Remote Work Productivity & Lifestyle

Allan of RemoteCompass  chats with Stephan Csorba of Csorba Media, a full-service web design, Wordpress, and app development agency.

Show notes:

• 99% of Stephan's customers are overseas (outside the Netherlands)
• Stephan operated offices in Brussels and Tokyo, on top of his Netherlands operations
• Their team worked with time differences across continents 
• They started companies in other countries in order to build stronger relationships
• Stephan books online meetings frequently in order to sync up with his global team and clients
• Stephan's day starts (at 9 am) and ends (at midnight) with online meetings
• Every project goes through Stephan in order to maintain quality 
• Flexibility enables Stephen's team to do business with international clients

Allan of RemoteCompass chats with Abhinav Chugh of Peoplebox, an employee engagement and performance platform for remote teams.

Notes:

• how managing remote/distributed teams is different (vs co-located teams)
• benefits of going remote: no need to dress up, reduce commute times, hire from anywhere in the world
• hiring people for a remote team is significantly different vs hiring someone for an office team
• self-driven people are right for remote
• one-on-one meetings are critical, especially for suddenly remote relationships
• we build relationships by breaking the bread together
• connecting personally is what differentiates teammates from 3rd party  suppliers
• building connections has been deprioritized in remote teams
• it's harder to separate work and life when you work from home
• if there's any reason for employees to go back from remote to the office, it's to separate work from life
• Allan's course on developing boundaries for remote work
• we used to separate work and non-work with physical constraints and older technologies

@AllanCaeg of RemoteCompass.com chats with Meryl Johnston, Founder & CEO of BeanNinjas.

Some highlights of this value-packed 20-minute conversation:

• "getting forced" into setting up as a remote team from the beginning and starting with building a location-independent business in mind
• growing a remote team of over 15 people across many different countries
• finding the best team members and the right culture fit (regardless of where someone's based)
• running team retreats to build rapport
• working with a weekly stream of job applicants by understanding culture fit, commitment, motivation, and ability to meet deadlines through online assessments
• meeting up with teammates and clients to build rapport (but staying productive via online collaboration)
• virtual summits are great for transferring knowledge, but they don't provide the same networking opportunities that you'd get from hallway conversations or lunch breaks spent together
• Find Meryl on Linkedin: https://au.linkedin.com/in/meryl-johnston-3a483728

Allan speaks with The Automator, Joe Glines. 

As a digital entrepreneur, running his operations remotely has been the default setup. 

Listen to this fun chat with the high energy Joe Glines, where we talked about:

• Windows Desktop automation with AutoHotkey
• How Joe automated tedious processes at his corporate job
• How Joe enjoys his work so much that he doesn't need an alarm clock to get up early
• Empowering the team to work with autonomy while focusing on the output
• Creating your own shortcuts with UI with QuickAccessPopup

Frank Rousseau of CG Wire chats with Allan about their remote operations and SaaS software for online collaboration.

Here are some takeaways from this conversation:

• Frank shares his experience leaving a VC-backed startup to run a remote SaaS company
• Transitioning from face-to-face networking to connecting with the audience online
• How to introduce a new product category to an audience that isn't actively looking for it
• Don't try to reproduce the traditional work environment as you switch to remote work

@AllanCaeg chats with Junaid Ansari of Draftss.

Here are some takeaways from this fun conversation:

• Growing and hiring aggressively amid the pandemic
• Reviewing pricing and packages to fit the market situation
• Coordinating various subject matter experts within the company
• Communicating your thought process to clients remotely

In this episode, we chat with the founder of the popular PomoDone app, Alex Mauzon.

Alex does what he preaches. Their product not only supports remote team collaboration. His team is composed of people from multiple countries as they collaborate via their cloud office.

Here are some takeaways from this packed conversation:

• Alex supports the individual's productivity while respecting their preferences and privacy
• Various factors affect one's productive hours: timezone/location, responsibilities at home, being a morning/evening person
• Competent project managers account for team members' productive hours to sync them up with the rest of the team

Find Alex on LinkedIn:  https://lt.linkedin.com/in/mauzon

Learn about PomoDone here:  https://pomodoneapp.com/