WLP301: Enrich Your Communication through Asynchronous Video
Pilar talks to Brian Casel about asynchronous communication and how he uses his product, Zip Message in the day to day running of his business.
A thank you to Zarah, based in Pakistan on LinkedIn, telling us our work is relevant and global!
04.06 MINS
Brian Casel is the founder and creator of Zip Message, a tool for async video messaging. He has been “living online” and working remotely for most of his professional career, working as a freelancer with people across the world for around 13 years.
Brian has built multiple businesses and has sold some of them too. Now he’s focusing on Zip Message, a conversational tool where you can send video messages to coworkers, customers or clients.
Brian has only recently (over the last three years) started to send video messages backwards and forwards, but has always mainly used asynchronous communication using chat-based tools, comments etc without resorting to meetings. This is the type of communication he feels makes him more productive, and video adds another dimension to the communication.
While having meetings with your camera on requires one set of skills, which Brian is comfortable with now, the practice of recording yourself on video to send in a message is different, and relatively new.
07.56 MINS
The kind of situations where video is more suitable than, for example, an email are those when you might otherwise say, “could we hop on a call to discuss that”, or “should we organise a meeting?”
Brian Casel
When using async video, Brian likes the fact that he can prepare the message he wants to send, after gathering his thoughts and sometimes even re-recording it. When his team members receive it, they can take the time to gather their own thoughts and reply when they are ready. One of the issues with meetings is that everyone has to be at the top of their game when they are gathered, and that might not always be possible.
At the moment, Pilar is seeing asynchronous communication being adopted in two ways: to replace meetings and as an integral way of communication. When we’re thinking about calling a meeting, we should consider if all we want to do is offload an idea, or bounce an idea off someone or a group, in which case maybe asynchronous communication is a better alternative.
There is an assumption that things get done faster if we meet, however the work still needs to be done after the meeting discussion. Brian has always made sure that there is enough time to do the work and sometimes this means being mindful about how a team communicates.
A mix of live calls and asynchronous is the best option. When working with someone new, Brian likes to have a live call to meet them, understand their personality, build rapport etc. When it comes to hashing out the details of the work, he prefers to move into asynchronous.
In fact, Brian takes inbound video messages (via Zip Message) first from applicants for work, then meets with them live, and then spends a couple of weeks talking asynchronously with them to talk about the work and get a better idea of their background and what they could bring to the team.
Zip Message allows you to have a conversation online, rather than recording one video, sending it and then waiting for the next video, so you have more of a sense of conversation.
18.50 MINS
Brian has noticed that when recruiting, some people are comfortable communicating in this way, and others aren’t. But what’s important is how adaptable they are and whether they’ll be able to pick up the form of communication. In the software development industry and software marketing, there are lot of people who have been remote for a while, but there is still a transition happening. Some like to mix text, video and audio, all of which Zip Message supports, and this is great because you can choose the medium to suit your message - for example a quick, “that’s great” in text vs giving detailed feedback via screen sharing and video.
Being able to switch between tools is becoming a real skill in remote work. While remote work is not new, companies now are beginning to optimise how people work remotely, looking at tools and workload.
The use of tools is also becoming part of a company’s culture. Even what “timely” means in communication is something that needs to be explicit and its definition will become part of a company’s culture.
23.25 MINS
Adoption of asynchronous communication speeds up when people can see the benefits. One benefit is that you can reference back to a conversation, as opposed to a meeting, where you might forget what was being said (unless you make great notes, or transcripts you can search through). This can even lead to feeling more confident at work.
Brian uses Zip Message with his clients as well. Before he set up Zip Message a year ago, Brian ran a content marketing agency for seven years. He had 25 remote team members, working with clients all over the world. They would have one sales call, and one kick off call and then continue working asynchronously - sometimes giving feedback through Zip Message on content. Sometimes the team would send questions via audio, and clients were happy with this. They also felt the benefits of async!
This also helped Brian protect their team’s time, especially because many of his people were writers and creators, so spending time in meetings was not the best use of their time. When clients requested more meetings, Brian had to push back as it wasn’t part of how they worked, but this didn’t happen often.
29.30 MINS
Good role-modelling also helps adoption, showing the benefits and the diversity in communication even within asynchronous. While asynchronous is not new (remember letters, some of you?), going beyond the written word is. When the written word was not enough, the only alternative seemed to be a meeting, now we have more options.
Brian uses Zip Message with recruitment and talking to his team members regularly. He also sends new customers a personal message, which is going down very well. He’s working with a marketer in Australia, but they still have a great working relationship sending feedback asynchronously etc. He also works with a team of developers completely asynchronously, which is very helpful for product development as most of the conversations are very technical and precise - so it really helps to use text asynchronous, or using a video to use a bug.
Screen sharing is also very useful to present and talk through a design mock-up, and get feedback from clients.
Zip Message is great for freelancers, as it provides a link where people can message you on the web. You can also create a link and then provide that link to as many people as need to be involved in the conversation.
Brian has two podcasts: Bootstrapped Web and Open Threads, both of which you can find here: https://briancasel.com/podcasts
We end with advice for those who want to integrate asynchronous video into your communication.
Be aware of those times when you are going to have a meeting and for example, ask to have some asynchronous exchanges before meeting. Once you get started you get more of a feel of when it’s most useful.
Or, if you’re trying to advocate for adoption, you can suggest use of async after the meeting and show how it might have been useful (but make sure you include that time in the agenda!).
Finally, you can communicate asynchronously with Brian through his Zip Message page:
https://zipmessage.com/brian
And you can find him on Twitter too https://twitter.com/CasJam
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