Oh Hey!
Thanks for coming - join me coz I am chatting about being "The Boss" of your own work.
That's me... posing for a photo that was a call out by Holly Tucker.... https://holly.co/
It was her "call to action" for female founders. Hell Yeah!!! I love the support Holly Tucker gives to small business owners and especially to female founders.
You can tell in that photo, how much it means to me, to be my own boss.
To follow my own path - make my own decisions - and.... yes, make all my own mistakes.
I love it.
I LOVE IT.
I have been working for myself for 16years now.
So why is the next image a red route of JohnOGroats - LandsEnd?
When I was knee deep... no, waist deep in my last business...
(neck deep came just before I sold that particular business. YUP, I was deep then!)
I decided to take TIME OFF and go on a cycle ride.
I rode my bicycle from the very TOP of the UK, to the very BOTTOM.
We call it JOGLE for short... JohnOG - Lands End.
Of course, this took me about 12 days. Two weeks if we include the days off at the end where I luxuriated in an AirBnB and spent time walking the Cornish Coastline.
Trust me - I will tell you all about this Adventure, some other time.
But, in addition to those wonderful 2 weeks of cycling down through the UK, I had to take time off for training. I had to learn / to train so that I could cycle 80 - 120miles per day.
That is quite a lot of time off.
YESssss... that is also quite a lot of cycling. My training rides were anywhere from 2 - 8hrs in length.
Mid week or weekends (My business was open physically 15hrs a day / 7 days per week + paper pushing on top of those "doors open" hours)
Here is me at a Weekend Cycling event. All Women. And all of us taking time away from our families and our work and our business.
Some rides were so tough and so draining and I had never felt hard work like that before.
The mental resilience I developed... to push through... rain or shine or wind (!)
I had to develop a way of talking to myself that meant I got through the pain and the fatigue and the occasional loneliness of those rides.
CUE: IMPORTANT BUSINESS LESSON #1
- it put my business issues right into perspective.
- all my business decisions seemed to shrink and I found I had the capacity to handle them better as they arose.
- things no longer seemed as insurmountable.
- I felt better able to cope with my workload. It seemed a little less "hard" than 100km on a bike.
CUE: IMPORTANT BUSINESS LESSON #2
100% when I took the time out to be on my bike... I would come up with solutions to problems I had in my business. OR I would find I came up with lots of new ideas that I could try.
My business wasn't suffering because I wasn't physically there in location or sat at home trying to "work things out".
Being away from it all became a whole new headspace that kept me fresh and innovative and happier. Less anxious. More "me".
CUE: IMPORTANT BUSINESS LESSON #3
When I was riding with others and having a right laugh, often I had no great ideas / solutions / genius come into my head. I was far far away from my business and far from any part of it.
I was OFF WORK.
And....
nothing happened.
Nothing fell apart.
Nothing collapsed.
Nothing broke or changed.
Nothing really moved forward either...
But it was all ok.
More than that even, I would walk back into my work with a renewed sense of enjoyment for the place. I felt refreshed and lighter in my mind, if not my body (I was often knackered from the training rides!!)
I remembered why it was I work in the first place.
So I can enjoy things like - my precious cycling.
So my question to you is really this:
"That Entrepreneur Life... Can you really afford NOT to take time off?"
It's the space where all the magic happens.
It's the space where life, love, living happens.
It's the space for renewal and restoration.
It's the space for neural and physiological repair - don't ever underestimate the 'burn' needed for you to keep on pushing forward. Your brain needs a break. It needs to repair. It needs to sleep well and breath deeply. "Burn out" is a very real condition and takes a long long time to repair.
Trust me.
I make PomPoms for living
but
I have been coaching Health & Happiness for a lot longer than I have been making PomPoms.
Much Love to you x
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