This Treasure Tuesday is about vacation and an important “Litmus test”: How long can you be out of touch with your team without problems? Let us answer this vacation-inspired question today.
When was the last time you went on a real vacation? A vacation where you didn’t work at all? Nothing, zero, zilch.
If it’s been a while, I understand.
If you watched last week’s Treasure Tuesday, you saw that I was on my way to a cruise ship departing from Galveston, TX. I was going on a Caribbean cruise with girlfriends. It was fantastic. I loved it and had a great time. We did many activities; we saw production shows and comedy shows, went on land excursions, and enjoyed the beach, parasailing, rock climbing, and ATVing in the jungle… we did all kinds of cool things.
Recently somebody asked me ”Why do you do this work with Brilliance Mining™”, which is about getting stuff out of your head and putting it into other people’s heads. On a personal level, why do you do that?
Where My Motivation Comes From
I thought about it, and as I dug deeper into it, it goes back to my childhood. My mom was very passionate about her work as a teacher. She took many tough steps to get there because she had my sister (my sister is two years younger than me) and me when she was pretty young. She interrupted her studies to have me at age 22. We were planned, yes, but she decided to interrupt her studies to have us. She picked them up later on. Picking them up later was harder. She was very passionate about being a teacher. Her passion inspired me.
My dad was a teacher, too. He didn’t love it nearly as much. He always told me that there are other important things in life, too, such as family, hobbies and friends, and lots of things. He talked to me about meditation and yoga and all kinds of things.
Out of that, I got this drive that we ought to be able to be very successful. My definition of success goes beyond how much money flows into my bank account. That’s nice and important, of course, but what’s even more important is the impact that we create. The people I want to talk to are those like you, for whom that matters, too, i.e., you desire to create an impact. It’s not just about money, but there’s a mission, a deeper purpose behind what we do. We want that to be big. We want that to have as wide an impact as possible and reach as many people as possible.
On the other hand, if you say that that’s the cake, we’d like to have the time to eat it, which means we want to enjoy other aspects of our life. As I said, that’s family, having time for spirituality, whatever that looks like for you, being with friends, pursuing hobbies, and so forth.
You Can Do It!
You can do that.
You can only do that by scaling the business over time, making it independent of you. The business or mission can live on when you make the business independent of you. That is one important thing. But before then, scaling your business is important. Luckily, you have to do the same things to a) scale a business and b) make it independent of you in the long run.
For both goals (scaling and “immortality”), you have to do the same thing: Get stuff out of your head and put it in the heads of others.
As we do that, we must do more than mentor and put people under our wing. That method used to work when people worked with the same company for many years. But that’s not happening anymore. Even then, it was risky because people dropped off for one reason or another, But nowadays, it doesn’t work.
I’m a recovering chemist. I have a Ph.D. in chemistry. I worked as a scientist for quite a few years, more than a decade. That was my first career.
The Litmus Test: How Well Are You Doing With Making Your Business Scalable and Independent Of You?
There’s one thing called the litmus test. A litmus test is a little strip of paper that’s got some chemicals on it. You dip it into a solution, and then you pull it out. Depending on the color, the solution is either basic or acidic. You can tell which it is. The litmus test for how well you are doing with making your business scalable and independent of you, in the long run, is how long you can go on vacation or be away.
How long can you be out of touch with your team?
How worried are you? How much work do you have sitting on your desk when you return? Those are all little strips of litmus tests.
- Because they tell you, what do you have to do?
- Are you there?
- Are you halfway there?
- Can you get away for a week and not be worried?
- Can you get away for two weeks or three months?
- What can it look like?
That is my question for you today. If you’d like to drop me a line, I would love it.
I will close by showing you a few pictures of my fantastic vacation. Enjoy!
Dr. Stephie
P.S.: I appreciate you commenting and sharing this with others. Thank you!
