Recorded (remotely!) on 02/20 between UK & Scotland, at Mainyard Studios (London) and Gary’s house (Glasgow). We had done this remotely (true to its nature), Remoter in the UK and founder of Ready for Remote Gary Walker in Scotland. Ready for Remote is an educational platform providing content and resources to help people, you guessed it, get ‘ready for remote.’ Stumbling and embracing remote work over the years has allowed Ready for Remote to grow while allowing Gary to better integrate his work with life as a parent of 2 young children.
Recorded (remotely!) on 02/20 between UK & Scotland, at Mainyard Studios (London) and Gary’s house (Glasgow). We had done this remotely (true to its nature), Remoter in the UK and founder of Ready for Remote Gary Walker in Scotland. Ready for Remote is an educational platform providing content and resources to help people, you guessed it, get ‘ready for remote.’ Stumbling and embracing remote work over the years has allowed Ready for Remote to grow while allowing Gary to better integrate his work with life as a parent of 2 young children.
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Josephine Tse 0:00
It's time for season two of the Remoter Podcast. I'm your host Josephine.
Josephine Tse 0:05
As a continuation from season one with Alex and Andres, I had the opportunity to interview some remote work leaders, ranging from companies, consultants, advocates and more to add to Remoter's stash of free resources and human-centred stories, enriching our educational platform about remote work. This podcast is sponsored by Torre, a new kind of professional network that automatically connects talent with opportunity. Founded by Alexander Torrenegra, our goal is to make work fulfilling for everyone find the job of your dreams by visiting torre.co. That's T O R R E dot C O
Josephine Tse 0:49
Gary's story really surprised me. Let me set the scene for you. I was in London at Mainyard Studios (thank you Bernie Mitchell for lending me your office). And I was patching in to speak with Gary who lives in Scotland, I originally thought that we would be talking about his drivers and motivations for working remotely and digital product creation for Ready for Remote and twist the conversation that way. But by the end of the conversation, it was very clear to me where the root of his motivation truly lies. It's a touching story, and I'm really glad that Gary shared it with us. It's a great reminder of how remote work is very advantageous and can be very fulfilling for the right reasons.
Josephine Tse 1:30
This is the first episode that I'm doing remotely for the Remoter Podcast. Every single one I've been just going to meet people in person but in this case really want to do this interview but couldn't find time to go up to Scotland where my guest Gary Walker is located. That's all right. And I mean, we work remotely anyway.
Gary Walker 1:52
Yeah, we're doing we're doing true remote, so.
Josephine Tse 1:55
This is the first true remote Remoter Project production. It's a tongue twister. Gary, could you tell our listeners I guess a little bit about who you are and what you do?
Gary Walker 2:05
So hi, I'm Gary. I'm the creator of Ready for Remote and the co-author Ready for Remote the book. And yeah, I'm also the leader of 22North, a consultancy, product development and media company. Thanks for having me on. It's a shame you didn't make it to sunny Scotland during the storm season. It's great to be on the podcast.
Gary Walker 2:27
The first time I remote worked was about 13 years ago, 14 years ago by default. It was kind of just to save cash more than anything else. I couldn't afford an office space for the web design and graphic design work that I was doing. Therefore, I started working from home and from there, I was originally intrigued by it. Went back into an office, kind of incumbent organisation, which eventually led me to give me the fortunate ability to build a fully remote teams within a hybrid organisation. But it really fascinated me because there are so many different aspects and elements to remote working. A lot of people were getting dragged down by the technologies. And it was a colleague of mine, Matt, and we put together kind of playbook just called Ready for Remote, which really just encapsulated kind of practical guide to how we built the remote teams in that hybrid organisation, the challenges that we had to overcome, and we were able to make some success. I also do a podcast, although I've been really crude at doing it recently. Yeah, so geared towards kind of helping people get ready for remote, whether it's individuals, whether it's companies, but really deeply focusing on that kind of mindset piece. So working with some different customers, getting them ready for remote working, still spinning our own products, which I'm super passionate about.
Josephine Tse 3:40
How do you see remote work currently in Scotland? Are a lot of people getting involved in it? Is that why you've kind of started the company, or are your clients more international at the moment?
Gary Walker 3:52
I don't think I've worked with any Scottish clients yet.
Josephine Tse 3:55
Okay.
Gary Walker 3:56
Even though I'm located in Scotland, which says a lot. Plus I think there's a lot of interest in Scotland, in terms of I think as a lot of people are like more interested in how flexible working starts to develop. And obviously those different terms for whether it's remote working with it and the other one is distributed working or whether people want the term it is working from home, which isn't totally correct. There's not a massive groundswell around remote work in Scotland. I think of small pockets and organic growth, and but a huge opportunity for the government to get involved in the tech advisory boards. And even if they want to drive it through a different agenda. So obviously, I'm very keen on their work life balance, but obviously you can look at the economic growth, you can look at the climate change factors, which can then amplify and accelerate the growth little more. So yeah, I wouldn't say Scotland's a particularly strong place when it comes to remote work, but people are starting to dip their toe in and try and get a better understanding of, what are the benefits for the company?What are the benefits that people? But yeah, there's a lot more work to be done, but I wouldn't say that was my primary reason for starting work that I'm doing. It wasn't specific to Scotland.
Josephine Tse 5:02
What would you say is your I guess, well, your core focus is to help people get Ready for Remote. What else are you planning on doing with 22North?
Gary Walker 5:10
Well, I was always super passionate about was how to create a service or a digital product that can start to benefit people. So obviously, if you're looking at technology from the outside at the moment, there's a huge conversation and debate happening about devices and people's relationships with those devices. And actually, without going down the rabbit hole and attention, capitalism and all those different aspects. I think for me, what's important is readdressing the balance there and starting to educate people on actually, the end of the phone is a piece of metal, it's a piece of glass. So it's not a you're addicted to that as essentially your relationship with that device or from me, it's starting to look at having those conversations through 22North and using the vehicle of remote work to start to have those conversations because as important, lots of people are overwhelmed even when they are remote working because they haven't looked at the rituals and the practices of just basic things like setting up the right notifications, when to @ people, when not to, understanding synchronous, asynchronous communication, all those different aspects. So for me, 22North is kind of like, how do we start to think about as we go down the line? How do we think about productizing some of those things? So for me, it's like, how do we start to and that's what I was doing with Ready for Remote. So yeah, it was a book and it was a bit more like, cathartic experience, like getting all that stuff together, putting it out there. If it can help one or two people then great, then starting to think about well actually, if we productize this and make it into a platform. Also the other aspect of 22North is doing a lot of employee experience work as well. And what I mean by that, again, is coming back to digital employee experience, so and the previous incumbent, the last permanent organisation I worked in, and basically we built this massive digital employee experience platform. There's lots of different avenues that we're going down with 22North, remote working is one of them, but digital products supporting employee experience is also something we're super passionate about.
Josephine Tse 7:04
So now listeners know that you basically work on a bunch of different products. And you said that you like creating products to get to like, what you want to do.
Gary Walker 7:13
Yes, more products to enable people. Like, at the end of the day, it's just like anybody trying to build out stuff. You're trying to identify problems, how you could solve those problems. I think the biggest challenge and innovation in creating products is, how do you, how do you solve a problem for someone that doesn't know they needs that problem solved?
Josephine Tse 7:30
Yeah, that's a big one.
Gary Walker 7:32
That's like the hardest part.
Josephine Tse 7:33
That's what we're trying to do here at Remoter as well. We're trying to find out what people want to know about, but it is hard because sometimes it's kind of like the problem, you said, people don't know what people don't know, that kind of is hard to find the intent when we're trying to figure out what people don't know, because they don't know it. And I'm like, this feels like this.
Gary Walker 7:53
Yeah, it feels like trying to help you guys trying to help people like where they don't know they need help but also how do you create that kind of ecosystem. And that's what I'm trying to do is Ready for Remote or that was the session for Ready for Remote. As for me, there's lots of companies out there that have job boards. And there's lots of companies out there that are geared towards technology, because very few have mastered an ecosystem which sort of caters for people who kind of want to start, and the reality is when you want to start, there was lots of mess, there's lots of people that are just failing it. There's lots of debate, emotional debates, as well, our own office, hybrid, remote. It's really trying to create a platform that educates people, that gives them the tools that we can go and experiment and whether that's a checklist or something else. There's lots of different avenues to do it. I don't think there's any right or wrong way to do everyone's got a process and I would never prescribe a process I think to find what works for you. So yeah.
Josephine Tse 8:42
Do you have any other working practices for people who are trying to explore working remotely?
Gary Walker 8:49
So I don't specifically think there's like, little tips and tricks. I think for me is like evaluating your business. I mean, we created the checklist, which was very much geared towards how your team is mediating. Over 75% now work through a screen? Do you already allow for working from home days? Are you already using collaboration, communication, digital tools, these different types of things, which is really just reassure people that you can answer yes to those items on the checklist, then there's no reason why you shouldn't feel confident to experiment with remote working, and team or practice or whatever that is going to be. So I think it's just giving people the confidence more than anything else. Just like anything, like the Agile piece is something that fascinates me because of the way it's materialised over time. Like, like I said, there's people who've been doing this for 20 years. So again, it comes back to what we started with a question of how do you create that ecosystem to give people the tools, the unseasoned information so that they can just make a start, and they can feel confident about making a start. Again, different people use different methods to use different tools of doing different work. So yeah.
Josephine Tse 9:50
I just wanted to bring it back to the Ready for Remote and the products that you create under that. As a fellow podcast host yourself, have there been any memorable episodes that you have basically taken the things that, the conversations you've had on those episodes and implemented it to your day to day?
Gary Walker 10:11
I think it's really interesting when you're having conversations and just with people, like I love meeting new people and having the conversations around their ways of working and how they've got to the point in our career. So like the podcast I actually did two years ago. And like, there's only like many series, only do like six episodes every year. It was called on Enlightened and it's just exploring the future of work. And it was really a list started off with my friend Matt and I just chatting around remote working, new ways of working. But then we quickly transition then to you know what, it'd be really great just to hear other people's stories, but not necessarily just about they work, but how they got to the point next year where they're at, and it was more of the untold stories. So it was with people who are really interested in progressive companies. We had them Steven Gruber was another guy from Baltimore, who was part of my team. Steven was really fascinating. He actually wrote a chapter, sent through a chapter on the book. you and he joined the podcast because he came from this, I have to be an office for nine o'clock every day. I have to be dressed a certain way. Not because it impacts my job, but because that's what we're taught to do.
Josephine Tse 11:11
Yeah, with the culture of the company is like.
Gary Walker 11:13
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But he went through this really fascinating transition of and I really wanted to document it because I was the manager at the time. And I was like, we had conversations on a weekly/daily basis, and we'd be chatting around this guilt curve. So I kinda named it the guilt curve, because what I sent him is if you've got the right people, and this is where the trust stuff happens. If you've got the right people, the danger is not that they're not working. It's the overworking. And the reason why they're overworking is they actually feel the sense of privilege for being able to work remotely and do something that they've never been able to do before. So that happened to Steven. Like I know myself, like when I foster what work I was like, I need to do more, like because you don't really factor in that you're not committing and all these different aspects. You think when you're working in an office, your day starts at seven, and finishes at six. And you're being productive during that time, you're not! Like, you may be commuting, you may then get a coffee and some breakfast sitting in front of a screen, then you start to get the creative juices.
Josephine Tse 12:13
I think that when I was working in an office, I worked... I was productive, like three hours of the day. Like, I don't think...
Gary Walker 12:20
That's really good, though, like, that's really good. Most people wouldn't be that way.
Gary Walker 12:24
Oh my god,
Gary Walker 12:25
This is a thing like Basecamp's Jason Fried always asks is, "where do you go when you have something important to do?" No one says the office.
Josephine Tse 12:32
That's true. No, no, I'm thinking about I'm like, Yeah, I've done I've been in that position before where I'm like, I'm going to stay at home and work on this because I save like, X amount of hours commuting. And I could just be doing this. Instead, I kind of want to hear about what your work routine is like.
Gary Walker 12:50
It's... 10 years ago, when I'd try and do multiple things, and you'd never achieve anything. And I think for me, it's important to focus on one or two things, and you focus and goes through to completion. So everything that I'm working towards, whether it is building a feature within a product, whether it's about consultancy work, it's very much geared towards that. The nature of consultancy work means that it's a lot about more depth and I don't know. But yeah, aside from that, like I've got a dedicated workspace because I think it's important because I think one of the things that psychologists say, and I've experienced myself is, you have to have that boundary of where work finishes and where your home life and if you want to call it that, begins. I think a lot of people who work in their living room may struggle to detach from that. So I have a home office space which I've had for about 10 years, desktop laptop, and I've got a little artifacts that make me smile like, I'm a massive Formula One fan. So I have Ferrari cars I've collected over the years. I have, I'm like one of these strange people who am an American football fan, even though I'm Scottish. So my favourite...
Josephine Tse 13:55
Oh, the bobblehead doll.
Gary Walker 13:58
The person is usually injured so he stands more on my desk and he does on the field. And and then yeah, it's some things. So what I do, do throughout my days- like there's quite often I'll go into other rooms just to break up. That seems to work for me a lot. So if I'm doing deep focus work, I'm usually in office, if I'm doing more meeting based stuff, or some research or something along those lines, and I love to, when recently I'd love to go into my daughter's playroom. That sounds weird, but there's something about the bright colours, and it's really, I don't know, it gets my creative juices flowing. It does freak me out at times as well, because she's a massive, it's called Spirit. It's like a horse racing programme on Netflix and those books and she's got all the toys. There are times I'm on meetings and I look left and there's like horses, and I'm like, oh my God, what am I doing here. No day's ever the same like which is what I love. As a terms of routine, that's a normal kind of day for me.
Josephine Tse 14:53
You mentioned you have a daughter and I'm sure that working remotely has helped you with your parental balance, in terms of the benefits you've seen.
Gary Walker 15:03
Yeah, so massive benefits like for me like, so I've got an eight year old daughter, a six month old daughter as well. I'll talk to you a little bit about trying to work remotely with a screaming child in the house because that was really fascinating and I've got to document that a bit more. In terms of my 8 year old daughter, it's amazing. Like, I get to take her to school, I get to pick her up from school, I get to be present and mindful. I'm not commuting, sitting in traffic for hours, which means I'm a healthier dad for her, like I'm a more present dad as well for her. Naturally as a person anyways, I'm actually quite curious and I'm fascinated by things like human technology and all these different aspects and I touched on attention capitalism, but I definitely give a lot of energy towards my family life. Also myself, I make time for myself. So again, working remotely, helps me be a better version of myself because I can give myself the time to enjoy the things that I enjoy, whether it's reading or listening to podcasts or binge watching some Netflix show that I've became obsessed with or something. But yeah, my daughter, I think she said to me many times that she loves the way that I work. And that's like, it gets me quite emotional when she says that, but also like she talks about when she grows up, she wants to like, she's very creative, but she wants to work and not sit in offices and she kind of talks that way, which is cool. I made that a t-shirt. So I've got like, I created a shop where I could create my own branded content and sort of T shirts and hoodies and, and tops and do it in a in a way which is good for the climate, so so eco friendly. But actually it's a kids t-shirt for her because she wanted one which said "When I grew up, I'm going to work remotely," she cuts it out with that T shirt sometimes, which is cool. And the other side of it though, is if I look at, since my baby was born, yeah, that has been like probably the most challenging period of my life ever. Like so what I mean by that is so our baby had colic. And for people who have had a baby with colic will know what I'm talking about. Basically, it's a really challenging period where your baby can scream intensely for hours and hours, there's no medical cure for it, it's not researched, it lasts for at least six, seven, eight months at times, it can also it can be with dairy intolerances, there's all these different things. So it's been super challenging because the type of person that I am, I wouldn't sit in the office and hear screaming happening and ignore that my wife is struggling and not go and help. So what I found in that six month period is it's really impacted the workloads and the way that I've gone about my work, which I think is going to be important at once the period comes through, I've been documenting the emotions, the feelings, the impact on work, so I'm going to try and write a piece once working through the other end of it and it's a little bit better, but that's been like super challenging, like the obvious answer would be Gary, get up and go to a co-working space, go to a cafe. I don't want to do that? Like...
Josephine Tse 18:00
You also want to maybe help, right? Like help your wife and stuff.
Gary Walker 18:04
Yeah. Yeah. At the end of the day, we're a team and like it's important from our own mental well being. And yeah, that's been like so fascinating and, and and an amazing experience. We've had to be so resilient. There's been a lot of emotional moments during it. I would say that there have been times that its impacted work, no doubt about it. I'm not quite sure the answer to it yet. And I think the only answer is to be more selfish and I don't go to that can be that way. I'm not the type of person that can be that way. So I wouldn't do that. But I think what really would fascinate me as for the working moms or the working dads that go out, and whether it's a dad that's a stay at home dad or the mom that's a stay at home mom or whoever is working? I think it'd be a great story for the people who are part of the house to hear, because I don't I think some people can sympathise and try and understand how challenging it can be, but why unless you live that, you're never going to understand the mental impact on it. Because it's mentally very draining. Mentally, you have to be super strong. And I think if I had had the practices and rituals that I've got my day when I do meditate when I do spend time for myself, when I do focus on the important things in life, which are happiness, then I wouldn't have got through this period doing the work that I'm doing, because I've probably would've got to a point where like, I can do this work, because I'm constantly being checks to see. So yeah, diving a little bit deeper in this topic. But I think it's important for people to understand that like, there's and that's where if some people have home offices, which are outside their building, therefore they wouldn't get a screaming child. But I've made this decision that I'll do it in the house and my wife says herself, she's like, I don't know what I would have done if you weren't around here. She says that quite often and I say at the same to her as well. I'm like, yeah, that's all. And she says that, she's like, because of that way I work. This wouldn't have been possible otherwise. So yeah, that's another great way to amplify the benefit of what remote working can bring, but the same thing bring the caveat of, well, actually, there's other problems, too. Yeah, it's a difficult obstacle to overcome. So like, if you can imagine trying to do some deep focus work, and you've got a baby in the house, that's why I wouldn't be. Yeah, totally so but you've got dedicated spaces, you've got a co working space as you can go to to do that. So that's been super interesting for six months.
Josephine Tse 20:24
So is is it you said it happens in like months, periods of months? Is your baby like over now? Or is it gonna? I don't know anything about this.
Gary Walker 20:34
Yeah, so basically, like a colic baby, my first baby Anna, she was, had colic as well. So colics not well known, but it's super challenging for parents and I can't even imagine single parents. There's no cure for it at all, like it's not a medical problem, because what doctors have said is that it's something that resolves itself after six months. They're not quite sure if it's an immature development of the stomach, or intestines and all the different sort of aspects to, but now, it's like 100 times better than what it was. The first eight months were like super challenging. And also a lot of parents that are dealing with it don't know what they're dealing with. Therefore, they think they're bad parents, they put themselves under enormous mental pressure. And they don't know who to turn to. Like it's it's a whole, it's a whole different podcast topic. Yeah, super passionate about raising awareness. But um, yeah, I've been in some communities and chatting to folks. There's not many dads on there that are doing that. So I'm like trying to do my bit. Yeah, it's something that definitely needs a lot more medical awareness and research. There's no doubt about it.
Josephine Tse 21:37
Maybe this podcast will start it. All of a sudden.
Gary Walker 21:41
Maybe, yeah.
Josephine Tse 21:43
I mean...
Gary Walker 21:43
I call out this podcast.
Josephine Tse 21:46
I mean, the cool thing, for me at least, like talking to all these, like everybody, everybody's got a different story. Everybody has their own topic and all that, but it's like kind of what we can dive into that I am, I never know until we get into the topic of. Add then for you like, being you know, like a parent that gets to stay and work from home and support your partner while taking care of your kids and watching them grow up like I think that's a really bold topic.
Gary Walker 22:17
Yeah, there's no substitute for it. Like I read our huge report last year. And it was the biggest regret of any person on their deathbed was not them not taking a dream job, was not even money. It was they didn't spend enough time with their kids like, and they realize there's no substitute for that. So like, I'm really okay. Oh, no, no, no, I know, but I've taken work that maybe pays less and stuff, but that, money doesn't motivate me. What what motivates me is I know what I need to pay my bills, anything above that is a luxury. And I feel very privileged to have that. But it's about time and presence for me. Like I think and that's something that's underestimated. Especially in today's society, like attention capitalism. There's not enough presence happening. It's about trying to change the conversation. And that starts with the parents of the children who are the future, can work and stuff like that. So, yeah, I am super passionate about that.
Josephine Tse 23:09
Would you say that those would be your main drivers to work remotely?
Gary Walker 23:14
100%. Yeah, family, family is everything, like happiness and family are the two things that I value over everything. Like not many people are sitting about and enjoying the moment and each day, and sort of like I wake up and the first thing I think about is like, great like start the day, and my kids are healthy and my wife's healthy. And I'm like, that's genuinely The first thing I think of it. And then I think, oh shit, I need to make a bottle for the baby. But it's that autopilot mode that people go on because they're constantly thinking about things or not enjoying life in presence, but it's something you need to work really... I need to work really hard at, it's something I need to practice every single day.
Josephine Tse 23:53
I just really want to thank you for your time today with us and participating in the Remoter Podcast.
Gary Walker 24:00
Thank you, it's been a lot of fun. And hopefully, like, it's just, I'm really fascinated by the work you guys are doing. So again, it's another avenue to really get remote working out there and focus on the right things. So I know we probably didn't spend huge chunks on remote working, but that's important too. So I probably overtalked at times, apologies for that. I'm not sure how your transcript will work because of my Scottish accent. Because I'll be honest things like Google and Alexa do not work unless I put an American accent or both. Hope everything else worked out quite well. So yeah.
Josephine Tse 24:33
Google Analytics doesn't work because of your accent? What do you...?
Gary Walker 24:36
No no no, Google, Google Assistant, and Alexa, yeah, see? See. I didn't even just yeah, just proved it. And that's, that's great. And I'm so glad we've got that on record. But, but yeah, when I'm searching for things on YouTube and stuff, I put on an American accent.
Josephine Tse 24:53
Oh when you're like, oh.
Gary Walker 24:55
I am not doing it, just so you know, on this podcast. But yeah. I put on some strange Midwest American accent picked up from somewhere.
Josephine Tse 25:06
You're not going to show us right now.
Gary Walker 25:08
Oh, definitely not.
Josephine Tse 25:09
Okay, okay.
Gary Walker 25:10
I'm not going to humiliate myself further.
Josephine Tse 25:17
Remoter Podcast season two is recorded, produced and edited by Josephine Tse. It is mixed and mastered by Stephen Stepanic and Vanesa Monroy. Graphics and visuals by Valentina Castillo. The music track used is Skip by OBOY from SoundStripe. Follow and subscribe to us on Spotify, Apple podcasts wherever you listen to your podcasts. Don't forget, we've recently made our Founding and Growing Remotely online course completely accessible and listed on our site. Visit us at remoter.com, that's R E M O T E R dot com for more relevant content. Follow us on social media @remoterproject to stay up to date with our latest initiatives and collaborations with other remote first companies around the world. We'd also love to hear your thoughts about each episode, so feel free to tag us on socials anytime. And remember, we're here to make work fulfilling, so what part will you play in shaping the future of work?