Have you always dreamed of traveling the world and running a business at the same time?
In this video, I’m sharing my experience of running a multi-million dollar business and a team of 35+ from a campervan for a month. Watch it here:
Yes, it is possible to successfully run a business from the road and find a balance as long as you rely on careful(very!) planning and time management.
Here are more tips on how a run my team (even when I’m in the office) and the tools that help me get things done.
Did you find this video helpful? Let us know by dropping a comment below!
Transcription:
Yep, yep. Okay. I’m logging in now. Hey, what’s up guys? Peter Moriarty here. I’m coming to you with a special video as I’m currently traveling in a van. Of course, got to still run my business, got to still do things. And so we decided to film a challenge. Can I work from this amazing Mercedes Sprinter van?
Let me give you a little bit of a tour, show you what it’s like inside. And then we’re going to get set up for work today and see if we can do it. So this van is a company called Apollo who did not sponsor this video, probably wouldn’t mind if they chose to sponsor some future ones for us. And this is, as you can see, based on a Mercedes Sprinter, and it’s basically been turned into a motorhome. I’m not going through all the features of the van as you can probably check that out on the website. But what is important is that there is a couple of cool seats here, which work out as a pretty awesome little workspace. You’ve got all your other amenities. You’ve got a cooktop here, [inaudible 00:01:43] sink and whatnot, fridge, TV there as well, which is pretty groovy. And most importantly, you actually have a full shower and toilet, which is really useful. What that means is that you can completely go on the road off grid and yeah, get quite a bit done.
So the big question we’ve got to answer is, can I actually get work done? And what that means is, we’ve got to break down working down to its bare essentials. Now I worked a lot while traveling before, and there’s a couple of key things that you have to get absolutely right when you’re traveling and working on the go. But surprisingly, it’s actually not that many things. We can actually keep out necessities pretty small and pretty minimalist and still get productive work done. So I’m going to go through the list now of all the things that are essential. So, you can hear it from the background I was being disturbed in the back of the truck. So I’ve actually decided to move and nestle myself right here in the driver’s seat, which is probably not the ideal place to work, but at least I’m getting it done.
So I wanted to share with you some of the key things that are important, the absolute essentials view, to be able to get work done on the road. And we’ve got our little list down, and this is the same kind of list whether I’m working out of a café or working in a park or actually working from the van as we are at the moment. So the number one thing you obviously need is a decent machine. And I prioritize a machine that has good battery, rather than something that is a performance powerhouse. When I’m working, I try and work on just one thing at once, rather than having a million tabs open at a time. I know for some of you out there that may be the way that you like to work, but for me, I try and keep it to one thing. Otherwise that ADD brain sets in and I end up completely distracted.
So I love my Chromebook. I’m currently rocking a Google Pixelbook and that machine has been running for a number of years now. The battery’s starting to get a little bit sad, but it still does run for at least three to four hours at least at a minimum. But a newer Chromebook will get you somewhere between five, six, seven, even eight hours sometimes or longer. And so if you are considering using a machine that’s going to last all day, Chromebook is a great option for that. Number two, rather than actually run everything off one machine, which can chew through the battery, because I spend most of my day on meetings, I actually run a second device. Now that might be my mobile phone, or it might be the iPad Pro that I’ve got here as well. I sometimes use that for drawing on using the Google Jamboard app.
But for the most part, I actually use it with my headphones here, connected to Google Meet. And so what that means is that as I am working during the course of the day, I’ve got one meeting running usually with my marketing manager, which is where I spend most of my time, or it might be with my leadership team. And that device there is basically me connecting with anyone I need to talk to. And then my actual work happens on the laptop. And so on the machine I might be typing notes in Asana in my task management application, I might be working on a document, I’d be responding to an email. I might be reviewing a webpage or a video. And then I actually have my meeting running permanently with my team, so we are connected.
Okay. So the number one question that most people are probably thinking is, what do we do about internet connection? And for most of you, you’re probably going to go ahead and just grab your mobile phone and switch to tethering mode. Just like you might do if you were sitting at a cafe or sitting down at the beach, but that presents a number of problems. Number one, the wifi connection between your phone and your computer is not going to be quite fast enough if you’re doing a lot of streaming or if you’re doing a lot of video calls and the quality is not necessarily going to be great. Second thing is, it’s going to chew down the battery on your phone, so I don’t recommend that either. Third thing is you might want to use your phone for something else. And having to kind of juggle back and forth between phone being in phone mode versus phone being in hotspot mode just makes things a little bit challenging.
So that’s why having a different device for your internet is a must. I happened to use a NETGEAR as it’s called a Nighthawk router, which is on a business plan. And that business plan is shared with my data, with my mobile phone plan. I’ve got heaps of data on that about a 100 gig a month, and that means that I’m able to get all of my work done.
Now, the great thing about this router is it connects to, I think 20 or 30 different devices, basically as many as you want. So this basically becomes the internet connection for the van. That means I can run a Chromecast into the TV. I can watch TV as I need to. I can have my laptop connected, my phone, all the other devices. And what I like about that is it gives me a home ESC wifi connection. What I mean by that is that I’m able to upload my photos. Any backups will just happen automatically. If you’ve got some large backups that are running on any of your devices, maybe you don’t want to do those over 3G or 4G, but any day–to–day kind of work that you need to do, it’s going to work pretty easily. So internet connection, sorted. How’s your set up babe?
The final one is if you’re doing any kind of meetings where you’re going to need to be on the phone and you’ve got another person in your space like I do on this trip, well then it’s probably going to be easier for you to either be one of you outside of the van, or at least trying to coordinate your meeting so you’re not talking at the same time. So this is Sarah’s workstation down the back of the van here. We have laptop, keyboard, mouse, everything needed–
And chocolate.
… for work, and chocolate.
Where is my chocolate?
Okay. Tell me about your first day working in the van.
Not bad.
Awesome. Was I disturbing you at the front? Talk about that.
Yes. A little bit. Just because I’m sensitive with your energy and I can just feel you there. It’s like I’m trying to listen to the radio, but another frequency is bashing into the frequency, so I’m getting mixed stuff. So I think we need to work on that, but you weren’t loud. I appreciate your effort. Thank you for not being too loud, but I guess they’ll hear you.
Can get a little bit stuffy with two people in one place trying to get work done together. And so for that reason, it’s probably only going to work for you if you’ve got one person trying to do productive work at any one time, unless you’re both doing quite work and not going to disturb each other. And since being kicked out of the van it’s a good reminder for me to share one of my other tips with you and that’s that if you’ve got a meeting that you don’t necessarily have to be super active on, so you don’t have to do heaps of notes, then you might want to do your meeting out for a walk. And this is one of the things that I love doing at home and at the studio as well is, if I need a bit of fresh air, just pop on my headset, go for a walk and enjoy the view.
Now while this video has been heaps of fun to record, end of the day you can absolutely work from a van if that works for you. But it’s probably going to get a little bit old if you’re doing more than four or five hours of productive work per day. I say that because the seats are not particularly ergonomic. I mean, I’d prefer a standup desk myself anyway. Obviously you’ve got challenges with power and where you’re plugged in, and eventually you’re going to have to start running down the machines. This will absolutely work for you if you’re the kind of person who only needs to do a couple of hours of light work per day. And for me at certain stages in my business that works great, but I get to find myself being much more productive if I’ve actually got a proper work space set up and that proper workspaces either in my home or it’s in a remote location,
Now this video has been fun to make. If you’re interested in more content, please check out the other videos on our channel and check out all the links to those below so you can keep in touch with us. If you are already a subscriber to G Suite, you might be interested in our free Facebook community for businesses running G Suite. Check that one out from below. And I’m curious to know where’s the number one place that you found working from? Is that at home? Is that at a cafe? Is that at a coworking space? Where do you enjoy getting your work done the most? And if you’ve got some cool work on the road travel stories, then go ahead and check those down below as well. I’ll see you in the next one. Cheers.
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