Toby: We’re big believers that people can build businesses and never have to leave home. What is your primary business?
Mari Anne: My primary business is a B2B consulting and education business, where we work with organizations that have distributed teams.
Those organizations can be quite small. We work with small nonprofits, like the American Mathematical Society. We work with very large national organizations, like national insurance companies, international energy companies, and international automobile companies.
It goes from quite small to quite large, but they have three things in common.
One is they’ve got multiple locations.
They have employees, but those employees don’t sit in the same place.
The second thing they have in common is they are dependent on technology to connect.
The third is they’re looking to the future. They’re seeing the changes that are happening either in their industry or the potential with some of the consumer changes or some of the possibilities of technology.
Those people are asking us to help them rethink the workplace and how it should function, how they can adapt, and how they can differentiate themselves in the current business environment.
Shelley: What are some of the pros and cons for the employee of remote work and some of the pros and cons for the employer of remote work?
Mari Anne: We work in a world where we’re connecting with people, building relationships, and leveraging our training in new and innovative ways.
Remote work has to be part of a larger business strategy.
Pros and cons from an employer’s point of view, are it gives you a business differentiator, more flexibility, and could save you money.
It makes you an employer of choice and gives you an edge in attracting employees right now.
Over the last two and a half years, the world has existed because folks who have never thought of themselves as a remote or distributed team kept the global economy going.
They did it in spite of the fact that a good portion of the social systems weren’t working and in place. It was a big proof of concept of what was possible. Employees didn’t have commutes, and they were accomplishing the transition and the work when it was hard.
Now they have an opportunity to discover what it’s like to be home for a meal with their families and not have to commute. They can rethink their social contacts and their professional framework in terms of where they want to do their work.
Some people are early morning people, some are later in the day people, and some want to pick up their kids at the bus stop at the end of the day.
It’s that flexibility, which gives people a lot of opportunity to reconnect with families and communities and to do their best work at the best time for them.
Toby: Shelley and I think about it from the context of independent entrepreneurs serving their potential clients.
My work life was the one-and-a-half-hour commute to downtown DC. Work meetings all day long at various locations, and a one-and-a-half-hour commute back. Then, dinner before soccer practice.
My three youngest daughters who grew up in that environment discovered that they could work for companies that would allow them to work remotely. So, they started building the technology into their lifestyles before the pandemic.
The pandemic was an employer solidifier. It was the employer that realized the only way to keep this business open during the pandemic shutdown was to provide these remote positions.
Now they work for companies that enable them the flexibility to move wherever they want. They live where they want to live.
The oldest of the three lives on the east coast, but she works for a company in Ireland. So her work day goes from six to two. Then work is over for the day and she can focus on the family.
This new generation, not as a result of the pandemic, but prior to the pandemic, was already behaving like that with their employers.
I retired before that was a common feature. I was a sole proprietor, so I didn’t have employees. But think of all the travel time in and around Washington, I could have avoided by using these tools.
When I retired, it was just becoming functionally proper to be able to hold a meeting online. It was uncommon and dependent on what they were doing.
Shelley: What types of businesses lend themselves to doing remote work? What are some businesses that it just wouldn’t work for?
Mari Anne: The businesses that it’s going to work best for are businesses that are run by leaders who are willing to experiment with the models.
You’re not going to have all your talent sitting in the same place, which means you are now going to have to learn how to lead differently, how to manage differently, how to operate your business differently, how to connect with your clients differently.
That means creating an operating model which allows you to have accountability, work processes, team processes, and a talent management system that will support this kind of work.
It’s important to have a clear understanding that if you’re going to adopt remote work, you’ve got to give people the benefit of the doubt.
You can’t go into it with an assumption that if you’re out of sight, that means you’re not working.
As long as you meet your responsibilities, then what you do in between the time periods that we connect should be of no relevance. Because if I’m delivering on the goods, I’m meeting expectations.
The types of businesses that offer remote work are expanding. We work with healthcare because telemedicine got its foothold in the pandemic and is now reimbursed by insurers.
Restaurants are changing the way they’re doing things. I walk through airports and people are ordering through kiosks as opposed to counters.
I was working with a national insurance company about two and a half years before COVID occurred, before 2020. They were doing office consolidations in parts of the country that didn’t financially support a large office overhead. During that two and a half years, we created operating models that the company then used to send 4,000 people home during the COVID lockdown.
They sent them home in less than three weeks because we already had the models that had been tested. We already had all the materials, so we scaled it.
As for accommodating a commute, when gas is at $3, $4, $5, a gallon or more, it is asking a lot of folks in particular income brackets along with all the minutes that are spent away from family, friends, and home.
I’ve worked with companies in many industries that are rethinking what it means when you have a consumer base that’s willing to buy a house or a car online sight unseen. They’re willing to order everything to their doorstep.
How does that shift the world of business and the world of work?
It remains to be seen how this stuff gets used in a particular industry based on what a business leader is willing to test and adopt.
Toby: I was thinking about the evolution of distributed operations, and distributed businesses and how difficult it was to overcome each of the important blockages.
The first big thing that enabled businesses to distribute themselves in a comfortable way was the telephone. Whether it was the regular landline or cellular telephone. Then along came email.
I remember when I was making the pitch for distributed database management as a tool for handling distributed operations. The next big thing was the evolution of customer relationship management systems like salesforce.com.
Another big thing that happened was the cloud. You could share documents and the customer relationship could all be in the cloud and everybody had access.
But I feel like what you’re bringing to these companies now is the thing that is most missing. There is no person I know who runs a company that doesn’t desire the intimacy of direct contact.
How have your clients evolved from the less intimate things like telephone, email, CRM, distributed databases, and the cloud to where they can meet with their employees with the click of a button?
There was a time when the phrase I want to start working at home and we’ll just use the telephone and email would make management nervous. Because suddenly they’re not only managing distributed operations, they’re managing distributed employment.
How do you get them comfortable with the idea that their employees can be any place they want, and they can still manage?
Mari Anne: There was a point in time when nobody thought that there would be desktop computers.
Then there were things like Blackberries, and now everybody has a cell phone.
Now we have a workplace where you can have five generations working together.
These generations are embracing technology and making it work for us.
But we also have lots of folks who feel this can’t possibly work.
Don’t over-romanticize the office because the plain fact is that folks who were poor performers in an office can be poor performers at home. People who were great performers in an office can be great performers at home.
When I started this work, that was the selling point. You had to be an internal person in a company, and you convinced your boss to let you do it because they loved you so much. You were reliable enough that you got them to do it as a pilot. Then you proved the model and didn’t tell anybody because you didn’t want to make waves.
Then there was globalization. You work for an international company. Before the cloud, it was offshoring and you’re working with a team in India, China, or Poland.
Those of us engaged in that kind of work had to figure things out.
Now we are in a workplace where we are hiring individuals who never have known a day without a cell phone. Who text before they will take a phone call. They’ll do online banking before they will check their voicemails. Desktop phones don’t exist.
I had an intern last summer who, when I asked her, have you ever been to the post office? She answered, in sixth grade. My sixth-grade teacher took us to the post office, showed us what it was, and made us send notes to myself. I flunked because I never got the postcard.
Part of it is what’s your generational reality and your orientation toward technology?
There are several generations of kids now who did homework with their friends over the internet. People are meeting their significant others online through technology and apps.
When you’re willing to bank online, buy goods online, or meet for a relationship online, where does it reach a tipping point?
This allows you to form relationships differently.
I think the big tipping point societally was COVID. How many people during the last couple of years were getting on video meetings with colleagues that they had never met?
They were seeing their homes, their kids, their families, and their pets. We were suddenly intimate in ways that were extraordinary with people that we had been working with for years. But we never talked about the personal stuff because we kept it professional.
Those boundaries loosened up for a small segment, but not for everyone.
Everything has changed in the last two and a half years. Our stats tell us that people are going back into the office and still meeting online in video chat instead of going to the conference room.
[00:25:48] Toby: The pandemic conceptually was the best thing that happened to businesses. It forced them to rethink their model to incorporate all these new technologies. We didn’t have to develop anything new. They were there. They were just terribly underutilized.
I remember Zoom making consistent pitches to businesses about how video conferencing could change their business. Suddenly, Zoom is the most important product your company can own in light of the pandemic.
I get all my healthcare through the Veteran’s Administration. They make appointments online. Over the period of the pandemic, a lot of my appointments were via Zoom calls.
But now when I go there in person, I’m always waiting. I’m always sitting next to another vet who’s about my age. We start talking and it comes up. What are you doing now? I’ll listen to them very politely about what they’re doing, like playing shuffleboard or whatever.
Then they’ll say, what do you do?
The last time I told my story about livestreaming and podcasting to a Vietnam veteran, like me but with a gray beard. He looked at me for about 10 seconds after I finished. He said I don’t think I understood a damn thing you said.
That’s my generation. That’s why we love coaching.
Shelley: How do we prepare to become a remote employee who stands out and gets hired? What are remote employers looking for?
Mari Anne: If you want to gain a foothold in the remote work economy, then part of it is recognizing employers who are ahead of the curve on this.
I can tell you that there are large institutions that are really rethinking. Elon Musk proclaimed that everybody must go back to the office. Then, about a week later, he reneged and told everybody that they could have flexibility because his critical engineers threatened to quit and he couldn’t afford that.
Educate yourself about these institutions and find out what their flexible work policies are.
Do your homework, prepare yourself regarding roles and responsibilities, and get those definitions. Don’t make assumptions.
Meet with your bosses, supervisors, and your peers to have a candid conversation about things like boundaries.
Ask them what are your expectations? If I choose to take from noon to 1:30 off to go to the gym, is this going to be okay? How do you communicate with this team?
Where do we find our dependencies and interdependencies? Are we working off of project plans? How do we share files?
Ask a million questions.
How do you create visibility for yourself in any profession? Even in an office, you’re still going to have to network.
How do you build those networks? What kind of networks do you build and how do you start to build your reputation as a trustworthy colleague/team member?
Showing up, doing what you say you’re going to do, showing values, having a good work ethic, and having clarity that you have to notify people as you progress on projects and share information because people are not going to see it otherwise.
You have to create transparency about the work you do.
Toby: Spend time ensuring that how you look on their screen is good, the camera at eye level, lighting from behind the camera, and backgrounds that are neat and tidy.
Start thinking about how you’re going to look to the person that’s reaching out to you when they’re seeing you on their screen. Make sure you’re well-dressed and you’ve spent some time grooming.
There are some businesses that slid right into this concept of remote work and some that didn’t. The ones that did tend to be more advanced technologically have adopted the distributed model and are comfortable with that.
What are some of the characteristics of companies that don’t seem to fit well into this?
Mari Anne: Some of the folks who are struggling with it are very dependent on hierarchy. I’m finding that my legal clients are struggling with it quite a bit. There are a lot of forceful personalities in those types of professions.
Previous to the pandemic, real estate people relied on their physical presence and proximity to someone.
These folks are struggling with creating a relationship through online conversation and doing it in a different framework.
There were some very smart event planners that figured out how to create virtual event venues around particular niche areas and have found an advantage and been quite profitable.
Those folks who are saying no, we must be in person to apply our training or to persuade people will be left behind.
Those of us who have a broader reach because we’re more comfortable in these frameworks, we are going to take the business because eventually, somebody’s going to say I don’t want to spend two hours of my day having coffee with you. I don’t want to have to take the time out of my schedule because I can use those minutes differently.
Toby: You have a Remote Work Handbook?
Mari Anne: It just came out on September 13th. The book has hit the number one bestseller spot on Amazon in three separate categories. We’re listed as the number one new release in business management, the number one bestseller in human resources, and also in quality control.
If you want accountability, then a good framework is definitely going to be helpful to you.
We’ve got an operational framework from start to finish. It’s a do-it-yourself opportunity to look at your business model. Think about different ways to insert flexible. distributed or remote teamwork into your operation.
We walk you through the process and look at every single aspect of that operating model.
Toby: Book publishing has its own set of rewards because it compiles the knowledge that you’ve acquired over the years that you’ve been practicing your expertise. Do you have other books that we can mention?
Mari Anne: We also do a series of hack books, 30 hacks for remote work, for engaging remote teams, and also for getting your own remote work job. We sell those through the Remote Nation Institute, which is our learning organization.
We’ve got consumer goods, accessories, and equipment for folks who are working online, just acknowledging folks who are working in this environment.
We’ve got our Remote Nation Institute, which has certificate programs for folks who are working in these types of environments.
Our Sophaya website is our business-to-business consulting site. Because if folks want to adopt this kind of work and they need help with assessing their organization and thinking about how to integrate flexible work into their existing operation, we’ll be here ready to help.
It is really about assessing your business and what’s right for you, and then building the business model that is going to deliver on what your business objectives are.
Toby: Companies are hiring and expecting if you want a broader range of applicants, you must be willing to work with them in a way that enables them not to change their entire lives by moving someplace across the country.
Most of the applicants that you’re going to be dealing with under 40 will expect at least partial remote work if not completely remote.
My son-in-law was the chief technology officer of a business that he and two others founded. He just recently left them to take a remote job with a firm in North Carolina as chief technology officer. He doesn’t have to leave his house and family except for the occasional meeting with the officers.
It’s perfectly normal to look for jobs where you can work remotely. But it doesn’t require any less rigor than working in an office building. You have to commit to that rigor to be successful. Otherwise, it falls apart. You’re going to get behind.
Mari Anne: I’m based in Providence, Rhode Island, in the New England Snowbelt. I have very dear friends who were reaching their early sixties and were tired of the snow, tired of the commute, tired of the dark days, all of that. He was going to quit his job and he was a highly valued employee in his organization.
They suggested to him, how about if we try remote?
He was very dubious at first. But he had good technical skills. He and his wife moved to a new development down in the Carolinas with a lower cost of living and a climate more to his liking. He set up a home and about six months in, he said to me, I thought I hated my job. What I really hated was my commute. I love my job. I love my profession.
The neighborhood that they moved into turned out to be a haven for remote professionals. Every single one of the neighbors in their particular development was in the exact same spot he was in.
They were moving from different locations to a place they wanted to live and they were applying their trades and doing it in a way that worked for them.
Toby: That describes my daughter Ryan’s location. She’s in South Carolina, in a new community.
They picked it expressly because of the weather and the schools and things like that. They were moving away from Washington DC.
She said both of our companies are willing to allow us to remote work.
She discovered that a lot of the people that she was meeting at the swimming pool were the same kinds of families. They had left the run around in New York, Washington, or Philadelphia and moved down there and are all working remotely.
Mari Anne: Question and look at everything with an open mind because it’s not good or bad. It’s how it’s applied and it’s how you approach it.
Toby: For those of you that feel like there’s some sort of technological intimidation, don’t be afraid. You can start with your laptop and your earbuds and work from there. That gives you the capacity to start this, try it out, see how it works out for you, and then start making improvements.
We offer a one-hour free consultation for anyone that’s trying to step into this technology and has some questions about it.
Learn more and connect with Mari Anne Snow at: https://remotenationworks.org https://sophaya.com https://www.remotenation.com https://www.linkedin.com/in/mariannesnow1
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