Smelling the roses and recharging our batteries!

This holiday season marks my 3-year anniversary in the Internet
Marketing business. Of course, on such anniversaries we all ask
ourselves: Am I better off now then when I started? My
enthusiastic answer is: By far :-) That automatically raises
another anniversary question: Am I where I want to be? My
answer, thoughtful but still enthusiastic, is: Not quite ;-)
Sound familiar? Or maybe you haven't gotten to the "better off"
part yet. Regardless of how you answer these two introspective
questions, my piece of advice to you this holiday season is the
same: Take some time off. Relax, enjoy your family, regroup your
thoughts and goals and decide what is really important to you,
your personal life, and the lives of those most important to you.
This piece of advice, like most advice I give, comes from
personal experience. I have been running around like crazy for
the past three years growing this Internet business. Granted, it
has paid off well, in many visible ways, but at what personal
price?
My children miss their mommy, my husband feels the pressure of
his long hours at work, compared to all the work here at home
(which I can't always attend to because of my own business time
and focus requirements), and I can feel my good health slowly
diminishing.
Many organizers and time management specialists will tell you
that if your life, as a whole, is not running smoothly then your
neglected areas will suffer. And how true that is! If the kids
ain't happy, nobody in the house is going to be happy. If your
spouse isn't happy, then how can you truly be happy? If all the
ongoing work and resultant unhappiness in the family cause you
to be unhappy, how effectively do you think you will perform
your job? Not well at all!
And what do you, as owner-operator of your own web business,
think happens when your health fails? Not much! Most jobs in the
"real world" include someone who is there to take your place
while you are out sick. But when you run your own business,
nobody is hovering in the wings, ready to take up the slack and
keep the operation humming.
I have personally been putting off having my wisdom teeth
extracted for over a year. I haven't seen my gynecologist since
my daughter was born three years ago, and my once-religious
exercise routine has ceased to exist as pounds keep getting
measured by my unforgiving, depressingly honest bathroom scale.
All in the name of entrepreneurship.
Some people would call that extreme dedication, laziness or even
a unique late-twentieth century form of mental illness! I'm not
even sure what I consider it anymore. What I have realized is
that taking time off can be like recharging dead (but
rechargeable) batteries. Accomplishing even the simplest of
tasks with dead batteries can be a chore--nearly impossible. But
take time to recognize the problem, put in a fresh set and you
can get three times the work done effortlessly.
This past Thanksgiving weekend I spent a glorious three nights
at the Wilderness Resort Lodge in the Wisconsin Dells. Just my
husband and I and our children, enjoying the water park,
horseback riding and getting away from the stress with other
activities we found open in the off-season. It was great!
Am I totally refreshed? No, not yet. But I plan to be as I am
not going to come back fully from vacation until after the new
year. One thing this mini-vacation made me realize is that I am
not happy if I miss out on what I normally view as the
"important stuff." I say normally view because when I have my
entrepreneur mindset on I experience complete tunnel vision. I
don't even realize what I'm missing because all I have my eyes
on are all the opportunities to grow my business on the little
glowing electronic screen in front of me.
But I don't want to miss Christmas with the kids this year. I
want to truly experience the holidays this season, not just try
to plan them around my busy work schedule. I don't even want to
miss the upcoming, once in a lifetime "turn of the century".
Now, what does this mean to my business? Does it hurt my growth?
Probably in the short run. Revenues won't be up but they
certainly won't dip down low enough to really worry me. This, by
the way, is one of the nicest things about an Internet business
:-)
But how will this reaffirmation that I am something more than a
slave to Internet possibilities eventually help my business?
Easy... when I do come back to full time work my health will be
improved, I'll feel better about myself and my family, and I'll
have a clear head. I'll most likely return to accomplish tasks
that I have struggled with previously in record time, just
because of my recharged, revitalized mental state.
So how can you apply this advice in your own life?
If you have already burnt yourself out and feel that you are
spinning your wheels, force yourself to take a break. You don't
have to push and push and push yourself in order to prove you
can be successful. It will come eventually, and when it finally
does march into your life, you should want to be able to handle
it. Wouldn't it be a shame if success finally knocked on your
door but you were too tired and mentally exhausted to remember
your early dreams, and be in a condition to take advantage of
that success? Of course it would be.
History is full of sad examples of people who started out with a
dream, pursued that dream relentlessly, and used all their
talents and time. Somehow, when they arrived at the end of the
rainbow, they were either too tired, or too bogged down by
worries that they were going to lose it, that they couldn’t even
enjoy the colors, much less the contents of that allegorical
kettle. You probably have worked for people like that. So you
know it’s not an uncommon phenomenon. Just don't let it happen
to you.
If you haven't yet fully launched your Internet business, and
you're feeling burnt out just from the pre-launch phase, then I
say enjoy this last holiday of the millennium with gusto. There
will be plenty of other sacrifices ahead in your first few years
of business.
If you haven't already gotten in on this year’s Christmas
Ecommerce train it is almost too late to do much anyway.
Christmas shoppers will be making their online purchases over
the next couple of weeks. After that they will turn to the
safety of the retail stores for any last-minute gifts. So if you
haven't launched by now, chances are the smart thing to do is
just relax and enjoy this last 1999 holiday.
We receive mixed messages in many of the publications we
regularly read. Some writers say stop procrastinating and make
sacrifices or you'll get nowhere. Then you have writers like me
who encourage you to stop and smell the roses occasionally.
Ultimately, of course, you have to do what you feel is right for
you and your particular circumstances.
I just know that for me and a few other well-known marketers
I've talked to, taking some time off provides us with a
much-needed renewal of our entrepreneurial batteries.