RWL070 How Remote Work Can Boost Productivity and Build Strong Company Culture with Sharon Koivman

Surviving Remote Work

Speaker 1

0:00

And today I have with me yet another exceptional guest. I have Sharon Koivman, and Sharon is obsessed about remote management. He's the president of Distant Job and I'm going to allow him in a moment to give us a bit more information about Distant Job. But, like I said, he's totally obsessed with remote work a man after my own heart, and over the past 20 years he's built and run not one, not two, but three fully remote companies.

Speaker 1

0:35

Sharon grew up in an entrepreneurial family and was heavily inspired by his father, who first introduced Sharon to the idea of working remotely. Wow, these days, sharon runs Distant Job. As I mentioned before, it's a unique recruitment agency geared specifically for finding full-time remote employees who work from all around the world. But the key difference in his approach is that he wants to show how remote work benefits business. And not only is Sharon the leader, the man behind Distant Job, he's also the author of a book called Surviving Remote Work, which reached number one bestseller status on Amazon. So, sharon, I'm just so glad to have you here today and you are most welcome.

Speaker 2

1:31

Thank you, alex. What a pleasure being around. What a nice introduction. It's nice to hear people talking about you, not behind your back. It works well.

Speaker 1

1:47

Yes, it's always nice the other way around, isn't it? It's always good. But today I mean, obviously the podcast is about about remote work and, as I mentioned before, really excited to have you here and I know there's going to be so much value in this session because obviously there's lots of people in the world right now who are working remotely, those who are new to remote work. But you know, I'm sure, if you stick around and please do stick around that if you're a seasoned remote worker, you will learn a lot from Sharon. So please stick around.

Speaker 1

2:21

Today we're going to be talking about really surviving remote work and the reason we chose that topic is because Sharon studied and researched not only how to operate remote businesses but how to create an amazing work culture and one where people actually feel like they love to come to work, and that's like the holy grail of remote, remote work, of work in as a whole, let alone remote work. So, as I said, amen, certainly worth sticking around for. But before we get to that, before we get to the sort of the golden nuggets of the show, I want to learn more about you, sharon. I really want to know, I want to find out more about you. Did you envision yourself in your current role and basically tell me how did you get to the position that you are now?

Speaker 2

3:14

So did I envision? Absolutely not. But let me rephrase it I've always envisioned myself as owner of a company. Let me rephrase that I've always envisioned myself as owner of a company. I had an entrepreneurial mind and an entrepreneurial family culture since I was a kid. But I have never envisioned having a 50-employee company actually 51 right now where I am sitting in my office by myself. I'm an extrovert. I like people, I like to socialize. So this idea that I build a real, tangible company while I'm still sitting here by myself and nobody's around still blows my mind Right. But I very much was an individual that my entire life was.

Speaker 2

4:19

I wanted to not just run company, run a company that changes things, then invent things, just like we changed the entire recruitment industry. I mean right now everybody's getting excited about remote recruitment, but we have been recruiting remote people for 12 years already. We're the first remote recruitment agency out there and it was very much based on that need that I had my first company, which was a web hosting and outsourcing company, and I kind of was offloading work for my team and companies software companies and technology companies would offload to me, which for me seemed like a business crime, almost a business sin, business crime, almost a business sin. Somebody would actually have their bread and butter give to me because it's cheaper to outsource, because we potentially could have provided a product a little faster. But really they were losing the soul of the company by doing so.

Speaker 2

5:18

And when I sold that company about 12 years ago or so, I realized that people need just people. They don't need to offload to a different company. They need individuals that are working for themselves, and that's why I started the company. Like you said, my dad was a man that built the same concept. He built massive wire and cable manufacturing machines for factories like a million-dollar piece of machinery, and he did it sitting at home by himself right.

Speaker 2

6:02

And designing that entire machine he was a brilliant engineer himself and just give it to a machine shop to do the work and the machine shop gave it to other people to put it together and I saw that from a young age a man building a substantial company with real, tangible products. This is not affiliate program or some kind of quick money scheme. This was a tangible, multi-million dollar machine that he built sitting on his bum at home and that inspired me a lot and you've taken up the baton, basically, and gone ahead and done it yourself and it's a great effect.

Speaker 1

6:41

And you mentioned just now, actually, that you're you're an extrovert. I'm quite intrigued. I might ask you that, as we go down in the show but everybody seems to think that remote work is the kind of uh, a kind of space for the introvert. The person who likes to stay on their own, is quietly all up to themselves. But yeah, we're about it sounds like we're about to break that sort of barrier, break that sort of misconception and blow it out of the water.

Speaker 2

7:10

Look, first of all, remote work is the ultimate equalizer. It is the place for female workers to show more of their emphasis. It's for special need people. Suddenly, it's not a big deal. Everybody's sitting in front of the computer working. So if you're in a wheelchair, no big deal. Nothing changes, right? If you're from a poor environment, no big deal. Environment, no big deal. You don't need to move to a wealthier environment or a community to succeed. If you're from a racial status that is often discriminated, no big deal, right. People seem to be quite the equalizer.

Speaker 2

8:04

But one of the things that truly has been equalized is the power of the introverts. And right now you introverts have the most power to shine, because usually in a physical office environment, in a physical office environment, it is the people that make the most noise, that provide the most commentary, that not necessarily make the most impact, but the people that are being heard, which usually succeed more. And the introverts not only are not being heard, that working environment from them is causing damage on their productivity. Working environment from them is causing damage on their productivity. Now, research has shown that when you leave introverts alone, they are the more productive kind of people right?

Speaker 2

8:54

Not that I'm trying to create new things to do, new ethnicities and new reasons to discriminate, and everything but introverts. When you let them sit at home, they kick some butt. Now going to extroverts, this is very much an interesting environment because there's no reason for you to fail in this environment, but you do need to think a little bit outside the box. You do need to create proactive activities. You need to create your social experience, because the extroverts love to go to the office, to not just to work, to hang out with people, to go for a happy hour, to go for lunch, and there's nothing that really stops you from doing that.

Remote Work Productivity and Social Optimization

Speaker 2

9:44

Covid has created a big culture shock for people. We're going from home. Oh my God, I don't hang out with my friends. I can't do anything. It's like why you like people in the office. Send them an email. Yes, COVID, sometimes you can't go to the restaurants for a little bit, so we had a tough time. So you go for a walk, Go do whatever you do, but now we're kind of back to normal and people are still staying home. Call your buddies, send them an email, but something about the going from home makes you forget that you had a great social life and a great social experience, and that is why people fail mental health-wise when they go remote.

Speaker 2

10:27

They forget about the things that they like in the physical world because you can just sit at home and be lazy, but you shouldn't be lazy with your social experience. It's very, very important, not just for your mental health but for productivity in general, and this is what I focus every day. I personally believe that people that work remote not believe. There's plenty of research MIT Sloan shown that remote people are happier, more independent and more productive. There's plenty of research showing that the bottom line is much better.

Speaker 2

10:59

Forget about the fact that you don't need to drive to an office. You don't need to cut your project in the middle because you're in a rush home and you want to be traffic, but in general, sitting at home, it creates a much less destruction kind of an office environment. And because you have extra time because I see that I have extra time as a remote person, of extra time, because I see that I have extra time as a remote person I actually invest a small part of my day half an hour an hour focusing on my social experience, booking restaurants, finding who am I going to hang out with for my happy hour, who am I going to go for for a run, or what courses interest me? This is part of my business day and I book my social experience as if there were business meetings. I think I got ahead of myself a little bit about the questions.

Speaker 2

11:53

But yes, this is my advice because, yes, introverts have the advantage on this one, but extroverts can live a perfectly happy life if they remember that they're extroverts. People almost forget that, and if you are a person that social experience elevates you, gives you motivation, gives you energy, you've got to book those activities and life will be perfectly as good as if you were going to an office.

Speaker 1

12:26

Love that. I love that. And I think I'm one of those introverts actually where I feel as though, since I started working remotely, my whole work ethic not my work ethic, but my productivity has changed completely. I can just focus on what I want to do, what I need to get done in the day. I can get things done more quickly than I used to get done. So I'm completely with you there, and I saw a post actually on. So go ahead, sharon.

Speaker 2

12:56

No, no, it's an important point because people assume that the office is an environment for productive work, but it's not. People on average, this is research that has shown that people produce about two hours and 53 minutes of actual work in an eight-hour shift on average. This is what people produce and the reason why they produce that. One of the reasons there's many reasons to it there's meetings and there's a lot of stoppage in the middle. You got to go for lunch with your friends and that kills going back to productivity. It's difficult, but really it is the number one reason is distraction when you're hanging out with people around you, when you're in a cubicle environment which, by the way, is the biggest business sin in the world cubicles are evil, right, and when you hear somebody and they distract you, it takes you 25 minutes to get back to focus, right. So absolutely getting to sit at home or in a co-working space in an environment where you have the most optimal working experience, gets you to do much more work and much shorter time.

Speaker 1

14:07

And this is why I can't understand why there's so much friction well, not friction, but so much resistance, I suppose, towards the whole idea of there are certain people that suit remote work and there's those that don't. I think there needs to be an acceptance of that, that if you prefer to work remotely, it doesn't mean. And I saw a post on linkedin actually today which said somebody was saying that you know he doesn't like the idea of remote work because he's frightened that you're going to lose the human connection. And I was thinking myself but but no, you don't lose the the connection because, like you said, sharon, you become deliberate about, you know, sending a text to your friends or sending an email to your, you know, to your college buddies to go and have a drink after work. Or you're a bit more deliberate about all the social activities that you've got in between your work or after your work, aren't you?

Speaker 2

15:01

Look, so I differentiate a little bit from my remote evangelist colleagues. Right, when I go on LinkedIn and I see a buddy that I met in a conference, in a remote management conference, there's always this rah, rah, rah. Right, remote is the best Out there. Company's not getting it, companies not getting it. And I see there's two reasons why companies are still being difficult, are still fighting their remote experience. One of them is legitimate. One of them, in my opinion, is not legitimate.

Speaker 2

15:44

Starting with, the illegitimate reason is because they truly are used to it. I mean, we have been brainwashed or brainwashed is a negative word but we've been. We got used to the concept that the office, work at the office, is the location of productivity, that we are able to separate our social life from an office life, because when we go home at least we know this is nobody is supposed to bug me there. In the 90s, there's always, even in the 2000s, there's always this discussion our bosses should not email people outside of work hours. And because the work-life balance has been separate in this hour in this location, and that's what we learned. And that, in my opinion, is illegitimate, because I have tons of research showing that you can have a perfectly work-life balance at home and be 10 times more productive, which means you can work less and it'll be just fine.

Speaker 2

16:48

Now the legitimate reason why and one of the biggest weaknesses with remote and I guess I differentiate from a lot of my remote evangelist buddies is that there is still a mental health issue that has not been solved.

Speaker 2

17:11

And you can have an incredibly disciplined employee or a very good manager that might fix that, but quite often it's not the case.

Speaker 2

17:24

That might fix that, but quite often it's not the case. And if you do not have a manager that is proactively getting intimate with his employees, getting to know them, paying attention to mental health, paying attention to burning out or underworking, the reality is that while you might get incredibly productive people so you get some serious productivity but you might not get longevity, and this is a legitimate concern. This is a legitimate concern that when people sit at home and you don't have employees like me that understand that I need to be proactive in my social experience and vice versa, you don't have managers that are paying attention to that, that they might just disappear into as I call remote la-la land. They're just going to work and eventually going to be more and more disconnected from the company, because creating a company culture in a remote environment is more challenging. Right, don't get me wrong. My company is an incredible company culture, but it requires somewhat more effort. There's no question about that.

Speaker 1

18:38

Yeah, and this is why it's so important not just to not just dive into it and think, okay, I've got a remote company, now that work we're all working from home. It takes a lot more thought, a lot more. So you said, as you said, dedication in terms of all the different aspects of remote work. Before you can really begin to to, I suppose, at least begin to check off all the you know the boxes that you need to check off in order to support your team and have the business working in operating in the right way. So well, that's good. That could be the discussion, a deeper discussion for another podcast.

Navigating Challenges and Remote Company Culture

Speaker 1

19:12

But, um, I'm still intrigued to know a bit more about, about you, um, what I mean. You um show on, obviously, the, the. The business now is growing. 12 years now you've been with distant jobs, but again, I mean, I've never come across an entrepreneur or business leader or somebody in their career who has. It's all been plain sailing. There's always setbacks. There's always, you know, challenges to overcome. I mean, what's been your biggest challenge that you've had to recover from and how did you go about that?

Speaker 2

19:58

Well, so it's not just 12 years, it's about 20 years of business, but in the last 12 years there was a huge amount of challenges. I mean the obvious and the boring challenge is become profitable, always sitting down how much money am I still investing until I'm ready to be profitable? And it's a continuous, ongoing experience, and probably from my first business. One of my challenges because I was 25 years old and still not an experienced manager is not understanding your numbers, because if you're playing this game, you really really manager is not understanding your numbers, because if you're playing this game, you really really, really got to know your cost.

Speaker 2

20:46

But that's a boring, usual, everyday boss challenges. I think it's more relevant to the world that I live in. One of my biggest challenges that I experienced throughout my years until today it's not 100% solved is how to evaluate the efforts of my employees, how to understand. You know, with remote you'd like to give a little bit more freedom and, yes, suddenly five years ago, based on research and learning that people are remote and more productive, but sometimes you don't have this capacity to say at least I know that the person comes at nine o'clock, types on his computer. It's probably in social media and everything, but at least he's typing on his computer and doing something, looking busy and leaving at five o'clock here. You really need to sit there and to know is this person doing anything or is this person doing amazing? Do I award? Do I? Do I not? And and it is. It is an incredible challenge. It is an incredible challenge to understand what the company is doing.

Speaker 2

21:53

In my first company, which was web hosting and outsourcing, I was not technically strong enough to understand whether my, my team, are doing a good job or not. Thank God, when I sold that company, I knew very well that I will never make that mistake. I will never go into a business that I'm not a specialist in and recruitment is definitely something that I do specialize in, very, very strong at, so I can evaluate, but it's still a challenge because there's the challenge of worrying whether my employees are keeping up with me. There's a challenge that I am probably, as a boss of a company, more motivated, more productive than any one of my employees, so I can't even keep myself as a standard of what is appropriate productivity. So it's always a continuous learning and the way that I fixed it is by creating an agile environment where they literally motivating each other and I can see the standard, the maximal, optimal standard that they can achieve without being burned out. But that was definitely one of my biggest challenges evaluating my workers' efforts.

Speaker 1

23:15

And, yeah, so while you're doing you must be doing a good job, because you're still, you know you're thriving. Your business is growing as well by you know, from all evidence that I've seen, anyway, at least and you were just talking there about learning, and that's one thing that, from the conversations that I have with various remote workers well, especially those that are new to remote work actually is that there is a challenge of you know, when you're in your career, you want to ideally to continue to learn so that you can grow, so that you can develop, so you can overcome any challenges that you have and be as relevant and as current as possible. I guess is another thing how do you continue to learn yourself and stay up to date with important issues?

Speaker 2

24:09

So interesting thing about me these days. For me, the focus is actually to make sure that my employees are learning right.

Speaker 2

24:21

You create a dynamic environment where you have a failure-consequence-free environment, a failure-friendly working environment where people can try and experiment and learn from that, and that gives people the opportunity to go and research new ideas and bring them to the table with zero consequences. And I actually, more and more, I'm learning from my employees. I'm letting them take the initiative and use our company a little bit as a research lab, because we are also not just a recruitment agency, we are a media company for remote management. Through the book, we opened a company called Think Remote. So I'm happy, yeah, thinkremotecom. We just started a media company all about the remote world and the remote management, and I'm happy that my company is almost like a management lab for how to make things more to make it better.

Speaker 2

25:33

I myself, I read a lot of, I listen to a lot of audio books. I even read some stuff and I keep myself educated. But I find that it is my employees that are educating me more than the audiobooks these days, and that is very, very exciting because my employees are taking leadership roles within the company.

Speaker 1

25:59

So you've got very much a learning environment where peer-to-peer learning, where you're learning from each other, that that's, that's a yeah, it's a culture where obviously I think that if you're learning from other people, you, it's, it's I. That's the way I learn actually is by listening, by seeing what other people have done, by you know, you know, sort of cross-checking that with against what I've done and how I can take little bits from what they do and add it to what I, you know what I do to improve my processes and sort of my daily work. It sounds like an interesting culture that you've built within a distant job and I think remote sounds interesting. That's something that we're going to have to probably again. That's probably another episode on the remote work life podcast, but we'll see.

Speaker 2

26:47

I'm happy to chat anytime about anything, anything. I have tons of ideas, I bet. That's why I started a media company.

Speaker 1

26:56

And I think one of those ideas that is circulating quite a lot now, one of those topics of conversation, not not just amongst the established remote companies but, um again, amongst those who are trying to really figure things out at the moment, is how do you keep your company culture alive remotely or even build one from scratch? Can you, you talk us through that, Sharon?

Building Company Culture Through Connection

Speaker 2

27:25

So company culture is a buzzword that too many people love to use. It's everybody dreams. Any businessman under the age of 40 dreams about that. Google happy hour people sitting on beanbags playing ping pong always seems so jolly and somehow they manage to produce so much. And this is what we envision as culture massive amount of research and culture, because it is one of the key components of keeping your team remotely motivated and productive. But what I've discovered through my research? That a lot of the people that define culture have a very hard time defining it. It is somewhat unusual that when you type in on Wikipedia or any kind of dictionary about company culture, they give you this extensive the way that the company thinks and connects, and they use big words, use buzzwords, to explain more buzzwords, or I love that one. It is the DNA of the company and you see it.

Speaker 1

28:50

Yeah, the.

Speaker 2

28:50

DNA. What does that mean? Right, and based on the definitions that people offer to me, when I was trying to put a lot of emphasis on culture, I realized that it's not helpful at all and the guides to create culture were so complicated. So I created my own definition and an easy, clear, maybe not the most dictionary-oriented definition of a company culture, but a really goal-oriented definition that, once you understand that definition, you can actually implement culture to the most optimal culture for your own company. And the definition of culture for me is connection. It is about creating connection. It's not about having the coolest party in the world that just feeds your ego, but really why you're making this party, why you're making this social experience in an office, is because you're trying to create a connection, a connection to the company. So a lot of those parties and social events are really there to make the employee feel like something bigger than themselves, but they're also there to create better teams. Connection to one another right, this is one of the key components of why you're creating culture. Other right this is one of the key components of why you're creating culture. It also is the third and least important, but still important is connection to your clients. So if you are in the fashion industry, you better know the difference between a Gucci and a Prada boots. You know, I don't know the difference, I'm just throwing those brand names. But clearly that's not my culture. My culture is very nerdy and very jolly but at the end of the day, everything that I do in the company is to create connection, Something.

Speaker 2

30:52

When you're making a big party and in the remote environment I started off I remember creating a big Zoom party and for two, you know, we all had drinks. You had to bring a drink. I didn't promote alcoholism, so I said you can bring a coffee, you can bring water, but we have a drink. This is a social experience. Two or three times people got excited yeah, look at that, how cool we are. We're remote and we're still partying and everything. And then after that I noticed that it was just me and my few managers are just having chit-chat and everybody put like, oh, my body is funny.

Speaker 2

31:33

At least deluding me acting. So I've noticed that this did not create a connection, and that was my goal. My goal is not to be cool. My goal was to create a connection and that was my goal. My goal is not to be cool, my goal was to create a connection.

Speaker 2

31:46

This is the often misconception of culture that people think that creating culture has been the coolest company. It really is not. It's about connection, and what I did find very successful is using a little app on Slack called Donut. They force you connect one-on-one with people and getting intimate with them. In general, the one-on-one has been incredibly powerful for my culture. Also, creating channels where people can throw in politically incorrect jokes Whoever doesn't want to come. We have other channels about food, about, so we created an environment where people can unite on specific topics. I first wanted to define the culture, but I realized that my employees were defining it and whatever I felt was discriminatory or not healthy to the environment I shut down and everything that connected. People said, hey, this is culture being created and all I need to do is encourage people in that direction were a nerdy, joke-oriented, mistake-friendly, trust-building kind of office environment. And we like also music. There's a lot of rock and roll discussion that's happening there and for me, I just focus whether this is creating solid teamwork and solid connection to the company.

Speaker 1

33:15

I like that. I like things that are kept simple Connection. It makes complete sense.

Speaker 2

33:22

A lot of things about connection all the time. If you define your culture that way, I'm a big believer in goal-oriented aspects. Here you have a clear, simple goal Is this activity creates a connection.

Speaker 1

33:39

And it probably takes a bit more work. I think what we're finding now is that those companies that you know, the ones that you talk about, the Googles not necessarily Googles, but the ones that are trying to create that fun environment, that it's almost they're trying to create that fun environment, it's almost they're trying to manufacture the culture. Now they're moving to the remote environment. They're probably having to think again, because it takes a lot more deliberate effort to really understand your employees, doesn't it? And more effort to figure out where that connection lies to figure out where that connection lies.

Speaker 2

34:19

You know, those big companies are committing some of the biggest sins in terms of culture, in my opinion, the fact that they are uprooting people from their own communities. That getting you know when you're young, fine, but getting people to take their kids away from their schools, from their families, from everything that they build within a certain community, a certain environment, and get up, bring all your stuff and move to where an office of those companies is, and because they want to have their culture, that, my friend, is not culture building. That, in my opinion, is disgusting and probably one of the biggest reasons why I'm such an advocate of remote work.

Speaker 1

35:09

No, yeah, yeah, I think again. People who again have been put in a situation where now they're working from home are probably beginning to realize that aren't? They probably begin to think of think twice before they apply to that big company that's forcing them to move here, there or everywhere, or commute for two hours on on the train or whatever it may be. So, yeah, it's putting us nice. I mean, I know you're not an evangelist, but it's kind of putting us quite nicely in the spotlight where, yeah, there's some big realizations coming to, coming to bear at the moment. But, yes, again could be another episode for another podcast, but uh, let's let's, let's move forward.

Speaker 1

35:52

Um, one thing that I that really used to get me we've talked a bit about culture and that connection um, one thing that used to get me when I first started working remotely was, um, I probably wasn't as productive then as I am I am now.

Speaker 1

36:12

I was sometimes tempted, I have to say, you know, in the middle of my working day, to, I don't know, put a load of washing on or something like that and do something that perhaps I wouldn't have done, you know, had I been in an office environment. And that actually, I mean, for some people it might not be a distraction, but for me that I did feel that did distract me, probably the only distraction, I would have said. But now I've honed my productivity skills, I would have said I'm a lot more focused than I've, than I have been. But I'm intrigued I always ask people this in terms of their different ways and their team's different ways of managing and avoiding distractions. How do you, uh, sharon, sort of manage those distractions for yourself? And second part to that is how do you, how does your team, do that?

Speaker 2

37:05

so where it comes to my team, I can only just throw, just like I would tell you what I'm about to tell you. I tell my team and they and we do the best that we can. And, of course, the more productive people are, the more successful they are in the company. And I personally feel that, in general, working remote, whether at home or in a co-door environment, already increases your productivity.

Speaker 2

37:37

You're in full control of your distractions. Distractions is the enemy of productivity. And in an office environment, you're not as in control. You're not in control when your boss randomly picks a time for a meeting, even if they don't randomly pick a time, suddenly you're getting productive, you're going, you're moving forward, you're kicking some butt and on the calendar, 20 minutes later there's a meeting coming up. So whether your company does it randomly or not doesn't matter, it is distracting. And even more distracting is your neighbors right? Instead of making your choices like you can make your choice when you want to clean your dishes, right, or sometimes I like to clean dishes, while I'm a pretty well-off guy. I'm not going to lie, I don't clean dishes anymore.

Speaker 2

38:37

Sorry that made me sound very snobby, but when it was the case that I did wash my dishes.

Speaker 2

38:45

I actually like to be on the phone talking to one of my employees, and it was actually one of the activities that I love to do with my director of marketing specifically is go for a walk. We put our headset on, he puts our headset on and it's like we're walking, going for a walk, and when you go for a walk, a certain amount of blood flow goes. Just the perfect fit of blood flow goes out of your head, so you're not as distracted and you can really think about creative things. Now I have a walking treadmill under me, so it's a stand-up table, so it's even a more exciting experience For me. It really works well. But the idea is going back to the original topic is that you're in control when you're going to wash your dishes. This is huge.

Speaker 2

39:38

Now, the reality is that most people, especially on ADHD extremists like me, managing productivity is very challenging. Managing procrastination is a huge thing. I can offer some advice how I beat procrastination, but yes, it is an everyday challenge, especially that you're sitting. Now you don't even need to fake to have that extra screen every time your boss passes by and you don't want to show social media. You need to transfer to Excel sheet quickly. Now you don't even have that reinforcement. Need to transfer to Excel shit quickly Now you don't even have that reinforcement right. But the way that I beat productivity I originally wanted it's 15, 20 years in the research for me and some of the best strategies that really worked for me. One was starting the Get Things Done program. I'm usually not a fan of gurus and coaches, but this guy hit the right spot for me, not just how to create lists, but how to simplify the list. It's a big discussion for another podcast, but if you simplify tasks to a really easy, easy subtask, your brain has an easy time to digest it and it will be less likely to procrastinate. Also, I'm a big fan of app blockers. I know they seem ridiculous, I know they can easily be hacked, but the five minutes that it takes you to hack an app blocker is the five minutes that your brain can go whoa, whoa, whoa, what I'm doing, I can go back to work and you don't go into the social media or the gaming or whatever that prevents you from working and gets you addicted. The last advice and how. I wrote two books in the past year and a half and I swear it is an incredible, incredible strategy. Right is, I didn't publish yet the second book. It's a political book, it's for a different day, but the way that I wrote it is the person that suggested that did not have kids.

Speaker 2

41:54

So he would say, literally wake up in the morning. Whenever you wake up, do the minimal things that you need to do, but minimal things, right, don't? You got to brush your teeth? Brush your teeth, fine, and after that, and make sure that the night before you prepare your whatever you're working on, you want to work on a content, like I was working on a book. That document needs to open. Do not open your emails, do not open your social media, do not open this. Just go and do this thing right without opening it. And I know it's scary not to open your emails, but nothing ever happens. That's why they send emails. They don't make phone calls. Go tackle this and the rest of your day is going to be so incredibly productive. You're just on the moment from and you can check your emails at 12 o'clock, because that's what happens Sometimes.

Speaker 2

42:44

I'm like into this type, type, type. I know it for all the audio people Type, type, type, type. It just doesn't stop because I just woke up, I'm pounding it. And it just doesn't stop because I just woke up, I'm pounding it and the reality with me, because I have two of the cutest kids in the world. Sometimes I need to take them to school, I need to feed them. So, yes, it is a distraction. I do whatever I need to do, right, take them to school. And while I'm driving from dropping them off, I'm already in my brain mission. I'm going to walk, I'm going to run to my computer and start typing, and that thing is a game changer, game changer. So those are the few, within the limited time, the few strategies that have really, really changed my productive game in terms of managing procrastination.

Speaker 1

43:28

And, yeah, kids can be distracting. I've got three of my own. You've got two toddlers of your own that can be distracting. I've got three of my own. You've got two toddlers of your own that can be distracting. You know, like you said, I do my school run. You know all those different things you know sometimes, well, there's one point where we had to do the, the homeschooling that you know that's. That's no longer the case, but, um, yeah, it's. I think lots of people have faced that, uh, product productivity challenge, especially those of us who have, who have children. So I get, there's so many, there's so many bits and pieces. I want to ask you, but, like I said, uh, for another podcast, especially the, the toddlers one. But I do have a question about about how you, how do you work from home with two toddlers? Are they actually in the room with you or do you sort of have different ways, of sort of? You know, like mine, for example, right now they're in front of the TV.

Parenting and Remote Work Strategies

Speaker 2

44:27

So I have a smaller kids right, and I just ship them to daycare and whenever one of the, so the, or during COVID, when there was a few months that there was no school and we had to figure out, or or when they're sick and everything. So, first of all, I'm a huge, huge believer in help, right, this is. This is something that is is very underestimate, underappreciate. A lot of people, even people that have the right financial mean, make a choice not to get paid help and they're not doing the math correctly. They're not evaluating how much time is the cost of distraction. Now, during the first few months of COVID, where I couldn't get paid help, I couldn't get any. My parents are old. My wife's parents are already older. They're amazing grandparents but they can't invest like they would with the younger grandparents. But what worked for me was negotiating with my wife I will grab the first six hours, you will grab the next six hours. Um, you got to do everything in power not to distract, right, let's, let's. We know it's just going to be a few months and it really was just a few months. Maybe for some parents it's been a year, but whatever it is, let's kick it in the.

Speaker 2

45:56

We know that what succeeds is non-distracting, distracted work environment, which is, as you see, the theme of this conversation a lot the non-distraction. So give it to me, give me four, give me three, give me. We know that people produce two hours and 53 minutes in an office environment. Give me three hours, give me four hours. Partner, wifey, or whoever you are, and vice versa. We, I want my, my wife runs a business, right, I'm, I've girls. I'm a hardcore feminist. I want them to be the CEO of my companies. I'm, I'm not, you know I so I. So I want my wife to succeed as much as I do, and the key is to give her the non-distracted work hours.

Speaker 2

46:39

And then, when it was my turn to hang out with the kids, I took on the phone calls with employees or suppliers, people that I know I will not offend when there's a bunch of really, really loud, noisy, happy, jolly love of my life, creatures which are awesome but incredibly distracting. But I actually put on paper the tasks that I can do while distraction is out there and that's how I survived the first few months of COVID. The first few months of COVID. What I also discovered is that a screen can be educational, so I actually bought an.

Speaker 2

47:27

I can't believe that I was against buying any screens for my kids, but for the COVID period I bought a screen, an iPad, for my kid and I pick and choose the best educational apps and my daughter was literally learning French, right, and I was like, okay, this is a good use of the time, right, let them play strictly. So there was Sesame Street, there was ABC Mouse, there was a few apps they didn't know. You know, I don't know how you deal with older kids. You still can tell them you can't upload or download, but I'm not there. I know how you deal with older kids. You still can tell them you can't upload or download, but I'm not there. I cannot give advice for for older kids because I'm not there, and I hate when people give me parents advice when they have not experienced themselves. But, um, what really worked for me is pick and choose some incredible apps that were incredibly educational and it was screen time, was not a waste of time. That's's how I survived those COVID era.

Speaker 1

48:14

You know what Sounds very similar to me. I've got a 17-year-old as well. I'm fortunate that my 17-year-old she gets quite involved, quite heavily involved, with her brother and sister, and she actually helped with the education side of things in her downtime. So it was a real I mean you were alluding to the whole idea of teamwork and sort of doing different things. It was a big team effort. I'm so, so proud of my family and how we managed to get through that period you know it was great, that's magical.

Speaker 2

48:49

Clearly, this girl probably had a very, very good dad. I'm just just sounds to me.

Speaker 1

48:54

Yeah, yeah, he's not a bad guy. He's not a bad guy. But no, sharon, I've loved this conversation. I've loved talking to you about yourself. Like I said, there's like probably 10 different episodes in that podcast, so in our podcast and we'd love to have you back on podcast, we'd love to have you back on Everybody. Please go across to distantjobcom. Sharon. Just tell us, generally speaking, what kind of roles do you typically deal with and any specific sectors at all?

Speaker 2

49:28

just before we wrap up, Our bread and butter is digital people programmers, developers, system administrators. We even kind of trying to get into the accounting world, but IT is our specialty right and we find the best programmers, developers, across the world. We go, we solicit people in established companies and entice them with remote jobs. So we really find better people, find them faster and an incredible value right, and this is what we do amazing with Distant Job.

Hiring Planning and Networking Opportunities

Speaker 1

50:05

Brilliant. Like I said, I would urge you, if you are hiring now, or in fact, don't just wait until you're hiring, Of course you're not going to just wait until you're hiring. You have to plan ahead.

Speaker 1

50:14

So why not plan ahead by going to wwwdistantjobcom and checking out Sharon on LinkedIn? Sharon Coyman, and I'll put both of those links in the show notes as well so you can access them easily. But, sharon, it's, it's been a blast. I've loved that. Lovely to see you and all the best with Distant Job and with thinkremotecom, and looking forward to hearing how you're getting on in the future.

Speaker 2

50:45

Thank you so much, alex. It was really really a fun conversation.

Speaker 1

50:49

Brilliant.