EP064: How to pay for your vacation while you're on vacation

Welcome to the Perfect Practice Podcast where we share the most innovative strategies to help you build a successful functional medicine business, attract your ideal patients, serve your community, and get paid what you're worth. Each episode is packed with practical steps that you can take to immediately grow your influence and serve more people. Our mission is to share golden nuggets from successful practitioners, technology experts and innovators from around the world. Your host, Sachin Patel is a functional medicine and success coach, international speaker and best selling author. He's calling in all his favors to bring this information to you so you can create your perfect practice.

Hey, what's up? It's Satya and welcome to Perfect Practice. I recently, in fact just this morning, got back from Maui. My wife, my son and I and a group of us practitioners who are part of JJ Virgin's Mastermind were all in Maui and for three days. And then my wife and I decided to go a day early and extend our stay by about another four days. So we had an amazing time and I actually posted who wanted to know more about how to pay for your vacation while you're on vacation. And here's the thing, you can actually make more money than what your vacation costs while you're on vacation using the framework that I'm going to share with you today. So pay attention if you're long overdue for a vacation, many of us are. I know there were drags of time or periods of time where I was not traveling as much as I do now, and I can tell you as someone who travels quite a bit, it's very enjoyable, especially if you can include your family and especially if you can continue to move your mission and vision and community forward. And if you can learn and grow and collaborate at the same time, it gets even better. So I love seeing, seeing cool places around the world. I love hanging out with awesome people, trying new food, and I also love serving my clients and my community. And if I can be strategic about that, then I can have it all. And guess what? So can you. So I'm gonna share what took me a few years to figure out. And if you hear just one thing, then please leave me a review or share this podcast because there's probably something that resonates in here with somebody else that you know, love and care about. And that's the reason I'm sharing this. Because I care about you guys and girls and men and women, of course, because I want to advance our entire mission forward. So first and foremost, you want to go to events that are in desirable locations. If you can find events that are in cool places, places that you've always wanted to go, then guess what, you can write it off as a business expense. You can get there a few days early or stay a few days late. And. And you can see some awesome places. Now, some of the places I like to go are Maui. That's an example. I've got North Carolina on my list. I love going to Phoenix and San Diego. I love going to Florida. So a lot of times big events will be held in desirable locations because that's part of the draw of these events themselves. They're strategic in where the events are held because they want to attract people to come. Now don't just go there for the days of the event and just pop right out. What you want to do is you want to add a few days afterwards is ideal so you can decompress and you can learn. Now, one of the things that this will do in helping you pay for your vacation is that white space allows for creativity to occur. We can't create if we're always doing something else or distracted by something else. So spending a few extra days is decompressing and integrating what you learned can be very powerful. And it's going to help you in creating new ideas and of course, pay for this vacation and many more. Another thing that you want to keep in mind when you're traveling is go to places where you know people. So it actually feels like a vacation. It feels like a mini reunion. And coordinate with your friends where they're going so that you can have some fun and you know people who are there, you're looking forward to it, you're pumped and, and lots of learning, collaboration, laughing, love. All those things take place when you go places where you know people. Okay? And of course, you get to deepen relationships, which is extremely powerful. Another way to pay for your vacations is to join masterminds or mentorships that meet in exotic locations, because this guarantees your personal growth, but it also guarantees some white space and some room for creativity and expansion. So when you're choosing who to work with or what groups or companies to work with, then kind of take a look at where their events are held because that might be inspiring to you and you could cross a few awesome places off of your list of places you want to go. Another way to pay for your vacation when you're on vacation is to talk to as many people as possible. This is a fertile stomping ground, so to speak, where you can practice your pitch, you can talk to people, explain to Them what you you do. It's an opportunity to open up conversations, practice your icebreakers, you know, practice looking people eye to eye. You don't even have to sell them anything. You're just telling them more about what you do. And I promise you, people are very interested and fascinated with what you do. If you're a functional medicine practitioner or health coach, there's lots of value that we can add into people's lives. I mean, I talk to every single Uber driver and by the end of the conversation, almost every single time, I either exchange phone numbers or contact information, even if it's on social media, because I want to build and continue to build relationships with people. And some people I've met, you know, over the years, with all the traveling I've done, are still in contact with me or still connect with me on Facebook. So it's pretty cool to see the relationships that can develop. And you never know where that relationship's going to go and what it's going to lead to in terms of your business and your contribution to your community and society. Another thing that you want to do is when you're traveling, what I strongly suggest, and this wasn't the case for me in Hawaii because it's a five hour time difference from Eastern time zone, is I want you to go to places where you're in the same time zone. So this is less disruptive to your sleep, it's less disruptive to your schedule and it allows you to stay, you know, focused and it allows you to stay on schedule if there's things that you've got scheduled that are going on. So certainly try to pick a beautiful destinations where you can connect and mastermind with people and collaborate with people that are in awesome venues that are also in the same time zone as you. And that's a huge bonus because, you know, we don't want to throw your sleep schedule off when you get there and then you're there for a few days and then you got to throw it back off when you get back home. We want you to, you know, operate almost seamlessly if you can. Now, if you're going to pay for your vacation, while you're on vacation, you're going to have to do some work. Okay? So truth be told, I'm about one to two hours of work while I'm gone, which leaves 22 hours for me to figure out what I'm going to do with my day. And trust me, that's plenty of time. So one of the things that I suggest is setting aside some time in the morning, first thing in the morning, so that you can get it out of the way. Knock out some emails. Knock out your most important emails for that day, and then I'll pluck away at my phone if I need to, if I've got some downtime, and I'll knock off my emails. I actually have less emails after my vacation than I did going into my vacation. So I'm pretty much almost caught up with all my email, and that felt good. So if I didn't do that, then I would have dropped some opportunities. I would have, you know, missed some amazing chances to collaborate with people. I'm just thinking about some of the emails that I got this week and what it would mean if I delayed my responses. Sometimes if you're a day late in responding to something that's important, it sets off the wrong message, and that can cost you a lot of money. Okay? So missing an opportunity can be very costly, but acquiring the opportunity can be even more beneficial. Now, one thing I will do if I respond to an email is I will let people know that I'm traveling so that when I connect with them and I email them, they know how important their email is. So I might even note love from Maui. That's how I signed off a lot of my emails this week. So people very subtly know that I'm out of town, and that embeds the impression that their email and their message is important to me. And you would be shocked at how many people responded with, with, you know, letting me know they appreciated my response or they appreciate how quickly I responded even though I was traveling. And, you know, that just shows your dedication and how much you care. With our phones, we can do 90% of our job directly from our phones. So I'm not saying to be sucked into your phone, but a lot of times a response takes 20 to 30 seconds. So you can knock out a lot of email in 10 minutes if you set it aside. You know, every few hours when you're traveling, depending on how much email you get. Of course. Now I like to address things as soon as they come in. I learned a principle called the Ohio principle. It's only handle it once. So if you do get an email and you need some time to respond to it, then make sure you mark it as unread and, and flag it or tag it as favorite or important so that you can find it easily later and get to it now. One thing I'll also have to remind you of is that when you're connecting with people, you know, this is A great way for you to practice your elevator pitch with people. Okay, so you got short Uber rides. You might have short interactions with people at the bar or on the beach or, you know, in the slopes, wherever you are. And it's a great way to practice and refine your delivery of what it is exactly that you do. And you can practice that over and over again. And when you see how interested people are, especially when they hear about what you do for the first time, just like you heard about functional medicine and lifestyle medicine for the same site for the first time, people get really, really excited. I also suggest that you record content while you're on vacation because that's a great way for, for you to capture new environments for your videos and switch things up a little bit. And of course, you want to be able to tell people and let people know that, hey, I'm not just recommending that you travel more. I'm not just recommending that you go on more vacations or see more beautiful places on this world. I'm actually doing it myself. And we should be, we should always be leading by example. Now, if you need some new images or anything like that for your website, then you can also hire a local, you know, lifestyle photographer who knows the area, who can take some great lifestyle shots for you. Those are extremely valuable and also a fun way for you to, you know, learn more about the city that you're in or connect with somebody who's local, and also update some of your digital media and social media platforms as well. And it allows you to kind of switch things up a little bit and then, you know, have fun. Okay? I promise, promise, promise you that the world is beautiful. There's so many amazing places to see, and you can find balance between work and visiting all these cool places. You know, you're gonna have to do some work. You're gonna have to set aside a few hours a day. You're gonna have to make offers. Of course, if you're not offering anything, people aren't buying anything. So make offers while you're gone, and that'll give you some momentum when you come back. So when you're coming back to the, you know, the, the work week, you've already got some new sales that you've converted or you've got some agreements that you formed with people that they're going to get started and focus on their care. So there's some excitement coming back from your vacation and, you know, get creative, get outside, get in nature, have fun, get some deep rest. Okay? Take good care of yourself. And make sure that you're setting aside time, quarterly, monthly, weekly, whatever it is, to take good care of yourself and lead by example. So with that, with love, I hope this helps you. I hope this allows you to travel a little bit more, see the cool planet that we all live on and make the world a better place with the work that you do and of course, pay for it all at the same time. Thanks. Talk to you soon. Bye for now.