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career

6 Simple Steps to Improve Remote Onboarding, Boost Productivity and Reduce Employee Churn

Last updated on November 18th, 2022 at 11:39 am

I’m going to show you how to build a fantastic remote onboarding experience. This works whether you’re onboarding your first remote freelancer, or you’re looking to refresh your company’s entire onboarding process.

Employees are at their peak motivation during the first few weeks in a new role. They want to make an excellent first impression. Investing in onboarding keeps that motivation and morale high for the long term. This means a happier, more productive team that sticks with you through the highs and lows.

Unfortunately, remote onboarding is still nascent.

There aren’t defined best practices.

At best, companies try to “port over” their IRL onboarding experience but don’t account for working remotely.

Over the last 10+ years, I’ve worked 7 remote work roles. That’s 7 different remote onboardings.

Here are the 6 things that separate good onboarding experiences from poor ones:

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A Beginner’s Guide to Navigating The Messy Middle of Your Career: Earn more money, become recession-proof, and drive results in 90 days

Messy Middle

Last updated on November 18th, 2022 at 11:39 am

Today I’m sharing 3 frameworks to accelerate through the “messy middle” of your career.

Push through the messy middle quickly and you’ll earn more money, faster, and be happier at your job.

What is the messy middle of your career? It’s the volatile period filled with uncertainty and struggle. As Brian Balfour put it:

Everything is always changing. New roles and functions are always emerging, the underlying knowledge for tech is accelerating, nothing is a linear path. As a result, navigating this part of the journey is chaotic and volatile (source).

This period is critical. The middle makes or breaks a career.

Unfortunately, because there’s no clear narrative arc (hence the “messy”) people rarely talk about it. Or they put too much stock in Steve Jobs’s idea that “you can only connect the dots going backward.” (Arnold was guilty of it, too.)

Instead, here are 3 frameworks to grab the reins of your career and navigate through the messy middle:

  1. Develop a clear hypothesis for your next role
  2. Set yourself up for success in the first 90 days (avoid these mistakes)
  3. Capture upside and limit risk in your career

Let’s jump in.

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Update: 2022 Goals Q2

For most people, goal setting is a waste of time.

Why? Because they don’t track their progress against those goals. If you’re going to set goals, keep yourself accountable. Here is the recap of my Q2 2022, the good, bad, and ugly.

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7 Powerful Ways To Boost Career Growth While Working Remotely

Last updated on August 14th, 2022 at 09:56 am

Today, I’m going to share my favorite tips and tools for working remotely. This list has been refined after:

  • After 9 years of remote work
  • In 7 different roles
  • Across multiple industries

Only 16% of companies are fully-remote businesses[efn_note]https://www.apollotechnical.com/statistics-on-remote-workers/[/efn_note]. Companies will spend the next 20-30 years addressing working remotely challenges. This means it’s our responsibility to create a great remote work experience.

By optimizing how you work remotely, you’ll drive more impact, get promoted faster, and earn more money. Plus, life is just more enjoyable.

The problem is most people treat remote work as working at the office… but at home. It’s not. Instead, they need to rethink every aspect of their work processes, routines, and cadences from a remote-first mindset.

Note: if you’re looking to land your first remote job, check out my article here. And if you’re trying to break into tech, read this first.

7 Tips for Working Remotely (That No One Talks About)

Remote work is a skill. The better your skills, the more successful you’ll be in a remote-first career. Here are 7 tips to improve the skill of working remotely:

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Update: 2022 Goals Q1

This is a recap of the first quarter of 2022.

In my 2022 planning post I said:

I’m focused on building my audience, career, and relationships for Q1 of 2022. This is probably an indication they’re going to be the focus for the year.

This quarter I reached the blog traffic goal. I missed on the newsletter and Twitter goals.

For the second quarter, here’s what I’ll tackle and the order of priority:

  • (High) Build processes to write and engage on Twitter and LinkedIn daily
  • (Med) SEO optimization for 3-5 blog articles; write at least 1-2 SEO articles
  • (Low) Define the value proposition of the newsletter; reposition opt-ins

Let’s dig into how things went. Plus, plans for next quarter.

(How did you do this quarter? Would love to read or hear about your retro!)

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10 Remote Jobs With No Experience Required (and How to Land Them)

Last updated on March 6th, 2023 at 05:06 am

Remote work is here for good.

When you’re not bound by geography or time zone, you have functionally an unlimited number of job opportunities. But if you’ve never worked for a remote company:

  • Where do you start?
  • What jobs are good?
  • Which ones pay well?
  • Which ones are scams?
  • Where do you find these jobs?
  • How do you stand out when you’re competing with anyone with Internet access?

In the last 10 years, I worked 4 different jobs in different industries (Hollywood, online education, technology). These jobs had two things in common:

  1. They were all remote
  2. I had no experience in any of the roles

But along the way, I met other ambitious people who followed this alternative career trajectory. They made remote work a critical component of their careers. They started with little to no experience. And many were also breaking into the tech industry for the first time.

Remote jobs with no experience required

Reflecting on our combined experiences, I realized: there are great remote jobs with no experience required out there. You just need to know what they are, where to find them, and how to stand out when applying. That’s what we’ll cover in this post.

First, we’ll talk about remote jobs to avoid.

Next, we’ll dig into 10 remote jobs with no experience required.

Finally, you’ll also learn principles to stand out when applying for ANY remote job.

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Add Freelancing to Your Career Management Arsenal

Takeaways

If you only have a minute, here are the takeaways:

  • Remote work is here to stay. With your next role is unbound by geography and time zone, the job marketplace is functionally limitless. This changes how you manage your career. 
  • Transactional relationships between employee and employer, e.g. “tours of duty” will become more common, and the quality of “gig-work” will continue to improve.
  • This future isn’t some panacea. Like everything else, there are tradeoffs. For example, more autonomy but less security.
  • If you’re curious, an easy way to sample a “tour of duty” is switching from an employee to a freelancer within the company. 
  • This can be great for your career if you see yourself as CEO someday, or you’ve worked at the same company for a long time. If your current priority is work/life balance, however, then stick with your employer until you’re ready to focus on your career.
  • As a freelancer, your hourly rate will likely go up, but you’ll likely owe more in taxes and they’ll get more complicated. You’ll also have less job security with each client.
  • If you’re a freelancer in the US, expect health insurance to get much more expensive. If you become a resident abroad, chances are you’ll be entitled to some public health services covered by the government.

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Remote work is here for good.[efn_note]https://buildremote.co/companies/companies-going-remote-permanently/[/efn_note]  This changes how we manage our careers.

When your next role is unbound from geography and time zone, the marketplace is functionally limitless. This accelerates the changing employer <> employee relationship, away from one based on stability and loyalty, towards a transactional exchange.

In other words, less monogamy, more swiping.

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Start Earning Your Second Revenue Stream

Takeaways

If you only have a minute, here are the takeaways:

  • Moments in time (like a global pandemic) show us how fragile our futures are if we rely on a single source of income.
  • Earning multiple sources of income is a superpower. Consulting is the best way to start.
  • Consulting has two advantages over other business models: leverage and speed. Leverage = apply lessons learned from your 9-5, and vice versa. Speed = test, launch, and operate your business quickly.
  • How to find your first client? Get good at something and have 10 people know. Email them and ask for referrals. Without your first paying client, building a website or email list is just procrastination.
  • How to land your first gig? Give them a presentation. Show you understand their business, their challenges, and how to address those challenges.
  • Offer a number of packages, anywhere from an audit of their existing work, to a full Done-for-you service.
  • You can charge an upfront fee or a percentage of sales. I’d recommend both ($X upfront and Y% on the backend).
  • If you’re consulting AND working your 9-5, avoid burnout. Choose your niche strategically, manage your client, and get advice if you’re stuck.

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I did the math as Zoom loaded. The answer was 7.

If we did layoffs, 7 colleagues would be let go before me. I was Chinese lucky number 8.

Like most people, I lived in this fantasy where my future was secure. Moments in time (like a global pandemic) tug at this facade. Behind the curtain is nothing more than a harried man peddling away at his Rube Goldberg machine.

Moments like this are the best thing that can happen to you.

It’s the Inciting Incident in your Hero’s Journey. Your opportunity to re-examine the fragility of having a single source of income (your job) and explore building multiple revenue streams.

For me, it nudged me towards landing my first consulting gig.

Why consulting?

Earning side income is a vast universe. You can teach online courses, start a food blog, sell ads against your content, and much more.

I choose to consult, trading my time to work on someone else’s education company/products, in exchange for money.

Consulting is the best way to start earning additional income for two reasons: 

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