Managing a Home Based Business and a Remote Team
As winner of StartupNation’s Home-Based 100 Competition as #1 Most Innovative, I thought it would make sense for my inaugural post to be about managing a home-based business and a bit about how our home business is run remotely too. The four co-founders of Blank Label Group are now working from 4 completely different locations: Orange County, where our CTO is, Boston, where our CEO is, and Shanghai, where our Lead Artist and our Lead Evangelist, me, are, although our Lead Artist and myself work out of completely independent home offices here in Shanghai. After having run the group’s brands remotely for almost all of the 16 or so months we’ve been in business, here are a few tips we have to share for other entrepreneurs looking to build a home-based business with a remote team.
1. Set up a quiet room
This is pretty important because while you don’t need a fully decked out office space, you at least need some working space in your home that is completely separate from the rest of the world because being at home can lead to many, many distractions, turning many of the efficiencies of working at home into inefficiencies.
2. Schedule work times
Working independently, without the encouragement or atmosphere of other busy worker bees around you, it’s easy to be super flexible with your day-by-day schedule, allowing hours of precious work time to slip by more and more frequently, until you realize you’re not even working anymore, so the best way for you to run a business from home and ensure you’re putting in quality effort is by scheduling work times when 110% of your concentration during that time is on your work and nothing else because if you allow even 5% of your head space to be occupied by personal matters, you will not be spending enough time or energy on your work, making less-than-satisfactory progress.
3. Schedule personal times
Conversely, you want to make sure to schedule personal times too so you can unwind and make sure you’re staying healthy both with body and mind, plus giving yourself time to breathe when you’re not working, otherwise you can probably work yourself silly since you never think about the traffic on the late commute home, that it’ll be too dark outside to travel home, etc.
4. Schedule weekly or twice weekly visits with team members
You can schedule Skype video chats or simple phone calls with your team to review work that’s been done, progress, and responsibilities for the next few days or week. This way, everyone’s accountable even though you’re not reporting to each other at the weekly conference meeting in a big conference room. Instead, as the manager of your business working with remote members, you’re making sure everything is running smoothly and you’re checking in frequently enough so that team members don’t feel they’ve lost touch. You also can ensure enough progress is being made and that lack-of-progress is caught and dealt with early enough so that it doesn’t become a chronic problem, or even worse, a problem you discover one month later.
Danny Wong is the Co-founder of Blank Label Group, which powers the startups Blank Label,Thread Tradition and RE:custom. He’s also a blogger for HuffingtonPost, TheNextWeb andReadWriteWeb.
March 3rd, 2011 at 3:52 am
I just saw a minor typo on item #1 ( quite = quiet ), but overall, the advice here makes perfect sense. One of the challenges of having a business at home is privacy- and you need to make some house rules so no one crosses the boundary of your work space, especially when you’re working. Though, it works wonder to get that ‘Do Not Disturb’ door sign like they have in hotels, it’s still better to talk to your family/loved ones about work and play - to avoid any sabotage.
March 3rd, 2011 at 5:46 am
Hi Aaron,
Thanks for telling me about the typo. It’s fixed!
You also bring up a great point about setting rules at home to ensure that your work space and time goes undisturbed for maximum efficiency.
- Danny
March 7th, 2011 at 1:43 am
Hello Danny, nice write up and congratulations on the win! I have been working 100% remotely for several years and have an amazing team of 4 here in the US and 2 others hailing from Great Britian and El Salvador that join me each day in virtual land. It is amazing how we have all come together and produced highly respectable work result in doing so, God is good and the world has become very small!
I just wanted to contribute to your topic here that I notice a trend where a great coach/project-resource role, that is very attuned with the challenges to working remotely can increase the effectiveness of the entire team by LARGE measure.
I should blog, but I don’t, so I will also offer here that I think we should help mentor others to be effective remote workers and remote managers/coaches. That working remotely shouldn’t be about where you sit, but rather the formula has changed.
old bad formula: (7am to 6pm - 1 hr for = paycheck) and (come in early & stay late = Recognition & Promotion)
new good formula: (A+ on a weeks worth of work = paycheck)(Creativity and Contribution = Recognition & Promotion)
March 7th, 2011 at 11:46 am
Great article. This is such a daunting task, you’re so right. Good advice.
March 8th, 2011 at 12:54 pm
Seems basic enough but all points that I needed to be reminded of from time to time. Thank you for sharing!
March 8th, 2011 at 3:59 pm
For those of you readers out there, I would recommend Daniel Pink’s book, Drive, where he talks about the coming of age of the ROWE - results only work environment. He elaborates greatly on the changing work world. Enjoy.
March 10th, 2011 at 8:52 pm
Nice tips and congratulations.
As a work-at-home Mom, however, that “quiet room” is the one I don’t have the luxury of creating, nor do I want to. I have learned to work in smaller increments of time than I ever thought possible and to concentrate amid the chaos. And most importantly, to just stop when it’s really not working and try again later. Little co-workers won’t always be that little. After nearly 11 years of working from home with at least one subordinate under foot, my kids are all in school now and I can get in six hours of work before the school bell rings.
March 16th, 2011 at 7:56 pm
I find scheduling work time is critical, but I usually have to adjust my schedule weekly based on appointments, travel, etc. I sometimes miss having a schedule that never changes. One week I’m working late at night and the next week I’m up and at it by 5 AM. Scheduling personal time is important as well. If I don’t, it seems that I’m constantly working and I become less productive. My continuing battle is with friends and family members who call and don’t understand that I work to do.
March 23rd, 2011 at 11:34 pm
Hey Danny! Congrats on the win and you are definitely paving your way to the top. Keep up the good work and congrats again!
March 31st, 2011 at 7:18 pm
Just went through some of your posts, and wanted to say I enjoy your blog, and will be back to visit often!
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