But where is Badsender located? Complicated question since the beginning of our existence, we are stealthy... but we don't hide from it 😉 So, we decided to tell you a little bit about our internal life and explain you an important adjustment in our structure/identity/functioning... we left Paris... without ever really being there.
In 2015, when I decided to leave Brussels and move to the south of France, a lot of administrative questions arose. At the time, I'd just finished 2 years as a freelancer, and Grégory and I had just created an SPRL (the SARL, but with a Belgian twist, and in Belgium, we know a thing or two about sauces), most of our customers were already located in France (in fact they always had been) and moving to Carlipa wasn't about making the commute to Paris any easier (cuckoo for the night train). So, to make life easier, we decided to set up a subsidiary of Badsender in France, with its head office in Paris. This allowed us to prepare the ground for the move from Brussels, to have a reassuring address for our customers and prospects (we'd already lost contracts because we were based in Brussels and not in France), to have a place to fall back on (we'd set up shop at the now-defunct Mutinerie Coworking)... and to really show off with a Parisian address, so we could live the high life!
Time has passed under the bridge (unless it's water, go figure), the team has grown, Marion and Olivier become partners in 2016, Lenka comes in to give us an administrative hand, Seb gives us a hand on the deliverability, Fab and Thomas become employees in 2017, Marion bis, Anaïs and Justine come to help us in 2018... and quickly, we find ourselves 11 collaborators... without any of them needing to go to the French head office of Badsender... as everyone is telecommuting...
(Psssst, in the 5 near Carlipa, that doesn't mean we see each other more than once a week, or even that we are within a 20 minute drive of each other)
For the anecdote, about 2 years ago, we had launched a job offer, and I had agreed on a meeting with a potential candidate. It was obvious to me that we were going to talk on the phone... until he called me and told me he was in front of the door... of the Mutiny... in Paris, but that he didn't understand where I was. In fact, I was about 700km away. He went for a coffee, and we talked on the phone. That's the only time we had a misunderstanding like that.
And the customers?
I would be tempted to say... "Nothing to report". In 4 years, we have continued to develop our clientele, still mainly in Paris! Clients who are always delighted that we systematically offer to come and see them at home when necessary. Clients with whom we have always relied on transparency (well, in two or three cases, some might take that as lying by omission).
Generally, our customers are well aware that the Badsender team is "decentralized" and telecommuting. I don't think this has ever been a problem. In our service business, a good internet connection and a reliable phone line are usually enough. If for some people it is still important to have regular physical meetings, for others, we have never had to go and see them in order to give them a perfect service!
As a result, we moved the French headquarters to Carlipa!
Why? Because the Mutinerie decided to close its coworking, and at the same time its service of domiciliation of company, we were in a way "put out" (nicely eh, we like them at the Mutinerie, we will even go to make a Team building at the Mutinerie Village in the next months). The question then arose... do we stay in Paris or do we play the transparency (and the simplicity) ?
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Simplicity won! Because receiving mail a week late because of redirection, not being able to pick up registered mail quickly, paying for a basic service... was not very interesting if it was only for the "glory" of having an address in Paris that nobody would ever see.
If we are going to be transparent, we might as well be transparent to the end!
Since July, the head office of Badsender France is well installed in Carlipa, a small village of 325 inhabitants in the Aude, at the foot of the Black Mountain with a view on the Pyrenees in the south. Since July, this address is on all our invoices, our documents, our estimates... and since July... nobody cares... for our greatest happiness!
Nevertheless, for Badsender, it is an important change, because it symbolizes our way of working, the freedom that is given to our employees to work from where they want, this desire to create a business model that values more the time spent with family, the good mood... than the fact of being the last to leave the office in the evening. A work model that allows you not to spend hours in transport, to manage your time with as much flexibility as possible. So obviously, everything is not rosy, there are not many examples to guide us, the legislation is not really cut out for this way of working, but we are making progress, and we like it.
From now on, we encourage our staff to talk about our model at the slightest Badsender pitch. The card shown above is highlighted in our sales presentations, and we try to see (and sell) this decentralization as an asset, proof that we're flexible. Our business is to offer companies the opportunity tooutsource part of their marketing activitiesWhat better way of outsourcing than with a company used to working remotely?
We also felt the need to emphasize this culture, and to display it directly in our presentations: Duty of advice, privacy, good humor and the need to have a balanced relationship with our partners.
It's not over yet!
We will try to work on this transparency even more. By sharing, here, more and more what we do at Badsender. We have always put this blog at the forefront, prioritizing the sharing of content (you know the one that brings real answers to your problems), even before the economic activity of theemailing and eCRM agency that makes us live. We'll continue, but with a little more talk about what's going on "Inside Badsender".
Bonus
As a bonus to this article, a few months ago I had asked everyone to share a photo of their desk. Now you have to guess (without cheating), which desk is whose 😉
2 réponses
Awesome and inspiring, thank you Jonathan for sharing your heartfelt experience!
With pleasure Xavier 😉