Running your own business overseas or working freelance means using lots of skills and drawing on your previous experience, and it also gives you the freedom to work from anywhere whilst you see the world. However, there are several roles that aren’t directly linked to your business niche but are important to ensure the smooth running of your business, lets take a look at those now.
Accountant
If you’ve just started your own business, and are using this to combine travel and building your business, it’s unlikely you’ll have the money to hire anyone yet. So, as a result, you become your own accountant for a while. To make this easier, FreshBooks has free invoicing templates you can use. By using their templates, you can save time on creating your own, which is useful if you have little or no design know-how. These also make it easier at the end of the tax year, as you can use these invoices to keep track of how much money your business has made.
The templates are available in DOC, XLS, Excel 2003, Google Docs, Google Sheets and PDF. So you’ll find one to suit your preferred format. This makes adapting it much easier and ensures you don’t forget to include any important information.
Negotiator
When you run your own business, you will find yourself having to negotiate with clients, suppliers or customers. Even if you’ve planned ahead, you can’t always plan for fluctuating demand for your product or services, supply shortages, price rises or over-demanding clients. This means you may have to smooth out problems if a client or customer isn’t happy, even if you disagree with them. You might also try to negotiate a better price or have to explain why your own prices are rising because of this. On top of this, you’ll be trying to work with people or businesses from different cultures, and have to consider how you might send or receive items between countries.
CEO
Starting your own business means automatically becoming a CEO. Your tasks, particularly if you work alone, will often involve a lot of legwork and smaller tasks. If you want your business to succeed, you’ll have regularly need to switch from an international traveller on business and networking internationally, to being a customer service representative and handling queries from potential clients. No task should be considered too big or too small.
Marketing manager
As a business owner, even if you have other staff, you’ll effectively become a marketing manager. Any marketing, especially paid marketing, will have to be approved by you. The activities and promotions will be created and developed by you. It’s your business, so it’s important to keep on top of what is working to improve it, or what isn’t working to look at ways to change that or consider other options. You could be working remotely with marketers from around the world, even so, you’ll need to keep track of everything, no matter where in the world you might be.
Although combining and running your own business with travel is about pursuing your dreams, there are lots of other roles you need to take on too. Being prepared for these means you’ll know how to switch between roles, and will have more time for the tasks you enjoy.
