. This episode of the Remote Work Life podcast reveals the tech essentials that can keep your remote team connected and productive without the stress of overcomplicating your setup. Greg Caplan shares his no-nonsense approach to selecting the right tools—whether it’s Zoom, Slack, or Google Meet—and underscores the importance of a strong team culture to make these tools shine.
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0:00
Welcome to the Remote Work Life podcast, where real world remote work CEOs and leaders talk about how they collaborate, thrive and build their businesses. Join me and thousands of followers from around the world to learn skills. You need to work online from anywhere, and in this episode, I am sharing with you a nugget that I captured from my interview with Greg Kaplan, who, at the time, was CEO of Remote Year. He's, at the moment, chief Marketing Officer Interim Chief Marketing Officer with Cameo as I record this particular podcast, but, as I said, he was with Remote Year. He was CEO of Remote Year at the time.
Alex Wilson-Campbell:
0:44
I recorded the segment that you're about to hear, and in this segment, he talks mainly about some of the the tech that he and his his teams use. So I think it's really useful, because often we can get uh, overwhelmed and really pontificate about the best tech to use when, at the end of the day, it's all about keeping it straightforward, keeping it simple. So I thought I'd just share this little nugget with you and see what you think, and anywhere you are, you have to be, way outside, not to be able to have a really strong connection at this point to the internet.
Greg Caplan:
1:24
So it's things that you'd expect. It's Zoom or you know maybe other video conferencing tools. Slack is great. We spend a lot of time on Slack. Obviously, it's a tool that's got to be used correctly, or else you could waste a lot of time chatting in Slack and emojing and sending giffies all day. But Slack is a great tool if you use correctly. Obviously, email as well, but we like to also have people come together and we have budgets for people to come together once a year and meet in person, which is a really great way to get to know each other and build trust, so that when you do have these online digital interactions, you do it from a place of empathy and understanding a little bit more. But you know all these things are tools. You know any video conferencing tool should be fine. Any chat tool or messaging tool should be fine, as long as you set the right culture around how to use them and how you want to get things done as an org.
Alex Wilson-Campbell:
2:21
So the message there really is don't overthink the use of the tools that you choose to use when you're working remotely, because, at the end of the day, most of these tools are pretty. You know most of the common tools like Zoom and Skype and Teams, even Google Meet. These are all pretty sturdy tools, pretty sort of well-known and user-friendly in most cases, tools that you can use, and I think what is really important is just really figuring out what's best for you, what's best for your team, making sure that everybody on the team knows how to use those bits of tech, making sure that they're getting the most out of it, because, at the end of the day, the tool is only as good as the person using the tool. So I think that's the message that came from Greg in that little segment as well. So just don't overthink it, because you'll end up just putting yourself in undue stress and overthinking things, which is something that we don't want to do.
Alex Wilson-Campbell:
3:30
Another thing that greg mentioned there, which I think is really key, really important it's not just all about online interactions. It's about also when you can getting together with your team in person, getting together to understand them, to really add that next layer of connectivity, I guess, and that next layer of connection with your teammates get to understand them. That's. That's a really important thing, because, at the end of the day, all these relationships and all these tools, can you know? They're just pale in significance if you can't trust those people on your team, if you don't get to know those people on your team intimately and as remote workers. That's what we're all about.
Alex Wilson-Campbell:
4:09
I think people just think we just sit behind a desk all day in our pajamas at home all these misconceptions which really kind of annoy me, to be honest with you. But when we're not, we're all about getting to know people. I think we in fact are the next level in terms of communication and getting to know people, which is something that I think is misunderstood. But I'm not going to start off on a rant, I'm just going to just, uh, really leave it there and just leave it with a message for you just to really just use the tools that best suit you. Get to to know your tools, get to know the ins and outs of those tools, don't use too many things, don't overcomplicate things and just keep things simple.
