How to Communicate Better as a Remote Worker or Remote Company with the Founder of YAC Chat

Introduction: Welcome to Badass Digital Nomads, where we're pushing the boundaries of remote work and travel, all while staying grounded with a little bit of old school philosophy, self-development, and business advice from our guests.

Kristin:  Today's episode is sponsored by me. Did you know you can now shop my favorite remote work tools, video production equipment, and travel accessories directly from your Amazon account? It's true. Just go to TravelingwithKristin.com/amazon to check out all the products I use and love.  

Kristin:    00:00:47    Welcome guys, to a Tuesday Streamaton. We have actually five podcast interviews today. I already recorded one of them, it wasn't a live podcast, but this is our first live podcast of the day with the founder of Yelling Across Cubicles. That's right. I know you wanna know how to yell across cubicles and you didn't know that you wanted to do that until now, but that's what we're doing today. We're talking with Justin Mitchell, who is the founder of Yac, which is the first audio messaging platform that helps you communicate faster, asynchronously and whenever you want, wherever you want with your remote teams. They have a pretty high list of early beta users, including Google, envision, Salesforce, HubSpot, CVS, and MailChimp. And they have also have funding from Betaworks Boost VC and Earnest Capital. Yac Chat came about because they won the Product Hunt Makers Festival. And so we're gonna talk with Justin about how this idea came about, how they're helping people yell across cubicles all over the world and how this is completely transforming remote communication and how it can save you time in less meetings, less time sending Slack messages, less time in your WhatsApp, less time in all of the other platforms that you're using to communicate less time in Zoom.  

Kristin:    00:02:22    All you need is Yac. Let's bring Justin on today and welcome Justin.  

Podcast Interview: 

Justin:     00:02:29    Hey!  

Kristin:    00:02:31    It's so good to have you here and welcome to everybody in the live chat. We have Storm is here, we have Abby here, we have Trader Walt, we have Larry. I'm sure we're gonna have Tech Lords here, so if you are joining us live, then listen carefully and bring your questions for Justin. I will just kick it off by asking Justin, did you know that both of us went to UCF?  

Justin:     00:02:55    Oh, no, I did not. That's very cool.  

Kristin:    00:02:58    Yes, I was doing a little bit of light stalking of you online or as, as I like to call it research. And I found out that we both went to UCF. I was like, what are the odds? And I just wanna know why aren't we doing this interview in person maybe since we're both in Florida. I am in St. Augustine where it was 37 degrees this morning and where are you?  

Justin:     00:03:20    I'm in Orlando. It's not 37, but it is a nice Florida cold day.  

Kristin:    00:03:25    I love it. I'm always looking to wear like winter clothing in Florida, but usually you can only do that for a few hours, a few days of the season. <laugh>.  

Justin:     00:03:33    Definitely.  

Kristin:    00:03:34    So tell us, how do you help people yell across cubicles? Let's just give everybody an overview of what it is that Yac is, what it is that you're helping people do and why they should care.  

Justin:     00:03:48    Sure. Yeah, I mean, the name came from this idea that we know that remote workers miss out on certain things in the office, and one of those things is just the ability to easily talk to a neighbor, right? You could walk over to somebody's desk, you can ask a question, uh, if you need an update on something, you can just tap somebody on the shoulder. And so the original version of Yac was kind of this idea of what if I could just like shout into my computer and it would come out the other end on somebody else's computer, very similar to what it would be like in a real office environment. And what's really cool is we quickly learned that that was awful. Um, it was interruptive, it was distracting. Uh, actually a lot of times it was just a bad experience. 'cause in remote work, you're not always at your desk.  

Justin:     00:04:28    And so what we actually found was once we launched that initial version, it was difficult to even use it just because of the kind of nature of remote work. And so what we actually did is we pivoted entirely into asynchronous instead of just kind of being able to blast your voice out of somebody's computer, you're recording your voice and you're sending that over in 32nd snippets. And what's great about that is, you know, I think for us at Yac, we're kind of one of the first people in this remote work toolkit space that is kind of leaning into the great things about remote work instead of trying to replicate an in-office environment. And I think that was a, a bad assumption on our part was that we needed to recreate the office environment. And so we've taken a step back now and kind of moved entirely into this idea of, well, what are the, the benefits of remote, right?  

Justin:     00:05:13    And one of those is the ability to kind of focus, you know, allow for deep work, uh, not constantly be in meetings, not constantly be interrupted like you will in an office environment. So we wanted to build a tool that kind of builds around that idea and really kind of, uh, you know, pushes that as the forefront of the way that we should be working. And so the way that Yac works today is we have desktop apps, we have mobile apps, uh, you record your voice in voice messages, 32nd snippets or even recording your screen. And it's this idea of kind of a context plus voice as this very high resolution way to communicate. We want to kind of replicate what it would be like if I was in a meeting with you or a Zoom call, but I don't wanna monopolize your time. And so what we've built is this voice collaboration platform that's sort of like a Zoom call on steroids, but not everybody has to be online at the same time.  

Justin:     00:06:01    So I can record my screen, I can even annotate, I can draw on the screen and say, Hey, take a look at this. I need you to edit this. And I can send that off to somebody on my team. They can receive it, they can view it, they can wait, right? The idea there is, it's asynchronous so they don't have to listen or view it immediately, right? And then they can reply back with their own voice. And it's just kind of that quick back and forth that allows us to actually communicate in this very high resolution method, but one that's not actually interruptive.  

Kristin:    00:06:27    I'm just showing everybody who's on the live chat, what it looks like right now. Yeah, it's funny because how this interview came about actually is that Emilio on your team messaged me, just like sent me an email and he is like, Hey, I came across your podcast, really like it. I'm sharing it with my team. And I looked where he was working and it was Yac and I was like, oh my God, I already follow you guys <laugh> on Twitter. I think I had something of like a Twitterverse friendship with Hunter, who is, is he your co-founder?  

Justin:     00:07:01    Yes,  

Kristin:    00:07:01    Because I'm always, I'm obviously obsessed with remote work and anybody who's doing cool stuff in this space. And so I follow everybody on Twitter who talks about, or even mentions remote work and they're doing something cool. And so that's how I came across Yac. So I had already looked at it before someone from your company started listening to Badass Digital Nomads. So I think that's a really cool kind of synchronicity of how tight knit this remote community is right now, and how real the excitement is for people who are making things for other remote workers to make their lives easier. Because typically the ideas for these types of things come out of the struggle that individuals have when they're working remotely, whether they are freelancers or entrepreneurs or working for a company or working with a remote company. I really wanna talk about some of the problems that this is solving for people because how many people in the chat, and then also you as well, Justin, when you think about remote work and remote communication, so many companies for whatever reason default to this micromanagement where it's like, okay, we can't see people working anymore, so let's make sure that they are tangibly available in Slack channels all day so that we know that they're working.  

Kristin:    00:08:29    And in my opinion, that is like my worst nightmare. If I had to work at a company where I was expected to be available during the eight hour workday or however long it is on Slack, that would just be disastrous to my productivity and I can't imagine working that way. So how does Yac work so that you can just message each other and kind of like get things done without being available for eight hours a day? And why do you think that companies have this like high anxiety about keeping tabs on people while they're working? Like what can we do to change that?  

Justin:     00:09:08    Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think most of it comes from a fear, right? And it, and it also has to do with your team. A lot of management will fear that if they don't know what's going on, then maybe nothing's going on. And it's that kind of idea of perceived busyness. And a lot of the tools that people are building around remote work today, I think prey on that, which is kind of where Yac took a step back and said, we're gonna kind of push an ethos and a methodology into our product. Like it's not just technology, this is a way of working and it's tough for us because it's all about education, right? We're trying to tell managers and team leads, you know, you don't have to have that buts in seat mentality. It's not about who's sitting at their desk the longest. It's not who's, you know, online that green bubble in Slack, right?  

Justin:     00:09:53    We gotta get teams out of this idea that the green bubble equals productivity, right? It doesn't necessarily have that one-to-one relationship. It's actually more common that you could get less, you know, more work done and less time and that's actually a more productive use of your time, right? So you're not burned out, you're not burning the midnight oil and you're tired, you know, nobody's making great decisions after 10:00 PM at night when they've continued to work the entire day, right? Yeah. So you wanna be working when you're your freshest and you're, you know, if you've got that clear mind and that comes down to a management issue and it's that trickle down effect from team leads all the way down to someone who's actually doing, you know, the entrenches work. And it all comes down to this idea of, if I can't see what you're doing, I don't trust that you're doing a good job.  

Justin:     00:10:37    And that's partly about having a team that you just say, I just know you're gonna get this stuff done and I don't have to micromanage that. Um, and I think remote work brings out the worst in a lot of either team members or team leaders in that when they have that remote work, and maybe it's something they're not used to, right? Maybe it's a company that has a couple remote workers, or they just recently went remote and they're so used to their confirmation being, I can see you, I can see what you're doing, I can reach out and I can get that confirmation. But it's a mindset shift of being able to shift from me being able to kind of lean over your shoulder versus me trusting that you'll just get your work done. And a lot of what Yac does is kind of push that, that methodology of working, there's no online status indicators.  

Justin:     00:11:23    Um, we only allow you to see when you've, the recipient has heard a message, right? So that just gives you a little bit of an idea of, okay, yes, they've heard me, they're probably working on it, right? We're adding little quick things like emoji quick replies, just so that a worker could just give a thumbs up and say, yep, I got it. I I heard you, I know what I'm doing. But a lot of kind of the application is built around that idea of leave me alone, right? <laugh> just, I know that you need to communicate with me, so you don't wanna cut off communication totally. But I need you to trust that I'm able to get my stuff done. And it's not about how often I'm on my computer or how available I am. Um, I actually talked to a VC just a couple weeks ago.  

Justin:     00:12:03    Uh, we're raising our seed round right now, so I've been doing back to back VC calls all day. And one of the things that he said is, well, I just don't get this because availability is what means that you're doing your work. And I was like, whoa, that is just not like right at all, man. He's like, what do you mean? Like that's why we have like a Zoom call going all day because it allows us to know that you're available, right? It's like, no, that, that's, that's bad management, right? Like you being available is not a sign that you're doing good work. In fact, it's probably a sign that you're just sitting there doing nothing, right? Yeah. Because you're, if you're available, you're not doing anything 'cause you're available, you should be unavailable, you should be heads down focused and be allowed to do deep work. And that's what we're trying to do at Yac.  

Kristin:    00:12:47    Yeah. You can't, you can't multitask. At least I can't multitask if remote work becomes just sitting in a remote meeting all day. I mean, that's defeating the purpose of the potential for what it is. So I really hope that, uh, through products like what you guys have done and, and this whole movement that people just kind of get on board with the idea and stop trying to make remote work, physical work in a remote capacity. Like let remote work be its own thing. Right. So I wanna also talk about how your company kind of came about because it has a really cool story that you guys actually won a contest on Product Hunt and you actually were running a different company before. And so can you tell us a little bit about this Product Hunt contest, how you entered it and then, I mean, you won, like people saw this product that you were making and they were like, I want that, and it kind of went viral. So kind of talk about how you ended up there and, and also in case other people might want to participate in something like that.  

Justin:     00:13:53    Yeah, definitely. I mean, just from a top level advice perspective, the company we're running before this was so friendly, that's what's on my shirt. We're designing products for other startups, doing SaaS products, doing mobile apps, everything from branding all the way up to design and development. So we're working on other people's startups and once in a while we would build things that were fun just for us. And typically we'd just throw 'em out there for free, generate some buzz, but a lot of it was kind of, it was our way of marketing, right? And because we didn't have our own audience that we were selling into, and you know, they always tell you build your audience first and then sell into that audience. Well, we didn't have an audience, but we knew the product Hunt had an audience, right? And most of the people on product Hunt's audience kind of match our ideal user cohort, right?  

Justin:     00:14:36    They're either remote workers or their startup founders or the design designers or developers. And so a lot of what we would do is we would build tools that were kind of geared towards that audience. We'd launch 'em on Product Hunt, we'd build some kind of viral funnel that, you know, know collects email addresses for early signup or you know, is a download button that you have to submit your email for, right? So that we could kind of like remarket to those people. And we've been doing that for years. We've had a couple successes on Product Hunt, uh, just kind of launching little tiny side projects. And so when they had this opportunity, uh, with the product Maker's Festival, it was again, one of those, okay, cool, they're gonna market for us, right? And if I was to give advice to any kind of like scrappy founder or any kind of maker out there that wants to just be known and doesn't have either the money or the funds or the knowhow to do ads and marketing campaigns, one of the things you can do is just ride somebody else's, you know, coattails, right?  

Justin:     00:15:34    They already have the email newsletter, they already have the blog, they already have the following, they're writing good copy. They already have the Twitter audience, right? So we didn't have to do any of that. And before it was, well, I hope we get lucky and that they post our stuff. This was, well, if we submit they post our stuff, right? So it's kind of an instant access to that audience. And for us as a design agency, that seemed like a really great way to kind of get ourselves in front of an audience and say, look, hey, look at us. We do cool things. We know how to build good products and we're great at design. And that was kind of all this was, right? But at its core, one of the categories for Maker's Festival was remote tools. And there was just something about seeing that blog post go out that said, build something for remote tools that I just had kind of that light bulb moment.  

Justin:     00:16:24    And I thought, well, um, I've got an idea. I, I think all the communication tools of today are too noisy, too distracting, um, too bloated. I wanna build something lightweight that's just pure communication, uh, screen sharing and voice, because I just think that that's the kind of highest resolution of communication you can have. And so, uh, it was a fast turnaround. We built the app in about four days over Thanksgiving weekend. So, uh, we applaud our team all the time for kind of pulling the all-nighters on a holiday break even, right? To pull this thing off. But we built incredibly scrappy product, didn't even have sign-in, uh, there was no authentication. Instead of doing sign-in, uh, every time you started the app fresh, you got a six digit friend code, you could share that friend code out with anybody. And that just connected you on the backend, right?  

Justin:     00:17:13    There was basically no usernames, no accounts, uh, it was about as easy as we could make the thing be, but we launched it and it got a lot of fanfare and it, you know, kind of exploded in growth very quickly. We ended up kind of mentioned in the newsletter first as a, Hey, check out this. There's, you know, these are our top four projects that we think are really cool. So just being mentioned in the newsletter, drove a lot of traffic to the site, drove a lot of interest. Uh, we were tweeted out by Product Hunt, we were posted on their Facebook and then we won. So we were written about in the blog, we were written in the newsletter again, they tweeted us out again, right? So there's just kind of this like continual rolling of, of free marketing and free press. Um, and that just brought in so many people.  

Justin:     00:17:57    We were getting about a download a minute for the first two days, just a constant ticker of downloads. Um, we ended the week with about like 2000 downloads, which was more than anything that we'd ever, you know, launched before. Um, and it kind of signaled to us, hey, maybe this is a little bit more than a side project. Maybe this is not just a fun weekend thing. Let's put an actual brand behind it. Let's, you know, put some beautiful design to it. Let's spend more than four days on it, right? So then we spent the next couple months building this thing out,  

Kristin:    00:18:28    And now it's been about a year, right?  

Justin:     00:18:31    A year since Product Hunt Makers Festival in April, we closed a pre-seed round with Boost VC and Betaworks. I got a call on my cell phone while I was in Vegas in January. Um, Adam Draper said, Hey, at dig what you're working on, and I'd like to talk to you about giving you some money. And at this time, we've never done any VC back deal inside of so friendly. Everything's just been free stuff that we bootstrapped and built on our own. And, uh, yeah, it it is totally world changing, especially when you're not chasing that, right? And it just kind of falls in your lap and you're like, oh, I don't, okay, sure, someone wants to give me money. This, I should probably put a pitch deck together, right? We should probably legally have an a, a a company name that's actually, you know, incorporated, right? So we very quickly had to get up to speed with a lot of things you would've done prior to that conversation. Um, but yeah, just over the next couple months we did a bunch of interviews, um, with different VCs and we closed that round in April and we've been building the product ever since.  

Kristin:    00:19:29    Yeah, I mean this is like a recurring lesson that seems to come up that I think everybody gets hung up on. Myself included, and I should have taken my own advice from the first company that I founded eight years ago, is to create a minimum viable product. Don't worry about how pretty the website is or how the user experience is or whatever. Or if you even have a company name or that you're like legally registered <laugh>, like just put something out there and see what happens. And if it resonates with people, then you can build a team around that. You can build out that concept, build out that idea, keep testing it, keep improving on it, and then you can have people calling your cell phone trying to give you money. And, uh, yeah, with my first company, that's exactly what I did with poker refugees. I just basically sent out a press release with a basic concept and I got signups the first day and ESPN called my cell phone the first day. And it's like, that is product I idea validation right there. And I thought I would be doing it for a few months and now it's been eight years. It's just like, sometimes you just get it right. And then did I read correctly that your first investors came through a blog post? How did that happen?  

Justin:     00:20:43    Yeah, so everything that's happened to us has been inbound, which is great. It's very cool to have investors knocking on your door. Uh, so Adam came from a tweet. What actually happened is, uh, Aiden, who must have just downloaded the product during Maker's Festival, we weren't friends on Twitter, I've never met him before. Now of course we talk all the time, but he just said, Hey, at Adam Draper, you should check out Yac and mentioned me and that Twitter mentioned is what kind of kicked off the entire thing. And Adam introduced me to the Betaworks guys. I talked to the Betaworks guys, and that's how we got them as an investor. And then Ernest Capital actually came in as an investor in that round as well. And that was from a blog post that Tyler wrote. Uh, he had just kind of authored this thing, request for Startup, someone needs to be making a communication tool that focuses exclusively on high resolution communication, sending screen shares, sending your voice.  

Justin:     00:21:40    We need to get out of Slack and be kind of on a, a different plane of communication. And so I actually made a Loom video for him and just said, Hey, I read your blog post, this is exactly what we're working on. Like basically everything you said in this post super resonated with me. Uh, let me just show you the product. And I did a quick screen share of like how I was using the product. I mean, man, if I could, I, I think this video still exists, but that product was junk at the time. Um, but it showed what it was, the raw product. I think it actually was an update that hadn't even been released to the public yet and said, I don't know if you're interested in investing, but we've got some things that are happening on our end. And this blog post just totally struck a chord with me.  

Justin:     00:22:22    And so I just tweeted at him and said, Hey, I made you a video, and he dmd me very quickly and we just got to talking. And yeah, so it's just amazing kind of what trolling on Twitter can can get you, right? Just being involved in the community, um, staying up to date with, you know, the trends. I think one thing that a lot of, uh, VCs will just ask us, it's the classic question, like, what's your unfair advantage? And for us, one thing that we've always been really good at is we have a really good pulse on the market. Like we know what's coming next, we know what people are talking about today. And a lot of that has to do with just kind of being immersed in that ecosystem. Whether that's being like one of the top hunters on product hunt, like I, I get emails all the time, can you please hunt my product? Um, you know, I'm pretty involved in that community, pretty involved on Twitter, and having that kind of immersion in the marketplace really helped us understand what are investors looking for? What are, you know, remote workers in need of what tools don't exist? And having that kind of ideas floating around in our head all the time keeps us kind of on our toes, which is kind of one of our things that we're really good at.  

Kristin:    00:23:28    Yeah, I think that that's a really good lesson because I know a lot of entrepreneurs and founders and I was surprised, like I've actually never been through the fundraising process and I know that it's really important for a lot of business models. I'm a sole proprietor, so I haven't ever needed to raise money, but if you have a tech company or if you need to build, you know, build a product and you need a team, like you definitely need money and that can help move things along really quickly. But I've been really surprised with the amount of time that my founder friends spend looking for money and fundraising and on the phone with people trying to generate support for their product, and they really don't have time to work on their product. And I think that is a, some, a trap that a lot of entrepreneurs fall into.  

Kristin:    00:24:19    And I think if I would give entrepreneurs advice based on what I've seen, and let me know if you agree with this, it would be to just focus your time on creating something that people want. IE solving a problem, solving a problem for yourself, solving a problem for other people, and that's gonna take on a life of its own no matter what it is you're doing. When people start sharing it, you know that you've struck a nerve. And then when you're solving a specific problem and you're niched down, the people who are aware and engaged in that industry and that community are going to recognize what you're doing. They're going to see the potential to collaborate or work together and they're going to seek you out. So would you think that people would be better served if they spent more time on that and less time, like convincing people to invest in their company and why, like you think that maybe the product should speak for itself?  

Justin:     00:25:18    Yeah, I mean, I think it's a mindset thing, right? So if you are chasing VCs all day long and you're trying to get somebody to invest in you and you don't have something that's compelling yet, like that's on you, you need to go back and get to that point where your product is compelling, it's found product market fit. You know, I think there's exceptions, right? We've got, you know, PhD students who may be working on some groundbreaking technology that they can't even start until they have money. And I think those, those scenarios exist. But for the vast majority of us, um, I would even say a lot of non-technical founders, you can certainly build a lot of stuff today, especially with like no code solutions like Webflow and Zapier, um, there's a lot you can do to bootstrap an MVP to a point where it gains virality, right? Yeah. And that's just about really knowing the market that you're selling into. And that's what I was saying earlier, having that pulse on the market is actually the most important thing because if you can build something scrappy and bootstrap it and get it together, you know, you may never have to take VC money, right? But at least you have that option available to you because when that excitement gets built up around a product, people are going to be knocking on your door.  

Kristin:    00:26:28    Yeah, exactly. And this also kind of follows along the lines of let's say like the lure of Silicon Valley or kind of the brand that Silicon Valley embodies as a place where like, you have to go if you want to be an entrepreneur or if you wanna raise money or if you want to start a company. And you guys are one of many who are proving that no, you can actually be based in central Florida and have VCs knocking on your door. And there's been a lot of stuff in the news about, and also on my news show too, that I've covered about programs and incentives and companies including Zapier that you mentioned, who are actually paying tech workers to move outside of Silicon Valley, where the cost of living is lower and the quality of life is higher. How do you think we're gonna see that play out, let's say in the next 10 years?  

Kristin:    00:27:29    I was at a dinner party a couple weeks ago, and a, and a VC was telling me how he moved away from Silicon Valley two years ago, and he is never going back. And he is trying to bring people with him. He was in San Diego, but I mean, you could be in Nebraska, like you can be anywhere. I mean, how do you see the culture, the startup culture in Silicon Valley changing, especially given that many of the companies in Silicon Valley are the first to have to hire remote workers and to have to hire outside of their local market?  

Justin:     00:28:02    Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think it's happening now. So I, I think the 10 year metric is way too long. You'll see it in the next two, three years. We're already seeing companies that are, like you said, giving those incentives to hire outside of the valley or even move outside of the valley. But one thing that we always say internally is that the valley's kind of like college, right? It's good to be there, it's great for networking. The opportunities are, you know, extreme. But once you're done with that kind of four year sprint, you should get out of there and kind of settle down somewhere. And you know, there's good parallels between that kind of graduation from college and graduation from the valley. But more and more we're also seeing things like Lambda School, you know, kicking the college trend away as well, right? So we're moving away from that idea that you have to come from royalty or spend time in a specific area to be successful.  

Justin:     00:28:55    And you know, for most startups in general, the valley's very cost prohibitive to even exist, right? You know, our runway that we get from this seed financing gets us five times, you know, the runway of, you know, some other company in the valley because it's, you know, cheaper to live here, we can hire anywhere. So we had, uh, developers in Cambodia and Guatemala, like digital nomads that just kind of travel all over the place, and their cost of living is much lower, and they're fantastic developers, right? And we're able to hire them and work with them remotely and not have to worry about where they physically live. Um, what's great about that kind of remote hiring is it also doesn't limit the skill level by geography. We can find the best person for the job, and we never want to be limiting our kind of hiring pool just by like a 30 mile radius.  

Justin:     00:29:43    That's just stupid, right? With today's technology, you'd be a moron to specifically only wanna hire 30 miles around you. But for us it's about not only giving those opportunities to people who maybe aren't in the valley, but also about kind of building a culture around that inclusiveness of you can live anywhere, you can work anywhere, you can have disabilities, you can, you know, be constantly traveling, not even have a permanent house as long as you get your work done. We don't care what your situation is, right? And I think that's something that breeds a better culture in a company than that very like narrow tight view of, oh, you need to live here, you need to work like this, you need to live like this. Um, but it also just saves the company money in general, right? Um, today we're able to hire more people, build more jobs, build faster and build better because we're not hiring exclusively in the valley.  

Kristin:    00:30:35    And explain, how did you start hiring people off Reddit? Because I uncovered that in my stocking. How did that come about? Do you recommend that as a, as a way to find people? Has it worked for you?  

Justin:     00:30:47    Yeah, definitely. I mean, Reddit for me has been a huge source of, of great hires. What's cool is that the people are, that are on Reddit typically tend to be kind of like us in a way, right? They're kind of those internet guys, they're interested in community, they are typically kind of wholehearted and fast to whatever beliefs they have. Um, and I like having people that are passionate in my company. And so going to Reddit is great because the people that are on that are those passionate people that love what they're doing. Um, one of the things that I always look for when I'm hiring is I'll say, Hey, gimme your GitHub. I just wanna see your GitHub. And I'm not looking at code quality, I'm not looking at even the languages. I'm really just looking, do you have hobby projects? Like, that's one of the biggest things that I'll look for when I'm hiring is are you just doing stuff for fun?  

Justin:     00:31:34    Are you forking open source stuff? And just playing around with it to see if it, you know, you can tinker with something. Are you involved in, you know, some community on GitHub or Reddit that you're just, you know, contributing to that community and asking questions. Like, I like to see people that code for fun. Not that it has to be your hobby, but someone who actually gets excited about building something. And I found that that type of person typically hangs out on Reddit. Uh, what's also nice about hiring on Reddit is it's free, right? So we don't have to pay listing fees, it's shareable. The people that are there respond very quickly. So what's crazy is most of the time when I post, I've got 35 replies within an hour, right? And I'll do the same thing on something like Upwork and I'm having to do a lot of the work reaching out to people because it's just more of a passive community.  

Justin:     00:32:23    And the quality there is great as well. But with Reddit, those people are just hungrier and they're chasing me and they're emailing me like, Hey, I wanna work for you. This sounds really exciting, you know, how can I get in? And what's great about it is I've also had an opportunity to offer a lot of work to junior developers, um, because a lot of those people don't have established portfolios. They're not, you know, highly ranked on a site like Upwork, but on Reddit, they can hop in immediately and say, Hey, I know that I'm not the best for this job, but I really want this opportunity. I'll work for X number of dollars. I've got an existing job so I can only work, you know, five to 8:00 PM at night. Right? I love those people though, because that's the kind of drive and passion and you really only find that in that online community like Reddit.  

Kristin:    00:33:08    I agree. You know, I do a lot of research on this just for the nature of my work and helping people work remotely and become digital nomads. And I have legitimately fallen asleep when I was reading job descriptions, <laugh> on some of these remote job boards. And it can be such a mess. I mean, even from the company perspective to think of like having an HR person or the team structure this really professional looking, but very bland job description and then paying fees to a site and then, you know, looking at all of these unqualified candidates who are just like sending cover letters, copying and pasting their resumes to a bunch of different companies. And it's like, let's go back to basics the same way that we do when we are creating a company or solving a problem. You need someone to help on something. Where would those people hang out?  

Kristin:    00:33:58    You know, if you are the person looking for a job, you wanna work for somebody you admire a person, um, a company, a product, something like just reach out and you could even do a work for free. Do a project like, Hey, I saw this. I think I would do it this way. I would fix this. Um, if you ever have a job opening, let me know. Or if you have a, a project you wanna contract out, like just being proactive is really helpful, but in a casual way. Like not in a, you know, really pretentious way or in a fake way, just like in a natural engaging way. Like if you hang out on Reddit, that's probably where you should find jobs. Yeah, it's kind of been the same thing with, with my podcast. Like I have this list of people that I want to interview for the podcast, but it always happens organically.  

Kristin:    00:34:49    Like the way that this podcast is happening now. And I am so much more open to bringing people on who I already know from Twitter or from Reddit or from a Facebook group or something like that who I know their background versus I get like cold emails from podcast booking agencies that are like super generic, copy and paste and I'm like, okay, I'll put you on the list, but you're behind like 85 other people that I would rather talk to first <laugh>. And so thank you for that tip because that is, uh, so easy. I think I'm gonna spread the word, you guys heard it here first. If you need a job or you're looking to hire developers, like start on Reddit. And then also Abby in the live chat said, Twitter is good too.  

Justin:     00:35:39    So yeah, I was gonna mention Twitter as well, just kind of putting a PSA out there. It'll get retweeted, it'll get shared, people get mentioned and that's actually one of the greatest ways to hire is when someone else mentions somebody that's that validation, right? You have other people, they're saying, you should hire this person. I've worked with them, they're awesome. And that's kind of one of the powers of Twitter is having that, you know, kind of reference built in.  

Kristin:    00:36:01    Yeah. And even LinkedIn could be good for getting jobs too. And I, I do get offers through there, but it's like spending a lot of time on LinkedIn versus just reaching out to people on Twitter or Reddit, like, what's gonna be more effective? And then now there's all of these like LinkedIn consultants, you can pay them a thousand dollars to make your LinkedIn profile look better or you can just focus on developing friendships and relationships in the community that you wanna work in or that you are working in. Very cool. What do you think Justin about? So right now I have AirPods in and we are recording a podcast. People have been saying that 2020 is gonna be the year of the audio apps. And I have seen that there's even like an app store now for AirPods style apps or like apps that work well with audio. Of course we have Amazon and Alexa and like all of these different tools. We have Gary Vaynerchuk pushing audio, everyone's talking about audio. I don't necessarily think that everyone knows how to use it, whether, you know, especially when it's applied to like a business or strategic level. Do you have any tips for small businesses, solopreneurs, and companies that wanna integrate more audio into their 2020 business practices or strategy and what would that be?  

Justin:     00:37:27    Yeah, definitely. Well, first off, that AirPod app store was actually built by Hunter on our team.  

Kristin:    00:37:33    Oh,  

Justin:     00:37:34    We're, we're all all in on on audio. Um, yeah, it, it ranked pretty high on product Hunt when it launched, so it got a good amount of uh, visits. But uh, yeah, I think what's great about audio is we're also seeing simultaneously this kind of rise in ar. And as we see Apple's announcing things like AR headsets and kind of the future of augmented reality, the thing to know is that audio is going to be a major input on those, right? Because you don't have a physical keypad, you're looking at something, you're doing a lot of things hands free. And so audio is definitely going to be a major input method, right? So when you're thinking about as a company, how do I, you know, cach it on this trend, the thing you want to think about is the benefits of audio, right? So for us, a lot of it was passive consumption.  

Justin:     00:38:19    We really liked this idea that with audio I could listen to something while I'm doing something else, right? What was really cool just you know, a couple weeks ago, uh, hunter and Jordan on the team are sending me a bunch of audio messages back and forth. I can hit play all and I could cook my wife dinner while listening to a full conversation with my phone just sitting on the counter. And that's something you can't really do with text-based communication with audio. You can be present in what you're currently doing and kind of just by osmosis be listening and hearing and learning. And that's why we see podcasts and audio books exploding in growth because I can drive and read at the same time, which without audiobook would be dangerous, right? And with a podcast I can listen to whatever topic and learn about new gadgets or I love like science verses from Gimlet just learning about different types of uh, you know, scientific facts that I would never divulge into on my own.  

Justin:     00:39:14    But with a podcast I throw that on in the car. Now I'm learning things while I'm driving on my commute. So one of the big things is, you know, kind of looking at that idea of passive entertainment, passive knowledge gain, you know, passive consumption. 'cause that's one of the great things about audio. And then the other side is that input, right? So if you're thinking about what's the benefit of audio, it's the ability to input something that's very low friction, right? Um, text to speech. Speech to text, right? Just as an input device, as it's much easier. You're not typing things, you can say things, recording notes to yourself is just in general a really great way. Because once you speak something out loud helps you kind of work through the problem. Uh, we call it the rubber duck methodology. This idea that if you were stuck on a problem, uh, you have a rubber duck that you can talk to and it'll solve the problem for you, right?  

Justin:     00:40:01    Sounds silly. But the idea is just that by vocalizing your problem for the first time, you kind of hear it external to you a little bit and you kinda work through it from a different angle. And we've seen this with Yac, actually I'll get messages from people on my team and at the end of the message they just say, you know what? Nevermind I, I just needed to talk it out. I already figured it out. Right? And that's because vocalizing it helps you kind of solve problems. So yeah, if you're a company and you're looking to figure out how we integrate with audio, figure out a way that maybe audio makes inputs into your application or your company better and cooler or maybe the output is better, right? Maybe you build an Alexa skill that helps, you know, consume the specials of the day. If there was a restaurant that you really love going to imagine just saying, Hey Alexa, what are the, you know, the specials for today at my favorite restaurant?  

Justin:     00:40:48    And being able to consume that information that way is really good. And like I said, conversely, being able to input information over voice is just massively better as an input device. It's more natural. We talk right as humans, that's how we communicate. And it's actually great for you as yourself. Just hearing things out loud helps you remember things better. Um, and it's a better way to articulate. So yeah, there's a lot of different opportunities and that's why we built that AirPods app store. 'cause we want to start kind of highlighting the different ways that people are thinking about audio. I  

Kristin:    00:41:18    Love that. You know, just bringing it back to basics and not overthinking it and not making it like too kind of farfetched into the future. Just remembering the importance of sound in the context in our daily lives and how sound adds like this richness and dimension to whatever it is that you're doing. Whether it's last night I was walking on the beach walking the dog and I like to mix it up, you know, just walk, listen to the ocean, listen to the wind, take in the surroundings. And then maybe if I'm going running, I wanna get like pumped up, put some music on, maybe I'm not feeling that music change to a different radio station or a different playlist, whatever. Um, or go for a nice long walk, listen to a podcast. Like it's just so cool to be able to add this soundtrack to your life.  

Kristin:    00:42:04    And that's what we're able to do. Now. Hopefully we're not frying our brain with AirPods <laugh>, but um, I also use exactly that same tip that you just mentioned about just talking it through with people. I think that's something that people can do, whether they are working by themselves in like a very solo capacity or they're working with a team, um, maybe they're using an app like Yac to just send a quick voice message like what do you think about this? And you know, explain it that way. Or if you're like me and you're working for yourself and let's say I'm writing something out and I'm getting stuck on a draft of an article that I'm writing and I literally sit down and ask myself. I'm like, what do I wanna say? Or sometimes not sitting pacing around, usually pacing around the house, but I'll be like, what am I trying to say?  

Kristin:    00:42:51    And I will actually dictate to myself and just pretend like I'm explaining it to somebody in the same room. And then I'm like, oh, that's it. And then I sit down and write it out. And it's like, that's such a, a simple thing. But that is something that helps us communicate and helps us absorb info from our environment. Whether we're watching a movie or you know, working on a strategic problem or just talking to a friend. It kind of like reminds me of, uh, back in the good old days when I would like be in elementary school or middle school on the phone all day with in my room, like talking to my friends or in the kitchen, just like communicating with people. And for a few years we kind of got lost there where everything had to be typed out or texted out and now we're like coming back to audio. So I say, and you lose  

Justin:     00:43:39    Emotion and tone when you do that too. So you don't have the richness of human communication with text. You can mis you know, misinterpret something. Maybe something sounds mean and it wasn't meant to be mean, but with voice you have that tone and that emotion that really will tell a different story that we miss out on when something's typed up. And so, yeah, just to your point, like I feel like as a society, especially Americans for sure, we moved into this kind of lazy communication style of text only. And I think a lot of the rest of the world, if you look at Latin America, if you look at China, they're doing voice messages a lot because it's just kind of an easier input. It's just, you know, more personal, more emotions. And especially in something like China, it's literally time saving 'cause it's so difficult to type out all the Mandarin characters.  

Justin:     00:44:26    Um, so yeah, I feel like America has kind of a, a renaissance period it needs to, to go through to kind of bring voice back to the forefront. But we have to make it a good experience. I think unfortunately robocalls kind of kill the idea of a good phone call. 'cause we now look, you know, when our phone is ringing, it's a negative experience that we're expecting. So I want to, you know, flip the script on that and make sure that people understand the value of voice. So we need to kind of give a good experience behind that.  

Kristin:    00:44:52    Bring, bring back the phone call. I actually heard a really funny story. I think it was in, it was either in the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times or Washington Post, like some legitimate newspaper. And it was an article about how to say, okay, properly, let me know you guys in the chat if you have heard of this or if you understand what I'm talking about here. So there's different ways to type out, okay, you can type out okay, a y okay, in capital letters. Um, okay, exclamation point or kk, which is something that I use a lot, being a good millennial, there's a different intonation that comes across in how you say, okay, in like a Slack chat or in a text message, or even if you just do like a thumbs up emoji. But if you are using audio, that wouldn't even be a thing. So like we have the, the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal telling business people how to communicate in Slack better with how they, which version of okay they use so that they're not being passive aggressive or whatever. Do you know, like have, have you experienced this? Like have you ever felt maybe offended by the way somebody like typed out a message?  

Justin:     00:46:13    Yeah, I mean that's, it's definitely something that we feel like Yac is really strong for is that idea of sometimes things just shouldn't be said over text because you just never know how it's going to be interpreted. But in general, what we also found is that just team building in general is so much stronger over voice. So there's, you know, when you start to just kind of relegate everything over to text, you start to lose that personal relationship with that person. And not only can you start to kind of lose whatever relationship you were building, but then they send one message and it's k you know, period and you're like, oh man, now they're upset with me. Right? And you don't have that problem with audio and voice and that's what's really important about using, you know, Yac for your communication. I think, you know, one thing that we always like to make clear is we're not saying stop using Slack.  

Justin:     00:47:00    You know, we use Slack internally here and it's a great tool, but there's kind of that time and place for messaging communication and there's that time and place for audio communication. And what we're hoping for companies to do is to start calming down their slack to only like critical notifications, pasting in links, pasting in documents, right? And then moving to kind of that high resolution communication of voice for the important conversations. Feedback. You know, one of the things, even in my own company, I'm typically very brutal and just totally honest with whatever the designer or developer's doing. And I'll just say, that sucks. Do it again. Right? But when you say that over text, that sucks. Try it again. Oof. Someone just heard that from the CEO and they just might think they're about to get fired when I say it over audio though, they can tell the like kind of joking, you know, sound in my voice. They can tell that I'm not upset and I'm just giving them, you know, honest feedback, right? And I found in my own company that I had team members that just thought I was constantly down on them and it really came down to the fact that I just sound way meaner over text. So I started to having to move to audio just to give people feedback on things because I knew that that's where kind of my true personality would come out and I wouldn't sound so down on them.  

Kristin:    00:48:16    Yeah, I had a comedian on my show, he was one of my first podcast episodes, his name was Drew and he was making fun of in the corporate environment how when you send an email it has to be like, hi, how are you? Blah blah blah. Best regards, thank you so much. And there's like all this politeness and there's politeness in meetings and there's politeness in email and there's politeness in the slack groups and when you can just talk to somebody and just talk it out, things just come across way more naturally and there would probably be less infighting or like feelings getting hurt if people could just do that. So whether you're yelling across the cubicle or yelling across the world but not really yelling at people. <laugh>, I wanna get to some of the questions from the live chat. So if anybody has questions for Justin in the live chat, speak now or forever hold your piece. And then I also wanna ask you a few lightning round questions. But first, if you had a direct line of communication to the CEOs of a bunch of companies that either have not been exposed to remote work yet or haven't yet gotten on board with remote work, what would be the message that you wanna send them about why they should start letting their employees have a flexible work environment? What are the benefits to them as a company?  

Justin:     00:49:41    Yeah, I mean it's a great question and there's a ton of benefits. Uh, in general, I think as a company leader, as a CEO, it kind of releases the reigns that you have on your employees. Instead of treating them like kind of mindless slaves at a desk all day, you start treating 'em like skilled employees. So by saying, hey, you're allowed to work from home now, it kind of sets precedent in the company of, wow, I am my own person. I have, you know, autonomy over the way that I work and that means that they're going to work better because they're in their environment, they're comfortable and they're working the way that they feel most comfortable. Uh, so you end up actually with just better productivity overall. But one thing that I would encourage in general is that if you do go remote, or if you have a lot of companies do like trials, like well we're gonna let this team work remote, we'll see how it works out and then we'll, you know, see if we integrate it into the bigger company.  

Justin:     00:50:35    And one thing that I think is a common misfire, there is this idea of the canary in the mine shaft. If you know anything about, you know, old school mining that a canary in the bird cage, the idea was as soon as that bird died, that was when the oxygen was running out and everybody had to vacate the mine shaft. A lot of times that happens with remote companies. You have like one guy that goes remote and because the company doesn't actually implement remote practices, overall that guy ends up being this like signaler for remote didn't work out, right? So what you have to do as a company leader though, is implement, assuming that everyone is remote, you can't have a couple remote employees and not implement remote practices because what will end up happening is that guy's missing out on things. That guy's unhappy.  

Justin:     00:51:19    He wasn't part of a decision process. He feels like he's left out, or in general, there's just bad productivity being at play. I've heard of companies that will have like a remote employee in the way that they accommodate this is by having like team viewer open on their computer all day so that they can see what that employee is doing and communicate with them constantly. And when you start kind of trying to fix the remote problem, it's not actually allowing remote to be the thing that it is. And so one of the things I always encourage other companies is that if you're gonna go remote, go remote, right? Implement remote practices and treat the company as if it's now a remote company. You can't just have one or two people that do it because eventually it just won't work out for them and it'll be a false signal to the rest of the company. Well, remote didn't work out. Pull everybody back in. Now you have to implement it from the top down.  

Kristin:    00:52:11    I have a quote from a hunter here, your coworker, and he says, butts in chair mentality is wrong. Remote teams should be focused on work results and efficiency, not necessarily the appearance of working buts and chairs  

Justin:     00:52:26    <laugh>. Yep. Absolutely. Yeah. That buts and chair mentality is very common. It's the idea of perceived busyness. If you're behind your computer at your desk, you must be doing work, right? And that's not necessarily true. And in most cases it's, it's not true, right? They're just there because they have to be there. You wanna also breed people in your company that, that want to accomplish their goals and make kind of work this idea of goal driven, right? You want to accomplish things, it should be results. So one thing I always say is, uh, it should be focused on output, not input. It doesn't really matter what the input is. If you could get all of your work done in four hours that day, that is awesome. You should be re rewarded by not having to work another four hours, right? Because you're very good at your job. It shouldn't be about the input, it should be about the output. Yeah,  

Kristin:    00:53:10    It definitely, I I agree with that wholeheartedly. I just published an article on medium this week called 12 Ways that the World Will Change when Everyone Works Remotely. Everyone Meaning like knowledge workers and people who can work remotely. And I've got a lot of comments on that. And uh, one of the things I was saying is that, I mean, this goes back to the value of a college degree. Like you don't necessarily need a piece of paper to be able to do things. And I think once people get into their late teens, early twenties, they've acquired so many skills from the real world that are valuable and that have value today versus they will have value four years from now after you incur a bunch of student loan debt. So I would just say exactly what Justin said, and also if you are especially millennial or Gen Z, but really any age and you are, you know, looking to get out of a situation that's not good for you and you're having trouble getting out of the status quo, instead of putting the burden on you to change the mindset of your superiors and your managers and and company founders, then find somebody who's already on board with it and go on Reddit, <laugh> and go on Twitter, find people who embrace remote and just jump on their team.  

Kristin:    00:54:26    And then the more people that do that, the more the old fashioned companies will, will wake up and be like, okay, I think we need to really take this seriously because, you know, the power is shifting into the employees who have good skills, who know how to get things done, who know how to contribute value to an organization. And they're gonna be the winners as well as their employers and clients. And one more question before the lightning round, what the heck is Foo Fridays?  

Justin:     00:54:53    Oh yeah, that's a new thing that we're, uh, kind of, uh, implementing at the company. We've always been makers at heart. We always like this idea of kind of innovation. And so Foo Fridays is this idea of allowing our employees to kind of work, um, on whatever they wanna work on on Fridays. It's every other Friday. The idea being that if you've got like a solo project that you want to, you know, spend some time on, we encourage that. We want you to be working on that. Um, a lot of times it'll also kind of, it's it's a teaching moment, right? So if you're building something on your own, you're learning things that just makes you a better, you know, member of our team. And so we want to encourage that kind of ingenuity at a personal level to allow people to do the things that we want to do because I also think that it encourages at a team level this idea of, you know, we don't want you to think you're ever cheating on us, right?  

Justin:     00:55:43    Like, if you have something that you want to be building, build it. Like we want you to be building it and we also want you to be asking us like, Hey, can I help you? Right? Is there any questions you have? We've got designers learning development right now. We've got developers building their own little tools, right? And so what we want to do is really be encouraging, um, that idea of kind of self, you know, reflection, an opportunity to build something that you're passionate about is we'd never want somebody to be in this company and feel like, well, I'm building somebody else's dream and this is boring. We want you to feel like you're surrounded by people that are going to support whatever you want to be doing.  

Kristin:    00:56:19    Find a company that lets you work on your own projects on Fridays. <laugh>.  

Justin:     00:56:23    Yeah, there you go.  

Kristin:    00:56:24    Moral of the story. I actually have been seeing a lot of research coming out on the benefits of a four day work week and how that is paying off big time in I think China and Japan and a few other places where they've tested it out. So it's kind of the same, like a, like a similar thing. The the bottom line is that we need to change this nine to five, five day a week mindset. Yes, definitely reinvent the wheel or make it up as you go along and pitch stuff to your companies and you know, everyone just like, this is our time to make change from the ground up. This is kind of this remote work revolution. So whatever that means to you, however you wanna express that, you go for it. So, okay, let's get to lightning round questions. Justin, what is your morning beverage of choice?  

Justin:     00:57:11    Uh, black coffee  

Kristin:    00:57:12    Iced or hot?  

Justin:     00:57:13    Ooh, mostly iced.  

Kristin:    00:57:14    That's some Florida for you. And who is an entrepreneur that you look up to?  

Justin:     00:57:20    Oh, that's a great question. Um, I really like Justin Jackson. We share the same name, so that's a big part of it. But, uh, no, I really like a lot of his thoughts on bootstrapping and, and yeah, he's great to follow. Definitely get involved in his, uh, Mega Maker community as well.  

Kristin:    00:57:33    What does he do?  

Justin:     00:57:34    Uh, so actually Transistor FM podcast hosting, that's one of his products. Um, but he also has this entire kind of maker community. We we're all kind of sitting around helping each other out and pro promoting each other's little projects.  

Kristin:    00:57:46    Cool. One of my questions was who, who's one person you recommend we should follow on Twitter? Would you say Justin or would you also add someone else? Yeah,  

Justin:     00:57:54    I think Justin Jackson's really good. Tyler Rinus, who's one of our investors. I always love saying that I like following him because he says the opposite of everybody else and it's kind of refreshing to get somebody that's going against the grain and, you know, holds strong and faster opinion. So yeah, both of those guys are great to follow.  

Kristin:    00:58:11    Love it. What is one of your favorite productivity or remote work tools that's not Yac?  

Justin:     00:58:19    I could go on and on for a long time about tools for sure. Bartender is great for Mac, of course. I'll plug our own tool, Backtrack that allows you to record audio that you forgot to record. That's really cool. Um, fantastical one of the best calendar apps ever made and Newton one of the best email apps ever made.  

Kristin:    00:58:36    Oh wow. I'm taking some notes there. <laugh>, what is your most underrated travel destination?  

Justin:     00:58:45    Ooh, you know, Ireland's one of the best places I've ever been. The air just smells different. It's just nice to, it was nice to get away and go to a place that doesn't seem commercialized, um, and just kind of be on a hill with some grass. Uh, so yeah, I'm a big fan of Ireland.  

Kristin:    00:59:01    It's a sign. I was just talking about that. I got this scratch off map where you can just scratch off all the countries you've been to and I was like, how have I not been to Ireland yet? And then my best friend texted me last night and said that she booked a direct flight from Orlando to Dublin. So clearly this is a sign I need to go there. Yeah,  

Justin:     00:59:20    We, we flew out of Orlando when we go.  

Kristin:    00:59:23    What is the most unusual place you've ever worked remotely?  

Justin:     00:59:27    Um, probably a boat. I, uh, I typically don't, uh, get away from work very often and so I've been on a cruise or a, uh, aircraft carrier a couple times with some very shoddy Wi-Fi. Um, so I'd say that's probably the most interesting place.  

Kristin:    00:59:45    Oh man. And cruise ships are notorious for bad internet. Yes. What is your favorite tech backpack brand or piece of luggage?  

Justin:     00:59:56    Ooh, that's good. I have a slicks backpack. It was a Kickstarter called Slicks. I travel with that everywhere. It's great for like a three day trip. It's got, uh, all kinds of extra stuff for like a suit cover that keeps your suit rigid and not wrinkled. Um, toiletry bag built in a spot for your shoes. So that's one of my favorite bags is the slicks travel bag.  

Kristin:    01:00:17    Okay. We're gonna put all the resources, <laugh> and links in the show notes. Guys, if you wanna check any of these out. I haven't even heard of that one. What are some of your tips for staying healthy while working remotely or from home, either physical health or mental health?  

Justin:     01:00:33    Well, we were talking about this before we started, but, uh, a standing desk, super important. This is a standing desk that I'm at. I very strongly believe in the idea of just going and taking a walk for 15 minutes or just standing for 15 minutes while you're working. Um, sometimes you can't get away from whatever you're working on and that's why a standing desk kinda gives your body that ability to breathe a little bit better and also kind of, you know, circulate your blood a little bit better. Uh, so I'm a huge advocate for standing desks, but if you have the opportunity, uh, Jordan and I have recently just said, Hey, you know what, I'm gonna go take a 10 minute walk. And so a lot of times it's when we're at the office, we'll just walk around the block a couple times in Florida, sometimes that's a little bit too hot and sweaty. Um, but we do like to kind of get out and stretch a little bit and it can also kind of give you an opportunity to reset.  

Kristin:    01:01:20    I actually was just reading, I have it, Ryan holiday's, new book guys. Stillness is the key. I'm almost done with this book. And there's a whole chapter on the importance of walking and he puts a lot of historical examples of people who walked a lot and some of these people walked like six miles a day. Writers, philosophers, uh, music composers, it's so important and it really helps you decompress and helps you work through problems or things that you're stuck on. So I would definitely second that as well. And we have a question from the live chat Universal Studios or Disney? This is from Abby.  

Justin:     01:02:02    Oh boy. Well, at Universal Studios you can get Butter Beer, so that's a very key element of our Orlando ecosystem there. So I would go with or I would go with Universal just for the Butterbeer.  

Kristin:    01:02:15    Yeah, and I just realized, 'cause I went to Disney for my niece's birthday, there's no alcohol at Disney and I don't remember that <laugh>.  

Justin:     01:02:24    Yeah, you gotta go to Epcot for the alcohol.  

Kristin:    01:02:27    Wait, what is Butter Beer, by the way,  

Justin:     01:02:29    From Harry Potter? The, the drink that they drink in Harry Potter, but in, in Universal it's uh, basically butter scotch ice cream milkshake. Wonderful. Goodness. It's delicious.  

Kristin:    01:02:40    Oh my God, that sounds amazing. I need to go, I'm gonna make a trip over there just for that. And I hope to come and drink black coffee with you guys the next day when I'm hungover <laugh>.  

Justin:     01:02:51    Yes, definitely.  

Kristin:    01:02:53    Okay, well thanks so much Justin for hanging out and being such a badass digital nomad in a remote work rockstar. Where can people sign up for Yac and where can people follow you on Twitter?  

Justin:     01:03:06    Yeah, definitely. Yac.chat is our website, Yac remember yelling across cubicles. So yac.chat is our website. Uh, you can request access, it's invite only right now, but if you mention this podcast, YouTube channel, whatever we want to say in the, uh, referral code spot, we'll bump you up to the priority list, uh, just for kind of watching this live stream. Uh, so Yac chat to request access, we're at Yac chat on Twitter. I'm @JMitch, J-M-I-T-C-H on Twitter. I'm super active there. Please feel free to reach out to me, ask me questions, uh, gimme feedback, uh, I'd love to talk to you.  

Kristin:    01:03:42    That's awesome. Thanks so much for that offer for the community. So guys, just put in badass or Badass Digital Nomads into the referral code. You can be one of the first people to use Yac chat and then when everyone else is on board, like months from now, you'll be like, oh yeah, I was an early adopter. So  

Justin:     01:04:00    <laugh> <laugh>. That's right.  

Kristin:    01:04:02    All right, I'll let you get back to work. Justin. Thank you. And thank you guys in the chat and everybody who's watching either silently or chatting around. We had Storm Abby, Walt, Larry, cryptocurrency, news Teklordz, uh, angel, Ann Angel <laugh>, a lot of people hanging out today. And if you wanna come back at 3:00 PM today, I will have Greg Kaplan on the show live. He is the founder of Remote Year, the Viral Travel Program, worldwide Work and Travel program for working professionals or digital nomads. We're gonna have him on the show at 3:00 PM and then also around 5:30 PM we're gonna have some full-time, expats, uh, expats anywhere. They help people live abroad in different countries all over the world. So come on back and hang out and we'll see you guys later. Bye. Thanks so much for listening to help support this podcast and help it grow. Please leave a review in the Apple Podcast store and send this or your favorite episode to a friend for weekly travel videos, live streams, and even more interviews. Make sure to subscribe to my YouTube channels at youtube.com/digitalnomad and Traveling with Kristin. See you soon.