As an entrepreneur you need a very good grasp of the world’s current trends, and the possible route of events that are unfolding all around you. How does this impact your entrepreneurial pursuits?

Well here we feature 8 crucial reasons why you should travel while you can. Better yet, while you are still young.

Read on and share your comments on what you have learnt as an entrepreneur through your adventures around the globe.

What Every Entrepreneur Can Learn From Travelling The World

1. See the world as it is

Richard Branson is one of the bravest living entrepreneurs today. One of his most interesting words of advice would be to “be watchful“. Watchful of what? Well travelling can open your eyes to many things. It gets you on the ground, you get a feel for the culture as it is, speak the native language, immerse in the societal elements of the very country you are in. Lurking behind these random experiences are business ideas.

Be watchful.

2. Importing and Exporting Ideas

The human race might have countless ethnic origins, but they do have some very common needs. When you travel around you see these glaring differences in behavior, customs, ethics, and other things. But you can also see  common grounds where you can build your business model on.

A business idea taken out of its original location where it has already reached a level of saturation can interact with a new market that finds it new and worth the try.

3. Cross Cultural Improvement

A travelling entrepreneur sees the world in a viewfinder. It allows him to enhance his business instincts and form interesting business ideas that go above and beyond what he sees every day. Travelling allows for new experiences, a new take on activities that are often taken for granted back home.

An entrepreneur who travels a lot can also see a better way of doing things. This too can become a business framework for your business ventures later on.

4. Find Fulfillment and significance

Travelling can also motivate entrepreneurs to address a pressing social issue to places that they visit. Will and Chris Haughey where inspired with their toy company Tegu with Honduras’ staggering poverty. It pushed them to action and enabled them to create one of the most innovative wood block toy ideas to date. Their entrepreneurial success is complimented with a sense of fulfillment that knows no monetary value.

5. Learn New Things

A travelling entrepreneur must avail themselves to new ideas. The worst thing that they can do is to have a closed mind and just “sniff” around the local scene.

Shunryu Suzuki once said “in a beginner’s mind there are a lot of possibilities; in an expert’s mind, there are few“. A budding entrepreneur must travel while they are still young or young at heart, a novice in his entrepreneurial journey. Being “young” can refer to one’s physical age, or it can also refer to your years of experience in the business world.

6. Create business value

Travelling the world is exciting. As an entrepreneur, this excitement has a unique dimension – seeing the world through a different lens. This can mean having a better perspective while handling your business, its processes and its selling points.

Kenneth Cobonpue is a well traveled young entrepreneur. Through his education in the US and Germany, he was able to provide new value to local materials for his furniture business based in his home town Cebu, Philippines. He was able to redefine modern furniture by putting in new value to traditional furniture making and materials.

This is just an example of what ideas where created by an entrepreneur while travelling and channeling his experiences into his business development.

7. Re-evaluation of business practices

As an entrepreneur, you already have instituted ways of managing your business. By travelling around the world, you will be able to reassess these practices objectively. This can be about your employee benefits program, organizational development interventions, leader succession programs, even advertising and marketing.

By going around the world you pick up little inputs that can do a lot for your business back home. You really cannot improve things without any point of reference of what it could and should be.

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Right now I am in Bali, Indonesia. This country has opened my eyes to what is going on out here in the real world. This country is so beautiful yet so full of people just scraping by in life on the streets.

We barter with them over shoes and clothes, some shoes and watches sell for 20 USD, to them this is a lot of money. To us it is not much at all. Their average Cars cost $15,000 USD and they make around $50 a day at most, some not even $10 a day so buying a motorcycle for a family of 5 is all that they can afford in their lifetime. These people are living in bad conditions selling on the street and creating anything they can for a loose dollar or two in our money, yet they put their skills to work creating and replicating things that western companies create and sell for 100’s of dollars.

This shows you that no matter what situation you are in, if you are resourceful enough, you will find a way to make it through life.

Travel Quotes To Live By:

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” – Mark Twain

“Travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living.” – Miriam Beard

“We live in a wonderful world that is full of beauty, charm and adventure. There is no end to the adventures we can have if only we seek them with our eyes open.” – Jawaharial Nehru

“To my mind, the greatest reward and luxury of travel is to be able to experience everyday things as if for the first time, to be in a position in which almost nothing is so familiar it is taken for granted.” – Bill Bryson

“Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

“I have found out that there ain’t no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.” – Mark Twain

“Once you have traveled, the voyage never ends, but is played out over and over again in the quietest chambers. The mind can never break off from the journey.” – Pat Conroy

“What you’ve done becomes the judge of what you’re going to do – especially in other people’s minds. When you’re traveling, you are what you are right there and then. People don’t have your past to hold against you. No yesterdays on the road.” – William Least Heat Moon