Culture Eats Strategy

Culture Eats Strategy


Sneak Peek: Bottleneck Virtual Assistants’ Company Culture | 061

December 03, 2019

You’ve heard about Bottleneck Virtual Assistants in the past, where Jaime Jay, our host, conversed with amazing business leaders. BNVA is Jaime Jay’s company and his team members are here to talk about the good and the bad of working remotely. In this episode, Jaime Jay shares to us how to create and cultivate a culture on a remote-based company.

Working Remotely

Jaime Jay, a businessman who thrives off company culture, shares that having a remote-based team has forced him to build systems and processes internally in order to have sturdier communications. He says that repetitive tasks must be systemized and must be captured through a workflow.

This process has helped him with delegations and accountabilities since he has never met a single person from his team, physically. He also addresses some of the common queries that he receives on how to maintain a good culture with a remote team.

Setting Up Culture Remotely

In terms of company culture, It is indeed possible to have a great one even if the team members are working from different parts of the world. Operations Manager Sara Knox also shares how amazing their company culture is.

“With the power of technology, right now, we’re all looking at each other, we’re all talking. We, at any moment, we can jump on a call. We can have a face to face, we can share screens. I think it works very well and for the culture, I love how everyone is excited and cares about everyone else in the company. We interact and we engage in fact, we have engagement on Facebook with everybody on a personal level.” – Sara Knox, BNVA Operations Director

The BNVA Team

The team, comprised of Operations Director Sara Knox, Graphic Designer Cedrick Beros, Executive Assistant Reina Adlawon, Recruitment Manager Rechelle Adlawon, Marketing Manager Diane Gervacio, Social Media Manager Ace Medina, Podcast Pilot Audio Engineer Mike Duruin and Bottleneck Medical VAs Co-Founder Dr. David Laurino — each gave their sentiments on the the perks and challenges they face as remote based virtual assistants.

“It’s been quite an interesting life. I didn’t know much about remote work before I met Jaime but it opened my eyes to the possibilities, about people who have phenomenal skills across the world and how beneficial they can be to us on a day to day basis. – Dr. David Laurino, Podiatrist and Co-Founder of Bottleneck Medical VAs

The Good and The Bad

The pros that the team discussed in unison include freedom from traffic and commute, more time for family and their personal businesses and more savings in terms of food and clothing allocation.

“I wasn’t expecting that working remotely was a little bit homey. What I love about working is you don’t have to go out and commute. The traffic is terrible.” – Reina Adlawon, Executive Assistant

“Here in the Philippines, the traffic, it is an understatement if you say its terrible. It’s like a full-time job, it’s like you’re doing two jobs. One of the huge things why I am never going back to the corporate setup.” – Ace Medina, Social Media Manager

“It [remote work] helps me not to spend time in traffic just to travel back and forth to offices in Manila. It helps me in terms of time management, to learn how to control and balance my tasks.” – Cedrick Beros, Graphic Designer

They also shared some of the processes and culture of BNVA that they particularly like such as working with the team and their project management platform.

“When you have a team,