- Hey zanners today, I have a Q and A video for you.
I finally get asked, a lot
of questions, by a lot of people a lot of the time,
and it can really help to do one of these every now
and then, to sort of group questions together,
because sometimes these things people ask me
that maybe don't warrant a whole video being made
on the topic individually,
but it's still useful to like answer
and share my thoughts on it.
So that's what we do.
We put them together in a video like this,
in today's Q and A we'll cover questions
about remote work, (pop)
about design, (pop)
about my new role. (pop)
Well, not so new anymore,
I guess I've been in it for almost six months now,
but my(air whooshing) role is creative director
at ConvertKit.
Lots of good things,
so let's get into it and let's answer your questions.
(upbeat music)
Okay first question.
Do you need a work visa to work remotely for a US company?
Good question.
I always get questions
about my work situation and all of this.
So to be employed in the US by US company,
you would need a US working visa.
I don't live in the US
and I am actually employed as a contractor for a US company.
And so I don't need a US work visa to make that happen.
This is often the way that remote companies based
in the U.S. deal with hiring people
from other countries, is either to hire them
as contractors, or they set up like a business entity
in the country they're in, in which case
then you were hired by the business in your country instead
of the business in the U.S. if that makes sense,
I don't know.
Every company will have their own way of doing it,
and a lot of companies limit their remote
to just U.S. for this reason,
because they don't want to have to deal with the hassle
of hiring international people,
which is a shame, I think, it defeats
the purpose of like being remote.
If you were still gonna limit your remote pool
to your own country, that's how it works for me.
So I hope that makes sense(chuckles)
Next question(air whooshing)
What difficulties as a manager have you had
to overcome so far, either being remote
or in general? (air whooshing)
For me no problems being remote
to do with being a manager so far, maybe it's
because I've only ever been a manager remote(chuckles)
So I don't really know the difference
to managing a team in person, but in general
the hardest thing about managing a team so far
has been the amount of context switching that I have to do.
I think it'd be a lot easier
if I was managing like just a design team,
and everyone on my team was the designer,
and all of the work that they were doing was design.
That is not the case for my team.
It's a multidisciplinary team.
That's a hard word to say,
I've got a designer, a filmmaker
a content producer, a writer.
And so that's four very different skillsets,
four very different scopes
of work that I am like overseeing the priorities
of and like helping them progress in.
So that's probably been the hardest part so far
has been the, yeah, the context switching that comes
along with that.
And of terms of how I've overcome it,
I think it's just been accepting
that I'm not gonna know everything all of the time,
and that you just(air whooshing), you trust
in your team, right?
To be getting their work done,
and making sure that they know that whenever they need you,
you're there to help them work through something.
But (air whooshing) I don't feel the need to be involved
in like the nitty-gritty day-to-day
of every single thing they're doing,
because they're professionals and like,
they've got this.
How (air whooshing) do you stay motivated working
on side project after work?(air whooshing)
I have an easy answer to this question.
I don't, so I make sure I get my side hustle work done
in the mornings or on the weekends
because I am completely out of energy
for focusing on anything of the sort after work.
But if that's the situation you're in,
if that's the only time you have to work
on your side hustles,
then I think it's just a question
you have to ask yourself of like
how much do you want this thing to work?
How motivated are you to create the side hustle
and to work on this thing?
And if you decide that it is a thing you want to do
like you really, really want to bring it to life
then I hope that that's where you can find the motivation.
Also, you might be surprised at how little you have time
you have to spend on it each day to make progress.
Like, even if you can set aside 30 minutes
after work to work on your side hustle,
and just like, you know, get through that,
you can move things forward
in a meaningful way.
As a creative director (air whooshing)
What skills do you need that aren't design-based?
Lots of them(chuckles)
Organization skills management, Skills strategy skills.
Like thinking about the bigger picture,
and the business side of things.
I've always thought about the business side
of stuff like that, but now I'm actually responsible
for a budget.
And so the choices I make feel like
they have a lot more weight to them now, right?
Because I'm deciding like, okay should
we spend money on this thing?
Is this thing going to drive the results that we need
for the business?
Like, is this the best idea we could put our budget
into all that stuff is really scary
and I'm still not quite used to it, to be honest.
But yeah, those types of skills is what I found.
I've been spending more time in recently in the switch
over to creative director, more time than in design itself.
My design knowledge is still used.
I still work on design projects,
and I'm still responsible for like our overall brand,
but it is more about zooming out,
and trying to like make connections
between things and look for areas for improvement.
Yeah, deciding on which of those areas are
the most highest priority
for us to be spending time on?
Communication skills too,
I don't know if I said that yet,
but that's definitely been important.
A lot more like making sure all the other teams know
what we're up to on the brand team,
and advocating for ideas and things as well.
Yeah, communication skills are pretty important
in any sort of leadership role, I think.
How ( air whooshing) do I ask for a promotion
that has been due for six months now?
Sad face.
That sucks.
I'm really sorry that
your company is like going slowly on this,
when you know, it's been something that you have deserved.
I think that you need to have a really Frank conversation
with your manager, with the person who was in charge
ultimately of giving you this promotion.
Maybe I would approach it as asking like, okay, how
what can I do to move this forward?
What do you need to be seeing
in me to make this promotion happen?
And even though it sounds like, you know
that the answer is you deserve it already,
but just asking that question,
and having your manager have
to say, "Well nothing you're already there."
Will sort of, I don't know
hopefully kick things into gear and show them that,
Okay, yeah, we really need to get this sorted.
I would really encourage you to keep asking about it though.
Don't feel like you're being pushy,
or like being a burden on or something.
Every one-on-one that you have
with your manager, ask for an update on it, ask
what's happening?
Is there a plan?
What do I need to do to move this forward?
That sort of thing, just so
that you make sure it stays top of mind.
As a manager now, I know that managers often have a lot
on their minds and a lot on their plates.
Your manager might not be thinking
about your promotion as much as you are,
and you have to advocate for yourself on this.
Hopefully your manager will advocate
for you to, to the, you know, the people higher up,
or whoever needs to sign off
on it at the end of the day,
but just make sure that you are bringing it
up as a topic of conversation often.
And I hope that you get it report back
to us if you do.
Fingers crossed for you,
that it goes through soon.
Any tips for remote teams (air whooshing)
with different time zones to stay connected and productive.
This is definitely something
we deal (air whooshing) with on my team.
Myself and Caleb are both in, well, the CDT time zone,
he's in Nigeria, I'm in Spain,
but we're in the same time zone.
And then the rest of the brand team are
in the US in a couple of different US time zones.
The first thing
I would recommend is just sitting expectations among
the team and making sure that everyone is aware
of what times when the person is in,
and what implications that has.
So my team, for example, know
that their mornings is when I'm online, when I'm available
for them, where I'm going to schedule meetings, et cetera.
And the great thing about that is that for them
their afternoons can be more focused time.
Like I'm not going to schedule any brand team meetings
in those times.
But yeah having
that shared understanding is really important.
We have a team Slack channel
that we will sort of like sometimes check
in in the morning or like, say goodbye
when we sign off for the day,
it's not required or anything,
but it is kind of a nice reminder
of when it is the morning
and when it is the end of the day for someone else.
We have a value at ConvertKit of working in public,
and so we share what we're working
on in there, and ask questions publicly,
as much as we can rather than in a direct message,
you get that sense of collaboration,
and knowing what other people were up to.
And then we have a team meeting once a week as a brand team.
And we always use maybe like the first five to 10 minutes
of that meeting is sort of just us chatting as people
as humans, before we get into like the business stuff
and like the official plan agenda and things like that.
So that's always nice to have better connection time
and be caught up on what's going
on in the lives of the people on your team.
Don't underestimate the importance of that
in remote work, and the value of that too,
because we don't get that like water cooler, oh
I'm making a coffee at the same time as you're
Time to chat to our colleagues
we can have random chats in Slack channels,
like I don't know if sharing funny things
or I dunno, sharing random thoughts.
We can have a little bit of chitchat
at the beginning of a meeting to capture that
because I think all that stuff is really important
for having a team bond,
and like trusting each other really
to do good work together.
Speaking of working in public,
that company evaluator said.
I got this question on Twitter,
How (air whooshing) does your company allow you to show
that the design files and the work that you do for them?
I get this a lot.
And so I thought I wanted to address it
in this video, because yeah
I am allowed to stream(chuckles)
as I'm working on design projects
I regularly do videos where I walk you through a project
and like show my behind the scenes, things like that.
And that is all because I worked
for a company that not just allows it
this sort of encourages it.
Like I said, work in public, is one
of the values, we believe that
by sharing our process and sharing what we're learning
along the way we can help the industry
as a whole help each other out.
And yeah, so I fully embrace that value,
in everything I do on this YouTube channel, obviously,
but that is the short answer
to why I'm allowed to stream so much is my company is great,
and they encourage me and allow me to do so.
I don't know why more companies don't do this to be honest,
because I don't know, like I get it.
There's things that you gotta be secretive about
when you're publicly traded,
and I don't know stuff you share could have an impact
on the share price, or I don't know.
There's a big, new creative idea you have
and you're worried, a competitor might copy you,
but for the work I do for web design, like
what is the point in keeping that a secret?
You know, I don't know.
I don't think I could ever work
for a company that didn't like allow me to share my work
because I think that we all benefit
from me being able to do that.
How are (air whooshing)
you handling remote work without real in-person reunions?
I miss meeting my workmates.
Me to Boha, I really miss our team retreats.
We have had to have two virtual retreats so far
in place of the times we would normally meet up
in person, because normally
that happens twice a year at ConvertKit,
and we've been in the pandemic for a year now.
(beep) (laughing)
I've been struggling with to be honest, I don't know
if I can say I've been handling it super well.
But what's kind of helped
for me has been setting up times
to chat to people on the team like just
for a chat to catch up,
the kind of conversations we would have,
at an in-personal retreat,
but you just can't recreate it.
It just, yeah, just calm.
How (air whooshing) do you handle professional questions
by your team that they should have known?
This is interesting to(air whooshing) me,
I can't think of a time when this has happened
and maybe it's because my attitude towards it is
in a creative career, in this creative field
there isn't one correct way to do a thing, right?
Like everyone has a different process,
there's like lots of options,
and like lots of ways to reach an end result.
And so I don't really feel like there's ever something that
if my team asked me a question, maybe
there's some things
that I'd be like, oh I'm surprised.
That's not something you didn't know already know
the answer to, but I would never judge them for that.
If that makes sense,
or like hold it against them in any way,
because they're learning, might've been, I don't know
in a different field, or maybe they had a different approach
to doing this thing previously.
And so the thing they're asking you
about is new to them, which is fine.
I really want to have a relationship
with my team where they feel comfortable to ask me questions
and like, don't have to worry
about feeling like they should have known already.
If it's something to do with information
in the company, for example, where they're like, they ask
about something that has already been announced somewhere,
or that I already said somewhere else.
Then I take that to mean
that our communication channels (chuckles) do need improving
to make sure that information is reaching the right people.
I guess my answer
to this is I won't, wouldn't judge the person asking
on this, and would just, yeah jump straight
into helping them figure out
the answer, either by answering and finding out myself,
or suggesting some ways that they could research it.
Do (air whooshing) you accept mentees?
Cute face, cute face.
At the moment No!
this is something I've been considering opening
up is like one-off mentoring sessions.
It's something my friend Fem Care
has been doing for a while.
I will leave a link to her down below
where you can book a super peer session with her.
But yeah, it's not something
that I have been able to make the time for yet.
I am interested in offering mentorship sessions
in future, but because I'm still fairly new
in this role of mine in leading a team,
I'm wanting to pour all of my like thinking
about other people into my team at work.
And so I can't really take on any other mentors
at the moment, but I hope that
you can continue like being mentored
by me from afar through my videos,
at least that's my goal.
Oh I like this question from Annie,
what (air whooshing) habits should you start
as a beginner designer to improve your skills?
I would say start the habit of exploring multiple ideas.
Even if you get started on something
and the first thing you do really like it, force yourself
to come up with like several other different options.
I think this is a good habit to develop,
because it forces you to see things from a different angle.
It forces you to push past the obvious,
because the first one, two, three ideas
that you can come up with as a solution
to a problem could be the most obvious way of doing things.
So if you force yourself to get past that,
that's when you can start to get really creative
and some new and awesome ideas can come out.
Sometimes not though, like sometimes
you go back to the first one, two, three
but it's a good habit to get into,
and it's good practice to be in.
And I think it's also good for ensuring
that you don't feel too precious about any one idea.
You know ( air whooshing), ideas are a dime, a dozen.
You can come up with untold ideas as a designer.
Don't get too committed to one certain idea too early on.
And this is a good habit that you can establish
to make sure that doesn't happen.
All right, I've been talking for a long time.
So I think I need to end this Q and A video here,
but if you enjoyed it, please give it a thumbs up.
And let me know if you'd like me to do more of these
in the future, or if perhaps there's any one topic I touched
on today, that you would like more detail on,
and that you'd like it to be a separate video.
Let me know in the comments, follow me on Instagram
on Twitter to ask questions in the future.
When I make these videos, I'm at Charliprangley both.
Thanks for being here and I'll see you in the next video.
Bye. (upbeat music)