We were lucky to catch up with Jason Oeltjen recently and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Jason, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear your thoughts about making remote work effective.
Sure! Our team is fully remote and has been since COVID started. We were in our previous office for five years, and the lease was coming up regardless, so I sent everyone home in January of 2020 to try full-time WFH… then COVID hit right before the lease actually expired, so I let it go and told everyone to stay home.
Since we are a digital marketing agency, everything we do is already online, so it is definitely easier to work from home for us, compared to some other industries and businesses.
That said, it’s still not easy managing a fully remote team when you’re used to being able to stand around a whiteboard and map out a project or roll over to someone’s desk to discuss a specific graphic or piece of code. And some people work from home better, or differently, rather, than others. Some need and thrive on the human interaction that an office brings, while others love that I can no longer walk over to their desk and bug them directly. Plus, who doesn’t love working in sweatpants all day and not having to make a drive every morning and afternoon?
We make WFH work for us by using a software stack and weekly virtual standup meetings that let us communicate well, stay organized, and give everyone the time and space they need to get things done.
In terms of software that facilitates WFH, we primarily use Slack, Monday.com, Zoom, and Gmail.
We use Slack to communicate day-to-day, share awesome memes, and generally keep in touch. Our #general channel is relatively quiet and is only used for general banter, morning checklist updates, etc. Individual projects or tasks are typically discussed only with those involved via group direct messages or channels to keep the noise down for everyone else.
Monday.com is our project management tool. We’ve tried them all (Basecamp, Asana, Trello, Wrike, etc.), and this is our favorite so far. It’s super flexible, and we have three primary ways of managing tasks.
The first is for larger clients. They each get a board in our main workspace, and each board gets a Todo, Backlog, and Done group.
We also have a small business website platform. Each of these clients gets a board in an independent workspace, and each has a templatized list of items that serve as the checklist for building and launching their site. Everything from logo creation to mockups, building the site, launching it, doing SEO, setting up email deliverability, etc., is included as individual tasks. When a new signup comes in, we simply create a new board from the template.
Then there are what I call the “dump” boards. These are boards in the main workspace for each team member that does any fulfillment/execution, and each one is literally named “[Team Member] dump,” lol. I have each of these boards saved as email contacts (Monday.com gives each board a unique email address you can send mail to, which adds a new item) so that I can simply forward an actionable email to the appropriate team member’s board, and it creates a task. Then, a Monday.com automation automatically assigns the task to that team member, sets the due date two days out as a default, and marks it as a ToDo.
Each person works off their “My Work” page based on due dates.
This setup works well for our workflows.
Then, naturally, we use Zoom for our weekly virtual standup meeting, which we treat like an informal version of EOS’s (Entrepreneurial Operating System) L10 meetings, if you’re familiar. Everyone shares anything cool or exciting they did in the last week, I share an overview of our current pipeline and any significant projects or other developments, then we run through the Monday.com “My Work” for each team member.
And last but not least, we use Gmail for email, and there are always plenty of those flying around!
WFH has worked out well for us. There are naturally times when I, as the owner, wonder if everyone is being as productive as they could be, but I think people are just as good at wasting time and procrastinating in an office setting as at home. There are ways to track productivity on an employee’s computer using tools like Time Doctor, but I don’t believe playing Big Brother is the answer. If an employee isn’t being productive, they don’t belong on the team. Not that I like firing people. It’s the least favorite part of the job, for sure.
Working from home has numerous benefits. The obvious is that there is no commute, which saves time and money and lets people have at least an hour of their day back. What that means is that a whole hour can now be spent with family, engaging with the kids in the morning and evening, picking them up from school instead of sending them to after-school care or having someone else pick them up, etc.
And it has definitely impacted me and my family personally, because about a year into COVID, we decided to make a major life change… We decided to sell our home in North Dallas and become fully nomadic in our RV. So, I run the agency from all over the US as we travel, allowing us to see incredible places while continuing to work and grow the business. Definitely something I couldn’t do if we were tied to an office!
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
Hi. I’m Jason. I enjoy nice long rides on my motorcycle, off-grid camping with my family all over the country, sailing, hiking, and helping clients grow their businesses.
Decisive Design is a full-service digital marketing agency specializing in the more technical aspects of digital marketing.
By that, I mean we don’t just build websites; we build websites that are fast, mobile-friendly, and compliant with Google’s latest best practices for SEO. We don’t just run paid ad campaigns; we make sure the landing pages and websites are optimized for conversion rates and user experience, and that success (or failure) can be measured appropriately by implementing relevant conversion tracking and analytics.
We also do a lot of WordPress and Shopify customization, creating one-off apps and plugins for clients that need specific functionality, then integrating them with their site and systems. This often involves coming in and playing clean-up crew after another attempt has already been made by another party or after the client has been delivered something pretty, but that doesn’t actually work.
A few years ago, we got fed up seeing small businesses get taken advantage of and charged thousands of dollars for straightforward websites based on cheap theme templates. That’s when we decided to create our own small business website platform. We call it Decisive Sites. It’s based on WordPress and uses a subscription pricing model.
We have $49 and $99 per month packages that fit the majority of website needs for service-based businesses, including building, hosting, and maintaining the site. So, instead of paying thousands upfront, plus hosting, plus maintenance fees, a small business can come to us, get a website built by a professional agency with 15+ years of experience, and pay a nominal monthly fee. Then, as their business grows, their website can grow with them, and we obviously hope they come to us for marketing services!
Our clients range from small businesses that just have a website with us, to large service-based and eCommerce companies that we do custom development, paid ad management, SEO, and more for.
Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?
This is a fun story.
In 2013, I was still a solo act. I had several clients and was taking contracts here and there to work in-house for local companies in the Dallas area.
One day, I was having some tacos at the local Fuzzy’s Taco Shop, and I got a call from a friend of a friend that I had met and hung out with a few times.
Long story short, that acquaintance was working for a local agency, and the agency had a large project for their biggest client that wasn’t going well. The client was about to walk if they couldn’t get the website revamp fixed and launched, so they needed my help.
I packed up my things, went to their offices, and spent 36 hours straight fixing their client’s large news/editorial WordPress website.
The owner offered me a job that night on the spot, asked me how much I wanted, and hired me.
And that’s where I met Lance, my current partner, lead developer, and the reason we are such a technical agency with many capabilities that most agencies just don’t have.
The situation at that agency eroded over the next few months, ending in them shutting the doors because of some very shady goings-on, and most of us walking out. I told Lance to meet me at my house the following Monday, and the rest is history! Luckily, I had retained all my freelance clients, so we split the existing revenue and got to work!
As I write this, I’m actually realizing… I think it’s been ten years to the month since we teamed up. Ha!
Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?
Most of our work still comes from referrals, and I believe the main contributing factor to that is twofold; We communicate well, and we deliver products and services that work.
It sounds simple, but having worked with thousands of other agencies and vendors that clients have used over the years, I just don’t see others communicating or delivering. Taking several days to respond to critical needs, saying they’ve done something when they clearly haven’t, acting like they know what they’re doing when they clearly don’t, not testing things, etc… none of that has a place in a professional environment where clients are relying on you to help them grow their business, and it really baffles me.
Finding hard workers that do a good job is difficult, as I have found out while trying to scale, and maybe what I’m talking about is just the “norm,” but I think that our reputation is largely built on the fact that we do better in these areas than many others. I’m proud of that.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://decisivedesign.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/decisive.design
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DecisiveDesign
- Other: https://decisivesites.com/