I run a service company. I would suggest “on the ground” leadership at least at first because you don’t know what you don’t know. In the early days most of what’ll you’ll learn about the business will come from informal observations, not formal conversations - which is what zoom lends itself to. You want to be able to show up to a job site with ice cream or water for your crews and they open up and tell you what the REAL DEAL is, not the sales pitch you read in the CIM. In a business like this, you’ll have to earn the trust and respect of your people especially the blue collar workforce. And it probably won’t send the best signals if they are working onsite/together and you aren’t. Hope this helps.

A lot of experience in this area. And, challenging the culture in a team is immensely difficult...but can almost always be done successfully. LMK if you want to discuss. [redacted]

I think this is a much bigger challenge if the services are delivered in-person (i.e. facilities management) but the company management is remote. Harder to connect and engage with your team because you lack the context of the business and its customers.

I would definitely say be present in the beginning to establish the new corporate culture you want. The only way you'll learn the current culture is by being there to observe it. Then you can change and set the new culture, and slowly fade to being a remote owner.

I have run an entirely remote tech business, but the format is well-suited. I would echo the same concerns about physical delivery businesses. If you do decide to go this route, some suggestions:
1) SLA Agreement for team members.
2) Consistent tools for communication, email and Zoom is not enough.
3) Annual (or even monthly) get-togethers. This is huge for morale.
4) An expense policy that takes the home office expenses into account.

This thread contains excellent advice on culture and management. I want to advise on establishing a network of virtual machines and email security protocols. In terms of VMs, employees will log into their VM and perform all company related work. The company will control installed software, accessible websites, ingress/egress of data, etc. If for some reason an employee leaves the business, you mitigate the risk of company data leaving with them. In our current remote culture, there is a multitude of risks with employees conducting work related tasks on personal laptops. Remote setups typically rely on heavy email usage. Email security protocols should be setup to reduce the risk of ransomware attacks.

If you are interested in having an offline conversation, feel free to email me at [redacted]