It is beneficial if your company sells something digital so that you don’t have to be in any specific place to handle your products. Check out this episode for more advice on how you could work and travel.
Video Transcript
So today I want to talk about the top three things that allow me to live this lifestyle. Vacationing in Bali and working from Bali. I think there are three components that all need to be aligned in order for you to work and travel and still be productive.
- Number one is the company that you’re building and working at.
- Number two is the team you’re working with.
- And number three is you, yourself and the structure you are willing to create for yourself.
And I’ll talk more about this in a bit but now I’ve got to run. I have to get to a drone shop to fix my drone. There’s a little sand that got into one of the motors yesterday and they close in about an hour so I’m going to head out there to Canggu.
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So we drove for about half an hour to the place that repairs drones. These guys seem like pros. There’s a ton of different drones here.
Quick and easy, they were able to fix it. The drone is running again and now we’re on the way to the beach to see if we can catch the sunset.
***
So we just got to Echo Beach. Should be a pretty nice evening and the reason why we came here was they offer a barbecue where you just pick fresh seafood and meat and they grill it right there in front of you.
The top three components to work and travel full-time
Earlier, I wanted to talk about how you can combine being productive and working and at the same time, every now and then, sit on a beach and sip a fresh coconut and go for a swim.
I think there are three components. One – your business. Two – your team. And three – yourself.
#1. The business you work at
I think for your business, it largely depends on what it is that you do with your business. I think certain companies like Sendtask or DFINITY where the product is purely virtual lend themselves much better to this type of flexibility than a typical brick-and-mortar business. Just because you don’t have to be in a certain place in order to sell your product and to produce your product. All I need to work is my laptop, my phone, Wi-Fi, and electricity. And I can get that in pretty much any time zone.
Also, I think what helps is if you have a product that you don’t need to sell one-on-one. Something like DFINITY or Sendtask where people buy your product online and you are able to sell your product through Google AdWords, Facebook advertising, SEO, instead of door-to-door salesmen or b2b practices.
#2. Your team
The way we set up processes is for them to be able to solve problems themselves or at least have enough work to work through the day so that I have, like, 8 to 12 hours to get back to them. What we’ve seen here is that at the beginning it costs us work a bit more and we were a bit slower to ramp up at the beginning because we had to write documentation, we have to figure out how often do we talk to each other…
Right now, that’s only once a week. We have one weekly call of 45 minutes. So while at the beginning we had to figure these things out and we had to provide documentation, we’ve also seen that about two months in, it made us a lot, lot faster and it helps us now to scale our team from, like, three people to 13 people because all the documentation was already there. So everyone who joins the team can just log in, read that documentation, ask questions at the beginning and then they pretty much have everything they need in order to
get started.
#3. Yourself
I think that’s a very important component as well. You need to figure out if you are able to work while you’re in such an unstructured environment. For me, while I really enjoy the fact that I have a lot of flexibility and a lot of my workday is unstructured, I also realize that I need to be extra disciplined because I don’t have anyone who holds me accountable.
Feels like I’m in Paradise. There’s no one calling me or texting me or telling me what to do today and when to get up and what to deliver today. I still got to make sure I put in the work required to make progress today and make sure the business is advancing. So you cannot be someone who gets too distracted by this kind of nice environment. I think it’s a fine balance between being able to enjoy the time off and making the best of your day and not just sitting at home and working if you get to experience such a nice place. And at the same, time put in the hours and energy in order to make progress and get somewhere.
Summary
So I think those are three components that are needed if you do want to work remotely and have this kind of flexibility where you can work from anywhere.
Number one is: I think your company and business model need to be flexible or need to be somewhat detached from the real world. So you’re selling online and you’re producing something that’s mostly virtual so you don’t have to carry tools around.
Number two: your team. You need to pick the right team members and trust them. You need to have people that are able to work independently.
And number three: yourself. I think it takes a certain amount of discipline to make sure you still get stuff done even if you’re in such a nice environment.
And with that, I think I’m gonna head over to dinner. I have about two more hours until I need to be back on my desk and then I have another couple hours of work tonight. Talk to you tomorrow.
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