By CHERYL ROMANO/YachatsNews.com
“Oh, you get to work in your pajamas.”
“You’re so lucky; you can set your own hours.”
“It must be great to be your own boss.”
The remote workers who call Yachats home — whether they call themselves freelancers, independent contractors or consultants — are used to remarks like these. They also know that while some myths about remote work are just that, they still count themselves fortunate to enjoy the central Oregon coast while working for clients elsewhere.
“Working from home” has become the new normal for many under the COVID-19 pandemic, but this mode has long been everyday business for a growing group of Yachats residents. Armed with online meetings, texts and email, these professionals stay productive while (only sometimes) staying in their pajamas.
“I do make my own hours,” says Linn West, a licensed architect who works from home as an architectural specifications consultant. “On a nice, sunny day, I can go outside and work for a few hours, then do my client work in the evening, or whenever I choose. As long as I meet the deadlines, the clients don’t really care.”
“Meet the deadlines” is a non-negotiable part of working remotely.
“Yes, you can be more relaxed about when you do the work,” says West, “but only to a point if you want to work for a particular client again.”
His work begins with a client’s architectural drawings. From there, West investigates all the materials and products needed to create a structure and makes recommendations. From this data he creates a project manual that accompanies the drawings. Self-employed for three years, West and his wife, Viki, moved from Eugene to Yachats last year and into a striking contemporary home that West designed.
West, who recently joined the Yachats Public Works & Streets Commission, works on projects with a partner in Lake Oswego he’s known for decades. They do virtually no marketing because their reputations have spread by word-of-mouth among architectural and engineering firms. Those clients bring West and his partner work for a variety of organizations, ranging from the University of Oregon to the Hillsboro Police Department.
“If I hadn’t built the base of my business by reputation, I’d have to frequently be out marketing and making contacts,” he said.
Building a career base is crucial, according to those who are successful at remote work.
“You do better work when you’re loving where you live”
When James Kerti moved to Yachats from Beaverton in 2015, he was already self-employed designing and building websites, and he brought his remote clients with him. As a former college and professional basketball scout, he had many clients in sports, and also in New Age spirituality. Now focused on online marketing and strategy, he gets most of his new business from referrals — and derives the most pleasure from the freedom that remote work affords.
“Having previously worked in the corporate world as a software engineer, the thing I like the most about working from home is that I get to choose with whom I work,” he said.
And he appreciates his Yachats home setting, too.
“Yachats is a great place to be, period, and for work, too,” said Kerti, who was on the Yachats City Council for a year before resigning in January. “You can always do better work when you’re loving where you live.”
Another plus for Kerti is the flexible schedule — yes, he can set his own hours, but that doesn’t mean a life of leisure.
“I’m not pinned to a 40-hour workweek,” he said. “On average, I work about 50 hours a week.”
What’s not so lovable about running a remote business? “The overall feeling of responsibility that I have to do it all.”
For those considering transitioning their careers to remote work, Kerti notes that a high-speed Internet connection is a must, especially to help online video meetings go smoothly. Beyond that? “Don’t spend a lot of time trying to understand how to make every single aspect work, but focus on getting those first three clients. If you can get three clients, you can figure out the rest of it from there.” He’s seen others spend months creating cool websites and business cards, and “end up with nothing to show for it. If you get the first three clients, you’ve validated what you can do, and you can take it from there.”
Web designers in town
Good websites are a must for almost every business, and they’re bread-and-butter for two other Yachats residents. Bruce Rawles and Nancy Bolton-Rawles are the husband/wife team behind Intent Design Studio, which specializes in web design, implementation and maintenance. They also offer graphic design (Bolton-Rawles’ specialty), search engine optimization and marketing services for small businesses.
The couple moved to Yachats just over three years ago, having lived most of their lives in California. While they do have “a handful” of local clients (including YachatsNews.com), most of their work is done remotely for businesses ranging from biomedical equipment to publishing to a tourist venue in eastern Canada. “I’m on Zoom or Skype at least daily,” says Bruce Rawles, referencing two popular video conferencing software programs.
Their biggest challenge?
“There aren’t enough hours in the day,” he notes, because the online world has “so much to keep up with.”
“There’s almost daily behind-the-scenes work with site maintenance and updates,” said Nancy Bolton-Rawles.
Bruce Rawles focuses on the technical side of websites, having previously worked as a hardware/software engineer for about 20 years. Nancy Bolton-Rawles, with degrees in fine art, illustration and computer art/design, is often called on to “help people understand the web is not the same as a newspaper or magazine. There are layout parameters that you have to follow, plus making a site mobile-responsive so it looks good on a phone, a tablet and even a big-screen TV.”
For those who might be considering remote work from a place that can be as, well, remote as Yachats, the duo has some advice. “Stay connected with everyone you can,” urges Rawles, “and get free accounts for the tools of the trade, like Zoom and Skype.”
For her part, Bolton-Rawles offers, “Make sure you carve out time for yourself. When you work from home, you get pulled in a lot of different directions.”
Working, retired, working again
Another Yachatian had a definite direction in mind — retirement — but then the COVID-19 pandemic struck.
“Now that I can’t travel, I’ve temporarily come out of retirement,” says Elaine Watkins. A former history and English teacher, she had been working remotely as a writer/editor in educational publishing for about three years, since moving to Yachats from California. Watkins retired in December, despite the pleas of clients who kept offering her work.
“I really enjoyed working from home. My time was my own, and I could command top dollar because of my expertise,” she said.
Still, it became time to focus on “travel, and visiting my grandkids.” So Watkins retired. She had made extensive travel plans for 2020, but when they were quashed by pandemic restrictions, she accepted work for the first time in months. The project from a New York publisher: review some middle school history textbook study guides.
“Strange, how work looks more palatable when you’re stuck at home,” she said.
“All the work I’ve done as a freelancer was built on a skillset I already had,” said Watkins, who points to that continuity as key to success. “When you move your career to working remotely, you want to go to a field where you already have expertise.”
Her foundation was certainly solid: she spent some 30 years teaching in Sedona, Ariz., then moved to California. There, she worked as a college and career counselor at a high school, and then earned a certificate in professional copy editing from the University of California at Berkeley.
‘”I loved being able to wake up when I was ready to, and work when I was ready to,” she recalls of her short-lived retirement.
Glad that she can live in Yachats and continue working for clients anywhere, Watkins looks forward to the day when she can call herself retired again.
Tech tools of the remote trade
Looking to take your work online? Tech tools abound for file storage, video conferencing and more. Below, Yachats web pros Bruce Rawles and Nancy Bolton-Rawles offer some of their favorites:
Tools that have free, easy-to-explore versions:
