The Strategic Playbook for Building a Remote-First Company with Nadia Vatalidis

About This Episode 

In this episode of The Future of Work® Podcast, host Frank Cottle is joined by Nadia Vatalidis, Head of People at Doist—the globally recognized company behind Todoist and Twist. With a decade of experience scaling distributed teams at GitLab, Remote.com, and now Doist, Nadia brings deep expertise on what it really takes to build a high-performing, remote-first company. Together, they explore the strategic decisions behind global hiring, equitable compensation frameworks, time zone productivity, employee security, and the cultural strengths of distributed work. 

Whether you’re a founder, team leader, or HR exec navigating the complexities of remote hiring or distributed team design, this episode is a roadmap to getting it right. Learn exactly why remote-first is a mindset shaping the future of work. 

About Nadia Vatalidis 

Nadia Vatalidis is a senior human resources executive with extensive experience in building and scaling distributed teams. As Head of People at Doist, creators of the award-winning applications Todoist and Twist, she oversees people strategy and culture for a 100+ person team distributed across 35+ countries, supporting 45 million users worldwide. She previously scaled Remote.com from 70 to 1,000 employees and GitLab from 75 to 1,300, with an emphasis on remote-first design, cultural cohesion, and global compliance. Originally from South Africa, she’s also an advisor to remote-friendly companies like Pyn. 

What You’ll Learn 

• Why remote-first strategies are talent amplifiers 
• The difference between equal pay and equitable pay in global teams 
• How to think globally about hiring from day one, even as a startup 
• Security and compliance best practices for distributed teams 
• How culture can be stronger in remote teams than in physical offices 
• Why asynchronous work and time zone autonomy boost productivity 
• Strategic tips on global compensation, currencies, and rolling averages 
• How remote-first hiring supports work-life balance and retention 
• Tools and platforms for secure onboarding and offboarding 
• Why remote hiring is a strategic—not a tactical—business decision 

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Transcript

Nadia Vatalidis

[ 00:00:00,000 ]If you start strategically hiring in a global fashion, you get to access talent that you would never access if you’re only hiring in a 30-kilometer radius. You simply get to work with people that probably have skills and competencies that you can’t even imagine.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:00:15,889 ] Nadia, the Welcome to the Future of Work podcast. Geez, all the way from South Africa, I should say.

Nadia Vatalidis

[ 00:00:23,180 ] Hey Frank, so good to be here. Yeah, the only background noise you might hear is the hardy dust, right? We have these gigantic birds. So maybe the sound will pick up a hearty dot today and we’ll give your listeners something fun to think about and our giant birds in Joe book.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:00:40,060 ] That that sure works. The only background noise you’ll hear her here is possibly my dog.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:00:45,890 ] That sort of thing. Nadia, you’ve been involved with remote work in the extreme, recruiting for companies, building and involved with companies that have gone remote only and big companies. We’re not talking about 10 people. We’re talking about thousands of people in single models.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:01:05,810 ] How do you develop a strategy? If you and I are going to build a company tomorrow, and let’s assume it’s a… Well, we’ll keep it technology. Let’s assume it’s a technology company or an internet-enabled company at least. maybe an internet-enabled company that distributes a product.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:01:25,330 ] How do we strategically make the decision?

Frank Cottle

[ 00:01:29,030 ] To say, oh. I think I’ll hire somebody in South Africa, Kenya, India, and the Philippines.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:01:35,340 ] How do we strategically make that decision right from the beginning, which is when it’s critical, I think. that we’re going remote first.

Nadia Vatalidis

[ 00:01:45,890 ] Yeah, I think, um, The cost element, many people would raise, right? So there’s this huge opportunity to hire in very cost-efficient locations. But to me, That’s not the most important thing. If you start strategically hiring in a global fashion, you get to access talent that you would never access if you’re only hiring in a 30-kilometer radius. You simply get to work with people. That probably has skills and competencies that you can’t even imagine, right? So that privilege to work at companies like this benefits the person. But the company is getting skills and talent globally, in locations that they simply would never have. I think the strategic part later comes in when you have a localization plan for languages or when you have a go-to-market plan, right? So imagine you had a go-to-market plan in the Philippines or in Germany. Hiring remotely from the beginning means that the footprint has already grown in those locations. Right and so, as the company evolves and grows, it just becomes so much easier to start thinking about right.

Nadia Vatalidis

[ 00:02:52,310 ] Do I need to sell into the German market? Do I have people there already that can help me? You know, localize that, translate that, grow that. So I think it’s, yeah.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:03:03,800 ] Is it necessary to have a global marketing plan? In order for a global remote first plan, or can you have a remote first very regionally also?

Frank Cottle

[ 00:03:15,370 ] You talk about a 30-kilometer radius. That’s pretty reasonable.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:03:22,300 ] Mutes, things of that nature.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:03:26,480 ] What about a 300-kilometer radius? Where the commute is out of the question, obviously.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:03:33,330 ] Um, and working on a regional or a local basis with a remote first plan— also which is probably what more are companies? Think of, especially when they start. I can see evolving to a global plan. All companies are international. Today, yeah, we all have an offshore, an international customer and an international team member of some sort. So, all companies are international, but we usually have a core focus.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:04:04,130 ] What’s your thought process on that?

Nadia Vatalidis

[ 00:04:07,350 ] Yeah, as someone out here in South Africa, always I would always highlight the fact that you have— if you have teams outside of that 300-kilometer radius—where you have time zone coverage in places that you can’t even think about. Right, so you have. Yeah, you have people following the sun without a single person having to follow the sun. Everyone gets to sleep, eat, have a life outside of work. Right, without having to work long hours because they’re simply working in their time zone. And at companies like GitLab, I think that was the huge differentiator to scale a DevOps tool. Now I think they’re a DevOps orchestrator, right? Um, but it It put them in a position where all of a sudden their support engineering team was in, I don’t know, 18 different time zones when they scaled. and in the beginning, maybe they were in five different time zones if they had five people. And so, I think the benefit is all of a sudden, while you’re sleeping. In your 30 kilometer radius, there are people that are working autonomously to get things done.

Nadia Vatalidis

[ 00:05:11,020 ] And by your morning, you could literally carry on. And so, I think it just is such a… a pace change. It’s an opportunity to serve customers in global locations before you even have those customers.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:05:25,350 ] Um, are talking about the benefits of remote first. But what about the strategic decision of… How to go about that in order to achieve those benefits again, starting regionally, growing.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:05:40,850 ] Well, in the United States, nationally, because we have… Six time zones here. If you all of them, um Uh, And, um, How are you thinking through that strategic positioning? Because we all start companies. We’re all, you know, serial entrepreneurs or… obsessive entrepreneurs.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:06:05,420 ] We all start companies and the strategy for the product, the strategy for the marketplace, etc. is always well thought through. But I don’t think the hiring plans are thought through. Where you’re going to bring employees in.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:06:22,050 ] And I agree that you get a bigger talent pool.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:06:25,890 ] Um, globally than you do regionally or locally or nationally. Yeah. But how do you reach that talent pool? How do you set that? Again, I’ll go back to the strategy that you laid. It says, ‘I’m going to build a company. And it’s going to be global. And I’m going to start hiring. Would you hire your first group regionally or locally? And then expand from there or do you hire your Maybe you, let’s say you’re starting a company and you say, ‘Well, I need a CEO or I need a CFO. I’m the CEO. You’re the CEO. I need a CFO.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:07:01,180 ] How am I going to… establish a CFO.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:07:06,650 ] All the controls, all the necessary things to do with the legal and the banking and everything, start and build a finance department.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:07:14,950 ] Remote. Strategically.’

Nadia Vatalidis

[ 00:07:18,480 ] Strategically, I have the unpopular opinion that you could still hire someone anywhere in the world, even for your CFO function. And I have experienced this firsthand at companies like Remote. com. There’s now more than 2,000 people in nearly 100 countries, right? And places like Gita, which didn’t ever select the location in the beginning. So when they started out, it was like… This position is remote first. We don’t care where you base. And I think that is a strategic decision. I think that comes down to: If you’re competing against the local market, you can pay very competitively, right? Um, even in all these other locations, without having to pay someone potentially a San Francisco, California, New York, or even London-based salary, right? Right, and so it does give you it does give you that strategic opportunity to think about long term as you scale the company. What is your average cost per employee going to be? And if you start hiring everyone in one location, that’s going to be your benchmark, right?

Nadia Vatalidis

[ 00:08:23,450 ] That’s going to be your strategic cost that you will struggle to change. If you only hire in one location, you know—I, I, I agree with that—strongly.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:08:34,786 ] Uh, we are a remote-first company. Uh, and, um, we have people scattered from Eastern Africa. Through Europe and back through Central and Latin America.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:08:51,030 ] Um, in all variety of the United States, the UK, et cetera. We’re not global, but we’re half global.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:09:00,650 ] And our motivation, and I’ll use our chief marketing officer as an example. When we started the company, the CFO and I were close physically.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:09:12,550 ] We had our offices in Las Vegas and Newport Beach.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:09:16,970 ] It’s a few hours back and forth, but we all knew each other really well. And so that all worked within our arc. corporate office officially. All finance has always been in Las Vegas. Oh. but our chief marketing officer lived in Thank you.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:09:31,940 ] The fellow we wanted to hire. And he actually had a small farm that he lived on with his wife and kids and everything. And telling him, ‘Hey, I got this great job opportunity for you.’ And you’re the best person for the job, and we want to pay you a fair, equitable salary.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:09:47,260 ] But you have to move to Las Vegas?

Frank Cottle

[ 00:09:50,590 ] Think in your brain. Farm, Kentucky.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:09:54,500 ] Neon Lights, Las Vegas.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:09:57,170 ] There’s no way he would have taken the job. And we would have had to buy the farm. Pay all the costs to move, and his wife was very well employed and had a very serious career. We would have torn that family apart.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:10:10,990 ] And that’s when we started years and years ago as we started this. That’s what… In our values, culturally, which internally says ‘family first.’ We went remote first and foremost to get the best people.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:10:27,480 ] Without messing up their families.

Nadia Vatalidis

[ 00:10:30,190 ] We felt that was a major strength.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:10:33,480 ] Um, And it’s worked out well for us.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:10:38,540 ] Your second point. Again, we’re an example of.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:10:43,270 ] We have about a 40% lower cost.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:10:48,160 ] Um, for our employee costs, our total personnel costs. Than if we were to have hired only in the U. S.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:11:01,290 ] And so that makes our revenue per employee. Ratio. hugely higher and adds a lot more company value, which means it’s easier to access capital. We don’t have any, we’re self-funded, but it would be much easier to access capital or create.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:11:21,490 ] Any sort of corporate valuation model, because of that.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:11:25,680 ] So the business side of it, I get totally.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:11:30,160 ] It’s just always a challenge to think of what’s the first move.

Nadia Vatalidis

[ 00:11:35,030 ] Yeah. I if I have to imagine a company that’s not currently remote first and that just wants to start. So imagine a company that does have a few people in the same region or has a bunch of offices but really want to explore this external Remote first space. I think. I think the friction to start is actually a lot lower than what people imagine, right? So one. When you make that role available before you’ve even you know thought about how you’re going to hire this person, the attraction is going to be gigantic.

Nadia Vatalidis

[ 00:12:09,600 ] In, I think it was 2022, Q4. We had posted a role at Remote, right? And this role had somehow gone viral between LinkedIn, Instagram, and other socials. And we…

Frank Cottle

[ 00:12:22,260 ] I’m going to stop right there.

Nadia Vatalidis

[ 00:12:23,950 ] Yeah. Yeah.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:12:25,160 ] Socials. How important are socials in the development of a remote first recruiting plan? Because I think that’s probably pretty critical.

Nadia Vatalidis

[ 00:12:36,180 ] Yeah, great question. I think if a company just believes they can just put a position on their careers page and hope for the best, I think nothing’s going to happen. They are going to get two percent or less than what they even expect to get, and I think having a network, having um a company LinkedIn profile, or people at the company that can advocate for the role— whether that is a talent acquisition or recruiter, right, or whether that’s one of the leadership team members that has a relatively large following or building a following— right absolutely vital to get that out there on places like LinkedIn. We even advertise positions on places like Instagram, YouTube, wherever we have the opportunity.

Nadia Vatalidis

[ 00:13:21,640 ] I think one of the tips that’s actually served me very well is to create a Loom video or any video, any recording about the job. Get the hiring manager to create a recording about this job for two minutes. About why anyone should be interested and post that with the job on social media, whether that is LinkedIn, Instagram, wherever your socials, X, wherever your socials live, right? The attraction is just going to be so much larger than just leaving it on some careers page and hope for the best. And those tools are evolving, right? They’re also changing at the moment.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:13:57,080 ] You’re absolutely right. They’re changing. They’re accelerating in that change.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:14:02,820 ] I heard it said by another guest a while ago that ‘The battle for talent is actually larger than the battle for market share.’

Frank Cottle

[ 00:14:11,930 ] The talent is the war. You have to focus on winning. If you win that war, then you’ll automatically, or almost automatically, win the war of competition and market share. So I think a lot of companies aren’t focused on that. It is a… We’re talking about remote first, but underneath that. Strategically, for any company growing its talent first.

Nadia Vatalidis

[ 00:14:42,989 ] Yeah, absolutely.

Nadia Vatalidis

[ 00:14:44,530 ] There are also amazing companies now that have created job boards, right? I wouldn’t say in competition with LinkedIn, but that has a massive following. Where any remote job can be advertised freely on their job board, right? And that does amplify people from visiting that particular job board over and over again to find that key role and starting to know that brand as the company to go to, to go and find a remote job, right? And I think it’s important if you’re going to hire talent remotely, that you start figuring out who those companies are. Networking with them, building a relationship with them so you can also access their funnel. They might have experts or talent that’s been watching them. That job worked for years, right? And so that’s also a critical way to go outside of the usual spaces and outside of maybe your comfort zone.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:15:36,490 ] To go and find these folks, well you know, uh, some data that we uh got uh from Rent Stat, um, you you’re familiar with what the israel stands— the largest recruiting company uh in the world, um, is that when they run an ad for a position and include the words either remote or hybrid within the job description, they get about a five to one return.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:16:05,520 ] So if your filter, if you have a funnel filter in your job thing, having five times as many potential candidates is going to probably yield better bottom-end talent. Absolutely. There’s a certain logic to that. But one of the questions that I hear— I don’t know how you deal with this. It’s security.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:16:29,630 ] Okay, we just hired someone, and uh, let’s see, uh, they’re in uh, wherever. I don’t wanna besmirch any particular country, but they’re in something. We don’t know them. We have no control over them, of their activities.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:16:44,650 ] How do we manage the security elements of our intellectual property? Yeah. Potentially sensitive material, financial materials, the materials of our customers, that’s proprietary to our customer.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:17:02,200 ] How are those challenges met effectively with large remote-only organizations?

Nadia Vatalidis

[ 00:17:10,530 ] Yeah, I think there’s a huge component of doing the basics right. And so implementing background checks nowadays is not what it was in the past. We get results within hours, sometimes within minutes, right? And so, it’s not expensive and it’s not friction-heavy to simply run an identity background check just to confirm the person is who they say they are, right? That’s the question. Yeah, that’s the first step.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:17:37,620 ] The second step is management processes and procedures.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:17:42,750 ] Or, yeah. Do they have to be? More rigid and a remote-only company in your view? Um, if so, in what way?

Nadia Vatalidis

[ 00:17:53,920 ] Yeah. In open source companies and the ones I certainly worked for, I wouldn’t necessarily say that they’re more rigid. I think they’re just really smart in terms of how they’re operating and how they run their business. Um, there’s very simple apps. I’m trying to think of the name. I think it’s called Kanji. Right, it’s an app that you install it helps you with onboarding and offboarding. You can sync it to tools like Okta, which is a single sign-on platform. I think Google has a single sign-on nowadays, which is awesome and epic, right? There’s many others. So not selling these tools, but just focusing on like… Do I need single sign-on to make sure I can easily manage access control and see what people do with that access? And two, do I need a tool like Kanji that should something go wrong, and I can instantly figure out where my red flags are? Many of these companies, of course, later on need things like socks. Sock type 1 or sock type 2. You know, certifications, and then that audit process is going to help you uncover anything but that— that’s already too late.

Nadia Vatalidis

[ 00:18:57,390 ] So I actually think start very simply with, like, how are you onboarding people through systems and tools? What can you access in those systems and tools without the need to track all their work? Just figuring out what is going to highlight a red flag or something in production that’s going wrong. Or how are you protecting customer data, right? Privacy laws.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:19:19,620 ] That’s the moment. Thing that’s right— if you have a you can lose your own money. But you absolutely your your moral obligation to protect your customers is hugely higher than to protect yourself.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:19:36,600 ] Yeah.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:19:38,310 ] You know, so I get that.

Nadia Vatalidis

[ 00:19:40,400 ] Yeah.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:19:41,210 ] You made a comment about efficiency and compensation.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:19:49,110 ] But sometimes the same position in three different countries has three different compensation structures.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:19:55,890 ] How do you calculate and balance that? Somebody in one country is doing exactly the same work as somebody in another country. Maybe even better work. And yet they’re compensated out of what goes on in the other country. So the difference between London, let’s say, and the Philippines is massive. Um, how do you have equity and compensation structures so that you Um, literally aren’t discriminating based on?

Nadia Vatalidis

[ 00:20:38,000 ] Yeah. So equal pay, right, is about two people having the same job in the same location. So to clarify for the audience, like… If we’re talking equal pay, it’s about imagining you and I both live in Las Vegas, we both have the same job, same job title, we should be paid equally, right? And sometimes there’s a pay range, and so as long as we both within that range, it’s equal and fair. But equitable pay works a little bit differently when you have all these different, you know, locations, geographies.

Nadia Vatalidis

[ 00:21:09,700 ] Um, going as far as cities, right? Within that. And my, and your cost of living looks entirely different, right? But my, and your taxes might look very different as well. My healthcare system might look entirely different between the UK and the Philippines, for example. That doesn’t mean in the Philippines you have it easier. It doesn’t necessarily mean you have all this access to things. It simply means it looks completely different. And you know, friend, I’ve built many compensation structures in my career. And I’ve seen companies really do global pay very well, where they pay everyone equally, no matter where they are.

Nadia Vatalidis

[ 00:21:46,540 ] If I had to start a company, I wouldn’t start with that. I think it’s a very expensive exercise.

Nadia Vatalidis

[ 00:21:52,230 ] It’s very hard. To keep it going when maybe times get harder financially or you’re not profitable yet, etc. Right. So if I had to think about the basics, how can I start a company and be equitable and fair. But scrappy in the beginning to make sure I can build on it later and simple enough to change, right? I would start thinking about: Where am I benchmarking my pay structures? Am I benchmarking it maybe in a location like Boston or Atlanta? That’s what many companies, global remote companies do. And that would be my 100% benchmark, right? And then I would figure out what is the minimum I want to pay people. Right? Is there a minimum?

Nadia Vatalidis

[ 00:22:36,679 ] Compliantly, there is. In companies like Germany, they have minimum pay. In many other countries in the world, they have minimum pay. In developing countries, it’s extremely low. So I would never recommend that. I would stay away from minimum pay in a country like Philippines or South Africa. I think that’s very hard to live on.

Nadia Vatalidis

[ 00:22:54,160 ] You know, to create awareness, but if I think about minimum pay and I start thinking about I want to be competitive. I don’t want to overpay anyone, but I want to be competitive. Something Duist does really well is our minimum pay is 75% of that 100% benchmark. So if we benchmarking against Boston.

Nadia Vatalidis

[ 00:23:13,770 ] We pay a minimum of 75% of that anywhere in the world. and then in between that we obviously have mapped locations and geolocations to that benchmark. And that also means a place like New York might be at 110% of that benchmark. And San Francisco might be, or Las Vegas might be at 110%. 15 of that benchmark but then That’s all California taxes, so it doesn’t. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. So I think, and look, you also have countries like Switzerland and Japan where you’ve got to pay above the 100% benchmark because their cost of living is higher. And their pay ranges are simply a ton higher. They live in an environment that’s a lot more expensive than what my location is. So I really like the simplicity of that— it’s very scalable, it’s still very competitive to pay people in this way, but it’s also easy to manage for a very small finance or people team. Right depending on what you have or HR team depending what you have. Some people just have an ops person, right? Some people just have a people person or finance person.

Nadia Vatalidis

[ 00:24:15,260 ] So I feel like… The simpler you can start, the easier it is to scale. And.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:24:21,940 ] One of the things that I see as a challenge, that we’ve had as a challenge, honestly, is currencies.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:24:28,960 ] We might start at… an equivalent. As you say, of 75% of a base.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:24:38,800 ] Geography.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:24:40,390 ] Okay, we’ll use Atlanta.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:24:42,840 ] And and we figure all that out, we say ‘Yes, that that that is an equal or better lifestyle in another location.’

Nadia Vatalidis

[ 00:24:51,810 ] Yeah.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:24:52,370 ] Amen. But do you pay them in dollars or do you pay them in local currency? And when local currency valuations change against the dollar, if you’re earning dollars in your company as a Um, um uh the compensation start your compensation structures are continuously changing. Um, as a result of exchange rates.

Nadia Vatalidis

[ 00:25:16,840 ] Yeah.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:25:17,450 ] We see that all the time.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:25:20,480 ] We used to pay everybody in dollars.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:25:23,420 ] Okay and then we had problems with local taxes.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:25:28,040 ] Uh, for employment taxes and things in various other countries, and so we had to stop doing that. Now we pay in the last currency, and we see every month exchange rates up and down, up and down, up and down, moving all over the place. So we have much more of a variable cost.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:25:45,490 ] Um, uh, and it’s it’s not always favorable, it’s not always unfavorable, but it’s You say, well, it’ll work out, but sometimes it takes two or three years to work out, to level out. What’s your thought on that?

Nadia Vatalidis

[ 00:25:59,550 ] Yes, you’re right that it does start with how you’ve employed people, right? So, whether you’ve hired them as contractors or employees via a vendor like an employer of record—right, like remote oyster, those kind of companies— so one, it starts with that. Did you hire them as a contractor or are they an employee of your company? If they’re an employee, they have to get paid in local currency, you’ve got to give them that option. But some countries, you can have multiple currencies, like Europe is a very good example where you can get paid in US dollars or euros.

Nadia Vatalidis

[ 00:26:33,060 ] And I think… What no one knows is the behind-the-scenes work of compensation.

Nadia Vatalidis

[ 00:26:39,510 ] Isn’t simple always and annually what do is does and what I’ve done in my past career as well is we have a rolling average running in the background that we constantly check between us dollar, euro, and other currencies. Usually, you will have a limit of how many currencies you work in, right? And you will have your main currency, which is very often USD. And then, based on that rolling averages, you give all your employees once a year an opportunity to change currencies. We’ve just gone through that now in November.

Nadia Vatalidis

[ 00:27:09,120 ] Depending on the location that they’re in, right? So, if they’re already an employee and they paid in their local currency, they can’t change back to USD. They’re an employee. They’ve got an employment contract. They’ve got to get paid in a specific currency in their country. But if they’re not, they can change the currency once a year. And that. Sometimes that benefits folks, sometimes it doesn’t. And that’s why I’m saying you’ve nearly got to roll that back in. Have a rolling average running in the back end to check how it’s fluctuating. In developing countries, people do huge comparisons. They’re like, ‘Oh my goodness, six months ago I was paid this, now I’m paid this.’ But if I’m an employee, I would be less focused on that and start looking at in my local currency. How has things changed? Is it changing significantly? And would it be better to have a non-fluctuating salary? And just get paid in my local pay.

Nadia Vatalidis

[ 00:28:00,830 ] Countries like Argentina, Yeah.

Nadia Vatalidis

[ 00:28:04,760 ] They’ve had a very very rough time bringing the wheelbarrow full of money, yeah. Absolutely. And there, I’ve seen companies do very courageous things where they actually好 Um.

Nadia Vatalidis

[ 00:28:20,810 ] help change that with USD or something else, right? But their local laws also come into play, their local taxes come into play, and that, that we can’t all control. Um.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:28:31,810 ] You know, when we look at local laws and your comment around remote. Com or third-party employment groups or independent contractor structures all work up to a certain scale.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:28:47,510 ] Three people here, two people there.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:28:50,810 ] But you put 20 or 30 people in a remote facility. And all of a sudden the law says, ‘These aren’t contractors anymore.’

Nadia Vatalidis

[ 00:28:59,670 ] Yeah.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:29:00,250 ] So you actually have to establish a local company in that country and do all your compensation under the rules of that country.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:29:14,020 ] Overall, so much of what you’re saying, I think, really applies well to larger organizations.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:29:22,130 ] But to a startup like you and I, we’re going to do a startup tomorrow and sell things that maybe is going to have 10 people scattered around. You really have to have your contractor or your third-party model worked out and have people willing, because with contractors, they don’t always have the same benefit structures. Willing to work in that, which again, narrows your selection of individuals.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:29:50,400 ] Yeah. Overall, in that battle for talent, so you have to be very careful looking at this stuff to not not you, but we all, to not overly generalize and to strategically set up that plan.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:30:06,670 ] That says, here’s how we’re going to do it. And it has to be established.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:30:13,350 ] A year well in advance.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:30:17,030 ] It is a strategic plan, not a tactical move.

Nadia Vatalidis

[ 00:30:20,910 ] No.

Nadia Vatalidis

[ 00:30:22,390 ] I will stay. GitLab went public and this is public knowledge so I’m not sharing something I shouldn’t but GitLab went public with various employment structures and based on the country right in place and in some of those locations you have to be a big company in order to do it you have to have a large hr department look at your finance department has to be sophisticated enough in your Absolutely.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:30:48,180 ] capital structure has to be sophisticated enough to manage those things Amen. I mean, every major. international company. deals with this. In fact, in the flexible workspace, this is a good illustration, in the flexible workspace industry, one of the largest contingents of customers are large corporates that need to move into a particular locale.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:31:15,940 ] So we had one a little while ago that needed to move into Accra. in Nigeria.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:31:23,280 ] And. they thought, well, we don’t want to hire secretarial, clerical, and administrative staff. we’re just going to hire a sales rep.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:31:35,070 ] so. it they didn’t have to deal with all the support structure.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:31:41,570 ] because they were using a flexible workspace.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:31:44,760 ] uh-huh. that supplied all of that as part of its services. so that’s another model, the virtual office model, the remote work model that large companies… Gosh, every global Fortune 1000 company uses that model in some way or another.

Nadia Vatalidis

[ 00:32:02,780 ] Yeah.

Nadia Vatalidis

[ 00:32:04,050 ] On a small scale, so if you and I did only have 10 contractors globally, I do really like what companies like Wave Money is doing in developing African locations and even Asia’s Pacific and other developing countries where Wave Money provides access to people to gain money in their location without getting trapped into some sort of political situation, right, where they can’t access any money. So if you can imagine some of the major issues we’ve seen all over Africa, etc. Wave money has made it possible for people to still access money if they’re working for an international company legitimately, right? And they had to set up the banking infrastructure for people to do so legitimately. But avoiding the, I can’t access my bank account because everything’s been frozen. It’s offline, right? And so I think… those types of even wise money make it way way easier to access money.

Nadia Vatalidis

[ 00:33:05,520 ] Companies like Remote and other smaller EORs are even creating opportunities to pay in things like cryptocurrencies, right? For those that genuinely want to be paid in that. So a certain portion of their salary can even go to that. So I think at small scale, there’s so many opportunities now. I feel like I would love to start a company and just hire 10 people globally, because I think the opportunities are so different from what it was.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:33:31,980 ] I agree. You know, there’s another company, its name’s alluding to me right now, that is a third-party company— like Upwork, Fiverr, etc and they actually have a compensation structure that pays the contractors in advance of their receipt of payment by the employer. If you will.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:34:04,720 ] So that the employees… don’t have to suffer with that collection process overall.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:34:11,320 ] That’s made them very, very popular with the higher-end contractors.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:34:16,600 ] Who can stay blind. And I think that that’s… A creative process that they were looking at solving up. A problem of the employee not just managing their business well and that stability is, I think, it gives them an advantage.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:34:33,069 ] Gosh, let’s do this. Let’s start a company.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:34:37,920 ] You know, you can run it. I’ll work for you. That’s easy.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:34:43,199 ] And let’s turn all this on its ear and start a huge employment agency. That only does this one thing, that only does remote. And I know they’re out there, but ours would be better, of course.

SPEAKER_2

[ 00:34:56,750 ] Yeah.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:34:59,010 ] And really try to lead the future of work by distributed work overall.

Nadia Vatalidis

[ 00:35:07,130 ] Yeah. I think, between your experience and mine, we will get so much people out of unemployment really quickly, which is one of the things I’d love to solve.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:35:16,350 ] We are going to change the world.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:35:19,160 ] Remote first, it’s always made sense.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:35:22,310 ] Where are you working right now? Are you at your office or your residence?

Nadia Vatalidis

[ 00:35:26,210 ] Yeah, I’m at home. I have a beautiful home office with all my kids’ art here on my wall. And I’m sitting just outside a pool here in Johannesburg because the sun is always shining.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:35:37,940 ] The pool is to the left.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:35:40,520 ] And I’ve worked remotely and from my residence for at least 30 years, always believing I had more efficient use of my time. And we’ve always used technology for communications, like we’re doing now. And one of the things I’ve found, and this has to do with remote teams and overall is that.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:36:07,000 ] If you’re really comfortable with yourself, you can establish a very strong remote relationship, sometimes even better than if you’re in the office every day.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:36:20,060 ] People, when they’re working, at a distance, and, I’ll say, you and I, as an example, I’m much more likely to be true and vulnerable.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:36:31,940 ] To you remotely and 100% candid and honest and that sort of thing.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:36:40,440 ] Because you’re at a distance, than I am if I see you every day in the office. And this is something I don’t think a lot of people relate to and has a lot to do with the culture of remote companies. Can actually be stronger.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:36:57,400 ] Than the culture of companies where everybody comes into the office every day.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:37:01,790 ] Yeah. And that’s something, I think, that’s a topic for another day because we’re kind of running out of time. So let’s re-gather up or maybe do a follow-up article on how to manage cultures inside of remote-first companies by comparison to… you know, we all take an hour commute on the train to get into the same office every day.

Nadia Vatalidis

[ 00:37:27,900 ] Yeah, I’d love that. I’d love that Frank. I think the other thing it does is the emotional maturity it sometimes builds to give you time to process information after a call. Agree in an office, the emotions can be very high. You can visibly see it. And that can often burn a relationship, right? But if someone has a chance to step away from their desk for a moment, take a step outside, have a cup of coffee, take a breather. I think it helps me process information and news or… um, feedback a lot better than when it’s face-to-face in an office where it can get really awkward, really quickly. Right? Where you’re not quite ready to just react. So I think there’s major benefits in terms of being that vulnerable, right, and then having the space to have a great life outside of work and process information.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:38:17,910 ] I agree completely. Well, thank you, Nadia, so much. I really appreciate it. I know Doist is an absolute pioneer and a huge success story in remote first, thousands of employees worldwide, and you’ve done the same in other companies. Not only is Doist a pioneer, but you personally are a pioneer. And I thank you for your time today.

Nadia Vatalidis

[ 00:38:39,630 ] Amazing. Thanks so much, Frank. So great to catch up with you today.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:38:43,620 ] Bye-bye.

Nadia Vatalidis

[ 00:38:44,850 ] Bye.