Key facts

• Role: B2B Account Executive, EMEA & LATAM
• Working from today: Málaga, Spain
• Top remote hub: Sri Lanka
• All-time favorite destinations: Costa Rica and Thailand

Alberto spent almost six years working in Madrid before he decided he’d had enough. He’d built a career in sales and partnerships, moving through corporations and entertainment agencies; the kind of jobs that expected him to be in the office four or five days a week, no exceptions. It wasn’t the work itself that wore him down, but everything built around it: the fixed hours, the commute, a stretch of highway that turned what should have been a twenty-minute drive into something closer to an hour.

“This has to end,” he remembers thinking, sitting in traffic yet again. “With everything being digital these days, it doesn’t have to be this way.”

That thought didn’t turn into a resignation letter overnight, but it planted the idea that his next move needed to look completely different. And before that decision ultimately drove him to Holafly, it first led to a bold adventure in Sri Lanka.

A freelance month near the sea proved it could work

After finally taking the leap, his next step wasn’t exactly a job search; it was a freelance experiment. Alberto had two clients he already knew personally, and offered to help them with sales copywriting and social media. “I’m not really doing much right now,” he told them, “if you want, I can help you sell a bit more.” They said yes, and he and his girlfriend spent a month working remotely from Sri Lanka, excited for what was to come.

The schedule he built for himself there says a lot about what he was actually chasing. He got up at 5am, when it was already light and the whole day was ahead of him, he enjoyed his free mornings to surf or just be at the beach, then worked from early afternoon until around 9pm. “It was kind of like what people do now in Bali,” he says, “everyone heading there to work remotely. I did that, and it was great.”

That initial experience became the reference point for everything that came after: proof, in his own words, that “it’s doable, if you organize yourself well and do things the right way.” From there, he started actively looking for remote roles, and his sales background pointed him toward travel. When a posting at Holafly came up, he applied.

The momentum that led him to chase the life he wanted

Ask Alberto to describe his first months at Holafly in one word, and he doesn’t reach for anything about flexibility or ease: he says momentum. As soon as mornings started at 8:30 or 9, calls and sales started flowing nonstop.

Part of that, he explains, comes down to what B2B actually was like at the time. “It’s not like the rest of Holafly,” he says, “it’s more like a startup inside the company.” That meant building the sales process itself while also feeding product feedback and sitting in on customer conversations, doing a bit of everything at once.

The remote part of the equation didn’t stay static either. He spent his first couple of months still in Madrid, working for Holafly from there. Once it was clear the role was fully remote and his girlfriend’s job was flexible too, they moved to Cádiz for about four months, chasing something specific: surf. Today they are in Málaga, where he’s originally from, close enough to the coast and to family to make daily life, in his words, entirely compatible.

A terrace, a laptop, and no fixed spot

Alberto’s setup has changed more than once. He started with just a laptop and no second screen for about a year before adding one. These days it’s a raised monitor, a webcam positioned above it, a mouse and keyboard. “More executive,” as he puts it. But the setup that matters more to him is the one that isn’t fixed at all.

Some days he takes the laptop out to the terrace instead, meetings and all. “It helps me get away from the workspace itself,” he says, half-joking that otherwise he starts to feel too cooped up indoors. He’s tried working from cafés too, though not often, as the noise and the volume of meetings he has most days make it more tiring than useful.

The one object he holds onto no matter where he’s working isn’t digital at all: a pen and notebook, kept close for anything that feels like it deserves to be written by hand, whether it is an important negotiation or a set of next steps to track.

A flexible schedule requires firm ownership

There’s a version of remote work Alberto hears about constantly online, the one where you’re your own boss, you work an hour or two, and the rest takes care of itself. He doesn’t hold back on how far that is from what he’s actually experienced.

“The reality isn’t like that,” he says. “You need extremely high ownership of your time, even more organized than you’d have to be in person.”

If anything, he says, remote work at a sales-driven company like Holafly has meant putting in more effort, not fewer, because meetings pile up and the job doesn’t pause just because nobody’s watching. The flexibility is real, but it’s earned, not given.

When his calendar is genuinely under control and meetings are stacked in the morning, he can have lunch with a client or a friend, and pick things back up afterward. “That only works,” he says, “when there’s structure, and you organize yourself well.”

Overcommunication, and a camera that’s always on

Working remotely hasn’t made Alberto any quieter on the inside of the company. If anything, it’s the opposite: he describes his own approach to Slack as something close to overcommunication, staying visibly connected, jumping into short conversations rather than letting things pile up into long meetings.

He proactively chooses to have a ten-minute call with the tech team when something operational comes up, or a quick sync with a sales colleague after something surfaces in a weekly meeting; he also enjoys the occasional virtual coffee. The channel stays open all day: “I treat it like a regular office,” he says.

Cameras, in his view, aren’t optional. “Always on,” he says, with clients, with the team, with anyone. Being remote, he argues, makes it more important, not less, for people to actually see who they’re talking to.

He’s just as firm about in-person meetings: Holafly’s team just wrapped a three-day offsite in Madrid, and Alberto is the first to say he’d happily take more get-togethers. “We’re human, we live in a society,” he says. “It helps a lot, being around people.”

Building a life around the tide

While surf isn’t the reason Alberto works remotely, it is rooted into nearly every decision about where he lives. If Málaga had the waves that Portugal does, he says, he’d stay there for life, but he makes sure it shows up when he travels: after Sri Lanka, he made a trip to Costa Rica with his girlfriend.

It’s less a hobby than something he tries to fold into how he actually lives, “without getting philosophical about it,” as he puts it. It’s a sport that keeps him near the ocean, outdoors, and moving.

That same pull toward nature shows up daily, not just on trips. Mornings start with coffee on the terrace before anything else, a habit that shifts depending on where he’s living: before, it meant a swim before work; from where he is now, it’s more often a walk along the seafront instead.

“I need to get outside,” he says. “It’s about health, plain and simple.” Coming from six years of Madrid’s pace, heavy traffic and buildings blocking out the sky, he doesn’t take the difference for granted.

One last tip before you dive in: know yourself first

Alberto’s advice for anyone considering remote work isn’t about tricks or shortcuts, it’s about self-knowledge: “Research the company properly”, he says, “make sure its values genuinely line up with your own, and take the time to look honestly at yourself and ask whether the role and the lifestyle actually fit.” For the right person, it’s worth every bit of the adjustment.

If you’re also someone who knows exactly what you need to do your best work, wherever that happens to be, Alberto’s story might spark some inspiration. Check out our open roles on the Careers Page.