Remote Work Revolution: Managing High-Performance Marketing Teams Virtually with Drew Moffitt Ep. 608

Howdy. Welcome back to the Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing. My name is Matt Bertram. I'm your SEO strategist for today. I have a special guest for you today, but before we get into it, I wanted to read a quick review. So this is from our Google My Business. This is from Ryan two days ago. We met Matt to discuss our farms website and he put us on the right track on how to develop our social media presence. He gave us a ton of important information on how to strengthen our online presence. So this was moving in, go to farm or what is it? Farm to market business that was moving into e-commerce and trying to get more online sales. So helping them out with that, I think that's a strong trend right now and excited to help people out with that. We do a lot of brand strategy. We do have a small business workshop. So please reach out and ask about that. That will be launched shortly to continue the trend of what we've been talking about with all the different tools to grow your business online. I brought an expert here. I brought in Drew Moffitt. Drew, how are you doing today? I'm doing great down here in Florida. I love Florida. I was actually out in the Bahamas two weeks ago. So weather's great. We live here in the swamp in Houston. So not as nice as Florida. I used to live there for about five and a half years. You know, you are with a virtual office company, Kumon Space. Is that right? Kumo Space. And that means, what does that mean in Japanese? It means cloud, cloud space. Cloud space. Look at that. Yeah. And so really, I think that there's this huge shift that's going on with since COVID, right? That everybody's worked remote and is starting to head back into the office. And there's a lot of like small business and medium market companies that are trying to decide how do we deal with this, right? Because employees

don't want to come back. We've gotten used to virtual, certainly even our office. I work from home many, much of the time. I have two kids that are young. And since COVID, it really just kind of got built into the schedule. So it's hard to manage that. I also think the talent pool has increased because we've been able to hire some really great people, not just in our geographic area. And then you expand that out to remote teams. And then pretty soon, it's kind of hard to put that back in the box, right? But there's a lot of challenges between working remote and then being able to be right there with somebody and look over your shoulder and have that quick conversation. And you don't see that a lot, right? I mean, so why don't you just kind of tell me, I mean, you're in this all the time and want to just try to connect in with someone listening that is trying to make the decision, okay, do I go back to the office or what are the pluses and minuses of it? Like, what are some of the things that are pronounced that you're seeing in the remote space? Yeah. So I think remote work is extremely productive on an individual basis, but where people struggle is around collaboration, especially those impromptu conversations that idea sharing will originate. And a lot of human capital intensive businesses tend to be really our prime customers. These are things like marketing agencies, consultancies, they're true SMBs, probably 10 to 200 person employees, companies. And there's a lot of cost of going back to the office. And they may have hired people to your point about talent that are not in that geography, or people may have moved since they went 100% remote at the start of the pandemic. So, you know, what we have found is that we can build a piece of software that makes collaboration as easy as a shoulder tap is in the physical office, but give that to remote and distributed teams.

And what that replicates is the benefit of having those collaborative moments, that transparencies, what's happening, who's interacting, who's having a conversation. Like, if I'm in cumulative space right now, I could see what the team's doing. And for example, our two co-founders are in their office, one of their offices, having a conversation with the door open. If I go over there, I can join that conversation. And as someone leading the marketing effort, maybe I need something from them immediately. You'd be able to do that in a physical office. You just don't have that ability with typical tools that have existed, like Slack or Zoom or Microsoft Teams. You don't know what's happening. And people feel very isolated as a result of that. You know, I think that there's two major trends, right? There is the trend to build remote teams or offshore teams, especially if we're speaking to other people in the marketing space, right? So you're building and connecting with people with different skill sets all over the place. And, and there's some advantages and disadvantages of that. Um, but, and that was already happening, uh, before COVID, right. And, and people were looking at that, but a lot of mid-market businesses, a lot of big businesses, you know, there's a way to do business. There's a way to run your company. Um, it was unacceptable to have an office, right? Like, or, or to not have an office, right. So, but now, um, you know, meeting at a Starbucks, doing a Zoom call, um, even doing sales calls on Zoom, all that sort of thing is totally, um, acceptable and, and mainstream now. Right. And the, the, the, the, the trend to go back into the office is actually working against the grain. Like there's a lot of employees are like, Hey, I like the freedom. I like working remote. Like you said, I'm more productive. Um, you know, and so they don't want to go back there. I'm going to switch companies if I go back. And so there's this huge kind of

debate. I mean, can you speak a little bit more to, um, what are the pluses and minuses and what's going on in the quote unquote national debate between going back to the office and not, I mean, just to give people an idea. Cause I know that there's so many business owners that are struggling with this in their head right now of like, you know, what do I do? How am I going to be viewed? Like what are some of the things you're seeing on that higher level? Yeah, I'll come back to that in a second, but first just, I want to talk about something kind of funny is because you have this virtual office, like we actually do all of our sales demos. So if people want to experience Kuma space, they come to our HQ and our customers, you know, a marketing agency, for example, they'll actually have their meetings, uh, instead of just in a zoom where it looks like one-on-one, um, they're actually, their, their perspective customers are showing up. They're in a space that's branded to their agency. Uh, and they're, you know, those, those prospective clients can see that there's a real company behind this, this brand, uh, that they're considering hiring. So that's another benefit is just actually, you know, making you look like a more grownup matured business, um, with real employees. But going back to your, your, your question. Are you, are you saying like there's a virtual, like you build them a virtual office that you put like a logo on the wall and they're, they're, they're little avatars walking in virtually. Is that, is that what I'm hearing? No, exactly. So it, the simple way to think about it is, is how you would, you know, maybe your physical office that you have, if you just thought about that from a, uh, 2d top-down view. So there's. So you map it, you map the lobby or something? Yeah. Well, not specifically to their office, but yes, you can make it layout and look like your

old office if you'd like. Um, but you're going to have common areas like a reception area, uh, in the Kumo HQ, there's the Kumo space logo. Uh, that's where everyone spawns when they join a meeting. Uh, and then you use your arrow keys or you can click around and you can move into, uh, different parts of the office, uh, and you have spatial audio range. So as you're in a common area, it's kind of the circle around you. If you go into a conference room, um, it's that entire conference room, you can close the door, have a private conversation. Um, but as, uh, you know, people experiencing Kumo space for the first time through a, through a sales demo, they're seeing me working. They're seeing the other marketing team. They're seeing our software engineers working. Um, they're seeing our other sales, uh, customer success people, uh, and our co-founders. Um, so they, they're, they're like, wow, this is an actual office. You're building a closed metaverse and that that's the office and they're, they're stepping into it and they're seeing, uh, everything that's happening. Um, yeah, I, I, I have, uh, I've seen, I think Facebook's doing something, um, you know, uh, maybe they're building the whole world and then everybody bolts on their, their, their, their own office, uh, to that on their servers. I think it's going to be a super interesting world. Um, because actually right now, um, we've actually never met and you're looking at my avatar and I'm looking at your avatar and, uh, everybody watching this, um, you know, or, or listening to this, um, you know, it's all virtual, right? It's all in virtual reality. Exactly. Yeah. No, I, I, I am super, I don't think that this trend is, is going anywhere. And, and I agree with you. I think that there's certainly, uh, not a suite of tools to see and I've seen like hybrid conferences. Um, I've seen a lot more of that where it's in person. Um, it's remote. Uh, I have seen like

product demos, uh, like you're talking about, like product demos or even, uh, people that are bringing the, uh, virtual to a webinar or even to an actual booth. Right. So like from a conference standpoint and then they're showing their office, right? Like, so, um, you can, you can take that window of the screen and, and there's a lot of things you can do with it, but I think, yeah, layering in, uh, people working and, um, interestingly enough, in the creative space, uh, I don't, I don't know the functionality, but I know if it's not, there'll come, you know, if people are having like, you know, mohawks and dyed hair and giving themselves tattoos, uh, who knows, like, uh, in, in the, um, in the creative space, it could get, it could get quite wild. Um, you know, certainly like ready player one, uh, is, is, uh, you know, the dystopian future of if Microsoft takes over or whatever, but, um, but, uh, yeah, no, I would, I would love to kind of, um, you know, I, I would love to go down that and I, and I, and I love crypto and, and, and there's a lot of, uh, opportunity with storytelling, um, in the crypto space. And I think there, there's a real future, uh, coming in and certainly you being on the cutting edge is certainly exciting. I, I want to just zoom back, I guess, to though, like, okay, we have a small business, right. Or we have, you know, uh, uh, a business that went remote, right? Like, so let's look at that, that, um, uh, target persona of, uh, the small business that has, I don't know, 10 employees, they have 20 employees, 30 employees, they have an office and they're still in their lease. Okay. And they're trying to figure out, Hey, we've been working remote and like, there's some advantages and disadvantages. Um, but do we go back into the office? I don't really know. I can't really decide. Like, I want you to help kind of way

out there. What are the bigger themes of going into the office and, and, and that, um, remote, like you're, you're trying to mitigate, right? Like some of the solutions you're offering, but also, and then some of the advantages. So I want to, I want to really start the conversation with what are those plus and minuses? Cause that, that's what, when someone's jumping on this podcast, they're trying to figure out, I believe is like, I don't know if I should go back into the office or not, or should I let my office go or, you know, and, and there's this huge cliff, right. That I've at least seen on the real estate side things from commercial real estate going to fall off a cliff because people are not going to renew releases because they're, they're, they're doing things, um, uh, remotely. Now I did a lot of work for a company that's selling office furniture. Okay. Guess what he tells me? He's telling me the flip side of this and like, Oh no, people want to go back to the office. Can't wait to go back to the office or hungry to go back to the office. And that's the narrative he's pushing. So I want to kind of hear from your perspective, what are the pluses and minuses of, of office work and why there might be a draw to come back. Um, and then, uh, okay, this is certainly, I think the trend, uh, why should people stay remote, but what are some of the problems and then how do you solve them? Yeah. Yeah. So I think we have to just look at how we got here, right. Slack wasn't built for remote work. They were, it was a business, you know, it was a replacement for email, just trying to make people working in a physical office, maybe on a different floor, even on the same floor, um, just more profession at sharing short messages and files, uh, video conferencing, you know, zoom that was for kind of specific use cases. We're

sitting in a conference room, talking to a team, uh, in another part of the country, another part of the world. Uh, but we use those tools, um, to, to be the, the things that, that got us through COVID and, and remote and being forced to quickly adopt remote work. Um, but there are real benefits to being in a physical office. So the ability to know what's happening, just feeling in the know, not being isolated, feeling that you, as an individual contributor, you have an equity, uh, and accessibility to the leadership and the ability to be mentored, right? These are things that you cannot get through Slack. You can't be mentored through Slack. You can't have impromptu conversations. You don't, you can't just butt into, uh, your colleagues that are talking, you know, next to you about something because you had an idea and that's how something maybe really, uh, great comes out of that impromptu conversation that doesn't happen. Um, that's what we've built inside of Kumo space. So I think if you're looking at the world as, okay, is there benefits to going back to the office? Absolutely. I think, um, but if you can replicate all those benefits virtually, then there's far more benefits as a result of that, because you aren't contained to the, the talent pool. That's only in that geography at the core. People really don't want to go back to the office because their commute sucks, right? The, the office that they're returning to. Yes. Maybe it's like the person selling furniture and this office is going to look like a Google HQ or an Apple HQ. That's just beautiful. But the average small business is probably pretty dimly lit, uninspiring environment. And someone sat in a car in traffic for 45 minutes to get there. So like, they're not thrilled about that. And they also miss out on these moments during the course of their life, uh, their personal life, right? They can't, uh, walk their dog. They can't, uh, maybe interact with their children. Um, they, there,

there's additional expenses. You're having to pay for a dog walker. You're having to pay for more childcare. Um, so there, we, at the core business owners really need to remember that like, no software is going to make you a trusting boss, but a really successful company is a trusting organization. Um, so you should be able to trust that your employees can, you know, take 15 minutes, go outside, walk their dog. It's also probably very good for their mental health to step outside, to, you know, uh, just step back from work for a moment. Um, so those are kind of the pros and cons I would say is there is clear productivity and collaboration and spontaneous conversations that happen when you're working physically together. But if the flip side is there is negative impacts to the person's work life, uh, and often their efficiency, um, and people tend to work longer hours, not saying that that's particularly good for the employee, but when they're working remotely, they tend to often work longer hours because they're not having the commute. So they're not having to stop exactly at five o'clock and being like, if I wait to five 15, the traffic gets really bad. They're like, okay, I can go to five 45. Um, and that's when something doesn't roll into the next day and you do that over an extended period of time, that's where the business becomes far more efficient, far more productive. Now, drew there. This was actually something that, that we as an agency looked into from the isolation standpoint that, that you had, uh, mentioned before. Um, certainly during COVID, uh, it was just isolating in general, right? Like you, you couldn't go out anywhere and, and people were certainly feeling isolated. Um, we looked at some kind of virtual reality environments. Um, but the, uh, demand, uh, on, uh, the laptops that people like, so everybody had a laptop and certainly you're talking about people remote, uh, they might have laptops that are not as powerful because it's very expensive, uh,

overseas, uh, and the capabilities to run some of the software, uh, to, to, to, to create the virtual environment. Uh, what was just the demand on the computer was just too high. Um, you know, uh, you know, with technology, I think things come down. Uh, the other thing I want to say is, uh, from a marketing standpoint, what I'm seeing in the trend is everything is becoming digitized. Okay. Uh, and really virtue signaling, right. I drive this car, I have these clothes, I have this watch, whatever I'm associated with these brands. Um, that's now like, I mean, look, if we say, so I just had another meeting with a client that's in the, uh, e-gaming space. Okay. And so, um, you know, everything, you know, you're, you want to show off whatever you've earned or your skin or like even in the video games, like awards you've gotten or badges, or you want to carry this, you know, NFT from, uh, this, this to that, but everything's becoming virtual, right? Like I even was reading this article. People were, um, you know, going and take pictures of clothes. Like they were getting clothes. They were keeping the tags on them. They were taking the pictures. Right. And then they were like giving the clothes back or like whatever they weren't like buying the clothes. They were literally creating something for the digital world to virtue signal. So in the virtue, so what you talked about is like, okay, you're, you're a prominent agency way better than walking into a, just a, a, a Google meet or a zoom call. Um, you're providing definition, texture, depth structure to, to what you're offering. You're creating, um, that appearance and that presence and that virtue of signature that we're, we're established agency and we're leveraging, um, uh, cutting edge technology. Right. I think that that's what, what I heard from you at least. No, absolutely. Um, the ability to decorate your own space. So, uh, as I was saying, you can put your logos, you can pick furniture

that, that matches your company colors. Um, everyone in, in, uh, Akumo space can have their own, uh, private office. They can go into, uh, do high, uh, you know, focus work, have those moments. Um, our typical users are spending seven, eight hours, uh, a day using this product. Um, they're, they're giving up zoom, uh, for the most part, or they're giving up slack for the most part, uh, if not entirely. Um, and you can also decorate your little office. So that's your point about the, the kind of virtual signaling. Um, it helps people express their personalities. So our co-founder, big surfer, his office, uh, has, uh, uh, you know, stand for the floor. Right. Um, and that's him expressing his personality in a, in a virtual world in the same way that maybe if he, we had a physical office, he'd have a surfboard on the wall. So cool. Okay. So I'm sold, right. I'm sold. Uh, I was a hard sell. I'm sold that, that, that, you know, you need to move to, um, there needs to be more capabilities in a remote setting and certainly, uh, ways in which just from a 2d standpoint, we're, we're, we're talking on a screen, uh, and we're hearing each other's voice, um, different ways to interact, right? Like different ways to connect, uh, like taking that 2d, making it 3d, like expanding it out. I I'm sold. I think that that is certainly the trend. Now there's a lot of like when people move, you know, COVID helped a ton, but people have there, there was a hurdles that people had to get over that are used to the old school way of doing things. And certainly the younger generation coming over leadership taking over, um, it becomes more ubiquitous, right? Like even the internet, right. Um, now let's, let's maybe transition into, uh, some of the maybe tips, experiences, recommendations from a hiring onboarding, uh, remote people, right? So like building and running high performance teams, like management style, how does that change? Does, is

it just, this is a medium that is whatever, uh, you do in person. It doesn't make you a better person in life, in life, right? Like maybe AI can help you write something better. If you're, if you're putting it in the middle between you and two people and helps you say things more eloquently, but you know, there should be a human driving that in my opinion. Um, and, uh, unless you're a fully autonomous AI and then you're, you're entity on your own. And of course, no one should be, uh, managing you. Um, you know, I, I want to be your friend AI. Um, and, uh, you know, but managing a high performance team remotely, how does that change? How does, uh, you know, somebody you've never met that's been working for you for a couple of years and you're doing a, you know, you're doing a, uh, employee review or something like, tell, tell me kind of some of the things that, that you've seen, um, where there's opportunities or there's even things, uh, people should be thinking about because it is very different. It's not just a medium. Uh, it actually changes the way how you do it. Yeah. So I think I'll start off with some things that I would strongly recommend, recommend against doing. So there's a group of people in the remote workspace. Um, I think who you could define as async absolutists, right? So there are no idea what that means. Yeah. Tell me that. So these are people who are defaulting to async communication, meaning text, like Slack, Microsoft teams, email as the default way and the only way to communicate. Um, and I think in Kumo space, you have video conferencing, you have the spatial audio range. We're talking about the, the setup of your space, but we also have chat, um, with threads and channels, those two tools, synchronous or ways of communicating synchronous communication, what we're doing right now and async sending a text message, um, are very beneficial for dirt, certain, you know, different moments

of the day, right? You're walking your dog. I'll be back in 15 minutes. Yes. Let's, uh, let's quickly jam about that or immediately defaulting to, to synchronous communication. Cause you can see I'm available. Um, and I, uh, I, you know, I'm very approachable person. Uh, and you just come over and you start talking to me about a problem. Got it. Okay. Async like, and then in sync, right? Like, so you're, you're, there's a feedback loop. Yeah. So I think there are some people who are, are becoming completely, uh, async, which is, there's a couple issues here. One, it's very much against just human nature, you know, for millions of years, humans have evolved, uh, speaking to one another, not just communicating via written letters or emails or something like that. Um, scribing on stone. Uh, so, so there's that problem. The second problem is when you're hiring teams and I, and I've, we've done a lot of, uh, expansion to our team recently, and I repeatedly heard people complaining about them having to do async interviews. So they would go into the equivalent of like a Google meet, but there would be no audio, no camera. And the whole interview would be done through the, the, the chat widget inside of Google meet. So I think that is something I would caution people against doing. People don't react very well to that, to, to joining that team. It's going to create an interesting, um, culture. And I don't think that you, that's how you solve loneliness. I don't think that's how you actually build real collaboration. Um, it's very hard to collaborate via text. So, so drew, I gotta, I got a story for you. Like this is, this is so much in line with that. Um, and this has never happened before or since then. Okay. So I, you know, I also, I do a lot of podcasting, do a lot of interviews or whatever. And I was doing an interview and I'm not going to say who it was for. If someone found

the interview, they, they might get it. But the person that was interviewing me, I like, you wouldn't know it. They didn't say it like, unless you're in it, you don't know what's happening. So to optimize their time. Okay. To get a, whatever they create the questions, right? So like, say like we were doing an interview and I said, Hey, drew, come on, let's talk about this. Cause I really want to, uh, get people understanding the remote workplace and I record the calls. Question one, question two, question three or whatever. And then you come on and I am never there. And there's just a screen up there that says, press the button. Okay. Press the button and I'll talk. And then you listen to it. And then it was like, all right, respond. And then I'm talking to nobody. And then, you know, and, and when you podcast to the camera, right. So now I'm looking at the camera, like I did a lot of podcasting actually, uh, with Chris, uh, who longtime listeners, um, will, will know we would talk to each other and we would talk to the audience. But like when you're talking to the audience or you're doing it like a training and you're looking at like a camera and they don't respond in the beginning, it is very difficult to understand. But then when another person's there, but they're not really there and they ask you the question and then you have to answer them. And then they just meld it all together. So it looks like an interview and it's like cutting. It was like the weirdest thing, but I can tell you to your point of that's not how humans are meant to interact. Like it was so like, um, there was so much friction I felt from the whole process. I was like, Oh, this is weird. You know? Um, I don't know. I just wanted to share that. Cause I thought, uh, you're, you're, you're dead on about that. And certainly if, if someone was just chatting

to you and then you talk, you feel like you're getting grilled or something like for, for something that you did wrong, uh, versus like actually, uh, having to be positive communication, like two-way communication, you know? Yeah. I, that, that sounds like a really hard podcast to, to be trying to record. Uh, so I'm glad we're not doing that. And I, and body language is so important, right? And that's often why people talk about getting into slack wars with their colleagues, right? Because there's context that is missing. So, um, definitely would, would recommend against being solely, uh, relying on async communication. Um, now going to the things that I suggest people do is as a leader, as someone leading a marketing org, I make myself, uh, what's kind of a servant leader, right? I make myself super available. I'm here to problem solve. I'm here to collaborate. I'm here to make sure that all the blockers are constantly getting pushed out of your way. So you can do your job and you can do it very well. Uh, I'm very productive in a very productive manner. Um, and what I do is I, in our virtual office, I sit there in kind of a common area so that people just to be more inviting for people to come up and talk to me. Like I'm almost always available. You have a moment, you have a, an issue, you have something, Drew's there to, to, to, to help resolve that for you, whether that's someone on the marketing team or someone on another team that needs, you know, help from us for something. Um, so that, and that goes into actually how you do the onboarding. So we bring our team in there. And typically when we make new hires, these people are cranking out, uh, you know, pieces of new work within one week, which is very quick for, for most companies and most new hires in a remote environment. Um, we had a team member who joined from, uh, Amazon recently, and she joined Amazon

when they were a hundred percent remote. And she said for the first month, she had very little understanding of what she was supposed to be doing outside of her immediate work. And she had no one knowing who those people were to go to. So when we onboard people, I'm like, I'm right here. If you ever have a question, come and find me. And then that's all the other team members. Those are the people in sales go introduce yourself. And then if you have a question about, you know, how they're selling objections that they're hearing things of that nature, just go talk to them directly. Don't default to go into a calendar, finding a time, you know, if they're free available, just, you know, tap them on the shoulder and have that conversation. There's our co-founders. You can see them talking. They're very accessible people. If you have a really weird, nasty bug, go find our, one of our engineers, because that'll be very helpful for them trying to debug and, and, and, and ship a fix to that quickly. Um, so very collaborative, very commutative, uh, onboarding process for us. Uh, and that, that, you know, transcends the entire management process for us. I think this just sounds like we're creating a video game where we're taking our job and our real life and we're like melding together. And it's like, Oh, if you uncover a bug, go find the right person. Right. And like, it's like, we're taking our real life and we're putting ourselves into a video game of like doing our job. And you know, life's just one big, uh, illusion and game kind of thing. Um, okay. So I have another question I want to get into and then, uh, want to maybe go deep on your product if we have a little bit of time. Um, cause super interesting stuff. So, okay. Say like I'm a business and I need some marketing augmentation. I need an agency. I need an integrated marketing agency. How can, um, in-house teams or someone

that wants to build an in-house team or someone that wants to hire an agency if, if they're a company, cause that's what, that was the whole model. Okay. The whole model of how traditional marketing companies started is it was like the cost to build an entire marketing department with everything you need to execute on advertising and marketing and ads and creative and you know, everything you got to do branding and graphic design, all that. It's cheaper to go hire a prebuilt company. Right. And then either, you know, pull from their pool of people to build a remote team for you or a mark, not a remote team, but a marketing team for you. Uh, and you're just tapping that, that giant pool of 500 employees or consultants, you know, and then crafting a team, building a team. And you're basically buying a marketing department. Does that make sense? And today that's not what marketing is. I think everything's kind of shifted and changed, but if you're a big company and you're trying to figure out, Hey, do, do I, do I need to hire remote people or freelancers? Do I need to hire an agency? Like how, how do I do marketing staff augmentation? Right. If you're a business or if you're a marketing agency, which I think we can go into further, but let's talk. If you were a business, what are those things to look at and how does, uh, the, the virtual connection help? Because I can tell you that, uh, I've had remote people since 2015. Uh, and, um, we always had in, in office meetings and team meetings and these things. And then there was like this remote person that we would contact for, you know, specific things here and there, but that person never felt like they were part of the team. But then when COVID happened and everything went virtual, they became just as integrated as anyone else. And also people that were like, Hey, that's that remote person. Uh, I moved into like management roles cause they

had like tons of experience. Um, and, and they were always in the past, like disjointed with like communication chains of what was going on in the office. And when we went to this remote setting, but I think that there's a hybrid component, right. Of, uh, there's people in the office. There's still a traditional ways. There's certainly a lot of businesses that you have to be in office, right? Like you have to be like, if you're medical, you have, you have to be there, right? Like there are certain offices, uh, in certain industries. Uh, if you're in a factory, you have to be there, right? Like, you know, um, if, if you're doing something on oil rig, you have to be there, right? Like, so, um, but, but adding a different components of, uh, like, you know, if you're attached to the executive team or, or, uh, HR function or, you know, but marketing, let's talk about marketing, cause that's what this podcast is about. If you're trying to bolt on, let's say, uh, individuals or, um, a remote team, uh, from a staff, uh, augmentation standpoint or marketing standpoint, what are those things before we get into your solution that one should be considering based on your experience? Yeah, I think, you know, you have to really remember the, the, the, that equity, right? So ability to be mentored, FaceTime, things like that. Um, it's a lot tougher when you are in this kind of, um, hybrid environment where it's, some people are going to the office some days a week, and then there's also associated with that a hundred percent remote employees. Um, the, the benefit of using Kumo space for me is that everyone has equal access to me, regardless of geography, right? Our team spans from Tokyo to Spain, um, from, uh, Canada to, uh, Uruguay. So it's a big, um, swath. Um, and, uh, largely we try to kind of work during more U S, uh, business hours. So some of those teams at the extended edges, they come in, but

they, they have strong overlap so they can engage in that synchronous communication. They can, uh, you know, have, uh, access to myself, to other team members. Um, so you just need to be cognizant of that. Uh, I also think when you have someone that's remote, uh, I've found, um, it, it can be tougher to manage them if you don't have them all in kind of one clean place. Um, so even if you're not using Kumo space, make sure you're treating them like you would a normal employee in the sense that they're, um, you know, in all, you know, all the access to your communication tool, whatever tools, whatever that might be. Um, and you're trying and bringing them to team meetings, things like that, trying to keep them very in the know. Um, and it comes down to like, you also, as a leader, just need to be very transparent with everyone in the company, but overly transparent, uh, to the people that maybe have less access to you, uh, and sit there and check in with them and really try to understand what's going on in their lives, but also like what, you know, what's, what's of interest to them, what they have ideas, make their voice feel heard. Man, I would tell you in the machine. For sure. For sure. I would tell you the biggest things that you said that I want to even highlight more that I think are, uh, quite a pro tip, uh, if you're trying to develop a remote team. And, uh, even on my team, people that had not worked with remote people before coming into this environment, struggled with it. Right. And one of the, I think the biggest struggles was, well, multiple forms of communication are, are certainly important. And you're calling this asynchronous communication, having that overlap time, right. Having that overlap time where, where you get the FaceTime, where you connect with the person where you're not just like inputting orders, like you're just programming in orders and you're hoping, uh, to get,

get, get that, that response out. Uh, one of the big things that I've found and, and certainly in the kind of, uh, green room or pre-interview, we were talking about remote people. And I know you had a number of people in the Philippines and I do as well. Um, what I have found is, uh, that overlap time, super important. There's a lot of people in Philippines that do work, uh, or overlap with the U S time. And that is absolutely critical. But I also found hiring, uh, in our, uh, hemisphere, uh, really, really helpful if I, if I'm using the word right, uh, South America, uh, rest of North America, cause they're on our time zone. Right. And then, so it doesn't matter where they're at. They're, they're working the same time. Uh, and that, that, that's been exceedingly, uh, valuable. Um, certainly I haven't got into multiple, uh, languages yet. Uh, we, we do do a little bit of Spanish. Um, but, um, you know, I would tell you that, um, you know, well, you know, you need to speak good English. Like, like if remote people are listening to this, that's the number one thing is understanding and being able to make sure that, uh, whatever you're sharing and thought when you walk away, whatever directions you were given, you understand what those directions are. And that might take, uh, multiple forms of communication to cross reference and triangulate, uh, what that answer is. But I think that, um, that's really important. I do have another podcast too, that I will try to link into this on a different show, a sales and marketing show where we go into a ton of information about remote. Um, drew, I want to give you a kind of elevator pitch, um, to pitch your product to talk about. I think it's been super interesting. I think we can go into a lot more detail, but, um, you know, pitch your product and, um, you know, how do people get in contact with you? Yeah. Just, um,

so one, one of the nice benefit to hiring in our hemisphere, as you were saying, is we have team members who are in Brazil, uh, Latin America, uh, and we have customers, you know, marketing agencies is one of our primary customer bases. Um, and they're not always in the U S or they're not always defaulting to an English language. So often our sales guys are finding a team member who speaks Portuguese or speak Spanish far better than they do. Uh, when we have those, those demos happening in the space and the people are like, Hey, I can speak some English, but you know, I'd love to speak to someone, uh, in, in my native tongue. Um, so having a diverse geographic team with, with multiple languages can actually be very helpful in selling and generating revenue. Um, I I'm adding you, I'm adding a product feature here. Like if you don't already have it, um, real time translation. So like, you know, I know people when I travel, right. You got like, like Google translate, like a real time. And then you're like talking to each other. Uh, you know, if you create some kind of latency, like you could have a conversation with somebody and then it could like convert it into their language. And then now you're in an office of people, multiple languages, but they're all talking to you in their own language. Like I, I see the future it's coming. Right. So, um, yeah, that, that's definitely a great feature. It's something we've thought about. It's a technically a harder, but, um, yeah, I could definitely see a future version of Kumo space having that kind of functionality, uh, built into it. Um, go ahead. Yep. The best ways to find us is just go to kumospace.com. Um, and if you click on schedule a demo, um, you can actually see how I work and how I run a marketing team. That's, that's one of the fun ways. Um, if you guys, uh, if listeners want to, uh, start a free

trial, um, there's a discount code associated with the best SEO podcasts. So just no spaces to get 10% off your first year. Uh, and then to find me personally, uh, you know, I'm pretty active on LinkedIn. Uh, and you can also just drop me an email. It's drew at kumospace.com. See, look at that affiliate. One of the best ways to, to grow your business without even asking me, they built affiliate code. Look at that and plugged it in. Um, you know, like, so that is one of the major ways, uh, once you get your business up and running, uh, and you're growing it. And I think there's a lot of bigger businesses, uh, that, uh, look at, um, affiliate partners, uh, in a new light. And, and you and I talked about influencers, um, the world's changing, right. Um, and so, uh, not just being a referral based business, um, you know, but referrals are where it all starts and, um, uh, trusted voices in the space. So, uh, Drew, thanks so much, uh, for being on. Um, uh, if anybody, uh, likes this podcast, please comment wherever you're finding it. Uh, really appreciate it. Please send in your questions. I know people have been sending me in questions and I am going to do a solo podcast to really go technical on some SEO stuff. Uh, just had a lot of people lined up. I wanted to do a series, uh, to give people a different perspective of just not my own and, and Chris's. Uh, so Drew, thank you so much, uh, for coming on, uh, until the next time. Bye-bye for now.