onsite to fully remote

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Hello, hello. Thanks for listening to Guidance Counselor 2.0. Listen, I want to give you a quick rundown of what this podcast is and what you're about to get into as you listen to these episodes. We had Guidance Counselors in middle school. We had Guidance Counselors in high school, but we didn't really have Guidance Counselors in college and now as professionals, we don't really have anybody to turn to to ask a quick question to learn something about the job search or to navigate your career. So that is what I want this podcast to be for you. I want it to be a tool for you to navigate the job search and your career.

So that being said, I hope you enjoy this episode. And if you need to reach me, Taylor at vaco, VACO.com is how to get in touch with me old fashioned email social media at T D S and T D E S S E Y N. And finally, please rate and review this in the app store because I want this to be discoverable for others so they can navigate their careers. Hope you enjoy the episode. Sarah, let's give the people what they want and why they're here to hear from you. Who are you? What do you do? And we'll go over there. Amazing. Yes. So thank you for the TIP.

I'm so happy to be here chatting today. Long time listener. First time caller, is that the thing? I think that's the thing. Yeah. So I'm head of business development at Vault Athletics. And like you mentioned, Vault is a software startup in the Seattle area. Well, we used to be in the Seattle area, but we'll get into that. I'm currently still in Seattle, and I manage all of our new business, our market expansions, our partnerships, the whole gamut, and our product is essentially a SaaS for fitness professionals. So it's a way to connect coaches and professionals to their athletes and clients remotely or in person. And we work with everyone from high school soccer players to NFL players to military to an accountant who works at Microsoft.

It runs a gamut. So it's a super fun and interesting field to be in. But for the company, we're pretty small. We've got 27 employees. And we were originally, when I joined the team in 2019, we were full-time in a small office here in Seattle. Yeah, and that's not the case anymore. So let's dive into that. So COVID hit, obviously everybody got pushed remote. Let's walk through kind of, you kind of talked about it off air about how you hated it. Talk about kind of your journey, just you personally have kind of, your audit has been work remote. Maybe you've some things you've done to help you kind of implement remote things.

I think a lot of people struggle, I know, again, I'm having to put guidelines in place because I work too much. So, you know, talk, talk about that journey. Yeah, I don't know if you know this about me, Taylor, but I'm a huge extrovert. It's both of those any great brands. We have any grams on the show. Sarah's a seven. Hard seven. There are no wings. There are no wings. There's all seven all the time. One hundred percent, which is why I love what I do so much because it is so primarily externally facing and linked in DM sliding, very successful strategy post pandemic. I have made some really good deals come through because of a good LinkedIn slide in the DM.

So I support that strategy. But yeah, when we first went remote and it turned out it was going to be longer than two weeks. I was not happy. I loved going to the office. I loved the routine of leaving the house. Our office was right next to a really cute little gym that I would work out at and then go to work and you know go out and get my coffee, get my lunch during the day. My whole Seattle thing. My commute home even. I loved 45 minutes in the car. I loved listening to a podcast or a book on tape. That was my personal development time.

When all of that routine was ripped away from me, I was not pleased. I was just waiting for us to get back in office and that day really never came. As a company, we decided to let go of of our physical office space in July of 2020 and full on embrace the coast to coast remote work life. So I had to come to terms with that. And I think, you know, some of the stuff that I personally implemented to help me was successful, but truly it was like what Volt brought to the table that helped bring me along with this acceptance of a new environment.

And I think Volt has done a really incredible job of helping fill the void that I thought I was going to miss, which is relationships and personal stuff. Like that thing you get in person that you don't get at home in your guest bedroom office, you know? Right, yeah. So I wanna dive into kind of some things that Volt's done. And I think the main reason I really got you on the show, actually, your husband, Shoutout's Colin messaged me because I've had a few people on talking about the four day work week. And he was like, Hey, like bolts doing that. You should talk to Sarah.

And I didn't realize that. So talk to me about that. When did y'all implement it? Why did y'all implement it? How have people taken to a job work for tens? Is it just for eights? Like what's how do y'all navigate? Yeah. Yeah. So that is definitely one of the best things the company could have ever done for all of us for so many reasons. But that started in July of 2020. When we decided we were not going to go back to an office maybe ever, we implemented a summer Fridays over the summer of 2020. And some of that was in response to like the stress and anxiety the pandemic was reaping on everyone.

Our CEO and co-founder said, I really want you all, most of us were still in Seattle, really want you all to be able to get out and enjoy the limited Seattle summer, you know, have your have a little more downtime for me personally, the five day on, two day off thing was not working. It turns into when you're at home, it turns into just working seven days a week because your computer's right there, your phone's right there, like there's nothing stopping you. So we implemented this summer Friday policy so that we could have three day weekends, go hiking, get out on the water, all of the great things that you can do in Seattle for your well-being.

And at the end of that six week period, our CEO scratched his head and he said, I think people really like this. And I don't think it is. Was it every Friday? Was it every Friday, every Friday. Yeah. So he's like, I think we're gonna do a little survey and see, like was this not just liked, but did it actually positively impact the business? And we did a company-wide survey of all employees and all department heads. And it turned out that 97% of us thought that our work was not just the same as it was before, it was actually better. So our productivity actually increased and our happiness clearly through the roof.

Why do you think that is? Like I'm curious, like there's no wrong answers, there's no wrong answers. Oh, I know exactly. I think I know why it is. I think I'm now the expert on the four day work week because we've been doing it for two years now. And I think it ties to a lot of concepts that we implement in fitness and training. And that's work rest intervals. And if you work all the time, you're not recovering and resting, your work capacity decreases. You fatigue, you can't recover, you're working at, you know, your tank is on low, you can't put out as much as you can when your tank is full.

And it's really true that like five days of going hard by Friday, your brain is melted, especially when you work in technology and you're working with complex concepts or doing complicated job processes. Like you need a forced reset, you need more rest in your, to balance out your life. So it's funny also by the way, Jackie's fan girl. And I can't trust my wife. We're obviously, I can't help but friends. But so I become fascinated with this. So I had a guest on the show. She is a render speaker, Kishaw. For those of you who have not seen the episode, I'll go to my YouTube channel and look at it.

Because we actually talked about this. And I've become fascinated with this about treating your employees like athletes. And she brought it up. literally I've been running this show for two years now. She brought it up and then now you brought it up. And so that's two guests. It's a thing. And I brought it up. And so I think that's huge. I really truly, because to be honest with you, I don't schedule anything on Fridays anymore. Yeah. I don't. It's something that I, because my brain's fried. Exactly. You're giving out 10% of your best self. and like that does nobody any good. So for us for a vault that we originally called it flex Friday, where it was like, you can work if you want to, but there's no expectation that you show up.

We definitely don't. You get, you get, that's a hairy situation. Well, that was how it started, right? Cause it was, it was unknown territory and we were all still figuring it out. And for those of us who were in external facing roles, like for me, I found it really awkward initially to tell people like I can't take that meeting on Friday because I'm supposed to like be nesting. If other people are working, then you're working. Yeah, yeah. It was really tough for me in the beginning. So I was, I took a lot of calls on Fridays. I did a lot of stuff with some of our partners because they're still working on Fridays.

And when that would happen, I'd come in on Monday, like I would have Sunday scaries. And I realized that the days that I actually took a Friday to go do something for myself or get out of the house or do something with my little guy who's just turned one. I come in on Mondays and I'm like pumped to go. I'm ready. And I think that really proves the efficacy of working hard for four days and taking three actual days to rest and recover. I love that. I wanna give a shout out to people tuning in. Erica, Mrs. Consistent, Abdas, it's great to see you. Michael from Huntsville, I love it.

Dominic Goes Seattle sounds amazing. It is, it is. I like it. And then Eric obviously affirming the work rest intervals. I want to talk about the question, I think, that plagues every organization right now. And I want your thoughts. And as a seven, I'm sure you have thoughts. Sometimes. And is it possible to build? I'm not going to go against the onsite stuff. Because I think, listen, if you want to get on site, you're near an office, it works fine. But let me ask you this. Do you think you can build culture remotely? In a full-time movie? Oh my gosh, absolutely. And as somebody who loved the on-site life, when I, because you're like, to me, you embody like what an employee is for on-site, right?

For those of you who don't know Sarah, I'd highly recommend Ken with Sarah. She is a beam of sunshine. But like Sarah is like, like if there's any like CEO, CTO watches this, like Sarah is the poster child for on-site. Like you said, love the process, like love the people, like Sarah gets energy off people. I want to hide, right? So it's like, Sarah's your employee. Like I want to say that, and I want to say that kind of emphatically, because what Sarah's about to say, I think, I think really shows that even the most outgoing person can thinks it still can be done. So talk about what y'all have done, how it can be done, as if you're talking to another CEO.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, okay, so thank you. That's, you're exactly right. like I thrived in the in-person environment, but if I were told today that I have to go back to a set schedule in office, that is not a position I would wanna be in. I wanna stay remote, I really do. I know, I know, I'm a complete 360 180, I'm a complete 180. That's not even asking too steady, I don't know. That's fine, 90 degrees, sure, that sounds like a thing. The first. Yeah, I would resist having to be forced back on site, even though I love seeing my colleagues, the few times that, you know, once a quarter if I run into someone or, you know, if I meet up for coffee with somebody, like I can get my in-person fix in small doses.

I've just found other ways to fill that personal connection tank. And honestly, Volt has done a really good job of being mindful of community fostering events that don't feel forced. Everything feels like a value add and not an obligation. And I think that's really been the key. And it's helpful that we're smaller, right, 27 employees. Like it's much easier to stay connected with all of your colleagues. But I think some of the things that can help promote culture development without ever seeing each other in person are thinking creatively of how to replace those like water cooler moments, where you're sitting at the lunch table with your colleague and you don't know much about their personal life they mentioned they went to the show over the weekend.

Like how does that come up when you're in a remote life and you don't have those moments that are out of a work environment? And I think we've all gotten so like ruthlessly efficient with our time in video calls because we don't wanna be on camera all day long. So there is no small talk anymore there. So some of the small ways that Volta's really helped support that culture growth and personal development between colleagues, little things like, We were talking about the donut chat in Slack. I know not every company uses Slack, but the concept is really easy to implement. You just once a month or every two weeks or whatever the cadence is, you randomly assign two to three people.

Three is really the magic number. Once you get over three people, it's like too many voices in the room on a video call. But you set for the whole company, you say like 99.30 is our donut chat. You can't talk about work, go. And it's opt-in, so for our like Supreme introverts who are like, oh no, that sounds terrible to me. They don't have to join, they don't have to do it. It's completely opt-in. But you know where they can participate are in like some of the fun chat channels that we have on our Slack. So we have like a random fun channel that is just, here's something fun I did over the weekend.

Here's a product I recommend. We use Notion as our community, our communications platform. And it's pretty straightforward, right? It's just a virtual note documenting space. And we have like a couple of fun documents in there for like here's a recipe that I made over the weekend and it was really good. Here's a TV show that we got hooked on and Netflix highly recommend. And it's just a really nice way to like asynchronously drop your personal interests and let others respond to it in their own time. So that works really great for all types of personalities, extroverts and introverts. And then like our community events or outside of work events are definitely value add, we do a white elephant once sometimes twice a year, we did like a Valentine's Day white elephant.

I didn't have work, I'm curious, how do you know about it? Oh my goodness. So there's a, of course, there's a platform on the internet for you to do that. It was like whiteelephant.io or something, but you all sign up and you submit the link to the item that you're bringing and you don't have to buy it until the end of the party, but everybody goes through and it's just like an in-person experience. You get a random number, you pick a random gift or you steal something that's already been opened. And at the end of it, you find out who selected the gift you brought and you purchase it and have it shipped to them.

So it was very, very fun, very, very popular, like all white elephant events are. And the Valentine's one in particular was super fun because it had to be like a sweet treat. So there were some real gems at that one. but super fun, right? And then other little things like hosting a trivia night, we had like an actual trivia host virtually bring us in to do trivia as a team. We've done like, pictionary competitions. We've done a ton of just completely opt in things to let people say, this sounds like an activity I want to do. And if you don't want to do it, you don't show up, that's okay.

So it was interesting. So Darren, Darren, Darren, I worked together and Darren's living on fitness. Love the concept of employee athletes, so many transferable, disciplined team building, training, periodization, peaking, tapering. You're speaking my language now, Darren. Yeah, I'm not saying Darren, you can't compare. Yes. There's fantastic with this stuff. I want to also say another thing too. And I wanted to hear your thoughts on this. Because again, again, this is coming from an individual who wanted to be in the office. And I feel like the in office culture, and correct me if I'm wrong, right? again, part of the reason why I have this show is people hold me accountable, right?

Make sure I'm not crazy when I think this way. But when it comes to leading teams, so when it comes to what has happened, right? The on site is more about the company, um, and which is, which is, which is great. Um, you know, team things. I feel like the shift to remote puts more emphasis actually on the individual. Instead of like the collective hole. Am I off base on that or? No, I think that's a really accurate summation and I think that's why a lot of companies are really scared to embrace fully remote. Why? Why though? Well, I don't want to call anybody out, but to me that says a micromanager.

Like, I want to see my people in person. I want to see the team working collaboratively because I'm afraid of what my individuals will do without me standing over them. That's my interpretation of a culture that says we have to be on site and it has to be at this schedule. Because the truth is we all have different peak hours of operating. We all have different ways that we process thought and work operatively and it looks different. And when you're in a forced in-person setting, you start to adopt what your colleagues are doing because that's the norm. that's the norm, that's like the culture that's set on site, and it might not be right for you.

I know for me personally, like that was a huge thing that I realized going remote, was that I could be way more efficient when I removed the things that I liked most, which was small talk and chit chat. When that goes away, oh my gosh, I was so much more efficient. I was just cranking out work because I had no distractions. And I just had to find ways to, you know, again, fill that tank creatively in a non-in-person setting. Well, I want to dive into a few things that you talked about, because I think they're incredibly important. Professional development fund and remote work stipend. So here, this is, so that I wanted to lead into that by asking that question, because I think people, it will mean more to people.

Instead of doing a happy hour, being like, you know what? Here it's mental, I think it's National Suicide Month, right? Awareness Month. Here's $200 to expense for mental health session. I, listen, I may be crazy here, but I feel like that's a lot further. Yeah, you know, I feel so strongly about this topic. Part of it is, you know, what I'm representing for the company and the products, you know, an arm of what we do is service workplace benefits. And the reason why, yeah, right? And the reason why we're such a good solution for the workplace and employee benefit when it comes to fitness is because our product is about personalization.

It's not one size fits all. It's not everybody's on the same streaming group fitness. It's build a program custom to you and your goals and your needs. And however many days you wanna work out, like design it to fit your needs. And that is the crux of what you're getting at here is personalization. you know, forcing everybody to come to a happy hour and buying them a vodka soda, cool, but like does that actually make anybody better or happier? It doesn't because what you need looks different than what I need. And if a company instead, like Volt says, here's your professional personal development funds, go spend it however you want.

You know, like that to me, we love to look at like across our colleagues and see who's doing what with their funds. And it is so varied. It's everything from like personal development courses to some sort of training course to some sort of educational session, some sort of product. Like it's up to us to clear with our manager to say, this is what I'd like to spend my funds on and here's why. And that amount of autonomy is so key in establishing buy-in and creating happiness with choice because you hold yourself accountable. You say, I made this choice. It's what I wanted. Yeah. Yeah, and I think that's really key.

Yeah. And then also, and then the remote work stipend. So you guys also have a remote work stipend. Right. I think it's great. Yeah, it is, it is because, you know, it allows you to optimize your own work environment to say, I want to invest in like a really nice chair or a really great headset. You can see I didn't pick that option. But again, it's autonomy. It's allowing you to say, I want to invest my stipend and the things that are going to best help me work on a day to day basis. And that looks different for me than for you. I wish I had your cool wallpaper and amazing microphone.

Oh, Jackie, I mean, we both have an offer. Of course it is. Jackie, I'd like to hire you for some assistant here. We'll help the Boulder and maybe Jackie can help do some interior and Colin and I go by golf. Sold, absolutely. Oh, he will love that. But yeah, yeah, right? Like it comes back to choice. And I think, again, that's what Volt has really done amazing job of culturally is everything they do for us is about choice. We get to choose whether or not we take that three-day weekend fully off or if we flex some of our time. We get to choose if we want to spend our stipend on whatever.

We get to choose what we're going to personally develop or professionally develop over the course of the year. And the opting in and the choice is just for building culture, I think that's a really crucial component of making people happy and getting them bought into what you're giving them. I just had a thought and escaped me. That, oh, do you think that empowering individuals could actually lead to better your office culture. Yeah, of course. Because happy people do better work, right? It does, it seems obvious, I know. But I don't know. And I'm saying this for every company out there right now, right? I feel like companies are like this right now, right?

They don't know what to do. It's on-site, it's an off-site, it's a blend, or whatever. And it's like, you know what? You could literally just give your people the option and you will literally solve everything. Oh yeah, I totally agree. I have several friends. So obviously here in Seattle, I have several friends who work at the big tech companies. Oh, I'm sure. Who are navigating this weird landscape and. And big tech is making people come on site. Yes, and they hate this, like you're forced to come on site on these two days. Like these are your two days to come on. One of my very good friends who works at one of those larger companies and if I were just given the choice of which two days I came on site, I would be happy.

But the fact that you're telling me, I don't like it. Exactly. It's like it doesn't work in my life, in my schedule, the commute. I want flexibility. And that's the key takeaway is like, sure, you can have both. You can have the hybrid experience of a day or two in person, once a quarter in person, a month in person, but don't force people to take it because we are all little children. And when you tell us we can't have something, that's what we fix it on. And that's what we want. Same as like when you say you have to do this, we don't want to do it because we're being told autonomy.

We need to make the choice for ourselves. And then we're bought in and then we're satisfied. And it feels like our own rather than somebody else's will being pressed down on us. What do you think? So as you wrap up here in time flu, by the way, Steve, Steve, I was on Instagram. He said, Hey, he said, Hey, to you, but of course, hi, Steve. But as we wrap up here, I always like, let the guess so so there's a question I'm starting to ask and I got to get better practice of it. So let's answer this one question and then I'll and then I'll ask you one more because this is guidance counselor 2.0.

You know, we had guidance counselors in high school and middle school, but we kind of don't have them now, right? They're called therapist now or wine and basically I want to ask you what would you tell your younger self getting into a career like like what advice would you give your younger self just on anything on anything. Oh my goodness. That's such a good question and you know as I start conversations with new people now and I say you know I've been in the industry for a decade I'm like oh a decade that's crazy but I think the biggest thing is just to let go of expectations.

The best shifts in career and trajectory I've experienced have been when I let go of the expectation of what I should be doing and just see where the opportunities take me. And instead of holding on to this roadmap of where I should be, I've been happiest when an opportunity presents itself and I follow my gut instinct on it. So two-fold answer, let go of expectations, and your gut has never let you down. I love it. I love it. All right, so final thing. Oh, so if, you know, CEOs, CIO, CTOs, was just like, all right, that sounds great. That sounds great. How has Bolt done with retention?

How have you all? I mean, I'm sure you'll probably lost a little bit, but just because due to the nature, but I mean, I mean, for the most part of you all kept people in place. Of course, yeah. know, people always will come and go and like with 27 people when one person leaves, it feels impactful, but the reality is like one person left. So it feels bigger on a smaller sample size, but we've not only has retention been great, but recruiting has been like insane. We just opened a position for the first time in a few months. And my very good friend Phil who runs four-day work week.

It's a website where you can sign up for job alerts of companies that are doing four-day work weeks. He's got a great newsletter and it's a great, you know, virtual bank of companies and the benefits they offer. So he had our job posted up there and he gave me an alert after two days over 400 people had filled out an application. So for the purpose of attracting talent talent and getting your positions out in a very crowded job seeker landscape. Like the four day work week has been a huge recruiting tool for us. Yeah, yeah, I love that so much. Any final thoughts, questions, concerns, or not concerns, any final thoughts that you would give to people hiring managers right now who are struggling kind of with the whole on-site off-site thing.

and basically anything we need to cover. Yeah, I mean, I think we really hit on it, like, find ways to make employees have choice, don't force things, don't be afraid of going remote because you might be surprised at the results. I know we were productivity through the roof, and we just don't have a set schedule. It's not like it has to be four eights or four tens. It's just get you work done in the week, however that looks. Yeah. And I think that, you know, treating your employees like the adults they are is going to get you more in the long run than micromanaging them.

And that includes where they're physically located, what type of benefits you provide them, like be mindful of giving people things that can be personalized to match their interests. I love it. Actually, this question just came in on Instagram. If companies give the choice of in-house or remote, do they have extra expenses they they have to deal with, I guess, with the remote thing. I think, yes, but a lot of your in-house expenses are not gonna be there anymore. So you're essentially either gonna save money or just basically be at even and then your remote expenses are gonna be actually towards the individuals. Yeah, that was definitely our experience at Vult.

And when we let go of the office space, you know, a significant lease costs here in Seattle, real estate is not cheap. and even for a small team of 27 people, the savings that we made in letting go of that office space, they turned around and gave it back to us in remote stipends and everybody's happy, everybody wins, and it didn't cost them more, if anything, they probably did save some money in the long run. But the bigger end picture was that everybody was happier. Yep, exactly, exactly. All right, y'all, well, thanks for hanging out. Sarah, stay on so I can say bye to you all.

Of course, yeah. Thank you so much. It was so great to chat. I welcome any DMs in my LinkedIn slide on in. Yeah, if you have fitness questions, ask Sarah, she's great. If you're interested in vault, hit her up. I'm sure we can work out something. We should have a guidance counselor 2.0 code for vault. Yeah, I'd be happy to put one together for you. Cool. Awesome. Sweet. Let's do it. You all have a great one. tomorrow morning unicorn finders is back with Kent Dodds. Kent Dodds is former PayPal. Now he's founder of remix and new JavaScript language out there that have no idea what it does.

But we're gonna talk about it tomorrow. And then Friday, Alex Sheridan, I found Alex on TikTok. This dude is hilarious. He's a content king and he and I are gonna dive into content creation on Friday. So two more great episodes to round out the week and y'all go connect with Sarah. Y'all have a great Wednesday. Thanks y'all. Thank you again if you need to reach out to me, Taylor at Vaco.com or at T. Destin on all social media handles. And I hope you have a fantastic day.