Remote Work Productivity & Lifestyle: Recent Episodes
WorldPodcasts.com / Gorilla Voice
Adam is 1/3 of A-Game Consultancy, where both of his business partners are also called Adam (no kidding). They help individuals and businesses improve mental, physical, and internal health. Show notes: Adam's background is physiotherapy and personal training He's teamed up with two other Adams, a nutritionist and life & habit coach They keep clients engaged through an online community that keeps them accountable He shares about the four pillars of health: physical, mental, internal, and sleep The uncertainty introduced by today's world should be addressed by doubling down on habits we can control We're in control of when we wake up and how our morning routine looks like We have power over our diet Adam doesn't keep his phone in his office, preventing him from waking up to scrolling social He finds that our health and fitness needs revolve around reinforcing ideas that might sound basic, but aren't practiced While remote communication and digital relationships enable us to connect, we're built to be around other people We have a variety of relationships to fulfil our different needs: certainty, variety, growth, love & connection, significance and contribution Connect with Adam through https://www.facebook.com/groups/bringyouragamegroup (their FB Group.) https://www.instagram.com/adam_hindley/ (Instagram,) and https://www.instagram.com/adam_hindley/ (Linkedin.)
Allan chats with https://twitter.com/Ke_Ga/ (Kevin Garber) of https://ukufu.com/ (Ukufu), an app that simplifies content and notes. Show notes: Ukufu is about 2 years old and has mostly been a Hybrid Team that gets together 2x per week All of their processes have been setup for a distributed-first configuration They plugged in a little bit of in-office interactions to build team rapport With COVID and team members moving out of Sydney, they've switched to a fully distributed setup They have team members in Dubai, Nepal, Eastern Europe, and other regions While they regularly work asynchronously, they add Zoom video calls and face-to-face meetings to nurture relationships Their product team practices cowork sessions The engineering team tends to work asynchronously more regularly Their cowork sessions are 2-hour blocks of time when they leave their cameras and mics on Kevin is a big fan of 2nd and 3rd PC screens Hire the right people who will thrive in a distributed team Younger people and extroverts may not be the best fit Quality microphones are underrated
Allan of https://remotecompass.com/ (RemoteCompass )chats with Owen Lansbury, Co-Founder & Chair of https://www.previousnext.com.au/ (PreviousNext). Founded in 2009, the company has been building large-scale Drupal websites for high-profile clients in Australia. Notes: Owen has been into remote work for many years. He started his business living in a remote area using solar power and satellite internet. This didn't stop him from working with large corporate clients and government agencies. Their average client tenure is around 5 years. The PreviousNext is spread across Australia. They've developed a culture of keeping up with the best remote work tools and practices.
Allan chats with https://www.linkedin.com/in/xeniamuntean (Xenia Muntean), the Co-Founder and CEO of Planable. Xenia's own experience as a Digital Agency owner led her to create the SaaS product. Their client relationships are 100% remote. They acquire customers largely through content marketing. The Planable team is located in Bucharest and Moldova. The two offices are brought together by occasional in-person events. As an alternative to in-person workshops, during this time, they run alternative team-building activities such as playing games together. They rely on thorough Help Center documentation to enable customers to solve problems on their own. Their Intercom chat support brings the Planable Team closer to customers through real-time conversations. They make customers feel like insiders by letting them influence the publicly visible Product Roadmap. They've seen a notable increase in demand for the product from academic institutions. Such organizations are relying more on remote communication through social media during these times. Xenia prescribes to communicate much more as folks switch to working from home. It helps to connect with more senses by getting heard on the phone or being seen on camera.
@AllanCaeg chats with Jason Dydynski of https://blog.weekdone.com/ (WeekDone), team software for driving change. Show notes: WeekDone helps teams see how their daily activities connect with their bigger work The platform helps teams with OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) and PPP status reporting (Progress, plans, problems) Jason's team always enabled flexibility They believe that your work and your life should fit together Teams bring in new Objectives (OKRs style) when they want to achieve beyond business as usual https://weekdone.com/remote-worker-reporting (WeekDone's Remote Team Management features) Jason's team relies on asynchronous communication Empower your team members to achieve goals their way
Allan of RemoteCompass.com chats with https://twitter.com/brettonputter?lang=en (Bretton Putter), CEO of https://www.culturegene.ai/ (CultureGene.ai) Brett is author of https://www.culturegene.ai/books/culture-decks-decoded (Culture Decks Decoded) and https://www.culturegene.ai/books/own-your-culture-book (Own Your Culture.) Show notes: Brett's team helps clients define, embed, and manage their culture Companies in rapid growth find that it's time to invest in company culture Brett's research suggests that only one out of 10 companies has done anything about their company culture Social distancing measures made organizations more aware of the importance of company culture The leadership team allowed the four walls of the office to develop and maintain the culture Companies that tend to grow rapidly invest in their culture early When an organization is smaller (e.g. 3-person company) and doesn't expect to grow beyond that, they can get away without being too systematic about their culture It's important for co-founders to understand your culture and values as they prepare to hire aggressively Being systematic about your culture has a lot to do with how much and how fast your headcount will change Start thinking about your culture when you're a team of 15 to 20 as it's difficult to connect with everyone everyday The first 15 team members are likely hired from the founder's network Brett suggests there is no such thing as a "good culture". It's about whether one is a good fit for a company or not A culture could be strong yet dysfunctional A culture is strong when expectations are well-defined and lived by the company on a daily basis You could have a well-defined culture that doesn't drive the business forward The companies with the strongest culture, based on Brett's research, started working remotely from day one, because they didn't have the option to do otherwise Culture is "the way we do things around here" "Culture and brand are two sides of the same coin, but culture comes first" As teams switch from co-located work to remote work, the glue that kept them together is weakening A well-defined culture brings stability and agility Companies that are smart about culture explain what values mean to the organization Values should be translated to 'expected behaviors' The team should define 3 to 6 behaviors that reflect each company value If a company values 'openness', an example behavior is "we don't talk about people behind their backs" Your values should inform who you recognize as employee of the month, hire, promote, etc If a team member joins a company remotely (e.g. from their own bedroom), they need to hear stories about what's acceptable or not You must keep repeating your culture's message. You know you're winning when your team's eyes are starting to roll
Allan of https://remotecompass.com/ (RemoteCompass) chats with https://pragmaticthinking.com/ (Pragmatic Thinking) CEO https://au.linkedin.com/in/fromalihill (Alison Hill.) Pragmatic Thinking is an AFR Fast 100 company that works with large organizations that are going through change. Alison’s work has made its way into businesses such as PepsiCo, McDonalds, Virgin Australia, Siemens, and more. Show notes: Ali's clients were already crafting much greater flexibility for their staff even before the pandemic Covid accelerated existing plans to find ways to connect differently (i.e. when there's no office space or watercooler) Leaders had to communicate the focus on performance more clearly Introducing location flexibility means both 1) sourcing talent from different locations and 2) enabling existing team members to connect differently Strategic decisions that are typically made within the two- to three-year cycle are now being made at the three- to six-month cycle Organizations that will succeed through the next phase are those that balance a sense of calm and flexibility Pre-pandemic, innovative leaders would have imagined a hybrid (remote) setup for 10% to 20% of their workforce. COVID has shown that this affects more like 90% to 95% Succeeding with a hybrid team starts with the belief that this way of working is worth pursuing in the first place Their team has a "seize the midday" ritual where they're encouraged to go outside to move, generally at 12 pm The blurring of boundaries between work and life also came with positive effects like meeting some of your coworkers' kids by virtue of doing video conferences Ali wraps up her workday by writing down three things she achieved today, three things she'll let go of today, and three things she needs to do tomorrow Teammates not only ought to communicate clearly. They also need to connect with each other as humans It's important to remember tangible ways to connect, like sending a care package As folks work from anywhere, they need three elements: 1) performance, 2) culture, and 3) autonomy
Allan of https://remotecompass.com/ (RemoteCompass) chats with https://il.linkedin.com/in/amselemdavid (David Amselem) of https://bigvu.tv/ (BIGVU). Show notes: it's important to make your videos concise minimize rambling with short scripts and teleprompters video captions strengthen the impact it helps when your script can be easily converted into captions when you send a video for sales outreach purposes, you'd want to include a call-to-action on the page where the video is hosted David is a big believer in having the whole team together in one room amid lockdowns, the BIGVU team has been able to hire new team members over Zoom calls moving forward, BIGVU will give their team members the freedom to either work from home or in their office to stand out, salespeople send personalized videos to their prospects there are two parts to a message: 1) who you are/your personality and 2) the actual content you're trying to communicate
http://9ranty.com/ (Grant Shaddick) of https://www.tella.tv/ (Tella) chats with Allan of https://remotecompass.com/ (RemoteCompass.com). Show notes: sometimes, we need more than the basic screen recording tools professional video editing tools could be too overwhelming for simpler use cases Tella is a collaborative video editor for team communication, educational content, sales, etc their product enables remote and asynchronous work as an early-stage company, they recognize the value of fostering close relationships among core team members while they don't have an intention to build a co-located team, Grant recognizes the value of spending time in person with teammates Grant suggests that it's ideal to enable asynchronous work for most of the time as long as everyone gets together every week or month At an early stage, when playbooks aren't firm for the founding team, meeting up is more critical Small startups take big swings, the kind of moves that are typically decided together by the founding team At Tella, half of their work is done asynchronously while the other half is synchronous Tools Tella use: https://tandem.chat/ (Tandem), https://www.notion.so/ (Notion), https://linear.app/ (Linear) (and of course Tella) A job is likely being improvised if a core team member is wearing multiple hats (e.g. acting as a UX designer in the morning then a marketer in the afternoon) For improvisation-heavy roles, it makes more sense to have synchronous communication Heavily defined roles are more suitable for asynchronous communication Doing remote work right doesn't simply mean bringing your workflows from the office to your home
Allan of https://remotecompass.com/ (RemoteCompass.com) chats with Nachum Kligman of https://booklikeaboss.com/ (Book Like A Boss), a popular product for booking services. Show notes: Nachum faced the challenging back and forth describing his consulting services — if a session is paid, its benefits, how much it costs, what's included, when, and more His experiences inspired him to build an e-commerce platform for services in 2017 People buy from people. They want to understand who they're booking The BLAB team is composed of team members in various countries They use WhatsApp, Trello, and Slack to coordinate Nachum likes to empower people, allowing them to own their jobs As a result, he rarely needs to hop on the phone with his partners They find that team meetings are unnecessary BLAB team members don't have to be micromanaged and are empowered to take their own risks 90% of the time, Nachum communicates with the team via WhatsApp voice messages BLAB's numbers doubled since March, growing alongside Zoom's rising popularity Nachum reckons that business should not be too formal — focused on hierarchies, ceremonies, sounding smart, etc Find Nachum on https://book.nachum.co/ (Book Like A Boss), https://www.linkedin.com/in/kligman (Linkedin), and https://twitter.com/kligman (Twitter)
Allan of https://remotecompass.com/ (RemoteCompass ) chats with Stephan Csorba of https://www.csorbamedia.com/ (Csorba Media), a full-service web design, Wordpress, and app development agency. Show notes: 99% of Stephan's customers are overseas (outside the Netherlands) Stephan operated offices in Brussels and Tokyo, on top of his Netherlands operations Their team worked with time differences across continents They started companies in other countries in order to build stronger relationships Stephan books online meetings frequently in order to sync up with his global team and clients Stephan's day starts (at 9 am) and ends (at midnight) with online meetings Every project goes through Stephan in order to maintain quality Flexibility enables Stephen's team to do business with international clients
Allan of https://remotecompass.com (RemoteCompass) chats with Abhinav Chugh of https://www.peoplebox.ai/ (Peoplebox), an employee engagement and performance platform for remote teams. Notes: how managing remote/distributed teams is different (vs co-located teams) benefits of going remote: no need to dress up, reduce commute times, hire from anywhere in the world hiring people for a remote team is significantly different vs hiring someone for an office team self-driven people are right for remote one-on-one meetings are critical, especially for suddenly remote relationships we build relationships by breaking the bread together connecting personally is what differentiates teammates from 3rd party suppliers building connections has been deprioritized in remote teams it's harder to separate work and life when you work from home if there's any reason for employees to go back from remote to the office, it's to separate work from life https://www.udemy.com/course/remote-work-boundaries/?referralCode=B6B6A911082719C30BAC (Allan's course on developing boundaries for remote work) we used to separate work and non-work with physical constraints and older technologies
@AllanCaeg of https://remotecompass.com/ (RemoteCompass.com) chats with Meryl Johnston, Founder & CEO of https://beanninjas.com/ (BeanNinjas). Some highlights of this value-packed 20-minute conversation: "getting forced" into setting up as a remote team from the beginning and starting with building a location-independent business in mind growing a remote team of over 15 people across many different countries finding the best team members and the right culture fit (regardless of where someone's based) running team retreats to build rapport working with a weekly stream of job applicants by understanding culture fit, commitment, motivation, and ability to meet deadlines through online assessments meeting up with teammates and clients to build rapport (but staying productive via online collaboration) virtual summits are great for transferring knowledge, but they don't provide the same networking opportunities that you'd get from hallway conversations or lunch breaks spent together Find Meryl on Linkedin: https://au.linkedin.com/in/meryl-johnston-3a483728 (https://au.linkedin.com/in/meryl-johnston-3a483728)
https://twitter.com/allancaeg (@AllanCaeg) chats with Alex Mauzon of https://pomodoneapp.com/ (PomoDone). Notes and takeaways from this episode: It takes 23 minutes to fully get back on track from interruptions Rewarding yourself when taking breaks, encouraging your uninterrupted focus when it's time to work https://www.udemy.com/course/remote-work-boundaries/?referralCode=B6B6A911082719C30BAC (Allan's course on establishing boundaries) Multitasking reduces productivity and increases tiredness Take breaks and let ideas brew in the background You can take breaks at home by cooking, doing chores This show is presented by https://remotecompass.com/ (RemoteCompass.com) and https://worldpodcasts.com/remote-work/ (WorldPodcasts.com)
https://twitter.com/johnsbeharry (Johns Beharry) of PeakShift and https://bed.money/ (bed.money) shares with us his experiences as a location-independent entrepreneur. Here are some takeaways from this conversation: Twitter is a great platform to start conversations It helps to turn a Twitter conversation into a phone call soon Johns would book flights to meet up with potential partners after kickstarting the conversation online Challenge conversations with prospects by asking better questions that would help them meet their goals The open-source community has mastered remote collaboration
Allan speaks with https://www.the-automator.com/ (The Automator), Joe Glines. As a digital entrepreneur, running his operations remotely has been the default setup. Listen to this fun chat with the high energy Joe Glines, where we talked about: Windows Desktop automation with https://www.autohotkey.com/ (AutoHotkey) How Joe automated tedious processes at his corporate job How Joe enjoys his work so much that he doesn't need an alarm clock to get up early Empowering the team to work with autonomy while focusing on the output Creating your own shortcuts with UI with https://www.quickaccesspopup.com/ (QuickAccessPopup)
Frank Rousseau of https://www.cg-wire.com/ (CG Wire )chats with Allan about their remote operations and SaaS software for online collaboration. Here are some takeaways from this conversation: Frank shares his experience leaving a VC-backed startup to run a remote SaaS company Transitioning from face-to-face networking to connecting with the audience online How to introduce a new product category to an audience that isn't actively looking for it Don't try to reproduce the traditional work environment as you switch to remote work
@AllanCaeg chats with Junaid Ansari of https://draftss.com/ (Draftss.) Here are some takeaways from this fun conversation: Growing and hiring aggressively amid the pandemic Reviewing pricing and packages to fit the market situation Coordinating various subject matter experts within the company Communicating your thought process to clients remotely
@AllanCaeg chats with Jimmy Rose, the go-to guy for automation and founder of https://akturatech.com/ (Aktura Technology) and https://contentsnare.com/ (ContentSnare.) Here are some takeaways from this conversation: how COVID accelerated good communication practices responsible communication cuts down back-and-forth emails how meeting up was a crutch (vs. having to communicate responsibly) how the desktop PC is so underrated Learn about Jimmy's work here: https://jimmyrose.me/ (https://jimmyrose.me/)
In this episode, we chat with the founder of the popular PomoDone app, Alex Mauzon. Alex does what he preaches. Their product not only supports remote team collaboration. His team is composed of people from multiple countries as they collaborate via their cloud office. Here are some takeaways from this packed conversation: Alex supports the individual's productivity while respecting their preferences and privacy Various factors affect one's productive hours: timezone/location, responsibilities at home, being a morning/evening person Competent project managers account for team members' productive hours to sync them up with the rest of the team Find Alex on LinkedIn: https://lt.linkedin.com/in/mauzon (https://lt.linkedin.com/in/mauzon) Learn about PomoDone here: https://pomodoneapp.com/ (https://pomodoneapp.com/)
This is a fun and insightful chat with Matthew Barnett, the founder of and Papa Bear at Bonjoro. Bonjoro started as a homegrown communication tool that allowed Matt's digital agency to close more deals with overseas clients. Here are some takeaways from this packed conversation: how investing time in "showing up" leads to 3x conversion rates for overseas clients personalized messages for the customer funnel embracing remote work constraints while thriving with clear expectations and video communication the difference between instruction videos vs rapport-building videos