By Russell Benaroya
Photo Credit: Getty
In 2018, my wife, teenage kids and I packed two suitcases each, the dog and some hope, and boarded a plane for a year abroad in San Jose, Costa Rica. After living in Seattle for 14 years and running two startups, we decided to do a trajectory shift of our lives. We decided that we would finally prioritize the family over the next startup, and that we wanted to design our lives first and then figure out how.
We moved back to Seattle after a year in Costa Rica. I had a new business that was thriving. My wife and I had strengthened our relationship. My children’s eyes had been opened to many of those things they had previously taken for granted, and we learned quite a bit of Spanish and embraced the pura vida (simple life) culture of Costa Rica (to the extent that a Type A personality can do that). But the magic of a year abroad proved to us that we could take a leap and figure it out — that we are, in fact, our greatest limitations to achieving our own dreams.
Living abroad also forced us to figure out how we were going to support ourselves financially. Moving to Costa Rica was not a sabbatical. It was simply moving to another country. Now what?
I often frequented a small café in San Jose called Picnic. I liked sitting outside with my laptop, drinking coffee, writing, working and watching the day pass. It was also at Picnic that I had a realization that fundamentally altered my view of work. The future of work is not about working hard for some number of years and then retiring. No. The future of work is what I have come to call “geographic independence.”
Geographic independence is the idea that you can pursue your professional passion from anywhere in the world and achieve your economic goals while doing so. There is no sense of retiring as a goal. The idea of geographic independence is that you break down the barrier between work and life.
While I didn’t have a term for this before I left for Costa Rica, it was exactly the problem that I needed to solve. And because necessity is the mother of invention, I had to make it happen. Today, I am the co-founder of a virtual back-office bookkeeping and accounting firm that employs 45 people globally in a 100% remote workforce environment. Yes, you can be anywhere and work for our company. And while this is core to the fabric of my business, many companies in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic are transitioning to this possibility today. It’s been a game-changer.
For many years, in the frenzy of being an entrepreneur in a bustling city like Seattle, what I thought was freedom was actually captivity. I couldn’t see outside of my bubble. I was scared about what I didn’t know. Would I be able to support my family? Would I find a rewarding career path?
It took me too long to realize that I am actually the architect of my life. If I solve for my family as priority, the environment where I get the most energy and work that is firmly in my zone of genius, then everything else will get figured out. Geographic independence has become the rallying cry for the future that I wanted to create and what I believe is the future of work happiness and longevity for many leaders.
For the original article, visit: Forbes.
