← Mondays with Matt
Mondays with Matt
Take Some Time Off: How Rest Makes You a Better Leader
00:19:12
In this episode, Matt Reynolds shares why learning to take some time off might be the smartest thing you do as a business owner. He unpacks how intentional rest can increase creativity, sharpen your strategic thinking, and actually improve your output...
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- [00:01]
Barbell Logic
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- [00:54]
Matt Reynolds
You're listening to the Build you'd Business podcast powered by Turnkey Coach where we.
- [00:59]
Chris Reynolds
Help business owners find freedom over fear.
- [01:01]
Matt Reynolds
I'm Matt Reynolds and I'm his brother Chris Reynold. Join us as we help build your business and move from fear to freedom together.
- [01:21]
Dan Schell
Hey, build your business. Audience, this is Dan Schell, Director of Content at Barbell Logic with a quick update before we dive into today's episode. Matt just wrapped up Barbell Logic's board meeting. Chris, by the way, is not just the host of this podcast, but also a member of the board and the founder and CEO of certain Right after the meeting, Matt hit it off on a well deserved vacation to Mexico to celebrate his 25th wedding anniversary with his wife Rachel. Congratulations to Matt and Rachel on 25 years. If you've been following the show, you know Matt and Chris have both been running full speed lately in the roles as CEOs. In light of that, we're re releasing an old episode Matt record taking time off. It feels especially relevant right now. We hope you enjoy it.
- [02:08]
Matt Reynolds
While it's fresh in my mind, I want to talk to you about something that I've heard a lot of pushback about lately on the Interwebs and it's about vacation. I'm hearing the hashtag Rise and Grind crew talk about why you should never take vacation. Like what's the purpose of vacation? To take time off and that you lose these weeks of work that you could be grinding and working 52 weeks a year and it would be stupid to take vacation. I think that is the dumbest thing I've ever heard of. I just got back from vacation in Mexico. If you know me. You know that my family and I, we love to go down there several times a year and I want to talk about why I Think vacation is actually really important. And so first off, if you are one of these people, you've heard it said that I need a vacation from my vacation or I need a vacation after my vacation. You're doing vacation wrong. When we set up vacation, we set up vacation to refresh and re energize ourselves. And that doesn't mean that we don't go on trips sometimes to a place like Washington D.C. or New York. And it's one of those kind of hustle and bustle sort of trips. But we almost don't consider that vacation. For us, vacation is a place that we can go and unwind and do the things that are really important to us and not be so focused on the urgent. And so, man, I work hard in this business many, many hours. I'm doing a video shoot. As soon as I'm done doing this podcast, I got a video shoot we're doing today. One of my employees is here, the video team is here, it's busy. And so by taking a vacation, one of the things that we do is we set up time to go. What are the things that we do to make us feel really good? And so we go to a resort. And I've talked about this on the podcast before, that's not the nicest resort certainly that you've ever been to, but it's an all inclusive resort. In Mexico. We stay at a building that is not the nicest building in the resort, but the building that we stay at, the room that we have, it's got a swim up pool and it's a nice resort. It's an all inclusive place. Right? So all food and drinks and everything is taken care of. It's got a swim up pool to the room. But the reason we picked this building is because it's right next to one of the nicest resort gyms that I've ever seen and an incredible resort spa that we have access to with having this level of room. And so what my vacation has looked like, by the way, when I do vacation, I actually rarely completely stop working. When you're a business owner, you're thinking about work and you're still probably doing some work. But if you're overwhelmed with work, this is why it's so important to be able to get away and take some vacation, refresh and spend some time with your family or whatever is important to you. And so this is the way my day looked. I was talking about this last night with cj. A lot of you guys know CJ from being on the podcast. We Were talking about kind of my perfect day. And my perfect day looked exactly like my trip in Mexico, which was I'd wake up early in the morning and actually I'd wake up oddly even earlier than normal, typically about 3:30 in the morning. Never set an alarm. I would go out on the deck, I would take my computer out, I would do online coaching. I would still work, right? I would have my coffee, have my Zen pouch, little performance enhancing drugs for CEOs. Knockout online coaching, knockout emails at 6:30 in the morning. And by the way, if I got hot and you know, there were mornings it was 86 degrees, I had this one up pool, I'd just throw on a suit and I'd jump in the water and cool off for a few minutes. Listen to a podcast, get back out, get back to work, work another half hour, do another pomodoro, knock out, good work. So I didn't feel like I was falling behind and was stressed as the work was piling up on me because it wouldn't pile up, get the quick stuff knocked out. At 6:30 in the morning, I'd run my wife a bath. We had kind of a hot tub bath. You had to fill it up out on the deck as well. She'd come out and she'd take a bath and then we would go to the gym at 7am every morning. And I trained every morning and I did that because I enjoy training. I like it. Matter of fact, it's tougher to train at home when everything is crazy in the business. And so one, because I online coach, I'm able to take a vacation and still coach my clients and still get paid. Because I run an online business, I'm able to still help run the business and still get paid and still do my job. And the business doesn't come to a halt because the CEO is completely checked out, still able to do some basic work, but really for the most part by 6:30 in the morning, I'm done working. And so at 6:30 in the morning, run Rachel a bath. We would go and train from 7 to 8 every day for an hour. If we got done training a little bit early, we'd walk on the treadmill and knock out some additional calories and then we would walk over to the spa which is on the other side of the same building and we would rotate through the steam sauna and the cold tub. They had a great cold plunge. It was like 40 degrees. The dry sauna, the cold plunge, the hot tub, the cold plunge. And I know that those things there's not a ton of great empirical evidence that those things actually do anything, but man, they make me feel good. And so I would get a good workout in, I'd knock out my work so I wasn't thinking about work when I was working out. I'd get a good workout in. I would go to the spa, we'd go back to the room, we'd change our clothes, we'd put swimming suits on and cover UPS T shirt, things like that. We would go to the breakfast buffet and they have this incredible layout of delicious food that I don't have to think about food. I don't have to take my family to a restaurant. I would eat for the most part salmon sashimi and boiled eggs and fresh fruit, watermelon and pineapple and cantaloupe and honeydew and I drink espresso and, and just enjoy life, get done with breakfast, walk out to the beach, bring my Kindle, bring a book, lay out on the beach, read, get hot, go in the water, cool off in the water, come back, lay out a little bit longer, turn over, read till lunchtime, come back to the hotel room, to the resort room and clean up, take a quick shower, change our clothes, go eat lunch, go have another really healthy lunch. Usually like a grill they have rotisserie chicken, stuff like that, grilled chicken, fresh fruit, maybe some tortillas, put some salsa verde on it, have a good healthy lunch, go back to the room and then either take a nap in the afternoon or there were times I had some business calls I would do. We'd gotten two rooms by having an 18 year old daughter. We let her bring her best friend, girlfriend and so they had a room and we had a room. So we'd set up one room as a nap in room and people could nap and chill out in the afternoons. And the other room I could do business calls if I wanted to for a couple hours. And again it wasn't overwhelming. I was in an extremely relaxed state. I was still able to do a few hours of work. I didn't have to do that every day. There were days that I was able to take a nap and just relax and enjoy time. Being able to do that, getting a little extra sleep, catching up on sleep and then get up 3,34 o' clock in the afternoon, go back out to the pool, usually our private pool, have a drink, hang out there for an hour, hour and a half, come back in, shower, change clothes and go to a really nice dinner and have a nice dinner. And then I'd come back and crawl in bed at 7:45, 8:00 at night. Now my perfect day. That's my perfect day. My perfect day doesn't necessarily mean it's your perfect day. You might be somebody that wants to be able to stay up late and that's fine. But the point is that I was able to come back from vacation completely refreshed and here's what I found happens when I do that. First off, I understand not everyone has the opportunity to do this. I know that not everyone can afford 12 day trips to Mexico. I totally get it. I don't think that is necessary when you start to look at the way to set up a vacation or a time of refreshment and relaxation. And so one of the things that I've noticed and one of the reasons we tend to book a little longer vacations is because it takes me a few days to relax and get out of work mode. I'm sort of, you know, I know this again is not probably truly scientific, but sort of feels like my nervous system is stressed or my adrenals are stressing and it's probably not actually those things, but it's kind of what it feels like, you know, heart rate's a little higher, the heart rate starts to come down. A couple days in, working out, going to the spa, doing those things and I get out of work mode and I'm able to get into dad and husband and just Matt. Just be Matt and not have to be the CEO of the company all the time.
- [10:02]
Turnkey Coach
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- [10:44]
Unknown
Foreign.
- [10:55]
Chris Reynolds
Hey everyone, it's Matt Reynolds and I've got exciting news. The audiobook version of my new book, Undoing Urgency is officially live. If you're a business owner who's tired of hustle culture and wants to build something sustainable, this book is absolutely for you. But also we've had scores of five star reviews from non business owners, normal everyday people who receive tremendous value from this book because it helped them stop drowning in urgency and focus on the things that really matter in their life. I share in the book. The mindset shifts and practical tools that help me escape the constant pressure of urgency and create a business that actually supports my life, not the other way around. You can grab the audiobook now@ undoingurgency.com or just search Undoing Urgency on Amazon or your favorite audiobook platform. Go check it out and let's keep building better.
- [12:12]
Matt Reynolds
And then what ended up happening and what happens on almost all these vacations is by the second half of the vacation, like four or five days, the last four or five days is my mind becomes incredibly creative and I start thinking about strategy and future of the business and where we're going because it's not bogged down with the urgent. And we've talked about in the past, the urgent is the enemy, the important. When you're not bogged down with the urgency in vacation, in a vacation type setting, then at some point you really get this incredible amount of. Just opens up the bandwidth in your brain. I'm sitting out on the beach, I'm reading the new biography on Elon Musk and of course he's, gosh, just a brilliant character and also kind of an asshole. But I would start to see ideas he would have. And you're thinking like, what commonalities would Barbalogic have with Tesla or SpaceX or. It wasn't really about the commonalities of the things that he was doing practically, but it would just, it would spur these ideas in my head that I would start to have about the business and I would start to be able to write things down and think about the future and think about what the next couple years look like. And so I get to come back from that vacation completely refreshed, relaxed, ready to hit the ground running, ready to be CEO Matt again. I'm able to go sit down with my mission control team and my executive team, my leadership team, and talk through all of the wonderful things I was able to think about. Not overwhelming for them, right? And I've done that before where I just throw them so many ideas it becomes overwhelming. But really just talk through like what a great time I was able to have and look where we're at. And it helps kind of ground you. And we get to change people's life for the better on a daily basis. And this is why these vacations are needed. And so by the way, they don't have to be expensive, right? They don't have to be a trip to Mexico and. And you shouldn't be putting vacations like this on a credit card and running up debt to be able to get it it's very easy to find a little cabin in the woods in the Ozarks for 50 bucks a night and go out and stay out there and fire up the wood stove and sit on the porch and have a cocktail and grill with your family and look up at the stars and read good books. And those things are doable for very cheap, right? And so it doesn't literally have to be a I'm traveling to another country, but I do think that's the way vacation should be done, especially if you're a business owner. So if you're one of these business owners, that one has promoted and preached that if you're a business owner, you shouldn't take vacation because you're giving away weeks to your competitors. That's ridiculous. Because what ends up happening is I'm able to come back from that vacation and work twice as hard. Twice as hard is not even the right term. It's twice as efficiently. Output goes up when I come back from vacation. As opposed to running yourself in the ground with the urgent work, it helps you reset the urgent. It helps you decide what are the things. I can pull some weeds on vacation. I don't have to do every single thing. I can come back completely refreshed and ready to take on my job. And I love my job. So again, at the end of vacation, I found myself doing this. I remember when I was a teacher, you get toward the end of vacation, it becomes depressing because you have to go back to work and you don't want to go back to work. For me, when I get to the end of vacation, I'm actually really excited to even travel home that day of travel home because I get to work on the plane, maybe I get to go to the lounge at the airport. I've got good Internet. I get to put all of those ideas that I've come up with over the previous four or five days in vacation kind of down on paper, written down on the computer, and be able to formulate my thoughts. And it also gives me an opportunity, it gives me a full day of travel often to just catch up on the stuff that maybe has built up a little bit so that when I come back, my first day back at home is not an overwhelming day. We often come back on a Friday, so that when we come back on a Friday, we're home on a Saturday, home on a Sunday, and then ready to hit the ground running on Monday. So it kind of allows you to adjust back to regular life schedule. And I love it. And so that's the way we set up vacations. And again, I don't think your day has to look exactly like my day. Maybe you don't enjoy training as much as I do. I enjoy eating, for the most part, really healthy food for breakfast and lunch and then enjoying dinner at night, sort of banking my calories. I felt better, I felt like I looked better. I actually measured my waist every single morning on vacation at an all inclusive resort. Probably my nutrition coach and others probably would say that's not a great idea, but my waist did exactly the same. I came back and I had actually lost two pounds on vacation. And that was not because I ate less calories, it's because I did more activity. It's because I trained every single day. It's because I went to the spa every single day and ran my heart rate up. It's because I was able to eat well for breakfast and lunch. It was because I was able to monitor my alcohol and not go overboard. Those things made me feel better. I know when I over drink, I don't feel good, I don't sleep well. And so even though it was all inclusive, just because the alcohol is free didn't mean that I had to try to get my money's worth in alcohol. It just wasn't important to me on this trip and it has been in the past and it's not anymore. And so I came back feeling great and able to hit the ground running. This has been a fantastic week. I've probably done 30 Zoom calls this week. Now, don't get me wrong, I do not enjoy these zoom calls, many of them with investors or with the team, and just a lot of work to get done. But boy, we've knocked out a ton of stuff. Two days of video shoots, podcasts, lots of calls with leadership and mission control and investors and setting, setting strategy for the business. And all of those things were really made possible or certainly made more efficient by the vacation that I took preceding it. And so one, you have permission to take vacation. Go take a vacation, take some time off. Two, if the job you work doesn't allow you to take vacation, you're doing the job wrong. This is why we offer something like turnkey coach. This is why online coaching is so wonderful, because it gives you the flexibility to do it anywhere, anytime. As long as you have Internet access, you can do your job. Back when I ran strong, I couldn't take a vacation and get paid. So you take the vacation and not get paid because you weren't training clients. If that's you and a hundred percent of your income comes from training clients and you can't take a vacation because you won't get paid, then you need to make a change to your job. It doesn't mean you have to give up the in person coaching. It means online coaching is something that you should explore as an addition to what you're currently doing to be able to do this more effectively. By the way, when you take vacation, if you do this sort of hybrid model of in person and online, you can online coach your in person clients while you're on vacation. And they can still pay you for coaching. You still give them access to the gym, they can still get into the gym and train. You can still program for them, you can still break down their videos, you can still do those integrated screen recording that we have in turnkey coach. And so that's what I love about what I do at Barbalogic is it gives me the freedom to do that. I can go on vacation, I can still get paid. The business doesn't stop. It can continue to run with me as both online coach, like in the trenches and CEO as kind of upper level management. I come back refreshed and ready to kick ass and take names. That's why you should take vacation. If you can't do that, you need to find a way to be able to free up your life. Guys. That's why we're business owners. We become business owners so we don't have to answer to the man and so we don't have to spend 50 weeks a year working for the two weeks of vacation that they give us. That's not life. We weren't created to live a life that way. And so I have the freedom to do that. That's why we homeschool. We homeschool so we could take our kids places, so we could see the world. And I can do those things and I can still work a few hours a day. I enjoy the work that I do. It doesn't suck the life out of me. And what you'll find is as you get rid of the urgent and focus on the important, it really frees up the creativity to be a better business owner in the second half often of that vacation. So again, that may literally just be, you know, going down the road to a cheap Airbnb and just getting out of your house and, and just focusing on reading good books and watching a great movie or documentaries or eating good food or having good drink or having good conversation with friends and family. That's the kind of stuff, think about the things that you do in life that give you energy, that refresh you, that energize you, that help you relax, you feel not stressed and not anxious and do those things. On vacation, you don't have to go do the thing where you go to the big city and you see every site and you go to the shows in the Ubers and on the mass transit systems. And again, we've done those things too. But that's not vacation. That's almost an educational experience for your kids to help them see. This is why we live in the Ozarks. I don't want to live in a city like this. And it's cool to see, but I don't come back from those refreshed. And so that's why we pick the vacations that we do. And that's why we have the cabin. It's 40 minutes away. We go down to the cabin and we take a couple days and we do a little mini version of that 40 minutes away and grill on the grill and sit out on the porch and have a cocktail and light up the wood stove and watch a Netflix documentary and just refresh and so take the time to do those things. I would argue that vacation or that important time off is one of the most important things you can do. And if your life is so caught up in the urgent, you'll never have the opportunity to do it. So it's been another episode of the Barbalogic podcast Coaching Success series. Again, get permission to take vacation. Make it happen. If your life is set up and your job is set up that you can't do it, change the job, make some changes so that you can have freedom in your life. Right? That's what Turnkey Coach was designed to do, to give coaches back their freedom. They can turn in their keys to the gym and they can have the freedom to go do the things that give them the rest and relaxation. If you feel like the only way to make more money for you is to work more hours, then change the strategy. Right? Thanks for listening. If you got value out of this, we'd love a five star review on Apple Podcasts or on Spotify or wherever you listen to your podcasts. And I'll see you guys next Friday.