Globe Trotting Entrepreneur Shares Secrets of Work and Travel at Inc.ubate

Inc.Ubate Coworking: Globe Trotting Entrepreneur Shares Secrets of Work and Travel at Inc.ubate

Brooke Roberts Photo Digital Nomad Discussion

A year ago, Brooke Roberts was living stateside and running two companies when she decided to take off and travel the world. She sold everything she had, put her dog in foster care with her mom, and set off to with a list of places she wanted to see.

While she traveled, she continued to manage Yoga Travel Tree to help yoga instructors organize retreats and Inside Study Abroad to consult for travel abroad companies. The globe trotting entrepreneur recently shared her story during an event at Inc.ubate on a layover from Europe to Washington D.C.

To explain why she wanted to be on the road, Brooke started where it all began - in a tiny trailer on a cattle ranch in rural Kansas.

“Picture the black and white start to the Wizard of Oz,” she said. “Traveling wasn’t something I really thought about.”

But then, a high school trip to Spain tore through her life like a tornado and she was hooked. In college, she studied abroad and then she started her career in the field. After several years, she started her own companies, still with an eye on traveling. She was living in Colorado and working remotely when she got the urge to go global.

“My goal was to go to a new country every month for a year,” she explained. She ended up visiting 27 countries and having 14 different homes, defined as any place where she spent more than two weeks.

Along the way, she learned a lot about staying focused and being productive despite the demands of being on the road and the pull to see the sites along the way. Below are the insights she shared at Inc.ubate.

 

Brooke’s Take on Business

Getting started:

Brooke designed her own website and still uses that today. She doesn’t consider herself a tech expert, but says she has a good eye for UX and UX online.

Common question Brooke is asked: What business should I pursue?

Consider what people are coming to you for. What service do they want most from you? What are they asking you to do?

The three things you need for your business:

1.      Product

2.      Someone to sell it to

3.      A way to get paid. Now there are platforms that make it easier than ever.

When to delegate:

When you’re starting out, you should be the master of your own business. You need to be in the trenches and know what’s going on. But as you go along, you need to figure out what you can outsource so you can concentrate on what you do best.

Finding staff:

Brooke let’s her personality show through on the job descriptions to help self-weed out candidates. She also looks to people who are in her existing communities for recommendations and considers people who have reached out to her.

Favorite tools:

Slack. It’s a way to keep the chatter out of email and follow conversations more easily.

Calendly. – lets you send a calendar to people showing when you are available so they can choose a time.

Newsfeed eradicator – hides your Facebook feed while you are using social media to post for business.

Favorite place:

Budapest

Brooke’s Take on Traveling and Working

Advice for working while traveling:

Own your phone and make sure it is unlocked. Bring a spare smartphone if possible.

Be diligent about your time. When I’m working, I focus on work. But, I also block out time to go on adventures.

The hardest parts:

FOMO (fear of missing out) = external pressure to visit the sites and see all there is in a region.

YOLO (You only live once) = internal pressure to try things and have adventures.

Best trick:

Use the Pomodoro method: set a timer for 25 minutes. Work until the timer goes off and then take a short break and repeat.

(Learn more of Brooke’s productivity tricks through her Udemy Course, just $11) 

Where to find Brooke online:

Email: brook@thenewdorothy.com      

Twitter: @thenewdorothy, @InStudyAbroad

Instagram:  thenewdorothy