Remote Work Wins | Maya Middlemiss | Growing Money with Sean Trace

In this episode, I sat down with Maya Middlemiss, founder of Remote Work Europe, to talk about why remote work is much bigger than just working from home. We got into how location independence can reshape not only your income, but also your lifestyle, your time, your energy, and the kind of life you are actually able to build. 

We talked about the future of remote work, digital nomad life, hybrid teams, productivity, burnout, and why more people are starting to question the old model of tying work to one office, one city, and one fixed way of living. What stood out to me most was the idea that wealth is not only about making more money, but also about having more freedom, more family time, better health, and more control over how you live day to day. 

This conversation really challenged the way we think about success, career growth, and work life balance in a world where technology now makes it possible to live and work almost anywhere. 

Do you think remote work gives people more freedom, or does it create a whole new set of challenges?

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Remote work is like all online communication, it's not as natural and automatic. You have to be a lot more intentional about it. We found out in 2020 a lot of people could work from home and work could be done, but also that it just didn't happen automatically by giving people a laptop and sending them home either. Some people had a terrible experience during that time. Some people had a terrible experience, but could also see how it could be good and realize that imagine I wasn't locked in my home and imagine my manager knew how to do this properly and that we had the correct structures and software and work designed to work in this way. This could be amazing, actually, once we're all unlocked. So it was a really important time in the evolution of remote work. Since then, we've had backlashes, we've had return to office mandates, we've had lots of talk, lots of media. But we've also had a growing number of less high-profile companies, smaller startups, scale-ups, just quietly getting on with distributed working without making headlines about what CEO says this about the future of work. Just doing it because they can and because it suits the people who they're hiring who, like you, have chosen to move away from where you you started out, same as I did, and put your life first and figure out what you wanted from your lifestyle, and then try and fit the work around that. Now we shouldn't need to compromise in order to do that anymore, not with not with the technology we have today.

SPEAKER_00 1:43

Welcome everybody back to the Growing Money with Sean Trace podcast. Um, I'm actually going a little bit, tiny bit of a different direction today, but I have an awesome guest with me. Would like to tell people, uh, would you like to tell people who you are and a little bit about what you do?

SPEAKER_02 1:56

Sure. Well, thank you very much for inviting me. I'm Maya Middlemis. I am the founder of Remote Work Europe and I'm an author, speaker, remote work advocate with various projects all around the whole area of working in a location-independent way.

SPEAKER_00 2:14

I love that. One of the things that I was thinking um ages ago, um was I I live in Southeast Asia and I and I I love living here, but for a long time it was challenging for me because the pay was substantially less than what my friends in the US were making. Um and you know, I always, not just with at work, but like education, I was wanting to finish my degree, but for so long, people go, Oh, you're not physically here, you can't do that. And one of the beautiful things is that 2020 onward showed us, wow, actually the world functions just fine when people are not in a central location. Uh and you know, and I I love how we are now seeing this. I know people are trying to get people to return to office, but uh talk to me about remote work and do you think it's here to stay?

SPEAKER_02 3:10

I've been remote working since the year 2000, so it's definitely here to stay for me. And the funny thing is there were an awful lot of people quietly doing it before March 2020 as well. You know, it was a trend that was supported by the technology, growing in acceptance, and what it took then when everybody suddenly realized they could work from home was it unlocked a bit more popular understanding. And since then we've had a lot of regulation has come after that. We we have better technology all the time in terms of bandwidth and the quality of communication. I mean, like we are here now, certainly one-to-one. We might as well be in the same room, right? It's not quite the same for a larger group, but this is this doesn't get much better. You're just through there if I tap on the glass, and that's that's enough of an illusion, I think, that it's working extremely well in real time. It is it here to stay? Well, remote work is like all online communication, it's not as natural and automatic. You have to be a lot more intentional about it. We found out in 2020 a lot of people could work from home and work could be done, but also that it just didn't happen automatically by giving people a laptop and sending them home either. Some people had a terrible experience during that time. Some people had a terrible experience, but could also see how it could be good and realize that imagine I wasn't locked in my home and imagine my manager knew how to do this properly and that we had the correct structures and software and work designed to work in this way. This could be amazing, actually, once we're all unlocked. So it was a really important time in the evolution of remote work. Since then, we've had backlashes, we've had return to office mandates, we've had lots of talk, lots of media. Uh, but we've also had a growing number of less high-profile companies, smaller startups, scale-ups, just quietly getting on with distributed working without making headlines about what CEO says this about the future of work. Um, just doing it because they can and because it suits the people who they're hiring who, like you, have chosen to move away from where you you started out, the same as I did, and put your life first and figure out what you want to from your lifestyle, and then try and fit the work around that. Now we shouldn't need to compromise in order to do that anymore. Not with not with the technology we have today.

SPEAKER_00 5:47

Right. I um I'm gonna be flying back to I I travel regularly back to the States for my my work, and then but my team keeps on ticking here, you know. And uh the I I told my team uh I'll be going back to the states, I'll be going to back to California doing some video for some work and some wineries uh uh that I I do video for. And uh I told my team I'm gonna be gone for two and a half weeks. And they're like, but what will we do? And I said, I chat with you on my computer all the time. Like we're in next to each other in a room, but we're always on Messenger and we always communicate things like through Messenger, and then, you know, and then sometimes we can pop onto a quick call. It's so simple. Like, like it, I'll be working the same time as you guys. I'm staying on the same time clock, you know, I'll go to sleep when when work finishes. But like it's no different. And they're like, okay. And it it was interesting because we have a lot of people have this, but it's gonna be different. But the reality is, is like when I first came to Vietnam, um I remember in 2001, a phone call cost a dollar a minute. And there was like a little box outside, and you'd run up to the phone, you're like, hey, mom, I love you. I'm I'm good, everything's okay. And oh my goodness, it's already$10. I gotta go click.

SPEAKER_02 7:06

Bye. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:08

Very prohibitive, you know. But now, like this is this is wild. We're we're sitting here um and just it it it feels like you're next door, you know?

SPEAKER_02 7:17

Right. And the amazing thing is that the cost per minute has not only gone to more or less effectively zero, then it's exactly the same whether we are next door or whether or on the other side of the world. The technology has bridged that distance. So so they'll be fine when you're not there.

SPEAKER_00 7:35

Um, one of the things that's interesting to me uh is this like when people work remotely too, there is it can change how people can earn. First of all, there's a couple things that it changes. First of all, it can change how much money you're making, because maybe you are from a region that does not get paid as much and you can tap into a region that does pay higher, or it could be that you just want to move somewhere that you can, you know, live off of less money. And that's one of those things you see with many digital nomads. But I wanted to ask you, how does remote working change how much someone can earn over their lifetime?

SPEAKER_02 8:12

That's an interesting question, the lifetime one. And I don't know if we have good data on that yet, because you know, I started working this way in year 2000. I didn't know anybody else who worked the way I did at that point, apart from a few freelancers. So I don't think we have a lot of information. I definitely think there's a gap in lifetime thinking among many digital nomads and remote workers and expats who aren't really it's very difficult to make good life plans or financial plans if you're not definitely going to know where you're gonna be, where you're gonna end up for the rest of your life. So I think that's a challenging question to answer because we've got the social acceptance, we've got the technology, but the regulation and structures that govern this world haven't caught up to the fact that somebody might be born in one place, go and live in another place for a few years, then go somewhere else, work with a client over there, um, and then retire in this country. So none of that is joined up thinking, yeah, there's still a lot of work to be done. I think once you decouple that need to be in a particular place from the way that you earn, a whole load of interesting possibilities open up and you can start to think in terms of the whole equation, your quality of life, the lifestyle that you want, what else you want to do in your life, perhaps as a parent or a carer and so on. You might not need to earn what you needed to earn to live outside a big Western city in that commuter belt. You might be able to arbitrage your time as well as your currency to think about what you really want. We have people coming, we have a lot of people coming to Spain and the rest of Europe at the moment from the US. I won't comment on why, but the uptick for digital nomad visas is surging. And people are thinking, well, you know, will I be able to earn the same? I'm gonna pay so much more tax, I'll even if I'm bringing my salary with me, I'll be left with a lot less. But then they look at what it actually costs to live, what things you get from the state in different countries. That it's a difficult sum to do well. It really is. I think everybody needs to get individual tax advice, but also spend a lot of time um with their calculators and spreadsheets and really try and figure out is this going to work for me? What could I set against that? You know, I don't actually, if I'm coming to Spain, I don't need to live in downtown Barcelona and pay those rents there. If my work is truly remote, I could live in a second or third tier city. I could go and live up a mountainside and pay next to nothing and have that village life, if that's what you're seeking. You know, there are so many things in the mix there other than financial, but it does take a lot more self-examination than is customary for a lot of people who just kind of lived and grew up and went to work in the same place they were born.

SPEAKER_00 11:06

One of the things, too, that pops into mind as well is the idea of income versus wealth. Because you might be making a great income in one place, but then you move to another place and you start getting wealth because maybe it's about, you know, I I love living in Southeast Asia because it's always hot. And I love the heat. I love the warm weather. I do not, I had a job offer in Boston a couple years ago for one of the top podcasters in the world, actually, the top podcaster in the world. They offered me a job as the head of media and content for her. And I was like, I said, no, I don't want to live in Boston. I love, I was born there. I love visiting, but I can't handle New England winters. I don't ever want to go through another winter like that. And so for me, wealth is to be able to wake up and go out to the fresh market where I can eat mango and papaya and things like that, you know, to be able to have a company in my house that I sit there and, you know, I'm doing a podcast right now, but my daughter's right next door. And, you know, I ran up between these podcasts, I'm gonna run up and give her a hug. And this is this is my work, you know, and I love that. It's priceless, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02 12:15

It is. You can't put a value on that. That's just amazing. And yeah, I hear you completely. I my business is based in Estonia in the northern tip of Europe, and it's an amazing culture there and business climate and technology and everything else. But I I don't think I could physically survive the winters that they have there. But I don't need to because I can live in Spain and enjoy the Mediterranean social climate without being dependent on their business operations climate. We can pick and choose the best and we can be rich in so many ways that would never open up to us if we stayed in one place.

SPEAKER_00 12:54

100%. Yeah, I mean, and and the it's it's amazing uh that the tools that we have are getting better, you know. And I think that one of the wild things is um, you know, there are so many productivity tools that can allow you to do more. And like that's one of the cool things is that I I have a team of people who work for me, but even still our team of about 12 uh functions, like about 50 people. Like we have a much more powerful because we are leveraging the technology, we're leveraging the tools that are out there now. And it's just beautiful like that, you know? And so I I think that too, if you can start, but here's one of the things too, is I think it's moving from being reactive to being intentional, and that people who, if you can like figure out how to have a remote work situation, you can become intentional about the the life that you want to build.

SPEAKER_02 13:50

It just means you have to get intentional about that stuff because work does a lot for people besides giving them an income. You know, for a lot of people, sometimes I I work with coaching people who've run into problems working remotely because they realize they're struggling socially or they're simply not getting enough exercise, or they haven't got boundaries between their work and their private life, because it's all happening in the same space, and that boundary used to be imposed by not just another building, but a a journey, a commute that that put an edge on that for them. So there are so many more things you have to think about then. And then you can get intentional about your own life as well. Big questions like how am I going to educate my children? Um, where do I see myself retiring one day? All of that goes into the mix as well. And rather than just doing what everybody else does, uh, which a lot of people do in quite an unexamined way, the in the same way that people used to say, Oh, I could never work from home up to March 2020, because they've never tried it, they've never experienced it, they never had to look at it and say, Does this work for me or does it not? And it it really does. It's not for everybody. I I think everybody should have the opportunity and the choice to be able to do their work remotely if they can. And there's there is a small subset of roles that obviously could never be done this way, because they do involve having to be there. There are some things that are harder to do remotely. Um, but the vast array of knowledge work roles, anything to do with communication, you can do it from just about anywhere that you've got an internet connection and an appropriate enabled device. So I think everybody should have that option to really think about what they would like. But I have known people come unstuck just with the, oh, and then I've got to decide about that question. And that opens up that question. And what do I where do I even start? So there are some good examples out there, but everybody's map is going to be slightly different. That's what's exciting about it, though.

SPEAKER_00 15:52

Uh and I think one of the things too that uh I was sitting there thinking about where where which of my podcasts to put this conversation under. And I really wanted it in this one because of the fact a couple things. One we talk about, you know, wealth building and making money and such, and yet people forget that what are you what are you doing all this for?

SPEAKER_01 16:14

And I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 17:38

And so it's like I think that for people, how can companies be aware that, you know, people aren't going to be goofing off? Or what do you think we do about that?

SPEAKER_02 17:48

It's a weird question, but I think it is a problem. No, it's a valid question. And I think it's a question that comes to a lot of managers' minds, whether how will I know what people are doing? Well, you know, I I can see Sean's over there, he's busy, he looks busy, he's on the phone or he's bashing away a keyboard or something. So that's that's a visible sign of busyness, not necessarily of being productive and of doing work that contributes to the bottom line, but putting that on one side. It's usually, I mean, I've got a whole framework for this, and this is the work I do consulting with clients, which usually starts some troubleshooting when something's gone wrong. But a lot of it comes down to measuring the right things in the first place. Because if you have that coworker who is actually able to hit all her KPIs, and they're they're not about being online or being logged into a certain app, and she can do that in a couple hours a day and spend the rest of the time at the gym, arguably, why not? You know, if if you don't know where she is, does that matter? Surely what matters is what she's producing, what she's capable of. So the problem is an awful lot of the time we're still measuring business in ways that were designed over a hundred years ago. We measure employment contracts in hours and fractions of days and weeks, and it's about presence and I own your time from nine to five or whatever. And that that time isn't valuable in itself. And we should really, if the best remote first teams are incredibly focused on outcomes and accountability and in enabling and supporting people to deliver those in the best way possible for them, recognizing that for different people that's going to involve different times of day, different preferred locations, different work environments. Somebody might want to have music blasting whilst they code, somebody else might want to have absolute silence whilst they write. Some people might want to be chatting away on Slack all day, others really need focus time and no interruptions and alerts going off. So knowing yourself, knowing your team, really being absolutely clear about those deliverables and being accountable and making that visible to each other. So, you know, we've got all these amazing software tools where you can track projects and track milestones and how resources are moving. You should never be having meetings to say, what have you done? That should be clear and visible. You can spend your direct sync time one-to-one building relationships and unsticking problems and addressing issues and really helping that team cohere. And then you can have amazing off-sites as well, like you mentioned, you enjoy the time going in to see people and say, hey, how are you? And relate to that individual because the work is trapped somewhere that's visible to everybody who needs to see it. You know, we have the technology now for nobody should need to get reports on what's happening with that budget or with that project or whatever. That all can be made manifest so that everybody can log in and see it, see where the blockers are, see if somebody's being unproductive, see if there's a resource constraint somewhere, see if something's waiting for something else and being blocked, and you know, all of that can be visible. And then people hold each other to account as well, because it's people shouldn't be thinking, well, why is she never on Slap? She's always down at the beach or the gym. If they can see that the work is getting done, that's really not their problem or their business.

SPEAKER_00 21:15

One of the things I that you tapped on there, and I love that, because KPIs are huge, and I think that that's such a great you have your metrics of like, is the job getting done? Because, you know, one of the things for me that having remote work that was so valuable for me is that it's time. My my a family member of mine spends about two and a half hours driving every single day from their home to work, from work to home. And that's not including the gas that has to be put into the car. That's not including the emotional drain, because that two and a half hour drive up over the mountains, you know, down these windy roads, it's exhausting. And then he gets home. And he's just tired, and then he has to parent. It would be so much easier if he could be just there. I mean, certainly it's not always completely easier because you have to figure out how to set those boundaries in your workplace, but once you figure that out, that time is so valuable. And I think that remote work, and this is one of the things I I've heard I've heard people discuss though. I heard this one question, I was reading this one forum, and these people were talking on this remote work forum about this. Does remote work actually give people more control over their time, or do they just end up working more? That was one of the things that people were discussing as well. And I wanted to ask you about that.

SPEAKER_02 22:40

Well, that's that's a res time is a resource to be managed. Um, and yeah, it can easily mean that people end up with not managing their boundaries well. They might well have a manager who's very experienced in their line of work but has never had any training in leading a distributed team and hasn't got a clue and is constantly hassling them for information and updates and and reassurance, basically. And so people can end up spending too much time dealing with those interruptions to their work and or spending all their day in Zoom calls and meetings. We had a lot of that during the pandemic lockdowns because managers needed that reassurance of let's let's all just hop on another call. And then people saying, Well, I I have to catch up and do my work at night because I haven't had time all day because I've been managing the work and managing the managers and managing the team. So it's it's uh an issue of time management, of self-management, of boundaries, um, and also other people respecting those boundaries and rights to unplug. I think it's something that we do better in Europe that we do have some legal protections for remote workers introduced in the last few years. I mean, it's practically illegal to send an email in France after about seven o'clock in the evening or something, but you know, these are things that have been put in place to stop people feeling like they have to be always on and always responsive. But it's not just a remote work problem, that one. The few times that when I was in London last year on a on a commuter train early in the morning um with about a million other people in one carriage and thinking for the millionth time, thank goodness this is one day for me, and they do this every day. But every single one of them was working. You know, they were either on their phones or they're cramming laptops onto the table in front of them. So you think they're all constantly responding to stuff. That time's not even their own anymore. I mean, hopefully it's different if they're driving. Um but people are expected to be online a lot of the time and to respond to managers. So I think actually people who habitually work from home are sometimes better at those boundaries, those rituals that say, right, you know, check it in, check it out. I'm done. See you in the morning, I'll be dealing with that then. And this is what I did, and and then checking out for the day and then switch the phone off or whatever.

SPEAKER_00 25:04

I I have to very clearly tell my clients, um, you know, I said, hey, I'm heading to bed. My team will handle this in the morning. And we have this hat handoff time, and you know, we we have a great Slack, and after everything is put on Slack, you know, I sit there and I go through it, and my team works really hard, and then we check in at the end of the day, hey, this is what was accomplished. And one of the things that I found is that um I I have to turn it off. And on Saturday, Sunday, luckily my clients are actually really respectful of Saturday, Sundays, and they're just they they don't want to talk. But I really enjoy the ability to sit there and turn it off completely. And you know, I'd be like, I'm done, I am out, and I go and spend time with my daughter. Uh, I take her all day, Saturday, Sunday, I take her to classes, and you know, it it's it's that freedom because it's precious. It does. And the remote work gives you that freedom, and it also removes some of these structures that just are not necessarily. I had a boss that was that would watch us, and she would like, I I would, it was the creepiest thing. I was teaching at this one school, and her office was outside my classroom. And sometimes I would see this eye just looking in through the curtain. Oh, you have no idea. And then I just was like, oh, I feel so creepy. And I was like, oh, I feel really weird. And then every now and then I'd be teaching, and suddenly I'd feel like someone was watching me, and I look over and she's just like watching. Probably the worst boss I've ever had in my life. And I've one day asked her, I was like, what are you doing? And she's like, I'm just trying to see and make sure you're doing your job right. I said, okay, first of all, do my students love the class? Well, yes, they all love it. Do they continue to sign up for my class? Well, yes, they all sign up. Are they learning the language right now? Well, yes, they're all becoming much better. And I said, So what's the problem?

SPEAKER_02 27:00

You know, what do you need to know beyond that? Yeah. And and there are digital equivalents of that, of course. There are people installing spyware. Um, there are people, you know, trying to do remote work without the trust means all sorts of horrible technologies. And again, often measuring the wrong thing. How long is somebody logged into this app? How is there active light on? I mean, there's a whole category of products on Amazon now for keeping your mouse jiggling about on your desk if you step away from your desk. So it keeps your status active or something. I mean, this is the world that we've come to where that's a thing. Because people don't trust and because people aren't measuring the right things. Who cares how long your light is on on Slack? Um, if you deliver the thing that you're working on by the agreed deadline, then what on earth else matters? And it, you know, when people are working over distance, they might be working across cultures, across continents, across many time zones, you've got to work on building that trust and accountability so that nobody feels a need to do that because I can't imagine that kind of environment. And if people are seeing what each other are doing, that should be a nice thing. You know, if I'm working on a a piece of client work and I see their they pop their face pops up in the Google Doc or something, it's like, oh hi. It's a little point of connection. If I ever felt they were kind of checking up on me, peering through the door like your colleague, um, I think I'd just close the dock and walk away. I don't think I could handle that.

SPEAKER_00 28:32

I quit a uh a remote job that uh had that. It was a an English language school based out of China, and they would observe your your classes. And I remember once they said at 29 minutes and 15 seconds, your dog walked in the room. And we would like to ask that you do not have your animal in the same room with you when you're teaching. I was just Oh fuck yours. Yeah. I was like, I was just like, and that is how we end our relationship. And I stepped right away.

SPEAKER_02 29:01

Me and my dog are out of here.

SPEAKER_00 29:03

And it was is wild because I was, and then when I said I'm leaving, they're like, Well, you're one of our most requested teachers, you're one of our most booked teachers. And I said, Yeah, and you guys like it.

SPEAKER_02 29:13

Why the hell are you checking up on me like that and sending me that kind of feedback then rather than telling me how good I am?

unknown 29:20

Right.

SPEAKER_00 29:21

But most yeah, most of my experiences have been awesome. And one of the things that for me I realized is that since I started my company and I've been working from home with clients remotely, I've been healthier, I've felt better. And even though I'm working more, I don't feel as burnt out. And I know partially the commute, partially it's it was the stress of going into an office and being around. I had this high churn rate of my work, and there was colleagues that some of them, it was hard to get to like know them because they were turning over so quick. And you know, you don't have those same bonds. So talk to me a little bit about what you feel about that. With how does remote work keep people from burning out?

SPEAKER_02 30:03

Well, I've been freelancing for a long time. So my experience of the employed team situation is more from an outsider looking in. It's a skill that the manager has to master to really support people from a distance and to recognize what's going on for people. You know, I think if people are in a shared office and somebody's overworked, stressed, on the verge of burnout, there are visible signs that a manager might pick up on in terms of their appearance, their body language, and so on. You don't get that in a remote team. So managers have to develop other ways of hearing what's not being said, of seeing whose camera is off again, another technical fault, or you know, who's who's not speaking up in meetings, who's pausing before they speak in a way that suggests they don't really want to engage. Uh it's harder. It's a whole new skill set to manage people at a distance, but it's still the manager's job and their responsibility, and the organization still has legal responsibility for their well-being, as you know, in different frameworks around the world. There's always some onus on the employer to make sure that health and safety needs are being met, and that includes emotional health and making sure that people are not being burned out. It might mean the manager having to take a one-to-one with somebody to check in with them outside of that group meeting and conversation to focus on their well-being rather than their work and see what's going on for them. What ideally though, it comes from a place of having built trust in the first place. So there's room for feedback, there's room for disagreement, there's room for pushback, there's room for 183 back feedback to say to the manager, well, actually, the way you're doing this, the way you're spying on me and through the door or whatever the digital equivalent is, is stressing me beyond belief. And if he just got out of my face, I could do my work a lot better, and we could both be happier and more fulfilled. So there has to be room for that. But it's not easy. Again, this is something that managers have to learn to do well, have to learn to listen, have to learn to overcome proximity bias from those who might be closer, not just if you happen to go to a hybrid office or a co-working once a week, but who might be closer to you in culture or language or demographics, that it's easier thinking, oh well, you know, that person's like me, so they work in the same way as me. And to really have that genuine curiosity and holding time and space to develop those connections remotely is tougher. It's harder. It's incredibly worthwhile and fulfilling. I've known some amazingly close, fulfilled, really high-performing, emotionally intelligent teams who meet each other maybe once a year at an off site. And they do make the effort to do that because they value those relationships so much. And that's part of investing it and getting people together across continents. Because remote doesn't mean you never see each other, right? It just means you do most of your work in separate locations, and it means you're very intentional about the time you do spend together, and you spend a lot of that on the relationships rather than the work. But it it can definitely be done, but it's not automatic like a lot of things in remote work. It you have to be very deliberate about it, you have to figure out what you're gonna do, how you're gonna measure that, how you're gonna make sure it's working, and then keep it under review.

SPEAKER_00 33:31

I love that. And there's one thing too that just struck me that I wanted to point out as well, is that one of the things that I think that people view wrong. And it's even from when I ask my questions, and I've tried to think of a better way to ask the question of who are you and what do you do? And like those are those are separate things. And like that's that's kind of the how I lead off so often in my podcast. But I I still think there's a fundamental flaw in that statement, and I'm gonna have to find a better way to say it because work is not who you are, and you know, they are separate things. And one of the things that I think that I've been trying to see is that work is a tool. Like your job is a tool to build the lifestyle, the life that you want. It is not the goal. You know, money is a tool, it is also not the goal. You know, I I work hard, I do different things. And my daughter's like, all you want to do is go down and edit videos. And I said, actually, no. Like, if I never had to edit another video again, I'd be perfectly happy. I'm just I'm good at what I do.

SPEAKER_02 34:38

That's your route to what you produce and what fulfills you. And yeah. I I did have my daughter come home from school once and said we were talking about what our parents did. And I told my teacher, you go on Facebook all day. Well, thank thank thank you for telling your teacher that.

SPEAKER_00 34:54

That's awesome. Well, it one of the things for me, as I I told my daughter, I was like, for me, I I love conversations and these these podcasts, that's what I want to be doing because I want to be able to leave stuff for you. And one of the things I said is like, but they're also a tool for me to build this thing, you know. And whether you're on Facebook all day, whether you're doing this all day, it's a tool, you know? It's simply a tool to create the life we want. And for me, yeah, it's a the ability to create more time with that little person upstairs, you know, that is And for her to grow up eating mangoes in Vietnam instead of putting her wellies on in Boston. Right. A hundred percent. But what what do you think when when when someone comes in and and they're looking at trying to think about working remotely, where where should they start? What are the things that people should look for and look at?

SPEAKER_02 35:43

That's a really tricky one because people often bring an awful lot of assumptions to that question or they're coming at it from very different places. We get it a lot in the remote work Europe community. I manage the Spain Facebook group, so yes, I do spend a lot of time there. But we get we get a lot of people. How do I go, how do where do I start? How do I go about getting a remote job? Because people sometimes think that remote is a like a separate industry. What do I need to learn to get a remote job? And respectfully, no one's going to pay you to do something you've just learned. What do you do now? What do you know? What's your expertise and your career has been all about up until this point? And then how can you use that in a remote setting? Because there isn't a remote job that you can go and apply for or learn about or study for or qualify for. It just doesn't work like that. People get hired to do stuff they're already really good at and that a customer needs. And the other assumption people will often bring to that situation is that they need a job, an inverted commas, something that occupies them five days a week, gives them an employment contract, gives them a fixed salary. And yeah, they exist, of course they do. Um, I would love to see more of them. It's what a lot of people are used to, right? A lot of people are really not happy to step outside that paradigm of employment and a fixed income and expectations. But actually, a great many people are finding it is possible to carve their own path and do something a bit more flexible, arbitrage their time and availability in the same way as they might their income and their currencies. Think, well, actually, maybe I, you know, if I can get a part-time job, um, then maybe I can have a bit of freelancing here, a bit of consulting there, a bit of non-exec there, build up a portfolio of activities and interests and things that combine and self-reinforce each other. And actually that gives you incredible resilience and future-proofing because people used to say, Oh, how can you how can you freelance? You know, that that's so uncertain and fragile, and you know, anything what happens if you lose all your clients and you can't pay your mortgage next month? But actually now I think it's the job people who are feeling more insecure because what the world has been through and is still going through in terms of layoffs and churn and overhiring and cutbacks. And if you have a one full-time job and somebody in another building or another continent decides they're cutting you as headcount, they not don't even know your name or what you're capable of. That's it, 100% of your income gone. Whereas if you're a freelancer or a bit of a portfolio person, you might well, you know, I've just lost my biggest client. That's a third of my income gone. But I've got the rest of it and I've got my pipeline because I'm always thinking like an entrepreneur. I'm always thinking about what I could change. Well, actually, if I can't replace that income, maybe the fact that it's all location independent means I could rent my house out and go and live somewhere more affordable for a year or two. Or I could change my life. I had to deal with a very sick child at one point in my remote life, and I was, you know, I just had to say to clients, I can't work this month. I had no income, but I was able to jiggle things around a bit and get an apartment by the hospital and and just make life work. You can't do that if you've got a a fixed job at somebody else's choice of place, and you have a set journey to that and a season ticket and a home that depends on that journey. So there are so many more things you can play around with once you step outside that job paradigm, but it's a scary place. So I often start with people to say, well, if you've got a job, that's great. Hold on to that for a start, because there's an awful lot of people who haven't. What flexibility could you negotiate within that job? What is their workation policy? Oh, they've never had one. Okay, well, maybe I can refer them to somebody who can help with that and not risk permanent establishment and all the other things that compliance people are scared of. It might be that you can get what you want in terms of a remote life, the fact that you can go to Vietnam for one month a year initially and see what it's like working remotely, see if you can make that work, see what you can negotiate in terms of your performance and what you do. So or it might be even rather than having a pay review, I'd rather negotiate another day a week at home. Or I think you can be very transparent about it, very transactional about it. We don't have to go back to the Tim Ferris kind of work from home by stealth and oh, I have to wait in for a plumber and then have this amazingly productive day and then try to engineer this this we shouldn't have to do that anymore. We should be able to have an honest conversation with our managers and say, look, this is what really matters to me at this point in my life. I want to be doing this. This is this is what work can do to support me in that. If you're any good, then you should be able to discuss that. Remote shouldn't be a perk, but it can be seen as one and you can leverage it as part of your discussions. And then if that works, then you might be able to push it a bit further. Well, you know, how about, okay, maybe you can't let me go and live in Vietnam year-round because of the employment contract and everything else. But how about if I was a consultant then? How about we found some other way of doing that as a contractor, or we used an employer of record or a digital nomad visa or all these things that didn't exist a few years ago that have sprung up post-COVID in this world of trying to figure out a way to put this jigsaw puzzle together of this fragmented global regulatory framework because people don't want to be fragmented. They want to move and they want choices. And you know, we we do have the means to do this somehow. It's it's growing and evolving all the time. The latest thing that I've been writing about this week is the proposals for EU Inc. as a new 28th state to incorporate microbusinesses in the whole of the EU. No one's got any idea how it's going to work yet. We like the sound of it, but that might give more freedom of movement within Europe for those of us, because it's all very well saying there's freedom of movement if you have a European passport, but if you're actually registered as a freelancer in that company, in that country, and you're paying Social Security, that you know, it's it's not flexible at all at the moment in reality. So the regulations are always changing. I suppose I've always been there kind of pushing against them and saying, well, how flexible can we make this? But that's what's rendered me completely unemployable, I guess. Uh I've always had to see if I can break it or find a way around it to make things better for people, um, and for me included. So it I think that the the trend is, despite whatever's going on geopolitically, I think the trend is towards greater mobility for individuals. We just have to get really clear on what we want and then figure it out. There will be a way to make it so if somebody wants to hire you to do a thing, it doesn't matter where you are or they are, there'll be a way of doing it. There won't necessarily be any OR in, I don't know, there are probably some places that's not true. Like I don't know if I could hire a freelancer in North Korea or or something, but in 99% of the world, there'll be a way of making a deal, of paying each other, of transferring value, and in both on both sides, and you know, you delivering the work and getting paid for it. But it might not look like a job. You've got to figure it out.

SPEAKER_00 43:11

I love that. Uh can I ask you this question? Where can people look you up and find out more information about you and what you do?

SPEAKER_02 43:19

Well, my main home online is remoteworkeurope.eu. You can find me on LinkedIn. I have the unusual distinction of having a unique name. So if you find my middlemis online, it's me. Um when it comes to social media and content and things like that. So, you know, I would love to hear from anybody who is excited about remote work. Link link up with me, send me a connection request. Let's keep in touch. If you're in Europe or interested in remote work in Europe, then do come and join, join us at Remote Work Europe. We have thriving social media communities in lots of different countries. Because again, they are all different, different languages and systems and things. So we we tend to do that at a country level, but the content's at a Europe level. Um yeah, I have two recent books, the uh both under the theme of a remote readiness and both look using the same framework that I've been using and developing and consulting for years. One of those is for the managers and leaders, how to troubleshoot within their team. And the other one, which just came out last month, is for job seekers, because I realized that hiring for a remote is really broken. The old ways of doing it. You you know, people stick an ad on LinkedIn and then they close it an hour later because they've got 2,000 CVs and they don't know where to start. And people have no idea how to demonstrate their remote readiness if they've not worked in that way before. So I wrote a book for job seekers specifically to address that. And within the Remote Work Europe community, we also have a low-cost premium community for job seekers where we're actually working through the book at the moment as a job club. We're looking at it a chapter a week and exploring it. That's helping me develop the material because I want to develop more training and IP around the framework for job seekers. I would love at some point for somebody who has to put their remote readiness score on their CV or have a certification on LinkedIn or something, but I need to work with the material more from the job seekers' point of view. So, and apparently nobody reads books anymore, I've been told. So we're reading it together just to really step people through that process and make sure you're remote ready across all the different elements in the framework, which are culture, communication, console being all the tech, collaboration, and connection.

SPEAKER_00 45:39

I love that. Well, if they're not reading, they should be. Like that's the reality.

SPEAKER_02 45:44

They should Yeah, well, you know, I've if I write it, come and read it. Um but it but if not, then come and get the overview, come and have a conversation about it, and make sure that you're you're thinking about your work in terms of presenting yourself as remote ready, if that's the way you want to go. Because obviously you're gonna people are gonna Google you, they're gonna risk they're gonna perplex you, or or whatever we do now, they're gonna find out what you look like online. So it is important that you show up well.

SPEAKER_00 46:11

I love it. Well, I want to say thank you so much. It you've inspired me and reinforce kind of what I already believed about remote work. And um, yeah, I've just been really happy about this conversation today. So thank you so much for your time.

SPEAKER_02 46:25

Well, it sounds like you were already a true believer. Um, but I hope that anybody listening to this will convert a few more people to think about the remote life. And thank you very much for inviting me.