You may already know that Remote Team Wellness is the leading virtual corporate wellness event provider, but did you know that RTW was founded in 2020 by Tarin Calmeyer, a 12-year holistic wellness expert, consultant, and public speaker?
For nearly a decade before founding RTW, Tarin helped companies take better care of their employees by teaching yoga, mindfulness, and movement around the world. And after the onset of the COVID-19 in early 2020, Tarin partnered with renowned marketing expert Andrew Lee Miller to found Remote Team Wellness and support thousands of companies shifting to virtual work with powerful expert-led lectures on Sleep, Burnout, Stress Management and more.
To date, the little but mighty company has helped clients like Meta (Facebook), L’Oreal, Dell, Cisco and more but Tarin has been so busy she hasn’t had time to properly sit down and tell you about who she is and what makes her tick! So we thought we’d take the time to interview our fearless leader and get inside the head of a leading virtual corporate wellness expert.
TELL US A LITTLE BIT ABOUT YOUR OWN WELLNESS JOURNEY?
From a very young age, I was intrigued by the human body and ever-curious about its immense capacity. I was raised by a loving foster family for most of my life who eventually ended up adopting me, but before that happened, my life was a slurry of court cases, psychologist visits and lawyer’s offices.
I grew up experimenting with different styles of dance and movement and learning new ways to control my physical body because it was one of the few things I felt I had control over. I had become firmly attached to the idea of being a professional athlete or performer and everything I did aligned with that belief until I experienced an ankle injury that set back my training, and ultimately brought my dream to an early end.
During my physical rehabilitation, I started doing yoga and meditating on a regular basis which led me to become more aware of other aspects of my well being like my emotions and mental state. It was at this time that I started to understand the power of my own mind in overcoming difficult circumstances and situations. I chose to follow the proverbial white rabbit and continue my studies of the human body in university as well as becoming a certified yoga and meditation teacher and since then, I haven’t looked back.
My work pre-pandemic involved teaching at movement festivals and conferences as well as helping 5 star hotels and resorts build out their guest wellness strategies for more holistic holiday experiences. Nowadays, my company’s mission is to help coach founders and companies to take control and optimize their wellbeing by implementing simple science-based practices into their daily lives.
WHAT WAS YOUR PATH TO WELLNESS?
One massive turning point in my wellness journey was when I consciously realized that I am responsible for my own healing and happiness. It may sound simplistic, but when I encountered the injury that brought my dream of performing crashing to a halt, I was faced with the weight of my own preconceived expectations and perceptions.
My mind became a battle field of self sabotaging thoughts and crippling fears of not amounting to anything because I had put all of my hope into one outcome. It wasn’t until a particular morning after class that my yoga teacher pulled me aside and told me how incredible it was to watch how my body was healing and getting better in every class I attended. I hadn’t even noticed I was getting better because I was so focused on being broken.
After that conversation, my perception of the situation began to shift from a state of victimhood to one of curiosity: if I kept showing up and getting better, what else was possible? This shift in my awareness helped me to start taking more responsibility for how I was thinking about the things that were happening in my life, which meant putting my situation into a bigger perspective than I had become accustomed to. This ever expanding awareness is what has led me to where I am in my life and business today.
HOW DO YOU MAKE FRIENDS WITH YOUR MIND?
For most of us, life might look a little bit like this: worrying, stressing about potential future events, regretting past decisions, overthinking, spiraling out of control or simply retreating to worlds of fantasy and distraction. We all possess subconscious and conscious parts of our minds which control our actions, behaviours and responses.
The truth is that whatever we choose to focus our attention on is what expands and ends up dictating the narrative for our lives. Take yourself back to the first time you thought to yourself that you were, in any way, “not enough”. Somewhere in that situation you perceived it all to be about you, which reinforces the belief that you aren’t enough and that you have to do more to “prove” your worth. In this case, your perception is stronger than the truth.
While we all experience this narrative at some point in our lives, there’s no space for this kind of thinking if you want to be happy and prosperous. Imagine if you went around trying to make friends with others by repeating some of the self-deprecating thoughts that you think about yourself to them, I’m guessing it wouldn’t get you too far.
When you commit to turning your mind into a friend rather than an enemy, you take the power back from the subconscious mind and make your choices and actions conscious. Your mind is capable of unbelievable things once you learn to step into the driver’s seat and steer the vehicle.
WHERE DID THE IDEA COME FROM FOR REMOTE TEAM WELLNESS?
When the pandemic started getting serious, I found myself locked down in Johannesburg, South Africa unable to leave and reunite with my partner, Andrew due to the country’s borders being closed. I started offering him and his employees meditation sessions 3 times a week to quell the stress and anxiety of being caught in the most intense throes of the pandemic from his business disappearing overnight to the uncertainty of when we’d see each other again.
They started to see such a positive impact that he asked if he could extend the invite to founders and colleagues in his network and as the session numbers grew, we knew there was a greater need for a more comprehensive offering in the midst of such a difficult time. Thus, Remote Team Wellness was born out of the desire to create resources for founders and employees to manage their new normal with their well being at the center.
Now we work with companies around the world to lead their employees on wellness classes virtually, covering topics that matter to day-to-day wellbeing at work and in life.
WHAT IS YOUR GOAL AND VISION FOR YOUR COMPANY?
We believe that every business, no matter how large or small, requires happy, healthy, and engaged employees in order to thrive. The goal for Remote Team Wellness is to support thousands of businesses around the world in creating working cultures of wellbeing and taking better care of their employees so that their teams function at their best.
The vision for the future of the business is to have the world’s most comprehensive library and marketplace of holistic corporate wellness content for companies to equip their employees with resources, tools and practices for keeping themselves well, no matter where they choose to work from. Another exciting part of our vision includes facilitating immersive in-person work-life wellness retreats for teams and founders to connect with themselves and each other offline.
WHAT CHALLENGES HAVE YOU FACED ALONG THE WAY?
The biggest challenges we have faced along the way have been the seismic shifts in the market over the last 18 months with the global workforce being caught in a conundrum of work location. From budgets being reallocated to many companies taking greater measures to get employees back to the office, it has been challenging to find consistency as a young company.
At first, we thought we should respond to people going back into the office by offering on-site services and becoming hybrid ourselves to respond to the market, but this experience served as a timely reminder to keep doing what we do best as a remote company.
HOW HAVE YOU FOUND BEING A FEMALE CEO?
I feel so inspired, empowered and proud to be a startup founder everyday. Since the moment I understood the concept of work, I have always wanted to own my own business, but for a long time I had no idea how I’d do it, what it would be about or who it would be for.
I spent years researching and envisioning, getting inspired by other amazing female founders and learning as much as I could about being an entrepreneur, but nothing made quite as much impact as taking the first step and deciding to make it happen. Now that I’ve taken some major steps toward creating the business of my dreams, it is an honor to be an example to other women of what is possible for them.
WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE TO SOMEONE WHO IS LOOKING TO START THEIR WELLNESS JOURNEY?
The advice I have for anyone looking to start anything or make a significant change is to take small, actionable steps daily towards whatever their goal is. By picking one small thing each day, you have a better chance of actually forming a sustainable habit in the long term, rather than overwhelming yourself with tasks that will eventually cause you to quit early.
WHAT DO YOU HAVE PLANNED FOR THE FUTURE?
For myself, I want to keep learning, growing and expanding in every way possible. For my mission, I want to keep teaching others to create more mindful moments that help them to live life well. For Remote Team Wellness we are always interested in helping more companies come together with their teams virtually and to teach them how to take better care of themselves. If anyone reading this is interested they can reach out to me at tarin@dexterodes.com
