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

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Episode Transcript

Victor (00:00):
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 bejoined by Brittany Rasmuth.
Brittany is the founder ofBloom Remote, with its mission
to help mid-career womennavigate the challenges of
remote work.

(00:20):
She has over 15 years ofexperience working remotely and
will help us answer the questionI'm not dumb, but how do I work
remote?
Welcome to the I'm not dumb butpodcast, where we won't claim
to have the answers to life'sdeepest questions, but we'll
give you an exciting journeyinto the realms of knowledge you
never knew you'd need.
Might be mainstream, but notcommon knowledge.

(00:41):
From artificial intelligence toconspiracy 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 ourlistening 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 remoteworking in general.

(01:03):
So the federal government andthe means of production owners
are championing the end ofworking from home.
Is remote working still a thing?
Is it declining?

Brittany (01:17):
It's all anyone wants to talk about and it's because
it's so in your face.
But you have to contextualizewhat's happening.
People have been workingremotely for decades.
When I was growing up, my dadworked completely remotely when
you used to have to do thatwithout computers.
He used to mail everything forall of his cross-country

(01:38):
training and he did a lot ofsystem of care work.
It's always been happening.
It's been picking up prettysteadily.
We had this I don't know if youguys remember the pandemic, but
it kind of made us go like thisfrom our regular arc I think
I'm familiar with that All of asudden, tons of people were
working from home, but most ofthem were working from home

(01:59):
really poorly.

Chris (02:00):
They weren't prepared.

Brittany (02:02):
There were no systems in place, the businesses didn't
know how to handle it, themanagers didn't know how to
manage it, the people didn'tknow what to do with themselves
and, quite frankly, most of themweren't sitting in nice, quiet
home offices.
They were sitting at a kitchentable with their spouse, who was
also trying to work from homein an organization that didn't
know how to do it with maybe acouple of kids who were doing
online school, which wasterrible.

(02:25):
And so, first off, all of asudden, we had way more people
working from home than you wouldexpect, given the regular curve
of how these things build overtime, and a lot of them had a
really terrible experience, andI think those two things
together really made us ripe fora big social backlash, and
that's what we're seeing rightnow.

Victor (02:44):
So it's just companies or people are just like.
I didn't have a good experiencewith this.
It obviously doesn't work right.

Brittany (02:51):
So a lot of smaller companies and especially
startups, are still I don't wantto say predominantly, because I
can't back that up but thereare a ton of smaller companies
and startups that are fullyremote, have been since
conception, probably will beuntil a point where they get so
big that they can't.
If that happens and I think formany people in that position,

(03:12):
it feels really bad when you'rein a remote situation and you
feel like you don't know how tomanage your workers anymore, and
so for those who are able tofigure it out and really
capitalize on it, it's a hugehiring advantage.
People are saying now that forevery remote job they post, they
get 500 applicants becausepeople want to work remotely so

(03:32):
much, and some of these bigcompanies are closing their
doors to that.
It also lifts geographicrestrictions, you can hire
people from anywhere.
But if you don't feel like, asthe person, as the means of
production owner, that you canreally control your situation,
if you don't know how to use itin a way that makes you feel
comfortable with the way thatyou're spending your company's

(03:54):
resources, which are designed toimprove your company right,
most people don't run companiesfor charity.

Rob (04:00):
They're hiring people because they have work to get
done, and if you feel like youcan't do that very well, I can
see why it's easy to just tryand yank everyone back where you
can stand over their shoulder,instead of learning how to
really manage remotely orotherwise honestly, yeah, the
biggest problem I ever had withremote work because I only got
to do like a couple of days aweek is that they still wanted

(04:21):
me to act like I was in anoffice, 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 Likewe were all in the same area.
So everyone you know themeetings and everything's still
set up, but it was like I had.

(04:50):
I was at home and I was likeI'm free and I felt good about
the work I'm doing.
I was like I know what I got todo, I got to do this, but they
still tried to make me feel likeI was in the office.
Do you still find that?
I mean, is that part of the?

Brittany (04:53):
bad system, what is the best system?
I love this.
This is one of my favoritetopics about remote work,
because I really think it's atotal game changer at the
individual level and theorganizational level.
When you're in an office,you're expected to be there for
a certain amount of time.
Most people right and you haveto stay there.
I really clearly remember myfirst job in college.

(05:13):
That was a regular40-hour-a-week office job I had
over the summer.
They would give me, if I waslucky, three hours of work a day
and at first I made the totalrookie mistake.
No, no, no, there's research onthis.
Most white collar workers whowork in the office, Um, oh, I
shouldn't say most.
I can't remember the exactparameters of the survey, but um

(05:35):
, on average, they were findingthat these people feel like they
did, I think something like twohours and 48 minutes just under
three hours of productive worka day.
And the rest of it is meetingsthat they didn't feel were
productive checking email, smalltalk, lunch trying to look busy
.

Victor (05:52):
I figured most of my time was spent seeing how I'm
going to spend my paycheck onAmazon.

Brittany (06:00):
And you're not alone.
You're not alone.
I will never forget.
And that very first job I hadis I'm sitting there dying.
Because I'm a very activeperson.
I like to be doing somethingthat feels like it's moving
things forward for me all thetime, from when I wake up to
when I go to bed, and it isexhausting, but it's just how
life is.
And I remember going to myfather and being like dad, I

(06:22):
don't know what to do, they'renot giving me enough work, I'm
so bored, and when I try to askfor more, they're starting to
get pretty mad at me.

Victor (06:32):
I actually had one of the older ladies on my team say
something to the effect of willyou shut up?
We have it so good.

Rob (06:34):
You're going to ruin it for everyone.

Brittany (06:37):
You're ruining this for us, exactly, exactly.
I was, and my dad was likeBrittany, try to be cool.
Why don't you work on yoursenior thesis?

Chris (06:45):
when you get done, why don't?

Brittany (06:46):
you play a game on your computer, why don't you,
whatever it is right, do jobhunting, since clearly you don't
like this?
But what you shouldn't do iscomplain.
Part of the code of the officeis not to show your hand if
you're not working all the time.
Now, suddenly, we're workingremotely and your manager is
like, oh God, ok, what doesmanaging mean?
Well, I know that a big part ofmanaging has been making sure

(07:08):
that my people work 40 hours aweek.

Rob (07:10):
Right.

Brittany (07:11):
Like we all agree, that's a huge part of working in
an office.

Victor (07:14):
If their butt is in the chair, they're working.

Brittany (07:16):
Yes Button seat time.
It's like a core businesssuccess metric, apparently.
Anyway, so when you'remeasuring to that in someone's
remote, you end up in thistechnological arms race trying
to trick each other in who can.
Are you sitting there?
Oh yes, I'm totally sittinghere and you do something to
make it look like you are, tokeep your teams on, to make your
mouth jiggle, and you'remeasuring the wrong things.

(07:36):
None of that matters.
What should matter is whetheror not you're accomplishing what
your position is supposed toaccomplish.
If you're accomplishing whatyour position is supposed, to
accomplish.
If you're a project manager, areyou hitting your deadlines?
Are you moving the projectforward?
Are you garnering whatever thesuccess metrics are for that
project?
If you are a salesperson, areyou hitting your numbers?
If you're gosh, if you're incustomer success, are you

(07:59):
answering a certain volume ofcalls with a certain
satisfaction score?
It's more complicated than thatand that's kind of the point.
I think.
I've talked to so many managerswho say, well, sure, for a
salesperson it's easy to havenumbers, but how on earth can I
define what success looks likefor all these other positions?
And to that I would say whatthe hell kind of irresponsible
business owner doesn't know whathe's hiring people to do?

(08:22):
You know?

Victor (08:24):
Yeah, like is the task getting done that I've assigned
to them?
If it's not, obviously it's not.

Brittany (08:29):
Like why would you hire someone without work?
That's such bloated bureaucracy.
If you need something to bedone and you need a human
resource to do it, so you hiresomeone who has the skills.
You can get it done.
Now, if I can do any metric youwant, if I can stay on task
with my projects, if I can move100,000 units a month, whatever
it is in 20 hours a week, chriscan do the same thing in 10

(08:52):
hours a week, but it takes poorVictor 50 hours a week.
Should it matter?
Or should it matter that we'reall moving our units, units?

Rob (09:00):
I think it's just like such a tangible thing when the when
the manager walks by, he can seeit, he can go to your desk and
he feels better, he or she feelsbetter, right, he or she?
does Right, but it's not.
It's not the case.
Like when people used to workfrom home, they they were like,
oh yeah, john's working fromhome, and it was kind of like

(09:23):
they're probably mowing theirlawn 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 (09:28):
Was that like before, like cause?
I remember before the pandemic,when you found out someone was
working from home, that was likehow did they swindle?

Chris (09:35):
that Like what?

Brittany (09:36):
scam are they running?

Victor (09:38):
that they got to work from home in every day.

Brittany (09:41):
So I have to say this, I have to put this out there in
defense of remote workers.
I work with a lot of remoteworkers Obviously I'm a remote
work coach and consultant andI've been a remote worker for
about 15 years and what is farmore common is people that are
working way, way, way too muchbecause they're afraid to ever
say enough and put everythingaway at the end of the day,

(10:03):
because they're worried thatpeople will think that they're
not really working.
And so we've come up withremote performative busyness.

Chris (10:11):
I don't know that's such a horrible thing because, like
when you're at work, even thoughI'm not doing anything, like no
one bothers me, right, becausethey think I'm working because
I'm sitting in front of mycomputer.
But when you work from home, Iget constant calls, emails to
make sure that I am working.
After a certain point I waslike I can't take this anymore,
so I would just show up to work.
Just less hassle, less hassle.

(10:33):
Yeah, I don't have to deal withall the BS and you know, yeah.

Rob (10:37):
You're in consulting.
So when you meet, you meet withemployers 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 managerlevel, and I also work with
mostly startup founders rightnow to work at the whole company
level, and I really like doingboth because I feel like it
helps me maintain bothperspectives instead of you see
some people that become wildchampions of remote work from

(11:08):
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 alland you're like well that's not
what business is.
But then you have people on themanagement 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 nottrue either.
Yeah, how do you entice thesecompanies to embrace the remote
workers?
Or just try to convince themlike, 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 thesecompanies, these usually small
founder-led startups that arethey've always been fully remote
, because it's so much cheaperto start a fully remote company
than a company that has a placeLike the barrier to entry is so
much lower.

(11:57):
And then when they have theircore team and it's them and
their brother and theirsister-in-law and that one girl
they hired off the internet it'sfine.
But at some point they start tohave a team of people who
aren't their family and theirfriends and everything starts to
normalize and people want tofall 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.

(12:19):
Morale is terrible.
I'm flying everyone to anoffsite 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 kindof people that are really great
at work from home or remotework or distributed work
whatever you want to call it arepeople 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 productivityfocused, not busyness focused.
And if you set up a systemwhere you tell your people, okay
, crystal clear, this is what Iwant from you, this is what I
expect you to accomplish.
This is a little bit about howthat looks.
You know you get buy-in therelike, yeah, yeah, that's totally

(13:03):
possible.
It's not like I'm asking you tosell 10 times as many units
this week as you've ever sold inyour life.
But this is what success lookslike here.
And then you say, okay, I trustyou to go get success for us
within those parameters.
That's how you get and keep Aplayers.
But part of what's tricky, a lotof those founders don't realize
and what a lot of the work wedo together is because they're

(13:23):
totally into the idea.
They get it.
That's what they always wanted.
But their processes, theirsystems, their communication
policies, their fear-drivenmicromanagement sometimes all of
these things are often not setup 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 areyou doing it?
How are you defining whatsuccess looks like for some of

(13:45):
these trickier roles, whatactually 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 measurethat productivity so that,
instead of having theseagonizing conversations over how
much you're working, you'reinstead laser focused?
Okay, Kimmy, you were supposedto run three workshops last week

(14:05):
and you didn't even run one.
What's happening?
Let's talk about this.
It's a completely differentconversation.

Victor (14:11):
I just might be just showing my ignorance, but I
imagine like a lot of remotework to be like at least from
what the ads Instagram reelsthat I see telling me that I
should work remote are all likecustomer 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 totake out a billboard that says
okay, I don't have a pithyslogan, I set that up too well,
I don't have a follow through.
But basically there's all thesejobs 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, aremicromanaged within an inch of

(14:52):
their lives in office settingstoo.
It's nothing new it's how thatwork is done, unfortunately, and
those are jobs.
And there's also a bunch of MLMschemes, multi-level marketing
schemes that are designed topart vulnerable people from
their savings under the guise ofstarting a business.
That is completely differentthan what I would consider to be
and I hate this distinction.
But career style jobs.

(15:12):
I, for example, have beenworking remotely for a long time
.
I've done it as a instructionaldesigner, I've done it as a
program manager, I've done it asa training coordinator, I've
done it as a social mediamarketer and I've done it in
various leadership positions andsome other stuff.
But I work with people who aregraphic designers, people who

(15:33):
are mid-level managers atvarious companies and all kinds.
I work a lot of ed tech, techdevelopment.
There's so many jobs that canbe done remotely now that have
no real need to go into theoffice, because, as technology
gets better and better andbetter, we need the physical
place or the special technologythat's there less.

(15:54):
I don't need a fancy setup thatI can't afford to edit videos
anymore.
Basically, anyone with aniPhone 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 thatcame with the work from home.
So I remember there was a lotof 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'smeeting.
We're all in the office.
That's the whole point.
Why don't we just meet in agroup?
So we have this meeting,everything goes on.
You got any questions?
No, we're good, and they walkover.

(16:22):
Hey, that one thing.
I'm like we're defeating thewhole purpose of this.
Either we're here or we're not.
And it was just like this weirdcrossover 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 likelimited 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 ajob right now where he works
from home three days a week, buttwo days a week he has to go
into office because you know Idon't know why home three days a
week, but two days a week hehas to go into office because
you know I don't know why, andhe doesn't know why either
Because at least one it's notboth of those days he is
literally the only person in hisoffice, and so he's either
working quietly on his computerby himself or he's on Zoom
meetings with his colleagues whoare at home that day.

(17:18):
He said some days he goes in allday and doesn't see one other
person Like what's the point ofthat?
And doesn't see one otherperson.
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 tothe 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 andI'm like all right, I want to
meet up with these people andit's going to be fun.
There was some camaraderie.

Brittany (17:45):
Yeah, no, I totally hear you.
You know it is a little bitmore fun to go into work, isn't
it?
You don't hear much about thatin the return to office debates,
but, goodness, I miss takinglong lunches with my coworkers.
It was a good time.
There's two things.
The first is, yeah, there's alot of little things that you

(18:07):
can do to have that kind ofcongenial, collegiate
relationship with your coworkers.
You can make a little timeintentionally at the beginning
and end of other regular callsto just talk about whatever is
interesting, to get to know thema little bit, to share weekend
plans, whatever Some places do,informal meetings where people
can just drop in and chat, andthose can be fun on little teams
.
I think they're probably prettyabrasive on big teams but on

(18:28):
little teams they can be fun.
But the real deal is this I'mgoing to take a step back from
this specific topic for just asecond, because this is part of
a larger issue, which is that wehave really been living through
a tremendously transformativetime when it comes to the death
of community.
People don't participate inreligious communities and near
the same numbers anymore.
Our neighborhoods aren't closeanymore.

(18:49):
We're losing third spaces left,right and center, third spaces
being places outside of home orsomeplace you have to pay to be,
where you can congregate andmeet people.
So if you have a vibrant park inyour neighborhood where you can
chat up.
Your neighbors and their peopleare hanging out doing things.
That's a third space and youmight be hard pressed to think
of a lot of third spaces nearyou anymore, unless you live in

(19:11):
a really metropolitan area nextto, like, the downtown part.
We just we don't do a lot of itanymore, yeah.

Victor (19:17):
I feel like there's also a difference.
So I, for a little less than ayear, I lived in Colorado
Springs and I and every time yougo hiking out there, anyone
stops you and they just want toknow 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 movedback to New York.
I remember I was just jogging.

(19:38):
I passed by someone.
I said good morning.
They gave me the dirtiest lookof just like who are you?
Why are you talking to me?
Mind your business and go onyour 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 incollege and I'm walking around
and I'm doing my big Midwesternsmile as I walk around and I'm
making casual eye contact withpeople as we walk past and
smiling Cause that is what youdo in Colorado and, um, I had
more than one person go oh,Americans, and like turn away
from me and discuss yeah, Didyou have your water?

Rob (20:20):
bottle and your North face jacket.
Well, I was smiling when I waswalking 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 explainthis to me, but also Americans
have very distinctive teeth.

Rob (20:35):
Ah, yeah.

Brittany (20:36):
But anyway, back to community.
The point is that we don't havecommunity like we used to, and
we haven't really replaced itwith anything.
So for a lot of people, workbecomes one of their primary
sources of community, and whileit's the easiest way to fill
that gap, I strongly encouragepeople who are working remotely,
or even if they're not, to tryto take the opportunity to have

(21:00):
more connections and morecommunity outside of work and to
not try to meet all theirsocial needs with work, because
we already depend on work forour paychecks, for our
healthcare, so many things inour lives and when your social
life is bound up in that too, itjust becomes too complicated.
One of the things I treasureabout having a little bit of

(21:20):
distance, having great mentorrelationships at work, having
fantastic collegiaterelationships, having just
really strong workingrelationships where we know each
other a little bit and we dogreat work together, is that it
is very low drama.
We don't talk about things thatcould cause drama because I
don't go there for all my socialneeds.

(21:40):
I have a social network here, Ihave family, I have friends, I
have my neighborhood, mycommunity, like there's all
kinds of things that I make apoint of interacting with, so
that I don't just sit at homeall 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 youhave to get out of your chair
because, well, we're killingourselves by sitting all day and
staring at screens.
Do you ever have a screenheadache 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, adviland 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 buttgets big and then everything
hurts more.
It's just, it's terrible if yousit too much.
So on the one hand, from a workperspective, I'm a I do what I
have to do to get the job donekind of girl, and sometimes that
does mean I work a really longday with not enough breaks and I
feel like crap at the end.
But for day to day, what I tryto do in a non-emergent

(22:51):
situation like oh, the grant'sdue tomorrow and we just found
out about it and we got to knockout 14 hours to do it Fine,
okay, it's what we need to do,we need the grant.
But on a regular day that's notacceptable, that I'm ruining my
body.
So I get up.
I get up every.
I try every 90 minutes, maybetwo hours I take 10 minutes.
I walk my dogs, I jump on theelliptical, I load my dishwasher
.
It doesn't matter what you'redoing.

(23:12):
You just need to get up, notlook at a screen and move your
poor body out of the sittingshape.

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 theiremployees work from home, and
they're doing it the right way.
What does that look like withtheir employer?
Do they sit down and they saylisten, 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 goodcollaborative work remotely,
and I've certainly worked onteams exactly like that, where
we talk to each other a lotbecause, we're working on things
together and that's how thatworks, right?
But yeah, I have worked withseveral companies that I think
are doing this very well, andI've worked at companies that
are doing this very well, andwhen I was the one in the

(23:56):
manager's chair, I was verystraightforward about it.
I'd say, okay, we're allgrownups here.
Nobody's here to babysit you.
This is what I expect from you.
I've done the work to figureout what I want from your
position and what success lookslike.
I'm not going to make you guessand then grade you on some
hidden curve.
That's really based on how muchI like you or not.
I'm defining transparently, in afair way which, by the way,

(24:19):
there's a way, more equitableway to do this all the way
across the board Um, whatsuccess looks like.
I'm gonna make it very clear toyou and when you have trouble
hitting that for whatever reason, we're going to troubleshoot it
together.
I'm not going to just jump toyou're lazy and not doing it.
We're going to talk about it.
Um, and I'm going to support youand I'm going to train you and
we're going to continue to growand do great things, but, at the

(24:40):
end of the day, everythingwe're doing here is built on the
trust that you are going to doeverything 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 monthand this guy called in.
It was a call in show and thisguy 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 awaynewspapers.
You'd put in your nickel andthen you'd take your newspaper.
We can't do that anymorebecause people steal.
I don't trust anyone, let alonemy 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 noteven 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 inthe system, a lot of the same
things aren't going to work.
We know there are tons ofmanagers who have gotten jobs,
not that they were good at theirjob, 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, thatwas going to drive me crazy.
The Peter principle is the ideathat you get promoted to the
point of incompetence.
Every time you're good at yourjob, you get promoted, and when
you stop being good, you staythere.
So the job you end up in is theone 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'treally been, uh, solidified yet
.
We're not learning it in schoolyet.

(26:05):
Um, people have to seek outthat knowledge for themselves,
and if you couldn't even be agood manager in an office and
you wouldn't take the time tolearn how to do that, are you
really going to go out andmaster 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 mygreatest 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 anorganization that has not gotten
this down yet which is, quitefrankly, likely, right, there's
some great ones, but there'ssome really terrible ones too
One of the things that you needto be thinking about is not just
am I producing what I need toproduce?
Am I creating value for thiscompany?

(26:47):
Am I really kicking butt overhere?
But how do I make sure that mymanager knows that?
Because if you have amicromanager or somebody who's
scared because they know theyshouldn't be your manager, the
worst thing that you can do istrigger all the little red flags
in their head that goes oh no,we better start paying attention
to how much Rob is working.
Because, once they do that,they're going to find what

(27:08):
they're looking for, no matterwhat you're doing.
They're going to take everytime you're sick, every time
your kid's home, every time blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
It's going to be confirmationin their mind that you're trying
to scam them instead of working.
So what you need to do is thinkreally proactively about what
it is that your manager wants tosee from you and give it to
them ahead of time.
Like I've been working withthis client whose manager has a

(27:32):
propensity on their meetings togive a whole bunch of ideas
every week that he thinks wouldbe great to work on, and he
wants to have a hundred irons inthe fire at a time which is
exhausting, but he also wants tosee real, meaningful progress,
and so one of the things that heended up doing after we really
talked about this was coming upwith this email to send his boss

(27:54):
a couple hours before they meetthat updates him on where all
these various things are andthen poses a couple of questions
at the end.
Like him on where all thesevarious things are and then
poses a couple of questions atthe end, like I'm really curious
to hear what you think about Xor I'm really not sure what to
do about Y and like.
This is where I'd like you toparticipate as my manager.
This is where everything is.
This is the status on all theprojects.
This is all the movement I'vecreated since we talked last.

(28:15):
Here's what I need from you asa manager, and here are any
problems that we need to problemsolve that I'm running into and
if I've accomplished anythinggreat 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 calmdown significantly and start

(28:35):
trusting him more because he wasproactively giving him exactly
what his manager wanted, so thathis manager didn't have to work
so hard to manage him but hismanager actually stopped having.
He'd put him on this daily callregimen where they were
checking in every single day totry to I don't know micromanage
him to excellence, like that's athing.

(28:56):
And he ended up canceling abouthalf of those calls because he'd
get the email and be like thislooks great.
Do X, this looks perfect.
Let me answer Y, let's focus onthis.
And it just it turned out thatwhat his manager really needed
was to feel like he hadvisibility on how my client was
spending his time.
That's what the guy wanted.

(29:16):
That's what his fear was isthat he didn't really know, and
he didn't want to go to his bossand say, well, I don't know how
he spends his time.
So, and that's what managing upis.
It's figuring out what yourboss needs from you and then
giving it to them and using thatto shape the conversation about
the work and your work and howyou're doing so that, instead of
them having to make it up wholecloth and fight for it and

(29:39):
perhaps start to be suspiciousor 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 Ihave to do so that I don't get a
call from my boss, because if Idon'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 justconstantly looks like he's
working.
Also the guy that puts thepaperweight on the escape button
so that it just constantlylooks like he's working.
So there's probably a reasonwhy.

Brittany (30:07):
But that is exactly how you can get caught in this
working way.
Too much from home.
Trap is that, if you don't know,what is important to your boss
and what is important in yourrole, but you feel that pressure
and that desire to be seen asbeing successful at doing it and
not to be micromanaged and notto have to get angry phone calls

(30:28):
.
You end up just filling yourday with anything you can think
of so that you can work.
And then you start to feelresentful because you're working
too much and you're burning outand you're killing yourself.
And no one appreciates it,because of course they don't,
because even if they didn't tellyou what they wanted, even if
they can't articulate what theycare about, they do know what
they expect from your position.

(30:48):
So if you don't put it out inthe open, you can't work to that
level, and so you just have towork 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 wayto work.

Rob (31:05):
Is that the common challenge we see for employees
working from home?
Is it appeasing the boss or isit the transition, is it?
You know, the weird thing waswhen I used to work from home
and I had a room that I wouldset up as my office, and it was
weird because when I would gointo it, I immediately started
feeling like, okay, I'm not athome, I'm at work.
I remember when we were in myapartment with my wife and she
works from home a hundredpercent.

(31:27):
She said that it was a hard wayto like split.
She did feel like she wasalways home and she did feel
like she was kind of always atwork.
But is that a common challengethat people run into or are you
seeing that?

Brittany (31:42):
Oh, definitely.
It all goes back to what wewere talking about before.
You take a job that,realistically you were going to
put in just under three hours aday of productive work.
You strip out standing at thewater cooler and the coffee.
You strip out half the meetingsif you're lucky, about half the

(32:03):
meetings.
If you're lucky you strip outall the other random little
things that take up time.
Going out to lunch witheveryone doing a laugh and
talking to people in theiroffices doing a quick check-in
that's really just gossip.
And then you're left with asmall amount of work and then
you're like, oh no, this won'tdo, I can't just do this.
And then, if you don't have thecontext and the mindset to
figure out how to be superimpactful with what you're doing

(32:24):
, you just fill it up and thenyou end up answering emails and
Slack messages, because that'sthe easiest way to do it right
is to respond to what other?
people are asking you for.
And then you download thoseapps on your phone and you find
yourself, instead of payingattention to your kid at night,
when you're supposed to behaving quality time, quickly
answering just one more emailabout a thing that is definitely
not an emergency because youwant everyone to know what a
good team player you are and howcooperative you are and how

(32:46):
you're always there and how theyshouldn't write you off because
you're remote.
But if you really think aboutwhat you're doing, by focusing
on that productive work andfiguring out what your goal is
and really going out andcrushing it, your company is
getting a much better deal.
They don't benefit from youdriving yourself crazy,
answering emails at all hours,like maybe in the microcosm.
Your supervisor might like itbecause they're doing the same

(33:09):
thing and it feeds into thisecosystem of performative
busyness.
But in terms of bottom line andwhether 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 theirspace?
What's the dynamic that they'retrying 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 fromhome together in the same room
right next to each other, which.
I know their desks were likecatty corner to each other, Just
they were angled so that youcouldn't see each other on their

(33:51):
zoom screens.
but I think they could probablyhold hands from their desks, and
so she always had these bigheadphones on, and I assume he
did as well.
I don't know.
He wasn't on my team but andshe always would mute herself in
between everything she saidbecause he was talking at the
same time and she had to be socareful about it.
It really seemed like it was amajor drag for her.

(34:11):
I feel like she made majorconcessions to the fact that
both of them were supposed tospend a significant amount of
time on the phone, and you can'treally 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 hestarted going to sit in his
office alone, and he did not.
He had a research job and herjob is mostly research too.
They had some meetings, but nota ton and they didn't have any
trouble with it.
It was just like sitting in avery small cubicle area.
So they did put some plantsbetween them as a screen because

(34:43):
she said it drove her crazy tolike watch him work.

Victor (34:46):
Yeah, so I guess.
I guess it's the nature of whatyour job is.

Rob (34:49):
So you have this company, bloom Remote right, and I just
love entrepreneur stories.
So is this, this, the firstbusiness 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.
I ended up being the co-founderat the last business I was at.
I was there for almost eightyears and was in charge of all
of the operations andprogramming for most of the time
that I was there, because ourfounder was really taking point
on investors and sales and stuffand so all the running of it I

(35:22):
was doing and all the peoplemanaging and hiring and
everything.
I also was a freelancer forabout three years.
I left one job and decidedafter I had my son that what I
really wanted was to have alittle more space and
flexibility and freedom and towork less, and I intended to
freelance part-time and by abouta year in I was working time
and a half almost every daybecause I just couldn't turn

(35:44):
away the work when it would comein and I had too much.
And by the end of it I hadthree job offers from three
different companies I was beenworking with as a freelancer,
one of which ended up being thecompany I was just talking about
, and I had to do it because itwas going to be easier to build
a startup than to keepfreelancing 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, whatdo I want?
And I really sat down and Itook a month and thought about
it.
Do I want to go into anotherstartup working and building?
Do I want to go get like aslower job somewhere?
Do I want to try freelancingagain?
What am I into right now?
What will help me grow?
And I realized that I reallyfelt this burning desire to see

(36:28):
if I could do it myself.
I had this passion for remotework.
I think it's a total gamechanger and where the world is
going, I see this huge problemin that people want this.
They want everything, both onthe business and on the personal
side.
They want all the promises ofthis, but they're not realizing
it because they don't realizethat remote work is a skill set.

(36:49):
It's not the same.
You can't do exactly what youdo at the office at home and
have it work.
You have to learn how to do it.
And so I thought to myself thisis a perfect opportunity to go
out there, really help a lot ofpeople make their businesses and
their careers work the way thatthey want to and at the same
time, put everything I've beendoing and all the different
things I've been building andall the design programs I've

(37:10):
designed and coaching I've doneand mentoring I've been into and
consulting work I've done andeverything I've learned.
And I wanted to pit myselfagainst 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 reallylearn it.
Like in school we come in, wesit 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 thenyou go to work.
You're like I know how to dothis, right, I just sit down, I
meet some friends and I dowhatever I got to do Corporate

(37:48):
beat training.
Yeah, if you don't have thatdrive, 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 fora while, which is that our
school system is still in a lotof ways.
So there've been a lot ofadvances 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 peopledoing fabulous work.
But as a whole, and especiallyin lower income neighborhoods,

(38:12):
we still tend to teach thisindustrial revolution model of
obedience driven but in seatwork, sit down, be here.
When you're supposed to shut up, don't say anything.
You're not supposed to Um andyou're more penalized for having
big ideas than you are rewardedfor it and have creativity
within this very narrow box.
Um, but that's not really howwork is anymore and a lot of

(38:35):
places in person or remote.
We want strategic, creativethinkers.
We want out of the boxsolutions.
Work changes every day.
I have people say, brittany,you do future of work stuff.
Because I'm on the future ofwork alliance, which is fabulous
, by the way what should my kidstudy?
What do you think is going tobe big when my 10 year old goes
to work?
I don't know.
That's the point your kid hasto Bitcoin and social media.

(38:58):
That's the point Bitcoin andsocial 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 figureout how to suss out the
situation you're in and thrivein it.
I have learned how to do somany different kinds of work.
I mean, if you name a businessfunction, I probably have done
it in the last decade, at leastfor a little while.

Victor (39:27):
Not great, but I did it for a small company.
I read a book recently and itwas talking about Thank you, the
first one.
They spoke about how a lot ofeducation in Ivy League schools
teach you how to do homeworkvery well, which gives a huge
bump to consulting industries,because all you do is you're
doing homework for a largeamount 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 rethinkyour life choices, rob?
Try harder.
I remember when I startedremote working during the
pandemic, and I know it wasn'tthe same as companies that are
ready for remote workers.
But I remember first feelingamazed.
I was like, oh my god, I amhome, I don't have to commute
anymore, I don't have to goanywhere, I don't have to get

(40:11):
dressed, I just have to get tomy computer and then I can start
my day.
Is there like a transitionperiod when you go from like
amazement of like hey, I'm athome, 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 takesself-discipline.
But if you've ever spent anytime reading about
self-discipline and motivation,you know that a lot of it
actually comes down to variousways we can trick our brain into
behaving.
So, yes, you can time block andI do.
I absolutely recommend timeblocking.

(40:46):
You can batch tasks, you canuse various kinds of little
timers to remind yourself totake breaks and do something
athletic, and these are allgreat tips.
But there's something moreimportant that you have to be
able to really master, which isthe 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 prettyoffice, they get their little

(41:07):
timers I actually have a little.
They work from home.
They set up a really prettyoffice, they get their little
timers I actually have a littlePomodoro timer right here.
I love it and they have a coupleof great weeks.
It's really fun.
But then it settles in and theystart to go like, oh, I'm
lonely, oh I don't actually wantto work this morning, oh I
don't, uh, I don't know what todo.
And then their boss starts tosay Hmm, you know, I get the
feeling maybe you're not workingbecause ridiculous indicator or

(41:29):
because you've stopped doingthings legitimately.
Either one depending on how itgoes.
And then they start to panic andso then they start filling
their day with anything they canthink of and they start
spending hours doing emailsevery day and they start
recleaning up old databases orwhatever it is to try to justify
the time, because they haven'tfundamentally shifted how they

(41:50):
think about what work is, and alot of people don't.
Our schools don't really teachus to do that.
Everything you just said aboutIvy league consulting which made
me laugh doesn't look at likeall that matters.
All that should matter in awork environment is what you can
make happen, what you cancreate, what you can produce,
who you can get to pay you to dothat.

(42:12):
Creating and producing thoseare the fundamentals of what
business is.
It's exchanging goods andservices for money, and you have
to be able to let go of thisbusyness killing time mindset.
You have to own whatever you'rein charge of, even if all
you're in charge of is gettingthe teenagers who signed up for
this seminar to show up andcalling them.

(42:34):
Fine, if that's your job, thenyou should be the best darn
probably client supportspecialist you can be.
That's it.
And if you can do that, if youcan really make that shift, then
the rest of it, the timers, thepretty office, the ergonomic
chair, the, the deep focusblocking it all works because
you understand what you'retrying to do.
But if you can't get that inthe first place, none of the

(42:55):
window dressing is going to makethis 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 Ican't do at home.
I realized I have to separatewhat tasks I could do at home so
that when I do work from homeand I only work only on those
things that I know I couldaccomplish, I know I could
finish.

Rob (43:16):
So you mentioned this future of work alliance.
What is that?
Because your face lit up whenyou 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, practicalapplications to a bunch of
different people who have theirown businesses that touch on the
future of work in some way.
So, for example, I do remotework stuff, but some people are
more focused on AI.
Some people are more focused onwhere they think that work

(43:47):
patterns are shifting.
There's all kinds of differentthings people do and what we do.
There's 50 of us.
We're the remote future of work50.
We just changed the name to aswe get together and we do
collaborative projects to try tocreate a little illumination on
where things are going, enoughattention being paid not to just

(44:08):
the tragedy and the catastropheof the moment, but how we can
shape the future of workpurposefully, so that it's a
future that we want to have.
For example, when I think aboutand there's a lot of people that
do remote work stuff in theAlliance when I think about
remote work, I'm not justthinking about, hey, what's the
newest software?
What's remote work look likeright now.

(44:28):
I'm trying to say, hey, this ismy thesis, this is my research
and experience-backedassessments that I use to help
businesses figure out whythey're not getting the results
they want, to help individualsfigure out where they're getting
stuck and then from there Ihave a process that's really
about helping people shape thework around them, and everyone

(44:50):
in the alliance is doingsomething like that.
We have several people who arereally involved in policy who
have been very involved rightnow in this discussion around
the return to office mandates,especially at the federal
government was spoke beforeCongress right before they did
that, trying to tell them whythis would be catastrophic Um
which I mean, of course, it willbe right.

(45:11):
The guy from the patent officewas on CPR last week talking
about how the patent office hasbeen hiring remotely forever
because you can't afford thekind of people that you need, um
, that have the skills you needto be able to do things like
technical patents.
If you make them live in DC andon a government salary, it just
it doesn't work out, it doesn'tmath, and so they've been
hiring remotely forever so thatthey can get the experts they

(45:33):
need to do the work that thepatent office has to do.
Like we don't want people atthe patent office who don't know
what they're evaluating.
This is the guys like I can't, Ican'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 thefuture of work should look like
and what we can do now to try todirect 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 needthat.
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 inflectionpoint, very clearly, where
technology is just like theIndustrial Revolution.
The technology has gotten to apoint in which we have to change
the way that we're working andliving 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 literallybloody like it was in the
Industrial Revolution to balancecorporate interests and
individual interests.
And, like you said, I thinkalso there's a societal shift
and economic shift as well,besides just technology, where
we don't have the one-incomehousehold anymore.
That's almost impossible tolive like that.
So yeah, we need to havealternate options, especially
with things like child care,because I know a lot of friends

(46:58):
that I know of are telling methat, oh yeah, it costs
thousands of dollars a month tohave someone watch their
children because there's noother options.
To me, that's like you need tohave both houses working at this
point yeah, how's this formessed up?

Brittany (47:12):
our public school system and what are considered
to be standard working hoursaren't the same.
So if everybody has to work andyou don't have stay-at-home
moms and dads hardly anymore.
Who's supposed to take theirkid to school like?
My kid's supposed to be atschool at 8 30 and he gets done
at 3 20?
I'm supposed to work more thanthat Like yeah.

(47:35):
I'm remote, so I just walk awayfor a minute and say cause, this
is part of having a flexiblejob and an organization where
you're trusted to make gooddecisions because you're meeting
your goals and you're you'redoing what you're supposed to do
and accomplishing what you'resupposed to accomplish.
Right and so it's never been abig deal for me to leave, get my
kid, bring him home, give him asnack and then sit down and
work some more.

(47:55):
But it would be a very big dealif 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.
You have to take breaks anyway.
Your brain can't.
Do you guys know that the wholeidea of an eight-hour work week
, which was based on automationlines, right, we're talking
about like Henry Ford kind ofstuff.
And that's how long a personcan do some repetitive tasks

(48:23):
like add a screw over and overand over again, without being so
fatigued that they maketerrible mistakes and any longer
than that you start to seeaccidents go up a lot.
But when they look at researchat how long someone can sustain
high-intensity creative thoughtlike the kind of stuff that you
need if you have a really thinkyjob it's more like two to
three-hour bursts.
Some people can do it for fourhours, but nobody can do that,
can sustain that for eight hoursat a time.

Victor (48:41):
Wow.
And this is why kids work thoselines 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 fromother 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 lifekind 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 foranthropology cultural
anthropology Super practical andactually the only reason I did
that is because I wanted to goto undergrad.
I did get a major in undergradin women's studies and sociology
and anthropology, because myfather said, brittany, you can
study whatever you want, but itwould be really cool if you pick
something that had thepotential to teach you a skill

(49:41):
and get a job one day, and Ijust don't think women's studies
is it which wasn't unfair.
So I got into anthropology andI loved it and I went to grad
school.
I have a master's and actuallyI have an ABD, all but a
dissertation.
I almost finished a doctorate inanthropology before I went a
different way, and one of thethings that you learn there is
how to talk to people and tolearn about a situation in a

(50:06):
place how it really is, not howyou think it might be.
It's how to have these big,open-ended conversations where
you bring in as littlepresupposition as humanly
possible and you follow theirleads.
You don't stick with yourquestions, you follow where they
lead you and hear the storythat they want to tell you and
you contextualize it with enoughobservations of being in the

(50:28):
space and reading and everythingelse that of both training and
coaching to help people learnhow to do really important
social services andinterventions with children

(50:55):
who've had trauma and thingslike that.
And I just learned so muchabout how to do what training is
actually supposed to do.
I know if you've taken atraining at work lately, you
probably think, ah, trainingsare for checking boxes, and
that's fair, because that's whatmost of your trainings at work
are for.
But what training is supposed tobe about is changing the way
that somebody behaves.
You're supposed to teach themsomething in such a way that

(51:15):
later, when they're faced with adecision or activity, they
choose to do it the way youtaught them to instead of how
they would have done it before,which is a totally different
threshold for learning, and itwas very challenging, but it was
really worthwhile to learn.
And from there I startedworking with a couple of
different small companies andstartups who did various kinds
of education in wildly differentspheres.

(51:37):
Some of them were reallycoaching driven, some of them
were a lot more mentoring andtraining style.
But I was learning both how touse that earlier information to
create behavior change and tolearn what's really going on so
that we can create that behaviorchange because you have to
really understand to do it andhow to build programs that make
that happen.
And I was learning how to run abusiness how do you find

(52:02):
clients, how do you market, howdo you keep your books so that
the IRS doesn't throw you inprison?
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 gotto really work with people
individually and help them growand mentor them, and during the
time I took off after my lastposition, I really came back to
that over and over and overagain.
These are the tools in my toolbelt.
I know how to help peoplechange their behavior in a

(52:31):
sustainable way.
I know how to design programsthat allow that to happen larger
just than the individual, so Ican do it with individuals and
with groups.
I know a ton about workingremotely and I believe in it
passionately because I've beendoing it for such a long time
and I've seen how it createsopportunity for all kinds of
people who don't haveopportunity.
One group that's here in myheart are mothers.

(52:52):
It is almost impossible to bethe primary parent to your child
and do all the pickups and sickdays and doctor visits and
everything else that has tohappen and go into a regular
office, but I didn't want togive up having a meaningful
career.
My work is super.
I don't know if this is comingacross, but my work is super
important to me.
I love working and feeling likeI'm making a difference in the

(53:16):
world and creating an impact,and in this I saw a chance to
pull all those things togetherand to help both people on one
side and businesses on the otherreally 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'redoing.
I mean, I never really thoughtof it that way.
We really have to reteacheverybody how to do this.
But we really have to reteacheverybody how to do this.
And a lot of the pain pointsthat I ran into when I did work
from home are things that weknow.
People know about them.
I thought I was just goingthrough it alone at home like,

(54:00):
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 manydifferent things.
One of the things we're doingright now is firming up what our
goals and our work groups aregoing to be for this year,
because it's not.
None of us work there right?
This is something that we do ona volunteer basis because we
believe in this and we thinkit's really important, and so,
um, yeah, I do think there'sgoing to be people who are
really interested in it.
At the educational level.
I'm obviously really interestedin it at the work level, the

(54:36):
company and individual level.
There's people that are reallyinto it at the policy level, but
the reality of this situationis well, there's a lot of things
that we can do as individualsto make it better for us, or
companies to make it better atthat company, and we should do
those things.
There's no reason to strugglejust because not everyone has it
figured out yet, but we'regoing to have to come to grips
with this culturally to movethrough this phase into the next

(54:58):
one.
This is going to continue to bea tumultuous transition until
we start to establish norms forhow this works and not just rely
on what has happened, butreally look at what is the best
way to take advantage of thisnew level of productivity but
also, I hate to say, work-lifebalance, because it's become so
loaded, but there's so muchopportunity here to use this

(55:21):
technology for us all to be moresuccessful and better, but we
have to do it carefully.
It's like AI Are we just goingto let it strip a bunch of
people of their jobs, have noidea how to replace it, let all
that money go into a very smallnumber of people's pockets and
leave everyone else to becomehomeless, or are we going to
come up with a strategic planfor how we're going to move

(55:43):
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 tospeak about remote work, and if
someone wants to reach out toyou, where can they find you?

Brittany (56:08):
bloomremotecom.
Got everything on my website.
It's bloomremotecom, and Iwould 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 howworking from home or remote work
was a thing.
Like I didn't realize all thethings we did or doing was part
of like a learning curve that weall went through.
I thought it was just part ofthe work.
Yeah, that was really fun andit definitely made me realize a
lot of things what I do at homenow or what I can do, all right.

Rob (56:47):
Rob.
This is important work and it'skind of nice to know that
there's people working at theforefront of this, that this is
a thing.
It's not just like it's a workfrom home thing, work remote
thing.
This is a systematic changething.
It's great to see that peopleare creating businesses to
answer and and tackle thesesolutions.
You know in a good way and Ithink she had a lot of great

(57:09):
things to say you know that Icould relate to when I was
working from home, like, oh yeah, that was a thing.
Hopefully we are headed in theright direction.

Chris (57:18):
I just wish that we had someone like that come to our
company when this all work fromhome happened.

Rob (57:26):
Absolutely Like someone like her to come in and be like
hey, listen, you have to workfrom home.
Happen.
Absolutely Like someone likeher to come in and be like hey,
listen, you have to work fromhome.
Do you know what that means?
This is what you're going torun into.
That would have been better forthe managers, that would have
been better for us.
Have us all on the same page.
This is this.
These are the changes you'regoing to see.
Like she said, it's making thebehavioral change, which is what

(57:48):
I think we're all going throughnow, 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 tocheck out her services at
bloomremotecom.
We want to thank you forlistening, but we need your help
.
If you enjoyed this episode, Iwant you to find that share
button and send this podcast toa friend.
It's cool.
I'll wait whenever you're readyand if you could hit that
subscribe button to stay updatedon new episodes.

(58:15):
Until next time, stay curious,see ya.