IAM231- Serial Entrepreneur Brings Human Connection Back to Communication

Ho Yin is a serial entrepreneur with a 8-figure Amazon business, a mobile agency, and also a $1M ARR B2B SaaS company. Ho Yin has 7+ years of experience building remote teams, and has worked with Fortune 100 companies like Best Buy, TJ Maxx, SunGard, Cardinal Health, and Kaiser Permanente. His new venture is Remo, the next-gen video workspace for distributed teams.

• CEO Hack: Ability to think in a lean way
• CEO Nugget: (1) Looks at trends from an overall perspective (2) The real opportunities lie in future problems
• CEO Defined: Leader with a vision

Website: http://remo.co/

LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/hoyincheung/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/hoyinc

Full Interview

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Transcription

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Intro 0:02

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

Gresham Harkless 0:27

Hello, hello. hello, this is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Ho Yin Cheung of Remo. Ho Yin, it is awesome to have you on the show.

Ho Yin Cheung 0:36

Hey, thank you. Thank you so much.

Gresham Harkless 0:38

No problem. Super excited to have you on and what I wanted to do was just read a little bit more about Ho Yin so you can hear about all the awesome things that he's doing. And Ho Yin is a serial entrepreneur with an 8-figure Amazon business, a mobile agency, and also a $1M ARR B2B SaaS company. Ho Yin has 7+ years of experience building remote teams and has worked with Fortune 100 companies like Best Buy, TJ Maxx, SunGard, Cardinal Health, and Kaiser Permanente. His new venture is Remo, the next-gen video workspace for distributed teams. So Ho Yin, Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO Community?

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Ho Yin Cheung 1:15

Yes, I'm ready.

Gresham Harkless 1:17

Awesome. Awesome. I love it. It was all those big figures that got me thrown off a little bit. But what I wanted to do is ask you for what I call your CEO story and hear a little bit more about what actually started with your businesses.

Ho Yin Cheung 1:26

Yes, great. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me on the podcast. This is fantastic. Thank you so much. I started off kind of working as a management consultant in the United States, I worked with like a lot of large Fortune 100 companies, I have worked for large corpse realized how slow kind of they were and then eventually kind of had enough of that, and then went back to Hong Kong and then started doing a variety of different ventures.

And so I did like Amazon FBA, like probably more than eight, nine years ago when Amazon first started and then gradually started doing other things like a mobile agency, and currently right now, I'm running like a SASS platform to grow Instagram accounts for small-medium businesses called Riley social. And that company was fully remote, I kind of gradually moved towards that model. And as it moves towards that I realized that I think remote work is the future of work.

And so I started to create Remo which is kind of like Skype on steroids, like a visual map, sort of like a game, but you can move into different rooms, and have a video conference immediately with anybody that's kind of sitting in that room, sort of like a game. So yeah, that's how I got started.

Gresham Harkless 2:37

Interesting, interesting. Yeah. And I know, we talked a little bit offline, about how the future of business, the future of remote teams, how everybody is able to build an established business, it doesn't necessarily need to be in the same room, at least, I guess, physically. But you can do it virtually, I guess, with what you're building. So I wanted to hear a little bit more about Remo and everything you're doing with it.

Ho Yin Cheung 2:57

Remo was really kind of solve, like our own itch, which was like, if you're a distributed team, you can think of like yourself, you're sitting at home, and you don't have much communication with the outside world, except for maybe an occasional spike of a zoom call or a Skype call. But in general, your interaction with people is very limited. And what we realized is that over long periods of time, that doesn't do very well for hyper-collaborative teams, teams that require a lot of collaboration, like product development, and product design, something that we kind of encounter. And it makes it very difficult for teams to be productive, and also to have a really good corporate culture and build camaraderie.

And that's actually one of the main reasons why we felt remote because we needed a common space for everybody kind of feels like they're together in that's number one. And then number two is we wanted to lower the barrier to entry for video conferencing not we didn't want this calling, we didn't want any of that concept we wanted, like if I can tap you on the shoulder, which like in the real world, and if you're an office attacker, in which there's a hey, I got a query for you, blah, blah, blah.

So we've been able to translate that tap-on-the-shoulder effect online. And we're really excited because it allows teams to lessen the use of chat, and more with the use of human connection with human, like human-to-human interaction. And that's what I really feel passionate about how do I bring that human connection back into communication? Zoom and Skype are great, but we want to make that human connection beyond just meetings.

Gresham Harkless 4:27

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. And like you mentioned with everybody, , having more opportunity to work from home, work in their home, I guess, intimate spaces, you don't have that opportunity, like you mentioned to go over to somebody's cubicle and tapped him on the shoulder and say, Hey, do you want to go out for lunch? Or hey, do you want to talk about this, but there's definitely an opportunity it sounds like you guys are filling that gap where you have the virtual love and ability to be able to work from home but at the same time you have that community feel.

Ho Yin Cheung 4:53

Yes.

Gresham Harkless 4:53

And kind of a touch of a button, that kind of sounds like.

Ho Yin Cheung 4:55

Yes, you're right. So it's like we want to take advantage of the good of both worlds. So it's exactly what you said, the freedom of working at home, but also the ease of socializing with people.

Gresham Harkless 5:06

Yeah, absolutely, you have to be able to kind of adapt to that or have platforms like the one you've created to make it a lot easier to adapt to that. So I love that you're building that. And you might have already touched on this, what would you say is your personal or your secret sauce for your organization?

Ho Yin Cheung 5:20

So I think my secret sauce for my organization is, I think we scale or not scale, but we leverage people in a way that allows us to scale ourselves, I think, at a startup or any organization, I think, the resource that and I tell all, everybody who works with me, it's not necessarily money, that's like the resource that you don't have. It's actually people's time, everybody's time, it's how do I scale as an individual more, and what we found that one of the best ways that I found is when I started off, like my fully remote company, I start the story with virtual assistants.

And it sounds like someone who helps you out and everything, but it's more than that. It's asking them to do things to help you out in order to scale yourself in ways that you don't have to work. And it's, I don't want to say it's like your contract to be a manager or not, no, like, you still have to create the process, you still have to design it and do it yourself first, right? You can't tell the virtual assistant to treat the process, like go figure it out, like that may or may not work well, depending on the purchases that you have. But you still need to do it yourself, and then figure out what are the means of success and train them to teach them how to do it. But that allows you can do so many things with a virtual assistant.

And that has allowed me to scale my lead generation that's allowed me to scale my marketing that's allowed me to scale the way how I do my sales. I have a sales team now, they start off as virtual assistants. And then they eventually became really amazing salespeople, that's how cool it is, is that you figure you're always surprised by how people are actually way have much more potential than you initially think. And I think that's what's the most amazing thing. And also combine that with cost arbitrage, getting a virtual assistant from countries where they may not be able to get jobs that easily so most artists just answer the Philippines and they're in the southern part of the Philippines into the bow where it's not easy to get jobs there.

And this allows them to have a global platform to work with many people around the world. And you're giving jobs to other people that may not have had that opportunity mothers that have to bring home the bacon, but they've got three kids, I have a work with someone who has three kids. And she needs to work somehow and take care of the kids. That's an amazing opportunity to allow people to do that.

Gresham Harkless 7:53

I wanted to switch gears a little bit and ask you for what I call a co-hack. And this might be an app or book or a habit that you have. But it's something that makes you more effective and efficient.

Ho Yin Cheung 8:01

I think for me, my CEO hack is the ability to think in a really lean way. A lot of people talk about lean startups and all that kind of stuff, I think, How can you do something leaner? I constantly ask myself and my team that. And I'm always trying to think what's the leanest way I can start a relationship with a new person. And some people were like, Oh, I'll hire that person for a month after an interview, or after I look at the resume interview for a few hours. And then hey, I got a pretty good idea. And then I go hire them. For me. I'm like, Okay, well, I think interviews are pretty hard, a pretty poor predictor of performance. Resumes just mean you're good at writing resumes.

So what I've found is we do tests of actually having them do the job they're supposed to do, and also having a one-week or a two-week pay test. So that's like a really lean way to test someone to see if they're a really good fit or not.

And it time boxes it in such a way that you don't have to, nobody's committed, right? And I always say this, whether it's to a business partner, whether it's to a new vendor that I'm working with, that says, hey, we need two months upfront, two months contract, I would say, hey, I'm a traditional kind of guy, I like to date someone first before I get married, Right? Would you ask the same question, wouldn't you? I say that to every single person and nobody would say let's get hitched. Let's go to Vegas and get hitched. Nobody said that. And I guess I'm not sure what kind of guy. And that's how I treat business as well. And that helps you say let's just do a one-week trial. I was talking to a vendor and I said let's just do a two-week trial. And it gave him the reason that's my legitimate concern. I just don't want to spend one month's worth or two months' worth of whatever cost and then just have no idea what's going to happen. I just don't know how can we work it out and a lot of vendors will come back and say, okay, let's see what we can do.

So I think that's like a great hack that allows you to minimize your risk. That's the key thing. How do you minimize your risk so that you don't make decisions or investments in areas that might not be good?

Gresham Harkless 10:12

Yeah, absolutely. And sometimes you don't really know that until you're starting to do it. And then you can start to make decisions based on that. But if you start laying, and allows you to be able to make pivots or decisions based off of that, so I think that's a phenomenal CEO hack. And now I want to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget. And this is a word of wisdom or piece of advice. Or if you can happen to be a time machine, what would you tell your younger business self?

Ho Yin Cheung 10:32

Okay, so here's mine, my nugget is there are a lot of trends and I think following those big trends is really important. And it's easy to say that because when I was young I don't know what a trend is like, there were so many trends going on. What's the right trend to go for? And I don't think I really got it until much later in life, what is a trend worth kind of following? And what's the trend that's not really worth following? And I think learning how to like a spot that I think it's really important.

So for example there are some key large trends that are happening right now. I mean, everybody's kind of talking about for example, like 3d printing, machine learning, or maybe crypto blockchain cryptocurrency or whatever. That's from a technology side. But you also have to look at trends from an overall silent like another one, for example, AR and VR, and we all know everybody's gonna go on to AR and VR, eventually, everybody kind of thinks that we're going to do blockchains, maybe eventually.

So you just got to pick one of those trends early and be able to get into it so that when that trend takes off, then you're at the right place, you have to have that vision of the future or solve a problem that is a future problem, not a current problem, you can solve a current problem that's cool. Nothing wrong with that, as a start, I solve the current problem in my first few companies.

But I realized that the really big opportunities are future problems. And that is where the risk is, frankly, because you're trying to make a bet on something that may or may not pan out. But if you're able to get on something early, I think that'd be really important. I don't know if I'm trying to stretch out this answer that longer, we'll tell you why I got that nugget, there was an interview with Jeff Bezos, the Amazon CEO. And he basically said the number of people that are using the internet every year has been increasing by X percent.

So he started Amazon way before 2001, before the buzz, and he saw that trend. So you can see when you look at the numbers, and you can look at numbers of the trend of internet usage going crazy up or mobile phones going crazy up, then you know that you're going to be part of some form of the trend before it was mobile now mobiles kind of peeking a little bit. So he saw that and he said, people are going to buy stuff online some way or another. And the best way to buy stuff online that you can't get anywhere else is about one place that could have not just 100 of 200 for maybe 1000 books, but millions of books, and I was like, wow it makes total sense that he start off with books. And so you got to be able to spot those trends. And then just make a committed, eight to 10 years or five or six, whatever many years you want to commit to into that area and just be a real legit leader and credible authority in that market.

Gresham Harkless 13:22

And now I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is a definition of what it means to be a CEO. We're hoping to have different quote-unquote, CEOs on the show. So I want to ask you, what does being a CEO mean to you?

Ho Yin Cheung 13:32

I think what it means to be a CEO for me personally, is, the older that I get, and the more experience that I get, the more that I realize that it depends on how young what stage the company is at. I think, if you're growing the company very quickly, from a young, small company to before it gets really large, I think vision is really important, vision to imagine what that future should look like and what your company is going to be accomplishing.

So I think vision is a really big part of it. And once it kind of hits track, like once it becomes large enough, then it becomes a bit different. Then it's like an operational CEO, not a visionary CEO, or the visionary CEO continues the vision by constantly tweaking the vision and going for that next mountain and keeps on going to the next mountain. And there are some people that can do that.

But I think that vision and rallying people together and putting them together to try to accomplish stuff, I think that's pretty cool. Like, I'm more of an operational guy, but I'm more like, hey let's go through the Excel spreadsheets. Let's go through it together and let's develop these defined processes. I realized that's important. But at the end of the day, I found that it's not about the vision and being a leader it's, you got to it because you can't do everything yourself. Like I can't keep on doing this fetch myself. I gotta find to work with people who do it really well and better than me, and the only way to do that is to have that vision and have that leadership and that's when I found that's how you scale yourself beyond yourself. And I think I never got that before. People talking about leadership, vision, all that kind of stuff. I was like, I don't get it. But now that I'm here and my point, my company, I realized that for this.

Gresham Harkless 15:12

And I wanted to pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional, you want to let our readers and our listeners know, and how best they can get a hold of you.

Ho Yin Cheung 15:36

We just launched Remo, so you can go to www.remo.co. And absolutely check out our workspace, check to see how the workspace works, or if it's not just Remo working also for companies that are hiring remote workers, but they have their own centralized office. So it's not 100% distributed might be like 20 to 30%. And it's also for companies that have a lot of regional offices or sales, people who are just like kind of all over the place. And so definitely check it out. And feel free to contact me. Contact me on LinkedIn if you're interested in kind of learning more about remote working or if can I get some more advice on how to conquer remote working challenges I'm down to kind of help people out. So yeah, those are definitely two ways to kind of check it out.

Gresham Harkless 16:05

Awesome, awesome, awesome. Well, I appreciate you Ho Yin. And what we'll do is we'll have those links in the show notes as well too, so that anybody can follow up with you but you're doing some awesome things my friend and I appreciate your time and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

Ho Yin Cheung 16:16

Thank you, man. Really appreciate. This is an awesome podcast. Thank you so much.

Outro 16:21

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