Breaking Free of Psychological Traps at Work

Carlos Ponce (00:00):

Welcome to another episode of Tech Leaders Unplugged, and today, Wednesday the 25th, we are getting unplugged with our guest, Vlad Giverts, the co-founder and CEO of Warmspace. Vlad, welcome to the show.

Vlad Giverts (00:31):

Hey, Carlos, thanks.

Carlos Ponce (00:33):

Sure. And of course, let me greet my fellow teammate and co-host Matt Kauffman from MK Partners. Thank you, Matt, for graciously, graciously hosting today's show as well.

Matt Kauffman (00:47):

Thanks for having me, Carlos.

Carlos Ponce (00:50):

Absolutely. My pleasure. Let's get started. Let's get unplugged, and let's start with you, Vlad. Tell us a little bit about you please, and then we can go and move on to talking about Warmspace.

Vlad Giverts (01:03):

Okay. Yeah. So kind of like a pseudo serial entrepreneur out of San Francisco, kind of alternating between trying my own things versus joining other startups. And eventually, you know, I actually left the tech industry and focused on my own inner journey. Moved to the Netherlands, which I, where I've been for the last six years. And then accidentally by part of that process started, started Warmspace, which is kind of started it during the depth of the, the Covid Pandemic during the lockdowns. And it's turned into a platform that helps kind of enliven people at work. And I think we'll talk more about that today. So I'm not going to say much more than that.

Carlos Ponce (01:59):

Sure, absolutely. Well, thank you so much Vlad. So now tell us a little bit about Warmspace. You mentioned, I, if I recall correctly that which you thought “this makes sens. I got, I just got to build this”. So tell us a little bit about that, please.

Vlad Giverts (02:25):

Well, originally this was what I started building was a platform to connect people from the kind of inner work group that I was a part of. And then I met up with a friend of mine who during Covid was connecting like acquaintances of his that never met each other over Zoom. And then he would turn off his video. So there'd be three of them, and he would kind of give them little, little messages, either via private messages or just intervening a little bit with a few words, and helped two total strangers have really deep conversations to the point where they're moved or crying or hugely impacted. And, and so that was the, that was the version one or the prototype you could say. And so he, I went through that experience. I was like, okay, that's all right. And kind of took the project I was working on and in collaboration with a couple others, me kind of morphed it into what we called Warmspace. And I was pretty skeptical actually. And, but we did a, a bootcamp lasted a week. But yeah, we, we tried out on a couple hundred people and like very short notice, and I was shocked, really shocked is not the right word, but like really touched and impacted by the, the impact we were getting where people were tremendously moved. And it had a meaningful impact on their lives. Not everyone, but it was happening often enough that I realized, well, there, there's something here. And yeah, that was almost, that was about three years ago. We just kept at it ever since.

Matt Kauffman (04:07):

And at that time, were you thinking of this as a business or just a need that the world had that, you know, you kind of stumbled upon and had the solution for?

Vlad Giverts (04:17):

I wanted to make it a nonprofit, but we didn't know how to raise money as a nonprofit. Me and my, my co-founders, I all came out of tech startups, so we started as a startup, and then we found investors who were willing to give us money to do this as a business. So then it's a business, but it's still more of a public service than anything else. But we need to make money because this needs to be sustainable. So we are selling a product, but for me personally, this is about kind of a public good.

Matt Kauffman (04:53):

Yeah, that's interesting. I, I often will volunteer as like a, a judge for code school graduations and things like that, and give talks to young people and, you know, they always want some advice. And so the advice I say is, you know, look around when, when people get really rich, what's the first thing they do? They go and they volunteer. They go and they donate. They start a foundation. I'm like, just skip the getting rich step. Start doing it now. Right. And find a job that you're passionate about that has something that you're, you know, you're really interested in and hopefully does something good for the world. Yeah. You might not make as much but you at least skip to that point. You don't, you don't have to work hard to make millions so that you can now do the good. And so it's, I think it's, it's great that you've kind of been able to combine those two. A passion to make the world better with hopefully a profitable business also.

Vlad Giverts (05:47):

Yeah. I did try the going, getting rich approach first. It really beat my head against the wall pretty hard, actually. I did pretty okay. Like I wasn't, didn't make enough money to retire, but, you know, many people would've considered me successful.

Matt Kauffman (06:03):

Sure.

Vlad Giverts (06:04):

I was like an executive at a public company just getting paid a lot, and that's when I was actually the most disillusioned. That's when I realized, well, I kind of made it, I see the people kind of a level or two above me, and they're kind of miserable. What, what? Yeah. There's, they've made it even more. And yeah, it doesn't seem to, there's not, there's no amount, there's no level of success that seems to solve kind of existential angst.

Matt Kauffman (06:33):

Right. Yeah, yeah, I think it's, is there's the, the rat race that, that we're all into some extent, and very few people make it to the level where, you know, whatever they want they can have. And even then they still are probably not happy, like you're saying. And so at that point, it's like, well then why bother? And so, so you, you have this, this existential crisis when you realize that I think when we're all young, we're working hard, we're going to university and, and trying to get that job and, and work our way up the ladder. And at some point you realize, wait a minute, what's the point of any of this? But we still need to go to work and make a living and, and, you know, pay for our expenses and pay for our children and things like that. And so I, I kind of see that is, is what warm space can help with, right? Like, so that we can get through our, daily grind in a way that you know, it doesn't feel soulless. So I, I see a lot of anecdotal, you know, evidence in what, what I've experienced at our company, in what you're doing from a more, you know practical approach and, and almost, I don't want to say programmatic approach, but, but by providing a platform with warm space, I feel like you're, you're probably going to be more successful in engaging employees and engaging them consistently. So, you mentioned that that those a hundred people or so that you, you brought together a couple of years back, are you measuring engagement and able to see that members of warm space stay at their jobs longer or are more satisfied with their jobs?

Vlad Giverts (08:25):

Yeah. So we, we have kind of two products. There's the consumer product that's free, that's a public service. I don't really know what people do or how they, do what's happening for them at work. Then we have a, a corporate product. Those people, we track, we work closely with. So I'll give you an example because it's a little easier to follow. So we're working with this one manufacturing company. It's, it's global, mostly European based. And so we were piloting this at one of their plants in the UK and like the executive, you know, like three levels above the plant leader visited that plant several months prior. And his sense was a pretty damaged culture, you could say, call it toxic at that plant. Then we implemented our ignite product. We call it Ignite because it really kind of brings energy to people's lives at work. And they, they used it really well. They actually used it every day, every workday for a month in, at the start of their day. Then this executive visited again, and this guy's in his mid-sixties, he'd seen, you know, he personally led or you know, was the executive of, you know, hundreds of, of plants. And what he said was that he had never seen such a group of positive, supported, uplifted people at a manufacturing plant in his entire career. And yeah. What's interesting was that even when the leader of that plant who was the one that implemented this process and drove it left for her own reasons they continued doing this every single day. And I talk, I've talked to some of these people, and they are, I've talked to people at different plants at this company, cause they're one of our customers. And I could tell that the plant that was you using this regularly, the people were genuinely like more cheerful, just more relaxed, more easygoing. The others were often a little more tense, a little more defensive, and sometimes a lot more.

Matt Kauffman (10:44):

That's interesting. When, when we think of, you know, dot coms and startups, we typically think of end users as being people who work at a desk and are in front of a computer all day. But it sounds like warm space is really for anybody. It doesn't have to be you know, the typical office worker that we're thinking of.

Vlad Giverts (11:07):

Yeah, yeah. So people can use warm spaces in person. I mean, you can do it over video. That's, that was how it originally was. It was over video and it would guide two people. Now it's any number of people into some kind of short experience that will kind of open them up. Now you could just pull out your phone and we could be face-to-face with each other. And the same guidance. It just shows up on the phone. Same app and, the same experience. We just don't need the video.

Matt Kauffman (11:35):

Right. And everybody has a phone. So that's easy to do.

Vlad Giverts (11:38):

Yeah. Yeah. And you know, they could just, when they're getting together in the mornings, they could just all scan a QR code and boom, they all get randomly paired off or tripled off and off.

Matt Kauffman (11:50):

So, I mean, again, anecdotally, I, I hear what you're saying and it makes sense. I think happy employees are a good thing, right? Happy people are a good thing. But are your customers trying to really put a dollar amount on it and say, well, we know that it costs this much money every time an employee leaves and it costs us this much more every time we have to hire someone new? Or we know that when employees are unproductive, we're losing this much money. Or are they thinking about it that way? Or are they thinking about it more from just a mental health and, and that type of situation?

Vlad Giverts (12:24):

So, for the bottom line matters, I wish it didn't matter as much as it does. It for sure matters. Actually, , our customers are looking at just the overall profit, from the teams. Like, what's it costing us? Including, you know, replacing people who left or dealing with people who aren't there because they're sick. I don't know if they're really sick or just don't feel like coming in that day, but all those are costs. And then, you know, and then there's the profit and what, what, what we're discovering is that not only do people show up more, just like sick leave goes down attrition goes down. People don't change company, they stay, they like it there, but creativity goes up too. So then instead of just going through the slog and whatever the problems are, like yeah, whatever, we'll just, you know, deal with them the way we always deal with 'em. People come alive a little more and say, Hey guys, maybe we can do something about these things. You know, we keep having this breakdown in our process all the time. Could be in the office, could be literally something breaking down at a factory, and all of a sudden the team is getting together. They're more of a team and they're actually dealing with it. Yeah. And of course, profits do go up. It's a little harder to measure. So we're going to, the jury's still out on just how, by how much, but the first order effects of like, people doing the right things that should lead to more profit are happening.

Matt Kauffman (13:58):

Interesting. Yeah. So it sounds like that warm space can kind of get you out of this situation than I see a lot of where especially over the last, you know, four years or so with, with the pandemic. There's this, this psychological trap in the office where you know, employees are not engaged. They're kind of disillusioned. It's that it's a day job. And this is a way of kind of breaking that cycle so that we can not necessarily get back to the way things work because I don't know if we ever will. But we can kind of embrace the new normal and move forward.

Vlad Giverts (14:40):

Yeah. Yeah. And I think it's, you know, the, the trap that I was referring to in, in this like breaking free of traps at work, it, the, it's this unconscious understanding that we are somehow part of this larger mechanism. It's like the proverbial cog in a machine. We have a role to play. I'm, I'm not, you know, I'm not a person. I'm a, I'm ACEO or I'm an engineer, or I'm, an HR, you know, manager, whatever it is. And then I do my role and, and some, a lot of people take a lot of pride in their roles and there's nothing wrong with that, but what ends up happening for everyone to, to various degrees is the more we take ourselves to be a role, the less we feel like a person, and then the less, the less we feel like a person, it, it ends up being draining for us. Is that you have to put in a lot of effort to maintain this like, an unconscious idea of who we think we are, which we're not, because we're not a role. That's something we do. It's not something we are. So what warm space does is it gives us these little breaks to remember. It's like, wait a minute, we're people Oh, and you're a person too. Oh man. Before I was getting all frustrated cause you were doing your role badly, so that meant you were bad. Now I'm Oh, you're just mad. I'm just Vlad. Yeah, of course. Like we might make mistakes and Yeah, maybe we could figure out how to do it better. Hey, let's do this together, and you get all this, actually, I'm, you know, you know, it's kind of not okay to use the word love, but it really feels like a lot more love in the interactions at work. And when there's love, it's not like romantic love, but you know, just the kind of like, Hey, this feels nice. I like human. I feel more relaxed,

Matt Kauffman (16:45):

Appreciation for another person.

Vlad Giverts (16:47):

Yeah. I appreciate you. Then all the, like, all this like kind of rigidity and affording starts to relax and when you're relaxed you can just do, creativity opens up, energy starts flowing, and good work happens.

Matt Kauffman (17:07):

We know anecdotally that when we've, you know, visited clients onsite or they've come, visited us, that our relationships are better. They tend to be happier with, with the work results, even though it's the same result either way. When you have that personal interaction with the service provider, they see it differently. And the same's true internally, we used to go into the office every day and, you know, everyone has their quirks. Everyone's a little different. But you know, that quirky coworker was, was your coworker. Right? They were, they were someone that you appreciated even though they were quirky and you maybe, you know, still made a little face every time they did their quirkiness, but you, they were, they were your coworker. They were part of your team. And now that we're all remote, I feel like it's too easy to just mute yourself, mute your camera, and when they're quirky, you just stop paying attention and you don't appreciate it. And so we're, we're really not appreciating each other's differences as much anymore. We're, we're, we're kind of isolating ourselves instead. So I, I see Warmspace as a way to kind of breakthrough that, that trap that we've kind of fallen into lately being all remote. And hopefully get back to that, one team sense. Even, even if like you're saying, you know, we're, we're not necessarily just a role but, you know, having a, a personal relationship with our employees instead of just a, a transactional one.

Vlad Giverts (18:37):

Yeah. That's right. And you, you really point to the how when you're remote, almost every meeting has an agenda, you can't like to show up early to a conference room and do a little chitchat that has nothing to do with the meeting or, you know, meet up in the kitchen, just run into people. That doesn't happen as much anymore. So, setting intentional time aside, literally just a few minutes a day is all it takes can start kind of undoing some of this kind of rut that we've we're falling into more and more in this, you know, remote work that more people are falling into.

Matt Kauffman (19:21):

Yeah. I mean, I see it even outside of work too. As a community organizer would put on different events and prior to the pandemic, they'd be in person. And there were a lot of these side conversations that you'd have with people. Often the, the, the best part of attending a conference is the networking. We would say, you know, it's, it's the people. It's not that I met someone who can help me with my job, it's that I had a conversation. It was an interesting conversation. But when you attend a virtual event, a virtual conference those don't really happen. You know, there, there's I played, played with a couple of different technologies. And although some of 'em let you kind of have a side conversation, you have to intentionally go and have it. You don't bump into somebody and start talking to them at the water fountain or the coffee, you know, that type of thing. And so I feel like we're, we're missing a lot of those, those non-intentional conversations, those non-intentional interactions that we used to have and, and, you know, broaden your horizon by just bumping into somebody who happened to be in the same three-foot radius as you, you know, for that moment in time. We're really missing that both at work and I think outside of work.

Vlad Giverts (20:35):

Yeah. We are. It's why one, one of the things I love about Warmspace is that when you use it, you could do it with a large group and then it will just match you randomly. Well, if you set it up that way with, with one other person, someone you maybe normally would never talk to nd, and there is a conversation flow and you can follow it. Some people don't, some people just chat, and, either way they come out kind of energized because if you know, if they get into a conversation, great, you know, they're engaged or, you know, if they go through the flow, great. You know, it takes them through a really lovely experience that'll also energize them.

Matt Kauffman (21:17):

Do you find that, that you need executive buy-in like how many, how many of the Worm space users are, you know, including the executives and management team versus just the employees?

Vlad Giverts (21:30):

Yeah. So the first time we tried implementing it, we actually tried implementing it with literally just kind of the, the bottom of the pyramid and actually didn't work so well. And so then we tried again going from the top down with like the top executive of the org is doing it every day with his directs, and then they're doing it with their directs and then kind of filtering it down. And that works, you know, a thousand times better. So just experientially the other, the without the executives using it and, and understanding the value and being fully bought into what it does for them, they can't really sell it to their people. Sure. Then it's like manipulation. It's like, well, wait a minute, you're asking me to do this, but you're, are you doing this? You're not really talking about it. Like, you know what you're talking about.

Matt Kauffman (22:28):

Yeah. I mean, as a kid I always hated icebreakers. I never liked them. I always felt like we were being forced to participate in things. As an adult, I actually do like them because it does give me that, that chance to interact with people and meet people, you know, and I think, like I said, over the last couple years, even more so. So I kind of, you know, wonder, do employees see that as, or being forced to use this tool? Or do you think that there's such a yearning for this connectivity that they embrace it, and it doesn't matter whether they're being forced to do it or not.

Vlad Giverts (23:11):

What we found is that if, their direct manager thinks this is amazing, then within a week everyone, maybe they had a resistance front, they think it's amazing. Otherwise, it takes longer. Usually, if people aren't getting bought in, it's usually their manager's not bought in. Their manager's not using it. But what I found is it takes a co if someone, most people actually like it upfront vast majority, but there is a minority and they can be vocal. It's like, man, this is. This is a waste of time. This is being, this is so forced, it feels unnatural. That's actually okay because what, what almost all of those people after a week or two, if they're doing it every day turn around, say, well, actually this is pretty nice.

Matt Kauffman (24:01):

That's great. Yeah. So you, you, you've built a platform that sells itself

Vlad Giverts (24:07):

Well to the people using it. For sure. I think the purchasing department takes some more work.

Matt Kauffman (24:13):

Sure.

Carlos Ponce (24:19):

Vlad we're coming up on time, but I wouldn't want to end of the conversation without asking you something very specific. I mean, I can see the value that Warmspace offers to users, to individuals as human beings, and just as a way to take care of exercise, self-care, and also interact with others in a nice way. But specifically, I mean, something that I'm looking at, on your website is how warm space impacts your business. So for those viewers who might be watching, who are interested in implementing warm space in their organizations, can you explain to us a little bit about how it reduces, I mean, it can help reduce turnover, increase job performance, and boost innovations. Can you elaborate on that aspect a little bit, please?

Vlad Giverts (25:15):

Let's see. Yeah, I mean, a lot of it is just kind of giving people a chance to be real people, not like, here's the box I'm supposed to be in. So if you have a warm space, and you know, the prompt might be, well, how are you? You might even answer, you know, I feel kind of today. You know, maybe my spouse is sick, or, you know, I didn't sleep well, or I'm injured, or, you know, going through a divorce, my, you know, father is dying. My wife is dying. Like, these are literally people things people have shared. So not, not necessarily all positive, but what happens is when you're real and when your counterparts or counterparts really see that and acknowledge it and appreciate you exactly as you are, then it's much easier to show up at work. You're no longer man, like, I really had to get through this slog. It's like, okay, yeah, I'm in a difficult place. And there's a sense of holding, like, yeah, I can do this. I can, I can actually do my job even though it's today. Maybe it's difficult. And, it also melts conflict, right? So much of what, why there's a difficulty at, at work is all these competing interests. Sometimes even, you know, opposing and acrimonious relationships at work. I've seen plenty of that. But when you engage in this way with your colleagues, maybe it won't resolve all the problems, but it's a lot easier to relate to them as human beings. And, and all of this contributes to a people feeling better at work. And when you feel better, you're, you're not going to want to leave so much, you know, this is actually pretty good. I like the people I work with, I like, like my boss. And, you know, so then you're saving on attrition, which is really expensive to replace people who are already ramped up. You don't have to any of the hiring and ramp-up costs plus the opportunity cost of that person not doing their job. So that alone makes it very valuable. But then you have people that are actually showing up more, showing up more fully, and being more productive while they're there significantly. So sometimes and more creative and that, you know, that kind of gets underappreciated. It's very hard to measure, but somehow the teams do better. That's interesting. So this kind of gives you a taste. It'd take a lot more to go into it further, but yeah,

Carlos Ponce (27:54):

Absolutely. Yeah, appreciate your elaborate space, and how it can impact organizations, and well, unfortunately, we're, we're coming up on time, so the only thing left for me to do personally is thank you for having been with us today on the show. Anything else for Vlad? Because the announcements.

Matt Kauffman (28:19):

No, I appreciate it. This was great and I look forward to, using Warmspace going forward.

Vlad Giverts (28:25):

Oh, very cool. Well, let, let's chat after this, Matt.

Carlos Ponce (28:28):

Absolutely. Alright, well before we go stay with us as we go up the air, I have a quick announcement to make and this is about guests. So on Wednesday of next week, we're going to be speaking with William McLain, the CTO of Cloud at Data Stack. And then on November the first we're going to be speaking with Priti Delia, the senior software engineer at Qualtrics. So that's what we have right here on Tech Leaders Unplugged. So join us next week at 9:30 PM 9:30 AM Pacific. I'm sorry. And join us as ever. Don't <inaudible> here or be. With that being said, again, thank you so much. Thank you, Vlad. Thank you, Matt. And see you next time.

Matt Kauffman (29:23):

Thanks.

Vlad Giverts (29:25):

Yeah, thank you.