# Remote Business Growth Podcast - Episode 6
## Guest: Sharon Kaufman
Sharon is a character - just full of beans (and knowledge). Don't miss this one!
He loves talking about remote work and is so passionate about what he does. You will definitely learn more about working and hiring remotely by tuning in to this episode. And not only that - he is also very entertaining!
Key topics discussed:
- The early challenges of selling clients on the concept of remote work 15+ years ago
- How Distant Job has grown to over 60 employees, all based on initially working with 1% of the market
- Understanding cultural differences in hiring globally and where to look for certain skills
- Educating managers to effectively lead remote teams
- Building trust and a mistake-friendly culture for remote employees
- Trends in asynchronous work and the importance of human connection
- Sharon's book "Surviving Remote Work" and resources at ThinkRemote.com
- The future of remote work technologies and infrastructure to better support workers
Here is the full transcript:
RBG Episode 6 Sharon Koifman
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
remote, remote workers, work, company, office, years, focus, employees, managers, sharon, trust, distant, amazing, book, clients, create, build, business, tech, remote management
SPEAKERS
Paul Urwin, Sharon Koifman
Paul Urwin 00:01
Welcome to remote business growth, your go to source for all things remote work and business growth. Join us as we delve deep into the strategies, insights and success stories that will help you thrive in the remote work landscape. Whether you're an entrepreneur, a remote team leader, or simply curious about how to grow your business, this podcast is your gateway to unlocking your full potential. So get ready to embark on a journey of innovation and success. This is episode six of the remote Business Growth Podcast. I'm Paul Urwin and today I'm talking with Sharon Kaufman are fantastic guest we really have an amazing conversation about remote work sure on is just super enthusiastic, super knowledgeable. A decades of experience, one of the pioneers really off of working in the remote space and definitely within the area of remote recruitment. So that's Sharon coifed coming up in just a second. If you'd like to hire a virtual assistant or remote worker to help grow and scale your business, then check out www.thereistalent.com. Right, let's get on with a conversation with Sharon Sharon Kaufman is all about remote management. He has over two decades of experience running three companies 100% from his computer and at times with two toddlers in the room. He is the president of distant job a remote recruitment agency that focuses on soliciting full time remote workers worldwide. Along with a rapidly expanding new media company think remote. Chevron's organization has also created a successful podcast featuring interviews with tech industry professionals about remote management and leadership. During the wake of the COVID crisis. Shawn wrote a best selling book in multiple Amazon categories, surviving remote work, his goal was to help businesses thrive in this new environment, Kaufman has studied and researched not just how to operate remote companies, but also how to establish an exceptional work culture, one, which people love to work in. Sharon, welcome to the show!
Sharon Koifman 02:04
Our pleasure. Thank you for having me, Paul. Really,
Paul Urwin 02:08
really looking forward to this really looking forward to talking some more about remote work. What an exciting what an exciting topic. So Shawn, kick us off and tell us a little bit about you, please? Well,
Sharon Koifman 02:20
so I have been working from my computer for the past 20 years. But back then it was not considered remote, who was just considered being lonely. But Joke aside, I'm saying 20. But I've been saying for five years. So it's probably 25 years, I rent two companies to run a web hosting company called Empire hosts, which I'd my servers in New Jersey and in Texas and my entire operation in India. So that company did some outsourcing. That was also part of the web hosting. Yeah, I mean, you couldn't do outsourcing back then. If you're when if you had an actual office in India, you had to do some outsourcing. Yeah. But then I realized that there is a little bit of a weakness in the industry and, and there is not enough emphasis on but just finding quality people that want a career that want to focus and become part of the amazing thing. Would it become my clients? Company. So I've decided to start this remote recruitment agency. And while I can't prove it, I believe I am, or distant job is the first remote recruitment agency in the world. And we are today I have a best selling book surviving remote work, and also our media company think remote. So find my life.
Paul Urwin 03:40
Fantastic. Fantastic. All right, well take us back to the beginning of distant job. So you'd obviously been in, in business before you were an established entrepreneur. But how did how did distant jobs specifically come about?
Sharon Koifman 03:53
So distant job started? As an evolution of my first company Empyreal, like I said, it was it was web hosting and outsourcing. And I, I having two offices in India, kind of managed to provide Mom and Pop solutions. I've noticed that there's a lot of companies that were willing to work with offshore company countries just to save money. That was great. Until I realized that some of this companies were outsourcing me or giving me to take care of some of their core products, the core skills and I said, you know why you're doing this? You're losing a little bit of you're losing a little bit of your, of your company, a company operation and I realized that that instead of taking on taking on projects, I should be able to focus on just producing people the work dedicated for those for those kids. mines. I really liked the model of people just being focused working in one company. You know, this industry, this international offshore industry, there's a lot of freelancers that do a lot of things. I felt that focus is is very important and a very strong component of making remote successful. So I decided to focus on just headhunting amazing people that want a job, a full time character driven job, even if they're remote. That's when we started the distant jump. Okay,
Paul Urwin 05:34
fantastic. And so that's is that placing placing experts with clients in the US mostly? Or?
Sharon Koifman 05:42
Americans? I'm Canadian myself. So it started a little bit in Canada. But yeah, to be honest, that I mean, that in Canada is, is 10% of the population of the United States. There's clearly love or business there. So we do there and also during the UK. Okay,
Paul Urwin 06:01
and does this does this go back to before the pandemic, right, this distant job? How many years 20? Y'all you've been running distant jobs for 20 years now? Yes.
Sharon Koifman 06:11
I, without a doubt. The first remote recruitment agency in the world? Yeah, amazing.
Paul Urwin 06:18
All right. Well, this is fascinating. Okay, so. So what I'm really interested in right now is how it was back in the old days, if you like, because now, yeah, okay. You say remote recruitment agency, and a lot of people are hiring remotely. And there's lots of things going on online. But you know, 15 years ago, it was a completely different landscape. And I would have thought that there was a, obviously a big tendency to, for people to hire locally for companies to connect with recruitment agencies in London, in New York, etc, etc. So how did you how did you find that market? How did you create a space in that market? back then?
Sharon Koifman 06:53
It was incredibly difficult. It was incredibly difficult because before COVID, or even, I mean, I'm talking about 15 years before COVID. The idea of somebody being productive outside the office, made no sense. Yeah, makes no sense. You know, yes, you can find the superstar consultants, because they're so smart. They're able to work from home. And it took many years I was I started before the science before the research before, bunch of researchers have shown that people working from home can be significantly more productive than people in the office, back then the idea that, that you that you can do anything that you can do anything without management was not was not a reasonable concept. And it was, for me, the bigger challenge was not to sell distant job was actually to sell the idea of remote work. This was the challenge. I didn't have much competitors back then. Yeah. It was really Hey, do you want a full time? person from a from another country? And people was like, why? And it's like, and it's and they and I said, first of all, you can save money. It's like, yeah, it's not worth the trouble. Yeah, yeah.
Paul Urwin 08:20
So it was tough. So I mean, did you have you obviously had enough clients to keep going? I mean, I'm assuming I can get on to this in a minute. But I'm, I'm guessing you went through some stage of like, massive growth. But is it is it fair to say that back then it was it what you said it was difficult, but how did you get enough? How did you get enough clients to survive? And
Sharon Koifman 08:40
yeah, just sell, sell, sell, sell, sell? I mean, I went to every conference, and I would say about 1% of the people got it.
Paul Urwin 08:52
Okay. Okay. But, so you were working with that? 1%? That's amazing. I was working
Sharon Koifman 08:58
with that. 1%. And we build a beautiful company. Yeah, we are. We're approximately 62 employees at this moment. So but it was just simple sales. I didn't need to sell this job. Like I said, I just needed to sell the idea of remote workers. And once they said, Okay, where do I find this company? I said, Ah, right here, right here.
