Latest / Humanity Working / Remote Work Toolkit with Jamie Ostroe

Transcript

Remote Work Toolkit with Jamie Ostroe · Humanity Working

• 0:07
  SPEAKER_01: It's a remote work world that we're living in, and you know, we this is really forcing businesses to adapt, to use technology, to collaborate.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, they're they need to use technology to track performance, they need to, you know, have better reporting, they need to ultimately do all these things, use technology so that they can win.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_03: Hey everyone.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_03: In today's episode, we have an interview with Jamie Ostro.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_03: Now, Jamie's the co-founder of B2B Reviews.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_03: It's a website that helps companies quickly source hardware and software to help them run their businesses.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_03: Recently, Jamie and her team wrote a great practical article called the Remote Work Toolkit.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_03: If you're a remote employee, it's likely to spark some ideas of what you need and what's missing to be really productive as a remote worker.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_03: And if you're an employer, well, it might spark some thoughts on what you should recommend or provide for your remote employees.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_03: We spent some time a few weeks ago talking about Jamie's own remote work experience and what's behind many of the recommendations.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_03: I hope you enjoy it.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_03: So I'm joined here by uh Jamie Ostro.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_03: It's great to have you here today, Jamie.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_03: Good to be here.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_03: Um tell me uh tell me a little bit about B2B Reviews.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_01: It's great to be here.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um so B2B Reviews is a software review and recommendation website.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_01: We started in June 2022.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: So we've only been uh a formed company for about six months.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I have my co-founder, Steven, he's uh located in Utah, Salt Lake City area, and I'm based here in Tulsa.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: So uh B2B Reviews is really free tools and resources for small to medium-sized businesses, um, startup founders, entrepreneurs, really any company that's using tech to scale or run their business.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_01: We have the resources and find guides and reviews for them to consume and use for free.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_03: Wow.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_03: And so where did the idea for it come from?
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_01: I love to work.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_01: I I've kind of get a it's kind of my hobby, it's my joy.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: But what I realize, what I do like to do, you know, what I like about work is is just being really effective and you know, optimizing systems and setting up things that, you know, really can scale for a company.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, Steve and I have the experience doing that.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_01: And when you're looking for software to use at work, that can be a multi-hour or multi-day process for business owners and especially these small businesses, like you know, I'm also a small business owner outside of B2B reviews.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: I have a yoga studio.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_01: So I know how time consuming and frustrating researching software can be.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_01: And we wanted to create a service that made it easier to made it just as easy to buy software as it is to order a pizza online, essentially.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_01: So taking this multi-hour, multi-day process and turning it into about a two to five minute reading experience for people.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, it really is interesting, isn't it?
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_03: Because on the on the one hand, if you think about what you need to do in order to be able to be successful at anything these days, um all of the tools that are out there uh uh are available to you, right?
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_03: So we can we can buy anything at a moment's notice, we can get information at a moment's notice.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_03: Um, everything is is to hand in ways that uh that it never was to hand before.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_03: But as that's happened, of course, what's happening at the same time is that we're getting overwhelmed by choice, right?
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_03: And so it's almost like a different thing you have to do these days, right?
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_03: Back in, you know, back in the day that you weren't choosing between, you know, 20 or 30 or 40 different items as you needed to fulfill, you know, part one of being a business.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_03: And you're doing that again and again and again across all of the all of these different areas.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_03: And that's what's taking the time now is just this navigating through all of the things that you could be picking and then figuring out which one is the best.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_03: Um, so yeah, I mean, it definitely seems like it's um it's fulfilling a market need.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_03: How things going in the business in general?
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_03: Are you are you getting traction?
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's been great.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, we we launched the site in August.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um we, you know, our traffic grows about 30% month over month, every month.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um we have about 16 partners so far, and um, it's still growing.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: So we're publishing new content, new categories every week, every month.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_01: And we have not quite 25 categories now, but we have about three times as many company reviews as we do buyers guides.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_01: So we're just continuing to fill out our our content and our authority.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_01: Being a brand new site takes some time, but you know, it's a long game that we're playing, so we're we're okay with that.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_03: And obviously, we'll put the uh the link to B2B reviews up there, but it's pretty simple.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_03: It's b number two breviews.com.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and uh and yeah, I mean, there's some great content on there, and we'll get into a little bit more of the detail of that later on.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_03: But um, I'm I'm curious.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_03: Obviously, the reason that we're having you on the podcast today is a very specific article that you've got on B2B reviews, which is this uh remote work toolkit.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_03: Now, I know that as you pointed out, there much of your content is really aimed at specific, I'd say, technology categories or or industry verticals.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_03: What led you to decide to research this?
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, I was thinking today is Friday the 13th, and I was remembering that it was a Friday the 13th in March in 2020 when I woke up to an email from my company, my previous employer, and it said, don't come into the office until further notice.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, then my day, my daughter's daycare started to close.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: My husband had to quit his job, so I could keep running my team of, you know, 15 plus people that was already mostly distributed, but mostly based in Tulsa.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, and the remote work shift was absolutely nuts.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: So I know from my experience that it took me personally weeks, months to really adapt to that.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_01: And I've, you know, from that day, that fateful Friday the 13th in 2020, to now, you know, I've now been working remotely for three years.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_01: So it's a remote work world that we're living in.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, we this is really forcing businesses to adapt, to use technology, to collaborate.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, they're they need to use technology to track performance.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_01: They need to, you know, have better reporting.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_01: They need to ultimately do all these things, use technology so that they can win.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: And BW Reviews readers are working remotely.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_01: So this does align with our audience.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_01: This is a topic our audience is inter is interested in.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and it's really, you know, it's a topic my co-founder and I have a lot of experience with.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we came from a remote first company.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, they're they're shifting back to the office in a hybrid schedule now, but our previous employer, you know, was very remote first company.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_01: We have distributed work first all over the country.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so this is just, it was a topic that was definitely resonates with our audience.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_01: And plus, it was fun to collaborate with you on this.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we are in a shared office space.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_01: We get to kind of bounce ideas off each other.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I would say it's also fun to work on an article where you get to shop online a little bit for your assignment.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so that was fun.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um but certainly it's definitely a topic that our readers would already be interested in.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, yeah, you really I I think put your your finger on it there.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_03: It's so interesting how this basically massive social experiment began um in for the vast majority of people, at least in the US, in in in March of 2020.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_03: And and I actually had forgotten that there was a there was a Friday the 13th in there, but that was a pretty uh pretty fateful Friday, the uh Friday the 13th for for you and and uh and many, many, many people uh around the country.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_03: And I and we've heard that a great deal.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_03: Obviously, in uh what we do at at Billy Mines involves an enormous number of interviews and uh and one-on-one uh connections with people that are uh that are working remotely.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_03: And I think the one thing that we've that we've really figured out is that there is a big, big difference between working from home or working out of the office, um, which we all have sort of some basic technology capabilities at this point that allow us to do it.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_03: In other words, pretty much everybody has an internet connection, right?
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_03: And uh pretty much everybody has a laptop at this point, um, and some means of being able to uh to do something approximating work out of the office.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_03: There's a big difference between that and doing it well.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_03: And I think what you've put your finger on in this article, which I think is great, is that doing it well consists of a bunch of different things, including not just the skills you have, which we'll talk about uh in a little bit, but then also the things you have, right?
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_03: And so um for for years, for decades, offices have put a lot of thought into what's the stuff that people need in order to be able to do their job well.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_03: And this is just that reinvented.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_03: It's that reinvented for, you know, for for this new world.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_03: And so I think it's it's extremely, extremely timely.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_03: And I love the fact that you've you've you've effectively got it all in one place, though, which is great.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I our conversation initially just inspired me even further, realizing that it wasn't just about tech or software or office desks.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_01: It was really this, it's just a nobody is gonna come out on the other side of this remote work world that we're living in, you know, in a positive way without being really intentional about their approach to it and acquiring the skills they need, like you, you and Ryan were you know talking to me about.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_01: It was just like, yes, this is this is really resonating with me.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_01: And I, and it really helped to shape and inform the categories of this toolkit that kind of helped to.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: So I see it as soft skills that you need to identify in like those soft skills are what are helping you know the difference between what's making you win, what's making you lose.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you need to look and acquire these soft skills to help you kind of shift from, you know, if you're if you're feeling really sad, like how can I feel happier?
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_01: If I'm losing, how can I win?
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_01: If I'm failing, how can I succeed?
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_01: Kind of so and uh, and really from the product and tech standpoint, it's what are those things that will help enhance this experience?
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_01: This deeper dive into the kind of the soft skills and the emotion and the control that you can have, and how can we enhance it with the right tools?
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, that sounds great.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_03: Um, so let's get into the specifics of it.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_03: So you've got a uh you've got a combination in there of software and physical items.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I'm really uh why don't you just I'll tell you what, why don't you just go into what the the overall categories are uh and then we can work our way through it.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, um it was we have tech and equipment.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, there's some things that are mixed in with the home office section, but we have tech and equipment, collaboration tools, home office supplies, snacks and drinks, and then a work from anywhere kind of category.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_01: But my thought here was, you know, what are what are kind of those key things that are going to um make my working from wherever I'm working experience what it needs to be?
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_01: Because, you know, I if anything, the pandemic taught me that there's no work Jamie and home Jamie.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_01: There's just Jamie.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_01: And it's, you know, wherever I am, that's who I am.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, I'm a wife, I'm a mom, I'm a daughter, a sister, an aunt.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_01: I'm also a friend and a coworker.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_01: So I really needed to make my new environment, working remotely at home, feel as productive and up to speed with what I was doing in an office setting because I realized that I needed to kind of make a more of a ceremony out of the shift to working in a new space, you know, add the things to my house that I needed that I didn't have, you know, get the desk.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_01: I was working off of this like antique secretary desk on a metal bar stool for like three weeks at the beginning of the pandemic.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, this clearly is not gonna be a long-term solution.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_01: So it was, and I think that, you know, it's just really, I've just had a lot of time to kind of think like these are the essential items.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_01: So we also uh surveyed users on Reddit to get their insight and saying, like, what is your work from home toolkit, you know, consist of?
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_01: We kind of led with what we were already thinking, but so we surveyed some people, we talked to some people um who are, you know, either working remotely or working in a hybrid environment and put all these things together.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_01: So um, you know, I just wanted a toolkit that would offer really tangible and actionable advice, plus a list of items that we actually use ourselves.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_01: So in these, and I don't know if you would want to go through the different sections, but um okay, great.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I was gonna say, I could even point out the things that I would say, yeah, I have that.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_01: You should get it.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_01: And trust me, this is what's a game changer.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_01: So it was fun to throw on stuff you have the experience with.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_03: You know, it's so funny, it's as you're talking about that there and you're talking about your own experience of like, hey, I gotta get, I gotta get serious about this thing.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_03: This is another area which I think is really intriguing, which is as we've as we've shifted from working in the uh in the office to working uh more completely outside of our own homes, it's sort of changing what we as individuals have to care about.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_03: So for example, if you just showed up to your office and they said, here's your desk, here's your desk lamp, I don't know, here's your uh you know, here's the keyboard, here's the mouse, here's the, you know, and you just you walk in the office, you've got the stuff you need to do in order to be able to in order to be able to do your job and kind of away you go.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_03: And as I mentioned just a little bit before, right, the companies have been thinking about what those things are for decades.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_03: But now a lot of the time, even if you're working for a larger uh corporation, you're now like making decisions about those things as an individual.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_03: You're making decisions about those things that you've never really had to make a decision about before.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_03: And what's intriguing is that the um the environment in which you are making those decisions is itself unique, right?
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_03: So your office space, if you run a cube, right?
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_03: Your cube was a specific size based on the uh on you know, job role and all that kind of stuff.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_03: And you had a desk of a standard size that would fit in it and all that kind of stuff.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_03: If you're working out of your home, it isn't that right.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_03: And you you know, if you're living in, if you're living in Tulsa, you might have a reasonably sized, you know, room you can get it in.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_03: If you're living in an apartment out of New York, you've probably got nowhere near that.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_03: So you have to make these these you know significant adjustments um to your home uh in order to be able to in order to be able to make it work really well for you.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_03: And I think that kind of comes through in the in the article as well, which I really like.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_03: Um all right, let's uh let's go into that first category, which uh from memory I think is tech and equipment.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it is.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_03: Um so um, yeah, talk about that.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_03: What's the uh what are the what's the main kit that you found people need?
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I um there is some overlap with what you would might see in the home office section as far as equipment goes, but I focused that section on really the stuff that you that mixes, it's stuff that you can take with you, whether you're at home or at the office.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_01: So the equipment that you need to really do your work.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_01: So wireless keyboard and mouse, um, a mouse pad and a wrist pad, you know, just getting yourself set up.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's the little things that you would just get kind of for free from the office manager, you know, and it's like, oh yeah.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know, and sometimes it's like there's people who maybe have worked from home for a year now at this point, um, where they haven't even gotten the proper equipment.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_01: It's always like, you know, I would get this mouse pad and this wrist, you know, and it's like, let's put that one on the list.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_01: And then we also have um the headset.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_01: This is actually one that, you know, was highly used by the company I worked for previously on the list.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_01: So it's really just having the high quality um equipment that you need to help you that you might have, you know, just not had the time to really go through Amazon and pick out one.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_01: But um you really just need things that are going to make it easy to transition from, you know, uh one office space to another, or you know, just just kind of stocking up on your home version of the tools that you were getting at work.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's interesting that one.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_03: Like the headset, for example.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_03: Um it sounds super straightforward, but I will say that um we've encountered people, for example, who worked in an office environment and they never thought about it, but there was something unique about that office environment.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe the uh maybe they worked in an office environment whereby their the installation was really good, they had their own office.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_03: Um, they never really heard anybody if the door was shut.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_03: So they never even had a headset, they didn't need it.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_03: They'd just uh they'd just be, you know, uh speaking through the uh through the speaker and and not even thinking about it.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_03: Then they transitioned to home, and I don't know, there are dogs or babies or or whatever it happens to be.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_03: And now all of a sudden they need one.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_03: So that's the uh that's the interesting thing as well, which is like something uh you start to have to think about what has changed about this new environment, and therefore what do you need that is different, or maybe an upgrade um to your it to your existing kit to kind of cope with with that environment.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_01: Because there's definitely, you know, there was people who didn't didn't adapt well uh early on when we have to shift to that.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it was because they were they really needed somebody to tell them exactly what to do and what exactly what to get.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_01: Like you need this, you need a keyboard, you need a mouse, you need a you know, all those things.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_01: So hopefully that my our list makes it real easy for people to just jump in, get the stuff they need to essentially.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, someone's like start there and then you know, it's like add, add, add, add all the added.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_03: And then uh and yeah, and then once you've done that, then uh then you can start to think about how you might tweak it a little bit.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_03: But it's great with that.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: Making remote work is brought to you by Billion Minds.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: Remote and hybrid is a new reality for organizations all over the world.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's one thing to support remote work, but entirely another to get strategic advantage from.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: Billion Minds helps organizations make remote actually work by giving employees and managers the critical skills they need to thrive in a world that is not centered around the traditional office.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to learn more about how we can help your organization, visit us at billionminds.com or email us for a free organizational assessment at info at billionminds.com.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: And be sure to mention making remote work in the subject line.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: Billion minds.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: Making remote work for everyone.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_03: All right, then you headed into collaboration tools.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_03: And I was uh I noticed you put us, the billion minds, in that category.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_03: So what was your rationale behind putting us into that category?
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_01: After talking with you and Ryan about remote work, I was really inspired by your mission to help employees develop these remote work skills.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_01: It's really not something I had heard somebody go into such such depth about before, even though I've been immersed in the remote work world against my will, really, for the last three years.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_01: So I was like, okay, yeah, these are the key skills.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_01: These are the areas that really help somebody do remote work well.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um it's you know, Zoom and email are not everything.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's really hard to create culture over the airwave.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_01: But I think what's also cool about Billion Minds is really um that not only does it teach and embed the skills that that the culture of your team really needs to thrive in a remote remote work world, it's it serves as a collaboration tool.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_01: So I, you know, I love using tech for work.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_01: I love using software that's fun and intuitive, a frictionless digital experience.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I and I and I love that Billion Minds actually ends up serving as a collaboration tool for teams.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_01: So it was just kind of hit all the marks uh as far as being part of a toolkit for remote teams.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and yeah, I wish I would have had it as a manager.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_01: I I needed it back when my team was much bigger.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's so interesting, actually, that you should mention it that way.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_03: Because I mean, obviously we think of ourselves as a as a skills development thing, but we've we've heard a couple of things um that have really surprised us.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_03: One is the exact point that you made there around like, okay, well, you know, we're it's not just individuals that need to be able to create these skills, right?
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_03: We need to create these skills as individuals, sure.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_03: But we need to also create these skills as a team.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_03: How you collaborate in a remote work environment is different to how you collaborate in uh in an in-person environment.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_03: Specifically, you tend to get a lot more collaboration that's happening asynchronously versus synchronously.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and so what are the skills that you need to be able to do that?
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_03: And those aren't just individual, they are they are team-level skills.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_03: So, in that sense, that was um, I'd say not um not exceptionally surprising for us, but it started to it started to happen that certainly inside smaller organizations, they start to think of it almost as a collaboration tool.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_03: Um, all right, so let's go into the home office uh setup.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_01: So you mentioned there's a little bit of overlap between that and the and the tech and equipment, but but talk through what's in there and yeah, the biggest difference to me kind of in this home office section of the toolkit is that I really for myself especially I've I'm trying to mimic that tech company startup environment in my home.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um that's the one big thing I noticed uh becoming a remote company when initially I, you know, I've been in person every day with my teams, um, you know, here in Tulsa.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_01: And it I was like, man, one thing that kind of unified all of us was being able to be in this beautiful office space.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_01: It really inspired you.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_01: It made you feel like you were working for something that was bigger than you and and exciting and new.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_01: So anything that we could, you know, I could bring into my house that made that work, that work from home experience feel like I was still at a startup or a tech company.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, this we we know that from an ergonomic standpoint, standing desks are better.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, find a good price for a standing desk on Amazon.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_01: Like that doesn't take too terribly long, but I went ahead and did that.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's like I would buy this desk, this standing desk, like we know they're better.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, Reddit, one of our Reddit users commented and said, an essential oils diffuser.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, say less.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_01: I am all about essential oils.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_01: So I would definitely put one of those on the list.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and you know, little things like the chair on the list.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Steven owns that chair.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_01: I just bought the chair and had it's in my Office now, kind of an ergonomic armrestless uh chair.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um, what else is in there?
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_01: The HP display is you know, just having a second screen.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_01: It's like maybe your company provides the screen that you get to use when you're in office some days.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_01: But if you need a second display, you know, that was something that for three years I didn't have because I just didn't want to go and figure out which one to get.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_01: But now, you know, it's like get this one.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_01: Same thing with the printer.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_01: Steven has that one and he would tell you all day.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_01: He's like, laser jets are better than inkjets because they won't dry out.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I, and you know, it's just like we had a lot of opinions about this home office equipment that we really felt like, yeah, they need this, they need that.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_01: So speaking from experience for sure on that section.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_03: You know, it's really interesting.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_03: One thing I'd add in there, Jamie, which um is in we're seeing increasingly with with billion mines users, um, this challenge between um creating enough separation between uh between work and the rest of your life, right?
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_03: So we know that um one of the potential downsides, particularly if you're working from home versus working, say, in coffee shops and things like that, is creating that separation.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_03: Um so you wind up where work and the rest of your life start to merge together.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and then that can cause motivation challenges and burnout and things like that.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_03: We often have people that speak to us, talk to us about the idea of, you know, they never get excited to go to work because they never leave it.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_03: Or, or, you know, they go from a phrase that we hear quite often is, you know, I've gone from uh working from home to living at work, or at least it feels like that.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you know.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_03: So, so what's really cool about if you like, I want to say almost like the professionalness of the of the home office setup that you've got there.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_03: Part of the goal of that for many people is uh should be to create a physical space that yes, it's within your home, but it feels like it's for work.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_03: That's and you go to it.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, right.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_03: So we have we even have people who, you know, who've like um created and and actually I did this in my uh in the my my previous home where they've created like a sh a shed or something like that, which is like their their office and they walk to work.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, right.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_03: So they can they go out of the they go out of the back door or they walk to work and they're in this uh they're this separate space.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_03: But what you're creating is like a version of that.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_03: And one thing I would add is that if you do that, that is your physical space helping you create that separation, that transition between work and non-work.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, as much as you can if you do that, that's your space, that's your place for work and just for work.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, yeah.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_03: So don't hang out there and watch, don't hang out in that same space and watch Netflix.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, right.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_03: Exactly.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_03: Don't hang out in that same space and do other stuff.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_03: If you're going to do other stuff that is not related to work, leave that space and go somewhere else.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_03: And then once people do that, that can really help with uh a transition between uh between one environment and the other.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and so your your kit, your setup, I think really, really does help with that.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_03: Great.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_03: All right, let's move on to uh let's let's move on to to uh the category that that I loved.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_03: And it sounds so freaking simple, um, but snacks and drinks.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_03: So tell me about that.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, I think too, what I had in mind was, you know, from my experience, you know, for the companies that maybe have a distributed workforce, they have some in office or some, you know, not in the office.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_01: I really that's one thing I miss about my previous employer was the snacks in the office.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_01: So just kind of creating just mindfully and having fun with it to create the environment you want.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you need a break room, you need snacks, you need nourishment.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, LaCroix is a is a favorite uh at the on B2B reviews team, um, just as an option for a non-caffeinated version of, you know, to get you through the day.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_01: We drink a lot of that.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_01: We had a lot of that at our at our old uh company as well.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_01: So it's just kind of a little shout out to that.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_01: But um really, and you know, nuts and those Wella bars, that was a really hard thing to find a way to purchase those online very easily.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_01: But the the, I mean, there's like, you know, the things that you learn working in the world of tech are really what are the best snacks?
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_01: Like that's that's yeah, because it's like, I don't know, they had grassbed beef jerky, but here we are, and now I'm addicted to it.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_01: So those are our if we had to, we had to cut it off at some point.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_01: So those are the snacks that made the list, but that was a fun section to do.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, and the yeah, and I would say I could not make a cup of coffee to save my life during the pandemic.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_01: So the splurge on that list is the Nespresso machine that literally a pod and press one button, it'll it's that was a game changer.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_01: So you need that.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_03: Absolutely.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_03: Because it's less important about whether people like LaCroix or whether they like something else.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_03: What the the point is that what you've done is you've looked at it almost from the perspective of mentally I associate these things with work.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, right.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_03: And so, and so those things are now part of your environment.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_03: So we've even seen this with other things that are related to it.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_03: I did a uh remote work tip recently and and uh where we talk about music.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_03: And specifically, we talk about whether you should play music or whether you should not play music and what to be able to help you focus.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_03: And that's a very, very it turns out it's a very individual topic, and there are certain pieces of uh areas of where neurodiversity fits into this and so on, whereby in some cases music can really, really help really help you focus.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_03: But one of the other things that we found out, which is really interesting, is that you might have like a piece of music that that is in your past and it tended to be on when you were getting a ton of stuff done.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_03: And if you play that same piece of music, pretty much guarantee that you'll be working away like crazy just because your brain is hearing that piece of music that I don't know, maybe you were doing you doing your finals at college or something like that, and it was playing in the background, and now you're back in that mode and just like writing, writing, writing, or whatever it happens to be.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_03: The snacks are like that, right?
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_03: So, in other words, if it's like if you're in your brain, this drink or this snack is associated with getting stuff done, that drink and that snack, specifically that drink and that snack can can really help.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_03: So you kind of like like key in on that, just a tiny thing, but with actually a ton of meaning in our uh in a remote, remote work center.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you need the it's the just even the ritual of having that first cup of coffee.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_01: And if your ritual involved the coffee that you got at your office and your life is lacking, is just again, like it's one of those things where you just have to stop and ask yourself like, why is my morning not as enjoyable as it used to be?
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_01: And especially for those who really want to embrace the digital nomad lifestyle or go 100% remote work and never go to an office again, you have to create the environment that you all thrive in.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_01: And we don't have to reinvent the wheel.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_01: We know that having, you know, well-stocked fridges and you know, morning routine and all the things, the equipment you need in hand is part of that.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_01: So it's good to force yourself into being responsible now for these new these new things like keeping the LaCroix stocked in the fridge.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_03: Absolutely.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_03: All right, and then uh I think we're now down to the final category.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_03: I think so that so work work from anywhere.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_03: So um, okay, let's let's get into this because this is actually something that comes up, I would say, a lot.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and it's actually one of the questions whereby the people ask us the most about, which is like okay, I'm getting how like working out of the office is different to working in the office.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_03: But is working from home different from work from anywhere if it is how?
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_03: Because a lot of times people use those terms very interchangeably.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but you've got specific kit for work from uh for work from anywhere versus work from home.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_03: So why do you think we need different or additional kit for a work from anywhere scenario?
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_01: My perspective on it is, you know, even for people that are going back to the office or are in some type of hybrid, you know, schedule, we'll continue to work remotely because of the fact that our colleagues are in other states.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_01: So I kind of view working remotely.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, and so almost like district.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, at any given point, even if I'm in the office, which, you know, this the incubator that I work out of is not technically um the entire company's headquarters because my coworkers in Salt Lake City, but you know, that's the office for me.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_01: And but I'm still working remotely with my uh with Steven because we have to do everything over Zoom.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_01: So it's really just like, okay, well, this is the world we live in.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_01: Even even if I go to an office or if I'm at home or if I'm traveling or if I really want to be at the digital nomad that I dream of being, um, you need to have equipment that's gonna help you keep the the weight light on that you're you know, transporting back and forth.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you really want to have a good ergonomic, productive setup, no matter where you work from.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, the the things that I include in the work from anywhere playlists are actually, you know, there's a Spotify study playlist, there's an Apple Music study playlist, um, there's the collapsible, easily transported laptop stand, right?
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_01: So it's kind of like I can make my setup at this coffee shop just as comfortable and productive as my setup sitting at my desk.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_01: So, and that's really the future.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_01: Because again, like even if you are working from an office five days a week, you know, you have times where you're gonna go off campus to go work from a coffee shop or, you know, a cafe or something.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_01: So that's it's like if you're not getting into these products that make that easier, like the Remarkable Tablet, which is you know, eliminating the need to carry around paper all the time, um, or the Brompton bike that can get you from one place to another.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_01: It's like these are just new, cool products that are available to us that a lot of people don't know about.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_01: And this is, you know, we're gonna continue to need to be flexible and agile.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_01: And um, you know, if we can be as productive from anywhere as an employee as we are from the office, then our our bosses and our colleagues have that trust in us.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_01: We can, we can really truly live the life we want, have the schedule that we want, um, because we can be productive from anywhere.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_01: And that's the goal for me.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_03: In a sense, you're saying if you work in a distributed team, you are remote.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_03: You're remote from those, from those other people.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_03: It doesn't matter whether you're showing up to the office or not, right?
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_03: And so it's that's really intriguing because a lot of organizations think about you know hybrid as being a very unique thing.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_03: In reality, hybrid implies some people in the office, some people out of the office.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_03: And in the office or out of the office is uh could be a statement about you as a person, in other words, you're 100% in the office or 100% out, or it could just be a statement of time, right?
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_03: So, as in you're in the office today, but this afternoon you're not, or this evening you're not.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_03: That's pretty much once you once you broaden it in that way, because we all go home, right?
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_03: And some of us do some work when we're at home, in that sense, we're all remote.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_03: And in a sense where almost all of us are working with people that are not in the same space as us, we're all remote.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_03: So so I'm kind of like like picking up what you're saying there.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_03: And and in a sense, what you're just what you're saying is we're all remote now.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and so then the question is given that we're all remote, um, what is it that we need in order to be able to do great work from anywhere?
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_03: And that could be the office this morning, and it could be, you know, a lunchtime meeting, and it could be, oh man, I'm a my kid's ball game, but I gotta get this thing done.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_03: You know, those kind of things that is pretty much universal.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_03: And people need uh people need that stuff to be able to uh to be able to help them do it well.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_03: So I think it's there's the there's something really, really intriguing behind that as well.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_01: For me, the goal is to love.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_03: So uh sorry, go ahead.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you the goal is to love working from anywhere and to do it really well.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_01: You know, that's that's what even B2B reviews is about.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_01: It's like do the work you do really well, no matter where you are, no matter what your office looks like or your you know, schedule.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_03: It's so important, Jamie.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, that like sometimes we have to do work when maybe times when we didn't intend to or didn't want to, or from places we didn't intend to or didn't want to.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_03: So if we can create this kind of toolkit, like toolkit you're talking about, that's just gonna make it a little bit easier for uh for just about everybody, regardless of whether they're um, you know, their official title is that they're a remote worker or something like that.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_03: Anyway, I know that uh coming into this, this wasn't a, as you mentioned, you had some personal experience of this, but it wasn't like a core area of expertise for you.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_03: Um when you, as you got into researching this area, you know, obviously you spoke to us, you spoke to the Reddit community, you um, you spoke to a whole bunch of people that were uh were working out of an office.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_03: Um, what would you say were kind of like your main like aha moments?
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_03: And what did what what were some of the main learnings you got?
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_03: What really surprised you?
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know, uh reflecting on this, um, you know, I was thinking for me in general, just the last six months of my life, you know, have have been a really a big season of transition, a big season of change, you know, um, leaving a job that I had for 10 years, starting a new business, right?
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_01: Uh up, flipping my schedule upside down, getting an office space, all these things.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_01: So it was, I really had the opportunity to create the schedule, the environment that I wanted for myself.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I was really fortunate to have done that.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, I work from an incubator office space in downtown Tulsa Monday through Friday while my daughter's in school.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I also work from home Monday through Friday.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_01: After I take my daughter, I pick her up from school and we go home and I finish my day from about 3:30 to 5:30 or 6.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_01: I work from home.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_01: So I realized that like I could have that life.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_01: This is possible.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_01: I could really, I could be a good co-founder, I could be a you know, a great business owner and have time back with my family, with my daughter.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I could the commute every day could be part of my time with her.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so I, but you know, just really being mindful.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_01: And yes, I was forced to kind of recreate this schedule for myself, but there's a lot of people who maybe were forced into a remote work or they were forced back into the office and they just really haven't taken the time to pause and say, what works for me?
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_01: You know, what equipment do I need?
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_01: I am not comfortable at my desk.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_01: I don't have the cup of coffee that I wanted that I would usually get in my commute.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_01: You know, there are little tiny things that just add up that can kind of create an environment that people are not going to be productive in.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, I like I said, you know, my coworkers are all in different states.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm working remotely no matter where I am.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I'm really coming away from the research with the realization that the way we work is dramatically different than it was um, you know, March 12th, 2020.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, it was very different then than it is, you know, in the middle and the kind of the heart of the pandemic.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's different than it was, you know, even a year ago.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_01: So the way we're working is is very different.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_01: And many of us didn't adapt well to it then.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_01: And there's a lot of people still who haven't really adapted to it three years later.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_01: So it's just it's time.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_01: And it really kind of brought it to the forefront for me, um, hearing your perspective on all of it and really understanding more of like what makes working remotely work.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_01: So I was happy for that.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I would say, you know, the principles that Billion Minds is teaching and the skills around, you know, maintaining organization, control, motivation, balance, you know, resist resilience, those are all really, those are all things that really resonated with me through this research.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_01: I think the world needs to continue to get better at remote work.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_01: And now's the time.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_03: So well, thank you so much, Jamie.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_03: Really appreciate it.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_03: Um, it's a reminder it's B2B reviews.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_03: There's the remote work toolkit on there.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_03: Um, we'll actually put a link directly to the remote work toolkit um in our show notes.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_03: Uh so if you're uh listening to this and just take a look at the show notes um and you'll be able to see a link directly to it with all of the things that uh that Jamie has mentioned there.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_03: Um and I just want to say thank you so much for joining us to uh today, Jamie, and uh and very best of luck with with B2B reviews and of course with the uh remote work journey for you and uh and all of your employees.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, thanks, Paul.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_01: It was a lot of fun.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_01: Appreciate it.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_00: Making remote work is brought to you by Billion Minds and produced by me, Matt Neal.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_00: If you enjoyed the episode, please subscribe, write us a review, rate us on iTunes, and wherever you listen to your podcasts.
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_00: Are you one of the more than one billion people who work out of a formal office setting at least one day a week?
• 38:39
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