How To Put Your Business On Autopilot Whilst You Travel The World As A Web Worker
Photo by sugu
Last week was a great example of the need to have efficient business processes and put our business on autopilot…
Our nightmare journey from Dubai to Cape Town took a whole day out of the week and we then needed to spend the rest of the week sorting out longer term accommodation for the next 3 months.
Fortunately, my experience of effective process design and our recent focus on creating efficient business practices means we were able keep on top of the workload and still enjoying exploring the fabulous city and surroundings of Cape Town.
If you live as we do - and run your online businesses whilst travelling the world - or you’d simply like to free up more of your time, then here are some of the simplest ways to put your business on autopilot…
Marketing
Plan out your ideal customer journey right from the start
This is one strategy I advise all my clients to do when it comes to marketing to new prospects and servicing clients. If you plan the end-to-end journey that you’d like each person (prospect and customer) to go through, this ensures each and every one of them will have the best customer experience when dealing with your business.
It also means you’ll be making your job infinitely easier by having all the necessary tools and resources in place and available at each stage, in advance. For more information on the customer journey/lifecycle, check out this post I wrote over at Freelance Switch.
Include all information a prospect needs on your website
To reduce the number of similar/standard requests you have, ensure that your website provides all the information a prospect is likely to need to make a decision. This includes your prices or at least a ball park range so that a prospect knows whether they’re in the right ball park. In addition, a well-written FAQ page can eliminate many of the unnecessary emails you get which are simply tentative enquiries for more information.
Use templated responses for prospect enquiries
For the times when prospects don’t read the information you provide on your site and still insist on emailing you, create a bank of templated responses that answer the most common questions and/or direct people to the relevant web page. You can personalise these but you’ll at least have the basic info you need at your fingertips without having to re-write it each time.
Use sign-up boxes and autoresponders
Still one of the most common ways to automate your marketing (and also one of the most abused), autoresponders are a great way to keep in touch with your mailing list and put this aspect of your marketing on hold. Personally, I’ve stopped using automated message sequences as I’m trying to move away from the typical ‘online marketing’ model and instead write a fortnightly business ezine packed with as much info and value as I can manage.
Either way, mailing lists and autoresponders are a fantastic way for location independent professionals to automate key aspects of their marketing.
Write and schedule blog posts in advance
Most of the popular blog platforms such as Typepad or Wordpress let you write and schedule blog posts several days or weeks in advance. Make the most of this feature if you know you’re going to be out of action for a week or so and spend some time building up a bank of posts you can schedule whilst you’re busy.
Create 1-page documents & document templates
Putting together the following 1-page documents means you don’t have to reinvent the wheel each time you need to email out the following:
- Company Overview & profile
- Media & PR profile
- An “About You” profile
- A template for press releases
- Complete price list of your products & services
- Portfolio document ( as well as your website)
- Terms & Conditions including payment terms
Whilst most of us web savvy geeks would go to a website to find this kind of information, our time in Dubai opened our eyes…many business owners there don’t yet bother with googling or websites - they’d much rather you send them through a document that covers the things they need to know. It just depends upon your market.
Customer Care
Provide a Customer FAQ Support Page
As with prospects, if you typically get the same sort of support requests from customers/clients then consider setting up a “customer support” section on your website. Depending upon the nature of your business, this could include Camtasia videos and tutorials, audio downloads and templates.
Outsource your customer service
If your business model requires 24 hour customer service and deals with simple queries that require no specialist knowledge (or knowledge that can easily be transferred), then consider outsourcing this aspect of your business. Either hire a VA or assistant to do this specific task or use specialist companies to do this.
Set the *right* expectations
This tactic is relevant for the entire way you run your business - including the time you take to respond to emails, the length of your emails, the time taken to respond to customer calls and more.
If you know you’re going to be travelling, busy or unable to maintain your usual level of service then inform people of this by using out-of-office autoresponders or informing clients in advance. If you typically offer a 3-day turnaround time, or you promise to get back to a client within a certain amount of time, then reset their expectations in advance if you know you’re going to fail to meet them.
Billing
Use recurring payments or get payment upfront
Chasing up invoices and customer payments is not only a time-consuming hassle, it also impacts your cashflow. Try moving to a pay-in-advance model or recurring, automated payments. I know that many of you might say “But no-one else does it in my industry” or something else along those lines but it’s your business so run it on your terms and if people don’t like it, they can go elsewhere.
Believe me, I know how hard that sounds (and is, if you’re desperate for work/money) but it’s worked for us - and even for Jonathan in the graphic design industry where payment upfront is not the norm.
Use online payment processors or forms of payment
Unless you have somebody who can pay cheques in for you, this is a MUST for a location independent business. Alongside the usual suspects such as Paypal, Google Checkout or your own online merchant account, you can also use a bank account which accepts international transfers.
To do this, you may need to find out the BIC or IBAN number for your bank and provide this to clients. There are usually charges to receive payments, so check these out before asking clients to do this and consider factoring this into your prices.
Personal Effectiveness & Admin
Use email filters
To cut down on the amount of email processing required to keep your inbox clear, use email filters to automatically direct things to the relevant folders. I have filters to automatically file the following emails:
- from Paypal confirming purchases I’ve made
- from Paypal confirming invoices/payment requests I’ve sent
- from different mailing lists I belong to
Identify & focus on mission critical tasks only
Here’s a harsh truth…much of what you do is probably unnecessary and wastes time. I know this is true because it’s true for me! I spend far too much time reading through my RSS feeds (in the name of research), checking out my stats (in the name of marketing analysis) and generally faffing around on the internet - and I know I’m fairly productive when compared to a lot of people I know.
One thing that travelling (and as we currently are having to do - paying for each MB of internet use) does for you is to focus your mind on only mission-critical tasks - these are the things which you absolutely have to do to keep your business running.
If you run a service-based business like we do, then putting your business 100% on autopilot may never be an option (although it’s something we’re currently working on!) but at the very least you can maximise the efficiency with which you do things and increase the time you have to explore your new surroundings.
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Comments
Hi Sean,
Thanks for the feedback…you’re right - this post was a long one. I did think at the time that it was a bit long but then having just moved to one feature article a week (instead of two), I didn’t want the focus on business each week to be too overwhelming for the readers who also like the travel/lifestyle tips. May I make a suggestion to help you implement the information in the article? Here’s what I’d do…
1) Copy and paste it in to a doc
2) Strip out the bits you don’t need to focus on, leaving only the bits you do
3) Add a heading “Business Focus for Feb”
4) Work through each point on the page in February (and March if necessary) until you’re done!
I wrote the content in the article to be a sort of end-to-end process - if you apply all of these pointers, you will have some really kick-ass business processes in place for long term success.
I do hear what you’re saying however…and I can promise the next few posts on a Monday will be more about travel & lifestyle aspects so you should have plenty of time to apply the business info here 
I think I may also have another solution however….which is a new premium content business blog I’m launching shortly. There will be a low monthly subscription for this but it will be packed full of content like this in easy-to-apply formats. I’ll be sharing more details soon.
Thanks for taking the time to feedback Sean…it’s appreciated!
Great suggestion Lea. I frequently feel overwhelmed with the amount of things that I need to do. Cutting and pasting into a word document and checking off the things you have done is a great idea, I am going to put it into practice tonight when I get home.
Sometimes the most simple and obvious solutions are the most easily over looked.
Agreed Coach.
Lea’s suggestion served as an important reminder for me. Not only did the simple cut and paste act put the tasks in “active” mode, but it helped me identify new things I might delegate to my VA….
Cheers!
Glad it helped guys - I didn’t want it to sound too simple but as always, the simple solutions are often the best
[...] How to Put Your Business on Autopilot Whilst You Travel the World as a Web Worker - Lea Woodward’s been putting out some great articles over at Location Independent. Cyan and I are about to become location independent as we’re moving to Hong Kong to work from there for a few months, which I’m very excited about. Lea’s also recently launched a charitable project called the “Leave it Better” initiative which is pretty cool! [...]
[...] How to Put Your Business on Autopilot Whilst You Travel the World as a Web Worker - Lea Woodward’s been putting out some great articles over at Location Independent. Cyan and I are about to become location independent as we’re moving to Hong Kong to work from there for a few months, which I’m very excited about. Lea’s also recently launched a charitable project called the “Leave it Better” initiative which is pretty cool! [...]
Lea, I agree. I really like the part about saving your materials so you can use them in different formats.
I run a virtual company so I definitely follow these guidelines!
Lea–
Another good post. These are things that have come up for me periodically and it’s so easy to get overwhelmed and to plainly ignore them. Some really valuable prep reminders here.
I’d like to make a suggestion that is not at all critical…may I? Ok, thanks… :> As someone living inependent of location, you may be able to help yourself and us readers by posting this kind of content in a series. Shorter pieces (easy for you) that may give us a chance to acutally put a few of these suggestions to work before getting to the next.
I know a longer post will somewhat scattershot and potentially attract more people. I personally felt a little overwhelmed because there was too much I wanted to tackle from one post. :>
I look forward to other commenters’ opinions.
Sean