I had my 30 day vacation in December!
And I am so glad that I did it.
It was so great to just not think about work and not think about every single thing that goes on in my business.
It’s so much that goes on in my business. And so it was so great for 30 days that I did not think about it.
Now as the time was coming to a close, I was like, “Oh no, I’ve gotta work tomorrow”.
But I am so glad that I did it!
So today our topic is about “What happens when you take time off from your business”
Because one of the biggest questions I’ve been getting while on vacation is “How in the world did you take 30 days away from your business and why did you do it?”
Now people are saying, “Well, how do you feel now that you took the time off and then now you’re back”
I wanted to share all of that with you today.
And so you’re probably gonna learn a lot of different things, as we have this topic, but for the most part you’re gonna say, “yeah, it just makes a lot of sense”.
So before I went on vacation, I’m sure there was a podcast episode where I talked about why I do it? And how God asked me to take time off and depend on Him to bring the increase. Depend on Him to help me make money in our business.
That was the first thing.
But as I started doing this over the last couple of years I have realized just how much I was hurting myself, hurting my business, and hurting my team by not taking the time off.
And here’s why I say that.
So, anytime you continue to just go and go and go.
I’m not talking about me working 20 hours a day. No!
I mean, when you’re just going every single day.
You may not work on Fridays or Saturdays and Sundays or whatever, but you are just constantly going and you never take a break.
Your body is constantly going and going.
Your brain is constantly thinking, strategizing, planning, plotting, and just always on, and never gets this time to rest.
It reminds me of our computers or even our cell phones.
Yes, you can charge your phone all the time and you can update its settings or software. But it’s so important to actually turn your phone off.
I power it down and then let it power back up so it can just recalculate.
That’s, I think about my computer.
What I have experienced is that in those times when I don’t restart my computer every couple of weeks or so, it’s just not happy.
It doesn’t mean it’s gonna run super slow, especially when you have a new computer.
But over time when you’re not giving it at least a little bit of a rest, there’s no recalibration or rejuvenation and restoration.
There’s just nothing that happens there.
And so for me, once I did it the first time a couple years ago, I was like, “this is really good”
It’s scary, because I’m so used to being the one that makes money for the business.
So when I think about this last December doing it, it was really, really good for me.
Because one of the things that was happening with me was, comes August, I was already feeling burnt out.
I was already feeling really, really tired, and I didn’t exactly know why I was feeling burnt out.
I was feeling tired because I was just running my business.
But what I realized, one of the biggest reasons I was feeling so burnt out is because 2020 was the year of systems and processes.
2020 was the year that I had to get out everything that was in my head and put it into systems and processes.
It’s when I hired an assistant. And so she couldn’t assist me in any way if everything was all in my head.
And so on a daily basis, I had to pull this out, and then I had to teach and train her.
I had to hire a bunch of different people and let a bunch of people go because they weren’t the right fit.
And so, it was such a strenuous process mentally.
Now, the average person on the outside looking in is everything is great.
However, if you continue going, and with your brain, it’s just like you just get burned out.
And I didn’t know why I was so tired, but then I realized later, “oh, we built all of these systems and processes in my business”.
So even though I wasn’t producing more content, I wasn’t doing more on the outward side of everybody, I was doing more inside of the business.
And so I was tired and I remember somebody saying, “what are you gonna do with your vacation? Are you going anywhere?”
And I said, “no, I’m actually gonna sleep”
And they were like, “what do you mean?”
I said, “no, I’m going to sleep. Like I’m going to sleep in a lot”
And I did. I slept so much!
I started this new thing where my cats are no longer in my bedroom when I sleep and I’m getting a higher sleep with them not in my bedroom.
And I’m sleeping for more hours because they’re not in there trying to wake me up with their claws because they’re ready to eat or whatever.
I’m just really getting restored sleep.
And I did not think about my business much.
This was my assistant’s very first time, me being gone for 30 days. So I did not wanna put her in a bad place.
I checked in with her every couple days just making sure she was okay.
I would post messages and Slack with the team saying, “Hey, you guys are doing good. I know it can be stressful. Make sure you guys are helping, my assistant, Adora, so that way she’s not too stressed”.
And I would just do that.
And everybody just felt like, “okay, everything’s okay, everything’s okay!”
And then I said, “You guys got one more week to go” because I gave everybody one week off and I paid everybody for an entire week, even though they’re contractors.
And that was like my Christmas gift to them.
It was very expensive, but I love my team.
And so I said, “Okay, this is the final week”
And I was giving them tips on how to get all their work done so that they wouldn’t be stress
And I just did that for them.
And that’s all I did.
But I wasn’t strategizing during that time, no, whatsoever.
I did not do any kind of strategy until I think it was maybe that Saturday right before I returned to work because I was like, “I want to just be off. My brain is up. Let’s just be off”
And it was just great.
Like how in the world was I able to really do that?
Well, it’s because I put all these systems and processes in place.
Now there’s a topic that talks about all of that, and so we won’t get into that.
But today we’re talking about what happens when you take time off for your business
One, you just get restoration. You just get to really relax and not think.
You get to recalibrate.
You get to be restored!
First of all, the reason why you started a business is because you wanted to have more time freedom, more financial freedom.
And so in December, I love Christmas. But i’ve never really had a good Christmas before with my family.
I love my family, but my family can be very chaotic, and so I wanted to have the “perfect Christmas”, which was just not chaotic.
And so I did.
So many nights, I would Google and I would find Christmas lights in the city.
I would put on my coat, my tennis shoes, and I would drive to that neighborhood.
And I would either drive the neighborhood if I needed to drive it, otherwise I would park, and I would just walk.
I didn’t have any kids, no dogs, no friends with me. It was just me and I would just walk and I would enjoy the Christmas lights and the music.
I would just enjoy it.
I would go to different events.
If people invited me to Christmas at parties or whatever, I went to them.
I got all dressed up.
Like I remember I was in H&M, Banana Republic and somewhere else.
I’m gonna try these on and I’m gonna try these on in the dressing room.
And so on my Instagram, I showed them, “What about this dress and what about this dress?”
And it was a whole fun process that people got to watch me getting ready for these different Christmas parties.
Come to think of it, I got this really cute dress that I bought and I didn’t have anywhere to wear it to.
I’ve found somewhere to wear that too, but that’s not here nor there.
And that’s what I did.
And so I just kept on going to all these different things.
But what happened as it pertains to my business was one, it showed the team how they can do this without me.
It showed my assistant just how smart she is, how strategic she is, how intentional she can be by not only the systems that we put in place, but also making everybody utilize the system.
We pay for a system called ClickUp.
But for the most part, we’ve been doing so much like assigning roles and stuff inside of Slack.
And I said, while December, while I’m gone, you want everybody to get used to using ClickUp.
“Everybody, put all your tasks, all the things or whatever on the inside of ClickUp and start using that so that Adora can focus on what she needs to do as my assistant to me. And then y’all can focus on your task.”
And so everybody’s been using ClickUp.
When I got back from vacation, I was like, “are y’all using ClickUp?”
And everybody was like, “Yes”
And I was like, “you mean everybody except me?” And they’re like, “Yes”
I’m like, “great, y’all keep using, ClickUp, I’m gonna keep using my assistant”
But I’m gonna get there by using ClickUp. That makes it even easier for my assistant.
But it also showed everybody like, here’s what all it takes to run an entire company.
I had this conversation with everybody.
I said, “Don’t just do your job while I’m gone, but also ask yourself, how can you assist? Is there anything you need to assist Nissa with, or Thais with or Anamika with?”
“What is it y’all can do to help each other because we are all in this together?”
Because when the company is profitable, successful, and all that, then everybody is happy.
We all have a job, we all are able to get paid.
And so I really was focusing on bringing the whole team or the whole company together.
So that way everybody understands that everything is doing tasks with the goal of taking the company to the next level.
But that also did for me. It taught me how to just have hands off and how not to expect perfection out of the team.
You know what I mean?
Like, there’s a lot of issues that happen, a lot of mistakes, a lot of things.
When I came back, I was like, “what? Why did y’all do what, what is going on here?”
And I had to have these conversations like, “Hey, I need you guys to really think before you do X, Y, and Z, why did y’all do that?”
And I said, “did you think about it before you did it?”
No.
And I said, “okay, you gotta start thinking”
And it started helping them to understand, “you get to have a thought, a process. You get to have a voice in this and end this together because I only know what I know. I don’t really know all the ins and outs of your particular job”
And so it just helped people to kind of go like, “Oh, I’m not just coming in, doing a task. Here’s the list of things I need to do but I get to go, “Hey, is there a way to do this better? Is there a way to make this easier that makes more sense, that makes the business more profitable, and is there a better way for all this stuff?”
And as a result, people have been learning how to navigate all those different things.
But also what I learned this time is that I learned how many automated tools we did not have in place in terms of revenue generation.
So the first time we did this, we just had a bunch of money just that was set up and no real expenses.
Because we didn’t have a team.
This time we had money set aside, but we also had a team recurring revenue expenses.
But we weren’t really running any kind of ads to help us generate all the money we normally would’ve made.
And so when I came back I said, “oh, okay, so here’s all the money out, here’s the money that came in”
And I said, well God still brings the increase, of course, but the next time we do this, we need to make sure that all of our funnels and all the ads are running.
That is revenue generation, generating that way.
Like the same amount of money we bring in when I’m here working is the same amount of money we bring in when I’m not working.
And then when I am working, I just help make it grow even more.
But a year ago I didn’t have that.
That wasn’t a necessary thought I needed to have because I didn’t have a team a year ago.
I got a team now and so I had to go, “okay, here is something that we as a company did not do well at because it was new to me”
And of course they weren’t gonna think about it coz that’s not their role, it’s not their job.
That’s what I do in the company.
But if we had an online business manager or we had an ad or whatever we had, if we had somebody doing certain things like thinking about marketing, then they would’ve been so we need to have A, B, C, D, E, F, G in place.
We didn’t have that in place.
And so I’m okay with that but I do have a vacation coming up in June.
I’m going over to England and then London and Paris and then Rome.
And I’ll be there for about two and a half weeks.
My job is to go, “okay, what is it that we need to put in place right now that we can have automated that helps us make even more money?”
While I’m over there in the UK doing what it is that I’m doing, I’m gonna be working but I’m also going to be vacationing and things of that nature.
And so the company needs to constantly have more revenue coming in, whether I am working or not.
So that is what my whole spiel is about what happens when you take time off from your business.
But I definitely feel rejuvenated.
I definitely don’t feel burned out but also what happened was once I got back from vacation, I started to realize that I really do wanna implement more balance in the company for not just me, but for the team and so on.
Our first meeting I said, “guys, I wanna implement a four day work week”
And they were all like, “what do you mean?”
“I want to pay you guys the same amount of hours that you’re getting paid, but I want y’all to work it Monday through Thursday coz I want Fridays off”
“And I can’t take off on Fridays if you’re working because you need me to give you certain things and do certain things.But if everybody is off on Fridays, then we’re off”
And everybody was so excited.
And so I told them, “Do a group chat between all of you guys and determine what is it that the times that you could work that, that everybody works at the exact same times.”
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and then everybody’s off on Friday, and so they got together to determine what that is.
And I said, “I think we’ll probably do it in March”
Because we have our course, Monetize the Talk of a Mastermind that opens up in February. And so we’re gonna be doing all of that.
And so I explained to them, “okay, so then in March we will implement that”
And everybody’s very, very excited about it.
Why?
They’re not gonna lose any money, but they’re gonna gain so much more time.
And all of them, they’re in the Philippines, Brazil, Ukraine and India and all that.
And so they’re all working on the PST time zone, but now they’re gonna get this extra day back Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and then I will get Friday.
I mean, I’m really excited about it.
But this is what happens as a result of taking time off of realizing that I really want this in my life.
I really want more balance.
And they need more balance too, not just me.
And so all that happened as a result.
So that is it, that’s what happens when you take time off from your business.
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