Making Remote Work with Stephanie Harris
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What is Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is when a business pays third-party affiliates to generate sales or traffic to their website.
Affiliates can be websites, influencers, or review sites.
Affiliates earn a commission on any sales or credit card applications made through their links.
The business only pays out on what they consider valuable traffic.
Remote Work
Affiliate marketing was a great way for her to work remotely because it involved building virtual relationships with websites.
Remote work has been a part of this business for a while before it became necessary due to COVID-19.
The decision to stay remote was based on efficiency and the ability to work with a diverse group of people from different locations.
The senior-level staff of the business was always remote because it was difficult to find talent concentrated in one area in their niche industry.
The decision to become a fully remote and distributed organization in 2015 was motivated by the fact that the culture was stronger among the remote staff than in the office.
The remote staff had a better culture because they were intentional about building a culture that connected virtually, appreciated the remote work lifestyle, and wanted to make it work.
The remote account management culture upheld values, had productive conversations, and had different contests and rewards to bring everyone together, while the in-person culture was more insular and had more politics.
The Advantages of Being Remote
Advantages of remote work include being able to attract the best talent from anywhere, lower absenteeism, and increased productivity.
Studies have shown that remote workers are working more than people in the office and are getting more done.
Remote work can save employers money by eliminating the need for office space and other expenses and can also save employees money on transportation and food costs.
On average, employees who work from home save up to $4,000 a year, while employers save $11,000 on average per employee when they work fully remotely.
The Employees Productivity
In the past, leaders equated long hours with productivity, but that's not always the case.
Remote work makes it harder to visually gauge productivity, leading to concerns about productivity levels.
However, studies show that remote workers are actually more productive than office workers.
To gauge productivity in remote workers, clear expectations and communication are key.
Establishing measurable goals and regular check-ins can help managers ensure productivity levels are met.
Measuring Employee's Productivity
Leaders in the past believed that working hard meant being productive, but that's not necessarily the case.
It's difficult to gauge productivity when working remotely since you can't physically see someone working.
Remote work technology such as instant messaging, Slack, and Microsoft Teams have made it easier to stay in touch with colleagues.
It's apparent when someone isn't a good fit for remote work if they're not accountable for their work.
Having measures in place to gauge productivity is essential.
Touchpoints such as video meetings with managers and colleagues are important to ensure accountability and engagement.
Technology enhancements since 2015 have made remote work even more accountable and connected.
The Values of a Company
Values are how the company defines the way they want to behave and wants others in the organization to behave.
The four values at PartnerCentric are professional intimacy, innovation, expertise, and responsibility.
Values were developed about a year before becoming fully remote and became even more crucial when transitioning to a remote workplace.
The values are non-negotiables and are intangibles, which means they are nuanced and require understanding to apply.
PartnerCentric reinforces the values by congratulating team members who display them in their everyday work and behavior.
Being Intentional
Conducting in-person and virtual retreats that prioritize team bonding and investment in the team
Implementing themes each quarter to foster inclusivity and engagement among team members
Utilizing technology, such as software for gift exchanges and Metronome for tracking company and individual goals, to enhance transparency and accountability within the team and to promote a sense of excitement and camaraderie among team members.
The Remote Culture
Overcommunicating is essential in a remote work environment to ensure everyone is on the same page.
Creating a strong remote culture takes intentionality and effort
Virtual team bonding activities, such as virtual retreats and games, can help foster a sense of connection and community
Transparency is key in a remote work environment to help alleviate the concerns and worries of team members
Themes can be used as a way to focus and align everyone's efforts toward a common goal.
Being a Mom and a CEO
Balancing work and life as a mother of young children and a CEO can be challenging.
Being able to work from home allows her to provide a consistent salary for her family and be present for her children.
Empathy and setting expectations for colleagues are important in maintaining work-life balance.
COVID-19 presented challenges for remote workers with young children, but the company adapted and continued to prioritize remote work for their employees.
Creating a Strong Culture + Leadership Team
The foundation of a strong leadership team is built on trust and open communication.
Professional intimacy is key, where leaders trust and believe in each other and follow through on commitments.
It's important to have face-to-face time as a team to discuss bigger issues and get on the same page.
Long-term relationships require ups and downs, but it's important to surround yourself with people who have your back and are willing to learn and grow.
Leaders should be willing to make tough decisions and remove team members who are not the right fit.
Advice for Leaders
Be intentional about your approach to remote/hybrid leadership
Deliberately incentivize and communicate with your team
Put more thought and creativity into your leadership skills
Culture is always evolving, so be consistent and constantly course correct
Remote/hybrid work can lead to benefits like work-life balance and financial satisfaction
Providing the life you've always wanted for other people is a rewarding calling in leadership
Thanks for listening!
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Mike Goldman: Stephanie Harris is the owner and CEO of PartnerCentric, the largest women-owned performance marketing agency in the US. She's been named a performance in top 50 industry player three times and has held multiple speaking and moderating engagements and industry conferences.
Such as Affiliate Summit East and West, Card Con and Capital One's Women in Business Panel. Her writing has been featured in FeedFront Magazine, PerformanceIN and numerous other publications. You may hear her speak on trends in leadership. Culture building and the future of affiliate marketing through social networks such as Forbes Agency Council and LinkedIn.
Most importantly, Stephanie I and I have been working together. She's been a client of mine. I looked this up, Stephanie, since March of 2015. So it's been eight years. And today we're gonna talk about remote work-life balance, and wherever else we go in this conversation. Stephanie, welcome.
Stephanie Harris: Thanks for having me, Mike.
Mike Goldman: Thanks for doing this. So before we get into some of the topics I really want to hit around remote work and work life and that stuff. Tell us a little bit about PartnerCentric. What do you do? Who are some of your clients?
[01 :21:5] PartnerCentric
Stephanie Harris: Sure. So PartnerCentric is an agency that does affiliate marketing for businesses from well-funded startups to Fortune 50. We work our clients are everyone from E-Commerce, D2C fashion retail to finance, FinTech, Digital Health, credit cards, you name it. So we have around 85 customers that we work with at any given time, and we probably work in about 85 different verticals during that time.
The business takes affiliate marketing programs and works that at scale for our clients, and like you said, we are about 50 people fully remote, distributed, all across North America.
[02:12:1] What is Affiliate Marketing
Mike Goldman: Excellent. And for those that don't know, because before we started working together, I didn't know what it was. Give us the 30,000 foot view on what is affiliate marketing.
Stephanie Harris: Sure. So affiliate marketing is basically when a business pays third party affiliates. These are websites. They could be review sites, brags deals. They could be influencers, on YouTube or Instagram. They can be even things like goodhousekeeping.com when you see articles written about best couches delivered to your doorstep and there's a list of different websites you can go to shop for. Those are usually affiliate links where, you know the furniture companies are paying good housekeeping as part of a commission fee to send qualified customers over to that furniture company, that couch company, to hopefully make a sale.
And if a sale is made, then Good Housekeeping earns a commission on that purchase. And my business basically manages those relationships for a furniture company in that case to the thousands.
There's thousands of websites like that, that businesses work with on a commission basis to generate sales or credit card applications or whatever they're trying to bring as best qualified traffic to their [?].
And it's a win-win for everyone cause they're paying out on only what they consider valuable. And it represents many small businesses that exist across America that are making money by monetizing the links on their site.
Mike Goldman: Beautiful. And while we're not gonna dive deep into affiliate marketing today, I always think the interesting thing about this type of marketing is, you know what you hear. Kind of tongue in cheek, but not really tongue in cheek is, only 50% of marketing works. You just don't know which 50% that is, or I've heard only 20% of marketing works.
You just don't know what that 20% is. And an affiliate marketing's case you know so it's interesting. But, tell us, I, I wanna start digging into the remote work piece of what you do and you guys were doing remote work before remote work was cool, before remote work was necessary.
How long have you been doing it? And tell us when, when, to some degree it may have always been the way things were working, but tell us why you decided to go remote and stay remote.
[04:46:5] Remote Work
Stephanie Harris: I've been remote since 2006. Before that I worked in an office like many other people do. But I myself have been remote since 2006. So the business has been a hybrid remote place since that time. And in 2015, right around the time that you and I also started working together, when I became CEO of the business, I made the business a fully remote workplace.
My personal decision to be remote was at a time when really nobody was remote. There were very few places you could do remote work, but my husband was starting medical school and I knew he'd be moving around and wanted something that was like consistent and keep my career going and make a meaningful salary doing that and was able to, was fortunate enough to be able to find a place where I could do remote work.
And affiliate marketing is a great way to do remote work because you are building virtual relationships with the websites I mentioned all have people that you connect with to negotiate these rates and get that going. That was toward the beginning of affiliate marketing. Our destiny has collided in that way.
But yeah, so I was always remote when we were part of this business. The office that was in Austin was a place where more like junior-level people worked. The idea was for them to have more oversight, but the account managers that we hired in the business, the more senior level people were always remote because we found that in our industry, at least at that time, it was really difficult to find talent concentrated in one area.
The industry that I'm in is niche, and to get the best talent, we found the best way to do that was to hire those senior people from wherever they lived, whatever major cities and areas they came from.
And then in 2015, being the CEO, becoming a CEO, that was actually the first major decision that I made was to shutter that office and become a fully remote and distributed organization. The reason for that was twofold. One, as the head of the company, it didn't make sense for a headquarters to be where I didn't live.
And two, I felt that the culture in the organization was stronger amongst the remote staff than it was in the office, and it was time to bridge those two together. And I really felt that with the right process and culture and communication, we could do this successfully, completely remote. There didn't need to be a sort of like physical oversight in place for junior-level people.
Mike Goldman: So, you just said something really interesting and counterintuitive to I think most people, which is your remote folks, your remote team had a better culture than the team in the office. Say a little bit more about that and your guess as to why that was the case. Cause most people would think it'd be the opposite, right?
Stephanie Harris: They would think so. I think number one, culture has to be very intentional when you're remote. And the people that were opting in for this kind of work really wanted to make it work, really appreciated a remote work lifestyle. You had a lot of fam, like parents of young children that were choosing to do this.
People who were coming from an office environment and saying, this is really what I want. And really being part of building a culture in which, we were looking to connect virtually to be able to find better ways to communicate virtually. And we're also talking about a time in which, in 2015 it's easy to forget now, but it was like less than 3% of the workforce was remote. And this was like really unheard of still and when I was doing it back in 2006 I probably knew nobody else who was remote and fast forward to 2015, most businesses, even if they were allowing remote work, were trying to front as if they didn't, I remember having to really explain to many businesses we would pitch.
Why we were still like an established business, a credible business, a legitimate business even though we were remote, it wasn't like some fly by night. There was like a real stigma around it at the time. And we could definitely talk about like the answers I gave to those businesses as to why it was okay.
But I remember, so it was really never done, even in my industry, for everyone to be remote and to be like proud about that and boast about it on your website. Like we're fully remote and proud of it. But the account management culture before we were fully remote I found that we upheld our values, that we were having the right kinds of productive and valuable conversations with each other, that we were having different contests and rewards and themes to bring everyone together.
Whereas the in-person culture was more insular. There was more politics happening in the office. There was, I think, a feeling that they were lacking connectivity with everybody else and maybe even feeling a little bit jealous that they had to come in and the other folks were able to not come in and work remote and that they saw that was being done successfully.
Now a lot of companies are struggling with trying to bring their employees back part-time or hybrid work, or you have to come back fully. And, there are many employees out there, there's been studies done on this where they don't wanna do it post-covid.
[10:32:3] The Advantages of Being Remote
Mike Goldman: There are a number of CEOs out there, a number that I work with that just long for the days that we were back in the office and believe at some point everybody is gonna be back and some are thinking seriously, hey, I'm gonna mandate it. Everybody's gotta be back in the office. Talk a little bit about the advantages. You mentioned an advantage of going out there being able to get the best talent because you weren't only looking for folks concentrated within a specific area, but what are some of the advantages of being remote?
Stephanie Harris: We've definitely talked a lot with our team about this, I've definitely done a lot of research on this over time and also like anecdotally what I hear from other employers and employees versus what goes on in my own organization. And I think that for one, they are much happier. They have much lower absenteeism.
The employees who are remote, they are more productive, it's counter to what the fears are and what they certainly were back in 2015. People used to say, how do you trust your people if they're not in front of you, but, studies have shown that remote workers are working more than people in the office.
They're getting more done. They are working more than a 40-hour work week by virtue of just always having it on. That creates its own issues too, because you're so tethered to your workplace and that's like its own challenge that a fully remote workplace has to support its staff to be able to turn it off, but it's counter to what the fears are that your people are not going to be working as hard if they're not being monitored, that they're always gonna be out to lunch, literally.
I think people are able to take care, instead of calling out sick for work or calling out of work and saying, I have to stay home because I have that furniture coming from that Good Housekeeping article I read, they are out of their desk for an hour, but otherwise they're working the whole day.
From an employer perspective, it's saving money because you're not paying for office space, you're not paying for some of the other things that are going into providing an office space. And it's also saving money for the employee because they're saving on gas, they're saving on food costs, they're saving probably on car maintenance and insurance and things like that.
On average they say that employees who work from home are saving up to $4,000 a year, but the employers are saving $11,000 on average per employee when they work full remote.
[13:16:1] The Employees Productivity
Mike Goldman: I wanna go back to the productivity piece cause that's such a subject that gets debated a lot, and part of the reason why I think it gets debated a lot is because in times past, leaders had the mistaken view that if someone looked like they were working real hard, if they were in early, if they stayed late, if they came in on the weekend, all that kind of stuff, that must mean they're productive.
And when folks are remote, you don't see that. You see when they're, I can't get in touch with them. Why? And then they're, oh, I had to take my kid to the doctor I had, oh God, they're not being productive. So, I understand what all the studies say, but how do you know? How do you gauge someone's productivity when they're not right there in front of you for you to see it?
[14:08:0] Measuring Employee's Productivity
Stephanie Harris: That's a great question. I think that people know when they're not giving it their all, whether they're in the office or at home. To your point, you can tell when they're like, not as available. You can tell when they're not responding as quickly as they should be. And obviously, there's like instant messaging, there's slack, there's these Microsoft teams.
There's different technologies that have evolved along with remote work where you can constantly be in touch with each other. And you may not wanna always be in touch with each other. People need deep work, they need time to work, and they should be disconnected if they're working. But we treat our people like adults.
They're either servicing clients, they're in communication with clients and doing work on their behalf. They're working with other team members. It's really very apparent to us when someone isn't a fit for remote work because they are not held accountable.
They're not holding themselves accountable for the work that they have, and that's just the same as in an in-office environment where I know when I worked in an office, there were definitely many hours that were spent, could be on your computer and look like you're working, but maybe you're looking at stock that isn't even related to work.
The same thing can happen at home, but just like any other job, you have deliverables, you have outcomes that need to be hit. You have satisfaction metrics, and you have to be available and if you're not, then you need to make that decision to either coach that person up or separate from them just like in person.
Mike Goldman: But it sounds like that one of the keys is having those measures so you can actually measure productivity versus needing to see that someone is busy or is making believe they're busy.
Stephanie Harris: Right. The measures are really important. We make sure that, as we have grown as an organization and evolved, so has the technology has evolved. If you think about Zoom had like just recently opened when we became fully remote and a lot of our meetings were still conference calls. Never a video meeting. We still will do all hands meetings on Slack most week.
But we do make sure that we have touchpoints with our team as a whole each week. But they also have video meetings with their account manager, with their managers every week. And they also have meetings with their team that they are I'm trying to think of the word
Mike Goldman: The team that did
Stephanie Harris: Talking about their colleagues, they have meetings with their colleagues. And the interesting thing about having more of the meetings on video, and I know there's a lot of back and forth about like zoom fatigue and all the other things, but I find that the enhancements to technology since 2015 has actually made it even more accountable to be remote because we can see who's engaged in the conversation, who is leaned in, who is participating. We can see each other every week. It feels so much more connected. Yeah.
[17:08:9] The Values as a Company
Mike Goldman: You talked a little earlier about needing to be intentional about culture. When you were talking about when you did have folks in the Austin office working together and a bunch of folks remote. So when it comes to being intentional about culture, I wanna hit on a number of things, but you mentioned values.
Talk a little bit about your values as a company. What does that mean to you? Cause a lot of companies use the word values and it looks great on a website, but it's more marketing than anything else. I know for you and your team, your values are a lot more than just a page on the website that looks good. So, what are those values, how do you define it and how do you use them to create a more intentional culture?
Stephanie Harris: So our values are how we define the way we wanna behave, and we want the other people in the organization to behave. These are the things that are most important to us, by the way we go about doing our work, the way we go about communicating, the way we go about showing up at PartnerCentric. So we have four values, professional intimacy, innovation, expertise, responsibility.
The values were created actually, we developed them about a year before we became remote. It was really crucial to have them when we became remote because it's also, it's not only things we live by, but we fire by them and I mentioned that there were a lot of politics and stuff in the in-office environment and some of that behavior even carries on when you become fully remote.
But it's much clearer to see it when that happens and It becomes very clear if someone's violating one of those values that you need to separate from that person. That's part of maintaining a culture.
If you want everyone to act with a certain compartment and behave in a certain way, then you have to be willing to, even if someone is successful from a productivity standpoint, they're getting their work done, with the way they're interacting with their colleagues, how they're taking responsibility for their actions, for example, or the way in which they're showing professional intimacy for us, that's our first one because working remote, it's very important that everyone that you talk to at PartnerCentric, if you're either interacting with us from the outside or interacting with us from the inside, that you're able to build rapport, that you have an honest conversation that people say what they mean and mean what they say.
And that comes from becoming fully remote. That it's important not to have that artifice. It's very hard to get the work done if you can't trust the things people are saying. It's part of communication. When we would see violations to that which come in the form of talking behind each other's back and saying one thing to someone's face and talking crap about them to your colleague.
These might be common things in a workplace, but we have fired people over that because it's a violation of professional intimacy. And because it threatens the culture that we're working so hard to maintain that is so important for a cohesive remote workplace. So the four values we're really important to establish ahead of going fully remote.
They are the thing where when we've lost our way or we felt off course, we always go back to the values.
Mike Goldman: Excellent and it sounds like your values are not aspirational ways to behave when you say they're fireable, they're more non-negotiables.
Stephanie Harris: They're non-negotiables and they're intangibles, so it's very nuanced if you want it to be. I think that businesses get tripped up with values when they make them so subjective that it's hard for them themselves to understand, is someone violating it? Is someone living it? So we, as part of culture and as part of remote culture, we've done a lot of work with the team around what we actually mean by these things.
We congratulate people and give them kudos in like our Slack Kudos channel when they display the value. So we'll say kudos for doing X, Y, and Z, hashtag responsibility or kudos to this client had this great thing to say, hashtag professional intimacy.
So we don't just fire by them, but we make sure we give recognition and reward to people and we do that on an everyday, all day long basis. Because people really need to understand, not just, here's the definitions and if something bad happens, we're gonna use one of them against you. It's not all day long, reinforcing them for every little and big behavior that goes on.
[22:00:4] Being Intentional
Mike Goldman: Beautiful, beautiful. And so back to the bigger umbrella of being intentional about culture. You've mentioned values. You talked about Slack a number of times as one of the technologies you've used, of course, Zoom that most people use or teams or whatever people are using.
What are some of the other things that you've done over the years to be more intentional about culture?
Stephanie Harris: So pre pandemic we did in-person retreats. So the in-person time was very intentional, we all get together we're all from all other states. We showed, this is an important investment in our team. Post-pandemic, we did virtual retreats, so we've used these like different virtual game companies and game shows and scavenger hunts and these other things to every six months, starting with two months after covid, which was like a real disaster of a time for everybody. But here we are, like, we're not gonna miss our retreat time, so we're gonna do it.
We spend like a full day, split between two days doing team bonding like we did a paint art class. We did an art class where everyone painted something.
We showed it to the cameras and whatever. We've done things like when we do our themes, we do a theme each quarter. We've utilized different technologies, we'll do it's not called Secret Santa, we call it like thankful for you, just to make sure we're inclusive of everything and everyone.
We do it around Thanksgiving and we utilize one of these softwares that allow you to put everyone on the team's names in, they get automatically matched with someone else on the team blindly, and they put in a wishlist of items that they would wanna get purchased for them and why, they get clues with each other, like a Secret Santa type thing, and the company sponsors each person to purchase something on behalf of their Secret Santa thing.
And then we do a big like reveal during one of our like post-Thanksgiving retreats, where we do like everyone unwraps something at the same time and they find out who gave it to them. And so we use those technologies.
We also use something called Metronome, which you introduced us to, where all of our goals go. So the company goals are in there. The individuals have their own goals that are in there that everyone can see how everyone else is doing, like they can view mine as CEO and how I'm doing against my goals.
Which is like in real time, sometimes it's red, sometimes it's yellow, sometimes it's green. Green is great, red is not great. Red is way off. But I can also see anyone else's. We're very transparent that way. The company numbers are in Metronome, in a one page plan of this is what we're going to do this year.
[24:42:8] The Remote Culture
Stephanie Harris: These are our goals. This is what we did last quarter. So everything, we try to make everything very transparent because one of the things in a remote culture, maybe even more so than in person is if you don't overly communicate when things are good, when things are bad, when things are, you're not sure, people worry.
They don't have the opportunities to go to a water cooler and ask people, and they may not wanna type out, and have it as here's proof that I've said this concern or this worry. They're not sharing things that way unless they're intentionally wanting to share it, but they need to know how things are going at all times because it's the sort of environment where you can if you don't have a strong remote culture, feel very isolated.
That's one of the criticisms of it if you don't do it well, so we overcommunicate our people, feel very connected.
Mike Goldman: So it sounds like the theme. Which is really interesting. The theme is almost because creating a culture in a remote work environment is harder. It forces you to be more intentional, work harder at it, and the result is you've been able to create a stronger culture by doing that. And I think that is such an important lesson for others to hear that instead of saying this is hard, so we're not gonna do it, or this is hard, so we're gonna force everybody to come back to work.
Even though half the staff is gonna hate us for it, half will love us for it, but half will hate us for it. Yeah, it is harder so do it and you can create a stronger culture. So really important lesson. I wanna shift gears a little bit, and I say a little bit because there's definitely, I'm sure some overlap here.
[26:32:9] Being a Mom and a CEO
Mike Goldman: But the other theme, Stephanie, when I think about you and the work you've done is, being a mom to young children and making that work, and I'm sure being remote was something that was really helpful for you in doing that. But talk a little bit about that experience. I was gonna say struggle, but I don't wanna start off on the negative side of it.
Talk a little bit about that experience of balancing work and life when being a mother to younger children and a CEO and making all this work.
Stephanie Harris: That's a big loaded question. Making it all work. It depends on the day that you ask. When I met you I had just had my third, I have four children, as I had just had my third. One of the reasons why I love this job so much is and why I'm a big advocate for it, not just working remote, but also the type of marketing that I'm in.
And I alluded to this before is I think it's very conducive to a work-life balance. So affiliate marketing, you're using all these relationship-based skills, negotiation skills, strategy, business, it's a great job for utilizing all kinds of different, people skills and business skills.
And you're doing that with other people who might be living 3000, 5,000, 10,000 miles away, whatever it is, all over the world on behalf of these really big, exciting brands and It is very conducive for working from home because they're virtual relationships, but you get a lot of satisfaction from seeing them flourish and seeing these businesses make meaningful contributions to their top and bottom line through the work that you're doing.
That's what kind of being an affiliate manager is, and that's how I got my start and that's when I started working remote. But when I was having my family and having my kids and my husband was in medical school and then we were moving for residency and then we were moving for his first job because obviously his work is not remote and he has to be in person.
It was great that I was able to provide that consistent salary for my family. I was like the major breadwinner for the first, 10 or 11 years of our marriage. I was able to do that without taking any pause in my career at all. Whether moving or having children. I took a couple of weeks off having each child and got right back to it.
But I was able to be home with my babies. I was able to, I needed childcare, but I was having that in the room next to me and I was able to, nurse, when I needed to nurse, I was able to come in and give lunch when I wanted to do that, or I was able to, now that they're older, I'm able to go to things at nursery school or go to things, the school play.
Sometimes the schools don't care when both parents work and they have things at 9:30 in the morning as long as to our earlier conversation, you're getting everything done that you need to do, and you're setting the expectations for those around you. I'd like to have this time to go do this thing.
We're all very at PartnerCentric. We're very empathetic and sympathetic to work-life balance cause we're all doing that. We're all trying to make it all work, and for me as the CEO and then owning the business, and that was its own transition, that all was in real stark relief at the beginning of Covid.
Covid was a very humbling time. A lot of people said to me like, oh, it must have been no problem for you guys. You were already remote. You didn't have to figure that out. And in some ways that was true because we had already been set up to do this. And in some ways it made a lot of things easier because all the businesses that we work with suddenly were working the same way we were.
And I didn't have this like thing of trying to explain why we're remote and we were all having Zoom meetings from our home and it felt great to be in kinship with everybody else that we were working with. That part has been great. But there were struggles.
Look, when you have most of your staff be the parents of young children and Covid hit suddenly they couldn't count on school and their other daycares and people that were coming into their home to watch their kids. And so we were just like everybody else, having our kids come in while we're working, having our kids chime in on a conference call and now I think all of that has gotten badly, but we're still doing the remote thing because it's how we wanna live our lives. And you spend most of your waking hours at work and it's very important to me that work has to integrate with the rest of your life.
[31:27:4] Creating a Strong Culture + Leadership Team
Mike Goldman: Before we start to wrap up, I wanna focus a little bit on the leadership team. Which of course is the whole theme of this show. How have you built a strong culture, a strong team? When you think about you and your direct reports on that leadership team, what have you done? And this could be specific to working remotely, or it may just be general thoughts on what you've done.
But what have you done to create a strong leadership team?
Stephanie Harris: So, my leadership team and I, many of us have been together for a long time, and actually I was asked recently what does that look like? Like how do you work with people? How do you keep them engaged? How do you stay engaged if you're working with some people for, with my COO it's been 10 years with someone else on the leadership team, it's been 15 years, which is a long time in any industry, let alone this one.
This comes back to the first value, which is professional intimacy because I have to believe what they say. They have to believe what I say. I have to follow through with the things I say I'm going to do and they do as well.
And it builds trust. It all starts with trust. I have to trust that these are my trusted advisors and that they are going to tell me what I need to hear to make the best decisions. And vice versa and it goes both ways.
So that's the foundation that it all starts with, that the people that surround me on the leadership team, that we have strong communication, strong trust, and that it's not just based on something that happened 10 years ago, but it's an ongoing demonstration. If I say something to them, I make sure I follow through on it. If I can't for some reason, I make sure I overcommunicate, over explain.
With the leadership team, it's important that we just got together again for the first time in person, all of us together since Covid back in January. And it's the remote thing works cause you feel like you've been seeing these people every day anyway. We were constantly in communications. You pick up like you, you never left. But it's important to get that base time once in a while to talk about like the bigger, heavier things as a small group, cause you're leading so many people. And to all get on one page and I really treasure that time.
But in terms of building that team, I think that It's like any relationship, any hopefully long-term relationship where you have your ups and your downs, but you wanna surround yourself with people that you wanna be in a foxhole with, that are gonna have your back, that you're gonna have their back. It's very difficult when you bring someone new in to know how is it really gonna go when the chips are down.
Like when things are not going well. That's when you really see what people are made of. And I think Covid really highlighted that a lot for a lot of people. But we were having two days during that time. We were meeting an hour in the morning and an hour in the afternoon, an hour in the morning, an hour in the afternoon for months.
And, I was so proud of the leadership team and how we came together. And I think that if other business leaders listening to this are thinking about the kind of team they want around them. You want people who can take you into your future. You want people who can evolve and who have a growth mindset to learn.
Because if you're together a long time, you have to learn. You have to grow together. You have to learn these new skills. But if they're willing to do that and they're putting in the work and they're people that you wanna be in the foxhole with, they think that's a winning formula.
Mike Goldman: and one of the things Stephanie, Iv'e always respected about you is more so than most leaders I've worked with, whether it's the leadership team or anybody else on the extended team. You haven't shied away from making the tough decisions if someone is not the right fit for the team. So I think that is so important as well.
[35:33:7] Advice for Leaders
Mike Goldman: The last thing I want to ask before we wrap up is of all of the experiences you've had, I guess over the 18 years of being remote and the 8, 10 years, whatever it's been of being remote with the team.
What's the one most important piece of advice you would give leaders that are struggling right now with remote slash hybrid?
What's the one piece of advice you'd give them that might help them through their struggle?
Stephanie Harris: I think we talked about it before, it's intentional. You have to be intentional about it. There is no let's see how it goes. But you do everything the way you did it before. I think when you are remote, you have to be very deliberate about the kinds of things you incentivize. You have to be very deliberate about what you communicate and how often you communicate it.
I think it has made me a better leader. Because I've had to be so much more thoughtful about what I'm putting on, what I'm putting to paper, what I'm writing out there that's going to be captured in Memorium, or when I'm choosing to use video and what I'm trying to say out loud to them.
And making sure that it sticks, because they're not going to have me in person around the hall, three hours later to ask it again. People every conversation is so much more deliberate and I think that in trying to figure this out, if there are people that are listening to this, that are trying to figure it out, I would say that it's takes more creativity, it takes more thought, it takes more leadership skills.
It takes more out of you and it's consistent and constant after that. It doesn't stop once you think you figured it out. Cause I think culture is always evolving and you're always course correcting but, when you do it right, the employees are so much more satisfied. The employer is so much more satisfied.
There are so many benefits from a financial perspective. There are so many benefits from like a work life balance and life satisfaction perspective and it's becomes a very rewarding calling.
For me, I feel like from the beginning I was providing the kind of life that I've always wanted for other people, and I think that is its own, righteous path to go on.
Mike Goldman: That is so powerful, providing the life you've always wanted for other people. I love that. That's gotta go in quotes on a social media posts somewhere. I love it. Stephanie, if someone wants to find out more about PartnerCentric, what you guys do, whether you can help them, where should they go?
[38:18:6] Stephanies Contact Links
Stephanie Harris: Sure. So we have a website, partnercentric.com. P A R T N E R C E N T R I C, *Laughter* that's a mouthful. I'm stephanie@partnercentric.com, which is pretty easy to remember. Stephanie with a ph if you wanna talk with me directly. Yeah.
Mike Goldman: Beautiful. Hey, thanks so much for doing this incredibly powerful stuff.
Stephanie Harris: Thanks for having me, Mike.