Episode 23: How to Make a Travel Protocol

Hello, Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the six Figure Systems podcast. I have a very exciting episode for you all today because we're going to be talking all about creating a travel protocol. And I'm including a little travel protocol for you to fill out with this, uh, episode in the show notes. So make sure you check that out because I think it's going to be insanely helpful. For those of you who are a little jetsetters like me and definitely feel the wonderlust bug, I want you to have that free because I know that many of you as solopreneurs, you started the business for the time, freedom that you have. You wanted the flexibility where you could travel around the world and also have a business that supported you. And one of the things that I just did is I actually just got back from Paris with my 88 year old grandmother. She is amazing. Oldest of twelve, grew up in Nova, off the coast of Nova Scotia in Prince Edward Island, Canada. And she rarely asks for anything. My grandfather loves to travel, but we were talking about bucket list items, um, and she mentioned to us that she wanted to go to Paris. Literally, it was like a month ago, I went and had dinner and slept over with them, uh, because they, I'm lucky enough that my grandparents live close. And it was just the most magical experience. Uh, we did literally everything. We got to fly together. I held her hand there and back. Uh, we got a chance to go to the Louvre into Versailles and to just, we went shopping and I got her shoes that she literally, like, wouldn't even take off to take a nap. It was like the most incredible experience. And I want more of you to start traveling with your businesses. There are so many amazing things that are in the world and I know that sometimes it can be really stressful either before you travel or after you travel. And I want to take some of that stress away from you because it kept me from traveling when I first started my business as well. So three things I'm going to go over today are creating meeting a weekly schedule, figuring out what are the items that keep your business flowing, then a pre travel protocol and then a post travel protocol for you to fill out when you get home. Now, within the first thing that you want to do is you want to be thinking about creating a way for your business to stay consistent while you are away. So one of the things that I found to be really helpful is having a weekly schedule that I'm following just on the day to day anyways. So, for instance, for my business, and if I'm thinking about the back end of my business and the systems that I have to keep it maintained and running. I have my marketing on social media. I also have marketing on, um, to my email list. I also, um, put stories up daily. So those are kind of like the three things that I do to maintain my business are posts, stories and emails. I end my podcast now. Those are the four things that I do to market my business on a one to many level. Then I also have ways that I manage my leads, where I discuss, I talk to people who are new followers online, and I also nurture people who are my current audience. The last piece that I do is I plan things weekly. So I will go through and I will make sure that I am, my finances are doing well. I make sure that I know how many posts I've been doing. And I have these metrics that I track for my business to make sure I know where my business is going, where it's growing. And those kind of things are things that uh, make my weekly business run. So I want you, in order to think about taking time away from your business, I want you to think about what are the things that you do to make your business tick. What are the kind of things that you have that uh, you have on a weekly basis that maintain the back end of your business. Now, when you take those things, what you can do is you can decide one of two things. You can either decide to batch things ahead of time, or you can decide to take some time away from them. I've done both in my business, and that's just what you want to decide consciously. I know that for me, sometimes when I'm thinking about taking time away from my business and traveling, a lot of the times I felt like I was playing a catch up game if I didn't consciously decide what the plan was ahead of time, am I going to continue to post or am I going to pause on posting? Am I going to respond to DM's or am I not going to respond to DM's? Are those are the, am I going to do my finances or am I going to wait until next week to do them? Uh, when you don't make m it a conscious decision, planning can feel, or going through travel can feel really stressful, because that's when I hear things like, oh my gosh, I'm so behind. I'm off schedule. And if you decide intentionally that you're going to take a time away from your business and you're going to stop posting, stop dming and stop, um, stopping planning, and seeing the schedule for your business, then decide that ahead of time. For me, a lot of times I will not respond to DM's when I'm traveling and that's fine, but if I was like, oh my gosh, I should be responding to these DM's, I could get this post out. I wish that I was doing this. Then it takes me out of the present moment and I don't enjoy the travel as much, which defeats the whole purpose of traveling in the first place is to get away and enjoy things. The first thing I want you to do is make that weekly schedule. Um, and then I want you to decide what do you consciously want to do? Do you want to have things going and then do you or do you not want to have things going while you're away and just decide it on purpose and then roll with it? Okay, so that's the first step. Weekly schedule. Are you or are you not going to be able to do those things? Then when you decide, let's say I decide that I do want to continue to post on way. I do want to get my weekly email out. I want to make sure that I get my, um, finances planned and figure that out ahead of time. That's when I can decide consciously to make a pre travel schedule that addresses that. So for me, when I was going to Paris, I decided that I wanted to keep up the consistency with my marketing. So that is when I did something called content batching. And what I did is I would take my content and I realized that I need to get my email finished for the week. I need to get my podcast for the week ahead, and I wanted to get my posts on ahead of time and my story scheduled. So I got all that ready the week before. So instead of planning, typically it takes me an hour and a half to do my marketing every week. I just added an hour and a half to get all that marketing done ahead of time. So you can just decide that and keep up the consistency even when you're away. For me, the consistency on my one to many marketing appearance looked like is I made sure that I got my content scheduled. I actually have a social media manager that helps me with that currently. I also made sure that I got my email scheduled. So typically with the technology that you have, there are ways that you can schedule things ahead of time so you don't even need to worry about posting it ahead of time. There's an app called later that I have used and that is something that I use to get my marketing out ahead of time. So my audience didn't miss a beat. I was literally bopping around in the Louvre with my Grammy and I was able to get my posts out ahead of time and make sure that my, um, everything was rolling ahead of time. So when you're thinking about your pre travel schedule in the back end of your business, you want to make sure that you do that consistently. You could also set up a way that if you want to respond to DM's, you could schedule a time for that when you're traveling, if you wanted to do that while you're there. Or you can just let people know that you're not going to be in town. Another thing that I like to do is, again, if you wanted to do the finances while you're on your trip, for sure, schedule, uh, like an hour for you to go through and plan out your things because you're not going to need to schedule things when you're in that week, and then you can do that on your trip. For me personally, I like to just when I'm going on a trip, I like to plan out my time and my finances when I come back. So it doesn't have to overlap with my travels. I don't typically like to do work when I'm traveling, so you just have to figure out what works for you. I have done work on my travels. I've not done work when I'm traveling. And I think it really, it depends on you as a person and what is going to make you feel the best and right role when you are there. The other thing that you want to be thinking about is client delivery. So I like to let my clients know at least a month or two in advance. Ah, before I'm out of town. And for my one on one clients, I felt this need to be like, oh my gosh, they signed up for 24 sessions. I need to make sure that they're finished by this date in November. But as we know, like, life happens, people get sick. There are so many things that happen. So what I do in my pre travel schedule is I also just move their calls back a week, say, hey, would that be cool for you? And my one on one clients are totally fine with that. Uh, for my group clients, I actually hire a guest coach so they get someone else to come in, give them a little coaching, get a little extra experience. I think note, like, my business doesn't take a beat. I also just communicate with my clients ahead of time and I say, hey, I'm not going to be out of town, but I will check your messages when I get back. And it's that simple. Just setting expectations ahead of time. It makes people feel way less stressed than and your clients feel like they're held, they're taken care of. Your people who are potential clients are seeing your marketing ahead of time, and it feels like your business doesn't miss a beat. Then the last piece that you want to do if you're creating a travel protocol is think about a post travel protocol. So typically for me, that includes two things. The front end of my business and client delivery, and the back end of my business for my, um, making sure that everything is running well in my business. So when I come back for my travels, typically what I do is I schedule an extra hour of just going over things that might have been missed. Typically what I do is I have 30 minutes in the morning when I talk to people and 30 minutes when I respond to people. And there might be some messages that I miss that I need to respond to while I've been away. So I make sure I have time for that. I already have time to look at client messages within my calendar, so I just make sure that I respond to people. I go ahead and make sure that my next week is ready to roll. If there's content that needs to be ready to go, I make sure that's ready to roll. I make sure that my marketing is ready to go. And a lot of times for me, I'll get. I'll just take time and get caught up with my finances and double up for a week. So I'll go through and I'll just plan out the following week. It's what I'm going to be doing today. I take a little minute and I get everything ready to go, make sure everything is planned to, and if there's anything that's new or different, I make sure I calendar them and that's what I do. So when you're traveling, you want to make sure that you are feeling great while you're traveling, that you actually are able to take time from your business. And knowing what my weekly schedule is for the front and the back end of my business, making sure that I have a pre travel schedule so that I've got everything planned ahead of time. And then having a post travel schedule has kept me feeling so sane and just delighted as I travel. This is really important for me in the next couple of weeks because I love to travel. It's my honestly, like one of my favorite things, and I have a lot of nerves coming up. I just got back from Paris and on this Friday, I'm going to go to Asheville for my dear friend's bachelorette. I am m then going to go to, um, Rome the following week with some friends of mine. I come back for that friend's wedding, and then I'm going to jet, set off to Africa. And all this is happening within my business, and I'm able to make. I'm actually going to be going to Disney this year. So many fun things are happening this year. And I want to make sure that you guys don't miss a beat, that my business doesn't miss a beat. And I'm actually able to enjoy my time as, um, I'm traveling over the next couple of months. And I can just also be present and enjoy time with my clients without feeling the Sunday scaries or feeling like, oh, my gosh, like everything is behind and all these things are happening. I don't feel like that. I'm like, oh, yep, I know everything is caught up. And I'm going to be able to get any of the work done within my scheduled time. I've already got it planned out, so, uh, I want you to make sure you have that, too. Please, uh, let me know if you need any help creating your travel protocol. I included the freebie in the show notes, and I can't wait to see you all next week.