Simone Gribble – Endzone’s Baker Accountant
Meet Simone Gribble (no, she's not a fictional cartoon… this is her self-portrait! You'll see the real Simone below).
Simone is in charge of finances and general admin duties here at Happyporch. She’s great at crunching our numbers but that doesn’t mean she’s all work and no play.
Since we’re a small dispersed team, Simone isn’t required to work full time or even at typical working hours. The flexibility of her role allows Simone to live her ideal lifestyle–splitting each year between Australia and Europe, working various contract jobs, pursuing new hobbies and self-publishing her personality driven Kindle baking and recipe books.
That’s right, she not only handles our salary, she pays us in scones, (manly) cupcakes and no-bake slices to boot.
But even with the flexibility and freedom Simone's work allows, it sure doesn't make her lazy. This week alone, Simone's published her latest Kindle book (a recipe book to make tasty and unique flavoured scones!), attended a shoe-making class, worked on another contract job, and helped plan our team meet up in May.
It’s a typically busy week for Simone and she wouldn’t have it any other way.
Simone Gribble - the baking admin extraordinaire
And that’s what Simone loves about working in a remote web agency, the freedom to pursue her creative interests while adding professional finance and admin experience to her skill set. A remote job and lifestyle means she doesn’t have to give up her hobbies or anything else for that matter.
But Simone is the first to admit that working remotely doesn’t come without it’s challenges. She sadly admits that so far she’s only managed to find one beach with reliable wifi… in Turkey.
More seriously, communication and relationship building can be affected when it comes to working remotely. As Simone cheekily put it:
You don’t have to get bogged down with office politics when all you want to do is get a glass of water.
Truthfully, when it comes to remote communication, Simone manages through the challenging parts very well, explaining:
I do miss sharing a little bit as it’s hard to do in text format. But that’s why I like when pics are shared in Slack–holiday pics or an office for the day. Reminds me that if I work hard I can make it to the beach soon, too. Communication is challenging if you need feedback because of the different timezones. But it’s okay because the type of admin and finance work that I do is not timezone critical. My job doesn’t affect other people as long as things get done.
That's all on Simone for now. If you’d like to check out her awesome recipe books, you can find her work here on Amazon.
How about you? What kind of life does your web agency bring you? Professional or creative, business or leisure, let us know on Twitter with the click to tweet button below.