The Laptop Free Lifestyle
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[00:00:00] Just because you can work from anywhere doesn't mean that you should work from anywhere. Let's debunk the myth of the laptop lifestyle. You have probably already heard of the laptop lifestyle, the entrepreneur who can work from anywhere around the world. You've probably seen the Instagram posts, the pictures of the entrepreneur on the beach with their laptop, or better yet working from their phone.
Why are we encouraging this behavior? That is not the dream. The dream should not be to be working in the most beautiful locations of the world. The dream should be to have a business that supports you. So that you can enjoy being in these beautiful spaces. So, And not have to think about work for an extended period of time.
That should be the [00:01:00] goal. Not bringing work with us to the beach. Work does not belong on the beach. The biggest culprits that I see of this comes from the MLM world, the multi-level marketing world, direct sales, social selling, whatever you wanna call it. They promote this image of the laptop lifestyle.
The boss babes out on the beach running their business, making money. While their family's on vacation. I, to me that is insane. First of all, have you ever tried to work on the beach? Have you ever brought your laptop to the beach? Do you know how that works? Not very well. Sand gets everywhere, and I'm not just talking about in your bathing suit, bottoms, sand gets into that keyboard and you don't want sand in your keyboard.
Plus, if you have tried to use your laptop and read that screen while the sun is shining down, good luck. So now you need to find [00:02:00] some kind of shelter. Rent a cabana, set up an umbrella, something to shield the sun from your screen. This doesn't work, and I don't know about you, but my phone overheats very quickly in the sun.
I'm sure my laptop does too. I just stopped taking it out there. But these devices, they overheat and then they can't work anymore. So then you're stuck with going back into the hotel or into the resort, finding some air conditioning or finding a cafe that you can sit and work at. Why? Why are we doing this?
This should not be encouraged. This is not a good goal. This idea of the laptop lifestyle is encouraging people to walk down, not even walk to sprint, down a path to burnout. So yes, can you work from anywhere? Sure, many of us can, but you shouldn't work from anywhere. Now, here's the exception. The [00:03:00] exception I'm gonna say is if you're planning to travel like year round, if you wanna live a nomad lifestyle where it's not that you're on vacation all the time, you are literally just living out on the road, then by all means, yes, you are going to need to take work with you and work in some of these locations.
But please, please, when it's time to lounge on the beach, Take the time to rest and relax on the beach. Bring a book to read, meditate, nap. Enjoy watching the waves. Engage with your family, with your friends. But don't bring work to beach please. I have just come back for my own little mini break at the beach.
We stayed at my sister-in-law's vacation home. It's beautiful. It's right on the water, and enjoyed some downtime. Now, I brought my laptop only [00:04:00] because I thought I might wanna stream some Netflix on it, but I didn't. I didn't open it. I didn't even take it outta the bag. I didn't even look at it, and it was glorious.
Did I use my phone? Yes, but only to take pictures of my dogs swimming and playing and of the scenery around us. And even then, I posted far less than I normally do because I was enjoying the break and anything I posted was either pre-scheduled before the break or I was just showing what we were doing and just posting lifestyle content.
And I. The benefit of all of this is that coming home, I am full of ideas. I'm rested, I'm recharged. I feel rejuvenated, and I came home with so much energy and so much creativity. It's like overflowing and bursting out of me right now. I wouldn't have that if I didn't take the time to shut down a recharge.
We need to take breaks. And as entrepreneurs [00:05:00] often we struggle to take a break because we think, well, what will happen to my business? Or if I take time off, I'm not making any money. And if that is the case, then there are fundamental flaws in your business. If you are thinking of your business as. Being bigger than just you.
If you are adopting that CEO mindset that we talked about a few episodes ago, which I can link for you in the show notes to make it easy to find, if you are adopting that CEO mindset, then you need to have systems and strategies in place so that your business can run without you, and maybe that means you have content created and scheduled to go out when you're not there.
Maybe for you. That is having courses and online programs that you can sell and you have sales systems set up in place so that you are still generating revenue while you are lounging on the beach. Laptop free. [00:06:00] How about that? Let's promote the laptop free lifestyle instead of the laptop lifestyle. We're gonna do that from now on the laptop Free lifestyle.
I like that. I think we should make t-shirts of that. Maybe not. I don't know if I would even wear that. Anyway, we need this time to shut down, to recover, to relax, to rest our brains. A corporation. I mean, they'd probably like some corporations, let's be real. Would probably love it if their people never took time off and just worked every day of the year without a break.
They'd probably love that. Uh, but the reality is that really good corporations see the benefit of having their people take their vacation days. In fact, a lot of companies now will not let you roll over your vacation days because they want you to use them within that year because they know they will get the most productivity out of their employees if they take their time off.
[00:07:00] And it goes the same for us entrepreneurs. So if you can't, let's talk about this. If you can't take time off in your business, Maybe it's time to reevaluate how you're doing your business. Where can you either set up opportunities to generate income while you're not working, while you're off through courses, through affiliates, through, you know, where, where can you find those opportunities to make some money?
Uh, or how can you leverage your time differently so that you can take time off and still have money? So, for example, if you are coaching and let's say. You're a coach and you don't want to have courses and you don't wanna do, um, you know, you wanna be hands-on with all of your clients. Maybe you love the one-to-one model.
And so you can only make money while you are working with clients. You are trading your time for dollars. Not a model I love personally, but there are people who do love it. So maybe that's you [00:08:00] and, and you need to have that connection that. That touch with the client, and so maybe you're thinking, well, when I take time off, I don't make any money.
But how can you organize your schedule that maybe, maybe you work three weeks outta the month and you take one week off and you don't have clients. Then could you do that? Could you create some products that support your clients? It's for your time off so that when you are off, your clients still have something to keep them engaged and something to work on, but you're not there.
Can you work with other service providers that can take care of your clients and you trade? So when you are off, they take care of your clients and when they're off, you take care of their clients. I know for example, some mortgage brokers who do that, they cover each other on their vacation so that they don't have to bring the laptop.
They don't have to worry about their clients. The other mortgage broker's gonna deal with it. And they're not even in business together. They're not business [00:09:00] partners. They just do this as, as friends and colleagues to support each other. And then they're still making commission off of any deals that closed during that time.
What a great idea and a great way to support each other. So can you do something like that in your business? Can you readjust your hours maybe over the summer so that you see all of your clients on specific days? And maybe those are busier days, but then you have a four day weekend every weekend.
Wouldn't that be great? Would, how would that be? Think about that for a moment. If you could take a four day weekend every week, what would that be like? When I was in personal training, after I had started boarding out, which. I won't go into that story completely on this episode. Uh, but I burnt out the, the Cole's Notes version of that story was I was trading time for money.
This is why I don't like this model. I was trading my time for money, and if I wanted to make more money, I had to train more clients. And so I was working 12, [00:10:00] 14 hour days every day, six days a week. Sometimes I take a client on a Sunday too, because I think, well, it's just one hour and. I burnt out. I was, I mean, first of all, I was sick all the time, so I kept having to cancel appointments cuz I kept getting sick because I was overworking.
It was lunacy, it doesn't work. And then when I started to smarten up, I cut my hours way back, way, way back. And you know, I shouldn't say I smartened up. It was when my doctor said to me, you need to stop this. You are burnt out, so you need to stop working how you're working. And she said you work three days a week.
You work four hours in each of those days. That's it. So I was forced to smarten enough and suddenly I had free time. I had time to rest. I had time to play. I had time to have fun. And then I really started to enjoy my clients again. The clients who I was working with at the time. I really started to enjoy the obsessions.
I became a better trainer again. I wasn't canceling all the time [00:11:00] because I was. Chronically Ill. So look at ways you can restructure your business. If you're finding that you cannot take time off and you love that one-to-one model, how can you restructure it so that you are getting time off? Maybe you need to charge more per session so that you can still meet the income that you need to make or that you want to make and still take time off.
But that aside, let's say that you're not married to the 1 0 1 model, that you are looking at ways that you can generate income that doesn't require your direct involvement. So, courses, books, what else can you sell? Products, affiliate programs where you market other people's stuff and you get money for it.
So think about all the ways, and I would challenge you to spend some time brainstorming all the ways that you can make money where you're generating revenue while you're on vacation. [00:12:00] Setting up sales systems that maybe I. Your courses or your group coaching programs or whatever they are, continue to be filled up while you are away because you have a sales system.
I know so many small business owners who have no sales system, no funnel, no marketing strategy. They just wing it every single time, which is a lot of work. I mean, you could do it, but it's a lot of work every time. Why not set yourself up with a really clear sales system that's still working for you while you are on holidays?
Because the benefit of all of this, oh, and by the way, cuz I can hear it now. I can hear it cuz I've heard it so many times business owners say to me, but Terry, I love what I do and I love my clients and I wanna take care of them. I don't really need a break. I would love for them to be able to message me or, or they say, I only work two hours a day while I'm on vacation and that's it.
And then I close the laptop and I'm done. [00:13:00] But the energy that it takes from you to spend that two hours working. And then to switch off that part of your brain and go into rest and play and relaxation mode. It's a, it's a big transition. I don't know many people who can just open the laptop, respond to a few emails, do a little work, close it, and then not think of business for the rest of that day.
Because once you're in that mindset, you're in it so that now when you're out with your family and you're on the beach, you're doing fun things, you're hiking a mountain, whatever you're doing, your mind is still thinking about that email from that client that you read that morning, or you're thinking about that opportunity that showed up in your inbox, or you're thinking about how your sales just took a dive, or the new client who just signed up with you, or the consultation request and oh my goodness, should I book that consultation while I'm away because.
What if they don't wanna wait till I'm home? [00:14:00] So you don't want your mind to be working just like, so. It's not just about the physical act of sitting down and working. It's also all the stuff that goes on in the mind. Your brain needs a break. You need to relax that part of you, you need to be able to shut down completely to stop all work, to leave it behind so that you can fully rest and recover.
Because if you don't, this is a recipe. This is a, a straight path to burnout, to exhaustion, and then you are useless to everyone. And I'm speaking as someone who has experienced true burnout, and I mean, Uh, like I'm not talk, when I talk about my burnout, it wasn't just that I was tired. Burnout is not being tired.
Burnout is, you cannot recover mentally or physically. So my body was shutting down. My adrenal glands were hardly producing any cortisol. And when my doctor read my lab results and saw how little cortisol I [00:15:00] had, she said, how do you get out of bed in the morning? And my answer was, some days I just don't.
That's what happens when we continually push and push and push and we don't take time off. The other part of this is about setting boundaries. That if you are always available to your clients, they will expect you to always be available. So here's where we need to have tools in place like an out of office autoresponder on email to say, Hey, I'm not here.
I'm on vacation. Uh, this is when you can expect to hear back from me. I won't be checking my email during this time. Now they know, and you know that you probably have access to your email if you wanted to, but set the expectation that you will not be checking it. I'm a big fan of funny out of office emails because you know, people gotta read this, so why not make it a little funny and entertaining?
And I'll often say something like, we both know that I'll have access to my email, but I'm not going to be [00:16:00] looking at it. So do like, let them know. Do that. Let them know what to expect from you and they will respect your boundaries a lot more. But if you are always available, they will expect for you to always be available.
And then let's say, and you know, let's hope this doesn't happen, knock on wood. But let's say then you do get sick because now you're so run down and exhausted, you do fall ill, they're still gonna expect you to respond to their texts, to their emails, to reply in a certain amount of time. So if you set those expectations of this is when I will respond to you, I will not be checking my email, and you set those clear expectations, you communicate this with your clients clearly.
Then if the worst happens and you got sick, they are more likely to respect that you are ill and to know that you will not be available for that period of time. But on the flip side, if you take your [00:17:00] breaks, you take time off and you allow yourself to fully recharge and you leave work behind, well, you're less likely to get sick.
Funny how that works, right? When we don't give our bodies the chance to heal and recover, our bodies will take it and it comes in the form of illness. I've seen that happen in my life. I had to learn that lesson the hard way, like I said, and it was a lesson that I kept getting and kept getting and kept getting, but I wasn't learning it.
I wasn't actually changing anything. Now, I mean, I've talked about my autoimmune issues that I've been dealing with, but aside from that, I haven't had a virus, a cold for quite a while now. I don't remember the last one actually. Uh, because I'm actually, I take time off. I've slowed down, and I'm gonna guess from what I know of my audience and what kind of businesses a lot of you do, from those of you who have reached out, who I've communicated with over the years, [00:18:00] it's, it's not rocket science.
None of us are doing anything that's life or death where people can't wait. They, they can wait. They can wait until you get back into your office to reply. Now. That's the other thing is that when you are setting expectations about communication while you're away, also tell them when they can expect to hear back from you and don't make it day one.
And this is something I've learned from Amanda Udin. I've mentioned her before. She's been on the show before. Amanda Putin is a brilliant business strategist, and something I learned from her is do not tell them you'll respond to their emails or their messages the day you get back because you're, you need time.
You need time to switch back from vacation mode into working mode. So say that you'll respond that week, the week of not the day of. So that that way they know that during that week you will respond to them, but they're not [00:19:00] expecting a response day one. I think that is the fastest way, in my opinion. The fastest way to undo all of your good rest and relaxation is to come back to work.
Sit down at your desk, see 300 emails in your inbox that need responding to and to start responding. I mean, to me, there's nothing worse than sitting down and responding to countless emails. So if you want to be more productive when you get back, give yourself time to get all that done. Set realistic expectations.
Set manageable expectations that are also into manage your energy because there's no point on taking this great vacation. And by the way, when I say vacation, I'm including staycations. You have the right to take time off and not go anywhere. Just because you're not leaving town doesn't mean that you don't need time off.
So consider that too. But there is, you know, [00:20:00] what is the point of taking that time if you're gonna come back to work after. And immediately be thrown into overwhelm and exhaustion right away because you're answering countless emails and texts and phone calls. That's ridiculous. So set that expectation that you'll respond to the week of and give yourself a week to go through them.
Now, taking a break also isn't dependent on how long you've been in business, whether you just started your business yesterday or you've been in business for 10 years or. Two months, it doesn't matter. You still need to take breaks and take time off. And I believe it was Jim Rohn who said something along the lines of when it's time to work, work, when it's time to rest, rest, and don't mix the two.
I'm paraphrasing, I don't have the quote in front of me, but something to that effect of, you know, when it's time to work. Work. So this idea of taking breaks and vacation. Also needs to not become an [00:21:00] excuse for not working because when it is time to work, you better be working. You gotta work. And when it's time to rest, you rest.
You take the break, you take your breaks as needed, schedule them. I remember when I was an employee looking forward to like, oh, I go on vacation in three weeks, in two weeks, in one week. Oh, tomorrow's vacation day. And I never thought. Oh man, I should take my phone with me. I should be working. I mean, I worked service jobs.
It was impossible, right? Like if I was working in a restaurant, it's not like I could wait tables remotely. That doesn't work. So, but I would look forward to those those times and it would give me something to work towards. Schedule out your breaks. Don't expect that you can just, you know, fit it in around your clients because.
I don't know about you, but I know for me, I will just keep filling my time unless I have time clearly marked off. I'll just keep booking [00:22:00] things and filling it in. I have to tell my husband this, that we need to schedule in advance because I will just keep booking things and then we'll run out of time.
So schedule it out. Sit down and schedule your break. Schedule your holidays, months in advance, even a year in advance, and give yourself that opportunity. It also gives you something to look forward to. And then financially you can plan for it. You can set up your sales funnels, you can plan, so you have revenue coming in while you're away, and you can plan to have your schedule filled up when you get home, as full as you want it to be.
So I hope this helps. If any of you are listening and you've been having some guilt about taking time off or you've been striving towards the laptop lifestyle and thinking it doesn't matter, I can go to Disneyland with my family. I'll just bring my laptop and when my kids are. Playing on these amazing rides, I'll just be sitting on the bench working away.
If you've been thinking that, stop, this is the laptop [00:23:00] free lifestyle. We're not playing that game anymore. We're not doing it. Even for those of you in MLMs, stop playing that game. It's time to change your industry. It's time to change how we think about business and entrepreneurship. If you wouldn't allow it in a job, do not allow it of yourself.
Don't allow it of yourself. Put yourself in that CEO role. You are more important than that extra sale, that little extra money you are. More important than that, your health is more important to your mental wellbeing is more important. You need to take those times off. So if you haven't already scheduled yourself time this summer.
Okay, then I challenge you and I encourage you after this episode, you open up your calendar and you block off some time, even if it's some four day weekends or three day weekends here and there. Even if you know, you have to piece it together like that for now, because maybe you've already filled things up in your calendar, [00:24:00] but take your breaks and then schedule yourself a proper break as soon as you can put it on the calendar.
So thanks so much for listening today. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Please, please, please share it with a friend who you think would benefit, who needs to hear this, who needs to take some time off. And if you haven't already left a five star review on Apple, I would love to see one. If you write me a new five star review between now and July 10th, I will send you a gift.
Thanks so much for listening. Hope you enjoyed this show, and I will be back again next week. Bye for now.
