One of the most common questions I get is regarding how Web4Realty came to be a remote company. Something that’s so normal from my perspective, is very uncommon from the average person’s viewpoint, which will certainly change over time, as more companies realize the benefits of going remote.

About three years ago, I began to read a lot of content about remote companies like Chargify, Buffer and Zapier. To this day, I’m very thankful that more and more companies are opening up and becoming transparent. I think that transparency has such a positive ROI in the overall business and startup ecosystem. That’s one of the main reasons I started opening up and sharing my experiences.

So, as I started reading and learning from other successful remote companies, we started applying some of their ideas into our business. We started implementing a lot of similar tools and apps that they were using, which made our operations more and more efficient. Slowly but surely, we were setting ourselves up to being a remote company, without even knowing it.

I find that most people make decisions or implement changes that satisfy a short-term need, rather than taking a step back and thinking about how it impacts the long-term focus of their business.

We started floating around the remote idea for a while. We always worked from home for two weeks during Christmas holidays, so we knew it could be done, there was just a hesitation about making it permanent. One random day at the office, we gathered the entire team together and told them we’re going to all work remote for the next month and just see what happens. We literally decided that on the spot. That day was actually the last time we all worked from the office together. We managed to get rid of our lease shortly after, and the rest was history.

Two years later, we’re still a fully remote company with no physical office location. We’ve grown our team, our business, and are much more productive as well. We’re currently a team of 16 strong in seven different countries around the globe. However, working remote certainly doesn’t come without challenges.

I credit our ability to pull this off due to how efficient we are in our internal processes and operations. We’ve always put a major emphasis on our internal structure, and constantly think about how scalable all of our decision-making is. I find that most people make decisions or implement changes that satisfy a short-term need, rather than taking a step back and thinking about how it impacts the long-term focus of their business.

One thing is for certain – I wouldn’t trade our remote setup for anything in the world!