Work 20XX with Jeff Frick

Liam Martin joined me fresh off the stage at Running Remote's 10th event, a milestone that puts into sharp relief just how much the landscape has shifted since that scrappy little secret called remote work became the world's crash course in 2020. What started as documentation...

Indiana went 16-0 and won the national championship with 7 blue-chip recruits. Their opponents had 110+. What does Curt Cignetti's talent evaluation strategy teach us about the future of work?

It's not about return to office. It's not about hybrid schedules. It's about creating an environment that enables people to do the best work of their lives—finding the best talent, empowering them with AI and modern tools, and building a cult...

Welcome to 2026!

After four years and 50+ episodes of Work 20XX, it's time to evolve the conversation. The return-to-office debates? We've covered them exhaustively. The real action now is in AI adoption, continuous learning, and building the skills that matter for distributed work.

In this episode, Jeff shares his vision for Work 20XX in 2026, including why he's shifting focus away from retur...

Liam Martin shared his full circle moment with me at Running Remote, almost 5 years to the day he was forced to cancel Running Remote's last visit to Austin, April 2020. With prior stops in Lisbon and Montreal, Running Remote's return to Austin was a community fest. 

Remote first organizations focus more on in-house retreats than anyone outside of the actual travel industry. Industry leaders needed their o...

Mike Melen took a college side hustle, and built it into a growing global digital marketing agency. After starting full remote, Mike opened an office in Bergen County, New Jersey. Covid closed the office, and SmartSites is back to being fully remote to stay.

Remote hiring opened up the available talent pool beyond his Bergen County, New Jersey. Suddenly, Mike could hire people with the special skills neede...

Melinda Stallings brings the power of positivity to the workplace and stage. Founder of The Positive Consultant and curator of DisruptHR Austin, Melinda promotes the "infinite power of positivity," consulting with individual organizations and extending her reach as the force behind DisruptHR Austin, where she builds programs such as the 2025 theme, Envision, Empower, Elevate, helping people thrive in the workplace.

Robert Phelps helps keep remote teams secure, often before they even know they're at risk. As President of Creative IT, Robert and team provide IT services for companies that are too small to build an in-house department, or those that need a little assist. 

Robert and I spoke at Running Remote 2025 Austin, before his keynote, 'The Hidden Bottleneck: Why Remote Teams Struggle to Scale (and How to Fix It To...

Karrie Sullivan has been on the edge of digital transformation since the earliest days of digital media, with a stint at Cars.com during the late '90 internet boom. She knows about getting people to change behavior, to adopt the new, to do things differently. 

As she said, people won't change behavior just because you ask them. People will change behavior to fit in. Especially if you hand them proven peer ...

Henrik Järleskog, has been on my radar for some time. He's an active member of the 'future of work' community on LinkedIn, frequently contributing articles, keynotes, posts, panel discussions, podcasts appearances and more. I knew I'd have him on eventually….

And then he dropped the post … 'Not one hand went up'

And went on to describe his team of AI agents, working for him.
His dirty dozen, c...

Brian Robertson' leadership philosophies are based on empowering the system, not the people. With clear limits, an 'act don't ask' permissive mindset, the culture seeks to foster more entrepreneurial leadership, when people can exercise authority and autonomy, rather then sitting around, waiting to be told what to do. 

As the founder of Holacracy and a veteran entrepreneur, Brian brings a new model for lea...

Mindy Honcoop helps people grow, one micro dose at a time. As the founder of Agile in HR and a seasoned people leader, Mindy brings a unique lens as her path started in the juvenile justice system, working with kids, and figuring out how happiness, and being one's best self at work, contributed to a child's well being. 

At Running Remote, Mindy emcee'd the outside stage for two days, absorbing insights, an...

Justin Harlan wants you to move to Tulsa. But not just for the $10,000 check. He wants you to consider building your life in Tulsa. As Managing Director of Tulsa Remote, Justin leads a groundbreaking initiative to attract talented, remote workers to diversity Tulsa's economic base beyond oil and gas with more knowledge workers. To grow greater Tulsa, as well as the newly transplanted community.

Tulsa is al...

Zach Boyette got a business class view of the world and decided to build a life, and company around the freedom to design one's own life, not only for Zach the traveler, but all the employees, regardless of the design they choose, living anywhere in the world. As co-founder and CEO of Galactic Fed, Zach leads a 100% remote, 150-person global marketing agency. They designed the company from the bottom up around the prin...

Phil Kirschner returns to Work 20XX with a fresh perspective on how we actually get work done, and exploring a concept he calls "vibe officing." And yes, it's a verb. As Phil puts it, "technology should help us be more human," navigating between spaces, people, and pulse moments with greater flow and fewer barriers.

Sitting face to face from Running Remote in Austin, Phil shares practical insights for lead...

Sophie Wade returns to Work 20XX with a powerful reminder, the future of work is digitalized, multi-gen, and human-first. And that's not a typo, it is a process of work being broken down, and digitalized, and to quote Sophie, 'the tech driven world and operations is changing how we work, not the other way around." In person, from Running Remote in Austin, Sophie shares deep insights on how empathy, adaptability, and tr...

Brian Elliott returns to Work 20XX with a fresh lens on scaling distributed work, investing in people, and navigating the J-curve of technology adoption inside teams. Because what works for supporting distributed teams, works for increasing team AI adoption. Align on real goals, only three to five, and check in with tweet sized updates, once a week, on those three goals. 

Please join me in welcoming Brian ...

Sacha Connor returns to Work 20XX and asks, how do you self advocate, make sure the right people see and are familiar with your accompaniments, skills, and potential, when the most important factor when being considered for that next promotion or fresh opportunity is an AI agent preparing a list of candidates for consideration.

Are you on the agent's radar? What digital persona is assembled by the AI after...

Ryan Anderson and his global research team are spread across more than 20 countries, allowing them to study a wide variety of built environments, workplaces, homes, schools, and healthcare, not just remotely, but in person. That in-person presence is critical. It gives them the ability to feel what's happening in different types of spaces, each designed around distinct objectives.

Ryan also hosts one of th...

Jessica "JJ" Reeder was there, with Darren Murph, at GitLab, early pandemic, when suddenly the entire world was interested in their masterpiece, the GitLab Remote Work handbook. When the world was thrown into remote and distributed work over a weekend in Spring 2020, and answers to many of the questions were contained in the tens of thousands of words, and thousands of pages in the GitLab remote work playbook.

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