If You Want To Build A Million-Dollar Business, Take More Vacations

Most successful entrepreneurs I know work way too hard.

Many people avoid saying this since it’s a lot easier to work too little than to work too much, but it’s true. Most of the entrepreneurs I know spend far too much time working. They are like high-intensity perpetual motion machines, always trying to do more, more, more for their business.

But their hard work doesn’t seem to get them anywhere.

Despite pulling 12-hour days for weeks, months, or years on end, they struggle to bring in new business. They struggle to keep up with what consumers want in the marketplace. They struggle to attract top talent. Despite all their hard work, they stay stuck in place.

Worse yet, they know they’re stuck. They know their business isn’t getting anywhere — but everyone says that when your business is stuck, what you should do is work harder — so harder they work.

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.”

 — Al-Anon Community

Instead of working harder, they should take a vacation

Instead of putting in 16 hour days, they should book a flight somewhere. Anywhere. Just as long as they’re forced to take a freaking break.

Why? Because taking a vacation is good for your emotional health, your productivity, and your bottom line:

Relaxed people are more creative

The ability to be an entrepreneur is the ability to identify market gaps, create new products to fill those gaps, and market those products to customers. That takes creativity — and one of the best ways you can stimulate your creativity is to relax.

Psychologists are still fiercely debating what exactly causes creativity, but we know that creativity requires mental attitudes like…

• Openness to new experiences
• An abundance mindset
• A belief that there is more to be discovered

People who aren’t relaxed don’t have these attitudes. They don’t feel the world is an abundant and wonderful place. They aren’t open to new experiences. They aren’t interested in discovering more. Of course they aren’t. They’re burnt out. And they’re going to stay burnt out until they take some time off.

People who don’t take time off don’t get enough sleep

One of our most basic biological needs is the need for sleep. We need eight hours of sleep a night, every night, or we will suffer. Period.

People who don’t get that eight hours of sleep suffer fun health problems such as trouble with thinking and concentration, memory issues, mood instability, high blood pressure, weight gain, an increased risk of heart disease, and more.

Anyone who is suffering from poor concentration, memory problems, mood instability, or any other avoidable health problem is going to have that much harder a time building a million-dollar business.

What does this have to do with vacations? Well, vacations provide an amazing opportunity for people to catch up on their sleep. Even a simple staycation at home can do wonders for helping your body recover from sleep deprivation. (Not that anyone is interested in a staycation right now, of course, but we make do with what we’ve got).

Well-traveled people have more imaginative minds

Anyone who grew up in and subsequently left a small rural town knows that people who don’t travel far from home don’t grow much as people.

What causes this is a limited amount of different experiences. Instead of getting exposed to different people, different ideas, and different ways of life, people who stay in the same rural town all the time are always in their comfort zone. They are never challenged, and so they never have to grow in response to these challenges.

Of course, this phenomenon is not exclusive to rural life. City people don’t grow much more if they never leave home either. The point is, people who don’t expose themselves to new things deprive themselves of opportunities to grow.

This is bad news for the would-be millionaire entrepreneur. An aspiring founder needs personal growth the way a company needs investment funds. If a founder is stuck in a personal rut, their company will be too. As goes a founder, so goes their startup.

If you want to keep your company dynamic and growing, travel regularly to have new experiences.

At first blush, it sounds like the epitome of privilege to talk about taking regular vacations to help your productivity at your startup. After all, only someone with enough money to travel and take time off can take a vacation, right?

Not necessarily.

First of all, you don’t need to go far to go on vacation. Even just driving two or three hours down the road and staying at a friend’s house can kick you out of a rut without incurring any extra cost.

And if you want to go a little farther than a friend’s house, that’s not a problem either. With services like Greyhound buses and Airbnb, traveling a long distance and staying somewhere new is surprisingly affordable. I just finished up a five-day trip to North Carolina that only cost me a little around $400.

My point is, you don’t need to take thousand-dollar flights to London to take a vacation. You can do something as simple as drive to the next state over.

Most entrepreneurs think of vacations as time-wasting diversions that, unless you have a top-notch team in place, can pull your company off-course. But far from being a diversion, the regular detachment vacations provide are an important part of a healthy and productive leader.

If you want to build a million-dollar business, you need to be a great leader. And being a great leader begins with taking care of your most valuable resource: yourself.

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