Making Remote Work More Accessible: A Conversation With Livit’s Lavinia Iosub

Lavinia Iosub is the Managing Partner of Livit, an international service provider for startups. Nexudus caught up with her over Zoom to find out more about Livit’s coworking hub in Bali and the company’s exciting new Remote Skills Academy. Livit is designed around empowering and enabling entrepreneurs and startups to grow businesses with a global impact, Lavinia begins.

I love working at Livit because I get to express myself through my work which is very important for me. We have a truly exceptional team—we're also nominated as one of Asia’s best places to work!

For Livit, it’s all about balancing work and play.

More and more these days there’s this feeling that if you want to be in the world of entrepreneurship it has to be a non-stop hustle; a lot of people come to us feeling burnt out. Set in paradisiacal surroundings—Pantai Karang, a tranquil white-sand beach is just a 5-minute walk away—the space contains spacious work areas, a cafe serving up delicious food and a “too-good-to-be-true” rooftop, with a 360° view over the island. 

We have a slide, swings, hammocks, a quiet room for napping and praying and meditation. Our beautiful rooftop terrace is perfect for social events and yoga, watching the sunset or working if you want to, Lavinia continues. Livit Hub is well-equipped to accommodate larger teams as well as individuals. Teams often use Livit Hub as a short-term retreat to regenerate whereas others find it a conducive environment for working productively and end up staying for a year or more.

It’s a “chore-free” environment with the team handling meals, wellness and sports activities, social activities, laundry and massages (except during the pandemic, of course).

However, workspace is just one of the services Livit specialises in. The space is just one thing we do: we have a whole stack of services, Lavinia continues.

We cover recruitment, retreats, HR and strategy services, business support services like legal admin, immigration and visas. We've also launched a Remote Skills Academy that’s designed to provide Indonesians and others with access to remote work education.Livit’s new Remote Skills Academy is an exciting programme that launched in April 2020 to much acclaim, despite the challenges posed by the coronavirus pandemic.

Changing lives through Livit’s Remote Skills Academy

The idea for an academy came about after Lavinia became increasingly frustrated with the huge disconnect between the “Instagrammable” digital nomad side of Bali and the reality for the local population.

People move here, get a beautiful villa with a pool and work away at their business, making money from clients who are thousands of kilometres away. 

Their lives are filled with epic trips, sunsets and smoothie bowls, but right outside that bubble—or even in that bubble—a lot of the local population are working in tourism-focused jobs that are very inflexible, low paid and seasonal, with very few opportunities for progression, Lavinia explains.

The idea behind the academy was to teach Indonesians the skills that some of us have been practising for many years, like online file management, how to take bookings and get money online, start a business remotely and work on digital products.I partnered up with an amazing project manager at the beginning of the year then we opened for applications for the first course in March.

The need for a training programme focusing on remote skills became even more relevant once the pandemic hit, Lavinia goes on to say.I spent $20 on advertising the first course and it booked up really quickly. We’re running more courses and covering more topics now, including online business management, project management and scrum master modules, as well as a module covering the basics of working remotely.

The academy’s training team is made up of Livit team members, people associated with the Livit community and guest professionals. We try as much as possible to offer Indonesian role models who are running successful businesses, Lavinia adds.

Due to COVID-19, the academy’s first course was conducted over Zoom. 

I don’t think remote work is the whole future but it's definitely part of it so why not make it available for more people? — Lavinia Iosub

Looking to the future with optimism

Despite the roadblocks created by the coronavirus pandemic, Lavinia has lots of interesting projects going on and looks forward to what the future holds for the Livit team. 

Within a week of the pandemic, we had to close the coworking space, cancel the events and refund lots of money. We also had a big acceleration retreat coming up and had been preparing for it for six months, which of course, in the end, went down the drain!But we thought: we can’t let this break us. What else can we do? What are the remote-capable things we do and can accelerate right now?

We’re currently building on the academy and we’re doing so much work with our clients on education training, HR business partner services, recruitment services, and so on. I think it’ll take us a while to go back to our “normal” carefree vibe but we’re embracing what is and trying to make the best of it. There’s still a sense of possibility and excitement!

To find out more about Livit’s coworking hub, Remote Skills Academy other services, visit liv.it.

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