86: Strategic Vacations - Reducing Relationship Risk in Your Business Plan

Welcome back to Make More Love. I'm your host, Ellen Dorian. This show looks at the connection between relationships and business ownership, especially for men who want straight talk, useful frameworks, and practical ways to solve relationship problems. If this is your first time here, hit follow or subscribe so you don't miss anything. Now let's get into it. It's vacation time again. I set a standard of four vacations per year. I believe it's a crucial aspect to staying on top of everything that I have going on in my life. I went back to Greece to attend an ancestral nutrition and wellness retreat. It was my second time at this retreat, and I'm really happy that I decided to return. It was held at a gorgeous stone villa overlooking the sea, and it was a small group of only 12 people. It's full immersion, so it's designed to really pull us away from everything that consumes us in our daily lives. That's a huge ask for any entrepreneur, and it was a huge ask for me, but it has been invaluable I'm gonna share more about the retreat in the next episode, but today I want to talk about the ROI of time away, because I know some of you believe vacations just lead to more work when you get back. And there's some truth to that, but it's just not the whole picture. So let's look at why strategic vacations are important. Honestly, it's been a complicated year so far for me. Some challenges in my personal life have taken way more of my time and attention than is healthy for me or my business. I've dropped a few balls, and I've missed a few opportunities. So this trip was an opportunity to reset. I needed a little elbow room to consider what I want next year to look like. It goes beyond strategic planning. It's more like possibility planning. I think a lot of business owners, if they do any strategic planning at all, only start thinking about it around November or even later than that. The problem with that is, by that time of the year, they're knee-deep in holidays, year-end deadlines, closing business, budgeting, staffing issues, vacations, and everything else that piles up. As a result, they usually end up with a shitty plan that they never look at once they're back from New Year's Eve parties, and that's because the plan doesn't focus on the right things. Here's an example of what I really hate about strategic planning. typically, unless you work with a facilitator of some kind, or a coach, or an expert, you're gonna end up doing it wrong. A lot of people start every strategic plan with a SWOT analysis. It's what they teach you in business school and in almost all of the books. But Here's how that usually goes. You start out the strategic planning looking at strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, right? You know those. So first is strengths. Well, you gloss right over those. After all, you don't need to fix what's not broken, right? Then you go on to weaknesses, and you obsess over those, poring over everything that went wrong in gory detail until the strategic plan becomes your "correct your mistakes" plan. This type of analysis is often referred to as an autopsy, which in my opinion is an unfortunate analogy. And by the time you've dissected all of the mistakes, it's late in the afternoon, you're feeling dejected and a bit pissed off, both at yourself and everyone else, so you all decide it's time to quit for the day. You go out and grab a few beers with the team to shake off all the negativity that's built up, and that is where you end up debating all the potential threats to the business. Now some of you might be saying, "Hey, Ellen, you skipped opportunities." And yeah, I did, and so do a lot of you when you're doing strategic planning this way. And there's a reason for that. By definition, an opportunity is something you could do that you're not doing right now. So if you wanna see opportunities, you have to look beyond all the stuff you're already doing. You have to question your assumptions. You need distance from the daily work to see options that are not obvious when you're buried in operations, and all of that requires a clear head. And I don't know about you, but the only way my head ever gets cleared is when I'm immersed in something that's not the business. That's when I get clarity and when new ideas are allowed to come into my brain And something else is also true. While many leaders understand the necessity of planning for their business, almost nobody sees how important it can be for their relationship. Maybe you've had the thought that you don't want your relationship to keep going the way it is. But how much have you really thought about how you want your relationship to look next year, for instance? It's not always easy to see past the current situation and you might even be afraid to want something different. That's actually an important piece of the work that I do with my clients. And really there's no harm in thinking about making your relationship better even if it's okay now, even if it's great now. There's never any harm in thinking about what could make your relationship better. So in the next segment, I'm gonna give you an easy step-by-step process to get started that's going to help you with both your business and your relationship. And then if you could use some more ideas, I'll let you know what you can do next. If you wanna follow along, grab some paper and a pen and get ready, and we'll walk through it together. Okay, here we go. The first step is to start now. Don't wait until the end of the year is looming And we're gonna start by looking at the big picture before you solidify anything. We're not setting any goals yet. We're just looking for possibilities and opportunities. So take out your piece of paper and draw a line vertically down the middle. Write "Business" on one side and "Relationship" on the other. And now you're gonna answer these questions for both. You may wanna pause the episode while you answer these questions. Just do that, and then restart it when you're ready for the next question. Okay, here's number one: What would I want this to look like a year from now if I weren't constrained by how it looks today? Do that for both the business and the relationship Question number two: what would I stop doing if I weren't already invested in it? Number three: what are one or two things I know I could be doing that I'm currently not doing? Everyone has a couple of these. Number four: regardless of whether you've acted on them or not, what opportunities have shown up over the past year that weren't obvious a year ago? And number five is: what assumptions am I glossing over that I probably should be questioning? Okay, so those are the five questions. Make sure you take the time to think about those and write them down both for your business and your relationship. And when you're ready, we'll go on to the next part. Okay. The next part is where the big money is. If you've heard me talk about work-life integration before, well, folks, this is how we do that. Almost nobody looks at both their business plan and their relationship plan to uncover patterns and dependencies and conflicts between them. So let's do that now. Take a few minutes and just look at both sides of the paper. Do you see any patterns? What do your business and relationship have in common? Next, let's look at dependencies. Where does what you want on one side have a direct or indirect impact on the other side? Now let's move on to conflict. Is there anything on either side that would make the other side very difficult or impossible to do? The last thing is what resources are both sides competing for? I will give you a hint. It's likely going to be you-- your time, and your attention. Once you've worked through all of that, then if you wanna go to the next level, then you're gonna wanna share this with your partner. Here's an example of a line that you could use: "I've been thinking about next year, and I wanna do a better job of being present for both the business and our relationship. I wrote a few things down. Would you be willing to go through it together?" This is the exercise. If you followed along, that's great. If you could use some help, that's what I'm here for. You can set up a free Relationship Reset Call with me and we'll work on your plan together. Just go to relationshipresetcall.com and pick a time to chat. It's free, it's private, it's quick, and at the end of it, you'll have a clear idea what your next step should be. Now, before we wrap up, here are three key points I hope you'll take away from today's episode. First, start thinking about next year before the end of year frenzy hits. Second, don't just look at what needs fixing. Give yourself time and space to imagine possibilities and identify potential opportunities. And third, don't plan your business and your relationships separately. Put them next to each other and look at how they affect each other. For me, that was a big part of what my trip was about, having space to think about what I want next year to look like before I start making decisions about how to get there. Now, you don't have to go to Greece to do that, although I highly, highly recommend it, but you do need to make both time and head space for it Because if you don't decide what you want your next year to look like, there's a pretty damn good chance it's gonna look a lot like this year. So what about you? What do you imagine the next year could bring for you, both in your business and your relationship? Are you excited by the prospect? I hope you are. I certainly am. I can't wait till next time when I'm going to give you all the details about what happened at the retreat and why it was so amazing. Alright. I hope today's episode got you thinking, but there's really only so much we can do in an open forum like this. If you wanna look at your specific situation, go to relationshipresetcall.com and book a time to talk with me. It's free, it's quick and it's private. We'll figure out the next best move for you and get you on track. And if you know someone who's struggling in their relationship, please pass this episode along. I've also included links to additional resources in the show notes so you can keep building on your relationship skills. I believe you had good reasons for choosing your partner. My mission is to help you reconnect with those reasons and discover new ways to Make More Love with your wife and in your life. I'm Ellen Dorian, and that's what I've got for you today.