Remote First - Annil Chandel - The Revenue Maze - Episode #012

Annil Chandel is the Co-Founder & CEO @ Wurkr.io. He has built a business with over 1 million sign-ups and is the recipient of the coveted Red Herring Top 100 Europe of 2021. He has spent two decades in technology and finance staffing, so he has plenty of information to share. Annil joins the host Valerie Cobb to discuss ways to successfully navigate your company out of the confusing maze of revenue.

Takeaways

  • The best way to grow your company and increase revenue is to keep it simple. Overcomplicating can lead to confusion and getting stuck in the same spot over and over.
  • Start out with an easy idea and then develop it from there. If you start with a complicated idea it will be hard to flesh it out and bring it to market.
  • Working remotely is more commonplace now, but there isn’t enough technology to support it logistically.
  • Remote first allows for a wider option of employees, but it doesn’t provide the same feeling as being in the office and can make employees feel disconnected to the culture.
  • When coming up with a product, you need to think about the product market fit and how your product or service will work in that space.
  • Be passionate about what you do. It will never take off, if you don’t believe in what you do and the process you are putting out there.
  • Remote work started to become very popular around 2017 – 2018. It has taken the business world by storm.

Quote of the Show:

3:13 “I think we overcomplicate this too often, and as soon as you start looking at it in a very simplistic form, you’ll find the jigsaw pieces start connecting and paint this picture quite well.”

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Remote First – Annil Chandel – The Revenue Maze

I’m super excited about our guest. He has built a business with over one million signups. He’s a recipient of the coveted Red Herring Top 100 Europe in 2021. He has spent two decades in technology and finance staffing. He lived and worked on three continents. He’s the Cofounder and CEO at Wurkr.io. Welcome, Annil Chandel.

Thanks, Valerie. When people do an introduction, it always makes me a little bit curious about how big is the name behind the brand and the person. It’s a very humbling introduction. Thanks for that. I appreciate it. It’s great to be on the show.

Thank you so much. We always start the show the same all the time. We have to start with this. What is one thing that you can tell the audience that will help them get out of the revenue maze?

It was a great question. It’s always a difficult one when you’re trying to succinctly put something together. I’m taking this from our learnings and where we are in our business at the moment. It’s as simple as, “Keep it simple.” There’s a very simple phraseology that comes from the American Army, which is the KISS principle, “Keep it stupid, simple,” or as they say, “Keep it simple, stupid.” Keeping it simple is what it’s all about. We overcomplicate this too often. As soon as you start looking at it in a very simplistic form, you will find the jigsaw pieces do start connecting together and paint this picture quite well but we all get lost in that maze of how can we, when can we, how do we, and so on. Keep it simple.

TRM 12 | Wurkr

Wurkr: We overcomplicate this too often. As soon as you start looking at it in a very simplistic form, you will find the jigsaw pieces do start connecting and paint this picture quite well.

I laugh because we do say that and then overcomplicate it. With what you’re doing with Wurkr and all of that stuff, you could overcomplicate some of the things that are going on out there. I struggle with that all the time. I have to write step by step in all these workflows and all these things, and then I have to dial it back afterward. I take it completely from the complex, set it aside, and go, “What do you remember? 1, 2, 3.” How do you do this? Give us some examples. Help us out here.

I don’t think there’s any magic potion or pill to take to make this work. As entrepreneurs and startups, we all try different things. Sometimes by luck, by process, and by opportunity, something will click. Often, we complicate it because we believe that there’s a lot more to do than a very simple thing like taking an idea and moving that idea into some planning. Ideate and then plan how you’re going to take that forward, launch whatever that little idea is, and then monitor it and measure it. You will know what works. If it doesn’t work, you tweak it, go back, and do the same.

It’s reiterating that but often we start with the idea. As we are going through those steps, we overcomplicate them. We start adding new processes, sub-projects, or plans into it. We try to then get to the same goal. That’s where often things fall apart. We instinctively usually know what the steps are but we overthink it and then overcomplicate it, and then it becomes very complex. That’s where you then have challenges even to go back and to go through the workflow and understand what it is that works.

Hands up. We have done it at Wurkr when we first launched back in 2018. We were ideating the concept of Wurkr. We did it then. We started with a very simple concept, which was to keep people connected and working together from anywhere. We started thinking, “How do I put virtual reality goggles on? How do I get into the metaverse and so forth?” Often, stay with the simple idea of what you set out to do because translating that into a revenue strategy is easier than all the new things that are happening but you get lost. Sometimes you get carried away in doing something which everybody else is doing, “I want to be in that space,” rather than focusing on what you started your journey with.

Hence why I say to keep it simple. It’s because we have been through this ourselves. It’s only after this fantastic number of a million signups that we managed to attract the business. It’s a great number. Don’t get me wrong but there’s a lot of noise in there. There’s a lot of cleansing that you have to do to get down to the customers that count, the customers that are going to pay, and ultimately the ones that you can replicate and target again in other markets. It’s bringing it back to basics and then taking that idea forward again.

There’s a lot of cleansing that you have to do to get down to the customers that count, the customers that are going to pay, and ultimately the ones that you can replicate and target again in other markets.

I have to admit. I completely struggle with that. It’s a great reminder because sometimes we whittle away even at our time because we spend so much time on it. I laugh a little bit. You have a picture of Einstein behind you. I love Einstein’s quotes. Other guests know that this is not scripted. We come up with what we’re going to talk about. I probably can’t quote it right but I love the Einstein quote where he is like, “If you had a problem and it’s summarizing, I would spend 50–something minutes on the right question. What are we solving for?“ In about five minutes, you’re solving it.

It goes around with that because sometimes people can’t identify what is the simple problem. You can quickly go 1, 2, 3. I‘m a fractional chief revenue officer. In the sales world, with all the AI and all the things that you’ve got to program, rev ops have almost become an animal in and of itself. We run into that all the time. Another guest was talking about product–market fit. We can overcomplicate that too, can’t we?

When you’ve come from a couple of decades of working in the non-technical way of building sales funnels, it does paint a good perspective in terms of where we are now because the buyer is simple but complex. I say that in almost a contradictory manner but it’s simply because they’re still a buyer. As long as you provide them with the right product or service, they will buy. It’s complex because the buyer doesn’t take your word for it.

The buyer has the ability to do many searches across the internet, look at testimonials and reviews, compare you, and look on rating sites in terms of what others have benefited from your product. They can do quite a lot of research, whereas if you were face-to-face with that buyer without any internet or any technology, the likelihood is you could probably get them to buy into the idea and the product or the service that you’re selling fairly easily. It becomes complex because you’ve got this noise of data and information.

The modern buyer has a lot more of this information to hand. Selling to that modern buyer does become a little bit harder. We have to make sure that we take that sale to them in a simplistic form so they know what they’re getting. That’s the challenge but there’s always going to be a bit of bias if they have done some research or they’re doing research post your conversation. The idea is how you get to that point fairly quickly and then get them to take it on.

There’s no magic to this. There are no signs of it. Sometimes it works quicker. Sometimes it’s slower but you’ve got to keep on going toward that simple step of what’s the problem that you’re trying to solve, and then you’re gathering information from that person to ensure that their problem is being solved by your solution, service, or product. Often, what we’re doing is we’re selling a widget or a product rather than solving their problem. If you focus on solving their problem, they’re more likely to want to buy your product or service.

TRM 12 | Wurkr

Wurkr: If you focus on solving people’s problem, they’re more likely to want to buy your product or service.

One of my mentors says, “People buy for their reasons.“ The complicated part is understanding the problem or identifying the problem. They’re not going to buy for your reasons. You’re probably familiar with the Challenger methodology. Matt Dixon came out with a New York Times bestseller. It talks about the challenges with the stall in people buying everything that you’re talking about.

We’ve got to simplify it for them. I’m peeling away the layers of the onion of the psychology or whatever you want to call it behind how they buy and train a bunch of sales team members. A lot of times, one will say, “I buy for the price,“ and another one will say, “I buy for this,” but that’s not the way that their customers buy. That’s their opinion of it because of their emotional aspect with buying something. You’ve got it down very simplistically.

I wouldn’t say I’ve got it down simplistically but the ideology very much on where we are in Wurkr is we have been fortunate through the pandemic. In some ways, we have been fortunate as a business because our solution was specifically tied to enabling people to work from home. We will work from anywhere was the original concept but because everybody was stuck at home and they needed a way of connecting and not feeling isolated and wanted to still feel like they were part of the team, having their water cooler moments and all that type of stuff, we were ideally positioned to grow fast.

We had a double-edged sword. We were not ready with products. We were still going from prototyping into the MVP stage as the pandemic emerged but we said, “It’s great. We can take this opportunity and either embrace it or shy away from it and say we’re going to hide away and not do anything with it.” We did exactly that. We embraced it and said, “We will keep it free. We will allow anybody and everybody to sign up for it. It gives us an advantage.”

We learned from the customers where this product needed to go but we signed up so many people. We signed up across 100 countries, and then we had language challenges that we had to also address. It’s a great problem to have but you hit the nail on the head. There are a lot of parts of the sales cycle but ultimately, it comes down to selling a solution for a problem. If you can do that, then does your solution tick the boxes for that particular problem? Is it a fix for a problem in general?

This is often where we get a little bit lost. From our experience, we had a solution. We first went to a very particular audience, which was the staffing and recruitment industry only because I and my co-founder Tim had come from that industry. We had good connections in that industry. We went to sell the product to them. We realized quickly that the industry doesn’t want this as a solution. They’re more inclined to have people in physical offices as teams of salespeople working together to sell to their customers. As time went on, industries started coming left, right, and center. We got a little bit lost with that as well because we were almost going like that with the funnel the other way around.

The funnel was getting bigger at the top. What we needed to focus on is where’s the sweet spot. What is the ideal persona or customer that would want to buy this particular solution for their problem? That’s where it took us a bit more time. I don’t think we’re fully there yet and I don’t think we’ve got it but we certainly are finding a niche now. If you’re niche, it’s easier to go out, target that audience, and then get them to buy because you’re providing a targeted solution to that audience as well. Solutioning rather than product-selling is a very key part of it.

It‘s great what you’re saying. I follow the work–from–anywhere crew as well because back in 2004, we were work–from–anywhere. It was very difficult back then. Pre-iPhone, the internet was spotty at best. You know some of those things. We were living in the Cayman Islands. It was interesting with little kids. They’ve got these great groups for work–from–anywhere now for help with homeschooling.

You could be on a boat for a week with your kids now and work from anywhere. One of the biggest challenges was feeling isolated. Even though we were physically working there, we were isolated away from family, friends, and things like that because you paid $1 million to make a phone call back then. A lot of people don’t experience that. We had Cuban refugees pull up to our dock and do a bunch of exciting things while we were living there.

I do feel like the mental health portion of what you are doing is very important for this generation but also globalization is making it so people will work from anywhere. Sales have been working from anywhere on an airplane forever but they didn’t have the ability to do what you’re talking about at Wurkr. I love that. It creates less isolation, collaborations, and all of those things.

The mental health portion of what you are doing is important for this generation, but also globalization is making it so people will work from anywhere.

A lot of people want those remote jobs now. COVID probably brought it and helped it. You saved tons of money on fuel and carbon footprints that everybody is talking about. If you can, you can. That‘s the good part about it. I love that you took the opportunity to help that entire workforce. Even though COVID spawned it, people want to know. How did you conceptualize Wurkr? What brought you to this point? I’m curious.

I’m going to keep it simple. In reality, we didn’t go out to conceptualize it in any particular way. It was a problem that we had in another business. I and Tim co-founded a remote-first staffing and recruitment business back in 2015. We started that with the mindset of, “We know the talent is very global. We tend to lose great people because once they reach a certain success in their life, they don’t particularly want to be traveling in and out of central city locations.” We realized we could still bring them back into a good business, make them successful, and have a successful business with people working from anywhere.

That’s how we started in 2015 in a remote-first recruitment business. Bear in mind that I for 2 decades and Tim for 3 decades have come from building hot businesses with offices in the most expensive locations in Central London, New York City, and Dubai. We have come from building businesses in the most expensive central business districts around the world. There’s a huge cost associated with that. We transitioned from that to saying, “We want to be remote-first. People can work from anywhere. They can sit at home. They can be in a cafe. They can go on holiday and then work at the same time.” That’s where we started as a business.

Two years into the business, we realized that as much as we had grown and were starting to build a successful staffing and recruitment business, we felt there was an element of loneliness, feeling disconnected, and not being able to do the things that we were so used to in a physical office like simply having a catch-up in the morning when somebody comes in, “Did you watch the soccer last night? Did you watch that particular show on TV? What do you think about it?” You talk about some gossip that you’ve heard that’s going on in the business.

We underestimate how powerful these things are for our businesses because that’s what instills the culture in a business. It’s the people having those non-business conversations as well as those business-element conversations that instill those values, those beliefs, and the culture of the business. We were missing that. We thought, “We can’t suddenly move from a remote-first model to take everybody into the office. Why don’t we see if we can find a solution off the shelf?”

TRM 12 | Wurkr

Wurkr: We can’t suddenly move from a remote-first model to take everybody into the office. Why don’t we see if we can find a solution off the shelf?

That’s how the journey started. We started looking for solutions off the shelf. We couldn’t find anything apart from traditional video conferencing and video meeting applications. Tim and I looked at each other and said, “We both come from an IT background. We’re both coders by academia but maybe we could see if we could build something.” We went looking to find a software development company. Lo and behold, we drew a concept on the back of a piece of paper. We held it up to this software development company and said, “We want to replicate something like that.”

It was ten rooms on a screen where we could see who was in that room. We could then move between those rooms on screen. We could have that feeling of knowing where people are as well as being able to engage with them very instantly. That’s where the concept started back in 2017 into 2018. When we built this Lego-looking application for our internal use, we switched it on. Everyone suddenly felt like they were connected and they knew each other.

We were sitting there and working away. We had a Christmas party. This is an interesting story. We all got together. We don’t do that remotely. We got everybody together in a central location. The one thing we realized as much as we knew them as individuals in the business, their characters were exactly what we anticipated. However, the only thing that we didn’t realize was how tall or short they were because this is all we have ever seen in a video meeting.

That’s a little bit of an interesting fact there. From there onwards, once we switched it on in our business, we had clients and candidates coming in to have meetings with us. People loved it. That naturally progressed on to us saying, “We’ve got an opportunity to take something to the masses and help them because this has helped us in such a fantastic way here.”

That’s how the concept of Wurkr started in 2018. We decided, “We’ve got a product. We have conceptualized it. We’ve got a prototype. Let’s see if we can take it to the marketplace and turn it into a commercially viable product.” It has taken us time. It has taken us nearly three years to have a product, which is now ready to launch into the marketplace but we have been very fortunate along that journey to have customers as well.

TRM 12 | Wurkr

Wurkr: At Wurkr, we decided, “We’ve got a product. We have conceptualized it. We’ve got a prototype. Let’s see if we can take it to the marketplace and turn it into a commercially viable product.”

Some of them were paying customers even though we were still in the MVP stage. The real key thing which we are discussing here is about building revenue and sales. It’s only in 2022 that we have started analyzing very clearly how we are going to go to market and what’s going to be the approach but we’re keeping it simple. This changes and evolves over time but that’s where we are now. It has been a fantastic journey. We have loved every second of it. I’ll do it again in a heartbeat even though it has been quite painful at times. I’ll do it again any day of the week.

I love that journey. I love that it hit almost at the time of the perfect storm. It’s like, “Who had that crystal ball.” I remember when I was working in heavy equipment manufacturing. When COVID hit, we were at CONEXPO. You may not know what that is but it’s a massive show in Las Vegas. Bauma is out of Germany. It’s twice the size of CONEXPO. You have 300,000 people attending. You‘ve got Cat spending $3 million on their booth alone. You have this interesting thing.

They shut down the last day of CONEXPO because of COVID. In manufacturing, it‘s like, “What do we do? We have all these workers and all this stuff. How do they adjust to that?“ It was funny because we had Teams. They were a Microsoft shop and all that stuff. The sales teams, the marketing, and the services were easy. You flipped a switch. You couldn’t have done that years ago. I remember doing GoTo meetings and trying to install software remotely and network it to fifteen different computers through spotty at best.

We’re giving our ages away now.

You couldn’t have known that would have been something that is the perfect storm because of the mental health around that. You understand the social aspect of it. We have been talking about the business the whole time but people want to hear more about what is Annil. What’s the passion that he does in his off time when he is not coding on a napkin or something? What do you love to do?

I’ve been very fortunate in being able to live and work on three continents around the world. Most recently, it was India. India has always been close. I’m an Indian-origin person. My parents came from Northern India. Having the ability to go and live and work in India gave me a fantastic perspective, not just purely from a work angle but also from a personal, social, and almost family angle. It was fantastic for the kids as well.

To take it back to what you’ve mentioned, I’ve been fortunate that I’ve seen quite a few different things. Here’s one fun fact for you. A lot of people won’t know this. Even if you redid some research, it would probably be hard to find. When I was going through university as much as I was a techie, I had a huge passion for music as we all do but my passion for music went a lot further than that. I was a DJ for a long time. I had my mobile sound show. We used to go and do parties and weddings. You name them.

From there, we led on to doing a crossover music video between my background, which is Punjabi, which is called Bhangra, and house music, which is what I was pretty much brought up with while I was going through the university. I did this crossover track called House Bhangra. Believe it or not, it got ranked in the UK. There’s a magazine called The Black Echoes. The Black Echoes used to do all the independent music that was coming out in the UK at that time.

We got into the top 40 and on TV. We were on TV. There’s a very well-known newspaper in the UK called The Evening Standard. We had a review in The Evening Standard. We even got ranked on Billboard, which is Billboard Magazine. That’s a fun fact for you. It was something we did out of fun. We enjoyed it. Music is very close to my heart. It is something I would love to get back into at some point. That’s a little bit of personal background for you.

Here’s what makes me tick otherwise. I like working out. We’ve got a Cockapoo dog. We go for dog walks. We’re first-dog owners. We have never had a dog before this particular dog. I cook Indian food as well as Italian and some other foods but Indian food is what I like cooking. I love cooking but these days, I don’t get a lot of time to do much.

A lot of times, we’re focused on what we are doing because we’ve got a big task ahead of us. It is all hands to the pumps but you do have to take time out. The great thing about Wurkr and working in this way has allowed us to keep that balance. Often, we talk about work-life balance. It’s work-life integration more than balance. That’s something that this way of working has allowed me to do. That’s a bit about me.

A lot of times, we’re focused on what we are doing because we have a big task ahead of us. It is all hands to the pumps, but you do have to take time out.

That’s awesome. I love that. I was over a youth group years ago. I love her dearly. She married someone from India. I remember it was in the United States but it was the best wedding I’ve ever been to because there were 400 people. It was this sit–down. I was a singer. I sang at the American portion of the wedding. She had all the henna and everything else. My husband and I were sitting there. We’re all dressed to the nines because everybody is dressed to the nines.

We’re all sitting there. They have this food. They started to welcome the bride and the groom. It was this uproar of music. People jumped up and started dancing. There were 400 people. My husband doesn’t even love to dance but you couldn’t contain it because it was so much fun. That was the most fun wedding I have ever been to. The music was amazing. It was amazing to have that.

We do everything big. It’s like a carnival. There are fireworks. There’s a band coming along with the procession. Everything happens.

You brought up such a great memory with it. I love what you’re doing with Wurkr. The audience would like to know how can they get ahold of you. What’s the best way?

I’m across all the different social media channels but the best way is to check me out on LinkedIn because my first name is spelled with two Ns. It’s easier to find. Otherwise, you will get lost in all the Anils that are on LinkedIn. Check us out. The company Wurkr is on LinkedIn. Have a look. I would love to catch up and chat with anybody interested in us or the journey we have been on.

Thanks, everybody, who has read this. We’re very grateful for the audience. We are super grateful for Annil sharing his story and his company. I‘m so excited for the future of work–from–anywhere, especially with things like Wurkr. Thank you so much, Annil.

Thank you, Valerie. It has been good. I enjoyed this. It allowed me to think back on some of the things that we did in the early days. Thanks for the opportunity. It was great speaking to you. I hope a lot of people get some good things out of this episode.

Me too. Thanks again, everyone.

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About Annil Chandel

Annil Chandel

Annil Chandel is the Co-Founder & CEO @ Wurkr.io. He has built a business with over 1 million sign ups, and he is the recipient of the coveted Red Herring Top 100 Europe of 2021. He has spent two decades in technology and finance staffing, so he has plenty of information to share. Annil joins the host Valerie Cobb to talk about ways to successfully navigate your company out of the confusing maze of revenue.

Here at Revenue NorthStar, we are passionate about sharing experiences and first-hand knowledge from the trenches. No fake gurus or consultants; we get into the execution of well-proven steps, strategies, and frameworks to help your business grow faster and more efficiently. Stay connected with us on social media for regular updates, tips, and insights:

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About The Author : Valerie Cobb

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