Remote Employee to Nomadic Entrepreneur, with Chris Cerra from Remote Base

Maya Middlemiss: 0:04

You're listening to, the future is freelance podcast, the show for celibraners, digital nomads and slow mats, consultants, remote workers, residents and everyone living a life without traditional boundaries. We're here for people who defy categorization, people who make a life and are living their own way. Every freelance Friday we bring you expert tips, inspired insights and stories from the frontiers of freelancing to help you achieve success with your borderless business and life, whatever success means to you as you move through the world on your own terms. And today we're bringing you a really interesting interview with the CEO of Remote Base, Chris Cerra. Chris is from the UK, like me, but he's been all over the world with his business and even before that, because we dig back a little bit into his life story. The service he offers now is to help people find accommodation for remote working and longer digital nomads stay, so you're not limited to the quite pricey per night kind of deals that you get on accommodation booking platforms. So he really is an expert when it comes to finding somewhere to stay. Do check out Chris's links in the show notes, but in the meantime, enjoy his thoughts and reflections as we dig into some of the realities of digital nomad and remote work life and go beyond the things that you might see on the Instagram feeds. So, Chris, it's great to have you with us at. The Future is Freelance. Thanks for joining us today. Thank you for having me.

Chris Cerra: 1:31

It was a really really nice invitation off the back of some content and it got me very, very curious about this whole conversation and very, very much looking forward to it. Fantastic, well, we're looking forward to getting to know you a little bit better.

Maya Middlemiss: 1:47

It says on your LinkedIn bio that remote work changed your life in 2017. So maybe we should start there. Tell us a bit about what happened then, what was happening before and what's happening now.

Chris Cerra: 1:59

I was working at a company based in London. I started a roller in 2016. And prior to that, I'd worked. I'd worked in London before. I'd worked in other cities in the UK before and I tried to. I'd moved around quite a lot, actually, like I'd not really graduated for very long Maybe four or five years out of university and lived in as many cities with work. But that was all in the UK. And 2016 was when I took that role and it was an amazing company. Amazing, like they were so progressive and their approach to everything from you know the culture internally to the organisational structure, to the management hierarchy, was all very, very progressive. We had policies like you know the organisation, the organisation that we had policies like self set pay, I think the official policy on work was like you can work wherever you want, whenever you want, however you like, without telling anyone, like as long as it doesn't interrupt the business or something. It was like, you know, as long as business isn't impacted, like we don't care what you do. It was kind of the yeah, that was the feel, that was what was happening.

Maya Middlemiss: 3:12

Yeah, and this was in the UK.

Chris Cerra: 3:17

Right, it was like pre pandemic and before all of like the remote work, buzzwords and stuff. But it was amazing. I was living in Bristol before I took that role and I moved back to London for this role. In my first kind of week I was doing all of the introduction calls and everything else that happened when you have a job and I found myself on a call with somebody who was in Croatia, a Canadian guy who was in Croatia. He was only there for a month and he was part of this part of one of these cohort programmes where they, you know, you take like a bunch of people travelling for a year and you spend a month in each place, all of these kind of cohort travel, cohort companies. They were in the infancy as well at this time and he was on one of the first programmes that was running and I was just like astounded because travel was something that was like a big aspiration for me and it was something that I tried to do as much of before I went into the world of work and I'd kind of given up. I was like, okay, cool, like maybe I go on city breaks every couple of months and then I'll have a couple of holidays, a couple of big holidays a year, and that will be my life, the life for most people. Yeah, exactly Right. And so I'd moved back to London. You know extortionate rent, good pay, but still, you know, exorbitant cost of living. It's probably even worse now. But, yeah, even back then it was high. Then I learned, you know, we also had like one guy was based in Shanghai. We had this whole team of people that was like 80% based in London and 20% based everywhere else, and so I bedded in for a year and worked with the team, built real internal relationships, all this other stuff. And then around about 2017 was when I started to work remotely, domestically, at first at home or from, you know, from my parents' house or from friends, places around the UK. And then 2018 was where I took the show on the road. And then by 2019, I began on the road with remote base, which it was. It was kind of side project at the time and it turned into my now full time, full time job. It's my own business.

Maya Middlemiss: 5:37

Fantastic. So you've got your first remote experience as an employee, then with somebody else who gave you that amazing unlock that you could go and work anywhere. Prove the case, prove that you could work that way as well, because not everybody can what does successfully and happily yeah. Yeah, then. Then you moved into your own side hustle, which is now your full time hustle. So tell me about remote base.

Chris Cerra: 6:04

Yeah, remote base was a. It was a labor of love to begin with. I and my girlfriend work Traveling around, spending one month at a time in different places, or maybe two months at a time, and doing that, I realized like if you book somewhere for one month, you don't pay the nightly price. That is, I did all of the short term mental sites. You can often get a pretty ludicrous discount. So what began as like a little hobby is like Saving all of these places that are available with huge discounts turn into a list of places that was longer. Then we could commit to like there were more places than we could stay in. It was impossible. So I started to like share these, share the idea of these places with other remote workers. So, again, this is like 2018, 2019. So remote work was definitely a thing, but it hadn't had that Huge upswing that the pandemic induced. So there was some like online communities for remote workers, slack groups, stuff like that, and so I was sharing this concept with people in those groups and the feedback was that that would be something that people wanted to see. So I started mailing list, bought a domain name often how these things begin right and started a mailing list and that was kind of it, and it ran alongside my job as a as a Completely free project, kind of just for the community for years and it was. It was only in 2020 to die, monetize the and Winding down my my day job.

Maya Middlemiss: 7:56

Excellent. So I was going to ask how that was affected by the lockdowns and the pandemic. Obviously, everybody experienced remote work, for many people for the first time and maybe started to see the potential for better, or indeed some people had a terrible experience, as we know. I couldn't wait to get back to the office, some of them couldn't wait to get back to 2019 and that was never gonna happen and obviously some organizations failed completely at the big experiment. But there must have been a lot of other people who were desperate to travel but couldn't. Where they joining your list? Where they hearing about the possibility and just waiting to get on a lot and get on the road.

Chris Cerra: 8:38

I think. So there was a. There was a big part of me that didn't really want to Kind of actively promote travel through that period, so I wasn't really sending a lot of stuff. But the sign up, the sign up stayed active and stayed alive and there was definitely a. You know, all things considered, it was surprising to see people signing up through that time and then, yeah, as the world emerged, I switched things back on again. Yeah, I took things more seriously with the newsletter I need. That allowed me to kind of walk away from the day job. I'm sure like freelancers listening to this might have had a similar experience right where maybe they had a, they had one small client on the side of their day job and then Things snowball then took over. I didn't really have the luxury of that. No more impact. I was like I need to switch on the monetization and I need to turn off my day job. I tried to do the snowball thing, I tried to go like part time and I was good for a while, but then I realized I was doing two things badly, never good. So I decided I was gonna do one thing and try and do it well, and I was this. It wasn't the day job, so that was the kind of decision made.

Maya Middlemiss: 9:55

Yeah that's really interesting what you identified there, because a lot of people still think work should be measured in hours and yeah, then in theory you can say I'm gonna do x hours in this role and then With the rest of my hours I'm gonna do something else. But we've only got one brain and that brain is working on the problem solving and it's occupying bandwidth the whole time. Yeah, this is exactly why it's it's crazy to measure work by the hour, by the time served, because it's about what you produce and create and you are clearly finding that remote base was taking up more and more headspace. Is your same or more potential in it, more and more demand for your, your input and attention there. So you did the honorable thing by your former employer. And when do I need? Which is really exciting. Yeah, it's funny how some people think they can be c o several organizations and still say everybody has to go back to the office, but we won't go there. Feel on the fire what was it like that? That moment then because this is something I think a lot of freelancers will relate to, in fact, what, what was, what was that pivot point for you are? You suddenly thought I can, I can make this into a viable business as opposed to a passion project.

Chris Cerra: 11:11

Well, part of me never really knew. I think this there's always. There's always a part of you that never really knows. And you know you can do All manner of Test and research, like remote bases are essentially on. Isn't entirely online business right, and so A lot of the time you would hear, you will hear people speaking like the indy hacker community on spaces like this where They'll say you know, put a page up where people can pay for the product but have the payment fail, have like the card payment fail, so that you can see how, yeah, just you can see how many people are really willing to go all the way through, like not just at the car, like they've got to put the car details in every. You know all of this stuff. I never really did that. I was like I'm never going to know, you are never going to know, you just have to do it and part. For me it was more like if I don't do it, I'll never know. I'll never know, I'll never be able to say that I tried.

Maya Middlemiss: 12:16

Yeah, you built the product anyway, so there wasn't any point trying to play at it at that point and simulate. Sign up to my as well. Just Jump over the cliff. But it's a scary one, right, because you are leaving behind what sounds like a really good job that gave you a lot of the lifestyle elements that you wanted, so yeah, I think it's almost like it's not like a bad break up is almost better in some ways right, like I'm a cool break ups kind of suck.

Chris Cerra: 12:43

Where's the least. You know, if I had a terrible job or boss I hated, I could have been really easy to walk away, but this is actually, yeah, it wasn't an easy choice, but yeah, I think the things that made me Made me really pull the pin out where if I don't do it, I will never know if it's possible or if I have it in me. And the thing was with just the timing, like where the world was Like the right time, like people were gonna be coming out of the pandemic, travel so huge up to remote works or huge up to product of those things is that digital nomadism also has this huge up swing, and so it kind of felt like the right. It felt like it would have been foolish not to leave my job, as bizarre as that sounds.

Maya Middlemiss: 13:36

Yes, it was the moment, so were at that point. Were we starting to see the emergence, or were people at least talking about digital nomad visas as well? Was that a factor in your timing? I?

Chris Cerra: 13:47

think that came a little bit after. I think at this point there would have been. There would have been a handful, there would have been like a maybe less than five. I think the Bahamas had one which was like extremely popular around that time. We'd not seen that snowball, in effect. Where?

Maya Middlemiss: 14:05

Couldn't call it a trend at that point. Yeah, it was nascent yeah. I suppose they say now about half the world has a digital nomad visa, access to it one way or another, or half the number of countries in the world. So yeah. Yeah, the landscape has changed just a little bit there and you obviously you must have seen that coming somehow, because it's such an amazing trend to be able to respond to, and you were giving people the tools to actually take advantage of that and spend a bit of time traveling and doing different things. So amazing. How easy was it then to switch the audience already have over to a premium paid version? Was there pushback? Did you lose many people? Not easy. What were your lessons there?

Chris Cerra: 14:50

Anybody who's a freelancer or anyone who's like running something online for themselves will always remember that moment where they have like the first paying customer, you know, like the first invoice that gets paid or something, and I'll never forget. I was in Portugal at the time and it was. I put a date in the diary right Of like it's going to happen on this day, no matter what. I spent all day, whether it was through I think part of it's through like fear of like what if I put this out in the world and then nobody buys it? I know, and I've just quit my job for some other reason.

Maya Middlemiss: 15:26

Understandable fear really.

Chris Cerra: 15:27

Completely understandable fear. Yeah, one, I think, is natural. But I spent all day like finalizing the launch copy and everything. It was all. It all had to be perfect and it got into like 10pm so I was just like, okay, there is no more, there is nothing more that I can do here. I need to hit, send, go for a walk, maybe sleep and then forget about it and start looking for jobs tomorrow.

Maya Middlemiss: 15:53

At least give it overnight to see if I didn't get it.

Chris Cerra: 15:57

Yeah, yeah, and I went out for a walk and I tried to check myself out of it and I think I was doing that thing that you do where you just refresh your email almost on autopilot. People had made payments and I was like, wow, this is insane. So that was kind of how it started. And now we like I don't, I don't really have the most optimal conversion rate from free to premium. I think there's probably a lot more that I can do. I probably have to, like, annoy a lot of people first before I figure out where that balance is. But I also monetize on the free newsletter. So the free newsletter operates with sponsorships Whilst. Having the premium product is great, it's not the only way for me to monetize the audience, so I don't feel like I have a gun to my head in that.

Maya Middlemiss: 16:44

It's a difficult one. People are used to getting so much content and information for free these days, Like this podcast you're listening to now, and all of that you receive on your device every week for free. It is difficult to start paying for content and it's very difficult to flip something from free to premium. So you know clearly meant that lots of people saw tremendous value there and were keen to move in that direction in their life. I guess it spoke to a hunger that was emerging at that time. People wanted this lifestyle for themselves. So because that's what you're enabling really, isn't it? It's a lifestyle change.

Chris Cerra: 17:20

Yeah, I think part of the mission for me is remote work changed my life. I often try to think like what would my life look like if that job that I took in London was not so remote friendly? What trajectory would that put me on comparison to now? Probably would never have met you.

Maya Middlemiss: 17:41

You'd still be commuting and having a holiday once a year or something.

Chris Cerra: 17:45

Yeah and so yeah, part of the mission is really like help other people either begin or continue on their own remote work and travel journey, whatever that looks like. You know some people are like full time nomadic families. Other people just want to do like the extended workation style getaway once a year. It's a really broad spectrum. So, as a kind of mission statement, I try to keep it broad. But you're right, ultimately it's just about helping other people enable a lifestyle for themselves.

Maya Middlemiss: 18:16

Yeah, that's brilliant and, yes, completely aligned mission with the Futures Freelance and Remote Work Europe to help people see the benefits for themselves and unlock that lifestyle, if that's what they choose. But I was drawn to some of your recent content that you've been creating about. Whilst this is aspirational for lots of people, you've been trying to ground things in reality a little bit more than, let's say, some digital nomadic content can be, and you've been sharing some diaries and some quite journalistic entries of what went well today, what I didn't go so well, what I did, and trying to give people a bit of a flavor of a day and a life. So we'll link to all that in the show notes because I think it's entertaining and it's interesting. But what was the reason behind that? Why did you feel you wanted to share your life on the road in that very unfiltered way?

Chris Cerra: 19:07

I think I just got bored of seeing this like glossy aesthetic that that's out there, it doesn't feel. I almost feel like it does. It actually does damage to the lifestyle. Or like you know how can? How can we say, how can we sit here on a call like this or in a conversation with somebody and say you know this lifestyle is fulfilling and other people should experiment with it? And like I basically say to people just try it. I know you, like even people. When people say to me like oh, I don't know how you did it or I don't you know how is it even possible? Or there's like these weird objections or hurdles that people have, I'm just like look, book a flight. I will personally help you find accommodation at a very good price to remove that barrier. But just try it. Just try it for one month and tell me that you don't like it. Because I think if people can at least say they've tried it, then like I'll listen to the objections, but I don't want to hear the objections up front. And so it's very difficult to say that whilst on the other side all you ever see is the all of the glossy stuff. You never see any of the challenging things. I think it's easier for people to see that, it's easier for people to accept that it's real if they see that it's challenging or that there are challenges. Yeah, sometimes I think it feels unattainable because it doesn't feel real.

Maya Middlemiss: 20:28

Yeah, the palm trees and the laptops on the beach Instagram shots talk about the realities. It frustrates me a lot that people don't talk enough about the work. That's what seems to be the biggest barrier to people, because we have services like remote base to access accommodation Now we have visas, we have apps, we have devices that are small and portable, we have really good cellular coverage over so much of the world. Now, the main obstacle to many people from unpacking this lifestyle is still work and not not being able to take their work with them that they've already got, or not having work that is suitable, and that seems to me, certainly in remote work Europe. The issue that most people have is is that reality? I don't know. My feeling is we don't see enough content about the work, about transitioning into work that you can do from when did you say you were on this call today, chris?

Chris Cerra: 21:27

I am in Thailand Northern Thailand.

Maya Middlemiss: 21:29

So you need work that's not just location independent but to an extent time zone independent or asynchronous, that you can carry out from anywhere. I think a lot of people they see the hammocks on the beach and the influencer.

Chris Cerra: 21:46

Coconut.

Maya Middlemiss: 21:48

Coconut is everywhere and that's all great, but then I get DMs from people saying how do I get into the remote work industry? Where is this list of remote work jobs? As though it's a completely separate thing from the world of work that they were used to and that it means changing careers or it necessarily means giving up everything they're familiar with and entering into this strange new world of remote work jobs, as though they're something utterly separate. Whereas your case was a very good example. You got a job that you didn't even know offered that degree of flexibility until you realized that other colleagues were enjoying that. It was just work, right.

Chris Cerra: 22:33

It's interesting because you hit on something which is, I guess you can't, I can't blame people for like building content strategies and building businesses out of this, like emergence of remote work. I think it's like, hey, it's great, you know, keep doing it. But one thing that I remember maybe people don't remember this because they didn't see it, but pre pandemic, there were businesses and people you know like the big voices in this space weren't? They weren't pushing the secret list of remote job boards that no one knows about. They were actually pushing something different, which was let me help you convince your existing employer to help you go remote. Yeah because at that point there was this complete understanding that, like it is just work, it's just work. It's just that you're not doing it. It's not remote work, it's just work. And so, yeah, I think there's like there's a bit of a hype train that goes with everything that we've seen which builds us into like you're like you say, where's this secret list, the secret list that we have access to that other people don't?

Maya Middlemiss: 23:43

How do I change to doing that Like like you do, yeah, yeah, and I wish I had got that list. I wish I could just hand people a silver platter with a remote job on it. That's going to change their life. And I know that we have got pushback from employers as well, who've sometimes been subject to stealth, digital nomadding and people sneaking off. It started during lockdown. I think there are a lot of people who found themselves maybe not quite at home when they decided to hunker down and maybe didn't mention that to their boss. And do you know what they got away with it? Actually, for the most part, the work carried on until they had a health insurance claim or a random IP check or something that brought it all crashing down. So I think, maybe do you think organizations have been burned as well? Is there? Is that the pushback we're seeing? Or is it all just coming from managers who don't have a clue and want people back where they can see them?

Chris Cerra: 24:38

It's really interesting, I think this happens at so many different levels. I think probably the most applicable way to look at this the sake of this conversation is like an organizational culture level, and I think if we look at this idea that the future is freelance, maybe one way to assess the change in dynamic of organizational culture is maybe it's against your employment contract to work somewhere else, so maybe you don't have an employment contract, maybe you have a freelance contract which kind of removes that shackle. I think this all links in very nicely with the rise of fractional work that we see and all of these other things. I think the other way to look at it is a bit more top down. I've seen so much material and research that comes from yeah, I don't know who it comes from, I don't know where it comes from, which is really bad, but that's how research on the internet works these days. You don't always know exactly where. They would tell sources, but what feels like really credible sources have also cited that like a lot of the return to work mandates are kind of driven by huge you know big VC companies, huge private equity companies, a lot of people who are involved in commercial real estate. So yeah, I think that's one way to look at it, but I don't necessarily think that's the most applicable lens for the kind of future freelance conversation. I think actually more of the organizational culture view and more of how the kind of not just the future being freelance but the future workplace will just change a lot.

Maya Middlemiss: 26:40

Yeah, it's just got to become more flexible, both contractually and locationally, I think. And yeah, we couldn't really call the show the future is blended work or the future is fractional. We were just confused a lot of people. But certainly that what used to be a dichotomy between the 95 and freelancing is now a very complex spectrum of different ways of making a deal with somebody who wants to pay for what you can do for them. And certainly, yeah, it's definitely we're shifting along that spectrum and I agree, for a lot of people the way to go remote is to sever that employment contract, which is not something I'd ever encourage anybody to do on a whim. You can end up with a giving up a lot in terms of your the benefits that you get from it. We certainly see it's. It's often been a route that people move from the UK to Spain is to go freelance and set up a simple freelance structure here and contract to their previous employer and that works. But they don't often realize what they've got to negotiate financially to really replicate the terms and conditions they had previously, what that means in terms of their annual leave, allowing for being off sick from time to time, contributions to their retirement savings, which to try and get an equitable package is really difficult. But I suppose that's one of the steps that we want people to to take as they move into this new world of work is to own that. I think about what you need and then then negotiate it.

Chris Cerra: 28:16

What do you think is harder? Do you think that the wild core, like the logistics aspect of it, which is stuff like that, or do you think more of like the mindset side of like as possible? Like which do you think is a greater challenge for people?

Maya Middlemiss: 28:33

What an interesting question. I think they're very closely linked. I think the mindset piece has to start first, because I think the reason I think that is because of the amount of people I meet through remote work Europe who cannot contemplate anything other than being employed and having those hard edges on what they do, what they can earn, what the deal is, what's expected of them. And once you take away those guardrails there's so much more freedom and flexibility. But for a lot of people that's terrifying. And maybe it's just terrifying because it's unknown and they don't realize. Whereas once people break out of that, not only is anything possible but it's really impossible to go back in. I interviewed somebody in season one who was the CEO of an organization, a startup, but he said, yeah, I'm working for them, but I'm contracted with them under my limited company. Because I would never have an employment contract again, don't want one. And because it was interesting talking to an entrepreneur who'd gone to work for somebody else but he was doing it as a freelancer, I thought, yeah, I get it. He'd completely broken out of that bubble of ever being employed. But just as many of us could never contemplate that now going back to having 100% of your income and your activities in somebody else's control is. It seems unthinkable now, and I, but so many people, are still in that mindset. So if we could do nothing else with this podcast, let's try and imagine, stepping through that looking glass and seeing it from the other way around, that you own that process. You decide what you're doing.

Chris Cerra: 30:15

Yeah much the mindset. It's interesting because so much of pay is kind of like psychologically it's a very it's like it's like treacle pay. The topic of pay is like something you have to like struggle through mentally, you have to like wade through it and it's sticky and gooey and especially for us Brits, right, it's that thing. Yeah right, so culturally not okay.

Maya Middlemiss: 30:42

Yes, we talk about money.

Chris Cerra: 30:46

Oh cringe. So much of our self worth can be derived through what other people say they're willing to pay us. And actually I think there's a big mindset change which is like realising, when you make the realisation that there's x billion people on the planet and the internet is here and will help you, will help you take money from those people in the nice and sounding way. It's kind of bizarre that you would like limit your earnings to whatever salary it is that someone wants to pay you. It's like 50K, 100k, 200k, like why would you limit yourself to a set feeling like a ceiling set by somebody else, right?

Maya Middlemiss: 31:35

Especially if they want you to do it within an hour's travel of your apartment. All these artificial constraints that seem so crazy when you step outside them and look at them. Even the idea of a job description. It's like a list of things drawn up by somebody else of how you're going to spend your working life, and they've bundled together some things that you probably love and are really good at and some other things that they need done that tend to go with those things. It just seems an extraordinary way to make a living once you're outside of that paradigm.

Chris Cerra: 32:08

That's interesting because I just onboarded somebody. Today I got a contract with somebody contract important, remember With somebody to help support me with remote base, and that is a like I am so conscious of exactly what you've just talked about, like this idea of a job description. I'm like I have to have something for this ad of like here's what I need doing, right, so it has to exist in some to some degree, but, like, very, very quickly, once the decision was made, it's like okay, now we speak together about what this looks like.

Maya Middlemiss: 32:43

Yeah, what about this excites you? What doesn't? What would you add? What would you? Yeah, brilliant, so you'll end up with somebody actually cares and wants to operate in their zone of excellence.

Chris Cerra: 32:55

Right, like I only want to do this once. I want to do it once and get the right person and have them be with me for a long time and help me execute on loads of stuff that I see coming down the line. Not somebody to just like do the stuff, maybe with some advice, put in the hours and take the money. Yeah, that's.

Maya Middlemiss: 33:14

That's what it'll help you. So have you found this person have? You got did you say you were onboarding or something? I?

Chris Cerra: 33:21

found this person onboarded today. Yeah, and he asked me in a couple of months like how it was going.

Maya Middlemiss: 33:29

I shall. I shall because I'm very interested and on that, that sort of cusp from freelancing into more of a permanent team is something that theme I've been returning to a lot this season because it's a live issue for me. I've lived years of being ruthlessly solo and independent, realizing that you do have to collaborate with other people, that how you make that arrangement is something that I want to walk my talk about and make sure that it's a great experience for everybody. So it seems like the future is freelance, but also flexible, blended, complicated, interesting. What do you see? Look, we'll get into the time of year where I'm going to start asking people what do you see coming down the pipe for 2024? What should we be looking at in this space? What should we be excited about?

Chris Cerra: 34:18

I'm not really sure if it's something to be excited about. Honestly, I think that people should be prepared for like a longer like the pendulum is going to keep swinging for a long time. It's kind of like it will keep swinging back and forth between office and remote and hybrid and it'll just keep swinging. It's going to be. I think it will be a really really long time before we see like a appreciable change. I think it'll be a really really long time before we can look back and go oh yeah, that's different and it was probably going to move so slow that we don't really realise it in the moment. Kind of like watching a stock tick up and down. You don't really realise until you zoom out what the change has been.

Maya Middlemiss: 34:59

Yes, you can't see a trend yet. It's too early to call it.

Chris Cerra: 35:04

I don't think it's going to be. I think a lot like the internet, or it's not going to be something as huge as that, but yeah, I think when we zoom out it might be a five year thing or a 10 year thing, when we realise, actually, you know, We've arrived.

Maya Middlemiss: 35:19

Here's the new normal.

Chris Cerra: 35:20

Yeah, like only 20% of the people who used to work in an office still work in an office or something like that, full time at least, and it's funny because you know you're obviously at what looks like a home office. I'm working in the co-working space, which is basically a fancy word for an office. The difference is that this office is in Thailand.

Maya Middlemiss: 35:38

Yeah, and that's where you've chosen to be right now, for as long as you want to be, and then you head off somewhere else.

Chris Cerra: 35:45

Yeah, I would like to think that maybe something that is a bit more visible will be the bleed from domestic to international. So I think, as people kind of find their feet with domestic remote work and believe in themselves that it's possible and have built trust with their team or with the teams that they have contracted to, that they can then start to more comfortably move further afield. So maybe we'll just see more kind of global mobility in the next year.

Maya Middlemiss: 36:18

Yes, just to experiment with it, to sort of try out some new things, maybe in the new year. This was the year when I met you in Gran Canaria. That was the first year that my other half had started doing a bit of remote working, coming on trips with me because he's in that working from home as an employee stage, and it's like, come on, you got a laptop. This will be coming with you on this one, let's go and experiment with co-working, with co-living, with blending work and travel and life and experiences in new ways. And, yeah, that's been an interesting experiment that's going to carry on in our household into 2024. So I think it sounds like between us there's a lot of changes going on new team members, new opportunities, new adventures. I'm excited about that. Are you excited about the future?

Chris Cerra: 37:14

I could not be more excited about the future.

Maya Middlemiss: 37:17

Brilliant. Well, it's been a real pleasure talking to you about that today the past, the future, but now the realities of remote work and freelancing. Chris from RemoteBase, thanks ever so much for joining us today.

Chris Cerra: 37:30

Thanks for having me.

Maya Middlemiss: 37:32

Thank you for listening to the Future is Freelance podcast. We appreciate your time and attention in a busy world and your busy freelance life. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a fellow freelancer and help us grow this movement of independent entrepreneurs. If you rate and review the Future is Freelance in whichever app you're listening to right now, it really helps spread the word and that means we can reach more people who need to hear this message. Together we can change the world and make sure the future is freelance. Don't forget you can check out all our back episodes from other seasons and learn more over at futureisfreelancexyz. We're so grateful, not only for our listeners, but for the contributions of our wonderful guests and for the production and marketing assistance of coffee like media. This is Maya Midlemish, wishing you freelance freedom and happiness until our next show.