Hey Reader,

A lot of companies praised remote work during the height of the pandemic but are now requiring workers to come back into the office.

Even Zoom is now requiring employees to work onsite two days a week.

There certainly are some benefits to the serendipity that comes from working in an office. One example is young people accelerating their careers by getting around those who are more experienced and learning from them.

But there are also many benefits to working remotely, including spending less time commuting and more time with family. That extra time can also go toward getting sufficient sleep and exercise.

It’s worth noting there is a major difference between companies that are remote “friendly” and those that are remote first.

At ConvertKit, we’ve been remote first since the beginning.

Remote first companies focus on asynchronous communication. They understand that communication doesn’t have to happen in real time. It’s easy to call meetings in person, but many time-consuming meetings could have been a written message.

Leaning on written communication helps those who couldn’t attend a meeting feel less left out, and writing also forces teams to clearly articulate and refine their ideas.

I’m a big fan of remote work. I like being able to do deep work at home without getting interrupted, but I’ll mix it up by working from a coffee shop a couple days a week so I’m not alone all of the time.

Working remotely doesn’t mean never getting together with people in person. At ConvertKit, we host two annual team retreats, which give team members the opportunity for some face time and a chance to build relationships, as well as an in-person conference, Craft + Commerce, in Boise, Idaho.

Something I also like to do is batch my travel. I did this with my recent Austin and Los Angeles trip where I scheduled months worth of meetings, podcast recordings, coffees, and events in a single week.

Companies are hesitant to enable or encourage remote work because they think workers won’t be as productive. I think of that the same way I think about installing monitoring software on people’s computers: it’s solving the wrong problem.

If people aren’t getting work done, you’re either: hiring the wrong people, failing to clearly communicate goals and responsibilities, or you don’t have systems in place to support remote work.

If the person is a bad fit, improve your hiring process.

If your employee isn’t clear on goals and responsibilities, have a conversation and set regular check-in points.

If all of your systems and culture are set up around in-person work, don’t be surprised when remote work suffers.

Fixing these problems takes seeing remote work as the future for your company instead of an afterthought or temporary accommodation.

If you’re looking for a remote job, make sure the company is remote first (or is at least making serious steps toward accommodating remote work).

If you’re looking to hire, consider hiring remote. You might also check out the tips I have in this thread on remote forced vs remote first.

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PODCAST

Leveraging Your Audience for the Long-Term with Codie Sanchez

Codie Sanchez, co-founder of Unconventional Acquisitions and founder of the Contrarian Thinking newsletter, is on a mission to create financially free and free-thinking humans.

Tune in to Billion Dollar Creator this week to discover why you can’t chase an audience and money simultaneously or you won’t catch either. Codie shares how to leverage your audience for profit in a sustainable way and why we should be buying businesses, not starting them.

​Listen to episode »​

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SLACK

Slack tip: Share DMs in a channel

Have you ever sent a direct message in Slack that you meant to post in a channel? Or maybe something you sent in a direct message ended up being relevant in a group discussion taking place in a channel.

I learned recently you can copy the link to your direct message and share it anywhere in Slack. It will show up as a quoted message the same way it will if you link to a message from another channel.

Doing so won’t share your entire direct message conversation with everyone (only you can view that), but you can selectively share individual messages.

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YOUTUBE

Washington's Dream - SNL

Maybe the funniest Saturday Night Live sketch in the last 20 years.

Give it a watch if you need a laugh.

​Watch video »​

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Have a great week!

—Nathan