Is remote work the future?
We wanted to answer this question ourselves, so we jumped on a plane to tour the world.
We are creating a documentary video series on remote work called Remote Collective. Our kickoff trip includes 8 countries across Europe and Africa in 3 months.
We will interview companies who are creating systems to help their teams transition to working remotely, sharing with us their tips on how to make it successful.
We will interview remote work employees, entrepreneurs and freelancers who are traveling, working and thriving. How they maintain their routines to be productive at work and find community along the way.
We will interview coworking and coliving spaces who are creating spaces for remote workers to work, live, and connect with each other and their local communities.
WHO WE ARE
I’ve been traveling and working remotely since 2014. I convinced my law firm to allow me to work remotely.
I moved to Costa Rica. I was the only woman in a small surfing town and definitely the only person I knew in the area who was working online.
From there, I’ve traveled to over 40 countries and have done a million and one things. I’ve worked remotely as an employee, an entrepreneur, founder, business consultant and community builder.
I’ve run travel companies, built whole communities of remote workers, created women entrepreneurship accelerators programs, and founded and organized a festival in a country in which I was a foreigner.
I’ve been consulting for coworking and coliving spaces for the past two years and have even consulted corporations on how to bring culture change within offices through remote working programs and work retreats.
My partner Johnny Wayan is a documentary filmmaker who’s worked for 10 years on programs for National Geographic, Discovery Channel and the BBC (He’s even worked with David Attenborough!).
He had the life every filmmaker dreams: going on location in exotic countries for months on end, meeting famous people and being accredited for his work in large projects.
But something was missing for him. I first met John in Bali two years ago. He walked into the coworking space I was consulting for and started asking me about my location independent lifestyle.
He had never seen anything like it before and was blown away. We were all working on our laptops in a converted villa with a pool, a 5 minute walk from the beach.
I was in the middle of running a social impact hackathon I’d organized and, when I found out he was a videographer, I immediately asked if he could create a video on the event (he said yes).
From the day we met, we’ve been creating things together.
HOW WE GOT STARTED
Flash forward two years and 8 countries together later and we are in India for a coworking conference I’m speaking at.
For months, we’d been discussing creating this video series about remote work.
So we jumped right in. We planned 8 countries, 5 coliving spaces and countless companies and coworking spaces to interview. We wanted to talk to EVERYONE.
I need to point out: we had no funding for the project when we got on that plane to London. We had our passionate idea, our skill sets and our credit card. No one gave us permission to do this. We decided we were going to create it and we carried this vision with us.
I knew it was going to work. Within two weeks, we had full sponsorship, a marketing team for promotion, distribution and push, and a direction on how the videos were going to be filmed and aired.
Read that: we have everything paid for, a full team of amazing sponsors, friends and advocates from around the world who are offering up their support, advice and resources.
We have a worldwide community of support. This means the world to us.
We are just at the beginning of documenting this journey and we are so excited for where it leads.
WHAT WE HOPE TO ACCOMPLISH
If companies want to transition to support a remote work program, we want them to get valuable tips and advice from Remote Collective series.
If an employee wants to convince her boss to let her work remotely, we want her to be able to share Remote Collective video series with them.
If someone is thinking of getting started working remotely and traveling, but they are scared to get started, we want Remote Collective video series to help them see it’s possible.
We want people to realize it’s easier than they realize. And in most cases, it’s CHEAPER than if they lived in their home city.
We want to show people there is a tight-knit community of supportive and helpful people who travel and work remotely, and who want to help them get started.
We want to share practical tips and advice about how to travel and work remotely, to save those traveling from making the same mistakes.
This project is bigger than us. We’d love for you to join our journey.
We’d love for you to join our Remote Collective.
