Written by: Lauren Ellen Barlow, Guest Writer
There’s one thing every entrepreneur has in common – we all started our businesses for more freedom of some kind. And for a lot of us, that involves travel of some kind, with the location freedom to pick up and fly off for a summer in Europe, or to spend a Wednesday afternoon eating gelato in Italy without being stuck to your laptop.
In January, I bought a plane ticket to Gran Canaria, Spain, to live out my dream of running my business from an island, and I haven’t looked back, spending the last few months traveling all over Europe with my business. I’ve been able to explore a new city every month, working only a few hours every day, while my business continued to grow month after month, and it all happened because of a few simple shifts that I’d made before I even began traveling.
Here are 4 shifts toward creating the freedom to travel within your business:
1. Take back your leadership over your freedom
Get clear on what freedom tangibly looks like for you and start to move in this direction. Step back into the leadership of not just what you’re doing in your business, but how you’re doing it, by making decisions that align with the life you want to create while traveling before you’ve even left. This could look like setting different boundaries around your schedule, or reducing your working hours so that when you do set off on your travels it’s a seamless transition.
This was something that I started implementing in my business months before I’d even booked a plane ticket, and it meant that working remotely abroad was a simple transition, as I already had created the freedoms I wanted and adjusted my business accordingly far in advance.
2. Build freedom into the foundations of your business
Now that you know how you want your business and life to look like while you’re traveling, go back to the foundational parts of your business and check in with whether they are actually supporting you in creating this. Do your offers, your income, and your workload enable you to travel with the freedom you’re desiring? If not, it’s time to take a look at how you can adapt to these areas.
This is an incredible opportunity for you to get creative with how your business gets to look, and how you get to do things, and so much innovation can come from this place, setting your business up for years to come and allowing for faster growth too.
3. Let’s check in with your finances
There are two parts here that we want to check in on – how much revenue you’re able to generate while maintaining the freedom you’re desiring, and secondly, the consistency of your income.
First up, looking at your business structure and your offers, does this allow you to bring in the income you want while you’re traveling? Take a look at what your traveling expenses will approximately look like each month and check in with whether your business is able to cover this and support you financially. If there’s still a gap here, take a look at your offers and see where there may be any opportunities for you to increase this income.
Consistent income is one of the best things you can prioritize if you’re planning to travel for an extended period with your business. There’s nothing worse than spending your days exploring new cities while worrying about whether you’re going to be able to cover your travel expenses the next month. Build consistency into your income, through payment plans, or through longer contracts with clients. This gives you the freedom to plan ahead knowing how much you will be bringing in.
4. Optimise and organise your business
Balancing travel and running a business can be a challenge if you’re constantly jumping from one task to another, and have an endless to-do list, so before you set off, take a look at everything that you’re doing in your business on a weekly basis, and optimise (everything). There may be some areas where you don’t need to spend so much time, there may be others where you can better organise how you’re completing this.
Ideally, we want to get clear on the priority areas within your business and reduce any time that you may be spending on tasks that aren’t moving the needle. Because who wants to be spending wasted hours on work that doesn’t move the needle when there is a new city right on your doorstep to explore?
And finally: Book that flight
Traveling with your business starts with creating the freedom to do so, and these 4 tips will completely shift how seamlessly your business can adapt to being run while you’re traveling. Go through these steps with your own business, and then book that flight, it’s time to take that leap and go for it!
Lauren Ellen Barlow, Brainz Magazine Guest Writer
Lauren Ellen Barlow is a business coach helping women to build freedom-filled businesses with powerful strategies that support them in doing business with simplicity as they grow their income and impact. At age 23, Lauren is now traveling full time with her business, working from locations all across Europe, and is helping her clients to create their own versions of a freedom-filled business. With clients in 10+ countries across 5 continents, she’s created a global community of ambitious women who are doing business differently, and setting a new standard for what they get to have inside and outside of their businesses.
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