It was my long-term dream to have a level of freedom that allowed me to live part-time in Europe and part-time in the U.S. I’m happy to say I’ve achieved that dream and am currently living in our apartment in Sweden. I’m currently here with my husband escaping the Texas heat. 

As I’m enjoying my ability to travel, I’ve received this question a lot: how did I do it? 

The reality is that you can also tap into the digital nomad lifestyle and have the same freedom I do.

But I’ve found that most CEOs end up hustling and working a lot of hours when they try to travel. They work strange hours due to time zone changes and end up stretching themselves to be available for their team. 

But there are things you can do in your business to not have to hustle as you travel. Instead, you can travel with the spaciousness you crave and the ability to soak in the journey of it all. Let’s talk about how below.

Add Recurring Income to Your Business 

The first step to achieving this flexibility is to add recurring income to your business. Many businesses in the online space operate solely off of the money they make from launches with no cash flow in between. That means a lot of juggling and hustling to earn money to cover normal expenses.

In turn, there’s limited spaciousness and ease around finances, which causes unneeded stress. It’s really important to have recurring income in your business when you’re going to be stepping away and traveling so you don’t have to worry about cash flow.

Ensuring Your Business is Highly Profitable 

When you’re going to be stepping away from your business, it’s important that it’s highly profitable and that you have extra money in the bank for the expenses that come along with being a digital nomad. You’ll need to cover things like living expenses wherever you end up.

The truth is that 50 percent of US businesses don’t even break even. You shouldn’t be spending more than 40 to 50 percent of your profit on operational costs like payroll, marketing, and everything else it takes to make your business work.

Ensuring you keep those costs under the 50 percent range gives you a high-profit business.

Limit Your Involvement in the Day-to-Day of Your Business

If you have to be involved in your business all the time to make sure it runs smoothly, it’s hard to step away and have the spaciousness you’re craving. That means you need to start delegating tasks. This may seem tricky and like you have many tasks that ONLY you can do.

But, I challenge you to make a list of what you’re doing. You’ll likely find that many of these things can be done by someone else. Many CEOs don’t realize or value how important it is to have spaciousness in their business, but it’s something you’ll love having once you do attain it.

For me, I work three days a week, whether I’m in the US or Europe. My team works all week and manages the day-to-day items and I take care of only my must-do items. My team does an amazing job, and this can be the case for your business too – probably more rapidly than you’d ever believe. 

Develop a Self-Managing Team 

It’s so important to have a self-managing team in place. To do this, you need to have guardrails around your team to ensure that they can operate the business to the level of standard you expect. This guardrail is the structure that tells them how to show up and run the team well. This structure consists of agreements – like policies and procedures, your core values, your mission, your company handbook, and so on.

It’s important to have this because it makes up your company culture and shows people how to show up and be successful in your business. When you have a culture where people will write and own standard operating procedures (SOPs), the quality and standard of your work is developed. This creates redundancy in your business, making it easy for everyone to work to a high standard and cover each other when needed. This is key for the CEO’s peace of mind.

Have a Project Manager Run the Show

This one is not completely necessary, but it makes life much easier. We develop project managers specifically for our clients’ businesses, then install them. These individuals are the first line of defense for the team and client questions, protecting your time and energy as CEO.

To have a successful project manager, though, you need to have established guardrails and agreements in your business. Bringing in a project manager without those will cause problems for you and your team.

But having an effective project manager running your business means that you will be eliminated from the day-to-day and be able to enjoy your life as CEO.

Have Excellent Communication Between Yourself and Your Team

Your team members need clarity and consistency in communication with them and in their own communication with clients. Make sure you’re prioritizing this and coming up with some way of communicating that’s streamlined and simple.

You should also know everyone’s schedules and have a regular cadence of sending out updates to keep each other in the loop at all times. This will severely enhance the success of your business.

It’s About Enjoying Life: The Bottom Line

It’s really about enjoying your life – not constantly hustling. That’s why you need to take these measures in your business to allow for that spaciousness and flexibility. 

We love establishing this level of freedom for the CEOs we work with. First, we focus on cash flow, then work on building that self-managing team to remove you from the business’ day-to-day. After that is the full team install to allow you to focus on your zone of genius. Finally, we calibrate your team’s communication internally and with clients.

Just like that, you’ll have more freedom than ever and you’ll feel so empowered and reinvigorated by that. Trust me, I know from experience!

I would love to get connected on Instagram or The 7-Figure Freedom Club Facebook Group so we can chat about your takeaways from this episode. If you’re interested in learning more schedule a call with me today or visit my website!

And if you want to take the next step, take the business assessment quiz to get started.