RWL236 Remote Work Realities and Solo Travel Adventures with Ashley Widener

Speaker 1:
0:00

Hey, it's Alex once again from the Remote Worker Live podcast. Welcome and thank you for joining us in today's episode. And today we're featuring Ashley Widener. She's the Director of Marketing for the Growth Team at an amazing remote business called GoCo, and I started out by asking her to just tell us a little bit more about herself and the team at GoCo.

Speaker 2:
0:24

GoCo is an all-in-one HR solution, so we give companies the tools to manage everything from their employee database to employee documents, payroll benefits administration, performance reviews. Really, any HR process can be run through our software. I've been with GoCo for a little over five years now. I started as the first marketing manager hired into the team back when the team was me and our director at the time and one other marketing coordinator so very small compared to the 10 people that we have now. I've been there for about five years and in my director role for about half of that time, so I really helped build the marketing program from the ground up, played a big generalist role, doing a bit of everything while we tried to figure out what worked and, yeah, it's been great the whole time. Time really flies when you're doing something like that, building a program from the ground up.

Speaker 2:
1:18

We're also a fully remote company. We have been since 2020. With the pandemic, we never went back to the office, so I had the unique opportunity to watch that transition and help navigate that from a leadership perspective. So I'm really passionate about remote work and talking about these topics and how to keep employees engaged and productive and all of those questions that people have when they make the transition to remote work. My team now is globally distributed, so our whole organization is we're across the world, but specifically on the marketing team we have people all over the United States and a couple of employees in Brazil as well, so we're also navigating the new global element, which has been really fun. In my role now I manage three marketers and we specifically focus on demand generation, paid marketing programs, referral programs, strategy around lead, life cycles and nurture. We have another arm of our team that focuses on the brand and creative and copy things like that. I think we have a really well-rounded team now, but my area of focus at the moment is specifically in the growth side.

Speaker 2:
2:20

I lived in Houston, texas, for about eight years. That's where the Goko headquarters is and, like I said, we were an in-person company at that point. So that's back when I joined the team. But I recently moved to a small town in Colorado Springs and I'm actually working on building out a van to live in full time. So, going all in on the remote lifestyle, I am about to be a van lifer, so I'll be living and working on the road, which I'm very excited for. So definitely made that transition from desk worker corporate cubicle type of scenario to living and working wherever I want to, which is really exciting.

Speaker 1:
2:59

And what made you choose to work at the company that you're at the moment.

Speaker 2:
3:03

I was actually recruited to GoCo. I wasn't looking for a role at the time. I was working at a different tech company in Houston, but one of my colleagues had made the jump over to GoCo to become their director of marketing at the time and build out the marketing organization and programs from scratch. So she reached out to me to see if I would make the jump with her and help do that. Like I said, I wasn't actively looking for a new role but looking back, I think I probably would have been sooner rather than later if the GoCo opportunity hadn't presented itself. I couldn't quite put my finger on why at the time, but again looking back, I realize now that my role was getting a bit stale, even though I had only been there for a little over a year. My focus in that role was selling into the customer database and doing expansions, but they were having a lot of changes in the client success team and with the product. So I often felt like I was more a member of the support team versus the marketing team, which is not something that interests me. That's not my area of expertise or anything I'm passionate about. So I was already starting to get a little burnt out and it also wasn't the typical fast paced environment you picture for tech. So they were a little bit more established. They were an older company. They were stuck with the routine that they had just doing the same types of programs on repeat. There's definitely room to be creative and have new ideas, but just not as much as I was looking for, and I'm very much a person who gets bored easily. I need that fast pace to keep me going and if I get bored I can't focus and then that just makes work miserable. So I'm constantly chasing a place where I'm going to be stimulated for my brain, have things to do, have challenges and not get bored. So I was already reaching that stage a little bit at my previous role and again that colleague reached out to me and so the timing kind of aligned very well. I started talking to GoCo. The company was much smaller back then. I think there were about 40 employees at that time and we have almost 200 now, so a lot different back then. But that meant I was able to meet with what felt like every employee at the company when I was interviewing and I definitely met with the three co-founders and got to hear directly from them their vision for the company and the product in the future, which was really cool.

Speaker 2:
5:14

I loved how excited everyone was about that, about the mission of the company and how collaborative they were and how fun. It was one of those offices that you could just walk into and feel the energy and there was always something kind of kooky going on, maybe a little bit of the stereotypes that you get with tech. There was definitely a ping pong table in the office and there were a life size stand ups of the founders that would catch your eye, maybe scare you a little. Lots of bright colors Our brand color is green, so there are these huge green and white Lego blocks everywhere. Colors Our brand color is green, so there were these huge green and white Lego blocks everywhere. So a lot of that fun stuff going on. But you could just feel it with the energy of the team too and I loved that. It was funny. One of the walls of the office was all glass windows and sometimes it felt like we were literally in a zoo because the other people in the more corporate offices upstairs would walk by and just stare like what are they up to today? But it was because it was just really collaborative and the energy was good and it made it exciting. Definitely not a place you could get bored at. So that drew me in.

Speaker 2:
6:14

And then, beyond that, like I said, they didn't have a marketing program in place. Instead, they had focused on building out a really great product and a client success team, which piqued my interest, especially coming from the situation I was in where I felt like I was having to do client support more often than I wanted to. So that really appealed to me and the opportunity to build out a marketing program from scratch with the funding that tech companies have and the support of a developing organization. Even though the marketing team was small, there were people who had been at the company for years and who were really passionate about the brand and had been doing their own guerrilla type marketing, so there was still some support. There was really appealing to me. I have worked at smaller companies in the past and family owned small B2C companies to build out marketing programs from scratch and it's just not the same thing. It's a slower process there. You have less resources to work with, so I was really excited about that opportunity as well.

Speaker 1:
7:13

Describe a personal, notable story or experience that's influenced who you are today.

Speaker 2:
7:19

This is actually a pretty easy question for me to answer, because there's a very specific experience I had a little over 10 years ago that I still think about to this day and use to motivate myself if I'm up against a challenge. I've always been a really independent person. I'm the type of person where once I set my mind to something, I find a way to make it happen. And after I graduated college, I really wanted to travel abroad. I've always loved traveling, always been really interested in other cultures. I studied cultural anthropology as my undergrad degree and I was ready to go out into the world and see some of these cultures that I had learned about and just get more life experience for myself.

Speaker 2:
7:58

So I started researching places and I was always drawn to very obscure locations I say obscure only as in they're not the typical top 10 places you should visit or top Europe destinations for tourists or things like that. And of course, I couldn't find anyone to go with me. We were fresh out of college on a budget. People didn't really want to join me on what they thought were these obscure adventures. I started making a plan to go myself. I think now social media has really opened up people's awareness about what's out there and what different locations look like and how to travel by yourself. But back then it really wasn't such a big thing, and so I set my sights on Iceland and most people either asked me where is that? Or why do you want to go? There's nothing there but ice and snow. And again now we probably all see these beautiful pictures of Iceland on our social media feeds and solo travelers go there all the time. But I hadn't really heard of anyone else doing it or didn't really know of a ton about the country.

Speaker 2:
9:00

So I started planning by myself, researching and preparing as best I could, and I remember one March day, early in the day I think it was like 7am I landed in Iceland, picked up my rental car and started driving, and my plan was to drive around the Ring Road which circles the whole country, and I was making my way to a peninsula on the west side, and the weather was very hit and miss, and I had read that it could be, since it was March, it was the off season, winter's starting to end, but the weather there can just change on a dime. I'd grown up in Colorado. I thought I was used to that, used to driving in snow, but it's just a different level in Iceland. So nothing really fully prepared me. And as I was driving, I realized I hadn't seen another living soul in a couple of hours. And again, I am a very independent person, but I had never been so alone and isolated, not in a city surrounded by other people.

Speaker 2:
9:53

So that was a very new experience and my brain started popping up these questions that just started to build anxiety. I was asking myself why did I come here? Why couldn't I have picked something easier? Why do I always have to take things to the extreme? I should just go home. We could still turn around, we could go home, we could go, stay in the city, not drive around, and just kept building up in my head.

Speaker 2:
10:15

And then a snowstorm moved in and it was a complete whiteout and I just stopped driving and it was a moment where I could have completely built off the anxiety that was already spinning in my head. But I just remember so distinctly this new confidence or power over my own thoughts coming up, and I was what am I talking about? I've been dreaming about traveling like this for years dreaming about Iceland specifically for almost a year and planning, researching. I know what I got into. I know what I'm capable of, I can do this, and I just felt this sense of peace wash over me and I continued on my way.

Speaker 2:
10:52

And I did have a few other moments during that trip that invoked that same sense of anxiety and, I think, allowed me to practice, calling on this new confidence and this new power. So I still just remember that feeling so distinctly in my head and I'm still able to call on it for that day. I think that's what's helped me, when I've been thrust into challenges, personally and professionally, get through them. I let myself ask those anxious questions and then I call on this power and say, no, I'm capable of this, I know I can figure it out, or I know that I already know what I need to do, so I can.

Speaker 1:
11:27

Then what are your aspirations for your career going forward?

Speaker 2:
11:35

The last question you asked me was easy. This one is always one of the hardest questions. I have always struggled to plan out my career aspirations and I've seen that things have changed so much for me. I actually, when I started my career, was in nonprofits and in event planning and I thought that I did not want to go into marketing. I thought that I did not like marketing and I think I only pictured madmen, ad agencies, things like that, and I've always ended up in marketing roles which got me to where I am today.

Speaker 2:
12:07

When I got out of nonprofits, I was at a marketing agency, but it was a small agency for local businesses. We were working on really mom and pop shops, moving them out of phone books into the internet, not doing this big digital campaigns and strategies like I managed today. So for many years I thought I did not like marketing and so I kept bouncing around and always ended up back in these marketing roles. I even went back to school to get an MBA in international business, still trying to figure out exactly what I wanted my career to look like, and I think I learned when I finally stopped trying to plan so far out and to go with the flow but check in with myself regularly and make sure I'm on the right path. Things started falling into place, so I really do love where I'm at now.

Speaker 2:
12:54

Goco is at a growth stage and I mentioned earlier that if I get bored I move on or I become miserable, and I don't see that happening. Just in the five years that I've been here, I feel like I've been at five different companies because things are growing and changing so quickly. So I really do love that and want to help move this company along and see it through as long as I can After that. At the moment, what I see myself doing is the same thing for other companies. I really love the strategy.

Speaker 2:
13:23

I'm great at connecting the dots across the strategy and the organization. I think some people can struggle to see things when it comes to understanding the technical and operational side of marketing along with the creative and campaign side. But I think I fall right in the middle and I've heard that from my peers, so I would love to help other companies do the same. So I have considered consulting in the future, but we'll have to see where it goes. Like I said, I try not to plan too closely because that's where I've gotten myself into some struggles, but I like to just check in with myself really regularly and make sure that I'm on the right path and I know, at the moment at least, I definitely am.

Speaker 1:
14:05

As you look back on your life and connect the dots that led to where you are now. What are those dots?

Speaker 2:
14:12

I think I just alluded to a few of the dots when I mentioned that I did not think I liked marketing, but yet here I am as a marketing leader. I think, looking back, I always really have loved being creative and pushing the limits a bit. I've loved learning about people and understanding people and connecting to people. As I mentioned, my undergrad degree was in cultural anthropology and I just love learning how people work and think how cultures work together, how cultures originate, what happens when a group of people is together and does certain things and I often joke that I use that degree in marketing much more than anything I learned about marketing getting my. I think it's just a really ever-evolving field. So I think, looking back now, some of those dots are my interest in different cultures and how people work.

Speaker 2:
15:04

I was always really passionate about event planning and creating experiences, whether it be social or professional. One of my first roles out of college was planning a huge fundraiser in LA and it was celebrities, MCs, celebrity attending and just massive event and I just loved every minute of it, creating this huge spectacle and creating an experience for people. I always love hosting and making things special, making themed parties down to little details, whether it's on the invitation, themed cocktails, themed food, the decorations. I don't think I just fully understood. That is a lot of what goes into marketing. So when I do look back, I see how the dots very clearly led me here. But it wasn't as clear of a path in the traditional sense that I knew what I wanted to be. I tailored my studies around it, things like that.

Speaker 1:
15:58

What made you choose this particular profession?

Speaker 2:
16:01

I think marketing actually chose me as a profession. I don't think I actively made the decision to be a marketer and go all in and say this is my career until a few years ago, maybe at the company that I was at right before my current one. So in the length of my career in general that's not that much time, but again, I always kept ending up in these positions that involved marketing. And once I was able to connect all of those dots and really see what marketing roles are out there and what it could look like in a more structured way, it finally clicked into place and I chose that would be my profession. I think it comes from the fact that I had been working at smaller companies. I had worked at an agency and had experience with marketing there, but I hadn't really seen what it could look like in-house at a big tech company or really understood all of the different roles that exist within marketing.

Speaker 2:
16:53

So I am a generalist. I consider myself a generalist. That's been my career, Even though I'm focused in the growth side of our team at the moment and leading to be generation marketers. I would say I really flex into the brand space and the operations space. So I'm still a generalist at heart. I can't actually get away from it because I always dabble in a little bit of everything. But once I realized that spoke to me, I could commit to it and choose it as my profession, and I've just been able to grow since then.

Speaker 1:
17:24

And was there a particular aha moment for you which confirmed that you're in the right profession and in the right role?

Speaker 2:
17:32

My aha moment, I think, think, also came relatively recently, considering the span of my career. I think I questioned my role for a long time because, like I said, I wasn't sure that I even liked marketing or that this was what I was supposed to be doing. I was constantly looking at how I could translate the skills I had learned into other industries or other roles, trying to explore what other people did, what was out there, find something that appealed to me. I don't quite know what I was trying to get away from or what I was trying to find. I think I was just kind of questioning everything still just a part of growing up and developing my career. So I think an aha moment that came recently was a couple of years after I had been at GoCo and it was one of my anniversaries. So I want to say it was probably two years ago. It may have been my third anniversary and they did a summary of the things that I had accomplished and it was a very nice shout out. Just, our company is great with recognition. So I was very on the spot getting a very nice shout out. Just, our company is great with recognition. So I was very on the spot getting a very nice shout out and they showed everything I had contributed to and really highlighted how unique some of the ways I approach those programs are, and I think that clicked it all together because I could see the impact that I was having.

Speaker 2:
18:49

I think one difficulty with marketing is that we can be a little bit removed. So we spend all of this time strategizing and working very hard and putting these things out to the world, but then we're not the sales team talking to the prospects that we're driving in, we're not the client success team talking to our customers. We're in our bubble just throwing stuff out there and hoping that it works. And, of course, we're monitoring the numbers and we can see different metrics that show whether it works or not, but it's just not as tangible. So I don't think the impact had really clicked for me.

Speaker 2:
19:21

I've also I mentioned that I get feedback from peers about how I sit in this unique space where I can connect the dots across a lot of different areas, and I think hearing that called out really helped me have an aha moment where I could see where I fit in these organizations and where I fit in these roles and what my strengths are. I think it had always nagged at me. That was something that I was very good at, but it's hard to be the one to say that for yourself. I needed that external validation from others to make it true in my brain.

Speaker 1:
19:53

What advice can you offer to somebody who's looking to build their own location? Independent career.

Speaker 2:
20:00

My first piece of advice is to try it out in whatever capacity you can to make sure that actually works for you. I had set my goal to be a remote worker way back before I even started in tech. So I was applying for remote only roles and back then this was a few years before the pandemic. Back then those roles were far and few between. It was a lot more rare to have a company that was fully remote or allowed you to work really location independently. So I was applying for those roles, got a couple interviews, got my hopes up, did not get them. Ended up at the tech company in Houston, which was very much in Houston. They provided us the opportunity to work one day a week from home and I loved that. That was my first taste of a more official work from home situation. So that only fueled my fire to have that as my goal. So I previously talked about everything great that drew me to GoCo. One of the questions that I had when I took on the role was, because they were location based, there was no work from home option, not even one day a week. So I really questioned if it was the right move and originally when I joined GoCo I had in my head. I'll use this as a launching pad to hopefully get one of those remote roles at another tech company. I can come here, build my resume. Hopefully in a couple of years I'll move on and be in a remote role.

Speaker 2:
21:24

And then the world did that for me. You could say for me that was the one good thing that came out of a terrible situation. But the pandemic forced us to go home and what we realized was that our culture was not sacrificed. Sure, it changed, but we didn't give it up when people were not in the office together and people were actually more productive on some teams. I was certainly more productive when I was working from home. I definitely had an adjustment period. It was very weird to go from being in the office every single day to being at home, having to ping people on Slack, it being very quiet. I remember I put on the live feeds of the show Big Brother, which is just people going about their day talking to mimic the office environment the best I could, because I was just going a little stir crazy those first few weeks working from home. But after the adjustment period I have absolutely loved it ever since and it works a lot better for me and my productivity and my work patterns. So I would say, any way that you can try it out, you should.

Speaker 2:
22:19

And then, for people who are actively looking for a remote role, be careful with the terminology. So I would really clarify what remote means for the companies that you're interviewing with, because remote does not necessarily mean work from anywhere. Work from home does not mean work from anywhere. Work from home does not mean work from anywhere. Some companies will say that they're remote but then require you to come into the office for meetings or certain work days and it adds up so that it's not really remote. You don't quite have that flexibility with your schedule. Same thing with certain laws and like payroll processing rules and things like that. Not all companies are going to be equipped to process payroll in every single state, so that's why they'll sometimes have location requirements.

Speaker 2:
22:59

Like, you can work remote as long as you live in these five states, but if you're planning on moving around or moving to a different state in the future, you need to be really careful and make sure that is something that they would support or are equipped to do. Otherwise, just be mindful that might not be an option they would support or are equipped to do Otherwise. Just be mindful that might not be an option, and then it can also depend on managers too. So when you're talking to managers, make sure that you can actually be location independent.

Speaker 2:
23:23

I think there's a lot of memes and jokes going around right now about people who are I think they're calling millennials like sneaky vacationing I can't remember the term for it, but it's like when you're working remote and you clearly have a hotel or something in your background and your managers, you're not at home, and if the expectation is work remote, that's anywhere, and that's not always the case. So just be really honest with your communication or just thoughtful about that, because you don't want to get yourself in a sticky situation there. I feel very lucky that my leadership supports working from anywhere, including a van I did really luck out there but it's definitely something that you do want to communicate with your organization.

Speaker 1:
24:04

What made you choose remote work as an option?

Speaker 2:
24:07

So I mentioned a few reasons in our discussion previously, but for me the biggest goal around being a remote worker was having the flexibility to travel and explore the world. I just realized that even if I take weekend trips going back and forth, I'm never going to see as much of our country of the world that I want to see. So I wanted to set myself up to be able to explore as much as possible. And then, on the productivity side, I would actually never go back to an office at this point. I learned so much about myself and how to be more productive from being able to control my own work environment and set up productivity spaces for myself.

Speaker 2:
24:44

I remember in the office and this is the thing that people say as a pro for office spaces but in the office it's very easy for someone to come up and just say, hey, can I ask you a quick question? And those quick questions turn into rabbit holes that turn into long discussions, or you just hear the noise from other places. I remember we had an open office environment in GoCo and we had little sections for each team. So I sat in a section with my marketing team members, but we were right across from the sales team members. So they're, of course, on the phone all day talking very boisterous and loud on the phone with prospects, and I would often go find some hidey hole corner that was quiet to work for myself. So I was never even working at my desk towards the end of the office time anyway, and I love being able to set better boundaries for that, because it is really easy for someone to just come up and say, hey, can I ask you a quick question and then derail your whole day.

Speaker 2:
25:38

When you're working remotely. You can still have that experience when it makes sense. I find that a quick Slack huddle or quick Zoom call people joke that you know I hate having to have a 30-minute Zoom call to answer a quick question. It doesn't have to be 30 minutes. I jump on for a few minutes with my coworkers all the time, but I'm able to set that boundary. I can say either yes, I have 10 minutes, I have a hard stop in 10 minutes, or I'm right in the middle of something. Can we do it a little bit later and I can control my time a lot more in my own space. So I would personally never go back. Now that I do have it and I wanted it for the fun and the glamour of the travel, but just from a productivity space and mental health space, it's so much better.

Speaker 1:
26:22

And how would you describe your current company's culture?

Speaker 2:
26:26

I've been saying recently that our company's culture is very human focused. We're a very human company. We care about the human elements of our employees very much. The phrase we're a family here has taken to mean very toxic things, and so I would say that we are a very close team but we care about your family here. So we see the human side of people and try to make that fit into our culture. And I think that being remote allows us to do that even more, because it gives you the flexibility to be a parent and have to pick up your kids from summer school or drop everything because your kid is sick, or not drop everything because you don't have to drive into an office or figure out child care If your child is sick. You can have them home and still do your job with the remote schedule. So I think we're very human. Our struggles around that transition from being in the office to remote. We still do try to hang on to some of the relics of that in-person culture, but it's been long enough now and we've made a really conscious effort to migrate those things to this new world that I think they've smoothed themselves out. We also are really inclusive, so we have employees all over the world.

Speaker 2:
27:45

We're very conscious of time zones and trying to make events hybrid. Hybrid events are very hard. I actually am the chair of our company's spirit committee, which is party planning, culture, things like that, and we threw some terrible hybrid events. I'll be the first to admit that it can be so awkward when you have one group in person and they're able to chat with each other, and then you have the poor people on Zoom who are just awkwardly watching and can't hear anything because the microphone picks up little bits and pieces of what people are saying. So we definitely had to learn the hard way how to make these things more successful.

Speaker 2:
28:20

But we now have a few events that we love running that include the whole company and connect across time zones, countries and location. We just wrapped one up that was a scavenger hunt. We split people out into teams and gave them a huge list of items to find, and it was really cool to see people collaborating and knocking off points and strategizing and things like that. I think we're also a very evolving culture, which I love. That's actually one of our company values, but I think it applies to how we approach things like this, because we're constantly trying to make things work better and make things easier, for example, with the meetings and some people want to jump on Zoom for 30 minutes, some people don't. We try to make meetings way more productive. We experiment with a lot of different tech and platforms and sending out meeting notes ahead of time. I think it's just really cool to see us evolve and take feedback and change things as we go.

Speaker 1:
29:18

What qualities and characteristics do your hiring managers look for when they're recruiting new hires?

Speaker 2:
29:25

I think this is a really interesting question as it relates to the topic of remote work, because I think it is different than if you were hiring for an in-person role, and I've had this conversation with other leaders about what that shift looks like. I think it can be different for different roles too. So I think in more senior roles you may have an easier time making the transition to remote work. In more junior roles, I think there's a lot that you can learn from an office environment that you wouldn't pick up on otherwise. So there probably are some qualities and characteristics that would make for an easier transition for those types of people. So I mentioned earlier for people wanting to get into remote work to test it out and make sure you like it. I would add to that make sure you can do it and just be really honest with yourself, because not everybody can. One of the career buzzwords is self-motivated. I think that especially applies here, but I would redefine that a little bit into self-sufficiency. I think you need to be someone who can look for answers, solve problems, figure things out on your own, know where to go. There's also a level of eagerness and a bit of confidence too, because you need to often track down answers and it can be intimidating to have to ping people on Slack that you've never engaged with. If you're new, or ping BP level or something like that, you have to have the confidence to go in there. I would hear from new employees a lot. They're like I don't want to bug them, I don't want to bother them, and bugging and notifying on Slack is the key when you're remote, because that's just your opportunity to talk to people. You are not in a room with them, you are not constantly interfacing with them, so you really have to be self-sufficient, figure things out and have a confidence to go ask people. I'd also say that eagerness is a big one. I think eagerness is the best word for it, and it's not quite a personality thing. It's related to the confidence I was just talking about. For example, if you have an idea of something you want to try, or you're seeing results of a report and seeing something different, you really need to have that eagerness and confidence to bring up your ideas and raise those points. Because, again, you're not interfacing with people. There's probably less opportunities where you're being outright asked those questions, so you need to be the one to surface those things and I think that's really critical to the success of a remote worker.

Speaker 2:
31:46

I think communication is key to again one of those buzzwords that you could probably say for every role, but it is especially important working remotely. We're a camera on company is what we call it. So any zoom meetings and things like that, it's expected that your cameras to be on, and that's because it can be really difficult to understand what someone's saying and understand the sentiment behind it without seeing their face. So being camera on helps, but we're still doing most of our communication over Slack and things can be misinterpreted if you're not communicating well. Tone can be really difficult to come across in text when you're remote. So I think being a good communicator is key and also having a level of understanding of that concept and not jumping to conclusions and things like that is key.

Speaker 1:
32:33

On the flip side, what's your philosophy for building a great team?

Speaker 2:
32:39

My philosophy for building a team is all about balance, so I want to fill in the gaps. I want to identify everybody's strengths and weaknesses and hire the opposites of that, including myself. And saying this out loud, it seems like maybe that is very common advice or very well known, but I do think it is a struggle for a lot of people, especially when it comes into including the managers and the team leads, comes into including the managers and the team leads. So as a team leader myself, I am the first to admit where I'm weak and I hire for that. So I want to bring in people who can balance out those skills and produce the most well-rounded team.

Speaker 2:
33:16

I think the other element to that makes it challenging is not a lot of managers know how to manage when they are not an expert in that area that their employee is.

Speaker 2:
33:25

For example, on my team I have a specialist who focuses on our paid programs and she has very technical knowledge of Google, search and Bing and things like that.

Speaker 2:
33:35

I don't have that much technical knowledge.

Speaker 2:
33:37

In my past I've managed those programs via an agency or very lightly before we brought her onto the team to manage them in-house.

Speaker 2:
33:44

So I'll be the first to admit that is a weakness of mine that she balances out with her strengths and that as a manager, it's not my responsibility to know every single thing. You have to also build your teams with people that you trust, because I trust that she is managing those programs properly and discussing those with me and I, as a manager, can look at the bigger picture to assess for performance and know that my role is not to coach on the specifics of programs like that, but to connect the strategy and connect the dots across the whole team and bring the programs together and orchestrate at a much bigger level. So all about balance, all about hiring for those strengths that we need, and I guess you could add humility in there too, because all for the managers to let go of any notions that they have about hiring good people that may overshine them and take a step back and let them step into those roles and fill those strengths where we have weaknesses.

Speaker 1:
34:44

Is there a particular team or organization whose culture you admire? If so, tell us about that.

Speaker 2:
34:51

It's hard for me to pinpoint specific organizations just because I have not worked at other remote organizations and I don't exactly know what goes on behind closed doors. But from the public standpoint, a company that I look to a lot is GitLab, and they are probably one of the most well-known and longest running remote-only companies. They also have a lot of really great public documentation on how they function as a remote company, so they have guides for how to have productive remote meetings and how to structure your communication, and tips like that that I think is really valuable and I love that they share it. Another one that's in our space in the HR tech world is 360 Learning, and they are all remote and they also are asynchronous. They have a very interesting culture that they refer to as convexity and they also have published documentation. So on their site you can find blog posts and videos talking about what this is and it is a very low to no meeting culture and they have some really interesting ways that they collaborate among team members across all different time zones, all different locations in the world, and how they make that work. So I think that's really cool.

Speaker 2:
35:57

And then in general, not company specific I am keeping my eye on companies who are taking it to the next level. So I think the remote world work shows that we can work from anywhere at any time and be productive. I think the final thing that's still clinging to the old world is working hours, which, of course, is important for overlap. It's a very tricky topic when you're a client facing and have meetings with other companies and things like that. But I am keeping my eye on those companies that are implementing things like a four day work week, even if it's just testing out summer Fridays for right now. I think that's the next phase is a lot more flexibility with the expectations for what a work week looks like, and I'm excited to hopefully see that change sometime in the future.

Speaker 1:
36:44

What do you prefer to do when you're not working?

Speaker 2:
36:46

I love to do a lot of different things. To be honest, I mentioned that I don't like to be bored, so I like to try a ton of new hobbies and at the moment I am currently building out a van to live in, so I'm doing it from scratch, completely by myself, and that's involved learning a ton of new skills and hobbies. I have not used any power tool except for a drill before this, and now I have a whole closet full of different saws and drills and things like that, so it's been a really fun project. My next piece to tackle is the electrical work, so wish me luck on that. But that takes up most of my time at the moment and once the van is built I am going to be traveling. I love to be outdoors and hiking, paddle boarding, kayaking at the ocean, so really looking forward to some adventures there.

Speaker 1:
37:36

What are your best tips for organizing your day and staying productive while working remotely?

Speaker 2:
37:43

Another way that I stay organized and, I think, help my team stay organized is by making sure that we have agendas and then follow-up summaries for meetings.

Speaker 2:
37:52

I hate when we have a meeting and people come out and they're unclear and you ask people a couple of days later and they each have different answers or someone's done all this work that doesn't need to do so. I try to always have an agenda document linked in any calendar invite, share it with the team before ask people to add to it. That can also help you determine if you even need to have that meeting, whether there's stuff on the agenda or the stuff that is there can just be knocked out on Slack. And then afterwards I, or whoever is presenting, I always ask them to send a summary and just make sure everybody is completely aligned on what needs to be done after, and I find that really helps stay organized because you can also make sure you're aligned on deadlines and when things will get done, and I hate having to drop everything to go shift to a project. That happens Sometimes, it's just unavoidable. But for the most part I try to stay as organized as possible with those prioritization type of conversations to make.