We were lucky to catch up with Tim Salau recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Tim thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Do you take vacations? How do you keep things going – any advice for entrepreneurs who feel like they can’t step away from their business for a short vacation?

No, I rarely take vacations. When I do get time to breathe, the vacation is usually a bleisure trip, incorporating business and leisure. As a business owner, I keep things going by taking things one day at a time. I really focus on progress in my business, I try not to ruminate on what happened yesterday, last year, or months ago. Business is about moving forward and positioning yourself for what’s now or next. If you feel like you can’t step away from your business, do the following: cherish your weekends. Seriously, cherish your weekends and use them to breathe, reflect, and invest in your self-improvement. A 52 weeks in the year, that’s 52 weekends to breathe, enjoy your loved ones, and reset for the next week. Cherish your weekend.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

My name is Tim Salau. Millions of people know me as Mr. Future of Work as I was one of the early evangelists for what the workplace of the future will be pre-2020 pandemic. I’ve worked in the technology industry since my undergrad years at Texas Tech University. I started in the Information Technology sector and eventually worked my way up into high-tech roles with companies like Google, WeWork, and Microsoft.

With these companies, I worked in product and user experience focused roles. I landed in the high-tech industry by way of studying psychology during undergrad and pursuing Information Studies for my graduate degree at the University of Texas at Austin. Today, I lead and own my own company called Guide, a B2B2C onboarding and training platform for remote workers.

We work with small-to-medium businesses in overhauling how they onboard and train new hires internally by using our bite-sized video platform optimized for creating user-generated content that feels more personal, entertaining, and enriching. What sets our platform apart from other platforms is our focus on bite-sized video-based training and belief that every organization has talented creators within their culture.

I’m primarily proud that we’ve been in market for over 4.5 years now. We’ve had to adapt to quite a few things such as the pandemic and the growth of generative AI based tools. When working with clients, we pride ourselves on delivering a tailored experience, understanding the needs of their talent, and how they can use Guide to scale impact within their organization. Since we’re still a small lean team, we’re able to offer a more personalized service experience.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

In March of 2019, we founded Guide app. Guide app is business to business to consumer (B2B2C) platform that helps organizations with onboarding and training their remote teams. We initially started in the life skills training vertical and niche, but had to pivot upstream due to COVID-19. COVID-19 was supposed to be the end of our business, but it ended up expanding our market as many organizations began to shift to remote work. We didn’t allow COVID-19 to defeat us, we adapted and are still building now,

How’d you meet your business partner?

I met my co-founder, Taban, while I lived in Seattle in 2019. Our mutual friend, Chad, connected us because he believed we were building similar things. At the time, I was administering and leading a 10,000+ Facebook community called mentors and mentees. Taban was building a early version of Guide called Jiref, it was a bare-bones application that educators can use to teach different skills. The first time we met was at a local coffee shop that was right by where I lived at the time. Taban and myself are both immigrants, in our first encounter, we connected over our kindred journey, passion for technology, passion for community, and interest in education-tech. It’s been history from there.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.timsalau.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mrfow777/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mrfow/

Image Credits
All images are owned and taken by © The Guide Groupe