Starting a business can be hard. There’s a ton to think about like why is your product unique, who are your customers, how will you find or market to them, when will you be ready to ship, what will your office look like, and who will help you.

New entrepreneurs have a million things to worry about, but one key factor many overlook is what happens when your product takes off. Having a plan for growth from day one is crucial to a young business’s success.

Growth typically requires people, and as initial orders or users start to file in you’ll find you need extra hands, brain power, and man-hours. Many skip this part of the planning process and quickly fall behind because hiring is not something they were prepared for and although you can rent an office and typically find help locally, there’s another way.

Why Hire Remote

One of the last things a new business needs is the overhead of a fancy office (or even a lousy office for that matter). Rent, desks, computers, and LaCroix all pull vital cash out of a new company which may be betting on future successes to afford their current growth.

Hiring remote lets you find talented help without the added expense of needing a place to house them every day. You can require employees to cover their own costs like computers, electricity, and internet, and you won’t need to shell out thousands for an office space.

You can immediately grow with no lengthy time delays for finding and moving into or renovating an office. As you continue to find new customers you can cover your financial commitment more easily from raising revenues since you’ll have significantly less expenses.

Benefits of a Remote Workforce

If you live in a small community, it may just be plain difficult to find the talent you need to help grow your company, but even in larger cities where talent is abundant, working from home or from the road is a major perk to the growing millennial workforce. Something as simple as no commuting for your team can lead to things like higher productivity, less stress, and lower turnover.

By building your company around a remote workforce you can aim to get the most qualified people, not just those available in your area. Finding people in markets with lower costs of living may even land you star talent at an affordable price.

Just because your tech startup is in San Fran, doesn’t mean a developer in Fargo, or Ukraine for that matter, isn’t the right person for the team. Their situation may enable them to work for far less than fellow bay area devs, plus they may add to the diversity of ideas within your company thanks to their varied background.

Hiring globally and finding workers across the planet means your working day extends well past the 5pm closing bell. Projects can be passed from one team to another, easily extending the working hours to 15 or 20 a day. Your business can accomplish a lot as the workforce grinds away on today’s problems while you sleep, sending answers and solutions to your inbox before tomorrow ever starts.

Hiring and Working with Remote Workers  

Hiring these days is made easy with tools like Indeed, where job posts can be published immediately all over the world, and video interviews over Skype makes face-to-face interaction a breeze.

Shared documents in your google suite and meeting software like Google Hangouts keeps your team on task no matter where in the world they are. Plus internet around the planet has gotten strong enough to avoid any delays or excuses.

One company that has built their business around a remote workforce is RunRepeat.com. Five years ago, when the founder decided to find a better way to help consumers buy athletic shoes, he decided to keep the structure of his company simple, overheads low, and invest in the best talent he could find, even if that talent may not have been in Copenhagen where he was located.

Today, RunRepeat employs 57 people around the world. Their workforce is online 24 hours a day ensuring product innovation is a constant and the team communicates daily through chat, video, email and shared docs.

The expenses saved from not having a high-tech office go towards a yearly company meet up in places like Bali, France, Thailand, and the Philippines. The employees love the freedom of being able to work from home, the beach, or anywhere they please, and turnover has been unbelievably low with only 3 people leaving the company since it first opened its digital doors.

Why Doesn’t Everyone Hire Remote

The main reason people don’t hire remote is fear. To some, not seeing your workforce means they may not be working hard enough. Unfortunately this false belief holds a lot of companies back. Trust is one of the highest motivators for successful people and allowing your employees to work where and when they please is a great way to show how much you believe in them.

The old fashioned idea of what a workplace is or looks like is changing. Today, with everything based in the cloud, workers are no longer tied to any one location. Commuting is part of yesterday’s working world, the workers of tomorrow want to be where they are most comfortable, leading to higher productivity, less turnover, and more balance.

Just because you have decided to start a business doesn’t mean you have to conform to the way you’ve always worked. Be creative, cut expenses, go on exciting adventures to meet your team, and consider just how powerful a remote-first company can be.