In our age of telecommunications, businesses have the opportunity to be increasingly decentralized.  Nowhere is this more prominent than at Treehouse.  Founded by Ryan Carson, the company specializes in online training from IT development to Java.  What sets it apart, besides making over 3 million a month, is that it’s completely virtual.  That means there’s no centralize location.  Carson is located in the UK, but his business spans the entire world.  How does he do it?  More importantly, how he does it successfully.

On an interview with IT News, he suggested several outsources.  The first step was to outsource HR.  He uses a service called Trinet.  That helps deal with the multinational nature of his business.  All the pension details and tax laws can be handled by local experts so Carson can focus on the core of his business rather than finding people to deal with minutia. The second hire he made was a reliable financial controller who managed day-to-day operations.  And for actual projects, Carson uses Campfire.

However, there are pitfalls to being so decentralized.  Carson says that the biggest problem is dealing with multiple time zones.  His final word of advice is that when employees go off kilter he calls them directly, as soon as possible, to get them back on track.

In an increasingly globalized world, doing business with people you’ve never met is becoming common place.  Cloud tools like Google Docs and Campfire are still evolving to accommodate the needs of this new development.  Telecommunicating has been around for decades, but never have businesses been completely based off this model on this scale.  It’ll be interesting to see how this what’s on the horizon.