Business owner from Whiteley celebrates a year of working virtually from Spain

Colin Bielckus, owner of Outsourced Finance Director, has worked remotely from Spain for the past year.

Colin Bielckus, who runs Outsourced Finance Director, has been living in Estepona, Spain with his wife since December last year, after virtual working allowed him to run his business abroad.

Colin, 65, would suffer during the British winters due to the harsh cold, and he and his wife always planned to eventually move to a warmer country when work didn’t get in the way.

But due to lockdown enforcing more virtual ways of working, he was able to completely run his business and serve his clients from the Costa Del Sol.

Colin said: ‘I’ve managed to move my business from Whiteley to Estepona, almost seamlessly, without losing one client. There isn’t a huge time difference anyway, but even that hasn’t got in the way and with two clocks in the house – one on UK time and one on Spanish – I’ve managed to not be early or late to any meetings.

‘I think that perhaps my clients wouldn’t have been quite as accepting, if it weren’t for the fact that virtual and remote working was so widely accepted and welcomed by the time we made the move. Most people were already taking meetings on Zoom, Teams and every other online platform, that it wasn’t an inconvenience and you almost wouldn’t be able to tell I was in another country.’

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Colin and his wife Lorraine, who does some work for him, both still keep in touch with their connections in the Portsmouth area and have made more connections thanks to online networking.

He said: ‘The networking groups that I’m a part of would typically meet face-to-face before lockdown moved online when lockdown started, and a lot of them have continued to run virtually, so we’ve still been able to network in Portsmouth and the UK as a whole.

‘I’ve even been getting enquiries from people in the UK, who haven’t even batted an eyelid when I’ve said I’m living in Spain. It just goes to show you can work from anywhere nowadays.

‘If anyone’s thinking of doing something similar and has always said “one day”, why wait? It’s completely possible and I’m happy to give anyone advice and help if they’re considering a big move.’