The Truth About Taking Time Off (And Why You Need To Do It). EP #267 - Den Lennie

G', day, guys. It's Dan here and I want to ask you a question. When was the last time you genuinely took some time off? I mean, time where you didn't check your phone, you told your clients you weren't available, or you could. You literally had out of office on. Because I know that my goal is always to have a week off every quarter, and I don't always succeed. And I've just come back from a week off and it's been incredible. So I want to share, share with you today why it's so important to take time off and why you need to do it. This is episode 267 of the how to Scale A Video Business Podcast.

Welcome to the Video Business Accelerator Podcast. Each week we uncover the secrets to creating a wildly successful and scalable video production business. With your host, Dan Lenny, discover how the accelerator program is transforming the lives of our members at www. Do videobusinessaccelerator.com. enjoy this episode.

So, you know, a couple weeks ago, I talked about avoiding burnout, and I'd reached a point actually where I was getting. I was getting close to the edge, if I'm honest.

And so I did something about it immediately. In fact, I've got to give full credit to my wife, who said, hey, why don't you head down to Melbourne and catch up with Fife and have some boy time? And she was absolutely right. Fife is a sound recorder. Well, he was a sound recorder back in the day. Back in about the early 2000s, Fife and I both worked at London Tonight together. He was a sound supervisor. And then we later went on to work on Wish youh Were Here Together and a whole draft of other series. We traveled the world together, him as a sound recorder, me as a cameraman. And we built this incredible friendship. And then he moved to Australia with his wife about 15 years ago, and we sort of lost touch for a while because I was in the uk, he was in Australia. And then we connected again when I came to Australia, and we've been, like, pretty inseparable since. I catch up with them three or four times a year, and we haven't actually seen each other for about a year because of COVID We were chatting last week and he's like, it's just so good to catch up with you, Dan. I said, yeah, and it's just I miss not catching up with you in person. And then Sam came over and said, why don't you go and hang out with Fife? And so I booked a week off last week and I just said, to my clients. Look, I need to recover, I need some rest. And we've got a big virtual event coming up tomorrow that is a result of we do these live events for our Mastermind. The first one was in the Gold coast, the next one's in Edinburgh in July. But not everyone can leave their families and kids and travel to every venue. So we record them all and then we give everyone a chance to watch the recordings and then we do a virtual event. We actually do two, we do a morning event, an afternoon event for the different time zones. So there's that. These are like four to five hour virtual events where we actually mastermind some of the themes that we talked about at the, at the live event. And it's a great way to connect people. But yeah, last week I just took a week off. So I decided that, you know, I needed to kind of factor in some rest time for me because as the leader of my business, I'm still human. I mean, I can look after myself and do all sorts of things to optimize my health and my, my performance. But sometimes you just need some time out. And so the truth is, if you don't take time off, you're actually doing your clients and your business a disservice. Because whenever you take time off, you get the opportunity to get creative again. When you don't have the, the mundanity of the daily grind of running a business, which is really what businesses are. They' a series of tasks repeated very consistently.

You lose some of your edge. And, you know, there's certainly times when you feel like you might be letting your clients down. If, you know, if you're running a production business and you think, oh, well, if I, what happens if I take that time off and they need me? But the truth is everyone understands the importance of time off. Everyone understands the fact that, you know, we're human beings, we need to have breaks. And you probably need to do it because you start to, you know, if you're not getting enough sleep, for example.

Then, you know, it's like being drunk.

Your ability to make rational decisions is impaired because your nervous system is running on empty. And one of the things I do on a weekly basis is I've started doing this thing called spinal flow. And it's an evolution of chiropractic, but without cracking bones. And I go twice a week for about 45 minutes each session. And my practitioner aligns me, but what she's really doing is resetting my nervous system. And I hadn't realized how short your nervous system gets when you are tired, when you're overworked and you, you're. You're kind of dealing with stress of all the decisions you have to make in running a business. But anyway, back to last week. So I took off on Monday down to Melbourne and I just, I just booked in time with, with Fife. He picked me up from the airport. We went and spent a day at like a health retreat where we, some friends of mine run the Melbourne Float House. And it's this incredible.

Space where they have like cryotherapy and oxygen chambers and infrared saunas and massage and float tanks and then this great big room with these huge comfortable sofas and you can just sit there in a robe and after all these treatments, just drink tea and chill and. And it's an amazing day out. And we usually spend five or six hours there and we just catch up.

And then we had some nice food and a bottle of wine and over the three days and caught up with friends down there and just hung out and it was really amazing to just be able to do that. And I felt so refreshed. So it's interesting how quickly you can recover by just having four or five days away from your computer, like actually turn everything off. And the truth is it's very rare that things fall over now. The caveat to this is it's much harder to do this if it's just you. If you have any kind of team, then this becomes a lot easier. And one of the things we always discussing on our calls in the VBA elite is the importance of scaling your team even beyond yourself to one person. Even if it's just a virtual assistant, it's critically important to have that support because you don't realize how many things you do on a daily basis that actually eat into your productivity time. And if you're not able to create space in your working week for learning and coaching. And by coaching, I mean just simply even reading a book and implementing it. You know, personal development, business development, growth days, as I call them, my Wednesdays are my growth days. And I spend Wednesday morning either working with my mentor, Sam Ovens, who, I mean his mastermind, or working on my own business doing something else. And it's just so important to. To recognize that if, if you don't take time off, you end up running on really bad decisions because your body is exhausted. So I really wanted to share the importance of that experience was. Was absolutely wonderful. And I didn't have to go very far. I barely spent any money. I just spent time in the presence of a really great friend. So when was the last time you did that? When was the last time you just called up a great friend and said, hey, you know, why don't we just get together? One of the things that I find so kind of sad in our current society is that everyone's so busy. Everyone's so busy chasing the money that they don't make time for enjoyment. And enjoyment for me is, you know, in joy of the moment. And sometimes it can just be pausing and going for a walk. But there are some systems you can create and you know, I'm a great fan of systems. And a personal system for execution can be just simply to create a default diary, a weekly default diary. And in that default diary you set up certain things to happen on certain days. And maybe what I'll do next week is as I'll go into a bit more detail about the default diary and why it's important and how you can make it work for you. And in the meantime, if you're feeling a bit burnt out, just, just book a few hours off this week and go for a walk or book a massage or book a float. Do something that allows you to just be and reset your nervous system. Because I guarantee you, you can feel like a brand new person. And you know one last thing this the easiest way to reset your nervous system is to meditate. And you can do that in 10 minutes using an app like Calm and just take a moment, breathe deeply, reset yourself and overall, just be kind to yourself.

You've been listening to the Video Business Accelerator podcast with your host, Den Lenny. If you are a video business owner who is tired of going it alone and would benefit from mentorship, support and weekly accountability, then mouse over to www.videobusinessexcel accelerator.com to learn more about how the Accelerator program can help you today. Don't forget to subscribe and rate the show over on itunes and we'd really appreciate you taking a few minutes to leave a review.