Running My Business While Travelling: The Biggest Adventure Yet

There are certain moments in life when you suddenly realise that the life you are living looks completely different from the one you imagined a few months ago.

Right now, I’m writing this from somewhere in Guatemala, with my small business travelling around South America with me. My iPad is my office, my backpack is my wardrobe, and my art studio is wherever I can find a little bit of space to sit down and create. It’s a strange, exciting and sometimes completely surreal way to run a business - and it’s a world away from the corporate life I was living not that long ago.

When I decided to leave my job and travel, I knew I wanted to do something different. I wanted to take some time away from the traditional 9-5, see more of the world and finally give The Little Things Company the attention it had always deserved. But I don’t think I fully appreciated just how big a change that would be.

I wasn’t simply taking a career break and going travelling. I was taking my business with me.

Building a business from a backpack

There is something quite funny about trying to run a creative business when your entire life fits inside a backpack.

Before travelling, The Little Things Company had a proper little setup at home. I had my printer, my workspace, my supplies and all the familiar routines that came with running a small art business. Now, my “office” changes depending on where I am. Some days I’m working from a café, other days I’m sitting at a desk in my room, and sometimes the laptop stays firmly shut because I’ve travelled halfway across the world and there is simply somewhere else I want to be.

It has forced me to become much more flexible.

The practical side of the business has changed too. While I’m away, my family has been helping with printing and packing orders back home, which means The Little Things Company can keep going even though I’m thousands of miles away. It’s not quite the way I originally imagined running a business, but I’ve actually loved seeing how something I built can continue to exist beyond me sitting at my desk every day.

Of course, there is a slightly less romantic side to it too.

Trying to grow a business while travelling is hard.

There is no guaranteed salary waiting for me at the end of the month anymore. There isn’t a manager setting my priorities or a neat list of tasks telling me exactly what success looks like. I have to decide where my time and money should go, work out what is actually moving the business forward and accept that sometimes I’m going to put hours into something without seeing an immediate result.

Visibility is probably the biggest challenge of all.

I know people love The Little Things Company when they see the prints. The frustrating part has always been getting enough people to actually see them. So while I’m travelling, I’m still trying to figure out SEO, social media, content, Etsy, my website and all of the other slightly overwhelming pieces of running a small online business.

Sometimes it feels like I’m trying to build an entire brand from the back of a bus.

It hasn’t all been easy

And I think that’s something I want to be honest about.

Travelling while trying to build a business isn’t one long highlight reel. There have been days when I’ve been ill, exhausted, overwhelmed or simply wondering whether I have completely lost the plot by deciding to do all of this at once.

There have been moments when I’ve missed the familiarity of home and moments when I’ve looked at my finances and thought, right, okay, we need to be sensible here. There have been days when I have wanted to work and absolutely nothing creative has come out of my brain, and days when I’ve felt guilty for not working because I was busy enjoying where I was instead.

I’ve also had to get much more comfortable with uncertainty.

When you leave a conventional job to travel and build a business, there isn’t really a clear roadmap anymore. I don’t know exactly how many orders I’ll have next month or exactly where I’ll be living six months from now. I don’t know which social media idea will suddenly take off or which new product will become a favourite.

But strangely, I think that’s becoming one of my favourite parts.

The life and the business are starting to become the same thing

The more I travel, the more I realise that The Little Things Company has always been about exactly this sort of thing.

It’s about the little details that make someone’s life theirs. The favourite drink. The ridiculous TV show. The holiday they can’t stop talking about. The hobby they spend every spare minute doing. The pet that is basically their child. The tiny things that might seem insignificant to somebody else but mean everything to you.

Travelling has made me notice those things even more.

When you’re constantly somewhere new, you become much more aware of the little moments. A favourite café. A beautiful view. A conversation with someone you’ve just met. A morning spent wandering around somewhere unfamiliar. A completely ordinary afternoon that you suddenly realise you’ll remember for years.

Those are the things I want to keep bringing into my work.

And I think that’s one of the most exciting things about growing a creative business while travelling: I’m not just building a business alongside my life. My life is becoming part of the business.

And somehow, it’s already been an incredible journey

When I stop and think about how different my life looks now compared with a few months ago, it is quite difficult to believe.

I left a job that was comfortable and familiar because I wanted something more. I packed up my life, put The Little Things Company into the mix and headed off into the unknown.

Since then, I’ve had days where I’ve felt completely out of my depth and days where I’ve thought, how is this actually my life?

There have been difficult days, but there have also been the kind of moments that remind me exactly why I took the risk in the first place.

I’m learning Spanish. I’m travelling through countries I had dreamed about visiting. I’m meeting people from all over the world. I’m challenging myself physically and mentally in ways I never expected. And somewhere in the middle of all of it, I’m still drawing little things and trying to turn them into a business.

I don’t think I could have predicted exactly what this chapter would look like.

And honestly, I’m glad I couldn’t.

This is only the beginning

There is still so much of this journey left.

South America is calling, and there are places I haven’t even reached yet. There are mountains, cities, deserts, beaches and completely new experiences waiting further down the road. There are still so many things I want to learn, see and experience.

And I want The Little Things Company to grow alongside me.

I want to see what happens when I give it a real chance. I want more people to discover the artwork, I want to keep creating and I want to build something that can eventually give me the freedom to live the kind of life I’ve always imagined.

Maybe I don’t need to know exactly what that looks like yet.

For now, I’m happy knowing that I took the leap.

I’m building something of my own while seeing the world, even if it doesn’t always look polished or predictable. I’m figuring things out as I go, learning from the difficult days and trying to appreciate the amazing ones.

And when I look back at this chapter one day, I hope I remember that I didn’t wait until everything was perfectly figured out.

I just started.

So here’s to the next country, the next idea, the next order, the next adventure and all the little things that happen along the way.

The journey is far from over.

And I genuinely can’t wait to see where it takes me - and The Little Things Company! - next.