Remotely Inclined Stefan Palios

Rafat Ali is a two-time media entrepreneur. He sold his first blog a few years ago and is now building Skift, a global media company focused on business travel, conferences, and the business of travel. 
Of course, COVID was not fun. 
The company nearly fell apart, but managed to eek by with a few saving graces. Namely: remote work. 
Rafat made the decision to not renew the company’s lease when it came up in summer 2020, and with that decision the company - and its dozens of employees - went 100% remote. This move stands apart from what’s becoming the major wave of hybrid remote announcements, since as of right now the company is totally remote with plans to stay that way. 
In this conversation with Rafat, we talked about
📈 How Skift weathered the COVID storm, coming back from the brink of collapse (and what they are up to now)
🔒 Remote work versus pandemic lockdown work (they are not the same thing)
✈️ The future of travel (and business travel in particular)
Have a listen in Substack or in your favorite podcast app! 
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Admittedly, you’d expect the founder of a company that helps remote teams with payroll and taxes to not like offices. But Sahin Boydas is a little different than most entrepreneurs.
With nearly 10 startups under his belt (a handful of failures and a handful of successes and exits), Sahin has barely ever worked in an office - and never on a permanent basis. Whether in his native Turkey, to Boston, to Silicon Valley, every single one of his startups is remote. It’s perhaps no wonder he refers to offices as “prisons of the mind.” 
In this interview, Sahin and I talked about the future of Silicon Valley, how Sahin thinks about angel investing remotely, and of course the future of remote work. 
Check out key takeaways below or listen to the whole episode on your favorite podcast platform.
Image courtesy Remote Team
Silicon Valley’s greatest export
Silicon Valley was - and arguably still is - the global epicentre of tech. Even in a remote world, Sahin doesn’t think that’s going anywhere. Instead, the shift will be from requiring physical presence in Silicon Valley to requiring a Silicon Valley mindset anywhere you are in the world. What constitutes a Silicon Valley mindset? For Sahin, it’s a willingness to try new things, take bold risks, and invest in ideas knowing that not everything will work out, but the production and founding process will teach individual founders a lot and help educate the whole ecosystem for the next crop of entrepreneurs. 
Key quote: 
“The idea of Silicon Valley is three ingredients. The first ingredient is we welcome everyone in the world. It’s the American dream on steroids. Second, you are free. You can be anything. I think anyone, any gender, any religion, you will be welcome here. Then we have Stanford, getting millions of ideas from professors. And we have the money from Sand Hill Road and Stanford. Then we have the lawyers that know how to do the exit playbooks.”
“It’s not really about the tech, it’s about the outcome and building something fast… it’s about the culture.”
Angel investing remotely
After some business successes, Sahin began to invest in other startups (remotely, of course). Instead of following a geographic thesis or waiting for the startups to come to him, he decided to take his stock investing mentality and bring that to angel investing. Namely, Sahin invests in companies that he either is a huge fan of as a customer or, if the solution isn’t what he personally needs, that he’s a huge fan of in general. It may not be the most sophisticated, algorithmic investment strategy, but it’s a system that helps him direct his investment dollars into opportunities he’s genuinely happy to rave about.
Key quote: 
“I personally read around a thousand article titles a day to generate ideas. If someone is building my idea, that’s an investment I want to make.”
“If I find any idea that I really, really, really like, I reach out to the founders.”
(Disclosure: Always do your own diligence on investments and follow your own independent research. Everything we talked about in the episode were just examples, not advice.)
The future of work
Sahin founded RemoteTeam.com to help remote companies manage the nitty gritty details of payroll, taxes, and employee administration on remote teams - all the little things that get more complicated when you don’t have one central office location. 
As such, it’s pretty easy to believe that Sahin thinks the future of work is remote: 
Key quote: 
“We somehow got used to this 8 hours of sleep, 8 hours of work, and 8 hours of family time. But I don’t think I’ve ever worked 8 hours linear in my life.”
“I’m so excited that the world is catching up to [remote work] and changing.”
The final word
“The office was built by the industrial revolution… the office is our prison of the mind”
Amazing, thank you for your insights!
You can get in touch with Sahin on:
* Twitter
* Instagram
* LinkedIn
*

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

One truth about remote work that’s become a cliché is that it saves you money. Many remote entrepreneurs I’ve spoken with say that their choice to be remote was, at least in part, due to the costs of an office.
The challenge I have with this statement isn’t about its truth. Instead, it ignores the other, very real expenses that pop up when you run a remote business. I want to shine a light on those for two reasons: 
* A lot of bashing around remote work stems from the idea that companies are reaping massive savings while forcing employees to pay for office expenses (in the words of Laurel Farrer - “will no one ever be satisfied?”). 
* Entrepreneurs thinking of going remote - you need to go in eyes wide open. You’ve probably experienced some of these costs as you navigated COVID, but there are others that will come up if you want to build a thriving remote culture. 
I’ve broken down this article into three categories: freelancers / solopreneurs, services teams, and product teams. Each category is cumulative, meaning a services team will also have the expenses that a freelancer or solopreneur has. Further, a product team will likely have the expenses of a services team and a freelancer, since a lot of product companies offer services, whether as a revenue line or under the banner of customer success. 
So shall we talk about money? 
Image via Burst
Remote expenses: Solopreneur and freelancer
All businesses have some fundamental things they need to pay for. In the freelancer and solopreneur world, thankfully those expenses can be relatively low. However, they can still amount to thousands of dollars per year for: 
* Payment processing for digital payments
* Web hosting for personal sites and ecommerce platforms
* Custom email and digital asset managers
* Social media management tools
* Contract management and e-signature tools
* Any custom technology necessary to do their job (design platforms, etc.)
These infrastructural costs hurt freelancers and solopreneurs the most, in my opinion, because they are not built for the freelance world. Big tech platforms like Zoom didn’t build for freelancers when they launched a ‘freelancer’ level. Instead, the company simply took enterprise value triggers and offered fewer of them for a lower price. While this covers some needs, it does not reach all - leading to platform creep for freelancers. 
Services companies
Services companies will have the same infrastructural costs of a freelancer, scaled up by the size of their team. However, they will also have: 
* Virtual office tools like Workplace by FB or Memberstack / Memberspace / etc. 
* Project management tools like Asana, Trello, or Airtable 
* Travel and retreat expenses (don’t assume remote teams shouldn’t spend time together)
* Home office stipends or coworking memberships for employees
* Virtual events
* Gift cards and other goodies in lieu of office perks like snacks and coffee
* Payroll and team admin software that manages the complexity of having employees in different countries
These kinds of expenses are often higher for remote service companies than they would be for an office-centric company. Take retreats, for example. You can’t hire a coach bus to drive outside the city with the team - everyone has to fly in, some folks from very far away. It creates opportunity for fun exotic locales, but also adds to the cost base. 
Product companies
Selling a product is the most scalable type of company, but it also carries with it a higher fixed cost base. Not only will product companies have all the costs associated with human capital, they will also have: 
* Ticket management and support hub software
* Fulfillment and shipping costs
* Returns and inventory management costs
* Cyber security costs associated with remote product development
* And more based on what kind of product they are selling
Many of these costs can be outsourced or handled as a percentage of revenues, but that leaves a smaller p

Laurel Farrer has been leading remote organizations for 14 years, well before it was a hot topic. Now, she helps other companies figure out their remote work arrangements with her company Distribute Consulting and she built a thriving community of remote workers in the Remote Work Association. 
While Laurel knows there’s a lot of flexibility in remote work, one thing that grinds her gears is when people have complained about wanting remote work for years only to deride organizations now for “downloading” office expenses onto employees. To quote: “Will no one ever be satisfied?”
In this interview, Laurel shared the four categories of remote work infrastructure, how to take care of your mental health during both the pandemic and with regular remote work, and more. 
Remote infrastructure is four things
→ Too many companies ignore infrastructure, believing that once you don’t need an office space anymore, you’re good. Not only is this not the case for hybrid remote companies, but it’s also not true of all-remote companies.
Physical infrastructure: All workers, remote or not, need a place to work - desks, chairs, wifi, etc. For a business, this could mean an office, coworking memberships, or home office stipends. 
Digital tools: Whatever tools you need to get your work done. This was commonplace in an office environment, but additional tools for communication and collaboration are critical.
Processes and rituals: You may not see everyone every day, so no chatting by the coffee machine. But that doesn’t mean you can’t build regular practices to make work life easier and more pleasant. 
Information management: If you don’t manage information properly, you get the worst of both worlds. 
Mental health: Remote work challenge accelerated by the pandemic
→ Like an office environment, a remote work environment has mental health risks associated with it. That’s to be expected. 
→ The difference between offices and remote work is that feelings of isolation, disconnection, and micromanagement can be very physical, whereas they might be more difficult to pin down in an office full of people. 
→ Unfortunately, the pandemic served to accelerate and exacerbate all these issues, meaning it’s critical that people check in with themselves. 
→ Self check in questions should be about discovering patterns which you can then do something about. This is entirely about what works for you - not about any sort of best practice. 
The final word
“There is no right way to do remote work. It’s however you want to leverage this as a strategy in order to optimize operations or retain employees or access a greater talent pool. It’s up to you.”
Remotely Inclined Chats with Laurel Farrer
Transcript edited for brevity and clarity.
Stefan: Welcome, Laurel! What’s your remote work journey and why did you found Distribute Consulting?
Laurel: I’ve been working remotely for 14 years. The entire time I was operating distributed companies. And 14 years ago, remote work wasn’t cool. It wasn’t natural. I got a lot of questions. Through those years, I was a consultant informally on the side, answering those questions. About four years ago I was experiencing a horrible company culture, and I said I was going to dedicate my life to preventing this for other people. I unexpectedly quit my job because it got to a level where I couldn’t do it anymore. I thought about what would be next, and I knew I wanted to strengthen the conversation about virtual organizational development and create the resources I wanted and needed as a distributed company executive.
What does it mean to be an “office manager” in a virtual world?
The role of an office manager is to keep operations humming - to create an environment in which productivity and business operations continue and people have a place to come together that fuels their productivity and collaboration. That’s exactly what you do as an office manager in a remote compa

Hi,
Welcome to Remotely Inclined, a newsletter about running a business remotely. If you’d like to sign up, you can do so here. Want to share your feedback? Respond to this email (or send me one). Or just read on…
Sharon Koifman has been running businesses remotely for 18 years, and now he helps companies around the globe hire full-time remote workers with his agency DistantJob. He’s also publishing a book, Surviving Remote Work, all about how to become the best possible remote employee (or manager). In our interview, Sharon shared a couple lessons he learned the hard way - namely, why CEOs should never try to be their company’s social centre. 
The perils of CEO-driven company socializing
→ When Sharon first started DistantJob, he went remote as a matter of cost: no office expenses and geographic arbitrage on salaries. This was also the value he thought he was offering to clients - a cheap talent solution. 
→ He soon realized the paradox that if you see humans as simply outsourced cheap labor, they won’t perform as well for you. He switched his mentality - and DistantJob’s work - to focus on placing full-time remote employees. 
→ As a result, he immediately tried to become what he called the “social centre” of the company. He’d bring everyone together for Zoom happy hours and crack jokes. The feedback was dismal: no one was having fun. 
Remaking socializing for remote work
→ After collecting feedback from employees, two themes emerged: they didn’t like that Sharon was driving all the company social activities and they didn’t like being forced into big digital groups. Both resulted in feelings of disengagement. 
→ As a result, the company revamped how it socialized: 
* The company uses Donut, a Slack app to match people for 1-1 coffee chats. 
* Further leveraging Slack, there are different channels for different kinds of socializing and fun, so people can pop into the “rooms” they are interested in - food, board games, etc. 
* The company is “99.999%” remote, but will occasionally get together around conferences (back when that was possible) - this allowed the team to socialize at night but also learn and connect with the latest industry trends during the day. 
The final word
“When you have too many people in a physical or zoom meeting, the majority of people don’t get invested in that meeting. But when you have one, two, or three individuals … you can really get to know them.”
Image courtesy DistantJob
Remotely Inclined Chats with Sharon Koifman
Transcript edited for brevity and clarity.
Stefan: Welcome, Sharon! Can you share how you got into remote work and what your company DistantJob is all about?
Sharon: I’ve been running businesses from my computer for about 18 years. I started off running a web hosting company - and I’d even started a company before that where I was trying to create one of the first music distribution sites, though unlike Napster it would all be legal. 
I didn’t really have money. So when I decided to find myself, I was sharing my hosting account with a few colleagues of mine and charging them. Next thing you know, we had about 3,000 clients and that music site never came to be. 
So hosting became my first company. We had offices in India. Had our servers originally in Texas then moved to New Jersey. I was sitting by myself running this entire operation. I realized my dad inspired me a lot because he ran an engineering firm. He would do the design of the machine on AutoCAD, on his computer by himself. The machine shop would make the components, someone else would ship it to the client… again, it was all remote. 
Then came DistantJob. The original concept came to me from the first business - when you have an office in India, you have to do some outsourcing. It’s unavoidable. But for me that was like a business sin. You’re getting paid for the way you’re doing things, your processes, and your methodology. But then you take everyth