- Let me tell you the story of how
I became a remote worker and get to live this life
of a digital nomad where I can work
from wherever I like in the world.
(upbeat music)
Being a remote worker means that you don't
go into an office to do your job.
You can do it from home, from cafes,
from a co-working space, wherever you like.
There's no centralized place that your work happens.
Some people work remote as freelancers,
but a lot of people also work remotely for companies.
The company I work for is called ConvertKit
and we make email marketing software for online creators.
We're a very small of only about 30 people.
But everyone works remote.
We don't have a head office.
I first found out about ConvertKit
through Nathan Barry who is our CEO.
He is a designer and a blogger.
He was speaking at a conference that I was also speaking at,
the Seanwes Conference.
Which was last October in Austin, Texas.
I have a video of my talk actually
if you feel like watching that, as a side note.
I'll be linked on a card.
But anyway, I met Nathan there,
saw him give his talk.
It was amazing the way he talked about
the way he runs his company in that talk.
It seemed like, it was very unique.
I hadn't heard of other companies being run that way.
The way he was talking about his team
when he was giving his talk just
felt like there was a definite emotional connection there
and he really cared about that.
I loved the sound of that.
After the conference ended, Nathan asked myself
and _ who is my podcast cohost,
so you might have heard of her.
He asked us if we'd like to go for lunch.
We were like, yeah sure, that would be great.
You know, we both really admire this guy
and it was cool that he was asking
us to go to lunch with him.
We went to this little pizza place for lunch
and our friend Levi came along as well.
We spent like I wanna say three or four hours
just talking in there about design,
about work, about I don't know, our goals with things.
It was a great conversation.
And during the conversation, I don't know what I
was talking about at the time,
but Nathan went have you ever considered
working remotely for an email marketing software company?
I was like,
what?
Then Levi goes, dude, I think he just offered you a job.
At this stage I hadn't been thinking about
changing jobs.
I was always interested in working remote.
Whenever there was a company that popped up
that I heard about that was fully remote,
I would investigate them.
Take a quick look and see if they were hiring.
But I hadn't pushed my remote working goals
further than that.
When this opportunity seemed to be coming along
I was like well, I've gotta explore this right?
Nathan and I went to breakfast the next day
and I guess that was kind of like an interview.
We talked about what the role would be
and how I would suit it or whatever.
More about the company and what it was like to work there.
Then when I was back in London
I worked on a freelance project for them.
Sort of as like a little test to see how things went.
They offered me the job and I accepted it of course
and now I work there.
My situation of becoming a remote worker and how I got there
I suppose wasn't a traditional way.
It's hard to repeat, but I have some tips for you.
There are some certain qualities that
you absolutely need to have as remote worker
to be successful at it.
I think that my conference talk
and through my side projects
and what Nathan had seen and heard about me
demonstrated those qualities to him
and that's why he was interested in hiring me.
You absolutely need to have self discipline.
If you're the type of person who
slacks off when the boss isn't around that day
or whatever, you're not gonna do well as a remote worker
because guess what?
The boss is never around looking over your shoulder.
You need a lot of self motivation and drive there.
I believe that side project really demonstrate those tasks.
Perhaps if you're looking for remote work,
side projects could be one of the ways
you demonstrate those qualities.
You also need to be really good at communication
because communication is super important in companies
and it's harder when you're not there
to speak to someone face to face.
As we all know from just talking to anyone on the internet,
when you type words, your tone doesn't come across.
So you have to be really good at communicating
what you mean so that you don't have any problems
with your coworkers or whatever.
You also just have to be good at keeping them up to date
'cause no one's around to see
what projects you're working on.
You've gotta tell them about it.
I will say that I think getting a remote job
will be a lot harder if you are new to the industry.
I think you need to have some experience first
because it's harder to train someone
when you're not there with them
to walk them through things and show them how it's done.
Just as a designer yourself, or whatever type
of remote work you're interested in doing,
I learned a lot in my first few years on the job.
I'm still learning on the job.
Those first few years were super fundamental
and foundational to my design knowledge.
So I don't think that I would be
as good a designer as I am today
if I wasn't in an office with other designers
and having that learning from my peers time.
To get a remote job, I think you need to be
able to demonstrate that you have experience
and you're good at what you do.
Perhaps more so than a job in a company
because that on the job training is a little bit harder.
Like I said before, my way of getting hired
as a remote worker isn't exactly repeatable,
but there's things you can learn from it.
Like putting yourself out there
and your side projects out there
so that companies can become aware of them
and of course aware of you as the person behind them
and get interested in hiring you.
There's also a lot of job boards online
specifically for remote jobs.
Like, We Work Remotely, Working Remote,
Remote Okay I think are a couple.
Speaking of Remote OK, I just wanna add one last thing
in that there's a big difference between a
remote first company and a remote friendly company.
Zach Holman from GitHub has a really good
article written about this that I will leave
a link to down below in the description.
Basically a remote first company is gonna be
so much better at communicating
and making you feel like you're a part of the team
than a remote friendly company is.
Because with remote friendly, most people are in an office.
They're in one space and it's really easy to get left out
when you're the person who is remote.
The reason I jumped at this opportunity
to work at ConvertKit is because it is a remote first
company so I knew I wasn't gonna have to deal
with that being left out of the loop issue.
Just something to keep in mind
and like I said read the article that'll be linked below.
That's the story of how I became a remote worker.
I love this digital nomad life, let me tell you.
I love the freedom of not having a commute in the mornings,
of being able to set my own hours.
I love that I can work from anywhere.
I can work from my desk in my apartment,
I can go work from a cafe,
I can go work in bloody Florence if I want to.
I've got these options.
It's meant I've been able to travel a lot more this year
without using up all of my vacation time
because I don't actually need to be on vacation
when I travel, I like living in a place.
I feel like when you work remotely from another country,
you can feel a bit more like you're living there
and experiencing the city as a local.
That's pretty cool, pretty fun and I love it.
Perhaps I'll do another whole video about working remotely
and traveling.
I hope you enjoyed this video.
Make sure you give it a thumbs up if you did.
If you're not subscribed yet, go ahead and hit
that red button because I make videos weekly
about working remote, life as a designer.
If you like this video,
I think you're gonna like the rest of them too.
Thanks for watching and I'll see you next time.
Bye.
(upbeat music)