About 5 years ago I sat front row in his class on the first day. One of his top instructions and exercises was to prepare a list of items that you can FIRE yourself from, so that your company doesn’t need you to do everything from sweeping the floors to customer delivery of services and products. He said one of the best things you can do for yourself, and your company is to be able to go on vacation, close the doors and leave or close the doors and go do charity work in the community and do valuable relationship building and represent your company and your people in the world. I said under my breath and wrote on my notebook VACATION IS FOR P*@#*@S and said I was already unhappy in his class.
I paid the money to be there and the people in the class were highly motivated, strong, very entrepreneurial and leaders in their industries, so I stayed. I participated and I not only did the exercises on paper in class but implemented them at work. I still didn’t think I needed a vacation that I should be available to everyone every day and night. Then COVID hit, and with all of the changes I ended up working day and night for over 20 months. I was in the hospital in December of 2019 and when I woke up from surgery, I looked at my phone and growled. Affirming my belief that I was irreplaceable and sorely needed every day at work.
However, the idea that you need to replace yourself means that you need to consider that anyone in your company needs to be expendable or at least go on vacation. So, we implemented a process of documenting everything you do share it with everyone and train at least one person to take over so anyone can go on vacation or heaven forbid be sick and unreachable. That has been one of our major tasks until finally I WAS ABLE TO LEAVE FOR A WEEK without touching my laptop or phone!
GUESS WHAT!! I grew a little, my team grew a lot, and I came home really happy and thanking everyone!
VACATION IS FOR HEROES weak people stay home and don’t trust their team!!
