Time Management

I'm now in Paris in an apartment with a beautiful view of the Eiffel tower. Last month was in San Francisco and then New York. It's definitely a cool experience being able to travel the world and also continue to build up and run a business successfully whilst traveling. But I've talked with a lot of business owners and it seems like an impossible dream for most people. So, how can you travel the world and still manage to run a business?

Actually I tried a few times to do this, but there were always a few things that seemed to hold me back. For example I spent a month in Brazil, but felt like I should go back “home” because the internet wasn't good enough and I couldn't really be productive and get work done. After several years of practice and refining the process I've discovered a way of working where it's possible to travel and remain productive.

Take the plunge: go completely virtual

The first thing you need to do is to get rid of your office entirely. This is a big psychological step. It also can be a major re-frame in the way that you think about a business. What is a business? Normally you think of an office, people coming into work etc. When I first started in business, I wanted to set up an office because I thought that it would help for the team to communicate better, I thought that it would be difficult to manage people who were working from home, hard to know if they are working or not … those sorts of things. Some of those concerns are valid, but it is possible to overcome all of the issues. It is possible to make it work.

And on the flip side the benefits of going completely virtual and getting rid of your office are enormous. For a start you lose all of the costs of the office. Secondly you can hire people in any city in any country in the world which reduces your costs further and enables you to hire more talented people. Many talented people want to work from home and may accept a lower salary to do so. There are highly talented people living in more remote locations that would love the chance to work remotely. And of course your team doesn't have to travel to get to work each day. If done right they will be more productive working from home than in an office.

Time management

Another key ingredient is managing your time well. Actually at first before I was implementing time management techniques in my life I had great challenges with this. I ended up not really getting ahead whilst traveling, but instead just managing to catch up on my emails. You can find out all the tips on how to manage your time well in the free articles section on this site. But there is one technique that you can do that will handle almost all of your time management challenges – read the article on the single most powerful productivity secret

Managing your team

As much as possible you want to manage with clear goals and responsibilities where you check in with your team members each week or month on progress towards their goals. If you have a team that is not capable and needs babysitting you need to replace them quickly. You want to keep to a maximum of 6-8 people reporting directly to you and have the rest reporting to other managers in your organization. You also need some kind of report structure that takes little of your time but gives you a complete picture of what is going on. I have built software that sends me one email a day that lists exactly what everyone in the team has done for the day.

Bank accounts: Keep control of the big amounts of money

In terms of your banking, you want to keep control of larger amounts of money. Personally what I do is to receive the income into bank accounts that I manage and transfer every two weeks enough money to the business to pay for all smaller expenses and for the payroll. This transfer can be handled via fax or internet banking so I can do it easily whilst traveling. Also I receive a report which lists all the amounts that were spent in the business and can compare that with my expectations of expenditure to make sure there is nothing out of the ordinary.

Your accommodation and internet

Actually one of the biggest challenges of working whilst traveling is internet access. Not a big deal in the US and other rich countries but in other areas it can be a challenge. To overcome the challenge you really need to prepare your accommodation in advance. For free roaming backpacker types that's not something you will want to do, but if you are truly running a business whilst traveling you need to make absolutely sure that you have a great space to work: a desk, a chair and fast internet. In the USA it's easy to handle this by signing up for a wireless internet provider such as Verizon.

Once you have fast internet access you can get everything else you need over the web. Sign up for an internet fax line with a service such as www.maxemail.com and get a virtual phone number with Skype or Google Voice. When you arrive in a new country buy a local SIM card, and get your calls diverted to your mobile phone and … voilà, you have a mobile office!

You really do need to go as much as possible for a paperless office. Get your bank statements sent to you over email for example. For signing documents you can scan your signature and copy and paste it virtually, so that you don't have to physically print anything. Or you can buy a small all in one printer and scanner that you can take with you, but I don't recommend it because it can be annoying if you run out of ink, and for the extra weight.

Also the time in each location you are visiting is key. For me spending a month or more in one place is perfect because you have some time to settle in and really experience the local environment. If you are moving to a new location every 2 days it's a big challenge because you will be spending a lot of your time traveling and settling in.

Organizing the travel

It's really time consuming! Finding a great place to stay with internet, and that doesn't cost too much is a real challenge at times. For me having a personal assistant makes it a lot easier to find places without needing to spend all my time researching.

How much does it cost?

It really depends on the style of your travel but the reality of this type of lifestyle is that in many locations it's not super-cheap. You can actually travel very cheaply in places like Thailand where you can get low cost accommodation and internet without too much hassle. But if you are traveling in Europe and want to rent an apartment it's difficult to get a good apartment with internet on a short term lease for less than about 1800 euro per month. So overall budget can vary from around $2000 per month if you do it fairly cheaply and in low cost areas, or even as low as $1000 per month if you are super-frugal and traveling in low cost countries. For most people though it's going to cost $4-6,000 per month, more in Europe and less in Asia. So you need to be earning enough to afford this, but for many it's not too hard once you get rid of your house, car and other fixed expenses, you start to save a lot of money by becoming a nomad.

What did you always dream of doing?

Most important of all is connecting it all together with the reason why you want to travel in the first place. Do you love skiing and want to spend a couple of months in a Canadian ski resort? Did you always want to learn Japanese, and stay for three months in Tokyo learning the language and experiencing the amazing Japanese food? Do you want to go scuba diving in the Great Barrier Reef in Australia? Do you have friends in multiple parts of the world that you want to catch up with?

Traveling is amazing. Even if it's only 2 or 3 months of the year, it's a fantastic experience to be in another culture, and a totally different part of the world. And the balance of doing some work during the week and then stepping out to explore your surroundings is a very cool experience.

There are a few key ingredients to make it work.

First it really depends on what type of business you have. Do you have a business that is fixed in a particular location like a café for example. If so the only way to be able to travel the world is to get your business completely hands off, to the point where you have a manager that takes over the running of the business. You step into the role of an investor in the café. At that point you can manage your investment by simply receiving a weekly or monthly report from your accountant and the manager. You structure one simple report that gives you all the information you need to make sure that things are on track. It's not possible to “manage” a café remotely, but it is possible to invest in a café whilst traveling the world. And a regular detailed report will give you enough information to know if things are on track. If there are major problems then unfortunately you have to fly back and sort it out.

For other businesses that are more virtual it is possible to actually manage the business whilst traveling.