As this point in the year, I should probably be wishing you happy holidays. And I do wish you that – but I’m so excited about something that happened recently, I’m going to abandon the original plan and share with you about an adventure I recently had with Aloha Life Digital.
I haven’t shared much about this yet, but in late November, I took a business trip to South Africa.
Some key Aloha Life Digital team members are based in and around Cape Town, and it was high time we met each other IRL.
So I took the 6 hour flight to London, then the 12 hour flight to Cape Town, and spent some incredible days getting to know our Developer Frank and Project Manager Camilla, and Keryn, Alex, Kady and Jash, as well as meeting some incredible potential clients and business partners along the way.
Alex, Keryn, Camilla, and me at the V&A Waterfront
Jash, Camilla, Kady, and me at Stardust in Cape Town
Camilla, me and Frank
Honestly, the whole trip was pretty life-changing. And it has already changed Aloha Life Digital for the better.
This is us on a Segway tour of Spier Wine Farm in Stellenbosch, one of our many adventures together.
When your team is based half a planet away, choosing the right people to work with is incredibly important. Everyone has to be extremely self-sufficient, proactive, and confident in their own abilities to get things done well. I have to be able to trust my team to do an amazing job without looking over their shoulder, or micro-managing them. And we all have to be prepared to have hard conversations over zoom from time to time.
And because of the time difference, we usually only overlap in our work by about half a day every day. So any time we do spend on zoom calls has to be extremely efficiently managed. Sure, there’s always some chit-chat and office banter, but rarely do we get opportunity for really in-depth conversations.
I’ve run a remote teams for my whole working life, so I know how this goes. But I wanted this time to be different. When I recruited people to my team, I specifically chose South Africa because it’s a country I adore and want to spend a lot more time visiting, and if I can do so also with a business purpose, so much the better.
South Africa was baked in as part of my plan not just for my business, for this life that I’m designing.
I left for Cape Town hoping for the following:
- To get to know my team better and understand what makes them tick
- To learn more about life in South Africa from the perspective of my team
- To build trust with my team so that they have the confidence to follow me when I make bold, sometimes scary, choices about the direction of projects or the business
- To learn how to build Aloha Life Digital so that it works really well for my team long-term.
- To make up for all the watercooler moments we never get to experience as a remote working team.
And I got all of that. But I also came away overflowing with excitement and gratitude for my life, my business, and my team. With the following added bonuses, which I didn’t predict or dare to hope for:
- Genuine friendships, not just great colleagues
- A huge confidence boost about the capability of myself and my team
- Some unexpected and exciting new client connections
- Renewed ambition for Aloha Life Digital
- More ambitious goals for next 2026 than I would have thought possible (so big they scare me).
This festive season, I’m feeling exceptionally grateful for the business I have created, for the wonderful, ambitious clients we work with, for the successes they are seeing, and for the exceptionally talented and inspiring teammates who have trusted me with their livelihoods and career path. It is truly a privilege to be part of this machine.
So in the last few days of 2025, I wanted to share news of this adventure, and send you on your way to the festive season with wishes of restfulness and success for all that 2026 may bring.
Happy holidays, whatever and wherever you are celebrating!
Claire.
The Aloha Life Digital team and a couple of very special guests (Kate and Kelsey aka the future Mrs Spillman) at Spier Wine Farm.
Preparing our team picnic.
Spier Wine Farm picnickery (I didn’t know there was such a thing but it was excellent)
Obsessed with Proteas
Pincushion proteas
The Segway gang during our Segway tour of Spier Wine Farm.
View from the top of Table Mountain
Thanks for taking the time to stop by this site! If you liked this article, here’s how you can get lots more free SEO and content from the fun and friendly team at Aloha Life Digital.
- Be sure to read our blog on how we helped a high-end service-based business increase its revenue by 150% in just six months
- Join our mailing list here to get infrequent SEO and content updates from Aloha Life Digital
- Book a free consultation here.
