So as my daughter, 2 dogs, 1 lizard, and I ride out the hurricane in our newly adopted home of Fort Walton Beach, Florida, I realized now just how awesome SaaS and cloud computing are. All of my sites are still up, and I’m able to work just like I was back at home, which has no power. Even though evacuating took 18 hours, I have no regrets today as I sit here typing this post in the comfort of AC and WIFI Internet. I’m in no rush to get back either.
Ten years ago (5?), this wouldn’t have even been a possibility. Everything would have needed to be saved locally, communications with my team overseas would be touch and go at best, and ensuring I could manage client requests effectively would be rough. But now, with Office 365, Azure, Slack, and everything else I use, I am truly liberated from a physical location to run my business from.
This has been sort of a revelation to me now. I’ve always worked from a physical location. I always FELT like I had to work from a physical location. But now, I can see that the location is not important any longer. It’s the results that matter. I’m no longer tied to my home office like I was for so many years.
And this is probably nothing new to a lot of you. But it is for me. And I’m sure it is for others as well. There’s a mind shift that needs to occur in order to adjust our thinking from the way we’ve been doing things for so long; almost 20 years. It worked well for me. I’ve always had a home office, because for me, that’s where I got things done. But now I’m realizing that isn’t a requirement any longer. I’m writing the post from a table inside a Marriott (I love Marriott’s now by the way), with all of the same access to technology that I would have if I was working at home in Palm Beach County right now.
So what are my take aways? I did the right thing. Keeping my family safe was the number one thing I needed to do, and it worked perfectly. Driving across the state of Florida in 18 hours sucked, but overall I am very happy for making that decision.
Business wise? I’m not tethered to an office anymore. It took a hurricane for me to figure that out….
