I’m Director of Marketing for CIPIO.ai, a community commerce automation company. My role is mostly demand lead generation and general marketing tasks. We are a startup, so it’s kind of a jack-of-all-trades kind of marketing role.

How big is it?

‍I currently have myself and two assistants.‍

Where are your teammates located?‍

The company is spread across the United States (mostly Bay Area, CA and greater DC area), and we also have a large team in India.‍

What does your team do? What are you responsible for?‍

I do a lot of social media work, content creation, project management on the website, etc. My team keeps track of when content goes live and its performance.

Communication. It’s critical that people be specific about what they need, along with deadlines and roadblocks. We use specific words, and we are concise. Ambiguous words create misunderstandings, and lots of words overwhelm team members.‍

Execution. Because no one is watching each of us go in and out of the office, we have to hold ourselves accountable by getting the work done efficiently and correctly. If we can’t trust each other to execute on a task, we can’t move forward or get along. Poor execution also leads to bickering among team members and delayed initiatives.

Flexibility. Leaders need to understand that remote work cultures thrive when we let our colleagues decide their prime work hours and processes. That said, strong communication helps people set reasonable expectations on availability.

Initiative. If people wait to be told, things fall through the cracks. Team members who see a potential roadblock and fix it (or notify the expert who can) are perfect for remote work culture. Proactivity (along with strong communication) make this environment golden.

I put them to work. :) And then I get their feedback on the work they just did. When they feel a part of the brand and know that they have a voice, connections get stronger despite the physical distance.

Discovering and dealing with someone who cannot execute. You have to trust people to get the work done, and when you find out the hard way, people feel let down. Thankfully, this has not happened very much. But it is difficult when it does.

As a startup, we are both always off and always working. We have a lot of Zoom calls, and we are lucky that most of us have great chemistry. Founders paid for us all to come to the company headquarters in Fairfax, VA in March, which was wonderful.

Many of our product launches (like our recent Influencer Search & Discovery tool) become major goals that we all rally around from all parts of the globe.

As we grow, we will have to be more intentional about regular “happy hours” and such. For now, the chemistry with our small team over Zoom is enough to keep morale high.

Yes, a couple of our virtual events involved games like trivia and sharing personal stories.

Yes, when a new team member joins, we ask them to share where they are from and a few interesting things about them. It’s really simple - we take interest and don’t rush those moments.

We mostly invest in collaboration tools (G Suite, Slack, etc.). As a startup, we invest most of our resources into developing and testing our product. Excitement over reaching milestones is currently the biggest morale booster.

Cofounders Sundeep Sanghavi, Growson Edwards, and Kelly McDonald (and even my web design expert at Bold Dialogue) are Marketing SaaS giants. As such, they’ve been inspiring mentors. I recently purchased a book that Sundeep recommended, Everybody Wants to Rule the World. I’m enjoying it so far..

Nothing beats personal mentorship, IMO.