[Interview] Tim Bornholdt

P-A Dutel -

Every week, we share the story of an inspiring Remote Worker and Remotive reader, here is Tim's story:

1.- Can you please tell us a bit more about: Who are you, and what do you do? :)

I am a developer, videographer and entrepreneur.

I co-founded a mobile app development consultancy named The Jed Mahonis Group.

I also shoot and edit C Tolle Run, a weekly YouTube series about running and fitness hosted by Olympian Carrie Tollefson.

2.- Why do you work remotely, and how does it feel?

I work remotely because my entire team does.

For the JMG, we have a team of designers and developers who work for us in all kinds of capacities (everything from "primary source of income" to "side hustle").

We wouldn't have the access to the talented team we have if we forced them to work 9 to 5 in an office. It's necessary to have a weekly check-in on progress, but our project teams tend to find a rhythm that works for them, and working remotely allows them to do so.

As a whole, working remotely feels awesome. I love the flexibility of working from my house, or a coffee shop, or a friend's house, or from a hotel in another city.

There are times where it would be nice to have people in the same room as me, but since we started this company in 2011, the technology has evolved to the point where we can get real work done from a distance.

3.- What software do you use?

My life would suck without Slack. Our entire internal development process revolves around a series of Slack teams for our various businesses and projects.

In addition to Slack, we've been using a combination of Basecamp and Trello to keep our projects on track. All of our repositories live on BitBucket.

Besides the obvious stuff like Dropbox, here are the pieces of software that get installed instantly when I get a new machine:

  • Tower: an awesome GUI for Git. Worth every penny.

  • TextMate: my text editor of choice.

  • TextExpander: saves so much time by allowing me to type shortcuts to expand complex thoughts.

  • 1Password: I have no idea what any of my passwords are anymore (except my master password), because 1Password chooses a random mess of 50 characters and remembers them for me.

  • Alfred: an app launcher which makes using a computer feel that much cooler.

  • TakeFive: an awesome little utility which pauses iTunes for 5 minutes (because when a client calls, I pause my music and remember 2 hours later that I forgot to restart it).

  • Fantastical: very handy calendaring tool which lives in my toolbar and lets me input events by just typing out a phrase in natural language (like "Breakfast with Rob next Friday at 8am").

I am still searching for an ideal e-mail client, and the closest I've found to date is Airmail. We use Fastmail as our e-mail hosting provider.

For C Tolle Run, I keep it old school and use Final Cut 7. When you've been producing a show for nearly 5 years, it's easy to be stuck in your ways.

In addition to that, I use Compressor to export the YouTube version, Handbrake to export the RSS feed version and Marco Arment's awesome WAV to MP3 gist to export the audio-only RSS feed version.

Any graphic work I need to do happens in Photoshop CS6.

4.- What would be your ideal setup?

I'm very satisfied with my existing setup.

The existence of software like Dropbox and 1Password make it incredibly easy to swap out older hardware for newer (faster) hardware, so if I had a dream setup, it would probably be something that could simultaneously render a 4k video and compile a complex app instantly.

Thanks Tim ! You can find Tim on Twitter over here :)

Would like to start a conversation about sharing your story? Let us know over here- thanks :)

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