Deleting Meetings & Building a More Human Remote Office with Erik Braund

Tim Melanson: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to today’s episode of the Work at Home Rockstar podcast. Excited for today’s episode. We’re talking to the CEO and founder of Katmai Tech. And what he does is he helps people to connect more naturally in an ever increasingly more digital world. So I’m very excited to be rocking out with Erik Braund.

Hey, Erik, you ready to rock?

Erik Braund: Uh, let’s rock and roll, Tim.

Tim Melanson: Let’s rock and roll. We always start off here in a good note. So tell me a story of success that we can be in inspired by.

Erik Braund: Oh man. I’m gonna, I’m gonna give you two, two in one. And they’re funny ’cause it’s, it’s funny how success is defined and viewed by yourself and other people.

Um, I had one year, I think it was 2010, that I found myself playing drums for Jay-Z at the Super Bowl. And about a month later I was on Conan O’Brien in the monologue because a little younger, a little skinnier and bigger hair. I got told I looked like Conan so many times. You looked like

Tim Melanson: Conan? Yeah,

Erik Braund: I made it on the show, on the monologue.

It was pretty hilarious. I actually got to play drums with his band and play a song, a Led Zeppelin song, and those things made it on the front [00:01:00] page of this, the newspaper back in Anchorage, Alaska where I’m, where I grew up. I was living in New York, but it was kind of this like. People thought I was just like famous for a second.

I was like, ah, come on. I got paid 300 bucks by CBS to be, to be a, a background drummer and I get paid to go uncoated. But it was just like such a funny, like that was viewed as he is successful and it had nothing to do with any success other than just like silly publicity, you know? Yeah. But they’re both fun stories.

Tim Melanson: Oh, that’s awesome. Yeah, and people do view success interestingly, right? I mean, it’s either money or it’s fame, and sometimes neither of those things would really get you, you wanna go and they, they’re cleaning too. You can make a bunch of money and then lose it all, and you’re still considered a success.

Right, exactly.

Erik Braund: Yeah.

Tim Melanson: Well, well then what do you consider con success?

Erik Braund: You know, right now it’s like being able to, to find a work life balance, which is pretty hard in my position right now, like startup [00:02:00] person, you know, and, um, but the work life balance to be able to. Make some time for my kids and like be able to drive them to school every day and make sure the mortgage is paid.

And there’s usually a few pennies left over after that. But I, I feel successful in that sense because I’m, I’ve got my family unit and, and we’re okay and we still get to have some fun, even though life gets very stressful. But, you know, money will make me technically more successful. If we ever get more money, it’ll, it’ll soften a few problems, but it’ll probably make some new ones.

So. Uh, I’m feeling pretty grateful right now, honestly.

Tim Melanson: That’s awesome. Yeah, I, and I agree. I think it’s all about the lifestyle. It’s about the long-term stuff and like you say, being able to drive your kids to school or actually attend their parent-teacher interviews, right?

Erik Braund: Yeah.

Tim Melanson: You know, or, or their recitals and stuff like that.

Right.

Erik Braund: Well, and I, I get to live, I live in the Catskills, so I live like in the woods on, on a piece of land where I can’t see my neighbors. And I get to talk to people all day and have a, a, like a career and a job digitally [00:03:00] and be home. It’s pretty cool.

Tim Melanson: Yep, I agree. And you know, that’s the point of this podcast really is to show people there’s different, there’s different definitions of success and depends on the one that you want, but I know that for sure, you know, working from, from home, having your own business, it’s hard.

There’s a lot to it. But on the other hand, you do have that flexibility, right? It’s not like you’re not working, you are working, you’re working probably more, but at least you can move those things around and you don’t have to ask anyone permission for anything, right?

Erik Braund: Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Uh, the, the one funny thing is I travel a lot.

Uh, for a guy that has a video conferencing solution startup, I still travel a lot because for whether it’s investors or customers. It’s important to, to, I love to be able to meet people in person if I can, but there’s such a huge opportunity cost, so I, you know, it’s just, it’s a funny, it’s a funny balance, but,

Tim Melanson: yeah.

Right on. So now with, along with the Good note, sometimes there’s things that don’t go as [00:04:00] planned.

Erik Braund: Yeah.

Tim Melanson: We all know that. And I like to talk about those things because people need to understand that, you know, failure isn’t. What you think, you know, it’s, uh, oftentimes those mistakes are actually what propel you to the successes later on.

And we all, we all go through them. So I’m wondering, can you share with us something that didn’t go as planned, a bad note that we can be, we can learn from?

Erik Braund: Yeah, I mean, I can, I’ll give you one just directly from this company, which is, um, as we were growing a team grew too fast in certain areas in the wrong way.

In retrospect, hindsight’s 2020, right? Yeah. But if I could do a few things again there, it’s like, gosh. I probably should have failed a little faster with some, with some composition of the team when things were getting off. I’m, I’m like the kind of guy that’s like always trying to see the good in everybody and try and make it work and try and make it work and try and make it work.

And then I’m just like, oh God, it’s not working. Like, yeah. So I’ve had to, I’ve had to get a lot tougher in terms of, nope, this isn’t working out for this. We [00:05:00] have to make a change. And that literally, that took me a long time to, to toughen up and be able to do that.

Tim Melanson: Yeah, I think that’s really super common with just about any entrepreneur.

I mean, we, I mean, we probably wouldn’t even be here if we didn’t have that kind of rose. Colored glasses kind of outlook, right?

Erik Braund: Yeah. And I’m like, I’m a social animal and I love people and I love talking to people, and I’m, oh, I see the value. You know, it works, but like at the end of the day, it’s like, oh shit.

Tim Melanson: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, and, and you know that too, right? I mean, we wanna say yes to everything and everybody, and you know, it’s, these are tough lessons that most of us will end up learning is that you, you just can’t, every time you say yes to something, you’re saying no to everything else. Right. And it’s, I, I

Erik Braund: used to have, back in my office in Brooklyn, I had a sticky note on my computer for like five years and it just said, say no.

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

Erik Braund: That was all said. I had to remind myself all the time, say no, because you know, you wanna say yes because it’s like, well, I can, it’s more work and it’s this and it’s that. But like saying no often is, [00:06:00] is really good for you too.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Yeah. And, and when you start a business too, like it’s, it’s, I mean, mentioned this before, but oftentimes we’ll start it because we’re good at, you know, this certain one thing, right?

And we’re like, oh, you know, I, maybe I’ll just cut out the middleman and, you know, be my own thing. But you end up wearing a whack load of different hats. And if you’re good at that, then you realize really quickly that you could, you could do just about anything. So anytime someone offers you something, it’s like this new shiny object that you’re like, oh, I could go in that direction now.

It doesn’t get you. Right.

Erik Braund: I mean, I’ve been on a condo board on the school board, all sorts. I actually just recently got off of both of those ’cause I kind of was like, you know, just ’cause I can do these or can add value doesn’t mean it’s what I should be doing right now because it is taking up a lot of time and maybe there’ll be time later in life to add value to those sorts of things.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Yeah, and, and maybe there won’t, and maybe there won’t

Erik Braund: be. I’d be okay with that too.

Tim Melanson: Right on. So let’s talk a little bit about practicing. I know, hey, you’re a [00:07:00] musician as well, so you know, we’re probably pretty familiar with that. I’m wondering in your business, like how do you stay up on everything?

Erik Braund: Oh, that’s interesting. Um, I’m trying to think of, everything is such a broad thing because I’m like, there’s the, how much cash do we have? How much runway do we have? What’s the status of all of these projects? What’s the status of our sales pipeline? Why is this broken? You know, like, and that I, that’s just like the first few things I can think of.

And then there’s the next level of like. You know, how are, how are the people doing? You know, are they satisfied here? What, who’s around, who’s going on vacation? Just like, you know, we have, our team is kind of around 30 people, and it’s a lot of people and it’s a lot of, it’s a lot of, we have a lot of balls in the air too, because we’re creating, we created a new technology and we’re creating a new product that has not been done before, so there is no playbook for.

How to talk about it, how to get it into the market, and we’re just kind of making everything up as we go. And, and that’s crazy. [00:08:00] It’s totally crazy.

Tim Melanson: Yep. Yeah. But how do I do it?

Erik Braund: I, I, I don’t think I answered your question though. I think I just told you all the things that work to keep track of Yeah. Um. I am, I’m just constantly, I mean, I’ve gotta go through a gazillion emails and text messages and phones and slack messages all day long.

Uh, except I do turn it off at night and I have stopped checking my email first thing in the morning from bed. That was like an important lesson for me to learn, but. I’m just constantly engaged, unfortunately is, is how I stay on top of it.

Tim Melanson: Well, I mean, you gotta do something right? Yeah. So you, you basically just have the, a process of just going through these messages one at a time and answering them all.

Erik Braund: Yeah, and I keep, um, I have an ongoing kind of Erik’s, Erik’s weekly tasks and monthly and quarterly sort of things, and I’m. C constantly going back and referencing that because if I don’t, things will inevitably fall through. That still could be important. Um, one of the best things that I’ve chosen to do in [00:09:00] about the last year was get an Apple watch and I turned off all the notifications for it, but I use it to remind myself or set timers.

20 times a day and it, I had, you know, this morning it was like, get to the office five minutes before podcast like that. It just, that reminder, while I’m having coffee, I’m making breakfast with the kids. Like, oh shit, I gotta go downstairs. Even though the calendar reminder happens, it’s like this extra vibration on my wrist that’s like, I gotta go.

’cause. Because otherwise I’ll just stay in chat forever.

Tim Melanson: Yep. Ah, it’s so funny. I, I use timers so much and it’s like, you know, my normal friends just think that that’s ridiculous. Yeah. I get, because, you know, if I’ll take a day off or, you know, you know, I’m. Like I say, it’s flexible, right? Yeah. So it’s a nice sunny day.

Maybe I’ll decide to, you know, work later on and I’ll go out and, you know, visit my friend’s pool or whatever. Yeah. And then there’s timers going off because I have to be set and recurring. Like, oh, Tim’s timer going off again. Yeah, that’s the timer that’s supposed to tell me to. Which is good from that.

Erik Braund: You [00:10:00] got a timer? For a timer? I got a timer for a timer

Tim Melanson: and it’ll turn them off. ’cause it would turn them off. Then they’re off the next day.

Erik Braund: Yeah, yeah. You

Tim Melanson: know,

Erik Braund: totally. Yeah.

Tim Melanson: Timers are great. I mean, they do work right.

Erik Braund: And I, I, I, seriously, I have all other notifications turned off on the Apple Watch. I think it’s a double looking thing.

But it has added this like ease of, of reminding myself and it has made me more punctual and more on time and I, you know, that’s, that’s good for me.

Tim Melanson: Well, and, and I think the, probably the, the thing I, I take outta that is that you’ve got timers that are set intentionally, like for you, rather than the notifications that are like more reactionary, right?

Erik Braund: Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Tim Melanson: So you’re, you’re, you’re, you’re doing what you’re supposed to do rather than what other people want you to do.

Erik Braund: That’s right. Yeah. I’m not very good at doing what other people want me to do. I think that’s why I’ve never had a, I had one job, I worked at a guitar store from the ages of 14 to 16, but since then, I’ve never had a job.

I’ve just been an entrepreneur. [00:11:00] ’cause I think I’d probably get hired and then get fired pretty quickly. I don’t think I would do well at someone else’s company.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Yeah. I’m the same way. It’s, it’s pretty common, I think, amongst us. Especially institutions. Yep.

Erik Braund: Speaking, which, you know what’s funny too is early in the days, early in Kamai, when we’re building a fully remote team, and this was like prime pandemic time, it wasn’t on purpose, but at somehow we, I looked around, I was like, there’s 10 people here and nine of them are.

Professional or formerly professional musicians. It’s like, we might need, we might have too many musicians here. It’s just funny. I don’t know how it happened. It just happened.

Tim Melanson: It’s a criteria. Put it on your applications.

Erik Braund: Yeah,

Tim Melanson: yeah. Then you’re, you’ll have the best office band ever.

Erik Braund: Yeah. No kidding. That’s funny.

Tim Melanson: That’s so cool. So like, well speaking of jam [00:12:00] room, so, so let’s talk about your home office. How do you have that set up to be productive?

Erik Braund: Yeah, my home office is probably quite a bit different than most people’s home offices because, uh, I come from an audio video production background, so I have tons of gear ’cause we used to do large video sets and, you know, immersive audio projects.

And so I’ve, and I’ve accumulated a lot of hardware over the years. Uh. From a structural standpoint, I’m in a concrete box under the garage, so it, it sounds worse than it is ’cause I have a sliding glass doors and I get to look out on some mountains, so it’s actually quite pleasant. Yeah. And I do, I can like walk out with the dogs and I go in and out a lot.

Um, but I’m looking at you on a 16 inch little screen with a webcam on. And that’s usually where I run my virtual office. And then behind this screen is an 85 inch TV that I use as a massive computer screen. And then off to the side are some very ridiculously nice, uh, studio monitors. I have some barefoot studio monitors that are for, like, they used to sit on top of my [00:13:00] analog console and a recording studio.

They’re. Primo now I basically just listen to other people’s webcam mics on them, which is kind of funny, like the worst audio source possible on these like amazing speakers. Uh, behind me here is my, this is my former life is I used to be a music producer, and this is all the audio production gear that was down in Brooklyn and is no longer there.

And off to the side is just. Heaps of equipment that I can’t find anywhere else to put it right now. So it’s just old equipment from the audio video days. Um, wow. But I have it. You know what, it’s great because I am, I’m under the house. I’m kind of away from the house, but like, I’m still accessible and I po you know, I, I, I go upstairs to make coffee four times a day.

I very specifically don’t have a coffee machine down here ’cause I want to go, like, walk up the stairs and see a different room sometimes.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Yeah. That’s cool. Yeah. Your office sounds very similar to mine. E yeah. Especially with the, the heaps of equipment that I don’t know what to do

Erik Braund: that

Tim Melanson: as well.

Erik Braund: And I have my requisite, uh, top gun [00:14:00] poster here.

Nice. You know, I’ve got a Waynes World poster over there and a Nirvana poster behind me. You can’t see it. And those are, those are, those pretty much sum up my cultural zeitgeist actually.

Tim Melanson: So do you feel, do you feel like motivated and excited to be in this room? Is that why you have all that stuff there?

Erik Braund: Yeah, I’m around my like tchotchkes and actually when I moved this stuff here from Brooklyn, all this stuff behind me, it’s, it’s literally not even plugged in yet because I don’t have time and I will someday again. But I kind of was like, oh God, I missed my like audio gear. ’cause I used it so much and just like.

Every piece over there has like a journey of how I got it and when I got it and what I did with it, and who I recorded through it and all this stuff, and I just was like, ah, it’s so good to have it back. You know? Yeah.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. It makes you want to be in your office, which is the point, right? Yeah.

Erik Braund: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I do. I do. I mean. I spend a, an inordinate amount of time down here, but I do like being in this, in this room. It’s kind of like a teenager’s bedroom, honestly. It like with the band posters on the wall and stuff.

Tim Melanson: [00:15:00] Yeah, I have a disco ball effect. Good.

Erik Braund: Perfect.

Tim Melanson: Stupid stuff. Right?

Erik Braund: Well, and I have two dog beds.

’cause I have two little Pomeranians, Batman and Gonzo. And they’re very cute and they spend a lot of time down here with me, so.

Tim Melanson: Right on. Right on. Cool. So let’s, uh, let’s talk about the virtual space. ’cause I mean, that’s your business, right? Let’s, let’s kind of touch into that like, ’cause I mean, you’ve got your physical office, of course, but tell me about your virtual space.

Erik Braund: So, um, Kat, my, the company set out to, to make a technology, um, where, where people could be together in a virtual space on live audio and video, and have those virtual spaces be really high quality. So it’s, um, you know, you think about, I have like an Apple Vision Pro in here, and you think I, I keep this here literally as a $4,000 prop.

Because there was a, there was a, a movement a few years ago where Meta said everybody was going to be [00:16:00] together in a headset and interact with each other and work with each other and socialize with each other and look like cartoons of each other. And we were all gonna sign up to, you know, this isn’t the meta one, but we’re all gonna do this all day long.

Right. Yeah. And I think that’s a dystopian nightmare. And so, yeah. We set out to do something different. Um, we built what we call immersive video technology. And what that is is a first, a first person 3D experience where you can move and you can see other people live on video. And you can put people in different rooms and environments and have private conversations and public conversations.

And you can have spatial audio where it sounds, as you get closer to someone in a hallway, you’re like, you hear them a little louder and it just starts to feel natural. And we did this because this, the genesis originated at the very beginning of the pandemic, which was, oh my gosh, we can’t be in a room together.

What are the tools? There’s zoom, there’s teams, what I call traditional video conferencing, and there’s not much else, right? There’s, there’s squares of faces that are static without [00:17:00] an environment. And I think you’ll appreciate this just from the music and creative field, like the space you’re in matters so much to the conversation you’re having with someone.

It’s like in a conversation, there’s the people and there’s the place. Yeah. And the place, it informs the conversation or it becomes a part of the memory, or it becomes a part of the conversation, right? Like you’re in a cafe, there’s people going by. That’s a much different conversation than like, we’re at home on a static video grid and it’s only us.

Tim Melanson: Yep.

Erik Braund: So. So that’s a, a long-winded way of saying we, we made this technology and the purpose was to have a more natural digital interaction. And what happened was, um, we built a very small team spread from Alaska to New York, to Florida, to the Netherlands and in Canada. And this is like early pandemic. And we just started spending time in our software while we were developing the technology.

’cause the first iterations of the technology would blow up a very nice computer. Exactly. We, we melted a few PCs in the early days, right. Um, so we were iterating on the [00:18:00] technology and then we realized, oh my God, we have an incredible, like, team building software here. This is just like being in an office together.

Yeah. And we have a, a creative director who’s just like a mad scientist, genius, this guy Pete, who knows how to take 3D environments and push them very far and make them very high quality. And also has a, a background in architecture and philosophy and so. It’s like we spent a lot of time working on these environments and feeling what it’s like to be in these, these virtual environments.

Um, it’s, it’s a, it’s a science place to a digital conversation, but you don’t have to have a headset on and it doesn’t look goofy and cartoony. It looks pretty darn real. It’s more like a. PlayStation four, PlayStation five type graphics, uh, that the engine can power. And so what we have today is a virtual office product that we sell to people.

Uh, it’s very inexpensive, uh, very accessible, and it works on billions of devices. So we spent years of r and d to say. Hey, this is a pretty like high tech thing we’re asking your computer to do. Upload [00:19:00] lots of video, download video, render 3D engines, have all these permissions going on. Um, and now it works really well and it works on a lot of devices, literally billions of devices.

And so we’re, we’re new into taking the product to market, but what it’s doing is it’s allowing teams to kind of. Be remote work from home, work from anywhere, but, and, and feel like they have returned to the office. Like, yeah. The things that people want from the office is to be social and to be seen and to see, right?

It’s like visibility is two ways you want to be seen and you want to see people and depending on your role, right? You want, like famously Zoom, the CEO of Zoom said. At, I think it was like 23, 24. You have to come back to the office to his employees. You can’t run a company on Zoom. There’s no, there’s not enough productivity, there’s not enough culture.

You gotta come back and you’re like, wait a minute. That’s the Zoom CEO saying this Uhoh. Yeah. And so we’re in this like total white space where there’s like traditional video conferencing and there’s in real life and we’re trying to occupy the space between, [00:20:00] and look, we, like we were talking about earlier.

You know, it’s a, it’s a strange concept, and when I show it to people, they either get it instantly. Or it takes 30 minutes or it takes 60 minutes to kind of get ’em there. Yeah. Yeah. And then they’re, then once they’re there, it’s like, how could this apply to my organization? And we have some companies that adopt just like instantly because it’s solving real life communication problems.

My favorite quote from one of our customers is, uh, cap my turns. Next week’s, 30 minute meeting into today’s five minute conversation. And when you let that sink in, about how many 30 minute meetings and 60 minute meetings do you have next week? And by the time you have that meeting next week, it’s like, what were we talking about?

Where are we with this? And in what CAP enables is like, Hey, I’ve got an idea. I can go talk to Tim right now. He’s across the, I see him there, he’s there. He, I don’t even know where you are physically. Doesn’t matter. ’cause you’re in our office and you’re available and we can chat. And it’s like. It’s pretty remarkable.

So we have some fun statistics around reducing calendar clutter and shorter meetings [00:21:00] with less people, and it’s just, I don’t know, it’s, it’s really interesting stuff.

Tim Melanson: Yeah, I think it’s a really cool idea. And, and I mean, I saw a, a quick demo of it before, and I’ll try to explain as much as I can, but one of the, one of the, uh, one of the disadvantages that we talk about on this podcast quite often about working from home is the lack, uh, of comradery.

The lack of like water cooler talk, that kind of stuff, right? I mean, you’re, you’re basically sitting in your office and Okay, fine. I, I think many of us, depending on your role, I mean, we have Zoom calls. We, you know, we, we talk to other people there. But, um, what this is doing is it allows you to be, it’s, it’s, it’s like a, a video game where you’re walking through a, a, a hall and it’s, this hall is a bunch of offices and in each office you see a, you see their video camera.

Of them sitting at their office doing something else, right?

Erik Braund: Yep. Yep. And so you

Tim Melanson: can, you can sort of see them and they’re like, oh, they’re there, and you can walk into that office and interrupt them, [00:22:00] right? Which is literally the same as being, being in a real office. So of course, it has its advantages and disadvantages.

I mean, one of the things that I don’t like about the office is getting interrupted. Yeah, but I mean, the, the alternative is you just turn your camera off so people don’t interrupt you at that particular time. Yeah. But, uh, but the big advantage, I think, for a lot of, uh, businesses is that they like to see their people sitting at an office and doing some work, right?

Yeah. And so I, I think it’s a really, really cool idea, especially if you wanna build a team of people and, and have that water cooler type thing where you can actually see people in your office and go hang out with them. I think it’s really cool.

Erik Braund: It is. Thank you. And, and I think that was a great description and it, it really like.

It’s funny to think about culture. It’s like what is, what is culture at a company and really what do, what does it mean and how do you get it? Yeah. And what I’ve learned is culture is kind of built through, like having a moment to shoot the shit with someone and talk about [00:23:00] something that is not the project and the agenda of the meeting and, and that’s not wasted time at all.

It’s like. Finding a rapport with someone, finding a common thread, and if you force that, it’s just weird if you get hired at a company and schedule a one-on-one with someone and just to get to know them for 30 minutes. It’s just weird. I dunno. But like if you bump into someone in the hallway before you know it, you’re talking about the weather or whatever, and then it’s like.

No, you’ve had a chat. You’ve had a chat with someone, and that is part of culture building and like continuing to have some sort of culture.

Tim Melanson: Yep. Yep. Okay. And then, you know, that kind of adds a little bit more, uh, texture to this. So, so basically what I’m hearing then is that potentially your team meetings would be sitting in a, whatever, a, it would be a, a room down the hall and instead of just clicking on a meeting invite, you actually have to.

Walk through the hall in, in, in this video game. Yeah. And go sit in that meeting. Yeah. Takes two minutes.

Erik Braund: Sorry. It takes you two seconds. [00:24:00] You use your keyboard or your mouse or whatever, and you walk to the conference room and, and people see you walking around like the o Our office is bustling. There’s 25 people in the virtual office.

When a guest comes in, the question will be like. Where am I and what is this? You know? Yeah. And that’s like, it’s a fun moment and it’s, it, oh, it’s so cool. There’s a, there’s a more, I, it, it never gets old for when I am on the other side of someone greeting them for the first time. So there’s two ways we can bring someone into cat.

I, we can drop them right into the meeting so we don’t have to teach them anything. So like, you don’t have to learn what a virtual office is and what a 3D environment is and what’s going on. You’re just positioned around a table. It’s very frictionless, very seamless, very easy. The other one is drop them into the lobby and I greet them.

And so they load in and they see an office and they see my face and I welcome them. And I say, okay, first thing you need to do is press and hold the up arrow. And they propel forward. And the the, the look is always like. It is like, it’s like this. Oh, what? And then it’s, they see 20 other people in offices having [00:25:00] conversations.

It’s like, are, are what’s going on there? Are those real? It’s like, yeah, those are real people. They’re all at home. They’re all in their home office. They’re just here. And it’s like such a fun unlock to do that for the first time with people.

Tim Melanson: Cool. I love this idea. Okay, so, um, I know, I mean, we’re already talking about your business, but is I always give people the floor for their guest solo.

So tell me what’s exciting in your business right now?

Erik Braund: Oh boy. What’s exciting right now is we, we put our product out, um, earlier this year and we thought that we would be kind of digitally marketing to small, fully remote companies. We thought that would be our tip of sphere. First customer easiest, decision maker, add value the quickest, um, you know, hybrid work and enterprise work.

Like, and back, you know, enterprise is generally back to the office or mostly hybrid, somewhere in there. Um, we thought that would come a bit later. And what we’ve found is some very large global companies seeing our solutions saying, oh, we want this. And we’re like, oh, wait, what? Understand. Yeah. And so, [00:26:00] so it’s kind of like.

Okay. But I’m just like thinking back, you know, one large company that wants to adopt, you go through like a six month process to meet their InfoSec requirements and their data and their privacy and retention requirements. Then you go through a legal process to make sure you can be legally adopted and then you get the green light one day and you’re like, oh, okay, so now, now people at your company can use this.

Now we go socialize this more and, and get them here because six months has gone by from when they said, can we have kamai to. Can we use it? And so, so that’s, we actually just made it through that with a huge company that is famously returned to office. And what’s cool is there’s value in our product and platform because even though folks have returned to office, I don’t know if you’ve seen this, they’re still on video calls all day long because their team is now dispersed all over the world.

Yeah. And they’re just video calling people in other offices. And so what we’re, we’re finding pockets of. Um, running things like office hours, so like a structured first come, first serve office [00:27:00] hours for like managers to, so people can get questions answered quickly. Um, we have something that’s kind of an alternative to a, a costly offsite where it’s a, it’s a digital offsite, but it’s more interactive and there’s more to it than just doing what we’re doing with squares of faces that are static.

Um, the, we have an interview loop thing and so there’s just lots of, lots of things that happen in an office, so we’re not expecting. Every customer to use it the same way, and they don’t. We have some people that are on Monday through Friday, nine to five. We have some people that only have sales meetings in it, or only have a team meeting once a week in it, but it’s still like this.

It’s this connective place for a richer conversation and a more, honestly, the one thing, the feedback we get is. It just feels more natural. Yeah. And like that’s a hard one to quantify and give a cool scientific data fact on. I dunno, people said it feels nicer. Yeah. And so then that means some people are willing to make the jump and use CAPM as their primary communication, uh, platform.

Tim Melanson: Well, so then how do we find out more?

Erik Braund: Uh, visit [00:28:00] www.catmytech.comandthatiskatmaitech.com. I grew up in Alaska. Kamai is a national park full of bears and salmon and you know, a very mountainous region and it’s kinda a little throwback to that.

Tim Melanson: Hopefully these office, well, actually, you know what I mean, you could probably put bears in

Erik Braund: office.

You probably should, or at least in Kamai there, if you look it up, there’s this viewing station for tourists. Up on this big fence with tons of bears jumping into eat salmon on this waterfall. And I’m like, oh, we could probably build one of those. Yeah.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Why not?

Erik Braund: Yeah, that’s the cool part. Right on. You know, I gotta, I gotta call out your, make a bad note.

Sound better. I love, I loved seeing that because, uh, my favorite guitarist in the world is actually coincidentally, a guy I got to play the band with for a long time. This guy, Brandon, er, he’s the tastiest guitar player in the world. He taught me 20 years ago. He is like, listen, you hit a bad note. You just [00:29:00] stick with the bad note.

You keep hitting the bad note. You make sure the distortion on, and then you bend it up over time. And then it sounds like it was on purpose. It’s a, it’s a bad note sounding better.

Tim Melanson: So Awesome. Yeah, I had a similar. Uh, advice and the the guy said, yeah, if you hit a bad note once, it’s a mistake. But if you hit it twice now it’s on purpose.

Exactly.

Erik Braund: Yeah. Love

Tim Melanson: it. Well, and, and actually I was gonna ask you that, that, that is one of the last questions that I, that I do ask is, who’s your favorite rock star? I think you just answered.

Erik Braund: I mean, like the guy I wanna meet the most and hang out with is Dave Grohl. And like I, I got into music because of Nirvana.

I started playing guitar at for 12 because of Kurt Cobain. I got a drum set because of Dave Grohl. You know, I’m like, even yesterday I went on a long drive and I just was listening to nevermind. And you know, I’m just like, I’m a grunge guy. Um, I’ve gotten to meet tons of rock stars and celebrities over the years from being a video producer.

It’s, it, it lets you [00:30:00] down nine times outta 10. It just always does. So, but I, I hear that Dave Grill’s the nicest guy on rock and roll supposedly, right? But, yep. Um, no, I love like arena rock. I love spectacle. Like I’m, I’m gonna go see Nine Inch Nails next week. Like, I love big shows and arena rock and stuff too, so.

Yeah, probably, probably Dave Grohl.

Tim Melanson: I hope you get to meet him. I’m looking forward to, to hearing you story. I’m hanging

Erik Braund: on, I I think there’s a chance someday. I

Tim Melanson: think there’s a chance. I’m actually surprised you haven’t yet. Uh, I mean, you’re right in that space, right?

Erik Braund: Totally. Yeah.

Tim Melanson: Maybe you’ll get ’em to sponsor your company.

Erik Braund: You know, I we’re actually, I’ve, I’ve been soliciting Conan O’Brien, I’m trying to get on his fan podcast. Mm-hmm. Because I’m like, I even pitched, I was like, I was on your TV show 20 years ago. Let me on. We’ll, have a fun time.

Tim Melanson: Well, fingers crossed. I hope it happens, man. That’s awesome. Thank you. This has been an awesome interview.

Thank you so much, uh, Erik, for rocking out with me today. [00:31:00]

Erik Braund: You, you, you got it, Tim. I appreciate it and I hope to talk to you again.

Tim Melanson: Awesome. And to the listeners, make sure you go to workathomerockstar.com for more information and we’ll see you next time on the Work At Home Rockstar Podcast.

Erik Braund: Peace. Peace.