RWL198:Secrets to Success in Lullabot’s Remote-First Business Model

Welcome to another edition of the remote work life business spotlight. It's me again, alex Wilson Campbell, from remote work life, putting the spotlight on yet another remote business, and today I'm looking at Lullabot. You can find them at Lullabotcom, that's L-U-L-L-A-B-O-T dot com. And, in case you don't know, the business spotlight is all about putting a spotlight on remote businesses. It does what it says on the tin, basically so that you can then go ahead and do your research to find out if it's the kind of business that you'd want to work for, want to work with, and I must say lots of businesses that I look at on the spotlight. I don't necessarily do any in depth research to begin with. I'm doing this essentially cold so I can get an experience, get an initial feel and initial sort of understanding of each business of that I cover on the spotlight. And let's say that I'm today I'm looking at Lullabot. So, on the homepage now and, incidentally, if you want to see what I can see, please hop across to my YouTube channel where I'll be uploading videos that I feature on the remote work life business spotlight and others. So it says here higherware, lullabot, strategy design and Drupal development for large scale publishers. So that is a bit about what they do and, incidentally, as I said, the reason I do this I think I might have said this in previous shows is because I know the challenges that you face when it comes to doing research for legitimate remote businesses. So what I want to do is show you how you can at least begin to do some research yourself so you can understand if a particular business suits you particular business is legitimate or not. Obviously, you need in depth research to do that, but there are some key questions that you should ask yourself, and I just mentioned one of them, which is what do they do? So what are the products, services I just mentioned strategy design, drupal development for large scale publishers? If you can understand their products and services, you can then understand what kind of problems do they solve and how can you then fit in with that whole scheme of things. What problems do they solve? What niche or niche do they operate in? Do you have experience of working within that particular niche? So another thing here let's see that you can find out sometimes, when you look at websites of certain business and you dig a bit deeper, is around the what is. You can see sometimes reviews of what people have said what customers have said about them. Here it says Lullabot has been a solid partner in transforming George's web presence. Not only have they excelled at technical implementation, but they were an effective strategic partner, and it gives the name of the person who gave that particular review. And although it's on their website, it's a starting point where you can then begin to ask other people about certain businesses or about Lullabot. You know how they performed. Maybe they've even got like an online Glassdoor site where you can have a look at reviews there as well. Obviously, glassdoor is not foolproof, but it's a starting point at least.

Speaker 1:
3:09

Okay, and as I scroll down on the Lullabot website, it says if digital content is key to your success, we're eager to eager to help. We've successfully designed, built and launched sites across industries, including media, publishing, government, higher education, healthcare, financial services and more so. Again, this should trigger sort of question, more questions, in your mind, and it should give you an understanding as to actually, I've worked in publishing, I've worked in higher education. Maybe there's a place here for me. So, as I continue, the next kind of question I would ask myself normally would be why do they do what they do? And usually you can find those answers to those sorts of questions on the about us page or on their blog, but I'm going to hop across to the about page to see if there's anything there. So what they say here is we're an employee-owned company of friendly, creative problem solvers who love challenges and approach every project with curiosity and commitment. And it encourages you to read their story. So there's a link here which says read our story. And that then takes you to their fact, basically their founding story, which they say Lollabot was founded in 2006. It tells you who they're founded by Matt Westgate and Jeff Robbins with the initial goal of helping great organizations to do big projects with Drew Powell. So I'm not gonna read the whole founding story, but at least it gives you again, it reassures you that they're well-established. So that's the next question you should ask yourself why do they do what they do? What's their founding story when we've established what their values?

Speaker 1:
4:55

And here, as I look on their about page, this answers my next question, which is who are the key personnel? Because it gives pictures of key personnel and also people. When I say key personnel, I mean the founders, the CEOs, the main managers, but also you wanna find out who actually works there. Who are the other people that work there? Not that they're less important, but I'm just saying I split those into two categories because I wanna understand a bit more about them, their business. So it gives a whole list, it gives pictures of all the kinds of people that work here. There's lots of people, lots of interesting looking people who I'd want to look at. You can even filter them by expertise.

Speaker 1:
5:37

So, again, this answers my next question. It gives board of directors leadership team, the sales team, the admin and HR team, the project management team, the design and strategy team and the dev team. So, again, it gives you a clue as to kind of categories, the kind of people that they hire, kind of personnel, the kind of skills that they want. So, yeah, and you can click on each one of these pictures and it's nothing to stop you from going across to LinkedIn to have a look, to see if any of those people, to see their track record, how did they get into working for Lullabot, what did their profile look like? And that will give you an idea as to what you need to do with your LinkedIn profile, with your CV, your resume, in order to stand out and potentially work for Lullabot or work with Lullabot. So, yeah, those are the key questions. So what else? How do they work? That's another key question, because lots of businesses advertise themselves as fully remote.

Speaker 1:
6:33

All remote, remote first, hybrid there's so many terms being banded around, all remote that you have to look for yourself to understand how they work. And again, when you look at the founding story I'm gonna go back to the about page you could sometimes figure out the answer to that particular question. I'm just trying to see if they mentioned anything about remote and how they work. They talk about their values. That's another thing is, when you talk about their, why you wanna understand are their values, is their mission aligned with my own values? Because that's the starting point to understanding the kind of environment that you're likely to be in once you start working there. So their values include inspire and empower, be human, own it, have fun, collaborate, openly, invent, innovate, love these. So these are all great values, but it's always good to see if they actually live their values once you get there. And actually they've got a whole list of awards. They've won the bookstores, they've written books or at least contributed to books.

Speaker 1:
7:49

So these guys are, yeah, all about communication, all about talking about what they do. They live what they do essentially by the looks of this, but I can't find anywhere, anywhere specific about. I'm gonna do a search for the word remote. Remote doesn't come up anywhere on this particular page. I wanna understand, as I said, how they work. I'm going to the contact page. Again, it doesn't say, by the looks of things, they've got a shipping address. I can't see an actual address. So that could mean that they're fully remote or remote.

Speaker 1:
8:39

First, let's see. No, there's not much really that says do they have a blog? They've got a podcast. Actually, they've got podcasts going on which I like. Behind the screens, hacking culture yeah, I love this. So they've got a podcast show that you can listen to, which I'd recommend you listen to to understand a bit more about them. There are remote business.

Speaker 1:
9:03

I'm gonna actually go to their career section as well, because that sometimes gives you a really good understanding of that question about how they work, because they often talk about that. If they're advertising a job or something like that, they may talk about that as part of the copy within the job advert. So the career section. Let's have a look. We're a friendly group of developers, designers, strategists and business people who talk, sorry, who take great pride in our work and our culture. Thank you for considering Lullabot as a future workplace. We're glad you're here.

Speaker 1:
9:42

There's a link to their diversity. There's the show's from their open positions. I'm looking at their benefits at the moment. No commute, so yeah, there you go. That tells you everything. They don't expect you to commute, which says they're remote. So yeah, not sure to what extent they're remote. Maybe they are fully remote. But, as I said, do your research, have a look, ask all the questions that I mentioned to yourself and more. Dig deep. Before you commit yourself to working for a particular company, before you even begin to write your resume or CV, before you even begin to interact with them, understand them as much as you can by asking the sorts of questions I mentioned today.