7 Ways Traveling Can Enhance Your Business Skills

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We all love to travel, no doubts there. But we don’t always get to vacation to our hearts’ content, especially business owners. Worry not! Here are seven ways to integrate your favorite hobby into your career.

1. Creativity and Problem Solving

Have you seen that film where the talented yet bitter protagonist gets tired with his glamorous city life and decides to head to a remote island to discover himself? (We all have — different titles, same movie).  As cliché as it sounds, it’s true and effective. New places, new people, and a diverse environment can inspire and motivate one to do the unimaginable. Foreign places and situations, often times, urge us to take the road less traveled, forcing us to improvise and providing important life lessons every moment of the way.

2. Expanding Your Business

Traveling takes you to new places where you can sell your product and also to places that have something you can sell at home. You get the opportunity to observe foreign marketing policies first-hand and apply them to your own business. You can observe not only policies, but innovative ways to promote products and conducting businesses as well!

3. Resources and Labor

Here’s a common story. Sarah is in dire need of skilled seamstresses for her small-scale embroidery business. Unfortunately, not many are available or affordable in the gray city of London. Had Sarah ever traveled to Southeast Asia, she would have stumbled across the hundreds and thousands of similar businesses and affordable labor. Surely, she must have known anyway, thanks to the power of the internet. But in many cases, internet surfing is just not enough.

4. Networking and Communication

Knowing the right people is crucial for businesses to bloom but knowing everyone else is just as important, if not more. Approaching strangers for help, for information, and more makes you more confident and develops your communication skills. You get to learn about people. It’s strange how people open up to a fleeting stranger more honestly than to their peers sometimes. The more you know about people, the better you can understand your customers. So get out there and be the people person everyone is looking for!

5. Culture

Understanding culture is the key to understanding people and understanding people is key to a successful business. Traveling is not only about sightseeing and fancy hotels. You are in a completely different part of the world where people eat different things, speak a different language, and have different traditions. You see assorted business models and experience how the same business can be done in so many alternative ways to adapt with different cultures. In turn, this enhances your perception about customers and workers and you become part of a global mindset.

6. Planning and Teams

In the digital age, nearly everyone use sites like TripAdvisor and HolidayMe to plan their trips. But actually going to a completely different part of the world requires a lot more planning and systematic organization as it can be quite unpredictable. It’s essential to take every little issue into account. Especially when traveling with a group, everyone has to be in sync with the travel plan and the travel plan has to be suitable for everyone. These situations teach us to collaborate, compromise, and coordinate to build an efficient team with impeccable organization skills.

7. Impact on Self

Discovering oneself is a very important step towards success. Knowing what gets you riled up, what makes you run faster towards the finish line, and most importantly, when you need a break is what makes you a valuable and proficient businessperson. Traveling makes a person more liberal in new environments and gives them the ability to adapt to unusual situations. It compels us to leave the comfort and familiarity of home and manage to survive in foreign environments with limited resources. Also, the break from monotony does wonders for the brain and body.

To sum it up, running a business isn’t only about crunching numbers, presentations, and meetings. There’s so much more to a business and a lot of interesting stories and memories behind a successful businessperson. Learn from those stories and make your own!

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