Norm Brodsky wrote his monthly editorial in Inc Magazine this month with a title, “Get lost: Taking more vacations increased the value of my company. How cool is that?”
…Now, I will admit that I haven’t always been as strong a believer in the importance of taking time off as I am today. For eight or nine years after starting my first business, I took breaks only when my wife, Elaine, forced me to. She would go to Florida, where we had a second home, and I would join her on the weekend — maybe. If the technology had been available, I would probably have been one of those poor souls sitting on the beach with a BlackBerry in one hand, a cell phone in the other, and a computer on my lap. Or I would have been doing deals while riding a ski lift up the side of a mountain. It took a long and painful trip through Chapter 11 to make me realize the dangers of becoming consumed by the business. Looking back, I could see that I had gotten in trouble in part because I had lost perspective. My business obsession had clouded my judgment and kept me from asking important questions about what I was doing and where I was going…
A couple of salient points from the article worth taking note of:
- He’s been more successful the more vacation he took
- It took a chapter 11 to help him realize the dangers or being consumed by his business
- The business ran just as smooth (or smoother) when he was gone
- Not taking vacations is dumb
- Your business needs to up and running, cash-flowing, and largely succeeding before you can start vacationing aggresively
Anyways, it’s an article worth checking out. Find it here…
