MBA882 The Working While Traveling Experiment P3: Applying Your Travel Experiences to Your Business

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Heyo. Welcome to the $100 MBA show, the business podcast with real business lessons from the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the Hundred Dollar MBA and webinar Ninja. It's part three of our Working while Traveling experiment and I'm in beautiful Rome and the experiment is in full force. I gotta say I love Rome. There's history on every corner and I got a bit more to say about that in a bit but if you're just joining us right now, this is part three of our eight part series where Nicole and I embark on an eight week trip. An eight week experiment to see if you can really travel the world while running and growing a business. There's a lot of talk in the online business world about being location independent and being able to travel the world while building a business. We're going to find out, or we're trying to find out in this experiment if this is actually true. Previously in our last episode in part two we learned how to make sure to make time to get work done so your business doesn't suffer, but also how to enjoy your travels and make time for play. So if you missed that episode, make sure you go back and listen to part two last week in the last episode we were in Milan and Florence. And in today's episode, again, we're in Rome, one of my favorite cities in the world. I love Rome because it's gritty, it's cultured, it's real. It's a consistent reminder of what mankind is capable of. Talk about motivation. In the next 20 minutes or so. In the episode today, I'll be sharing with you how to apply your travel experiences in your business. Travel is a privilege and if you're able to travel to, you should take full advantage of it. Yeah, it's a ton of fun, but the experiences you have along the way can really impact your business and can really improve you as an entrepreneur. In this episode, I'm gonna be sharing with you three experiences I've had already in Milan, Florence and in Rome that have greatly influenced me, have changed me. They've really changed me as an entrepreneur and I'll be showing you how. I'll be applying what I've learned in our business. And this is no surprise. You know, this show is practical. We're gonna give you practical examples, real examples of what we are learning and how we're app a little bit of behind the scenes information. This episode has taken a lot of my time to prepare for because it takes a lot of reflection. It takes a lot of time to actually, you know, internalize what you're learning along the way. Sometimes when you're traveling and you're moving around and things are happening fast, you don't get a chance to reflect. I'll be giving you some strategies on how to make sure that you don't let things just wash all over you. You actually can take note of these things and apply in your business strategically. So let's get into it. Let's, let's get down to business. If you're just joining us along the journey in our working while traveling experiment, here's a little history. Nicole And I run two businesses, the $100 MBA and Webinar Ninja, our software business. We have a team of 21. Actually we're making another couple hires in the next couple of weeks. So we're going to be a team of 23 really soon. But in this experiment we want to see can you actually travel and build a business at the same time with grow a business, run a business. Now, we've traveled at long periods of time before, but only up to three weeks. But in this experiment, we're going all in. Eight weeks of travel, 15 cities and we're going to run our businesses along the way. So we've Been to Milan, we've been to Florence, and now we're in Rome. And we'll be in Rome for the next three days and then we'll move on to Sicily. This is my second time in Rome. Absolutely love this city. I'll explain why in a bit. But what we're going to do in today's episode is I'm going to give you three specific examples or three specific takeaways I got in each of the cities that I've been to so far and how I will be applying them in our business. But before I do that, I want to give you some quick tips on making sure that you do the same when you travel, that you actually take note of the experiences you're having. And not only just take note of it, but analyze it and find out, hey, what can I take from this? How can I apply this in my business? How can I take this and make it my own and reinvent myself as an entrepreneur? So one of the best ways of doing this is just taking note, really having a journal. Now, this experiment, these pilots episodes would not be possible if I did not journal what I've done every day, what I've learned along the way, because I would have no content, right? I would be in my head and it would be really hard for me to recall it. So you have to document what's going on. Take advantage. It only takes a few minutes a day. It literally can only take five minutes a day. Open up your journal, whether it's on your phone, whether it's Evernote or a notebook, and just take five minutes. Put a timer on your phone and just say, hey, I'm going to just write for the next five minutes everything I've experienced, everything I've learned. I'd highly recommend you make this a daily practice. Five minutes is nothing. But you're going to really, really benefit in the long run because it's gonna allow you to really analyze what you've learned. It's also gonna force you to recall what you actually did that day. And this is gonna allow you to remember and really have some really strong takeaways. So really make it a point to journal along your journey again. You could do this on your phone with some note taking apps like Evernote or the Notes app on your iPhone, or simply just emailing yourself something, whatever it takes. Take down notes, journal about what's going on. Now, if it's really hard for you to stick to a writing journal, then make it an audio journal. Auto recording on your smartphone is so simple. Now you can just have audio clips for every day and let it run. Heck, you can make it video clips if you'd like. Now, I prefer writing because it's a lot easier to scan and to, you know, kind of go back and look at what happened every day with text rather than with video or with audio. But it's better than nothing. Documenting it is really important. And if it takes you making audio notes versus written notes, go ahead and do it. Now, one of the ways to make sure this actually happens is to allot some time to do this, to actually schedule a time every day to do this. Now, one of the best ways to do this is to line it up with breakfast, because you're gonna have breakfast every morning, something that we all do, right? And breakfast usually doesn't take too much time, maybe 10, 15 minutes. And writing in your journal is really a great way to ease into the morning while you're having your coffee or your tea or your fruit, whatever it is. But the point is, is that you can journal about the day before while you're having breakfast every morning. And it's hard to miss because you have breakfast every morning and you just kind of link it or you anchor it to breakfast. Also, mornings are usually a slower time in travel. It's not like you're linking it to dinner. We're usually going out for that, meeting up with friends or maybe meeting up with some locals, whatever it is. The point is, is that, you know, breakfast is a slow time. It's a time that you can stay consistent with. And again, it's only five, ten minutes, and you should be able to link it up to breakfast and get it done. Now, another tip I want to share with you before I get into my experiences and how I'm going to apply it in our business, is asking the question, how can this experience help me so ever you're doing? So if you're going on a hike up a mountain, if you are going to see some historical sites, if you're going to a museum or whatever you're experiencing at the moment, if you're looking at a beautiful painting in a museum, ask yourself, what can I learn from this painting and what can it do for my business? That learning, that takeaway. You want to really live in that moment. Especially when you talk about history or art or architecture or any kind of experience you're having in the traveling experience. That thing was built, was created for a reason, is for you to reflect, for you to take something out of it. So ask yourself that question every time you're Having some sort of experience in your travel, even if it's a bad experience, like, say, for example, you had a bad experience with a taxi driver who overcharged you or something like that, or you had bad service at a restaurant. Ask us, what can I learn from this experience? What can I take away? Lastly, I mentioned, you know, you're going to be experiencing a lot of history or architecture, or you're going to museums, or you're going to famous sites or going to some natural attractions like a mountain or a river or a beach. It really helps if you read up beforehand about those things. Learn the history of that monument, learn the history of that cathedral, learn the history about that, you know, beautiful landmark. They'll help you put things in context. And hey, this is super simple. These days with Wikipedia, you can just Google wherever you're going and you can learn so much about that site. It's going to help you experience more and get more out of it, so you can apply it to your business and to yourself as an entrepreneur. And you're going to see what I mean in a moment as I'm sharing these experiences with you. All right, so let's jump into the first experience. And we started our trip in Milan, and one of the first things I was really looking forward to seeing is the architecture in Italy. Now, this is my third visit to Italy, but it never gets old. I love the architecture. There's so much going on. Now, one of the beautiful sites in Milan is the Milan Cathedral, or as it's known in Italy, the Duomo. I mean, this is a beautiful Gothic cathedral, and it's right in the middle of a piazza in an open square. And the detail that's illustrated in the facade of this cathedral is incredible. I mean, every square inch is a work of art. Now, that in itself is a huge takeaway. This is a huge inspiration. Wow. This is an incredible large building, built beautifully. And there's so many questions going through my head when I'm there, like, what am I doing in my life? What am I building in our business? That's awe inspiring. But the biggest takeaway for me is that it took over a hundred years to build this cathedral. The architect of this cathedral, Simone d', Arcanillo, I believe I'm pronouncing that incorrectly. He started building this. He started with an idea, with a sketch, and didn't live to see it complete. They started building this in 1386, and it wasn't quote, unquote, complete until 1856. Almost 300 years for it to resemble what it looks like today that beautiful gothic style of architecture. The point here is, is that how many of us are willing to start something that's going to take a long time to build? Maybe even longer than our own lifet. I started thinking, why would someone do this? Why would the architect actually say, hey, okay, let's do this, I will, you know, let's start building this cathedral. Even though he knew he won't be able to see it completed, he's not going to get any gratification because he's not going to see the finished product. But he still did it because he wanted to be a part of something great. He had belief that this thing was going to be incredible and that he wants to be a part of that history. He wants to be a part of that amazing feat. Now that really shook me to the core because it made me feel like, hey, you gotta have patience, bro. You know, you gotta take the time it takes to build something great. Now it hit me personally because we've been working on the next version of Webinar Ninja, webinar ninja 5.0 that's due to be released in August. And we've been working on this for over 18 months, which feels like an eternity, but you know, it's actually not that long in terms of building something great. And it's just a reminder that, hey, you gotta have a little bit more patience. Hey, if you wanna build something amazing, it takes time and 5.0 is just the beginning. Right? I'm going to iterate again and again and improve upon that software with new releases later on. And it was just a reminder that maybe we live in a culture and a time where we want instant gratification all the time. We don't wanna wait for anything. Even if that gratification is not really, you know, long lived, it's short lived. We don't really aspire to greater things like the people who've come before us. I mean, people were really looking to be a part of history. They valued legacy. They really focused on what kind of legacy are they leaving behind rather than what am I doing every single day. They had a bigger picture in sight and they were willing to work for it. So for me, when I'm looking at this cathedral and this beautiful architecture, this beautiful art on the facade, the sculptures, the door engravings. Incredible, right? All the people that it took to build this thing. And now I'm looking at it hundreds of years later and I'm enjoying it, I'm appreciating it. What am I doing in my business? What am I leaving behind in my life that other people can appreciate years after I'm dead and gone? Right after I'm no longer in the equation? I know that's some heavy stuff, but hey, there's so much you can take from these experiences when you're traveling. That's what I took from my visit to the Duomo in Milan. Hey, Fidelity.

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Podcast our next stop was Florence. And as many of you know, Florence is the home of the Renaissance, where art became more than just praising religion or God or praising the rulers. It was an expression. Art was starting to become just a personal expression. And one of the sites people love to go to see in Milan, of course, is the David. David is, of course, one of Michelangelo's most famous works, is the depiction of the story of David and Goliath, particularly where David is looking at Goliath, saying to himself, I can take him on now. Even though the David is five meters tall, it's incredibly lifelike. Like, you look at this thing and it's like, this looks like a real person. Like, in terms of the features and the detail. You have a real great appreciation for Michelangelo's work as a sculptor when you're looking at the David. Now, let's talk about some of the takeaways, how I'm going to use it in my business. Now, if you don't know the story of the David, the Romans had a huge slab of marble where all the artists said, hey, this is too big. I can't use this slab of marble. I can't do anything with it. Let's cut it into pieces and create something smaller. Michelangelo on the other hand said, no, give me this huge piece of marble. I would love to make use of it. I know it's huge. I know that it's not the perfect piece of marble for sculpting, but, hey, I think I can chisel something out of this thing. That's going to be incredible. And of course, he chisels out the David. Now, obviously, the point or the moral of the story is that everybody's looking at this huge slab of marble saying, it's useless. I can't use this thing because I normally use smaller pieces, or this is what I'm used to. This is going to be a headache. What am I going to do with this huge thing? So Michelangelo zigged while everybody else zagged. He basically took what everybody thought was useless and turned it into one of the most iconic and most beautiful pieces of art of all time. So, knowing the history and looking at how incredible the David is, I thought to myself, hey, what is something in our market, in our industry, whether it's business lessons, whether it's webinars, what is something that people are neglecting or saying, hey, this is not something that people normally do. This is not how things are done. And can we change things? Can we do things in a different way? Can we take those things and say, hey, no, this is not wasteful. We can take this and use it? I didn't know at the time what that thing would be, but I thought to myself, hey, just keep an eye out. Maybe there's something that I'm overlooking. Maybe there's something that we're just saying, okay, that's over with. We're not using that anymore in our process or in our software, in our features, when I can really utilize it. Or maybe there's something that people are doing every single time they interact with webinars that they shouldn't have to do every single time. Just because it's the way it's always been doesn't mean that that's how it has to be. It really forced me to think laterally. And because I had that in mind, had my radar on, we got two things out of it, two things that we're gonna apply in our business. Because I was thinking, hey, is there something that we're overlooking that everybody's doing that really is unnecessary or they're not utilizing? So the first thing is, is that with webinar Ninja 5.0, we decided there is no reason to be filling out forms every single time you register for a webinar. So typically, when you register for Any webinar. Let's say, for example, I'm going to register for Pat Flynn's webinar. Pat Flynn from Smart Passive Income. Great guy, runs great webinars. I'm going to go to his registration page, I'm going to fill out my name and email address and register. Let's say he runs another webinar next week or the week after, I have to do the same thing again. I go to the registration page, I click register, I fill in my name and email address, I do it again, I click my register button, then I hit my name and email address over and over. And I thought, this doesn't make any sense. Why are we doing this every single time? Why is the same person giving their information over and over again to register for a webinar? So our amazing team at Webinar Ninja has implemented a great new feature that's going to be released with 5.0. And that feature is, once you register once for a webinar on Webinar Ninja, you never have to register again. It remembers you. So you fill in your name and email address and you register for one webinar. The next time you register for another webinar for patflin or anybody else who's using Webinar Ninja, the system remembers you. Says, hey, are you Omar? Is this your email address? Yes, it is. You click one button, you're registered, you're done. No more form fills. Why are we filling forms for no reason? And in fact, if you're already signed in or you already have been on a webinar in the last 30 days with webinar ninja, it automatically remembers you. And one click, you're signed in. It doesn't even ask you. It knows that it's you. We made it even easier with allowing you to sign up with social media, with Facebook, with Gmail, with LinkedIn. So even if you don't want to fill any forms, even at the start, you can just click one button and you're registered. So thank you, Michelangelo, for inspiring us to think different, differently about the way things are. We also notice that when people run webinars, they have a lot of interaction. They have a lot of chat messages going back and forth. And when it's live, it's great and it's fun. But what about the replay? The replay, it's just the video that gets replayed. You want to offer an exciting experience for people watching the replay as well. So they actually get a replay of what happens in the chat. Now, of course, they're not going to be able to participate in the chat because, you know, the webinar is over, the live webinar is no longer there. But they're going to get to see all the messages as they happened live again. Why not? If we're recording the video, let's record the chat as well. That way they can have a full experience. People have been neglecting having that chat experience as well into the replay experience. So thanks again, Michelangelo, for the inspiration. So take what you can from your experiences and apply them. Guys. One more experience that I had along my trip so far and how we're applying it in our business. We are in Rome now, one of my favorite cities in the world. Like I mentioned before, there is history on every corner. It is gorgeous, it's real. The food, amazing. People are warm, yet sophisticated. And there's plenty to see. Obviously. Rome's got plenty of history. And one of the sites that we just saw was the Colosseum. As you know, it's one of the first major stadiums in the world. It's where Caesar conducted all of the games. We would call them more like battles now, but it's how they entertained their masses and. And they built it in 70 A.D. so we're talking about over 2,000 years old. And you look at the structure and even though it is a little worn out because it's been through better days and through history, you know, things get destroyed, you know, lands get conquered, people pillage. It still looks incredible. And some of the technology, yes, technology that they had inside the Colosseum would blow your mind. We're talking about dozens of elevators under the stage that would lift up animals and gladiators up from below the stage to the stage because they wanted to create, obviously, a theatrical event 2000 years old. They had, you know, manual elevators going on here. It's incredible. They had a collapsible canopy. So if the weather was too sunny or started to rain, they had a canopy that would come out and they would roll out that canopy and cover the top. This is a feature that's in major stadiums around the world for major events like the World cup or football, the super bowl. And the Romans had it 2,000 years ago. So incredible, incredible things you learn along the way while you're traveling. Lesser known facts about the Colosseum. This huge stadium that held over 4,000 people was built in eight years. When I learned that, I was like, what, eight years? They built this stadium with all that technology, with all those elevators, with this organized system where there was a particular door that you'd Walk through so you can find your seat fast and easy. And yes, just like Today's modern stadiums, eight years, 2,000 years ago, with the limited technology they had, incredible. I'm pretty sure that a modern, you know, football stadium today would take longer, even with all the resources we have today. So it's kind of like the counterpoint or the counter learning point. I learned from Milan, which took hundreds of years to complete that beautiful cathedral. The Romans took eight years to build the Colosseum. And yes, they had a lot of free labor, quote, unquote. And that's a horrible thing. But it makes you think, what are my deadlines based on? Am I cutting myself short? Maybe I can actually pull it off in shorter time. I really wanted to apply it to my own goals with our business, whether it's the number of users we want to have, where we want to be in our marketplace, maybe these goals are a little bit far out. Maybe I need to shorten them up a little. Maybe I could achieve them in sooner time. So I revisited our goals. I really took a look at, hey, where do I want to be in the next year? 2 years, 5 years, and said to myself, can I shorten that time? Can I pull off what I want to get done in five years? In three years, what would I have to do? And I worked backwards. I challenged myself. Even if the answer was no, I need to challenge myself and find out why no. If Caesar said, I want this done in 8 years, he got it done in 8 years without any cranes or without any machinery or drills or any of that stuff. So I really wanted to challenge myself, and I did that. And it really helped me get some perspective. And I realized, hey, I think I can get this done faster. And what I learned from this experience is that we really overestimate what we can do in the short term, but we underestimate what we can do in the long term. So, for example, I might say, I want to get done all these things I want to do in my to do list today. We usually underestimate how long that would take. We'd say, oh, I could do that today. And really, you need a few days to finish that. But when it comes to long term things, things that take over a year, we usually overestimate and give ourselves a little bit too much time. So it made me evaluate our long term goals. And, boy, I was lost in thought after that kind of pivotal shift. I was like, wow, what else am I shortchanging myself on? What are some things that we can learn from history? Some of the decisions people made in the past that can really help us make better decisions now. You get the point. I hope that by sharing these experiences with you that I'm having in this journey and how I'm applying it to our business has helped you think about your own business and your own experiences and the experiences you're going to have in your travel and how you can really take advantage of it. And again, by journaling, by really reflecting on these experiences and asking the question, what can I take from this? What can I learn from this? How can I apply from this? Guys, that wraps up today's lesson. It was a long one, but there was a lot to cover. The experiment keeps going. In next week's episode, we go to Sicily and Sardinia, the old country, and we learn all about learning from businesses abroad. People do business in different ways in different countries, in different cultures, in different atmospheres. We can learn from those experiences. We can learn from the way they do business and see, hey, how can I apply that in my business? That's really smart. That's really clever. That's a good twist on what I'm doing. I'm going to be sharing those experiences with you as well as some of the challenges I'm having along the way as I'm on this journey. Working while traveling is a lot of fun, but whoa, it's a lot of work. I'll share more in the next episode. Thank you so much for listening. Make sure you hit subscribe so you don't miss any of the episodes that we have in store. We have over 880 episodes in our archives and the best way to have access to the archives is to hit subscribe. Alright, that's it for me today, guys. But before I go, I want to leave you with this. You're spending a lot of money to get to these destinations to travel, to take the time out to do this, you might as well make the most of it. That's why I think journaling is one of the best things you could do along the way. If there's one thing that you take away from today's episode is journal when you travel so you can really take home those experiences and not just forget about them or really just let them wash over you. All right, I hope that helps and I hope to see you in the next episode. I'll see you then. Take care of.

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