RWL074 Tasia Duskie on Revolutionizing Museums and Managing Remote Teams

Redefining Museum Tours With MuseumHack

Alex Wilson-Campbell

0:00

Okay, hello everybody. This is again another edition of the Remote Work Live Summit and I've got a spectacular guest Well, that's all I can really say A spectacular guest, a great guest with me today, tasia Dusky. She is the CEO of MuseumHack and you'll see soon why I asked Tasia to be on here, and there's two reasons. Actually, museum Hack a quite unusual company. They're not your regular company. They lead renegade museum tours and team building activities at some of the best museums in New York, in San Francisco, chicago, la, washington DC Very unusual business in that sense and a very unique business. And Tasia is not your regular CEO either. So I just had to have Tasia on here today with me to tell you more about Museum Hack and to get to know about Tasia as well. Tasia is also an expert in psychology and basic presentation, so I just had to have her on here. Tasia, thank you so much for joining me today.

Tasia Duske

1:05

My pleasure, so excited to be here.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

1:07

Excellent, excellent. Well, first Tasia, like I said, I need the audience to get to know more about you and MuseumHack, so could you tell us how you got involved with MuseumHack and a little bit more about MuseumHack as well, please?

Tasia Duske

1:23

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely well. You nailed our description pretty nicely in my intro. So, museum hack. We believe that museums are fucking awesome and we're on a mission to reimagine the museum experience for people who think they don't like museums. So we've been around for about five years. We started as a very small, scrappy startup with our one founder, nick gray, and he just loved museums and wanted to share that world with other people like his friends and different millennials that weren't finding the love themselves. So he started throwing renegade museum tours. And then, of course, he had one hipster blogger that ended up on one of his tours, wrote an article about it the power of exposure and it blew up from there. So now we've grown over five, five years. We bring in about 21,000 guests every year to the museum with us and we just made it to an Inc 5000 company, so one of the fastest growing companies in the US.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

2:12

It's amazing and it's such a rapid growth over five years.

Tasia Duske

2:16

Absolutely yeah. So I've been with the company about two and a half years, coming up on three. I'm very excited and I must admit I am our ideal client of someone that lived in New York City for a number of years and never went to the Mets. I never visited it until I got a phone call one day from a friend that said hey, I don't know if you're looking for another job, but there's this company, museum Hack, and I think you should be part of them. So I went on a tour. I visited the Mets for the first time, realized it was something, something powerful, and knew I had to be a part of it.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

2:46

And you've had a pretty rapid, rapid rise yourself within the company, because was it only last year that you were chief of staff and now you're CEO? Is that right?

Tasia Duske

2:54

Absolutely. In two and a half years I made it from staff manager to chief of staff to CEO. So I chuckle with myself. When I first joined the company as staff manager because the company was so small and I'd worked so long in corporate world I knew what they needed in a position which was chief of staff, starting to build up the budgets, the structures, everything that you need for a sustainable company. And at our small stages they didn't necessarily know that or have that yet. So I joined at a very small role, knowing that I could start building my own job description and doing what I wanted, and created my own career path.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

3:29

And was that the push for you that moved you from the corporate world to Museum Hack, or was there more to it?

Tasia Duske

3:35

Yeah, okay. So I really wanted the flexibility and the ability myself to build something. So I was working for Marriott and Marriott is an amazing like powerhouse of a company. They've already developed all of their structures and all their systems, so it was pretty much me maintaining them. And I found myself after a couple of years with Marriott wanting to like, build and create something of my own, which is what really enticed me to jump over to a startup and have so much control. If I wanted to change a policy or procedure or try something wild new, I could just make that happen, and I had a team that was equally as excited and, plus, it was remote. So I got to jump out of the office and now I get to travel and go hang out with my family whenever I want now that's that's cool, and is it?

Alex Wilson-Campbell

4:16

is it 100% remote then?

Tasia Duske

4:18

yeah, okay. So that's um interesting. We have. We've had this organic growth over the past five years. So we started being a local in New York City and all of our tours are live, so they do happen in museums.

Tasia Duske

4:30

And we found, as we started to grow and have more tour guides, we needed some additional admin support. So we originally started with hiring some virtual assistants to just keep up with, say, the billing, the invoicing and scheduling all of our tours and then from there we're like, hey, this is pretty sweet having a virtual workplace. And we've just organically grown so we have now some of our virtual assistants that started out. One is now currently our marketing manager. So we've really been able to dial up the skill sets of our people working as VAs and get them into larger roles and, plus a lot of our tour guides, they do a lot of their prep work, building their content all at home, so it gives them the flexibility. So while everything is actually live in person at a museum, all the headquarters, all the back end stuff is done from wherever we want in our living room on our couch wherever and as somebody, because there's kind of two sides to your business.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

5:26

As far as I've gathered, there may be a bit more. There's like the, the, I suppose, the tourist side, where you sort of you're telling stories to tourists to get them to really engage with the museum, and there's the team building side of things. Could you tell us about both of those areas?

Tasia Duske

5:41

yeah, absolutely so. We started out just basically our target audience was those millennials that either lived in the area or were coming to visit. And then we had one guy come on a tour with his friends and then he's like, hey, you know, I think this would be awesome to bring my company to. Can I like bring my company to this? And we're like, oh, interesting business idea. So it's now a huge, huge sector of our business. The majority of our revenue does come in from corporate team building events and, hey, people want to go either like to happy hour, to bullying, or they can come on an intentional team building activity in a classy museum with us and kind of turn it around for the renegade style sounds nice, sounds nice, and so if you're a tour guide, then you you do all your prep wherever you may be near to New York or San Francisco, wherever it may be, and then you're on site at the museum.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

6:31

And what kind of so you're obviously showing people around the museum, not in a sort of regular tour guide style. Tell me more about that.

Tasia Duske

6:41

Yeah, exactly so. Our tour guides. It takes about three months to train up to be a tour guide, so it's an audition process. So they all have to write their own material. We really push this because we want it to be passion-based storytelling. So what I find most interesting and most exciting like that is going to have an energy and contagious like energy with it, compared to if I was now making you tell the stories that I was excited about. So we really make all of our tour guides, whoever they are, to write the content and find the interesting things that they love and then they get to share that with the guests. So they write about two hours worth of content.

Tasia Duske

7:15

We also have a number of games that we play within our tours as well as icebreakers and we have some photo challenges. So you have about 75% content, about 25% games and activities with your team and you meet together. We aim to keep our groups very small. So typical museum you'd imagine going on a docent tour, maybe of 20 people, maybe of 30. They're all kind of like staggered and it's the docent delivering that wonderful, very like educational information at you and we take an entertainment first approach to that education. So very small tour groups. We want to have it like you're going on an adventure with your friends. No one's standing in front of each other, you can all look each other in the eyes and we like to ask a lot of questions and push that social vibe sounds good.

Tasia Duske

8:01

Sounds good as well yeah, is that a good picture for you?

Alex Wilson-Campbell

8:03

no, that's great and I think that to me, I mean it's, it's it sounds like a pretty rigorous process to get those people, um, in. You know, so if there's people listening in new york or, uh, wherever it may be, washington dc, this is, it's really important for you to listen up if you're, if you're ever looking to apply for a job, should it become available at museum hat, because it sounds like it's going to be quite a rigorous process, would you say, to sort of hire your new, new members of staff yeah.

Tasia Duske

8:32

So we take a lot of pride in our team and it's like joining our family. So any audition process, whether it be for tour guide or for our remote positions, are usually pretty long. We like to have a first intro conversation to just let the person know what they're getting into for our interview audition process. It's like bringing someone into your family and you want to make sure it's a good fit for us and also a good fit for them.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

8:53

Yeah, and it's funny. I mean it's not funny, but you're reflecting what a lot of other CEOs, high managers, have said. It's not just about the fact that it's a remote job or a job with MuseumHack you have to live and breathe, essentially what the company does right. Is that your ethic as well?

Tasia Duske

9:10

Yeah, and I very much believe also with a remote culture, some of the lines do get blurred between work and life. So instead of trying to figure out how to separate and balance them, how do you integrate them in a way that is successful and works out for both of you? So there are a lot of those boundaries that are blurred and we want to make sure our team that are with us, they feel fully supported in every area and we do have that family atmosphere.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

9:32

No, that's great, and I think you say something about a premium mentality. Fierce conversations, yes, yeah.

Tasia Duske

9:43

Very much believe in it.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

9:44

Yeah, how is that in real life? I mean, can you give me an example?

Tasia Duske

9:49

Yeah, okay, so I'm thinking um one of my main philosophies. I still wasn't like I love, I love, love, love. Susan Scott. She's one of my favorite leadership consultants and, uh, one of her quotes is well, no single conversation is guaranteed to change the trajectory of a relationship, a career, a company or a life. Any single conversation can. So I very much believe that I love that quote and I really want to push all of our team members to be having conversations that are impactful, that are pushing for results and are going to get us what we want and where we want to be.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

10:18

So try to make every conversation as real as possible and get right to the issue and move us all forward no, I agree and I think, um, I get the feeling as well, as part of this process of vet well, getting people on board, you're going to expect that kind of um two-way sort of interaction and conversation as well.

Tasia Duske

10:39

What?

Alex Wilson-Campbell

10:39

yeah, very much though yeah, what kind of advice could you give somebody to prepare themselves for an interview with museum hack or in general? Because I think yeah I think what you do actually can be applied to other. I think it can be applied to other companies as well yeah, definitely okay.

Tasia Duske

10:56

So I'm interviewing right now. So it's like really hot in my mind of like the big tips for it. So, yeah, one of the biggest things we try to write our job descriptions as like fun and playful as our culture is. So have you ever read a job description? You go through like three-fourths of a page and you're like I have no idea what they're talking about. It's just full of all these buzzwords and all this fluff.

Tasia Duske

11:17

So we try to eliminate it down, uh, give some real life examples and also put like a playfulness into it so people know from the instant when they're reading a job description at museum Mac, that's like the culture they're going into. And we put at the very bottom like hey, basic cover letters will not be looked at. So like add fun into it. So I love getting the excitement of someone really pouring out their heart in a cover letter and letting us know that they are actually interested in a job with us, compared to just looking for a job, because we really want people that are going to fight for the mission like us be part of that team mentality absolutely.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

11:51

Can you give me an example of some someone that stood out for you that you've either hired recently or in the past?

Refining Remote Interviews With Creativity

Tasia Duske

11:58

yeah, okay, so there's one that put at the bottom of his cover letter where he's like an extra points for reading to the bottom of my cover letter. My favorite holiday coming up is national talk like a pirate day, so I love this. I thought it was hilarious. So then when I sent out emails for the next round of auditions and inviting them, at the very bottom I put for all the members that were coming back. I was like FYI, thanks to the fellow candidate, national talk like a pirate day is coming up, so I got a kick out of it. I was entertained and he joined our team.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

12:29

I'm very, very grateful. I'll tell you what I mean. I've hired myself in the past and it can get quite mundane. You must get quite a number of applications right yeah, okay.

Tasia Duske

12:37

So uh, here's my other trick for weeding out people instantly you want to hear the secret. Yeah, okay. So, um, well, two things, we have two, uh, one, we just ask people to do a typing test, okay, so that's the first part of it.

Tasia Duske

12:48

And then the second thing we put a bonus question and we say, go to the application online of imager and you have to use that software online to take a screenshot of your typing test results. It turns it into a url and then upload your URL here. So pretty tricky, okay, you have to learn, like, how to use a new platform online and you also have to have the motivation to do a bonus question. You know how many people write in their cover letters being like I always go above and beyond, I do everything extra and then they pass on the bonus question. Oh my gosh, it drives me wild. So that's my instant like out. I will never hire anyone that chooses not to do that bonus question, because if you're not going to fight like hell for it in the instant, like initial interview process, like you're probably not going to fight like hell on my team and I want people that are going to give it their all absolutely.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

13:40

I mean, if you're going to say you're going to go above and beyond, at least to say you're going to go above and beyond at least prove that you're going to go above and beyond.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

13:46

Yeah, I hear that, but it's great that. I mean, I think a lot of applicants get quite bored with the application process as well. So I think it's great that you've got sort of you put things in there that are not just there to sort of test them. They're different, they're amusing. I think that that takes the mundane stuff from the job application, so that I think it's great.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

14:07

it's great and like you said, it kind of doubles up on their technical ability as well, which is even better, like that very much so so, um, are there any other parts of your, uh, your recruitment process that I don't know, that you, that you want to tell us about, or that are quite important to you, I suppose?

Tasia Duske

14:26

yeah, I'm fine and I'm really proud of where we've come in our recruitment and also our onboarding, and so we'd start out with just reviewing okay cover letter and then answering questions, um, in the application, so I can see typing tests, I can see bonus questions, and then from there we email out a questionnaire. As you know, like your time is very important, so I want to limit, eliminate people as quickly as possible so I don't spend hours in an actual interview with them asking questions when I could have found out something early on that would have made them not an ideal candidate. That's related to the job itself. So, for example, I'm hiring for a current operations manager. So I sent out a couple of sample questions that said here's our policy, here's imagine this situation came up that was breaking our policy. How would you respond? So they talk me through their thought process, about how they go about making a decision and then also what the ideal outcome would be. So I really love that one to get an idea of how people think and then also how clearly they communicate.

Tasia Duske

15:28

I'll be able to explain thought process in black over email, so it's really really helpful to people out you're breaking up slightly there ah, oh, no aha, I've got you back now.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

15:42

Okay, am I back? I missed the last 20 seconds or so of what you said there. Sorry about that the whole 20 seconds. Yeah, I'm really sorry. You said something about, uh, the last thing I heard was communication yeah, okay, so, um, in just fine.

Tasia Duske

15:56

see the joys of remote work and then also the challenges coming up. Yes, so in communication. So having them we send them out a questionnaire to have them communicate and write back their written responses Not only helps me identify their decision making process, but also how clearly they can communicate in a way and form. So, using Slack, using email, it's really important to be able to express yourself in a way that others are responding to and communicate clearly. So this allows me to see all those skill sets pretty quickly, pretty easily, and evaluate the candidate.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

16:28

Yeah, it's very thorough and again, something that a lot of other remote companies not just remote companies, but I think especially remote companies that whole idea of written communication, you know, via Slack and email, it seems to be top of the list. Well, communication in general, but especially written communication, you know.

Tasia Duske

16:48

Exactly.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

16:49

And you, I mean at MuseumHack. You guys are experts in, obviously, communication, you're an expert in psychology and all that sort of thing. Now, when they got past this rigorous, uh, pre-screening process that you have which I think is it was really good um, and they're, they're standing in front of you now interview, you say you kind of, I suppose, tick some of the boxes already by doing that pre-screening process. What do you? What do you look at next in terms of the interview candidate in front of you?

Tasia Duske

17:23

Yeah. So we're trying one new thing with this operations manager, which I'm borrowing from a potential role that I heard about at Marriott. So you have 15 minutes and you have to teach your audience something. It could be anything. So I heard about this for a job interview where you had to be a trainer. So you need to be able to communicate clearly and also train other people on the topic. So things that I've heard that you could potentially teach people how to talk like a pirate that was my joke. As you can tell, I'm, like, really into pirates so talk like a pirate, teach someone how to fold a fitted sheet, so whatever it may be to have a couple minutes where you teach something that you're passionate about in any way. So again, it shows that clear communication. And how also do you train and teach someone, which would be very important in the roles that I'm hiring right now.

Tasia Duske

18:10

Again that's one thing.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

18:12

I love it, and that's not just about the communications, it's about the creativity as well. Yes, very much so, because with it again, I'm assuming it's probably a good assumption, but when you're doing tours, when you're trying to inspire your guests, there's a certain amount of storytelling in there that you have to build in right to keep them engaged, definitely. How do you then? What do you look for then at the interview? And another thing the second part is how do you tell stories to keep people really sort of like engage and not get bored?

Tasia Duske

18:50

yeah, okay, two separate ones there. Um, so, starting with the interview questions, okay, so what? Looking for a one either? Clear communication and also confidence in sharing and presenting to a group. We do have a lot of roles, such as our operations manager that is going to be responsible for teaching and training in a remote area. So you're going to have to be able to teach people in a Zoom room. So set them up for that skill and just see their comfort level expressing whatever it is to a group.

Tasia Duske

19:17

A second thing it lets me know how they handle things under pressure. So if one person is not getting it or not understanding it, or, say, internet does cut out, I can see how they respond in times of crisis. So that helps me out in that situation. And I also believe very much that past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior. So I love to use star interview questions after this. So, looking at the situation and the test that happened, the action that the person took on it and the actual results of that and I think a lot of candidates miss that result when they're talking about their past experience so how do you drive home? Here's exactly what I did and here's what I'm going to add hey, don't confuse efforts with results. We have to make sure that the results are there and on a team where results really matter. I got to make sure that I'm seeing that past behavior before I'm going to make a chance with it and risk you bringing on a team for future behavior got you that's, that's, that's great, and what what?

Alex Wilson-Campbell

20:13

so the story side of things, um, all right, how I mean one thing I always got, mean I used to interview lots, in fact still interview quite a lot of people you know, for jobs, for example, and it can be quite monotonous sometimes, can't it? Because you're seeing lots of people. You're probably hearing the same things often.

Tasia Duske

20:33

Yep, you have to explain why you're interested yeah exactly.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

20:36

I mean, what do you look for? Sorry, how would you sort of suggest somebody makes their story or their answers interesting?

Tasia Duske

20:48

Yeah. So a couple of things. I'll give you some advice for interviewing and then some advice we use on Museum Hack, just for our engaging stories. So one, be passionate about it, Be excited to have that sense of play. So that's one of our core values is of passionate, playful and curious. Put that in there.

Tasia Duske

21:03

These interviews don't have to be so high rung and so stressful depending on which culture you're at. So our culture at Museum Ag, I want someone to be there, be silly, have fun, because that's going to fit in with our vibe. So show your personality, have a good time with it. So the other thing that we use a lot on tours, in addition to like the passion based, are also engagement techniques. So we call them like check-ins and call outs. And when can you ask a question? So an example that I use, very small in this interview earlier like, have you ever read a job description that's very long and you go through half of it and you don't know what's going on? So that probably resonated with you. You're like we've all been there. So bring up something as an example that the other people have lived through and then ask them how they feel about it sounds good and you mentioned one of those things that you look for, obviously.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

21:52

Well, obviously, being the kind of um company that expects people to present in front of quite a you know well, not massive crowd, but quite it's a decent sized crowd um, how do you, what indicators do you look for in terms of the confidence side of things, because I know lots of people struggle with confidence uh, interviews, what do you look for?

Tasia Duske

22:13

yeah, okay, so eye contact being a main one. Um, how you present yourself with if you're nervous or say unsure about your answers okay, maybe you're like crouching in, you're like covering yourself compared to being open and the very basic behavioral and body language responses right Hands on your hips, you're feeling like confrontational. So just looking for someone to have a freedom and a flexibility with it and really push back as long as they're having fun. If they're having fun and they're excited about it, okay, not only fun. We gotta also have like, the content underneath to make sure that the results are going to be there. But mainly look for just openness and people enjoying what they're doing and you said as well well, sorry, no, you didn't say this.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

22:55

I I said this um one of my questions um, you're hiring at the moment. Um, but I mean different companies experience different um so peak periods and periods where they're quiet in terms of hiring. Are there any particular peak periods for museum hack with their hiring at all?

Seasonal Hiring and Onboarding Process

Tasia Duske

23:15

yeah, so it depends on the say which department. So for our tour guides we do have seasons where we hire quite regularly. So our busy seasons are usually going into, say, like October, november, december, january, february. It tends to be very busy with tourists coming in and also companies wanting to have their end-of-year holiday parties, so huge group for us. So we usually do a hiring for tour guides in the summers, where it's a little bit slower, and then we can have them all trained up ready to go when we have that high timing quarter four, and then the rest of our positions just depends on demand.

Tasia Duske

23:47

So as we've been growing and we've been a lot more corporate leads, then we've had to expand our sales team because of that. We've also had to expand our marketing team as we've adjusted our content strategy. So that's been more of like, whenever we felt the need for it or if we had a new position we want to experiment with, we'd open up those not specific two seasons.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

24:04

Sounds good to me. It sounds good and, like I said before, it's a rigorous excuse me, a rigorous hiring process. Great hiring process, different, you know, it brings out all the great aspects of um looking for a job. I mean, people just think looking for a job is a drag in most cases it is, but this sounds, yeah, this sounds pretty good to me. It sounds great and it makes sounds as well as though you've got. I think another thing that's um a pattern is that you're you're trying to make people feel part of you, obviously trying to find people who can sort of get get in with the actual culture of Museum Hack, but you deliberately try and go overboard to make people feel welcome and part of the team and part of the culture, by the sounds of it as well. Yeah, definitely.

Tasia Duske

24:51

We have icebreakers at almost all of our meetings and we have little games that we play during all of them, so very important is the culture Sounds good, and just tell me a bit more.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

24:59

I mean, you mentioned briefly about the onboarding side of things. Um, what does that look like?

Tasia Duske

25:06

yeah, so we rely heavily on trello. Okay, so have you used trello?

Alex Wilson-Campbell

25:09

before yes, I have.

Tasia Duske

25:10

Yeah, I love trello, I love trello like a pinterest board, but for to-do lists, like I absolutely love it. Yeah, so we put together all of our trello boards for different departments and then it allows the manager to easily assign with due dates for the different cards that need to be done and then also link in, like we have a Google form that could be used in the quiz to test knowledge at certain points, so a manager can be able to go in and check off what is happening on the onboarding training process, usually within the first week, and we also put up a number of cards that are like okay, your q and a's are here. If you have any questions, type it here and then your manager can go on and check if they have any and then also give you them a little challenge. It's like find out this person in accounting and go introduce yourself and have an icebreaker with them.

Remote Team Communication and Engagement

Alex Wilson-Campbell

25:53

So we use trello a lot and we find them fun tasks, as well as the training material sounds good and and once they've got their feet firmly well, once they're sort of feeling like part of the furniture, I suppose, Hands right on the keyboard bolted in Hands on the keyboard. Do you have any sort of like protocols or set structures for like communication between teams, or is it fairly know, fairly sporadic?

Tasia Duske

26:23

yeah, so we have our. I'd say it starts with we have weekly manager meetings. We call them the league of extraordinary managers. So it starts with weekly meetings. There we tend to post our notes either on slack. We have a facebook group that we post up there as well and then we email out occasionally whenever we do have an important company announcement. So we try to hit like all three levels of like Slack, email, facebook to share anything. And then from there we have department meetings. So our sales team meets weekly.

Tasia Duske

26:48

We try to keep those as short as possible. You know people's attention spans can start going when it goes to a remote meeting. They're like cat comes up or they need to get more coffee, who knows. So we usually keep those to like half an hour and we also check in regularly. If one week you don't need anything, don't have a meeting, like cancel it and feel okay with that and then from there also trying to post up any important notes from it.

Tasia Duske

27:10

And then we also have our city lead meetings. So we have a city head in each city that's on the ground and then so I meet with them about once a month, two times a month and also try to share out all of our notes so everyone knows what is happening, how we can communicate and then also ask for feedback on them. So we try to plug in for all of our notes, like, hey, if you have a thought about this, email this, or I'll plug in some jokes there which I have like maybe two or three people that read all the way to the bottom and get my jokes and respond back to get like gift cards or candy or whatever it is, but try to add in little engaging stuff so they want to read the company updates that are passed around, because we only have a lot of times our written communication form, so if not sent out a video, people just have to read sounds good to me sounds good and it sounds like you.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

27:54

you've answered kind of my next question in terms of the, you know, keeping the team sort of um, sort of engaging what's going on in the business, those regular meetings, those regular, both the remote meetings as well as the sort of in-person meetings as well, that sounds great. Yeah, I suppose what's the biggest challenge then for you as a team, as a remote team?

Tasia Duske

28:25

for you as a, as a team, as a remote team yeah, so I don't want to be cliche and just say, uh, going with the communication. Communication is so strong so it can be so frequent of you're starting to ask a lot of questions and you kind of like get in the weeds with a slack channel just going on and it can spend like 10 minutes trying to figure out something on slack, compared to just jumping on a phone call and you're able to solve it instantly. So I think that's one thing. We try to push for that as much as possible. Anytime you start feeling like the communication is not going where you need, just jump on a call with the person and figure out what's happening.

Tasia Duske

28:52

And then also the other side of things, you really have to have a lot of trust with your remote teams because they're not with you there in the office. So really push the trust and verify method of making sure you have people in place that you really feel completely confident that they're going to be able to work at home, they're going to be able to respect that power that comes with it and be responsible. And then also verify to make sure that people are following up with what they need to share results as much as possible on Slack Again that communication. So one more quote from Susan Scott. I freaking love it saying that all communication or all conversations are with yourself and sometimes they involve other people.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

29:30

So I love that. I like that one, I like it.

Tasia Duske

29:33

Yeah, and thinking about remote world. There's so much that I'm just like sitting here and I'm thinking about it. I'm like that'd be an awesome idea. Okay, I need to make sure I like ask my team what they think about that and then, hey, maybe I do get a phone call or get another Slack message and I like forget about it. But I keep moving ahead with the direction that I now see because the idea that I had in my head. So it's not as easy to turn to the person next to you and say, hey, I was just thinking about this. Can we all like rally and discuss it? You have to be very intentional about making sure to get those thoughts out of your head onto the keyboard and into other people's.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

30:04

No, I love that. I love it because one of the sort of pain pain points of the people in my community is that they may have a remote role but they don't necessarily have that team to call on to actually share those ideas, share those thoughts. And then, um, they're one or two who perhaps feel as though they're restricted in their thoughts and their ability to sort of express them. What I wanted to ask you is one big question I get asked a lot is uh, how do you actually, I suppose, how do you actually encourage people to overcome, or or how do you overcome those feelings sometimes, when you get feel a bit lonely, maybe, uh, you're working at home how do you you personally overcome that and how do you encourage others within your team to encourage that?

Remote Work Productivity and Team Building

Tasia Duske

30:58

yeah, yeah, that's a great one. And we do have a lot of people regularly bring up and say like a quarter, quarterly review or like what are you struggling with, what can we help you with? And they're like I'm feeling a little lonely. So one thing that we've implemented is we call it our mr rogers channel. So it's a channel set up in slack and we use the donut integration. So, uh, you, it pairs you up with other people that are in that channel and it sends you a message. You can set it at whatever setting whether it be one week, two weeks, three weeks and then you get sent a private message with those people and then you have to plan a like time to have coffee and donuts that's a little joke and plan words. So we try to have those regularly where we can get our team members together just talking about stuff. It's not related to work at all.

Tasia Duske

31:39

We also have a lot of fun Slack channels. So we have, like the Dogs of Museum Hacks Slack channel. We have a fitness one. We also do a lot of regular like healthy lifestyle challenges. So we've had two so far this year that have been either stretching challenges or water drinking challenges, and it's something that everyone yes, both need it. It's something that everyone's doing together, they're competing with it together, and then we can like joke with one another about, like are you keeping up on this?

Alex Wilson-Campbell

32:03

so it gives us something outside of work to specifically be talking about if we're not actively involved in those other channels sounds good, I mean it's, it's a lot, I mean, I think for me, I think there's a probably underestimate the you know the challenges involved with remote work and perhaps think it's, you know, it's just an easy, an easy sort of alternative, but I think you have to work much harder, do you not think, tasia, if you work remotely.

Tasia Duske

32:32

Yeah, I'm so on this, okay. So I think I very much believe, like remote cultures, you get pushed so much more for results than just being a warm body there. It's more important, like what you're doing, uh, compared to just being present. So an office job, all right, you could go in there for eight hours. You can, like sit back, you can chill, you can drink your coffee, you can take whatever breaks, um, and it's okay, I'm stereotyping some office jobs, but so you could just hang out and it wouldn't matter in a remote world, if you're just hanging out and you're on the clock, like, that feels a lot different than just like BS in, when you're sitting around talking with your coworkers, like you're not working.

Tasia Duske

33:09

So I think it helps us set up those clear boundaries of like when you're on, you are super productive, get your stuff done and then get off, so you can also enjoy life. Because that's part of the joy of being remote is you can enjoy life and you can be anywhere you want in the world and you can take breaks anytime, you can walk outside and do whatever.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

33:27

Yeah, it's a special kind of person and a special kind of mentality. I think, yeah, because of some of the things that you just said there about the productivity and about knowing when to stop and start. I mean, I was speaking to a wellness professional who said because one of my, one of my issues is that I, once I start work, I get so zoomed in, so focused in what I'm doing, and I just stay in my chair for hours without taking a break, and it's getting dark outside and everything like that. You gotta move exactly, and it was. It gave me problems. I was getting stiff in my you know.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

34:02

So one of the things, one of the things you said to me, is put, put a red dot on the corner of your, your laptop, to remind yourself to actually go for a walk. What, what things, what hacks do you have to sort of like you know what are your productivity hacks, or what hacks do you have to sort of like you know what are your productivity hacks, or the hacks that you use to actually make sure that you're on track with things as well?

Tasia Duske

34:26

Yeah, absolutely Okay.

Tasia Duske

34:27

So I like okay, anything that could be a good reminder to get up, stand up or, hey, just check in with your posture, because that can also start to fall when you're working so hard on something.

Tasia Duske

34:37

So I love doing like Pomodoro sessions, so if you plan for like 20 minutes that you're working on something very specifically, very isolated, and then take a break and go on to something else, so trying to limit the multitasking, I also am very pro trying to get off Slack as much as possible, of like using your snooze and setting away settings if you are working on specific things or you have a meeting, so one people don't expect you to respond then and also you don't have the guilt that you're supposed to be responding then.

Tasia Duske

35:06

And also, I'd say, with it creating a to-do list of what results you actually want to accomplish specifically that day. So I usually pick out like three to four things that I want to get done by about one o'clock in the afternoon. So it helps like direct my activities and then, once I've completed those, great, I go have lunch, go walk around, do whatever you want. Um, go, I like to do yoga every day, so go and like take a yoga class in the afternoon, whatever, and then come back to it. So whatever you can do to stay healthy, stay fit and emotionally and mentally strong while working out absolutely, absolutely, I mean, and one of the things I know you like, sean Aker right.

Tasia Duske

35:44

I love him. Yes, happiness advantage.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

35:47

Yeah, yeah, it's, it's. I love Sean Aker as well and I love the whole idea of happiness at work. I know I know you've you've talked about lots of things like the playful nature of museum hack. You know the community that you've built and the actual, the idea of having fun and all that sort of thing. What advice can you give to, in general, somebody seeking that sort of I don't know that happiness, that enjoyment in work and life?

Tasia Duske

36:20

know that, that happiness, that enjoyment in in work and life, yeah, a very tough question. So one read johnny gersberg happiness, advantage because I love that one. Yeah, it's great.

Tasia Duske

36:25

Oh yeah, I think he's brilliant at thinking okay if you adjust your mindset, then the results and the happiness like you'll get where you want to go. If you decide happiness first, so starting with the playful nature, then hey, people respond to you better, your team's more excited, the results are higher. So the whole beliefs of being in a team building industry and like being a company that provides those team building very much believe in it internally as a company. When your people are happy, they're feeling taken care of, they're gonna take care of your clients and your guests and then business will take care of itself. So you really need to push that will take care of itself. So you really need to push that and it doesn't have to be as serious.

Tasia Duske

37:04

I think a lot of bosses feel like their role and their responsibility is to like make sure people are getting results done and like get them in trouble if they are messing up. And I really want to push people to redefine what it means to be a boss and think of it more of like a coach. If you were on a basketball team and your like star player was missing their free throws, like what would you do and how would you talk with them to make sure they got everything they needed to be successful and bring your whole team to victory. So redefine that to think of yourself more as a coach compared to a boss that needs to get stuff done, the way that you think bosses need to get stuff done love that.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

37:34

I love it and in terms of um museum hack, like you said, you're growing so quickly. It sounds like you've got things on point where the actual culture is concerned, where your process is concerned, everything. What can we expect from the future, from from museum hack and from tasia?

Tasia Duske

37:53

yeah, okay, great question also. So I'm excited we're going into our next 2019 and beyond planning. So this last year has been all about stability, so we've had so much growth. As you know, we want to make sure that we're going to stay strong and stable as a foundation that will allow us to, like, exponentially grow next year. So we've done some soft launches and looking at Boston and Atlanta and then we're looking to roll out to have some full launches in those cities as well, as we really want to push and have more museum consulting. So our audience development wing.

Tasia Duske

38:31

We've been focusing a lot on our corporate team building and we want to make sure that our museum consulting is just as strong. So looking at more opportunities to partner with museums and potentially even teach them how to build team building and businesses within themselves so they can use it as an alternative revenue source. Funding is being cut so much for cultural institutions, so if we can help bring over the business side to those institutions that don't have those regular revenue flows outside of funding and save some smaller for admission of, potentially team building could be an awesome industry for them to tap into. So those are some things that we're also very excited. We just launched our first book, our first book ever. So, yes, so we're pushing more of our content. Our goal for next year we've been working on hard this year is we want to be a household name. So, just like Guinness Book of World Records, we want Museum Hack to be the go-to place to be hearing the wild stories about history, about art and everything in between.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

39:28

So what's your book called?

Tasia Duske

39:29

Okay, so it's the Guide to the Fiercest Females. So it's off of our Badass Bitches tour in all of our cities, except we weren't allowed to call it a Badass Bitches book. So fierce females.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

39:42

I like it. When's that coming out? When's that due to be launched?

Tasia Duske

39:45

So it came out, so we already launched in October. So, yeah, we have the Kindle edition as well as the hard copy, so check it out on Amazon. It's an awesome gift, especially for the holidays.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

39:54

All right sounds good. Awesome gift, especially for the holidays. All right Sounds good. When are you coming to the UK? When are you guys going to be in the UK?

Tasia Duske

40:00

Okay. So that has very much been on the radar of when we want to make that leap and so potentially there's a couple spots that we've picked out. It would just mean the whole next operations of expanding globally. I'm not sure when we want to take that leap, so this whole year has been found stability for operating in the U? S as well as consulting regularly all around the world. So to open up operations, that's probably going to be our next thing, but I won't give you any specific dates.

Global Work Opportunities at MuseumHack

Alex Wilson-Campbell

40:26

Well, we're going to keep an eye on you for that and I on museum hack for that, because it's just, it's just so refreshing to come across a company and a CEO who does things differently and who does things with an element of fun, whilst having, obviously, that great sort of way of trying to build not just the museums but the people within the business as well. I love it. I really love it. So we're going to be keeping our museum hack and I recommend as well that you have a look at museum hack, go to museumhackcom and, even if museum hack are not hiring right now, I always recommend that you immerse yourself in what they're doing If it's of interest to you, immerse yourself in what they're doing, understand what they're doing, so by the time they come to hire, you'll know everything you need to know about them and it'd be so much easier for you to apply to a role. And actually, on that note, tasia, do you accept people from the US as well as internationally as well?

Tasia Duske

41:32

So, as long as you're authorized to work in the US, we do have some people that choose to live elsewhere. So one of our marketing associates right now is living in Bali. So she's just hanging out in Bali, authorized to work in the US, so we can accommodate making sure she can get paid, all right. So right now I'm just limited to working in authorization in the US. But, hey, you can live wherever you want.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

41:53

Sounds good to me. Teja, I just want to say massive thank you, it's been. It's been great. Uh, I've loved what you've had to say. You know about MuseumHack, about yourself and your own work and all that sort of thing, and I wish MuseumHack and yourself all the best for the future thank you, this has been a blast.

Tasia Duske

42:09

I appreciate it, alex excellent.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

42:11

Speak to you soon, tasia thanks bye.