Today I’m going to give you my productivity tips for running your business from the road or from wherever you are.

As I write, I’m sitting in Green Valley, AZ at my friends Rich and Cindy’s house.  I took a leisurely nine days to ride here on my motorcycle from Seattle, visiting friends and family along the way.

Last year I took a 6 week; 8,500-mile road trip in my Corvette from Seattle to Atlanta and back.

So how can I, and more importantly, how can you be away from home for weeks or months at a time and run your business?  You don’t have a business you say.  Everyone has a business; it’s called “You Inc.” or “Your Family Inc.”  Even if you work for someone else, you have income, expenses, assets, and liabilities.  And you have a product you sell; it’s you, your skills.  Sounds like a business to me!

My point is, we all have affairs we have to manage, so let’s get started on my top 10 productivity tips for running your business from the road (in no particular order):

1. Embrace technology – The technology we have today allows us to do things in minutes that used to take hours or days.  Teenagers are a great source of the latest technology.  If you’re not lucky enough to have some teenagers at home, borrow someone else’s for an hour a month.  My adult daughter and I share an Amazon Prime account, and one day she ordered something and charged it to my credit card by mistake.  She asked if she could repay me with Venmo.  My response to her was, “Do all the cool people use Venmo?” to which she answered, “yes.”  So, I set up a Venmo account and now use it regularly.  It’s just one of the many digital forms of payment.

2. Go paperless – Get all your bank, credit card, utility, and other statements online.  This frees you from being tied to a physical address.

3. Stop reconciling statements – Maybe I’m showing my age here, and nobody does this anymore; but if any of you are still reconciling monthly bank or credit card statements, STOP.  Use the app provided by your bank or credit card company and set up notifications (email or text) to let you know when there is a transaction in your account.  Now, you’re essentially reconciling your statements one transaction at a time.  In the end, you’re looking to verify that each transaction is yours.   If you see one that isn’t, call and let the institution know your account has been compromised.  No more going over countless statements at the end of each month.

4. Automate bill paying – Have all your bills automatically debited from your bank account or better yet, charged to a credit card or cards.  Having your bills charged to your credit card/s will earn you stuff, miles, or cash back, and you’ll pay one to three credit card bills a month instead of perhaps ten bills of various kinds, depending on how many cards you choose to use.

5. Automate credit card payments – Just like paying your bill automatically, you need to have your credit cards paid automatically.  And to be clear, have them paid IN FULL, automatically, every month, not just the minimum payment.  I can hear it already; some of you are going to say, “But sometimes I don’t know if I’ll have enough money to pay my card in full each month.”  That’s another challenge altogether.  This all only works if you have more money than bills at the end of the month.  If that’s a challenge for you, the easiest way to put more money in your pocket is with the Family Bank; check out Blog Articles #26 and #19.  After that, start getting serious about reducing your taxes, check out Blog #20 and read Tom Wheelwright’s book Tax-Free Wealth.

6. Automate income deposits – Regardless of your source of income, have it deposited directly into your bank account.  I can’t be on a four-week motorcycle trip and have my passive income sitting in the form of a paper check in a mailbox somewhere I’m not.

7. Use an electronic calendar – I know some people, who shall remain nameless, we might even be related, who run their life by the paper calendar on the refrigerator.  If you want your life to be tied to your refrigerator, this is a great plan.  If you want to travel the country or the world for extended periods of time, you need your calendar with you, wherever you are.  And don’t just use your calendar to schedule meetings with other people.  Use it to schedule the high-priority things in your life.  If reading and exercise are important to you, for example, schedule your reading and exercise time; and don’t be late for it, just like you wouldn’t be late for someone else.  Don’t be late for yourself.

8. Use some type of electronic to-do list – I once heard someone say that you can’t waste your day if you didn’t have anything planned for your day to begin with.  If you get up tomorrow and spend the day playing video games and re-watching whole seasons of Breaking Bad, you can’t say at the end of the day, you wasted it, because you didn’t have anything planned to begin with.   There’s nothing wrong with video games and Netflix binging as long as that’s your plan for that day.  Between your calendar and your to-do list, you should have things you want to accomplish each day; and when these are electronic, you have them wherever you are – in the car, on the motorcycle, in the airplane, on the cruise ship.  I find that one of the most useful aspects of these electronic to-do lists is the ability to schedule a task way into the future.  For example, once a year I have a task scheduled to walk around my house and property and take a video inventory of all my personal belongings.  I walk through each room in the house and video and discuss everything in the house.  This will make insurance claims easier in the event of a fire, theft, etc.  But, I don’t have to remember this, my electronic to-do list pops up automatically every year at the appropriate date and time.

9. Use some type of electronic notes – Are you beginning to see item #1 Embrace Technology scattered throughout all these items.  Anyway, I know some people, who shall remain nameless, we might even be related, who run their life with little sticky notes, stuck all over the place.  Inevitably, that little sticky note and whatever information is on it, isn’t with you when you need it.  If it’s electronic, it can simultaneously be on your phone, tablet, and laptop; so you have it wherever you are and on whichever device happens to be with you at the time.  And, you can do a search to find the information contained in your many notes.  Let me give you an example; my partner and I own three cars and two motorcycles.  Each of those vehicles takes a different type of oil, oil filter, air filter, wiper blade, and tire pressure.  Right now, I’m traveling on my 2012 BMW K1600GTL motorcycle.  On my phone, tablet, and laptop is a note with technical information about this motorcycle.  The main thing I tend not to remember from vehicle to vehicle is tire pressure, and on some motorcycles, the front and rear tire pressures are different depending on whether you’re riding solo, with a passenger, or with a full complement of luggage.  I don’t have to dig out an owner’s manual to find this information; I just do a search through the notes on my phone to locate the information I need.  And this extends to when you attend some type of conference or training event.  If you take these types of notes electronically, someday far in the future, you can do a search for some obscure piece of information you know you learned at one time.  Try finding that piece of paper or notebook years later; it will be a challenge.

10. You need a team – Life today is complex, and it’s a team sport.  We all can’t be experts in everything, so each of us needs to focus on what we do best and hire others to do the rest.  Here are some examples of the team members you should have in your contacts, and with whom you’ve built up a great working relationship over the years:

• Bookkeeper 
• CPA
• Tax preparer and strategist
• Car and motorcycle mechanic
• Doctor – both general practitioner and specialist
• Insurance agent
• Handyman or contractor
• Attorney
• Realtor 
• Banker
• And others

When you’re on the road, and you need one of these professionals; it’s not time to have to go find one.

So, that’s my top 10 list of productivity tools for running your affairs from wherever you are.  I’m going to put this list in a nice, written format, and I’ll also include the specific applications that I use.  If you send me an email at chris@jcesolutions.net and put Productivity in the subject line, I’ll send you this list, and I won’t spam you, other than letting you know when I’ve published a new article or video.

Remember, when you make better financial decisions, someday you can make work a choice instead of a necessity.