Mountains Work all set to show that small business communities rock

by Startacus Admin

With Mountains Work’s flagship programme starting at the end of the month in Lake Tahoe, California, we thought it was a good time to spotlight this grassroots (mountainside?) movement. 

The goal of Mountains Work? To attract businesses, entrepreneurs, freelancers, and remote workers to mountain, beach, and resort towns around the world. 

Mountains Work are weeklong programmes where business owners and entrepreneurs can go to a small mountain, beach, or resort community and experience what it would be like to work and live there. Rather than having top talent concentrated in big cities, Mountains Work would like to see these people spread out a little more and contributing the to economy of these small communities.

Places like Lake Tahoe are very tourism-centric, but tourism is seasonal and not always enough to sustain these communities. Adding to this is how low wages can be in this industry, meaning that even the few workers who also live there don’t have a lot to contribute to the local economy. Businesses bringing in money from outside of the community can only benefit that community and help it to thrive.

By showing business leaders and entrepreneurs what life and work can be like for themselves and/or their employees in such places, Mountains Work hopes to attract them to put down roots, at least for their businesses if not for their families.

But the aim of the Mountains Work programmes isn’t to show people only how they can benefit these small towns, but also how the small towns can benefit them - for them to see how they can have a better quality of life there. 

As far as possible, Mountains Work provides everything except food and drink for free, via sponsorship from local accommodation and transportation businesses, office spaces, and other other community organisations. As well as conducting work as normal, visitors will be treated to experiences and events such as skiing, mountain biking, paddleboarding, hiking, beer tasting, and all sorts of local attractions that make these communities attractive to tourists. Or, more importantly, they are provided the opportunity to experience life in the community as a resident would.

Opportunities to talk to business and community leaders, as well as information on the price of houses and business premises, round off the experience, providing visitors with all the information they could need to seriously consider life and business outside of the big city.

Just a stroll around Lake Tahoe in Google Street View shows us it’s the kind of place we’d like to work from, so imagine being able to actually go and experience it without having first to make the life changing decision of uprooting.

Mountains Work is certainly on to something, and it is a programme that we reckon would work well all over the world and for all kinds of small communities.

Mountains Work - we look forward to hearing more about your inaugural event. We like the idea behind it a lot.

• #mountain works
• #remote workers
• #digital nomads
• #resort towns
• #lake tahoe
• #city living
• #freelancers
• #beach living
• #mountain communities

Published on: 7th May 2017