Working Remotely

This is the written script of Halftime, episode 43 of the Makers of Sport® podcast. Halftime was a short show on the off weeks between interviews where I wrote and read on topics in professionalism, entrepreneurship and business for creatives in sport. The episode aired July 6, 2015; the audio is on SoundCloud and the show notes live at makersofsport.com. The show's opening and closing announcements are trimmed here.

We’re talking about working remotely, or telecommuting if you want to use the uncool, old world for it. Today is the greatest time in the history of the world for you to be able to do what you are passionate while living where you want to live, not where you have to live to do what you want to do.

To start I’m going to tell you a short story about a friend I have in Lexington whom I occasionally meet for lunch to share stories and channel inspiration. I remember when I first met him this dude, I thought, this guy does not look like he belongs in Kentucky. He just had this whole vibe about him. He looked creative I guess. Sort of stereotypical hipsterish. Think Brooklyn designer. He was just big city fashionable before social media.

I was intrigued by this guy and his rebel personality – to avoid the status quo. He really turned me on to this whole entrepreneur thing and being comfortable with who you are how you don’t fit the 9-to-5 grind. This guy is extremely passionate about gaming. So passionate that he once had a small creative shop focused solely on marketing and branding for the gaming industry.

Now as you can imagine Lexington, Kentucky is not exactly a hot bed for the gaming industry. But thing I found inspiring about my friend is he didn’t even consider his location at all when it came to making in-roads in his industry. In fact, I was once having lunch with him discussing landing clients outside of our market and flat out told me “I’ll never let my area code hinder what I can do professionally”. I wrote that quote down and try to remember it when discussing remote work.

“I’ll never let my area code hinder what I can do professionally.”

About a year later, this friend, who’s name is Wes Keltner, launched one of the most successful mobile games of all time in the App Store called Breach & Clear from his company Gun Media. Today he frequents gaming events and conferences, has raised over a million dollars in funding and is working on a console game that is already gracing wish lists at IGN this year.

Think for a minute about listening to his podcast. Many of you and I have developed real relationships or had real conversations over time because you listen to this show. Most of the time starting out on twitter, then maybe moving to direct messages, to email, to Skype or Google Hangouts and for some in-person at conferences or sports events. Even those of you who haven’t tweeted with or digitally chatted with me as much might still feel a connection to me just because of the intimacy of the podcast medium as it relates to me sharing my thoughts, my personality, and my worldview with you through my own voice in audio form.

Consider for a moment the people you communicate with daily in this sports design or business industry. We are constantly conversing with one another, developing relationships and residing in online communities of our interest. The Internet, even though some argue is ruining people’s ability to form personal human-to-human connections, is this vast and wonderful place where if you dig deep enough, you find that people are actually communicating very deeply with one another.

Like many of you who listen to this show, I’m a millennial. We grew up as digital nomads. We’ve grown up thinking the word social media is a dumb term, because the Internet has always been social. We’ve gamed online with one another. Joined online chatrooms, maybe made up fake screen names as high schoolers and communicated with our friends on text or AOL chat. We know there is no social Internet, there is just the Internet. Everything is social. It’s just the default of participating online.

This is also true in client work or freelancing. You see, you don’t have to be physically present to get successfully and productively work with others. One of my own biggest clients is in Denver, Colorado, and I reside rurally about 45 minutes outside of the nearest city in Kentucky. Each Monday at the same time, I have a Skype call with this client discussing what needs to be done for the week, what was finished up last week and even occasionally goofing off or telling funny stories about our weekends. I also have a Slack channel set up for this client where have water cooler chat, share funny gifs and also discuss projects. We set up to-do lists on basecamp, share files with each other in Dropbox and set up screensharing in GoToMeeting when I need to walk them through a presentation or design I’m submitting. I bill them through a digital invoicing system and they pay via credit card. Other than the occasional physical item that gets overnighted between us, there is literally no physical interaction.

In fact, in the near 2 years I’ve been working with this client, I have only met them in person once, and that was after I was a year in. But I feel like we are pals. That we know each other. They know me and I know them. They know about my family and I know about their’s. Where I am when I perform my work does not matter. What matters is that I am passionate about the work and don’t waste my time playing video games or watching TV when I need to making something for them.

Those of you know that my passion is where sports and design intersect. However, just because I live in the middle of no where Kentucky, I’m not going to let that stop me from working with people in this niche when opportunities arise. And you shouldn’t either. You should seek out opportunities outside of your locale in the area you are passionate about.

Why do many of us still today let our locations be an excuse for what we want to do professionally? Sure there are instances where being in person may be vital, specifically in the full-time sense. If you want to work for the Chicago Bulls full-time, of course you need to be in-house the majority of your time. But there may be ways to convince your superiors to let you try working remotely for at least small bit of your time.

One way is productivity. For example, Jason Fried, a co-founder of the project management software basecamp, once gave a Tedtalk where he mentions that when people need to get work done, they get into the office super early, stay super late or sneak in on the weekends. Why is this? It’s because during the normal office hours, there are constant distractions. Fried calls them interruption factories that chop your day into tiny bits. 15 minutes here, 10 minutes there and so on. There are meetings, conference calls, or just people dropping by to to chat. Uninterrupted, meaningful and creative work can be too hard to get done in today’s office environments.

Many times trust tends to be the issue. The old mentality of workers is that you need butts in seats to show how successful your company is. Or so your boss can reside over you making sure that you are doing your work. For example, how does your boss know you aren’t playing video games or browsing Facebook all day if they can’t see you in their same building? Well let’s let the secret out, chances are people are already doing that anyway IN the office. Being in an office isn’t going to stop someone from wasting time.

I live by the principle that your passion is the thing you won’t cheat on when no one else is looking. These are the people that make for the best remote workers; people that care about their craft enough to do their best on it, on their own time, when their is little to no reward. People that just want to get better. The very fact that you take time to listen to this podcast means that is you.

Renown entrepreneur and founder of Virgin, Richard Branson argues that companies should give people the freedom to work wherever they want to work. That to successfully work with other people it takes trust. And a big part of that trust is allowing people to get their work done wherever they are without constant supervision. We live in a time where the technology is readily available and available and affordable to maintain constant communication. An example of one of these types of communication platforms is the company Slack (which I mentioned I use with my clients). The startup is barely over a year old is now valued at over 2 billion dollars touting over 750,000 daily active users and growing from a 1 billion dollar valuation to over 2 billion dollar valuation in as little as 5 months.

Now unfortunately the reality as you know is the sports business tends to adopt things late, such as allowing for remote workers, or having design-lead organizations like what is happening in the Silicon Valley. But, I believe eventually sports organizations and jobs will have no choice. If you truly want to hire the best talent, why should X employee have to uproot their family and leave the place they love to come live in a small college town just so they can be physically present if they aren’t the ones that need to be physically present at games keeping stats or dealing with coaches? After all, we are just making things on the Internet. It’s super easy today to jump on a plane.

No one that works in the digital or creative realm should ever sacrifice losing a quality employee simply because they aren’t interested in moving to your city. Teams need to innovate or get left behind by talented employees sick of the demands and hours it takes to work in sports.

If the stat I mentioned earlier regarding the company Slack tells us anything, it’s that the future of work isn’t coming, it’s already here. Will you be the next Tyson Beck working from your Australian home creating for the NBA in the U.S.? Or the next Rodney Richardson of Rare Design or Joe Bosack creating for some of the biggest brands in sport from your smalltown?

Never let your location be a barrier and keep you from pursuing your passion.