The blog’s been a little quieter the past few weeks. I’ve been away on a lengthy road trip, which was 7,500 kilometres long and stretched from Vancouver, BC all the way down the California coast, east to Sedona and back up through Sequoia National Forest. It was quite the journey. I had the best intentions of blogging along the way, giving you business tips drawn from the incredible experiences I had on the road.
It didn’t quite work out as I’d planned.
I did spend some time working on the business – I really did – but going to so many destinations over 24 days meant I was distracted a lot of the time and it was hard to get things done. What this trip made abundantly clear was that there are specific tasks in my business that I can outsource, and probably should outsource, because they are the first things that fall away when I’m distracted by shiny objects (or white sand beaches). If you’re looking to create a location independent business, some of these ideas might work for you, too.
- Billing & Invoicing. Normally I like keeping close track of what’s been invoiced and when. But as projects wrapped up, I found myself wishing someone else was taking care of collections. It was also hard to keep up with what needed invoicing when Celeste was managing all of the projects.
- Write News (our newsletter). I needed to reach out to our subscribers in some way and I could have pre-written content for the newsletter, then had someone else format it in MailChimp and make sure it got out to our audience.
- Project Setup. We use Basecamp for all of our project management and I found myself scrambling to set up a couple of projects.
- Scheduling meetings. This was impossible. I didn’t know where I was going to be or when, so I gave up and postponed my meetings until my return. While it was definitely good for my sanity, I think next time I’ll create some designated work days and have a VA set up appointments for me on those days.
- Social Media Interaction. I like Twitter, so I logged in from time to time to post about what I was up to. But other networks were harder to manage.
Even if you have a brick and mortar business, or you stay in one place all the time, getting away for a few weeks can really open your eyes about what tasks you can outsource, because doing this can help you scale up your business. With other people working in your business, you’ll have more time to work on your business, and figure out how to make it grow.
Have you ever taken a “working vacation”? Tell us about your experience.