The World is Your Oyster: Inside Tony Jamous’s Journey to Building a Billion-Dollar Platform - ep. 102

We are excited to present a fascinating new episode to kick off the year strong with some remote wisdom. This time, we sat down with Tony Jamous, CEO and co-founder of Oyster—a pioneering global employment platform. Joining our host Kaleem Clarkson for this insightful conversation is guest co-host, Jeff Frick. Together, they explore Tony's purpose-driven journey and how it shapes his approach to entrepreneurship, sustainable leadership, and remote work culture.

Tony’s entrepreneurial story began with the founding of Nexmo, a communications platform whose rapid growth eventually led to its acquisition first by Vonage and then by Ericsson for $6.5 billion. This experience, while financially rewarding, led Tony to reassess his priorities after seeing the toll intense work demands were taking on his health and well-being. This period of introspection inspired him to take a sabbatical and rethink his career goals. Determined to pursue a more meaningful path, Tony envisioned a platform that would enable economic freedom and allow individuals to access global employment while staying in their home communities. This vision led to the founding of Oyster, now valued at $1 billion and dedicated to providing cross-border employment solutions that empower individuals and benefit local economies.

A key aspect of Oyster’s mission is its focus on hiring talent from emerging markets, with 40% of its team now hailing from these regions—a significant increase from 30% just two years ago. This strategy goes beyond simply filling roles; it embodies a commitment to measurable social impact. By allowing companies to hire globally, Oyster directly invests in these economies through salaries and taxes, bolstering local development.

What values does Tony consider essential? At Oyster, diversity and inclusion are foundational, with operations spanning over 80 countries and a workforce representing more than 100 nationalities, achieving gender balance across top management and the board. Tony also dives into the topic of compensation within remote teams, highlighting Oyster’s three-zone pay system, designed to promote fair wages and reduce global income disparities. His insights reveal a profound commitment to sustainable leadership, inclusivity, and a progressive workplace culture. Through Oyster, he is championing a new model of employment that transcends borders and fosters global equality.

To top it off, Tony shares his philosophy of 'sustainable leadership‘, a concept that has become foundational to his approach to building and leading teams. Unlike traditional models focused solely on servant leadership or relentless growth, sustainable leadership prioritizes leaders’ well-being, enabling them to support their teams better. Inspired by the “oxygen mask” analogy, Tony emphasizes the need for leaders to care for themselves first to lead effectively. This approach promotes empathy-based management, which is especially relevant in today’s evolving remote work environment.

Tony’s mission is to democratize job opportunities worldwide and create a new employment model that drives social impact, especially in emerging economies. His dedication to building a more equitable global workforce and his principles of sustainable leadership make this episode a valuable roadmap for leaders seeking to align business success with positive social contributions. Start this year strong: put on your headphones and get your remote-work inspiration!

Learn more about Tony:

More about us:

• Remotely One’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/remotelyone
• Remotely One’s Webpage: https://www.remotelyone.com/

Transcript

Tony Jamous: 0:35

Hello, guys. I'm

Kaleem: 0:36

How you doing, sir? How you doing?

Tony Jamous: 0:38

doing amazing.

Kaleem: 0:40

Amazing is good. Amazing amazing.

Tony Jamous: 0:43

amazing. It's more than good.

Kaleem: 0:46

Yes. Yes,

Jeff: 0:46

What time is it there on that side of the world?

Tony Jamous: 0:49

It is 6 p. m. in Cyprus.

Jeff: 0:53

Excellent.

Kaleem: 0:54

You're still looking fresh for 6 p. m. Sir. I mean, like, did you just hop in the shower and get, you know, just get ready for the show?

Tony Jamous: 1:00

Exactly what it is.

Kaleem: 1:03

Awesome, man. Nice to finally meet you. I've seen you around. I've been following you for a while. I feel like I've known you for years. Um, actually, I want to ask you. Do you know what Kaleem means?

Tony Jamous: 1:14

Kaleem is in Arabic, right?

Kaleem: 1:16

I Believe so.

Tony Jamous: 1:17

So Kaleem, mean the word.

Kaleem: 1:21

speaker, baby speaker

Jeff: 1:24

Nice. I hope

Tony Jamous: 1:25

The word.

Kaleem: 1:27

Oh It's the word all my head my head My head. Speaker.

Jeff: 1:40

Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here coming to you from remotely one. I'm a guest host today, and I'm excited to join my good buddy, clean Clarkson to come on over and help him out to join remotely one. So Kaleem great to see you.

Kaleem: 1:53

Oh, great to see you, bro. Thank you so much, by the way, man, the guest host, we got a professional today, everyone. We got a Rick. You're professional too, bro. Don't don't. Don't, don't judge me. Don't judge me here, Rick. But we got a professional who has his own podcast. You got to check them out. Shout out to work 20 X, X podcasts. So go be sure to check Jeff out in his crew. And once again, Jeff, I appreciate you, bro. I

Jeff: 2:16

My pleasure, but there's only one Rick and Rick. We hope you get better. I know you had some other things you had to take care of today. So, uh, thanks for having me on before we get jumping in here. Just want to give us a little favor, give us a shout out on rate. This podcast. com slash remotely one Rick and clean have been at this for a while since 2015 remotely. One is one of the largest communities of remote work professionals with over 3000 slack members at 5, 000 email subscribers. So good job to Rick and Kaleem. That's pretty, pretty amazing. It's free to join. So go check it out at remotely one. com. Calm. So with that out of the way, Kaleem, tell us a little bit about our guest today.

Kaleem: 2:58

Ooh, Jeff, Jeff, Jeff, Jeff. You know what I'm saying? When I do these intros, I just get so nervous because number one, they just remind me of just how little I am. You know what I'm saying? You know what I'm saying, Jeff? Like, they're just like so intimidating. Today's guest is no, no different. They're sitting there. They're intimidating. No, I'm just playing it. They're super nice. But our guest today. All right, Jeff. Our guest today is originally from Lebanon. Okay. And they lived in France, went to school in France and now currently resides. You ready for this? I had an island called Cyprus. Right in the Mediterranean and island Jeff. That's where

Jeff: 3:36

a person of the world

Kaleem: 3:38

a person of the world Our guest today also got their bachelor's in computer science So back in the day our guest was coding some ish was coding some shit in the matrix Just like neo was chillin neo in the matrix. What do you think about neo? Which pill which pill do you

Jeff: 3:56

which color which color

Kaleem: 3:59

Let's see. Let's see. Oh That kind of led our guests to becoming really just a serial startup entrepreneur, right? So our guests created one company called Mblox, which was acquired by another company called Cinch back in the day. Then he didn't stop there. He didn't stop there. Moved on to another company called Paymo, which was acquired by a little company we may all heard of. Twilio. Every developer has heard of Twilio. If you develop any apps, you always plug it into the Twilio API. So that's a big company for some of y'all that don't know.

Jeff: 4:33

we all know we all get the Notifications coming out of Twilio all the time. So you know it more than you know that you know it

Kaleem: 4:40

Yes, that is true. That is true. Oh, something that most people don't know about our guests and guests. I'm going to ask you real quick, Jeff, our guest has two birthdays, one in July and one in August. Real quick guest. Why do you have two birthdays real quick? Why do you have two birthdays?

Tony Jamous: 4:58

Be because the guy who was in charge of register me and getting my birth certificate when I was born. He went there and forgot when I was born. And back then you had, there was no phone lines, you couldn't text somebody. Right. So he put the date of the day and I'm so blessed to have two birthdays and I get all these amazing congratulations for like 10 days

Jeff: 5:22

probably great when you're five right to get to two setups

Kaleem: 5:26

One birthday in July and one in August. They're not even in the same month, Jeff. They're not even in the same month. Okay. Let's see our guest has written and been featured in you ready for this list of publications, Inc magazine, fast company, Forbes, and fortune. Just a few Jeff, just a few. Um, geez, let me get this towel, dog. I'm nervous. I'm sweating. Our guest also is a LinkedIn top voice for leadership. Shout out, shout out to our guests. Last but not least, Jeff, last but not least. Our guests, you ready for this? Our guest is the co founder and CEO of Oyster, which is a global employment platform that has raised 225 million over the years. And it's currently has a 1 billion valuation. Whew.

Jeff: 6:20

The world is his oyster,

Kaleem: 6:21

oh, the world is his oyster. I love it, Jeff. I love it. Listeners and viewers, please give a warm welcome to Tony Jamous Skoll! Skoll! Skoll! Woo! Settle down, studio audience. Settle down. They're too loud. Sorry about that, Tony. Sorry about that, Tony. The studio audience is crazy. They're crazy.

Tony Jamous: 6:54

prior.

Kaleem: 6:58

Thank you so much, sir, for joining us. We appreciate you, man. We appreciate you.

Jeff: 7:02

Welcome Tony, so let's jump into it. So you As a clean, just said multiple time, startup founder, multiple exits, multiple, you know, selling the company, but it wasn't all sweetness and happiness and easy. I know it was from that experience as part of the reason that you started oyster. And you started it with a little different mission and a little different kind of foundation. I wonder if you can tell us as you finished all the successful exits. You took a break and you decided to do something else. Give us a little background.

Tony Jamous: 7:32

Yeah. So first, thank you guys for having me. This is such a warm introduction. This is like the most fun introduction I've ever had on a podcast. So I

Kaleem: 7:42

sir. We take that. That's what we're trying to do, baby.

Tony Jamous: 7:46

love, I love these fun things because, you know, I love to do this podcast because even if I, like if I, if I screw up. Like there's nothing at stake, you know, it's like, so it's like this best part of my work is to just have fun with amazing people. for giving me this

Kaleem: 8:00

You're making me ache.

Tony Jamous: 8:02

and, uh, to go back to Jeff's question. So before starting Oyster, actually, 13 years ago, I started a hyper gross technology company called Nexmo actually was a competitor to Twilio. We were the main competitor to Twilio. I took the company public in mid 2016 by doing a merger with Vonage which led to its acquisition by Ericsson for 6. 5 billion a few years ago. So I left the business. I've done my work in mid 2018. And, uh, I was committed to take a break, to take a year off sabbatical before I decide what I'm going to do next, if I'm going to do anything, because I don't need, I didn't need it to work. And I had to go through a lot of inner work, a lot of questions about why I'm here on this planet. I was really dedicated to my mental health. And that's here because I had all this money and then I was feeling miserable in my life, right? I was, our relationship were not great. My health was not great. I was this like typical founder who burns out every three months and work like nonstop, right? So I needed to recalibrate, myself and understand why I'm here on this planet. And that led me to start Oyster as a mission driven company. First and foremost. On a mission to make the world more free and equal by democratizing access to global job opportunities. And as Kaleem mentioned, I had to, I was forced to leave my home country when I was in my teen years to France to study, uh, to actually, to hope for a better economical future. You can call me an economical refugee. And at that young age, leaving my tribe, my community, my land, was a very difficult experience for me. I was on my own in a foreign country, and I had to really succeed in order to give that protection for my family back home. So I created Oyster so that people like me doesn't have to go through this, doesn't have to feel what I have, what I felt and bring the opportunity to them. They can stay in their community, they can stay in their tribe and then amazing job opportunities can be possible to them by removing the barriers for companies in the world to be able to employ anyone anywhere. The world is your oyster when you're looking for a job and the world is your oyster when you're looking for talent.

Jeff: 10:25

Tony, I wonder if before we get to Oyster, just to reflect back on it, because from the outside, looking in, you

Kaleem: 10:30

BM is here. Trey BM is

Jeff: 10:31

right? You look like a huge success. You made all this money. You're an entrepreneur. You built the company. You IPO'd, you sold it. Share for people that what that actually takes. Cause I think people only see the, the silver lining. They don't necessarily see it. I don't necessarily understand the effort and the sacrifices that you have to make because you still have the same 24 hours a day as everybody else and you got to make hard trade offs and decisions. So I wonder if you can share, I don't want to say the dark side, but people maybe don't really understand what it's all about to be a CEO of a high growth company in a hyper competitive market.

Tony Jamous: 11:04

Yeah, you have to be obsessed with what you do. You have to be extremely dedicated and committed. Quitting is not an option. Although you have to say in many times in my career as a, as an entrepreneur and a CEO of hyper gross companies, like I wanted to quit so many times, but you cannot quit. And that makes you face Your fears makes you face your makes you clarify your purpose, makes you align what you do is with what you believe in. And that keeps you going. That keeps you going. That enables you to have higher degree of resilience and stamina to overcome a lot of these challenges you face. And the more you become successful, and the more your business become bigger, the bigger the challenges you're going to be faced with. So, this is what I realized. But actually, your ability to deal with these issues are also become bigger, right? So you become more experienced and more capable.

Kaleem: 11:57

Interesting. So change, you're talking about change right there as the organization grows. Can you talk a little bit about some of those challenges as those companies were growing right before you decided to sell? What were some of the challenges that you, common challenges, now that you've, you know, Worked on three companies. What are some of the common challenges that you are dealing with as you're beginning to scale from, you know, the seed round to series A to series B? Like, what are some of the common challenges that you remember going through?

Tony Jamous: 12:27

Now, so, one of the major challenges is how do you ensure that the team that you have, your leadership team is one that is fit for that phase of the business, right? So you hire people in the beginning that are amazing to get you from zero to one. But then as a company grow and scale, you have to ensure that these people can grow with the opportunity, can have an experience, get to take them from one to 10 or one to a hundred. So that's a big challenge for entrepreneurs that are on a hyper gross, right? And zero, you know, zero to a hundred million of revenue in, Less than five years in two companies. I found it in the last 13 years. So you always going to need to replenish this leadership structure. You have to take care of it. You have to always think about evolving it. You have to lead and coach your team to grow. You have to support them on their journey. And you have to surround them with the right environment and the right skill set to help them grow and be successful. That's number one. Number two is how do you keep the growth engine going? Like you, in order for you to be perceived as a high gross or hyper gross company, you have to be obsessed with growth. You have to find new segments. You have to find new techniques of growing. You have to find new ways of acquiring customers. You have to have new ways of servicing this customer. So you become more efficient and you become more scalable. And thirdly, one of the major challenges, especially in technology is competition because most competitors, they're playing this game to win. They want to kill you that they are in that mindset. So they come and they try to hire your people, give them more salaries. I try to say bad things about you in the market. And they, like most competitors don't play nice.

Kaleem: 14:13

It's gangster out there. It's gangster out there is what you're saying. Mamba mentality. Everybody's out there trying to just, you know, kill you. Like you said, that's, that's crazy.

Tony Jamous: 14:23

it's completely unnecessary because the market is so big. We live in an abandoned world, guys. And so, so I like this concept called the infinite game from Simon Sinek. I don't know if you've seen this latest book about this topic. It's like, guys, there's no need to beat the competition. You have to beat yourself to be better every day. But if you're obsessed with a competition, you're going to burn your energy and you're going to burn, you're going to burn the market. So I see a lot of that behavior. I've always seen that like, aggressive behavior from the competition that is completely unnecessary just because, there is a big ego, that is driving who's better and who's bigger, which is makes no sense to nobody.

Jeff: 15:06

Yeah, you know, one of Simon's other things he loves to talk about is the why, you know, that's his other big theme, you know, what, why are you doing it? And it's interesting to go from specifically high growth, which was your lead adjective. And some of those other opportunities to, as you just said, a mission driven organization. So what is, Mission driven actually mean, and how do you make that a priority? Cause you've still got investors as Kaleem mentioned, they want to get an ROI on their return. You've got employees with stock presumably and customers. So how does mission driven really fit and how do you keep that as a priority?

Tony Jamous: 15:41

so first, Jeff great question. Why mission driven? Because mission driven is better for business. Mission driven enable you to succeed more. There's been 300 studies done in the last 40 years that correlate, that look at the correlation between financial success and your ESG and CSR Initiatives in the business. Okay, so there's no doubt being mission driven makes you more financially successful. But it also enable you to attract better people. Because people don't want to only work for a company just for a paycheck that is only has a purpose to make more money. They want to work at a company that makes them feel fulfilled. They want to connect with the work they're doing. They want to make a difference in this world. So you get, you end up acquiring the best talent in the world. Thirdly, you get better customers and more customers because customers, again, they want to buy from companies that are aligned with their values. So that's why, why mission driven? Because it's better for business. And secondly, your question, Jeff, was about, well, how do you make it happen? So, uh, the formula we crack at Oyster is, is to align your business model with your impact, and we just launched our impact report last week. We launched it every year that enabled us to measure how many team members we employ in emerging economies, how much money we send in terms of foreign direct investments. In the form of salary and taxes, which is communities that need that money. How many people are improving their life with Oyster? What is the lift in salaries that they get working through Oyster and working through non Oyster? So we measure all of that. And the beauty of our model is that the more we grow our revenue, the more we deliver impact. We have 40 percent of our team members in emerging economies. That was 30 percent two years ago. So, uh, and then you operationalize it. You, you drive your strategy with it. Our strategy is to be the best of breed platform for cross border employment. Everything we do is for cross border employment. Every one of our rivals, they're doing local HR. They do local payroll. They do local accounting. Like, we're not interested in that. We are unique in our sense that we are here, although these are very lucrative markets to go into, right? And they might grow faster than us But we are driven by our mission that drives our product roadmap and drive everything we do

Kaleem: 18:05

Oh my gosh, you know, Tony, you are basically singing what we're all talking about, like, and the fact that you just explained it like that, it, it's just really great to hear you have all of these companies right now that are forcing their employees back to the office that are doing things that are aren't necessarily aligning with their quote unquote mission. You have companies, I'm not going to say their names, but you have companies where their whole business is about connecting maybe on video. We all know who I'm talking about probably. And then You're all coming back to the office that contradicts the mission of your product. What in the eff are you doing? So so it was just really good the thing that we talked about at blemming We're working with our clients and I just oh i'm just so happy You said mission driven because that's who we want to work with too But like the reality is there are two things that you said that are critical if you're going to be mission mission driven You said impact and measure Ooh, look at the bubbles. Impact and measure. If you do not measure, you cannot have impact. You have to measure. So thank you.

Tony Jamous: 19:13

You're welcome, Kaleem. And I just want to say, the future of work is not in office, hybrid, remote. The future of work, in my opinion, is empathy based management and leadership is to be in touch with the real need of your employees. And by forcing employees to commute back to the office, like you're completely disconnected from the real need of your employees. Like there's no need to add additional burden from work on their lives. If it's completely unnecessary.

Jeff: 19:44

Yeah. And just, I don't know that you could update the numbers. I saw somewhere, Tony, 600 people in 80 countries, but I think you said you're the only person in the country in which you reside. So you guys are clearly practicing what you preach. I want to. Shift gears a little bit because you had another interesting concept in terms of a leadership philosophy, which kind of is similar to your mission, where we often hear of servant leadership or service leadership, which is one of the more progressive styles, which the idea of, you know, the boss is there to use their resources to remove roadblocks to help people get their job done. You've got a slightly different twist that you call sustainable leadership. And what I found is really interesting is the different layers of sustainability that you've described, starting with number one, which you always go back to the, you know, you get on the airplane. What's the 1st thing I tell you put your seatbelt on 1st or do your own mask 1st before you help anyone else that needs wonder if you can share a little bit about the development of your sustainable leadership and some of those different layers that all build upon themselves to help you have a more successful organization.

20:49

We'll be right back after these words. 2020 was no joke. It changed the game for everyone. Workplace flexibility is no longer a perk, but an expectation. In fact, a recent study showed that a flexible schedule is more important than salary. Yeah, you heard that right? Employees want choices over cash. If you're a startup or a small business that doesn't have a remote work strategy, stop what you're doing right now and complete our free tree assessment at blendmeinc. com. Since 2013, BlendMe Inc. Has been helping small businesses improve the remote employee experience. Let's stay local, but compete global. Visit us at blendmeinc. com. That's blendmeinc. com. Ever wonder how certain ads catch your attention or get stuck in your head? It's because the person voicing it knows how to tell the story. Maybe they're telling you to stumble over to Sullivan St. Patrick's day for green beers, Irish car bombs, and corned beef. Oh. Freakin day. Or maybe Don't miss the deal of a lifetime this President's Day at Callahan Ford. Savings like these should be unconstitutional. Or maybe Come wash away your troubles here at Cooter's Car Wash. We ain't no soap opery, but you'll be singing high praises. Hoo wee, Cooter's! Or Here at Brooks Brothers Mortuary, we put the fun in funeral. Everyone is just dying to join us. Alright, well that's a bit much, but for you, I'll do it. I'm Rick Haney, and if you're a business owner looking for a creative voice in your marketing, look no further. I'll tell your story the way you want it told. Follow along at Remotely We Are One, or visit my website at rickhaney. me for more information. And now, back to the show.

Tony Jamous: 22:57

Sustainable leadership. Jeff means for me is you have to take care of yourself as a leader in order for you to be able to be present to your team. If you're always in a reactive mode, you're not there for your team. If you're sending a Slack message at 2am in the morning to them, you're You gotta actually push that pressure on them and you're gonna pollute their lives unnecessarily Schedule it send it to 2 a. m. But let it appear Next day at 9 a. m if you if you don't disconnect and take some time off and recharge if you don't Show that you are human you're vulnerable sometimes actually It happened to me a few times at oyster where I tell guys. Hey, i'm burned out right now You I need my space. I'm going to disappear for two days. Come back. So that's what sustainable leadership is. And I've been practicing since it's been amazing. It's been amazing to really, use Oyster as an opportunity to take care of myself because I don't want to burn out anymore as a leader. I don't need to do this. I want to do this. And if I want to do this, I want to do it on my terms. I want to be live where I want to live. I want to work where I want to work. And I want to be grounded with people. that are from everywhere in the world. We are, as we said, we are in 80 countries, probably over 100 nationalities, gender equal across the board, including management team and on my board. So that's what sustainable leadership is. And I want to say like, my core belief is that I believe in the infinite potential of humans. And I believe there is an environment in which you put people in Then you unlock their infinite potential and you unlock their growth. And that environment is a combination of from one hand about caring and nurturing and supporting. And from the other hand is about daring and pushing the limit. You have to do both at the same time.

Kaleem: 24:49

let me ask you something about sustainability. Cause like my first thought just went to something that exists past yourself. that's where I thought you were going with that. Um, but I, I wanted to ask you a

Tony Jamous: 25:04

no, no. Can you, can you go deeper into that?

Kaleem: 25:07

yeah, yeah. I want, yeah. So this idea that, you know, we're all trying to be sustainability. We're all doing this so that the earth is healthier after we die. That's like the main objective of sustainability overall. And I love this term of, um, because a lot of people will use Succession planning.

Tony Jamous: 25:27

yeah,

Kaleem: 25:28

Um, but earlier when you talked about oyster scaling or just actually start up scaling and the challenges that you're dealing with when you're hiring in the beginning, can you talk a little bit about what. Learning and development or what you were doing with some of those companies where you actually developed. Your leaders to be able to take on those new challenges as you progress. I feel like a lot of, especially founders are reactive, right? Like what you said, are reactive and not thinking forward. Can you talk about the importance of development of your team and your leadership team? And can you talk about how you do that from a remote perspective,

Tony Jamous: 26:11

absolutely. So, uh, you have to have clear principles and values. So in our case, it's about building trust is one of our core values, thriving together is a core value as well, and elevating talent. is another core value. And I look at my leaders and I come and, I recognize them in public and they're behaving within these values. And when they're not, I go in private and give them some feedback.

Kaleem: 26:42

Ooh, I love that. Recognize in public. Not criticize, but suggest privately.

Tony Jamous: 26:49

Absolutely, absolutely. Secondly, it's about modeling the way. I need to be the best leader in my business for so that they can see me how I lead and learn from me. You know, we all have these new mirror neurons, right? So we can mimic, especially when you look at your boss, it's like a child looking up to their parents. You want to be like them. So by model, by actually cleaning my energy system and modeling the way in this behavior, I influence everybody I interact with. It's like, uh, I posted something on LinkedIn recently. It's like going to work for me here in my home office, when I go downstairs into my home office. It's like entering a temple. I clean myself, I clean my emotions, I ensure I am not in a reactive mode, and I come and be present to my people. I want to go back, Khalil, to what you said around this, like we're taking care of the planet, right? Sustainability is taking care of the planet. And there is something about that is about what I call consciousness development for leaders. So you have to realize that you're not an independent entity. You are part of a bigger system and you can all connected and we're all one in order for you to, not only take care of your people, but also to be more connected with your mission and aligned with your purpose. And that's the practice I've been doing since I started Oyster. Actually, this is why I started Oyster because I was doing this retreat that enabled me to expand my consciousness and my therapist told me, don't take any important decisions for the next 10 days. So I went and incorporated Oyster the next day in November 2019 because I realized that That pain that I felt, it's not only me that is feeling that pain to immigrate and leave my tribe, everybody in my situation. So I expanded my consciousness to hundreds of millions of people and realized actually I can do something to help them.

Jeff: 28:52

I'm curious, Tony, I heard an interview with Toby Redshaw and he talked about trying to get people to give marginal effort and discretionary effort and the change in productivity when someone is really in the boat and really pulling hard versus showing up is huge. It can be 10 X, it can be 10%. It makes a huge difference. Why do you think there's the resistance from kind of traditional thinkers in seeing that doing things the better way is not only better for people's health and emotion and a bunch of somewhat say softer sides, but it also has direct business benefit because you get better contributions from the team. You get a more diverse perspectives. You get people leaning in and trying to solve problems. You push problem solving down closer and decision making to the people that are closest to the problem. What's the resistance and the hold back to doing it the way that we've always done it versus embracing some of these new concepts when there's data that's pretty clear that it's going to result in better financial performance for the organization as well.

Tony Jamous: 29:54

great question, Jeff. In my opinion, this is linked to fear from leaders to fail. Because this has worked the way the old way we did this worked. Why we need to change it. I'm taking risk that is actually creating more anxiety for me. And I need to run away from that risk. Right? So that's why consciousness development is critical here. Because when you do this emotional development as a leader, you become more sensitive to your inner experience and you feel that fear coming into your body. And then you see, Oh, this is fear that's an illusion. I don't have to react to that fear. I can take that risk. I can expand and try new ways of changing, of improving my business and improving my people.

Jeff: 30:41

Interesting. And that's also I think just, you know, people just aren't comfortable with vulnerability and being humble and that these are actually great leadership traits and you don't need to know all the right answers and it's okay to be wrong or to have a question and ask someone who's a more junior but is closer to the problem what they think.

Tony Jamous: 30:58

That's actually Jeff also, uh, linked to the, how we created leadership, the perception of leadership for the last few thousand years, actually, since, since we had, uh, Empires, right? So what would happen? I'm reading a book recently called The Great Turning that looks at the history of the human consciousness development and specifically when it comes to leadership and 5, 000 years ago and before we were living in harmony, we were living in tribes and then when resources started to get scarce, we started having fear and then one of the tribes started to become dominant and aggressive. Yeah. And start to dominate the other tribe. And that created the modern way of leading today, like in the last few thousand years, accelerated in the last 50 years is a system that's really about dominating not sharing power. And, so leaders, we are like, I feel like I'm expected to be aggressive that I'm some people come to work with me. and bringing in their old trauma from their previous experiences, and they expect me to be this top down decision maker and this aggressive leader. And, I'm learning how to manage that. I'm learning how to, I call these energy systems. One is the eagle. That is my flight and flight response. Eagle is like this, is a predator. And the other one is a condor, the condor is which is like fly higher than the eagle has a bigger vision and is a scavenger, like take care of the environment. So depending on the situation I'm in, I'm learning how to show up as an eagle or as a condor. And this is a very like spiritual story that I, that drives my behavior at work.

Kaleem: 32:45

It makes a lot, it makes a lot of sense. Now, Tony, I got a question for you. It might be a little controversial for you. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. I mean, I don't know. I mean, but you're in the business of pay. You're in the business of You know payment processing or payroll should we say

Tony Jamous: 33:01

Yeah.

Kaleem: 33:02

I have a question about your opinion on location based pay Versus location independent based pay. So for people who don't know what that is Location based pay is would be a company that would say you move to san francisco you get paid this amount But if you move to idaho You're gonna get paid less. Okay, so There is that that's location based pay Then there's location independent base pay, which means, Hey, no matter where you live in the whole world, we're going to pay you the same amount of money, no matter where you live. So without me telling you how I feel about it, I'm just curious. What's your take on it, sir? What's

Tony Jamous: 33:44

Yeah, my take here, Kaleem, thank you for the question. My take that, uh, like, this inequality that we see based on the location is nothing more than the result of this unequal system that we created in the last few thousand years. And, like for me, like poverty, because I came from a very poor background. Poverty is an illusion. It's like you, you, you, people make you feel that you're poor. It's a feeling, and it doesn't have to exist. So I believe that in the future, we want to drive the world to be location independent. Especially as we have remote work, we have knowledge work, we have over a billion knowledge worker coming into the workforce in the next 10 years, mostly from emerging economies. So by removing the barriers for companies to tap into the global talent pool, we create more, more equality in the system. And we already see that the salaries of remote workers, let's take an Argentinian software developer, uh, used to be paid 1, 000 a 40K a year, and now they are paid 120K a year. It's still less, it's just half of what they get paid in the Bay Area. Uh, but for these roles, for high demand roles that can be done remotely, and there is more and more of them. Think about sales executive, customer service representative, you can marketers, product managers, you accountant. All of these job can be standardized and be done from any country. You only need a laptop and a good interconnection. Then we're gonna see that gap closing. So now how we do it at Oyster. So at Oyster, we do location based. But what we do is for we split the world into three zones.

Kaleem: 35:30

Ooh, the world. Interesting. Instead of getting granular to country, you do the world.

Tony Jamous: 35:36

Yeah,

Kaleem: 35:37

Well done.

Tony Jamous: 35:38

because we have people everywhere and, and, Now our key is to make, the key is to make people feel that they are treated fairly. I don't, I don't know if you remember guys, this, uh, this study they did with the monkeys where they, they put one monkey in a cage and they gave them a cucumber and nearby there's another cage with a monkey and they gave that banana and the cucumber monkey was like shouting and, and threw the cucumber away. If they, if they give both of them a banana or both of them a cucumber, it is. Right. So this feeling of being treated unfairly is ingrained in us. It's like our animal brain. So you need to be sensitive to that. So what we do at Oyster is we, uh, for the people that are in expensive cities, we pay on 50% of the market. But for the more we go into countries that are, that have lower cost of living, the more we lift that percentage up. So we pay people like 80% or 90%. Of what they would be worse in a given country if they are from a country that is on, more on the low side when it comes to cost of living. And why we do that because we still, we're still operating in the capitalistic system. investors to report to.

Kaleem: 36:51

cost of living, you can't control the world's cost of living. So, you know, you're trying to adjust as best as you can, but I mean, separating it by the world. I haven't heard that yet. I'm sure there are companies that do that, but like, I think your division is much higher and gives people more options than you know going to down to the country level and in some cases in the u. s Even going down to the state state level. So what you're doing is amazing

Tony Jamous: 37:19

yeah,

Jeff: 37:20

So Tony, Pierre Nanterne used to be, he was also French and used to be the CEO of a center years ago. Unfortunately, he passed away, too young, but one of the things that he used to talk about is demographics is the trend and every other trend follows off demographic trends because it's big and it moves slowly and impacts us all. You're right on top of that. And you've talked. Briefly about kind of this, imbalance between demand for talent and where the talent is. And you're bridging that gap with, by basically breaking down the geographic divides. The other piece that I've heard you talk about that's interesting is learning. And the fact that with YouTube and all these tools now, anyone, anywhere, if they have the right access can learn anything. So we're getting to the end, Tony, we will ask all guests, tell us a comical or inspiring moment from your remote working experience.

Tony Jamous: 38:11

Well, I don't know if it's embarrassing or not. I'm actually proud of it. I'm proud of it. Uh,

Kaleem: 38:17

Okay.

Tony Jamous: 38:18

what is cool about remote work is I could be, I could be on my headphone listening to a Zoom call or in a board meeting and putting some music in the background and it'll be dancing, moving my hips here. They don't see I'm moving. It'll keep my hips moving, keeps me mobile, keeps my energy system Kaleem and, uh,

Kaleem: 38:39

Can you salsa? Can you salsa?

Tony Jamous: 38:41

yeah, whatever, you know, we can do whatever. Yes.

Kaleem: 38:46

Okay. Okay. I'm getting the visual. I'm getting the visual of your ability to dance. Okay. Okay.

Tony Jamous: 38:51

That's why, that's why we only do one in person board meeting a year. The other three are virtual. And it's a great way to actually reduce your stress level to keep moving. You know, in the past I used to have like treadmill walking on, but then I realized, you know, why I can actually, I can dance. Why do you have to walk like straight? I can keep moving and keep shifting all this energy. Yeah, it's been great.

Kaleem: 39:14

Wait, so, Let me get this, let me get this straight. Are you telling me that in your,

Jeff: 39:22

Come on!

Kaleem: 39:23

I can sense it. Are you telling me that in your meetings, you have your whole company on and you're dancing,

Tony Jamous: 39:29

I'm dancing. Like, like

Kaleem: 39:31

dancing, dancing, dancing. Everything else is bullshit.

Tony Jamous: 39:36

Exactly.

Jeff: 39:36

There's so much power in the music to change your mood, right?

Tony Jamous: 39:39

imagine like making such a big decision with the board, right? And then you're dancing. Right? That's a great way to manage your stress. Only possible if you work from home. Unless you work in the dancing industry. That's not a story, but Uh,

Jeff: 39:55

do you get together with your team? What's kind of your cadence for actually getting people together?

Tony Jamous: 40:01

twice a year. I mean, not the whole company because that's very expensive. But my team, my leadership team, we meet twice a year.

Kaleem: 40:07

Back to dancing. Hang on. I'm sorry. I'm still stuck on the dancing thing. So wait, do you dance if you're letting someone go? Um,

Tony Jamous: 40:17

I haven't had that experience yet to dance and I think someone, but I'll try it, I'll try it because you know, it's like it's moving, shifting your emotional energy through physically gets you to be more present and gets you to be, to let the life to be less reactive. Yeah, because you're not this, like this fear or this sadness, like they're not stuck in your body. They're like releasing all the time. So it's actually, makes you better decision maker, makes you be more compassionate to people. Let's say if you're firing somebody, then, yeah, I think that, I recommend it to every remote worker on this planet. Yeah,

Kaleem: 40:55

it would be more of a slow dance. Maybe you do more of a, you know, more of a slow dance. If you have to let someone go, you know what I'm saying? Versus cause like sauces, you know, you just, you just keep it going. You know what I mean? Like, like that's too much. I think that's too much. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Tony Jamous: 41:11

Oh, you know, and yeah,

Kaleem: 41:13

That is great. That is unbelievable. Well, thank you for sharing that Tony. That's that's the first we've definitely never had anyone on the show. Tell us that they dance. While working remotely, especially a CEO of a company your size. So that is your meetings must be fun as hell. That's awesome.

Jeff: 41:31

Well, it tells you something that we're coming to the end of our time. We barely talked about the business and all the great things that you offer in the details and the nitty gritty. But I think it really, highlights that it's the top level things that are really the more important things. And I think that the skills that used to be described as soft skills are actually the critical skills that enable all the detailed stuff that happens, happens under the cover. So we could go forever. I got pages of notes, but unfortunately the clock the clock keeps ticking. So Tony, how can people get ahold of you? Where can they reach out and connect?

Tony Jamous: 42:01

can find me on LinkedIn.

Kaleem: 42:03

There it is. Just search, just search for Tony Jamus. Yes. And bonjour, vous? That's all I know. That's all I know.

Jeff: 42:13

Very good.

Kaleem: 42:16

Awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming on, Tony. We really appreciate it. Come back anytime and can't wait to, meet you in person for the first time, but I guess I got to go to a Mediterranean Island to do that.

Jeff: 42:25

That's a good trade.

Tony Jamous: 42:26

An invitation for you already. Here we go.

Kaleem: 42:30

Awesome. We'll talk to you soon, man.

Tony Jamous: 42:32

Thank you.

Kaleem: 42:33

Peace.