Jeff Zbar
If you want to learn about working from the road? Explore this blog. If you want to discover more about the RV and festival camping scene, visit RoadtripMojo. Either way, Enjoy the Ride!
A kind enough nudge from someone seemingly concerned about my enjoying a little R&R during my vacation.
But to many home officers, micropreneurs and small business owners, a simple, paradoxical equation prevails when presented the prospect of a vacation:
Time Away From the Office = Reductions in Billable Work = Lost Income Potential / Revenues
Multiply that equation by three weeks on the road, and the result can be downright devastating to the bottom line. To paraphrase my friend Jim Blasingame at the Small Business Advocate, “As a small business owner, if you don’t kill, you don’t eat.”
In the message, the person left her query. She also commented that my outbound greeting referenced Cinco de Mayo. A greeting a month old, eh? Goes to show how little attention many of us pay to our vmail greetings.
This got me to thinking, though… Assuming people actually listen to greetings, what should we say or request of those trying to reach us? What about for teleworkers, road warriors and even workationing entrepreneurs?
This summer, the Home Office Highway ‘11 road show will showcase the tech, tools and tips that empower people to work and play from the interstate highway – or the information superhighway. The three-week excursion and social media event will highlight how “location independence” can be found wherever life’s journey ventures.
This year, we’ll travel from Fort Lauderdale to San Francisco. Part sightseeing trip, part college tour, all fun-n-games. The van will have laptops, digital cameras and other technology common to the modern family home.
Seth Godin wrote recently of “the end of magic.” He was lamenting how the newness of the new seems to have passed us by — how the really cool tools and applications that once wowed us in the workplace and life now are so commonplace that they are taken for granted, and no longer harbingers of Wow!Wait. Take a moment to ponder the tools we use and what they bring to our daily lives. You might respectfully disagree.
Every day, I use services and tools that keep me connected with the world outside in ways that still seem magical. My BlackBerry brings the Internet and its motherlode of possibilities to a device smaller than a deck of cards (iPhone users will only smirk at the possibilities borne from their device).
Want to contact a peer, client or someone else from my database? Will that be by phone (office, mobile, home, “other”?), or email, or SMS, or MMS?
Add a new name to Google Contacts — and it’s “magically” duplicated in my BlackBerry. Send an email from my phone and it instantly appears in GMail.
As I prepare to head out on Home Office Highway once again this year, I think about the tools that’ll keep me connected from the road.
Today, she offers some guidance on handling business and travel expenses. To June, the questions seem the same: Travel expenses, transportation expenses, vehicle expenses – aren’t they all more or less the same thing?
Well, maybe to you they are, June says. But not to the IRS. There are subtle and there are grand differences. Understanding standard business travel and the expenses related to a typical business trip is the place to start.
Over the river and through the woods to Grandmother’s house goes Pat Personal Trainer. Gram just bought a color laser printer and it’s the cheapest way for Pat to print his new brochures. He leaves Friday afternoon. The bus gets him there in time for dinner. He works at the computer all the next day until the wee hours. (He’s sure these new brochures will get him lots of customers.) Very early the next morning he kisses Grandma good-bye and heads back home on the bus.
Pat was away from his home, for business, overnight. It was BUSINESS TRAVEL. Therefore he may deduct travel expenses.
The IRS says this about BUSINESS TRAVEL . . .
Never saw him pull out lunch or a pair of car keys, though.
Jack Bauer & the Jack Sack
Still, I wanted a bag dripping in such utility. Functional, not too girlish. Effective enough to carry all my stuff, but still macho enough so as not to bring my manhood into question (no, it’s neither a manpurse NOR a European shoulder bag). Apparently, you can find one here.
Any home office worker, teleworker or other mobile tech / road warrior likely could appreciate this lament.
Is there a bag that fits all the stuff the modern tech-laden exec or home-working mom / dad must shuttle?
In other words, what makes a great laptop travel bag? It’s a question I’ve asked for years.
This flash drive — or “thumb drive” as some people call it, referring to its digit-like size — is small on size but huge on capacity. Measuring from 8 gigabytes to 32 gigs, this traditional flash drive offers one-touch back-up. It’s ideal for traditional back-up, or just stashing stuff to take on the road.
Good thing, since most IT pros joke about there being two types of computer users in the world: Those who have lost data, and those who will. Read More »
