Vacation might be the ticket to working smarter
By Alexa Divett
If you want to be a successful cannabis entrepreneur, you might want to take a vacation.
Take a what?
You might be thinking, “Wait, you can’t be serious!”
Oh, but I am. I recently came across an article about a study that the Harvard Business Review published back in 2009 titled “Making time off predictable — and required,” and it reminded me about the old saying, “work smarter, not harder.” It also got me thinking about how we are likely suppressing our creativity and visionary leadership when we are constantly plugged in, bouncing from one email to the next without any real connection or thought.
The study found that “when the assumption that everyone needs to be always available was collectively challenged, not only could individuals take time off, but their work actually benefited. Our experiments with time off resulted in more open dialogue among team members, which is valuable in itself. But the improved communication also sparked new processes that enhanced the teams’ ability to work efficiently and effectively.”
I strongly believe that another important theme at play here is the concept of leverage and literally working smarter, not harder. Many of us have heard of the concept of the four-hour workweek but we’re not exactly sure how to achieve it. Likewise as business owners, we are doing our companies a greater service when we focus on the so-called $1,000-an-hour jobs as opposed to the busy work that keeps us numb and stuck in the hamster wheel.
One example of leverage that I am working on in my own business is moving my consulting and coaching clients to a group setting. Instead of filling my calendar with back-to-back appointments that frankly make me feel like that hamster, I serve my clients in a group. Not only have I been able to scale up my business by accepting more clients than I could normally serve on a one-on-one basis, I have also been able to take the extra time to build a bigger and better marketing curriculum and deliver way more value than I could when I was a slave to the clock.
Additionally, my clients are now able to use what I love to call the “cannabusiness spirit of collaboration” to work with each other to create a road map for this brand new industry.
Of course if I had a client who adamantly opposed the group coaching setting, I wouldn’t turn him or her away.
I think most importantly I am learning that when I challenge my own assumptions about how things should be done, I wind up doing my best work while enjoying life.
It’s a radical concept, I know.
Sometimes as business owners, especially in a start-up industry like cannabis, we are so busy doing what we think we should do that we never stop to ask ourselves, “Is this really what I want to do? Is this really my highest calling and the best work for the future of my business?”
So as winter nears, I invite everybody to think about ways we can create leverage within our own businesses and carve out some much needed downtime with no phone, no computer and no social media.
If the Harvard Business Review is correct — and it usually is — we will all see greater success after a much needed vacation.
Alexa Divett is the co-founder and marketing director of Maya Media Collective (www.mayamc.com), an Oregon-based marketing and design firm that specializes in the cannabis industry.