SHOULD PEOPLE GO BACK TO WORK AT THE OFFICE? - Meet quini from Guatemala. EP.02

I'm not a hoarder, you know. I've been— I haven't hoarded anything. Like, I will not go and buy more food than the food that we need because, you know, we spoke with my wife and I think it's a good thing. It's crazy to go and leave others without anything. But I did hoard a little beer because, you know, I just bought like, what is it, 6 times 3? No, probably like 90 beers.

So we are now recording. I'm starting. So Queenie, welcome to my show. I'm so happy to have you, my friend.

Thank you very much, Nir. It's a pleasure to talk with you, my friend.

So my show is called Zavaronis, and it's a little bit about trying to bring some of the global village that we have where we are all at the moment stuck at home, kind of trying to pass the time. And I don't know if you know this, but my project for 2020 was to go and do 100 talks all over the world. And seeing I can't leave my house, I thought, why not bring the whole world into my house? So you're the second guest. I've already spoken to a guy from Israel. And you and I had a quick chat last week, and you were so gracious to jump on board and do this with me. And I'm— listen, thank you for this. I appreciate it.

It's an honor to be the second guest, my friend. Yeah, I hope to be the first in America.

Yeah, the first one in Latin America, definitely not the last. And the first guest from Guatemala, so Listen, usually on my show in Israel, and now I think I'll take it globally, is I give the guests the chance to know you by asking you to do your elevator pitch, something like 60 seconds. You can talk about anything you want so the guests can kind of get to know you. So are you ready?

Excellent, ready. So my name is Joaquin Cordero. I was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. I'm living in Guatemala. I've been living here since I was 2 years old. I studied in Mexico business and I'm married. My wife is from Mexico. We have a daughter named Stella. I have an advertising business. We do everything. Small country, sometimes you have to do everything. And we do advertising 360, like digital. We have a production house. We did a co-production of a movie that you can see on Netflix that is called September.

Wow.

But mostly it's commercials. Mostly it's commercials. We do a lot of things for, I don't know, pictures or commercials for McDonald's, for Danone, Volkswagen, and we work from Guatemala and El Salvador. So it's on both countries. It's a small agency, 23 people, and I love rock climbing. I love, I love, that's what I'm passionate about. I feel that I work so that I can take trips where I can go meet new rock in different countries. I've climbed in Brazil, in Yosemite in the States. I didn't climb in Israel. I didn't find any rock over there. It's probably starting. In Greece, Croatia, you know, happy, happy to help.

Wow, I didn't know that you rock climb. That's amazing.

Oh, you didn't know?

No.

I love it. I have— I had a— as a goal, I wanted to climb El Cap this year in Yosemite. I climbed— I tried to climb it in 2017. Uh, I was not able to, to climb it to the top, so I, I still have the thing to go and do it.

So, but you climb with the whole gear and everything, right? There's those who climb bare hands.

I climb like it's, uh, free climbing where you use your feet and your hands to climb, but I use a rope and a harness and all the necessary gear to keep safe.

So safety first.

Yeah, I've already had a couple of, of, um, accidents that, you know, that always make you think you have to check everything twice.

Wow, that's insane. You know, part of doing this, uh, um Global Calls is trying to kind of connect to people on the other side, and you said we're a small agency with 23 people, and you know, in Israel it's not very small, 23.

Oh no?

No, it's like, so I have about 7 employees and about 5 or 6 freelancers, and we do outsourced marketing services. So it's always interesting about how people consider what is small and big in their country. How many people live in Guatemala?

Uh, there is 16 million.

Yeah, so we're about 8.

So yeah, you are, you're a little smaller than El Salvador. I had the pleasure of visiting your beautiful country.

You were here?

Yeah, I was there. Uh, my partner, uh, in another business that I also So, um, my partner got married in Israel. He's from Guatemala, and we all went over there. I think he wanted to get married in Israel so that nobody would go to his wedding because it was going to be too far, but like 150 people came. Everybody went.

Wow.

And it was great. It was spectacular. We had a lot of fun. We visited a lot of beautiful places. We did a great tour over there. I have a couple great restaurants that I loved over there. And you know, there's a funny thing between Guatemala and Israel. There is a strong relationship. I understand that for Israel to— when they went voting to vote, so when— because I think it was between California or Baja California. and different places, but Guatemala voted positive. So we have a strong relationship. When I was in Israel, um, people would say, oh, that's so funny, everybody goes from here to Guatemala. Well, now we have people from Guatemala going over to Israel.

Yeah, so I, I assume you've met, but Israelis have this thing. So I don't know if you know this, but we finished the army service, so we served for about 3 years, and also women serve And we finished the army and after 3 years of wearing the same clothes and people telling us what to do the whole time, we feel the right thing to do is to go work in a bar or restaurant, save up some money and go traveling. So we're kind of divided, those who go to Thailand and Far East, those that might go to Australia and New Zealand, that's what I did. And I got to travel Australia and New Zealand for about 8 months, which was amazing after the army service. And the other side is that people go to South America and Central America and they come back after they fell in love with those places and those countries. And I think we also have a lot of people who speak very bad Spanish because of that.

You should see my Hebrew.

I'll trust you. So we are now talking from our homes during corona days, and what is the weather and what is the situation over there, if I may ask?

Well, the weather is really strange. It's hot right now, so, you know, winter in Guatemala is from May till more or less October. Because it's the rainy season and we have half a year rains, half the year it doesn't. So we don't have like the full seasons, the 4 seasons. And right now it's a little warm. Yesterday, um, we had a hailstorm. That's what you call the big ice that fall from the sky. It was very strange, like for 20 minutes it was— I was about to get my glass outside so, so as to serve me a cocktail. It was amazing. But, you know, the weather is good. We have been in quarantine since, what is it, like 3 complete weeks.

Wow.

This is the 3rd complete week of quarantine. Before that, I was in Mexico City. We went to a concert with my wife and some friends, and we were already hearing something about the COVID And, you know, it was a little probably irresponsible if you think about it. So we were like, hey, let's go. So we went. We went to a concert with 15,000 other people, Soda Stereo, it's a spectacular Argentinian group. And, you know, we went to have a good time. We were already taking care of washing our hands, of having the gel, of all that little things, but when we came back, we were more understandable of the seriousness it had. Guatemala took a lot of measurements, they implemented stronger measurements. before Mexico did. Guatemala and El Salvador implemented very strong measurements before any other countries in Latin America, thankfully. And it's been interesting. It's been interesting in the sense of, you know, being in your home all day. I mean, it's— I think over this time there's many ups, mostly ups, and there are sometimes downs because it's normal. I think everybody has to freak out a couple of times during this time. I have found some things that I cherish a lot, and I don't know if we're all going to go back to normal. You know, probably we wouldn't want to go back to some of the things we had before, but sometimes I think I miss traffic. So, you know.

Really? That's what you miss? Well, I don't know what to tell you, but I have a bike here, so I drive to work and every place and all the meetings I drive with a bike. So now my biggest thing is during the mornings I go downstairs in my building, I start the engine of the bike just to hear it and make sure like electricity is working and everything, and so it doesn't lose power, and that's like enough for me. And actually, when I think when COVID started here, I got my new bike and I still went walking like for hours and I love to do audiobooks while I walk. So yeah, I'm not sure if I'm going to miss that. Do you think—

I have a bike as well. I started it today.

Yeah, I saw you have, but you have road bikes. Not road bikes, dirt bikes.

Wow. Yeah, so I like the smell of it. Yeah, when you started the gasoline.

Yeah, I, I can imagine. Tell me, but as someone who has hobbies outside and is used to big productions, doing stuff, do you think that people can keep doing this in terms of working from home? Do people will need still will still need offices, in your opinion?

Yes, that's such a good question. I've been thinking about and imagining and trying to understand. I am a fan of the future, and one of our values in our company is vision, and we share it as— to design is to predict the future. So I'm a fan of trying to predict future and understand behaviors and trying to see how things are gonna start being. And we had a conversation with our team in the advertising agency, the creatives and all. We're thinking, you know, first of all, I've been thinking for 2 weeks that this is gonna be a new normal, that we have to adapt fast because things are not gonna be again ever as they were. Imagine who is going to want to get onto the airplane with so much closeness between people, or go to a restaurant probably where 70 people are in the same restaurant. I think We are going— there is going to be a re-accommodation of those normal social— here in Guatemala, I think— I don't know if we're frozen again. Okay. Okay, so here in Guatemala, you know, it's normal that people kiss each other when they meet. In France, they do 2 kisses and a hug, you know, everybody hugs and everything. I don't know if that's gonna be like still like normal or shake hands, probably people are gonna be more, you know, worrisome of it. I don't know if the offices— I mean, I had a tough time talking with my team for 2 years. They were like, we should do home office, we should do home office. I was like, I don't know, you know, it would be good probably a day a week, but, you know, it's not the same. There's some magic that happens when you're in the office. I mean, That guy's right there and I thought about this idea I wanna share with him.

I agree, I agree.

But now this thing didn't give us any option and it just turned our force to work from home and it's working fantastic. I mean, I myself, I'm thinking if I should go back to the office. I mean, we're working so well here, not have to pay for the place for the employees to park or any other, or even the rent. I mean, we don't rent, but still, I think people are gonna see the benefits of home office and they're gonna apply it more. Maybe not completely eliminate the office space, but, you know, probably just use it for 40%. And some guys come on Monday and some guys come on Tuesday. I was thinking it'd be good to work from probably 9:30 or 10 AM to 4:00 or 3:30, just be there like all that time. You avoid traffic. So I think those norms are gonna change definitely.

Yeah, so I think it's interesting to see that people are actually being productive and I wonder if you guys have team calls, like 20 people and someone calls you out and says, hey, Quini, remember that we wanted to work from home? Do they do that?

Oh, I do it myself. I was like, remember guys how funny we were all discussing this and now we all have to do it? I mean, and it's working. That's the positive thing. We have calls. We're trying to remain with the frequency of the calls. We have a Tuesday call at 8 AM that we do with the key people to understand what things we have to do, and that's weekly. We have a weekly commercial call on Mondays at 8:30, and we have a daily huddle at 11 AM. That daily huddle, we are asking everybody to be in it. I mean, including the person who makes the errands or the person who helps us with cleaning the office space. I mean, it's important, you know, to be— to have them in contact with the office as well. There is a lot of indecisiveness, a lot of things we don't know what are going to happen. So we need all the guys over there. It's not mandatory. Almost everybody comes now because before it would be a little less, but now almost everybody comes. And we have this thing where we go with one word, like what we use in EO forums, and then we do good news. Everybody shares their good news of the day so as to start, you know, thinking more and minding more and being more conscious of good news throughout the days. And then we do a top 1. There is this top 5 where you write the top 5 things that you have to do and bring the most benefit to the company. For each employee, and we do bottlenecks to understand if there is something that is not letting them do their job. And it could be, you know, the internet is down or a lot of different things. One of them said that they had a bottleneck because the water wasn't being given to their home. So, so, you know, we were trying to see how we could help her, and finally she got water in her home. So sometimes they mix personal things with office things, and that's okay. We want to know how they're doing, and we want to maintain that communication as fluidly as possible. And we finish with if somebody saw someone doing something cool. The theme for this year in our company is Meraki, and Meraki is to do something with a lot of passion, with a lot of balls, we say. So that's our year's theme, and we asked at the end, anybody saw someone doing something cool or something with Meraki? They share it and it normally takes about 30 minutes. Wow.

First of all, sounds amazing. I want to join your calls. It sounds like there's a lot of things and I can learn. I can probably learn my Spanish.

You're welcome.

Yeah, I can probably get a taxi with my Spanish.

For sure.

But no, but listen, this is unbelievable, the amount of things and the fact that you guys are adding everyone in your staff to the cause, I think is amazing and it's worth mentioning to people trying to figure out who joins the call and who doesn't. To those of you who don't know, I think it's worth mentioning a one-word opener is something we do in our EO organization and it's one word to describe your state of mind when the meeting starts. So excited, happy, and people might go with negative stuff like I'm tired, exhausted, worried, or whatever, and a lot of times at the end of the meeting we will do a one-word closer, and a lot of people then noticed a change in their mind shift, and I think if you guys can take one tip in that sense from us, that'd be amazing. Also, I think I love the 5 things that people do and the bottlenecks, and definitely a lot of good stuff we can Oh, that'd be great. You know, I think I heard you say about moving— if we move out of office and if we lose traffic. And then you said we have a weekly meeting at 8 AM. So going back to the worst traffic hour— worst traffic— but let's, let's go back to the differences between Israel and Guatemala. I think it's crazy if you bring someone here at 8 AM, and trust me, I do try, to a meeting at 8 AM, they will talk until 8:30 about the fact that they're not happy that you brought them at 8 AM. So your working hours are what? When do you guys start?

Normally it's 8 to 5.

8 to 5?

Okay. And Mexico is very different. In Mexico, in the City of Mexico, people start a lot later, probably like 9:30 or 10, but they will leave the office like at 6:30 or 7 PM. they would have lunch at a different hour, probably like 2 PM instead of 1 PM when we have lunch.

Really? That's interesting. Yeah, I think if, if I'm not mistaken, we are the— as the startup nation that saves everything and we do amazing things and everything, we are, if I'm not mistaken, the least productive workforce in the OECD, the The industrial countries. And so we work from 9 AM to 6, but basically people work from 9 to like 8 or 7, and we're very unproductive. We will do everything during our working hours. People will pay their bills, they'll go online, they'll do stuff, they'll do shopping. We're like— And then we complain we work a lot of hours. And you mentioned earlier about the timeframe. And we have noticed, and I had a call last week actually with a friend who said he's noticed that working moms can work 5 hours, they'll work straight, they'll be super, super productive. And he says that moving forward, he thinks he might hire quite a lot of mothers and give them a better deal, 'cause before that, he used to want— a full-time position, and now he says, wait, I'm not sure I need a full-time position. I'm not sure I need to bring her a mandatory come to the office every single day. So I think that will also change in the way we— we don't need to work 10 hours.

You know, before this happened, there was a lot of editorials that people from the advertising industry were making here in Guatemala. A lot of them were like complaining about how the industry had failed them or had failed everybody in the industry. Advertising is like, it pushes people, the creative ones, to work till like 3 or 4 AM or to make long works. And I don't believe that. I believe that you have to have a balance. It's really boring and people burn, you know, they have a burn rate. So we have 11 years since we were funded— founded. And we did a commercial once for a telco, Claro, telecommunications company in El Salvador, and we did one of those places we call pinchazo where they fix a tire, you know, on the road. Your tire flats, you go to a pinchazo, and there was a thing that it said closed on Sundays. So we took that prop and we brought it to our office, and it's above in a wall, and it says closed on Sundays, and it's a reminder to everyone that we don't want people being there at 2 AM or 3 AM or sleeping over. We want them to have a life, to go and have dinner every day at their home, and, you know, they don't have to go in every day at 8 AM. Before, we would do 7 AM for like 9 years. It would be 7 AM and we would give them breakfast at that meeting, and we were feeling like if we started that early, we were beating up the competition. But then we thought, you know what, let's do it at 8, and you know, it's going to be a little easier for everyone. And we're pretty tuned into that one. So, and we do a 5-minute meditation in that one. Normally, I'm not a big meditator, but I know the benefits. So, it helps a lot every time I do it. And we do a 5-minute meditation after the one word. And we've been doing it virtually also. Everybody close their eyes 5 minutes during that meeting. And, you know, all of them mostly probably wouldn't have— probably started meditating in the company, probably started meditating those 5 minutes weekly, but it helps a lot.

Interesting. So tell me, now that you've been at home for 3 weeks, the world is divided into 2 camps, okay? There's one camp that keeps fit, eats well, and the, the, the other camp is just becoming a couch potato. So in which camp are you, my friend?

Well, you know, I have— well, generally, or in this COVID virus?

Let's go for the COVID virus because you're not allowed to go out. We'll talk about that in a second.

I've eaten spectacularly. My wife cooks like no other. She loves to cook. She loves to do different meals. I transitioned from eating a lot of bad food outside to eating a lot of good things inside, eating, you know, like vegetarian tacos or vegetarian meals that I probably didn't even know they didn't have meat in it. So for me, I already lost from 233 pounds, I mean 222, that's 11 pounds, and it's like 2 BMI point index numbers. So I'm pretty— I'm eating pretty well, but I've been drinking a little more. So, you know, it's funny how we're not social drinkers. We thought we were, but so now I've been having like probably 4 beers a day.

4 beers a day?

Yeah, 4 beers a day, or let me— 30 beers a week. Yeah, so it's like 4 beers a day. And yesterday they said that they were not going to allow anybody to sell alcohol after today at noon. So right now you cannot buy alcohol anymore. So I'm not a hoarder, you know. I've been— I haven't hoarded anything. Like, I will not go and buy more food than the food that we need because, you know, we spoke with my wife and I think it's a good thing. It's crazy to go and leave others without anything. But I did hoard a little beer because, you know, I just bought like, what is it, 6 times 3? No, probably like 90 beers, like, you know, for like 3 weeks.

But that's, that's a lifesaver. It's like having toilet paper. That's—

Yeah, I saw a meme, really funny one, that said, all right drinkers, let's show the toilet paper hoarders we're not like them. Let's leave some for the others.

I don't know if you know this, but so I went into quarantine for 2 weeks when I came back from Germany because that was what they decided. So I didn't leave the apartment. Like literally did not leave the apartment and I live alone for 2 weeks, which was kind of insane. So I was trying to find ways of like keeping myself sane and one of them was walking. So I walk in my corridor 12 steps each way and I do about 10,000 steps every day here. And the second thing is I made a decision—

Wow.

I would stop drinking until I finish my 2 weeks. So far it's been a whole month. So I had only one beer in the last 30 days. Now, for those of you who just joined us—

Wow.

I own 2 bars in Tel Aviv, and when people ask me, why do you own a bar? It's very cool. And I say, no, it's not because it's cool, it's because I have a drinking problem and it's cheaper to own a bar than to pay for the drinks. Okay, so when this all ends, I'm just gonna throw myself into a whiskey pool and get wasted. Okay. So this, this Wednesday we will have our Passover, a Jewish holiday which is very important, and it represents us going into freedom and leaving Egypt in the early days. And we tell the tale and we have a huge dinner with the whole family and So now we're having ads about people stay at home and do your Passover without your elderly to keep them safe and everything. So earlier tonight— we are filming, it's nighttime here, it's daytime for you— and earlier today we had—

9-hour difference.

9-hour difference, we should have said that at the beginning. Yeah, so we had earlier today, we had 30 People on a Zoom call with our staff and our boss, and everybody had a bottle, a glass, whatever, just having a toast. And I wanted to ask you, how do you say cheers?

Salud.

Salud. So we say lechaim.

Lechaim.

Lechaim, which means for life.

And salud means health.

Health.

Yeah.

That's amazing. I think I'll keep asking people what are their things and their small things. And, you know, I've met you a couple of years ago, and every time I see you smile, I can't help but smile. And it is a very important thing when you do sales, because if you smile, other people smile, and it has a lot to do with leaving a feeling, right? A brand, a company, it's the feeling you leave with the people you meet along the way.

Right.

And as we're gonna wrap up, I want to say thank you, my friend. It's every time I see you, I meet you, and we talk, you leave that feeling, you know? And it is something very special and very unique. And I think a big part of me asking you to be on this show is that I hope that other people who are at the moment Kind of lost and not sure where to go from here because no one knows and the uncertainty is big, might stumble on this video and see you and your face and your smile and say, you know what, things will be all right. Could I ask you to give us some closing words about how to keep positive? How do you keep positive?

For sure. Thank you very much, Nir. That's very deep. I appreciate you sharing it with me. Um, I've been a fan of Stoicism, um, for a couple years now, and I feel that that thing prepares you for everything. And, uh, I started just reading a couple books, uh, The Obstacle Is the Way, um, and, uh, I don't remember what other books I read, but, you know, following things on Instagram, The Daily Stoic and whatnot. And it talks about how you there are things that you can control and things that you cannot control. And one of the things that you cannot control is this virus, how it affects everyone. And you cannot control how they're keeping you inside. For us, we cannot leave from 4:00 PM. In Panama, they are only being allowed to leave 2 hours a day depending on the end of your ID number, and no leaving on Sunday. So, you know, I— I feel that it helps a lot. Communication helps a lot. I already, you know, have a discussion on Friday and it really affected me with a forum mate, actually. And it really affected me and, you know, everything's chill and we worked it out. But I feel how everybody's a lot tenser right now. So communication has to flow a lot, a lot more. And we walk every day. We walk the dogs. We have to take with our things, and we do all the process to clean our shoes, to clean our hands, and everything. But we take that walk, and that walk is probably 20 minutes, and that, you know, it feels good. And I've been trying to find all the positiveness inside this because there are a lot of things, really good things that are happening. People are taking a pause. We were all freaking out every day, just going out and killing ourselves. Right now we're taking a pause where some of us are lucky to be with our families. All of us are lucky to still have something to eat. And so I think you have to be the finder of that positiveness because there's a lot of negative things going out there. I mean, let's stop counting how many infected or the deaths. Let's start counting how many have come out of it and how many are healed. All those little things I think make a huge difference. And I would like to say something about you as well. Yeah, we met in China a couple years ago. I really appreciate Your friendship. You're a great communicator. You're a great storyteller. I love this impulse you had to do this because we have to be disruptive now. Nothing ever is going to be the same if you want to do We have to be disruptive. You were gonna do 100 presentations in 100 countries. You cannot do it. Why? Because I cannot go out of my home, so I'll do them online. And that's awesome. 100 interviews. I told my daughter today about it, and she said, could you tell him that I want to be interviewed as well? I was like, that's awesome.

And I think, I think that is, that is the Yeah, I think that is the idea, to have a positive impact on absolutely anyone and try to bring this together. At the end of the day, we are one. This is what we have, and this COVID is reaffirming my thing that my mission statement is I want to meet as many people on the planet and I want to do good. My title on my email says Chief of Happiness. It doesn't say anything else. It doesn't say CEO. And I think if we all come together and we understand that we are all the same, I have a feeling that this will last a long time after this is over and we get back to normal. I want to say thank you for being here, and hopefully— so you're in charge to bring another guest from South America and Central America until we have 100, my friend.

I love it. Count on it, of course. And really appreciate your call, my friend, and this time is very enjoyable, very charitable. It gave me a lot of value, and I'm glad you're doing that, man. You're a leader. Thank you very much for that.

Love you, man, and we'll talk soon. Thank you.

Love you, my friend.

Bye-bye.