If you want to travel but you own a business, what are you going to do about this? Many people think that you simply can’t travel and that you’re just stuck where you are until you get some time off like everyone else. This isn’t true though.
If you have established your business well enough, and if you are a success on the market right now, then you should be able to run your business from anywhere in the world. It might take a little more effort from everyone involved, and you are going to need to adjust to doing things this way sometimes, but it’s possible. Keep reading if you would like to find out more about how you can travel while running your business.
Move Your Business Online
If you want to take out all of the physical complications, then you can take the time before you leave to move your business online entirely. This might take a little while, and it can throw up some complications, but you can manage it if you put your mind to it.
You can look up how to do this online so that you have a good idea of the best way to make this transition, you need to warn all of your employees that this is what is happening and make sure that they are okay to work from home, etc. If you don’t want to do this alone, there are services that you can hire who will be able to help you move your business online without much hassle. This should make it a more seamless transition, which is ideally what you need.
If your business is online, then you would be running it from your home anyway, so as long as you are following the correct timezone, it shouldn’t matter where in the world you are.
Have Someone Run It In Your Place
Of course, if you don’t want to move your business online, and you want to travel, then you might decide that the best option is to have someone that you trust running the business in your place in the meantime. Of course, this has got to be someone that you trust, someone that you know will do their best for the business, and someone that will communicate regularly with you, not making any of the big decisions without your input.
You need to think carefully about exactly who you are putting in charge before you leave. If it’s someone that you don’t completely trust and you’re just going to panic the entire time that you are traveling, it’s not worth this hassle. It has got to be someone who has proven that they can handle the responsibility and the pressure.
Keep Up With Things Remotely
As the business owner, you should be keeping up with your business remotely no matter where in the world that you are. It’s your job to ensure that you are on the right time to suit the business operating hours, and that of your employees rather than wherever you are at any given time. You are the one who is off jetting around the world, so you are the one who is going to have to sacrifice the time, even if this means being up at 4am where you are to have a business meeting with clients.
You can’t just stop everything because you have decided to travel. You are still going to have to take business meetings, you are still going to have to make the overall decisions for the business, which means that you have got to be constantly available for emergencies at the very least. Your employees, your partner or whoever else needs to be able to contact you about the business, just in case there is something essential that they need to discuss with you. If you don’t do this, then you are risking your business, and shirking your responsibilities as the person who runs the business.
Don’t Go Anywhere Without WiFi
A good rule of thumb is that even though you are traveling, you should not go anywhere that doesn’t have wifi or access to mobile data. You have got to stay connected to the internet for the majority of the time. We’re not saying that there aren’t going to be times where the internet isn’t the strongest or where you’re not going to drop out in certain areas, but as long as you can get online in some areas and you are there frequently enough, this is fine. Staying connected to the internet is paramount to keeping your business running successfully.
To be honest with you, the majority of places in the world have internet connection, so this shouldn’t be too much of a problem. If you know that you are going to be offline for a few hours during work time, then you need to make sure that your employees know that they are not going to be able to get in contact with you at this time. If you give them a heads up, at least they know that they’re going to need to sort out whatever problem arises, rather than waiting for your input in what could be hours from then.
Don’t Forget To Keep Things Safe
When traveling around and accessing business data, you need to make sure that you are keeping things safe. If you’re going to be using shared networks or computers, it is essential that you are taking the necessary precautions to keep your business and its data safe.
For example, if you are going to be traveling to Taiwan, you might want to look into a VPN for travel to Taiwan for the duration of your stay here. Ideally, you want a strong VPN for your laptop so that you don’t have to panic about people being able to access your files. Do your research into VPN’s, look into the benefits of them, find out which ones the best are and so much more.
You also want to make sure that you are logging out of your business after every time that you log in. The last thing that you want to do is risk someone ending up trying to steal or read any of your business files, as this is a massive security breach, something your business certainly doesn’t need.
Hold Video Meetings With The Team
In order to keep up with the team, you need to hold video meetings with them. In the same way that you would do this if you have employees working remotely, just consider this the other way around. You need to schedule regular meetings for the duration that you are gone, ensuring that they are all attending the meeting.
Some business owners don’t see the need for this, but it’s just as much about your relationship with your employees as anything else. If they think that you are sunning yourself somewhere and you’re not doing any work but you’re expecting them to continue doing most of the heavy lifting, this can create some resentment from them.
Keeping in touch with your employees through things like video meetings ensures that they know you are still working. That you are still pitting in the effort, and that you have not abandoned the business entirely. The best kind of bosses are the ones that are present, and that make the time for those that they employ. Be this boss, hold these team meetings, get the information that you need, and make sure to ask your employees how they are and how they are getting on.
Ensure You’re Being Kept In The Loop
Last but not least, if you want to run your business while traveling, you have got to ensure that you are being kept in the loop at all times. You need to know what is going on, if there are any big changes going down and why. Ideally, you should be getting little progress reports each day to ensure that you know what’s happening with the day to day running of things, and then you should get a more detailed report at the end of the week. You can then read through this, see if there is anything that you didn’t already know and if there is any action that you need to take. If there is, then you need to get on that asap. If there isn’t, then that’s great for you.
We hope that you have found this article helpful, and now see some of the things that you can do to run your business even when you are traveling. The great thing about being the boss is that you have the option to travel while still being the boss, as long as you have set your business up to be able to handle this. Of course, this isn’t going to be possible when your business is still finding its feet, but for established business owners, this is going to be a possibility if you want it to be. We wish you the very best of luck with this.
