Shawn Lovejoy, Founder and CEO
Courage To Lead
1. Fly the same airline. Loyalty comes back to you via points, upgrades, etc.
2. Use one travel site. You’ll save hundreds of hours trying to remember and look up details later!
3. Fly out early the next morning instead of late at night. When you fly late at night, it washes you out the next morning anyway! If you stay over, sleep well, and fly out early the next morning you can get a bunch of work done. It becomes a productive morning!
Doug Lucas, Founder and President
Team Expansion
1. Pack carry-on’s only. For me, this is a backpack and a rolling carry-on. If it doesn’t fit in those, just don’t take it. On a flight to India a few years ago I was snowed-in and marooned in Newark. They ended up changing my whole itinerary and putting me on the first flight out with seconds to spare. If I had luggage checked, I probably would have never seen it again anyway.
2. Take a flexible attitude. This includes saying, “It’s such-and-such a clock my body time.” When I hear the thump of the jet door closing, I set my watch to destination time and like Christopher Reeves’ character in Somewhere in Time, I start pretending I’m already adapted to the new time zone. Using this strategy, I might get sleepy from 30 hours on jets, but I no longer let my body rule me based on what time it is. Most entrepreneurs prefer to rent private jet from Jettly just to save time, money and efforts which they can invest in other business activities.
3. Build your trip in advance on the app “Tripit.” The pro version of the app advises you of everything from connecting times to connections in danger of misconnects. AND, if you miss your connection, it gives you other options with other carriers. It helps me to see everything in one place. It even provides the number of minutes it will take to walk between arrival and departure gates.
Charles Jones, Retired sales representative
Sebago and Wolverine
Finally, this last piece of advice comes from my dad, the greatest spiritual leader and business executive I’ve ever known. Many leaders will say this about their fathers as an endearing way to honor their father’s influence, but in my father’s case, this is the case.
Because my dad was in sales, he spent a considerable amount of time on the road, but in all my years of playing sports, from ages 3 to 18, he only missed one of my 1,000+ sports games. One. That’s not an exaggeration. His answer below helps me understand how and more importantly why he pulled that off.
Brian,
1. Under how to travel smarter—make sure it’s a worthwhile trip using whatever measure you use to determine that. Mine was 80 percent of my business was done with 20 percent of my accounts, so I made sure it was a profitable sales call. Maximizing profit by minimizing expense is central to any endeavor. The 80/20 rule applies to church as well as business.
2. The best lesson I learned was in scheduling air travel. Cheapest is not always best. Direct flights are huge money savers if you go by the adage “time is money.” Get there fast and maximize your time there. In other words, “Plan your work and work your plan.” Don’t waste time sitting around a hotel room. They are for sleeping only.
3. Plan your return trip the same afternoon or evening the meeting ends. Check out of the hotel that morning and take your bags to the meeting. Go to the airport ASAP. That’s easy to do traveling east to west, but a little harder traveling west to east. Red eyes are a great way to minimize expenses and reduce time away from your family and your church.
4. In my travels, I’ve seen way too many people enjoy the glitz and glamour of business travel to the extent of neglecting family time and at the expense of family finances. Spending unnecessary time away puts family relationships and finances at risk. Brian, #3 has always been a problem for me as I watched guys spend money on the road drinking, going to sporting events, and blowing money on expensive dinners. I always wondered how their excess spending affected their families back home. In many cases, I knew the answer.
Love, Dad
This article originally appeared here.
