The Resilient Entrepreneur, Edition #106
Hi there
I hope you had a great week!
Here are the topics in today's edition:
- My Office Is Where My Backpack Is: Lessons From 10 Years of Remote Work
- How to Manage Multiple Projects Without Burning Out
Please reach out with comments, questions, or suggestions for articles!
Talk soon,
Tom
TACTICS FOR RESILIENT ENTREPRENEURS
My Office Is Where My Backpack Is: Lessons From 10 Years of Remote Work
Remote work gives professional flexibility to companies and personal flexibility to employees. But you need the right equipment for it.
Everything used to be better in the old days. Really? Let’s flash back to the world of work in 2015. That was before the COVID-19 pandemic, yet we already had most of the software tools allowing remote work at that time. But remote work wasn’t common yet.
At that time, I worked in a large company, and it was strictly forbidden to work from home on Fridays — apparently, because people would misuse their liberties and extend their weekends at the company’s expense. Of course, my boss made an exception for himself regularly.
Let’s flash back even further, to 2001. At that time, I started studying engineering at university. There existed a thing called “computer rooms.” That’s where we went to solve our programming homework. We wrote C++ programs on big, ugly Unix workstations.
At the same time, my late father was an executive in a large industrial corporation. When he had to finish work on the weekend, he didn’t do it from home. He drove his car to the office, some 40 km away, because that’s where his computer and his office were.
Back to 2026. As the Founder & CEO of Yonder, a B2B SaaS company, my colleagues and I work from wherever we are. We still like to see each other, and that’s why everyone based in Switzerland comes to our physical office on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. For our colleagues based outside Switzerland, we bring them to Switzerland for a work week every 6 months.
No doubt, remote work has huge professional and personal benefits. The advantages of remote work have been discussed widely, mainly at the height of the pandemic, so I refrain from repeating them. But let’s look at two specific aspects from my daily life as an entrepreneur: The flexibility remote work facilitates, and the (very modest) equipment you need to succeed in such a setup.
The Flexibility
A few weeks ago, we had an infrastructure problem affecting one of our customers who went live just a few days earlier. As usual, the infrastructure problem didn’t occur on a Monday morning at 9 am, but on a Sunday at 6 am. I was on vacation, the customer success manager was at a family gathering, and our DevOps guys were at home with their families somewhere in Eastern Europe.
Within 2 hours, the problem was fixed. How did we do it? First of all, everybody in the company was aware that this new customer was about to go live. Therefore, our DevOps guys on on-call duty knew that their assistance would likely be needed over the weekend. Furthermore, both the customer success manager and I knew that being responsive is important for any new customer, so we kept our laptops close to intervene if needed.
We don’t celebrate being always-on, but if it’s needed, we’re not shy to do whatever it takes anywhere, anywhen. Our remote work mindset gives us the professional flexibility to do so without maintaining large on-call teams that sit idle most of the time.
What does our team get in return for their professional flexibility? Nobody needs to take half a day off in our company for a medical appointment, a school gathering, or an extended lunch with a good friend. Flexibility is two-sided — if you expect professional flexibility from your team, you have to give them personal flexibility in return.
The Equipment
Working flexibly needs the right equipment. It means you need to be able to carry all necessary equipment with you at all times. So forget about large 50-inch screens, gaming chairs, and height-adjustable desks.
I got accustomed to this work setup when I worked in global sales from 2015 to 2019. Very often, I’d find myself in an airport café with a shitty WiFi signal, drawing technical plans on my laptop, which I needed to compile proposals. The proposal was then finalized in an economy class seat on the plane heading back home. Because I traveled very often, I avoided checking baggage whenever possible. This meant that my mobile office needed to be lightweight.
Since that time, I keep everything I need for my daily work in a Minaal office backpack (no affiliation here, but it’s the best piece of equipment I ever owned). All the dashboards I need to run the company fit on a MacBook Pro 16-inch screen, so there is no excuse that I can’t work on certain things because I’m working on a small screen.
Besides my laptop, I always carry my mobile phone, my AirPods Pro noise-cancelling headphones, my iPad (which I can use as a second screen), and a power bank to extend the juice of my devices if needed. The setup is complemented with the daily amenities such as a water bottle, a toothbrush, a small paper notebook, a Swiss Army knife, and a head lamp — you never know when adversity strikes.
Those 10 kg of equipment have accompanied me through the last 10 years of my professional life, and they gave me the ultimate freedom as an entrepreneur: My office is where my backpack is.
STRATEGIES FOR RESILIENT ENTREPRENEURS
How to Manage Multiple Projects Without Burning Out
I am often asked, “How do you manage to juggle everything?” Managing multiple projects requires organization, discipline, focus, and frustration tolerance.
Entrepreneurs juggle many hats. Customers, sales, investors, finance, employees — everybody wants your attention.
On top of that, many entrepreneurs have families, and surprisingly, many entrepreneurs are involved in volunteer work in addition to their daily grind.
I think I fit this pattern pretty well. Besides being the Founder & CEO of Yonder, a B2B SaaS company, my wife and I are raising three kids, I’m an active reserve officer in the Swiss Armed Forces, and I serve as a volunteer on two school boards.
I am often asked, “How do you manage to juggle everything?” This article aims to share some of my practices to manage my daily life.
Before you continue, it’s important to understand two things: First, I’m not superhuman. Everyone can learn the practices outlined below. And second, building practices takes time. Just as getting rich quickly won’t work, developing those practices quickly won’t work.
1. Get Organized
First and foremost, you need to get organized when you want to juggle multiple projects and activities. Over the years, I have developed a planning system using Asana to stay on top of things.
This system keeps me out of delays and urgencies, as it helps me work on tasks well before their deadlines. In this way, I’m not getting off the track when an unforeseen urgency hits my desk. And yes, unforeseen urgencies happen more often than I’d like them to happen.
2. Discipline
Getting and staying organized requires discipline. Everything I need to do has an Asana task in my planning system. Even if I’d love to have an empty task list in Asana, I’ve gotten used to a never-ending stream of tasks.
Discipline is needed not just for getting and staying organized. When you’re involved in multiple projects, sometimes you’ll have to squeeze in meetings at odd times in far-flung places to make everything add up. That means getting up early or getting home late. Sometimes I feel like cancelling that last meeting halfway across the country, or not getting out of bed in the morning. But if you choose the path of being involved in multiple activities, you have to be ready to grit your teeth now and then.
3. Focus
Being involved in multiple projects sounds like anti-focus. It’s not; multiple projects have a stimulating effect on each other: Activities in one domain can result in innovative solutions in another, seemingly unconnected domain.
But focus is still important, albeit in a different form than you might think: Do one thing at a time. Don’t sit in a business meeting and answer emails from your volunteering work. Don’t sit at the family table and slack with your work colleagues. Discipline yourself to separate your different activities. It’s better to invest a short, focused period of time into one of your activities and then switch to the next, rather than trying to do everything all the time.
4. Frustration Tolerance
I admit it, it’s not always fun to juggle multiple activities. Things can go wrong in each of your activities, and they seldom go wrong in sequence. Usually, they all go wrong at the same time. That’s when your tightly packed schedule explodes, multiple people try to call you, and you don’t know what to do first. I call those days Shit Days.
When a Shit Day happens, get over it quickly. Shit days are a reality, and they shouldn’t divert too much energy from you.
Whenever I’m frustrated, I try to pull myself out of frustration as quickly as possible by remembering the purpose of all my activities. I chose all my activities deliberately, and I fully stand behind the purpose each serves.
5. Enjoy
Last but not least, you need to enjoy all the activities you’re involved in. That makes everything easier, even if you suffer the occasional Shit Day.
About Me
Growing a company in uncertain times is like running a marathon — it demands grit, strategy, and resilience.
As a tech entrepreneur, active reserve officer, and father of three, I share practical insights and write about entrepreneurship, leadership, and crisis management — no AI bullshit, no promos, just my thoughts in plain text.
When I’m not solving problems, I recharge and find inspiration in the breathtaking mountains around Zermatt.
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