Rob Price

Building a small business can be a lonely and frustrating affair.  I’m sure all the entrepreneurs out there know what I mean.  We’re supposed to be sharing our passion with the world every day and, instead, we’re stuck doing accounts, managing the IT department (OK, turning things off then on again as the only solution to any technical problem)… and, of course, begging for meetings with the janitor at any larger organization!

Rarely are there folks around who understand the nature of your challenges… or the gravity of your small victories.  I mean, which of your family and friends would drop what they are doing to have a celebratory beer with you when someone at Cigna returned your call?!

Anyway, the prospect of spending a year with a community of likeminded individuals who take an interest in what you are doing, are there to bounce things off and even weigh in when you need help or guidance sounded pretty damn appealing to me.

Oh, and travelling the world at the same time, I mean… WTF? Up until about 2 years ago I had been travelling pretty solidly for a few years… and only just getting started!  As my business began to gain gravity I was able to do this less and less, a factor I was really resenting.

In summary, I guess you could say RY solved a fair few of the issues that were irking me.
 

How did you hear about Remote Year?

Ah!  In March of last year I was trekking in Patagonia with with a friend of mine.  He was walking behind me chatting to someone we had just met on the trail and she was telling him about this amazing new program that a friend of her’s was applying for.  They were a little behind me so I was taking in small snippets of the conversation.  ‘12 cities in 12 months’, I heard… ‘A group of 70 likeminded professionals’… ‘a mobile community working and travelling the world.’

I stopped dead in my tracks… turned around, and practically yelled at her “What the #*@ did you just say??”  

She has since become a good friend and we regularly laugh about the intensity of my question. She didn’t know whether to laugh or run down the mountain.  I got back a week later, applied the day I arrived… and was off to Prague 6 weeks later to start this crazy adventure.
 

How did you find yourself a remote role?

Well, I went up to my boss, looked at him straight in the eye and said “You are an absolute asshole if you don’t let me do this”.  He pondered for about 20 seconds, stroked his chin for a moment and replied with two simple words.

“Hell Yeah!”

I then turned from the mirror walked to the computer and accepted the offer to join :)… small business does have its advantages.

Jokes aside, it did take a fair bit of organizing… especially when it came to balancing which customers to tell and which to… well… ‘manage’.  But, at the end of the day nothing was going to stop me getting on that plane.  
 

Compact Health is a start up created to bring the ‘science’ of good health to ordinary people.
Our flagship program is called the Power of Calm and it helps people do a better job of identifying when stress is negatively affecting their health and performance and delivers a simple set of skills and strategies to help reduce it in an efficient, scientific and effective way.

My goal for this year is to create a fully digital version of our health education program, one that can get into the hands of all those who need it, wherever they may be.