I like to use my travel time as much as possible to work on the
business rather than in it, and I find that being in a different environment,
being out of my normal office and desk space, I find that that
helps me to shift out of the day to day habit that I'm in of.
Oh, sit down, and then work in the business like I usually
would. Welcome to imperfect Action, I'm Steph Taylor. For years, I
read all the books, downloaded all the freebies, and did all the courses,
but it wasn't until I started taking imperfect action that my business had its
first million dollar year. Imperfect action is about doing things before you're ready,
prioritizing consistent action over perfect action, and moving forward even when you're not sure
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Hey, welcome back to in Perfect Action. This is episode seven hundred
and seventy four. Today I'm sharing seven things that made running my business while
traveling a whole lot easier. On my most recent trips, So if you
haven't been following along, I spent most of January and a little bit of
February of this year in France skiing in the beautiful French Alps. And while
I was over there, I worked a little bit, but I also really
enjoyed the skiing aspect, the travel aspect, and for the first time in
a while, I really felt like I had the balance between working and enjoying
where I was and enjoying the travel part. I felt like I actually had
that downpat for the first time in a while. Because I have done a
lot of travel while working, I've also done a lot of offline travel where
I've been completely offline and in some cases haven't even had my laptop with me,
like in twenty twenty two when I went hiking through the Outback for two
weeks, obviously didn't have my laptop with me, and back in twenty twenty
one, I took a whole month completely offline and traveled down the coast of
Australia in a van. So this was a bit more of a run by
business while traveling kind of holiday. So a couple of little things that really
helped. So first of all was keeping my laptop time zone set to my
home time zone. Now this seems so basic, but it was a tiny
little thing that made a huge difference because it meant that I could see my
calendar in Brisbane time, in my home time, not in friend time France
time, because mentally converting time zones can be exhausting. So what I did
was I had my phone set to the local time where I was and my
laptop set to my home time zone, and then that way I could see
my calendar in whichever time zone I needed to. So if I, for
example, if I was booking a podcast interview on somebody else's show and they'd
sent me a calendar link and I was going to book it for after I
landed back home, I wanted to make sure that I was booking it in
a time that was going to be appropriate for home. I didn't want to
accidentally book it in the middle of the night or four am or on the
wrong day. So it made it really easy to just be able to quickly
refer to, oh, what day and what time is that going to be
back home when I'm back. And it also really helped because my team are
mostly all in Australia, so at least then when I opened my laptop,
I could ride away see oh great, it's seven am. Then none of
them are online yet, and that just saved me a lot of mental arithmetic
of what is it minus ten hours or plus ten hours, and what day
is it and all of that conversion, which when you're in somewhere like America,
for example, and you live in Australia, then there's even the factor
of like what day is it? Day ahead? Is it day behind?
I can never remember, So I highly recommend making that small little tweak if
you are going to be traveling and running your business. The second thing that
I found really helpful was getting into a routine. Now I find even in
normal everyday life, if I don't have a routine around work, then I
struggle to get my brain into work mode. This can be a lot harder
if you are traveling in multiple cities and stopping over for short amounts of time,
which is why if I'm going to be working on a trip. I
also like to be traveling for a little bit longer in one place, and
I like to live a little bit more like a local, so that it's
not this quick dash from one's to the next, and oh, I've got
to try and see all of the things in this one city, and I've
only got two days to do it. So I much prefer spending a longer
period of time in one area. My most recent trip that I did to
the French Alps, I was in the ski town for about twenty two days
or twenty three days, and I had about twenty days of skiing, which
was awesome. I woke up, I did a few hours of work,
I skied for a few hours. Some days I skied longer. Some days
I didn't ski as much, depending on the weather, depending on the snow.
And then some days so I had friends there for a little while.
Some days I had lunch with them. We had a big lunch, and
then after that I was pretty useless and I just wanted to nap. Other
days, after I finished skiing, I found a comfy chair at the base
of the mountain and I had a nice cold beer and I read my book.
With the beautiful view on days when I knew that I had to stay
up late. So you know, I had some calls because my all of
my courses and programs are set to Australian mornings for the calls, so I
knew I had to stay up late to do those calls. So on those
days I went back to my Airbnb, I did a little bit more work,
I had some dinner, maybe did a bit more work after dinner,
just to keep my brain awake and stop me from falling asleep. There were
some evenings where I woke up, I had a nap, and I woke
up literally fifteen minutes before the call because I just knew I needed that energy.
But the main thing was I got into a bit of a routine with
each day around Okay, this is when I'm working, and this is when
I am going to be having fun and skiing or hanging out with friends,
or going out for meals or going for a walk and enjoying the area that
I'm in. I really also recommend. Something that I did this trip that
I haven't done previously was trying to intentionally cluster my calls together. So I
did my best to make sure that most of my calls were scheduled for Thursday
mornings Australian time, so then I was only having to stay up late on
that Wednesday night, and that meant, you know, one call my eight
am calls in Australian time, I were eleven pm in France, which is
really late to stay up when you are an early morning person like I am.
But at least I only had to stay up late that one night,
and I could back to back a few calls, so I had ten pm
and then eleven pm for example. The third big thing that made a massive
difference was setting strict boundaries with my time. So the idea here is that
if you have boundaries between your travel time or relaxation time, whatever you want
to call it, and your work time, then you can make the most
of both of them, rather than making the mistake that I made when I
went traveling for the first time after starting my business back in twenty seventeen,
where when I wasn't working and I was out enjoying myself, I felt really
guilty because I knew how much work I still needed to do, and when
I was working, I felt really guilty because I was in Lisbon, Paris
or beautiful places and I wasn't enjoying where I was, so at least if
you know, if you have those boundaries around what hours you're going to work
and what days you're going to work, then if you stick to those,
then that removes that element of guilt and it really it ties in with your
routine. So what hours will you work? What hours will you not work?
If you are traveling with friends or partner or family, communicate this to
anyone else that you are traveling with as well. Tell them I'm going to
be working from seven till ten each morning, and then I'm free to do
any travel activities so that there's that expectation ahead of time. They know,
okay, great, So if I want to go for breakfast before ten am,
I'm going to be having breakfast by myself. Communicate this. If you
have a team, communicate this with your team so they know what hours to
expect you online and offline. And also put in your calendar what city you're
going to be in. I know that this has been a bit confusing for
my team in the past. They're like, you're in America, but which
time zoning you in because I have no idea what time it is for you.
So communicate all of those things with your team so they know exactly when
they can expect you online and offline. My friend Anita who Anita Seek,
who was a guest on this show not that long ago, about a month
ago a week, did some episodes and she said that one of her tips
for travel is that she has half an hour or an hour every day when
she's traveling where her main operations team member is online at the same time,
and they use that one hour to just get through anything that they need to
both get through. So if you can do that with the time zones that
you're working in and your team are working in, then you can potentially do
that as well. I also find that booking a longer period of travel can
be a great way to start setting your business and your team to rely on
you a lot less because so it relies on you less because it's forcing you
to figure out exactly what tasks you have to do every single day, and
it forces you to either do this tasks before you go, do them while
you are there, which a lot of the time you might want to do
those while you're traveling, in which case you then need to maybe delegate them
to your team or you need to find a way to automate or systemize them,
or in some cases maybe you'll realize that the tasks you were doing weren't
that important and you can delete them from your to do list. Right,
the little admin things that don't need to be done, great, we can
delete those. And when I'm traveling, I find that because I'm usually wanting
to only work like two or three hours in a day. If that,
then I find that I'm very selective about what I work on and I'm become
a lot better at prioritizing. So I delete the tasks that don't need to
be done or aren't as important. And then the other thing to consider is
what do you want to work on? What do you not want to work
on while you are traveling? So, for example, I don't want to
be recording podcast episodes while I'm traveling. It's there's just too many variables around
sound quality, around the lighting, Like I don't know if the Airbnb I'm
going to go to, So the one that I was in France, it
was not soundproof, and the building it was like, I don't know,
it was wooden or something, and everybody on all sides of the building above
downstairs either side of the apartment. Whenever they came and went, it was
so noisy. So I wouldn't want to be recording podcast episodes in that environment
where I can't control that kind of sound quality. I also then can't record
video, which I prefer to record video with my episodes if I can.
So instead, what I did was I batched those podcast episodes ahead of time
before I went, and I didn't have to worry about it for an entire
month, which was awesome. I also find having a list prepared of things
that I want to work on on the business can be quite nice. I
like to use my travel time as much as possible to work on the business
rather than in it, and I find them being in a different environment,
being out of my normal office and desk space, I find that that helps
me to shift out of the day to day habit that I'm in of Oh,
sit down and then work in the business like I usually would. So
I made a list of things that had been on my like, oh,
I want to do these someday. I made that list and I started chipping
away at some of those tasks, which was really fun actually, and because
I was in that new, new environment, my brain was able to be
a little bit more creative than it usually is in its everyday environment, which
is my home office. All right. The next thing that I have always
like whenever, ever since I started traveling and working, and even now,
I think that this is a non negotiable, and that is having a dedicated
workspace. So in other words, not working in the same place that you
relax. I find it so challenging to switch from relaxing mode to working mode
when I'm traveling. So have it a desk at my airbnb or even just
like I don't know, a chair at the kitchen table where I can sit
down and activate activate work mode. That makes such a difference. It makes
it so much easier to switch from relaxing to working. Your brain creates these
associations with particular places. So for example, if you're staying in one town
for a while and you find a cafe you always like and you always sit
down in the window seat, and as soon as you sit down you do
an hour of deep focused work. Guess what your brain is going to associate
that window seat in that cafe as where you do deep focused work. So
when you sit down, it's going to naturally be a lot easier to start
those kinds of tasks. There. On the flip side, your brain is
also probably going to associate your bed with sleep and your couch with relaxing,
so you're gonna find it a lot harder to motivate yourself and find that energy
to do work when you are sitting on the couch with your feed up.
It Also, having a dedicated workspace also helps to create that boundary between work
and travel fun relaxing mode, right because otherwise you can very easily find yourself
in that gray area where you're half working, you're replying to emails while you're
chilling on the couch, and it's not really productive work, but it's not
relaxing either, and then you don't feel like you've even had a holiday.
And when you're on the couch on your laptop, your family doesn't know that
you're necessarily in work mode, or your travel companions, your friends, whoever
you're with, they don't know that you're in work mode, so they don't
know not to disturb you. Whereas you can create that boundary of hey,
when I'm sitting at this desk or I'm sitting at this table, or when
I physically remove myself and go and sit at the cafe across the road.
That is, when I'm in work mode. Please don't disturb, okay number
five and not relying on hotel or Airbnb WiFi for calls. This has nearly
got me into trouble a few times. And now when I land in another
country, I download an eSIM as soon as I can. So if you
have a new Ish I. I'm not sure about other I'm not sure about
Android, but I know with iPhones, the Newish ones, you can download
an e SIM so you don't have to even get the physical sim card anymore.
It's like a little digital sim. And I make sure that it's one
that allows me to hot spot my phone, because some of them will only
give you Internet that you can use on your phone, but you can't hotspot
it to your laptop. And then I have a backup internet connection for my
laptop. And this really saved me in France where the second airbnb that I
stayed at, so I spent half the trip in one place and half the
trip in another place. The second airbnb that I was at didn't have Wi
Fi. Now I'm so accustomed to Airbnb's having Wi Fi that I almost like,
actually, don't even check anymore that they include Wi Fi because I just
assume that they're going to have Wi Fi, like it's so readily available and
so cheap in most places now. But this one didn't have Wi Fi.
So I had to hot spot my phone to be able to do all of
my calls. I went through, like I don't know, I think it
was like a hundred gigabytes of data just doing the calls for my programs that
I had to run while I was over there, and recording and uploading a
couple of things. It is also this has saved me a few other times
when the hotel or airbnb WiFi has been a bit slow and patchy. You
know those times when it's like it's there, it's good enough to maybe scroll
through social media, but it's not good enough to do a zoom call.
This is when having an eSIM has saved me a lot. So I have
an app called air r Lo Airlo and it just has all of the eSIMs
for different countries and you can search the country and then when I land in
that country, I download a new simcard on the free airport Wi Fi.
It's usually only a couple of dollars, depending how long you're staying and how
many gigs of data you want. So I'll download the new SIM card when
I land, and then I have data that I can use on my phone,
and I don't have to pay roaming fees, and I can hotspot my
forward to my laptop, save me money, and it's generally going to be
a reliable source of Internet. That said, I do if I'm going to
a new place I've never been before that is not a major city, I
will look up the coverage maps to see what phone networks have coverage and make
sure that they at least have four G, like decent four G coverage,
so that if the Wi Fi and the Airbnb is no good, then I
can get a simcard for that particular phone network if the e SIM isn't connected
to that phone network, and I at least have four G signal, which
is kind of the bare minimum that I need to be able to run zoom
calls for my courses and programs. So that's a little hot tip for you,
Okay, Number six. I like to use travel time to do the
things that I don't usually have time for. This is something that I've always
always stuck to. I love it because man like, we have so much
downtime on planes. And yes, sometimes I will climb onto a plane and
if it's the evening, I will just have a glass or two of wine
and watch a movie and go to sleep. Like I'm not one of those
people who is always productive on a plane. But if it's a daytime plane
flight and I have a bit of I have in flight Wi Fi, then
I will use that time to catch up on an online course that I've bought
and haven't got around to finishing yet. Or if the plane doesn't have Wi
Fi and there's some kind of particular focused work that I need to chip away
at, then I'll make sure I have the document downloaded and I'll work offline
on it. I remember actually once on a daytime flight from Australia to the
State. It was obviously it was like a ten am flight or something,
so I wasn't going to sleep and I spent that flight I wrote our entire
affiliate guide and swipe copy for a launch Magic Launch, which that was like
more than twenty pages of words. Basically I wrote that over the flight,
which it's like a thirteen hour flight, and it made it go so much
quicker then if I'd just been sitting there watching movies or binge watching a series
and trying to maybe sleep during the day, which there was no chance that
was going to happen. On my way back from Europe. In this most
recent trip, I had a six hour layover in Dubai and I used that
as a chance to catch up on a coding course. So I'm learning how
to code in Python, and I used that as a chance to catch up
on that course because it kept my brain more awake. Like I'd just come
off a long flight, I was feeling a little bit jet lag, a
little bit tired, and I knew that if I sat there and tried to
read or if I was scrolling through social media, I would probably get really
sleepy. So I was like, well, how can I do this to
keep How can I do something to keep my brain awake? So I caught
up on that course. So find the things that you don't usually have time
to do and use your travel downtime as a way to catch up on those.
And then finally, oh, this is this is a great This is
like the biggest tip I can probably give you, and that is pack a
good pair of noise canceler headphones. I don't think this just applies to running
your business while traveling. This applies to any kind of travel. Like,
noise canceling headphones make travel in general just so much nicer, so much more
pleasant. If I'm on a plane and I want to focus on some work,
I put my headphones on. I have a good little focus playlist,
and then even the loudest screaming baby becomes white noise. If you are traveling
with other people and you need to focus on work, noise counseling headphones can
block out their noise, like, for example, if you are in a
small hotel room or a small airbnb and your kids are in the same room
as you and they are watching TV and you need to focus, put the
headphones on. They can also be like a nice way of signaling to your
family, Hey, when my headphones are on, don't disturb me. I
don't typically travel with a lot of tech. I just take my headphones,
like that is my main piece of tech that I cannot travel without, even
on short trips, like even if I am just flying down to Sydney,
I will take my noise counseling headphones with me so that I can have a
pleasant one hour flow light. Some people I know take a lot of tech
with them. Some people I know will take portable ring lights so that they
look good in their calls. They'll take microphones to record things, et cetera,
et cetera. I don't take any of that. I batch my podcasts
before I go, and I rely on my built in webcam of my Mac.
I rely on my built in microphone on my Mac because it's pretty good
quality. Actually, this episode you are listening to right now is recorded on
the built in microphone on my computer. Would you believe it? Because I
did not get ahead on my episodes before I headed over to New Zealand,
So I'm recording this one from a Mac microphone. Not terrible. It's not
as great as my normal microphone, but it's not terrible either. So there
you have it. Those are a couple of things that made running my business
while traveling a whole lot smoother. If you have learned anything from this episode
or any of the other episodes on this show, please take thirty seconds to
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Thank you so much for listening. Catch you next time.