MBA887 The Working While Traveling Experiment P8: Would I Work While Traveling Again? My Take-Aways From This Experiment

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PCs like the Dell 14 with Intel Core Ultra processors will help you do more faster and with a premium suite of monitors and accessories, you can upgrade your whole setup with amazing savings. Visit Dell.com deals. Hey O welcome to the $100 MBA show, the business podcast that delivers practical business lessons for 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 eight of our Working While Traveling experiment and I'm in the Swiss Alps in a quaint little town called Gimmelwald. This is my first time in the Alps and boy is it breathtaking. I'm talking incredible panoramic views of snow capped mountains and plenty of fresh air. And it's the perfect setting for our final installment of our eight part Working While Traveling series. If you're just joining us, Nicole and I have been embarking on an eight week trip. An eight week experiment to see if you can really travel the world while running and growing a business. I'll also be sharing some really exciting news later in this episode you won't want to miss. Very, very exciting. Can't wait for that. So hang on and I'll be sharing some really, really amazing news. Previously in our last episode in part seven we were in Berlin. We learned how to be laser focused and block out all distractions when we're trying to get work done. When traveling, we learn how to segment our time and not multitask how to work in sprints and make sure that everybody that's with you is on board. If you haven't listened to that episode, go back and check it out. I know you'll find the advice useful whether you're traveling or not. But today we're in Gimmelwald, Switzerland, a little mountain town in the Alps with a population of 130 people. It's the perfect setting for today's episode because I'm going to be reflecting on this eight week journey, this eight week experiment, and give you my biggest takeaways and insights. I'll share with you all the things that really stood out for me. In this experiment, I'm going to be answering all the questions I had at the start of the experiment and answering the biggest question of all. Would I ever do this again? Work while traveling in the future? I got a lot to share, so let's get into it. Let's get down to business. Nicole and I run two businesses with a team of 23 people. In fact, we just made a recent hire, so now we're a team of 24. We've traveled up to three weeks before, but in this experiment we go all in. Eight weeks of travel, plenty of cities we've been to Milan, Florence, Rome, Sicily, Sardinia, Venice, Naples, Berlin. And now on our final stop in this eight week experiment, we're in Gimmelwald, Switzerland. Gimmelwald is like nothing else. It's a time warp. No motorized vehicles, snow capped mountains, crystal clear waterfalls and streams and a population of 130 people. There are more cattle and livestock than people and of course, more fresh mountain air than your lungs can take in. But seriously, it's gorgeous. It's un, untainted, unpolluted nature. Shout out to Rick Steves for discovering this place and sharing it on his YouTube channel. Love you, Rick. And in today's episode, I use the serene setting of Gimmelwald to share with you my biggest takeaways of the working while traveling experiment. How did this experiment go? Would I do it again? But first, I'd like to preface that my experience of working while traveling has been a little different to what you would experience. Because in addition to working on my business and traveling from city to city, I have to document the whole experience so I can share it with you. On this eight part series, I had to take the time to take notes and to journal regularly. I then had to take those notes and turn them to a cohesive script. Then I had to edit the script. Then of course, I had to record the episode like I'M doing right now. Then our awesome podcast editor Carl can edit the episode for us. So my workload was a bit more than it would normally be if I wasn't creating this series. Having said that, I am so glad we did this experiment and I'm so glad that we documented the experiment and shared it with you. It really answered a lot of questions I had on the topic of working while traveling. What questions you may ask. Well, let me share them with you. This will be a great way for me to share what I've learned on this experiment. So there were five main questions I had before starting this experiment. These are five questions I was wondering I wanted answers for about working while traveling. And I was hoping that through this experiment I'll have the answers to them. And I'm happy to say I do have answers to them. But first let me share with you what these five questions are and then I'll answer them based on the experience we had in this eight week experiment. Let's jump right into it. So question number one I had was, is this whole lifestyle business location independent thing really a thing? Is it really possible to travel the world while running and building a profitable business? You know, you see so much of this online, people with laptops on the beach in front of a pool or drinking some sort of cocktail and it looks so nice, look so relaxed. It doesn't even look like they're working. So I wanted to really understand the reality of working while traveling and if this is real and can you really do this? Like, is it sustainable? So that was question number one. Question number two, Will my business suffer or take a dip if I work while traveling? So I have an established business. I have a business that's running. I have two businesses that are running. I have 100 RBA and Webinar Ninja. And one of my biggest concerns was if I traveled for an extended amount of time, eight weeks, would my business take a dip? Would it suffer in any way? All right, question number three, Will I enjoy my work and enjoy my travel? So in other words, will I enjoy the work I do every day when I'm traveling, and will I enjoy the sights and the things I experience while I'm traveling? Because I know I like my work and I also know I like to travel, but would I like to do both of them at the same time? All right, question number four, how would this affect my physical and emotional health? Now this is an important one, and I don't think a lot of people think about this enough. Or maybe they don't Prioritize it enough. When you travel, your schedule is not very consistent. Are you getting enough physical exercise in? Are you completely stressed out and burnt out? These things affect your work, affect your business, and you may be somebody who's neglecting it now even if you're not traveling. I found that when I do make the time for my physical health with exercise and eating right and I'm conscious of my emotional health, the amount of stress I have and taking breaks and all that kind of stuff, it has a tremendous positive effect on our business. So we'll get into that and share my answer to that in today's episode. And then finally, question number five. Is this something I'd like to do frequently, working while traveling? Is this something I'd like to do full time for like a year or two? Or did this experiment teach me something about myself and say, hey, this is not for me? I'll share with you that final and big question as well in today's episode. So let's jump into answering these questions and in the process, I'll give you all my takeaways from this incredible eight week experiment. All right, question number one. Is this whole lifestyle, business and location independent thing really a thing? Is it viable, is it possible, is it sustainable to work while traveling and run a profitable business? The short answer to this is yes, you can do this. And in fact, there are plenty of people that make it their business to do this. What I mean by that is that that's what they do. They teach people how to be location independent, they blog about it, they travel the world, they run their business based on that experiment. There's also travel bloggers or travel writers. I mentioned Rick Steves, who has a YouTube channel. He's a huge, huge travel writer, has one of the bestselling books on travel in Europe. In fact, I think it's the bestselling travel book outside of Disney, period. The point is, is that that's his life. He travels and works. That's what he does. So it's part of his business. So it's definitely possible and it's definitely something that might make a lot of sense if it's part of what your business is all about. If you're teaching other people how to travel, working or travel is your business. But what if you're just running a business, any business, you have an E commerce store that sells retro T shirts or something, you don't need to travel, you can run that business from home, or you have a software business, or you sell courses online on something completely separate like how to improve your golf swing. Right? Or you run a business like ours, like Webinar Ninja. So what if you have a business that's completely unrelated to travel or lifestyle business? Yes, it is possible. I was able to run my business. I was able to grow my business and make progress while I was traveling. Now, is it easy? No, it's not easy. Is it like being on vacation every day with, you know, a drink in one hand and, you know, your feet in the sand? No, it's not like that at all, actually. I personally had difficulty trying to blend the two. I like to work when I'm working and travel or experience R and R separately from my work. For me, it's hard to have these mixed intentions. Am I relaxing now or am I working? If I am working, I want complete focus. I want no distractions so I can be efficient. And a beautiful sunset or the beautiful lapping of an ocean or watching people, like, kite surf or something like that, that's distracting to me. I wanna enjoy that. Why am I gonna put myself in that situation where I'm torn? That's just me. So it's definitely possible. I just think that it's more challenging than it may appear. Now, I do have to say, from my experience of building businesses, launching different products, I'd find it very hard to do this without an established business. Like if you don't have a business yet or you don't have a profitable revenue stream, whether it's an online course or software, something like that, that's already going on. They have customers and you have money coming in to pay for expenses. Then building something from scratch and putting it out in the world while you're traveling, it's a lot of work. It's really hard because you really need to be super focused and be in an environment that is controlled so you can get that information out there, you know, we're building a whole new webinar Ninja webinar Ninja 5.0, and it launches very soon. In fact, our whole new website, webinary.com launches today. And you guessed it, that was the very special news I wanted to share with you. We have some really, really cool, cool videos to share with you. Check them out. Some great tutorials on webinars. I'll share more about that later. But the site goes live today as well as the actual launch and release of the Software on the 22nd. And it's been 18 months in the making to get to this point. So most of the work I did to build up to this point has been done before we went on this trip. Plus, it's not the first time I've done this. This is the fifth iteration of Webinar Ninja. So we have some systems in place, we have a team in place. But if I'm doing something for the first time from scratch, there is a lot of work involved. From building a website to opt ins, to autoresponders, to building the product itself, to testing the product to make sure that it's working properly and making sure that everything works to payment processing. There's a lot to do. The to do list is huge. And if you're by yourself, if you're a solopreneur and you're building something from scratch and you're doing it while traveling, that is going to be hard. I would really recommend you do that before you start to travel. Get your business running and, you know, grow and maintain it while you're traveling. All right, let's answer question number two. Will my business suffer or take a dip while I'm traveling? Now, I have to say that we did not take a dip. I think we've made a lot of progress. Our team has worked very hard in this last eight weeks as we're gearing up for the new site and the new launch of the new software webinar in Asia 5.0. I've been working hard as well as Nicole, and I'm happy to say that we did not take a dip. We didn't take a step back and things didn't slow down. We really just kept the momentum going. But I was very conscious of it. So if you're conscious of it and you're making sure that your business is on track and everything you set out to do, your goals and your sprints for two weeks and all that stuff are being fulfilled, even if you're traveling, then you're good to go. But be conscious of it. I don't think if I wasn't on top of it, that would be the case. I think it would have suffered if I was not seriously on top of things and making sure we're hitting all. The advice I want to share with you is that you have to keep in mind that in business there is no stasis, there's no staying the same. You're either improving or you're declining. You're either growing or you're dying slowly. I personally don't think there's such a thing of putting your whole business on autopilot. There is no such thing. You can put some things on autopilot in your Business, whether it's, you know, an aspect of marketing or something like that, but your whole business where like, oh, my business is on autopilot. I'm just going to go and take a break. No, either you're going to give somebody tasks to do, you're going to assign people that are going to be responsible and you're going to check in, but just like, hey, my business is going to run for like eight weeks, three months, four months without my intervention. That's a big ask. I mean, even if you just have a plot of land and you're like, hey, this land is mine, I'm just going to save this land as an investment, you got to maintain that land. You got to make sure that, you know there's nobody squatting on that land. You got to make sure it's secure. You got to make sure the land, whether it's farming land, doesn't get over flooded or whatever it is. The point is, no matter how simple your business is, you gotta be on top of it to some extent. All right, question number three. Will I enjoy my work as well, enjoy all the traveling experiences that I was having? Will I still enjoy the things I do every day for the business? And will I really take in and enjoy the experiences that I was having as we're traveling through Europe? This was a really tough one for me. And I'm gonna be quite honest, I was surprised with the answer after the experience I had. And the answer is I really didn't enjoy either. As much as I would like to. I really didn't enjoy the work was doing because it was really a pressure cooker to really make sure that everything fit in a certain amount of time so I can do the other stuff of travel and document this whole series, right? And for me, when I'm always just doing task based stuff and don't really have much time for creative thought, it really kind of ruins my work for me because it's all just like task, task, task, task and no chance to really reflect and you know, write a great blog post that really I have a chance to think about and really do due diligence. Now I got some of that by documenting this experiment. But sometimes you need to reflect on your business so you can make the right decisions when things are really tight. When it comes to your work time, you don't have time for that. And that's a shame. And that's really one of my favorite parts of running a business. Taking things in perspective and making the right decisions based on my experiences. The second part of this equation is the travel experience. Now, I really enjoyed all the cities that we visited, all the beautiful things we saw in Italy, from the museums, from the architecture, from the food, from the people, from the beautiful different types of lifestyles that we experienced in Rome and in Berlin as well, and now in Gimmelwald. But I wasn't fully immersed. I was definitely, you know, half my brain was still, you know, working. And if I was going to be completely honest with myself, if this was just a pure holiday, I'd probably enjoy it more, enjoy these experiences more. But I knew that coming into this whole experiment, I knew that it's not going to be a holiday, it's going to be working while traveling. So I wasn't super disappointed. It's kind of met my expectations. But there's a part of me, you know, that part that says, man, this would have been a whole lot more fun if I didn't have to work. Hey, I'm just being honest here. And that's what I learned in this experiment. All right, let's answer question number four. How would this affect my physical and emotional health? Let's talk about physical first. So luckily I was in Europe and there's a lot of walking in Europe. We walked a whole lot in Italy, walked a whole lot in Germany. And here in Gimmel, there's no cars, no motorized vehicles. So we're taking hikes and we're riding bikes and we're really, you know, using our bodies. So luckily we got kind of like a daily forced exercise. Now, the funny thing is that that's not the type of exercise I was used to in my daily routine. Back at home. I play basketball once a week, which is high intensity cardio. And I go to the gym three to four times a week. So it's more like strength training. And this was just low impact cardio, you know, low impact walking. So even though I didn't get the physical activity that I'm used to, I still got some physical activity in. So it was a good compromise. It was okay. And I didn't feel so bad about my physical health. Yeah, you know, I missed the gym and I missed my routine and, you know, I'm going to have to make up for lost time when I come back, but that's okay. So from the physical standpoint, it was great when it comes to food. We ate really well and it was healthy. You know, when it comes to food, Europe's got it on lock. I mean, Italy is like nothing else in terms of fresh ingredients, delicious food that doesn't make you feel awful after eating a big meal. You don't feel bloated, you don't feel heavy. And Germany wasn't bad either. It was really good. It was delicious and healthy, healthy options were out there. So that was great. Now, emotional health. I'd be lying if I said to you that working while traveling doesn't add on any extra stress at all. It adds a little. It adds a little because you're balancing things. You know, anytime you're out of your comfort zone or your normal routine, there's going to be a level of, you know, stress. You're not used to certain, you know, surprises or hiccups that go along the way. You might be planning to work for a couple hours when you get to your next city and your train gets delayed. That's going to cause a little bit of stress and anxiety. So you got to make sure that you anticipate that. Now. I wasn't a wreck. It wasn't really crazy. It was still, you know, enjoyable and fun in a lot of ways. But you got to be mindful of it. There is some stress involved. So I highly recommend that if you are working while traveling, make sure you try to incorporate some physical activity. Even if it's just walking, you know, 10,000 steps. Make sure that you're eating healthy, drinking plenty of water, and of course you're mindful of your stress levels. And speaking of stress, I can't stress enough how important your physical and emotional health is to your business. You are the leader of the business. You are the person that's in charge of the morale, you're in charge of the leadership. And if you're down, it's going to affect the rest of the business and the work that you do in it. This is especially important if you are a small team or a solopreneur. You need to be working on all cylinders, making sure you're well oiled machine, you feel as good as possible all the time. And remember, when your physical health is great, you stay healthy, you don't get sick. And if you're sick and you're working and you're traveling, not a great recipe for, you know, a great experience.

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All right, let's wrap up today's final question. And it's the question of this eight part series. Would I do this again? Would I work while traveling for an extended period of time? Would I do this full time? Do it for a year or two? And here's my answer. As much as that sounds like a lot of fun, I learned a lot about myself in this experiment. I learned that I really like to separate work from pleasure. I really do. It allows me to have a full experience. This is just my personal, personal preference. It may be different for you. I'm not a multitasker. I'm somebody who likes to go all in on something. And personally, I would love to travel and not work. Even if it's not eight weeks. I rather do it for two weeks than really just shut off and allow my team to take over and I'll come back when I'm back. On the flip side, I like my work. I enjoy it and I like to go all in. So when I'm working, I like to just work and focus on that and enjoy it for long periods of time. I'm a big believer of deep work. Cal Newport's book Deep Work is a great piece on this topic. I believe that great work comes out of, you know, intense, uninterrupted periods of time. Long periods of time, four or five hours at a time. When I get four hours straight with no interruptions, I get an incredible amount of work. And that's really hard to do when you're working while traveling. The quality of my work during that deep work period is a whole lot better. And I really enjoy that process of producing something in that state of deep work. And I feel like working while traveling and deep work are just not a good match. So in the future there are going to be times where I have to work while traveling, but I'm not going to mix work with pleasure. So say, for example, I was going to speak at a conference and I'll be traveling for a week. I'm seeing this as a work week. It's not a travel week. But at the same token, if I'm going to take a week or two off to a new country, a new city to learn, to explore, to broaden my horizons, I'm going to really just focus on that. And it doesn't mean I'm not going to take away the things I learn and apply to my business. These are the things that we talked about throughout this whole experiment. I love our work and I love our business, but I want to be able to reflect and think about it in a broader sense as I'm enjoying all the experiences I'm having when I'm traveling. So to answer the question, after this eight week experiment, I probably would not do this again. I personally would not do it. I'd love to go through two or three weeks of sprints of, you know, just pure travel where I get to really, really take in everything. And then when I get back, I really have this intense, deep work where it's really game on and I'm really focusing on the task at hand. Guys, I told you I'd give you the honest truth, as I always do. And having said that, just because I wouldn't do it again in the future, it doesn't mean I didn't enjoy this experiment. I loved it. I thought it was great. It really shed a light on a lot of questions. I had these five main questions, of course, and it really allowed me to discover what kind of entrepreneur I want to be. How do I run or run my business? Do I want to have a physical office? Do I want to have a physical space? Or do I just want to be gallivanting around the world running something completely remotely? That's just not for me. I like a little structure. I like a little routine. I guess it helps me feel a little bit more calm, a little bit more in control and not as stressed out. So that's just me and I just wanted to share with you and I also wanted to thank you all for being with us in this whole journey. This eight week, you know, eight part experiment. It's been great. And you might be thinking, hey, what now, Omar? Where are you going from? From here. Well, this concludes the experiment, but Nicole and I will be moving on to the States. We have a mastermind group that we are a part of with the wonderful Michael Port and Amy Port, Jordan from the Art of Charm. Jordan Harbinger and his wife Jenny and Noah Kagan from Sumo.com. we're going to be spending a few days masterminding and then we're going to be heading back home after that. We have a lot of exciting things ahead of us. And that leads me to that special news. Today we have launched the all new webinar ninja.com if you've been following along. I'm the co founder and CEO of our webinar software, Webinar Ninja, a software we've been working on for nearly four years now. And because we're launching a whole new version, webinar ninja 5.0 come August 22nd, we are launching with a whole new site@webinarninja.com take a minute, check it out. We put a lot of work into it. Check out our sales pages. We did something really interesting with our features page that we don't think a lot of people do. We thought it was an interesting way to have a conversation with our visitors. And we launched a whole new blog with some really incredible video tutorials on how to be better at webinars, how to choose your mic for your webinars, how to choose a topic for your webinars, and even given the basics of what is a webinar and how to utilize it. We are so excited to share that with you. And we're also very excited about the launch of 5.0. Check us out at webinar ninja.com Guys, thank you so much for listening to the $100 MBA show. Make sure you hit subscribe because next week we got a very special guest teacher. Troy Stites is going to be teaching three strategies to automate your business growth. Can't wait for that. That wraps up today's lesson. But before I go, I want to leave you with this. I can hardly believe that this eight week experiment is all wrapped up. But one of the best things about this experiment was documenting it. Actually going through all my notes and, you know, creating these episodes, it really allowed me to reflect. It really allowed me to really take in and evaluate what I like, what I don't like, and what I've learned. Now, even if you're not producing a podcast or a video show or a blog, I highly recommend that you do document these types of experiences or experiments. Whether you're traveling, whether you're working, whether you're trying something new in your business or in your life really allows you to evaluate it and ask yourself, is this something I really want to do or is this just something I'm telling myself to do? And that's how I kind of was able to analyze this whole experiment and say to myself, you know what? This is just not for me. I think I'm going to focus on, you know, going all in on work and going all in on travel in the future. Thanks again for listening to the show. If you have two minutes, leave us an itunes rating and review. We'd love to know what you think of the show, you think of the series. Your feedback means so much to us. All right, I'll see you next time in our next episode. Take care.

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