301 – Diversity, Delegation, and Determination with Indy Gregg

John Over the last two decades, I’ve been on an insatiable quest to learn everything I can about leadership. What makes the best leaders so good? After running companies small and large over the last 20 years, today I speak on stages all across the world to audiences who are interested in that same question. My name is John Laurito. I’m your host, and I invite you to join me on this journey as we explore this very topic and what makes the best leader so good. 

John Welcome to tomorrow’s leader. All right. Tomorrow’s leaders. I have got another great interview for you today. I’ve got Indy Gregg. She’s the founder and CEO of We Do Remember that name. That is a company that is going big places. They just two years ago had four people. They’re now at 30 growing fast. It’s kind of like a Venmo version for independent contractors. It’s really, really a cool company. But what really struck me is in these really great kind of natural way of leading an organization, very authentic, very much paying attention to the culture at the same point, very much about high accountability and ownership and having the right systems in place, getting everybody on the right page. So there’s a lot to what we talked about in this short conversation. There’s a lot of valuable nuggets. So pay attention and I think you’re going to really like this one. Here’s Indy. 

John All right. Welcome to today’s episode of Tomorrow’s Leader, where we dove deep on all things leader related related to leading yourself and leading others. I’m John Laurito, your host. I’ve got a great guest with me today with a great story. Her name is Indy Gregg. She’s the founder and CEO of We Do Company. Over the last two years. That’s grown significantly. So, Indy, welcome to the show. 

Indy Thanks for having me here. 

John Yeah, my pleasure. For those who are not watching and just listening, you’ve got a really cool backdrop behind you. And you’re I guess you’re your guy behind you as his name is West. Is that right or does it mess it up? 

Indy Yeah, we nicknamed him West and then. 

Indy But he represents the trinity of business. So the relationship or the equality in general directly represents equality. But, you know, if you have community or the customer at the bottom and you have investment or stakeholders and then you have the company in the team and the way that, you know, should be dosed in equal measures that we pay attention to all three. 

John I love it. I love it. That’s a constant, everyday reminder when you got him behind you there. 

Indy Is pretty imposing. 

John It’s a big guy. Yeah, he’s a big guy. 

Indy He’s taller than me. 

John Well, there’s a lot I want to talk about in a short period of time. Yeah, I know that the listeners are be interested in your story. So you started. We do two years ago. It started with four or five of you. It’s now grown significantly. You’ve got your team all over the place. It’s 29 of you. Now, let’s just start with that story. I mean, you’ve done something that less than a fraction of of 1% of entrepreneurs in startups do. What what do you credit to that? And what’s some of the things that you’ve learned in building a company that fast? 

Indy Oh, well, I think I guess hindsight is always 20, 20, 20, and I think that we learned mostly from our failures. So I’ve had plenty of those throughout my life, but I’ve had plenty of success as well. So don’t feel too sorry for me. But I think, yeah, just choosing people who are determined and who have a great work ethic and building a team of people who have diverse skills that aren’t like you is one of the main things that helped us grow quickly. Just getting the right skill sets in at the right time in the growth of a company. 

John How delivered are you with that? So is it more of, hey, you’re aware and looking for the skills that complement you when you’re interviewing people? Or are you specifically have in mind certain skills and competencies that you are recruiting for both? 

Indy So when you’re starting out, you don’t necessarily have a bunch of budget to hire. So you try to find people who have diverse skills and who can help you grow the company and come in kind of in a co-founder type of status. And we didn’t raise capital for a really long time, so I was looking for people and kind of choosing people from my life already. Right. So I think yeah, I think it’s both. I think choosing skills that are diverse and different than your skills so that you can fill the gaps together. And then as you grow your specifically looking for a set of skills to own a lane in ownership and accountability is part of that. And then as you grow a little bit bigger, you’re looking for people who can help do the heavy lifting, as well as lead a group of the heavy lifters. So a little bit of all. 

John What is that or chronology look like the order of events in terms of hiring people. When you started back two years ago, you had a small group of four or five who what type of person or what type of role did you then realize you needed? What was kind of next for you? 

Indy Well, we started with a group of small creatives and tech people. I have a tech background and a design background. And so we had a couple of designers and yeah, a gal who works in marketing, he was doing some ops for us and and still is, but she’s moved into marketing. And then as we grew, as we developed and we were able to raise capital at that point, we decided, okay, now it’s time to hire people, because it just kept getting busier and busier. And so so yeah, it’s just a natural progression. You kind of know when you, when your bandwidth is so run out that you need someone else, you know, in the loop. 

John Yeah, exactly. So what is what? Let’s talk a little bit about the company. What is we do? What what do you do? What. No pun intended. And what what is it all about? 

Indy Well, what we do, what we do is we enable people. So we are enabling small businesses, entrepreneurs and freelancers with an end to end networking platform that supported by banking services and invoicing and contracting. So if you can imagine video and audio streaming services connected to file sharing, so you can serve a client or you can, you know, do a concert or sell a ticket or show sell an event. And combining that all seamlessly with chat, video, file, share, invoicing, contracting and banking, and we issue you a debit card so you deploy your money as well in 38 currencies. And we’re kind of an all in one business in a box social networking device, essentially. 

John Interesting. So. So do you find the how first of all, what’s the growth been? So how many users do you have at this point? 

Indy We’ve got 37,000 in our in our weight room. We bring in about 500 every week, and we’re launching in September in the United States, we’re covering UK and Europe. So we’re a little bit ahead in the UK, in Europe right now. But we launched in Las Vegas and will be money 2020. So yeah, we we are hoping to grow, you know, through net for network effects and through some, some marketing and PR. But we’re in the early stages still. You know, we’re two years old, but we’re we’re marching on. 

John Yeah, well, that’s tremendous progress you’ve made in a really short period of time. So what do you think? I mean, what’s the vision for the company when you look out five years, ten years, what does it look like? 

Indy Well, we’d like to help millions of people. I think right now the world is changing. We’re in a knowledge based society going into one and and coming out of work. That was from, you know, the early 1900s when manufacturing was more important. So now we’re moving to knowledge based and the Internet and services, digital services are becoming more and more important for people and work is changing. So we believe that people should be able to be anywhere in the world, anytime, anywhere, any place. And if they have a mobile phone or an Internet connection, they should be able to pick up that phone and be able to work. Right. And and we’re looking at digital nomads, fractional work, where people are being divided among one or two or three companies rather than having one 9 to 5. And we believe that this offers freedom and flexibility for people and can help remove the barrier to entry. You know, Upwork and Fiverr take like 20% of a freelancers income, just as just as an example. We don’t do that. We remove that because everyone needs a bank and everybody needs to have transactions, right? So we just we just apply a flat 3% and we hopefully will save that inflationary like add 20% on the assignee. Who hires you is paying more and you’re going to build that into your margins. And it just seems incredible. Half the world’s workforce will be freelance by 2027. Half. That’s huge. So we can’t continue this way, you know? 

John Yeah. 

Indy 20% in between. 

John So is that what you see as the future? Let’s talk about the future. The work future of work in that is that where you see things going is that there’s just this larger momentum and trend toward independent freelancers. 

Indy I think. And not just independent freelancers, but also small businesses and startups and technical startups especially, will be more fractional, more remote in the future. They already are. I mean, you know, tech people have been working remotely for, you know, over a decade, maybe longer and online. But more and more people who have services, who have talent, knowledge and skills, who aren’t fixed to a desk, are working remotely. If COVID taught us anything, it’s that, you know, remote working is a thing, right? And now. What that does is it enables people to be able to live their lives and go anywhere. So you’re we’re seeing more and more countries add digital nomad visas so that people can just, you know, their work maybe, you know, in in Japan or in South America. But they can go to America and work or they can go to France and work. And that that creates opportunities, especially in the millennial generation, you know, the age 30 and under more and more people traveling, experiencing the world and experience is extremely important to that generation. And I think that their work lives are going to be more balanced and more flexible, and hopefully we build a society with more happy people. 

John Well, that makes a lot of sense. And I like where that ends, where it gets everybody to a happy place and a productive place. If people want to learn more about We do and the company and you and learn more about what it is, where do they go? How do they do it? 

Indy On our websites we do. I of course they can download the app in iOS and Android it’s we do where we search video you’re going to find it and and yeah online I’m Indiana Greg that’s my handle and for the company it’s we do underscore HQ so if you want to see the crazy west getting up to no good we have a live was that runs around in a crazy yellow suit you can catch it catch that on on Instagram and the usual suspects. 

John Well I’ll be sure to check it out. This has been terrific, indeed. Congrats, first of all, on all your success. And I know you’re just scratching the surface and getting started. So my guess is you’ve got a lot of had a lot of great success. I will certainly be checking out and downloading the app and getting involved. So as I’m sure many of our listeners are, but I appreciate you joining us today. It’s just been great. 

Indy I appreciate you having me here. 

John You got it. 

Indy Really grateful. Thank you. 

John You got it. And thanks all for joining us today. We’ve been here with Indy Gregg, who’s the founder and CEO of We Do. We’ll have all the info in the show, notes, the links, everything. Check it out. Download the app. I think you’ll gain a lot from that. 

John As always, appreciate you joining like share subscribe. Go down below. Give a five star review and we’ll see you next time. Thanks. 

Thanks for joining us on today’s episode of Tomorrow’s Leader. For suggestions or inquiries about having me at your next event or personal coaching, you can reach me at John@johnlauriot.com. Thanks, lead on!