Freelance Freedom and Employment Flexibility with Nikola Bubevski and Native Teams

Welcome to the future is freelance. This is the show for solopreneurs, digital nomads, slowmad s, consultants, remote workers, e-residents and everybody living a life without traditional boundaries. We're here for people who defy categorization and prefer to make a living and a life their own way. Every freelance Friday, we bring you expert tips, inspired insights and stories from the frontiers of freelancing to help you achieve success with your borderless business, whatever success looks like to you, and today we have some new ideas to share with you which might help you in ways you hadn't expected to do. Just that, because my interviewee is Nikolas Bubevski from Native Teams. They're building a solution which helps to give freelancers a parity in the workforce with employees with traditional contracts. Well, they're an EOR, they're a payment solution, they're a freelancing platform and they're a payment service that you can use to operate your accounts and your expenses and so on. I'll let Nikola explain fully, but I think you're going to find this really fascinating and if you want to check it out further, then please use the link in the show notes to hop straight into the Native Teams platform. You can create a free account. You can book a call with one of their people to talk to, because you want to be certain that this is exactly right for you, but I think the Native Teams solution is going to be perfect for so many freelancers in Europe and beyond and I really look forward to seeing you on the inside of it because I'm very glad to be working with them to represent their brand within Europe and the remote work Europe community. So I just wanted to declare that interest and that's why I wanted to have Nikola on the podcast, because I know that there will be lots of questions and he explains it better than I can. I really hope you enjoyed this conversation. I hope you enjoy reflecting on the insight that Nikolas brings to the whole future of Workspace, from his earliest days freelancing on Fiverr to now founding this innovative international solution, and I'm sure that, just like it did with me, it will give you lots to think about. So welcome Nikolas. It's great to have you with us at the future of Fiverr's Freelance.

Hello Maya and thanks for having me.

Well, I'm very excited about today's conversation and, before you tell us all about Native Teams, we'd love to know a little bit more about you, your story, how you ended up where you are and what you're doing now.

Sure thing, thank you very much. Well, I'm Nikola Bubevski. I come from North Macedonia, from a city called Bitolodet, the South part of the country, really near to Greece. In my background, I'm a civil engineer. Believe it or not, but before I ever jumped into studies and college and getting a degree, I was actually freelancing online. So my background comes from the freelance industry and I did had a really successful career over there. My story is not common around the freelance community because my niche industry was really weird. So, to be more precise, when I was 17, I was not even able to register on some of the websites, but somehow, together with my sister's identity, I managed to register on a platform that was called Fiverr. com.

Oh, I remember that. I remember that when things used to be a Fiverr.

Yeah, as soon as I've jumped into that market and I saw what kind of professionals are there, I realized wait, I don't have any skills, any knowledge, nothing in my background that I can compete with. So I kind of closed that one and I was a little bit disappointed. So one year after, when I was finally 18 and become adult, I really needed that extra income. So after one year I came back to Fiverrcom, but this time I had a better plan. Not that I've developed my skills or something, but I found that there is a certain category or niche category that was called bizarre or fun, and under that category I found that nobody on the market is doing Turkish coffee ground readings. So that's a science. I can call it science. The name of the science is taseography and that's something that people are doing for fun. Usually it comes from Turkey, regionally, but across the Balkans, where I come from, it's really common. So my grandma used to do that with her friends back in the days when I was a kid and I was always listening to that. So how that works is you drink the Turkish coffee and the Turkish coffee, if you compare it to other types of coffees, it has a lot of grounds. So once you're done, you spin the cup, you twist it around and you leave it like that for five minutes and then there will be symbols. So there are some certain rules that need to follow, and what I did was I created that geek. I went to the library, I captured around 2000 and something symbols and their meanings. I started learning how that works and in two years time I was the top seller on Fiverr in that category. So by freelancing, I managed to get myself a certain budget for my day to day life. But, to be honest, if I compare the market value these days, I was earning more than my parents, to be more precise, and I managed to pay for my college.

Wow.

Just by freelancing and doing Turkish coffee reading.

What an amazing example of how there is a niche for everyone in online work. Who would have thought something that I didn't even know existed? And yet you managed to support your education through this approach, which is just mind blowing, and I hope everybody listening thinking I've got nothing to offer in a freelance space is going to be inspired by that. Now, obviously, your career has evolved since that point and it's rather different to what you're doing now, so we should talk about native teams, and how do you predict the future?

therefore, everybody yeah, that's a good one. So of course I've mentioned that. I kind of collected some cash from freelancing and I managed to put that investment in myself. So I've been throughout a lot of online courses. I've learned a lot about design, marketing, product management and all sorts of stuff that I could find online back then on the available courses online. So that knowledge was quickly recognized by Jack and I started working as a freelancer for him. So the native teams and how it's funded, it's one main person and that's Jack, and then we have me and Alex joining him. So back then we were working for Jack, but we were actually freelancing. No official employee of record, no official way of getting stuff compliant. We just were paid on our bank accounts and we need to do all of the heavy paperwork on ourself. Naturally, it came to us that, wait, I had some certain struggles in my freelancing career. Alex had some struggles as well. They were both different. Mine was more of a payment stuff, more of a way to get everything inside my country and get everything in my pocket, but from Alex's side was more of how about loans, how about maternity leave and stuff like that. We managed within that team to create this project. Today we have it as a native teams and it's the platform where every remote worker and freelancer can find their niche or need solved out.

Yeah, it's absolutely fantastic because I've been around this space for a while and I've come across some great solutions for freelancers in different markets and some great solutions for employees in other markets. This is the first thing I've come across that really addresses the needs of both and also recognizes that people don't necessarily sit in one category or another these days. I think that founder story is really interesting, that you both had different needs that you brought to the table anyway. Tell me how it grew from there then. What have you been building together?

When somebody asked me about the founding story, and it's really interesting because we really did have the three H. What I mean by the three H is the hacker, the hustler and the hipster, which makes a really good combination of people and mindsets that can bring together and have something successful. The first step that we took was we back then had a different product which is really similar to what we are doing right now. It was like a video conferencing stuff, and from there we managed to get a certain level of knowledge of the market, of how things work, product development, sales and so on. We managed to get this product in place just to cover our own needs. Naturally, work2mount came in and we suddenly found out that the problem that we have it's not just local, it's not just one person, it's global. We managed to create the platform and start rolling in. We started in the Balkans as our own known market, but right now, currently, we are in 55 countries plus I think that every day that number goes up where we do own our entity and we serve our clients locally.

That's amazing. I'd like to go back to that metaphor of the three different categories. What was the hustler Tell me about that?

I think that not the perfect. I'm not saying that this is like the blueprint on how everybody should work. I think that within those three categories of people the hustler, the hacker and the hipster are the right ingredients to create something great. Why? Because the hustler and I will put myself in this category is somebody who has this ways of getting the money from here and there, trying to invent the new ways. Then you have the growth, or the hacker, a person that has experience and knows how to tap in in different segments of the idea and can make them in reality. But don't forget the hipster and the creativity and the spirit that those people bring From culture, mission, vision. In all of the aspects, they are 100% on point and needed. We had those three ingredients and I think that's the key or the background of the success we have today.

That's really interesting. I've not heard of that model before, but it makes a lot of sense. I think a lot of freelancers have to try and be all of those things. I'm very interested in that interface between the freelance and the tiny team and who to look for to do that work together. Maybe we're too often drawn to people who are like ourselves in different ways, whereas we should be looking for these other personalities.

Yeah, so in order to complete the puzzle, you're looking for pieces that are covering the other ones spaces, right? So, in order to complete the puzzle, you need the right fit.

Makes excellent sense, but obviously you're much bigger than three of you. Now You've been funded, you're hiring aggressively. Tell me about your growth in recent years, because it looks very impressive.

Yeah, as soon as we started the small project that was mainly covering our needs, it was really easy and I was the one that put the sales hat on it was really easy to promote the product and sell it on the market, because we were actually selling to our peers, and it's really easy to promote or to sell something to a person that thinks like you, a freelancer that has the same mindset, same needs in the same market space right? So we had a significant growth. I can say that for the first year we had 40% growth per month, which is, for a startup, is a huge one. And then we had the first injection, as a call it, or the first funding that helped us get even more funds and more resources for us to do even better research and development, even better market coverage, and we managed in over one year to grow from 50 to 160 people and being present in around 20 countries, to be present in 55 plus countries. So that's the growth that we experience and which is really interesting. And what I really like about this journey is the learning curve. So you think that you understand and you know the freelancers problems or clients problems in a certain small market area, like I've mentioned in Macedonia, but if you stand that, you will see that the people from the Baltic region have certain problems. Western Europeans have different problems. So it's all connected in a line and the knowledge that we and experience we get throughout this whole journey, it's invaluable.

Yeah, that's amazing Because, yes, I completely agree with you. As freelancers, we need the same things. We have the same mindset and drive, and yet as soon as you put yourself down in a different country, different jurisdiction, everything's new the compliance, the taxes, the structures and simply to navigate that. This is what stops us all being as flexible as we want to as location independence. So we have a lot of people in Spain, for example and I know that you've recently appointed a country director there and you're growing in Spain Now there'll be a lot of people listening to this who are freelancing in Spain, who think that Spain is a terrible place to be a freelancer. I don't agree with them. I've been happily freelancing in Spain for a long time myself, but can you just package up? What would you offer to freelancers in Spain? Why is it better to work with native teams than simply to just file your invoices direct to your customers?

Well, you made a great point. In every country and this I probably miss to mention this in every country that we grow, we like to have boots on the ground, so it's not something that we just are developing and trying to sell to somebody that we don't know, but we really work with locals that understand the market, understand the struggles and we really try to solve them. We have personal phone numbers that we give out to our freelancers so they can call us and have a better interaction with our team, and that helps us and them to grow and have a certain level of security and trust and, of course, valuable information from both sides on what can happen. Spain, for example, as a market, I can say that it's really different from what we know in Macedonia and what we can offer over there. It's really a good package where they don't have to open, I think. Can you please help me remember the name?

It's Autonomo, autonomo is the freelancing tax status?

Yes, yes, so we can really help them with us as an agency, cover that one throughout us. So Native Teams in a sense is five things in one. So it's your own company that you can use bank account. With that it comes an account accountant, a legal person and a mobility expert. So you don't have to struggle with all the admin stuff then have a bookkeeper, then have a lawyer, then go to the I don't know local tax authorities. So Native Teams will cover all of that in one app or in one package. So you come, you open up account, you already have your bank account, you already have your own entity. That you're actually preventing throughout Native Teams. We are not opening a separate one. You're renting the Spanish one and throughout that you can submit your employment status like that. Together with that we have an extraditional package for taxes where you can check the tax reporting, tax allowances and utilize everything that comes with owning an entity in Spain.

So it's like I'm renting a little slice of your Spanish entity to call my own, 100% correct, yes, okay, yes, so am I an employee then of your entity, or how does that work?

So, in general, when you sign up for the EUR status or employer of record status, you are becoming a Native Teams employee, but independent employee who take care of their own salary right. So we have this flexible payment system. As we all are aware and know that freelancers and when you're freelancing you don't have like a always steady income, but you will have a good month, a bad month, maybe a month of a pause, a break, and this is the part where Native Teams wallet comes in place. So within that wallet you can adjust your payments, you can make a downstream of your payments that will come regularly every first of the month, so that way you can manage your fundings. But also you're always available to withdraw those funds and use them as a company expenses or business expenses within the Native Teams ATM card. So we do provide our own plastics as well. That comes with that, with that package.

Excellent, so I could use that for software subscriptions and things that I need to operate the business on a regular basis. Now that makes sense, but I think for a lot of people it's going to be very exciting the idea that they could be treated as an employee rather than a self-employed person. Now there are a couple of reasons for that. The first is social security. Would I still be paying my own social security as an autonomous, or would that be done through Native Teams? How would that work?

So what native teams does is every month, every end of the month, we withdraw a certain amount, and this is automated process. We withdraw a certain amount of your wallet that you adjusted as a gross salary. Right In that gross salary you're going to have a pay slip with the full salary breakdown where you're going to see how much you're paying for your social contributions and everything. But at the beginning of the month you're getting the net salary in your pocket.

So you do the payment through native teams and just basically withdraw what I've got to actually really spend. Yes, and income taxes as well, then as well, yeah, Okay, that's great. And the other thing that a lot of people in Spain desperately miss when they're autonomous is having that pay slip, that nominal, because it's very difficult to do something like I live in Valencia and to get an apartment in the city to rent one. It's almost impossible, and I know Madrid and Barcelona are worse. It's because the rental law is very much in favor of the tenant here. So landlords are very skeptical and they want to get insurance, and they can't get insurance on a freelancer. If you haven't got a pay slip, you can get turned to. I've known people turn up and they said we'll pay a year rent upfront and the landlord still says no, I don't want to rent to you. That pay slip is like gold around here.

Those are the some of the pain points that we realized by entering that market. So not just the rentals, but you also have a couple of other categories, like cars, like loans, like maternity leaves, like everything that is included in that package. That's exactly the problem that we solved.

Yes, consumer credit is just particularly for mobile workers, for people who don't have that traditional credit score that they develop over years. You start with a credit card when you're at university and you're encouraged to increase your debt, to increase your score, and all of that. I'll give you an example from my own life. A couple of years ago, we wanted to get solar panels put on our house and we own this house we're not going to run away and leave the house but we couldn't get credit put the panels on the roof because me and my husband are both self-employed, so and my business entity isn't in Spain. So they were like, oh no, we can't do that. And then they found that my teenage daughter was working part-time in a restaurant in a few hundred euros a month. They said, oh yes, we can use this, this payslip, to give you credit in her name but not in yours.

This is one of the problems as well. I think that government institutions I'm not talking about Spain particularly, but worldwide are not keeping up with the modern waves and the way that the future is shaped. The podcast is called Future is Freelance, and I do agree with that one. So I think that the local legislations and laws are not following our pace, the pace of the world, the pace that we are moving forward to the future way of working, and I think that until then, we found our own small pathway on how to solve that one.

This is just such an important piece of the jigsaw and this show started being all about freelancing and how to do it, and it's actually evolved into a much bigger picture, because freelancing doesn't fit at one end of a spectrum anymore. It's so blended. Now Freelances include consultants, fractional execs, people who operate a limited company to form a retainer, or they might be a founder. They might be doing something else on the side and they want to do that anywhere they don't want to have to be stuck with the place that their tax resident is the only place they can write a contract. For me, the future is it's employers of record, it's payment solutions. It's e-residency I represent the Estonian e-residency program. It's autonomous in Spain. There are so many different elements to this. I'm hoping to have someone from the Plumia Project Donsoon talking about their borderless passporting, because once you have these global solutions in place, there shouldn't be any limits on where you can go and just because of the passport in your pocket says that you're not allowed to travel to this region, and so on. All of these things getting in my passport used to entitle me to 27 countries, not any longer. I have a permanent residency in Spain, but my freedom of movement in the rest of the EU has gone, but I can do business with them thanks to Estonia. So it's all this putting together these solutions. It seems to me that you're covering a lot of different things here.

Yeah, definitely so. One of the solutions and one of the pain points of every freelancer is that flexibility to move around and to be a global worker and go whatever they like, because the income is there. Just the problem is the documentation and how that is solved around the world and you've mentioned your passport used to bring you to 27 countries, but imagine the amount of freelancers that are in the Eastern Europe part, like Turkey, serbia, macedonia I will mention them again Georgia, armenia. So the problem that we managed to solve is providing and helping people mobility. How we do that. We do that throughout our connection of legal entities. We have them spread across the world and each of our entity has the ability to sponsor somebody to move around, as we do guarantee for them. They are part of our umbrella and everything is really connected. So the entity in Turkey can request from the entity in Spain to get that person from point A, from point B, and stay longer over there Throughout that we are providing work permits and visas which really do help freelancers and their work environment and personal growth and help at the end of the day.

So you're providing a direct foreign employment solution as well by connecting up these different entities.

Yes, we do that.

Very powerful.

One thing that I probably forgot to mention at the beginning is that everything you see when you join the platform or when you open our website is actually based on customer feedback and experience. So this is a conversation with freelancers, tons of documentation and polls from them on what they want to see and what will be beneficial for them. So we hear their word and we provide the solution.

Well, anytime you want to consult more of them. We've got a lot of them in the remote work Europe community, so we'll invite you in. I mean, obviously, I know I've already said I want you to come back and do a live webinar in the biggest Facebook community, because I think there's going to be a lot of questions here. This is new for people. People will be worried about compliance and about you know. Should I step off the autonomous path? What's going to happen to my tax residency if I'm a foreigner? What's going to happen to my track record of paying my social security? I think it's something that's particularly in Spain. If your contributions get interrupted, you can find bad things happening when you try to use the health service and things like that. So I take it it's all there on the website for people to dig in and reassure themselves.

It is. It is so I understand the struggles when it comes to having the difficulties with the health institutions and so on, so you will be surprised that we kind of solve that one as well. So what we did as a company, we have a section in our app that is called Benefits, and that's something that everybody can apply for. So, for example, in most of the countries that we operate in, we go to local health insurance providers and because we are such a big network and we have a lot of clients using us, we capture special offers from them and throughout our entity, we're giving out those supplementary health benefits to our clients as well. So if you're part of the app, if you're part of the native teams platform, you can always, with a couple of click, put yourself on an extra supplementary health insurance as well Much more lower price than you will get somewhere.

Yeah, because I mean we're very lucky in Spain. We have excellent public health services, but I might want to travel to a country where maybe things aren't what I would expect. Or even if I've got reciprocal European healthcare, we all know that the standards are not identical in every place that you go. So what other benefits could I opt into? Is it like benefits as a service?

Yeah, it is. It's something that once again came out as feedback from our current users and we are going to expand that one in multiple categories. So you will have co-working, co-living spaces. You will have a hardware and software provision in which we are doing. Right now, of course, the health insurance is already live and usable, but on the road map we're going to have even retirement funds investing and feed passes for James with discount. So we are building and trying to get everything that let's call it standard or traditional employee in a company will have from their company. We're trying to give that freelance community.

Right, so we're not going to be second class citizens anymore. I mean to pay for everything out of pocket and then try and claim it.

Yeah, so yeah, freelancers won't be a second class citizens, because we're trying to give everything that a traditional employee and a local employee will have. So this is where native teams come so long, and we do play a really big part in that community.

Brilliant, okay. So this is all really exciting because it's blending away those barriers between the people who have the perks, who have the gold plated contract, and the rest of us who might be doing the same work alongside them now in the same team. Let's face it, this is so. Many people face redundancies and layoffs in the last year or so and a lot, we know a lot of those people have been hired back in as contractors because the work still needed doing and whether they were over hired in the first place or not, then corporations still need to get that stuff done. So I'm wondering, I would love to know, given your journey so far, what do you think the future will look like in maybe another five or 10 years time? Will we even talk about freelancers and employees? Will we all be our own entities? What's the future of work going to look like?

I'm really enthusiastic when it comes to this topic. I mean, I think that and this is a note that I need to check once again but I think that the nine to five and standard employment was invented in 1920, something like that by a guy named Ford.

Yeah, it was great for making cars.

Yes, and I think that after this digitalization if I can pronounce it right and globalization of some of the work role that we have, so now I think that the borderless employment and the borderless work is coming to the stage. The COVID era showed us that this is something that we can do and cope with and get the job done. It changed a little bit the buyer behavior and company's behavior and attitude towards work and how it should be measured. Is it measured by taking your card in the office or it's measured about the quality that you are giving and the quantity that you are giving. So I think that the future is definitely remote and I think that more and more we are going to have a swift outlook to that, even in some of the more traditional industries and profession, I think that people will start that independency and, at the end of the day, have a better overview on what they're doing and the quality of things, rather than just get the job done and take away that card.

Well, I hope you're right. It does seem strange to me I mean, you mentioned sort of the industrial revolution and the production lines that most of the employment law in so many countries is still rooted in that paradigm of 40 hour chunks and the employer owns what you do in that time. But there's nothing in the contract about quality or results or effectiveness. It's just that you have to show up and be online or present. So we have people buying things to make their mouse jiggle whilst they're pretending to work from home and things like that, and organisations that have no way of measuring people's performance effectively or they think, if they put them back in the room together, that they can see who's performing well by looking around the office at them. Why are we still talking like that?

Like, some of the changes that we did are not just concerning the employer as such, but it's concerning the whole structural levels of governments and institutions that are involved in such a way of working. I think that this is something that we inhabited, or something that it's a legacy, and I think that it's now it's the time for us to kind of make the awareness, education switch into a better and more quality focused world and jobs.

Makes total sense. So you started off trying to disrupt freelancing and now you've got to disrupt governments. No pressure, I mean that's quite a big goal.

One step at a time.

Absolutely, and it's always the people. There'll be pioneers who are trying to do things in new ways. There'll be the technology. So it's the people, then the technology, and then we'll find the organisations coming along. And then, right the other end, we have the compliance and the regulations and the state structures always the last to change. We can't. You know, governments still can't tax Amazon and Google properly. After a quarter of a century, they can't figure that out. So how they're going to adjust to this? You're giving them the tools, you're giving them the principles, and I think we're seeing more and more evidence of the productivity and satisfaction that people are finding working in a more flexible way, even sort of four day work weeks and things like that. It's amazing to see that being trialled in big corporations now. So we're getting there, aren't we?

I think that we are. I think that we are one step at a time, but we are baby steps.

Baby steps. I love it, but we're baby steps in lots of directions at once with your 55 entities now. And so what should people do if they want to learn more about native teams? Maybe they're a freelancer, maybe they're a remote worker, maybe they are thinking of leaving that nine to five and venturing off into founding something of their own. What should the next step be?

Yeah, well, definitely well. On our website, nativethemescom, you can always finda huge knowledge base for every country and how everything looks and what are the legislations, what you need to do in order to have your employment status. But what I always recommend? What I always recommend is pick one of the phone numbers there. We are called native themes just by that reason that we speak local languages. We have a multinational and international team that can accommodate your needs in your local language, or just book a call throughout the forum. So everything is there. Most of the people. What they like to do is always, always, book that particular call or just adjust everything to our support chat and then, once you have all of the information, the platform is really easy to use. It's three clicks and you're employed.

Brilliant. Well, I'll put the link in so that people can jump into that page. They can see exactly what is included for each price, including your free tier, where people can register and access the very comprehensive information that you make available. Anyway, even before people decide to contract anything with you, they can check out a great deal and then from there they can book that demo call, talk to somebody in their own country about exactly what they have to do to remain safe and compliant there. I think native teams is. You know, I'm glad to declare a commercial relationship with you, but I only partner with brands who I believe are actually making a difference in a responsible and credible way, and I'm sure that this is going to be a huge part of the future of work in freelancing and beyond. Is there anything else you'd like to share with our listeners, nicola, before we wrap up?

Yeah, yeah, one thing that I will give you as an advice to everybody, and from my own experience just focus on the stuff that you do good, focus on yourself, advance and advance in your, in your in yourself and let the other ones fix the things that are unknown to you on their own. Meaning that if you're a freelancer, what I would do I was focused on developing my skills and admin stuff employment, taxes, payments I would leave it to some expert, like like native teams 100% play to your strengths.

You made it in your introduction story. You made it very clear how you built upon skills, that you've got you invested in your time and your education and as freelancers, we can do this and we can absolutely double down again. We're not having that 40 hour a week contract where somebody else wrote the description and bundled up tasks and things that you've got to do. When it, when you're a freelancer, you choose, you know you get somebody else to do the stuff that isn't your strength, because there's no point trying to augment the things that you're not good at or that change your energy or you might not do well, somebody else will do that brilliantly. In this case, it's a case of that administration and that infrastructure. Rather than figuring it out yourself. You can contract with native teams or it could be that you need somebody to help you with your web copy, or you need somebody to help with your visual design or something. You just find the right freelancer. Somebody else is out there who can exactly compliment like your three H's. Somebody will be out there who will be the perfect partner for you and you can focus on what your best act, because that's what we love about freelancing. So, nicola, thank you, it's been really insightful talking to you. I'm excited about the future of work, the future of freelancing and the way that native teams is going to be helping with that, so I really appreciate you sharing your insight today thank you very much, maya.

Thanks for having me, and I'm looking forward to a great variation between the future as well thank you for listening to the future is freelance podcast.

We appreciate your time and attention in a busy world and your busy freelance life. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a fellow freelancer and help us grow this movement of independent entrepreneurs. If you rate and review the future is freelance in whichever app you're listening to right now, it really helps spread the word and that means we can reach more people who need to hear this message. Together, we can change the world and make sure the future is freelance. Don't forget you can check out all our back episodes from other seasons and learn more over at future is freelance dot XYZ. We're so grateful not only for our listeners, but for the contributions of our wonderful guests and for the production and marketing assistance of coffee like media. This is Maya middle miss, wishing you freelance freedom and happiness until our next show.