cloud and then all of a sudden, when your job is in the cloud, and then all of a sudden, when your job is in the cloud, things completely change from a work perspective and how you think about productivity, how you think about how you assemble teams and how you really go and drive things like culture and others. So it's really stemmed from that time at Intel that really kind of my passion around remote started is that?

Andy Tryba

5:03

that was, I guess, the inspiration for um for crossover as well, because you started off with crossover, well, you're known also as crossover for work, is that right?

Alex Wilson-Campbell

5:12

yeah, it's crossover. I think I think the crossover uh, you know twitter handle, I think, was it was taken, so I think that they put for work at the end of it, just by line. But it's a good crossovercom, so it's crossover excellent.

Andy Tryba

5:25

Well, tell us more about crossover, because it's it was one of those things I mean. Hiring is, is is one of the biggest um issues I guess you could say with any business, most of all, I guess, remote business there's big challenges wearing it when it comes to hiring and, and from what I can see, crossover seems to solve a lot of those issues. Could you tell us just a bit more about Crossover, to begin with as well?

Alex Wilson-Campbell

5:53

Yeah, sure. So with Crossover, what we basically do is we go around trying to find the best people from around the world and everyone freaking says that, so it sounds cliche, but here's the way that we basically do it. Right Is that we've got anywhere between 20 and 25,000 people a week apply to our various jobs, and then we test everyone right. Because at the end of the day, if you look at what the way that most people get their jobs and you know they today they look at people's resumes and you look at the resume and you like it. You bring them in for an interview and you interview them and then you hire them. All that is so outdated and archaic.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

6:29

Literally the resume. The format of the resume was invented by Leonardo da Vinci, believe it or not, 500 years ago. His resume looked a little bit better than ours, granted, but it's still the same thing. It's like a list of accomplishments. Whatever people want to put, it doesn't really tell you a whole lot. And then interviews are actually worse than a coin flip in that you have all these human biases that come in there, on what school they went to, where they used to work, how they look, whatever it may be. So you're taking this 500-year-old artifact and then you're putting it into this non-objective, non-structured model and believing that you can get someone. That's just wrong, right? So what we do is we test everyone and we think that for every single role, you could come up with very specific tests on you know what that job is really going to be like and what are the skills that are needed and things like that, and kind of then objectively really understand who's really really good at their job. And then you can interview them for things like cultural fit and things like that, right? So so that's what we do around the world and I think you know we then you know, you know we then assemble them into these cloud teams and we give them a bunch of tools to try to drive their productivity and what have you.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

7:40

And one big thing I think that's different about what we do is that we also have what I call a cloud wage. And what I mean by the cloud wage is that, if you think about how people, how wages, are set today, right, they're hyperlocal in that what a Java developer makes in San Francisco is different than here in Austin, texas, it's different in Rio de Janeiro, right, but they all could be doing the exact same job. Java developer makes in san francisco is different than here in austin, texas is different, you know, in rio de janeiro, right, but they all could be doing the exact same job, of course, right, particularly since they're doing it in the cloud. So you're like why should they all make something different? So we pay the exact same, no matter where in the world you are.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

8:18

So it's because we believe that you should get paid for you know how good you are, not where you live, and therefore we have these, what? These cloud wages, which are horizontal anywhere around the world. So it doesn't matter if you're in romania. If you qualify for our one of our svp positions, you're making 400 000 us dollars a year. It doesn't matter that you're in romania and you're literally like. Four thousand dollars is completely different than than the wage rates in romania, of course, but that's what you're worth right to the companies and what have you to my company, so that's what you should get paid. So those are the fundamental differences, I think, and it's all 40-hour-a-week long-term positions careers the whole nine yards.

Andy Tryba

8:56

We believe that that is the future of work. No, I love the idea of getting paid based on what you bring to the table, because getting paid based on you know what you bring to the table Because, like you said, it doesn't matter where you may be, you know you could be just as good, if not better, than anybody else I love that, I love that idea and I think that's that's one of the things that really sort of compelled me to want to speak to you to find out more about your ideas behind that. And, of course, you've assembled your own team as well, your own remote. You're a remote first team, right? Is that right All?

Alex Wilson-Campbell

9:27

remote. Everything I do is remote across all of my companies and I actually, you know, so we've got thousands of people across my various companies now that are, you know, that are in 130 different countries and every single time I buy a company, I, you know, I basically staff that up with all remote teams, teams, because magic happens when you can get these amazing people from around the world to infuse them into these companies, like literally, magic happens.

Andy Tryba

9:55

Nice. It's amazing and I mean, what's the? I guess, like you said, you've got different teams, but what's the general makeup of your team with Crossover, what sort of what different departments do you have? And is it just typical of a, you know, a sas, um remote business or anything different?

Alex Wilson-Campbell

10:13

Yeah, so think about it in two different lines. So there's the team that I have that actually operates Crossover itself, right, which is kind of your sourcing teams, your testing teams, your engineering teams and your support teams and all that other good jazz, right, but then and that is a relatively modest set of people but the bigger part of my team is actually using all of that talent that comes in to then buy these various other SaaS companies and infuse them into those companies and in those companies we've got everything, all of the various types of teams that you can imagine, everything, not only your typical engineering teams and what have you and support, but we do inside sales via remote. We do marketing via remote. We, we do inside sales via remote, we do marketing via remote. We do finance and accounting via remote. Every single type of team that you need to run a sas company, you know. We, we staff up across all these various companies that I buy it's amazing.

Andy Tryba

11:12

I was amazed that you know the, the portfolio that you have, and it's all obviously interconnected into, as you've just explained, what challenges, what are the biggest challenges for you that you've had to overcome with, not just with crossover, but just with amalgamating such a portfolio?

Alex Wilson-Campbell

11:30

Yeah, you know, it's interesting, you know, and there's challenges that we face across the board, of course challenges that we face across the board, of course.

Data-Driven Remote Work Productivity Tools

Alex Wilson-Campbell

11:42

But I have to say that figuring out how to do a lot of these functions remote was a big part of it, right? Because obviously, the way that you manage a remote team is just fundamentally different than the way that you manage a local team, and therefore, when you start thinking about how you actually manage and coach those individuals, you have to then say what are the assets that I now have, because they are doing work in the cloud, and how do I leverage those? And, for example, you know, one thing that you lack is that they're not down your hall, right, so you can't just walk around, but what you do have is that they are, you know, producing. You know we all produce about two terabytes of data a year when we're working, banging away, you know what application is, the foreground background, who I'm collaborating with, and things like that. And then so we were like, great, how do we gather all that data to be able to provide real-time coaching to people, right, where you know, if you think about the notion of lead and lag metrics, where?

Alex Wilson-Campbell

12:31

the lag metric is like I, you know, did I lose? Did I lose my five pounds that I was trying to lose, right? But you know? But if you just wait to step on the scale two weeks later, you're like, oh, I either lost it or I didn't lose it, right? You need a lead metric which is, like, you know, like a Fitbit, right? Which is like did I take my 10,000 steps today or not? Right?

Alex Wilson-Campbell

12:51

And people look down they're like oh, I didn't do it, so I'm going to walk up the stairs, right, and that's a lead metric that then leads to the outcome or the lag metric that you want, right. So in the cloud world, we had to figure out what are these lead metrics that matter, that we can give people the coaching and provide these data points to then lead to the results that we want. So figuring all that was really really important. I'd say that the second really really important thing was how you actually develop culture remotely right, because, end of the day, you know, these are your teams, these are, you know, this is the, the folks that are, you know, in battle with you. You know, you gotta, you gotta believe what you believe together and you gotta build this culture and it's different.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

13:28

When you know, then you know.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

13:29

When you you can't go out and grab a pint together necessarily very easily although I still do remember, I do still tell people hey, just because you're remote doesn't mean that airplanes don't work. You should still get together every once in a while. Uh, but like how you build culture remotely. And and I and I just bought this company uh called sococo, which is like one of the most exciting companies that I've bought in a long time, because it it focuses on this remote culture element of it and it really kind of gives you a visual overlay of your, of your floor and as if people were kind of sitting there together and uh, and I'm excited for that no, it sounds like there's lots of exciting things.

Andy Tryba

14:02

I could probably get this podcast to go for two hours, let alone, uh, 30 minutes with all the questions that are springing into my head. But no, I I'm fascinated because you mentioned you were talking about the fitbit. Um, you're giving the fitbit sort of analogy there. Tell us more than about so you, you've developed, you've developed this tool which is kind of like the Fitbit sort of analogy there. Tell us more, then, about because you've developed this tool which is kind of like the Fitbit for work and productivity. Can you tell us more about that? I mean, there's lots of them out there on the market, but how is WorkSmart different? What can it bring?

Alex Wilson-Campbell

14:36

Yeah, so WorkSmart is probably my worst marketed product of all time right now. But what we're trying to do is really do exactly what I was mentioning, which is, like, how do we measure all these various things to be able to provide people real-time coaching on the spot? Because I believe that, again, getting that lead metric really, really matters in people's hands. But then I also believe that the manager of the future is really a bot, right where it like tells you right, you know what you're actually doing. Well, here's the way you're working versus other people, and just, you know. That might be okay, but you know these are the top performers over here. Are you sure you don't want to do it like this? Right? So, like giving people this level of coaching based on real data, because I think back towards most of my reviews that I've, you know, either done, or even, you know, when I was Intel or others, and they're super data light, right. You're like you meet with someone once a quarter or once a year and like here's three things you did well and three things you need to get improvement on, and you're like there's no data, there's no anything. Right, it's like a manager like wrote it like three minutes before the meeting Right, but like, this is real data. Right, where you're banging away, you're working. Like who you're working with, how are you working? Like when are you most productive? Like, how do we, you know, how do we think about your team? Like athletes, right, where, like all the best athletes in the world, right, you think about your golf swing or whatever, you're measuring your angle of attack or you're, you know you're, if you're a soccer, soccer player, you're measuring the compression on the golf ball, on the on the soccer ball. You know, if you're a basketball player, you're measuring your arc. Like all these things that you're measuring right. And then you're giving it back to the athlete and say, hey, change this or change that and making them better. But we don't do that on the business side, we don't do that on the work side. You're like, why not? Right, so that's what we're trying to go.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

16:14

Build right is like measure everything to try to run regressions, to get that, to help people to get better and better and better. And if we get good at that, then the individuals will get better. But not only will the individuals get better. We'll then be able to go further back in the recruiting cycle and say, well, what is it about this individual then, and how they work and how they're great and what their background was and how they did, and how they're great and what their background was and how they did on the various tests?

Alex Wilson-Campbell

16:39

And then can we then statistically tell you when you apply hey, alex, I think that you're applying for this role here, but you have a 90% chance to be top performer in this role. You sure you don't want to apply for this one instead, and to be able to give that type of guidance to people as they apply, or even reach out to people, be like, oh my God, like you are the you know 99 fit for this role. You got to come apply right, like so all those things. We want this circular motion to occur, but it comes from measuring that data and the good news is that you know we're measuring a lot of it. But now we, you know we're still trying to figure out the correlations and all that we got.

Andy Tryba

17:12

We got a long way to go there well, we're keeping an eye on that, because, if productivity is like a, it's a massive talking point in not just in the world of work, but remote work in particular, because you know that, um, because when you, when you're, I suppose, disseminated over such a wide space, you, you, as a manager, you have to have, like you said, those data points to to understand where you can make improvements, to understand, yeah, to understand where the holes are. So, so, no, that sounds good to me, exactly.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

17:40

Because, like unfortunately, and the reason why most managers still don't do remote is they don't trust it right.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

17:47

They're like is that person really working or not? Are they really on the golf course somewhere, right? So, like, the good news is that with this data model and you can you know it also provides trust in a scalable way, because you can see them work and you can see the data points, you can see the intensity, you can see who they're collaborating with and things like that and as a manager, then you're like great, I can now look across my 1,000, 2,000, 3,000 people and, even though they're all remote, I know that they're being productive and I have even more data on them than the random person that's just sitting in the cubicle down the hall or whatever else it may be. So I believe that this will become the norm and I believe that this is actually the way that it's a scalable, remote future versus today. It's, you know, these tiny little pocket niches.

Andy Tryba

18:29

Today, yeah, I'm with you and I think another thing, I suppose, which is obviously related to this we're talking about, obviously, recruiting and finding the best people and making things a bit more efficient, and a lot of managers I speak to ceos etc talk about the volume of volume of applicants that they get for each role, in particular, remote roles. Obviously, remote work is is a very popular thing, it's very en vogue at the moment, but they always get a sort of a swathe of applicants to different roles and that testing at the top of the funnel sort of thing, and not just the top of the funnel but throughout the whole process is really important. How could you you know you've developed, I suppose, custom processes, testing tools, haven't you to sort of make this easier? Can you tell us more about those?

Global Remote Work Talent Acquisition

Alex Wilson-Campbell

19:20

Yeah, no, so we use a combination of both custom tools as well, as I would consider to be kind of industry standard. And so we look at any given role and we say what are the really the key important characteristics of that role? From everything from a cognitive capability to of that role, from everything from a cognitive capability to the level of English capability to the specifics of that role itself. I'll give you an example. My executive assistant is a good example, because everyone you can visualize that for software developers and making them code and analyzing their code and things like that. But I like to kind of use examples that are a little bit different in that, like by EA, right, I'm like okay, so I'm like okay, what are the important characteristics of EA? Yeah, sure, right, when she's to be smart, she needs to communicate well. But then, like she also, because I travel all over the place, right, she needs to be an expert at travel. Right, she needs to be an expert at, like, multiple time zones. Right, since we're doing meetings and multiple time zones.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

20:21

And then she also needs to be able to be an expert at like expense reports and stuff like that. Like it seems like those are three things that are reasonable for the people to be experts on, right. So we develop a test that would test all three of those Right and we had 421 people apply, I think, for that given role and we gave them all this test Right and like the. The travel one was like hey, I'm flying from austin to chicago to dubai, right.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

20:43

And then here are a bunch of different airline options and prices and and and which is the best one, and and there's multiple good answers, but then you know this one has too tight of a connection through o'hare or whatever else may be, so you can really kind of see who does it. Or you know, or like the time zone one. You're like, hey, here are five people, they all have to meet at UTC time. You like, do the conversion and you know multiple choice, right, you can go do that. Or the expense support.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

21:08

One was really good in that it was like here are you know 10 different receipts and here's you know 50 different exchange rates. You know translate them into an expense report and then also separate what business versus personal, and then give me an answer in us dollars, right, and you have to do the conversions and see what you know a whole nine yards. And and you run like hundreds of people through these tests. Right, you do cognitive tests, english tests and those tests and the people you get at the end of it are awesome, you know that they're really, really good at their job, and then you interview them right.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

21:36

and then you, you know obviously yeah, because I interact with them all the time like you, you want to make sure that you get along with them and stuff like that right. So, like you, you could envision these types of tests A lot of them, you know we do automated in manner and therefore it really weeds out the people and really brings out the people that are really really the best in their trait, and then you can go look for the soft stuff. So we do that across the board. And again, I said that we've got anywhere between 20 and 25,000 people a week that apply for a job. So we got to get good at these.

Andy Tryba

22:05

That is a lot, that's a big number, oh my gosh. And talking about the soft skills, I mean how do you recommend? Then I mean can you? I don't know if you can really test for soft skills, because people can change their behaviors, can't they? Um? So I don't know what's your, what's your view on, on testing for soft skills?

Alex Wilson-Campbell

22:28

yeah, so you know, I kind of, uh, I divide soft skills kind of into, uh, you know, three different categories, right?

Alex Wilson-Campbell

22:34

one is kind of just a soft skill of communication, right, like communication quality you can test, because sometimes you know, in a sales you want a five out of five out of English, but maybe for a developer role you're like three out of five. So you can kind of, you know, test for English quality there, right, you have them, do a recording and things like that. For then we also give some personality tests and we look for consciousness and some other characteristics that we've known to be relevant for certain types of roles, like support and what have you. But then on the last one, yeah, I mean, you really kind of you do have to look for you know the type of role that it is and understand whether or not they've got the right demeanor for that type of role.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

23:16

But in all scenarios you want people that have a bit more of a growth mentality, right. Or you want people to be like no, absolutely Like. You know they can take coaching and they can be like great, I want to get better and they, you know, and move on. And those are the types of people that I look for. Is the people that you know that that can really be like you know what? No, I want, give me the feedback. I want the direct feedback, I want radical candor so I can get better because you know I, I, I can strive and continue to get better because I have this growth mentality and it's it's been harder to test for that, but certainly the way that you, when you talk to folks, you can kind of feel that and I'd love to make it all objective at some point.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

23:54

But you know, I think that you know each of these soft skills you gotta, you know, we just gotta get better and better at our testing no, definitely, definitely.

Andy Tryba

24:00

I like that. I like it. Radical candor yes, I'm a fan of that myself and obviously, when you're doing your searches, you're you're searching. I think the beauty of remote work and hiring in remote work is that it's like you can you have access to people from all over the world to do whichever role that you want. But that can obviously bring its challenges as well. I mean, is it? Am I right in saying you search for candidates across nearly 100 countries? Yeah even more.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

24:32

so actually, we actually have people today in 130 different countries. But we search even broader than that Because we're a big believer that the wider that you search, the better and better talent that you can get. The analogy I give often is a football analogy. Where I'm here in Austin, texas, there's two million people or so in the greater Austin area. If I were to assemble a football team here, it would be a decent team. There's two million people to choose from. Right. But if I expand my denominator to all of the United States, right, and 350 million people in the United States and I assemble the team, rest assured my US team is going to beat my us team and like and without a doubt, there's no doubt that in my global best team is going to beat my austin team. Like, like, like.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

25:27

People look at that like. There's obviously no comparison. But yet when people assemble companies in their, in their team, right, you're like oh, but I only want to choose the people in austin or my zip code, right. You're like what are you doing? Right, like you, you want to. You, you want to. You don't want to compete. You don't want, you don't want the global team. Like, what world do you not want that? Right. So we're like guys like go everywhere and like the one thing that I've learned, you know, over the last 15 years doing distributed and remote teams, is that, uh, that there are amazing people fricking everywhere and it's awesome and it's inspiring to see man.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

25:57

No matter where I land, I meet with people and chat with them. It's such amazing, inspiring stories. I'm like, I'm so happy that I got the honor to meet you. There are everywhere. Fortunately, 70% of the people in the US. They don't even have a passport. They've never gone anywhere. Is it 70%? 70%, wow, it's a crazy town. You're like there are great people everywhere. That 70%, right. So like crazy talent, right. So you're like like there are great people everywhere. So, like, and that's why I'm like trying to buy as many companies as possible now, because I'm like guys, what a great competitive advantage. If I can figure out how to leverage all this great talent and put them, buy these companies and infuse them, magic can happen, right. So I'm like man, like just back up the truck, like if I can continue to find all the great people around the world and if I can like assemble the top one percent of talent for anyone around the world. Like, how much are you willing to pay to have the world's best team and whatever, right like it's, it's infinite right.

Andy Tryba

26:47

So no, it's, it's, it's. It's a great thing and I think, like I said, remote brings so much opportunity. It's amazing that there are still people out there who, I mean, I know there's obviously again lots of things that um can be improved, and that same can be said about co-located business, but there's so much opportunity. That's. You know, this is why I started the podcast, because I wanted to sort of shine a light on all all the people like yourself, andy, who are sort of giving us this um, yeah, giving us this, yeah, giving us this opportunity to sort of make it, to make it work. So, no, thank you.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

27:24

Yeah, no, no. I mean it takes awareness and I appreciate you.

Future of Remote Work Acquisition

Alex Wilson-Campbell

27:27

You know you starting a podcast because it is awareness because it's still young and there's been starts and stops, right. It's been this sine wave over time where, you know, in the in the late 90s it was on this big boom and then marissa meyer and others, you know, it took a big dip in the in the early 2000s and now it's kind of coming on, coming back. But but now more than ever, I think we now have the right capabilities to do that right. Where you know, uh, it used to be that you know you go to places in the world and then like dial-up modem at best, right, I mean, there wasn't a big internet pipe, but now there's big internet pipes everywhere, even wireless.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

28:02

You've got these great remote collaboration tools. You've got these great culture-building tools like Sokoko. You've got all these great project management tools that you could do in the cloud. So we're now to that point where you can actually do a lot of these things, and it might have been a little premature before, so I can understand why it failed, but we have to do it in a scalable way, right, it can't be this like little niche things and therefore, you know, hard questions like trust matter, right, because not everyone in the world is trustworthy, right. So you gotta like you know, you gotta make sure that you protect your enterprise, right? So what can you do to actually go and and do all that? Are the things that I think. That is the next evolution remote that I'm super excited to see evolution on.

Andy Tryba

28:42

And talking about evolution, what's in the pipeline for crossover in the? What the next six to 12 months? Have you planned beyond the next 12 months? I don't know.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

28:54

Yeah, yeah, no, no, so we are going to continue to buy you know, as part of my think three fund are going to continue to buy.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

29:03

You know, as part of my Think3 fund, we're going to continue to buy as many companies as humanly possible, right? And we're going to staff them with great remote teams from around the world. And, literally, you know, I view that as a big part of my competitive advantage on buying these companies is that I now know how to source and assemble these great teams and manage these great teams and put them into these companies, and it dramatically changes the trajectory of these companies when you just infuse it with better and better people, right? So I view that and I'm sure there will be other private equity firms that spring up that will end up doing the same thing, but I believe that to be the absolute future of, not know, not only pe, but certainly vc and startups too. So, you know. So we're just going to continue to buy.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

29:45

Uh, companies are crazy. We're trying to go from uh, you know, I think we bought 30 companies last year or this year. Uh, we're trying to go to one a week. Uh, next, next year, and then, uh, we're trying to go to one a day. Uh, in by 2021. Wow, well, one thing's for sure I'll be keeping an eye out um andy to go to one a day by 2021.

Andy Tryba

30:00

Wow, well, one thing's for sure I'll be keeping an eye out, andy, to see where things are going and where are you at the moment? Where are you situated right now?

Alex Wilson-Campbell

30:12

Yeah, I'm in Austin Texas. It's a cold front coming through here, so I'm freezing my rear end off here in Austin Texas, but it's a great city, great food scene, great music scene, great tech scene here.

Andy Tryba

30:25

Excellent Sounds good. Well, andy, it's been eye-opening, it's been interesting, it's been lovely speaking to you. As I said, I'll be keeping an eye on what you are doing and your aims to sort of buy one company. You know, was it per month or per day? Was it per?

Alex Wilson-Campbell

30:40

month, so by next year we're going to do one a week, and then we're going to do one a day by 2021.

Andy Tryba

30:47

That's amazing. Well, I'll be keeping an eye out for that. Thank you for joining us, andy, and I wish you all the best with your ventures and with Crossover and, if anybody, I'll leave the details in the show notes, but if you're hiring right now or if you're looking to hire in the future, then you should get over to crossovercom and check it out, because there are challenges involved in recruiting and I think, really, crossover is a real solution that you should consider in your hiring.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

31:19

So thank you again, andy, and have anyone want to reach out to me? Feel free. I mean, my Twitter handle, of course, is just at Andy Treba, so feel free to reach out and thank you again for the time here. It's always fun to chat with other passionate remote folks.

Andy Tryba

31:33

Excellent. I'll put your Twitter handle in the in the show notes as well, so people can reach out to you. Thanks, andy. All right, so there you have it, andy tree there of crossovercom, and don't forget to reach out to him via twitter, and I've left his handle, his, uh, twitter handle in the show notes.

Andy Tryba

31:52

But I'm really intrigued to know what you thought of the interview. Whether you are I don't know a remote worker, you know what? What are your thoughts on Andy's ideas when it comes to the future of work in terms of productivity, in terms of building trust? Where do you see yourself aligning to those? You know those, those ideas that Andy talked about. Are you prepared for those sorts of work scenarios where you're being measured in terms of your productivity levels? Because that's something that you really should think about and that's something that a lot of remote businesses do not just remote businesses, but businesses in general. So that's something to think about. But if you're a business owner looking to grow your business, are you ahead of the curve when it comes to hiring the best talent? Are you still in the mindset of just hiring people locally? What tools are you using to assess your talent that are coming through the door. So all things that are relevant, all things that should be considered in your hiring process, not just now, but also in the future.

Andy Tryba

32:58

So I'd really love to hear your thoughts and, if you enjoyed this podcast, please leave me a rating, because not only does it, I guess, boost my ego in some ways, but, you know, more importantly, it helps me to to reach as many people possible, because I believe that's how iTunes and various other platforms elevate the podcast. So if you think this content is worth listening to and that other people may benefit from it, please help me out with a rating and please help me out with some sort of comment as well. That'd be great, that'd be very much appreciated. And do let me know as well what guests you know. Who do you want to hear from and what do you want me to talk about next on the podcast, because there's so many topics, there's so many areas that I've discussed already.

Andy Tryba

33:47

But this podcast, don't forget, it's all about you, it's all for you, and I want to provide you with the best content possible to help you to grow your remote work life, to help you to grow your remote business, and that's why you're so important. But don't forget, we've got lots of other interviews from a number of other remarkable other great CEOs, leaders of remote businesses, coming up for you not just over the Christmas period but also into the new year as well. So listen out for those. I'll also be dropping a few ideas myself, a few, you know, bits of advice and tips here and there all from my 10 or so years working remotely, so please look out for those too. But, you know, also connect with me. That's the final thing. Connect with me via LinkedIn, say hello, let me know you're out there, because it's a fairly lonely world sometimes when you're just starting a podcast I'm up to episode 30 or so now but it can be fairly lonely when you're recording these podcasts in your studio. So it's nice to hear from you every now and again, just to let me know that you're out there, just to let me know that you're listening and just to let me know that what I'm serving up is of value to you and if