We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Jessica Jorgensen a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Jessica , looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Let’s start with something countless entrepreneurs have had to figure out on the fly – how have you dealt with the rise of remote work?
Not everyone is cut out for remote work, and having the choice of the home office is powerful. For over 15 years, I’ve been assisting IT leaders in implementing flexible technology solutions that provide choices and budget benefits for their Enterprises. Sometimes the conversation starts around reducing IT staff tasks, operational expenses, and travel budgets. That conversation always ends with culture. In my experience, remote work’s success is always rooted in culture.
Our teams are 100% remote and always will be. I, for one, live full-time in an RV and office all over the western USA. My office view changes weekly, and that keeps me fresh and creative. I’ve never been good at being in an office or seeing the same five people every day.
In contrast, many folks can not work from home. No private office space or quiet areas, lack of good internet services, too many demands in the house, or an absolute landslide of other reasons all contribute to un-successful home offices. Working from home is often a privilege many aren’t afforded.
Having a choice to do a bit of both has been the most highly successful roll-out of technology-based initiatives we’ve seen. Our client organizations that approached it in this manner had had the most successful transitions over the last few years and suffered the least when it came to productivity and customer care. Empowering teams to do what is necessary to get the job done, wherever they happen to be, is the culture that thrives.
We discuss the ultimate flow circumstances for each team member and do our best to support that environment. When you are working remotely, that doesn’t have to mean your home. We help our team identify coworking spaces, set flexible working hours, and confirm expectations upfront.
Successful remote work comes down to the delineation between work hours and home hours. Some people struggle with that and need a different place to work from. There is no cookie-cutter answer other than to provide the technology that allows everyone to work when they want or need to based on all of the other life circumstances in motion at that particular moment.
The biggest pitfall for our organization and all of our clients is trust. There has to be a constant level of check-in, measurement of goals, evaluation, and feedback on the work expected and completed for at least the first 90 days. Unfortunately, if delivered incorrectly, this process can feel like micromanaging. No one likes that. People leave without understanding the goal of the trust-building process. Empowering your team means trusting your team. No amount of technology will fix an employee who cringes every time they see the boss’ name. That’s a cultural challenge.
To me, the most interesting benefit has been meeting the family members, and pets, and seeing incredible places that have taught me so much about my team, my clients, and fellow Entrepreneurs. I never would have seen or understood what was critically important to them. Beyond the tasks, enabling a work-from-anywhere policy has allowed us to see what anywhere looks like through our team’s lens. It’s a super interesting perspective!
Jessica , before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
As the child of Entrepreneurs, I often joke about being a telecom brat. I grew up in technology and built a career in helping humans adapt and use emerging technologies to improve their quality of life, as I used it for mine. My husband and I have a blended family of 7 now adult children. As you can imagine, those were crazy busy times, and I needed to work from the football field. The tech I helped folks deploy also helped me be the mother and businesswoman I wanted to be.
In July of 2020, I became an Entrepreneur to help our struggling healthcare providers implement tech that would allow them to continue serving patients with automated check-ins, remote access for administrative staff to work from home, and better internet access to support cloud systems. Now, I help small and medium businesses do the same to retain their best talent by allowing staff to work from anywhere.
After a long proof-of-concept trip to ensure it was feasible, my husband and I took our remote jobs on the road! We’ve now traveled and lived full-time in our beautiful fifth-wheel (RV) trailer for over a year while still working full-time. We solved our problem of having stable, secure, and reliable internet through enterprise SD-WAN services that we custom configure for each client.
I do my best work from the forest, and during non-working hours you can find us kicking up some dirt in our off-road vehicle, hiking, paddle boarding, kayaking, and taking our pugs on adventures! We love to help other folks get on the road and live a life of more liberty.
What’s been the most effective strategy for growing your clientele?
So far, we’ve had the most success from referrals and being podcast guests. Although we have spent tons of time building our social presence for credibility, our custom solutions can be hard for me to explain in a non-nerdy way. I love public speaking and networking, so we focus on videos of our life. goRoam.Tech is a lifestyle brand, so community-building content has been my focus in a social context.
We shifted gears from chasing Facebook comment sections, which can be golden, but a ton of work, to a more affiliate-based referral system to help promote the business. After a focused outreach to podcasters in our space, we have reached more of our audience, bringing the highest quantity of new clients and prospects to our site.
As a constant learner in the ever-changing technology space, we constantly evolve our messaging and products to serve the most folks in the market. We’re focused on Google optimization, YouTube with SEO, and spreading the word about an alternative to living a “normal” life through our adventures. We evaluate the trends in our efforts quarterly and adapt to market and economic changes.
Are there any books, videos, essays or other resources that have significantly impacted your management and entrepreneurial thinking and philosophy?
Finding communities to learn and grow in has been priceless! I don’t care what superhuman powers you may have; doing everything independently as an Entrepreneur will leave you crispy. The people you surround yourself with make a massive difference in building your dreams.
As a member of several Entrepreneurship communities, the advice, practice, and expertise of the folks in my circle have highly impacted my market strategies. If you’re interested, I would be happy to snag you an invitation to our exclusive, invitation-only communities. As you can imagine, my constant travel provides challenges to creating and nurturing business and personal relationships. These hybrid communities allow me to flourish and create consistency in my schedule. It’s like having a database of experts in every type of business that genuinely want to help you grow your business at your disposal weekly.
Also, I read a TON, and we listen to audiobooks and podcasts as we drive to improve our understanding of ourselves and our businesses constantly. Essentialism, Atomic Habits, GreenLights, Talking to Strangers, Think Again, Mindset, Mind Hacking Happiness, and $100M Offers have all contributed to how we show up to ourselves, our children and grandchildren, and the world today.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.goRoam.Tech
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goroam.tech1/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/goRoam.Tech
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/goroam-tech/
- Twitter: @go_roam_tech
- Youtube: @goRoam