Notes
Running a business from anywhere sounds great until a routine bank requirement shows up. Eric got an email that his company’s line of credit would be shut down because the bank needs a fresh signature in person every two years, and he was in Costa Rica. Because he had sat down with his business banker before leaving and set up other people who could sign, it was an email instead of a crisis.
Eric walks through 14 safeguards. On the business side: talk to your bank before you go, set up someone who can step in and serve your clients if your laptop is stolen or the power is out for days, keep almost nothing on your computer and everything in encrypted cloud storage, never let clients email you passwords, use a password manager with two factor authentication, and carry key person insurance so someone can be hired to run the company if you can’t. He also covers checking for cameras behind you in coffee shops, waiting until you’ve left a place to post about it, a VPN on public wifi, a fireproof document pouch, a laptop cable lock, and backup payment methods kept in different places after an ATM in Peru ate one of his cards.
Midway through, Eric steps back to a coaching story about an owner who thought he had to learn SEO before he could sell it. People who sell cars don’t build cars. He closes with the leadership tip of the week: trust is built in the absence of secrets, on your team and at home.
Key Highlights
- Talk to your business banker before you travel and set up other signers, so a routine requirement doesn’t freeze your cash flow.
- Always have someone with access who can step in and serve your clients if your equipment or connection fails.
- If you have a sustained problem in your business, it’s a systems issue.
- Key person insurance means your family or team can hire someone to run the business if you can’t.
- Trust is built in the absence of secrets.
Key Takeaways
All right, here we go. Let’s get ready to record this podcast episode. Just finishing the sound check here.
Traveling as a business owner can definitely increase your need for additional security. So let’s talk about it in this episode of the Digital Nomad Entrepreneur podcast. I’ve got several ideas that I want to share with you that I’ve used to increase my safety, my family’s safety, and the safety of my business.
My name is Eric. I’m a full time digital nomad entrepreneur, traveling around the world with my wife and our four kids. And as a dad and a business owner, I take security pretty seriously. Not saying that if you’re not a dad, you wouldn’t take it seriously, but it’s just one of those things that definitely is on my radar a good bit.
In this episode I actually have an overwhelming number. I should have broken this up into two episodes, but I’ve got 14 ideas I’m going to give you, and I’m not going to labor a lot of these. Some of them don’t take a lot of time. So some of them I’ll just mention and then move on. But I’ve got 14 things for you to do to work on keeping your business safe. And even if you’re not traveling, maybe some things you want to consider.
But this is, after all, a podcast designed to help business owners optimize their business for revenue, profit, and location independence. I really appreciate all of you that listen that aren’t full time travelers. Those of you that have reached out and have become coaching clients, or have joined our Monday open office calls, that aren’t full time travelers, that is great to have you here. I’m really willing to help people set their business up for success no matter where they choose to run their business from. And if I can inspire you to travel a little more, well, I really want to be able to do that.
By the way, it’s been a while since I’ve mentioned it. If you are a family and travel is your thing, make sure you check out my wife’s podcast, the Digital Nomad Family Podcast. That’s right, we’ve got the Digital Nomad Family Podcast and this, the Digital Nomad Entrepreneur podcast.
All right, so let’s jump into these 14 items. We’re already two minutes and thirty five seconds into this episode, so let’s get going.
Number one: talk to your bank before you leave. This is going to be really important. Just a couple weeks ago, I got an email from my bank that they were going to be shutting down one of our accounts. We have a line of credit with our bank that is useful to cover periods where we may be waiting for a big invoice to come in, or some peaks in cash flow. It’s nice to have that line of credit as a backup.
But as it turns out, every two years they require a new signature. They require you to visit the bank. Well, I’m in Costa Rica. I’m not going to run back up to the United States to do this. But luckily, I had gone in and sat down with our business banker before we left, explaining what we were doing, and we were able to put in several mechanisms that we can use when we’re out of the country to continue doing our banking. I have a couple of additional people that can sign these documents for me on my behalf. I’ve got other things in place, but specifically, just being able to drop an email to Andy, that’s our business banker, we’re with Truist Bank, absolutely an amazing business bank, and I’m able to reach out to him and work with him and he knows our lifestyle and understands it.
So why is this a security kind of thing? Because as you’re traveling, you need your bank to understand that they’re going to see transactions happening in different countries, not from a client base, but maybe to me, or I might use my card. I’ve got business expenses as I’m traveling. If I go work in a coffee shop, well, that’s not a personal expense, that’s a business expense. So for lots of reasons, talk to your bank before you do any traveling.
Number two: set up access with someone to your most important business things. You need to have a backup plan. Now, if you are listening to this, I get a lot of people that listen to this that are web designers. Not all of you are interested in that, there are lots of types of jobs you can have to be a digital nomad entrepreneur. But for those of you that are web designers, I want to highlight one option for you, and then for those that aren’t web designers, look and see if there’s something like this for you.
If you’re a web designer, I want to recommend that you check out FocusWP at FocusWP.co. They have a vacation service that actually works as an emergency backup. What you do is you onboard all of your client websites with them, and then when you need them to, they can immediately begin taking care of those sites when you go on vacation, at a very reasonable price. It’s absolutely fantastic. I reached out to my friend Stephanie there and told her I was going to do this, and she’s put together a coupon code, if you will. If you go to FocusWP.co, check out their vacation service, and use the code No Worry Nomad, one word, you’re going to save $150 right off the top. Now, this is for a limited time, so whenever you’re listening to this, check it out right away, see if the window’s still open on that.
It’s definitely worth a service, because if you run into a big travel delay, and some countries have power outages or internet outages, it may take longer to get that stuff repaired than you’re used to. Or if your laptop gets stolen or something like that, you may be in areas where there’s not a convenient place to get something replaced. So you’ve got to have a backup plan to serve your client. If you’re not a web designer, this may be somebody in the same industry as you are, a friend, a colleague, somebody that you can trust that you can say, hey, can I keep you signed up with access to be able to get in and step in if I need to work something out, as a backup plan for you. This is important.
Number three: travel with security cameras and smoke detectors. Now, we travel very light as a family. In fact, we are a carry on luggage only family, up to this point. We travel with carry on luggage and one personal item for each person. We’re a family of six and we’ve lived that way for a couple of years. Everything we own and everybody needs fits into their carry on and personal bag.
For me, I’ve got a carry on where my clothes go, as well as my tripod that I use for a couple of other things. I use it for work, but I also use it for my hobby. I travel with the stuff that I need to be able to go out and paint. I like to paint en plein air, and so I travel with my hobby, and I also have my entire portable office to run my company. World HQ of In Transit Studios goes in my personal backpack, and that’s what we travel with.
We have made sure, though, that we have room for two Ring security cameras, and we travel with smoke detectors, because there are a lot of places out there that don’t have smoke detectors, and we can set up security cameras for when we are gone. As parents, there have been times, not as much anymore now that our kids are older, but when our kids were a little younger, still old enough to be left alone, my wife and I would go out to dinner and we could remotely access the camera and say hi to the kids, just to remind them that somebody was watching. So travel with a security camera or two, and definitely a smoke detector or two.
Number four: don’t broadcast your exact location while you’re there. Okay, so if I am out and about working at a cafe and I want to post a picture of it, I will take a picture, and if I want to do the Instagram picture of being in this amazing environment, traveling and working, and we all like to be able to do that, the little brag, the showing off a little bit, when I do that I never post it right then and there. I always wait until I am well gone from the place, a week or even a couple weeks. So I try to generally not keep our location live in real time.
Now, we may talk in broad terms. If you’ve been listening to the podcast, you know we are in Costa Rica, and that’s pretty much all you know. Costa Rica is a really big place, and we’re just not going to do much more than that. When we post pictures, we make sure they aren’t geotagged. You don’t want to broadcast that, especially in some countries, that you’re the CEO of a company and you’re traveling there. That may elevate a type of target on you, even if your company is not a multimillion dollar company. People won’t know that. They’ll see CEO and target. So just be careful when you’re broadcasting your location on social media. Be smart and be very careful with that.
Number five: without crossing the line of cultural appropriation, dress like a local. As much as you can. There are some places in the world where nobody wears shorts, none of the locals wear shorts, there’s usually a tell. If somebody’s got shorts on, they’re a tourist. So basically, try not to dress like a tourist. We strive to not look like a tourist when we’re out and about. There are times that we do, we can’t help it, but we really try, and we just use common sense. Don’t have your phone in your back pocket.
I travel with three pairs of cargo pants. I don’t travel with any jeans, they take up too much space. So I’ve got cargo pants, three pairs where the legs zip off, so I’ve got three pairs of pants, three pairs of shorts. On the outside of one of the legs I have pockets that zip, and that’s where I’ll keep my wallet or my phone, I don’t keep things in an accessible pocket. So dress smart and dress like a local, again, without crossing the line of cultural appropriation.
So there’s the first five. Told you it was going to take us a while to go through all 14, but we’re moving right along. Before we move on to number six, I would really appreciate it if you could do me a favor. If you’re enjoying the podcast, if this has been helpful to you, leave a review, subscribe, leave a rating. It means the world to me. It helps other people find it, and it helps encourage me. And if you have any constructive criticism, any suggestions on how to make the podcast better, drop me an email at [email protected]. I would really appreciate the opportunity to learn from you and grow.
Number six: make sure you use a good, reliable VPN. I use ClearVPN, which is part of Setapp, a service I use that’s only available for Apple, for Mac users. I pay a $10 a month fee and I have access to I don’t know how many Mac apps that work on my phone, my Mac, my iPad. It’s absolutely amazing. One of them is a VPN, I have my calendar through that, CleanMyMac, several things I use that are all part of that subscription. You can find a link to Setapp on the resource page of my website.
I also use Surfshark, especially if I’m out and about on any type of public wifi. I’ll test and check my wifi at an Airbnb if we’re going to be there for a season, to make sure it’s as secure as possible. I will work from time to time without my VPN, because while VPNs are great and helpful, there are times they interfere with my Zoom calls, and I’m on Zoom a lot. For you really techie folks out there, you can split tunnel for Zoom, go check that out and it’ll help you set that up. That’s way more than I want to get into. But I’ve had people tell me about it, it’s just not that big of a deal for me. I’m not on public wifi doing Zoom every day in a coffee shop where I’m exposing myself.
The other option is Surfshark, that’s a great one, and you can get a really good deal at DNEPodcast.com/surfshark. All of these links will of course be in the show notes.
Number seven, this is really important, and I was surprised to discover just how big of a deal this is and how many people end up getting hacked because of this. When you’re working in a public place, be very aware of what’s behind you. There are a number of places where there are cameras, and those cameras could be pointing right at your keyboard, right at your screen even. You might use a screen protector that prevents people from looking sideways at the screen, that’s great, but are you covering your keyboard? Probably not.
So be very aware. Anytime I choose a place in a public venue to work in, I always look behind me and above me, I scan them well, I look to see if there’s any cameras or places cameras could be hidden before I choose my place to work. Then I’m constantly looking around me, making sure nobody’s got a phone pointed at me, especially to my left and my right. If somebody comes in beside me, I’m really paying attention. They may look like they’re on their phone, but if their phone is pointed at me, especially in a way that could see my keyboard, I stop typing, or I’m really aware of what I’m typing at that point. That’s one of the reasons I try to use Touch ID as much as possible to enter passwords, so it’s just my fingertip and I’m not actually physically typing in my keywords.
Number eight, we’re only halfway through, and only 18 minutes in, we’re crushing it, people. Increasing your security on the road: backup everything to secure cloud. I keep very little data, hardly any at all, on my computer. I have secure, trusted sources for my cloud. Now, I know everything can be vulnerable, nothing is perfectly secure if it’s connected to the internet, so chill out. But for the most part, you can choose some very secure, well-known options. Use high quality, don’t look for the cheap stuff, use high quality secure cloud storage and services with encryption.
If you use Google Workspace, and you have a team like we do, we’re constantly making sure that all the enhanced security features are turned on and maxed out. We do not store or email passwords, I don’t let my clients email us passwords, we use a service called OneTimeSecret.com to have clients send us passwords. We also use a password service, I know all of them have had issues, I like LastPass, they had a breach a couple years ago, yeah, they did, I’ve evaluated things, we still use that. We’ve got two factor authentication, it’s super secure, I can share notes and share passwords without sharing the actual password with my team. We take password security very seriously.
So I just actually covered two right there, that was number eight and number twelve. Number eight, backup everything to a secure cloud, and I’ll just skip down the line, number twelve, be uber cautious with passwords.
Number nine, travel with a fireproof, waterproof document safe. I’m going to put a link to the one that we have in the show notes, this thing is amazing, we got it off Amazon, it’s a two pocketed fireproof document bag, 15 by 11 inches, not super thick, and you can use it for anything you want, but it’s where we keep our most important documents that we travel with. It’s got this amazing zipper on it, and it’s rated up to 2000 degrees Fahrenheit.
As we’re out and about, if we don’t have our passports with us, we’ll have those locked up and secure and hidden. We’ve had to renew passports while out of the country, and you can’t go into an embassy with photocopies of some of these documents, you have to have some documents with you. So we have backups of all of our documents in an electronic version that my wife and I can access, and we have official, legal copies of our most important documents in a fireproof safe with one of our family members. Traveling with this fireproof, waterproof document pouch is really something I would recommend. Again, I’ll put a link in the show notes.
Number ten, travel with a computer cable lock. There’s all kinds of types out there, I’m not going to share a specific one, just go to Amazon and search for it. You can get these, they work great, some of them use a screw that replaces one of the screws that holds the bottom plate on your computer, and then you can click in a cable. Now, there’s no way to permanently secure anything. When we lived in the States, even if I put something in a safe, if somebody really wanted to, they could walk out with the safe. The whole idea is you’re just wanting to slow people down and deter them.
Here in Costa Rica, and in most of Latin America to be honest, all of our houses have had phenomenal safety bars on the windows, gates, barbed wire at the top of the gates, they really do a great job deterring opportunistic thieves. You can do the same thing when you’re out and about working in busy cafes or coffee shops. I may want to close my laptop lid down and just jump up to the counter to get a fresh cup of coffee, without packing everything up in my backpack. So make sure nothing loose is laid out, never leave your phone on the table. I like having my computer locked, and if I am going to be somewhere that’s not secure, a hostel or something like that, I would definitely want to be able to lock that. A lot of times you can use those in a way that they also lock around your backpack straps.
Number eleven, have proper insurance. Secure yourself, secure your family, have proper insurance, including key person insurance. What is key person insurance? If I become incapacitated in some way, death, disability, illness, sickness, and I can’t work, we have insurance that would kick in and give us money to hire someone to run things while I’m not there. If I pass away, it’s enough money that my wife could hire a full time CEO to run the company for two years, without having to worry about our income from the business being decreased. We also have additional life insurance, or she could use that money to hire someone to facilitate selling the business. So key person insurance, love your people, set them up with insurance, have term life insurance, have travel insurance, have key person insurance. It’s worth it, get it in place.
I’m not going to talk about number twelve now, since I already covered it, be super cautious with passwords. I’m going to jump right into thirteen and fourteen, my last two, and then I’m going to share this week’s leadership tip of the week, so make sure you stick around for that.
Let me say, before I get to these last two and the leadership tip, a couple people this week I was talking to in group coaching or one on one coaching had these aha moments. It’s one of my favorite things about coaching. Every week I see people have these aha moments, and for many of them it’s the moment they realize that they’re not just a business owner, this isn’t just a side hustle, they’re a leader. Even when they don’t have a team, when they embrace the fact that they are a leader of an organization, leading themselves, leading an organization, when they realize that organizations get the results they’re organized to get, and leadership is what sets that in place. Leadership is what guides the organization. Everything rises and falls on leadership. Leadership is the capacity of your company, it all comes down to leadership every single time.
It’s this aha moment, and then I immediately see them start to get results because they realize, I’ve got to lead better, I’ve got to learn leadership, and they start learning. It’s so much fun watching people that are doing this as a side hustle get to the point where they’re able to leave the nine to five, people that have no desire to travel, people that want to travel more, it all comes down to that. It’s one of my favorite things about coaching, how many people have that moment of, I don’t have to be the one that does the things I’m selling.
I was talking to somebody the other day, and he’s like, well, I want to start adding SEO services, it’s going to take me a year to learn it. And I’m like, why are you going to learn it? He’s like, well, if I’m going to sell it, I’m going to have to know how to lead people that are doing it. And I was like, have you ever bought a car? He’s like, yeah. I was like, okay, was the person that sold you the car able to tell you how the car worked? No, probably not. And the people supervising them, were they able to? Probably not either. People that sell cars don’t build cars. The realtor that sells houses, they don’t build the houses they sell, they’re not electricians, they’re not plumbers. What do all these people do? They help you see yourself with the solution to the problem you have, and then they leave the how it all works up to other people. I do the same thing. I have a team that knows how to do things I don’t know how to do, and that’s the way it should be. I don’t need to know what they know. How do you lead them? I look at the results. Did we get results, great. We didn’t get results, something’s wrong, there’s a system problem, we have a broken system. If you have a sustained problem in your business, it’s a systems issue.
These are all the kinds of things that are leadership, you’ve got to learn leadership. That’s why I end with the leadership tip of the week, don’t skip it. Don’t think, well, we’re done now, I can turn off. No. Honestly, the leadership stuff is the most valuable, in my opinion, for you. The rest of this is good, it’s important, it’s helpful, but it’s the leadership stuff that is the game changer. So make sure you stick around for that. And if you want help developing yourself as a leader, to run your business, to run your life better, reach out to me. That’s what I do in my coaching, I help you become the leader you need to be, so you have the business and lifestyle you want.
Okay, my last two here we go. Number thirteen, travel with backup payment methods, divided into other places. What I mean by that, don’t keep all of your payment methods in your wallet, that’s ridiculous. Have a couple backups in a couple different places. You don’t want to be left stranded if your wallet gets stolen, it may take a while to get your replacement.
We learned this in Peru, one of our ATM cards got eaten by an ATM machine, we walked away and left it there, and there was no way to retrieve it. They don’t have mailing addresses in Peru, so to try to get an ATM card mailed to us from our bank, we literally didn’t have a mailing address to give them. We had a nice house, but there’s no mail service. Luckily we had a backup card, and the next time we were in the States we were able to get our replacement. So have a backup plan, and a backup plan for your backup plan, to access your money.
A little tip for parents traveling with your kids. Our kids are old enough now, they’re teenagers, and when my wife and I go out, we leave a backup payment method in the house so that if something was to happen to us, they would be able to survive, buy groceries, pay for things until, honestly, my dad, our backup plan, if something was to happen to my wife and I, he has agreed to be ready to fly to where our kids are. But our kids are old enough now and self-sustainable enough now that they could totally live if we leave a backup payment method with them. So be secure with your payment methods, travel with backups.
And the fourth and final one, use Apple AirTags or something similar on everything. Just do it, they’re amazing. Tag your kids, tag your bags you carry out and about during the day, it’s so convenient to have those.
All right, so those are my 14. Now, what is my leadership tip of the week? This is a golden leadership tip. If you’re leading a team, you’re going to want this for your team, and you’re going to tell your team this. If you are a leader in your family, this is a leadership tip that works with your children and in your marriage.
Here it is, you ready? Trust is built in the absence of secrets. That’s good, right? Trust is built in the absence of secrets. We tend to think that if somebody is a good secret keeper, they can be trusted, because they can keep a good secret. But secrets don’t build a great marriage. Secrets don’t build healthy relationships with your kids. And secrets don’t build a healthy team culture. Don’t keep secrets from your team. Now, there is a time and place to share things, that’s not saying everybody needs to know everything that is happening, that’s not necessarily an issue of keeping a secret. You know what I’m talking about. Trust is built in the absence of secrets. Be vulnerable. Be transparent. Be honest. Trust is built in the absence of secrets.
Well, my friends, thank you for listening to this episode, episode 23. I am absolutely loving recording these. I want to hear from you, to make sure that you’re loving getting something out of them. So leave that rating, leave that review. Drop me an email at [email protected], would love to hear from you. Until next time, my friend, chase the big dream, lead with courage, and safe travels.
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