MBA2332 Q&A Wednesday: I need a break but I can’t afford one. What do I do?

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Ready to save on new tech? It's time for Dell Tech Day's annual sales event, celebrating our customers with fantastic deals and benefits. Perks include Dell rewards, free shipping, premium support, and more. PCs like the Dell 14 with Intel Core Ultra processors will help you do more faster. And with a premium suite of monitors and accessories, you can upgrade your whole setup with amazing savings. Visit Dell.com deals. Hey O. Welcome to the $100 MBA show. No fluff, just the good stuff with our practical business lessons. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher, Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of Webinar Ninja, an independent software company I started back in 2014. And today's episode is Q and A Wednesday. On Q and A Wednesdays, we answer a question from one of you, one of our listeners. If you've got a question you want to ask, go ahead and email me over at Omar MBA net. Today's Q& A Wednesday's question is from Maggie and Maggie asks. Hey Omar, I am totally burnt out. I've been working on my business for the last 18 months straight without a day off. The business is slowly starting to get traction and we're starting to be profitable, but I am desperate for a break, but I can't afford one in both time and money. I'd love to take two weeks off and just escape to an island somewhere, but I simply can't afford it. Would love any advice on how I can recharge at no cost to my business or my wallet. Maggie, thanks for asking this question. This is not an uncommon question. I get asked this question a lot. People are burnt out all the time working on their business and finances are tough. Finances are tight, time is tight, but they're desperate for a break. In today's lesson, I'm going to give you some options because right now you can't afford not to take a break because it might cause you to make some mistakes that are Going to not allow your business to continue to grow or continue on the directory it's on. You are a human being. We have limits, okay? And it's amazing that you dedicated yourself to the business for 18 months, no breaks. That's incredible grit. But the benefit you'll get from the recharge is huge. You'll come back with better ideas, better energy to go strong for another period of time. But how do you pull it off with money being tight, time being tight? Well, I'll share with you what I would recommend, what I've done in the past, what works, and hopefully you'll take it on and get that break you need. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. Many people, when they're burnt out, they're like, I want to just take a couple weeks off, a month off. I can't take this anymore. And I totally empathize. I have been there several times, trust me. But what I found is we are often go to extremes when we're tired. We actually don't need that much time to recharge. We're going to talk about time first and we'll talk about finances, how you can afford a break. Have you ever been on a holiday where after the third or fourth day you're kind of like over it? You're like, oh, I'm ready to go back now, right? I'm bored. Well, that tells you you actually don't need that much time to kind of diffuse and not do anything and relax and recharge the batteries. The other thing it means is that it sounds like you need more frequent breaks, Shorter, more frequent break instead of one long break so you can avoid burnout before it happens. I know this is kind of hard to do when you're starting out in your business. You're scrapping, you're working hard, you're putting in so much effort, burning the midline oil, I get it. But you have to manage yourself as if you are the manager of you. You know what I'm saying? You have to tell yourself it's time to take a break. And right now you're telling yourself you're burnt out. But you don't want to get to this point in the future. You want to be able to take more frequent breaks, even if it's just three straight days, four straigh days, it can make a huge difference instead of trying to take two weeks off when it's too late. So most likely you don't need two weeks. So you're trying to say to yourself. Hey, I'd love to take two weeks off, but I can't because I can't afford two weeks. Well, maybe you don't need two weeks. In fact, maybe you only need a few extra days, like a long weekend, like taking a Friday and a Monday, Tuesday off. There you go. That's five days. You might want to take a half day on Thursday and it'll feel like six days, almost a week. And every business has a slow time in business. Slow days, slow periods. If Monday is slow for you, that's a good day to take off, whatever it might be. The other thing is that you might see this as an opportunity to empower somebody on your team to take over, to take some responsibility, to groom them, to make some decisions while you're gone. They don't have to be huge decisions. I highly recommend you don't go away and take a break when huge decisions need to be made, or when you're pushing a new update or your release or doing some sort of big promotion. Not a good time to go away, to go when nothing's happening, when you're just kind of maintaining things and working on things. Bridging a weekend is not going to break your business. In fact, this is a good stress test to see if you can delegate and empower people. The other thing is that how you spend your time during the time off actually has a lot to do with how long it feels or how much it will recharge you. I experimented a lot when it comes to my breaks. And the most valuable breaks in terms of feeling recharged afterwards are the ones that I actually didn't have a lot of time, but did a lot of interesting, fun, new activities during that time. One time I had a break was about six days. I was bridging a weekend, but every day I did something fun and interesting. An excursion, went to see a museum, jet skiing. Maybe one visited like a pineapple plantation. The point here is that when you're busy doing other things than work, having new experiences, enjoying yourself, having your itinerary kind of full with fun stuff like trying new foods and going to the markets or whatever it might be, the day feels long. It feels like you've been away for a lot of time because you're doing so much. And the best way to unplug from work and feel recharged is to plug into something else and experience something fun, something new, a new adventure. So that's in terms of spending your time, do a lot of fun activities in a short period of time. You're gonna come back feeling recharged. Even if it's just a handful of days, two or three or four days, that should be plenty for you to come back and feel like, oof, that break was good. Now, we talked about using your limited time. Let's talk about limited funds. Listen, you don't need to fly to some exotic beach. You don't need to fly to, you know, a new country or a new culture to have these experiences to feel recharged. You don't need to drop, you know, thousands of dollars. I've gone on breaks for four or five days where I spent only a few hundred dollars and felt more recharged, more refreshed, and had a better time than spending thousands of dollars on a vacation.

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We've all been there. You hold on to a coupon but forget about it and suddenly it's expired.

Expired in 2012. Dang it.

Fortunately, by switching to Geico, you could save about $900 on car insurance without ever touching a coupon.

It feels good to save big. It feels good to Geico.

There's plenty for you to do locally, wherever you live, even if you just drive somewhere, you don't have to fly. You can drive anywhere. For example, recently we visited some friends up north that lived close to by the beach. They had a guest house. We stayed at their house, didn't pay anything because they're friends. But we picked up the tap for dinner and a few of the groceries and we did some cooking at home. And it was a ton of fun and it was just relaxing and we just went slow and we followed their lead and they showed us the nice beaches. And I believe that break was only like four days. I came back feeling so refreshed. I got to read some books, I went swimming. I got to cook some dinners for the family. It was a ton of fun and it was very, very inexpensive. Don't have a friend with a beach house. No problem. There's plenty of small little Airbnbs, little rooms that you can rent in Less expensive areas in your local area. Get away for a couple days. There's plenty of things you could do for free. Some Airbnb's come with bikes so that you can go and cycle around town. You can go for hikes, go for a swim, go to the local grocery store and make a barbecue and enjoy a beautiful meal with your loved ones. Get lost in that book you've been wanting to crack into. Just get creative. It's okay. If your budget's tight, that's fine. It actually forces you to be creative with your activities and it's great to have limitations because then you don't have so many choice. You know that hey, you're on a budget. So these are your choices for activities. Even if you are not going to go somewhere where you're going to stay overnight, you're going to stay home and save money on lodging. Spend the day and make some day trips. Drive an hour out and see something new, have lunch somewhere new, Go window shopping, go to the park, play some cards with your significant other. Pretend you're retired. Just pretend you're retired for a few days and just force yourself not to look at work at all. This will allow you to really relax, really focus on life and an enjoyment of life and the people around you and the simple things like good food, good company and just appreciating your surroundings. The point here is that don't not take a break because of finances or because of time. You have some wiggle room with the time. You have some wiggle room with the finances. Especially if you're not going anywhere. Staycation. Go for a drive, go somewhere free. Go to the beach, go to the park, go for a hike, go see a waterfall, whatever is in your local area. Go to the museum. Heck, go to the library. You know, there's a lot of fun stuff you can find in the library. Interesting books, audio books. Maybe they have a room where you can watch movies. Some of us don't realize, but there's probably a pretty interesting library around your town. Maybe downtown, the major library of your city. Something new, right? Something different than your computer screen. Well, I hope that helped you, Maggie and everybody else listening, who is dying for a break but maybe thinking I can't afford it. Whether it's through time or finances, you can. And remember, this is an investment in yourself, in your health and your well being so that you can come back recharged and ready to go at it even stronger in your business. If you want to ask a question here on Q and A Wednesday, just go ahead and email me over at omar100.mba.net. i'll answer your question right here on Q and A Wednesday. And if you want to keep it anonymous, just let me know in the email. No problem. I'm just here to have your back and help you along the way. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. I always say this and I'm going to say it again. You are the leader of the business. You are the founder. You're the person that has the most influence over the success of the business. So if you're not in the best shape in terms of your mind, in terms of your health, in terms of your well being, in terms of the way you feel, if you're tired, if you're burnt out, you're not going to produce stellar results. That's just a fact. You owe it to you and your company and your employees and everybody else, and especially your customers for you to take the time you need to recharge the batteries and come back ready to surf. We need you at your best so that you can produce the best. Thank you so much for listening and I'll check you in Friday's episode Free Ride Friday. I'll see you then. Take care.

We've all been there. You hold on to a coupon but forget about it and suddenly it's expired.

Expired in 2012.

Dang it.

Fortunately, by switching to Geico, you could save about 900 on car insurance without ever touching a coupon.

It feels good to save big. It feels good to geico.