One of the top reasons I wanted to start my own business was for the freedom it would allow me, mainly, being able to travel for long periods of time and being able to work from wherever I fancied that had good wifi. 

Over the past 2+ years I’ve worked from Barcelona, the British countryside, London, New York to Thailand. The longest time away being, 2 weeks where I either had photoshoots lined up or I was working on website design projects. 

I wanted to chat to you today about what a whole month away looks like, the pros, the cons and my tips for others like me that are thinking of traveling for longer periods and working on the move. 

Halfway through last year (2019) I made the decision that I wanted to buy my first home and living in London wasn’t really conducive to saving enough money for a house deposit. So in July 2019 I moved back in with my parents for 1 year, with my deposit goal in place and happy to say it’s all going well. 

A few months into what I’m now calling my ‘deposit year’, I was looking to the New Year and how I wanted to start the next decade in a super positive way. I started looking into personal development business events that I could maybe attend in January and found one that looked fab which was being held in San Diego for 3 days. 5 years previously I’d met my lovely friend Kaneema in a tiny off-the-beaten-track bar in a little village called Paraty in Brazil - Kaneema lives in LA. 

So I get on the phone to Kaneema, ask about staying at hers whilst I’m at the event, she informs me she’s going on a biz trip for 3 weeks and I can stay whilst she’s away if I like. Amazing, my quick trip over from the UK to the US for an event, is now becoming a month long visit. 

She’s been to visit me in London loads and knows all of my friends, so when my friend Caroline mentioned wanting to get away in January too - Kaneema’s like, come stay too, winning! 

I get on the phone to my other friend who lives in LA to see if she wants to come to the event with me, she does, so that’s all sorted! When a past client and now great friend who lives in Nebraska heard about my trip, she booked a hotel in West Hollywood for my final weekend. 

At this point my January 2020 is naaat looking too shabby at all! 

Back in December a few weeks before my trip, I’d decided on my word for the year for 2020 - CONSISTENCY. I wanted to post more content consistently. To enable that to happen, I made a marketing content plan for the entire year, so I wouldn’t be anxiously wondering what to post about. 

I knew that I wanted to enjoy my experience in LA, network with new contacts from the event I’d be attending, take that bucket list American coastal road trip I’d been dreaming of for years, be inspired with new business idea etc. All of that meant that I’d need to have enough content written and planned so I could have the best time possible and work on client work without having to worry too much about my own biz bits. 

December became my batch month. I wrote 17,000+ words for 6 blog articles and 6 newsletters, shit was intense! I planned out what I would be posting on my social in advance and wrote initial posts that I could edit depending on what I actually did whilst there. 

When I say I planned my social, I’m mainly talking about my Instagram which I would then upload onto my FB, this is how I did it… 

In pencil, I scribbled out what I knew I’d be doing; 

• Event for 3 days

• Seeing Kaneema, Katy, Jennifer (I’d then talk about how we met, how they’ve inspired me etc)

• LA > San Fran road trip

• Hiking - boy was I excited to go on hikes in the sun!!! 

• Sunset and sunrise hikes (again hikes, guys!) 

The blog posts that would be scheduled whilst I was away, posts would be needed to promote them.

I then looked at the calendar and started sketching in when abouts roughly the above list would be happening. Then I added in existing photos of my friends into an image bank folder, images of my walking for the hikes as place holders for when I’d have the real life images, and then i created in Canva plain squares with text over the top listing the event. I added all of these images into Planoly (a visual Insta scheduling app) and moved the squares around so that it all was in place, the copy captions added and ready to be edited as and when I had the photos. 

Please note you don’t have to do this, but as a branding expert where my whole biz is about making things looking pretty, plus I’m a virgo, this really appeals to me. 

Now this may all seem very planned and not spontaneous which is what some people feel Insta/FB should be about - I get it! But I wanted to enjoy my time whilst away and I knew that planning my month away like this would make posting/scheduling everything sooo much easier. 

Of course there are going to be exceptions and you can freestyle and add away, like when we randomly went to see Russel Brand speak on his Recovery tour in an intimate gig in Hollywood, front row seats and hugs happened! 

Again there are going to be times when things fu$* up. For instance I wrote a really long post about the difference between Squarespace 7 and 7.1, where I did a video tutorial all about it. Then realised it was on my other laptop that I’d left at home. Luckily I had another blog post spare that I could replace it with. 

As for working on my client work, I found this slightly harder than I thought I would. I’ve realised that I like my creature comforts of a big monitor hooked up to my laptop, my usual environment where I can get in my zone. I just realised that I can’t work as full on as I’d like on the fly. Will be working on this more as I do love traveling and working.

Another thing I struggled with was the different time zones from most of my clients, being able to have face to face zoom calls, if you have a question that needs answering there and then, it would get tricky, especially with new clients which I booked in whilst away. 

What I really wanted to tell you about was how when I got back home, I was more jet lagged than I’d ever been in my life before. It took me a whole week to feel like myself again, by which time a day later I became poorly so it was about 10 days of wipe out and no content was produced.

So my consistent every week blog post was missed by a week. This made me feel terrible, but also a great lesson to always over produce and make allowances for that when you book a trip away. 

I’m not going to write a huge big breakdown of my trip, instead I thought I’d do a more visual diary for you. I hope it inspires you to take some time out of your business (and like me working at the same time also) to invigorate your soul so that you can really step back into it upon your return. 

One of my biggest takeaways of this trip wasn’t a huge business ah-ha that I thought it would be, it was on a much more personal level than that. I realised that what I was doing all my business work for, was so that I could build the life that I wanted with friends, family, a new home, meeting my person <3 and starting a family.

I knew that when I got back, I needed to put more focus on those things, the things that are truly important to me. In the past I’ve always thought, when my business hits this sales figure then I can do those things - when really that’s rubbish. I can start those things today! So that’s what I’m doing now <3 

Visual Diary

Personal Development Event in San Diego with my old uni friend, Katy Sloane

LA Vibes

LA > San Fran and back road trip

Jennifer Troester, my old client/new great friend coming to visit in West Hollywood baby!