6 months ago, our location independent adventure began. We uncluttered and eliminated 75% of our stuff and fit the rest into a 8×10 storage unit in San Diego to head out to experience what it was like running a business from the road. We packed up our car and drove across the country. Over these last 6 months we have spent time with friends and family in Minnesota, Utah, Iowa, Wyoming, North Carolina and Montana.
Our journey is coming to an end this month, We will pack up our car again and drive back cross country to Arizona and then finally back to the warm weather in San Diego.
So what have we learned running a business from the road? It was exciting, It was crazy. It’s been the best decision of our lives. Since my husband and I work together running our business and we normally work from home, we knew we could make this work. And it did work, but of course, there’s been lots of lessons learned!
5 Lessons Learned From Running a Business From The Road:
1. Break up your routine.
I highly recommend that everyone break the routine of their daily life to free up new ideas and possibilities. Not only that, but getting away from people you see all the time and experiencing a new location can really allow you to open up and learn about a new side of yourself. This could be as simple as driving a different way home from work and watching the sunset or it could be something even bigger like asking to go part time at work to grow a business. If you are feeling in a rut, do something wild and crazy even if other people don’t always agree you should do it. Listen to your gut instead. Getting away from your normal routine really forces you to evaluate what you REALLY want to do with your life.
Breaking up the routine made us appreciate what we had (warm San Diego weather), appreciate our friends and family that we don’t get to see so much, and really appreciate the people who are a constant in life.
It’s also important to break up your routine when you need to make some important decisions to make sure you make the best decisions for YOU. When your calendar is full every weeknight and weekend, you can’t get that alone time to make the best decision for you.
2. Focus exclusively on what you enjoy doing.
This is something I learn over and over again in my life. When I was stuck in my day job years ago, I realized that the part of my work that I loved doing the most was teaching and mentoring. I hated finance even though I was really great at it. Well..I learned that again.
You may have noticed if you have been following closely that we’ve changed things up a bit at CCG. Through this travel and “alone” time I have had, it forced me to evaluate how I was running and operating my business. I had already freed up most of my time by changing my individual coaching packages into group coaching packages, but I was still spending a lot of time meeting with potential clients and preparing for the weekly group calls for my two programs.
Something didn’t feel right, so I listened to my gut and stopped doing it like everyone else. I stopped listening to my previous mentors and listened to myself instead. I unsubscribed from emails with other people’s advice. I stopped listening to podcasts. I quit a coaching program I was in. I unfollowed hundreds of people online. Instead, I coached myself into a model where I could focus more on what I enjoy doing. As CEO of your business, it can’t be “work” for you. If you are leading a team you have to LOVE what you are doing.
I made a big switch so we could scale, impact even more women and I could be happier. We turned all of our programs into self-study courses as of January 1st, 2016. Now that I am not running group programs, I can get back to what I really enjoy doing and the reason this blog started….creating meaningful content at the intersection of your work, dreams and everyday life. We have changed from a coaching business to an e-learning platform to help you launch your dream career or business. It’s pretty exciting, go ahead, tell your friends!! 🙂
Coaching is something I am great at and love doing, but I was limiting my impact the way I was doing it. I don’t want to get to a point where I plateau can’t grow anymore and I don’t want my entire business to be reliant on only me. Which is why we also brought back the opportunity to submit a guest article and be featured on our site so you can join me on my mission to impact millions of women around the world. I can’t do it alone, so thank you for joining me in this mission. We have had hundreds of submissions and will be hiring someone soon to help us keep up with sharing all of your great content here as well.
It’s interesting, I never started a coaching business, I started a blog. So I hope you have enjoyed the increased number of daily articles (we are at 3 per day now! woohoo!)
3. Keep your expenses (very) low.
Through this road trip, a huge freedom we have had is not having rent or a mortgage. Here’s why it’s been amazing….we were not under any pressure to make money immediately. My husband and I were able to plan for the future of our business and really create a vision of how we wanted it to be without worrying about how much we made (or didn’t make) yesterday.
We could set up processes and systems that would help us in 6 months instead of today. I’ve written a lot about how debt can impact your career negatively in the past, and I learned it again. Not being bogged down by car payments and bills has allowed me to once again deviate from my original career path and do something I enjoy even more.
4. Don’t believe everything you read online.
So yes, the location independent and work from wherever lifestyle is all the rage right now. Start an online business, quit your job and work next to a pool. I love to travel so this lifestyle always sounded great to me. And trust me, it’s been fun but we are definitely missing having our own space and being able to call somewhere home.
If you have this desire to be like all of the location independent internet bloggers, please know this…it’s not all perfect all the time. There are hard times not having your own space and arranging travel and travel not working out and trying to meet a work deadline. Sometimes the travel impacts running a business and stresses you out. It’s not all about beautiful hotels and fine dining. Weigh the pros and cons carefully before jumping in.
5. You only need 5% of what you own right now.
