I’m on a bus traveling from AucklandNew Zealand to Rotorua, New Zealand. While on the bus I prepared a word doc that I need to submit to the City of New York as a provider of Professional Training and Development. Earlier this week I helped a couple members of my team prepare their contributions as well. This morning I was on a conference call with a client who had participants from all over the USA. It’s a program about communication and sharing resources.

Why am I telling you this? Because to take on this new lifestyle I had to give up doing it all on my own. I have a team for both these clients. I brought in collaborators who can handle things when I can’t be there. I’m continuing to support teammates. The work is stronger because of it and my load is lighter.

Just like this canoe used by the Maori to travel on New Zealand’s waterways, it takes a team rowing together to make progress.

Could your super-stretch-project benefit from collaboration? What would you have to give up to have collaborators? How would it be strengthened while lightening your load if they were on board?

#travelingwhileworking  #workingwhiletraveling

Change is scary. In the months leading up to this trip I wrestled with the overwhelmingness of it. Where would I travel to? How many countries and how long for the first trip? Visasweather, inoculations, choosing a backpack or roller bag, getting a tablet (my regular computer was too big), where to stay, who could I connect with, how to be in a new place and still be connected to the east coast, advice from the web. I’m traveling by myself. As a single woman traveling, what should I be careful of?

Big changes are as scary and as overwhelming as these rock cliffs in New Zealand. Where do you start with something so huge?

Whether you’re an individual or an organizational team or a small business, can you challenge yourself to make a big change. Not just a little incremental change, but a big disruptive change? One that challenges who you are and how big your vision is? I dare you to take on a big change right now and achieve your big challenge as you read about mine in these blog posts. What’s your change? Can you label it as your super-stretch-project? #travelingwhileworking  #workingwhiletraveling

Change! What does it take to change your lifestyle? To change the methods by which you serve your clients? To change how you deal with time? To change your communication methods?

It means getting outside your comfort zonebeing out on the skinny branches where it’s risky, giving up the comfort of the old. It means making some changes to your identity so that it includes more and lives larger.

That’s what’s happening to me. I’m changing my life style to include more travel and traveling while working. In the past I would either travel for work to a conference or to service a client. My focus would be on the work to be done. Or, I would travel for vacations, try to get off the grid and away from work. Just relax in a nice warm place and treat myself to things that would help me forget all about the pressures of work.

Now my new lifestyle is a mix and a balance. I’m traveling in New Zealand (Australia and the Philippines, also) I work part of the day and see sights and meet people other parts of the day. I service clients via Zoom, participate in conference calls via What’s App. Use my phone provider sparingly because of the extra charges.

 I planned this for a year. Did it take a year? When you include fighting my own demons about making changes, yes. Could I master time differences? Could I still maintain client relationships? Would I be able to earn enough money to make the business work and to make the traveling work? Could my picture of myself include doing something I’d never done before?

You’re invited with me on this journey, not only to different countries, but to different depths of myself. I’ll post a couple of times a week. Short entries and I promise some pictures. Just enter your email address if you’re not on my list yet. #travelingwhileworking  #workingwhiletraveling

Are you considering traveling more and you want to keep your business going while you’re traveling? Here are some things I did. They are not perfect. But they’re a start. They’ve also helped me streamline my business since I’ve been back. This is a picture of the stage of the main concert hall inside the Sidney Opera House. I chose it for this newsletter/blog post because “All the world's a stage” (Shakespeare). You get to say how the play goes. You get to create the life you want.

1. I evaluated scheduling apps. I chose Calendly.com so people could book their own appointments at mutually convenient times more easily. I used it for clientsprospects, marketing on LinkedIn. I’ve also continued to use it since I’ve been back in NYC. Some of my appointments are now in person so I have to block out NYC travel time, too. Here’s a link if you want to set up a conversation. https://calendly.com/drivingimprovedresults/60min
2. I wanted to keep getting new clients even though I was traveling. So I arranged with a LinkedIn marketer and two virtual assistants to continue contacting prospects on my behalf.
3. One of my virtual assistants took the articles I wrote a couple times a week, posted them on my blog site, sent the blog/article out to my mailing list, and then sent out social media posts with the same content to bring traffic to my site. This had its problems getting started, but it’s in process now. Some friends are making suggestions about having even more impact with social media.
4. Another virtual assistant was sending things to a specific target market. We’ve identified another app so she can follow-up with phone calls, get return calls, and not reveal her own cell/home phone number. Phone.com.
5. I used the pictures from my trip to bring life to the blogs, social media, and email marketing.
6. After being drugged and robbed in the Philippines, I’ve turned that into speaking engagements about ‘Trust, Risk, Betrayal and Resilience’. Nothing like turning lemons into lemonade. Hopefully you won’t have a similar incident. But you’ll find some experience or decision you had to make that you can leverage into a topic that others want to know more about.
7. Reading/answering my email was a big time waster for me. One of my first steps in planning this shift in my business was to segment my email so that I only saw in my primary box the important emails coming from clients, prospects, referral partners, etc. Everything else was segmented into email categories that I could choose to look at later if I had time.
8. Another early choice was to decide how much time I would be traveling. At first it was 3 months and then it scaled back to about 5 weeks per trip. I’m happy with that now. It’s what I can bite off and chew. I might expand it in the future. But it’s fine for now.
9. Making changes always involves what you’ll give up. I decided to give up two networking groups that I had gotten mixed results from. Now I can look at what might be a better use of my time.
10. When I decided what countries would be included, I thought deeply about what people I knew who lived there and what organizations might have branches there. I wound up with 3 speaking engagements and a couple of meetings with fellow coaches.
11. I planned carefully about available times when I was traveling to countries in different time zones. For instance, New Zealand had a 16-hour time difference from NYC. Australia 14-hours, and Manila-12 hours. Also, it was the next day. I arranged open slots in my Calendly app for those few hours when it made sense for my schedule in those countries and still was business time in NYC. It worked out well that I used early morning hours for business and then had the rest of the day free for travel in the countries I was visiting. Creating a chart in google sheets was super so I could refer to it regularly.
12. I checked email every day. But I had scheduled calls only a few hours a day a few days a week.
13. Partnering: I had a client who wanted me to present at their annual conference. It was right in the middle of my travel time. So I brought in another coach/consultant to partner with me and meet the company’s need.
14. Teamwork: I have a contract with the City of New York to provide professional training and development. I had developed a team from the start of even bidding on it, working with the best professionals for this, from a directory of professionals online. The team continued to work and move the contract forward even though I was traveling. I had to make decisions along the way, but that was done through emails and phone calls. I didn’t have to be there.
15. Getting coached: Planning this shift in my business model was overwhelming and scary. So many choices and decisions. Very much out of my comfort zone. Traveling by myself had its good points and fearful points. Getting coached helped me see things differently, focus on my strengths, kept me accountable to get things done.
16. I kept a gratitude journal. Fear and gratitude can’t co-exist because they are from different parts of the brain and involve different neurochemicals. So focusing on gratitude shifted my mental mood and quieted the fearful part of my brain.

This is only a start of my ‘Traveling While Working’ and ‘Working While Traveling’ insights and evolving lifestyle and business model. It’s all about creating the life you want and not settling for what you fall into. It’s not always easy. Change can generate a lot of fear. But all things are possible if you believe you can create what you want. If you want to learn more and set up something similar for yourself, please contact me. Use my scheduling app. It makes finding a mutually good time easy. https://calendly.com/drivingimprovedresults/60min #travelingwhileworking #workingwhiletraveling