Hello. We’re Envato - we have 90 remoters and thousands of authors all over the world! AUA!

@oscar Go Pagely!! I got to meet Josh and Sally at Pressnomics #1 and they were awesome!

Good question, I think some of it is the culture of Automattic the parent company. They are completely dispersed (side note, if they haven’t done an AMA, they totally should) - which has led to a lot of other companies being remote friendly like WooThemes, ourselves, and so on. Then the WordPress foundation is setup to encourage global Wordcamps and they’ve been very successful at it too. Finally the WordPress economy itself, like ThemeForest, is also very global and dispersed.

So I think it’s a combination of things, but as it often is, I think it starts from Matt/Automattic and feeds all the way down into the ecosystem. It’s one of my favourite things about WordPress and much credit to Matt for building it this way.

@skat Great questions about selling on sites like Envato Market or other marketplaces.

There is definitely way more competition these days. If I look at ThemeForest where there are thousands of WordPress themes for sale, to do well you have to be really, really good. But if you are then the rewards are pretty big. We had a new author in 2014 launch a theme that has already sold almost $2m worth.

In terms of where our authors/sellers are located, we have a little over half in the US, Canada and Europe. So I think it’s pretty diversely spread across the globe.

You’re completely correct of course that working from a place with cheaper cost of living means you can sell less and do very well off it — thats a big part of nomad’ing!

In terms of where do people make a living. For Envato we have some very high volume sellers on all our markets. Most of our larger markets (Themes, Code, Video, Music, Graphics) have people earning over $25,000 p/month after our fees are deducted.

Hope that helps!

Fixed the typo

Having that record is great. There’s a saying I read a while back. Something about “unless it’s in a digital format, it didn’t happen”. That kind of attitude helps, and again it doesn’t just benefit the remote experience.

Great question @Bear!

Having first come from the remote side, then moved to co-located and then experienced each every other month; what seems to have made the biggest impact in this area is being mindful of the broader team (as a whole, regardless of location). The tools and processes facilitate the mindset, but if the mindset is there, people will find a way to communicate to all the right people regardless of location.

With that said, the tools really help and are getting better every day! Slack has done a great job bridging gaps in these areas as well as Hangouts via Chromeboxes we have in nearly all our office meeting rooms (big TV with HD webcam and conference speaker / mic). Scheduling meetings is quite easy since we’re all on Google Apps Calendar (where we can book meeting rooms, etc).

@bear - that would be cool! I really want to open up the Envato HQ in Melbourne to have a coworking spot for Envato authors … except we’re growing and we keep running out of space in every office we inhabit :-/ (Good problems to have I guess!)

Ohh, good questions @atu

1) Did you notice any difference between managing 10 remoters and 90 remoters?

I’ll add some of my experiences to what @collis said on this one. +1 “Heaps of differences!”

It goes without saying that communicating well through all available means in remote teams is really key to success, but even more so as the team grows. You inherently lose body language communication when remote, which actually accounts for a large amount of the communication people do with each other and how you understand people. People’s varying ability and willingness to adapt to and understand an environment like this becomes much more visible as the team grows partially because, as Collis said, it’s much easier to have closer relationships with 10 people than 90.

There are also some general “rules” of human nature where team structure will form organically as the group size increases if it isn’t purposefully shaped along the way. Although this mostly mirrors non-remote, the challenges it presents are often compounded depending on the the foundation of systems the team is built on (communication, agreed values, etc).

What surprised me early on in managing the Market Quality team as it has grown over the years (50 and growing) was how group / team size related to individual performance and happiness. Though not limited to remoters, it seems to have been more challenging to get it right.

I also found that (maybe depending on the type of work?), the time required for communication wasn’t a linear increase with team size and doesn’t follow the same trends as non-remote teams. As a remote team grows, they tend to require more time for communication than an equal sized non-remote team (where time needs increase faster for remoters). However, when a team reaches a certain size, the required time for communication seems to slow down a lot (requiring less than non-remote).

Having said that, I think it’s very dependent on team structure, type of work, mixtures of personalities and other variables.

Speaking personally as a manager having experienced between a few and 40+ direct remote reports, I learned a lot about the demands various remote team sizes has on me. This is when I initially adopted polyphasic sleeping to better suit a range of time-zones.

2) What is the next step for nomadism? and remote worker?

+1 regarding visas. The world simply isn’t there yet. I’ve called many immigration departments to make sure I’m following the rules, but largely they’re unable to understand how what I’m doing fits into their existing system.

I’m excited about the growing trend for sharing (housing, cars, bikes, etc). This will be a great enabler for nomadism. The applications we use today that facilitate this sharing are largely based on establishing trust level with total strangers. I love this!

I’m also quite excited about recent growth in remote working facilities like cafes, shared offices, libraries, etc. People are quickly opening to the idea that anyone off the street can pop into their shop for a couple hours to be both productive in their work and a consumer enjoying what the shop has to offer.

Beyond these areas, I think the next step is what’s happening with the nomad / remote working community where it’s organizing and strengthening through an increasing number of people with a strong vision for the community’s future, enabling more people to get started.

Edit: One more! There’s more and more information and opportunities online that enable these lifestyles, which I hope to see become much more common place. Like Envato!

@atu - great questions. Jarel and Damir will have some views on this stuff too! But here’s my take:

(1) Heaps of differences!
Having remote teams is inherently complex and hard. With 10 people you can fudge through some problems because you can have closer, more personal relationships with everyone. So for example when we had remote meetups I would have coffee catchups with every person there. That worked even when there was 25 remoters.

With 90 people you need better team structures, tools, and communication systems. We have a long way to go on all of these - and we’re always working to improve. But if we had a remote meetup now (which would be tough to do!) having an hour long coffee with everyone would take two weeks!

In some ways it mirrors scaling non-remote people too, you need to figure out how to disseminate information quickly, how to make everyone feel they have access to what’s happening, help teams communicate with each other and internally, and so on.

A few things that work well for us which spring to mind:

• We use Slack and other similar systems for chatting online
• We film lots of company meetings so that videos of our All Hands and things are available
• We rigged up all our meeting rooms with TVs and Chromeboxes so we can run Google Hangouts really easily
• We try to make sure there’s some human touch stuff like hand written Christmas cards

(2) Interesting question. I think the big open issue in my mind for nomadism is around visas and things like that
The world isn’t really rigged up for some of the things that nomads and remote workers do, and so there’s a lot of places I think where people fudge things, and by and large it’s pretty harmless.

I don’t know how it happens, but I’d love to see someone crack offering services to help companies make work anywhere a bigger, easier, thing to run with less risk and compliance worries.

(3) So different than these days!
Back then there was just a handful of people, we were all very green about how business works, and completely concentrated on making products. That had pluses and minuses. I think there were things we didn’t do very well in terms of making Envato a great place to work (aside from anything else, we had like no money!) but on the flip side the general spirit and culture was already really strong.

There was a lot of long hours then, but that’s still true - just very different content. Back then I used to design and build and write and make. These days I’m in spreadsheets and meetings and prioritisation. It’s still interesting, but a completely different kind of interesting.

Going remote now is much harder. That said, Cyan and I are thinking to go stay in Taipei with our two little boys, at the end of the year for a few weeks and try being a #remoteceo

@Bear Being one of the newer members of the team, I’ve always worked with remote staff since coming onboard. Over the last year and a half I’ve noticed the remote experience improve a lot.

As Collis mentioned, better technology has helped the remote experience without a doubt. What I find just as important is the attitude towards the remote experience at Envato. We think it’s important, and it’s simply not cool to run a meeting without taking into account remote staff.

I think empathy is a key ingredient in making the remote experience work. Us Melbourne staff spend one day each week working from home. This means that on any given day at least one of your team members won’t be in the office. Creating a remote friendly work environment isn’t just going to help people working outside of Melbourne, but all of us individually. Since the introduction of the WFH policy Envato has become quite remote friendly.

Also, processes! I used to communicate about important aspects of my design work (escpecially feedback) in face-to-face meetings. Now most of that discussion happens in InVision, Trello and Slack. Without this process in place there’d be no way for me to be able to work from Europe this year. Personally I also prefer asynchronous communication because I’m an introvert, and I find that I can present my ideas in a better way if I have the time to think through them more carefully.

Remote-friendly is not the same as a completely distributed and nomadic work environment. Legal limitations like immigration and tax laws make it challenging, especially for a company the size of Envato. Having said that, when your CEO does an AMA on a forum for digital nomads you know the motivation is there to make it possible.

@bear - I’ve noticed that too. I guess the mindset of going nomad is similarly non-conformist to an entrepreneurial mindset!

That’s right, we’re still bootstrapped, though we’ve never acted as VC/Investor. I hope one day that we will be a bit more of one, but at the moment it’s all been internal focus around here!

Hi @Jaclyn!

Before I started living abroad every other month, I moved out of my place (lived alone) and over to share a flat with two friends who were looking to fill their third room. That reduced my expenses a lot in Australia. I’ve looked into Airbnb options but it was still more expensive at the time.

I also suspend some of my services (cell, etc) when I leave to save a little extra, do quite a bit of research for places to stay abroad to keep expenses down (another reason I love nomadlist.io!) and save a lot by investing in fewer things with more utility and durability.

Hey @bear, just to add to what Jarel wrote - it’s tough to manage! I’ve had a few calls with airport noises in the background - never a great professional look!

At some airports - I see them in Asia a lot - you can find lounges that are unaffiliated with an airline and you can pay to enter and use their wifi. They help, especially on long stopovers in between places. But most of them are pretty quiet, so still doesn’t fit voice calls.

I think the best thing you can do is prep to make sure you’ve got some coverage while you’re travelling. I also try to line up lots of quiet work to do on the plane so that at least on either side I can do the more collaborative stuff.

Working on planes is pretty horrible though, especially when you’re tall with arms that extend right out of your seat. My pro tips are look up what kind of plane you’re going on, see if you can get one with USB or other charging ports to extend battery life on your devices, and give up on feeling comfortable

When I land, I usually try to get some internet going asap. Either coming in with prepaid phone roaming (which is exorbitant but always works) or with a local SIM if I have a bit more time on the ground.

Hi @Bear!

For me it would depend on the length of time and mode of travel. Long flights lend well to thinking time I find really valuable, so I tend to scribble ideas, notes, writing or just practice a little meditation, which usually results in creative problem solving I can put into action once I’m on the ground.

It’s a little different when you’re in the back of a van or bus for 5+ hours raging down the road in Thailand and you get an urgent email from your team. As tech advances though, it’s easier to stay connected and find creative ways to tackle whatever needs to be done. I’ve tackled lots of email on long journeys between cities in SEA where I’ve largely been offline and only needed a brief connection.

Aside from this, planning has been key for me. I keep the team up to date on where I’m going and when I’ll be available, organize my work ahead of time and research my likely connectivity, etc.