Recorded on 01/20 in Galway, Ireland at Matteo’s home. Matteo Grassi, COO of Eli Z Group, invited Remoter into his home to chat about Eli Z’s growth as a company and his learnings as a leader managing globally distributed teams. Eli Z is an eCommerce accelerator helping small businesses scale up with the help of AI solutions. Leading a remote-first company has helped him understand the benefits of today’s interconnected societies and networks to get things done.
Recorded on 01/20 in Galway, Ireland at Matteo’s home. Matteo Grassi, COO of Eli Z Group, invited Remoter into his home to chat about Eli Z’s growth as a company and his learnings as a leader managing globally distributed teams. Eli Z is an eCommerce accelerator helping small businesses scale up with the help of AI solutions. Leading a remote-first company has helped him understand the benefits of today’s interconnected societies and networks to get things done.
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Josephine Tse 0:00
It's time for season two of the Remoter Podcast. I'm your host Josephine.
As a continuation from season one with Alex and Andres, I had the opportunity to interview some remote work leaders, ranging from companies, consultants, advocates and more to add to Remoter's stash of free resources and human-centred stories, enriching our educational platform about remote work. This podcast is sponsored by Torre, a new kind of professional network that automatically connects talent with opportunity. Founded by Alexander Torrenegra, our goal is to make work fulfilling for everyone find the job of your dreams by visiting torre.co. That's T O R R E dot C O.
Hey everyone, I'm sharing Matteo's story today. He's the COO of Eli-Zeta group, and he was actually the first one to ever reach out to us to see if a collaboration could be done, which was pretty cool because it lined up very well with my trip planning because I was going to Ireland first. He's been at the company for many years scaling and managing his own globally distributed team. In our conversation you'll hear about Matteo's vibrant, and international experiences that have shaped his leadership and beliefs which he's implemented into Eli-Zeta Group today.
Today I'm here in Galway with Matteo Grassi of Eli-Z group. He's got a little nice home office that he shares with his wife. They work on either corners vertices of the space and nice sunlight windows, except there's no sun in this island. Yeah, it's really really grey outside. I don't even see a cloud. It's just, it's just great. That's pretty much the environment we're in, like the office is nice, the outside is not. So keep keep that in mind. Also, you can check out our diverse workspace photo series to see more. So Matteo, could you give our listeners a bit of background?
Matteo Grassi 2:04
Hello, Hi, I'm Matteo and I'm a COO, which means I oversee the operations of this e-commerce accelerator that started about four years ago. A little bit about myself. My background is actually psychology, behavioural psychology. After finishing a degree, I realised that I didn't want to do any psychotherapy or so I decided to quit everything and move to New York to pursue my dream actually to become a dancer. Got into the Broadway Dance School, got an audition and got in and spent about a year in that school over there. And then I got into travelling and partying and and, you know, the good life of New York and I did realise that if I wanted to become a professional dancer, I that should have been my call. I think I arrived at a plateau in my life and I wanted to travel and I wanted to do other things. So I moved to Southeast Asia for about a year and a half to cover two years until the money ran out and I moved to Australia to make some money. I stayed in Australia then four years. After Australia, I moved back to Italy for a year and then after a year in Italy, I moved back to Ireland.
Josephine Tse 3:12
Got it, got it. That's a really...
Matteo Grassi 3:16
I'm Italian by the way. I was born in Italy.
Josephine Tse 3:19
Right. Okay. Okay. How did you get to Eli-Z group?
Matteo Grassi 3:23
Um, I got to Eli-Z group because when I moved to Galway, when I started to work for Shopify, they started to hire people here for the European support. So I started to work in in Shopify. I started in support and then a move to Shopify plus, because they needed someone in Europe to doShopify plus, that's how that's how I started then to connect with different clients for Shopify plus, and one of one of my clients was, was the founder of this company. And then I think I saw an opportunity and I wasn't really happy about having a career inside a big company like Shopify.
Josephine Tse 4:00
Right, right. Okay.
Matteo Grassi 4:02
Nothing wrong with Shopify. I mean, I think it was, I think it's still a great company and I got to learn a lot. But I just I think I was I wanted to have my own thing. You know, I wanted to join and at the time, he- the offer that Nico gave me was to become a partner in this.
Josephine Tse 4:18
To bring in a little bit back. How did you find yourself in the world of e commerce in general?
Matteo Grassi 4:24
Really, I started an e-commerce in 2006. Okay, when I decided to produce initially was a streetwear brand actually using nanotechnology fabric. Because of production problems that streetwear brand turned into a uniform brand.
Josephine Tse 5:06
Oh okay.
Matteo Grassi 5:06
Yeah, so that's that was actually my first business. I think I arrived too early. I think if I arrived maybe 10 years later, when was Facebook ads and drop shipping came out that gave the opportunity to drive traffic very easily and acquire product without buying stock. I would probably be more successful. Because I said, I think that was my the issue that I had to start driving traffic quickly, right? And being tied down to buy stock, right? I see I see. So that's how I arrived in e commerce. And I arrived in marketing from psychology because I spent a year in Milan, and I met his, I didn't have a job when I came in, and I knew how to bartend quite quite good as a cocktail bartender. So I got into these private parties, I started chatting with this, at the time was maybe 50 year old man, about the bottle of vodka that I was serving. It was Absolute.
Matteo Grassi 5:33
And I was we were chatting about it. And he told me it's like, why do you think is a nice bottle? And I was like, well, I think from a psychological level it's not, it doesn't appeal much. And I think I would have designed the label differently. And I think the colours that they use, it doesn't really portray the emotions that I think should be associated with this product. And then he was like, well do you want to work for me? And I was like, what do you do and it's like, well, I have a branding corporate and consumer identity agency but I'm looking For the brand strategist and you are not the real fit for me, but I think you can have a good potential and that's what I started to actually learn about marketing and there was no digital you know, we weren't with website, was corporate and consumer identity so designing logos and designing packaging.
Josephine Tse 6:15
I guess it's like yeah, like marketing is psychology technically you need to know how to cater to the people that you're selling to it. It makes sense.
Matteo Grassi 6:22
There's a big part. There is a big wave is called neuromarketing.
Josephine Tse 6:24
Okay. Is that new? Like I didn't know about...
Matteo Grassi 6:28
Few years. There's two nice books if you know, if your listeners want to check something out, which is the, made a book called The Buying Brain. And yeah, it's a nice 200 page book and he explains about neuromarketing.
Josephine Tse 6:43
Okay, yeah, maybe I need I probably need to check it out.
Matteo Grassi 6:46
I can talk for an hour if you want but then we're going to move from remote work to neuromarketing.
Josephine Tse 6:52
This is a this has been a shift in the podcast topic. And now this podcast is not about remote work. But no, that's, that's really interesting. I mean, personally, I've only been in the workforce for now, two and a half years, and I just can't even foresee like what kind of path I'll be taking because things are not like in our parents or grandparents generation where, you know, if you are a farmer, you're a farmer. Like we can do so many things nowadays, and just hearing about your story, like how you just went like this, and got here kind of thing. It's really, really inspiring. Can you tell me a little bit more about Eli-Z group, like we know that it's an accelerator, you help small businesses? What else do you guys do?
Matteo Grassi 7:29
Well, we started as a as an e-commerce operation. And then we realised that nobody realises like I think we were all excited about new projects. So instead of focusing on one store one brand and putting all the efforts into one thing, we started to do many things, and we were spotting trends very quickly. And because we had the remote structure, we could do that. That was the good thing and a bad thing at the same time. Because with great freedom comes great...
Josephine Tse 7:58
Responsibility...?
Matteo Grassi 7:59
No, great... uh...
Josephine Tse 8:01
Not a spider man... Guess copyright.
Matteo Grassi 8:04
Yeah, let's say we with great freedom comes the lack of focus. And focus. It's important because you're even though your, your opportunities and the things that you can do are unlimited, your hands, your brain, your manpower, that's limited. So that was like the learning curve, right? So I think we decided last year to shift the business and because we had a lot of people coming to us and say, Oh, you know, I really like your business model and I have this more store or I have an idea. Our shift should be partnering with other people and complete them. We have a structure in place that we can help people to bring their company or bring their project to the next level. Because we wanted to do other different projects about starting a project bringing a project from zero to one, that's that's the hard bit. So when we decided to to partner with these people, the project wasn't really zero, it was 0.5. So the the effort that we're putting in was much less as taking in a project.
Josephine Tse 9:06
So obviously, like you are a champion in remote work and scalability, as you've just said, have you ever experienced a scenario where maybe you were working with a company that didn't believe in that?
Matteo Grassi 9:20
I can give you a small example. The company I used to work in Milan, the one I mentioned before the corporate consumer identity, they had a beautiful office in the centre of Milan, and it was a 17th century building.
Josephine Tse 9:30
Okay, okay.
Matteo Grassi 9:31
Any modification to the building needs to be done through the government. There is a rule in Italy and I think in a lot of countries is that once your company past a certain amount of people you enter is in a different category. Okay, so if you employ more than 30 people in Italy, you go in category to let's say, a category to your hire one person with disability every 10 people that you hire, okay, which is fair enough, I'm not nothing, nothing wrong against that. To every person with disability working in an office, you need to have disable bathroom.
Josephine Tse 10:03
Accessibility... ah okay.
Matteo Grassi 10:05
But that I saw people that we couldn't hire it at the time because if we're passing that threshold, right, then there was consequences that the company couldn't face.
Josephine Tse 10:14
It makes no, that makes a lot of sense. There was something that I was talking to someone the other day and they were saying that if companies weren't able to solve international problems without thinking like locally and all that, then they're never going to be able to scale and that's exactly what you're talking about. That makes total sense.
Matteo Grassi 10:27
Yeah. In the company, the the main problems that you will have is operation costs. And the fixed operation costs the people cost is is manageable, especially if you have some freelancer working for you that are kind of flexible, so you know, but if you have an office space that the rent is due at the end of the month, if you're using a remote work as well, you can optimise your business structure for taxes.
Josephine Tse 10:35
I wanted to ask through the lens of the company. Do you have any any examples are stories of businesses that you've worked with that you've been able to help scale quickly because of the remote aspect?
Matteo Grassi 10:48
Yes. I mean, we work with this project is was a yoga project, okay? Ashram Yoga. When we met the owner at the time she had an idea, but she had like full on product line designed and everything. Now, one thing that we did successfully in Eli-Zeta is managing physical product remotely. Okay, so that's what actually we do. We can have a design team in China, we can have a design team in Ukraine.
Josephine Tse 11:09
Mm hmm.
Matteo Grassi 11:09
Our product manager gets the samples through post office. They do video calls, she checks them, she ships them back, monitoring quality through through the process and all the time is remote. She's based in Amsterdam. So I think that in that case, she wouldn't have been able to produce. I think that's a good example of how to use remote management for physical products to actually start a fashion line.
Josephine Tse 11:32
So I want to now ask in the lens of your eyes, not the company's eyes or just your eyes. There's got to be people out there who disagree with you know what you're saying that remote companies can start remote first and be able to scale? Do you have any stories or experiences with people who are on the other side of the fence?
Matteo Grassi 11:54
I think the main argument is you can't build relationships when you start to remotely trust issues, obviously, that's estimating how do you check on people? How do you know if they're working?
Josephine Tse 12:07
It's hard to prove because you know, just because you are in an office doesn't mean you are focused at the same time.
Matteo Grassi 12:13
You can measure you know, the OKRs, objectives and key results. Yeah, right. You can you can measure that. But you can measure that in an office so you can know exactly remotely. But I like remote work, but God, sometimes I want to be in an office, I love to be in an office. There's a lot of downsides. You know, and I think a lot of companies, the problem is thinking that I can work remotely and I can start remotely because it's going to save money. And I think that that's wrong. We shouldn't think like that, I think that there is money savings in remote work, 100%. But it should be reinvested the money. I don't think every company should go remote, I think you need to be remote ready as a leader and I think you have to actually do a reality check. Be prepared, you gotta be prepared. A lot of people go remotely thinking I'm prepared from a tool perspective and from a manager's perspective, but they're not prepared as a leadership perspective you know, and a human perspective because it's gonna come out it shifting from from an office to a remote environment. Like you have to be able to trust people and put yourself in the backseat.
Josephine Tse 13:21
Are you saying these things from personal experiences you are...
Matteo Grassi 13:26
100%. Things that I thought and the things that I had to face myself. And it's a constant reality check or be focused, I think on the people and their success.
Josephine Tse 13:35
What else are you doing as CEO to help improve your own remote work culture today?
Matteo Grassi 13:41
I started to use actually some feedback and surveys, I believe in data. So I try to get this out as much as I can and try to collect feedback from the people that work for me. I think this is another thing that I find Slack or those messaging tool fairly useful because people can get service directly in there and it's easy for them to answer honestly as well. So then once I get that I can analyse the key metrics of engagement of relationship with the manager, communications, trust level, etc. And once I have some metrics, I can start to decide what's what can I do to implement to improve in this.
Josephine Tse 14:21
What's the latest, I guess, measures you've implemented from the survey results?
Matteo Grassi 14:25
Like stress level was was was a big one. And I find that remote work is is a particularly bad for that because whenever you have whenever you are stress in your own house, especially if you're working from home, the place that you are stress in is the place that you live.
Josephine Tse 14:42
It's all in one place. Yeah.
Matteo Grassi 14:43
It's all in one place.
Josephine Tse 14:43
Yeah.
Matteo Grassi 14:44
So I cannot change the stress level due to the workload of the company growing. But what I can do, we can give help our people to actually get out of the office a little bit more, get out of the house a little bit more, and work in co-working spaces, we started to kind of try to enforce this. And I think, as humans, when I was studying psychology, we have a tendency to our destruction. This is something that it's innate in that in us, we have a tendency to destroy ourself and to destroy the things around us. And it's really neat, I think within us, not for everyone. I think people have self preservation but I can see a lot of people that giving the perk is not enough. You have to enforce it.
Josephine Tse 15:26
Yeah, I mean, for me as well like because like when I first started working remotely I did. I did like the worst thing ever and stayed on my bed and worked. Like it's not it's...
Matteo Grassi 15:35
No, you have to get dressed.
Josephine Tse 15:36
It's not possible.
Matteo Grassi 15:37
Get dressed in normal clothes. Don't wear sweats, you know, like...
Josephine Tse 15:42
Pyjamas?
Matteo Grassi 15:42
No, no, no.
Josephine Tse 15:43
No. I think the things that you said about the psychology things that you said were really interesting. Are there any other instances that you kind of draw back on your psychology education to structure things in your company?
Matteo Grassi 15:56
Yeah, I think CBT which is Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, as it can be put into a work situation very easily. You see the basic things that we do that CBT try to counteract, they manifest a lot in a company environment, negative thinking, where you basically you just focus on the negative aspects of your work and you forget about the positive one, or automatic thoughts, which is when you start to thinking that you're gonna fail, for instance, when there is no real evidence that you're going to fail. So all this setup is work on an evidence base, right? And I think I tried to draw back into that when I have my one to ones with my staff, okay. It's very simple. Try to focus on the evidence of your work, especially when and you will realise that a lot of things that you thought about a lot of things that you felt they actually didn't match up with the facts. An advice is like, think about the worst case scenario. And once you picture that in your mind, ask yourself if that happened, can I deal with it? Am I prepared to deal with it? Do I have a team, are we gonna be okay, can I manage it and nine out of 10 times, it's yes. If the answer is no, it means your business is not good. It means that you are in a danger or in a dangerous situation that has nothing to do with the person. So these are kind of basic things that you can use you learn Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, but you can actually bring it to a work situation.
Josephine Tse 17:19
I definitely do the number one, but the first one you talked about a lot. I definitely I every time just like am I doing anything and I'm doing it. But then I in my one on ones, they're fine. And also I look at my output. I just, you know, reflect back and I'm like, Okay, I guess I did things. It didn't...
Matteo Grassi 17:36
It happens a lot.
Josephine Tse 17:38
But I definitely like it. I need to... I personally need to get to a point where I stop overthinking about those things because it's a waste of time really. Like if I'm just like, I find it more difficult. It takes more discipline to centre and ground myself.
Matteo Grassi 17:52
100% Yeah, yeah. But also because when you are close to each other, you you you see the work happening in front of your eyes and you feel like everyone is productive and you feel like you're part of something when you're next to each other. So I think when you are remote is much harder. I think it's important as a leader, giving feedback, praise people the right way, making sure that you track the progress. Also making sure that the progress is tracked visually. Weekly stand ups as well it's important to do. ily check ins it's important to do. Not because I think it's important for other people to know what you're doing. But I think it's important to yourself, to write down for everyone what you're doing, because you're writing it to yourself and you're telling yourself.
Josephine Tse 18:34
So it feels like in the as you said three years that you've been at this company, you've learned a lot about being CEO being in a leadership in your position. So can you tell me a little bit about your work routine and all that?
Matteo Grassi 18:47
Yeah, so I'm... my job is to manage the six... My job is to manage the six manage of all the departments. They are my basically my team. And I try to understand what's not working in the department, help them try to fix things if they need to be fixed. And because I have an overall vision of the company, I make sure that all the departments are trying to work at the same pace and at the same objective, you know, and then try to improve like the communication flow between all of them. Because all the heads of the departments are also in different countries.
Josephine Tse 19:21
Right.
Matteo Grassi 19:21
So the marketing is in Italy, the product is in Amsterdam, the customer service is in Philippines and their finances in Uruguay and the dev is in Italy, actually, and India. It's like four or five different time zones.
Josephine Tse 19:37
In the beginning did you ever find yourself just overworking?
Matteo Grassi 19:39
100%. Yeah. I still, I still I still a problem. You know, being being too too much available.
Josephine Tse 19:48
Yeah, it's just prioritising.
Matteo Grassi 19:49
Prioritising, exactly. Prioritizing life I guess, my 2020 goals. Yeah, prioritising my life a little bit more.
Josephine Tse 19:57
We talked about scalability and remote work, we talked about a lot of... got personal. We got a lot of things out of this one. And I just want to thank you so much for your time. But before we end off completely, I want to know, do you think that Eli-Zeta's does story mission and values will help encourage and enable more leaders and companies to think about going or transitioning to remote?
Matteo Grassi 20:21
I hope that a lot of companies that are struggling right now, they will try to embrace remote work as a solution for their growth that is in a leader in an expansion, into a different market or into hiring a workforce from a different country or just simply by being more adaptable to the change. So I think that's, that's a good with advice.
Josephine Tse 20:44
If not Brexit there always be something else.
Matteo Grassi 20:46
Oh, it'd always be something else and the economy is shifting and in the States, you have Trump now who knows what's going to happen next year, maybe you get a better president, maybe you get a better president that does something that is going to go against your business because that's that, you know, the trade deal changes or Facebook is a private company. Facebook decides, okay, let's not do ads anymore because the government is decides okay, Facebook cannot run ads anymore. In our word, digital world, things change too quickly. You need to be adaptable. It's crazy not to be.
Josephine Tse 21:18
And whichever episode this will be for the remoter podcasts will let you know.
Matteo Grassi 21:23
Thanks.
Josephine Tse 21:25
Thank you.
Matteo Grassi 21:25
You're welcome.
Josephine Tse 21:29
Remoter Podcast season two is recorded, produced and edited by Josephine Tse. It is mixed and mastered by Stephen Stepanic and Vanesa Monroy. Graphics and visuals by Valentina Castillo. The music track used is Skip by OBOY from SoundStripe. Follow and subscribe to us on Spotify, Apple podcasts wherever you listen to your podcasts. Don't forget, we've recently made our Founding and Growing Remotely online course completely accessible and listed on our site. Visit us at remoter.com, that's R E M O T E R dot com for more relevant content. Follow us on social media @remoterproject to stay up to date with our latest initiatives and collaborations with other remote first companies around the world. We'd also love to hear your thoughts about each episode, so feel free to tag us on socials anytime. And remember, we're here to make work fulfilling, so what part will you play in shaping the future of work?