More Beach Meetings Podcast by Surf Office

David Dawoud: Building a Fresh Approach to Remote Hiring by More Beach Meetings

Chase Warrington: Building a Culture of Remote Work by More Beach Meetings

In today’s episode, we sit down with Natalie Nagale from Wildbit to discuss the importance of team retreats, how they use a people-first perspective to structure their offsite experiences, and the ways Wildbit is supporting workers in connecting with like-minded companies in other industries.

In today’s episode we sat down with Gamestorming CEO, Dave Mastronardi to learn more about how organizations can use gamestorming techniques to plan and structure their offsite experiences.

Cardiologs is a medical technology company that uses AI to improve cardiac diagnostics. The team is largely based in Paris, although some members work remotely in Boston. Linda Koenig organizes the company’s annual retreat. In 2019, the team joined Surf Office at our Valencia location. We talked to her on today’s podcast about her planning process, offsite agenda, and retreat follow-up.

Remote companies know that culture is important. But few companies spend as much time investing in culture as 15Five. Shane Metcalf, the company’s Co-Founder and Chief Culture Officer, believes that personal development and professional development are the same things. In today’s episode, we talked to Shane about building a culture that values individuals and how 15Five retreats are nearly as fun as Burning Man.

On this week’s episode of More Beach Meetings, we spoke to Laurel Farrer, a Remote Work Strategist and Consultant. Laurel works with some of the top remote-friendly companies in the world. She helps them optimize communications, update processes, and capitalize on the benefits of remote work. Laurel also contributes to high-level strategy in governments, businesses, and companies who want the benefits of a remote workforce.

How do you manage a physical product while remote? That's what we get into here on this week’s episode of More Beach Meetings. Our guest this week is Fred Perrotta, co-founder and CEO of Tortuga, a remote company specializing in travel products like their award-winning Setout Backpack.

Our guest is Monica Zeng, the human resources expert at Aragon One. In this podcast, we chatted with Monica about her approach to hiring, how she uses coaching to professionally develop the Aragon One team members, and some of the creative activities Monica’s dreamed up to make their offsite retreats a little more special.

We sat down with Wences Garcia, CEO and Head of Culture at MarketGoo, a SaaS SEO tool, to talk about managing and growing a fully remote team. In this podcast, we learned about Marketgoo’s culture, including transparency, ownership, and how they cultivate it with retreats. Please give it a listen or scroll down for the highlights!

Shane Pearlman is the CEO at Modern Tribe Inc, a fully distributed design and development company. A few years ago while on a company retreat, the owners looked at their vision and realized what they wanted out of the business required scale. Five years later they've gone from 20-100 employees, and continue to ask the question how will this let me "live well and do good work".

Michelle Ardiel is the Director of Photographer Operations at Flytographer, the very first platform created for vacation photographers that now works with 500 photographers in 300 cities around the world. Passionate about seeing the connections between travelers and local photographers, Michelle fosters community with intentional global retreats that build life-long friendships.  Notes: How creating a community allows for better retention The importance of social, not just work-related tasks during an off-site/meetup Booking a meetup depending on the busy/slow season of the business Booking in a city that is most convenient to the majority of the home base Why community is the most important thing

Melissa Ng is a digital nomad, Product UX Designer and the CEO & founder of Melewi, a fully remote design company that’s worked with clients such as McDonalds, Visa, and Samsung. Melissa has been leading a remote and digital nomad lifestyle for 8+ years. We sat down with her (remotely, of course) to ask about her beginnings as a remote worker, the struggles of founding a remote company, the importance of culture, how she hires, and more.

Today's guest is Kristi DePaul, the CEO of Founders Marketing, a company that creates bold content strategy for the future of learning and work. Kristi is a regular contributor on Remote.co's blog, where' she's contributed over 160 blog posts. I tried my best to get out of Kristi's way here, her view on remote work is one of empowerment and self-discovery that goes beyond the click-bait of digital nomad-ship. Let's get into it. Shows notes: - Kristi's favorite quote right now is from Set Godin, when looking at a meeting or a gathering of folks..."Who's not here might be the most important unasked question" - Gaining agency over, not just your current job, but the trajectory of your career - Remote work enables people to have a more productive and positive life - Her article: The Future of Work Belongs to All of Us: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/future-work-belongs-all-us-were-writing-every-day-kristi-depaul/

We sat down with Darren Buckner, CEO and founder of Workfrom, to discuss remote work, coworking spaces, how an idea was born out of his own need and how remote workers can find better coworking spaces in the future. Notes: - We talk about the isolation of remote work and how, even though most of us work from home the majority of the time, we crave the energy of co-working spaces - We talk about where people are working, and what community does to impact our passion and purpose in the workplace. - Workfrom's new product Homebase allows co-working on demand. Revolutionizing co-working and empowering the next generation of workers.

There's an overwhelming agreement that culture impacts every corner of your business. 94% of executives and 88% of employees believe a distinct workplace culture is important to business success. But why is corporate culture so important? We invited Marie Richter, VP of People at the fintech startup Billie, to talk about company culture - not the foosball table and free lunches kind, but the kind where people work together in an aligned and purpose-driven way. Marie is the VP of People at Billie. Previously she spent time at Google where she scaled operations across EMEA,and Soundcloud where she built their People Operations team, implementing the processes & programs to reach their hyper-growth targets.

We’re excited for today’s interview with Liam Martin, a man so dedicated to the remote lifestyle that he: ⌛️ Built a tool called Time Doctor to help remote companies perform better

Welcome back to another episode of More Beach Meetings, where we discuss team retreats, awesome remote and distributed companies and the stories behind them. Our guest today is Mary Hartberg from Close.io, where she works as the Director of People Operations. We talk about company retreats and what they do to build a culture as a fully remote company.

Leaving life as you know it to travel the world and become a digital nomad can be a pretty scary thought. What about doing the same, with your entire family? Some might think he’s crazy, but that’s exactly what Ken Weary does. Working as VP of Operations for Hotjar, Ken’s been traveling the world with his wife and children for the past 4 years. In today’s episode of More Beach Meetings podcast, Ken shares his experience on remote work, digital nomadism, traveling with his family and much more. Take a listen!

Stephanie Lee is the Operation Manager in Buffer and we discussed their company culture, approach to transparency, core values, hiring process in a distributed company and company retreats.

Davide is a Speaker, Coach, and Design Principal in Automattic's Design Operations team. Previously he designed various parts of the WordPress experience – across web and mobile – and the upcoming WooCommerce mobile apps. He's a polymath with a wide range of interests, all contributing to his perspective on design.

We talked with Leon Barnard, a designer and writer for Balsamiq. This distributed company has more than 30 employees spread across the world, and Leon told us how they work remotely, what their biggest challenges are and how their team collaborates across continents and time zones.

Sebastien Grosjean founded BookingSync with a view of turning his passion for vacation rentals into a leading, high-quality product. As a totally distributed company, we spoke with Sebastien about what it’s like working fully remote, and also some of the difficulties he has faced with this process. You can find out more about them here: https://www.bookingsync.com/

Noel Tock is the Chief Product Officer at Human Made, one of thirteen WordPress VIP agencies. We had an incredibly interesting chat with Noel, discussing open source platforms, the problems that come with being a digital nomad working for a distributed company, and the benefits of company retreats. Covering a range of topics from mental health to the importance of meeting your colleagues face-to-face, this is a jam-packed podcast that you don't want to miss!

Deborah is a People Success Manager at Buffer, a company that is renowned for the way it’s revolutionised social media. But it’s also renowned for the culture that it’s fostered at the company, and so we spoke with Deborah on where the future of social media is heading, how Buffer hire remotely, and just what makes their culture so great. Join Buffer's Slack channel here: https://buffer.com/slack

Sissel has been an entrepreneur since a young age. We discussed her story in greater depth, and how it’s led to her current project; Startup Guides. Looking for some inspiration? Look no further.

Laila is a designer at Hanno.co, a digital product design team all over the world. We spoke with Laila about remote work, where she sees the industry heading, and her awesome & growing ‘remote workshops’ project.