Avoid Falling Into The ‘Complacently Trap’ Of Remote Work As A Business Owner

Founding partner of CEO Advisory Guru, LLC. Best-selling author of The Private Equity Playbook and The Exit-Strategy Playbook.

I recently took a quick business trip to San Francisco—caught an early-morning flight, sat in a room with some of my business partners all day, and then jumped on an evening flight back home to Texas.

In today’s world of video conferencing and remote work, making the decision to get up early and slog to the airport (not to mention pay for the cost of the flight) might seem surprising. And yet, there’s a time and a place where this is exactly what we as business owners need to do.

There’s no question that life has changed dramatically since Covid-19. Before the pandemic, statistics suggest that only 17% of people worked from home five days or more per week. During Covid-19, that number rose to 44%. It appears that this is our new normal: Many people haven’t gone back to the office full-time, and if they have, many have done so through a hybrid model. On top of that, there are many small business owners who have always worked almost exclusively from home.

Many times, remote work makes sense. But, to drive your business forward, sometimes it’s crucial to bite the bullet and meet with people face to face.

The Cost Of Complacency

There’s an attractiveness to the remote landscape, but it comes with a cost, too. If you get too comfortable with our new normal (or even, dare I say, lazy), there’s a good chance that you’ll never develop the kinds of relationships that are integral to getting business done.

Take my trip to San Francisco, for example. My business partners and I had some competing visions and thoughts about our mutual enterprise. Could we have tried to hash out our differences via video conference? Sure … but it wouldn’t have been nearly as effective.

For starters, maintaining engagement on a video call for four or five hours straight is almost impossible to do. Additionally, reading body language and picking up on subtle nuances is far easier to do in person. And, of course, when you’re at home, there are distractions: The kids come in and want to tell you about their day, the dog whines to be let outside, or someone comes to the door because they need you to sign for a package.

Get out of your home office, though, and all those distractions—and the impediments that come with them—disappear.

The Right Time And Place

Don’t get me wrong: There are a lot of instances where video conferencing is entirely appropriate. My trip to San Francisco, for example, only came after multiple remote meetings where we put our business plan together, talked through how we wanted to structure, and so on.

Those meetings were great for laying the groundwork for our venture. But when it was time to bring in investors and plan the launch—both tasks that required finding a way to mesh our different ideas, goals and personalities—a video call just wasn’t going to cut it.

After the in-person meeting, we all felt good about the decisions that we made. Just as importantly, we were on the same page about how to move forward. In my opinion (and I’ve been doing this a long time), achieving the kind of success we’re aiming for with this undertaking wouldn’t be possible if we had let complacency and laziness stop us from meeting in person.

Making The Decision To Connect

So, this leads me to the big question: When is the right time to stay in your home office, and when should you bite the bullet and get into a room with other people?

While there are no hard and fast rules, there are some useful guidelines to help you make this decision. First, ask yourself what the goals for the particular meeting are. Is the goal to close a big deal? Is it to establish or deepen a relationship? Do you want to convince someone to work with you? In each of these instances, making the effort to meet in person is often the way to go.

Let me give you an example from my own life. As a CEO coach and consultant, I have clients from all over the world. Many of them make it a point to meet me for lunch or dinner at my country club when their travels bring them to Texas—and I make it a point to accommodate them. Why do we meet in person whenever possible? Because for us, in-person meetings are by far the best way for us to build a relationship and deepen trust.

Depending on the type of business you have, the odds are good that relationships are key to it. You can maintain a relationship via video conferencing. Building the kind of trust and familiarity that’s crucial for doing business remotely can be far more difficult.

Create A Framework For Your Business

Thinking about your goals is a good start, but I highly recommend you go a step further and create a framework that outlines when to engage in remote versus in-person meetings. When you do, remember to consider what’s standard for your industry.

If your business involves sales, for example, you may need to meet with your clients and prospective clients face to face to shake their hands and play a round of golf with them. If you’re a coach or an investor, like me, it might be appropriate to meet in person to establish relationships or hash out details with partners.

Think through all the scenarios you regularly encounter with clients, colleagues and partners, and use that to inform when you should get in front of someone. For example, maybe you decide that you should engage in face-to-face meetings when there’s a problem, or when the relationship has a large economic potential and needs to be nurtured to ensure that value comes through. Maybe you decide it’s when you’re first establishing the relationship. Or, perhaps it’s some combination of all of these.

Remember, there are no hard and fast rules for this. But, by creating a framework now, you can ensure you don’t become complacent when it comes to driving your relationships—and, therefore, your business—forward.

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