SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hey Joshua, we're back. Another fractional episode here. Got a couple things on mind to kick off with. Yeah. I was interviewing a candidate, one of my customers, you know, looking at bringing on a marketing role. So I'm interviewing this candidate and I'm really impressed with her, like out of the gate. She has a PhD, she has an MBA, she's worked at a really high level in And been really successful. She's trilingual. She holds a great conversation. She's warm and inviting. It

SPEAKER_00 0:31

sounds like there's no catch here, right? It sounds like this is good.

SPEAKER_01 0:34

Yeah, right? I'm like, this would be a fantastic person to work with. And she's telling me her story. And she's telling me how in 2023, she was hired at this company as a remote employee. She lives a short plane ride away from where their headquarters is. She's got a family there. Her home is there. And she was hired as a remote employee. And now corporate is pushing for a return to office. And they want her to relocate to the city where the headquarters is. And this is her sign to exit. And they're going to lose a fantastic person. Maybe my customer will benefit from that. But I just am like, this is such an interesting case in point in real life about the incredible value of A very talented, specialized person that's going to walk out the door. because they can't embrace any sort of flexibility or autonomy. But I know you've got some feelings about this. I obviously do.

SPEAKER_00 1:33

I'm going to actually take the positive case for a second, and I'm going to flip the roles on us. What do you think is the reason? Is there a good reason that you can figure out for why the company is doing this? Because I've been listening to a lot of different takes over the last year, and I still stand mostly where I did before, which is remote is great for most people most of the time. But there's sometimes where in-person helps to do things faster, better. Is this one of those cases? Or what are you kind of gleaning out of it so far from the interview?

SPEAKER_01 2:00

Yeah, and I have my bias, too, towards leaning remote and flexible. But from my understanding, this isn't, hey, we wish you'd come collaborate once a quarter or once a month. That would be just fine, right? This is the relocate your family because we think even though your role is completely knowledge based and done from your computer with all the digital tools we have to collaborate with, we just want everybody back in the office. I don't see like I don't see another reason. I don't know the whole story right from the employer side, but I don't I can't think of a good reason.

SPEAKER_00 2:35

It sounds like they're not making a call for increased productivity. This does feel like power and control. This does feel like an attempt to be able to demand and exercise your right as the employer to say, nope, everyone's got to be here because I want to see butts in the seat throughout my office. That's horrible. That's like you're unsettling this person's life. You're changing the agreement on them. And I'm presuming this person has proved herself for the last two years in a fantastic way. Productivity has probably been better than ever. And then they're suddenly just demanding control back. And that's it's infuriating, especially we're at the stage in our lives where you and I. We have families that come first. My family, it does come first, period. I love my work. I love my job. I love my ability to be able to do this creative thing that brings me so much joy and helps others. That's fantastic. But it will never come ahead of my family. I think that there is such a culture mind shift in so many places, especially Silicon Valley, of work is most important. And then later on, you can have a nice life. I was listening to this six-hour episode with DHH and Lex Fridman of his podcast, where DHH's is not what life is about. Yes, he'll spend 40 hours at his home office remotely and he does it. He does great work. He loves it. But then he checks off and he goes and plays Fortnite with his boys like that. So much of the struggle I feel is where people have misplaced priorities. Now, all that to say, sometimes you need people in office. I get it. But this doesn't sound like one of those cases.

SPEAKER_01 4:12

Yeah, not to me. And to your point, you know, I think there it's not just work that can be like an overwhelming, consuming thing. Right. I think we see people, whether it's Yeah, it does. And now, to be fair, and

SPEAKER_00 4:41

we'll talk about this in a second, in the last week, I have probably put in more hours than any time in the last year because of something that I just feel deeply passionate about that I think will shift the entire work process. But I will not keep this up for months on end. I recognize like that therein leads a path to not having a happy family. And that's more important to me.

SPEAKER_01 5:01

Right. You're putting in a season of work for an outcome or a goal that you're trying to accomplish right now. Right. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 5:09

Yeah. So I think this is anyone who's listened to Fractional for a while. And if you're new, welcome. Lance and I. have tried to build careers on doing awesome things with other people that we genuinely find as friends or colleagues that could become friends, but then also getting off the laptop and going out on a run, going out on a boat with our kids. Those things are why we do life. It's not the other way around. Totally.

SPEAKER_01 5:34

Second topic on my mind is Today, as we kind of have this abbreviated different approach to our episodes, I was in the gas station. This is where this thought, this experience prompted episode content. Coming home from, all right, so connecting this to the family investment thing, right? I took my daughter to a downhill mountain bike race down in Kellogg, Idaho at Silver Mountain Resort, where she happened to actually win. She got her first W. So it was really fun to see her on the top step of the podium. I was really proud of that. So on the way home, I'm bringing her home and I have our youngest with us too and stuff for fuel. Little one needs to go to the bathroom and go in there and by the sink where you wash your hands, there's a little sign on the wall that says, if this restroom is in need of service, and the twist is here, it was flip the switch. There was a light switch right below the sign. I see those signs in bathrooms a lot, but they say, you know, find a team member to let them know, right? And I thought that was brilliant for a couple of reasons. One, I have never once made the effort to go find a... gas station attendant to tell them, hey, you're out of paper towels or, hey, you're out of soap or, you know, there's a spill or whatever, right?

SPEAKER_00 6:48

Or, hey, I made a mess and I'm embarrassed and can you go clean it up? Like, no one's going to do that.

SPEAKER_01 6:54

Yeah, there you go. That's a whole nother angle. Totally. Right. So it just like it reduced so much friction to delivering feedback that I thought I would do that, right? If I was in here and I noticed, even if it was a small thing that I felt was like, it's not that big of a deal, right? Because that's not going to be enough reason to do the work to go find somebody. I could flip a switch. And then I thought too, the interesting thing is, If you go and you tell explicitly somebody you're out of paper towels, they'll walk into the bathroom, they'll replace the paper towels, and they'll walk out. But if you flip the switch, it's a little bit of a treasure hunt, right? They're

SPEAKER_00 7:26

going to look around. They'll try to understand the state of it.

SPEAKER_01 7:28

Yeah, they take a QA approach. All right, we need to come in. We need to test everything until we find what's wrong. And maybe there's two or three things that the user didn't notice that the attendant finds and can correct before the next person experiences a deficiency. So I just really liked the idea. It seems super simple. And maybe there's, you know, 10,000 other service stations that do it that way. I've just never been in them. Maybe you all have, but I liked it. And I, and it got me thinking like, what is the way that we can reduce the friction for people in our workplaces to say, I've got a problem, right? Maybe protecting anonymity is a part of that, but just making it easier for someone to raise their hand. So we,

SPEAKER_00 8:08

this needs help. This This topic's really interesting because here on Fractional, we've asked for feedback over the years and we've had some awesome listeners write in and give us feedback and that's spurred on future episodes. But I'd be lying if I If I'd said it's as much as I've wanted, it's often been bits here and there that have been useful. In the last week or two, I've on my blog, which I've been writing for a long time, I switched it over from WordPress to Ghost. And I set up a subscription form where you can get one post every week for free or one post every day for five bucks a month. And I basically begged and pleaded with every friend I knew who was tangentially, potentially curious in the topic to subscribe. At one point, Ghost... Shut me down because they're like, why are you adding people manually? And I explained and they opened it back up. And I was like, everyone who I've added has told me verbally or in writing that they're good with it. So I've been writing. As I have, so from November to the start of this month, I wrote basically every day. And I've had friends give me feedback and respond. It's been fantastic. But in the last week or two since using Ghost, what's happened is these people who have agreed to get an email, they are now responding to the emails and just replying and saying, hey, here's a thought. Here's a question. One buddy, he actually, we were on a run. He's like, hey, so I've emailed you several times. You haven't responded. And I freaked out. Like I had messed up the email response process. reply to. So he couldn't, it was going to a dead inbox. So I fixed that right away. And I've noticed just today, I had a post that I wrote, it went out and someone immediately responded and they asked a question. They're like, hey, you said this and this and this. It was about Figma and how I think the design process is changing. Go read it if you're curious. And he's like, but what about this? You didn't talk about this. And I started writing back to him. I was like, well, go read this other article. I'm like, wait a minute. No, I actually didn't give you an answer. And I wrote a 500 word answer to him right there in the email. And then that has now become the basis of a 1300 word post that's going to go out tomorrow. And he's helping me even though I'm helping him. It has just lit me up as a writer. I am so excited to have this rapid feedback loop. We're in a group chat yesterday where Jonathan asked me, hey, Joshua, what do you think about this new Figma IPO? What's your thoughts? And my response was, I don't have any opinion. And then I said, well, actually, well, actually, And I dropped in like 400 word response into our group chat. And then I realized, okay, I need to go write about this. I wrote about it last night, dropped a 400 word post. And I'm finding, I've turned this whole question around, but by having these immediate feedback loops where friends and people I've never even met are able to respond to my writing and ask me questions, it is just spurring me on to write things that hopefully are more valuable and interesting. And that's given me a focal point that I have i've frankly been loving

SPEAKER_01 10:52

and how are you seeing like is this like only friends and acquaintances that that are engaging are you getting like people that you don't even know that are asking you questions or signing up the one how's this going

SPEAKER_00 11:03

one this morning he just found me randomly somewhere doesn't know how he paid he signed up and paid and he emailed me a question i actually yesterday i emailed everyone who signed up that i didn't know and said thanks for joining it was a custom email. I did not do an auto reply. And I said, thanks for joining. What would you like to know? And so he responded back. So I kind of prompted him to let him know I was a real person who would respond. And so this morning is like, hey, hello again. Here's a question I have. And I actually placed an ad in this other newsletter last week, and I've gotten 14, 15 people from that ad. They subscribe for free. And I've been emailing. I'm like, hey, how can I help you? And some of them are probably freaked out, but a couple have responded. And I love that because these are people that are like me, other designers who are are looking for help and I'm happy to give it. And then I can take that data and put it into future posts. Awesome.

SPEAKER_01 11:50

Okay. So then the question here is to our audience, what do you want to know? What do you want to hear about? What should we talk

SPEAKER_00 11:56

about? All right. We'll turn that around. On Fractional, Lance and I, we've had a bunch of interviews. We've had a bunch of calls. We've had a bunch of discussions. We've wrestled through this topic. And I think things are starting to shift where Fractional is. I was talking to a founder recently. He's like, da-da-da-da, hired a Fractional. I was like, wait, pause, hold on. Can you tell me more about that? Because my buddy and I have a whole podcast about this. So yeah, listeners, thank you for listening. Really appreciated this. And we're going to keep going. We have so much more to say. But what do you want to hear? What are you dying to know? Do you just want to hear more Fractional 101 stuff? Because Lance and I have talked about that a ton. but maybe it's time to recycle. We're open to feedback where we can take this. Otherwise, we're going to keep just talking about the things that are interesting to us. And we also love that too. Yep.

SPEAKER_01 12:38

And we'll continue to have guests, interesting people that we think are interesting and we want to learn from. But yeah, is there a guest in particular that you'd like to hear from? Feel free to make an

SPEAKER_00 12:48

introduction. And I will shill myself for a minute. JoshuaWold.com. Please go sign up for the free newsletter. Once a week, you're going to get a post from me about this. This Monday's post was basically... You're searching for success in your career and you could miss out on the fact that it's right alongside you with your family growing up while you're working. And that's basically been my story and taking that moment to appreciate it. Feel free to sign up and maybe I'll convince you to go for the daily post at some point. Thank you. We're here because of our listeners and we appreciate each of you. Absolutely. And you can reach us here as a fractional team at email

SPEAKER_01 13:21

at fractional.

SPEAKER_00 13:22

Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_01 13:22

Catch you next time.