Covid-19 has changed everything. We all went from waking up to an alarm, getting ready for work and going to work. Now we all realize that the act of going to work is not necessary for the success of a business for millions of workers.
This is how I’ve been working for over 8 years now.
I remember in the early days people would ask me “how can you stand being home all the time? Don’t you need to go to an office and be around people?” and my answer to them was just “no”. The entire reason I built my businesses was so I never have to commute to work again. I hated commuting somewhere at a time I didn’t want to leave, to a place I didn’t want to be, working with people I didn’t want to work with. 8 hours later, commuting back through the same traffic I was in during the morning rush hour all the way home and arriving too exhausted to do anything else. Day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year. Only 40 more years and then you can retire!
Yeah right! I had to get out of that system ASAP! So I built J – CAD Inc. with the idea that one day if I have enough customers to pay my bills I can finally leave this “rat race” and work on my own time, where I want, when I want, with who I want.
1. Hire The Right People.
After I quit my job I started needing extra help as the business grew rapidly and hired some employees. When doing this I had some friends and contacts who would say “now it’s time to get an office” but I always disagreed and said “why?” Their argument was “how will you make everyone work if you can’t see them?” and my answer was “I don’t need to make them work, they just work.”
If you have the right people in place, you don’t need to manage them, they just manage themselves. I was lucky in this area. Everyone I hired just did the work they were asked to do on time. I never had any problems and still don’t with over 40 employees now.
I don’t understand why companies keep incompetent people around. If it’s not working out then end the relationship. When I hire someone new I treat it as sort of a trial period to see if they like working with me and if I like working with them. If it works out then great. If not, we both understood it was a trial period. If there are any doubts on either side then end it.
2. Put All Project Files And Documents On The Cloud
One thing I hear a lot of people say is they can’t let people work from home because all files are on the computers in the office. Why is that a reason to not work from home? Have you heard of Dropbox, Onedrive, Googledrive, etc? Use them.
3. No Meetings Allowed
You might think that since you’re not all working under one roof now we have to have more meetings to make sure everyone is on the same page. Wrong! I have exactly 0 meetings per year with any employee I have. We all communicate by email first. This takes care of 99.999999% of concerns. Maybe once or twice a year we need to pick up the phone and discuss something because it’ll be quicker. Stressing to use email to communicate makes people narrow down what they want to say into easy to understand short statements. Things get done quicker. It’s impossible to forget things because all instruction are in the email which they can refer to anytime. There is no difference between a phone call and a meeting other than the time wasted for a meeting so I don’t have meetings. Phone calls are as far as I go. If communication is not working with email or as a last resort phone calls then the relationship is not working out and you need to change that person from your team.
I hope that helps you transition. These are the 3 most important things I’ve been doing for over 8 years now and it’s kind of funny for me to watch everyone now adapting to working from home. It’s not difficult. Follow these 3 steps and it’s actually pretty easy.
Thanks!
Jason