Life in the Romanian countryside: How I work remotely from a village with my team in Bucharest

When I moved to the countryside a year and a half ago, I did not know for sure how things would go on the work front. I just knew I was not happy anymore in Bucharest, and I had to do something. So after 20 years of living and working there, I took the plunge and left the city. Here's how I work now remotely with my team still in Bucharest, and the tools and system which help us.

I had some things in place before leaving, a checklist of minimum criteria to be met, allowing us to live and work in a village in Northern Romania while our team was in Bucharest. The rest, we organized along the way. This was my checklist at the time: 1. Can my work be done remotely? For many years, I worked on the editorial side of our media project: I interviewed people, wrote news, went to press conferences. Meanwhile, my business partner took care of sales and business development. After my son was born three years ago, I had to remove myself from the continuous information cycle which I could not sustain anymore, so we agreed I would run the whole company: admin, project development, sales overview, marketing, while my partner covered the active sales part. All of my tasks can be done, some with some workflow changes, remotely. I was not the company’s sales face, so my leaving did not have an impact on revenues. Yes, sometimes I wish I can attend some meetings face to face, but usually, video calls or phone calls successfully replace all these, if you explain the situation well. And sometimes I do travel to Bucharest for meetings, including business partner and team meetings. 2. Do I have people I can trust in Bucharest? The answer was: absolutely. We have a small team, but we’ve been working together for many years, trust goes both ways and I knew I could count on them doing the things we needed done, without me being physically in the office to supervise. This was of the essence, and I partially tested it during my Bucharest time, when I was sometimes too working from home. Trust did not only cover day to day activities but more sensitive issues like representation at the bank, financial administration, and contract signatures. These are usually areas which Romanian entrepreneurs have a hard time delegating. 3. Do my business partners understand and accept my move? Do I have their support? The answer here was again: Yes. At the time of the move, I had just one business partner, the second one joined after I had left Bucharest (and this was no impediment for him investing in our company, as things have been going very well). We discussed how it would work with me remotely and a few ideas I had to make sure things were running smoothly without me there all the time. This support was another important weight for my decision. 4. How well do I know my team and communicate with them?