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Man, Laptop And World: How To Travel Efficiently
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The Entrepreneur’s Survival Instinct: Got It?

Man, Laptop And World: How To Travel Efficiently

Over the last seven months, I feel like I’ve spent more time logging in to hotel Wifi systems than I have in my own office. When you make the decision to travel, whilst working on the move, efficiency becomes a major issue. How can you get the most out of your time, while severing many of those hours in pursuit of greater thrills?

I recommend travelling to anybody who has the chance. If your business is self-managed, it makes little sense to constrain your time and freedom to a single city, especially if you already know that city inside out. Many people cite the influence of outside factors for not being able to travel.

“The wife won’t let me…”
“The kids are too much work…”
“I’m tied in to a rental contract…”

Admittedly, those with less ties than myself have more problems to solve before they can take off around the world, but none of the factors are hammer blows to the idea. They just take a greater leap of faith and/or commitment to overcome.

If you’re stuck between indecision and lack of information, here are a few pointers I’ve picked up along the way:

1. Travel as lightly as possible.

If you are a notorious hoarder of junk, traveling is an excellent excuse to throw out the crap that’s being cluttering your garage for so long. When I moved to Thailand, I completely overestimated how many clothes I would need, and indeed what type of clothes I would need. Sticky heat-trapping shirts barely cool enough for the English winter? Definitely not going to be needed in Bangkok. Did I bring them anyway? Of course I did.

It’s tempting to fit a lifetime’s accumulation of crap in to your suitcase, but ask yourself one question. Is this so important that I can’t buy a replacement while I’m away? The answer to most items will be no. Traveling light makes moving around much easier, not to mention saving you many many pesos in excess baggage charges.

2. Hotel Wifi has a recurring tendency to suck balls.

I’ve learnt that if I don’t do research beforehand, fate will typically conspire to hand me a shitty hotel Internet connection. Working from a laptop instead of a dual screen Mac took some adjusting. Working from a laptop on 56K dial-up speeds merited a full blooded sucker punch to the balls. If you’re staying in a hotel, make sure the Wifi is good and included free of charge. Or risk paying £30 for a few hours of patchy usage at somewhere like Novotel Rim Pae. Screw you, Novotel.

3. Don’t stay in flash, rich, luxurious hotels.

Wifi is worth investing in if you’re running a business from your laptop. But I’ve never understood the craze behind booking hotels for $500/night. Ultimately, a bed is a bed. Unless you plan on doing something other than sleeping in it, why pay through the nose for something that rarely gives you a true taste of the place you’re visiting? Overpaying is considered by many to be a macho display of ballin’. Invariably, traveling with set requirements of the pampered existence you need to get to sleep at night defeats the bloody purpose of traveling at all.

4. Learn the language.

My biggest regret as I move on from Thailand. It’s difficult to truly appreciate a culture if the standard conversation leaves you scratching your head and whipping up Rosetta Stone on the smartphone. Learning a few basic phrases is a must, while learning conversational basics will give you a much better understanding of what’s happening around you. Not to mention, a whole new world of local prices become accessible once you display a better grasp of the native vocab than a regular tourist.

5. Dropbox.

Dropbox is the new rage. Okay, to most people, it’s yesterday’s new rage. I was slow to jump on the bandwagon, but I’m glad that I did. By using Dropbox, you can afford to pull a Tim Ferriss. Sod off the face of the Earth completely, leave your laptop behind and restrict work to bursts of activity in an Internet Cafe just outside the Angolan Jungle. Dropbox gives you access to your important files anywhere, synchronizing them across devices and affording you the title of Digital Nomad.

6. Use time differences to your advantage.

Initially, I was concerned about the time difference when I first moved to Asia. Companies and reps based in the UK, Canada and America would still be asleep while I was busy with work. What if I needed to talk to them? It didn’t take long for me to figure that this was a great blessing in disguise. Zero distractions and zero interruptions. By the time those in America had woken up and replied to my emails, I would be happily relaxing and unwinding in the sun.

7. Have back-up support in place.

When you’re traveling, even with laptop in tow, it brings peace of mind to have somebody ready and waiting to act on any emergencies. I hired a Virtual Assistant from EasyOutsource.com, which is by far my favourite place to recruit cheap but talented labour.

You can have all your mundane tasks handled by a full-time VA for as little as $250/month, although I would recommend you invest a little more for quality’s sake. It’s also better to hire a combined workforce rather than a single employee. An individual is just as prone to “sick days” at inconvenient times as you were back in the day job. Hiring a team removes this worry.

8. Reduce any unwanted papermail before leaving.

In the UK, I use the Royal Mail’s redirection service to have my post sent to family while I’m away. If it’s important, I’ll have them send it on for me. This costs £8/month for domestic redirection and up to £30/month to have mail routed overseas. It’s a good idea to deselect paper statements from your online credit and store card accounts. Who needs to be reminded of yesterday’s vanity purchases, anyway?

For tax purposes, I have any important documents from HRMC sent to my Thai based address. This is easy to do by updating your current profile after receiving the Government Gateway ID. For everything else, I don’t stress. If it’s important, I’m sure the sender will find a better way of contacting me.

9. Tell your bank and credit card issuers where you’re traveling.

Very important and the source of much frustration while I’ve been attempting to use ATMs overseas. Fraud detectors are sent in to a frenzy if you withdraw £500 from a Cambodian street market. Your bank will routinely cancel payments and refuse to process ATM withdrawals if you don’t make it clear over the phone that you will be traveling to a particular region on a certain date.

For this reason alone, I chose to open an HSBC Advance account before moving to Asia. They have a strong presence abroad and it’s reassuring to be able to walk in to a branch that knows your name if you have any problems.

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The Entrepreneur’s Survival Instinct: Got It?

Running an online business works in stages. Those stages are typically bemusement, survival and once in a blue moon, the luxury of thriving.

The majority of enterpreneurs are stuck in survival mode. Not because surviving is any easier than winding up bemused, but because most people give up not long after bemusement sets in.

So that leaves the rest of us. Surviving or thriving. What is it for you?

Many people believe their online businesses are thriving, but in reality, they are prospering on the edge of a cliff. Just one stiff breeze from falling in to the oblivion. It’s difficult to determine what distinguishes thriving from surviving, but in my opinion, the ability to take several setbacks in your stride is a decisive factor.

I know many affiliate marketers who are producing profits of five figures on a monthly basis, but I stop short of calling them thrivers. Why? Because they’re surviving in a marginal market. Their methods are the business equivalent of whoring out a one trick pony. If the products they sell change, or the advertisement methods they use disintegrate, it’s very difficult to recover. Such is the pain in the arse that follows any middleman in a volatile industry.

This isn’t to knock affiliate marketers (I am one), but to get to the bottom of the most important quality in a successful online entrepreneur – the ability to survive, at all costs, in rapidly changing markets.

We have to adapt to new methods of generating income, or fall by the wayside as yesterday’s dotcom optimists.

If you are based solely online, you are running a fluid business. By doing away with the brick and mortar, your rent becomes the price of staying aware of how the online space is changing – and how you can affect it.

I remember hating web programming because I resented the endless evolving technologies attached to the craft. Learn one language and I’d find it out of date, or the poorer cousin of a brand new language. In reality, all online businesses are prisoners to the chains of technology. The quicker technology develops, the more proactive you have to be to stay on top of your competition.

For that reason, I always say that it’s wise to build a business on flexible foundations. You don’t want to be so rooted in what you offer that the evolution of technologies predates you before you’ve even started. There’s simply no good in forming a belief system that Money Making Method X will always work, when Money Making Method Y is already the next hot shit.

Adapting to new technology is one requirement for survival, and it could also be linked to the second requirement: Never get lazy.

For the same reason that a World Champion boxer one day finds it difficult to hang with a younger, hungrier opponent, you too have to deal with your own motivations if you want to stay on top. Can you hear that sound? That is the sound of a thousand keyboards being mashed by would-be entrepreneurs all around the world. Everybody wants a slice of the online riches pie, and just because you’ve had a taste, doesn’t mean you have a right to the next bite.

Dealing with laziness and those mornings where the brain just doesn’t want to cooperate are fundamental to enjoying lasting success.

I think the difference between a successful entrepreneur and a persistent failboat is not the output when they’re both hyped and happy to work. The difference shows in the output when direct motivation is hard to come by.

The people I see thriving with the most successful online businesses do not work in bursts. We all love the rush of a sudden motivational kick up the arse to get some work done, but these kicks cannot help you every day. If it takes reading a blog post, or tearing through a self-help book, to spur you in to action, then you are prone to working in bursts.

We can all achieve excellence when we’re motivated and at the height of our games. But retaining that burning motivation as success arrives can be a difficult trait to master. But you must succeed. There are plenty of other entrepreneurs waiting to fill your spot if you don’t match them for work ethic.

Personally, my favourite method for combating laziness is to engage in projects where money isn’t my sole motivation. It’s the only way I can ensure that when money arrives, I won’t relent and consider my job done. Surround yourself in enough reasons to go that extra mile and laziness should never be a problem.

Listen to Bill Gates:

“I never took a day off in my twenties. Not one.”

This type of commitment – besides being practically unhealthy – simply isn’t possible if money is your only driving force.

Recommended This Week:

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