 Thank you taco and thank you all for being here I know there are a lot of other great tracks going on and so I'm really honored that you're here with me And I can't believe that I get to speak in this room if you don't mind I would like to take a quick selfie because this is incredible, and I just don't get to do this every day This is wild. You don't mind you All right, ready everybody smile One two So as taco said I am Leslie malecky. I'm an American I live in France And I run corner shop creative, which is a fully distributed Wordpress development shop. We serve primarily non-profits. You might call them charities or associations or NGOs in your country And I'm here today to talk to you about my company and how we've turned this pipe dream Into something that employs 14 remote employees I'm gonna tell you a little bit about how we've done it why I think we've been successful for the last four years and hopefully give you some ideas that you can take back to your own company or to You know give you ideas for starting your own if you don't already run your own firm First a quick bit about me I've been working on the web since I was in high school before I could drive a car I was building websites for small businesses in my town using what you see is what you get tools like PageMaker and Dreamweaver. I'm not a developer But those tools made it easy for me to do that back in the day and since then I have been managing enterprise level rollouts of CMSs like Plone at municipalities and and large school districts but in the past four years I've been running corner shop creative and My customers at corner shop creative are these nonprofits. They are American nonprofits They are working to create profit But that profit goes directly to a cause to furthering a cause and making the world a better place And their funding comes from individual donors like me and you From foundations like you can think the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for example and from government or Agencies like in America. This is the Department of Agriculture the Department of Veterans Affairs for example They're always looking for ways to outsource work and get other folks to do this good work so There's like businesses in that they have expenses related to those primary activities they have salaries that they need to pay they have Desks that they need to buy and computers they need to maintain and they need to do advertising so that people understand what the cause is and how they can help out and Those expenses come out of overhead Now these nonprofits are under extreme pressure to keep that overhead low and we as individual donors I think often we totally understand that we want as much of every dollar we give every euro We give to go to the cause as possible but we also understand logically that these organizations do have expenses and This is the place where firms like mine work out of we work out of this tiny little bit of overhead We chose to work with nonprofits, you know when I tell people that we work with nonprofits They say is there any money there? Can you actually make a living doing that and I'm happy to say yes You can and it's really really satisfying. These are good people They're nice to work with and you feel good because you're helping them make the world a better place We actually come from nonprofit backgrounds, so we you know We already have that heart for nonprofits, but we also saw how often nonprofits were being taken advantage of by vendors They were getting stuck in contracts that they didn't really understand a technology that wasn't good services that really weren't serving their needs and We thought we could do it better. We could take better care of them We also thought that we could create a good quality of life for us and our employees while still providing cost-effective solutions for our customers and It's working. So I'm gonna tell you a little bit about what we do how we're doing it Just to give you a peek into this. So we build websites Always using WordPress. We started off as a technology agnostic shop using Drupal or WordPress or Joomla or kind of whatever you brought as long as long as it was a CMS But about this time last year we realized that WordPress was the tool that we kept choosing over and over We would go into the discovery process saying we're agnostic will pick what's best for you And we chose WordPress over and over so we decided to focus on WordPress about a year ago and WordPress has been an excellent tool for our customers because it is this amazing combination of power and flexibility We can make it do anything we want it to do and ease of use So we can pass it off to our customers and they can make their own changes Which is something a lot of them don't have right now They're stuck paying a vendor to make the simplest of changes to their site Which is not a good deal for a non-profit. They don't have that kind of money all the time, right? So WordPress has been excellent for that in addition to that this community you guys and all the folks in those other two tracks create uncountable richness of plugins and themes and All support even that they don't have to come back to us and continue to spend money in the future to have a great Site that can evolve their WordPress allows us to build them a site and then they can evolve it with or without us We hope they do it with us, but they don't have to that's excellent And on top of that the WordPress community this this amazing group of people that we have in this amazing Inclusivity that we have in the WordPress community aligns really well with the nonprofit community our values are so similar And we just get along really well. It's a really nice combination So we build these websites for our nonprofits We also design online petitions to help them get signatures to change change national and local government policy to get change corporate behavior to change public opinion this petition got 83,000 signatures and changed business. They decided to stop using be killing pesticides. Thanks to this petition We design online donation forms that are easy for people to use especially on their mobile phones This is one that breaks the donation process down into three steps with gigantic buttons and great big fields So people are on their phones Which is where a lot of people make donations from are easy to use and back to you The the great presentation that started us off this morning We also design great email templates for our nonprofits so that when they're messaging out to their supporters and They're getting those emails on their phones, which is inevitable They can actually read those emails and they're they are compelling. They have good calls to action and they're beautiful In four years, we've gone from this. We were three people here at the bottom who barely knew each other And we had five possible customers. So that's Ben He knew Ira and he knew me But I didn't know Ira and Ira didn't know me and Ben was sort of the linchpin He said, you know, well, let's let's start a company. What do you say? And we were like, well, I don't know But now we're this four years later. We are 14 people with hundreds of customers all over the United States We are six and a half Developers one and a half designers because we wear multiple hats five project managers and one salesperson And we have a few trusted contractors that we outsource work to when we get too busy But with all of these hires we have, you know, less need for that At this point, you know, I told you we had five potential customers back then we now have 260 opportunities every month. So business is good and I ask myself all the time Why how did this happen so that I can continue to make sure it keeps happening, you know So I'm gonna tell you a few stories and share my theories and hopefully they'll be helpful For you. So these are the secrets to our awesome sauce There's a reason those expensive Canon cameras are on tripods up there And there's a reason that the tripod is a set of three legs. It's stability So I used to be a solo entrepreneur as well when I was in high school in college I ran my own firm and that meant that if I wanted to take vacation or if I got sick I just had to put my projects on hold With a team and especially with co-founders. That's not the case I founded this company with these guys and then I moved from America to France and The company kept going it was amazing It was like magic because there were three of us pulling the company in one direction To me this team of three or at least an odd number of founding partners is crucial Because you have ideally someone to break ties So just two people then you're gonna get in in disagreements and not be able to to resolve them But which three you have someone to break those ties It's it's been really good for us and I definitely encourage you to go get some partners Go get some people who share your vision and want to do the same sort of thing But how do you pick those partners? That's that's sort of a scary thing and I didn't want to look into that So when my friend Ben said hey, let's start a company. I have this other guy I want to do it with I said, okay But I want to meet him and I want to spend some quality time together We will be a remote company, but I want to meet face-to-face for this first time So we locked ourselves in Ben's living room for an entire long weekend We had three days together and we did all kinds of talking We talked about what we wanted to be when we grew up and what our favorite bands were and we drank a lot and we played cards against humanity and We got to know each other really well and while we also talked about the business obviously what kind of business we wanted to run projections what sort of you know, what kind of company did we want to do do we want to be services or products or what as We were having these conversations. I personally was paying really close attention to how we communicated with one another Were we paying attention to one another were we asking interesting questions and challenging one another but respectfully? Were we different enough that we would challenge each other where we similar enough that we wouldn't just destroy one another and In the end we were in the end this proof of concept basically that we did in this living room has worked out very nicely Crucially we came out of this meeting with the agreement that we would be equals We call it third Z's and we've called it third Z's ever since then we are Partners equal partners and as a woman as a feminist especially in technology Salary inequality is a big deal. I'm one third partner. I get paid the same amount This is a big deal and it's crucial and it you'll see it it Continues into the rest of the company While we were in this living room, we also talked about projections We tried to figure out what are the services we're going to provide because really we didn't know Much of anything when we first started off we knew we had a you know a fairly good sense of who our potential customers were But we didn't know exactly where we were going to find them We didn't know exactly what they were going to pay us for we didn't know exactly what we wanted to provide them You know never mind what they wanted to pay us for but what work did we want to do? And we didn't know how many of them we would need in order to keep our families fed So that's where we started we started with how much do you need to make every month to feed your family? Each one of us is married with children and we said well I need I need about this much a month and I need about this much each one of us took a pay cut a Significant pay cut for my two co-founders. I was working for a city city government. I was hardly making anything anyway But we each took a pay cut and we started from there We started our budget with how much do you need to feed your family and we worked up from there? We were Really aware as we were doing this that planning is guessing you You know you can make projections, but you're really making a guess It's going to change as you go forward and that was Unnerving but also comforting After we got those projections together we took them to our partners and we said Here's this crazy plan. We've cooked up. What do you say? We're pretty sure we can feed our families doing this and we're Really sure it's going to make us really happy What do you say and? We got them to sign off somehow so as soon as that happened we bit the bullet we said all right we're doing this and this is the message from me to To Ben the guy who started this all off and his reaction And then my announcement on Facebook from the time that we met By that email that was in April We met in person in that living room in May and this happened in June so it was two months We wanted to strike while the iron was hot and do it before we or our partners could change our minds The really crucial thing to figure out in the beginning was tools and when it's just three of us It wasn't so hard to figure out tools. I mean there's a ton out there And there's really no no worry about getting too invested in anyone because if it wasn't serving us We just kick it to the curb and pick a different one So these are some of the tools that we went through over time You see started off with team lab ended up with smart sheet. We've used b-bowl all along Skype is iffy So we've gone to uber conference and now zoom The one that really has been crucial for us that is our water cooler, you know to Mario's talked to us now about About remote work working. We needed to create company culture We needed to have a place that people felt like they were together. You might be able to tell I'm an extreme extrovert. I desperately need that social connection Hip-chat is our water cooler. It is the place that we get together and just mess around We have very serious conversations in hip-chat, but we also do really silly things in hip-chat including animated gifts Animated gifts are so important in our company that we actually write them into our job description So those arrows are pointing to the line that says ability to quickly find topical animated gifts for our team amusement this is a big deal at corner shop creative and It resulted in this animated gift being attached to a job application that we got from a successful Applicants, right? I couldn't stop laughing. I passed this around all of my social networks So you guys are never gonna believe what I got So of course we put Tracy through the standard interview process You know the first round phone call and then the second round Skype interview to make sure that in fact our cultures We're going to fit but this our job description Indicated to her what our company culture was and then her response to it Indicated to us that she was gonna fit into our company culture just fine and it has worked out quite well So speaking of hiring this is the scariest part It was actually one year one full year before we hired our first employee. So we were a team of three for a year Outsourcing some work to contractors doing most of the work in-house Partly because we knew that at the point that we expanded from being a team of three whose destinies were you know Knitted to one another because of our time in that living room and founding this company together We were making a social contract with this first employee that we would feed his family also and that's super scary You guys it's really he has kids He has a wife he has responsibilities when it's the three of us if it fails, you know, we tried When you hire someone that's a whole different level of responsibility. So we took it very very seriously We've since then gone to now we have 11 employees and you would think that the hiring process would be less difficult Less scary each time and it's a little bit less scary, but it's still it's still kind of a big deal We are our basically theory right now is that we like to hire people who are different from us But people that we'd like to hang out with So I'm proud of the fact that we're quite diverse We have I've strived very very hard to make us gender diverse make us ethnically diverse And that's easier to do when you're a remote team because you can hire from anywhere So that's that's an advantage is something I encourage you to consider when you're trying to figure out How you'll form your company you have a much larger pool We I think our company culture is actually our real secret sauce And I'm not sure exactly where it comes from But I think it's a combination of what we the team Bring to the table and then what we the decision-makers bring to the table. So our team They bring their smart their curious their hard-working and self-starting and they take deadlines seriously they also have a deep-seated respect for one another and Trust in one another and so it makes it easy for them to work with one another and As the management team we bring an organized Environment so we use smart sheet and we manage our projects to the nth degree every project is broken down Very very minutely, but then we give those projects to employees and say Have at it our project managers are making sure that things are going really well throughout But we you know we trust them to get the work done Next to our employees the customers take the cake So this is Hannah Hannah runs a small nonprofit and when we built this website for her She called me from her kitchen table crying Because she was so happy to finally have a website to help her further this cause it I mean it was an amazing moment and So much this happens often actually that people get very emotional about the work that we do because they've been burnt By bad vendors in the past It's so easy to be a vendor in this space and not be an asshole And that's really all it takes to take care of these people take care of them and They'll I mean they're just so grateful and you feel good about the work you're doing sometimes they're not fun to work with and You have to kick them to the curb This was the best business advice I got before founding corner shop And that was that you need to fire bad customers swiftly and decisively When they don't pay when they don't respect your boundaries like timelines and revision cycles or when they're Mean just get rid of them get it get it done fast write your contract so that that's possible and set clear expectations for the relationship And remember that at some point you're gonna fuck up You're going to hire the wrong person. You're gonna mess up a deliverable. You're going to have a disagreement with your Co-founders it's gonna happen at one point one of our donation forms wasn't processing donations which is like its whole job and We found out actually before the customer found out and we had this oh my god gut check moment What are we gonna do and we didn't agree the three founders about exactly how to handle it and As we're arguing and they were some intense arguments about what to do I realized that this was really a make-or-break moment for our company We were most likely gonna lose these customers when we called up and told them what had happened and they lost faith in us But also if we didn't get through these arguments about how to handle this we were maybe gonna lose each other and lose the company and It it was it was a big deal in the end. We it worked out okay We called our customers because it was multiple. We told them what had happened and we they ended up Hiring us again in the future. We made big donations to each one of them to make up for the problems that we had had To me really the secrets are to surround yourself with good people To project and assess very carefully your company and then finally to jump in to get in there and do it if you feel the Feel the urge get in there and do it. I am at time