Sebastian Jimenez, founder of RillaVoice a company that helps people to record their multilingual global conversations to analyze them in order to help sales teams to sell better and Amir Reiter, CEO of CloudTask a marketplace to build sales team either in house with agents or outsourcing with agencies, share with us their experience and ideas about the future of work and how to scale your business without borders and grow their sales capacity and revenue.
How do you know it’s time for you and your business to go fully remote?
This is a commonly asked question. Is there an exact method to follow in order to be a remote company? Is my business prepared to do so? Before the pandemic, the general wisdom thought that the only way to make business was face-to-face. That you need to build companies with face to face interaction, especially if you have a “small business”. “And because of this we struggle a lot to be in person with each other, take flights to see each other, it was really a struggle” – says Sebastian.
And then, the pandemic arrived and all the investors and traditional companies were forced to change the way they operate, they started going remote… And suddenly, companies hiring remote workers started to see the benefits of it, how they could get more deal flow or talk to more founders all over the world. “And just like that, the game changed for them. There's still some friction because you have to account for communication, you have to over communicate but you can solve those frictions with technology. Let everybody work where they want to”.
But let’s not marry an idea. There are some other ways, but not every company is the same. For Amir, it's all about performance culture. “It's not remote, it's not hybrid, it's not an office. It's a performance culture that allows people to come to the office if they want to and if they think that'll improve their performance or they can be remote if that’s the way they choose to improve. So basically what really accelerated my company for being remote was covid, but we are working in a hybrid model.”
If you are a founder in the stage of ideation, here you can see both sides and two different examples not only on what is happening on the bootstrapping side but also on a company.
To the early stage founders that ARE about to start building their businesses:
When you are remote, results really speak more for themselves than anything else. If you apply the right tracking technologies or use project management software, then it is no longer about all the office culture or personalities but performance and getting the results and it becomes quite simple to see who's performing well and who's not and where do you need to help your teammates.
This is a great advantage of being remote, you are really just looking at your business through metrics - Sebastian, RillaVoice Founder
Besides all of this stuff, first you need to understand what kind of business you are operating, because being remote is not applicable for everybody. It's not just because you need to follow the trends or because it works for the rest. Always remember to:
1. Identify your business
2. Identify who you are serving and how you are serving them
3. What methodology can serve your clients and your people better
My biggest advice is that nothing really even matters if you don't have a plan. The biggest advice I can give you is: Understand your business, understand the type of business you are operating and that will tell you whether or not you would be remote or not. Commit to the process and by following it, it'll start becoming irrelevant if you're remote or not. - Says Amir.
It is very important to tailor and customize to what makes sense for you!!
Is it possible to experience company culture as things get more distributed?
Culture is one of the hardest things to scale and replicate. “It's not impossible, you just have to be really savvy and even put in a lot of effort” – tells Sebastian. You have to understand that the people that you work with probably are not going to become your bff if you never met them.
So, decide your values, it doesn't matter if you are a two person company, have the things that are important to you, write down your values and principles, what you care about, the type of people you enjoy being.
Either you create a culture or it creates on its own and maybe it isn't going to be like you imagined.
“Be dynamic with your culture” - says Amir. “Create a culture that fits the microeconomic environment. We have a weekly happy hour event where people can dance and sing and we actually have prizes for them and also we have on site events so people get to choose what they want to come to, this way everyone can experience their own culture".
There is a culture for people that like being remote and there's another for people that want to socialize but they are all united with the vision and the mission of the company and the common goal. If you try to have one culture in your company, it's gonna break because you're not going to get people to fit into one mold.
If you want to watch the full webinar click on this link and just unplug a bit from your day by day with a cup of coffee and tap into the great minds of Sebastian and Amir through their personal experiences and advice while building their business.
