#85 – The Day Before My Trip to America

SUMMARY:  Stephen talks about how he prepares and gets everything in the right place before going on a trip.

 

[00:00:14] Stephen:  Hey guys, Stephen Esketzis here from Marketing on the Move.  And I’m here with you on a very early morning, 8:36 a.m. to be exact and heading over on my way to the office, actually and getting a lot of things in order before I head over to America again tomorrow.  So, tomorrow I’m flying out to Fort Lauderdale.  That’s in Florida for those of you who don’t know America.  I’m just learning, so I’m quite proud of my little geographical knowledge.  But basically, I’m flying all the way from Melbourne to Florida.  It’s a 16-hour flight from Melbourne to L.A.  And then it is a four or five-hour flight, I think, across the country to Florida, to Fort Lauderdale.

[00:00:58] And I’m heading there for Marketing Funnel Automation’s live event.  So, it’s I think a two-day event, plus there’s a couple other meetings and things I’ve got going on while I’m there.  So, we’ll be there for that.  It should be a really ripper event.  I’m looking forward to it.  I think it’s going to come out really nicely and it’s really focused all around direct response sales funnel.  So, I think that the event quality will be really good.  I’m expecting it to be really good.  There’s a bit of a change of pace when you’re focused.  When you niche down on specifically sales panels, it’s kind of nice for a change because it means you get the quality which is there, which sometimes you don’t see in other events.  So, it’s looking forward to the content, looking forward to the networking, kind of all the above.

[00:01:46] So, what I wanted to chat with you guys today — I’m stuck in traffic right now, but what I want to chat with you guys today about is what I do to pack for some of these events, what I’ve got going on — and I’d also love to hear your thoughts as well, if you listen to this and if you can reach out to me.  But basically, so what goes through my mind, I’ve got a lot of — when it comes to packing for events and travelling, there’s a few things I kind of get in order.  I’ve got a bit of a checklist that goes through and I thought I’d just share it with you because it might be helpful if you guys are starting to travel to events and conferences.

[00:02:17] I think this is my fourth one this year, international one.  I’ve been going to America pretty often.  So, it’s really getting quite busy.  This is my last U.S. trip though for the year, which is good.  So, I’m only there for seven days.  I’m not there that long.  So, I’m going to come back very quickly.  But nonetheless, I do love it.  So, it’s not something that I’m putting myself through for no reason.  As soon as I get there, I absolutely love it.  The flying is always a bit of a pain.  And I kind of have the worst of it.  So most other people seem to genuinely have it pretty good, but when you’re from Melbourne, you’ve got to make the long trips out.  So, all good.

[00:02:57] Either way though, what I do to prepare for the flight?  So, there’s a few things that I learn that after flying long trips — I’ve done a lot of long trips now.  And a few of the things that I’ve learned that you guys might pick up and might be helpful, one thing is your sleeping.  Sleeping is absolutely critical to working at your sleep cycle and getting all that, your jetlag, trying to overcome all that kind of stuff.  That’s all critical.  So you need to be able to make sure that you can handle that when you’re going to places like this and especially if you’re going to a conference or event because you need to be fresh.  You need to wake up on time.  You need to get through another whole day.  I typically like to stay in places an extra day longer or whatnot to try to recover, I usually just get there.  And then the next morning, the event starts, I’m good to go.  So, I don’t really like to waste time staying at the place because it means I don’t get much work done or I can come back.  So, I like to be in there as quickly as possible.

[00:03:50] I made the mistake once when I was in San Diego actually for traffic and conversion summit this year.  I thought I’d stick around for an extra day.  And it was a mistake.  I felt like I was just kind of wasting a day.  I was there, going to go and relax a bit, but there’s not much you can do, to be honest, like, once you’re there, you’re there for the event, do what you need to do, get back, get back to work, catch up on your sleep when you get back and get back to it.

[00:04:14] I think one distinction I’ve made and I’ve learned while getting into this business a little bit more is, you’ve got to have a clear distinction between work and play — for me, anyway.  One thing that I’ve learned is there are people who go to coffee shops and work from there and just chill and relax, just kick back while trying to do work at the same time in their laptop, living this like, laptop lifestyle, which I’ve seen it being called.  It just doesn’t work enough for me.  Anyway, it depends on the type of person you are, what are your strengths.  But when I’m in work mode, I’m in absolute work mode.  I want to be in the office, four walls, absolutely crunching it out, on alls or meetings, just doing work, actually getting through it.  And when I’m at conferences, I want to network.  That’s my goal.  My goal is to either consume content or network and 90 percent of the time, it’s networking.

So from there, I want to be in the moment.  I don’t want to be doing work.  I want to be set up just before I go away, have my VAs handle everything, have my team handle everything.  If I’ve got content that I’m supposed to be publishing, have all that drafted, lined up, ready to go.  It has to be done without a doubt.  And that’s why I’ve pulled these long days before I go to get a lot of work done because you have to do it.  I don’t want to sacrifice the actual money I’ve spent to go over to this conference, to kind of be halfheartedly involved in the event.  So, it’s something which I think is very important.

[00:05:36] Now, a few things I do generally before I go to these events, they include, pretty much making sure that you’ve got all your actual things together that you need to have.  And that includes files, computers, laptops, whatnot, make sure that you’ve got all that ready to go.  And then — sorry guys.  I’m just trying to get around some cars.  Yeah, making sure you got your laptop, phone, everything charged, ready to go, everything backed up.  I make sure as well that I always bring my Bose headphones because they’re critical if you want to actually fall asleep on a flight, especially on the way home.  On the way up I usually manage to get a lot of work done, but on the way back, I usually relax a bit more after the conference.  But get those in, make sure you’ve got a fair bit of work and everything done so that way, you’re ready to go leading up to it.

[00:06:33 ]Now, when I go, before I go way, I make sure meetings with my team, fresh, ready to go, they know exactly what needs to be done.  I tell them a week before I go away that I’m going to be away and what needs to happen gets done.  So, that happens.  And then on the content side of things, for example, I write for ClickFunnels, so I write, I post it down, it’s a lot of content, so I need to make sure that I’ve got tons of content drafted and ready to go.  That will need to be ready and that needs to be ready to be published and good to go too.  So, between content and getting my team handling all the other things — on the plane, I generally like to do a lot of emails and write some blog posts and things like that because it gives me some time to work without being too distracted.  It’s kind of good focus on — it’s kind of something that I’ve started getting better at trying to work.  I think the last trip, I managed to get three hours of work in or something like that, three or four hours out of 16 or 14.  So, it takes a little bit of work, but you’ll get there.  And hopefully this trip as well, I’ll do one or two hours and then take a break, watch a movie, do another one or two hours, take a break and just try and do it in short bursts of energy, get as much out of the trip as I can.  And then if I want to relax, I can relax.  There’s no real set time.  I think people who go in there, you know, trying to schedule out the trip, schedule out the flight, schedule out the work they’re going to do at the airport, it just doesn’t work.  You’ve got to work to how your body is feeling, how switched on you are because if you’re not motivated and “get this work done” mood, you’re just not going to produce the results.  So, you’re better off just relaxing and kicking back for a bit.

[00:08:17] So, that’s kind of what I do leading up to America.  Keep an eye on my Snapchats, guys.  You can add me on Snapchat.  It’s just stephenesketzis, one word.  I’m going to be Snapchatting a lot of travelling.  I love Snapchatting travelling because it’s something different.  Snapchatting my days aren’t super exciting at the moment because it’s a lot of just work.  But head to stephenesketzis on Snapchat, check that out.  You’d be able to see me at the airport.  I’ll try to drop some bombs and share some cool things, even share some things at the event.  The last event, I got a filter and I actually Snapchatted a lot of content in commerce.  So, if you were watching, you would have seen that.  Otherwise, guys, we’ll definitely try and do a podcast while I am in Fort Lauderdale while I’m there.  So, look out for that.  In the meantime, hit me up if you’ve got any questions about anything.

[00:09:05] We do have really actually something really exciting as the Funnel Lab coming out, the membership area.  I think I just gave away the name, but only you guys can know about it then.  It’s going to be coming out very soon.  I wasn’t supposed to give out the name just yet, but it’s going to be really exciting.  I’m so pumped for it.  You guys are going to absolutely love it.  Yeah.  I’ll show you what that is in a very short few weeks.  It’s going to be launching, paid membership area community for sales funnels.  It’s going to be amazing.  So, you guys are going to love it.  I’ll let you guys know when that’s launched.  In the mean time, take care and I’ll speak to you soon.