How I Helped Someone Turn Their In-Person Job Into Full Remote Work and How You Can Too (DF#145)

Ryan Maruyama [00:00:00]:
You don't need for them to say yes to you years in the future. You just need them to say yes to you right now so that you can work tomorrow, not next year. And to me, it's the biggest bargaining chip that she had. Like they'd be able to overtly see that it's not a decision that they are making right now because they're getting a trial period because they can reevaluate later. They can make that decision later and they can just see what happens. Hello folks. And welcome back to degree free many years ago, maybe 20 15, 20 16, I was able to negotiate remote work and I was able to replicate those results again in 2024. This time it wasn't with me, but I helped somebody do the exact same thing.

Ryan Maruyama [00:00:50]:
So I know this works. I'm going to walk you through everything that I did to help this person negotiate their remote work setup. So they were in the office, they had a job and they wanted that job to go remote. I'm going to explain everything and how this person went and did this and what I told them so that you can do the same thing. Let me set the stage a little bit. I'm kind of the ask me your work questions guy. All my friends and family know what Hannah and I do for a living. When anyone has any questions, they usually come to me to ask about these things.

Ryan Maruyama [00:01:25]:
But also this person had the exact situation I had and knew that I was able to negotiate remote work. So they asked me for help. And if you want to ask Hannah and myself for help as well, go to ask that degree free.coforward/question to ask your question. We are going to be doing a Q and a session soon. So go to ask that degree free.coforward/question to ask your question. It'll be at the show notes, degree free.coforward/podcast. Just so I don't call this person, this person we're going to call this young lady, Jen and Jen's company just had a return to the office mandate as of May 1st, 2024. And I'm pretty sure that this episode is not even gonna come out before that.

Ryan Maruyama [00:02:12]:
So this was a notice that they gave them, like the beginning of the year or maybe in March or so that on May 1st, 2024, everyone has to come back to the office at least 2 days a week. And that's every single person in this large company. It's a multibillion dollar company, 1,000 or tens of thousands of people. I think it's just 1,000. I think it's like 10,000 plus in this company. And that was a letter from the CEO. She is now going fully remote with the stipulation that with enough notice she'll need to come into the office every once in a while. And she still has that ability.

Ryan Maruyama [00:02:50]:
And I'll explain her whole situation in a second, but I'd want to show you the result of this. The company that she works for is going back to the office as of May 1, 2024. And she on the other hand is going fully remote. Now every single person has to go in 2 days a week, at least return to the office. And she is going fully remote except for sometimes when she will have to come in. And that has a lot to do with her position. And I'll tell you why. But that's how powerful what I'm about to share with you is.

Ryan Maruyama [00:03:23]:
And hopefully you can do this for your own life. I mean, I was able to do this 9, 8 years ago, whatever it was. And I was able to replicate my results 8 years later today. I hope that you can learn something from this. Let's get into it. So her situation, she works in HR. She's a recruiter. She's moving away in May.

Ryan Maruyama [00:03:45]:
So she's leaving 100%. She has to go for personal reasons. She is moving away, and I'll just give a little bit of context. She's in Hawaii, which is where I'm from. Jen is moving to another island. You can't drive there. You have to take a plane, and there's really no equivalent in as far as on the mainland because you can drive everywhere. So I don't really know exactly how to equate that, but just know that, like, it's a big deal because she has to get on a plane to come back to the office.

Ryan Maruyama [00:04:16]:
So she's not going to be coming back to the office pretty much at all. So for her, she has to leave. She either has to get this remote work set up or she has to quit. Those are the only two options that she has. She really likes her job. And to be honest, the pay is pretty good considering her position and considering where she is, where she's located, which is in Hawaii. The wages in Hawaii for those that don't know are really, really bad. She really wanted to keep the job.

Ryan Maruyama [00:04:43]:
Well, a few months ago when she was finally sure that she was moving to another island, she was like, hey, Ryan. Can you help me figure out how I can possibly turn my job remote? Because I know that you've done it. They just came out with this mandate that says back to the office at least 2 days a week, and I need to circumvent that. I need to go around it. And so I was like, yeah, sure. Sounds good. I'll stop here and I'll say a key element to this story and to my story as well. And if you want to hear my story, it's all the way back in episode 25.

Ryan Maruyama [00:05:17]:
I'll put it in the show notes, degreefree.coforward/podcast. But a key element to this is that she got the buy in from her immediate supervisor first before she took it to the decision makers. And that was the exact same thing that happened to me. And I needed to get the buy in from my immediate supervisor, but actually, it's a little bit different. I'll just tell you the story here. I worked in a 2 person department at a very small company or at least bigger than the company that I run right now, but, you know, small in terms of how massive companies can get. There was, like, 50 people. I was in a 2 person department.

Ryan Maruyama [00:05:53]:
I was a very horizontal structure. When I negotiated my remote work, even though my boss said that he would never employ remote workers ever again. I needed to get the buy in of the other person in my department and the way that I sold it was actually that we would give her promotion. This color, Jill, my boss. We give her a promotion, so she managed me. And then I was underneath her. And then that would give us more layers underneath. And so Jill would end up managing me and Jill was like, yeah, that sounds good.

Ryan Maruyama [00:06:26]:
I'm totally fine with that. And so I got to buy in there. So I had somebody else to go to bat for me as well. When my boss was like, Hey, is work still going to be done? Is this feasible? Can we do this? She was like, well, yeah, I'm going to be a supervisor. It's totally fine. In that same vein, she already had a supervisor. So let's just call this her manager. I don't know what the actual title is.

Ryan Maruyama [00:06:46]:
I'm pretty sure it is manager, but we'll call them the manager. Jen had to get the approval of her manager and the manager was the one that would go to bat for her because what was different about her scenario versus my scenario, my scenario was a little different in that I actually brought my argument to the decision makers. I actually went to my boss, Bob, and I said, Hey, Bob, I need to go remote because I'm leaving. I'm moving to New York and this is just the way it's going to be, but here's how it's going to look. And I came in my proposal. I was able to speak to him face to face Jen, the person that I'm helping now, her situation is completely different in that she wasn't the person that was actually going to present her own argument. It was going to be the boss because Jen doesn't have meetings with her boss's boss or her boss's boss's boss or her boss's boss's boss's boss, because she's all the way down at the very bottom of the totem pole. I think she's always wrong on the totem pole, but she might be, like, one up.

Ryan Maruyama [00:07:48]:
She might be, like, a senior recruiter or something like that. But, you know, she's very, very far down in a $3,000,000,000 company or whatever the market cap of this company is. It's multiple billions, low single digit billions, but she was able to get the buy in and approval from her immediate manager. So the manager could go to bat for her and present this plan to the higher ups. That's a key element to both of these stories. So if you're doing this for yourself, just know that you have to do this very, very early is getting your manager's buy in and being like, hey, I am going to quit or I'm going to go remote. Do you support me? And then obviously you have to come up with a plan. I'm going to tell you how to come up with your plan right now.

Ryan Maruyama [00:08:32]:
That is a key element to the story. So as of this time in this story, Jen's not sure how far up the chain this thing is going to have to go. And that's what I was talking about before. It might go to her boss's boss, Jen's manager's boss, or it might go up, up, up, up because the back to the office mandate on May 1st is straight from the CEO, like straight from his office. And Jen is buried by about 5 layers of the CEO or the c suite guys. So she's freaking out thinking that this thing might have to go all the way up to the top because everyone else is back to the office except for her. But anyway, getting your immediate managers buy in is critical. And like I said, her proposal had to be in writing.

Ryan Maruyama [00:09:21]:
She wasn't actually presenting her case, like how I did, which in a lot of ways is a lot more nerve wracking, I think, because you don't have any control over how to sell it or how to pitch it. What ended up happening? I'm skipping around in the story a little bit, just so that you have the full idea of what happened and I'm filling in the gaps here and there. But what happened is that her boss, her manager had to present the proposal to the decision makers. And then that decision maker wasn't actually the decision maker and that person had to send up that proposal to their boss. So it didn't get up to the CEC suite level, but it did get right below them. Jen is one layer manager, the manager's boss. And so I was like 4 layers right before the C level guys. It really did go up all the way up the chain.

Ryan Maruyama [00:10:14]:
And so it was a little nerve wracking for her being like, wow, I can't even present my case. I can't even fight my case. I can't present my argument in a way that I would present my argument. The only thing that I can do is write a well crafted memo and make sure that my argument is really clear on this thing. That's where we're at in the story. We have to write a memo and we have to write a proposal of what is this going to look like and why would they do this? Because they literally just said everybody back to the office. So a couple of weeks ago by. She is drafting up her document.

Ryan Maruyama [00:10:49]:
She's drafting up her proposal and she's like, Hey, can I put a meeting on your schedule? And can we go over this? I'm like, sure. That's fine. She sends me over the document for me to read before our meeting. It's her proposal. And when she gives me this document, I'm just going to be very honest. It was very bad. I didn't tell her like that, but I did tell her that I wouldn't approve it if I were in charge, if I were in charge and I was the decision maker and she gave me that document, she gave me that proposal. I would have been like, no, absolutely not.

Ryan Maruyama [00:11:22]:
This is ridiculous. The document that she gave me was similar to a resume, just to explain it to you really quickly about like what this looked like and why it was bad. It had the proposal at the top, kind of similar to a summary statement or an objective statement on a resume. I want to get this job because I am a professional in this industry because of all of my experience and all the things that I did. So very similar instead of that objective statement or summary statement, it was just a proposal. I am moving to this Island and I need to go remote as of this date. And here's why. So there was a proposal at the top and a few bullet points of the stats she did while she was at the company and kind of similar to your job history.

Ryan Maruyama [00:12:09]:
And then at the end, there was an essay at the bottom, an essay of why she thought that she deserved to go remote. And I'll go over each section really quickly about why it was bad and what it looked like, just so that you can avoid these same mistakes. The proposal was actually very good. The proposal literally just said, this is what I'm doing, and this is what I'm doing it by. This is what I propose. Perfect. Awesome. The bullet points was really terrible because yes, she had statistics, which we suggest everybody do for pretty much any document, especially when trying to sell people like your resume should have a bunch of different bullet points on there that have a bunch of statistics, like raised revenue by 6%.

Ryan Maruyama [00:12:58]:
Whatever, whatever, whatever. She had all of these types of things. Remember her job, her job as a recruiter. She put in all these people that she onboarded and that was good, like 50, whatever people that she onboarded hundreds of applications she goes through. That was all good. And that's fine. She started to talk about how she knows the company culture so well, how she's so ingrained in it and how she can filter people out for company culture and things like that. And then she's mentioned something about an internship program.

Ryan Maruyama [00:13:33]:
It was all convoluted. There was like 7 different points that she was trying to make and all these bullet points. And then I wasn't clear about what her argument is. Like, what is your unique value to this company? And why should I let you go remote? I mean, I'm just thinking like as the boss. And then at the essay at the bottom was absolutely terrible because of the way that it was written. It was, 1, it was way too long. The essay was, like, 7 paragraphs, and each paragraph was a block of text like this freaking big. And you just looked at it, and you're like, I'm not gonna read this.

Ryan Maruyama [00:14:09]:
Like, I'm just not gonna read this. I had to force myself to read it because it's all in, like, corporate speak. And I was just, this is absolutely terrible. Nobody's going to read this thing. One of the things that I had to tell her is like 1, 2 pages is too long. She said that she knew that she said that from her boss, the bosses said, after I said that 2 pages is too long, it should be 1 page. She said that, yeah, you're right. Because my boss said that I should come up with a proposal that's 1 page.

Ryan Maruyama [00:14:40]:
And I was like, exactly. And she's just like, yeah, but it's so difficult to come up to condense all of this to 1 page. It's so important that they know all these things is like, this is so important to me. This is the most important thing in my life right now. And I was, yeah, I completely hear you. And I agree with you that it is the most important thing in your life right now. You still got to keep it to 1 page because nobody's going to read what it is. It's and it's my opinion that the reason why we write something is so that other people read it and it could just be you in the future.

Ryan Maruyama [00:15:12]:
Or like that's my opinion. I don't know if that's true. I think that we write so that later on someone will be able or would want to read it. And if that's the case, then we should make it readable for these people. How can they know your argument if they don't even read it? How can they know your argument if they look at it? And they're like, this is crap. Like I'm not going to read this thing. This is huge. So long story short, keep it to 1 page.

Ryan Maruyama [00:15:38]:
Another thing that I was telling her is that schools, she went to college and she graduated. She was a communications major, right? Like I'm using air quotes here because she was obviously terrible at communicating or at least in really written form. The way that schools teach you to write is terrible. They teach you like, okay, you need to write an essay. You need to write 6 paragraphs. Each paragraph needs to have 4 to 7 sentences and have 10 to 20 words in it, something like that. And then each paragraph is just a block of text this big. And then the next paragraph is a block of text this big.

Ryan Maruyama [00:16:17]:
And then you have one idea in the first paragraph. You have one idea in the second paragraph. You have one idea in the 3rd paragraph or what's even worse. And if you've gone to school, even high school teaches you how to do this, you know what I'm talking about. It's even worse is the 5 paragraph essay. It's like the intro paragraph. This is what I'm going to be talking about. Then you have your first point.

Ryan Maruyama [00:16:36]:
If your second point, if your third point, and then you have your summary paragraph, Like that's an actually terrible, terrible way to write. And I didn't find this out until recently, like within the past 4 years, I didn't figure this out. And I just, cause I have to write so much for a living. Now I have to write a lot to make these episodes and I have to write a lot to get people to do things like get people to buy things after you write a lot, to communicate ideas to people. I have to write a lot to make sure that they understand what I'm saying. Well, it wasn't until recently that I figured this out and I told her, I was like, Hey, we've got to shorten this up. We have to do a bunch of things here. We have to shorten it up.

Ryan Maruyama [00:17:12]:
We have to give the readers a little bit more space to breathe. Like, white space is good on a paper. Even if you don't change anything, you don't delete any words, which I suggested that she did. I suggested that she do most of it. You can just go to the end of one of those sentences within the 4 to 7 sentences, and you just press enter, and that little breathing room makes it so much more readable and makes it so much easier for somebody to understand your point because they're actually going to read the document. So to sum that up, if this is the most important document of your life of her life at that time, then wouldn't you want to make it so that people will actually read it and people will actually be able to understand your argument rather than them looking at a wall of text and then just skimming it and be like, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And I didn't tell her this, but another thing that you can do instead of that is even if you want us to keep those little walls of text, just putting a little bit of a subheading first. Makes a whole world of difference.

Ryan Maruyama [00:18:21]:
The first part is like, this is how great I am at being a recruiter. That's the subheading. This is how great I am at this internship thing. That's a subheading. This is how great I am about knowing the company culture. That's that this is how great I am about this. And you can just go down and create subheadings. Even that gives you a little bit of time to breathe and gets the reader in this frame of mind to absorb what is about to be said and what they are about to read to backtrack a little bit.

Ryan Maruyama [00:18:48]:
I was talking to her and I was telling her. I don't know why I would approve this thing. I don't know why I would say yes to you. Really what you're trying to do here is you're trying to be special because literally on May 1st, they are telling you that everybody in the entire company has to go back into the office at least 2 days a week. And you are not going to be doing that because you are going to be living a plane ride away out of every single person in the company. You are literally going to be special. And that is what you're asking for. And I don't understand reading this document, why you are special.

Ryan Maruyama [00:19:27]:
You are just saying a lot of things and you're not making any arguments clear. You're saying I'm a recruiter. I do this internship thing. I know about the company culture and none of those arguments you go into much depth. It's a lot of breath. You're like, look how great I am. I told her, I said, I don't see why I couldn't just hire somebody else to do this. That would just come into the office like everyone else.

Ryan Maruyama [00:19:51]:
I told her she had to figure out why she was unique to the company. She needed to figure out the unique value that she and she alone brought the company. She had an answer off the bat, but I thought about this a little bit more for people that are struggling with this. If you are working in an environment where you're really not sure how you're unique, the honest of the answer is that you have to become unique and you have to do something. So for her, it was this internship program that we're going to talk about in a little bit. For me, when I was trying to become remote, I was the person that automated this system, and I created this entire new accounting system for our company. I was the person that upkept it, and I knew how to do it because I invented it. I knew how long it would take to train somebody else to do it because I invented it.

Ryan Maruyama [00:20:45]:
If you do not know how you're unique one, go and become unique, figure out how you can take on more responsibility than nobody else has. And that is like mission critical stuff, or at least mission critical enough for that department. And you're like, okay. Yeah, I see it makes sense. You're good. Now, if you're in this situation where you really truly aren't differentiated from everybody, you're going to be fighting an uphill battle here. The way that I thought about it here when I was thinking, okay, if I had to have her hone in on one thing and she didn't already know what that thing was, The advice I would give her is to look at how your leaving would cost the company pain. So we know from behavioral psychology that people experience pain, the loss of something more than they experienced the gain of something like reward.

Ryan Maruyama [00:21:37]:
If you can figure out how you leaving is going to cause the company pain and why they should let you become remote and stay remote, stay on and not cause the company pain and save them that pain, they are much more likely to do it. And that is your unique selling proposition. And even though it might be that your job isn't differentiated, but if you can make the argument that, Hey, this is what I do. This is what I do. And all those three points, everybody else in your apartment does too. But if you're just able to say, well, you really don't want to have to hire somebody. It took me 8 months to train up in this position. It took Sandra 5 months to train up at this position.

Ryan Maruyama [00:22:20]:
It took Robbie 8 months to train up in this position. You really don't want to spend 8 months of productivity down the tubes to train somebody else. So why don't we just let me go remote that right there. If you sell it correctly, that could be your unique selling proposition, even though you're not really differentiated in any way. But my number one advice is to be differentiated is to be unique. And that's the real of the entire matter. Like you have to be unique enough, have enough unique responsibility and be able to communicate that unique value you have to them for them to say yes to you. Not only do you have to have the unique responsibility, but do you have to have the communication skills to communicate that unique value to them as well? Like I said, we found out and we're about to find out in the story, she had unique value.

Ryan Maruyama [00:23:10]:
She did. She just didn't know how to communicate it. That is the second part of the skill, which is what I'm going to teach you today, which is what we're talking about here. Very simply, if you're just like everyone else, then they could just go and hire someone else. So when we were talking about the uniqueness thing, like she already knew where she was unique, the company has an internship program that has high visibility with the C level suite with the C level guys. And she ran that internship program alone. Remember she is an HR. She's actually a recruiter.

Ryan Maruyama [00:23:41]:
So she does her recruiting things. Or she onboards a lot of people. She interviews a lot of people. She screens a lot of people. She does all of that, but everyone else in the HR department does that as well. But she has a project as well. Along with her other duties, she has this one project and it is running the internship programs for the summers. When she looked at that responsibility, not from a HR recruiter thing, but more from like a project manager of this thing, she was the only person that hired all the interns onboarded them, followed up with them, went through the applications, created the job descriptions.

Ryan Maruyama [00:24:19]:
That was her project. Nobody else helped her with it. The manager that helped her that it's helping her. The manager had oversight of the entire thing. She, yes, no to a bunch of things. But as far as actually hands on boots on the ground doing it, she was the only person that did it. And she knew from the conversations that she was lucky to have with the C suite guys, when she had that opportunity, that they really cared about this internship thing. And and I'm gonna pause for a second.

Ryan Maruyama [00:24:49]:
This is happening more and more. The internship programs are starting to come up more and more and more. And really, eventually they're not even gonna be internships. They're going to be more like apprenticeships on the job training. They're taking more and more people straight out of high school. They're taking more and more people straight from the source because they have these college programs, which is what she's talking about here. The college programs, the people that they're hiring is bad. It's not doing well.

Ryan Maruyama [00:25:18]:
The reason why they like it, maybe I'm speaking out of time, but it's okay. I'm not telling you where she works or who this person is. So it's fine. The reason why they like this internship program, the college one specifically is because it looks good to the community, but they don't really hire anybody from it. They just looks good to the community. It puts their brand forward, Goodwill into good faith, gets their name name out there more like, look at all the good that we're doing in the community. We're helping people learn more, educate them and all that, but they don't actually hire anybody from it. The people that they hire are straight out of high school with the internship program.

Ryan Maruyama [00:25:53]:
She did this along with her main duties, like I talked about. And so I asked her, so she brought it up to me when I'm sitting here thinking you're talking about an internship program. We're talking about practice. What are we talking about here? And so I had to ask her, like, is this important enough to be the selling point? Because the problem, if you think back before, what I told her is that I don't see why you're unique and I don't see why I would approve this because I don't understand what you're saying to me. I don't understand the thing that you're trying to sell me. And I said, okay, we're going to hone in on one thing. Because when we're trying to sell somebody, we're just going to go after the thing that they care about most. And we're just going to tackle that domino.

Ryan Maruyama [00:26:34]:
And if we can tackle that one domino, then the rest of it doesn't matter. The rest of it doesn't matter if we just tackle the biggest domino of like, okay, well, why you, why are you unique? And so you should only sell one thing in this proposal is what I told her. And then she was like, yeah. And that's why she was telling me, well, it's so difficult to condense it all down from 2 pages to 1. I was like, it's not, you're gonna talk about one thing. She's yeah, but I do like 7 other things in my job. I recruit all these people, all these HR stuff. Right? I deal with inbound and all this stuff.

Ryan Maruyama [00:27:05]:
And I was like, yeah. But everybody else at the company does that everybody in your position, every other recruiter in HR does all of those things. That's just table stakes. That's just pulling up to the table. And like, this is what we're dealing with in order to be an HR person in order to be a recruiter, specifically, you have to do all of those things. Why are you going to talk about that? You talk about the one thing that they really care about. You make your argument super clear to them and you talk about one thing. Is this one thing really, really important enough to them? Is it really painful enough that if you were gone and them having to hire somebody else really quickly and then train them up to do it, or your boss having to take it over? Is it really going to be sore for them? Long story short, she said, yes.

Ryan Maruyama [00:27:53]:
And I was like, okay. So I told her all in on that one point, we're going to talk about the internship program and nothing else. Make it clear that if you leave that no one else is going to be able to administer this thing because nobody else does at this moment in time, all of that institutional knowledge is just gone. All of it has gone and nevermind the institutional knowledge, but the actual of Lee, like doing it, putting the job descriptions out, screening the candidates, hiring them, making sure that they're on track, filling out whatever paperwork they have to fill out and then conducting their exit interviews at the end of the summer. All of that stuff somebody else would have to do. This is how we need to stack the cards in our favor. It helps that this internship program starts in June. So the prep for everything, plus the recruiting and onboarding is happening right now, as I record this, and this is going to come out maybe next week.

Ryan Maruyama [00:28:47]:
I think it's happening right now. So she would have to give her 2 week notice and she would be basically out the door. Cause she's like finding other jobs already. And they would have to hire somebody and try to train them really quickly and try to switch over all the knowledge that's in her head to somebody else within 2 weeks, which is probably not going to get done. So that will just be left high and dry and have to hire someone quickly and risk them not doing it correctly. That's the one thing we're going to go all in on the internship program because that's what they care about. And that's the only thing that you think makes you unique about this company. And that's the thing that they care about the most.

Ryan Maruyama [00:29:24]:
She said, okay, we're going to do it. Then she asked one last question before we let off the phone, before she edited it. And she goes, do you think I should put a trial period in? And I said, yes, absolutely. I forgot to mention it at first, but trial periods is the ultimate secret weapon When you're trying to negotiate these types of things, especially like something like remote work, she didn't have a trial period in the proposal. From her perspective, it makes sense. Like she's not trying to get a trial of this thing that she wants to work. Does she want to keep her work into the future for years years years to come? But the problem is, is that really you don't need them to say yes to you working at the company for years years years to come. You really just need them to say yes to this one thing, which is you remaining to be at the company right now.

Ryan Maruyama [00:30:14]:
And so you need to make as de risked and as good of an argument, as sweet of a deal as possible for them to say yes to you. I was like, yes, we need to add in the trial period if you're willing to do that. And I thought back to my own experience. That's exactly what my boss said to me. I forgot to bring it up in my own experience when I was doing this 8, 9 years ago. I went to my boss and when I explained my unique value and I said, okay, this is why this is what it looks like. Here's my proposal, whatever, whatever he says, okay, well, I'm going to agree to it. If we can agree that in 3 months we evaluate this thing.

Ryan Maruyama [00:30:55]:
And if this is not working, we go separate ways. And I said, yeah, absolutely. That sounds really good. I literally wish that I had thought of it myself. Long story short to wrap a bow on what happened to me 3 months later, we didn't even need to have that conversation because it was working so well. I ended up working for that company for like another year and a half before we split ways for her. We talked about it and she agreed that makes sense. Because I told her that I was like, you don't need for them to say yes to you years in the future.

Ryan Maruyama [00:31:22]:
You just need them to say yes to you right now so that you can work tomorrow, not next year. And to me, it's the biggest bargaining chip that she had. Like they'd be able to overtly see that is a, not a decision that they are making right now. Because they're getting a trial period because they can reevaluate later. They can make that decision later and they can just see what happens. Hey there. I hope you're enjoying this episode of the degree free podcast. At degree free, we wanna help everyone thrive and succeed without needing a college degree.

Ryan Maruyama [00:31:56]:
And the only way to truly reach everyone is with your help. If you're getting value out of this episode or if this is your second, 3rd, or 4th episode that you're tuning into, if you could just ship this to a friend, just click that one button and share it with someone in your contacts or on your stories. It would mean the world to us. And more importantly, get our message out to more people who need help getting out of their current situation. If you could do that right now, that would mean a whole lot. All they have to do is say yes now, and if they wanted to change their minds in the future, they can do so. It's interesting that that works because when you think about employment, you can be let go at any time. Like you can just be let go at any time.

Ryan Maruyama [00:32:38]:
In my view is a trial period, but spelling it out overtly to them was going to be a huge deal. Like, and I I knew it and she knew it too, which is why she brought it up. It just derisks everything about the entire situation Because the same thing they're thinking like, oh my gosh. Like, what if this doesn't work out? Here we are. We're left high and dry. She's gonna be crappy, and we can't get rid of her, but, like, of course they can get rid of her. And it was like, oh, man. But instead, oh, well, let's just do it for a set period of time.

Ryan Maruyama [00:33:09]:
And then later on, we're going to reevaluate. And then somebody's like, oh, okay. Yeah. Let's totally do that because I'm not really making a final decision right now. I'm actually not making a final decision right now, which is why if you look at your ever sign up for like software or like a service of some time, like an ongoing service or like a gym membership, they give you free trials because they're making you make one decision now. And you're thinking to yourself, well, okay. I don't actually have to make the decision until later, but really the likelihood of you making the decision to stay with whatever it is that it is, is much higher because you've kind of already made the decision. You've said that this is a good enough idea for whatever this is and same, the same exact concept here.

Ryan Maruyama [00:33:57]:
You know, we're hoping that in the future, when they do reevaluate, she knocked it out of the park and there's a, yeah, this is really working out. Yeah. Go ahead. Stay on please. So long story short, she made the edits, the format of this thing largely stayed the same. The format of the document, it was still the proposal at the top, the proposal statement, bullet points, and then an essay at the bottom. And it wasn't really an essay. It was just like a few paragraphs now, but the content, the content was completely different.

Ryan Maruyama [00:34:24]:
It focused on one thing. And that one thing was that she was the only person in the entire company that did an administered the internship program. She gave the statistics of the work she had to do to administer that program. I made it clear that if she left, it would be difficult to find someone else to replace her. She mentioned one statistic of her actual HR recruiting job. She mentioned 1, and that was a bottom of her bullet points. And it was that statistic that we talked about earlier. This is how many people I hired.

Ryan Maruyama [00:35:00]:
And she kept that one statistic on there. Obviously that didn't differentiate herself from anyone else. So she just mentioned one line, but everything else was just about the internship, even though largely her job. Isn't really the internship program. Her job is the recruiter. She is a recruiter and that's what she does all year round. But she was just talking about this one project because that is the thing that differentiated herself from everybody else. I am beating a dead horse here because I can't stress enough how important that is.

Ryan Maruyama [00:35:32]:
Like just giving them a reason why I'm presenting your value in a unique way and making sure that you're presenting your argument in a way that they are going to understand it. When she gave the proposal back to me, it was much, much better, like much, much better. Her argument was incredibly clear. I should be treated differently because the company cares about this internship program. And I am the sole person that administers and fulfills this program. That was her entire argument. And it was laid out in everything. Boom.

Ryan Maruyama [00:36:06]:
That was it. And then she had to go into like the trial period and she had to elaborate on like what that looks like and what the timeframe is and everything like that. But that was it. It was I'm unique because of this. And the trial period will look like this. It's not a risky proposition for you because I'm suggesting a trial period. I'm suggesting that at the end of the year, we come together to reevaluate and see if this makes sense. That was the entirety of her argument.

Ryan Maruyama [00:36:35]:
And fast forward to the end of the story, it got approved. Jen's boss took it to her boss and then her boss took it to her boss and it got approved. What was the elements here really? And so what's the takeaway? Well, how can you use this in your own life? Well, the very first one, and I'm just honest here, this is what I did, and this is what she did. And this is what I think is the most effective is she was willing to walk away from the job. She had an ultimatum on the table. She was leaving no matter what. I'm not saying that that's a good idea for you, but for me, that's how I did it. I had a life scenario that brought me to New York.

Ryan Maruyama [00:37:21]:
She has a life scenario that left the island. Both of us, we were leaving regardless. It didn't matter what they said. You couldn't keep me. If you paid me more money, I'm leaving the, having the willingness and you're going to walk away is huge. So that's the first thing, right? Willing to walk away from the job. 2nd, she found out how she was unique or rather if you don't know how you're unique figure, how you staying at the company is going to save them pain. Think about how painful for the company it's going to be.

Ryan Maruyama [00:37:57]:
If you leave that reason, whatever reason that you're coming up with there, that's the thing that you're going to talk about. That's the one thing that you're going to be talking about. And that one thing leads me to my next point of how to make this clear for you. She made one clear argument and focus on that. And that was the exact same thing that I did. I was an accountant. I had a bunch of different responsibilities, like a bunch of different responsibilities. It just so happened that 2 of those responsibilities, I was the only person that did in the company.

Ryan Maruyama [00:38:27]:
So I was able to talk about 2 things. But, you know, her, she only did one unique thing. So she just talked about one thing. Figure out how you are unique and make that one clear argument. And so for me, that one clear argument, instead of like, Oh, well I am unique because of these two things, mine was just completely just, I am unique because it is going to suck for you if I leave because I know that it sucked when I had to learn all this stuff. And that was a clear enough argument because of those two things that I was able to present to him and then be like, yeah. That would suck. For them, same thing.

Ryan Maruyama [00:39:05]:
It was just, oh, it's going to suck if I leave because then these interns that are coming on in the next month or so or in the next 2 months And the program that needs to get started and hire all these people, you're gonna have to find somebody to do that really quickly, or we're gonna have to shove that onto somebody else's plate if I leave. And they're like, yeah, that would suck. How about you do it? And then, yeah, that sounds good. That's what I was talking about. And then the last thing is that is the trial period and the trial period is going to reevaluate at the end of the year. For me, it was 90 days for her. It's the end of the year, whatever makes sense for your company. There's 2 more things that I want to talk about real quick.

Ryan Maruyama [00:39:44]:
I just wanted to touch on really quickly is the actual proposal. You have to have a plan. You have to have some sort of proposal to tell them like, look, they're going to have a bunch of questions of like, what is the actual day to day of this whole thing going to look like? You want to go remotely, but what does that mean? Because you're not remote right now. And so I don't understand what that means. Or if you are hybrid, like how she was like, okay, what does that mean? She was able to give an outline, a specific plan saying, okay, I am going to go fully remote, but I will be back whenever you need me to be back. And for this internship program, I think it required like 4 days or something like that for actual events where they bring all of them together. There's like a beginning one, a middle one, a middle one, and an end one. Because, like, each program is only the summer, so it's, like, at the beginning ceremonies, the closing ceremonies, and then a couple of different things in between.

Ryan Maruyama [00:40:39]:
And so it's just like for those 4 events, I will be back. I will come back here, and I will administer it, and I'll make sure everything's set up and do the whole shebang. For you, you just have to figure out what that means as well. For me, I was fully, fully remote. I moved from California to New York, and, like, I was not flying back. I didn't make enough money to fly back. For me, I said, okay. Well, we're gonna have a standing meeting on Tuesdays Thursdays at 2 o'clock or whatever it was.

Ryan Maruyama [00:41:07]:
Every Tuesday Thursday, the 3 of us, the head honcho, the owner, my senior now, and me, we're going to have a standing meeting. We're going to do these meetings an hour 90 minutes every Tuesday Thursday, instead of having these impromptu meetings every single day, every single day. Hey Ryan, can you come up here? Hey Ryan, can you come up here? Hey Ryan, can you come up here? We did that standing meeting instead. And there was like, yeah, you know what? Actually, that makes a lot more sense. And that way we can get more work done. I was like, yeah, we should have been doing this the entire time. But anyway, you have to have a proposal there for them so that when they think about like, okay, what does that look like? They're not wondering. They know exactly you've spelled it out for them.

Ryan Maruyama [00:41:48]:
And I didn't touch on that because that's up to you. I don't know how your department works. I don't know how what your work looks like. You just have to figure out something and go with it. The best thing that I would say about that is remember the key element and I didn't bring it up in the recaps. I'll bring it up here. One of the key elements is to get your immediate supervisors buy in. So if you can get your immediate supervisors buy in, which you're going to need, regardless whether you rope them in to help you sell it or whether or not you need their approval to get the yes, if you can rope in your immediate supervisor or at least your coworkers, they can help you formulate a plan to execute this thing.

Ryan Maruyama [00:42:31]:
You can be like, what do you think about me doing meetings, standing meetings on Tuesdays Thursdays, right? For me, I needed to have my immediate supervisor also have that on her schedule as well. So it impeded the owner of the business and it also impeded my direct supervisor, but both of them were on board with it. And same thing with this person, same thing with Jen. She needs to figure out with her supervisor what makes the most sense. Okay. Well, this day and this day in the, in the office or this day and this day and this day in the office, whatever it is that is really important. And so getting your immediate supervisor on board can help you with that proposal. Now, the last thing, not talking about the future, you've successfully turned your not remote work job to a remote job.

Ryan Maruyama [00:43:17]:
And you have this trial period because that's why they're going to say yes to you. They're going to say yes to you because you've de risked the entire situation. You've said I am going to do my best. I am going to knock this out of the park and we are going to reevaluate in 3 months. We're going to reevaluate at the end of the year. Now it is your task to knock it out of the park. You gotta, gotta, gotta do a good job. If you don't do a good job, when it comes time to reevaluate, they're going to be like, you know what? This isn't working out.

Ryan Maruyama [00:43:49]:
We're good. But if you knock it out of the park, you start taking on more responsibilities are doing a better job. You become even more productive. Now that you're remote, they're going to see my hand. This is really working out. Okay. Awesome. Yeah.

Ryan Maruyama [00:44:01]:
Let's keep, we doing this. Let's keep this going. Like I said, for me in my own situation, 90 days, we were supposed to reevaluate. We never had that discussion. We just never had that discussion because it was clear to them and it was clear to me that we didn't need to have that discussion because I was doing my work and I was doing a better job and I was doing just as good of a job as I was when I was in the office. And that's what I told her. I said, look for you. You have got to knock it out of the park.

Ryan Maruyama [00:44:30]:
Now, whatever that means. I hope that she takes that too into consideration. I think she will obviously take that into consideration and she knocks it out of the park for her own sake so that she could keep this awesome gig and work remotely. That is how to turn your job. That's not remote into a remote job. And I know this works. I know this works because I did it and I have replicated my results now. And so I know that you can do it too.

Ryan Maruyama [00:44:58]:
If you have any questions, go to ask that degree free.coforward/question and ask your question there. And leave a comment on YouTube. Let me know if you use this in your own life. Let me know if you've ever negotiated remote work and whether or not it was successful or not. What did you say? I want to know because this was huge. This is a huge w for her own life. And I'm stoked for her. I'm so glad that she is now able to do the things that she wanted to do without getting her income disrupted and without getting her life really disrupted.

Ryan Maruyama [00:45:30]:
I mean, she's moving to an entirely different Island. She doesn't know anybody there, things of that nature, and she's moving in to a new place. She had to handle all of those things. Now she doesn't have to do one of the biggest things, which she doesn't have to find a new job. And then also she gets to keep a pretty good paying job as it is. So this was life changing for her. And so if you've done this as well, I want to know, go to YouTube and let me know in the comments, remember to give us a rating. Hannah should be back.

Ryan Maruyama [00:45:57]:
If not next week, the week after that, we've got a bunch of things we have to go over. But that's pretty much it for this week, guys. Aloha.