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This is a guest post written by Walter Chen, a former big law firm lawyer, math and computer science graduate and more recently founder and CEO of iDoneThis - a simple team performance management system that we ourselves use at WooThemes.

What I've admired most about WooThemes is that they have built a multimillion-dollar business, entirely bootstrapped, and outside of the tech hub.

One of the major challenges for businesses that aren't part of the tech hubs is their ability to quickly hire skilled employees, but with some business jiu-Jitsu, WooThemes has WooThemes group has turned this weakness into a strength. It was by being self-employed by the founding team that they were able to start the business and, in the years since, it has enabled them to "hire high-quality talent from anywhere in all over the globe."

Continuing to make an effective distributed team, though, has been one of the most difficult tests for WooThemes. It's the worst thing is that the challenges of running a distributed team grow as your team grows. As Adii put it, "The flexibility of remote work is a part of our genes. Yet, it doesn't remove some of the difficulties associated with remote working."

Three companies fight to gain remote work a advantages in the marketplace and the steps they've taken to succeed.

It's an extremely delicate balance to ensure that every person who's not at the base can feel as member of the team.

Joel Gascoigne, Buffer.

As you grow your team from a purely distributed small team to a team that has 10+ employees You'll be at a crossroads -whether to set up an office in a central location or to keep working completely remote.

When Buffer was able to reach $1.5M in annual revenue and increasing its workforce the company decided to set up an office located in San Francisco. To achieve this it was a team that emphasized one key principle: equality.

When there's inequality between office and remote work, both parties resent and distrust the one. Remote workers feel cut out of the action in the office; office people believe that remote employees are slacking off.

Jason Zimdars from 37signals wrote it down succinctly when he said"equality" means "there is no advantage when you go to the workplace, as well as it is not a disadvantage to stay at home in order to work done" This is essential to ensure that there's no second-class employees in your company.

The Buffer team is committed to equality to the point that they utilize tools to facilitate remote communication within the workplace in order that everyone as distributed and remote -are able to join in the conversation. Although they may not be sitting close to one another in the office, they talk on HipChat or even send out emails to ensure that everyone can participate in conversations. At Buffer it's about equality. making sure that everyone is treated on your team in an absolute optimal way as well as going to every length to make that possible.

There's a high probability that you cannot simply pick any random person from any time throughout history, scattered across the globe and expected them to build something amazing. We've found there are three important ingredients to creating a successful remote, work: Team tools, Process, and Team.

Wade Foster, Zapier.

Remote work is regarded as having the advantage as being more casual and informal than working at work. You're sitting in your bedroom and maybe you don't even wear pants. What you really experience when working remotely was completely different for Wade Foster, co-founder at Zapier.

It was found that teams with remote locations need to be more deliberate about three aspects -- tool, process and people -- than co-located teams to be able to compensate for the culture that would grow organically in offices.

The most important element is who makes up the team. According to Wade, hiring autonomous and trustworthy individuals who are able to thrive without a physical social space is crucial. In addition, provide them with the necessary tools and resources to accomplish the task. Like, for instance Zapier's Zapier team makes use of Sqwiggle, an always-on video chat room that snaps into a live stream with a single click button. It allows users to be aware of the presence of each other and to solve the issue of no physical shared space.

Finally, teams that are distributed work most efficiently when they've given some thought into how to work most effectively. For Zapier it's the all-hands approach to support and the routine of regular feedback.

This process can also be influenced by the selection of tools should be used. Since they are the developers of a fantastic automation app that automates tasks across different services, those working at Zapier are naturally big believers in the power of automation to help to streamline processes and tools to maintain equanimity in the team. In fact, using Zapier while building Zapier is an awesome chance to allow Wade and the company to promote their own product.

Whereas some people might find traditional processes and tools overburden them, Wade and his team employ Zapier to automate their actions to drive interoperability between their processes and tools, for instance by employing Zapier to transmit issues and pull requests into Campfire to facilitate group discussions.

Although we're all over across the globe, we would like all to feel as if they're part of a small team.

Mark Forrester WooThemes.

Maintaining that connected and close feeling across different borders as well as many projects requires everyone to be in the loop. It's a particularly problem for teams that are distributed. Co-founder Mark Forrester recalls how, "Back when we were in the past when we were in a position to hop on Skype and have a group chat -- that's no longer efficient and efficient now." Today, they keep each other updated by using IDoneThis to track and circulate information about what each person has accomplished from day to day.

For WooThemes keeping that sense of cohesion, and keeping it the company small rather than growing just for the sake of growing is how they remain an unbeatable source of effectiveness. "We insist on that,"" Mark comments, "which is the reason we're using software such as iDoneThis to maximize the value of all of our staff not overworking them or exhausting them unnecessarily."

Unleashing the strength of teams that are distributed using the entrepreneurial spirit of WooThemes comes in the form of care and thoughtfulness put into who is on the team and how to help them work at their best. For WooThemes Zapier, WooThemes and Buffer it means that they pay extremely close attention to features that are so often overlooked within co-located workplaces A conscious effort to cultivate cohesion and togetherness, an understanding of the importance of equality and a keen eye on how the puzzle pieces of work are put together.