The Vacation Effect: Growing Your Business Even Faster By Working Less with Denise Gosnell and Joe Polish - Genius Network Episode #139

True freedom is not what you think. Freedom is a mindset, not a destination. Freedom is a decision you choose to have. Freedom. Isn't freedom the reason why you became an entrepreneur to begin with?

Who doesn't want to make more while working less? Denise Gosnell, the creator of the Vacation Effect, reveals how in today's Genius Network episode, Denise shares how to be more efficient and productive with limited time so you can live your life like you're on vacation while still growing a business thrives. She explains what freedom really means and how to stop saying someday or maybe by doing, killing or delegating the things that are wasting your time. If you'd like to learn more about the Genius Network annual event or to apply, go to geniusnetwork.com Let me ask.

You, have you ever had an experience like this? You create an exotic, short, four day long mini vacation. You plan to leave on Thursday and return Sunday evening. You're so excited and thrilled to be getting away. My question for you is how much will you get done Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday before you leave on Thursday? You said a shit ton. Yep, it's a technical term. Chances are you're going to get a tremendous amount done because you've got to get a week's worth of work done in just three days. How many of you have had a similar experience where your time is limited and you become super productive in the limited amount of time you have? Okay, probably, I think about 30% of people raise their hand. It's probably more about two years ago. This is exactly what happened in Denise Gosnell's life. She did a little scheduling experiment one month and became super productive in a very short period of time. She analyzed what had happened and realized she had discovered something significant. She called it the Vacation Effect and as a matter of fact formed a company by that name to help busy entrepreneurs learn how to grow their businesses faster by working less. Using this method, she was able to earn more money in one year by working less than she'd ever done in her entire 19 year career. And as an attorney and real estate investor, Denise is not only an amazing attorney who is general counsel for me and many other entrepreneurs, but she also is an intellectual property and Internet law expert. Plus, she has now become a speaker and consultant on the subject of the Vacation Effect. Her title for today's talk is growing your business even faster by working less. Please help me welcome Denise Gosnell. Thank you.

Appreciate it. My goal today, or the goal is to show you four key points. The first goal is to show you that working Harder. And throwing more resources at a project is not the best way to grow. The second is that you are actually likely to waste too much effort and time on a project unless you force yourself to be super productive. The third is that there is one thing that causes most entrepreneurs to feel unfulfilled that can be fixed when with one simple technique that I'll share with you. So the fourth is, and this one's my favorite, the secret to experiencing true freedom is not what you think it is. So let's jump into the four secrets and starting with secret number one, this is what I discovered. That the fastest way to grow your business is actually by working less, not more. So how many here have heard of the Pareto principle, right? Probably most of the room. The idea that 20% of the efforts will produce 80% of the results, yet only 80% of your efforts will produce a meager 20% of the results. Well, if that's true, why is it as entrepreneurs that we aren't focusing on that 20% of the effort that produces 80% of the results? Why are we not doing that? It's because we are crazy busy, right? We've been conditioned to be busy all the time, to be disconnected with our efforts. And it doesn't mean we're actually getting anything done by being crazy busy, right? And yet we've also somehow been conditioned to feel guilty, to feel guilty if we're not working all the time. Like, we should feel guilty that we built a company that doesn't require our presence. That's, like, been instilled into our business culture in America and around the world. Workaholism, as Joe calls it, has become the respected addiction. You know, it's like we have actually got statistics that show that workaholism, that more than 30% of the US population is estimated to be work workaholics. And that number is estimated to be even higher for entrepreneurs. You guys may have seen this email from our fearless leader, Joe, a couple weeks ago that he sent out on workaholism. And I know you can't read the email, but in that email, he talked about how 30 to 50% of entrepreneurs are estimated to have some type of addiction. And the most obvious one is workaholism. And I actually think that's 50% is probably a good estimate of entrepreneurs that are workaholics, whether we want to admit it or not. I know I was here. A couple of interesting statistics that I wanted to share with you. 10 million Americans work 60 plus hours a week. And since 1950 the average American worker productivity has increased by 400%. Interesting, isn't it? So if that's the case, if the productivity has increased by 400%, why are we still working like it's the 1950s? Think about that for a moment. It's because it's what we've been taught. We become addicted to this crazy busy, let's go, go, go all the time. Let's feel guilty if we're not working all the time. That's exactly what I was doing for 18 years of my career until I had something happen. I had a life changing incident. What I'd like you to do for a moment, please, is just close your eyes for just a moment and imagine that there's a knock at your door and standing before you is a fireman who tells you your house is on fire and that you have to. You only have five minutes to. To have him retrieve something for you. What do you want us to retrieve in the next five minutes before your house is ruined with fire and water? What would you have that fireman go retrieve for you? What you would have him retrieve is very revealing about yourself. Think about that. Would it be books? Would it be, you know, your mother's heirloom? Would it be wedding photos? Would it be jewelry? What would it be? It's okay, whatever it is, but whatever. You can open your eyes now. Write down if you want, whatever came to your mind so you don't forget. But whatever you wrote down is a glimpse into your soul of what really is important to you. And so for me, that's what happened to me. On June 20, 2011, a fireman greeted me at the door. And what I had him retrieve was all sentimental stuff. It was nothing expensive. So that day I realized I was not living my life in alignment with what mattered to me. But let's be honest, I still wanted it all. We all want it all, right? We want the career, we want the money, we want the time, we want the family, we want balance. We want it all. So that day, I vowed to figure out how to have it all. I wanted to grow my business, but I also wanted to have all the free time to be happy and do what I wanted. So, as Joe mentioned in my intro, I stumbled onto this little secret by accident. That you can grow your business faster by working less. I did a little scheduling experiment one month that I then continued and made a way of life. And what happened with the way I rearranged my schedule was I had the best income year ever by working 40% less. That year. And so that leads me to secret number two. That you can actually force hyper efficiency into your way of life. Like what you do when you're about to go on vacation and you get a shit ton done. Right? We were talking about that. We all do it, right? We all get a shit ton done before vacation. What if you made that your way of operating every single week? So when I say forced hyper efficiency, I mean super productivity. So super productivity is hyper efficiency. So Parkinson's law. Has anyone here ever heard of Parkinson's law? The amount of time that it takes to complete a project is the amount of time you allow yourself to do it anyway. Relate to that.

Right?

So that's the problem. If we don't limit the amount of time we spend on a task and force hyper efficiency into our schedule, then we're going to actually take longer than we need to. So the idea here is to work smarter, not harder. And so here's an example of what I did in my little scheduling experiment. I gave myself a Tuesday, Thursday schedule where I call them freedom Days to do whatever I want, wake up and be creative. Whatever I want to work on today that brings me joy. It can be business, it can be personal. And I limited myself to only working three days in the business. There are a lot of other parameters around it that I don't have time to go into here. But that is the essence of it that I did in that three months that changed my life. And then I've made a way of life. And so if you were to actually do something like that in your life, to limit the amount of time you work in the business to just three or four days a week, it would limit the amount of time you could waste. Right? And it would force you to do what matters, to focus on what matters most. It would force that Pareto 20%, that gives 80% of the results into your life. And of course, there are technology tools that can help you as long as you don't get addicted. We won't go down that tangent again, but it would also give you more free time for joy. And remember this guy, if you have become so efficient in three days that you used to be in five, do you really have any reason to feel guilty? You don't. And there is one thing. Remember how I said there's one thing that causes entrepreneurs to feel unfulfilled? And that leads me to secret number three. Bring your someday maybes into today. So someday maybes. What I mean by that is, you know how you say someday maybe when I have More time or I have more money. I'll get around to that thing that I'm going to do. Travel more, learn Spanish, do whatever. Well, I'm here to tell you and that you need to either bring. Actually, first of all, you're never gonna get around to them. You've been saying that for years. Let's be honest with yourself. If you're not gonna do them now, when are you gonna do them? So my advice on the someday maybes is to either bring themself into the now in some small way or a big way, or give yourself permission to let them go. Quit telling yourself, someday maybe I'll get around that. Fuck that. Do it now or kill it or delegate it. But someday is not a day of the week. Someday. Let me repeat that. That is my favorite line of all. Some day is not a day of the week. So that leads me to secret number four. True freedom is not what you think. Freedom is a mindset, not a destination. Freedom is a decision you choose to have. Freedom. Isn't freedom the reason why you became an entrepreneur to begin with? You can step into freedom today, right here, right now. All you have to do is decide. So the formula I've been talking about is less work plus forced hyper efficiency plus more joy in equals faster business growth. And that's what I launched in the company, the Vacation effect. Because you can force hyper efficiency to get more joy, to get more done and have more joy in your life. So your plan of action, step one, in the next 30 days, take two business days off in the same week. Just pick a week, take two business days off, that you're just going to do this little experiment. Notice what you're doing, what's working and not what's not working, what inefficiencies bubble to the top. And then step three, compare the five days that you worked the week before to the three days and what you got done and notice the difference. You might notice that super hyper efficiency kicking in, like when you're about to go on vacation. That's the goal here, to see what you can do. That's something you guys can do. You guys feel like you can do that? Yes. Right. So I have the handout for you that lays out everything I've been talking about. You can email me or text me. My phone number's on the handout. The email is denisegacationeffect.com and. And if any of you want to go deeper into the nuances of what I've done here, happy to jump on the phone. I call it a freedom session. Anybody wants to have a freedom session. I'm on a mission to help entrepreneurs rid the world of workaholism. Because there's a better way. And I'm here right now to tell you as an attorney that you are not guilty if every week of your life has so much joy that it feels like a vacation. Because your life should have so much joy every week that it feels like a vacation. Amen. Amen.

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