The Remote Work Revolution

Uncover the transformative power of remote work with Brittany Rastsmith, founder of Bloom Remote, as she guides us through the evolving landscape of virtual workplaces. Brittany is a 15 year veteran of working remotely and shares her unique insights into the pivotal shifts occurring in remote work, and how these changes have reshaped opportunities for startups and small companies. Learn about the challenges and solutions for managing remote teams, and why rethinking traditional office norms is essential for productivity and a supportive work environment.

We explore the intricacies of managing remote teams where maintaining employee engagement and morale is crucial. Brittany discusses the importance of clear expectations, trust, and the impact of technological advancements on remote roles.

Gain valuable strategies for managing up in remote work, tackling trust issues, and enhancing productivity through effective communication. Brittany provides insights into managing performative busyness, balancing personal life, and understanding the skills needed to achieve flexibility and efficiency in remote work. From fostering growth through training to redefining cultural norms, Brittany's journey with Bloom Remote exemplifies the potential of remote work as a transformative force in today's business world.

Don't forget to check her services at https://www.bloomremote.com

Chapters

• 0:00 Navigating Remote Work Challenges
• 11:43 Remote Work Challenges and Solutions
• 20:38 Work-Life Balance in Remote Work
• 24:53 Managing Up in Remote Work
• 31:52 Challenges of Remote Work Transition
• 37:55 Shifting Mindset for Remote Work
• 49:21 Revolutionizing Remote Work Practices

Transcript

Victor: 0:00

Welcome everyone to the I'm Not Dumb but Podcast. I'm your host for today, victor, joined always by Rob Hello and Chris Yo. On this episode, we will be joined by Brittany Rasmuth. Brittany is the founder of Bloom Remote, with its mission to help mid-career women navigate the challenges of remote work. She has over 15 years of experience working remotely and will help us answer the question I'm not dumb, but how do I work remote? Welcome to the I'm not dumb but podcast, where we won't claim to have the answers to life's deepest questions, but we'll give you an exciting journey into the realms of knowledge you never knew you'd need.

Victor: 0:39

Might be mainstream, but not common knowledge. From artificial intelligence to conspiracy theories, no topic is too taboo for us to explore. Let's get curious together. Brittany, welcome to the show. Glad you can join us For our listening audience. She is joining us remotely, which is not part of a bit, but maybe it is, You'll never know. So let's just talk about remote working in general. So the federal government and the means of production owners are championing the end of working from home. Is remote working still a thing? Is it declining?

Brittany: 1:17

It's all anyone wants to talk about and it's because it's so in your face. But you have to contextualize what's happening. People have been working remotely for decades. When I was growing up, my dad worked completely remotely when you used to have to do that without computers. He used to mail everything for all of his cross-country training and he did a lot of system of care work. It's always been happening. It's been picking up pretty steadily. We had this I don't know if you guys remember the pandemic, but it kind of made us go like this from our regular arc I think I'm familiar with that All of a sudden, tons of people were working from home, but most of them were working from home really poorly.

Chris: 2:00

They weren't prepared.

Brittany: 2:02

There were no systems in place, the businesses didn't know how to handle it, the managers didn't know how to manage it, the people didn't know what to do with themselves and, quite frankly, most of them weren't sitting in nice, quiet home offices. They were sitting at a kitchen table with their spouse, who was also trying to work from home in an organization that didn't know how to do it with maybe a couple of kids who were doing online school, which was terrible.

Brittany: 2:25

And so, first off, all of a sudden, we had way more people working from home than you would expect, given the regular curve of how these things build over time, and a lot of them had a really terrible experience, and I think those two things together really made us ripe for a big social backlash, and that's what we're seeing right now.

Victor: 2:44

So it's just companies or people are just like. I didn't have a good experience with this. It obviously doesn't work right.

Brittany: 2:51

So a lot of smaller companies and especially startups, are still I don't want to say predominantly, because I can't back that up but there are a ton of smaller companies and startups that are fully remote, have been since conception, probably will be until a point where they get so big that they can't. If that happens and I think for many people in that position, it feels really bad when you're in a remote situation and you feel like you don't know how to manage your workers anymore, and so for those who are able to figure it out and really capitalize on it, it's a huge hiring advantage. People are saying now that for every remote job they post, they get 500 applicants because people want to work remotely so much, and some of these big companies are closing their doors to that.

Brittany: 3:35

It also lifts geographic restrictions, you can hire people from anywhere. But if you don't feel like, as the person, as the means of production owner, that you can really control your situation, if you don't know how to use it in a way that makes you feel comfortable with the way that you're spending your company's resources, which are designed to improve your company right, most people don't run companies for charity.

Rob: 4:00

They're hiring people because they have work to get done, and if you feel like you can't do that very well, I can see why it's easy to just try and yank everyone back where you can stand over their shoulder, instead of learning how to really manage remotely or otherwise honestly, yeah, the biggest problem I ever had with remote work because I only got to do like a couple of days a week is that they still wanted me to act like I was in an office, like I still had to come in or sign in at a certain time, sign out at a certain time, even if it didn't work out Like we were all in the same area.

Rob: 4:32

So everyone you know the meetings and everything's still set up, but it was like I had. I was at home and I was like I'm free and I felt good about the work I'm doing. I was like I know what I got to do, I got to do this, but they still tried to make me feel like I was in the office. Do you still find that? I mean, is that part of the?

Brittany: 4:53

bad system, what is the best system? I love this. This is one of my favorite topics about remote work, because I really think it's a total game changer at the individual level and the organizational level. When you're in an office, you're expected to be there for a certain amount of time.

Brittany: 5:06

Most people right and you have to stay there. I really clearly remember my first job in college. That was a regular 40-hour-a-week office job I had over the summer. They would give me, if I was lucky, three hours of work a day and at first I made the total rookie mistake. No, no, no, there's research on this. Most white collar workers who work in the office, Um, oh, I shouldn't say most. I can't remember the exact parameters of the survey, but um, on average, they were finding that these people feel like they did, I think something like two hours and 48 minutes just under three hours of productive work a day.

Brittany: 5:43

And the rest of it is meetings that they didn't feel were productive checking email, small talk, lunch trying to look busy.

Victor: 5:52

I figured most of my time was spent seeing how I'm going to spend my paycheck on Amazon.

Brittany: 6:00

And you're not alone. You're not alone. I will never forget. And that very first job I had is I'm sitting there dying. Because I'm a very active person. I like to be doing something that feels like it's moving things forward for me all the time, from when I wake up to when I go to bed, and it is exhausting, but it's just how life is. And I remember going to my father and being like dad, I don't know what to do, they're not giving me enough work, I'm so bored, and when I try to ask for more, they're starting to get pretty mad at me.

Victor: 6:32

I actually had one of the older ladies on my team say something to the effect of will you shut up? We have it so good.

Rob: 6:34

You're going to ruin it for everyone.

Brittany: 6:37

You're ruining this for us, exactly, exactly. I was, and my dad was like Brittany, try to be cool. Why don't you work on your senior thesis?

Chris: 6:45

when you get done, why don't?

Brittany: 6:46

you play a game on your computer, why don't you, whatever it is right, do job hunting, since clearly you don't like this? But what you shouldn't do is complain. Part of the code of the office is not to show your hand if you're not working all the time. Now, suddenly, we're working remotely and your manager is like, oh God, ok, what does managing mean? Well, I know that a big part of managing has been making sure that my people work 40 hours a week.

Rob: 7:10

Right.

Brittany: 7:11

Like we all agree, that's a huge part of working in an office.

Victor: 7:14

If their butt is in the chair, they're working.

Brittany: 7:16

Yes Button seat time.

Brittany: 7:21

It's like a core business success metric, apparently. Anyway, so when you're measuring to that in someone's remote, you end up in this technological arms race trying to trick each other in who can. Are you sitting there? Oh yes, I'm totally sitting here and you do something to make it look like you are, to keep your teams on, to make your mouth jiggle, and you're measuring the wrong things. None of that matters. What should matter is whether or not you're accomplishing what your position is supposed to accomplish. If you're accomplishing what your position is supposed, to accomplish.

Brittany: 7:44

If you're a project manager, are you hitting your deadlines? Are you moving the project forward? Are you garnering whatever the success metrics are for that project? If you are a salesperson, are you hitting your numbers? If you're gosh, if you're in customer success, are you answering a certain volume of calls with a certain satisfaction score? It's more complicated than that and that's kind of the point. I think. I've talked to so many managers who say, well, sure, for a salesperson it's easy to have numbers, but how on earth can I define what success looks like for all these other positions? And to that I would say what the hell kind of irresponsible business owner doesn't know what he's hiring people to do? You know?

Victor: 8:24

Yeah, like is the task getting done that I've assigned to them? If it's not, obviously it's not.

Brittany: 8:29

Like why would you hire someone without work? That's such bloated bureaucracy. If you need something to be done and you need a human resource to do it, so you hire someone who has the skills. You can get it done. Now, if I can do any metric you want, if I can stay on task with my projects, if I can move 100,000 units a month, whatever it is in 20 hours a week, chris can do the same thing in 10 hours a week, but it takes poor Victor 50 hours a week. Should it matter? Or should it matter that we're all moving our units, units?

Rob: 9:00

I think it's just like such a tangible thing when the when the manager walks by, he can see it, he can go to your desk and he feels better, he or she feels better, right, he or she?

Rob: 9:13

does Right, but it's not. It's not the case. Like when people used to work from home, they they were like, oh yeah, john's working from home, and it was kind of like they're probably mowing their lawn right now. Like let me call him and see, maybe he's at BJ's or something. You know what I mean. Like or Costco or whatever.

Victor: 9:28

Was that like before, like cause? I remember before the pandemic, when you found out someone was working from home, that was like how did they swindle?

Chris: 9:35

that Like what?

Brittany: 9:36

scam are they running?

Victor: 9:38

that they got to work from home in every day.

Brittany: 9:41

So I have to say this, I have to put this out there in defense of remote workers. I work with a lot of remote workers Obviously I'm a remote work coach and consultant and I've been a remote worker for about 15 years and what is far more common is people that are working way, way, way too much because they're afraid to ever say enough and put everything away at the end of the day, because they're worried that people will think that they're not really working. And so we've come up with remote performative busyness.

Chris: 10:11

I don't know that's such a horrible thing because, like when you're at work, even though I'm not doing anything, like no one bothers me, right, because they think I'm working because I'm sitting in front of my computer. But when you work from home, I get constant calls, emails to make sure that I am working. After a certain point I was like I can't take this anymore, so I would just show up to work. Just less hassle, less hassle. Yeah, I don't have to deal with all the BS and you know, yeah.

Rob: 10:37

You're in consulting. So when you meet, you meet with employers or do you meet with the managers? Do the companies hire you Like? How are you helping I?

Brittany: 10:46

do work with individuals at the individual contributor and at the manager level, and I also work with mostly startup founders right now to work at the whole company level, and I really like doing both because I feel like it helps me maintain both perspectives instead of you see some people that become wild champions of remote work from the individual side.

Chris: 11:09

They're like anything you want goes Everything should be perfect.

Brittany: 11:11

There's not enough perks in the world. Don't make people work at all and you're like well that's not what business is. But then you have people on the management side who are like, oh, work from home is scum, everyone is so lazy.

Victor: 11:22

Nobody works and it's definitely not my fault for not learning how to manage. You're like, well, that's not true either. Yeah, how do you entice these companies to embrace the remote workers? Or just try to convince them like, hey, this would really work well.

Brittany: 11:36

Well, so I don't work with companies or at least I haven't been. I wouldn't be opposed to it, but I haven't been who are making the transition. What I do is you have these companies, these usually small founder-led startups that are they've always been fully remote, because it's so much cheaper to start a fully remote company than a company that has a place Like the barrier to entry is so much lower.

Brittany: 11:57

And then when they have their core team and it's them and their brother and their sister-in-law and that one girl they hired off the internet it's fine. But at some point they start to have a team of people who aren't their family and their friends and everything starts to normalize and people want to fall into work patterns. And then they're like oh gosh, my turnover is incredible. Why is no one staying here? Engagement is in the toilet. Morale is terrible. I'm flying everyone to an offsite so we can have a vacation together. Why didn't that fix it? I'm giving them a bonus. Why isn't that fixing it? And the answer is that the kind of people that are really great at work from home or remote work or distributed work whatever you want to call it are people who are good at managing themselves.

Chris: 12:39

I agree, they have really good self-discipline.

Brittany: 12:41

They're really good at figuring out what is important and focusing on it. They're productive productivity focused, not busyness focused. And if you set up a system where you tell your people, okay, crystal clear, this is what I want from you, this is what I expect you to accomplish. This is a little bit about how that looks. You know you get buy-in there like, yeah, yeah, that's totally possible. It's not like I'm asking you to sell 10 times as many units this week as you've ever sold in your life. But this is what success looks like here. And then you say, okay, I trust you to go get success for us within those parameters. That's how you get and keep A players.

Brittany: 13:18

But part of what's tricky, a lot of those founders don't realize and what a lot of the work we do together is because they're totally into the idea. They get it. That's what they always wanted. But their processes, their systems, their communication policies, their fear-driven micromanagement sometimes all of these things are often not set up with the kind of environment they're trying to create in mind, and so we have to go through and really look at okay, how are you doing it? How are you defining what success looks like for some of these trickier roles, what actually needs to happen in each position? How do we cut out all the crap, all the busy work to really make it about productivity? And then, how do we measure that productivity so that, instead of having these agonizing conversations over how much you're working, you're instead laser focused? Okay, Kimmy, you were supposed to run three workshops last week and you didn't even run one. What's happening? Let's talk about this.

Brittany: 14:08

It's a completely different conversation.

Victor: 14:11

I just might be just showing my ignorance, but I imagine like a lot of remote work to be like at least from what the ads Instagram reels that I see telling me that I should work remote are all like customer service or like accounting type jobs.

Brittany: 14:29

Like is there any limitation to what remote jobs are? I sometimes feel like I want to take out a billboard that says okay, I don't have a pithy slogan, I set that up too well, I don't have a follow through. But basically there's all these jobs that are either totally repetitive, step and repeat, super easy to micromanage, like database entry, lead generation, call center work, and those people, to be fair, are micromanaged within an inch of their lives in office settings too.

Brittany: 14:53

It's nothing new it's how that work is done, unfortunately, and those are jobs. And there's also a bunch of MLM schemes, multi-level marketing schemes that are designed to part vulnerable people from their savings under the guise of starting a business. That is completely different than what I would consider to be and I hate this distinction. But career style jobs. I, for example, have been working remotely for a long time. I've done it as a instructional designer, I've done it as a program manager, I've done it as a training coordinator, I've done it as a social media marketer and I've done it in various leadership positions and some other stuff.

Brittany: 15:29

But I work with people who are graphic designers, people who are mid-level managers at various companies and all kinds. I work a lot of ed tech, tech development. There's so many jobs that can be done remotely now that have no real need to go into the office, because, as technology gets better and better and better, we need the physical place or the special technology that's there less. I don't need a fancy setup that I can't afford to edit videos anymore. Basically, anyone with an iPhone can do it right.

Rob: 16:01

It was funny because when we had to come back to work, there was a lot of things that came with the work from home. So I remember there was a lot of the meetings that would go on and they're like all right, we're going to start up this meeting at one. Yada, yada, yada, it's a team's meeting. We're all in the office. That's the whole point. Why don't we just meet in a group? So we have this meeting, everything goes on. You got any questions? No, we're good, and they walk over. Hey, that one thing. I'm like we're defeating the whole purpose of this. Either we're here or we're not. And it was just like this weird crossover that they wanted to keep the teams.

Victor: 16:33

I feel like it was also an excuse to get as many people in the meeting as possible. Like a conference room is like limited to 20 people, but with teams I can invite 200 people.

Rob: 16:46

And they can just all sit there and listen.

Brittany: 16:49

It'll definitely be a worthwhile meeting with 200 people, right.

Victor: 16:52

It's not going to totally be a waste of time for 195 of them. No.

Brittany: 16:56

No, I get it. My brother-in-law works in a job right now where he works from home three days a week, but two days a week he has to go into office because you know I don't know why home three days a week, but two days a week he has to go into office because you know I don't know why, and he doesn't know why either Because at least one it's not both of those days he is literally the only person in his office, and so he's either working quietly on his computer by himself or he's on Zoom meetings with his colleagues who are at home that day.

Brittany: 17:18

He said some days he goes in all day and doesn't see one other person Like what's the point of that? And doesn't see one other person. Like what's the point of that?

Victor: 17:22

It's like they're just justifying their real estate. But as you're working remotely, how does one person participate in like company culture? Because I can't really go to the water cooler and talk trash about Beth?

Rob: 17:35

Yeah, how do you create that sense of community, like I remember I would go to work and I'm like all right, I want to meet up with these people and it's going to be fun. There was some camaraderie.

Brittany: 17:45

Yeah, no, I totally hear you. You know it is a little bit more fun to go into work, isn't it? You don't hear much about that in the return to office debates, but, goodness, I miss taking long lunches with my coworkers.

Brittany: 17:57

It was a good time. There's two things. The first is, yeah, there's a lot of little things that you can do to have that kind of congenial, collegiate relationship with your coworkers. You can make a little time intentionally at the beginning and end of other regular calls to just talk about whatever is interesting, to get to know them a little bit, to share weekend plans, whatever Some places do, informal meetings where people can just drop in and chat, and those can be fun on little teams. I think they're probably pretty abrasive on big teams but on little teams they can be fun.

Brittany: 18:30

But the real deal is this I'm going to take a step back from this specific topic for just a second, because this is part of a larger issue, which is that we have really been living through a tremendously transformative time when it comes to the death of community. People don't participate in religious communities and near the same numbers anymore. Our neighborhoods aren't close anymore. We're losing third spaces left, right and center, third spaces being places outside of home or someplace you have to pay to be, where you can congregate and meet people.

Brittany: 18:59

So if you have a vibrant park in your neighborhood where you can chat up. Your neighbors and their people are hanging out doing things. That's a third space and you might be hard pressed to think of a lot of third spaces near you anymore, unless you live in a really metropolitan area next to, like, the downtown part. We just we don't do a lot of it anymore, yeah.

Victor: 19:17

I feel like there's also a difference. So I, for a little less than a year, I lived in Colorado Springs and I and every time you go hiking out there, anyone stops you and they just want to know your entire life. You go by, they're like oh, where are you going? How far are you going? Where are you from this? Oh, I know someone from there. And then I remember I moved back to New York. I remember I was just jogging. I passed by someone. I said good morning. They gave me the dirtiest look of just like who are you? Why are you talking to me? Mind your business and go on your run.

Rob: 19:50

I'm here to hike, you know I'm here.

Victor: 19:52

Yeah, I'm out for my morning walk. Do not talk to me.

Brittany: 19:57

I'll never forget. I was studying abroad in college and I'm walking around and I'm doing my big Midwestern smile as I walk around and I'm making casual eye contact with people as we walk past and smiling Cause that is what you do in Colorado and, um, I had more than one person go oh, Americans, and like turn away from me and discuss yeah, Did you have your water?

Rob: 20:20

bottle and your North face jacket. Well, I was smiling when I was walking and not only was.

Brittany: 20:25

I smiling and making too much eye contact and looking too happy. I asked a few people to explain this to me, but also Americans have very distinctive teeth.

Rob: 20:35

Ah, yeah.

Brittany: 20:36

But anyway, back to community.

Brittany: 20:38

The point is that we don't have community like we used to, and we haven't really replaced it with anything.

Brittany: 20:44

So for a lot of people, work becomes one of their primary sources of community, and while it's the easiest way to fill that gap, I strongly encourage people who are working remotely, or even if they're not, to try to take the opportunity to have more connections and more community outside of work and to not try to meet all their social needs with work, because we already depend on work for our paychecks, for our healthcare, so many things in our lives and when your social life is bound up in that too, it just becomes too complicated.

Brittany: 21:18

One of the things I treasure about having a little bit of distance, having great mentor relationships at work, having fantastic collegiate relationships, having just really strong working relationships where we know each other a little bit and we do great work together, is that it is very low drama. We don't talk about things that could cause drama because I don't go there for all my social needs. I have a social network here, I have family, I have friends, I have my neighborhood, my community, like there's all kinds of things that I make a point of interacting with, so that I don't just sit at home all day and, you know, get the basement dweller coloring going. Got to go outside too. That's important.

Victor: 21:57

Is it okay to eat lunch at your desk?

Brittany: 21:59

No, no. You have to take breaks. You have to take breaks and you have to get out of your chair because, well, we're killing ourselves by sitting all day and staring at screens. Do you ever have a screen headache at the end of the day?

Rob: 22:11

Yes.

Brittany: 22:13

That's a little bit of your brain die.

Victor: 22:14

That's why if you go to any of the first aid kits in an office, it's all missing, advil and TimeLock.

Rob: 22:20

They took all that away in an office it's all missing Advil and TimeLock.

Victor: 22:23

Oh, I need this to get by and you're like what's going on.

Brittany: 22:30

Your back hurts and you get a neck hunch and your knees hurt and then your butt gets big and then everything hurts more. It's just, it's terrible if you sit too much. So on the one hand, from a work perspective, I'm a I do what I have to do to get the job done kind of girl, and sometimes that does mean I work a really long day with not enough breaks and I feel like crap at the end. But for day to day, what I try to do in a non-emergent situation like oh, the grant's due tomorrow and we just found out about it and we got to knock out 14 hours to do it Fine, okay, it's what we need to do, we need the grant.

Brittany: 23:06

But on a regular day that's not acceptable, that I'm ruining my body. So I get up. I get up every. I try every 90 minutes, maybe two hours I take 10 minutes. I walk my dogs, I jump on the elliptical, I load my dishwasher. It doesn't matter what you're doing. You just need to get up, not look at a screen and move your poor body out of the sitting shape.

Rob: 23:17

So for these companies that are doing this, well, let's say, they are taking the initiative. They do want to have their employees work from home, and they're doing it the right way. What does that look like with their employer? Do they sit down and they say listen, this is what I need from you. As long as you knock these out, I'm not bothering you.

Brittany: 23:35

I don't like, I'm not bothering you, because I do think there can be a lot of good collaborative work remotely, and I've certainly worked on teams exactly like that, where we talk to each other a lot because, we're working on things together and that's how that works, right?

Brittany: 23:49

But yeah, I have worked with several companies that I think are doing this very well, and I've worked at companies that are doing this very well, and when I was the one in the manager's chair, I was very straightforward about it. I'd say, okay, we're all grownups here. Nobody's here to babysit you. This is what I expect from you. I've done the work to figure out what I want from your position and what success looks like. I'm not going to make you guess and then grade you on some hidden curve. That's really based on how much I like you or not.

Brittany: 24:16

I'm defining transparently, in a fair way which, by the way, there's a way, more equitable way to do this all the way across the board Um, what success looks like. I'm gonna make it very clear to you and when you have trouble hitting that for whatever reason, we're going to troubleshoot it together. I'm not going to just jump to you're lazy and not doing it. We're going to talk about it.

Brittany: 24:34

Um, and I'm going to support you and I'm going to train you and we're going to continue to grow and do great things, but, at the end of the day, everything we're doing here is built on the trust that you are going to do everything in your power to achieve your goals.

Rob: 24:48

I think it's the trust. I think trust is the big one, right? Yeah, it's the big one.

Brittany: 24:53

I was on Texas Public Radio talking about remote work at the beginning of the month and this guy called in. It was a call in show and this guy called in at the end. I had a lot of great callers, but one said people are terrible. We used to be able to give away newspapers. You'd put in your nickel and then you'd take your newspaper. We can't do that anymore because people steal. I don't trust anyone, let alone my employees. How?

Chris: 25:16

on earth.

Rob: 25:16

Could I ever believe they're working, if I'm not watching them work and I'm not even dramatizing that. That's basically what he said.

Victor: 25:20

I just yeah, he's a delight to work with.

Chris: 25:24

You okay.

Rob: 25:25

The old system allowed for certain things to happen, but now that we have this shift in the system, a lot of the same things aren't going to work. We know there are tons of managers who have gotten jobs, not that they were good at their job, you know, or they were great at their job. They're just not great managers.

Brittany: 25:44

Yeah, the Peter principle. Sorry, I did look that up, that was going to drive me crazy. The Peter principle is the idea that you get promoted to the point of incompetence. Every time you're good at your job, you get promoted, and when you stop being good, you stay there. So the job you end up in is the one that you're the worst at. And then you add in remote work, which is more only because it's new, only because it hasn't really been, uh, solidified yet. We're not learning it in school yet. Um, people have to seek out that knowledge for themselves, and if you couldn't even be a good manager in an office and you wouldn't take the time to learn how to do that, are you really going to go out and master remote management?

Victor: 26:16

No.

Rob: 26:17

What do you think your greatest strengths as a manager? Why don't I tell you what my greatest weaknesses are?

Brittany: 26:22

I want to talk about, if you guys are interested, a little bit about managing up.

Rob: 26:25

Let's do it.

Brittany: 26:26

Okay, Because I think that if you are an individual remote worker and you're at an organization that has not gotten this down yet which is, quite frankly, likely, right, there's some great ones, but there's some really terrible ones too One of the things that you need to be thinking about is not just am I producing what I need to produce? Am I creating value for this company? Am I really kicking butt over here? But how do I make sure that my manager knows that? Because if you have a micromanager or somebody who's scared because they know they shouldn't be your manager, the worst thing that you can do is trigger all the little red flags in their head that goes oh no, we better start paying attention to how much Rob is working.

Brittany: 27:06

Because, once they do that, they're going to find what they're looking for, no matter what you're doing. They're going to take every time you're sick, every time your kid's home, every time blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's going to be confirmation in their mind that you're trying to scam them instead of working. So what you need to do is think really proactively about what it is that your manager wants to see from you and give it to them ahead of time. Like I've been working with this client whose manager has a propensity on their meetings to give a whole bunch of ideas every week that he thinks would be great to work on, and he wants to have a hundred irons in the fire at a time which is exhausting, but he also wants to see real, meaningful progress, and so one of the things that he ended up doing after we really talked about this was coming up with this email to send his boss a couple hours before they meet that updates him on where all these various things are and then poses a couple of questions at the end. Like him on where all these various things are and then poses a couple of questions at the end, like I'm really curious to hear what you think about X or I'm really not sure what to do about Y and like.

Brittany: 28:07

This is where I'd like you to participate as my manager. This is where everything is. This is the status on all the projects. This is all the movement I've created since we talked last. Here's what I need from you as a manager, and here are any problems that we need to problem solve that I'm running into and if I've accomplished anything great and this is always important victories and you know, I found this, which is going to be perfect. I closed that I built this, whatever, um, and by doing this, not only did his manager calm down significantly and start trusting him more because he was proactively giving him exactly what his manager wanted, so that his manager didn't have to work so hard to manage him but his manager actually stopped having. He'd put him on this daily call regimen where they were checking in every single day to try to I don't know micromanage him to excellence, like that's a thing.

Brittany: 28:56

And he ended up canceling about half of those calls because he'd get the email and be like this looks great. Do X, this looks perfect. Let me answer Y, let's focus on this. And it just it turned out that what his manager really needed was to feel like he had visibility on how my client was spending his time.

Brittany: 29:15

That's what the guy wanted. That's what his fear was is that he didn't really know, and he didn't want to go to his boss and say, well, I don't know how he spends his time. So, and that's what managing up is. It's figuring out what your boss needs from you and then giving it to them and using that to shape the conversation about the work and your work and how you're doing so that, instead of them having to make it up whole cloth and fight for it and perhaps start to be suspicious or negative, you're framing the whole conversation. This works in person too.

Chris: 29:45

Now I think about it, my goal, like when I work from home, my goal is to do whatever I have to do so that I don't get a call from my boss, because if I don't get a call, that means I did everything right.

Rob: 29:56

Chris is also the guy that puts the paperweight on the escape button so that it just constantly looks like he's working. Also the guy that puts the paperweight on the escape button so that it just constantly looks like he's working. So there's probably a reason why.

Brittany: 30:07

But that is exactly how you can get caught in this working way. Too much from home.

Brittany: 30:12

Trap is that, if you don't know, what is important to your boss and what is important in your role, but you feel that pressure and that desire to be seen as being successful at doing it and not to be micromanaged and not to have to get angry phone calls. You end up just filling your day with anything you can think of so that you can work. And then you start to feel resentful because you're working too much and you're burning out and you're killing yourself. And no one appreciates it, because of course they don't, because even if they didn't tell you what they wanted, even if they can't articulate what they care about, they do know what they expect from your position. So if you don't put it out in the open, you can't work to that level, and so you just have to work as hard as you can, frantically at everything, trying to guess which is. I mean, it's messed up. This is a really messed up way to work.

Rob: 31:05

Is that the common challenge we see for employees working from home? Is it appeasing the boss or is it the transition, is it? You know, the weird thing was when I used to work from home and I had a room that I would set up as my office, and it was weird because when I would go into it, I immediately started feeling like, okay, I'm not at home, I'm at work. I remember when we were in my apartment with my wife and she works from home a hundred percent. She said that it was a hard way to like split. She did feel like she was always home and she did feel like she was kind of always at work. But is that a common challenge that people run into or are you seeing that?

Brittany: 31:42

Oh, definitely. It all goes back to what we were talking about before. You take a job that, realistically you were going to put in just under three hours a day of productive work. You strip out standing at the water cooler and the coffee. You strip out half the meetings if you're lucky, about half the meetings. If you're lucky you strip out all the other random little things that take up time. Going out to lunch with everyone doing a laugh and talking to people in their offices doing a quick check-in that's really just gossip. And then you're left with a small amount of work and then you're like, oh no, this won't do, I can't just do this. And then, if you don't have the context and the mindset to figure out how to be super impactful with what you're doing, you just fill it up and then you end up answering emails and Slack messages, because that's the easiest way to do it right is to respond to what other?

Brittany: 32:31

people are asking you for. And then you download those apps on your phone and you find yourself, instead of paying attention to your kid at night, when you're supposed to be having quality time, quickly answering just one more email about a thing that is definitely not an emergency because you want everyone to know what a good team player you are and how cooperative you are and how you're always there and how they shouldn't write you off because you're remote. But if you really think about what you're doing, by focusing on that productive work and figuring out what your goal is and really going out and crushing it, your company is getting a much better deal. They don't benefit from you driving yourself crazy, answering emails at all hours, like maybe in the microcosm. Your supervisor might like it because they're doing the same thing and it feeds into this ecosystem of performative busyness. But in terms of bottom line and whether or not your company or your department is successful, that doesn't help. None of that helps.

Victor: 33:21

Have you ever worked with remote working couples of like? How do they separate their space? What's the dynamic that they're trying to create?

Brittany: 33:30

It's hard, it's hard. One of my directors at my last, one of my supervisees at my last position. She and her husband worked from home together in the same room right next to each other, which. I know their desks were like catty corner to each other, Just they were angled so that you couldn't see each other on their zoom screens.

Brittany: 33:51

but I think they could probably hold hands from their desks, and so she always had these big headphones on, and I assume he did as well. I don't know. He wasn't on my team but and she always would mute herself in between everything she said because he was talking at the same time and she had to be so careful about it. It really seemed like it was a major drag for her. I feel like she made major concessions to the fact that both of them were supposed to spend a significant amount of time on the phone, and you can't really do that right next to each other.

Victor: 34:20

No.

Brittany: 34:21

But my sister and her husband were both working from home for a while until he started going to sit in his office alone, and he did not. He had a research job and her job is mostly research too. They had some meetings, but not a ton and they didn't have any trouble with it. It was just like sitting in a very small cubicle area. So they did put some plants between them as a screen because she said it drove her crazy to like watch him work.

Victor: 34:46

Yeah, so I guess. I guess it's the nature of what your job is.

Rob: 34:49

So you have this company, bloom Remote right, and I just love entrepreneur stories. So is this, this, the first business or this, this, the second one?

Brittany: 35:00

So I have been the number two at a couple of startups for a long time.

Brittany: 35:05

I ended up being the co-founder at the last business I was at.

Brittany: 35:07

I was there for almost eight years and was in charge of all of the operations and programming for most of the time that I was there, because our founder was really taking point on investors and sales and stuff and so all the running of it I was doing and all the people managing and hiring and everything.

Brittany: 35:24

I also was a freelancer for about three years. I left one job and decided after I had my son that what I really wanted was to have a little more space and flexibility and freedom and to work less, and I intended to freelance part-time and by about a year in I was working time and a half almost every day because I just couldn't turn away the work when it would come in and I had too much. And by the end of it I had three job offers from three different companies I was been working with as a freelancer, one of which ended up being the company I was just talking about, and I had to do it because it was going to be easier to build a startup than to keep freelancing at the level I was doing it at.

Chris: 36:01

Okay.

Brittany: 36:02

So then I did that for a long time and then, when that was over, I decided well, what do I want? And I really sat down and I took a month and thought about it. Do I want to go into another startup working and building? Do I want to go get like a slower job somewhere? Do I want to try freelancing again? What am I into right now? What will help me grow? And I realized that I really felt this burning desire to see if I could do it myself. I had this passion for remote work. I think it's a total game changer and where the world is going, I see this huge problem in that people want this. They want everything, both on the business and on the personal side. They want all the promises of this, but they're not realizing it because they don't realize that remote work is a skill set.

Brittany: 36:49

It's not the same. You can't do exactly what you do at the office at home and have it work. You have to learn how to do it. And so I thought to myself this is a perfect opportunity to go out there, really help a lot of people make their businesses and their careers work the way that they want to and at the same time, put everything I've been doing and all the different things I've been building and all the design programs I've designed and coaching I've done and mentoring I've been into and consulting work I've done and everything I've learned. And I wanted to pit myself against the world and say can I do this or not? Like put up your show.

Chris: 37:23

Yeah.

Brittany: 37:23

I just I need to know, so I'm doing it.

Rob: 37:26

That's cool because there really is a need for it and, like you said, we don't really learn it. Like in school we come in, we sit down, we listen to our boss or our teacher or whatever it is. We're used to that. We did that for 18 years. Then you go to school and then you go to work. You're like I know how to do this, right, I just sit down, I meet some friends and I do whatever I got to do Corporate beat training. Yeah, if you don't have that drive, that's hard.

Brittany: 37:51

And I love that you said that, because school is supposed to prepare us for work. But there's been a problem for a while, which is that our school system is still in a lot of ways. So there've been a lot of advances and people trying to make progress and my, my husband, the teacher, would kill me if this was a blanket condemnation. So it's not. Um, there's a ton of people doing fabulous work.

Brittany: 38:09

But as a whole, and especially in lower income neighborhoods, we still tend to teach this industrial revolution model of obedience driven but in seat work, sit down, be here. When you're supposed to shut up, don't say anything.

Brittany: 38:24

You're not supposed to Um and you're more penalized for having big ideas than you are rewarded for it and have creativity within this very narrow box. Um, but that's not really how work is anymore and a lot of places in person or remote. We want strategic, creative thinkers. We want out of the box solutions. Work changes every day. I have people say, brittany, you do future of work stuff. Because I'm on the future of work alliance, which is fabulous, by the way what should my kid study? What do you think is going to be big when my 10 year old goes to work?

Brittany: 38:53

I don't know. That's the point your kid has to Bitcoin and social media. That's the point Bitcoin and social media.

Victor: 39:03

Maybe I'm guessing, I don't know.

Brittany: 39:05

You got to learn how to be adaptable. You have to be able to figure out how to suss out the situation you're in and thrive in it. I have learned how to do so many different kinds of work. I mean, if you name a business function, I probably have done it in the last decade, at least for a little while.

Victor: 39:27

Not great, but I did it for a small company. I read a book recently and it was talking about Thank you, the first one. They spoke about how a lot of education in Ivy League schools teach you how to do homework very well, which gives a huge bump to consulting industries, because all you do is you're doing homework for a large amount of money.

Brittany: 39:43

I hadn't thought about it like that Is that why I'm not doing well?

Rob: 39:45

Because?

Chris: 39:46

I never do my homework. Yeah.

Victor: 39:49

Maybe. Yeah, why don't you rethink your life choices, rob? Try harder. I remember when I started remote working during the pandemic, and I know it wasn't the same as companies that are ready for remote workers. But I remember first feeling amazed. I was like, oh my god, I am home, I don't have to commute anymore, I don't have to go anywhere, I don't have to get dressed, I just have to get to my computer and then I can start my day. Is there like a transition period when you go from like amazement of like hey, I'm at home, to like okay, I need to sit down and focus?

Brittany: 40:25

So everyone knows well I think that everyone knows that remote work takes self-discipline. But if you've ever spent any time reading about self-discipline and motivation, you know that a lot of it actually comes down to various ways we can trick our brain into behaving. So, yes, you can time block and I do. I absolutely recommend time blocking. You can batch tasks, you can use various kinds of little timers to remind yourself to take breaks and do something athletic, and these are all great tips. But there's something more important that you have to be able to really master, which is the mindset that makes all those tools work for you. And so a lot of people come in. They work from home. They set up a really pretty office, they get their little timers I actually have a little. They work from home. They set up a really pretty office, they get their little timers I actually have a little Pomodoro timer right here.

Brittany: 41:12

I love it and they have a couple of great weeks. It's really fun. But then it settles in and they start to go like, oh, I'm lonely, oh I don't actually want to work this morning, oh I don't, uh, I don't know what to do. And then their boss starts to say Hmm, you know, I get the feeling maybe you're not working because ridiculous indicator or because you've stopped doing things legitimately. Either one depending on how it goes.

Brittany: 41:33

And then they start to panic and so then they start filling their day with anything they can think of and they start spending hours doing emails every day and they start recleaning up old databases or whatever it is to try to justify the time, because they haven't fundamentally shifted how they think about what work is, and a lot of people don't.

Brittany: 41:53

Our schools don't really teach us to do that. Everything you just said about Ivy league consulting which made me laugh doesn't look at like all that matters. All that should matter in a work environment is what you can make happen, what you can create, what you can produce, who you can get to pay you to do that. Creating and producing those are the fundamentals of what business is. It's exchanging goods and services for money, and you have to be able to let go of this busyness killing time mindset. You have to own whatever you're in charge of, even if all you're in charge of is getting the teenagers who signed up for this seminar to show up and calling them. Fine, if that's your job, then you should be the best darn probably client support specialist you can be. That's it.

Brittany: 42:41

And if you can do that, if you can really make that shift, then the rest of it, the timers, the pretty office, the ergonomic chair, the, the deep focus blocking it all works because you understand what you're trying to do. But if you can't get that in the first place, none of the window dressing is going to make this feel good for you.

Rob: 42:58

I think that carries over into the office too.

Chris: 43:01

I think it took me a little bit to understand what I can do at home versus what I can't do at home. I realized I have to separate what tasks I could do at home so that when I do work from home and I only work only on those things that I know I could accomplish, I know I could finish.

Rob: 43:16

So you mentioned this future of work alliance. What is that? Because your face lit up when you said it.

Brittany: 43:23

I was like I need to know about this.

Rob: 43:25

I need to know about this.

Brittany: 43:27

So this is a group that I belong to that is really focused on research, practical applications to a bunch of different people who have their own businesses that touch on the future of work in some way. So, for example, I do remote work stuff, but some people are more focused on AI. Some people are more focused on where they think that work patterns are shifting. There's all kinds of different things people do and what we do. There's 50 of us. We're the remote future of work 50.

Brittany: 43:54

We just changed the name to as we get together and we do collaborative projects to try to create a little illumination on where things are going, enough attention being paid not to just the tragedy and the catastrophe of the moment, but how we can shape the future of work purposefully, so that it's a future that we want to have.

Brittany: 44:16

For example, when I think about and there's a lot of people that do remote work stuff in the Alliance when I think about remote work, I'm not just thinking about, hey, what's the newest software? What's remote work look like right now. I'm trying to say, hey, this is my thesis, this is my research and experience-backed assessments that I use to help businesses figure out why they're not getting the results they want, to help individuals figure out where they're getting stuck and then from there I have a process that's really about helping people shape the work around them, and everyone in the alliance is doing something like that. We have several people who are really involved in policy who have been very involved right now in this discussion around the return to office mandates, especially at the federal government was spoke before Congress right before they did that, trying to tell them why this would be catastrophic Um which I mean, of course, it will be right.

Brittany: 45:11

The guy from the patent office was on CPR last week talking about how the patent office has been hiring remotely forever because you can't afford the kind of people that you need, um, that have the skills you need to be able to do things like technical patents. If you make them live in DC and on a government salary, it just it doesn't work out, it doesn't math, and so they've been hiring remotely forever so that they can get the experts they need to do the work that the patent office has to do. Like we don't want people at the patent office who don't know what they're evaluating.

Brittany: 45:39

This is the guys like I can't, I can't hire people here, I don't know what we're going to do, and it's. It's that kind of stuff. It's thinking about what the future of work should look like and what we can do now to try to direct it that way, and whether it's one person in one company, at a time or at a policy level.

Rob: 45:55

Yeah, we definitely need that. You know, we definitely need that. And do you guys have merch?

Brittany: 46:00

You should? I don't think so, but we should, right.

Rob: 46:03

Yeah, you need that. I need a hat, a hat, a hoodie, something.

Brittany: 46:09

Yeah, it's just there's a lot of things changing. Yeah, we're at an inflection point, very clearly, where technology is just like the Industrial Revolution. The technology has gotten to a point in which we have to change the way that we're working and living to accommodate what the technology can do now and, unfortunately, basically exactly like the Industrial Revolution, it turns out that it's going to be a pretty bloody fight.

Victor: 46:36

It turns out that it's going to be a pretty bloody fight hopefully not literally bloody like it was in the Industrial Revolution to balance corporate interests and individual interests. And, like you said, I think also there's a societal shift and economic shift as well, besides just technology, where we don't have the one-income household anymore. That's almost impossible to live like that.

Victor: 46:51

So yeah, we need to have alternate options, especially with things like child care, because I know a lot of friends that I know of are telling me that, oh yeah, it costs thousands of dollars a month to have someone watch their children because there's no other options. To me, that's like you need to have both houses working at this point yeah, how's this for messed up?

Brittany: 47:12

our public school system and what are considered to be standard working hours aren't the same. So if everybody has to work and you don't have stay-at-home moms and dads hardly anymore. Who's supposed to take their kid to school like? My kid's supposed to be at school at 8 30 and he gets done at 3 20? I'm supposed to work more than that Like yeah.

Brittany: 47:35

I'm remote, so I just walk away for a minute and say cause, this is part of having a flexible job and an organization where you're trusted to make good decisions because you're meeting your goals and you're you're doing what you're supposed to do and accomplishing what you're supposed to accomplish.

Brittany: 47:43

Right and so it's never been a big deal for me to leave, get my kid, bring him home, give him a snack and then sit down and work some more. But it would be a very big deal if I was in an office and it's a very big deal in those crappy. We're going to treat flex, we're going to treat at-home work exactly like in the office. You just happen to be at home, kind of jobs but it doesn't have to be.

Brittany: 48:03

You have to take breaks anyway. Your brain can't. Do you guys know that the whole idea of an eight-hour work week, which was based on automation lines, right, we're talking about like Henry Ford kind of stuff. And that's how long a person can do some repetitive tasks like add a screw over and over and over again, without being so fatigued that they make terrible mistakes and any longer than that you start to see accidents go up a lot.

Brittany: 48:27

But when they look at research at how long someone can sustain high-intensity creative thought like the kind of stuff that you need if you have a really thinky job it's more like two to three-hour bursts. Some people can do it for four hours, but nobody can do that, can sustain that for eight hours at a time.

Victor: 48:41

Wow. And this is why kids work those lines because it was efficient.

Rob: 48:47

Kids can do it for 10 hours actually.

Chris: 48:49

Yeah, if you give them a fruit snack, they can do it for 10 hours actually.

Rob: 48:50

yeah, if you give them a fruit snack. They can do 10. They got those little hands, you just get right in there.

Victor: 48:56

So just going back to your experience creating bloom remote, what did you learn from other ventures that helped you build bloom remote?

Brittany: 49:04

oh man, I love this story because I do you ever feel like everything in your life kind of comes together?

Victor: 49:09

No, not yet You're asking the wrong person.

Chris: 49:11

No, yeah, I'm still hoping. I'm still hoping.

Rob: 49:15

Victor has a green carpet behind him.

Victor: 49:19

I'm doing my best.

Brittany: 49:21

Okay. So I went to grad school for anthropology cultural anthropology Super practical and actually the only reason I did that is because I wanted to go to undergrad. I did get a major in undergrad in women's studies and sociology and anthropology, because my father said, brittany, you can study whatever you want, but it would be really cool if you pick something that had the potential to teach you a skill and get a job one day, and I just don't think women's studies is it which wasn't unfair. So I got into anthropology and I loved it and I went to grad school. I have a master's and actually I have an ABD, all but a dissertation.

Brittany: 49:55

I almost finished a doctorate in anthropology before I went a different way, and one of the things that you learn there is how to talk to people and to learn about a situation in a place how it really is, not how you think it might be. It's how to have these big, open-ended conversations where you bring in as little presupposition as humanly possible and you follow their leads. You don't stick with your questions, you follow where they lead you and hear the story that they want to tell you and you contextualize it with enough observations of being in the space and reading and everything else that of both training and coaching to help people learn how to do really important social services and interventions with children who've had trauma and things like that. And I just learned so much about how to do what training is actually supposed to do. I know if you've taken a training at work lately, you probably think, ah, trainings are for checking boxes, and that's fair, because that's what most of your trainings at work are for.

Brittany: 51:09

But what training is supposed to be about is changing the way that somebody behaves.

Brittany: 51:13

You're supposed to teach them something in such a way that later, when they're faced with a decision or activity, they choose to do it the way you taught them to instead of how they would have done it before, which is a totally different threshold for learning, and it was very challenging, but it was really worthwhile to learn. And from there I started working with a couple of different small companies and startups who did various kinds of education in wildly different spheres. Some of them were really coaching driven, some of them were a lot more mentoring and training style. But I was learning both how to use that earlier information to create behavior change and to learn what's really going on so that we can create that behavior change because you have to really understand to do it and how to build programs that make that happen. And I was learning how to run a business how do you find clients, how do you market, how do you keep your books so that the IRS doesn't throw you in prison? Al Capone style.

Rob: 52:08

There's a lot to learn about running a business.

Brittany: 52:11

And through the course of all of that, the thing that I loved the most was when I got to really work with people individually and help them grow and mentor them, and during the time I took off after my last position, I really came back to that over and over and over again. These are the tools in my tool belt. I know how to help people change their behavior in a sustainable way. I know how to design programs that allow that to happen larger just than the individual, so I can do it with individuals and with groups. I know a ton about working remotely and I believe in it passionately because I've been doing it for such a long time and I've seen how it creates opportunity for all kinds of people who don't have opportunity.

Brittany: 52:50

One group that's here in my heart are mothers. It is almost impossible to be the primary parent to your child and do all the pickups and sick days and doctor visits and everything else that has to happen and go into a regular office, but I didn't want to give up having a meaningful career. My work is super. I don't know if this is coming across, but my work is super important to me.

Brittany: 53:12

I love working and feeling like I'm making a difference in the world and creating an impact, and in this I saw a chance to pull all those things together and to help both people on one side and businesses on the other really make this situation work to the mutual benefit of both. Plus, I'm a total process nerd. I love processing.

Rob: 53:39

Yeah, it's important work. It's important work what you're doing. I mean, I never really thought of it that way. We really have to reteach everybody how to do this. But we really have to reteach everybody how to do this. And a lot of the pain points that I ran into when I did work from home are things that we know. People know about them. I thought I was just going through it alone at home like, oh, this sucks, how do I do this? But yeah, it's there.

Victor: 54:11

The group that you work with?

Brittany: 54:12

are they also trying to reinforce the change in education as well? Honestly, there's so many different things. One of the things we're doing right now is firming up what our goals and our work groups are going to be for this year, because it's not.

Brittany: 54:20

None of us work there right? This is something that we do on a volunteer basis because we believe in this and we think it's really important, and so, um, yeah, I do think there's going to be people who are really interested in it. At the educational level. I'm obviously really interested in it at the work level, the company and individual level. There's people that are really into it at the policy level, but the reality of this situation is well, there's a lot of things that we can do as individuals to make it better for us, or companies to make it better at that company, and we should do those things.

Brittany: 54:49

There's no reason to struggle just because not everyone has it figured out yet, but we're going to have to come to grips with this culturally to move through this phase into the next one. This is going to continue to be a tumultuous transition until we start to establish norms for how this works and not just rely on what has happened, but really look at what is the best way to take advantage of this new level of productivity but also, I hate to say, work-life balance, because it's become so loaded, but there's so much opportunity here to use this technology for us all to be more successful and better, but we have to do it carefully. It's like AI Are we just going to let it strip a bunch of people of their jobs, have no idea how to replace it, let all that money go into a very small number of people's pockets and leave everyone else to become homeless, or are we going to come up with a strategic plan for how we're going to move forward together? I'd like the second one, that's.

Rob: 55:47

When you say it like that, the second one sounds really good.

Victor: 55:52

I was waiting until we have to fight the machines.

Rob: 55:54

We'll be fighting them from home, hopefully at least.

Victor: 55:57

I always think you're tight, but Well, brittany, thank you so much for joining us. Appreciate you taking time to speak about remote work, and if someone wants to reach out to you, where can they find you?

Brittany: 56:08

bloomremotecom. Got everything on my website. It's bloomremotecom, and I would wants to reach out to you. Where can they find you? Bloomremotecom? Got everything on my website. It's bloomremotecom.

Victor: 56:15

And I would love to talk to you. Sounds great.

Chris: 56:17

Thank you yeah.

Rob: 56:17

Thanks for taking the time. This is a game. This is eye-opening, very nice.

Victor: 56:22

All right. So final thoughts Chris.

Chris: 56:26

This was really awesome. Like I didn't realize how working from home or remote work was a thing. Like I didn't realize all the things we did or doing was part of like a learning curve that we all went through. I thought it was just part of the work. Yeah, that was really fun and it definitely made me realize a lot of things what I do at home now or what I can do, all right.

Rob: 56:47

Rob. This is important work and it's kind of nice to know that there's people working at the forefront of this, that this is a thing. It's not just like it's a work from home thing, work remote thing. This is a systematic change thing. It's great to see that people are creating businesses to answer and and tackle these solutions. You know in a good way and I think she had a lot of great things to say you know that I could relate to when I was working from home, like, oh yeah, that was a thing. Hopefully we are headed in the right direction.

Chris: 57:18

I just wish that we had someone like that come to our company when this all work from home happened.

Rob: 57:26

Absolutely Like someone like her to come in and be like hey, listen, you have to work from home. Happen. Absolutely Like someone like her to come in and be like hey, listen, you have to work from home. Do you know what that means? This is what you're going to run into. That would have been better for the managers, that would have been better for us. Have us all on the same page. This is this. These are the changes you're going to see. Like she said, it's making the behavioral change, which is what I think we're all going through now, Because we're all learning this new behavioral change.

Victor: 57:53

Once again, we want to thank Brittany Rassmith for joining us and don't forget to check out her services at bloomremotecom. We want to thank you for listening, but we need your help. If you enjoyed this episode, I want you to find that share button and send this podcast to a friend. It's cool. I'll wait whenever you're ready and if you could hit that subscribe button to stay updated on new episodes. Until next time, stay curious, see ya.