And why I never meant to do something so complicated , quite the opposite.
Words by Ed Templeton | 20th May' 25
The original idea? A simple life. Me, Sofie, surf, yoga, no staff, six months a year.
But then… Soul & Surf took on a life of its own. It grew. Slowly at first, then rapidly. And somewhere along the way, that simple life turned into a fairly complicated one.
Now, nearly 15 years in, I’m co-owner and co-director of seven companies in four countries. At peak season, we’ve got around 120 people on the payroll – a mix of employees and freelancers, all trying to make Soul & Surf happen in different corners of the world.
Image by Malva Lorensson
We’ve ended up dealing with multi-national corporation challenges, legals and logistics – with corner shop resources.
Since Sofie & I left Kerala in 2015 to open in Sri Lanka, we’ve been working mostly remotely. A small core team of us don’t work on the ground in location, we work across all the businesses, supporting managers, coaching staff, meeting, promoting, booking and firefighting from afar, rather than being on the ground at any one location.
We do still get the odd guest who feels a bit disappointed that Ed or Sofie didn’t spend the week hanging out with them all week, but, hey, we couldn’t do what we need to do and also work on site,
Most remote teams I read about tend to work in tech. They’re natural users of Slack, Zoom, Trello, Google Sheets, Notion and everything in between. Us? Well… 95% of our team seem to be allergic to all of that. Surf coaches and yoga teachers don’t dream in spreadsheets. We’re not Basecamp. We’re more… barefoot camp.
Our systems have to somehow connect a handwritten shopping list in a Sri Lankan kitchen to a spreadsheet in the UK, to a Xero dashboard on someone’s laptop in Portugal. All with multiple layers of human error lovingly layered in between.
Even writing that makes me shudder.
So yeah… running a multi-national company with the budget and backbone of a beachside café was never exactly part of the plan. But somewhere between scribbled expense lists and rogue Slack threads, we realised we needed to build some kind of system – not a tech startup-style matrix of AI-powered dashboards – but something that actually worked for real people, in real locations, doing real stuff. That’s where the mistakes started. And, eventually, the learning.
Image by Malva Lorensson
Let’s start with the early days we let everyone update everything. “Collaborative,” we thought. “Empowering,” we told ourselves. What we ended up with was a chaotic Google Drive (or was it Dropbox back then)graveyard of documents named some variation of “Copy of XYZ-new-FINAL-(v2)-USE THIS ONE.” Entire hours of our lives lost trying to work out who updated what, when, and why they saved it in a random folder called “2021 - URGENT” in 2025.
Then there was the classic remote-work error of over-complication. In our well-meaning attempt to introduce clarity, we built systems so logical, so beautifully structured, so deeply reliant on a love of spreadsheets… that only three people in the business understood them. One of whom was me. One of whom left. The other? Let’s just say they now live in the woods and only communicate via smoke signals.
And training. Ah yes, we trained our team, gave them a workshop, a doc, a helpful video. We assumed they got it. Until six months later, our lovely, loyal team members casually mention they’d never been told how to do that thing… You know, the thing they’d been trained on, watched the video, ticked the box on their training sheet saying ‘I’ve been trained on this thing.’
One of our old GMs kept Slack notifications on 24/7, replying at midnight because someone on a different timezone had asked a question, responding like their life depended on it. We only realised months later that they thought it was like WhatsApp – always on, always urgent. Oops. Burnout? Not ideal.
Lesson one: remote management doesn’t mean detached management. Our managers need to be present, hands-on, and tuned in—not in a creepy, hover-y kind of way, but in a I’ve-got-your-back way. It’s a delicate balance.
We also learned to create a culture where people feel safe to say “I don’t get it.” That bit’s crucial. We’ve had whole projects slowly unravel because someone didn’t speak up when they got lost back in week one.
The regular one-to-one video chat? Unskippable. Group calls and Slack threads can’t replace a proper check-in, face-to-face (even if it’s screen-to-screen). Especially in our world, where emotional intelligence counts for more than how fast you can type.
Over-communicate. Always. Be clear. Be human. Use emojis if you must. And for goodness’ sake, talk about something other than work. A team that laughs together, stays together—especially when they’re spread across time zones.
Recognition needs to be more intentional when you’re remote. A quick high five or pat on the back doesn’t travel well through fibre optic cables, so you need to actively notice and celebrate the little wins. A ‘great job’ message might feel small, but it’s big on the receiving end.
And finally: strip it back. What’s the minimum viable process you need? Remote work often pushes you to systemise everything—and yes, some of that is helpful—but it’s easy to build a fortress of SOPs nobody can scale. Sometimes, a shared note and a weekly call are enough.
Image by Malva Lorensson
Erm… Yeah. I mean, I think so, yeah.
It’s not easy. It’s often absurd. Sometimes it makes you want to run off and open a falafel van. But it’s also flexible, human, and full of possibility.
We’ve had team members raising kids in the countryside, others travelling the world between seasons, studying new things, and bringing their full selves to work in a way they couldn’t if they were stuck behind a desk from 9 to 5.
It’s the way forward—for us, at least. Remote doesn’t mean disconnected. And complicated doesn’t have to mean confusing.
We’re still figuring it out. Still tidying up those rogue Google Docs. But we wouldn’t go back.
