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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Cheaper Help to Aligned Help: The Story Behind Staff4Half
I thought I needed cheaper help. What I really needed was aligned help.
Back when I was running my California-based office supply business, Gorilla Stationers, payroll was my biggest expense and compliance headaches never seemed to stop. Despite paying top dollar, I couldn’t always count on the work getting done right. So I did what every cost-conscious entrepreneur eventually does: I hired offshore.
The Philippines made sense, great people, affordable rates. But then came the 2 a.m. Zoom calls. Not for me, but for my team abroad. I could hear the exhaustion in their voices, even when they smiled through it. The 12-hour time difference between the Philippines and the U.S. made me wonder: is this really how I want to grow, by making people labor through their nights? It felt unethical.
I didn’t want just cheap help. I wanted team members who could have a healthy work-life balance that worked for them and for me. And that shouldn’t be limited to my U.S. team.
That dilemma was still on my mind when I flew to Buenos Aires for an EO event. What I found surprised me:
✔️ U.S. time-zone alignment
✔️ A cost advantage compared to U.S. salaries
✔️ And a European-style culture of ownership and pride in workSo I decided to give it a try. I hired a VA to help me with my admin. That one hire turned into two. Then five. They helped me grow Gorilla Stationers while building a healthier team.
As I shared my experience, the inquiries started:
“Where did you find this person?”
“Can you help me get someone like that?”And just like that, Staff4Half was born, from solving my own talent problem in a way that finally felt aligned with my values, my clients, and my team.
If you’re tired of trading cost for quality, or ethics for output, I’ve been there. There’s a better way to build.
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When Effort Stops Being the Answer
When Effort Stops Being the Answer
One of the hardest shifts for high performers is realizing that effort is no longer the problem.
At a certain level, working harder doesn’t create better outcomes.
It just creates fatigue.
What actually moves things forward is precision.
Knowing where your attention creates the most leverage.
Knowing which decisions matter and which don’t.
Knowing when to stop pushing and start designing better systems.
I see so many leaders burn energy on things that shouldn’t require them anymore. Not because they’re incapable of letting go, but because no one ever showed them how to replace effort with structure.
The goal isn’t to do less.
It’s to do what only you can do.
When you make that shift, work feels lighter.
Decisions feel cleaner.
And progress stops feeling forced.
If everything feels heavy right now, it might not be because you’re doing too little.
It might be because you’re doing too much of the wrong things.
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What I Found in Argentina
There’s been a lot of talk about Argentina lately.
I’d like to share my take. Not on economics or politics, but on something I’ve come to know well: its people.
When I first started working with Argentina, I didn’t know what to expect. What I found was creativity, honesty, and a kind of grounded intelligence that’s hard to put into words.
People who don’t just show up to work — they show up with the intention to improve, to change, to build something meaningful.
People often talk about outsourcing as a cost decision, but for me, it was never just that.
I love Argentina. And if I can work with people who bring creativity, grit, and a sense of calm to every challenge, how could I ever say no?
Today, many of our most important projects are led by incredible professionals from Buenos Aires, Córdoba, and Rosario — people who bring warmth, clarity, and an unshakable sense of purpose.
That spirit has become part of who I am.
