Melissa Ng is a digital nomad, Product UX Designer and the CEO & founder of Melewi, a fully remote design company that’s worked with clients such as McDonalds, Visa, and Samsung.
In our quest to investigate how great founders do this remote work thing, we sat down with her (remotely, of course) to ask about her beginnings as a remote worker, the struggles of founding a remote company, the importance of culture, how she hires, and more.
Take a listen to the short interview and keep scrolling for the highlights 👇
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Accidentally starting a remote career
Melissa always knew she couldn’t fit into the 9-5 schedule, so going freelance was a natural choice. One of her first jobs asked her to move to Vietnam for work, and ever since then she has been working with clients from all over the world.
As long as the work was done well, no one cared where she worked from, and she used this opportunity to travel. Eventually, the workload became too heavy for one person and Melissa started hiring remote workers, making Melewi a fully remote company.
She created the kind of job descriptions she would have loved to read herself – and continues to use these same job descriptions to this day.
On hiring remotely and why culture comes before revenue
One of the core principles of Melewi is that culture comes before revenue. In other words, when making a new hire, the key part is that they share the same values as the rest of the team.
In Melewi’s case, everyone shares the same desire to create badass designs and collaborate with compelling new businesses.
“You can teach someone how to design better, but you can’t teach them how to fit into your company culture.”
💡 Tip for hiring remotely
When interviewing, ask questions like…
“What do you look for in a team you would enjoy working with?”
“Describe the most ideal way to collaborate with you”
“What do you need to create an effective work environment?”
Team retreats as a reward
Because they have a team that works well together, team retreats are seen as a reward and not a chore. The team gets along and collaborates well, but they still make it a point to organize company retreats at least once per year.
In an interview with Remote.co, Melewi’s COO, Peach Nacion, explains why:
“Going on a company retreats is the perfect way for the team to spend some relaxing, all-play-no-work, quality time together. It’s also a way of rewarding and giving ourselves something to look forward to after all the hard work we’ve put into our projects.”
🌍 Let Surf Office organize your next epic team retreat
The biggest challenge of remote work is…
Communication and the fact that most of it is non-verbal.
There are so many cues you can pick up from communicating with someone in person that you just cannot observe in remote environments.
The cure, she says, is being proactive and asking for advice, mentorship, lessons, critique, feedback and in general showing initiative. Without initiative, things fall apart quickly.
Awesome offer from @joelgascoigne – I’m pretty sure every founder has struggled with all these. I’ll throw my hat in the ring and offer the same help for anyone having a hard time, or even anyone who wants advice, encouragement or a sounding board. 👈🏻 https://t.co/HjqaRO9B2R
— Melissa Ng (@thedesignnomad) May 31, 2018
Other insights you’ll hear on the podcast:
- Melissa’s best piece of advice for remote workers
- The biggest challenges of setting up and running a fully remote company
- And more
For additional knowledge on retreats, remote work and lifestyle, subscribe to the More Beach Meetings podcast and catch new episodes every other Wednesday!