We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Matthew Garel, Mark Stuart a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Matthew Garel, Mark Stuart thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. So let’s jump to your mission – what’s the backstory behind how you developed the mission that drives your brand?
At Remote Performance, our mission goes beyond providing high-quality supplements; it’s about empowering those who make their living at home, bridging the gap between productivity and personal well-being. It’s a mission deeply rooted in our own personal journeys and the challenges we faced adapting to remote work during the pandemic.
The seed for Remote Performance was planted long before it officially sprouted into the brand you see today. Our journey began in the bustling hallways of a Toronto high school where we bonded over shared classes, a common Jamaican heritage, and a deep appreciation for music icons like Michael Jackson. It continued through university where we both earned business degrees, our friendship evolved and our taste for entrepreneurship was sparked. Life took us in different directions – Mark to the fast-paced world of tech in Seattle, and Matthew to the vibrant, high-energy modeling scene of New York City – but our friendship and entrepreneurial drive endured over time and distance.
Our lives reconverged during the Covid pandemic as we were both navigating new realities as remote workers – Mark as a home-based consultant and Matthew selling life insurance. We both experienced firsthand the blurred boundaries between home and work, the strain on focus and energy, and the challenge of maintaining health while living an increasingly sedentary lifestyle. This sparked our lightbulb moment: what if we could turn our challenges into solutions not just for ourselves but for countless others?
With that realization, Remote Performance was born—a brand rooted in our personal experiences and designed for the modern remote worker. Our mission? To empower individuals to be “ON” when they need to perform and “OFF” when it’s time to recharge and rest. Partnering with a premium, GMP/NSF-certified supplier, we curated a selection that meets the highest standards to tackle common challenges: from maintaining energy and focus to enhancing sleep quality and reducing stress.
But Remote Performance is not just about supplements; it’s about community and support. We aim to inspire and create an environment where stories, struggles, and successes are shared, fostering connections among those who understand the intricacies of remote life. We don’t just want to improve productivity—we want to make remote living more balanced, fulfilling and fun.
Our journey from high school friends to co-founders of a mission-driven brand epitomizes resilience, adaptation, and the desire to help others thrive in their unique work environments. Because when you make your bread where you lay your head, you deserve the tools and support to work better, rest better, and live better.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
The roots of Remote Performance run deep. As mentioned earlier, they stretch back to the high school hallways where our friendship began as teenagers, bonding over shared Jamaican heritage, mutual interests, and a competitive streak that kept us both sharp. From Michael Jackson dance-offs and martial arts sparring sessions to gym challenges, we were constantly pushing each other to reach new heights. Those early competitions? Let’s just say the results are still debated to this day.
The partnership we enjoy now was forged over five years together in undergrad and graduate business school, filled with late-night study sessions, team projects, and shared strategies to get through endless deadlines. Those years saw us navigating countless group assignments, long hours in the library (often with more laughter than studying), and even a full-year strategy project for our grad school capstone. Along the way, we balanced our hard work with plenty of Mortal Kombat video game tournaments.
The trust this brand is founded on is one derived not just from the friendship between us but from the families we adopted of each other over time. Over the years, Matt’s mum and grandmother became “Aunty Rolly” and “Grandma” to Mark, while Mark’s parents became “Aunty June” and “Uncle Ernest” to Matt. We didn’t just know each other’s families—they became family. This mutual support and understanding laid the groundwork for the vision that would become Remote Performance.
Remote Performance is the intentional journey of trusted friends reuniting with purpose; taking a familiar, trusted partnership and infusing it with the lived experience we each gained from the lives we led on separate paths. Our lives reconverged through the Covid pandemic, bringing us together again over shared experiences—the trials of remote life and the toll it can take on focus, energy, and overall well-being. This brought to the surface our shared ambitions to help others thrive in remote work environments, just as we had always helped each other.
At its core, Remote Performance is more than just a business; it’s a reflection of the friendship, trust, and commitment that have defined our lives for years. Together, we aim to build a brand that not only supports productivity but also champions balance, wellness, and community for remote workers everywhere.
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
Matt- For over 25 years, I had a successful career in modeling. But over time, the industry changed so much that my regular clients weren’t so regular anymore, and jobs became less frequent. Suddenly, I was looking at a very different financial reality—one that made me realize I needed to pivot if I wanted to keep supporting my family. So, I decided to try something new and went into life insurance. Then COVID hit, which transformed that business into a work-from-home model. Suddenly, I was spending endless hours on Zoom calls, client meetings, and continuing education, which meant sitting in front of a computer for hours. And honestly, I started dealing with all the classic “remote worker” struggles—joint pain, brain fog, and feeling like I never knew when to shut down.
Mark – For those same 25 years, I thrived in business IT, guiding companies through strategic tech transformations with roles at top firms like Microsoft and Resources Global Professionals. Resilience developed naturally from navigating the fast-paced, ever-evolving world of Finance technology. But my pivot moment came in 2006 when I first decided to leave corporate life in a venture to launch a sophisticated lounge in downtown Seattle—a venture fueled by a desire to create something of my own and escape burnout from a path that didn’t fully resonate with me. Partnering with a like-minded friend, we spent a year and a half promoting our vision of a cosmopolitan lounge with international flare. Our efforts even earned a feature in the Puget Sound Business Journal, but ultimately, we fell short on securing the needed investment. Watching similar venues thrive soon after confirmed our vision but also taught me perseverance. I returned to the corporate world, but with a renewed resolve to one day pursue another venture where cause, opportunity, timing and the right partnership aligned.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
That merger of timing, cause, opportunity and the right partnership presented itself in the COVID pandemic where circumstances brought Matt and Mark back together. Inspired by Covid’s disruption of “normal”, we were both thinking about what comes next for us and it seemed like the right time to be thinking entrepreneurially. And, with timing being everything, an opportunity presented itself to enter a relationship with a manufacturer of consumable products under a brand of our own creation, targeting an audience of our own choosing. It was out of this opportunity that Remote Performance emerged. In the beginning, the relationship seemed perfect. They seemed to have all the ingredients for success: an impressive product line, top-notch facilities that checked all the boxes, support for label and website design and automated order fulfillment – pretty much the whole package. It was everything we’d hoped for, and we felt confident enough to invest capital, time and energy into building our brand on this relationship.
But about six months in, things took a turn. Products started to become unavailable without warning or notification, questions went unanswered for too long, and terms began to shift as minimum order quantities were introduced on previously on-demand products, requiring either more capital or product line changes. Ultimately, what we experienced as a lack of transparency and under-communication brought us to a tough decision after over a year of effort. We could either go forward as is and launch our brand with inventory shortfalls and trust issues or exit the relationship and take our brand IP to a new manufacturing partner to start over and move forward on better footing. We chose the latter. It meant reworking our entire product line, redesigning labels, overhauling our website, and—on top of all that—maintaining a strong mindset to push through.
Choosing to start over wasn’t easy, but we decided to go for it. We poured even more time and energy into finding the right partner, believing that this new direction would set us up for a stronger launch. And thankfully, despite all the setbacks, we got our brand and website live this past October, with a partnership that we truly value. This whole experience was a serious test of resilience—it showed us that sometimes, the harder path really is the one worth taking.
Now, looking back, we’re proud of what we’ve built with Remote Performance. The challenges taught us so much—not just about our product line and running an e-commerce business, but also about choosing the right partners and trusting our own vision. We’re more grounded and stronger now, and we’re ready to keep pushing forward.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://remote-performance.com/
- Instagram: @remoteperformance
- Facebook: @remoteperformance
- Other: TikTok: @remoteperformance
Image Credits
Joanna Garel