Innovative Work Models for the Future with Alex Filipuk

**SPEAKER_1** (0:03)
The Bliss Business Podcast, the show about empathy, connection and consciousness in business. Today's episode is brought to you by Zero Company, your paid search, social media and programmatic ad experts.

**Stephen Sakach** (0:16)
Welcome back to the show, everyone. I'm Stephen Sakach here again with my cohost, Mike Lisski and our special guest. So according to recent global workforce studies, a strong majority of employees say they would trade some level of pay or perks for more flexibility, autonomy and meaning in how they work. At the same time, many leaders are still trying to retrofit traditional top-down work models onto a world that is now more hybrid, distributed and project-based. The tension is clear, people want more agency and where and how they work, and companies need reliability, quality and accountability at the same time. The question is no longer whether work models will change, but which leaders will be intentional about designing systems that will work for both human and businesses. Today, we're exploring innovative work models and what they look like in the world world, especially in industries that are not usually at the center of the future of work conversations. Mike, introduce our guest today.

**Mike Liwski** (1:17)
Absolutely, Stephen, I am delighted to, and I love how you put that in the intro. So our guest today is really none other than Alex Filipuk. You may know him as the CEO and the founder of Ideal Siding. Now, Alex truly has a dynamic entrepreneurial background. His journey is quite varied because it spans multiple continents, sectors and disciplines. In fact, born in Belarus and educated across Europe, he's built a career that blends technology, finance and really hands-down operational leadership that we'll really dig into today. Now, before founding Ideal Siding in 2019, Alex as well contributed to PayPal's European expansion, developed one of the first social media platforms in the Russian-speaking world, and built multiple successful ventures, including a performance marketing agency and even a translation company, and a publishing firm with over 140 employees, and actually quite a few construction businesses. So, Ideal Siding with that has quickly expanded through the franchising world across Canada and now you in the United States. And Alex as well as now being recognized as an innovative leader in the home improvement space, designing really work models that bring structure, scalability and opportunity to really a traditionally fragmented industry. So Alex, we are very much looking forward to our conversation today and hearing about your experience. So with that, welcome to our show.

**Alex Filipuk** (3:02)
Thank you, Michael. Thank you, Stephen. It's great to be on your show. Yeah, it's a great topic and it hits us on three different levels on our support center, our headquarters, on level of franchisees and also on level of installers, crews that we have. So it's a lot of things comes to my mind about it.

**Stephen Sakach** (3:25)
So let's get into it. So Alex, I know a lot of future work conversations, they kind of, I don't know, stay focused on tech or office based roles and those sometimes often get overemphasized, but you're building kind of innovative work models in a very different context with like crews on job sites and of course, you got franchise partners and local markets to deal with as well. When you think about innovative work models for the future, what does that phrase kind of mean to you and how is it showing up in the way you've built Ideal Siding so far?

**Alex Filipuk** (4:00)
Well, I think a lot of this is happening with changes in generations that are becoming in place right now, and those generations that are retiring, their expectations, their lifestyle that they want to design for themselves. All of this is changing quite fast. I think the curve of how it's changing is accelerating because of all the technology and advancements that we have with AI and travel, ease of travel, all of those things. So, it's definitely a combination of things that are around expectations of how people want to design their work part of their life. And for every person, it's a little bit different, but there are patterns.
So, it's a very big topic. So, I'm happy to start whatever part you want.

**Mike Liwski** (5:02)
Yeah. Yeah, you mentioned those patterns. I think that might be a little bit more interesting. What patterns you've noticed?

**Alex Filipuk** (5:10)
So, number one is, I think people don't want to work from 85 anymore. That's, I think it's number one. Number two, people don't want to commute to office. Number three, people don't want to have preset career that have very little room for change, like in an army.