Remote Team Management featuring Joshua Chin – How We Solve Podcast

The How We Solve Podcast invited Chronos Agency’s CEO and Co-Founder Joshua Chin for an interview on remote team management last February 21, 2020. Turns out, managing a remote team is simpler than it sounds. Plus, the episode offers some solid and practical benefits to business owners when done right.

From recruiting his remote teams all the way to managing them with the use of special tools, Josh shared his experience with bringing together his remote dream team. Read on for more on how he did it.

From Him and His Dorm Room to More Than 60 Strong in 3 Years

Rather than going around distributing flyers or putting up ads and waiting, Josh personally scouted the talents he knew his email marketing vision needed. He first focused his talent search efforts around his home country (Singapore), assembling a small team to get started.

Later, he decided to finally build his remote workforce. A decision, he pointed out, that was born out of a practical need. With a remote team, finding and renting a workplace or office space wouldn’t be a problem—minimizing costs as he started his agency. And that’s not all. Josh also highlighted how expanding into remote employment opened up a whole new level of access to various talents as his search continued.

Platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook came in handy as hiring portals for Josh. These made his talent hunts more efficient and accessible. As time passed, he went from just focusing within the borders of Singapore to expanding outwards to other regions. First were Malaysia and the Philippines. And just recently, the far west like North America is now within his scope for remote employment.

“Your talent pool expands significantly when you aren’t tied to geography.” —Joshua Chin

Managing a Remote Team and Keeping Track

When it comes to managing your remote team, it’s actually not so different from managing an office-based one. Josh highlighted that the only major difference was the acquisition of talents.

While having remote teams meant that having a centralized office space was less of a priority, today Chronos Agency already actually has two physical offices (one in Singapore and one in Malaysia). That’s how much Chronos has grown since 2017!

When it came to establishing a system for managing and keeping track of his remote teams and their operations, Josh implemented the KPI system. This gave a clear set of objectives to his different remote teams so they know where to focus all their efforts within a given time period. This, again, emphasized Josh’s point on how remote teams aren’t that different from office-based ones.

With KPIs set, what other tools did Josh use to streamline his remote team management experience? For project management, Click Up is the current tool of choice of the Chronos family. The ability of each team down to their teammates to track and organize their tasks only made remote work simpler to execute.

And as for time management? Google Calendar meets the needs of Chronos Agency. When it comes to synchronizing different teams from different regions around the world to important appointments like company-wide meetings, Google Calendar does its job allowing Chronosians to be more efficient and effective.

A stable and reliable form of communication is also key to maintaining coordination among the different remote teams. Josh’s favorite communication tool? Slack. In fact, it’s so reliable that Josh has been using Slack since the beginning and it is still in use by the whole company.

We mentioned company-wide meetings earlier, so how does Chronos conduct those? Zoom is the tool of choice when it comes to meetings, especially for meetings between teams and the more intimate 1-on-1 meetings. These video chat meetings are necessary for maintaining healthy interaction among team members. Different departments also conduct their own meetings and strategy sessions via Zoom.

It Is Easier Than It Sounds—Really!

Down to the main point Josh wants to emphasize—remote team management isn’t as complicated as it sounds. With the help of Chronos Agency’s COO and Co-Founder Louis Teo, along with the many talents he hired to help him with team management, Josh’s role has continued to evolve. Now he’s more of the company advisor, the KPI overseer, and the partnership builder.

“Managing a remote team is, actually more freeing for entrepreneurs — because it enables them to manage objectives & KPIs.” —Joshua Chin

Today, household brands like Klaviyo and Clutch are slowly recognizing Chronos Agency as a reliable global leader in the field of email marketing.

So if you need help with your email marketing strategies, don’t hesitate to schedule a free 30-minute strategy meeting with us!