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If you can't unplug and reset and take time to yourself because you own a business, you didn't build a business, you built yourself a job with fancy title. By the time your business hits about three, you should be able to walk away for six to eight weeks without the whole place burning down. I went on my dream vacation and this was a very expensive trip. We planned it for two years. It was a wonderful vacation, but every single day I got a phone call from one of my employees and I very quickly realized that I had made a huge mistake. Hi and welcome to another episode of Special Ops podcast where we give real actual insights to direct response marketers and e commerce sellers. I'm Amarineville, I'm your host and I'm special super excited to talk to you today. I am actually sitting in my podcast room at 11:30 at night and I am filming right before I go on vacation. So I'm one of the few people that I know that own a business and can just leave for three, four, five weeks at a time. So at Shockwave, my main company, I have a system where I can disconnect when I want to. And so you're probably wondering, like, why is she even talking about this? I think that it's a really important topic, actually. And I think it's really important for other business owners to realize that if you can't unplug and reset and take time to yourself because you own a business, you didn't build a business, you built yourself a job with fancy title. And. And it is possible to get out of that, but we're gonna kind of walk through that. Cause I also built that for myself a few years ago and realized it and decided I was gonna work really hard to fix it. By the time your business hits about three, you should be able to walk away for six to eight weeks without the whole place burning down, maybe even longer than that, but you should be able to walk away for that long. Certainly not saying to walk away that long, but your business should be able to hold its own for a very short amount of time. And so what happened to me is a few years ago, I went on at the time, my dream vacation with my husband and the rents, Eric and Kathy. We travel a lot together. We're actually all going to Iceland together. And this was a very expensive trip. We planned it for two years. I was supposed to go and I got Covid, and then we had to postpone it a whole year. So I got on the plane, flew to Italy, spent a few days in Italy. Got on the boat. We were on the boat for two weeks, came back to Italy. We were in Italy for a week. It was a wonderful vacation. But every single day, and I do mean every single day, I got a phone call from one of my employees. Every single day I was on vacation. I could not take one full day and not do something for work. And sometimes it was something really simple, like, hey, can you approve the banner for the conference that we're going to in a month? Sometimes there's more important stuff, but mostly it was stuff like the banner. And I very quickly realized that I had made a huge mistake. I'm unemployable at this point. Like, I have to have a business. I can't be employed by somebody else. That's just not going to work out for me or for them. So it's important that I am able to run a business, but I also need to be able to step away from that business. So I realized very, very quickly that I needed to get to work. And I needed to get to work getting rid of people who were incapable for their role, whether I like them or not. That was a hard, hard truth that I had to face. That was almost three years ago now. Very hard truth. And so I needed to get my team to people that I could trust to make decisions, people that I could trust to understand the workload that they were responsible for and to be reliable to get those things done whether I was watching or not. And so I came back and I evaluated every member of my team. We did end up replacing two people over the next three months. And I really started working on one. Letting my team be comfortable with making a mistake and knowing that I would have their back as long as they thought through their decision. I would always have their back if they made the wrong choice. Because you don't achieve anything great without first failing. And so as a team, we're never going to achieve anything great if we. I never allow them to fail. So I got really intentional about never getting mad when they had a mistake. If they didn't make an excuse, if they didn't make the same mistakes over and over again, and if they thought through the decision that they made, and I just asked, like, what was your thought process? Right. So as long as they did a little bit of due diligence and took some time to think it through, I wouldn't. Well, why would you do that? That's stupid. Like, I just don't do that. If they make excuses, that's another issue. I don't have Much tolerance for that. But if they own the mistake and we can talk through how to fix it. I've been very, very intentional about stepping back and that was a really good try. What do you think you should do differently? Yo, we interrupted this pod to tell you to like and subscribe. What are you doing? Why haven't you liked? Why haven't you subscribed? Just subscribe. What's the problem? In all seriousness, subscribe so that you get notifications every time we drop new content. Additionally, if you have not signed up for our visionary vault, what the hell? Www.specialopspodcast.com Go sign up. It's free. We never try and sell you and we're putting all kinds of stuff in there to help you with the operations of your business because we're passionate about it and we want to share operational excellence with our direct response, e commerce and online selling family. What that has allowed me is for them to step up and not be afraid to make a decision. For them to be comfortable making a decision when I'm not readily available, whether I be on a call or I be in Iceland. They're going to take and handle what they're going to handle. And if they don't have the answer, they'll reach out for help appropriately. And so that's something I spent a lot of time working on in my business, very intensely spent time with each member of my team telling them what I would not feel comfortable with them deciding on their own. And it's very little what I would not feel comfortable with. And for the most part, anything that's in their wheelhouse, any deliverable that they're responsible for, I feel comfortable with going with what they decide in my absence. And I'll stand by their decision and clean up the mess with them. And if there is one. But what I found was the more I put things in their wheelhouse, the more responsible they got and the less mishaps we actually had because we weren't misfiring because I was making a decision for them. So if you think about this, if your team builds a funnel and they come to you for every little decision in the funnel, you don't know as much as them about the funnel because they built it. So who's the best person to make the decision? The person who built it. Right. So it's just the little things like that that you'll not misfire as much because the person responsible for the build now you've allowed them to be responsible for the outcome and you'll see that they Take small, calculated risks that will generally benefit you. And so we spent a lot of time at Shockwave working on that and working on the ability for me to be comfortable with that and for me to let them shine where they could shine. And then when they didn't shine, not kicking them, but saying, you know, how could we have done this differently? What should we do next time? What do you think about if you would have? And I try very intently to do that. And so the following year, we spent a year doing that. The following year, my husband and I, we took a boat from Fort Lauderdale to Southampton, England, which is about two weeks transatlantic, 13 days, 13 nights, something like that. And then we spent another two weeks going on trains from London to York, from York to Edinburgh, from Edinburgh back down to London. We had a beautiful month that I was off. And I worked literally a total of four hours to two hour blocks during the trip just to kind of get a download of what's going on with all of our clients there. Any issues, any problems? Do you guys need anything? And both times they didn't really need anything. It was little reviews and updates. It was wonderful. And so now it's a little after 12:40 in the morning and I'm all packed and my husband's all packed and we are going to fly out tomorrow to jfk. And late tomorrow night we're going to board a plane and we're going to land in Iceland where we'll spend a few days and then we'll get on a cruise ship. I didn't even buy the WI fi. Everything will be fine. I'll check in, I'll check my phone on port days. But if I know Richard, he won't call me for anything. Tiago might give me an update here or there. We have some clients who are having some launches while I'm away. We have one big launch and one big consultation for another client. And so he'll probably give me some updates there so I won't worry. While I'm traveling, Gabe and I will relax. And I wish this for all entrepreneurs. If you haven't built yourself a business, then it's probably time to really start thinking about how to change that. As business owners, we don't necessarily get to shut off. Like, I know for me, I don't conform to the 9 to 5 Monday through Friday thing. I've never enjoyed that. That's never been who I am as a person. It's not what I want for my life. And different people like different things. But I personally don't need Weekends I get in a groove and I work really well for as many days as I work. Sometimes that's 14, sometimes that's 30. I've gone 45. And then when I need a break, I take a break. I go on a hiking trip with my family, I go on a weekend getaway with my friends, I'll take my husband somewhere and I'll take four or five days off whenever I need to. And once a year I take a big trip, that's three to four weeks and I reset and I come home. When I come home, I'll probably work like two months straight without a day off. Not because I have to, because I want to, because I'm in a groove. I don't need to give every competitor out there a two day advantage on me every weekend because the societal norms is that I shouldn't work. If I feel good and I feel inspired to work, I work. If I don't, I don't. That translates to generally about 300 days a year working and about 65 now. And if it's more days working, then it's more days working. If it's not, it's not. But I do. It feels good for me and you should too. So if you are ready to build a business for yourself where you don't have shackles and you're not, you know, confined to that business, then head on over to www.specialopspodcast.com. i have left for you a five step guide in turning your business from a trap to freedom. Check it out in the Visionary Vault. If you haven't already signed up for the Visionary Vault, it's always free. It's my thank you for you for hanging out with me during my podcast and listening. So we never try and sell you anything. You just sign up totally for free. You can find that and many, many courses, many checklists, many other things. Thank you so much. Don't forget to like and subscribe so you can always get a notification when we drop a new podcast.