Online businesses come with their own unique requirements and challenges, especially when it comes to managing a remote team.

Today we’re delving into one of Ireland’s international success stories, with an online business based in Dublin, leading a digital team working around the globe. We find out how they operate in the fast moving tech business, about building relationships with customers you never meet and geographically diverse staff, and some great advice from a business planner with a wealth of experience.

Our guest is a finance and business operations professional working remotely for the tech sector for almost 20 years. He is the Chief Financial Officer with MailerLite, Martin Ruano.

Mailerlite logo

THINGS WE SPOKE ABOUT

● MailerLite’s growth into a global online company
● Creating a productive and intentional remote working environment
● How to build and maintain relationships in a geographically diverse team
● Advice for navigating mergers and acquisitions
● Lessons learned in planning and communication
GUEST DETAILS

MailerLite was born in 2010 to give businesses a simple yet powerful email solution to help them grow. Their global team has a passion for building a world-class product within a company culture that is built on trust, dedication and shared values.

Martin Ruano Chief Financial Officer and MailerLite and is a Finance and Business Operations professional with sound knowledge in Financial Planning and P&L Management. He has 20 years in Technology industry leading global teams undergoing fast change with a proven ability to improve financial results growing the top line through creative business development strategies as well as improving the bottom line through cost management and operational optimization.

Transcription

For your convenience, we include an automated AI transcription

Martin Ruano  00:00

The most important lesson that I learned is freedom comes with responsibility. Freedom gives you a lot of options. One of them is to be productive, and I think that that’s the best one that you can choose.

VO  00:15

No unicorns, no brands, just hard working people who built their business from the ground up, sharing their experience so others can learn. Presented by Larissa Feeney from Kinore. This is Real Business Conversations.

Larissa Feeney  00:34

Hello. My name is Larissa Feeney. I am CEO and founder at Kinore Finance and Business Services. Today we’re delving into one of Ireland’s international success stories, with an online business based in Dublin, leading a digital team working around the globe. We’ll find out about the challenges of a fast moving tech business, about building relationships with customers you never meet, and some great advice from a business planner with a wealth of experience. It’s a pleasure to welcome CFO of MailerLite, Martin Ruano. Martin, can you maybe tell me how MailerLite began?

Martin Ruano  01:17

Okay? MailerLite began in Lithuania in 2010 it was in the early days a website designer agency, and at some point, one specific customer started asking for some help to deploy email automation product. So that’s how the company start, almost 50 years ago.

Larissa Feeney  01:43

Okay, so it didn’t actually start as an email marketing company. It started, was it a design company? Is that what you said? Yes.

Martin Ruano  01:50

Yes, it was.

Larissa Feeney  01:51

So then there was a it was a response to a customer need that the company pivoted as such to provide email marketing. Exactly. That was exactly the case. Oh, that’s really interesting. So that was 2010 and then you joined as a CFO when

Martin Ruano  02:06

I joined us a financial manager, 10 years after that, in 2020 but it’s interesting because I was the first member of the finance team in the company during the first period, almost 10 years, the company used to work with external accountant in Lithuania. So when I show in the company, the goal at that moment was to deploy and globalization strategy, moving the company to the US and getting more exposure in a global business. So that’s why we took ownership of finances internally, and how my journey began.

Larissa Feeney  02:51

So you were the first strategic financial hire? Then yes,

Martin Ruano  02:57

and I would say not only strategic, but the first one really, there was no other internal colleague working at finance until moment. And

Larissa Feeney  03:08

okay, so the first internal hire. And do you remember Martin, whenever you started? How many people were working in the business at that time?

Martin Ruano  03:16

Yes, I was a number 70. Number

Larissa Feeney  03:19

70, wow. So there was 70 people in the business before there was an internal finance person appointed exactly, wow. They did well to get to that size, didn’t they, without some internal support?

Martin Ruano  03:32

They did amazing, amazing. Yeah, yeah. Well, okay, fantastic.

Larissa Feeney  03:36

And that bit, and the numbers have grown now from 70 to about 160 at the moment. Is that right?

Martin Ruano  03:41

Yes, we are 160 at this time. So maybe we

Larissa Feeney  03:46

can start by talking about the team. Because what’s fascinating is that mirror light, just like Noor is a remote first company, and we have a lot of attention, media attention at the moment, around employers looking to get teams back in the office, and you know, the shift away, apparently, from remote work. How do you guys find not being in person?

Martin Ruano  04:12

Well, the company started with a office in euthenia. The founders and the first colleagues were based there. But at some point there was an opportunity of one of our colleagues, Sylvester, wanted to do some trip to Asia. It was a good idea at that moment, because they said, Okay, we can work remotely in that case also, and having a colleague base in another time. So means going to enable our capabilities of providing support to our customers. So that is how the experiment started, a long time ago, before it was cool, or before it was a requirement for pandemic or something like that. And from there, our founders saw a lot of advanced. Advantages about this way of working, working remotely, building a global team, taking advantages of all the strengths and talent that they could find around the globe. That requires a lot of attention when it comes to finding the right people with the right mindset, not only skills, but it’s not difficult to it’s not easy, sorry, to work remotely. It’s not for everybody. You need to be prepared. You need to be sure that you have the right tools and the right environments to be productive. And I think that our management team did a great job providing clear guidelines about what is needed and the resources and how to establish a synchronous environment for us to be successful.

Larissa Feeney  05:48

And I completely agree with you, by the way. I mean, I frequently use the term intentional remote working, that intentionality around being remote so that you don’t happen to be working from home, you have an a role that’s intentionally remote and and it is harder than an in person role, and it doesn’t suit everybody. You’re right. And companies and individuals have to go a little bit further to make sure that the relationship works and that and that it works, the team works well together. Can you tell me about some of the things made or like do to make sure that remote working works

Martin Ruano  06:25

well in first place? I think that the key was that everybody feels that despite that we are working remotely, we have a deep feeling of being part of of of the company of something bigger than us, that we have the right tools to connect with each other, that we can also use the the freedom that we have as a booster of our productivity. So there are a lot of tools or procedures or or ways of schedule our meetings only if necessary, avoiding zoom fatigue, for example, or wasting time in unnecessary calls. I think that the most important thing is that we don’t try to replicate the office kind of relationships in a remote environment. We don’t need to be in five meetings or five calls per day, you know, because that is not going to be productive for us. We don’t need to replicate that. We go for a synchronous work. We have a fluent communication in Slack channels. We know that our team is not working at the same time everybody, so we give time to other colleagues to reply, to review a message and take some time to work on it. That is something very important, something that I experienced in previous opportunity is that probably somebody receive a message and feels that need to reply instantly, and that is not the case. And an advantage about this also was that, for example, when we need to discuss a new idea, rather than starting a brainstorming session like you would do in an office. We start the document, for example, so we do that in writing. That also put a lot of different personalities at the same level. In a in a meeting, you will find that people are more extrovert, and probably they are taking all the all the focus in the meeting, and probably somebody that is more introvert could send a comment by email or keep it for for themselves, and working in a global in a remote environment provides the same opportunities for everybody probably are more kind of a shy or introvert, but I can review a document, put my thoughts together, have time to reflect on what I really want to say about that. Share a more powerful idea or a better way to replicate my my thoughts. I think that’s

Larissa Feeney  09:14

a really interesting perspective, and you’re absolutely right where in an in person environment, an individual who’s naturally extroverted would be seen and heard quite easily, where an introverted person wouldn’t be. And I’ve seen that ourselves, where, especially among the juniors and the trainee members of the team, those what that wouldn’t be as perhaps, won’t have as much confidence, yet, they’re just as visible in a remote environment as they are in an in person environment, which which is very interesting. Do you guys, Martin, do you bring people together for in person events at all?

Martin Ruano  09:46

Yes, we do. In fact, I just returned from our annual meetup that was in in Barcelona. 180 people. We’ve been together during the week. It’s something. Being always important for us to have that kind of meetup, and not only for bonding, but also to have the opportunity to really work together and to spend a week fully focused on our business, on our processes, and probably probably given a space for some interactions that are more difficult to have in an online environment. So yes, we meet once per year. In the past, we used to meet twice per year, but even the size of the company at this moment and the resources required to plan it and to make it a successful event, we are doing these meetings once per year. So we just came back from our global meetup. We call it workations, work occasions. I love, yes, a combination of work and vacations. And we we do it. We did it last week in Barcelona.

Larissa Feeney  10:58

And can you share some insights into how, I mean, what you felt in that week that you guys spent together, you know, in terms of the relationships that you built with your colleagues. Do you find that it helps, overall, in a remote environment to meet in person? Sometimes,

Martin Ruano  11:15

yes, it helps a lot, because it enabled us to share more about ourselves, about not only about our personalities, our different qualities, but also about our processes, about the challenges we are working at, and we have the opportunity to discuss that during a hiking session, for example, yes and that change in the environment, I think that brings a lot of creativity that is very, very valuable for for any company.

Larissa Feeney  11:50

Fantastic. Yeah, I love it. And people must have come from all over the world, then, because you have people, do you have any clusters anywhere in the world, Martin, or are they all spread out

Martin Ruano  12:01

now. We still have the small office in Lithuania where our colleagues that are based there could good meet, or if anybody is traveling around, could stop for a moment. But basically, we are 160 people working out from 40 countries, for the different countries,

Larissa Feeney  12:23

okay, that’s, that’s and you and I’m interested in, whenever you join the company, it was a team of 70, which is still a sizable team, isn’t it? Um, and where the company is now with 180 employees. What has changed for you in that, you know, in terms of structure. What have you You’ve obviously grown your team, for example, has the structure changed enormously over that time? Yes,

Martin Ruano  12:48

the structure changed a lot. For example, I mentioned at that time I was the only member in the finance team. We are four now at this moment, and I have colleagues working from Ivory Coast, Spain, Egypt and Well, I think that this growth also is related to the evolution of our products. We were able to add key people in in different areas supporting the product growth. That were the main areas that I can mention, and

Larissa Feeney  13:24

as your team have increased, how have you personally dealt with that in terms of delegation? Do you feel that? Do you find it easy to delegate tasks to your team? Or do you struggle with that?

Martin Ruano  13:34

No, no, I find that extremely easy. I think that is also necessary. We had a lot of things that we can delegate, and also it’s very important, because for me as a manager, that is something that enables me to keep my team motivated, delegating tasks that are complex, where we need to think together a way to resolve it. We have a lot of challenges and new projects anytime. So each team of each member of my team is going to take care of a different area or project that we need to review and we need to implement. So I think it’s a key area for motivation to keep the people interested in what we are doing,

Larissa Feeney  14:23

yes, and you’re absolutely right, I suppose, if you know freeing yourself up as well to concentrate on on more strategic aspects of of the finance function or of the business as a whole, in terms of your journey over that time. So going from being the first internal hire right now to lead in the team and leading the finance team. How have you developed your own skills and management? Martin, what do you do to help you? Know, to help you lead a team?

Martin Ruano  14:53

Well, I think that at some point I need to. I had an advantage somehow myself, because I. I been working remotely for several years now from 2006 so at some point I came to this role with some skill set that enabled me to work remotely and also to empower people to be able to work in that way, and probably to understand which are the specific challenges. But after that, I think that something important for me is to keep learning that is very important to understand that I want be able to solve all the challenges in front of me. That’s why we need strong team to face those challenges together. And also it’s very important to know how to find help when you need it, and that helps sometimes could be external. You need to get in touch with an advisor or with somebody that has some specific knowledge that could help us to sort a specific situation.

Larissa Feeney  16:00

Yeah, that’s really good advice. And that comes up a few times whenever I speak to business owners, the importance of bringing external advice into the business and that objective view, and even from a personal perspective, Martin, you know, even if it’s not really directly brought in by the business, sometimes having that objective opinion in your corner can be really helpful when you’re making decisions. Yes,

Martin Ruano  16:25

totally. And I think that regarding that, we also have a strong management team with so diverse areas of knowledge and personalities that sometimes I find myself asking for advice to colleagues or to my managers or people that I know that could point me in the right direction and in a specific situation, and also about talking about advice, sometimes it’s about a specific knowledge that is very difficult to have. You know, we are running a global business, and we don’t have all the knowledge at any moment that could help us to solve any specific situation that could raise in any different country or base any specific regulation. So that is also something that we we know that we need to have access to that advice

Larissa Feeney  17:19

also. Yeah, no, absolutely, absolutely. And on that point, the fact that mirror light is a global, global business and works in different markets around the world. Could you give us some idea of the number of customers that you guys work with, or the number of markets that you operate in?

Martin Ruano  17:38

Yes, we are operating in more than 130 countries. So far we have supported more than 1 million users of our software.

Larissa Feeney  17:53

Wow, that’s amazing. So 1 million users, 130 countries. Who is your biggest competitor? Martin,

Martin Ruano  18:03

the leader in our space is MailChimp.

Larissa Feeney  18:06

And in terms of comparing MailerLite to MailChimp, it’s size wise, would MailChimp be much bigger? Yes,

Martin Ruano  18:13

yes. They have bigger revenue, bigger market share. Yes, they

Larissa Feeney  18:17

Well, congratulations. So far, I mean, that’s amazing. That’s amazing growth. So your customer is any business that sends email marketing? Is that right? Yes,

Martin Ruano  18:27

that is right. Our focus always was to provide a simple but powerful solution. And by simple, I mean that our customers don’t need to be an expert in on email marketing or coding to be able to use our features, they have access to a simple solution that could help us to deploy their strategies without losing focus in in their business. And I mentioned this because most of our customers are SMBs or entrepreneurs, authors, coaches, professionals that probably are not mainly focused on email marketing. They are not part of the marketing team. They wear all the hats that they need to do and mail light is here to provide them a very easy to use solution, but powerful with very nice features to have a successful email marketing strategy. That’s

Larissa Feeney  19:27

fantastic, and it’s so important, isn’t it? I mean, for a small business owner, an entrepreneur or a founder who doesn’t have the time, as you said, wearing all the hats, to be able to use something that’s simple and effective. So that’s, that’s fantastic. Well done on the growth so far. What are the future plans for mirror light in terms of growth?

Martin Ruano  19:47

The future plans at this moment is well, to increase our customer base, for sure, to keep evolving our product, making sure that we stay up to. Eight in all the trends, and we continue deploying a strong product, I think that there is a lot of opportunities in terms of AI, for example, in our space. And also we are now part of a bigger group, because MailerLite was acquired by another company, bercom, in Poland two years ago. So we are part of a bigger portfolio of resources and stronger offering from this group. So I think that there is a lot of opportunity of synergies between the different products and features that we have as part of the verkhov portfolio at this moment.

Larissa Feeney  20:39

I’m really glad you brought that up, actually, because I was going to ask you about the sale of the company. I mean, that was a big deal. Two years ago, the company was sold. Can you maybe talk to us about that process, the transition from, you know, essentially what was a startup in 2010 had grown into a significant company, a scale up as such, and then was, was bought out, and for you in your role, how did that transition go? And it obviously, you know, was, was change, and how did you manage that change, and how did the team respond to it? Well,

Martin Ruano  21:14

I think that was an amazing process because, well, I, as you say, we were working as an independent company. We were no longer a startup, but we still had that culture. We keep our culture to the date. I think that is the most important thing. But during that process, we had to work on the ausilicians. We had to share all the product and information, and the result was very successful. So personally, in my role, it was very an accomplishment to see that all that we created in our team was good, was well done, and in contributing to this transaction, but also being part of a public company, we need to have regular audits from external accounting firms. We had audits from KPMG video, and that was also very satisfying during these two years, being that all the processes and all the information and the way that we have to work was up to the standards, meeting of the standards for a public company in Europe. So it was a great process. So far, I have to say that also there was not a big change in terms of culture, we are able to continue working the way we we’ve been working so far, but we have now bigger plans for the future, if I can say it that way, yeah,

Larissa Feeney  22:53

you have, I suppose, a partner there with who can invest and probably has deeper pockets than than you would have had If you are acting alone, would you have any advice Martin, because that the mergers and acquisitions market is quite active, and it happens all the time where, obviously, where companies merge and one buys another out. Would you have any advice for somebody that’s going into the process or going through that process that would help them make it a success?

Martin Ruano  23:21

Yeah, I think that the most important advice it will be to plan in advance. Maybe you you are building a procedure, you are building the in internal practice for finance or for Egle or for product development. But think about that possibility. Plan ahead, single probably in one year, or in two year, you are going to be successful, and you will need to go through that process, and at that point, it’s very, very difficult to change things or to correct something that probably was not done in the best way. I remember implementing our accounting in the US entity, for example, from the first transaction, doing the first journal entries myself for subscription payments, to test how that what that is going to work. But always, the focus was to do it right, to make it audit ready. You know, despite it was happening two years in advance, were meeting that situation. So that would be my advance things that you’re going to go through that process, do it right from the beginning. Think big,

Larissa Feeney  24:35

yeah, and plan, as you say, plan it out and be prepared. And you’ve also had another change. I mean, the company was bought over, which was big change. But you also changed your financial system as well. Didn’t you from QuickBooks?

Martin Ruano  24:47

Yes, yes, yes, we did. We migrated from QuickBooks when I implemented our accounting in US and in Ireland, we implemented. QuickBooks Online at the beginning, but then we outgrown QuickBooks capability as our business growth and also, well, we were talking about MailChimp before. MailChimp, at some point, was acquired by Intuit, so it failed, a bit strange, hosting all our financial information with our competitors. So that was the right moment to to migrate to a different tool. And after reviewing several of the options available, we go with Oracle NetSuite. That really is working amazing for for us, what a great improvement for our process,

Larissa Feeney  25:41

I think that’s that’s really interesting, you know, insight, whenever you said that you had outgrown the capabilities of QuickBooks, because, you know, every business chooses a system that’s right for them right now, and that’s and that’s fine. And usually businesses will start off with QuickBooks or sage or Xero or something similar, and those systems will only take you so far. What were the clues or the red flags in terms of the QuickBooks functionality that led you to think that, Okay, this time, it’s time, now that we moved on? Well,

Martin Ruano  26:15

in our personal case, was the quantity of transactions that we were processing on a daily basis. The available resources that QuickBooks offered us to process that batch of transactions was not possible to do that directly, but we needed to trust on third party integrations. So default revenue accounting was not the best for the kind of business we were running. So I think it’s a great tool, maybe for smaller companies entrepreneurs. Is very friendly, very easy to use, but we needed to have something more robust and more complex for the kind of business we were running at that moment. Yeah,

Larissa Feeney  26:55

no, absolutely, absolutely. And I think that your advice around planning in advance for any change actually applies to that as well, because a system change can be hugely disruptive to the day to day business, and usually disruptive to the team, if they’re used to working on one system, and they have to try to get used to another system. How did that all go for you?

Martin Ruano  27:19

It went very well. I have to say that I think that we did it at the right moment. That is very important. And I say this because probably in my yoga days, that wouldn’t be an option. Go straight with NetSuite. Let’s skip the QuickBooks process. You know, it’s an expensive tool, and it’s not easy to implement, so I was able to do it just after having a team supporting me and bringing additional expertise to the table. To do that, we’ve been working on immigration process that took around five months. We had to set up the tool for all the different complexities and particular things or components in our business, in our pricing, in our subscription scheduling, our tax setup. So I think that having a team with specific knowledge and being able to consider this as a team initiative was the most important thing. So yes, you need to plan ahead, but probably you can implement SAP when you are creating a product SAP, you know, it’s not possible. Yeah, I always,

Larissa Feeney  28:32

I always say to clients, you know, that we underestimate the amount of time that it takes and the amount of resources that it takes. So I find it interesting that you said that it is a team initiative, but that you brought in or brought in external help as well to navigate that so that was important in terms of making sure it was a success.

Martin Ruano  28:52

Yes, totally. That is true. We were working in first place with the Oracle implementation team, but when I said bringing external help is just because, at that moment, I was hiring another team member from finance, and the focus was in finding someone that could bring that specific skill set that have worked with NetSuite implementations and migrations before. So yes, it was external, but it was showing in us, as part of our our team. Can

Larissa Feeney  29:29

you tell me what has been the most important lesson that you’ve learned over your career in MailerLite, as you’ve been as you’ve been managing that growth? What’s the most important lesson,

Martin Ruano  29:40

the most important lesson that I learned is how important is to take accountability working in a company like this. Freedom comes with responsibility. Freedom gives you a lot of options. One of them is to be. Be productive, and I think that that’s the best one that you you can choose. And also I learned that communication is key to be successful in this kind of working environments. So if I had to choose, I would say that being able to communicate with with your team is going to be a key area to be successful in this kind of environment.

Larissa Feeney  30:27

Yes, I think, you know, I love those two you know, working remotely, personal accountability is key for success and communication both ways. You know, from the employee and from the company is really important. You mentioned slack, Martin, that you guys use. Slack is slack your main tool for communicating with your team? Yes,

Martin Ruano  30:50

yes, totally. And we make sure that we do a good use of it, really. And we have a lot of channels that are created to support this kind of communications. We have product or processes dedicated channel, but we also have a kudos channel to say thank you to the people that is helping you or is adding value on a daily basis to your role. I think that is very important to give and to receive things in terms of motivation and to show everybody what we are grateful for. We have channels to share about moments where we feel proud. It could be a customer feedback, it could be something in our teams that was an accomplishment. We have a channel called moment of the week where we can share something important that happened during the last days in our life, and we want to share so it’s I think, that we take seriously when I talk about communication and to give feedback and to share what is happening as individuals and as a team member, and in

Larissa Feeney  32:02

that aspect, sounds very much like an in person environment, you know, trying to recreate the connections with the other individuals and trying to build those relationships. So together with the in person events and the communication that you do, you probably find that you do build relationships with your colleagues, even though you work very far away from them. Yes, absolutely.

Martin Ruano  32:29

We have a situations where we skill a meeting just to have dinner together so somebody is going to share a typical food from their country. Is going to provide, in advance, the ingredients and the recipe, and we are going to start preparing that together via zoom at the same time, and then having lunch or dinner together something interesting, for example, that happened during the pandemic is that we were not able to meet as a team, so instead of work occasions, we used to have staycations. As we got it, we used to do the same thing that we do in person, including sharing, for example, recording a movie with a specific theme, five minutes movie, and having a movie night where all the team were together, seeing that movies that each one of us created for that specific moment. We play games, board games, or similar games through zoom. So we try to deploy these kind of activities that enable us not only to bond, but also to to have a deeper relation and get in touch with colleagues that probably are not part of our daily activities. Yes,

Larissa Feeney  33:58

yeah, your your core team, that sounds fantastic. And one last question for you, Martin, can you think of a piece of advice that you give to a younger person who’s going into a similar role that you went into and has similar ambitions to grow within that role?

Martin Ruano  34:16

Yes, the main advice is that keep learning every day. Keep learning is very, very important, especially if you want to scale up yourself and get ready to deploy more complex activities or grow a business. Stay curious, stay learning and always. Don’t be afraid of ask for for advice or ask for help. Count with your team. Count with anybody that could give you a good piece of advice, and then be patient, if you’ll do it, everything will be fine and will come

Larissa Feeney  34:53

That is great advice. That is great advice. Thank you very much. Martin CFO of MailerLite, thanks for joining us today.

Martin Ruano  35:00

Thanks for having me, Larissa. Nice to speak with you.

VO  35:03

Thank you for listening to Real Business Conversations with Kinore. For more information on this episode, see the description area of this podcast or visit our website, Kinore.com. Remember to press follow on your podcast player now so you get a brand new episode every single month. This podcast is produced by dustpod.io for Kinore Finance and Business Services.