We recorded a podcast about remote work, and met in person the same afternoon
I spent an hour talking to Aurora Meneghello about working remotely in Europe, down a video call, in the way I have had a few thousand conversations over the past twenty-odd years.
Then I went out that evening to the Valencia Nomads Hub, and there she was.
I knew she was in Valencia. What neither of us had was any firm plan to be in the same room that evening, so it was a happy accident rather than an arrangement. Which made it better, I think. We had spent the day discussing how people build working relationships at a distance, and then got to do the other half of it by chance a few hours later.
I have thought about it on and off since, because it illustrates something I say often and had not expected to have handed to me on the same day. Remote work does not replace being in a room with somebody. It changes what the room is for. The conversation worked perfectly well down a video call, the way a few thousand of mine have. Meeting her was a different pleasure altogether, and every bit as worth having.
Who Aurora is, and what the podcast is
Aurora runs Repurpose Your Purpose, a podcast and a coaching practice built around career change. Her audience is people working out what to do next, which is a different readership from mine and a useful one to be in front of.
Her questions were the ones you get from somebody who works with people in transition rather than somebody who covers the industry. Less “what is the state of the market” and more “what does this actually take, and who does it work for.”
What we covered
It runs to about an hour, and we got through more than I expected. The parts I would point you at:
- Who genuinely thrives working remotely, and why the answer has little to do with being an introvert or owning a good chair
- Remote gateway roles – the idea that there are jobs that will take somebody with real working experience and no remote track record, and how to recognise one
- What to do with experience that does not look like the job advert, which is the position most career changers are in
- How employers are actually deciding, and the timing question of when it is worth bringing in help
- How to research a country properly before you build a plan around it
If you have read much of what I write, the gateway roles material will be familiar. If you have not, that section is probably the best hour-long explanation of it that exists, because Aurora kept asking the follow-up questions rather than letting me move on.
Listen to it
It is episode 39 of Repurpose Your Purpose, and it is on Aurora’s own site along with everything else she has recorded. You will also find it on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
If the career-change question is the one you are actually sitting with, rather than the remote-work one, her podcast is worth more of your time than this page is.
