Do You ever feel like you just work the entire year and miss out on your family and all the fun stuff that normal people have who aren't entrepreneurs?
Well, I used to feel that way until I figured something out that I'm going to share with you in this video that I do every year with my wife. So watch today's video if you're an entrepreneur or small business owner and you want to have a more enjoyable balanced life with your work this year.
Last weekend I went down to Denver with my wife Kara and we stayed in a really nice hotel using the reward miles from my business credit card and that was a really fun way to celebrate. We went shopping and had some delicious dinner and just hung out together in a way that we haven't in a long time because we have kids. So we got away for the weekend. It was awesome. And then we got to work on Sunday. And what we did was we planned out the whole year. We did this last year where we put all of our family vacations in our Google calendar and also a print calendar.
Put Your Vacation Time In The Calendar NOW
And that was helpful. We outlined some of the things that we wanted to really work on as a family and how that related to my business travel, which is something that I didn't really communicate as well in the past. So we put all that in the calendar. And a couple of weeks ago we worked with my coach Wayne Herring on a full day planning and got a lot of the big vision stuff in mind of where are we heading and what we want. And then we brought that down into the calendar. And when we did this, in 2019, it really helped us actually go on vacation because I actually didn't do that for like nine years, which is really lame because I didn't put it in the calendar, which was something I learned from Paul Winans, who's a consultant in the remodeling industry.
How One High End Remodeler Created An Incredible Lifestyle Business
A couple of years ago I wrote a keynote presentation for Stephen Gordon from InSite Builders & Remodeling, which is one of the most profitable remodeling companies, in Remodelers Advantage, which is a really incredible organization that has a conference called Remodeler’s Summit. And they invited him to speak about how did he do it? And I got to meet Stephen and his wife, Mary, who are just wonderful people and their son-in-law Chris, and interview them about how they operate. And part of what really stuck with me, being the writer of Stephen's presentation was wow, he and his wife are just thrilled with each other and they figured out how to have this awesome lifestyle as a result of their business, which was something that was really lacking for me at the time. And so that inspired me to actually take the time, go on vacation, do all those things. So thank you Stephen and Mary for inspiring us.
Design Your Annual Plan Around The Seasonality Of Your Industry
The other thing that we did was we designed the Ramblin Jackson calendar to be the inverse of the landscape industry. So we serve the landscape industry with digital marketing and there's a fair amount of seasonality just based on the seasons in the year, the weather, things like that. And we have clients all over the country, but generally there's a busy spring and summer. And then our clients are really, you know, interested in working with us in the fall and winter to get ready for spring. So what we're doing this year is we're actually doing a four day work week at Ramblin Jackson during the summer season. And this doesn't mean that we're not going to work hard the whole week. It just means that we're going to have a four day week during that period because the winter and fall is really full for us. Right? I know some landscape companies do something similar.
A Tip From Dan Kennedy About Lifestyle Mindset for Entrepreneurs
So we were doing the inverse of that - pretty excited to try that out. One of the people that I read a lot is Dan Kennedy. Dan Kennedy has a book, No BS Guide To Time Management. And he talks about how as an entrepreneur, you really should be designing your business around your lifestyle. And I didn't used to do that. I just kinda had a job. But why? Why would you have all the risk of your business of employing people and buying vehicles and equipment and, the stress of having employees and finding them and recruiting them and training them and retaining them and firing them when you need to. Right? It's extremely stressful. So your lifestyle should be awesome, right? As a result of that and you deserve it. So that's the mindset that we had that we started to take last year.
How One Landscaper Slays It at Work AND Coaches His Kids’ Football Team
And it really made the business more fun and our family life more enjoyable. Another client who really inspired me to do this was Jake Harris from Jake's Designs. Jake runs an incredible design build firm down in Colorado Springs, Colorado. What's cool about Jake is that his boys play football and he coaches them. And during that season, during that time of the year, he's working like 30 hours a week and spending that extra time with his family. And I'm like, wow, that's really cool. And it's during the time of year when he can and should go and do that. Right? So I've really worked to design my schedule to do similar things with my family while still having those times of year where I expect to work a lot more. So, thanks Jake for sharing that tip. I love learning about how my clients create their businesses and lifestyles and balance all this stuff.
What If Your Sales And Marketing Created More Freedom For You?
One of the things that can create a lot of freedom for you to enjoy this kind of time is to have a sales and marketing system that works without you, the owner, doing everything yourself. So that's something that I help businesses with. We create online marketing systems and sales processes that allow you to get appointments booked online by the right customers even when you're not there. Maybe you need to go and do the final bid or the estimate or whatever your staff looks like. But the point is you get a lot of leverage when you're not just waiting for referrals, but you have other marketing channels proactively bringing in the right business. So if you want to learn more about that, we offer a Marketing Strategy Meeting, which you can schedule anytime at MeetJackNow.com. You can pick a time on our calendar, we'll call you at exactly that time and learn more about you and what are your goals, what are you doing, and see how we can help. So go ahead and book a call at MeetJackNow.com.
Thanks,
Jack Jostes
CEO
Ramblin Jackson