Local Market Monopoly

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Clarence Fisher: Welcome back to the Local Market monopoly. I'm Clarence, your host. Thanks for joining me this week. You know, it's, we're at the end of the year, first of all, Merry Christmas to you. 2020 has been crazy. You know, I think everybody thinks that things are just going to kind of click over and change, at midnight on January 1st. But, you know, I don't know, either way, chances are you and your, your team, either your marketing team or your whole team have had your world turned upside down this year and had to adjust to remote work. You know, we are fortunate enough in our team to have been 90% remote before then. And we've definitely been 100% remote since March. So we're not going to change at all. And so I thought it may be a good time to, I know everybody wants to get back to the office and some of you are going back to the office, but I kind of feel like that remote work is going to be an offering going forward. If not, for more benefit as employees come on, maybe it's an, it's a benefit if you can offer them a remote work. So I dunno, I was talking about this with some business leaders last week and I thought, Hey, what a good time to share how we've made it work even before COVID, how we made it work. And I just want to share some tips with you. So hold on, we'll be right back.

Intro: You're listening to Local Market Monopoly with Clarence Fisher, uncovering the tools tactics, and strategies. The most successful small businesses use in their local market and own the block.

Clarence Fisher: You know, what's the crazy thing. Walk back. It's the, what kind of a crazy thing is we were trying to promote our member a couple of years ago, two, three years ago, trying to get people to meet with me remotely, small business owners to meet with me remotely. And it was like, no don't. And especially in town. If it was out of town, like we had clients in Washington and also in Seattle, of course, we met either, either on the phone or introduced to them to web conferencing, right? But locally, no one wanted to do that. So for me, it's kind of, the world has caught up with the way that we were doing things and it's no longer this strange thing to meet over Zoom. You know, this is going to be a Zoom meeting and it's been nice.

Clarence Fisher: You know, I do miss every now and then, uh, people. So we do connect. I say connect. I mean as much as we can during the pandemic type social distancing and all that stuff. But for the most part, I mean, my team has been 100% remote and we still get everything done. But again, I tell you we've been that way before. So what I wanted to share with you are just kind of a few things that we've learned along the way on how to remain productive as productive. If not more, while you still have kids and all that stuff going on. The first thing is you want to make sure that you set up a workspace. There needs to be a dedicated space. I mean, if you think you're going to get work done by, Hey, just taking your laptop and being on the couch and then you get up and you move over here and then all that stuff.

Clarence Fisher: I mean, you need to have a workspace because distractions happen all day around the house. We have a door here, both my wife and I are working from home. She did not work from home before all of this. I think she had just negotiated it or something had just started. So we both worked from home and we have a closed-door kind of thing. If you do open the door, you need to be pay attention and see if we're on the phone or worse on a video. So there has to be that awareness. I've been looking for a wireless on-air sign to put above the, uh, we, this is called the war room, put above the war room door where I'm at. And, that way I can click it and say, Hey, I am on the air, but I haven't found a wireless one.

Clarence Fisher: So if you knew of a wireless one, send me that and I'd love to pick that up. So number one is set up a dedicated workspace, or if at all possible number two is stick with a schedule, set a schedule, stick with a schedule. We have experimented with flex kind of a flex time, a little bit. I'm not a fan of it. I'll go on record to say, I'm not a fan of it. So move back to a schedule of when you are going to be online. I know a lot of companies who are like, Hey, as long as the work gets done, I know Facebook does that. Maybe Google does that, but small businesses I don't know a bunch who do that. I mean, it seems like super stressful if you're like, which is whenever you're online, get online.

Clarence Fisher: So stick to a schedule as much as you can, the same schedule that you had before. I know some people, especially during lockdowns, they have the kids there and it's going to be in it's difficult. I know, I know. I know, but I'm just saying as much as you can stick to a schedule, you need to take a lunch so that your brain gets a rest, take your breaks. But the big thing is, the number is the nut third thing I want to share with you, and that's communicating with your team. One of the things that I've found a long time ago is that if you're going to be remote, you have to be super dedicated on purpose and intentional about your communication. I mean, there's nothing like, and really you can't really stick to text and email. You want to pick up the phone and you want to have a video call if you want.

Clarence Fisher: Like, we have a, it's a shortcut on the desktop. So we may be in Slack and say, Hey, Hey, let's, uh, let's chat about this. And if you say let's chat in Slack, then you're definitely not talking. Let's chat in Slack. You're talking about, let's jump on a face to face, right? So face to face, and you just clicked a button and up pops your teammate, who you need to talk to and you talk and you go through it because there are a lot of things that just don't come across well in text or in type, right. You know you read it in this through whatever lens or whatever state you are in at the moment. So if you got interrupted and you're irritated, and you look at this text from your teammate, then it can take on a whole other thing than what they meant.

Clarence Fisher: So do not be afraid to pick up the phone so that your teammate can hear your voice. And also jump on Zoom, have a quick, like, we just took the URL, the team URL, and created a shortcut, and everybody just has it on their desktop and you just hit it. And there we are right there, just like in the movies, right? Also your strategy rehash, the strategy that you have, it kind of ties into the daily huddle. We, there is nothing more important than the daily huddle. When you're working remote, we have a huddle every single day and it gets everyone and it's on Slack. You can have, of course, can daily huddle on Zoom, or you can daily huddle on Slack, whatever. And it just gets everybody on the same page we start with, Hey, what's good. Everybody shares something good since yesterday.

Clarence Fisher: And it could be personal or business, you know, Hey, we got this. I finally got the content back for such and such a website or a, my kids are gone to grandma or whatever. That is a good thing. So it's a, what's good. All right. So then we go over project updates really quickly so that everybody knows where everybody's at. So these are the project updates. And then what are the priorities for today? And this way, you know, the, at least the first that's funny, the word priorities, it really should be your priority, right? So what is your number one priority today? But we typically go with the three. So what are the top three things that you need to get done today that you are working on today? And when we talk about that, when we post about that, somebody else may say, Hey, I can help you with that or whatever. Did you get this? And then we'll typically ask, are there any obstacles or in the way of you completing that, and then we'll get help with that. And really, I'm gonna tell you, just having that solves a lot of, a lot of problems, a lot of communication issues, and then everything out throughout the day, it just supports. Everyone's still got, everyone's got their head down and it just supports calls throughout the rest of the day.

Clarence Fisher: But you don't want to Neglect the small talk. And when you're working remotely, you're already separated. We still have a small talk. It still happens in the chat. It happens in the Slack channels. All of our clients have their own Slack channel. Then we have a general Slack channel and it is funny like there are jokes that happen. And I mean, we're still kind of poking fun and all this stuff that happens there, there is still the small talk. I know it sounds weird to a lot of people who are, who really just hate that we are doing this thing remotely, but I just want to let you know that number one, there are teams, especially digital marketing teams who have been remote for a long time. Like, and then we have people who work with us. Then we have team members who aren't even in my country. So we've been remote that way. So, and then, so we have team members in not only Tulsa but New York, Florida, other countries. So we're, we've been all over the world anyway. So it's just been nothing new to us. And I just want to kind of give you some encouragement that it can be done and celebrate,

Clarence Fisher: You know, we have a New, a fairly new team member on the team who we were just doing the huddle at the end of the huddle. One day, I said, Hey, jump up and down. I had just come back from the Tony Robbins UPW event. So I said, jump up and down and get yourself in a peak state and let's go, and we weren't on Zoom. We were on Slack and she gave it a thumbs up while everybody else gave it, you know, a dancing icon and then this and that. And there was this thumbs up and I was going on about, you know, I was like, okay, well it's over. But then I got to think about it. And I popped back and I said, Hey, you're not a jump up and I'm kind of dance around a type of person. Are you? And it was just, you know, hahaha, Oh, well, no, I'm not.

Clarence Fisher: So that's not her thing, which is totally okay. But when you are remote and you are remote for, I guess I'll say you can be remote so long that you pick up on these little things. You can pick up on emotions and feelings even through type, but it does pay to pick up the phone and to be on Zoom and all that stuff. Now, this is, if you're, again, we are 100% remote have been 75, 80, 90% remote, except for when I'm visiting with clients who just absolutely need to be in the real war room where we have whiteboards everywhere and we're doing a consulting session and all that stuff that happens, or if I need to be in their office, consulting with their marketing director, that happens that's onsite. But just want to just kind of share some of the things that we've learned from working remotely.

Clarence Fisher: If you have any other questions, go to Clarencefisher.com/ask, leave me a voice message. And we will pop that on-air so that everybody gets to hear it. And I get to, and I'll, and I'll answer it and we'll help everybody else out. Okay? And then also, if you have, you've been listening to our podcast and you say, Hey, Clarence, I want to see if, you know, if we may be a good fit to do some work for you or work together, helping you move forward into the new year, bounce back from all of the COVID mess, then go to Clarencefisher.com/help. And there's a little form there, you can fill that out and we can have a quick chat and see if we are a fit. So until next week, I want to tell you Merry Christmas to you. We've got a new year coming up. I'm so looking forward to it. So looking forward to helping you succeed even more in the next year, if I can do anything for you, please, please let me know. All right? So share this episode, if you would like it, review it. And until next week go and market your business, make a difference, and own the block.

: We appreciate you listening to Local Market Monopoly. Be sure to rate, review, and subscribe to the show and visit ClarenceFisher.com for more resources that will help you dominate your local market and own the block.