Taking Your Small Business on the Road: Travel Tips for the Entrepreneur
As a small business owner, you may find yourself traveling with regularity. And, as is the case with many entrepreneurs, you may find yourself facing recurring frustrations when you travel. The stark reality is that merely because you are on the road doesn’t mean that your home base business operations come to an end. You not only must tend to tasks associated with your travel, but you must take care of all of your other home base business tasks as well.
With this in mind, there are some strategies that you should bear in mind as a small business own on the road. By employing these tips and tactics, you will make your travels easier and you will enhance the overall operations of your enterprise.
Apps that Keep You Plugged In
Email is a decent way of communicating. So is the phone, both talking and texting. However, in the final analysis, there is a myriad of situations in which face to face discussions are necessary.
Like many people, you may have made a half-hearted attempt at incorporating applications that permit you to have “face time” with your colleagues, clients, customers, vendors, and others who are located at remote locations. However, if you are also like many individuals, you routinely default to using communication portals like email and the phone.
Before you take off on your next business trip, download an app that permits you the ability to connect face to face with key individuals while you are on the road. There are apps that format perfectly well to communication via your mobile phone. You do need to make sure that those individuals with whom you will need to connect and communicate in this manner have access to the same application.
Lowering the Stress Level and Enhancing Productivity
Even the best equipped business travelers maintain that they are far less productive on the road because of the various travel related issues faced. There are a number of steps that a small business owner heading out on the road can take in order to reduce stress, and related issues, in order to make travel time more productive.
First and foremost, when traveling, eat decent meals. Time and again, business travelers eat poorly, very poorly, when on the road. There is a reason hotels and motels continue to maintain vending machines.
When on the road, eat good meals. You can take the frustration out of finding a decent place to eat, even in a city you know nothing about, by using an application like Yelp or TripAdvisor. With these apps, you can identify convenient restaurants, that feature your food preferences, with relative ease.
By being well nourished, and eating properly, you lower your stress level and enhance your productivity. You also make your business trips more enjoyable — and there is nothing wrong with that!
Pop some pills before you travel. No, don’t start relying on heavy prescriptions for your travels. Rather, a couple of hours before you embark on a business trip, take a couple of over-the-counter pain pills. By taking this proactive approach, you lessen the odds that you will suffer such common travel-related issues like headache from dehydration (a common issue when flying), a back or neck ache from carrying luggage, or a stomachache from eating at strange hours.
Bring Along a Personal WiFi Hot Spot
If you’ve spent any time at all involved in business travel, you are well aware of the fact that you face a great deal of what can amount to wasted “down time.” For example, you can find yourself snared at an airport for an extended period of time because of flight delays.
While it is true that publically available WiFi is widely available, two factors about it need to be borne in mind. First, it is not something you absolutely can rely upon. Second, depending on the setting, so-called public WiFi can prove to be quite costly. Many a hotel charges what is far from a negligible fee to access in-room WiFi.
For these reasons, you are wise to make sure you have access to a personal WiFi hotspot. In other words, you make your business trip most productive by carrying your own access to WiFi along with you.
Take Full Advantage of a Hotel Business Center
On a somewhat related note, most hotels maintain business centers. Typically, there is no charge to take advantage of a hotel’s business center. Another tip to keep in mind to optimize resources available to you when you travel is to take full advantage of a hotel’s business center.
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Jessica Kane is a professional blogger who writes for Documents International LLC, a leading apostille service for individuals and businesses.
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