From Roadie To Googler To Future of Work Consultant: One Remote Entrepreneur’s Journey Remotely Inclined

Lauren Razavi is now a sought after consultant and researcher on the future of work (and remote work in particular), but she didn’t start her career that way. Instead, she ran away from home at a young age and became a music tour manager, helping indie bands get their break. Then she transitioned into full-time freelancing, digital nomadism, and eventually to big tech™ at Google before striking back out on her own.
In our conversation, she shared her insights on the future of the office, mobility, and humanity in remote work. 
Building humanity into remote work
“A lot of people think technology somehow changes how humans behave, but I really don’t think it does. We behave in the same way using different kinds of communications tools. For instance, I’ve run a Slack channel for freelancers who collaborate on different projects, and it’s a small but close knit community. Most of us are in touch most days just to have some digital recreation. But you consciously have to make sure that you’re not spending your whole day gossiping on Slack, for instance. There’s a balance to strike, but I don’t think anything’s lost.”
The future of the office
“One of the trends I think we’re going to see moving forward is a shift of the office from a place that people go for 9-5 every day into spaces for collaboration and getting together on a less regular basis with a clear motivation and purpose.”
“But even the most dedicated remote workers are still going to encounter a lot of situations in their work where being remote from others is not necessarily conducive to achieving that particular task they might be focused on.”
“Software is having an absolute renaissance now from the downturn in a way nobody really expected. You have these software companies that are absolutely flourishing because they’ve been on a path and were viewing a future of work they thought was very distant. And before 2020 it was very distant. And now suddenly it’s here.”
Not just remote, but mobile
“When we say remote work right now, we mean work from home. But I think by the end of this decade we will see a fundamental and enormous shift to work from anywhere. In the next stage of things, people are going to wake up to what’s possible. We’re going to see a much more fluid approach to location from workers. For instance, if your role is remote, what’s to stop you from taking your family to a villa in Italy for three months every summer?”
“We’re seeing this as sort of a pandemic recovery process for many countries like Barbados, Bermuda, and Georgia. These countries and governments actually want to attract remote workers as replacements for tourists.”
The final word
“Remote work itself is for everybody, but I would say that remote work definitely isn’t for all types of work.”
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Remotely Inclined Chats with Lauren Razavi
Transcript edited for brevity and clarity.
Stefan: Welcome, Lauren. Let’s start with your story and journey into remote work
Lauren: My story actually started about a decade ago. When I was a teenager, I basically ran away from home and joined a music tour. From that experience, I ended up becoming a freelancer and remote worker - and I haven’t changed course since. 
I wanted to be a musician, but I was absolutely terrible at the guitar, singing, and the piano. So that wasn’t going to work. So I started to promote some friends. One of the bands I was working with started to get some traction, and that was mainly through my work as a music manager. Back then I didn’t really understand what I was doing, but just kind of going for it and leveraging the internet to spread the word about music and to make connections. 
From there I went to university and studied politics. The main thing that studying politics teaches you is that you don’t want to get into politics! While I was studying, I fell into being a freelance journalist. I started pitching edit