How to Run Your Business While Traveling

Welcome to The Spark Show! In this episode, I’m going to talk about how to run your biz while traveling. I just got back from a month-long trip to Europe where I was in Paris, Southern Spain, and Southern Italy and it wasn’t a vacation. I was working while traveling and let me tell you - it was quite a challenge. I wanna share with you the challenges, what I wish I should have done differently and what I would do the next time that I’m traveling over a longer period of time. 

First of all, let’s just talk about what I mean by traveling and working at the same time. As influencers, we’re content creators so wherever we go, we’re creating content. We’re still showing up every single day on social, on stories, making sure our weekly content goes out. If you have a digital offer, you’re still showing up for that unless you’ve planned it out where you’re not at the time. But in my case, I was still doing weekly coaching calls and email support so I had to make sure I was still ON and had wifi to be able to take care of things. 

Most people when they see me traveling, they don’t actually think I’m working. They think “I’m on vacation.” They don’t realize that when you get sponsored travel, you actually have to work and shoot, you have deliverables to fulfill. 

So here are the challenges that I faced on this trip: 

#1 The time difference

Because we were 9 hours ahead it was really tough to adjust to the time and be consistent with posting times, and stuff like going LIVE and being on calls were very challenging. So keep that in mind if you’re traveling somewhere and there’s a time difference. 

#2 Feeling FOMO

Another challenge I faced was feeling the FOMO of wishing I was out doing fun stuff instead of being at the hotel or AirBNB working. It was tough to want to get work done when you’re somewhere traveling. This was especially tough when we only have 2-3 days or a limited time at a certain place. It was much easier when we had more than 4-5 days so we can balance the work and the traveling. 

#3 The WIFI

Sometimes the places we had didn’t have good WIFI so it was hard to upload or download. There were some things I wasn’t able to do until we got to a place where I had better WIFI. When I booked places to stay, I tried to read reviews to see which places had good WIFI and avoided places where people complained about the WIFI. We activated an international data plan before I left but we had problems with that at the end of our trip since I ran out of data and it wouldn’t refresh until the 30 days were up. 

Things I wish I had done differently and will do the next time around:

#1 More planning and prep 

I had thought I had already done a lot of planning and prep before the trip but I wish I would have done more. I wish I batched and created more content so I wasn’t worried about it on the trip. 

#2 More time at each destination

I will definitely plan to have more time at each destination so I’m not feeling the FOMO. I feel that it should be at least 4-5 nights at each location so I have time to work and not just trying to pack it all in to just a few days. 

#3 More outfits

I was traveling with only a carry-on and a backpack for the month which made it difficult to do photoshoots. I did some shopping in Paris and Sardinia which gave me more looks. It was challenging because the weather was different, it was colder in Paris then warmer in Spain and Italy. Next time, I would probably have brought more clothes or worked with a stylist where I could rent clothes for a shoot. 

Things I was glad that I did:

#1 Book a photoshoot

I hired a professional photographer through AirBNB experiences in Paris and had the best time. The photos came out great and now I have a ton of photos from that part of my trip. I went to Mallorca for my friend’s wedding and I was also able to get photos from there. The rest of the time, my husband Luke took my photos with his new iPhone11 Pro that he was able to get before he left and joined me. 

#2 Prepped my team

I have a team and I prepped everyone for my trip telling them about the time difference, availability etc. We communicated via Slack and they were patient with me knowing that I was traveling and sometimes unavailable. 

Overall, I think it’s definitely doable to run your business while traveling, you just have to be willing to be flexible and adapt to the situation. Sometimes, things will turn out great and sometimes, things won’t. At the end of the day, it’s supposed to be fun and with the right amount of preparation and patient - it can be done. 

In the next episode, I’ll be talking about how to be your own producer so you can plan out your shoots the right way. I’ll be going over how to create your concept, scouting locations, planning outfits and more.Thanks so much for listening to The Spark Show and I’ll see you in the next one!! 

Listen to the full episode here:

Book a call with Gwen: 

thesparksociety.org/call

Listen to Previous Episodes: 

To Video or Not to Video

How to Grow on YouTube featuring Erika Vieira

How to Create an Influencer Business Plan

How to Launch Your First Digital Project featuring Danielle Prahl

Answering the Question: What Do you Do?

Passion to Paycheck featuring Erika De La Cruz

How to Avoid Burnout

The CEO Mindset featuring Ali Daniel

                      Connect with Gwen Lane

The Spark Society | Instagram | Facebook