Well our stay in Córdoba is officially in the books and we’re now rounding the final turn into Buenos Aires for our last month of Remote Year. Here´s my video recap for the past month:
And here is the month told in photos:
Overall I’ve had a really productive month in Córdoba. Last month was previously my all-time best sales month for Pagely and I just beat it this month. Córdoba is a college town with not a ton of cultural stuff but an active nightlife scene. Highlights of stuff we did this month included:
- Getting to see my brother
- Getting to see my Dad win a prestigious award in Phoenix and to have home-cooked meals while home.
- Getting to speak at PressNomics 5. My talk on remote work below and slides and links here:
- Learning how to grow miniature aromatic herb gardens in an urban setting then incorporate those in making exotic cocktails.
- Learning how to make empanadas from scratch at a house in the countryside.
- Visiting the Umepay commune in the countryside outside of Córdoba and learning how to make vegan beet ice cream (amongst other culinary creations).
- Leading a “Start With Why” workshop at the Junction event and getting awesome insights from 14 of my fellow Remotes.
- And my favorite, visiting the Proyecto Caraya monkey sanctuary to gather content before our Charity Makeover event for them last weekend. They had no site prior to last Saturday and 14 of us volunteered an entire day to work together to build them a crowdfunding site and remake their digital presence from scratch. We were also able to implement some basic accounting processes and a CRM system for them to streamline how they recruit volunteers and manage communications with donors and on-premise visitors. Read about how we changed the game for them in a day and watch the video Eddie made for them that tells their story in 1min below:
Work update
Work-wise as I mentioned our small sales & marketing team at Pagely killed it this month. We’re firing on all cylinders with Rod ramping up lead flow, Chad doing qualifying and appointment setting, myself conducting sales calls with prospects and Kirill taking the handoff on new customers to ensure successful onboarding. The big news is that I have approval to recruit someone to replace me in the capacity of sales person so I can move up stack into a VP of Sales role and focus on growing and supporting our sales force while placing more emphasis on refining and expanding the Leviathan automated sales followup AI I created. The prerequisite to this change is me reworking our comp plan to account for everything we’ve learned in v1 and make it support our revenue objective for this year.
Gear recs
As far as gear I’m liking this month, I’ve gotten exceptional value from these items:
- These in-ear noise-cancelling headphones are awesome. The workspace this month was nice but it was particularly noisey. With these headphones though I’m able to switch from my normal Apple earbuds and it’s like having ear plugs in that also play music.The bass output on these is just fantastic and at $24 for a pair they’re an incredibly good value. It’s nice to know you always have the capability to zone out and work effectively wherever you are despite a noisy environment.
- This multi tool has come in handy a few times this month. It’s basically a half-sized Leatherman and has everything you might need with a screwdriver, a blade, can opener, leather punch, etc.
- Simple zip ties actually make great ad hoc luggage locks. I consolidated down to just my hiking pack earlier this month when I was back home in Phoenix but unfortuantely left my luggage lock on the bag I shed. I had brought large zip ties though and these are arguably just as good as a deterrent for keeping would-be thieves from rummaging through your bags while in transit (especially now that all TSA-friendly locks are compromised now that someone uploaded the CAD file to 3D-print the master key).
Music-wise these are some of the songs that will forever remind me of this month:
I don’t know that I’d want to live in Córdoba for an extended period but the visit was entirely worth it just to meet Mayu and be able to run a Charity Makeover to help their monkey sanctuary. When you have a minute hop over to their new site we built and check out the monkeys. For just $5 you can sponsor one of these little guys and feed him/her for a week!
True to the Charity Makeover mission of “teach a person to fish vs. give a person a fish,” part of the goal in this project is to test the concept of a “revolving door Charity Makeover” wherein we leverage the RY flow of talented knowledge workers and pass the baton on what we started to the next Remote Year group. We’ve already intro’d the Meraki’s (group who is following us entering into Córdoba today) program leader to Mayu. We’ve tee’d up an amazing roadmap for them, documented processes and vision and used collaborative tools like Trello, Slack and Google Drive to make it possible to more easily advance the vision we set and build on the foundation we laid. I’m hopeful they will fall in love with Mayu and the project as much as we did and this will become a tradition amongst future RY groups in Córdoba. There are 10 in all coming over the next year – given what we’ve queued up I’m optimistic this could change the game for them in the long-term. If our revolving pilot program with Caraya goes well, Charity Makeover is something I’d be keen to throw myself into full-force once my work for Pagely is done.
Anyways, adios Cordoba, hello Buenos Aires! Can’t believe this crazy year-long adventure is in its final stretch.
