smiling for the camera
A weekly video is the best thing I've ever done to bring our team together.
Our team is 100% remote. Only two of us live within an hour of each other. We don't have an office and we won't have one any time soon.
So we face the same challenges all remote teams face. It's hard to build connection and culture in a text-only workplace.
A few years ago, my then CEO (now a co-founder with me at Accoil) and I started recording a Friday chinwag. We called it The Good Form Show. Our product was a form builder, so there's a glimpse into our sense of humor.
The Good Form Show highlighted a few things:
What happened with the product this week? This way everyone on the team knew the latest features, bugs, use cases, etc. Our support team was especially grateful. The video meant they could choose to read release notes or see the update.
Sales volume. We ran an open company. Still do at Accoil. Revenue is no secret inside the company and it's one of the best measures of company health we can share with our teammates.
Sales and marketing activity. I made sure to include this so nobody thought "marketing ain't doing anything for us" ;) But also because when everyone knows which campaigns are running, we get more support.
That's it. The Good Form Show was five minutes on average. We kept it tight. We kept it high signal. We made it every week.
I do the same thing at our new company. I didn't know if anyone would care and, frankly, it didn't matter if they did. Sitting down to record a 5-10 minute review of what happened at our company forces me to know what's happening. I can't make up revenue numbers, or customer count, or product details.
Recording this video helps me end the week feeling like I know my company.
And it turns out, the team loves it, too. When we're all remote and removed from one another, it's hard to rely on Slack messages to convey how things are *really* going. Our team jumps into the comments and gets excited with me.
It's a cool feeling. And if you run a business or a team - and even if you're a team of one - try recording a video this week.
When you do, hit reply here and let me know how it goes.
Smile,
Peter
(411 / 500)
PS: It's Sweet Talk.
