The Communication Secret to Becoming a Best Virtual Workplace

Vroom, vroom, vroom. We are going to the home of the Indianapolis 500. We're not going to talk about motor racing, but we are going to talk about how one entrepreneur has managed to build a business where it is just irresistible to work. His company has been voted 2 years in succession the best place to work in Indiana. But what's cool about this is he doesn't have anybody work from one location. They're all remote. They always have been. We're going to talk to Wayne Stanley, who's the founder and CEO of a a company called Beau Digital. And we're going to talk about the challenges of building a completely virtual team, how he's overcome the perception of clients about having a team that doesn't have a permanent office, and how he has also overcome the obstacles of building a company where people don't even know where they can go to find him. Wayne, Sandy, welcome to the show.

Great to be here, Jim.

Well, Wayne, it's great to have you. Apologies, I couldn't help the vroom vroom Indianapolis 500 for all of us overseas. That Indiana and that race are synonymous. But now you've built a company, Bow Digital. Tell us about what you do at Bow Digital. And then we're going to talk about how you've been building this amazing company.

Of course. We are a marketing team that helps small businesses all around the United States with everything from their traditional marketing, logo design, flyers, training, strategy, all of that kind of stuff into everything in the digital space with website development, social media content, email marketing, video work, and all of that. We are primarily based in the real estate space, but we work with small businesses of every shape, size, and budget. So we've got one-man companies in rural areas of the country all the way up to a couple Fortune 200 companies that we work with. So it's a, a really exciting thing for us to be able to work with all sides of that spectrum.

Wayne, um, I'm gonna ask you in a moment about your strategy because most companies, you know, advise to niche, right? Yet it sounds as though you're dealing with one niche in terms of an industry but various size of companies. But before that, I just want to ask you about the name of the company because on your website you've got sort of old family photographs, um, and the naming of a company, especially as a founder You didn't call it the Wayne Stanley Company. You called it Beau Digital. Tell us what is the provenance of the name and why it's important.

Yeah, that was, that was really important to me putting it together. And I wanted it to have a tie. At the time I lived in Washington, DC when I started the company and I wanted it to have a tie back to my home state of Indiana. So for a long time during the planning process, it was actually going to be called Sycamore Strategies because Sycamore Strategy Sycamore was a, is a tree in Indiana that is very notable and is, is a symbol around here. But I had a dream one night about my grandfather and his last name was Bowe. His name was Glenn Vernon Bowe. And he and my grandmother, Shirley Bowe, were majorly influential in my life. And some just the most, the best people on the planet. And they actually led me to know that I was going to be a small business owner one day. I used to go to their home and I would set up a store on their couch. And that's one of the pictures on the website is that store when I would bring all their belongings and put it on the couch and then charge them money for their own things. So he was the— he was known by Beau in our community. And he was the one of the last Beaus in the family. So it was just a good way for me to honor him. And we can do a lot of fun puns with your marketing deserves a pro, put a Beau on it, all that kind of stuff.

Yeah, no, I love that. I love that. And I love the way that you've sort of retained the the authenticity of the family, but not made it look hokey, but made it seem part of the origin story, but a very professional and, and very modern look and feel to the services you're providing. You know, one of the reasons that I wanted to have you on, Wayne, is because you've built a company that has, for 2 years in succession, won Best Place to Work. I used to have a client in Singapore called The Best Place to Work. There's an awards program and they go in and they give consultancy to companies on how to be the best places to work. But you've built a company where people are all working from home. And since 2017, that's the way you started the business. Tell us about some of the obstacles that you've faced, or maybe first of all, tell us why you did that. And then the obstacles that you faced in building a fully remote company?

Of course. I think any startup knows that it's— there are plenty of obstacles. But I think that, you know, for me, starting it remote was twofold. It was financially driven. I was the one starting this company. There were no investors. There were no partners. It was just me. And I was the sole employee to begin with. So it just made sense to save money on a brick-and-mortar business All the overhead that comes with that. But also my network is national in the United States. And so I realized that if we were going to be doing business in multiple states and hopefully eventually multiple countries, it didn't really make sense to have some grand brick-and-mortar office in Indiana when it would— it's very unlikely that our customers would be coming here to our office. It would be more that we would be going to them. And so both of those things combined is really why I made the decision to make us fully remote. The obstacles that came with it, I really didn't at the time. I came from an organization, I left an organization to start Bow Digital that had already embraced remote work culture. They had many employees that were already fully remote. The entire team wasn't, but I didn't realize that So many had a negative, I would say, connotation when it comes to remote work and what that looks like. And so one of my biggest challenges starting out were that people didn't understand it. And we actually lost contracts because people would think, you know, that I was some shady character working from my car or something like that, not a serious business. And so that was really hard. And then getting people used to— You know, I put a premium on communication internally and externally. And so we were using Zoom in 2017 to try and communicate with our customers. I felt like for us to see them face-to-face helped with the fact that we didn't have an office and we weren't seeing them right down the street all the time and that sort of thing. And they were very, you know, at that point they were very averse to, I don't want to turn on my camera. I don't want to be on a video call. This is weird. Why are you doing this?

Yeah.

And of course now post-COVID, we are well beyond anybody ever fretting about a Zoom call.

But yeah, interesting, isn't it? Because when I set up a business in Singapore, I also did a lot of remote work back in '95, '96. But I couldn't find the staff that wanted to work from home because they wanted to go to an office and that gave credibility to the business. So you had clients questioning it. What about attracting talent? Because especially in a service business, in a way, that is the hardest part often to build a company.

For sure. I mean, if I had a smaller third reason for being remote, it would be to have talent from anywhere. And so that part was really appetizing to a lot of people that were looking for roles. But it's also, it's had its challenges as well because people are very, They are surprisingly honest in the interview process about why they want a fully remote position. And they will tell me things like, I want to save money on childcare, or I want to be able to watch TV during the workday. I want to do laundry during the workday. And we'll, you know, we talk about how we put a premium on the work part of being remote and not the remote part. So that's hard for some people to grasp, but it's been overall, it's definitely a selling point. And we get tons of applications. applications purely for being a fully remote organization alone, let alone their actual position or any of our benefits.

Wayne Stanley, that's really interesting how the, you know, the shift has taken place entirely. How do you maintain a team culture? How do you maintain communication when people are distributed, in your case, across the country as much as just across one state?

There are a couple of different things. I, like I just said, I put a premium on communication. And so, we set expectations from the beginning of how we want to communicate and how to do that effectively, but also to provide enough information that everyone still feels connected. So, even the small things like the hacks that you might learn, did you know that this software that we use does this? Have you seen that you can save time by using this tool or product? That's really important. And so we schedule time for those kinds of conversations, which, you know, a lot may think that that's wasted time on the schedule, but we try to be purposeful with that. Our group works in pods. So there are groups of 3 or 4 people that work together much more closely than maybe they do with some of the others on the team. And so, We have dedicated time for video chats with other people on the team. So it's not just your manager one-on-one direct report kind of chats, but also just, hey, how's it going? I heard on the team meeting that you had a room addition on your house. I heard that story about your crazy neighbor. I saw your Instagram story this weekend about your kid's crazy dentist visit. You know, whatever it may be to give them time to connect on a human side of things because that's really important too. Outside of the communication, the next thing that's really important to us is we practice. We practice everything that we do. We, when it comes to kickoff calls for new customers, trade shows that we're going to and exhibiting at, that kind of thing, just like you would a sports team or a drama, a theater organization, all of those types of things, we actually What are we going to say? What do we want to get out of this? What's the expectation for each person on the team? And how do we find success there? And I think that all of that translates into everything that we do externally for our customers as well. Wonderful.

And presumably, that's why you've won the Best Places to Work without a place to work. So, you've got your own unique award there as well. And you did touch on the point that people like to work from home so they can do their laundry, though frankly any excuse not to do laundry as far as I'm concerned would be welcome. Monitoring or any of those kind of issues, do those come up? And if so, how do you manage what is essentially a trust issue between employers and employees that's become central to this work-from-home issue?

Yeah, the trust piece is absolutely huge. It is foundational to any organization that is embracing hybrid, fully remote, whatever buzzword you want to use. Any owner that I talk to about our model, I tell them that it's built on a foundation of trust. I have to trust that these guys will do what they need to do. There are lots of organizations, there are lots of other marketing agencies and others that use tools and services to monitor people's screens, to monitor clicks, signing in, clocking in, all of that kind of stuff. That feels more to me like prison or forced work, not necessarily remote work. And so, you know, I try to lead by example, but that trust piece is absolutely huge. And I tell people when they start with us, when they join our organization, that there's ultimate freedom and flexibility at Bow Digital, but there's also ultimate responsibility and trust. Like you, you have a full workload and we expect you to work a full week and all of that. And you can make your schedule whatever you want and you can be as flexible as you need to be. And we have unlimited PTO and we want you to use it, but the work's there. And so it's up to you to figure out how to make the work work.

Right. And you said a full working week. What does that look like at Bow Digital? Is that, you know, everyone logging at 8 o'clock? Because presumably you've got different time zones as well.

Yes, we do have different time zones. Most people work, I would say, 9:30 to 5:30 on any given day. It kind of depends on what they're doing. But during our 5-year anniversary, we actually moved to a 4-day work week as an organization. So they work 9:30 to 5:30 most days, but not Fridays. We do have somebody monitoring on Fridays for our customers because the rest of the world hasn't really caught up to a 4-day work week. So somebody's always watching and working on a Friday, but that right now, that equates to maybe 2 Fridays a year per team member. It just, it kind of depends on the schedule, but most people end up working just one Friday a year. And that's, that's also changed things for us in terms of our culture and how people value things around here. But we, when we moved to a 4-day work week, we chose to go to a 32-hour work week. There are a lot of different options that you can do when you consider that. You can go to a 10-hour-a-day, 4-days-a-week, all of that kind of stuff. But we really felt like, you know, I know that it's different everywhere, but When you look at the Friday productivity for people, it's already terrible. Our customers didn't really know it, but we closed at 2:30 most Fridays anyway. If they're not coming in until 9:30, we were like, okay, that's 5 hours of work.

Sure.

With that said, you know, if we cut that out, can they add that somewhere else in the week with being more efficient and that sort of thing? Lots of people were leaving around noon anyway. We just felt like if we, again, back to that total responsibility and trust, if we said we were going to do this, could they figure out how to be more productive and efficient with a couple of more hours in the other days? And they've done it.

Wayne, Stanley, that's brilliant. Changing focus slightly, you've had to build the brand. So, from a marketing point of view, What have you been doing to build the brand as an entrepreneur?

Oh, as a marketing company, we try to do all of the things, which sometimes is hard because I often tell our customers, you can't be all things to all people. But some of it for us is it's a way for us to experiment and see what's working, what's not working, especially with new platforms, new services and tools. But I would say that the way that we have built our brand is to stay consistent in what we're doing and who we are. It's not for everybody. And I'm okay with that. And I didn't understand that at the beginning, but it's okay to not be everybody's everything. But we really focus on the consistency of our message and trying to offer Really good advice and really good information regardless of whether people are paying us for that service or not. So we call our customers partners because we really aim to be an extension of their team. Because a lot of times when you hire a marketing agency, you are signing up for, you know, either a project-based service or a monthly retainer of specific deliverables like social media content or emails or videos or whatever it may be. And I didn't want what we do to feel transactional to our customers. And so we really try to be an extension of their brand. And so when we get to know their business, as we see other things that might be helpful, tools in HR or operations or other things that aren't really in our wheelhouse, we try to make sure that we put that in front of them. We did a webinar series last year where we introduced a variety of different vendors to our customers. It was purely for our customers. It wasn't for— prospects or other friends in the industry. It was purely for them to be able to get a really in-depth deep dive into tools and services that might be able to help their business. And so we haven't done one specific marketing tactic to do that, but our strategy is to be a real partner to them, not only in their marketing, but in their overall business success.

And Wayne, is there something that you've If you like, not done as well as you might have done? It sounds like you've done a textbook job of building the business of Bow Digital, but any confessions of a marketing man?

Yeah, I, you mentioned that I did not name the company Wayne Stanley Media. And that is because I have shied away from the very beginning. I mean, I should have seen it then. I've shied away from relying on my own personal brand. for building the business. And that was a misstep. And it's something that I now, you know, counsel so many of our businesses that we work with that not leaning on the well-known owner or sales leader or who knows, you know, founder or whatever it may be, that it's really a misstep because I really thought, you know, I was building this business. I don't want it to be about me. I want it to be about what we're doing and the services that we provide and that kind of thing. And it became very clear as we moved along that people genuinely want to work with me. And, you know, our team would say, you know, you are the human side of what we're doing. And so we need to expand on that more and let people know about that. And I thought it was a— I was worried that it would come across as arrogant or self-serving or, you know, always looking for the next shiny object, which was not what I was doing, but it really forced me to look at it in a very different way. And figure out how to make that work for me. What does that look like where I feel comfortable? What does that look like? What does success in doing that look like? And then that's helped us, me sort of figuring that out for myself for the company has led us to do that even better, I think, for our customers.

That's great, Wayne. And there's a humility as well though in actually your approach, right? And that's a big part of why people don't name the company after themselves. The eponymous ones also tie the founder to the company. which creates problems when they want to exit. Wayne Stanley, as, um, Bojana saw, um, is there, um, a reason you, you, you're doing property and construction? Um, just touching on that point we made earlier that, you know, people go for a niche. Often people go for a certain industry and a certain size of client, but you seem to have gone for an industry but any size of client. Any implications of kind of leaving yourself open to such a broad spectrum of clients?

Yeah, I get that question sometimes. And I think for us, I really love it because in working with that large spectrum of clients, let's just say on the budget size, for example, because there are some agencies that have, you know, a floor or a ceiling for for what they're willing to work in. And we probably have that too in some form or fashion, but our small clients, our teeny tiny guys teach us things about listening and how to be nimble and find success that help our larger clients. And our larger clients on budget alone allow us to have access to tools, products, services, trainings, experiences.

Yeah.

that we wouldn't have otherwise, but then allow us to serve those smaller clients even better. So for me, it's sort of a 360 approach to having both of those allows us to serve the other one that much better. And then on the, just the side of, you know, the actual industries that we service, it's really helpful because we have some really, I would say, not very sexy industries that we help. People that are hard to market, really down in the weeds, super technical industries where they'll come to us and want ebooks or white papers and all that kind of stuff. And I think by serving a variety of industries, I sort of think of it as like a college writing prompt book, you know, where it's like, well, if we were explaining this industry to a pirate, how would we talk about it? If we were going to have to go through this with dinosaurs, what would that look like? You know, it just makes us think about it a little differently and try to think about how to differentiate them in their own space.

I love that answer, Wayne. Now, as you know, we're only able to have sort of up to 25 minutes today. So I want to ask you briefly, is there a needle mover, one thing that you've done for Bow Digital that really has moved the needle from a getting noticed point of view that you'd recommend every entrepreneur to try and do?

Yeah, I think that you have to— I heard a phrase a long time ago that you have to make what you do irresistible and indispensable to people. And so I've tried to do that with our culture internally. I want it to be an irresistible place to work. And I try to make the services that we provide to our customers indispensable, hence our process for being partners and that sort of thing. And so that way, when we do have economic downturns and that kind of stuff, well, what we do, it's one of the first budgets to be cut for people. And A lot of our customers don't cut us first, and we do try to think about other ways to provide them benefit and value. And so that's the thing that's worked for us is to be irresistible and indispensable.

Well, I can understand why you're both irresistible and indispensable to your clients. If there's a final question for you as an entrepreneur, a book or a podcast that has influenced you, I'm gonna start to ask my guests this, realizing that I've had quite a few authors on the show. And actually sharing books is a really stimulating way to finish a conversation. So, Wayne, a book from you or a podcast you'd recommend?

Yes, I love this question. A book that I've read recently that I love is called Ride of a Lifetime by Bob Iger, who is the current CEO of Disney. And it's just a fantastic story of them being storytellers at Disney and how they want to be part of the best stories in the world. Even if you're not a Disney person, which I'm not necessarily a Disney diehard, it's really a fantastic walkthrough of how to communicate and how to plan for a big, bold future.

Well, and I can hear you've got a big, bold future ahead of you, Wayne Stanley. So, Bow Digital founder, inspirational leader, thank you. And I think you'd have a business helping other companies to become virtual with the way that you've done that. Thank you so much for joining me on the show today, Wayne.

Of course. Thank you, Jim.

So we've been listening to Wayne Stanley in the home of the Indianapolis 500, Indiana. So wonderful to have him and to start a business very bravely being fully remote and then to be able to go through COVID and find that everybody now wants to be remote, but he's in a pole position, really sort of was future-proof by taking that decision. So I wanted to share with you how sometimes taking a decision that seems counterintuitive in the short term can in the long term play out really, really well. Also, the approach to a 4-day week and trusting the people that work for you and letting them get on with the job rather than worrying about controlling them— really, really important. And the relationship with the clients and how plainly having that mix of clients and the relationship where they're indispensable and irresistible is keeping the business both growing and thriving through the good and the hard times. So thank you to Wayne for joining us today, and thank you for joining me. Jim James, your host. Hope you've enjoyed this. If you have, please do share it and do rate us on the podcast player that you're using right now. It's right at the bottom underneath all those podcasts. It says review this show. If you don't know where that is, Apple hide it, and so does Spotify. And until we meet again, I just do encourage you to keep on communicating. Thank you for listening.