The Return to Office: It’s Happening

This is one of those episodes that just pisses everyone off, this topic over here. But hey guys, harsh reality again. Most people are going back to the office. Let me tell you why. JP Morgan to staff, party's over, back to your desk. JP Morgan plans to mandate all 300,000 employees return to office 5 days weekly, ending remote. Okay, so Jamie Dimon said this last year. He said, you know, I think taking a day or two at home is fine. That's what he said last year to gear up for this year, right? And then Not only that, guys, not only that, WPP tells its employees to return to office. Okay, you're coming back into the office 4 days a week and maybe you can do 1 day work from home. Okay.

Well, let's go back to Jamie Dimon. So last year he said, when did he say last year? You don't know.

I don't know. But he said last year that, you know, 1 or 2 days from home is fine. And by the way, guys, Amazon too, sure, they might've paused it, but you can bet your butt that they're going to bring it. So my point is I've been saying this, it's not like, Guys, like, I don't want to be the bearer of bad news. But the reality is, it's not that, like, I love working at home in my shorts. Neil loves working at home in his shorts. We all love it. You can—

I still do, by the way.

Okay, you get to, you get to play with your kids, you get to, you know, hang out and do things, right. But the reality is, if we both like that, chances are these executives like that too. I don't think anybody would prefer to go back into the office all the time. But the company has a job to do. And the focus is on for the company to do a good job, not for not for everyone's happiness first and foremost, right? The happiness is important. But, and I hate to say it, like, the company has numbers to hit, and they have shareholders to please as well. And they have to do that. There is pressure, right? There are expectations. Now, that being said, there are companies that I think will continue to be remote first. But I'm just saying, I think the majority of companies are going to call for people to come back, just because they're incentivized to do so. Not because they want to enslave people, or like torture them, or whatever it is exactly. It's just because they They tend to get more done in the office for whatever it is that they do.

What are companies like your company doing when which you had an office, you went remote, and now you have an office again, but there's no way all your employees are within Los Angeles County?

So you guys might think the way I'm saying this right now, I'm calling everyone back. No, that's not the reality. We're remote first still, right? So that being said, I would, anybody that is in LA, they're going to come to the office and we're just going to build it out there. So we're going to have like a base. But I do, I think for an agency type business, I think we can leverage, you know, nearshore, I think we can hire people remotely as long as we, you know, make sure that they align with our values. What do you think about it?

I do think having people back into the office is better.

For your company?

For my company, at least. I don't know for the, you know, all the other businesses out there. And I'll tell you this, we are a remote-first company. We used to be an office-first company. We had offices in all the countries we were in. We slowly changed that and we went to no offices during COVID You slowly or fastly changed?

I think everyone just changed.

Well, we fastly changed it, but some of our leases slowly changed because we couldn't get out of our leases and we stuck with the contract and we paid them, you know, and we were able to. So the landlord should get their money. You know, they're running a business as well. Fast forward to today, we have offices in certain countries. And the reason we have offices in certain countries is because of their culture. Like in certain countries, for example, in India, and I was not born in India, even though I'm Indian, I've grown up and I lived most of my life in the United States. So I was talking to someone who runs our India team and she was like, you know, in India, if you don't have office, a lot of people will join Zoom calls and they'll be at lunch. I'm like, really? She's like, yeah, try getting them to actually turn on their video. She's like, they'll refuse to. And I was like, huh, never realized this. I'm like, you sure? She's like, yeah. She's like, in places like India, people will take advantage of you. So in certain countries, we've had to put back an office, force people back into the office, and we've seen a huge increase in productivity. And it's funny in which some people refuse to go back into the office and they just quit on you. They're like, nope, not coming back to the office, I quit. And when you look at what they're actually delivering in their output, it was very little to nothing. And I was like, yeah, a lot of people were working 2, 3 jobs, double dipping. And she's just like, this is why you got to do this. And she's like, in certain countries, I'm Indian, you know, keep that in mind, you have more people taking advantage or doing corrupt stuff. Like I get calls all the time from people in India saying they are the IRS and I need to pay or I'm going to go to jail. Or from a sheriff's station saying if I don't give them money, they're going to put a warrant for my arrest. And I always tell them, Cool. Give me your phone number and your address. I would love to meet you in person because I know it's fake. And they're like, we have a arrest warrant for you right now in Las Vegas for things that you did last week. And I'm like, I don't live in Las Vegas anymore. You got the wrong person. I'm like, you're doing a terrible job scamming. But I typically don't tell them at the beginning. I drag it on for 20, 30 minutes and then I let them know.

Yeah, I love those. I'll drag it on and I'll be like, So how's it feel to be a scumbag? And then they like don't know what to say and then they hang up.

Yeah. No, but I try not to go there directly. I drag it out like I'm actually really worried that something's gonna happen.

I know, I do the same thing too. I'm saying I drag it out for 20, 30 minutes.

And then you let them know at the end that they're a scumbag and you wasted their time.

Yes, exactly.

They get pissed off at you so bad.

It's like, you wanna waste time? I'll waste your time. Yeah. But look guys, I think both sides are warranted here. It's like on one end, if you're a parent and then you have You know, you enjoy your time at home. Like, yeah, remote work is great. Um, but on the other side, if you're running a business, like, you know, you have numbers to hit, you have— that's— it makes sense that you would call people back. And when I post this to LinkedIn, that the last post I threw up there got like a million impressions and people were just fighting in the comments. Um, the vast majority of people that are leaving comments, do you think it's the entrepreneurs?

No, it's the haters.

It's the— it's most of the— it's mostly people that really want to protect working from home. And as they should, but The thing is, the people that in the replies, you'll never see the entrepreneurs in the replies because they're so busy running their business, right? If you're an agency owner looking to break high 7 figures, 8 figures, or even 9 figures, the Agency Owners Association is for you. It's ran by my partner, Neil Patel, and myself. And we've been there, done that from an agency standpoint. And if you want to learn more about it, if you want to grow faster, get more clients, take yourself out of the day-to-day, just go to marketingschool.io/aoa. agency to learn more. I don't have time to reply to them either. So it ends up that they're just kind of fighting each other. So my point of saying all this is that, look, we're seeing signals from Amazon, from WPP, from JP Morgan. We're not— I'm not saying this is gonna happen across the board, but I think the majority of companies will call people back if necessary. And that's just the reality, guys. I'm sorry.

Yep.

Goodbye, guys. That's it for today. Go to marketingschool.io/agency if you want to grow your agency faster. And we'll see you tomorrow.