Running Your Business from the Beach

Today’s mobile lifestyle makes it possible to run your business from anywhere. While you can lead the life of a globetrotter and still run a successful business, first you must get organized and put some systems in place.

A completely virtual office is pretty affordable on almost anyone’s budget. As long as you have a smartphone and shared access to your important files, technically, you don’t even need a laptop to run your office from anywhere.

Skype (http://www.skype.com) provides free Voice over IP between any smartphones or computers with speakers and/or webcams. Calls to regular phones cost a minimal fee. There is Google Voice available now as well, which serves as an extremely powerful and free call forwarding system and voicemail service. If your wireless provider allows you to use it, it is a wonderful thing.

There are also many different services that will provide voicemail, forwarding, 800 numbers and extensions for your staff and virtual assistants so that you and they can be anywhere in the world and still all appearing to be in one location.

Unless you have an assistant at home to empty the mailbox you might want to set up a virtual service. One such service, VirtualPostMail (http://www.virtualpostmail.com) will scan and send a pdf of your mail to you. For as little as $5 per month (cost based on volume) this company will scan your physical mail, FEDEX or UPS physical mail to you (for an extra charge), keep your data secure in an online file, and allow you to download and store mail locally. I have never used this service myself so I can’t vouch for them, but it is certainly an intriguing concept.

Whether you are a solo-preneur who travels, or you have a number of assistants who need access to important documents, use a file-sharing system to keep these files in a central secure location accessible from any computer. Google docs provides a free way to share Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, flowcharts and drawings with those individuals you invite to have access. You can find more about Google Docs on your http://www.Google.com. Dropbox (https://www.dropbox.com) has both free and paid versions. It allows you not only to share, but also to sync your files across various computer platforms, back up your files and access them from any computer. Box.net (http://www.box.net) has similar features and pricing for business and enterprise-level use. Of course the larger your business gets, the more it would benefit you to set up your own secure server.

Add online banking, bill paying and online access to QuickBooks (http://quickbooksonline.intuit.com) and you are set to be away from your office for an extended period of time without losing a beat with your business.