A culture of freelancers kicks ass!

Because nobody is worried about managing perception, politics, and the rest of it.

I was talking to someone that worked in a previous client recently and they were telling me how things had gotten a bit toxic.

The strategy was evolving, there was new leadership, people were fighting for repositioning amidst all the changes, etc.

It reminded of the many times I experienced similiar things in my past career.

And I kind of sighed and smiled… glad to not have to deal with any of that shit anymore.

I find it so refreshing working in my own company. In total we probably have 15-20 people working with us but I am the only full-timer. The rest are just freelancers or agency folks.

I literally think it is the best culture I have ever worked in in my 20 year career and I’m not just saying that because I run the company. I’m saying it because it is just structurally designed to not have many of the flaws that traditional companies have.

Now let me explain.

A recap on how we work

As i’ve mentioned many times in the past we use my ‘Beast method’ in which the rules are:

• Everything is a Clickup task

• All work is an update to a task (comment, status change, etc)

• Everyone clears their Clickup inbox at least once a day

That is it.

We have no team meetings.

I have no regular 1-on-1’s.

Most people have never met each other face-to-face, even on a call.

We do not invest in culture because i think that is bullshit.

Relationships are the foundation to politics

I’ve mentioned this numerous times in the past, but I think it is worth restating again.

We are humans and we develop relationships. We end up liking some folks and disliking others.

It will always happen.

And the longer humans interact with each other the more certain relationships will get deeper and others will get even more antagonistic.

To the point of many people in larger corporate offices hating each other. I’ve seen in many times.

But I chucked all this bullshit out of the window and led with the idea of “let’s build a system where people do not really develop relationships.”

I don’t wanna know almost anything about anyone other than what they input on their Clickup tasks.

I do not wanna hang out with them in my free time. I do not want to have team parties or any of that bs.

I want us to all just remain at arm’s length so that we barely know each other. Because when that happens then clans are not formed. And politics remain at a minimum.

Having done this a number of times the past few years I cannot tell you how freeing it is. Not just for me, but for everyone.

They can just do their work and keep all the emotions out.

And instead of a system run by the people that are most adept at forming relationships (which is typically the case), you have a system run by the people that are truly the best at getting shit done.

Get paid for what you do

This is another element that I think is really key to a well-functioning system.

All of my freelancers are either paid either for the time they put in or for the results they deliver. Nobody makes a fixed salary.

The way it works is that I prioritise which cards they should work on and then they allocate time to those cards. Then they get paid based on a fair rate per hour for their skills.

And I see how much we spent on each card that they worked on, which is an easy check that I’m getting good value.

Why is this psychologically great in my view?

Because I am never wondering what someone is doing. And they are never trying to ‘seem busy’, which is so typical of most employee relationships.

When a person makes a fixed salary they feel the need to justify how much they are being paid so that they are not a target for a layoff. And that typically means:

• They do stuff that doesn’t really need to be done

• They try to inflate their perception via politics

But when they are paid for what they do, they no longer feel the pressure to do any of that stuff. They just mind their own business and get their work done.

Perhaps it is just 10 hours of work this week and that is fine. They try to find other clients to juggle at the same time.

Rather then being paid for 10-20 hours of productive work, but making it ‘seem’ as if they are doing 50 hours of work. Which is a pretty normal scenario in large, inefficient companies.

It’s about freedom

I don’t think anybody in the company really thinks about what I am thinking about them.

I am not their boss. I do not try to seem like their boss.

I do not tell them when to work. They work when they want.

They control their own time.

And pretty much everything we do is asynchronous. They get help from anyone they want by just tagging them into their card and asking for it.

Nobody is breathing down their neck. They set and manage their own due dates.

They take pride in their work and are almost completely results-driven. Because nothing else really matters in this system.

Perception doesn’t matter. Adherence to the system is the only thing that matters.

Closing thoughts

We’ve been operating Reviv for over six months like this.

If you were to ask anyone in the company whether they felt a lot of pressure, I think they would answer no.

And yet we’re growing nicely, delivering results, and doing it at a fraction of what most traditional companies would spend to do the same.

How?

Well, we are extremely organized and transparent. And nobody wastes any time on managing their perception or politics.

But do note that this way of working is not for everyone…

Employees who thrived off building strong at-work relationships that they could leverage generally hate this kind of system because it negates their biggest asset.

Managers that manage the old way and love to just grab their team for impromptu in-person meetings anytime they want also end up hating this. Because it requires a level of organization that they do not have.

But do i mind that they are not interested in working with Reviv?

No! Good riddance!

Let them work for those “slow-as-shit” corporates and the VC-backed companies that lose all the $millions of investor money. LOL

And i’ll just keep runnin circles around em.