Lessons Learned: Growing Remote Teams with Jason Aiginitis

Spyros Tsoukalas: Welcome everyone. This is another episode for the Growth Mentor Podcast. I’m excited to host Jason Aiginitis, a fellow Greek marketer, who has a vast experience in the marketing sector having worked for more than 10 years with clients from all over the world. Jason, welcome!

Jason Aiginitis: Nice to be here. Nice to meet you.

Spyros Tsoukalas: I’m quite excited as a digital nomad to discuss with you remote working. So could you tell us something we don’t know about remote working given your experiences?

Jason Aiginitis: Yeah, absolutely. This is to give you some context. I’ve been a digital nomad. Basically, I’ve been working remotely for about three, or four years now. So I’ve done it for a while. So, I know the pitfalls, basically. And something that most people don’t know is that it’s not all lovey-dovey like perfectly living life like taking Instagram pictures all over the world. That’s not just that. There are a lot of technical elements of countries from internet connection to even doing your taxes. That is quite challenging. And unfortunately, governments around the world have not advanced as fast as digital nomad requirements and people wanting to be digital nomads. So, it’s a bit of a challenge to navigate around the technicalities and the bureaucracy of governments around the world.

Spyros Tsoukalas: I haven’t experienced that intensively being a digital nomad because I have been nomadic in the European Union. So this was kind of resolved. So, elaborating on these challenges. Could we share a broader list of the challenges that digital nomad face? And then how to address them?

Jason Aiginitis: Yeah, of course. So let’s talk about the technical limitation. So for example, let’s say you are a marketer, for an agency or for any house somewhere, and you can work from anywhere you want in the world, and you want to travel, perfect, all you need is a laptop and your backpack, right? Well wrong. Because actually, you need to make sure that wherever you’re going to be traveling, there is going to be the infrastructure required for you to do your job. Let’s say you’re a video editor, if you go somewhere in Malawi, in the middle of nowhere. Logic says there isn’t going to be a wifi infrastructure for you to do your work. So a lot of research is required beforehand, for the locations, you are going to make sure that there is the infrastructure, they are allowing you to do your work. And that’s the technical side. So another limitation has to do with your taxes. And like your base, because even actually within the European Union, one big challenge is that if you move into another country for more than six months, then your tax residency changes. So you are limited by where you want to go, which country you want to go to, and how long you want to stay there. So if you suddenly decide, okay, I want to go to Japan and stay there for six months. There are limitations because your tax residency is going to change. And then depending on your situation you need to speak with accountants basically to see “Is it viable for you to stay for that long in another country?” So yes, it’s a dream come true for everyone to travel around the world, but you need to consider the limitations.

Spyros Tsoukalas: Have you experienced the challenges of being on the side of a company building a remote team with partners or employees facing such challenges?

Jason Aiginitis: So, yes, and no. The remote working part is a challenge in itself. And there again, if you’re working for a company, there are limitations because again, there is a whole legal framework behind where you are based as an employee. So let’s take the UK for example because I was in the UK for a decade. And like, I know how it works. And Brexit has thrown a spanner in the works in general in there. But to give you some context, if you leave the country for more than six months, and you’re an employee, you can’t legally do that, because then you’re not allowed because of your taxes on a different country, you’re not allowed to be employed in that country or in that company. Unless they do a lot of paperwork and not many companies know that they need to do that or are willing to do that. So, that’s a challenge. And then yes, of course, we can go like that’s a completely different topic like growing a remote team and managing a remote even like how to deal with a remote team but that’s a completely separate challenge. And you know, the challenge of being a digital nomad.

Spyros Tsoukalas: Yeah, totally understood. So, there’s I think that many people we think of as mentors and others probably are some of our listeners relate to the idea of building a remote team since talent and skill and people meet on the internet, especially during the COVID years, and they connect to the internet and they work through the internet. So I find it quite challenging as it’s new to build remote teams. So I would like, given your experience, I would like to focus on that. So what are your experiences and your thoughts about building remote teams? I have a ton of questions to ask you. But like, what is your take?

Jason Aiginitis: Of course, so COVID brought our revelation. It really, really changed our industry, I think forever. And when I say our industry, I mean, the technology industry in general, like marketing, like developers, anything, anyone that can work from home, basically. And then the change, the biggest change that came with that was that not only people were working from home, but it made the workplace International. And what I mean, by making the workplace international means that there is competition for jobs now all over the world. Because if you have the skill set, nowadays, it doesn’t matter where you are, like in most companies and more startups really are looking and they are trying to hire the best people possible the best talent possible. So it doesn’t matter if you’re in Spain, doesn’t matter. If you’re in Greece, does it matter of Yunnan, China doesn’t matter if you’re in India, if you have the skill set, they’re going to hire you. And that brings a very big challenge to the managers that are going to be managing those teams because we are moving away from the whole office mentality and being there and you need a different way to connect with your team. And you need a different way to upskill your team. And you need to be a different kind of leader in order to be successful in that.

Spyros Tsoukalas: So, what skills are involved, especially on the manager side, or on the founder side leading such a team?

Jason Aiginitis: So the very first thing is that you will need either yourself or you will need someone that really knows the industry very well, because there are two types of founders, right? So the first one is people that have an idea, they’re business people, they have an idea, and they hire the people to execute it. But nowadays, that’s not going to be enough. You will need to know the work you need to know like being able to go in the trenches with the people otherwise, it’s very, very easy to lose their trust. The second type of founder is the one that has been in the industry has been doing the job and wants to make the next step and create something of his own, in my opinion, this tends to be the best type of founder for the employees. Because they are able to join the trenches, be there with them and be a real leader. And I think so, no matter what you’re in the industry, your business is going to be going into knowing how to build it yourself. And being part of that employee team almost in a way is going to be critical for you to succeed.

Spyros Tsoukalas: You mentioned leadership more than once. So, how does a founder or leader lead remotely? What actions should they be taking in your opinion?

Jason Aiginitis: So, in the old days, I’m gonna call it like old days, because that’s what it is in my mind. So, in the old days of the office, working as a leader could literally be someone sitting in the office, doing nothing like being there, making the decisions. I’m not necessarily saying that this was a good leader, but this could be a leader. Nowadays, with remote working, if this is your approach, you are not a leader, because people are not going to be interacting with you every single day, they’re not going to be necessarily seeing you every single day, even like on our call on the internal zoom call. So, in my perspective, in order to be a good leader, you need to be able to go in the trenches, like do the work, be with them, and lead by example. Because this is going to be critical to building trust. And without trust, you cannot have a remote team. And I focus a lot on trust. Because as I said, you’re not in the office, you cannot see what your employees are doing. It might sound like this is micromanagement but you want to know that they are going to be doing the work you have assigned them and you need to be able to trust them to do it. And they need to be able to trust you that you’re going to recognize their work as well.

Spyros Tsoukalas: Trust was the next question because that’s something I really find challenging. So, how can a remote leader take care of their team being remote? It’s challenging as well.

Jason Aiginitis: Yes, of course, it can be challenging but as I said, it all comes down to building trust being there for them, and being someone that they can trust you recognize the hard work and trust to do what’s best for them. And when I say them, I mean of course the team under you. This can be done in more in multiple ways as you can do it at once, but this list is not enough. Because what once means you’re gonna speak with your employer like, once a day, once a week, once a month, it doesn’t, it’s just a conversation on a call. So, remember, you need to think about the context of everything you’re doing as a manager, right? So when you’re having your one-to-one, your employee, they’re sat at home, possibly on the couch, you don’t know, with a laptop on their hands doing work like they’re at home, they’re in the safe space, they’re not in a professional environment necessarily. So, you need to be able to level with them and be able to make them trust you to be honest, it’s critical, like transparency. That’s a very big buzzword when it comes to remote working. But transparency is critical for any remote team to succeed. Because, again, in the old days, if something was wrong, if you were the employee, you will see your manager going into meetings, or likely, you would get the feeling of nonverbal communication, that something is wrong. Or if something was going well, you would do a great job, again, nonverbal communication would be there. So you could realize those things. With remote working, nonverbal communication does not exist. Even verbal communication is a challenge. Because we have Slack, we have email, we have like different communication tools. But at the end of the day, it’s not the same as being right in front of someone and talking with them. So you need to have a method of replacing that nonverbal communication with your employees. And the only way like Facebook, my experience, the only way to is through being transparent. Tell them if you think they are long, late one day, tell them if you think the quality of the work is going down, tell them you feel the training, tell them like be open and honest. There are people that are not quite open to constructive, constructive criticism. Don’t get me wrong, I know that but how you that’s like the second layer of this. Like how you communicate things is also quite important. But, none of this matters if you don’t communicate it. So you need to be transparent and communicate everything.

Spyros Tsoukalas: I really highly relate to the ideas. You have been part of having led remote teams, thanks for going so deep. Last question for the day. Jason, what’s the role of technology nowadays?

Jason Aiginitis: Oh, it’s critical. It’s absolutely critical. Because without technology, we wouldn’t be able to do any of those. So, not only technology makes it easier to communicate with your team. But it also makes it easier to have like a set plan of goals for the day to monitor what everyone is doing. Again, without going into creepy territory, insecurities on the screen, or things like that. You don’t want to be doing that. That’s really bad for morale, it’s really bad for trust. Again, I keep coming back to trust and how we can use technology to actually instill trust in our employees because this is quite important. They need to be able to feel you trust them to do what they do in order to succeed. And there are many, many tools. So, for example, I’ve used in the past a tool called Forecast, a new startup they do project management. It is like a Monday.com. There are many, many tools that can help you manage a fully remote team because everybody’s working in a single place. I like to call it a single place of truth. Because everything about your clients, your work, everything is going to be on that platform. So, yes, technology is absolutely critical. And the key thing that enables us to have remote teams really.

Spyros Tsoukalas: Jason, thanks for taking the time to join us and share all these ideas and experiences you have had with us. I hope that people that relate to or are part of this ecosystem, learned a few things here and there today. I learned a lot that I didn’t have in mind being a digital nomad or a member of remote teams. Thank you so much.

Jason Aiginitis: Thank you!