I built PeKu’s team on a completely virtual basis.  My designer and engineer are in Europe.  My editors are in the US and Canada.  My writers are distributed among a few continents. As I have hired new team members, location never mattered.

Even though PeKu is headquartered in Manchester, New Hampshire, coming to the office never was a requirement.  The only thing that mattered was that you did your job well and were punctual.   We use collaborative software that keeps team members on the same page.  Working with my editorial team, we hold monthly meetings utilizing an online meeting tool to discuss ideas and issues.

Interestingly the only people that I worked with in the same physical location were my interns.  Every week or two, I would meet with them on their campus.  We would review previous projects and discuss future goals.  However, this was a small part of their internships, as once again this role could be filled virtually.

However, I just hired our first marketing coordinator.  While most of her work will be completed virtually, we do have monthly, in-person meetings planned.  After holding our first in-person meeting, I definitely feel a benefit to it.  Most of what we did could have been completed virtually, there were advantages.  We could discuss an idea, return to our individual projects, and then share a follow-up to the original idea a couple minutes later.  We could sketch out ideas in real time, instead of emailing or sharing files and waiting for a response.

Does this epiphany change the way I want to run PeKu?  Not really.  I think there is a lot of downtime when working in an office.  Working on your own, if you’re focused, allows you to get many projects done without interruption.  However, would regularly scheduled in-person meetings benefit certain roles? Absolutely.

The net-net is that I think the addition of a marketing coordinator is going to help PeKu in many ways.  Collaborating, brainstorming, and working together will be even more beneficial.