How to Lead Effective Marketing Teams in a Virtual World with Manuel Pistner

Hey everybody. It's Terry McDougall, your host at marketing Mambo. And my guest today is Manwell piss ner. He is the founder and CEO of flash hub, and he's located in Darmstadt Germany. He is also the CEO of bright solutions, a marketing agency. And it was actually a wall that he hit really hard with his agency in 2018.  , where he just could not work any harder or keep up with the demands. 

Of what he needed to deliver with his agency. And this actually led him  to found flash hub. And today he helps business leaders around the world to scale their businesses, to serve global clients with global talent, instead of only limiting themselves to the talent that might be in a particular marketplace. 

So he's truly creating what the future of work is going to look like. And I've been saying for a long time, That I know that a new normal is coming,  my sense is that Manwell is well ahead of us on the path and he can send back some insights about what he's seeing out there on the cutting edge of the future of work. And I can't wait to share our conversation with you. And speaking of the future of work, of course, in the future, we all want to be winning at work, right? So if you happen to be running into snags or hurdles, or even brick walls at work, or you feel weighted down by things that are going on around you, and you might not even know what to do differently. 

Might I suggest that you check out my book, winning the game of work career happiness and success on your own terms. I share a lot of tips and stories and strategies that you can use today to start being more successful and more importantly, happier at work. This book is available on Amazon worldwide as an ebook. 

And as a paperback, and I hope that you'll get some valuable insights. That will help you feel better and do better at work. Now without further ado let the mambo begin. 

Hey everybody. It's Terry with marketing Mambo, and I am thrilled today to bring you Manuel Pistner, who is the CEO of flash hub. Manuel, welcome to marketing Mambo.

Yeah, thank you. I'm very excited. Thanks for having me on. 

Well, so could you give us an overview of your organization and what you do?

Yeah, absolutely. So basically what we do is we help organizations to build virtual teams and scale level work with global freelancers to escape the local staff shortages. 

Wow.  That's so great. And,  we were talking for a moment here before I hit record about how complex marketing has gotten. There's so many different platforms and, , it's very difficult to have. Skillsets on staff in many cases. And I know in my career, I was basically kind of a marketing generalist.

And  as more and more technology came into the world of marketing, it was really difficult to be able to keep up with everything. So,  what are you seeing out there in the marketplace?

Yeah, exactly what you describe marketing, gets more and more technology driven. It gets more and more complex. And, what makes that even harder is that things change with increasing speeds. So you need to be able to be agile on the one side and adapt to change in the market in technology. And on the other side, you need to have clarity, which is very hard because of the whole complexity or the things are more and more complex.

It's hard to get the clarity you need in order to choose the right technology, to run the right campaigns, to use the right CMS, the right CRM and all the things that you need. Yeah. And local teams typically suffer from skill shortages and from the shortage or lack of experience when it comes to these topics. 

Well, and then I suppose another factor that figures in here is also the cost of getting these specialists. I mean, that's the old supply and demand that if you're in a particular city and there's a huge demand for a particular skillset, you may be paying a lot for it. And so tell us about how you help, arbitrage that if you will, by using.

Across the globe.

I mean, exactly what you said is the big problem. Right? Most people think they need to have their stuff. No, Kelly. They find all kinds of reasons, which became their false belief over the years because they just experienced work in an office and they thought That work can only be done successfully when people are constantly at the same place and communicating constantly.

Right now, we see that when we work remotely, That somehow works, but it's so stressful if you are in video calls for six to 10 hours every day, because you think that without communication, the whole day, nothing works and there is a better way of doing work and there is a better way. Or let me rephrase it.

There is now a widely opened door. That opened with remote work, to access global skills and global talent and the global freelancer trend, which is a huge trend globally, has a big opportunity to basically scale teams and how we do that is it requires a slightly different way of working away from these false beliefs that you need to have constant communication with everyone.

To a point where you really appreciate structured communication. And as in kronas communication, the technology's all there. The tools are all there. Just how we define leadership needs to become a little bit differently, a way from we lead by availability and presence to a point where we lead by results and with clarity and transparency about progress and KPIs instead of constant communication.

Because of missing clarity. I mean, you can assess that in your own organization. Basically how many meetings you have is an indicator, how much unclear things are in your organization.

That is a very profound and I would say dairy true. And it's funny as a executive and leadership coach.  I find that a lot with leaders that  they sometimes,  feel like they have to micromanage because they actually haven't spent more time getting clear themselves and then learning to communicate very clearly to the staff and getting very clear about roles and responsibilities so that people can just understand what's expected and run with it.

So tell me, what types of projects do. Marketing organizations typically, offshore with you or, or outsource with you.

Yeah.

That's a good start because we do neither offshoring nor outsourcing. So what we do is, because why I don't like these words is because. They typically put the picture into your mind that you have some kind of work that you throw over the fence to somebody else. They do some magic, and there is a lot of hope involved that they get it done in time, budget and scope and with the quality you want, and then they throw it back over the fence.

And you are disappointed because it doesn't met your expectation. That's how it typically works. And I think that concept is just a wrong concept. What we do instead now. If the whole world works remotely. So why thinking in terms of outsourcing and offshoring, a better way to approach that is simply by extending your team with skilled talent, onboard them into your organization.

Very efficiently, provide them with clarity about goals and transparency about progress. Coach them so that they progress and develop the results you want and provide them with a quality standard that expresses your expectations very clearly so that others can fulfill it explicitly. Instead of telling them that you are so disappointed because they didn't fulfill your uncommunicated expectations. Right.

And this kind of clarity and this kind of leadership and resell focused leadership with radical transparency. Progress and precise on what you want.  I think that enables and empowers organization to work with people from everywhere in the club together as one team, not as an outsourcing partner that you play in because you were not able to communicate, express your expectations, and then you are unsatisfied or disappointed because he didn't fulfill it.

But the only way to deal with that is playing the other party, which will not solve the problem. So I think there is a better way of working, collaborating now as the whole work works, technology driven and remotely. 

Well, so tell us how you help companies to do.

We have them first define their digital leadership system. So what that means is we help them identify exactly what they want in a measurable way. What is the outcome that you want from a team that can be, if it is a marketing team, let's say it's a B2B marketing team. The outcome. Sales opportunities for the sales team and the output they generate for that is sales qualified leads.

According to a sales qualification criteria checklist where you exactly specify how a lead, which attributes a lead must have. So that it stays qualified. So that is the main thing. What are you optimizing for with your team? And then we help them build structured workflows that help the team to get transparency about progress and performance of the team.

And that really sets expectations very clearly that is the quality standard. Okay. That is for example, work templates to set up a marketing. Campaign that is a work template to set up a marketing strategy. That is a template, how to define a persona that is a template, how to set up a Google ad campaign, et cetera.

So then you can even create videos to onboard people, to work with these items. That's how you standardize and systemize your work and set clear expectations to every stakeholder. That's what we do next. And then we help them to keep people accountable in their role while a role it's not described with an abstract thing.

Like we need a very enthusiastic guy technology, blah, blah, blah. Nobody knows what you really want. But you put all the passwords in to the job. This grip find somebody that says, yes, I like that. Instead we define roles based on just accountability, responsibility, of course, language max, hourly rate, et cetera.

And the purpose of this. And how this role contributes to the purpose of the team and how the team contributes to the purpose of the organization. That is what people must understand first. And once we have that, and we hired a person that accepts this role, because the skills match, that's the only thing that matters, the skills must match 

Yes.

And then the team can keep people or each other accountable in this role, instead of. Just communicating all the time had been problems appeared. There was huge panic and huge email blind copy with like 20 people. Hopefully that somebody catches  the message and does something with it. 

Yeah. 

Right. That's what we do. 

Well, what you're talking about is something that's very much needed. Right? I feels like,  structure and discipline. And, I like  the whole idea of, doing a video also  to be able to introduce somebody to what the role is because  it's repeatable and it's exact.

So, certainly we see sometimes where, one person comes into a role and they get trained very thoroughly and then the next person comes in and they're just thrown in the deep end with no training at all. And then they may be blamed because they weren't trained. 

exactly. 

Yeah, so , that's very, very interesting.

You're located in Germany, right? 

Yeah. Yeah, 

 I first met one of your colleagues who I believe  he's German and he lives in Mexico. So you're really are, enabling companies to knock down the borders and just use talent, wherever. Do you have other people that work in your company that are located elsewhere in the world?

I have, in fact, two companies, the one company is pride solutions, which is a digital agency for software development and marketing and all kinds of things. And that's where this idea came from because I had a really terrible crash in 2018. For those that listen to me and want to see the drama. There is a TEDx talk.

If you Google monitor piston and TEDx, you will see how I crash  my entire company almost, with 43 full-time employees and expensive experiments with offshoring and near shoring, the typical outsourcing thing. And from this point, I discovered this, which with team approach and they've completely rebuilt my organization.

Pride solutions. Nowadays we only have 12 employees, but over 150 freelancers in 67 countries, and we can really deliver any kinds of services. Our clients need at an high quality standard level, because work is systemized. And after I figured this out, What I did is I found a flash app so that other organizations can work with the same structure and scale their teams with the same methodology.

So, and yes, of course we have over 400 lines that flash up that started to implement this methodology. 

So that's so interesting. And,   I worked in the corporate world for 30 years. So everything that you described is very, very familiar, , and  I think that sometimes for many leaders, it's sort of like a badge of pride. If they're. Calendar is stilled with meetings, right?

That they're so important that they have to be at all of these meetings. And I agree with you that, if there could be more clarity to,  press down that knowledge and expectations so that people are empowered just to go and do their jobs, that it would make companies more efficient and more effective.

I would imagine though, that in some cases, It might be difficult. I mean, do you find that every company that you talk to is ready for the, discipline and maybe the introspection to even think about what is it that we need? You know? Cause I think in a lot of cases, you're right. They're throwing things over the fence, hoping that when it lands on the other side, people will know what to do with it because they don't know what to do with it.

Right.

Yeah. So no, they are not yet ready, but I see that they get ready really fast when I heard them declutter their day, removing everything that is not relevant and focusing on the 20% that really contributed to the results and most, I mean, if you have for business owner, what is important for them are four cases.

PIs, it's happy clients. It's profitability of the organization. It's a happy team and it's cash. That's the main thing that really matters to Crow, a healthy business. Now, typically the leader is the only person accountable for these KPIs and the bigger the organization close, the bigger, the problems of the leader Crow, because he, or she's the only one telling others what to do.

So that his interests are fulfilled and these KPIs are on track, right? That's a typical hierarchy in an organization. You have the boss and everyone has to do with Boston. Instead of that approach,  I suggest a different setup where these four main KPIs are delegated to every team. To really any team in the organization, any team needs to monitor satisfaction of their clients, both internal and external clients.

And they need to know what's the purpose of this team.  That means which clients internal or external do they serve? Like the marketing team serves the sales team. That's all the sales team serves the internal client facing teams. I call them clients squats. And if every team is accountable for these KPIs and the scope of their team, You delegate and break down, the heavy lifting of being accountable and responsible for these main four KPIs to smaller teams.

And that makes the whole thing very much easier to manage. 

Yeah.

for every, for every time you break down the big company, KPIs to the team, KPIs to the roll KPIs, and then you have clarity. If you can measure that and you can coach people so that they become the best version of themselves reaching the goals for the organization and for themselves. 

Yeah. When you were talking about that, I thought, wow, there's a lot parallels here with what you do and what I do as an executive coach and helping people get clarity around what are their priorities and,  people are drowning and just so much information and there can be so much confusion.

And often what happens is that because there is a lot of anxiety. Fear about not meeting expectations or not meeting goals that people will just sort of compulsively, focus on activities. But the activities aren't necessarily productive activities.  But they're just doing that to make themselves feel a little bit better because they're not sure what the right activities are.

And it sounds like you are helping them do that through having this process through having these templates  that companies can use. So,  what's the typical,  assignment  that organizations will come to you?

So the typical problems they start to come to me , to flash up is that they don't have enough talent or their team's strong. And,  then we come into the,  Yeah.

we built something that I called the team blueprint, where everything that I described previously is well-defined in it's one Excel sheet, basically one extra sheet for a team where you have the quality standard, the roads, the meetings with the agenda, the KPIs, output outcome defined, right.

That's what we do for the team. And once they see that they get clarity about what really matters. And they can help the team to get clarity and they help them to stop everything that is not relevant to stick to that and to deliver these outputs and to reach the outcomes that are related. And,  Yeah.

 That is the first thing.

And then once they implemented that, then they have this clarity, then they can easily scale with freelancers because it doesn't matter if people are in the organization for term and have all the knowledge because knowledge doesn't. Yeah.

Not just in the brain of people and the people leave, knowledge is gone.

That's a huge risk for the business. So we make it persistent and then they can scale their teams. And that's typically , their biggest problem promote, work more efficient and scale with freelancers to compensate for the lack of knowledge and work capacity. Yeah.

Yeah.  It's sort of funny. I'm wondering if in some cases,   once they've started working with you and implement this way of doing business, if they say to themselves,  I didn't know, it could be this easy.

Yes,  it is sometimes I really literally have some business owners that work. 14 to 16 hours every day, they are completely overhead. I sometimes see them really trying in a call when they see that things can be that and the same for their teams. And it can be that easy that the only thing  it needs is this one moment we really reflect on what is my goal and which activities contribute to my goal.

All others just don't do it or delegate it if you think it must be done, but don't do it yourself that will reduce your workload. I mean, I'm currently able to lead  my main business pride solutions with 150 freelancers with two hours per day, the organization is completely driven by my team, but they have clarity about what really matters.

And I support them as a coach instead of being the manager, pushing everyone to get the work done and just pushing stress into the organization. So that works. It just change your mind, how to lead people. 

well, and I think that most people well want to feel a sense of ownership over what they do. And I personally think that When there's not clarity and where there's uncertainty around. Do I have the authority to move forward with this? Or am I going to get in trouble?

Because I'm not sure where the boundary is between where my job ends and somebody else's starts, or, ,  like you said, the KPIs haven't been defined. So I don't even know if I'm doing a good job or not,  that those are the drivers. dissatisfaction, I think. And, , I, coach my clients very often on the fact that as a leader, one of the most important things is to, provide context.

For their employees. So get very clear on what the goals are, but also for employees to understand where do I fit or freelancers, whoever the workers are, where do I fit into the overall objective of what we're trying to do? Because once I understand that, and then it becomes sort of an intrinsic drive, right.

But when you're in a vacuum and somebody's just saying,  just do these tasks. There's no meaning in it. And I think that as humans, we want to have meaning, we want to understand how we're contributing to something that's bigger than ourselves. And I'm actually quite impressed with how thoughtful,  this is not just an engineering process that you came up with, but took into consideration,  the needs of humans and what 

Yeah. 

sort of empowers them to want to perform.

Right. That's the purpose of an organization. It has the purpose to solve problems for your clients, and it has to purpose to contribute something meaningful and positive to the life of people working with the organization. That's it. And when the,  interests of your team are aligned with the interests of the organization, which is aligned with the interest of your clients, then your business will really thrive without just people pushing and getting stressed.

And yeah. All the things that you currently see in the corporate. 

Well, so,  how do you recruit your freelance?

I have a freelancer team that recruits freelancers. Of course. Yeah. What we do is we have a team that has the purpose to win talent for the organization. The KPIs. For example, how much, talents did you bring into the organization last week? How many chop roles did you feel?  How much time did you spend on that?

That's the profitability thing. And then we have like a pipeline.  That helps the team to create proper job posts, which is one work template,  to do the assessment with, predefined interview questions, soft skill assessment, hard skill assessment that is then done by the recruiters and the HR lead coaches to recruiters to do that very well.

 Yeah, basically, that's what we do. We, we source these people on LinkedIn on five of Google Upwork, freelance sort of calm these platforms. And we also run social media company. In the same way as we attract clients with social media campaigns. Yeah, 

So I would imagine that once you have identified talent, that you try to keep them in a stable in a way, so that,  once they're done with one assignment that if they're good, you're going to try to. Yeah. And typically how long are the, assignments  of people.

You mean a freelancers working with it? 

Well, actually clarify for me,   what the relationship is. Are you helping companies to work with the freelancers directly or do you okay, so it's, it's not like you're sort of an eight. Okay. Because I know you said you have an agency, but

yeah.

So at flash up, we helped them first build their leadership system and understand how to lead people by. And then either they can find their own freelancers on all these platforms, or they can ask us to recruit freelancers and they work with the freelancers through flash up, but they work with them.

We are not the man in the middle. And then, we 

okay, got it. 

you. That's not what 

Right, right. Okay. But you do have an agency as well. So if companies want to work with you directly on things that they can do that.

Yeah, we have an agency which typically does projects for clients and this agency is client or flash up. 

Okay. Got it. Got it.  That's a nice setup that you have there. 

Yeah. 

Yeah. So what,  observations have you made about the marketplace's readiness for this, since you started this and you said, well, I am going to go out and watch your TEDx talk after this, but, since 2018, what have you seen.

 I see that. The problem of not having enough time gets bigger and bigger and the even bigger problem, which is the root cause of not having enough time is that people are more and more driven by others. Like for many entrepreneurs. And I was the same prototype, like four years ago, you wake up first thing, your smartphone messages, everywhere, escalation here, problem there.

That's how your day starts. And that's how your day. That's totally, that's crazy. And then you open your laptop messages everywhere, just reacting on what other people's want instead of consciously decide what is really important for you to actively do so that you fulfill your role properly and contribute to your team, which contributes to the organism. Not just like running behind what others asked you to do, and that sucks your time that you don't have any more to do the things that you need to do to contribute to your goals. 

Right. So really it's about,  prioritizing. And  when I was in the corporate world  they talk about putting out fires, and as a leader, obviously, especially as a new leader, going into a new role, a lot of times you're inheriting a lot of headaches and, maybe patterns of interacting with other parts of the business.

And, it was my responsibility to come in and put the fires out. But more importantly, I think to figure out why are these fires. Being set in the first place and see, okay, is there a system or a process that can be put in place to circumvent this at all. And so to your point about, Entrepreneurs getting up and, being driven by reactivity around messages or whatever, fire popped up really  stepping back and saying, okay, what's the most important thing for me to do today, but recognizing that, okay, those messages are going to keep coming in.

How can I manage that in a way that does that. Require  my time or not as much of my time. So it might be okay, I'm going to hire a virtual assistant and they're going to go through my messages in we're going to set up  a grid of how they respond. Okay. These are the ones that you trash.

 These are the ones that you respond with, this type of message.  And maybe these are the ones that you will send to me to respond to. Right. But you basically  triage. 

I build a system instead of just people that are my system, a business should be a system. As you said, of tools, workflows procedures, policies, And people just operated instead of just a bunch of people, desperately trying to fight the fires and getting all the work done because they have no structures that 

Right.  Yeah.  I talk about working with, high achievers who are successful, but not satisfied. And I think a lot of times people they'll do whatever needs to be done to be successful, but a lot of times are really running themselves ragged.

To make that happen and they're not really enjoying their lives. And, , I actually came across some, research by Tom DeLonge. Who's a professor at Harvard business school that purported to find that,  high achievers are addicted to external validation.  So, yeah. And so I think that what you're talking about here is really shifting the balance from like looking outside of ourselves and saying what does everybody else expect of me to, bringing it in and saying, well, okay, if I'm centered and I'm clear on what needs to be done.

I'm going to look to myself or maybe look to what we've set up  as the goals and the structure to carry that weight, rather than being hypervigilant about worrying about what everybody else expects of me. Because I think you're absolutely right, that there's so much,  crazy activity and maybe partly driven by the pace of change these days.

That there's a lot of people out there that. Fearful that they're going to miss something. And so rather than stepping back and saying, well, let me examine this and figure out a repeatable, sustainable way to address this. I'm going to,  just be like a hamster on the wheel,  trying to run faster and faster and really not getting a handle on what needs to be done in a way that's really repeated.

Yeah. Yeah.

If you don't know your goals, you are driven by others and you do things that help others to achieve them. Right. And if, of course, what'd you say the typical high performance, high achievers, they are good in satisfying others. That means they are good in doing things that others want from them.

And if you do that more, you just run against the wall at a certain point. And that's what most people call burnout. And I have friends that are in this situation because they are just driven by external factors 

Okay.

and are not clear about what they want and how they get. 

Yeah. And the sad thing is that, because they're so used to doing that and leading up to where they are today,  that hard work and that delayed gratification and, burning the midnight oil and all of that has gotten them a certain level of success. So. If they're not happy or they're not reaching their goals, they just double down and they just do more of it.

And then it just gets them deeper and deeper in the hole. And to your point, it leads to burnout. Well, so what has, personally for you, since, you said you sort of had a meltdown in 2018, what's the difference been since, pre. Coming up with this. And now that you not only have come up with this, but you're selling it to other people, what's your life like?

Oh, my God. Yeah. When you just asked the question, I just feel so much relief again and again. And I compare how it was, 2018 and before to how it is Right.

now. I mean,  it's not comparable. I was working like 14, 16 hours everyday. Even at the weekend, I always had the feeling. If I don't tell people what to do, nothing gets done.

I was always constantly in the pressure of having either not enough talent to get all the work done or not having enough work to pay my fixed costs, which were caused by people on my payroll. And that is exactly this hamster wheel. And I always just, the company has grown from like me as a freelance with 2 43 employees in 2018.

And my problems just true. The problems just got bigger and bigger and bigger. I always had a dream of like having 10 employees because I thought, man, Yeah.

then I got it right. And I had 10 and then 20 and 30 and 40 and problems just got bigger. I was constantly driven problems involved in everything.

And without me, nothing work, that was really, really terrible. The good thing is that Corona showed the whole world that remote work works. So it's no Hocus Pocus anymore. What I'm doing, they see it works. It just needs some changes and tweaks, but I can work. When I want with whom I want, where I want.

Sometimes I will walk in the forest and do my work. Sometimes as it, outside of the pension work, I can decide when I want to work. And so that's my team. I don't need to tell them what to do. They come to me when they want coaching or support and consultation, but they know what matters because my leadership system needs their focus to what really matters.

And I support them to get their job done. That's how it goes so much more relaxed. I mean, even I have time to build another company flash up to help others achieve the same. That speaks for itself, I would say. 

 Yeah. That's so great. What was it? that shifted  your thinking because you sort of had the blinders on and then all of a sudden, I suppose you hit the wall and you couldn't go any further for some reason. And  there's a couple of books that come to mind as we're talking  the E-Myth is one.

And then the other one Tim Ferriss's four hour workweek, but what influenced you at that point  to have  this thought that this is what I need to do.

They had  no influence. So I experienced because I was involved in some open source software communities and I saw over long time since 2012, that there are many, many great and bright people out there in the world. That's what I saw when I made it, when I saw them at exhibitions and in meetups, et cetera.

And I realized already in 2012, that all my problems are self-made because I limit myself. With my office, having just a radius of like 100 kilometers around my office, when it comes to recruiting talent, while the whole world can be my talent pool. So,  I started to work with freelancers in 2012. I always visited them for one week, traveled across Europe to really meet them in person because I thought I can only have control over them when I meet them.

So that was my video. And I read some studies from the Stanford university called flesh organic  flash teams and train teams. , and they inspired me. And I also, watched the video, which is, , from Ricardo Semler, which is called,  how to lead a business with almost no. So rules 

Uh huh.

things they already inspired me, but I never had the guts to.

Do it. And then this crash came in 2018 where almost lost my entire business and my existence by paying contract penalties of over 500,000 zero to our biggest client, if we didn't deliver the project. And that was the point when, as at a crate now, almost everything is crap. So I need to rebuild it.

And a virtual team of 23 freelancers that I got in one day saved my project and with my project, my business, and with my business, my existence. So that's what I saw. Wow. That works people that I never saw. People I never met. Right. They worked with me, they got the work done. They committed to working 14 hours a day, even over the weekend.

And of course, some left because they didn't like the job, but then I had two others within an hour. And that was a feeling of freedom and independence. That's what I was wondering when I became an entrepreneur. And that was the feeling that I want to keep when I grow my business product. And then I hired 20 people in one day and 10 others left.

It felt like, Okay.

everything is now again crashing, but that was the start. When I really started to attract the right people that want to work in my business because they also share the values of transparency. And self-determination and independence Yeah.

that's how it started. You see that in my TEDx targets, that's all it is about. 

Oh, well, I'm really looking forward to it. And, really think that most people want to get satisfaction from good, honest, hard work. I really do. But I also think that one of the reasons why a lot of people are turned off. By work is some of the things that you talked about that, there's just not clarity.

There's not a sense of ownership that  there's  these patterns that can happen at work so often, like the micromanaging boss,   that kind of thing. And, , it really sounds like. I mean, I not to be too grandiose, but really part of my mission is to make the world a better place by helping people feel better about how they show up every day.

And understanding much like you've talked about, how much control we actually have over our lives, but it requires a sort of mindset shift to realize that having more control over our lives. Actually means, maybe doing less like thinking about what our true objectives are and maybe trusting more.

Yeah. And thinking more.

what are the right things to do that contributes to what you really want? 

Yeah. 

  We can simply switch off our computer and our phone and everything and get no message. That's that's the gift that we got with remote work. The problem is just, most people never do that because they believe then like the world crashes or whatever, like, okay. That's 

not. But that's the habit that they developed in the office when they always can interrupt their colleagues. And that's a world of constant interruption still, we have the same habit, but even faster because I can send tons of messages right now to everyone.

And if people react to that, that's a big problem. So the gift is that everyone should use, switch off the communication and focus on what matters if it's just for an hour. And then switch and communication and communicate and then switch it off and focus again. Your work day becomes more relaxed and you get much more done. 

Yeah, think you're absolutely right. And it does go back to what I was saying earlier about that,  feeling of needing that external validation. I think sometimes people feel  if I'm not getting messages constantly, do I even exist? 

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I have a guy  in my team. He's working with me since like five or six years. And, we were always working and improving his personal life to reduce his workload. Right. Because   in my company at pride solutions, you'll get your full salary. Doesn't matter how many hours you work.

It just matters that. Reach your goals deliver the results. And if you can't ask for coaching and.

support, that's the only rule. Okay.

And he aimed for working six hours instead of eight hours. And now he's in the situation that this became his reality. He's working much less, but he doesn't feel comfortable because he constantly thinks that there must be something wrong.

I don't get this huge overload of messages. So something, it doesn't feel good. So he reaches goal, but doesn't feel well about it because he's not 

yet. To think in that way that this is okay. 

 Yeah.  I've certainly seen that with people that I've coached too. And when you're dealing with people that are smart and experienced, a lot of times they don't feel comfortable if they're not packing their day with activity. And as you rise within organizations, a lot of times your job is not to make the widget.

Your job is to sort of look at, okay, how's the flow of work,  how's the relationship with our clients,  are there gaps within the organization when it comes to training or something like that? It's really looking at the bigger picture and taking care of that. Not being down in the weeds, worrying about,  the actual.

Getting this work done. And always say to people who are moving up, like you've got to mentally promote yourself to the level that you're at, so that you can see things from the correct perspective. Not get sucked down the rabbit. 

Absolutely. 

Manuel, well, this has been a fascinating conversation and I thank you so much for being a guest on marketing Mambo.

Where can people find you?

On LinkedIn, if you?

search by monitor Christina or, yeah, on flash up bio, but the best place to connect with me. 

Okay, great. And any last words of wisdom before we close out the episode,

Yeah, declutter your day and stop reacting  decide about what's really meaningful to you and to your job, and then do that. That is very important for me. And I hope you benefit from that too. 

Definitely. Very wise words. Thank you very much.