I just recorded a podcast with Elizabeth Garvish, founder of Garvish Immigration Law Group, LLC.
Her story reminded me how much leadership is about trusting people we can’t always see and choosing what Elizabeth calls “love.” In practice, that means leading with empathy, trust, and courage, even when leading from afar.
Elizabeth runs a fully distributed team with lawyers and staff across the United States, Spain, Argentina, Colombia, and Honduras.
Her goal is simple yet powerful: to build the happiest law firm in America.
My top three takeaways:
1️⃣ Love as a leadership system
Elizabeth doesn’t lead with rules; she leads with trust. Her team works globally, across time zones and cultures, connected not by oversight but by shared values.
2️⃣ Flexibility as a gift, especially for working mothers
Her firm is built around women, many of them mothers, who can choose how and where they work. She proved that flexibility doesn’t have to reduce performance.
3️⃣ Structure makes freedom possible
Behind the idea of “love” is solid structure: EOS meetings, SOPs in Trainual, and remote systems that make clarity the default. It’s a vivid reminder that this is how culture scales beyond the office.
For me, this conversation reinforced that remote leadership requires a different set of skills, approaches, and practices—and that it absolutely works. When trust, support, and clarity are part of the system, teams don’t just function remotely; they thrive.
Grateful to Elizabeth for sharing her vision of what leading with love looks like in the real world.
Full episode coming soon. 💫
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The Art (and Science) of Hiring in 2025
Over the past 24 years, I’ve read thousands of resumes, interviewed hundreds of people, and hired across multiple companies. I thought I had a ton of experience — until I met Cecilia and Victoria. I’m in awe.
Why? Because Cecilia and Victoria are true experts at sourcing new team members. The other day, I did a quick calculation: between them, it’s easily over 40,000 interviews throughout their careers. That’s an incredible amount of experience.
And I’m not saying this because they are part of my team, but because I’ve seen firsthand how much hiring has changed over the past 24 months — more than it did in the previous 24 years. Hiring hasn’t gotten easier. Quite the opposite.
I think this is one of the biggest challenges small companies face today: finding the right people in a sea of opportunities. Getting hiring right determines the success of any business. Get it right, and the business grows. Get it wrong, and it stagnates.
Here are three timeless techniques Cecilia and Victoria use when interviewing candidates after scanning thousands of applications:
1. Details that hurt
Anyone can talk about wins. The real test is whether they can tell the story behind them in vivid detail — what really happened, who was involved, and what the friction was. They even ask small things like what the weather was like during a specific event to test authenticity.2. Process over polish
They ask candidates to walk through how they did something, step by step. Real experience is a little messy. Made-up experience sounds like bullet points. They look for the small missteps and corrections that prove genuine experience.3. The pause
Real memory makes people stop and think. Over-rehearsed answers don’t. When on a video interview, do the eyes move slightly as they recall, or do they stay fixed? That’s a subtle but powerful signal.These are fundamentals in a hiring process that has only gotten more complex in recent months. But they remain the foundation — even in a world of a thousand resumes and AI-polished applications.
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Clarity Is Kindness
Most leadership mistakes don’t happen because people don’t care. They happen because things stay vague for too long.
I see this over and over again with founders and leaders.
They say things like
“I thought it was obvious.”
“I assumed they understood.”
“I didn’t want to micromanage.”And then, weeks later, they feel frustrated, disappointed, or quietly resentful.
Here’s the uncomfortable truth.
Clarity is not micromanagement.
Clarity is kindness.When expectations live only in your head, people are forced to guess. When priorities are implied instead of stated, people fill in the gaps with their own assumptions. When feedback comes too late, it feels personal instead of useful.
Most teams don’t fail because of a lack of talent. They fail because of a lack of shared understanding.
The leaders who grow the fastest are the ones willing to say the obvious out loud. Even when it feels repetitive. Even when it feels uncomfortable. Even when they worry they’re being too direct. Especially then.
Strong leadership isn’t about having all the answers. It’s about creating an environment where people know where they’re headed, how their work fits in, and what success actually looks like.
That means clearly naming priorities, giving feedback early rather than perfectly, explaining the why and not just the what, and making decisions visible instead of hiding them in private conversations.
When clarity becomes the norm, something shifts.
People stop second guessing themselves. Energy goes into execution instead of interpretation. Trust increases because there are fewer surprises. And leaders stop carrying everything alone.
If you’re feeling stuck, overwhelmed, or disappointed with how things are playing out on your team, ask yourself this before changing the people: have I truly made the expectations clear?
Leadership isn’t about being softer or tougher. It’s about being clearer.
And clarity changes everything.
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