Building your own business can be a good way to create an income that will support you while you travel. But finding the right business can be difficult. Sure, just about any business can be made portable — assuming you are able to bring employees on board that you really trust or you’ll be traveling in an area with regular postal delivery. Just the same, there are some warning signs that can pop up when you’re exploring business ideas: seeing one of these signs may not be a deal-breaker, but it does mean that there are some major factors that you’ll need to consider before you can get up and running.

1. You need to sign off on anything in person: If you’re considering having a product made that you can sell online, details like order fulfillment are fairly easy to handle. But any part of the production process that requires you to come by in person and double check that the product looks the way it’s supposed is a red flag.
2. You need significant amounts of equipment to do your work: As long as your work equipment amounts to software, you’re in good shape. But if you need larger pieces of equipment in addition to your laptop, especially if it’s particularly specialized, may make packing far more complicated.
3. You need to maintain hard copy files: I’ve tried to fit what amounted to a filing cabinet into a suitcase — it doesn’t work particularly well. And if those files are at all sensitive, the situation becomes even more of a problem.
4. You need an employee who you must directly supervise: The fact of the matter is that some employees just can’t — by the nature of their work as well as their own habits — work without direct supervision. Such situations can be hard to manage if you’re in another time zone.
5. Your business isn’t legal in all countries or states: There are many businesses that may not be legal to practice — at least the way you’re used to — in other countries. There are some unexpected laws about what you can do across international and state borders as well. I’m not talking about careers that are universally seen poorly, either. Life coaching, for instance, can have some very different licensing requirements depending on where you are.

It’s important to remember that if any of these are drawbacks to a business idea that you’re otherwise passionate about, you may be able to find a way around these issues to make it work quite comfortably. You can rent equipment in any country you plan to stay in more than a week, make short trips to other places and so on. But if you aren’t passionate about a business idea and it’s got a few of these drawbacks to it, maybe it’s worth looking to see if there are any ideas you are more passionate about.

Photo — Jessica Shannon