Combining a full-time 9-5 job with owning a burgeoning online publishing outfit such as Nairametrics can be a very difficult task without some help. At a point, I was the only one blogging consistently for many years. As my content continued to increase, it became necessary for me to employ a few hands to help with my content flow.
To ensure my project got the attention it required whilst maintaining my 9-5 job required that I hire some more hands on a part time and/or full time basis. Back then, since I did not have an office space, I had to find a way to get them to work for me from a different location whilst also creating a semblance of everyone being in the same location.
So basically, I needed employees who will work for me from different locations whilst also ensuring that they all work in consonant with each other and delivering overall corporate objective of my organisation. That therefore requires a Virtual Office and Virtual Assistants (Employees).
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Of course, I had to do some background research about how virtual offices really work; and upon my venture, I found two very instructive guides online from people who have ran successful startups virtually. You too can. Find useful excerpts and links below:
How I manage 40 people remotely
I’ve been running Treehouse since August 2010 from my home in the United Kingdom. We started with just three people (me, Nick Pettit and Jim Hoskins) and now we’re about to hit 40 full-time employees. I’m in the UK with one other person on the Support Team, our main office is in Orlando and the rest of the Team is spread out all around the States.
I’ve managed the company for almost two years from another country with up to an eight hour time difference. We’re doing $3,000,000+ in revenue with over 11,000 paying customers and growing fast, so we must be doing something right. Here’s how I manage the Team
5 tips to manage a completely virtual startup team
As a founder of Young Entrepreneur Council, I know millions of people worldwide are in long-distance relationships. And most find themselves facing the distance because their jobs or other commitments don’t allow them the flexibility to be location-independent. After enduring a one-year long distance relationship with my now husband, we’d had enough, and decided to build our own business in a way that could accommodate location flexibility with our team.
We became a remote team within the first two months of our founding, when our third business partner moved across the country to be closer to his girlfriend (now fiancé) while she was in medical school. A year later, my husband and I moved to Michigan and left another team member behind in Chicago.
This year, we kept another team member on part-time when he decided to move to Senegal to be closer to his girlfriend while she completed a program there.
We now span across a seven-hour time difference, from Palo Alto to Africa. Crazy? Maybe — but here’s how we made it work:
Do you have more resources or have a unique experience about running a virtual office you wish to share? Send me an email.
Interesting. I’ve worked remotely for the most part of this year and manage/ interface with a team that’s scattered across Nigeria, UK & India. Asides, having to convince people that I’m not doing yahoo yahoo :-), it’s been a very enjoyable experience. It’s certainly doable….and I might be able to hook you up with the human resource for yours when you need it.
That will be nice. How do people contact you?
Thank you so much for this article
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