Brave New Workforce

Meeting fatigue is very real now that we’re all doing things digitally. If you’re on the job market and looking to get hired remotely, Larry, Trip, and Anna share their tips on how to give a good first digital impression. They cover how to practice for an interview, to improve your energy levels, and to think about having a backup plan when technology fails.
Key Takeaways
How do you present yourself in a positive light while conducting job interviews remotely?
Some people in tech look down on you because you wore a tie to an in-person interview!
Anna shares how you can make a good first impression from a distance.
Why shower for a video meeting?
What are the subtle differences between a remote interview vs. an in-person interview?
15-20 minutes before a meeting, Anna will make sure all her equipment (sound, camera, etc) is working.
It might not come naturally, but being able to express yourself/emote while looking at a screen can go a long way.
Move your body. The voice reacts to your movements.
How do you convey who you actually are over video?
Larry positions the webcam strategically so that you’re looking at the person when talking to them.
Larry has had software and computers fail him; he offers tips on how to properly prepare for that.
Power stances help greatly to build confidence and bring positive energy.
Trip finds when you’re prepared, you have more confidence and you’re ready to tackle what’s thrown at you.
It’s important to remember that forgiveness needs to happen on both sides. From a manager’s side, does it really matter if your employee or teammate is not smiling on the video?
As a hiring manager, you’re interviewing hundreds of people, the candidate might not be as familiar with this online stuff as you are.
Do all meetings have to have video required?
Record yourself to get the video practice you need. Practice makes perfect.
Resources
Thebraveworkforce.com (http://thebraveworkforce.com/)
Bravenewcompanies.com (http://bravenewcompanies.com/)
TED Talk — Your Body Language May Shape Who You Are (https://www.ted.com/talks/amy_cuddy_your_body_language_may_shape_who_you_are?language=en)

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bravenewworkforce.substack.com

There are some negative things coming out in the news about remote work. Do they have some merit or are they coming from a place of inexperience? Larry, Trip, and Anna have been working remotely for a long time and they’ve seen the true reality of what remote work can do for an organization, both good and bad. They share some of the negative counterpoints that have been said about remote work and offer advice on how leaders, and other people, can best adapt to this new environment.
Key Takeaways
The negative connotations about remote work. Invested interest or valid points?
Remote work isn’t new, but it’s become a larger issue because we’re all now forced to work remotely.
Does remote work stifle innovation and creativity?
Are remote employees not as respected as their peers in the office?
Trip argues the technicalities and the word definition of ‘remote.’
We are having Zoom fatigue and that’s because our meeting culture is broken.
Companies that are successful in being a remote company will be the ones who are innovating within their culture.
Remote work is a completely different animal. You have to adapt to a new medium instead of trying to fit a physical model (what you used to know) into a digital model.
You can build a culture to make everyone working for you accountable for their work.
You, as a leader, don’t want to be so critical that your team can accomplish nothing without you.
It’s easier in a physical setting to have things slip through the cracks or people forget important to-dos after a meeting. In a remote setting, there is often a paper trail and it’s harder for people to take a back seat to the team.
A recent study came out that there was an eight-percent jump in people violating ethical standards when shifting to a remote model. What’s going on here?
Poor behavior will improve dramatically when everyone knows you can’t get away with harassment and bullying anymore.
At Amazon, Trip experienced a very collaborative environment where leadership empowered their teams to act.
Are people not being as productive at home vs. the office?
Leaders and executives will be asking how they can help create boundaries for their staff so that they can have a better work/life balance.
Anna knows the struggles of balancing work and life. She has to be conscious of when life is going too far to the right or too far to the left on the work/life scale.
Trip has worked with teams in India. It’s hard. Shifting your life by 11 hours is tough, especially when you do need to communicate.
Larry has also had to manage and talk to teams in different time zones. He shares how he best navigated this.
Anna shares her experience on how you can use time zones to your advantage.
Culture eats strategy for breakfast. Remote work has to be a cultural change within your company.
How can you empower your people to be more independent in their work?
For leaders, how can they become more adaptable and flexible so they’re not out of a job in six months?
Either you and your leadership adapt or a company that’s more flexible will take over. Remote work isn’t going to go away. This pandemic might not end as soon as you think.
Remote work doesn’t have to be completely black and white. You have the control to design a life you want. You no longer need a company to design it for you. Remote work allows you to choose what you value.
Resources
Thebraveworkforce.com (http://thebraveworkforce.com/)
Bravenewcompanies.com (http://bravenewcompanies.com/)

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bravenewworkforce.substack.com

Companies calculate a Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) whenever one of their staff relocates and moves to a state that either has an incredibly high cost of living (California) or a low one (Iowa). However, as more companies become remote and people get to decide where to live, is COLA still relevant, and more importantly, is it still fair for the employee? Companies are saving thousands in commercial real estate and retention perks by having their employees go remote, so why are they so picky about COLA? Anna, Larry, and Trip discuss.
Key Takeaways
What is COLA?
Trip left the Bay Area as an economic refugee. He didn’t want to choose between paying rent vs. having another child.
Anna lives in Costa Rica, a vacation spot. It must be incredibly expensive to live there? Not so fast.
Major tech companies are announcing that you can work remotely… permanently. What’s happening here?
Companies are saving so much money on real estate alone right now.
Larry doesn’t think it’s right that just because you move from an expensive area to a less expensive area, you should get paid less for the same amount of work.
Companies are willing to spend big $$$ on all these crazy perks, like massages and free food because they want to retain you.
Zapier offered employees $10,000 to leave California. They knew the quality of life was going down. They wanted their employees to be happy, they wanted them to stay with them, so they asked them to leave the state.
An amazing retention strategy could very well be giving your employees the freedom of choice to live wherever they want.
These perks that Silicon Valley companies offer, they do not work! The average tenure for an employee is 13–24 months.
The cost to replace an employee is about half of their annual salary.
Trip makes a counter-argument about relocation. What happens if you get 53 more days back in your life (by not sitting in traffic) and you can use those days however you want? We’ll just pay you a little less compensation-wise.
Anna used to sit in traffic for five hours a day. Now that she’s remote, she cooks her own meals, she is learning a new language, there’s so much time now to work on and do cool things!
If all of your companies are remote, do you stop subsidizing people to live in specific places? And, see compensation normalizing on a global level?
Income inequity is a big problem in the United States and a remote workforce could level the playing field.
Larry sees people leaving big cities and going back to rural communities. He thinks it’s a rebalancing of what happened during the Industrial Revolution. We should be reinvesting in smaller communities.
Larry believes by going to where the talent is, instead of having the talent coming to you, we will see a bigger boom in cultural and cognitive diversity.
Anna shares her experience working with diverse and remote teams throughout her career.
It’s been interesting to see some of the companies struggling right now. The ones thriving are the ones solving real problems for people and their staff. The ones that are having challenges are detached from what people really need and are offering them cool scooters to zip around in.
Whenever Larry had to consider a new hire, they always asked if they had enough ‘relo’ budget to bring someone out-of-state in.
Trip’s father and grandfather’s generation, they worked to get a gold watch. That was their career moment.
If you value diversity, you have to invest and take risks, and grow people.
Ideally, you want to hire the most qualified person for the job and also have the added benefit they’re different from you. Anna has seen it where employers hire someone based on race or gender because they’re just trying to fill a quota or box and their lack of skills or quality brings the whole team down.
College degrees used to open doors. That’s changing now. Companies have to up their game.
Trip has hired several people who didn’t have a college education because they had skillsets that were unique and highly sought after. He also compares it to the ivy league graduates who have walked through his door.
Where is COLA and all of this going to be five years from now? Trip, Anna, and Larry weigh in.
Resources
Thebraveworkforce.com (http://thebraveworkforce.com/)
Bravenewcompanies.com (http://bravenewcompanies.com/)

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bravenewworkforce.substack.com

Tom Pizzica is in the food business. When the pandemic hit, so many places had to shut their doors;not Tom. He trusted in his food and doubled down on a new way of serving his customers without taking on the challenges of take out that every chef secretly dreads. That meant tackling new problems in unfamiliar areas like logistics, and changing the way he thought about the business of food...that’s where we come in. Brave New Companies’ Trip O’Dell, Anna Codina, and Larry Cornett learn about Tom’s business model and share their expertise on how Philly Hots can optimize, automate, and streamline how Tom’s business works more efficiently and profitably while doing more of what he loves.
Key Takeaways
Tom shares how he fell in love with food and his early years in the business
Tom’s experiences in restaurants as a chef and owner, his experience with corporate catering helped him understand the business of food, and prepared him for his new endeavor.
The Pandemic helped Tom discover a new way to do what he loves, making it easier to bring families together with practical, family meals prepared fresh and ready to heat.
Right now, it’s just Tom and another team member helping him prep the food. Tom likes that he is running a lean team.
The biggest challenge for Tom tailoring his menus for foods is automating parts of the business like ordering process and getting the word, so he can focus on the parts of the business he cares about most.
How Tom is building his customer base?
Tom is unsure when to schedule the cut-off time for new orders coming in. It’s been a struggle because he wants more orders, but he can only order so much food before cooking day.
Anna recaps some of the struggles Tom is having:
1. Reduce ordering friction
2. Accurate measuring of the quantity of food
3. Grow the business beyond friends and family
How is Tom accepting payments?
Tom is unsure about doing a subscription model this early on in his business.
The good news is the problems that Tom is facing are the exact same problems companies like eBay and Amazon are facing, just at a smaller scale.
How does Tom manage his margins?
The goal would be for Tom to focus on being a creative chef and not stress out over the numbers.
Larry recommends to actively seek out partnerships in your community. What other local products would compliment your products?
Trip is a huge advocate of getting your data in order first. When that’s disorganized, it’s very hard to see clearly what’s the next step.
Tom right now is tracking all of his customers in his head. He knows that’s not the best way to do it.
Larry talks about the life cycle of a customer and how to best understand that in any business. He also offers recommendations to build customer loyalty.
Trip believes in creating small tests within the business to understand where it makes sense to grow and scale, based on the results you’re generating.
Tom tracks inventory in a simple spreadsheet. He doesn’t have a lot of time to mess with tools and technology. The good news here is that he can automate this process! You don’t have to boil the ocean overnight.
Tom knows that his life would be simplified if he hired one more person, but he is hesitant to bring someone in, due to COVID-19.
Anna, Trip, and Larry offer advice on easy ways Tom can simplify his business so that he can focus on what he does best.
Small businesses are the heart of the economy. That’s why Larry, Trip, and Anna are here to help. No one wants to see a family man go out of business.
Trip, Larry, and Anna share their final key takeaway that business owners can do today to optimize their business.
Stay tuned to next week’s episode, where your co-hosts talk about the cost of living adjustments. You can work remotely from anywhere… but you also get a pay cut — is that fair?
Resources
Thebraveworkforce.com (http://thebraveworkforce.com/)
Bravenewcompanies.com (http://bravenewcompanies.com/)
Bctbellyburgers.com (http://www.bctbellyburgers.com/)
Tom Pizzica on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/bigcheftom/?hl=en)
Special Guest: Tom Pizzica.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bravenewworkforce.substack.com

Welcome to The Brave New Workforce Podcast! Your hosts Trip O’Dell, Anna Codina, and Larry Cornett give a quick teaser on what’s to come and why they’re excited for the future of work. The way we’ve been working is outdated and it’s time we re-examine how we can optimize this so that we live happier lives without having to make substantial career and lifestyle sacrifices. This podcast is about finding happiness, balance, and ultimately, living a quality life filled with freedom.
Key Takeaways
Our traditional way of working is broken, now what?
Disaster is commonplace in our society. We’ll adapt. Remote work is one of those adaptations.
This podcast is about optimizing your happiness so that you can have the freedom to do the things you want to do.
Introductions: Who are your co-hosts? Anna goes first and shares her story and her background.
Who is Larry? Larry shares how he got his start into remote work and consulting.
Who is Trip? Trip shares his story. Self-proclaimed as ‘Forrest Gump: The Sequel.’
Why is Trip excited about this podcast? There are a lot of things about work that are broken, but these are easy problems to fix!
Larry’s excited because we’re in the middle of a revolution. Larry had to leave his family in the midwest to have a career. We don’t have to do that anymore.
Are Millennials the unluckiest generation in history? Anna shares why she’s excited about the future.
Resources
Thebraveworkforce.com
Bravenewcompanies.com

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bravenewworkforce.substack.com