The remote work movement has altered expectations of what’s possible in a job, making it easy than ever to build your career around your lifestyle. True remote work is choice, flexibility, and freedom to feel fulfilled, make good money, and do your best work from just about anywhere. Welcome back to the Author Hour Podcast. I’m your host Hussein Al-Baiaty and my next guest is my good friend Jordan Carroll, who is here with me today to celebrate and talk about his new book, Remote For Life. Let’s dive in.

Hey everyone, welcome back. I am with my man and friend, Jordan Carroll. This is so exciting for me because Jordan and I have met each other quite some time ago. I am excited because when he was reaching out to me to write his book, I was like, “Bro, forget everybody and everything, you got to go with Scribe,” and I have a text message that proves that. As I was reviewing for Jordan’s interview, I brought that up and sent it to him and Jordan, I’m excited to have you on the show my man. Tell us a little bit about yourself, a little bit of background and how you got into this remote work.

Jordan Carroll: Hussein, what’s up bro? Well, first and foremost, thanks for having me on and I would say, we met back in what? 2016 or ’17, somewhere around those times. When I was in Portland, Oregon, we met at your shop. I got an intro from a mutual friend to you, and I went and interviewed you and so now, you’re finally paying me back and interviewing me. This is why I’ve been working so hard, to be interviewed by you. I had to write a book for you to interview me dude, what the hell? You didn’t have to do that for me. So—

Hussein Al-Baiaty: You know what bro? Your friendship, this is what really came to my mind yesterday is just how much you genuinely respect friendships man, because dude, it was just your birthday, I didn’t call you, I didn’t text you, I’m a terrible friend. Why would you want to be my friend? But I on the other hand, I will receive your phone calls, I’ll get voice messages on my birthday, you send me stuff, you got me on your calendar for like specific Sundays of the month to call your boy.

Dude, I got to commend you, man. Like honestly, I have my close friends, of course, we all do, right? But the person that works hardest, I feel, on my list to maintain that friendship is you man, so I’m grateful for that. But man, tell me about that. Tell me about how you’ve always been this guy that I’ve known who, on top of everything you do man, you really foster and create a bond between you, whoever you’re working with, whoever you deem, I guess, a friend.  And I just appreciate that about you, man. But tell me about that, how did you cultivate this—I guess you could call it “urge” to stay close?

Jordan Carroll: Yeah, you know what’s interesting? In my book being Remote For Life, being about how to find remote jobs, being about how to set yourself really apart from the rest of the candidates that are going for these positions that are very highly competitive, I found that over the course of the past decade or so in the workforce, the different companies that I’ve worked for, different things that I’ve done, that I’ve always been able to build relationships, has kind of come naturally to me. 

Now, that doesn’t mean that I didn’t work at it. It was something that, when I was in high school for instance, I was extremely introverted, extremely shy and as I got to university, I came out of my shell and I realized, “Wow, I could actually make networking a skill that I develop.” So it takes intention, it takes effort. It takes thinking about how you can maintain relationships in a way that suits your personality and suits the way that your brain thinks. What was very interesting was that all the things that you just said are all reasons why I teach what I teach. 

Because the idea of doing a job search for most people is, “I’m going to go in to a job” or “I’m going to look at all the jobs.” The idea of people being friends with someone is, maybe every once in a while, like randomly, talking to them without a rhyme or a reason. What I try to bring to everything that I do is a little bit more intentionality and a little bit more systemization. 

That includes a job search, that includes my friendships, that includes understanding my personality, understanding the things that are important to me, and then making sure that, for instance, I have an ongoing calendar invitation with some of my best friends that makes sure that at least every quarter I’m catching up with them.

That is the same way that I look at a job search. How can we use our calendar, how can we use networking, how can we use personal branding, how can we use these different components that most people don’t use to stand out in a job search? So it’s funny you ask me about me being a friend because it perfectly segues into what I talk about in the book and how I look at life, and all these things are interconnected.

It’s like the way that I do one thing in one area of my life is also the way I’m doing it in another area of my life. Like in my relationship, in my romantic relationships for instance, we got shit on the calendar too. It’s like, all the things that we really hold dear every single week, they’re going in the calendar. There’s a system or there’s a process because that’s how my brain works and that’s how things become easier for me. 

I understand that some people don’t work that way but there’s a lot of reasons why, at least in a job search, you would want to be very systematic, you’d want to be understanding. One of the things that I could do that are going to give me a higher chance of landing a remote job, and on top of that, is the mindset that you have mixed with a system and a strategy mixed with networking and personal branding.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: You stack all these things so well, but I know it’s taken a long time to cultivate that. That mentality, the understanding like you said, the big thing about it is understanding yourself, your own person, how you work. Understanding yourself is so big, and then stacking that into your calendar, and you really have time. 

I have blocks of time for my wife and my friends now and all these things, but I’ve learned that from you, man. I got to commend you for that because once you sent me a calendar invite to just catch up, I realized, I’m like, “Wow, this is something that’s so powerful, I need to apply this to some of my other friends.” And now we’ve fostered like a new, organized more way of staying in tune with one another and it’s like, you’re right. 

If you’re not intentional about those relationships, if you’re not intentional about the type of work you want to do, that’s just everything about life, the type of food you want to eat, the exercise, whatever it is or writing a book, it’s probably not going to get done. But having that commitment and then systemizing it is something I very much learn from you man, at a very—I would say, at the very early on in our meeting one another and learning from one another.

Like how much you travel. This is what’s crazy, it’s like, you could be in a completely different time zone in New Zealand, and you still make a call. Which I just love and appreciate man, but tell me about your travels. Tell me about that bug you got and at what age and at what time in your life did you decide, “You know what? I don’t really care to be in this boxed lifestyle where I go from one box to the other box to inevitably the last box,” if you know what I mean?

Jordan Carroll: So yeah, so you read the intro is what I’m getting at.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah man! So tell me a little bit about how you maneuver your life from that aspect of things to how you are intentional about your life today?

Jordan Carroll: Yeah man, great question and appreciate all the thoughts and also the—just the reflection on how I’ve impacted your ability to do that with other people, because I think that’s such a powerful thing about what I’m trying to create, is that a life of intention and the life of alignment gives other people permission. It gives other people ideas of how they should live. 

I don’t want people to think like they need to live like me, that they need to go travel to all these different countries and then you go do this and go do that. I want my life to be an invitation for them to be more of themselves. 

That’s like the main thing I want to get across with this book is that it’s not just for people who want to go travel the world, and where it gets for people who want to get out of the office and work from home so that they’re around their dog that’s barking in the background all day. So very real client stories that I have where that was their motivation. 

It’s like, hey, I have a client who is a foster parent to dogs, and she was having to give up being a foster parent to dogs because the company that she was working for was going back after the pandemic. So for her, that’s a really big deal. It’s like a really, really big deal. 

So for me, how it all started was, I actually worked in corporate, in 2013, when I graduated from university. I went to IBM. Big blue. Did a training period of about nine months and I was coming into the office every day during those nine months. At least, for most of the nine months. 

I was in Boston, Massachusetts, so eventually what happens is that it starts to snow. I don’t know if you’ve ever been to Boston, but I’m a California boy originally and that ain’t the business. Trying to wake up in a couple of hours, arguably, to scrape off the windshield, trying to do this and that to make sure that I could safely get an hour and a half away to the office wasn’t great, and I realized I didn’t love that aspect of it.

I also didn’t love the politics, like being the young kid in an office with a bunch of guys and gals who’d been there for many years, and we were technically in this training program that was fast tracking us, let’s just say. They were not happy about that, and I wouldn’t have been either. 

So eventually what happens is we negotiated. After the snow happened, I had my first work from home day, which at that time only meant I’m going to wake up two hours later and I’m going to give my hangover a chance to subside, right? That’s what it meant to me back then. It didn’t mean, let me work on my personal development, let me do this, let me do that. 

It was simply just those few extra hours of sleep. As I grew into who I am today. I ended up going remote one day a week on Fridays even when it wasn’t snowing, we negotiated that and then after the training program, I was remote to a certain extent. I was mostly working from home. I would sometimes go to a satellite office where there really wasn’t anybody there, but it was a place for us to work if we wanted to, and then would start traveling for work. 

I did that for a few years, I did that for about four years at IBM and my remote status was different at different times. Like certain times, I’d be going to client appointments, but I was completely remote other than that. I didn’t have to work in an office and that was my first true experience, was those first four years at IBM, being basically a hybrid remote-type position. 

Then once I left IBM, I worked remote for a small PR firm in Portland, that’s about the time that I met you and I was really going through shit at that time. The relationship I was in was great for a while and then I realized it wasn’t, like many of us do, and it’s not the person for me. This and that happened, I was in an existential crisis. I wanted to leave the country. I just thought about—I don’t know what happened, dude. 

It was just like, I had this idea that there’s more out there in the world and I wanted to see it and I ended up leaving my job, I left my girlfriend, I left Portland and I started traveling, and that was 2018, in March of 2018. So I started traveling with a travel and work program called Remote Year. I started taking on some freelance gigs. 

A Remote Year

I started just trying to figure out, like, I started my coaching business, I was trying to figure out how do I actually make some money and I also wanted to work at that company Remote Year, which I was traveling with. So they do these travel and work programs where every single month, you go to a different country, every month. 

So you pay them a monthly fee, we’re going to Lisbon, we’re going to go to Croatia, we’re going to go to Prague, Czech Republic, we’re going to go to Cape Town, South Africa. You pay us every month, we’re going to take care of the flights, we’re going to take care of you having a co-working space, we’re going to take care of your apartment and you’re going to have forty people that you’re traveling with. 

I tell you man, that was one of the coolest experiences of my life. Four months, four different countries, the first time out of the US really, for a long-extended period, and then also I got a job with that company because I was so intentional about it. This is one thing I teach to a lot of people in my book, become a customer of the target company, right? You do the same thing, dude. Isn’t it funny how both of us are sitting here?

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, I was just going to say.

Jordan Carroll: With the same story, because it’s so powerful when you come from a customer perspective. You have so much more to offer the organization as far as feedback, as far as the connections that you can build, as far as the relatability; it becomes almost a formality, which is what my job interview—

By the time I had my job interview, it was a formality. I had people at the company already submitting my resumes for me. It was like, who is going to—I was a sales person of the program and it’s like, who is going to sell the program better than the guy who did it? So that was how I went about it, and then my travels continued after that.

I continue to travel since 2018. I’ve been on the road pretty much that entire time but the amount of time that I’ll stay in a place has differed. I actually got my residency in Mexico, and I’ve spent most of the past few years in Mexico, the whole pandemic I was there, about a year and a half in Mexico, in Playa Del Carmen.

And that’s become really the pseudo home for me as a home base and then, I go back and visit my family in California every once in a while, and then I have times like now where I’m in a different country, in Columbia checking things out and living with a friend.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: And it’s so cool man, I feel like I’ve known you throughout that journey.

Jordan Carroll: Yeah, from before.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: So deep watching you, following you. Yeah man, and we’ve shared so many conversations back and forth and you’re 100 percent right, man. I mean, I don’t think I was as intentional as you were as far as like, when I joined Scribe to write my book. I was more like, “Oh, this is going to be a great organization that’s going to help me get the story out so that I can move on and move forward with this.”

Because my whole thing was, I’m a good speaker, I want to become a great speaker. What’s going to get me there, and who can help me get there? In a way, doing what you did and like I said, I started working for Scribe just being community management role because it was just so fitting. I felt so welcome. 

It was so natural and at that time I, in a way, blew up my life. We moved down to Arizona after the pandemic. The timing of everything swirled and it feels like nothing is making sense but at the same time, when the dust settled, it does make sense. Like for you, I remember when you were just like, “Dude, I’m going to do this remote job coaching.”

“I think this is it, like I love this, I love helping people get their freedom that I feel now.” This was like 2019, maybe yeah, like 2019. I was like, “Bro, that’s dope, that’s where the world’s going.” What’s interesting is, we both didn’t, I mean, I didn’t have a remote job, per se; I still own my own business.

But once I started working with Scribe and developing my book, I realized, “Wow, how powerful is remote work?” Then obviously, the pandemic happened, and I was like, “Oh my God, Jordan’s biz is about to blow up, son.” Because we’re all remote now whether we like it or not, and I always hit you up to get some advice and whatever it was, man, you were always just on point.

I just love how things really transformed you, but you also were very intentional at the same time about that transformation. Man, every time I talk to you, every time I seek content, you’re very humorous about your work. You’re very, in a way, lighthearted. I know you’ve done standup comedy and things like that, and I feel it’s courageous putting yourself out there all the time, helping guide people. 

What do you think, and you talk about how you’re being shy at the beginning, especially growing up, what do you think gave you that confidence to really come out of your shell? And then now, in a way, really help guide, coach, and create courses for your work, what gives you this confidence? Especially around career paths, which I think is some of the hardest stuff. 

You really have to get to people and get to know how they think and where they could potentially thrive the best, and so how did you become so confident, I guess?

Jordan Carroll: You want to know the truth?

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I want to know the truth bro, always.

Jordan Carroll: Alcohol.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Oh okay.

Jordan Carroll: So…

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Talk to me about alcohol though, because I know.

Jordan Carroll: My initial transition from being the shy, quiet dude in high school that smoked a lot of weed, I like, I don’t know, I feel like I was like just socially inept in many ways, and the weed does not help. Weed just makes you more paranoid, makes you wonder what people are thinking about you, all that stuff. So I wasn’t helping myself out.

I got to college, it was a little bit more freedom. I was living in a dorm, I was in a new environment, nobody knew who I was. So the pseudo, I don’t know, just the way that I coped with that situation and decided to become a new person was by drinking a lot. That allowed me to come out of my shell and not worry about this anxiety that I have. 

Of course, when the drunk wears off, there’s even more anxiety about, “What the hell did I do?” and all this stuff. So the initial transition of my personality, I think, was actually really impacted by my drinking.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah man, thank you for your honesty bro, and I know you talk about that very openly. Again, this is where I get to follow you in a cool way because you’re very open about these experiences, but you also quit alcohol and you went sober. 

Jordan Carroll: I did.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: And you made that decision, you were very firm about it. I mean, you talk about it very freely, but just tell me a little bit about how that’s freed you, I guess, from that mental state and now to more freedom, more of yourself, right?

Jordan Carroll: Yeah dude, what’s interesting is I guess, the way that I think about it now is, at any point in time, we as humans are getting either further from ourselves by numbing our experiences and our emotions and our feelings, or we’re getting closer to ourselves by allowing ourselves to feel those things, accepting them, processing them and integrating them. 

What I recognize looking back was, the alcohol initially helped me to get out of my shell and it helped me to learn how to be more social, and it helped me to relate to other people and it helped me put on a mask and do all those things, but then eventually, I hit what I would consider to be a rock bottom of sorts, where I lost myself to the numbing. 

And it’s also come in the form of food and like anything that I could abuse, women, whatever. Like, I’ve had different times in my life where those things that I’ve been chasing were basically means to an end, to numb myself from the emotions and feelings that I had processed from traumas when I was a child.

We all have things that we’ve experienced when we were kids. Like nobody—obviously I know your story too, and I can’t even imagine the shit that would happen to a child being in a refugee camp, like you went through. So I look at my experience, I’m like, “Shit man, I finally have to do all this healing.”

I can’t imagine some of the healing you’ve been through, and it’s an interesting perspective to not always compare that, but just be like, “Hey, what are the things that I’m trying to constantly get away from?”

“What are the emotions and the feelings and the struggles and the things that in my mind are just constantly going on to the background that I need to feel like I need to numb from?” And so, when I made the intention to become sober, it was with the intention to actually heal these things and process them and actually learn who I was.

In that process, funny enough, that’s where I got the confidence because all of the false bravado I got from drinking was great in the moment to pretend that I was confident, but then when it got down to the actual looking myself in the mirror, understanding who I was, I didn’t. So now, I feel like I have a clear line of sight to what my true north is. 

I have a clear line of sight to what my actual—what resonates with me and what’s aligned to me, the people, the things that I am doing, the decisions I’m making, and I just feel like I have a much more innate sense of what that is, and from that place, I can most easily help other people as well.

Pass the Remote

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah man, I love that so much because yeah, you are 100 percent right. The more we heal ourselves, the more I feel like our purpose reveals itself in a way, and it’s a one force attracts the other. The more we rid ourselves of the things that numb us and lean into the things that, I guess in a way, challenge us, and take us out of our comfort zone or whatever. 

It’s like there’s a piece of ourselves that we find and it’s really powerful when you start piecing them together, which I think is a perfect segue into how you designed the theme of your book, which I love so much, man. The idea of taking the remote—which double entendre, I just love that so much—it is very poetic in a way, but you’ve taken the remote and then you are talking about the different aspects of a remote. 

Whether it’s the guide, whether it is moving forward or going backwards or hitting the info button, it makes perfect sense in how you laid it out into how people who are seeking, not only new work but new opportunity and new career paths, but to also the remote, just this idea of thinking about who you are, what you’re capable of, what your abilities are, and just really analyzing yourself and seeing what the future can hold for you. 

All of these things you package it in a way that’s really profound and easily readable, meaning I can really resonate with it. And then you forge it, this pathway to how we can land our next thing, these really competitive jobs, whether it be small processes like updating our LinkedIn stuff or bigger things like going to get some therapy and healing some things out. 

These are all very powerful, man, but what made you drive to that theme? What made it feel like, “Oh my god, this is it, this is the path that’s going to explain this process in which I teach?” 

Jordan Carroll: Yeah, fortunately enough, your team at Scribe was the main driver of that. I remember when we were doing some ideation and they came back with a few different titles, and they came back with a few different concepts. Together, we came up with the idea and then as we got more clear on, “Hey, what double meanings could we use?” 

It was like, “Oh, well we could make each of the buttons on the remote symbolize something for remote work. Oh, we could make each of the chapters symbolize something from like what you would do on a TV.” And it just continued to overlap. So I definitely can’t take too much credit for that because I think it was really the team who helped me brainstorm, and that’s what was really—I mean, the whole process with Scribe was great. 

They’re not paying me to plug this, but obviously you should. I wouldn’t have written my book if it was without Scribe. So I think all the different directions that they were interested, entertaining, and doing, I was like, “Hey, let’s think about it. Let me see a mockup, let me do this.” 

I think we ended up with three or four different concepts, and I did a couple of polls, initial polls on LinkedIn, and just getting—and I am pretty sure that they said not to do that but I was doing it because I wanted people to get excited. I think I already knew what I wanted to do because the one that was chosen the most was actually called Remote Control and not Remote For Life, and I was like, “No, I’m not doing that.” I just wanted people to get hyped that I am writing a book. 

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, but that’s so cool. I mean, you’re very inclusive of the audience that you share the content with, whether it be on YouTube or LinkedIn or wherever I see you. You are always asking questions or like thought-provoking, and then you’re always sharing what you are working on to get that feedback. Now, whether you’ve already decided or not, but to get something to resonate with a group of people is very powerful. 

It’s very moving. You also, I remember when we were talking, you were bouncing ideas of launching a kick starter, which you did, and again, it just shows the power in which, when you convey a message that resonates with a lot of people, you get the support of those people. 

So how is building an audience been for you now that you’ve launched your book and getting it out there, how has that been for you in circulating around that audience that you really seek to help? 

Jordan Carroll: Yeah, it’s been an interesting journey because there are so many different ways that I have built the audience. It’s been through videos, it’s been through my Facebook group, it’s been through emails, it’s been through Instagram. I have been trying to be super omnipresent on the Internet, like have profiles everywhere and just capture people wherever they are and bring them into my world.

I don’t know, it feels like, I feel like a blur, man. I remember the first place that my social media really took off was on LinkedIn back in 2017. I started creating LinkedIn videos and one of the big reasons for that was because they started doing native video, so you could actually upload a video to LinkedIn. There was a time where you couldn’t do that, you couldn’t upload a native video. 

What I realized was like okay, whenever there are these new features coming out on a platform, I should probably take advantage of those because that’s when they are going to push stuff out, that’s where short form is out right now, right? All these companies are competing on short form, so for me I’m like, “All right, well, my next move is really like how do I compete on YouTube in short form and long form?” Because I think those are going to be the really big things, and how do I repurpose that to TikTok and then get people from there? 

So dude, it’s been like trial and error. It’s been experimentation, it’s been throw as much crap on the wall as you can and just see what works and then try to double down on that, but try to also not get too stuck in thinking, like after you create content for a while and you have done this before, it’s like as you create content for a while, you just go through the motions. Sometimes you don’t re-evaluate, why am I doing this and then what am I getting out of it? And that’s how I felt about my podcast, for instance. 

That is how I felt about certain videos that I have been creating on YouTube. I was doing a couple of different series and it’s like no one is searching these series. I’m literally creating them just for myself pretty much, and the person.  They are getting 10 to 60 views, shit like that. So you’re constantly going between what can I do to play with this algorithm versus what can I do to create something that I want to create, and where is that? 

I view it as like a Venn diagram. It’s what’s working on YouTube versus the other circles? What am I interested in creating? Another circle might be, what does my audience want to hear? It’s finding the middle of all of these things and that is really where I think audience building could be tremendous, and I felt like this book was a new way to reach even more people, because there is a lot of stuff that I do from a coaching perspective that’s not accessible to people in different countries that don’t have the money. 

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I love that man, I think you’re right. I think building an audience is super powerful, and you, at this day and age, you got to really just choose one or two, and discover the ways that you can stand out within those opportunities. But also, you do this a lot. You provide tons of value, tons of ways for people to search out that new career path, figure out ways to get there, which I love. 

But, ultimately your book is a message. It’s a compounded message. What would you say that message is? What is it that you are trying to, I guess, show people in your book that is possible for them? What is that thing that you want to unlock within people seeking out those new career paths? 

Remote Mindset 

Jordan Carroll: A lot of it is around mindset. Just unlocking the new mindset of this is possible for me and I actually have a strategy, whereas most people when they are doing a job search, they are just opening their computer and just shooting all over the place like, “I should do this. I should do this. I should do this,” but not really knowing what it is that they need to do to have a predictable level of success. 

So I think it is giving them the tools certainly for that strategy, but also forcing them to reconsider where to start in a job search. And where to start is mostly with your ideal lifestyle and what it is that you actually want, because if you want to travel around the world and work remotely, that is going to be a very different job search than if you want to work from home in the US. There is a lot of different types of companies that will give you the ability to work from home in the US whereas there is not as many companies that are going to allow you to work from anywhere around the world. 

So that might impact whether or not you do a search for full-time remote work for distributing companies that hire anywhere or whether you go down the freelance route and pick up contracts and things like that. So that decision making process is important, but also just understanding what it is you want and then going through the mental exercise of believing. There are so many job seekers I talk to that are looking for the magic bullet of where I put my resume that gets me the job. 

What do I put in my LinkedIn that gets me the job? When their mindset is that, it is not going to work no matter what, and they don’t even realize it because it’s subconscious, so they are going into a job search thinking in the back of their mind, “This is not going to work,” yet they are asking me for the magic bullet of what to put on their resume. There is not. You need to believe in yourself. 

Hussein Al-Baiaty: There is a wall here. 

Jordan Carroll: First, you got to believe in yourself, then you got to pick what you want your lifestyle to be, then you need to pick companies that will allow you to live that lifestyle without you having to negotiate anything with them and then that is when you actually start the job search. 

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah. Well, and that’s the thing, right? It’s the negotiation, it’s the friction.  I think what you’re doing, what you’ve been really great at, is how do you reduce the friction between what you want, who you want to become, and really bridging those two for work that matters to you? I think your ability to take someone and say, “Okay, let’s just start with the mindset first, let’s break that down, where you’re at mentally and then let’s go further from there.” 

That’s really powerful man. I mean, you really broke down a system. Where do you see yourself growing this opportunity to? I know we were just talking before we hit record, your intention to go into universities and schools, how do you see those works unfolding in the future? 

Jordan Carroll: Yeah, well I would love this to be some type of curriculum in schools for sure, like you said. I have approached my alma matter about it, and I just think that there is a huge opportunity for people who are just getting out of school to learn about this kind of thing, really prepare them not only for a job search in general but I want people to understand where remote work is going and what true remote work looks like. 

So they can identify the type of remote company that’s going to allow them to live the lifestyle they want to live. Because even if you get a remote job, it doesn’t mean that life is all of a sudden fucking amazing. 

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Right. 

Jordan Carroll: You can get a remote job but it’s nine to five, they’ve got tracking software on your computer that’s seeing if you are online or not. You could work for one of those companies I guess, but most people want to have where the future of work actually is within asynchronous work, where people are just concerned about output. People are documenting everything. 

People are using templates to do the certain type of work that they need to do, and it’s just like there’s a better way to work where people don’t need to be online synchronously, they can get their job done and then they pass the project along to the next person and that’s the collaboration that occurs. You can go out in the middle of the day and go hiking for all anybody cares. It’s like I’m going to get those—

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, I’ll go walk my dog. 

Jordan Carroll: Yeah, like I am going to get that other hour back later in the day because that is a better time for me. So that’s really where I think the best remote companies are going to. I mean, that’s what the best remote companies do, is that they allow people to live the lifestyle they want to live without over-managing, without over-watching, without micro-controlling everything that they do. 

But you got to understand where remote has been and where it’s going, and that’s why I also talk about in the book is, what are we in store for and what are going to be the important themes to think about? I think most people don’t think about that, they just think about work from home and they just think about remote work as this blanket term when really, remote work means so many different things, and there’s literally zero standardization right now of what terms mean in remote work. 

Hussein Al-Baiaty: So powerful man, I’m living that right now, working with Scribe and unfolding my career path around publishing books and of course, podcasting, which I’ve just taken on this new role, right? I’m so vocal about not only what I want but what I believe can be enhanced, what I believe could be better and luckily for me, I knew I wanted to get into books when I started writing. 

I wanted to help other people bring their books to life which, having the conversations with you and you joining Scribe, that just means the world to me. There’s been other people that did that too and I think my goal is really interesting. I have been learning about our DNA and our heritage and what my next book is about and how we understand our own fears and creative fears, and how some of the fears that we feel aren’t necessarily ours and perhaps they’re our ancestors. Because a lot of that stuff gets transferred down to us. So for me, I realized I am a social human being. I love people, I love when people get excited about—

Jordan Carroll: You? Really? 

Hussein Al-Baiaty: When they get excited about their ideas and what they want to do, and I realized that I know for a fact, somewhere down the line in my ancestral heritage, there was a lot of people that worked around books and creating this idea of sharing knowledge. I feel so at home at Scribe because it just feels so natural to help this company grow, and they have this beautiful trust. 

That is of course around the leadership and the way they set things up but ultimately, you’re 100 percent right. Look for those opportunities that reduce the friction, that can get you to where you want to go, and you might have to go work for that company that you are a customer of. So maybe look out for something that you want to be a customer and work out their process, see where they can improve and offer yourself up to help with that. 

That is a great way to navigate the uncertainty of things, but I really appreciate your approach and how you’ve been able to grow. I love watching you grow man, it’s been awesome. What a journey. I know I’ve always referred people to you that are lost or seeking new opportunities, and you have always been able to help, so I appreciate that man. I want to say congratulations to you man, for writing a book. 

But you have also done something else to surprise me and of course, not really surprise but more like, “Yep, that’s who Jordan is.” You’ve been also helping refugees in a beautiful way around your work, and I know you give a small percentage of your work to helping refugees get work, which I think is very just, it is up there in my world, and I just appreciate that about what you’re doing, man. Can you tell me a little bit about your work with refugees? 

Jordan Carroll: Yeah, man, and I appreciate the recognition there and I know it is something that—it is actually, like I’ve told you in the past, it is something that you inspired me to do, because I was always trying to consider what would be a way that I could give back or what would be a way that I could just do more with what I’ve been given, what I’ve been so blessed to have myself, and within that, there was this really interesting opportunity to almost cross reference that with something that you also cared about. So it just became a very natural thing for me because I’d felt so inspired by you.

One of the biggest things that refugees struggle with is work. Not having work visas, not having an ability, not having a computer maybe, not having all of these things that maybe a lot of other folks will take for granted who are living in a very stable environment. Just imagine you were forced out of your home because of war or because of religious persecution or whatever the reason being. 

Then now all of a sudden, you have to flee somewhere but you have no way of making money, making a living, and so I see remote work as one of those things that’s an equalizer. It is a thing that, if used correctly and if we really leverage the full potential of remote work, it can be a place where refugees are able to gain dignified employment. That’s just huge. So there are a couple of organizations I work with. 

I’ve done volunteer work with my time, so I have done resume reviews, LinkedIn reviews, presentations, webinar type things where I’ll go in and talk to people. I have done a whole training series with one of the companies called Jobs for Humanity. So it is not only on the money donation side, which is about 10 percent of my profits of my business, but then also giving time when I can. 

That’s been more sporadic. There’s been times where I have been able to be more active on that and done full thirteen-week programs ,where I’m meeting with the refugees every single week and we’re learning English, and there is stuff like that where you really get to experience part of that, where it’s like man, it’s hard to imagine man. It’s hard to imagine for me personally. I know you went through it, so you can almost put yourself in some of those shoes, but I think it’s given me a perspective on humanity that I think I really needed as well. 

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah man, it’s beautifully said, and I just wanted to recognize your work beyond what you typically would do or typically what people would want to do. You really think things through, and you connected it from the beginning of your book, where you talk about just giving a huge shootout and thanks, and your gratitude for people that have come here before you, such as your ancestors, your grandfather.

All that good stuff to how you want to pass it onto people who are still coming here or traveling about wherever in the world, that you’re a resource to help them get the one thing that can move them forward, which is work, and so it’s very beautiful and commendable man. Thank you so much. Again, congratulations on this huge accomplishment of launching a book that I know for sure will help hundreds if not thousands and hopefully millions of people out there. 

Jordan, as always man, I always learn so much from you. Thank you for sharing your stories, your experiences with us today. The book is called, Remote For Life: How to Find a Flexible Job and Fast Forward to Freedom. Besides checking out the book, where can people find you? 

Jordan Carroll: Theremotejobcoach.com, my man, everything is on there and yeah, likewise. I appreciate you brother and so appreciative of our friendship and finally interviewing me, bro. It took me writing a book to get here, but I love it. 

Hussein Al-Baiaty: You got to earn it. 

Jordan Carroll: Yes sir. I earned it. 

Hussein Al-Baiaty: No, you did great and hope I did you and your work justice, my friend. 

Jordan Carroll: Yes sir. 

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Thank you.