We are here to move sustainably so that we can create long-term impact on the lives around us, and we can do that with the ability to reset and disconnect throughout. In fact, that is the only way we build something that is not just successful in the present, but something that has lasting impact well into the future. Rest is productive, you guys, so let's make it a priority this season. Let's make it a priority this summer.
Welcome to the Legacy Creator podcast, a show dedicated to giving you the tools you need to build a profitable, purposeful, and powerful business that lasts. I'm your host, Ashton Smith, a sixth-generation entrepreneur who is passionate about helping you think bigger so that you can actualize your goals and build your legacy.
Let's dive in.
Hello, hello. With summer upon us, I figured it would be a good time to connect and have a conversation around taking time. What a concept. As business owners, it can feel like you're never able to fully take time off. Even when you're away, there is that element of just mental energy going towards your business, but taking time off, disconnecting, allowing yourself space as a founder is so important.
I remember when I started my first business, for my first couple years in business, actually, I was livin' that laptop lifestyle. Now, this is a term that I actually have, I wanna say, a little bit of beef with, because I think it implies that you always have your laptop on you, you always have the ability to work. Now, I realize there is convenience to that, I realize there is benefit to that, but I don't really wanna live that laptop lifestyle, especially when I am on vacation or it's the weekend or I'm with family. And I think because that phrase and that topic had, in a way, been glorified for so long when I first entered the online space, I aspired to live that laptop lifestyle. I loved pulling my laptop out when I was on trips and vacation and, you know, spending time with family or in the evening, and I think it's important to mention that there will be seasons where you may do this, where it might be needed. I am never going to be the person that is not honest about what entrepreneurship requires of us. It's not easy. It is not as simple as, you know, putting a piece of content out or putting an offer out, sitting back and drinking a mimosa and having hundreds of thousands of dollars come into your business and your bank account. It's just not that simple, but I think in the online space, you know, when it comes to specific marketing materials, sometimes it's implied that that's all it is, and that's just not true, right? So, we have to have a balanced outlook here, and we do have to realize that there's going to be seasons where we're working harder or some seasons where we are taking time off. Maybe we're taking a sabbatical. Maybe we're taking an extended vacation or whatever it may be. And in that season of my life, I was in the trenches of building up my business, and so I think that that work stewarding your vision, it's honored and it's needed.
But to circle back, our top priority always is sustainable growth, and that is something that will guide all of our conversations on this show, because sustainability is everything, and sustained momentum requires that we disconnect every once in a while, that we take space to refresh, to rejuvenate, to pour back into our own cup. And so today, we're going to talk through both short-term as well as long-term shifts that you can make in order to successfully prepare for time off in your business. I wanna take the lens of short-term as well as long-term, because I think that I would do a disservice if I only gave you quick tips to implement. There are things that you can integrate long-term that will help you do this over time, and since we are all founders and we know that things take time, I wanted to include that for you all. So, I have eight things that I wanna cover with you. We're gonna dive in and start off with those short-term recommendations.
First and foremost, may sound so obvious, but I have to say it. Block it off in your calendar. Now, you know, some of you may be like, "Okay, Ashton, I understand. I mean, I've got that." I know, I know. I find that this is so simple, but I work with a lot of clients. Over the last few years, we have worked with over 300 people all over the world, and this is something that people really do actually struggle with. It's almost like time off is an afterthought, and that is so unsustainable. This is something that we have to make a non-negotiable, because more often than not, entrepreneurs are going to be working longer hours. They're going to be working even more than the average person in a full-time job, especially in the startup and messy middle stages, and depending on how they've built their business as an established business owner, they can even get into that cycle and that hamster wheel far out in business. And so it all comes back to the way that you design your business, lead a team, systematize—all things we're gonna talk about.
But all of this to say, it's important that early on, time off, time to disconnect is a priority, not an afterthought. And maybe your time off is taking a week off. Maybe your time off is actually giving yourself a weekend. Maybe instead of taking full-time off, you wanna start by optimizing your schedule day in, day out so that you actually take a proper lunch break, or maybe you take a 30-minute walk in the afternoon to kind of split up your day. So there are a ton of ways that you can block time off. Block this off in your calendar so you can actually disconnect, and this allows you to actually plan around it, right? This allows you to plan around your time off and treat that as you would any other meeting. If meetings with clients, if projects and campaigns are gonna go onto your calendar, why would we not put time off in your calendar? So, start this practice early on. It doesn't mean that you have to leave the country for a month. It doesn't mean that you have to take a week off next month in your busiest season of business, but it does mean that you need to be intentional about giving yourself space and time to disconnect. So that's step one.
Step 2 is clear communication with your clients. I'm willing to bet that a lot of people tuning in right now have some one-on-one clients or have clients that are in a group setting, and so we need to have clear communication with them. They are a top priority, right? The people that are investing in you, that you are pouring into, that you are serving, they are a top priority, and so we do want to have seamless communication with them and let them know what the expectation is, what's coming up. We like to send out a notice of out-of-office about 2 to 4 weeks beforehand. Four weeks is pretty generous. It really depends as well on your line of work and how hands-on you are with your client work. But all of that to say, 2 to 4 weeks prior, touch base with your clients and set the expectation. "Hey, we will be, I will be out-of-office this date to this date. Here's what you can expect leading up to that." Right? How can we set them up for success? Have a cutoff date as well for them to submit things to you in order for you to either review or complete before you head out-of-office. If that's applicable to you, if you are a coach, consultant, agency owner, et cetera, that is definitely going to be applicable, but have that cutoff date. So, for me, if I'm heading out-of-office on the 15th, about 7 days prior may be whenever I have that cutoff date for them to submit something so that way I have a full week leading up to my out-of-office to finalize that client work. And then let them know how they will be supported in your absence. So if you have a team that, you know, works with you, that supports your clients in any way, let them know, "Hey, so-and-so is available. They are here to be a resource for you while I am away. Here's, you know, what you can expect there." If you don't have a team, let your clients know how you're going to compensate for that time away. More than likely, your clients are going to be paying you, you know, either per month or quarter, et cetera, but they, they may be paying you for your time, especially in those higher-level containers, and so if you are going to be away for five business days, let's say, how will you compensate for that? Are we going to, you know, take some of the cost down on your invoice? Are we going to potentially add that time onto the end of your container with them? Either way, that will work. But let them know how you're going to compensate for that. This is key because if you can clearly and effectively communicate with your clients, put them in a state of peace, give them peace of mind, then they will be less likely to be in that emergency headspace when you are away, which can potentially result in you being in that emergency headspace, feeling like you have to pull away from your time off and immediately dive into supporting your clients.
Alright, tip 3. Automations for your inquiry and sales process. Now, automations are a whole topic. We could have a few guest experts come on to talk about this alone, but I want to specifically highlight automations for your inquiry and sales process. So ensure that potential clients can seamlessly inquire while you're away. Even though you're going to be out-of-office, and even though you may be, you know, a one-person team, like you're running the show, we still want people to be able to inquire. We don't want to shut down everything while you're away. Ideally, we would like for that process to continue while you're gone. If possible, it would be awesome if you do facilitate sales calls, let's say, for your mid- to high-ticket containers. If they are able to book a sales call in that inquiry process, that's gonna be really, really helpful. So while you're away, you can still be supporting those inquiries coming in, they can book sales calls into your calendar for whenever you are back in office, and then you're not slammed with all of that when you come back into the office. We want to allow you to have the ability to continue to welcome new people in, serve new people, etc., even while you are out-of-office. Now, if you feel like you have to vet people before you can welcome them in to a sales call, for example, we may have to do that, you know, a little bit differently. If you have someone on your team, though, you could always train them in order to vet. So if you have a team, a lot of this is is even easier. If you're a one-person show, it may be a little bit different. Nonetheless, allow them to be able to inquire. Ideally, allow them to be able to book in a sales call, and then have a series of automated emails that are set up to just kind of say welcome and then set those expectations for next steps, what's gonna happen. This is something that's not only helpful for when you're out-of-office. This is just helpful anytime you have an inquiry come through. So definitely prioritize that.
Tip 4, work ahead on your content. And in general, I think a better way to title this point is to just plan ahead. I find that so many people are just in a reactionary state in their business, and so when it comes to taking time off, nothing is worked on in advance, nothing is planned ahead. So when that time comes, it is like chaos trying to go out-of-office, and then you're thinking about that when you are out-of-office. And then when you come back, even worse, you're slammed with three times the work, you know, four times the work, whatever it is. So plan ahead. When we do annual planning, we go ahead and look at time out-of-office and we plan accordingly. We plan our marketing calendar around that. We plan our big launches around that. So I'll get to that here in a moment. But in general, plan ahead. You should be doing annual and quarterly planning with yourself and the team so that you know what to expect, what's upcoming so that you can actually honor the tasks on your agenda, get things done. But let's specifically hone in here on working ahead on your content.
If you do not already, I would encourage you to batch-create your content. For us, at our company, we batch content 30 days in advance. So every month, we batch a month's worth of content. I am even wanting to work towards quarterly content planning, and batching just so that that can be created and done, and then we can just focus on sharing and being present as that content is rolling out. But be sure to batch-create your content for while you're going to be out-of-office. I think that there are some seasons where you may go quiet with your digital presence, but if possible, if we can continue to be of service while you're away without you having to touch anything, that's, that's a dream. That's how people are able to land sales for their passive offers, welcome people in while they're on the beach, sipping a mojito, as people like to say. And again, it may not be that easy, but to my point, that's what makes that possible. Having a consistent marketing presence even when you aren't in office, even when you are away, even when you're spending time with your family.
So batch-create it, and then schedule it out. There are so many tools available that will post, publish for you. And of course, if you have a team, they can take this on if you want people to be posting in real time, sharing content in real time. But get it scheduled. And then do your best, at large, to maintain your digital presence while you're away, which I already hit on that point, but I can't emphasize the importance of this enough. You know, I've seen a lot of people in the online space that decide they're taking a sabbatical or they decide they're taking a month off, and for some people, maybe they do go dormant and quiet. That's okay, but you do have to have the expectation that when you come back, your audience is going to be colder. They're not necessarily going to be warm, so you just have to compensate for that. If you do wanna go silent for an extended period of time, just have the expectation that when you come back, you will have some rapport building, some trust building to do with your audience in order to warm them back up to you and your brand again. If you don't want to disrupt that pattern, which is honestly my favorite mode of operation, and you wanna just continue serving, if that's feasible, just do your best to batch-create content, schedule it out, and it will post for you, or your team can post for you. But planning ahead and batch-creating is going to be your lifesaver here. I would even say batch-create content that goes into the first part of when you're even back in office so that you don't come back to office and then immediately feel like, "Oh, I have to create content now because we have nothing scheduled out." We want you to be set up for success, so you can come back to office and be like, "I feel good. I feel refreshed. Nothing is on fire, and I can just kind of, like, get reintegrated into our systems, into our team, into our processes," whatever it may be.
Tip 5 here is set an email auto-responder. Again, this one may sound super simple. I do wanna highlight a few things that I recommend having in this automatic email, but this is really, really helpful because, again, it does set the expectation with clients even, reminding them that you are out-of-office. It also, of course, clearly communicates if you have people that are reaching out to you for any reason. It sets the expectation of potentially why response times may be slower or may take a week or so because you're out-of-office. So, a few things that I would have in this email: of course, put your out-of-office dates in there. Also, put when people can expect a response from you. Now, you may stagger this a little bit. You may say that your clients and your students, your customers may receive a response, you know, two days after you're back in office, and you'll put that date for them. And then for everyone else, you may say that they will receive a response within the first five business days of you being back, and you would put that exact date in there. So, if you need to stagger, if you get a lot of emails, that's totally fine, but put an expected response date in there so that people know what's going on, right? Specifically, share what clients can expect, so when you're back in office, you know, when will they hear from you? Where will they hear from you? If they submit something for review or they need help with something, like, what is that process going to look like? Make sure that we give them peace of mind. And then if you have a potential client that's emailing you, how can they inquire? You may want to link your services page, or you may want to link your application. Going back to that earlier conversation around automations, if we have the ability for them to fill out a form and then go ahead and book a sales call, we can link that particular form in your auto-email responder and say, "If you're interested in working together, go ahead, fill out this application. We will be in touch shortly." That way, we are not pausing any of your potential sales conversations.
So those are all of the kind of immediate, quick-hit tips that I wanna encourage you to implement in the short term, especially because we're already in summer. So, go ahead. These are, are really easy to integrate and implement.
But like I said earlier, I also wanna direct your attention to some things that you can integrate long-term that will make a huge difference in your confidence and ability in stepping away from your business and taking dedicated time off. These are larger conversations, so I'm going to try and provide as much insight as I can without this getting too lengthy, but here we go.
Tip one is design a strategic offer suite that accommodates your desired lifestyle. Now, what does that mean? A lot of times, I will talk to potential clients, and one of the, one of the things that people always want when they work, they start working with us is, you know, they want to take back their time. They want to, uh, be able to hit their revenue goals and support their mission and their team and all the things while being able to take back some of their time and live their life. How many of us just wanna be able to live our life, you know? And then we get to the discussion around, "Okay, well, what do you offer and how is that facilitated?" And a lot of times, what they are offering and the predominant source of their revenue, it actually doesn't allow for them to be able to take the time off that they want. It doesn't allow for the spaciousness that they maybe want, and a lot of those offers are just so directly tied to their one-on-one time. They feel like they have to be present every day between 9:00 and 5:00 in order to be available, in order to be of service. It really does depend on your line of work and what you offer, but we need to think long term about, "Okay, what is your desired lifestyle?" And I understand that business isn't all about that. It's, it's also about mission, and we all believe in what we're doing here. Like, otherwise, why start a business? I mean, there're so many ways that you can have, like, stable income and be supported financially out there without all of the pain that sometimes comes with entrepreneurship. So we all believe in what we're doing. We all are passionate about what we're doing, but at the same time, we're focusing in on that sustainability factor, and we're also wanting to think long term about what we're building and ensure that we aren't building a prison for ourself that we find ourself in, you know, five to ten years from now. We want to think about what is that desired lifestyle? What do I want my days to look like? What do I want my months, my years to look like? How much space do I wanna have? How much do I realistically want to work? And even though we might not be able to have that today, right now, we still can work towards that.
So how can you introduce offers that don't require that you be tied to the business at all times? How can you think about ways that you could serve people without having to show up one-on-one all the time, every day? And for some of you, this may revolve around more team support. Let's say that you're building an agency, for example, and you're so passionate about that. Agency work is definitely demanding. We've worked with a lot of agency owners that both love it and/or people that have pivoted into more coaching/consulting realms. But if you're that person that says, "I love running this agency," that may require that instead of restructuring the offers themselves, you may need to restructure and/or look at how you can expand your team, right? So it's all about what your business looks like, and you'll know how to apply, but consider, how am I designing something that accommodates your desired lifestyle?
The second piece here that kind of directly ties to this is consider passive income integration. Now, before I even dive into this, let me just reiterate that this takes time. We work with a lot of clients that are really eager to integrate passive income into their business, and I think that this is, a picture, again, that's painted in the online space like it is the easiest thing, and you can just kick back and relax, and maybe once you get there, there's an element of that, but it is a lot of work, and it takes time. But when we're so dedicated to and committed to and we're such a believer in our vision, that time is so worth it. The instant gratification factor, it's not there. Instead, we're so focused on, "This is my vision, this is my guiding light, this is where I'm going," and the work required in between now and there is so worth it. So, consider integrating passive income into your business model, your offer suites. We want you to be able to diversify your revenue sources and allow for some of that to come from offers that don't require your one-on-one time. That's the big thing here. And you can have a diverse offer suite that has a little bit of everything, so I'll reference one of our past clients we worked with long, long term. Over time, we worked together to build out her offer suite. She had, at the end of it all, a multi-division company. One side was an agency model, so she and her team of, I believe, three would work on different client accounts for all things social media management and branding. They also did done-for-you branding and website projects, and then she also had another side to her business that was coaching, consulting, and it was just an education platform. It was an education platform. And so in that side, she had an array of different offers, a couple of which were e-books or courses that were totally passive, a membership that was semi-passive, but still integrating that recurring revenue, intensive sessions, and one-on-one containers. So you can kinda see, over time, if you really think methodically about how you wanna build out your business model and what you're offering, you can integrate a little bit of everything, because, you know, I'm willing to bet that people listening to this may say, "Well, I love supporting people one-on-one. I don't wanna get rid of that immediately," or, you know, "I have most of my revenue coming from these higher-ticket containers, and my agency said, 'I don't wanna just gut that.'" Well, I would never tell you to do that. Why don't we slowly start to integrate some of these new revenue sources into your business model? Why don't we start to diversify a little bit? Why don't we integrate some passive income opportunities and revenue sources? That's the second one here.
And then the final, the third tip in the long-term side of things: plan your campaigns, your launches, and those higher energy projects around your out-of-office time. Now, this comes down to some annual planning, which I was kind of hinting at earlier. This is so important. Whenever we go into a new year at The Awakening, we immediately block off our time off for the year. So, 12 months in advance, myself and the team, we are optimizing, we are organizing my schedule specifically as the founder. We're blocking off trips, vacations, white space that I wanna have on the calendar, months where I, I know that I'm going to be lower energy and I want to be able to step away. A lot of times for people, that is the summer months, you know? We wanna have more of a spacious summer. We want to be able to go to the beach, go hang out with our family. So, we'll plan around that. We'll ensure that we aren't trying to overlap big projects, big launches, big campaigns over top of a season where we're wanting to actually have some space. And this comes down to, again, that annual planning and just being intentional and thinking ahead, on behalf of your schedule and, and really making it a priority and treating this as though it is a non-negotiable.
You may find, too, that you want to accommodate for the out-of-office time by maybe having a heavier load of work in a different quarter, or creating a cash infusion in preparation for that time off. So, let's say that you wanna take a lot of time off between June, July, and August. Well, you may say that for the first five months of the year, we're going to allow for a more full schedule, maybe a heavier workload. Maybe we're going to roll out a couple of launches or campaigns around that time. You may want to front-load some of your work in order to accommodate for some time that you're taking off, and that can both be from an energetic perspective, but also from a revenue perspective.
At the end of the day, we are here to move sustainably so that we can create long-term impact on the lives around us. And we can do that with peace, with ease, with the ability to reset and disconnect throughout. In fact, that is the only way we build something that is not just successful in the present, but something that has lasting impact well into the future. Rest is productive, you guys. So, let's make it a priority this season. Let's make it a priority this summer.
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