You can still enjoy traveling even when you have to work.
Credit: Colourbox
I love traveling and have now been to more than 90 countries even as I’ve been working nearly every day, raking in six or seven figures a year for the past 15 years. I spend a good amount of money on travel, but always make sure to save a good portion of my earnings for retirement and to spend on the next trip! How do I balance my work and travel? Here are my 3 best tips:
Tip #1: Use new technologies to free yourself
My laptop, email, WordPress, Skype, Whatsapp, and Gotowebinar are just a few of the new technologies I use to manage my business while I travel abroad. You can call me a travel addict because I’m one of the fortunate ones who recognizes that we’re living in a different time; one where you don’t have to work from your home office, cubicle or office in just one city or town.
The internet is still just 20 years old, not even legal to drink, so no matter what your profession, use Google to see what kinds of tools now exist to help you do your job/grow your business and you too can earn a steady income from anywhere in the world where there’s an internet connection.
Tip #2: Plan your travel ahead of time
It sounds great to travel anytime, anywhere, but unlike many spur-of-the-moment travelers, my trips are well planned days and weeks in advance. If you’re going to work and make money from locations where 99.9% of people there are on a vacation where work is the last thing on their minds, you need to be meticulous or else risk becoming a vacationer too.
I always do thorough research ahead of time using websites like TripAdvisor, Booking.com, Expedia, Frommers, Yelp and TripIt to make sure my hotel and itinerary allow for plenty of work time on the highest speed internet possible in every travel destination.
I love beaches and tropical locations, but the internet can be very slow in places like Turks & Caicos, Bora Bora and the Maldives (which I all highly recommend) so be sure to research hotels and cafes that have the best internet possible. TripAdvisor has a nice way to search reviews from business travelers that are more useful than reviews from people like “young couples”.
Tip #3: Invest in proper equipment
Making money while traveling is the dream of so many, but to do so you need to be well equipped. Don’t bring a knife to a gunfight and don’t bring an old laptop that doesn’t utilize the latest technologies to give yourself the best odds of success to achieve a stable work environment during your travels.
Working from crowded cafés or business centers is sometimes unavoidable so invest in a premium headset with a microphone so you can use Skype to handle calls or play music and not be disturbed by those around you. Other people will inevitably look at you like you’re crazy and encourage you to stop working and go relax, have a drink and swim in the beautiful waters, but don’t let them distract you from your goals. You can always take a dip AFTER you’ve done your work and made enough money to pay for some or all of the vacation.
Then just rinse and repeat, no need to visit too many places on one trip, if you optimize your work and travel schedule, you can take endless trips and pay for them all by taking a few hours out of each day to work like I do.
This week’s picks:
1. Team USA’s final few minutes of play before they lost, there’s still hope for the future.
2. New smartphone apps are being developed to improve your health, everything from eyesight to cholesterol & diabetes.
3. The weather this summer has been near perfect!
What’s up and what’s down:
Up:
The US stock market is at all-time highs and there doesn’t seem to be anything on the horizon to stop the bullish rally.
Down:
Facebook acquired LiveRail, which makes video ads so now we’ll start seeing annoying video ads auto-playing all the time. Boooooo!
Timothy Sykes is a millionaire stock trader and entrepreneur. Visit his site at TimothySykes.com.
