5 Tips For Success When Traveling With Your Business
I’m in Hawaii now having come up from Fiji on my way to Canada. I’m presently typing this at a cafe on the top floor of the Ala Moana shopping center – the largest mall in Hawaii.
Typing on the third floor of the Ala Moana Center in Hawaii
In response to my recent blog posts written from places around the world, many people expressed a strong desire to emulate what I’m doing now – traveling and working in a functional and balanced manner (just without getting sick like I did!).
I’ve also had a couple of people email me explaining how they are also traveling the world and running their Internet business and how they believe more people could do the same, if only the knowledge of how to do so was out there.
In the spirit of helping others realize their dream of the traveling lifestyle, I’m going to present some tips to help you travel and run a successful business at the same time. I hope these ideas motivate you towards actually beginning the process of planning your trip, rather than constantly dreaming about it and putting it off until you have “more money” or “more time” or whatever belief that holds you back.
I don’t have a family traveling with me and I realize for many of you there are spouses and kids to consider too. Just remember your loved ones are variables you need to accommodate, they should not be reasons for not going, assuming the family are happy to come along.
It’s acceptable to hold off travel until children are out of school or independent, if you don’t want to disrupt their life. However the tips I’m about to present can certainly be applied to summer holidays and most of them apply just as well to any person who runs a business and wants more freedom.
Let’s get to it…
Life Portability: Mixing Travel, Business and Pleasure In One Seamless Lifestyle
Recently I was the willing target of several audio interviews. The topic of course, was blogging, however as is customary, most interviews begin with a little background study of the person in question.
As a result of telling my recent business history I found myself reminiscing about some of the ventures I was involved in during the previous 8 years or so. Most of them were online enterprises, but there was one experience where I was running a start-up based in the real world, an English tutoring school called “Aussie Tutor”.
If you dig into my earlier archives you will find several posts and podcasts were I mentioned my English school. It was an interesting time in my life, which taught me many lessons about business and in particular what I want from a business and what I don’t want.
Working 9 to 5 by Choice
While in charge of my school I came to fully realize what I had always known – I do not like having to be anywhere nine-to-five, five days a week.
Before I avoided a full time job specifically because of not wanting to be anywhere for such long periods of time to work for someone else. Not surprisingly, despite working for myself, I still did not like that I had to be somewhere during working hours.
Unfortunately, as a business with a physical premises, the English school demanded my presence every day unless I was willing to forgo any possible patronage that might walk in off the street. Ironically, despite my immaculate attendance, many days my English school was empty and I spent the time working online.
It didn’t take long for me to realize, despite my passion for the idea and my entrepreneurial spirit, my tutoring service was not going to work unless I made a significant commitment to it. I would need to either shut it down, or invest money and time and treat it like a true start-up.
At the time I had a growing Internet based business demanding my attention that was profitable (BetterEdit – an online proofreading service I sold in 2007). It wasn’t too hard to decide what to do next. I closed down Aussie Tutor, broke my lease and went back to working at home.
A Web Based Life
I am very thankful that I grew up during a period where the Internet also grew up. My very first casual job was web based (crafting websites for the business school at university) and my very first self created income stream came from the Internet too.
I can’t remember what life was like before the Internet, but I know it wasn’t nearly as good as it is now.
Tomorrow I hop on a plane and fly to Fiji. I’ll be there for 5 days before I board another plane where I’ll head to Hawaii. I’ll spend a week in the land of aloha, before jumping on another flight, this time to Vancouver, where a week of fun awaits. I’ll then make a short flight to Winnipeg, visit my grandmother, before settling in Toronto for 5 months. I intend to visit the USA for conferences and other fun things during my time in Canada too.
In Fiji I will be in a hotel but during the rest of my travels I’m staying in rented apartments with kitchens, private double beds and all the usual trimmings, at two thirds the price of equivalent standard hotels (I’m practicing a little 4-Hour Work Week accommodation hunting). I’ll have ample time and funds to do what I want and it’s all thanks to the World Wide Web. There’s not many occupations today that grant you this much freedom.
Ever present during this trip will be my laptop. My computer that connects me to the online world will serve as a communication tool to keep in touch with friends, family and colleagues. I’ll blog, create content, work on products, market, network and effectively live a very similar life to what I usually do at home in Brisbane.
The scenery might change, but the purpose and lifestyle doesn’t – and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Live the Stereotype – Laptop on the Beach
We all know the archetypical image of the entrepreneur sitting on the beach with their laptop, logging on to check how much money they made during the previous night and then settling back to a day full of sun, sand and sleep – a perpetual holiday.
I’ve already written about my disdain for the traditional non-working holiday, however the gist of the laptop on the beach image is definitely something I appreciate because it represents fantastic freedom. A business that can function – and even grow – despite your absence or location in the world, and the freedom to choose when to work, how to work and what to work on, is a great business.
This is a far cry from waking up at 8am to open the doors to a 3rd floor English tutoring school.
How To Build a Framework for Life Portability
Don’t Wait As Long As I Did To Learn This Business Building Lesson
It’s Monday morning in Australia and I’m about to have a group meeting at my house with my team to begin work on something new.
For most of my Internet business career I worked solo – and I really mean solo.
I built my website myself, created marketing materials like flyers and posters, promoted my websites, located and managed sponsors and provided customer and sales support. The only thing I didn’t do was actually provide the services, I had contractors do the editing when it came to BetterEdit.com my proofreading business and I had writers write the content on my first successful online venture, MTGParadise.com (although I did a lot of writing myself on that site too).
It’s amazing how far your enthusiasm and work ethic can take you in business. I’m proud of my achievements as a solo entrepreneur and I’m amazed at what I did manage to get done by myself. However after about 7 years of working without any support I realized that I couldn’t keep it up for ever, plus there was another pressing reason to get help – I had reached a ceiling point in my growth. Your business can only get so big if it’s just you doing the work.
With typical timing, it was around this time that Rich Schefren came to town with his first ground breaking report, the Internet Business Manifesto. I read Rich’s report and found myself agreeing with everything he said. I wasn’t exactly shocked by the revelation as some Internet marketers were when they first read the report. I knew I was working too hard and doing too much by myself, my problem was lack of action to change the situation.
Things finally did change in 2006. With my blogging business growing and my cashflow increasing I knew I could realistically outsource tasks to other people. With a looming trip overseas I decided I to do two things -
How To Launch A Membership Site – Part 8: Set Your Membership Site On Autopilot
Read previous articles in this series:
- Part 1: Build Your Preeminence
- Part 2: Communication Channels
- Part 3: Technology
- Part 4: Content and Pricing
- Part 5: Triggers
- Part 6: Prelaunch and Launch
- Part 7: Dealing With Attrition
The hard work is done. After a successful prelaunch and launch process your membership site is operating at full steam ahead. You watch your attrition rate, test and tweak your marketing, and continue to monitor feedback from your members so you can determine how best to meet their needs.
Depending on what you offer, whether it is education, physical product, software, news content, audios, videos, private label rights articles – anything, and whether you prepared in advance or you are creating what you provide “on the fly“, will dictate how much ongoing maintenance you have to do. Obviously no one wants to work forever, so you need to consider an exit strategy or set up an automation process so you can separate yourself from your membership site.
If your exit strategy is to sell your membership site, you will attract a larger price if your membership site is automated, so really, unless you need to sell urgently, you should be thinking about how to automate.
Systematization
Kill the Bargain Hunter and Change Your Attitudes Toward Money and Time
The last few months have seen some huge changes in my life. I bought my first house (pictures coming soon – I move in later this month), I just bought a new car (Suzuki Swift – again photos coming soon), I haven’t had a car in nearly 7 years so it will be great to finally not rely on friends for lifts (thanks Fran and Will!), I launched a new business, Blog Mastermind, and began the process of leaving my other business, BetterEdit (more news on this soon too!).
It’s been a pretty amazing ride since I left Canada in February, that is for sure!
Something I’ve noticed lately is a change to my mindset towards how I spend money. Ever since I began studying business, learning the 80/20 Rule, dealing with information overload, studying business systems with Rich Schefren’s mentoring program and just my own progression as a business owner, has led to a big mental shift.
The core concept I am talking about here is the relationship between time and money and how I leverage those two resources.
