Kill the Zoom Meeting: How Asynchronous Work Can Increase Your Startup’s Profits
If you run a startup with a remote team, you need to kill your Zoom meetings. By sticking to a “synchronous” schedule (i.e. everyone is online at the same time or in meetings at the same time) instead of letting your team work fully asynchronously, you’re harming your bottom line.
When I’m talking about fully asynchronous work, I mean work that is done completely on the timeline of each individual contributor — with no regular meetings or meet-ups. If you’re a team working across multiple timezones, you already probably have something like this in place. And if you’re already a fully asynchronous remote-work startup — congrats! Welcome to the future. 😎
In this article, I’m going to help you deal a death blow to your weekly Zoom meetings — and in turn, unlock a new level of productivity and creativity from your team.
Why I’m the Authority on Asynchronous Remote Work as a Freelance Writer
If you’re new to this blog, hello! Welcome. I have my 10,000 hours when it comes to successfully working on an asynchronous schedule, and in my career as a freelancer writer I’ve worked with startups valued at over a billion dollars who also prioritize async workflows. I’ve also ghostwritten full memoirs for high-achieving individuals, many of whom chose to forgo weekly Zooms to instead send me voice memos as both myself and my client realized it was a better way to produce their memoir, rather than waiting for our schedules to align on a weekly basis.
For the past six years, I’ve seen how my asynchronous-forward clients saw better results in their business. My startup clients and I could iterate faster, and my memoir clients had more reflection time when I gave them prompts to record voice memos for their book. I saw that founders who embrace async work and don’t use Zoom meetings as a crutch were often the ones who also had the most success with their startups.
In short, I have the unique privilege of working with dozens and dozens of startups and inspiring individuals. I’ve been embedded within companies, and I’ve worked directly with CEO’s. As a founder myself I’ve also worked with remote teams, and I’ve seen a huge difference when freelancers and employees get to work async rather than losing deep work time to weekly calls.
If any of that sounds like valuable experience to you, let me make my case on why you need to kill your Zoom meetings so you can level up as a founder and get more from your team!
When Are Zoom Meetings Effective?
There is a time and a place for Zoom meetings. Hop on a Zoom call or phone call if…
You’re meeting someone for the first time for an interview
You’re resolving a conflict or clearing up a miscommunication that absolutely can’t be done over email/messages
You’re needing to do a live demo of something that requires participants to ask questions and dig deeper in a way that can’t be done by disseminating a screen recording
…that’s it :) Even the above can be done asynchronously. I’ve successfully completed multiple copywriting projects for billion-dollar companies without meeting anyone face-to-face, ever — not even for an initial interview. I once completed a six-month project for a startup, and all feedback and instruction were delivered over email and Google docs. These projects were long-term and highly complex. In all cases, I received glowing feedback from these clients and still work with a few of them today!
In my experience, startups that are laser-focused on what they need from team members are also able to accomplish a lot — fast! — and without the need for meetings.
This isn’t just “move fast and break things.” This is getting organized, creating structured tasks, trying out freelancers on paid test assignments to get a true measure of their work, and moving forward with those who deliver the work you need to further your goals.
Regular Meetings Hurt Your Company’s Bottom Line
The data on regular meetings — and meetings at all! — is rather grim.
Citigroup instituted “Zoom-Free Fridays” and a study from Wundamail Research showed that 42% of Zoom meeting participants contribute nothing to the call. Even pre-pandemic meetings were hurting companies, as Inc. profiled a study conducted by the scheduling app Doodle which tracked over 19 million meetings and interviewed over 6,500 professionals. The study’s findings? “Pointless meetings will cost U.S. companies a whopping $399 billion in 2019."
2022 is no different as those meetings have just migrated online, and are still costing employers money.
3 Reasons Why Asynchronous Remote Work is Adapted by Forward-Thinking Startups
If you're still asking why asynchronous work? then here are some things to think about:
1. Asynchronous work means your teams can seek out information when they need it, providing more time for deep work.
2. More deep work = increased productivity.
And lastly...
3. Asynchronous work allows for deep work to turn into flow states. Flow states = higher creativity and better problem-solving. Stop interrupting your team and let them do what you've hired them to do!
5 Tools for Effective Asynchronous Remote Work for Your Teams + Freelancers
If you’ve made it this far, I’ll consider you convinced (welcome!) and ready to implement some asynchronous practices. Here are some of my favorite tools that you can take advantage of in your asynchronous workflow and tech stack:
#1: Screen Recording Tools
"But Amy, I can't capture complex topics over email and my tone never comes across the way I want it to -- I'm not a writer!"
Totally, that's why there are great screen capture tools like Loom and Vidyard. Vidyard has a better free plan than Loom if you want to save a few extra bucks.
I LOVE getting Looms and screen-recorded videos from my founders because I can refer back to them in a way that I can't if we're not recording Zoom calls. Zoom calls (if they're recorded) are also hard to scrub through to find the right nuggets and take more time to review.
Founders: you should love Loom because you can also get notified if the person watched your video... or didn't and just said they did :) Helps to know what freelancers/collaborators are staying up to date with your messages.
#2: Good Ol' Voice Memos (free iPhone app)
In your PJ's past 2pm and don't want to be on-camera? No problemo. Just record a voice memo and ship it off to your freelancer/collaborators. Or, use a voice text feature on messages or in Whatsapp.
As a freelancer, I prefer getting audio files because I can pop them into Otter, a cool transcription tool, and integrate them into my notes system so I can keep track of all important project info. But do what's best for your workflow and team!
#3: Team Communication Tools (Slack/Discord/Geneva)
I'll be honest, I'm not totally a fan of these tools as keeping up with communication across multiple channels can take away from my deep work time. But if you're needing to collaborate on complex projects, they can be great.
#4: Accountability Tools (Notion, Monday, Asana, etc.)
If you're worried about holding people accountable, first ensure you've hired the right team. And then get them onto an accountability workflow.
Get people aligned with deadlines and share clear expectations for a better daily workflow.
#5: Get Faster at Email with an App Like Superhuman
If you work with a remote team, you have to be fast on email in order to keep the trains moving. I know founders who stay in one timezone to keep the info flowing with their team. There's a better way!
Don't be the bottleneck with your inbox! I've used Superhuman for the past few years and successfully hit Inbox Zero on a daily basis despite fielding hundreds of timely emails per week.
Common Excuses for Not Going Async
Let’s dive into some of the common reasons people give why asynchronous work doesn’t, well, work. I’ll then share some counterpoints from my research and personal experience:
Excuse #1: We’re solving creative and/or highly complex problems. We need our contributors to be on the same page!
I’ve worked in a number of TV writers’ rooms, and I can tell you that group brainstorming is not the answer. Some of the best showrunners land on great ideas by sending their creatives away and dismissing the room early — so everyone can solve the problem on their own, and generate ideas (asynchronously.) Almost all of the writers’ rooms I was in were only in sessions for a few hours a day at most. Some rooms even dismissed writers completely after a few weeks so everyone could work from home.
Also, creative conversations and brainstorming can easily take up time and space without producing ideas that actually stick. That’s why Hollywood goes to great lengths and expense to hire writers’ assistants who sit in a writers’ room all day taking notes, recording what’s written on the whiteboard, and noting what ideas were landed on… and most of room discussions still get thrown out and rewritten in the weeks that follow.
In Hollywood we’re also seeing auteur-types on the rise: singular writer/showrunner/directors who write every episode and take ownership over everything. The latest season of Euphoria is a great example of how eliminating the “too many cooks in the kitchen” problem leads to creative success.
When it comes to creativity, less is more. The assembly line or “group project” method rarely works, especially as it disperses responsibility for actually coming up with high-level solutions and problem-solving.
Excuse #2: Culture is created on a face-to-face basis! We have to keep our team motivated!
If your team’s motivation is hanging on a thread of a weekly Zoom call, I hate to be the one to tell you that you have some bigger issues with hiring. Your team should be intrinsically motivated to contribute. Meaning? They’re excited to go above and beyond on their work, regardless of any rah-rah speech made on a Zoom call.
If motivation is the issue, reconsider who you’ve been hiring, or at least understand where their motivation got lost in the sauce if they were jazzed to begin with but took a turn.
Excuse #3: We have a large team and everyone needs to be in the loop about these decisions and discussions!
Part of the job of a founder (or department heads) is to curate information for their contributors. You need to be giving people the information they need to do their jobs, and no more. Information overload will not help anyone, and having an email group or Slack channel for important updates is good enough. Or, even better, you could record and send a quick Loom video discussing the nugget of info your team needs to know :)
Asynchronous work does require good communication on the part of the C-Suite, but that should already be the cornerstone of your startup if you’re wanting to grow at a massive pace.
Additionally, large Zoom calls are even more redundant: too often team members have to table much of the items of discussion to talk “offline” — when they could have just made that the focus and shared the findings of those one-on-one communication channels with the rest of the team.
Do your large team a favor and hold them accountable for the information they need to know (or seek out!) and set aside time once per day to check messages/emails/whatever to disseminate anything you need them to know or answer questions.
Excuse #4: I don’t have time to send emails or record Loom videos for my team! I’m too busy!
If you’re too busy to work asynchronously, you’re too busy to be in a Zoom meeting. Next.
Excuse #5: I like providing emotional support and chit-chat with my team. I can’t do that asynchronously!
You definitely can provide a warmth and rah-rah attitude in your emails, messages, video screenshares, voice memos — you name it. You can set up a channel in Slack where everyone shares their weekend plans if you miss small talk enough.
However, it’s important to remember that work life is not meant to replace home life. Your contributors receive emotional support and processing from their friends, family, therapist, their dog, you name it. We should be giving people more time to live their lives and find fulfillment outside of work.
While I keep most of my work chat “business as usual” with my clients (we are laser-focused on a shared goal, after all!) I still try and share a level of warmth with my clients, but it’s not necessary most of the time. This is a little different because I’m a freelancer (not an employee with a singular relationship with one company), so if you need some company bonding just schedule an annual retreat where everyone meets up in-person and gets a free vacation out of it.
I’m skeptical of some of these team bonding exercises as they’ve never truly helped with team collaboration with teams I’ve been on in the past. Working directly with your teammates on projects does that. But I do recognize that there are some different strategies you could implement with employees when you’re optimizing for retention.
One of the best strategies? Giving them the flexibility to work asynchronously :)
Go Asynchronous to Capture Top Talent
At the end of the day, top talent wants to work remotely and asynchronously. I know because I’m in the top 1% of freelance copywriters, and my peers and I all gravitate towards long-term relationships with clients and companies who also embrace limited Zoom meetings and asynchronous-forward workflows.
So, before you hit "send" on that meeting invitation, ask yourself:
Can this information be discussed via email, voice memo, Loom video, or ~anything~ else?
You'd be surprised how your bottom line begins to shift as your team has more time for deep work on their terms.
