Episodes
-
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 trainingHe's teamed up with two other Adams, a nutritionist and life & habit coachThey keep clients engaged through an online community that keeps them accountableHe shares about the four pillars of health: physical, mental, internal, and sleepThe uncertainty introduced by today's world should be addressed by doubling down on habits we can controlWe're in control of when we wake up and how our morning routine looks likeWe have power over our dietAdam doesn't keep his phone in his office, preventing him from waking up to scrolling socialHe finds that our health and fitness needs revolve around reinforcing ideas that might sound basic, but aren't practicedWhile remote communication and digital relationships enable us to connect, we're built to be around other peopleWe have a variety of relationships to fulfil our different needs: certainty, variety, growth, love & connection, significance and contributionConnect with Adam through their FB Group. Instagram, and Linkedin.
-
Allan chats with Kevin Garber of 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 weekAll of their processes have been setup for a distributed-first configurationThey plugged in a little bit of in-office interactions to build team rapportWith COVID and team members moving out of Sydney, they've switched to a fully distributed setupThey have team members in Dubai, Nepal, Eastern Europe, and other regionsWhile they regularly work asynchronously, they add Zoom video calls and face-to-face meetings to nurture relationshipsTheir product team practices cowork sessionsThe engineering team tends to work asynchronously more regularlyTheir cowork sessions are 2-hour blocks of time when they leave their cameras and mics onKevin is a big fan of 2nd and 3rd PC screensHire the right people who will thrive in a distributed teamYounger people and extroverts may not be the best fitQuality microphones are underrated
-
Episodes manquant?
-
Allan of RemoteCompass chats with Owen Lansbury, Co-Founder & Chair of 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 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 WeekDone, team software for driving change.
Show notes:
WeekDone helps teams see how their daily activities connect with their bigger workThe platform helps teams with OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) and PPP status reporting (Progress, plans, problems)Jason's team always enabled flexibilityThey believe that your work and your life should fit togetherTeams bring in new Objectives (OKRs style) when they want to achieve beyond business as usualWeekDone's Remote Team Management featuresJason's team relies on asynchronous communicationEmpower your team members to achieve goals their way
-
Allan of RemoteCompass.com chats with Bretton Putter, CEO of CultureGene.ai
Brett is author of Culture Decks Decoded and Own Your Culture.
Show notes:
Brett's team helps clients define, embed, and manage their cultureCompanies in rapid growth find that it's time to invest in company cultureBrett's research suggests that only one out of 10 companies has done anything about their company cultureSocial distancing measures made organizations more aware of the importance of company cultureThe leadership team allowed the four walls of the office to develop and maintain the cultureCompanies that tend to grow rapidly invest in their culture earlyWhen 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 cultureIt's important for co-founders to understand your culture and values as they prepare to hire aggressivelyBeing systematic about your culture has a lot to do with how much and how fast your headcount will changeStart thinking about your culture when you're a team of 15 to 20 as it's difficult to connect with everyone everydayThe first 15 team members are likely hired from the founder's networkBrett suggests there is no such thing as a "good culture". It's about whether one is a good fit for a company or notA culture could be strong yet dysfunctionalA culture is strong when expectations are well-defined and lived by the company on a daily basisYou could have a well-defined culture that doesn't drive the business forwardThe 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 otherwiseCulture 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 weakeningA well-defined culture brings stability and agilityCompanies that are smart about culture explain what values mean to the organizationValues should be translated to 'expected behaviors'The team should define 3 to 6 behaviors that reflect each company valueIf 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, etcIf a team member joins a company remotely (e.g. from their own bedroom), they need to hear stories about what's acceptable or notYou must keep repeating your culture's message. You know you're winning when your team's eyes are starting to roll
-
Allan of RemoteCompass chats with Pragmatic Thinking CEO 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 pandemicCovid 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 differentlyStrategic decisions that are typically made within the two- to three-year cycle are now being made at the three- to six-month cycleOrganizations that will succeed through the next phase are those that balance a sense of calm and flexibilityPre-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 placeTheir 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 conferencesAli 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 tomorrowTeammates not only ought to communicate clearly. They also need to connect with each other as humansIt's important to remember tangible ways to connect, like sending a care packageAs folks work from anywhere, they need three elements: 1) performance, 2) culture, and 3) autonomy
-
Allan of RemoteCompass chats with David Amselem of BIGVU.
Show notes:
it's important to make your videos conciseminimize rambling with short scripts and telepromptersvideo captions strengthen the impactit helps when your script can be easily converted into captionswhen you send a video for sales outreach purposes, you'd want to include a call-to-action on the page where the video is hostedDavid is a big believer in having the whole team together in one roomamid lockdowns, the BIGVU team has been able to hire new team members over Zoom callsmoving forward, BIGVU will give their team members the freedom to either work from home or in their officeto stand out, salespeople send personalized videos to their prospectsthere are two parts to a message: 1) who you are/your personality and 2) the actual content you're trying to communicate
-
Grant Shaddick of Tella chats with Allan of RemoteCompass.com.
Show notes:
sometimes, we need more than the basic screen recording toolsprofessional video editing tools could be too overwhelming for simpler use casesTella is a collaborative video editor for team communication, educational content, sales, etctheir product enables remote and asynchronous workas an early-stage company, they recognize the value of fostering close relationships among core team memberswhile they don't have an intention to build a co-located team, Grant recognizes the value of spending time in person with teammatesGrant suggests that it's ideal to enable asynchronous work for most of the time as long as everyone gets together every week or monthAt an early stage, when playbooks aren't firm for the founding team, meeting up is more criticalSmall startups take big swings, the kind of moves that are typically decided together by the founding teamAt Tella, half of their work is done asynchronously while the other half is synchronousTools Tella use: Tandem, Notion, 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 communicationHeavily defined roles are more suitable for asynchronous communicationDoing remote work right doesn't simply mean bringing your workflows from the office to your home
-
Allan of RemoteCompass.com chats with Nachum Kligman of 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 moreHis experiences inspired him to build an e-commerce platform for services in 2017People buy from people. They want to understand who they're bookingThe BLAB team is composed of team members in various countriesThey use WhatsApp, Trello, and Slack to coordinateNachum likes to empower people, allowing them to own their jobsAs a result, he rarely needs to hop on the phone with his partnersThey find that team meetings are unnecessaryBLAB team members don't have to be micromanaged and are empowered to take their own risks90% of the time, Nachum communicates with the team via WhatsApp voice messagesBLAB's numbers doubled since March, growing alongside Zoom's rising popularityNachum reckons that business should not be too formal — focused on hierarchies, ceremonies, sounding smart, etcFind Nachum on Book Like A Boss, Linkedin, and Twitter
-
Allan of RemoteCompass chats with Stephan Csorba of 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 operationsTheir team worked with time differences across continents They started companies in other countries in order to build stronger relationshipsStephan books online meetings frequently in order to sync up with his global team and clientsStephan's day starts (at 9 am) and ends (at midnight) with online meetingsEvery project goes through Stephan in order to maintain quality Flexibility enables Stephen's team to do business with international clients
-
Allan of RemoteCompass chats with Abhinav Chugh of 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 worldhiring people for a remote team is significantly different vs hiring someone for an office teamself-driven people are right for remoteone-on-one meetings are critical, especially for suddenly remote relationshipswe build relationships by breaking the bread togetherconnecting personally is what differentiates teammates from 3rd party suppliersbuilding connections has been deprioritized in remote teamsit's harder to separate work and life when you work from homeif there's any reason for employees to go back from remote to the office, it's to separate work from lifeAllan's course on developing boundaries for remote workwe used to separate work and non-work with physical constraints and older technologies
-
@AllanCaeg of RemoteCompass.com chats with Meryl Johnston, Founder & CEO of 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 mindgrowing a remote team of over 15 people across many different countriesfinding the best team members and the right culture fit (regardless of where someone's based)running team retreats to build rapportworking with a weekly stream of job applicants by understanding culture fit, commitment, motivation, and ability to meet deadlines through online assessmentsmeeting 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 togetherFind Meryl on Linkedin: https://au.linkedin.com/in/meryl-johnston-3a483728
-
@AllanCaeg chats with Alex Mauzon of PomoDone.
Notes and takeaways from this episode:
It takes 23 minutes to fully get back on track from interruptionsRewarding yourself when taking breaks, encouraging your uninterrupted focus when it's time to workAllan's course on establishing boundariesMultitasking reduces productivity and increases tirednessTake breaks and let ideas brew in the backgroundYou can take breaks at home by cooking, doing choresThis show is presented by RemoteCompass.com and WorldPodcasts.com
-
Johns Beharry of PeakShift and 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 conversationsIt helps to turn a Twitter conversation into a phone call soonJohns would book flights to meet up with potential partners after kickstarting the conversation onlineChallenge conversations with prospects by asking better questions that would help them meet their goalsThe open-source community has mastered remote collaboration
-
Allan speaks with 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 AutoHotkeyHow Joe automated tedious processes at his corporate jobHow Joe enjoys his work so much that he doesn't need an alarm clock to get up earlyEmpowering the team to work with autonomy while focusing on the outputCreating your own shortcuts with UI with QuickAccessPopup
-
Frank Rousseau of 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 companyTransitioning from face-to-face networking to connecting with the audience onlineHow to introduce a new product category to an audience that isn't actively looking for itDon't try to reproduce the traditional work environment as you switch to remote work
-
@AllanCaeg chats with Junaid Ansari of Draftss.
Here are some takeaways from this fun conversation:
Growing and hiring aggressively amid the pandemicReviewing pricing and packages to fit the market situationCoordinating various subject matter experts within the companyCommunicating your thought process to clients remotely
-
@AllanCaeg chats with Jimmy Rose, the go-to guy for automation and founder of Aktura Technology and ContentSnare.
Here are some takeaways from this conversation:
how COVID accelerated good communication practicesresponsible communication cuts down back-and-forth emailshow meeting up was a crutch (vs. having to communicate responsibly)how the desktop PC is so underratedLearn about Jimmy's work here: 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 privacyVarious factors affect one's productive hours: timezone/location, responsibilities at home, being a morning/evening personCompetent project managers account for team members' productive hours to sync them up with the rest of the teamFind Alex on LinkedIn: https://lt.linkedin.com/in/mauzon
Learn about PomoDone here: https://pomodoneapp.com/
- Montre plus
