Zach Boyette is the Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Galactic Feda fully external growth marketing agency with employees in more than 17 countries.
For remote entrepreneurs, every day comes with some unique challenges. Dropped calls, poor Wi-Fi, and time zone mix-ups are common. But how would you run a remote-first company from the world’s most remote lake? Is it possible to run a successful business while traveling the world? And how can you leverage these formative experiences to improve growth and revenue and run a better business?
In the spring of 2022, my co-founder and I traveled across Africa, climbed Mount Kilimanjaro and trekked to one of the most remote lakes in the world, Lake Tele. We did all of this while running our remote marketing agency of over 155 employees. This experience was one of the most formative of my life to date and gave us some unique insights that have highlighted the importance of remote entrepreneurship. Below are three valuable lessons I learned.
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Leaders can pave the way for remote work success.
Like climbing Kilimanjaro, building a company that allows you to travel around the world and still scale up step by step. While my co-founder and I are now reaping the benefits of a solid remote foundation, we first had to encounter and overcome many challenges, most of which are entirely new to us as entrepreneurs exploring the remote world.
What type of infrastructure must be in place to make this possible? We had to answer this question before we could travel the world while running our business. Wherever you are, to stay on top of teams, systems and results, remote team leaders must build quantitative measurement systems that can outperform more traditional management models. A systematic approach to how work gets done is crucial.
For example, at my company, we call this our “GFW” or the “Galactic Fed Way.” The GFW is the company’s blueprint for everything we do, including recruiting, training, marketing, sales, HR, etc. We started documenting all our processes when we were a team of two, and now as a team of over 150, it is meticulously tracked and as detailed as possible.
Suppose you are not a remote entrepreneur, but do want to make the switch. In that case, there are ways you can start today. Try to keep calls to a minimum and limit them to just a few days a week. Encourage asynchronous work. Allow employees to work remotely one or two days per week or one full week per month.
Remote entrepreneurs can bring benefits to their business.
At first glance, the benefits of remote entrepreneurship seem clear: no physical office, less overhead, and no time spent commuting. But I’ve found that the potential positive results for your business itself go further than you might think.
Consider, for example, recruitment. You can hire top talent from anywhere in the world. This approach to hiring proved right when we returned from our three month trip to find that our international agency was operating as usual. Coming back and seeing that everything was okay was really worth it. My team knows how to do their job and handle things without the founders around.
Moreover, necessity leads to innovation. I believe the result of traveling and working remotely while running a business forces entrepreneurs to impeccable time management and can expose them to other cultures. In my experience, it opens your mind to new work and management philosophies and can help you learn to go with the flow and take things more naturally, a skill I think many entrepreneurs lack.
Moreover, I have discovered that broadening your cultural horizons can lead to a more diverse team and an inclusive culture. The same diversity also comes to the fore when you travel, especially if you have to deal with different issues in a multicultural setting and you have to learn to empathize with other viewpoints. Ultimately, I believe in making your business a reflection of the world you see around you. This can foster an environment of acceptance in which people want to work. You may also find that this helps lower turnover and makes room for lifelong careers.
The new future of work is here.
Remote work is often referred to as ‘the future of work’, but as we know it has now become relatively mainstream. I believe we are on the verge of one new ones future of work. What does that look like? I predict the future of work will be mostly asynchronous, global organizations. We will see people move out of cities and into other areas to be closer to family, to be close to nature or to live in a new country. As time goes by, the term “digital nomad” or even “remote work” may even seem outdated as I expect travel and work to be a normal facet of life.
And of course, knowing the strengths of your team and organization is essential to thrive in this new future. This is something I learned in practice. Building a team of self-motivated, relatively autonomous go-getters who thrive in the remote work environment is key. Trusting your team and delegating responsibility to leaders who know what they are talking about is essential. If you can’t do this, remote leadership is not possible.
Traveling while running a business may seem counterintuitive and isn’t right for everyone or every industry. But for founders, entrepreneurs, and business leaders curious about how adopting this new future could shape their corporate culture and drive its growth, there are strategies that can be implemented today.
Whether you want to hike for 14 days to the most remote lake in the world or just want to integrate your life and work more holistically, I believe that experiencing the world by traveling while running your business is good for you, but it can even be even better for your business.
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