Many employees were forced to adopt the freelance lifestyle when COVID hit. Though a bit of a shock at first, many were happy to have some extra time at home with family and the convenience of their snack cupboards just a room away. For the businesses that employed them, however, the transition to working from home wasn’t necessarily a smooth one.
How do you manage a company with an entirely remote workforce? If you were never before involved in the gig economy, you suddenly had to worry about keeping workers motivated, engaged and informed, not knowing when or if they would be returning to the office.
For Max Khindria, the WFH reality of the COVID crisis was just another day at the office. That’s because he doesn’t have one, and neither do the 30 full-time freelancers he manages from wherever he happens to be in the world.
“I’ve built my business only on freelancers. I don’t have employees,” said Khindria in his appearance on the Europreneur Podcast. “When I was traveling in Asia, I saw whole communities of digital nomads… and I hung out with those people for six months.”
Their lifestyle rubbed off and him and Khindria saw an opportunity to be a successful entrepreneur and live how he wanted, where he wanted. Khindria, President and Founder of the brand new EO Paris chapter, is British and French, but besides London and Paris, he has lived in Madrid, Buenos Aires, Thailand, and now Portugal, where he rides some of the more modest waves adjacent to the biggest, record-breaking monsters that regularly crash down on Europe’s shores. His company, FinEvents, organizes important financial and business events for companies that have to stand out from the crowd to appeal to investors and other audiences.
Somehow, he does it all while being the only official employee of a company that has no brick-and-mortar headquarters or other physical place of operations.
At first, he says, it was natural to turn to freelancers, because the events industry was seasonal. Since the COVID upheaval, remote events have proven to be efficient, effective and in many cases, preferable, allowing him to fill a new niche and offer an even more important solution to his clients. Success helped him expand his network of freelancers, who, for him, are not that much different than hiring (remote) employees.
“Freelancers really appreciate when you pay them fast and pay them on time, because a lot of their clients don’t. By doing that, you’re creating trust with people, and that’s invaluable.”
– Max Khindria
“Choosing freelancers is like choosing employees, it’s a lot about values, honesty and are they motivated and proactive. Are you proactive? Are you smart? Are you honest?” It’s rare, he says, but these key ingredients are the telltale sings of any good worker.
“I test freelancers on small projects, low impact and never with clients directly,” he said. “They will always do something internal within the company. It’s easy to see if they went the extra mile. Do they just check the email once or go through the details?”
In terms of keeping his freelancers informed and connected, Khindria does the next-best thing to herding everyone into the meeting room every few days.
“Now we’re building more company culture and processes. The way we do it with freelancers is regular meetings, like once-a-week, like a normal business. The one thing that changes with freelancers is that they have other clients, so you have to manage timetables.”
And how about making sure these remote workers are motivated, and want to continue working with him? According to Khindria, it’s all about generosity, being fair and paying well.
“It’s not [just] about the money, but money is important. Freelancers really appreciate when you pay them fast and pay them on time, because a lot of their clients don’t. If you do that, they treat you better… If you can’t pay people on time, call them, explain why, set a new date and pay them on time then. By doing that, you’re creating trust with people, and that’s invaluable.”
That trust allows Khindria to pay his freelancers 30 or even 60 days after an event while his clients pay part of their fees up front, meaning he never has to worry if he has the cash on hand to pay in a timely manner.
He also uses an app to track how much time his freelancers spend on each client. “For them it’s really great because they feel they are really getting paid for the hours they [make]. We tend to push for hourly rates because it’s easier to control… and they feel of their budget as well. There’s no ill will of ‘I’m doing too much for this client.'”
Freelancing, and freelancers, aren’t for everyone, but this new era of WFH and hybrid work models makes it invaluable to have the management skills necessary for maintaining a remote work force. And who knows? Maybe even CEOs can find new life and new benefits in running everything from their dream location.
Listen to the full interview with Max Khindria on the Europreneur Podcast.
Max Khindria is President and Founder of EO Paris and CEO of FinEvents, a financial services company focused on event organization. Max runs his business remotely and currently resides in Portugal.