Why Travel Is a Business Expense I’ll Always Defend
Travel is very much on my brain. I’m writing this from one trip while planning no fewer than six more over the next six months, which feels equal parts exciting and slightly unhinged. But here’s how I justify it.
I’ve always believed travel makes me a better person, but it also makes me a better designer. Recently, we interviewed Rick Campos, and he framed it in a way I loved and completely agree with: travel is one of the most meaningful investments you can make in your business.
Not every trip needs to generate a client or solve a project before you can justify it. Travel can grow your network, expand your creative vocabulary, or simply give your brain enough room to work again. Those are three very different reasons to leave, and all three matter.
industry events arE for growth
Markets, conferences, showrooms, retreats, and industry events are the easiest kinds of travel to label a business expense because the purpose is clear. You see new products, meet vendors and makers, and hear how fellow designers are running their businesses.
But the most useful part often happens between the official things. It’s the dinner where you sit next to someone you would never otherwise meet, the introduction that leads to another introduction, or the resource you hear about in passing and use six months later. In a relationship-driven industry, those connections compound.
Go somewhere that changes what you notice
Pinterest is useful, but there’s a limit to all of us scrolling through the same rooms and saving the same references. Travel gets you off the algorithm and puts you inside places you never would have known to search for.
I can point to projects where that input showed up directly. The flooring for one project was inspired by a trip to Palm Springs. Another design kept pulling me back to tile installation methods I had seen in Marrakech and gave me the confidence to pitch something similar to a client.
I wasn’t visiting either place to solve those projects. I just saw something, filed it away, and it resurfaced later. That’s the best kind of inspiration. It passes through your own memory and point of view before it reaches the work.
Leave your laptop and email at home
And then there is travel whose only purpose is to have no purpose. Sometimes I need to get away long enough to stop reacting and start noticing what my brain has been trying to tell me.
Creative work requires capacity, and capacity is not infinite. Sometimes the most useful thing I can do for my business is rest, have an adventure with people I love, stare at a view, and become a person who is not currently answering an email.
I may not come home with a specific idea, but I come home wanting to make things again. These trips may not be an actual business write off, but they are not wasted time. It is refilling the part of the business everything else depends on.
There’s always a reason not to go. I always say that a week away is actually three weeks long. One week to prepare, one for the trip, and one to recover. Travel costs money, takes me away from the office, and leaves a pile of emails waiting when I get back. But if my job is to keep producing ideas, I can’t expect all of them to appear while I’m sitting in the same chair looking at the same screen.
And that’s exactly how we’re structuring our designer trip to Mexico City. It brings all three kinds of travel together: access to the design industry and new professional relationships, firsthand inspiration from an incredible city, and enough space to step away from the day-to-day and refill your creative capacity.
We want everyone to come home with new connections, new ideas, and the energy to actually do something with them. Spots are limited, so if this sounds like the kind of business investment you could get behind, explore the Mexico City designer trip here.
Fizzles & Sizzles
Rebecca's Fizzle
Mid-construction on a couple fun projects, but unfortunately we had to pivot and re-install bathroom tile for one of them. Luckily this powder bath floor turned out amazing!
Rebecca's Sizzle
Speaking of travel, I wrapped up August in a beautiful Lake Tahoe cabin, working on my business alongside design besties and getting excited about finishing the year strong.
Shaun's Fizzle
I obviously haven’t been paying enough attention to my office plants because they’ve all suffered this Summer, I took them home to nurse them all back to health. Oopsies!
Shaun's Sizzle
A good friend came into town just to teach a group of us mahjong. So much fun! And now I’m obsessed and looking at all the cute sets and accessories like these.
Stuff We're Digging
- 1. Nothing better than staying in a cabin where every detail has been considered.
- 2. I keep these neck chillers on rotation when it's hot -S
- 3. An oil-based cleanser that gets all my mineral sunscreen off -S
- 4. They're not cheap but these pants are worth the hype.
- 5. Great for Zoom meetings but they also translate someone speaking and it works!
