Business Traveler Interview: Anna Brones

This is part of a new series here at WhyGo Business Travel featuring brief interviews with people who travel for work, asking them about what they do and some of their favorite travel tips. This way, if you’re looking for a career that will require travel, you’ll get to read about people doing some of the jobs you might consider – and you’ll also learn a few great travel tips from the travel pros!

This week, we’re talking with Anna Brones. Anna’s based in Portland, OR, her work blog is undersolenmedia.com and her personal blog is annabrones.wordpress.com. She’s on Twitter as @annabrones and @undersolen.

What do you do?
I’m the co-founder of Under Solen Media, a new media marketing firm based in Portland. We work mostly with outdoor businesses and non-profits and do everything from content development, to viral strategies to communications consulting.

What kind of travel do you get to do for work? Do you get to choose where you go?
The great thing about what we do is that we can do it anywhere! As long as my business partner Emily and I set up check in times and workplans, we can easily work remotely. That’s pretty nice when you want to get out of town.

But for work specific travel, we travel for a lot of reasons, like trade shows and sales meeting. The most fun though are film festivals. Since we work with a variety of nonprofits and production teams, we’ve started to add some of these to our regular list of events to attend. For example, we work with Mountainfilm, which meant we got to spend Memorial Day in Telluride, Colorado last year. We’re headed back this year, which we’re pretty excited about.

How often do you get to travel for work?
We’ve got about 3 or 4 big trips a year and then there always seems to be a smaller one that pops up every month.

Did you choose your job at least in part because you love to travel? Would you make the same job choice again, knowing what you know now?
We started this business because we knew we wanted to work with organizations and causes that we love and we wanted to have a job that could be done remotely. The rest is history… and I’d certainly do it all over again.

What are some of your favorite travel tips that you’ve picked up?
1. Always pack in stuff sacks. Keeping stuff separate makes for easier packing and unpacking when you’re staying at a different spot each night.

2. Always carry a basic first aid kit – seriously, ibuprofen and neosporin will take you far.

What advice do you have for someone who’s interested in doing what you do?
Run with it! You don’t get a job that you love by sitting around. Figure out what you want to do and stick with it. Sure, there are hurdles along the way and pursuing your passion isn’t always easy, but it’s better than the alternative.

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