This cast gives our guidance on how to create a trip folder.

Manager Tools recommends to managers that they have their admins create Trip Folders – a document which contains all the details of their trip and which can be printed out to travel with. This means they have all the relevant details with them – with no danger of losing them due to electrical equipment failure.

If you need to create one for your manager or yourself, where do you start? Here's where.

  [Play in Popup]

This guidance describes how to prepare for the inevitable loss of gadgets and gadget power, most likely on while traveling.

We did a cast once on having a printed copy at home of your professional contacts, and we got a SURPRISING amount of comments suggesting we were Luddites, that we didn't need to kill trees, that companies wouldn't do that, that you can just copy them onto other media for home. We're not Luddites, and at least one of us HAS been fired and had his laptop taken from him (stupidly). Thankfully, we also got SEVERAL mails from folks who offered their heartfelt thanks, because they did what we recommended, and then they got fired or laid off, and they had a contact list to reach out to because of our Luddite guidance.

And now we broaden that guidance a little, and recommend that when you travel, you prepare for the inevitable event that you run out of battery power for all your gadgets, and you need to be able to still get some simple things done. We call this cast Travel EMP after the ElectroMagnetic Pulse reward you can get in Call of Duty, a videogame, which knocks out all electronics. (And lest you think this is far-fetched, the former Soviet Union's fighter jets (the MiG-25 was particularly known for this, based on its design and one getting flown to Japan, as I recall, in a defection) actually were equipped with vacuum tubes to make their systems more resistant to the potential EMP caused by nuclear detonations, among other things.)

  [Play in Popup]

This cast concludes our discussion on a standard practice of administrative assistants helping managers prepare for business travel.

In Part 1, we covered what a trip folder is, how to implement them initially, and started a conversation on what trip folders contain. In today's show, we pick up with what they contain.

1. What a Trip Folder IS (covered in part 1)
2. How To Implement Them Initially (covered in part 1)
3. What They Contain (started in part 1)
4. How To Action Them
5. Two Admin Trends Worth Noting
   
   1. Less Admins
   2. Less Training

  [Play in Popup]

This cast describes a standard practice of administrative assistants helping managers prepare for business travel.

Mike and Mark both feel that one of our most unsung casts (actually, it's a series of casts) are the ones on working with an administrative assistant. If you have an admin, it's likely that you're seriously under-utilizing him or her. Great admins, well managed, improve the performance of the executive or manager they support by 50% in all cases, and ... get this ... 100% in MANY cases. Good admins honestly make that much difference. We're not kidding.

In our original set of casts, we talked about really just the beginnings of how to have a great relationship with our admins, leading to our effectiveness. There are hundreds of actions that admins take that add up to noteworthy efficiency gains, many of which ANYONE with an admin can use right away. And this cast is about one of those: creating trip folders to make traveling administratively less burdensome.

1. What a Trip Folder IS
2. How To Implement Them Initially
3. What They Contain
4. How To Action Them
5. Two Admin Trends Worth Noting
   
   1. Less Admins
   2. Less Training

  [Play in Popup]

Part 2 of our conversation on the basics of Airline Travel.

  [Play in Popup]

This cast makes some basic recommendations regarding airline travel for professionals.

Everyone talks all the time about the atomization of the workplace. Commuting is going away, thanks to telecommuting. Teams are virtual. Modern virtualization software and webcams and TelePresence and conference calls and a focus on the individual employee…all of this means that work is going to be much easier for everyone.

But what nobody says is that this means a good deal more AIR travel for some of us. And if we're going to be asked to get on a plane . . . and no one is going to teach us the ins and outs of air travel - then we're going to make a lot of mistakes. And depending upon the situation, air travel mistakes can affect our work performance. So that's why there's Career Tools.

  [Play in Popup]

This cast describes how to manage your seating on airlines, because it matters.

We're not doing this cast just because Mark and Mike are both over six feet tall. But our experience in the past few years reinforces that managing our airline seating arrangements makes a big difference in the comfort and utility of a professional's airline travel. If you travel on business, and you've ever gotten a bad seat, you know what we mean. And if you follow our guidance in this cast, the chances are virtually zero for normal travel that that will ever happen to you again. We will discuss how to GET what seat we want, in terms of the processes, and then how to KNOW what seat we want.

During the show, we reference one of our favorite sites for finding the best airline seats when traveling, SeatGuru.com – well worth a visit!

Note: The original podcast posted ended prematurely. I uploaded on a corrected file on Friday, July 10, 9:45am. If you downloaded the podcast prior to that time, you'll want to delete the old and download the newer file. If you need help on the steps to accomplish this in iTunes, you'll find instructions in this forum post. Thanks to Fred Castenada of the Struggling Entrepreneur podcast for pointing the problem out!

  [Play in Popup]

For years pundits have been predicting that technology (videoconferencing, etc.) will lead to the decline and death of business travel. We here at Manager Tools don't agree. We're human, and humans do better with face to face connections to ensure a complex project does well. Technology has led to the globalization of business, but that has INCREASED the need for getting on an airplane.

And getting on an airplane means packing a bag. And based on what Mark sees in his travels, no one seems to have gotten the memo about the right way to do it.

How easy is it? How about a 23 day, 5 country trip without checking a bag? Yep, you read that right.

For Individual Licensees, we have the normal shownotes (though the notes have a bonus in them) and slides, PLUS a special set of slides showing How Mark Packs for a Week Long Trip. Step by step pictures: what he packs, how he uses dry cleaning bags, how it all fits (easily). If you're not a Licensee, this is a cast that might make it worth it!

  [Play in Popup]

For Individual Licencees only, we've posted a video of Mark going through his packing routine. One of many more videos to come!