Today, I’m talking to Marissa Goldberg. She’s an expert in remote work and guides companies and founders alike toward a future-proof workplace. We’ll talk about productivity, best practices for going remote, and setting up a remote team of all sizes. Here’s Marissa.
Arvid Kahl
Today, I’m talking to Marissa Goldberg. She’s an expert in remote work and guides companies and founders alike towards a future proof workplace. We’ll talk about productivity, best practices for going remote, and setting up a remote team of all sizes. Here’s Marissa. I found this amazing tweet of yours that is essentially a pin tweet, where you talked about having a successful company that allows you to wake up whenever you wanna wake up in the morning. You only have two days in a week where you have meetings. So I assume this is one of those days. So thank you for sharing your time with me today. And you work a four day workweek. Now to me, this is almost a pinnacle of what an indie founder or solopreneur or an indie hacker can reach. You have an amazing story about your company, how you build a business. And I would like to talk to you about everything today, both that story and what you do professionally. So from my vantage point, is you have a really firm grasp on remote work, what that means for companies, what that means for employees and employers. You have a very firm grasp on how an introvert can navigate both remote work and entrepreneurship. Now, I wanna talk about all these things with you today in the kind of confines of the indie hacking space. I would assume that you do a lot of consulting and a lot of work with larger enterprise companies. Today, I wanna talk to you about how somebody who has zero employees at this point, somebody with maybe a really small team, and who wants to go into a remote work culture, who wants to bring remote work into their company because they need to grow, or they want to grow, how they can go about it, what the pitfalls are. And you know how to do this in a way that is actually human centric, instead of just following some odd metric along the way. So thank you for being on today. Yeah, let’s get started. What is the business that you run? And how did you get to be involved in remote work so much?
Marissa Goldberg
Yeah, so my business is remote work prep. We offer fractional head of remote coaching for a variety of different clients. So not just big clients, but also like seed stage. And then we also offer products that help people become better managers and better remote workers. We encourage like using remote work to create a better life. And I got started in this because my background is actually in software engineering and product management. And I was in a very toxic in person tech job back in 2015. And I almost left tech. I thought like, this just isn’t the field for me. And then I said, I’m going to apply to one more place and do one more job. And if it’s just as bad that I can leave knowing that I tried everything I could. But if not like hopefully I could stay in because I love tech. And the job just happened to be a remote work job back in 2015 when it wasn’t that all that common. And I fell in love with it. Like you had control over your space, your time. I could like, you know, construct my own workday. I could work with people all around the world. It was amazing. And so back then there wasn’t a ton of resources out there on how to do it correctly. So I got a ton of things wrong. The company that I was working for got a ton of things wrong. And it really just ignited this passion in me to figure out like, how do I do this right? How do I make sure that the engineers I’m leading aren’t in meetings all day? How do I make sure that I manage in a way that’s people first, while being you know, remote first, and juggling all these things? And in 2018, some fellow managers came to me and they’re like, hey, how are you, not a meaningful day? Like, how are you going about this? And I was like, oh, you know, I could just start some coaching on the side, it’ll just be the side projects. So in 2018, I started remote work prep, was never supposed to be anything big, never supposed to be my full time thing. And, you know, then 2020 happened and you know, things blew up. And yeah, so now it’s my full time thing. And I love my job.
Arvid Kahl
I love that story, too. Because like there’s nothing better than a side project that just happened to happen, becoming something that is so meaningful and impactful, like in your case. That you’re actually helping a whole generation of businesses of all sizes to figure out how to apply this thing that everybody else is doing badly in a better way. I remember too in 2012, I worked for a company in San Francisco and I was German. So I was in Germany, working remotely for a company that was nine hours behind, I guess.
Marissa Goldberg
Yeah, that’s right.
Arvid Kahl
Like it was a lot of time difference. And that was super frustrating because I essentially shifted my day to live on San Francisco.
Marissa Goldberg
Ah, that sucks!
Arvid Kahl
Which I didn’t mind. I’m a night owl so it was great getting up at like noon ish and then like starting work at five so it would like match up with the eight or something
Marissa Goldberg
Right
Arvid Kahl
In the morning in San Francisco, that was okay. And working until four in the morning, wonderful because there were no distractions and I love this. Again, software engineer, right? You know how that feels, like you don’t wanna be pulled out of the thing by a neighbor coming asking for like spices that they need, or somebody calling you or a family member showing up. This kind of stuff is highly disruptive. And this kind of already brings me into this whole topic of remote work. And, you know, boundaries, which is a big thing, right? You just talked about the mental health problems that come like the stress and the toxicity of certain places that can exist in any kind of work and any way of working. And I kind of wanna talk to you about this. First off, because I’ve been on the, just on the edge of burnout. I’ve been mid burnout twice in my life, once actually in that company. I’ve working remotely for a company that was a Silicon Valley VC funded startup. And you know how those work, right? They expect you to work a lot of time. And back then nobody really understood that presence does not mean productivity, right? Like presence in front of a screen does not mean that you actually get work done. And I was very much in a desolate space that it took me quite a while to crawl back out of. And I would like to give people an opportunity to avoid that both for themselves and for their employees. So I mean, let me just start a very generic kind of questionnaire and a general very large scope question. If you were, and you are a founder of a small business and you would want to grow a team. And you know it’s gonna be global because which founder can afford just local talent, like you look all over the place. How can you set up a culture from the start involving people working remotely that is actually not detrimental to everybody’s mental health, but bolstering it making it better? What are the first things you need to think about?
Marissa Goldberg
Yeah, I don’t think that there’s one right approach to go about this. So the very first thing I always recommend to, you know, new founders coming to me being like, hey, I wanna go remote, is just start questioning the default. So what have you been used to your entire career, that may not actually be working for you? So like being in tons of meetings that might not be working for you. Your nine to five schedule, that might not actually be your peak time. So like you were talking about, you’re more of a night owl. And so if you’re forced to get up every day at 8am and start working, you’re not gonna be at your best self to get that you know, Dev work or whatever else you’re doing done. So just start questioning the default and figure out where were those pain points you experienced before? And they might not be obvious too because we’ve been so ingrained in one way of working in one way of thinking for so long that this is gonna be a recurring question. So you’re gonna start off and there might be one blazing thing that’s like, “Oh, hey, this was awful.” And you’ll start working on that. Then as you continue on, you’ll start noticing, oh, I’m doing this as routine, but it’s not really working for me and then just do tiny little changes. Treat it as an experiment. Because like I said, you’re so used to one way of working that you just need to get yourself out of that spot of just using that as the default.
Arvid Kahl
That sounds like a problem that probably every founder who’s a solopreneur, who’s in all roles at the same time, might struggle with because I am also on the verge of hiring for my own media business, right? This podcast and everything I do, the newsletter and my writing my weekly writing, it gets to a point where I need help. And I wanna build a team and I wanna build a team remotely. But I have certain expectations of how work is done, and how quickly anybody should respond to what needs to be done, how urgency is communicated, or lack of urgency is established. So I have all these things in my mind. And they’re probably not codified in the way so that other people immediately would comprehend or even just be aware of those things. So this self perception as a founder of somebody who knows exactly how things are done, this could potentially stand in the way of establishing like, an equal culture or a culture of equality in a company. How would I go about this? Let’s not turn this into consulting session. I don’t want that.
Marissa Goldberg
No, no, no.
Arvid Kahl
But all those founders out there who are kind of afraid to hire because they don’t know how to establish the process. What steps could they think off? Because I certainly understand that the way I used to work for others in other companies in the past, which I’m now unemployable, I guess but back when I wasn’t, right? I knew how to host a process was established. There were standard operating procedures or somebody would tell you exactly what to do. There would be tickets with time estimations, all that stuff. But now as a solo founder, I just kind of wing it all the time. How do you stop your kind of distance nebulousness from impacting a remote working culture in your business?
Marissa Goldberg
So there’s a couple things there. So first, I would recommend, like if you are a solo founder, don’t feel like you have to hire people. So I think that’s something that a lot of people fall into. They’re like, “Oh, I have to create this business. And it has to be as big as possible.” It doesn’t. Like so for me, I’ve actually held my company back. Because I’m not ready to hire a full team. I was very burnt out when I officially went full time on my business. And I just needed that space to not be a manager. And so I’ve held my company back because of it. So first ask like, hey, do I actually want this? Then if you do actually want it, the first thing to do is to start documenting, because you don’t wanna be in nonstop calls with this new person once you hire them. So you need to write everything down, right? Step by step, create loom videos of exactly how you did something. If you do something the same way, like twice, like just document it. So just document everything. And then when you’re hiring, the traditional way to hire is, you know, put up a job posting, then you get a resume, and then you know, like you interview with questions, and then you hire that person. Now that traditional hiring process does not work for remote teams. And the reason why is because it’s not targeting the things that you need from remote work. So with remote work, you’re very autonomous. You, you know, shouldn’t be in meetings all day. You shouldn’t be handheld. So you need to have that autonomy in that initiative. You need to have like that proof of work, that’s more important than like how you present yourself. So with the standard interview process, you’re not targeting that at all. So instead of doing that, start with things like Contract Hire, where you trial someone out for three months, or you do like a test where you like put out like this is what a typical three hours day in your life looks like. And then you do a test and then they respond with what like how they would go about that. So aim for more proof of work, rather than standard measures of interview.
Arvid Kahl
That’s a very, very interesting idea. Because I gotta say, it’s just really, from my own perspective, like that way of hiring, as you described it the traditional way. That’s all I knew.
Marissa Goldberg
Yup
Arvid Kahl
That’s all I kinda know because it’s just, it’s also a much different kind of relationship that you build with a person, right? If you want them like as a full time employee, at least in the traditional sense, it always feels like this person is gonna be part of the business forever. And it’s kind of where people get that watch after 50 years of service to whatever kind of company. I think that feels like that time is over. And it’s more project based to begin with. Honestly, that was a reason why I got my second burnout while I was building Feedback Panda with my partner, Danielle. We did not hire even though we had to or we should have, right? We went for a long time where we didn’t need to hire and didn’t want to hire and everything was great. But then there was so much work, that it kind of stressed me out as the only technical person in the business, and I should have just gotten somebody else to help me. And I didn’t because I only knew either somebody does not work for you at all, or they work 40 hours a week on a contract. That was kind of the mindset, this weird binary mindset I was in. But there’s a lot in between, right?
Marissa Goldberg
Absolutely. Absolutely. There’s so many changes now. And this goes back to what we were talking about before where we’ve questioned the default. What isn’t working? This binary way of life where you’re working nine to five, or you’re unemployed, like that’s not the only option anymore. And if we’re not using the changes, like remote work, and this future of work concept, if we’re not using these changes to create a better life, then what are we doing?
Arvid Kahl
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Interesting that that is like the purpose of work, being not work but work and life, right? It’s this whole nebulous kind of work life balance thing that is coming out so much more as an actual topic of discussion for people now, because they are living where they work, which is a, that’s also something I really wanted to talk to you about. Because I am sitting here in my little studio, where my little lights and my little camera or my computer but that is not the most conducive place for deep work.
Marissa Goldberg
Absolutely!
Arvid Kahl
It’s a very conducive place for communication, but not for deep work. What do you think of like physical office space in your home? How should people approach or what kind of options do they have in that regard?
Marissa Goldberg
There’s a lot of options. And this is a problem that I see come up again and again with the people I coach is that they hear this one advice that said over and over and it drives me crazy. But it’s basically said that you need to separate your work and your life. You need to have physical boundaries, and so they tell you to create a physical office in your home. And to me, this is just replicating office work. And the reason why you had your own little desk in the office is because they only had, you know, so many spots for so many people and you needed to have a designated spot. At home, you don’t have to keep doing this. What’s actually more important than physical boundaries is virtual boundaries. Because in remote work, what we’re doing is all on the computer. There’s rarely remote work, people who are working with their hands. And like physical objects, it’s all, you know, very virtual. So what you need to do is set up like separate browser profiles so that you can’t access Twitter and your, you know, work email at the same time. They need to be separated. So that you can kind of create this boundary between like, this is my work. And this is when I’m, you know, deep work, focusing all that stuff and not getting distracted by Twitter. And this is when I have my personal life. And I’m not getting distracted by work because that’s just as equally important. So when it comes to physical boundaries, what I actually recommend is to create little work zones specific to the type of work that you’re doing. So like right now I am in this little, you know, office space with my lighting and tech and all that stuff. And like you said, this is not conducive to deep work. So I am on here when I’m on calls. And that’s pretty much it. Like I am not in this space when I’m trying to actually write or I’m trying to code or I’m trying to get anything meaningful done because it just wouldn’t work. And I’ve tested this out where I’ve used like, my specified zone for writing versus in here. And I’m doubly as productive over there because the distractions aren’t there. I don’t have the multiple screens and all that stuff. So I suggest creating multiple work zones. And this doesn’t mean creating multiple offices in your home. So that’s another common misconception. They’re like, oh, I don’t have enough space for that. I’m like, no, no, no. So like thinking about like, when you’re writing. I want to be when I’m writing, I’m not saying this for everyone I want to be cozy. I want to be in a room where I just feel very comfortable. So I can work from my bed, and I got like a little adjustable bed. So I can like sit up and write. And that’s where I write best. Or like going from the couch or the dining room table or creating a little desk space in the loft or going outside the home. So if you’re not like me where you wanna be home all the time, then maybe you go to like the library and you get some quiet work done there. Because of course libraries are very quiet, or you go to the coffee shop when you need to have kind of like, you know, that social interaction around you depending on the type of work. So just assign different work zones for specific type of work. And that will actually increase your work productivity rather than just having one office space.
Arvid Kahl
It also makes it much easier to kind of distribute your work throughout your whole day not just have this big chunk of I’m sitting in my chair, this is work
Marissa Goldberg
For eight hours, I’m not moving. Yeah.
Arvid Kahl
Exactly, right? Because even in an office setting, you do get up from work. You have this kind of transitional mode where you go into like lunch mode, and then you go back to work mode. And you have these little habits where you just hang out at somebody else’s desk for a second, like inviting them over and you go to the same place. Like there are these little rituals that we have. Is that something that you recommend for people to develop in their own home office spaces as well?
Marissa Goldberg
Absolutely! I actually recommend integrating rest into work, because I believe that enhances your work if you’re not just like, you know, heads down for 10 hours, like that just burns you out. And so back when I was like a coder, and I’d be like, “Oh, I have this bug. I have to figure it out before I can like leave my desk. And I’m not gonna be done for the day until then.” But if I had actually like left my desk and went for a walk, all of a sudden that solution came to me without the forced pressure. And it’s much more healthy on the level of like I’m working less hours, but I’m getting more quality work done. But then I’m also like not burnt out, which is a huge thing. Because that burnout carries over not just that specific moment and carries over days or weeks or even months or years at a time. So my job is to just kind of like constrain that as much as possible. And make sure that if there’s any friction, it stays within today and doesn’t carry on till tomorrow.
Arvid Kahl
Oh, that’s genius because that kind of burnout also carries into your personal life. There’s very little boundary between my basement and the upstairs. Little bit of wood up there. That’s the boundary. It’s very thin. And the yeah, burn out doesn’t stop at that boundary, right? If you feel negative feelings, negative emotions, you kind of carry them around with you. And if you are in your home, it’s quite likely that something or someone, if even worse, will feel that as well, hopefully just passively but there’s always kind of tension. Very cool, that noticing that and just even having that as a concept, I think to understand that as a concept already makes your approach to work quite different. I have two little anecdotes here that I wanna share with you because I was just first up I’m sitting here in my little YouTube office with all the lights and stuff. But right over there, just pointing off to the side is my little painting desk because I love painting miniatures. I’ve been a board gaming nerd and I love painting these little things like airbrushing itself.
Marissa Goldberg
Yeah
Arvid Kahl
So I have found that most of my creative work, my thoughts about what I wanna write about this week, or what my next I don’t know book project or something should be like and what the points of it should be happens not here in this chair, but over there while I’m painting the miniatures. So there is this kind of this, to me also is rest, or at least like recuperation, something where I can get my energy back. And in that moment, it opens the floodgates for creativity because it’s by itself a creative act to paint. But it’s just a more physical and a kind of artisanal act, not a thinking act. All our knowledge workers always kind of focused on brain to computer communication, but it’s really just like brain hands paint miniature. So that really helps me opening up these things that my mind kind of blocks during the day of regular computer work. And I can do this in this separate space. So that is really helpful. I used to have a little painting desk right over here, right next to me didn’t work the same way. When I physically move, my brain also physically changes. That’s an interesting thing. And the other little anecdote is, it is interesting that we are now rediscovering rest while working. While this is part of many other cultures. And I kind of wanna talk about cross cultural communication at one point, but wanna start with this little anecdote. Danielle and I, at the height of Feedback Panda were invited to education technology summit in Beijing, in China. And we went there. It was an amazing trip, gotta say that traveling to China and experiencing a very different world compared to the Western world that we’ve experienced so far. That was just really, really interesting. And we went to this summit and Danielle gave a talk. It was really cool. And then we were invited to tour a couple of companies in Beijing, like Baidu, this level of companies like the Google and Facebook equivalents in China. And we went to the offices and we checked out how they work. They just wanted to show us around to make sure we see how China’s digital economy is booming. It’s kind of what it was. It was, you know, politically motivated show but it was awesome. Because I got for the first time in my life, I saw people sleeping at their desks. And while this is maybe not the best thing, and I quite understand like, you know, overwork. While there is this culture of working six days a week and many, many hours a day, questionably good for your health, right? But I saw people napping at work under like on their desks. And that was really, really exciting to see that this is acceptable, right? That it’s not button seat, and you better focus on your screen. And if I don’t see you move your mouse for two minutes, you’re clocked out. That kind of mentality that we have particularly in remote work. Like when I was remotely working for the company back in 2012-13, we were using tools like oDesk was a big thing back then like this kind of what is now Fiverr. These kinds of platforms and they had a software that you had to install to track your time that would take screenshots at random intervals between 30 seconds and five minutes.
Marissa Goldberg
Don’t me started on that. I can just rant all day.
Arvid Kahl
If you would like to rant, now is your chance because I hate it just as much. Isn’t that like an intrusion and a completely perversion of productivity?
Marissa Goldberg
Absolutely. And like we talked about before, if you’re gonna work remotely and you’re gonna do it well, you have to have autonomy. And you have to have that initiative. And those things do not encourage that whatsoever. And when it comes down to it, it doesn’t even prove that you’re working. Because this is showing like oh, I’m looking like I’m working rather than I’m actually being productive. So let’s go back to like that coding bug case. It doesn’t look like I’m working when I go take that walk. But then that solution is triggered. It wasn’t triggered by me sitting at my desk and staring at a screen all day. It was triggered by removing myself from that environment. So if someone had taken a screenshot of my computer at that time, they’re not gonna actually see that. They’re gonna see oh, I’m slacking, that’s not the case. And to try to replicate what we did in the office that was based off a very different type of work, it’s not knowledge work. Knowledge work is very different from like working with your hands or building something that’s more applicable to what you’re talking about. And to just apply it without any thought of like, what harm is this doing? Yeah.
Arvid Kahl
Yeah, that seems to be a lot of policies that people just unquestioningly took into remote work. And like the whole idea of like showing up on a meeting inviting way too many people to a meeting like that has been something that the office does spectacularly well, too, right? Oh, yeah. Come on, everybody, like the meeting is happening. And it’s even more kind of intrusive for remote work because you never know what people are currently actually doing. You can’t see them, right? And how focused they are. Oh do you know any other kind of policies that we just unquestioningly take over into remote work that we shouldn’t? Do you got examples there?
Marissa Goldberg
There’s a ton. So when it comes to remote work, it doesn’t tend to create new problems. It tends to magnify existing problems. So like when it comes to meetings, like you’re talking about where people are just scheduling too many meetings with too many people, like that’s just done virtually. They just copy that from office work or like the availability level were in the office, we were available for tap, tap tap on the shoulder constantly. Now that slack. And what that does is just, it disrupts your work. So you’re interrupted constantly. You can’t get into a deep work state. And so like not having a responsiveness policy, not having like boundaries set where people can say, like, I don’t need to check this right away. I don’t need to be seen as like, this is the only way to show that I’m working. So I typically recommend that every single remote company have a responsiveness policy, which tends to be about 24 business hours. In most cases, you don’t need a response on, you know, outside of that time. You don’t need it immediately. And you’re gonna burn people out by having slack open all day and then just checking that and not getting any real work done. Because they’re just responding all day. They’re not actually getting any core work done. So yeah, that’s one level.
Arvid Kahl
Do you have any advice for the flip side of this? Because it sounds like a really good idea to have a responsiveness policy for the business part. Because that makes it very clear how you can be reached and what can be expected of you. But if you’re at home and you have family at home, or particularly small children or partners, who may not completely understand like your level of deep work, how involved you are and how much you need this kind of in the zone work to be undisturbed. How do you communicate it to your local peers at home? I guess that’s, I feel that’s hard, right?
Marissa Goldberg
It is absolutely. And this can be tied back into work zones. So you can say if I’m in this specific place, that means like I need space. I can’t be interrupted during that time. But also give them like, I’m typically in this place for like an hour and a half. And then I’ll jump out to have like, you know, a little moment where I’m separating myself from work. And then that’s when you can talk to me or like have a red light green light yellow light policy where like, if it’s red light, absolutely don’t come in unless it’s a huge emergency. Green light, you can come in as needed and yellow light only if it’s like, you know, pretty important. So you can hang that on your door. You can assign different ones for small kids, that tends to be work really well. But yeah, it all comes down honestly, to setting expectations. If you’re talking about the company side or you’re talking about the family side, what causes issues is when you don’t make it clear what you need and what you want on either side. So thinking about it in those terms where you’re being very upfront and you’re communicating everything, can you know help in a big way.
Arvid Kahl
This sounds like just good management sense, right? To set expectations, both for what you want and for what you think they will do. Yeah, that’s, I think this is generally good advice for any kind of relationship, you know.
Marissa Goldberg
But so many people don’t. And they only, you know, communicate once they get upset about something or like they’re not doing it the way it lines up with them. So, yeah,
Arvid Kahl
Well, in many ways, there’s also like the fear of being called out or the fear of being misunderstood because what I have noticed in many kind of video based or just audio based communication, people always fear that there’s like a lack of the density of communication, lack of being understood because if it’s not face to face, you don’t see micro gestures. Or you if it’s like video off, people think they might misunderstand because they don’t see like people gesturing around and acting for the camera. What’s your position, both like personally, maybe and professionally on video calls with the video part in general?
Marissa Goldberg
I am very against video being assumed should be on in every single call. I’m just very against it for a number of reasons. So one, when it comes down to it, you are acting for the camera. You do have you know gestures. You have a mask. You have faces, you know, like you’re not gonna. Okay, so your boss says something stupid, you’re not gonna be like, “Oh, that’s so stupid.” Like when you’re on camera, it doesn’t change that fact that you’re gonna have that mask on. You’re gonna not really show that to the camera. So you’re still not getting that full communication across. So it tends to go against people in other countries who have like less internet connection. So not only are you like forcing their video to be on, you’re forcing that communication to be stunted to where what you do say isn’t actually coming across to them just so that you can see their face. And so then it’s not really actually about communication. It’s about your own personal need to see someone else’s face and to put that onto someone else. It also tends to be harder for women or for people who are primary. You know, like they’re the parents in the house and they have to, you know, juggle their kids at the same time. And they might be able to do that at the same time as a video call, as a call, but they’re not able to do that as videos on because people are going to perceive them as less productive. Or like people who want to take a walk during the call and not be stuck in an office environment all day where they are zoning out because there’s just too much versus if they were walking, they could solely focus and solely listen to what was going on and think things through. So there’s just so many reasons why I think camera should not be on by default. Instead, I always leave it up to the other person. I always say like, hey, I will, you know, have cameras on or I will have cameras off because I do both as well. And then I’ll leave it up to them. I have no expectations on your side. Let’s just communicate and see what’s right for you. So especially when it comes time to like brainstorming, I tend to recommend keeping cameras off. When it comes time for things that our social, that’s when I tend to recommend like, hey, try to keep cameras on but like don’t enforce it.
Arvid Kahl
Well, thanks for having a camera on for this call.
Marissa Goldberg
Of course!
Arvid Kahl
That’s really nice. Yeah, but because in a conversation where you get to know each other, it definitely is a very different thing than if you talk about feature XYZ and its implementation details. Yeah, that’s the thing like in an office setting, you don’t have that choice or you don’t have to make, maybe that’s the difference here. You don’t have to make a choice. You’re just there or you’re not, right? But with the virtual abstraction layer in between. So now, a different story. I have another little anecdote for you, which kind of supports this case. I have a friend that I regularly talk to back in Germany, right? I moved from Germany last year to Canada. And we’re now six hours and many, many hundreds of kilometers apart, but we still wanna chat.
Marissa Goldberg
Of course!
Arvid Kahl
And he is quickly overwhelmed by sensory input. Like he doesn’t like to have like seven different things happening at the same time. He wants to be able to focus on the conversation. So whenever he’s in that mood in that kind of state, we turn off video for both of us, right? He turns off his. I turn off mine. We just have a chat, like on the phone, as we all did for the last 30 years.
Marissa Goldberg
Yup
Arvid Kahl
And nobody had a problem with, right? And usually that leads to a much deeper conversation because there’s less distraction. We don’t have to look for gestures, because they’re just not visible. So might just as well assume they’re not there. And you built this reality in your mind. That’s the only way I can phrase this of this conversation. You visualize it without having this kind of real visual in its weird distorted 200 by 200 pixel form, that a really not that great internet connection provides. You don’t need that. You can have the conversation with somebody else. As a kid, I had hour long phone conversations with my friends. And they were like, on their landline just aging myself here. And I was on mine.
Marissa Goldberg
Yeah
Arvid Kahl
And it was a great and deep and meaningful for kids a meaningful conversation, right? And it is surprising to me that people have forgotten that or maybe that people in particular people who are experiencing the pandemic and what some call post pandemic state as where people are in their own homes, where the kind of phones or the idea of having a phone call is the norm. Why they are so video focused? I just, I can’t get it either like in some conversations or you don’t need the kind of visual component. And particularly as an introvert and I would consider myself one. It may not appear like that but I think you’re also introverted.
Marissa Goldberg
Super introverted
Arvid Kahl
But when it comes to the topics we love, we kind of flipped that switch a little bit. Is that right? Like that’s how it is. For me. I feel I’m an extrovert in terms of like business. And, you know, talking about painting I could talk to about that for hours. In many other ways, I’m very kind of reduced in terms of my energy levels. Here I have it but you know, otherwise I don’t. And this kind of new culture of communicating from your own safe space at home, it feels like it’s a benefit for introverts. So that’s kind of where I wanna go with this.
Marissa Goldberg
Oh, absolutely.
Arvid Kahl
Do you agree? Like are there also shadows to this? Like, is there light and shadow? Or how do you perceive this as a fellow introvert? I wanna know.
Marissa Goldberg
So first of all, I wanna make it clear like I am extremely introverted, so not just like a little. And I don’t think so when it comes to being introverted, it’s more about your energy and how it relates to like, being around other people. And so like on this call, of course, I’m gonna have a fun time. I’m talking about one of my passions, this is great. However, I’m not gonna stack like five of these calls in one day. This is the only call I have like this because I’m going to get off this call. I’m gonna be like, “oof, that was a lot for me as an introvert.”
Arvid Kahl
Me too!
Marissa Goldberg
Yeah. So it comes back to that, and I wish more people talked about out the energy savings you get as an introvert, as an extrovert, as anyone, just from being away from an environment that you have no control over. So in the office, I wouldn’t realize how much that affected me until I went remote. And all of a sudden, not only did I get time back, so we talk all the time about the time savings, because we no longer have to commute and we can, like, you know, do our work day better so that we can get more done in less time. But there’s also an energy component where I’m not utterly exhausted at the end of my workday because I didn’t have to deal with people that I didn’t choose to be around. You know, I didn’t have to deal with a harassing environment, like I used to. Like, there was just so many elements to it that now I can not only do my work, but I’m also now involved in the community. I was an elected, I’m an elected local official to my community because I have that energy at the end of the day where I can apply it to other places. So it’s not just the time savings, it’s the time savings plus the energy savings that allows you to do more with your life. So when it comes back to it for introverts and remote work, yes, they can absolutely, you know, be able to harness that energy and do more of what they like to do and feel better overall. And then there’s this element. So a problem that a lot of people have is that they feel isolated when they first go remote. And this was an especially big problem because a lot of people were remote during the pandemic, when you couldn’t go out and you couldn’t do things, even people who had worked remotely for years beforehand. So like me, I’d worked remotely for five years before the pandemic happened. You do get this isolating feeling when you can’t leave the house. When you’re like stuck and you can’t see family members and friends because of this, you know, this disease. But that’s not normal remote. Normal remote, you would be able to, you know, go to the coffee shop as needed, take a walk around and like go out and do things. So the biggest issue I see is that people are getting stuck in pandemic remote and not transitioning into normal remote because they’ve hit this routine. Now, it’s been two plus years where they’ve been working remotely in the state and they haven’t decided to venture off or even know that it’s possible to not do remote work. And just that one way.
Arvid Kahl
Yeah. Now that you say it, yeah, it’s a conflation, right? You conflate the kind of force remote with the voluntary one.
Marissa Goldberg
And it’s very different, very different.
Arvid Kahl
Yeah, is it like, I must, I’m always trying to think of this in terms of boundaries, but both the boundaries that we set for ourselves, hopefully, and the boundaries that are set for us by, you know, the external forces in our lives, either our employers or our government, right? The kind of restrictions that we have. Yeah, that it feels hard to figure out which one is the temporary one, which one is the one we want to keep, which is the one we wanna get rid of? Do you see a transition out of the pandemic remote into normal remote? Or are people still clinging to something that they shouldn’t
Marissa Goldberg
They’re stuck. A lot of people are stuck just because they don’t even realize this is the only remote that they’ve experienced. So they think this is remote work. No, this is pandemic remote work. And so that’s why I’m trying to label it as like, hey, this is something completely separate and to give people tools. So I have like an article on my website on going from pandemic remote to normal remote work and the exact steps you need to kind of like, ease yourself in. Because like I said, when it comes to remote work, there’s no one right way. And this can be very, it can either be very freeing to some people, they’re like, oh, I can try whatever I want. Or it can be like, oh my gosh, too many options. I can’t do this. Like, it’s just completely overwhelming. So giving them some ideas can help make them transition and then they can, you know, integrate their own personal things. So that they can customize it to themselves as well.
Arvid Kahl
Yeah, that sounds like a necessary step to take, or just even to be able to be competitive in the space of hiring people who work remotely because I guess we’re gonna be seeing the exact same thing that we saw back in the day. Like I guess, the .com kind of times where the Google’s and the Facebook’s of the world got all the great engineers because they essentially gave them packages that involve like work whenever you want or work in ways that are more conducive to your actual lives instead of just like clock in, work, and clock out, right? And I think we might see this again in the remote world but with different things, different kind of liberties and different kinds of ways of allowing people to both have a life and have a work life and not necessarily need to completely have them disjointed. That’s always a problem for me like and as an entrepreneur in thinking about hiring people. I also don’t wanna overreach. I don’t wanna give a call somebody and say I need this done. And then like in the middle of cooking your risotto, which I know takes like at least 45 minutes and that’s something you don’t wanna mess up mid risotto.
Marissa Goldberg
Of course!
Arvid Kahl
I feel it’s kinda hard to involve myself in this. And I’m saying this like as a somebody who wants to hire without overstepping. Do you have any idea how I could solve this problem like just my mental blockade there?
Marissa Goldberg
Absolutely. So I’ve created a method of work called the Work Forward Approach that directly addresses this. Because it was a common issue where people will be like, oh, I’m dealing with this problem. And I wanna like respond right away, or this availability aspect to it. And how do you lead teams to where you don’t put this pressure of time just because like, it doesn’t necessarily need to be there. So that’s what I call the Work Forward Approach. And there’s a lot of different elements to it. So we can’t dive into everything. But one of the key aspects as a manager is setting expectations at the beginning of the week. This is what I expect to get done. Then you talk to them like, is this doable in like a normal work? And I don’t define like, oh, is this doable in 40 hours? I’d say, is this doable in your healthy work week? Because that might look different to everybody. And then if they say yes, and then I’m like okay, so then I expect this to be done by, you know, Friday like this is what’s there. And if they get it done in two hours per day or they get it done in five hours per day or whatever it is, like they decide that. They’re the worker. They decide how it’s getting done. As the manager, I’m just saying the what and the why. So just be extremely clear on those two things and set that expectations, and then give them free rein because they will make it happen.
Arvid Kahl
That is so different from most of the advice and just traditional teaching of how you should manage people.
Marissa Goldberg
Yeah
Arvid Kahl
In a very good way, right? That’s yeah, I guess we allowed a culture of control and kind of top down decision making to completely take over the world world, this bizarre.
Marissa Goldberg
It doesn’t make sense for knowledge work to me. So it doesn’t make sense for me to be like, oh, you have to be available 40 hours. If the things that I want are getting done, who cares?
Arvid Kahl
Yeah, it seems like some people are like, they wanna have a cake and eat it too, right? They want the work to be done. And they want you to show up and work hard for 40 hours, right? Which is they don’t really connect on any level, right? A good knowledge worker in an inspirational moment could do the work of the week within a couple hours.
Marissa Goldberg
Yeah
Arvid Kahl
And they often do. That’s kind of what most of coding is, is like figuring stuff out until you
Marissa Goldberg
And thinking in background. And yeah
Arvid Kahl
It’s always building. You essentially build up the code base in your mind, and then you kind of translate it into the actual text.
Marissa Goldberg
Absolutely!
Arvid Kahl
But it has to happen in your mind first before you can put it into text.
Marissa Goldberg
And then outside of the actual work getting done. Just think about the loyalty that encourages because this person is like I am being trusted. I am being treated like an adult. I can have a life outside of work. And that’s totally okay. And then you end up seeing tenure at companies that apply this kind of thinking, and this management is insane. Like it’s something that I never saw when I was in person office work where you start to see things like that used to happen where it was like 20 years, 30 years at one company, all because they’re just giving them freedom, giving them autonomy.
Arvid Kahl
That is new because I also feel that people identify with the mission of these companies much more because there isn’t as much office culture kind of bro ish camaraderie that can kinda usurp this identification anymore. I guess, kind of maybe phrased in a weird way. But if you do something, you work remotely on something and you see an actual product come to be and you are effective at what it is. And you see this process progressing and the product becoming better, even though you only worked on it for a couple hours. Yeah, that is probably very enticing to keep that as a career. Anyway, it’s not about showing up and hoping that nobody sees you going to Twitter, like we you know that kind of the boss button that some people have on their computer where they kinda switch to a browser if their boss walks behind them. What kind of pointlessness is this? Like just the absence of trust on both sides site, the boss doesn’t trust this person to do their work so they check and the person doesn’t trust their boss not to fire them so they hide. Like neither of this is goal aligned with the mission of the company. But the fewer of that you have, the more the actual alignment can happen. I really liked it which is why I have you on because I think we should talk a lot more about the kind of benefits of doing work remotely in a good way. Because it could catapult industries and whole fields into a much more productive and much more goal aligned way of doing work.
Marissa Goldberg
And change how people live and change how people live for the better. And the counter argument that people always say it’s like what about under work? What about like, if they’re not a hard worker? And to me, that comes back to you as the employer, like you hired them.
Arvid Kahl
Yeah
Marissa Goldberg
That was your choice. And when it comes to underwork, it’s actually way more easy to do when you set up the availability aspect where they’re like a, you know, doing that key on the computer to bring up a page that shows all the code and whatever, but they’re not actually doing any work. Versus I gave you a set expectation at the end of the week, we just see if it’s done or not, then I know exactly what was done. It’s there’s no place to hide with that. There’s no place to underwork because it’s just laid out right there. And so the underwork is actually happening in the standard way of working.
Arvid Kahl
Yeah, that’s true. And it just hides behind all these corporate facades and then the kind of behavioral. Yeah, well, talking about on the work, that’s interesting. But overwork probably is much more interesting, right?
Marissa Goldberg
Yeah
Arvid Kahl
What do you have to say about that?
Marissa Goldberg
Yeah, so much of remote work comes back to this, like, this is the biggest problem with remote work. And so many companies are like, oh, it’s under work, it’s under work. Let’s address that. And then they put in these policies and like this recordings and all that stuff in place, and then it makes people overwork even more and burns people out, and then they’re not actually doing good work for the company because you can’t. If you’re not in a healthy, happy place, you cannot do good work. And so when it comes to overwork on a personal level, you have to understand yourself. You have to understand, not just like the times you work best, but also when your energy is highest and lowest. So don’t just think of in terms of like a nine to five workday. Think of oh, I have high energy in the mornings and I have lower energy here. And then I have high energy here. So what if you broke your workday up into these little pieces? And then how do you fit it into your life with your kids and your spouse and your hobbies and all that stuff? Like fitting it into blocks? And then how do you integrate work? Or how do you integrate rest into your work so that you can enhance your work even more so that you’re not burning yourself out? So there’s all these different elements that you can do because you have the freedom from remote work. And there’s no one right, right? I wanna get that. I wanna make that super clear. Like there’s no one right way to work, how I work. And you talked about at the beginning, the four day workweek, the waking up whenever I want, like, there’s all these different elements to it. That’s probably not gonna work for you or work for whoever’s listening to this. But they can figure out different elements of it that will.
Arvid Kahl
Yeah, definitely. I think that that is just entrepreneurship in a nutshell, right? Like even advice, any advice in our field is like, it’s probably anecdotal and pick the things that are interesting. Do your own experiments on it. And if that works for you, wonderful. Then that advice, that is the maximum capacity that advice can actually impact your life. I wanna talk about policies again a little bit because I would assume that lots of companies have underworked policies, because that usually is the reason why people get fired because they didn’t, right? Way too many. But I don’t I honestly, I would not expect that to be too many overwork policies. Do you see anything like that? Or do you see that changing?
Marissa Goldberg
Every company I work with has overworked policies because they’re incredibly important. And like I said, if your team members are burned out, they can’t do what you’re paying them to do. It’s as simple as that. So we put in policies in place around like time off. So like, if you have an unlimited time off policy, then there’s absolutely going to be a minimum set if you’re working with me. You cannot just have unlimited time off because then no one’s going to take any time off. So we set a minimum time off policy where it’s unlimited time off with a minimum of four weeks. And then we go from there. So there’s so many things that you can put in place that will encourage people to take off or not expecting an incident response. Or if you’re a manager, and you’re receiving an incident response from one of your team members every single time you ask them like, hey, are you getting into deep work? Are you turning off slack? Are you setting these, I have a whole document too that set slack settings so that it’s not all the time it’s not in your face, or creating virtual boundaries, where you have different browser profiles, like I set all of these things up with the companies I work with, because it’s just incredibly important for people to have these boundaries and have just held the elements in place.
Arvid Kahl
Yeah, it must be hard for people who have been like doing this traditional management style, where everything that doesn’t work immediately gets addressed, but things that might potentially result in burnout never get addressed because they’re beneficial right now at least, right? When people overwork
Marissa Goldberg
It’s very short term thinking.
Arvid Kahl
Yeah, it’s very short term thinking. I guess that’s hard to shake. Also like I always feel like the work that you do right now teaching companies to do this, like this is the most novel kind of management style that these people with their whole educational experience have never ever seen before. So it must be hard to switch. Do you get any resistance to this and how does it show? Is it hard? Like, is it hard for you to convince people?
Marissa Goldberg
So I absolutely get resistance. And I think it would be weird if I didn’t get resistance, right? So like, I mean, people have been doing it one way for a very long time. They aren’t used to any other way they don’t know of any other way. So they’re like you’re trying to change my way of work completely. What’s going on here? So typically, we start one with baby steps. We start a lot with the why. So I don’t give them like, this is exactly how you do everything. Instead, we start with the why are we doing things? Why are we changing things? What could we potentially accomplish by changing how things are working right now? What exactly isn’t working? So I start with questions a lot of times when I go into companies, instead of just like, this is how we’re gonna do things and like, you know, bulldoze everyone in my way. We start with questions, because like I said, it needs to be, you know, customized and adjusted for each person, each company and how they do things and what’s not working for them right now. So that’s what we’re gonna target first instead of targeting everything. And then the other thing is like, you get a lot of people who, when you approach it that way, when you approach it from a place of empathy and questions, and not just like I’m always writing, you’re always wrong, then they come out and be like, oh, you know, this thing really hasn’t worked for me. Can you maybe help me with this? And then you build trust along the way, because you take those tiny things that they say aren’t working and you fix them for them. And then all of a sudden, they’re like, oh, wow, you’re helping me. So now I can open up even more and even more. So it’s definitely a process. It doesn’t happen all at once. And every time I go into a new company, I’m like, oh, like, we have to start this whole trust building process all over again. But it’s also so powerful, because you see these companies that have been doing things one way for so long, easing their way into a new way of work that’s changing the lifestyle of every single person in their company. And that’s why I keep doing it because it’s hard for me, you know, going into these companies. But seeing the end result is always so worth it.
Arvid Kahl
That is so nice to hear that you find, that you see results in from your work. And you use that feeling to go and do it for somebody else.
Marissa Goldberg
Yeah
Arvid Kahl
Who needs to be convinced, again, who is again, having the same little issues. I assumed it’s always the same problems or at least like generally very similar problems all over the place. I remember that from my own consulting work, when I was doing this, like maybe like six or seven years ago. It’s always the same. You go into a company, everybody’s like, who’s that? Like, what are they gonna tell us? Right? Like, they have no idea, like how we work and what we wanna do. And then over time, you build these little relationships. You hang out with them. You may even go like, do some after work stuff with them, or have a call that is not necessarily just business, but just relationship building social calls, I guess that’s what you call them. And over time, they noticed, okay, we actually aligned. You want something. We want something and it’s the same thing. We just come at it from different perspectives. Now, that is your business. And I kind of wanna end this conversation with a little look at how you’re doing because like, obviously, you talk a lot about other businesses and their employees. But you are also a founder, right? You are somebody trying to make a living from doing this. And as an introvert, that is prone to burnout myself, I would like to know, how do you deal with not burning out talking about burnout all the time?
Marissa Goldberg
Yeah
Arvid Kahl
It’s pretty meta, but
Marissa Goldberg
Yeah
Arvid Kahl
How do you keep doing what you do?
Marissa Goldberg
So I am an incredibly ambitious person who has burned out many times in the past because of that. And the thing is, is that you have to know yourself. So this is one of my three keys for remote work as well as you have to understand yourself in depth. So I track things all the time. I track my energy levels daily, my moods daily. I also track like memories and things like that. And then I do like weekly reviews and weekly planning and monthly reviews and monthly planning, like each iteration. Because I need that data. I need all of that data to figure out exactly how I should work in order to not burn out because if I burn out, then that’s affecting every single person, every single company that I work with for the worse. So if you think about it instead from like, so if I think about it from like my perspective of like, this is affecting me, my health. I’m like, ah who cares? I’m not thinking about in that aspect. But if I think about it, like how is me burning out affecting other people, then I’m like, whoa, okay, so I need to change this. And that’s obviously an issue that I still need to deal with. But this is what works for me. And so there’s so many different things. So I create virtual boundaries, like we talked about. I track everything I adjust as needed. I’m able to see now with my data trends on like, if my energy is low for a certain period of time, well, if something goes wrong, I need to adjust this right away. And that’s why I attract things on a daily level. So I’m not just getting there when I’m officially burnt out because then it’s too late to apply a solution. I wanna avoid it before it happens. And so I use those triggers to identify what needs to change. Another big thing that I did this year that has led to zero burnout episodes this year, I’m so proud of myself like that it’s almost a year end. It’s like what November now, so close. Is that the beginning of the year, I recognize that the year before when I officially gone full time on my business, I hadn’t taken any time off. And it was because like I’d taken like weekends and that kind of thing, but no vacations. And I was like, okay, so I love what I do. But it clearly didn’t work for me last year because I burned out a lot. So what I did at the very beginning of this year is I assigned one week off per quarter. And then I took it off on my calendar. I sent all of my clients my time off for the year. I also did holidays at the same time as well, because I would just like not even realize an American holiday was happening. And I would just keep continuing working. And so no, I took all of them off on the calendar. I sent them all to my clients to lay out like this is when I’m off this year. And then I actually took them off this year, one week off per quarter all the holidays. And I haven’t burnt out at all this year, because combined with all my tracking and combined with all my boundaries and all the healthy elements that I apply. This was the final piece of the puzzle for me in like making sure that was laid out before it was in the moment. Before I was like, oh, but there’s too much work to do. There’s too much going on. No, it was on my calendar. I’d already let everyone know I was taking off.
Arvid Kahl
Congratulations. That is such a smart way of dealing with your own stuff. Like, you know how you do things, and then you actively work against it.
Marissa Goldberg
Exactly!
Arvid Kahl
To provide yourself
Marissa Goldberg
Your best opponent
Arvid Kahl
Your best opponent. Yeah, right. But that’s why we that’s kind of the whole monkey mind, lizard mind and you know, conscious mind that they’re always in a constant state of fighting. So like what imposter syndrome is too, right? It’s not your presence as a intellectual being that is an imposter or feels like an impostor. It’s like some nagging voice from the evolutionary ages ago telling you don’t change anything. That’s kind of what it is. Yeah, amazing. I love the idea of, first of all, there’s a common thread here. I feel expectation management for yourself and for others, gathering data and acting on it. So like a data driven approach to this. And just like making choices and building systems to stick to, that seems to permeate everything you do.
Marissa Goldberg
Absolutely. And being proactive.
Arvid Kahl
Yeah, preparation, like preparing for the storm. So you can stay calm while it’s happening instead of you know, freaking out because you didn’t know what to do. Wonderful. What an amazing approach through. I guess you’re a role model. You’re now a role model for me. And probably also for many, many other founders out there because that is a level of self control and self introspection, I guess, that I rarely see so efficiently expressed and systemically approached. So thank you so much for sharing all of this today with me. I have to think about a lot of things after this call. But if people wanna follow you, if they wanna see what you do, and they wanna read your things and even see what business you offer, where can they find you?
Marissa Goldberg
Yes, so you can find me at marissagoldberg.com or remoteworkprep.com. I’m most active on Twitter, @mar15sa. And I also have a newsletter called Remotely Interesting that helps you question the defaults of work and apply it to your own life. So, yeah.
Arvid Kahl
That is awesome. Wow, that’s a lot of work. Before we close, I would like to point out that running a business, running a newsletter, being present on Twitter, and you know, having a life, that’s a lot to juggle. I’m quite impressed. I’m trying to do the same. And I know how hard it is so wow, amazing job! Thank you so much for being on today. And I am very, not just remotely, I am very interested.
Marissa Goldberg
Thank you so much for having me.
Arvid Kahl
And that’s it for today. Thank you for listening to The Bootstrapped Founder. You can find me on Twitter @arvidkahl. You’ll find my books and my Twitter course there as well. If you wanna support me on the show, please subscribe to my YouTube channel, get to the podcast in your podcast player of choice, and leave a rating and a review by going to http://ratethispodcast.com/founder. Any of this will help the show. Thank you so much for listening, and have a wonderful day. Bye bye.
Topics we talk about
00:00:00 Remote Work and Future Proof Workplaces
00:02:03 What is Remote Work Prep?
00:06:54 The right approach to go about remote work.
00:11:00 Traditional hiring doesn’t work for remote teams.
00:17:29 Integrating rest into your work.
00:23:10 The perversion of productivity & responsiveness policies.
00:27:27 Issues with video calls.
00:31:02 The difference between a conversation and a phone call.
00:37:12 How to transition from pandemic remote to normal remote.
00:41:10 The culture of control and top-down decision-making.
00:45:29 There’s no place to hide with remote work.
00:51:58 How do you keep doing what you do?
00:56:23 What is impostor syndrome? What is it and why does it exist?
