By this time, I feel like I’ve fully arrived in my role here at Sun & Co and in Javea. Hosting
has become second nature at this point, and I have moved on to incorporate my strategic
skills in the marketing area.
In the first weeks, I struggled a bit with organizing my day, but also with communicating and collaborating with the team. The working environment is quite fast-paced and dynamic since the situation can change very quickly, on an organizational level in terms of bookings, cancellations, resources, and responsibilities, or on a personal level depending on the influence of guests and changes in the community.
If this experience has revealed one thing to me so far, it is the fact that I really enjoy working with people. I never had the opportunity, and really the privilege, to work closely with people.
Since I am not in a role that demands me to lead or direct anybody, but in most cases rather listen, respond, and facilitate, I’m learning and practicing a whole new way of
communicating. Those communication skills seem to not only benefit the way I interact with guests but also with my peers and superiors.
In the past, I sometimes struggled to convince people of my ideas or communicate strategies effectively. I think that might have been due to the fact that I concentrated too much on my perspective, instead of genuinely listening and understanding the other point of view.
This change has, among other things, led me to analyze the current situation around an
event Sun & Co is organizing in April and to develop a marketing strategy in response.
Instead of going through a detailed and long-lived process, I was able to incorporate the
working pace, practicality, and adaptability I got familiar with in the last weeks and present a simple and effective strategy plan within a matter of days.
The presentation has won me the trust of all team members, and we are slowly shifting to
get me more involved in the overall marketing strategy and process. Since the company is
working mostly with flat hierarchies, I’m learning to communicate my needs, time, and
responsibility effectively. Working in a small team, I also realize more and more the
importance of being effective and practical, but also the trust and reliability necessary
amongst team members.
During the last weeks of this month, another team member joined who will be helping out in the marketing area. It is a very interesting experience to help with the onboarding that I just recently went through myself. I keep noticing that beyond the act of onboarding itself, making sure a new person feels welcome, integrated, and empowered is not something that can be reduced to a task on a to-do list.
Onboarding in this sense is an open-ended effort that requires openness and responsiveness from all parties involved. No matter the professional skills, sometimes the
better team member might be a sociable and flexible person, instead of the highly qualified professional.

Full trust from the first moment. Those words probably describe best how my arrival and
work during the first weeks at Sun & Co in Javea felt. I was welcomed for an onboarding
week in the coliving space and introduced to the idea, concept, and reality of co-living on the west coast of Spain.
Co-living, unlike coworking, is a concept that extends its services and responsibilities beyond the professional realm. Coworking spaces are for people who do not need or do not want to rent or buy a personal office. Co-livings are spaces for people who do not need or do not want to live in one particular place throughout the year – namely: digital nomads and remote workers.
My responsibilities and tasks at Sun & Co are split into two areas: Hosting & Marketing. In
general, the company facilitates and hosts a space for guests to live and work in. Hosting
includes regular organizational tasks like organizing the spaces, checking in new guests, or
receiving feedback. However, a significant part of Sun & Co’s approach is the reliability and
personal connection to the co-living community. There is no explicit necessity or hierarchical demand to be personable, but as a host, I spend a lot of time with the guests, and handling the organization as well as relationships during their stay really makes a difference in their perception of the co-living experience.
The marketing role revolves more around the promotion of the co-living and Javea, the town it is embedded in. In this area, I was given a lot of autonomy, along with the permission to incorporate my personal talents. I’ve proceeded to use my photography and videography skills to create high-quality content for the social channels. I also used my time to get a better understanding of how the marketing is organized and what key factors are relevant for the success of the marketing measures.
Generally, I am granted a lot of freedom in terms of how I structure my work, and I am
allowed to fully incorporate my creativity as well as soft skills and people skills. I feel very
trusted and am excited to explore a new way of working

This was a great month. Galicia feels like something very homey already. The people I met, the nature around me, the project here, it all feels familiar already and like it’s coming together nicely. We did a bioconstruction workshop at the place where my project will be evolving and my project and its vision to renovate a stone house into a learning center became more graspable and concrete as I learned that it is actually possible to do. Building with wood, stone, clay and calk is so beautiful. The photo below was from the workshop with the bioconstruction teachers.

Dennis has helped me immensely to learn so many things about the region, the construction industry and possibilities, has connected me to his network and so on. We have done a small workshop together around permaculture and food forests and will be doing another one in January. The Foundry also hosted a little Christmas market with an exhibition of art from children that are part of a school project at the Foundry.

There will also be the annual association assembly in January that I will be participating in. To do that I have decided to become an associate in the Foundry, which I am very happy about, as I will stay in Galicia. That also allows me to co-create with the Foundry and be more involved in it in the future, partner up with our project, do cool things together and so on. 😊 I am looking forward to spending the holidays here with everyone and celebrate the many things happening in the past months in my project and in the process of this Erasmus for Young Entrepreneurs stay. Merry Christmas!

I have now, more or less, arrived at the half of my stay in Galicia.

It really feels like a very productive time here, as I am not only learning so much from Dennis and the Foundry, but also progressing a lot in my project. The highlight is that we (meaning I and my sister, who is doing the project with me) took the decision to officially found the legal entity of our project here in Galicia, a non-profit organisation (in Spanish: organización sin fines de lucro). We called it “Pouqiño a pouqiño”, in English “step by step” inspired by the Galician mentality to not rush it but rather go with the flow and take small continuous steps towards the vision. This feels like the official start of a big commitment, but amazing as it is exactly what we have always wanted. Now things are getting more concrete. Of course, this was a lot of bureaucratic work and still is. However, I find the Spanish bureaucracy more straight forward than the German one, so that’s a plus :-D.

On top of that, we are working a lot on our financial strategy, our business model right now, where I receive lots of ideas from Dennis as well, which is great.

In the Foundry always happen so many things, that it is impossible to write about everything. The latest highlight was the creation of a geoglyph out of turnip greens, that also attracted the local press. You can read about the project here (but it’s in Spanish) https://www.elprogreso.es/articulo/a-marina/geoglifo-grelos-marina/202311141333161708133.html. The Foundry continues to be a thriving place with many cultural and educational events happening and I continue to be deeply inspired by it as well as its visionary: Dennis 😊. This Sunday is a public exhibition of the geoglyph and art from school students that use the Foundry as their creative classroom, which I am looking forward to. Grateful for this Erasmus opportunity.