As a creative person the 9-to-5 was literally killing me. I never found a company that matched my mindset in a working environment, and my work never supported my personal life goals. I wasn’t happy and I never felt fulfilled at work. Companies talk a lot about the “family concept company”, but when it comes to conflict and challenges, they will often discard even dedicated employees. I worked for a lot of companies like that in my first 10 years of experience.
I was thinking a lot, late at night, about what I should do with my life.
Finding Great Work from Home Jobs isn't Always that Easy
Since work is such a very big part of life, I was thinking about leaving my country, going to different places and working with different people. But I didn’t want to do that because I am very close with my local friends and I always want to be near when my family members need me.
Before the pandemic, I started researching for remote work. Work from home jobs were still uncommon, but just when the pandemic started all over the world I found one, part-time. However, my 9-to-5 work was still waiting for me outside of that side hustle. I was scared to quit the 9-5 because online work was a whole new concept to me and I didn't know how stable it could be!
One night I had a deep conversation with my father-in-law who is a great man and businessman and he gave me advice that I will never forget. He said: “When Colombo landed on an island he burned all the team's ships, and he said to them: 'Now you don’t have a way back. Either you give all you have to this new journey and survive, or you can give up and die.' So you Shpat, should do the same...forget about the 9-to-5 and give all you have on this new journey.”
I finally found the courage, and quit my main job. The first online role I found didn’t last that long because, as I predicted, it was not a stable company. But it was an interesting start. I decided that I was going to spend a full year trying to achieve success in remote work.
I made my way through Upwork and I became a part of a lot of leadership roles. I met a lot of different people from different countries and started to build my online presence. Somehow, I still didn’t feel fulfilled because, to be honest, I was tired of working in a hierarchy. It was still the same as a 9-5 – fraught with the same management problems including a lack of honest and meaningful connections that I was looking for.
After a few years, I was a part of different remote marketing jobs and projects and finally I was working in a company with a developer teammate, Tyler, who was a highly skilled, and a very professional person with a work ethic that I always appreciated.
A Digital Designer Starting A Career in the Online World
The company where we were worked was very stable, but didn’t take into consideration our complaints about working hours at all. I tried to raise my voice in that matter by literally telling my employer that I can’t continue like this. That I can’t rest 2 weeks and then immediately have a hundred tasks to do in a very short amount of time. I couldn’t earn what I needed and on the other hand I couldn’t even get a new project because I was afraid that when I receive 100 new tasks I wouldn't be able to handle it. So I decided to quit.
A short while later, I received an email from Tyler asking if I’d be interested in working for a special company named Tangible Words! This is the moment when everything changed…
Tangible Words - Remote Marketing Jobs and a Sense of Community
Alysha Dominico, CEO of Tangible Words, heard from Tyler that I was a highly skilled digital designer. She started hunting me and wanted to arrange an interview with me. We started the interview and I didn’t need much time to sense that this company wa a different story! Through the way she talked about team members, and Tangible Words’ company culture – I realized that I was getting to a whole different level - something new.
I didn’t try to impress her at all – I was just being brutally honest about who I was and what I was looking for. Alysha was honest with me and told me this: “If you’re looking for 30 hours per week in Tangible Words, you can’t reach that by only doing design work. But we have a lot of diversity in the growth services we offer. If you want to reach the hours you want without having to market yourself, can you learn new skills that contribute to our clients’ growth?”
Vicky Marrack and Alysha Dominico, the co-founders of TW (the kindest people on earth), wanted to support me in every way possible in this new Growth Strategy Manager (GSM) role by being able to pay me for all the training time that I spend in these courses. To be honest, there are not a lot of companies out there that do this.
In my work with Tangible Words I've made a lot of mistakes, but I've never been judged - something that I haven’t experienced before. Every time I've made a mistake, instead of receiving hard criticism, I've received warm advice in the kindest way possible. Instead of having a “boss”, I have a mentor, and it feels like one who knows the psychology of human beings very well.
For the smallest achievements I've made with tasks, clients and different aspects of the work I've received HUGE APPRECIATION! I've thought to myself, “Hey I didn’t do enough to get appreciated that much, what is happening?!” But that kind of genuine treatment focused on brightening each other’s day has felt like a dream!
All of my team members are such nice, helpful and very supportive -- it's unbelievable. But you know what they say, “As the head is, so is the rest.” I've experienced a unique company culture that has felt as if I'm working in Utopia. I've learnt a lot about how to approach clients, how important it is to be kind and polite, and above all how important it is to make somebody feel heard, understood.
To describe this company culture in simple words -- we are all equal. We all receive requests from each other and we all respect our work. None of us need a “boss” to stay on top of our tasks and point at us saying “you didn’t do this" or "you didn’t do that.” In my case, I work on Tangible Words like it’s my company, my baby!
The most interesting part is these guys even know how to treat conflicts in the smartest way possible. There is a lot of compassion in this company! Alysha says, "communicating through conflict strengthens relationships". We believe we should fail faster so we can all learn from it, share the knowledge and build a plan to improve. We try to create relief for each other, our team members, just as much as our clients.
One of the most thrilling moments at Tangible Words occurred when I received an incredible swag bag as a token of appreciation for my ongoing contributions to the company. They sent me a package that had to traverse the sea to reach my country, given the considerable distance between us.
I love that this positive, respectful, grateful energy is not flowing only internally but externally. Tangible Words focuses on choosing to work with clients who are good humans. They treat everyone respectfully and are very appreciative clients. It makes a difference as you don’t always see this in other agency work.
Another thing I like is that I have my tasks, I have my deadlines and I’m the manager of my own job. I can’t miss deadlines (which is crucial to how work flows in our company) and time is very important to supporting each other and our work. Mondays and Thursdays we work North American business hours. But for 3 out of 5 workdays, I get to choose which hours of the day I work. I can work weekends if I want instead of working a Friday. When I work – and where I work – is all up to me. And I love that freedom. It’s just an awesome system that Alysha and Vicky worked hard for a very long time to achieve, and that team members at Tangible Words now get to enjoy.
The only negative side effect of working in Tangible Words is that if you ever had a goal to open your own company, after working a while in Tangible Words, you're going to want to give up on that goal because you will fall in love with Tangible Words, and feel like you want to be part of this company forever!
Today marks my 1 year as a Tangible Words team member and I’m looking forward to many more.
Sincerely,
Shpat Goci
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