Learned a few things over the past few years
of running a virtual business.
I'm Sue B. Zimmerman, and I want to share some of these tips
with you.
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The first tip is that you need more communication
than you think.
It used to be that we would meet two times a week,
but ever since we decided to check in daily--
even if it's just for 20 minutes--
it makes a great difference in making sure
that we're all on the same page with every single project
that we're doing.
So you might be thinking, what the heck do
you guys talk about every day?
Well let me tell you, there is quite a bit.
We have blog posts, YouTube videos, e-mail copy, graphics,
sales pages, my travels, first when I'm speaking.
There is a ton that we need to go over.
And often, it makes it so much better when you actually
get on a Skype call and look at each other
in the eye, as opposed to sending texts or e-mails.
So I highly recommend, if you work with people virtually,
the more communication the better.
The second tip I want to give you,
is to consider using two of our favorite tools, Dropbox
and Google Drive.
We love these tools because each team member
is able to have their own folder,
and this minimizes the frustration of somebody
moving your content around.
So by having our own folders, we all
know where our content is that we're working on.
It also makes sending files and documents really easy.
Somebody writes something, they share the link,
the other person approves it, and we're all on the same page.
Viola.
Tip number three is getting together
with your team as much as possible in person.
So what we do is, whenever we travel
to a conference or an event, we always buffer that travel
and take time to all be together.
Because having physical contact, looking at people in the eye,
and actually having fun together and not
having it all be business, is really important.
And we also make sure that we meet up
every single quarter at a destination
to have a quarterly meeting.
And this makes it so that we can all be on check,
we have an agenda that we go over,
we're very conscious of our time together.
But again, we make sure that we have
down time to have some fun.
And that is really important when
you are running a virtual team.
Though some of the fun things that we actually
get to do when we're together are, sip on green juices,
go for power walks, we Periscope together,
and more often than not, Morgan is Morgan-izing our computer
in some great way.
Tip number four-- and probably the most important,
and the one that took me a while to really do the right way--
is setting boundaries.
I was guilty of firing off texts all day long.
Early in the morning, late at night, and my team
members got frustrated and nervous
sometimes about the content that I was sending.
And it just wasn't in the boundaries
that they wanted to be working in.
So listen to what your team members want to receive
and make sure that you are all on the same page when
it comes to communicating.
This is really important.
And this is something that has taken me
a long time to embrace and to actually do on a day
to day basis.
But let me tell you something, my team members
are so much happier because we now have boundaries.
One of my favorite resources for running a virtual team
is by my good friend Chris Tucker.
It's called Virtual Freedom and I'm
going to link it up right here in the description below.
And if you have a favorite tip that I didn't cover,
please leave it in the comments below.
And as always, I want you to have a hashtag, Insta Awesome
day.