Hurricane Irma

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….

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