Joining us for a conversation, Shaun McCloskey sheds light on the profound impact of pauses in business. We'll explore how pausing from work can be advantageous and discuss strategies for making the most of your time off. Take a leap and discover how to maximize the potential of your vacation!
Key takeaways to listen for
Resources Mentioned In This Episode
About Shaun McCloskey
Shaun McCloskey is a real estate investor, author, and nationally recognized speaker. Considered “the Coach’s Coach,” Shaun coaches high-caliber business owners, national speakers, and coaches nationwide.
When he’s not out changing lives and helping others to grow their business visions, he can be found in his hometown of St. Louis with his wife and 3 children, playing guitar and singing in a band for fun. His personal and business motto is “give first,” which is evident in his coaching programs and personal interactions.
Connect with Shaun
Website: Shaun McCloskey | Leadership Boardroom
Connect With Us
Master your context with real-results leadership training!
To learn more, visit our website at www.greatsummit.com.
For tax, bookkeeping, or accounting help, contact Dr. Nate’s team at www.theincometaxcenter.com or send an email to info@theincometaxcenter.com.
Follow Dr. Nate Salah on his Social Media
Joining us for a conversation, Shaun McCloskey sheds light on the profound impact of pauses in business. We'll explore how pausing from work can be advantageous and discuss strategies for making the most of your time off. Take a leap and discover how to maximize the potential of your vacation!
Key takeaways to listen for
Resources Mentioned In This Episode
About Shaun McCloskey
Shaun McCloskey is a real estate investor, author, and nationally recognized speaker. Considered “the Coach’s Coach,” Shaun coaches high-caliber business owners, national speakers, and coaches nationwide.
When he’s not out changing lives and helping others to grow their business visions, he can be found in his hometown of St. Louis with his wife and 3 children, playing guitar and singing in a band for fun. His personal and business motto is “give first,” which is evident in his coaching programs and personal interactions.
Connect with Shaun
Website: Shaun McCloskey | Leadership Boardroom
Connect With Us
Master your context with real-results leadership training!
To learn more, visit our website at www.greatsummit.com.
For tax, bookkeeping, or accounting help, contact Dr. Nate’s team at www.theincometaxcenter.com or send an email to info@theincometaxcenter.com.
Follow Dr. Nate Salah on his Social Media
[00:00:00] Dr. Nate Salah
So everybody needs a break sometimes. And sometimes you feel the pressure, you feel the stress, you feel all of the tension. You know, your productivity is waning and you need a break, but you don't know how you don't know what would happen if you took a vacation. If you came back and everything was worse, you have mounds more work to do when you get back. So you talk to your business coach and your business coach says, yes, you need to take a vacation and you need to take an entire month off. Of course you laugh. Say, I can't even take a week off. alone a month. Your business coach says, not only are you gonna take a month off, but you're not going to have any distractions, no emails, no distractions whatsoever.
[00:00:42]
Well, this actually can happen. You might be thinking, Nate, never, but I am going to introduce you to Mr. Shaun McCloskey, who is a coach among coaches, actually been my coach. I respect, love this guy. guy, he is inspiring, challenging. He is going to call us out in this very important area. So get ready for this two part on fire series on getting true perspective, capturing priorities in our entrepreneurial life through getting away. I'm Dr. Nate Salah, and this is A Call to Leadership. Shaun McCloskey. What's happening, man. Thanks for being on the show. Thanks for having me. So years ago, probably two and a half years ago, we had a conversation at one of your leadership boardroom retreats that you run an amazing group of entrepreneurs to teach them how to inspire to reach their vision and number one, have a vision.
[00:01:42]
And make that vision real. And I told you that I wanted to find a way to go from one to many, you encouraged me to start a podcast, but you said you had one rule for me. And you may not remember this, but your rule was have fun. All right. Yeah. And that's tough to do. It's an interesting. Coaching objective, have fun. Number one, how much time do we spend in our businesses truly saying, Hey, I want to make sure a primary goal, a number one priority is to have fun, enjoy the process. And I've held on to that through the show. And I'm happy to report that I've been having fun.
[00:02:26] Shaun McCloskey
That's good.
[00:02:26] Dr. Nate Salah
Yes, that's good. So we're here and.
[00:02:28] Shaun McCloskey
Well, then comes up, how many rules do you have to have in place in order to have fun? Right. Well, I'm having fun if all the equipment works and if the guy shows up on time, and if we have a great interview, it's like. Having fun doesn't seem like a noble objective because it doesn't feel like it pushes the needle forward, but it does. It does.
[00:02:42] Dr. Nate Salah
I think it does when we're focused on, and you've talked about this, and this is what's important for the listener on this episode, as we're talking about business as leaders, as entrepreneurs. We live in the space where business is hard, business is stressful, business is challenging, business keeps us up late at night. Someone listening right now, like, yes, yes, yes, yes, right? So to even say, have fun doing business might seem like an incredibly deep chasm to overcome. And you know this because you've been coaching for many years now, hundreds and hundreds of people.
[00:03:17] Shaun McCloskey
I know this because my father was in the military for 20 years and we had fun after work's done. Is that right? You don't have fun until the work, you have, you finish your work and then you can have fun. It's like, who taught you that? Why can't you have fun while you're doing work? And so it's ridiculously simple, but it's like, of course you can. And by the way, I didn't come up with that myself. It's such a simple, stupid thing to say, have fun while you work. But I've been teaching people to do two things for many years now is create your personal vision and then design your business in a way that allows you to live it. And you should have a vision for both and they should be separate and they should compliment each other.
[00:03:47]
But one of my students one time at the top of his business vision said, I'm having fun or I'm not doing it. And I thought, Oh, that's interesting. There's all kinds of stuff you have to do in business that isn't fun, but you got to do it because it's part of business. But he wrote in there, I'm either going to have fun or I'm not doing it. If I don't think this thing's fun and it's necessary to do in business, I'm going to find somebody else to work with and either partner with them or hire this piece out. That does think that's fun. Cause people think accounting is fun. I think they're nuts, but I don't love accounting. And so I'm not going to do accounting. It doesn't have to be done in business. Of course it does. Yeah. But if that's not a fun thing for me to do, then I gotta find somebody who it is fun for. That's how you get everything done.
[00:04:28] Dr. Nate Salah
Yeah. Because the opposite of that, and there's all different kinds of stress. There's good stress and there's bad stress. But the bad stress or the distress, there's, you've heard of distress and someone listening to me and not heard of EU stress, eustress is a good kind of stress's kinda stress that motivates you, kinda stress that engages you, invigorates you distress is the kind of stress that shuts you down. Right. And when you're not working in your genius, when you're not working in your superpower, when you're not working in area that you truly believe this is bringing me life, it's making me fully alive, then you're not going to have fun.
[00:05:01] Shaun McCloskey
Yep. Well, so to give you an idea, when I first started exploring this stuff, you know about the unique genius zone exercise, but for the listeners real quick, I have this little exercise that I have my students do, which I have them write an email to at least a dozen. People that they've known for a long time, more if you can, but at least a dozen you want ex-coworkers, maybe friends you've had for 20 years, friends you've had for two years, family members, different variety of people. And you're basically asking them, everybody has what's called the unique genius zone. It's an area where, you know, they excel or some things they do really naturally or really well. What do you think mine is? And it's a cool exercise because it asks other people instead of you trying to figure out on your own to ask people who are close to you or not so close to you what they think you're good at.
[00:05:42]
And it's really interesting to get the responses back. When I got back response, I sent mine to 17 people when I did this first time I got back 16 responses and they said things that I wasn't giving myself any credit for. As a matter of fact, I would beat myself up in these areas. They said, you're a great teacher, communicator. You take complicated things and break them down into simple things. And when I saw that, I was like. First of all, holy cow, what a great way to accept a compliment that I didn't think I was any good at any of those things. It was kind of an ego boost for a second, but also it made me go, all right, what percentage of my workday, if that is in fact my unique genius zone, what percentage of my workday am I spent doing that each day? And I really paid attention to this for a couple weeks, like 5% of my time was spent doing these things. If this is the area in which God gifted you and you're only spending 5% of your work time in this area, no wonder you're freaking miserable all the time. You know, maybe if you up that percentage, let's just try to up it to maybe 40% of your time and see what happens.
[00:06:39]
And I did that over the next few months. 50% was my goal. I actually didn't believe you could do more than that at the time, but I decided 50% of my time is going to be spent in my unique genius owner. I'm not doing it. And, uh, let's see what happens. Six months later, I hit roughly the number. There's no way to actually measure it, but roughly 50% of my time was spent in the unique genius zone. I was having a blast and I was making more money. And all of a sudden it's like, I didn't feel like I was working in the hours that I was working and I was having a blast. And then, you know, some of my team. Resonated with this. We had my entire team do the unique genius. I had all my coaching students do this. It's like most people are spending such a small minuscule amount of time in the area of gifting. They're no wonder you're not having fun. You're doing a bunch of crap you don't want to do.
[00:07:23] Dr. Nate Salah
Someone listening right now is saying yes. That's a hundred percent. I'm so glad you brought that up because it clearly like, as you're saying it, someone listening, including myself is thinking, Oh, that's why I feel alive in this space. That's why I don't feel alive in that space. I'll give you an example for me as you introduced me to the predictive index. And I've shared this many times on the program. So some of our listeners will have heard this, but understanding what my primary drives are, where, I have the least amount of perceived effort to accomplish the different aspects of each drive. One of the aspects of my drive is I am more collaborative than I am dominant in terms of wanting to drive the bus. Right. So I love conversation. And so all these years of when people say, Oh, it's tax season. Oh man, you must hate it. Like, I honestly love the conversations. I love talking with people and having that annual, like, Hey, how you been?
[00:08:23]
What's been up with your life? Oh, you got divorced. Let's go ahead and take that spouse off the return or you got married. Let's add this house to the return. Or you had kids or you went to school or, and for me, that was always so invigorating. Like I never felt like it was work because it was fun for me to have those conversations and knowing that. I never knew that was why. And so had I known that was why, I would have focused more on the conversations and the relationships, some of the other work that I was doing that I didn't like to do. Like, I did not like management. Not that I couldn't do it, but I just didn't like telling people what to do. I didn't like to organize their behavior. Plan staff control. And if I would have understood that earlier on, I probably would have had less headaches. I would have had better performance too, by the way, because you know this, when you are working outside of your genius zone or your giftings, you're probably not working in an area that you're extremely competent at either.
[00:09:23] Shaun McCloskey
And it's hard. It's work. Yeah, it's hard work. It feels more like work. You probably stink at it and somebody else could be doing it in a third of the time or better. I would imagine you have a little bit of a higher beat. I don't remember. I do. Yeah, I have a little higher be. Yeah. So you have that you're collaborative and that you like being around more people and that's it. So it's a great recipe. But now take the advice that's given in business all the time anymore. So I remember going when I first started teaching, I used to flip houses for years. I used to teach how to do that. And I first started teaching people how to flip houses. One of my pieces of advice was you just got to get out and talk to people. And I would hear from people who were higher A's and very low B's. So very dominant. They want their finger on the trigger of everything and they don't necessarily want to be around lots of people all the time. They don't get energy from being around lots of people and they would hear this and they'd go, Oh, so I have to force myself.
[00:10:13]
To make sales calls and to go out and meet people and network and all this stuff. And back then I thought the answer was yes and the answer is no. And so you're getting advice all the time that works for the person that's giving you the advice. It may not work for you. That's why it's called the unique genius zone. It ain't everybody's genius zone. Accounting is not my genius zone at all. I like people. I like helping them. I like collaborating also, but there's certain topics that I just don't care to even collaborate with, you know, so I got to have help with, I think. I don't know this, but I think that's why God made us all different. So we can start to rely on each other for certain things.
[00:10:45] Dr. Nate Salah
Yeah. And the objectivity I think is important because it's so subjective when someone else is saying, well, you need to do this, this, and this, and you and I have evolved tremendously over the years as we've learned to help to maximize the capabilities of each individual and help people understand and accept that it's okay that you. Absolutely abhor that particular role. I give you an example. When I was, I had a client in probably about five years ago and a child care provider. And so we were talking. I could not imagine changing all those diapers. Oh man, it would be like just arduous. And she looked at me and said, That's exactly the same way I feel about doing taxes. Yeah. I could not imagine preparing all those taxes. And I never thought that. Preparing tax returns for someone would be like changing dirty, poopy diapers for someone else.
[00:11:37] Shaun McCloskey
Oh yeah. That's about what it sounds like for me. But you know, here's the thing. So you can look at changing diapers and you go, well, thank God I don't have to do my business. But there are some things you have to do in your business that you don't like. So accounting is one of them. So it's got to get done, right? It just doesn't mean that you have to be the one doing it. And usually new business owners go, well, easy for you to say I can't afford to hire that out right now. Well, let me give an example of this. So I started business in 2003. My first roughly two and a half years in business, I didn't have an accountant. I didn't have a bookkeeper. I didn't know what I was doing. I tried to file my own taxes, but I don't know what I'm doing and I hate it. And so I procrastinated.
[00:12:09]
So the first two years I didn't even file taxes. Right. So I didn't do that. And so about two and a half years in, I was like, okay, I finally have just a tiny bit of money. Let me at least hire a bookkeeper to help me with this stack mound of paperwork that I've gotten. So I hired Matt Seamer, I think, you know, now I've hired him to come in and clean up all my mess. Right. And so it took him a couple of months of leaning up just to get all my stuff into QuickBooks. I don't know how to do that. Fascinating for two. By the way, the stress that that caused me for the first two and a half years, whatever it was, I was stressed out of my mind because my taxes aren't getting done. All the paperwork's stacking up. I know how much is in my account, but I don't know how to reconcile everything, all that stuff. Finally hire Matt. Matt fixes it all in about two months. And I write him a check, which really wasn't that big. And then he goes, let me show you something real quick. And he showed me my books.
[00:12:58]
He goes, you don't like paying your bills every month, do you? And I said, no, I hate it. And he goes, well, because you hate it so much. You have late fees on a lot of your bills. Let me show you what that's added up to over the last two and a half years. And he showed me and he said, do you realize if you would have hired me two and a half years ago, it would have cost you less to hire me than you paid in late fees in the last two and a half years in your bills. That's a revelation. It actually costs you more money not to hire me. I can get this stuff done in one 10th the time you could. I've been over here stressing about it for two and a half years. He fixes it all in a couple of months. And now going forward, it costs me less than my lay fees. I mean, this is a perfect example. Why should I be even doing it? It has to get done in business, but it doesn't mean I should be doing it. And also my excuse was that I couldn't afford it. That's dumb. I couldn't afford not to do, you know, same thing with taxes. It's like you saved me enough money in taxes where it's like, if I didn't have you, you're not an expense to me. You're saving me significantly more than I'm paying you.
[00:13:55] Dr. Nate Salah
At that point, it's an investment rather than a cost. These relationships. And I think that's the reframing of the mind is how we do that. And sometimes I don't know that we can do that. When we are in the weeds, I think that sometimes we are so deep in what we think is important for us to be doing that we have no idea what is truly important and what we really could care less about if we were detached for say a month, which is a good segue to something that's really important for business owners. Anyone really in a position to where they are just running through this constant cycle of work, work, work for a number of reasons. And you've done this more than once. You recently came back from what some people call a sabbatical or a long vacation. Yep. And for you, it's game changing in terms of how you see your role, the role of others and the decisions you make in business. Let's unpack that.
[00:15:00] Shaun McCloskey
Yeah. So four years ago I gave myself a little challenge. First of all, I redo my vision every single year and I start from scratch. That way I'm not just dragging old stuff into this year that I may or may not care about still. But four years ago I said, you know what? I've always wanted to take some time off and go on an RV trip with my family around the country and not worry about work at all while I'm gone. Up until that point, I had taken vacations before. You know, you answer email a little bit here and there, you take a phone call. And I thought, I want to take a month off, no work and see what happens. And so now I planned for this. It took me about six months to even prepare for my business to be able to run completely without me for a month.
[00:15:37]
And now I'm a coach and I have coaches that work with us. So that part I could outsource, but working with my own students, you know, if I'm supposed to be coaching them once a month to take a month off, I got to plan ahead. And so it took me about six months and a lot of work. And I said, okay, now I can take a month off. So I did. And I even asked my students, I said, here's an experiment that I'm going to do. I want you to not call me during that month. If it's an absolute emergency, like someone's dying, call me. And I don't mind helping, but I want to see if I can go a month and not work at all. No emails, no phone calls, no nothing. I want to join my family and see what that's like. And little to my belief, they actually respected that and no one called. Which is interesting because... I found out a whole bunch of different things when I took a month off. First, I found out that it took me four days just to relax when I was on this trip.
[00:16:25]
Four days. You know, I've taken week vacations before. You ever taken a week vacation where at the end of it you're like, Man, this is so nice and I could really... Go another day or two. And then there's been the vacations too that you take and I go, I got so much to do when I get back. It's stressing me out to be here. So I need to get back. Right. I've always experienced those two differences, but I realized on this one, four days is what it took to even relax enough to get present because up until that, especially being busy, trying to plan for taking a month off. My phone was ringing more than ever. I'm doing more work than ever. I'm preparing for this trip, you know, it's a new RV. And so we're trying to plan for all that stuff. And I don't know what's going to happen there. And four days into it, I finally just took a deep breath and I go, I'm present again, which I hadn't been. I realized I hadn't been for all months and months and months and months.
[00:17:13]
So get present then about a weekend. I'm realizing that I am. Playing games with my kids, we haven't played in a long time. This isn't like we're doing it because it's game night. I'm going, hey, let's play a game or let's tell stories or, you know, stuff that you don't even normally think of. But I got all the time in the world now to do it. And so presence turned into activities that I don't normally think of. But then what happened about a week and a half in is I realized how much of my emotional needs get met by my business because no one called me, they honored what I asked them to do. And about a week and a half in, I'm going, no one needs me. I miss helping people and I miss working with, I miss challenge and I miss being needed. If I'm being quite honest, you know, how did that make you feel? Well, it made me feel scared a little bit like. Am I going to come back to a coaching organization where no one needs me and they all quit and I don't have a business anymore?
[00:18:11]
My coaches that work for our organization didn't call me either. And it's like, man, they don't have any problems. They're going to realize they can do all this on their own. Everybody's going to leave and I don't have a business and a little lonely even because I like collaborating with people. I have a higher B in the predictive index as well. And so I'm collaborating a lot with family and strangers and people on the RV trip, but not with the people I'm used to. And so a little bit of loneliness kicked in, man. I remember two weeks in, there was a lady that I coached for years named Donna Bauer and she called me. She wasn't at our last coaching retreat, so she didn't hear me ask everyone not to call. She called. I saw the phone ring and I got so happy, you know, it's like, Oh, here's somebody I can help or do so. And I looked at my wife. I said, should I answer it? She goes, go ahead and answer it. Cause I was breaking my own rule. I wasn't going to work well, but I answered the phone and I talked to her for about an hour.
[00:19:00]
Felt so good to help her with some of her challenges that she had going on. And I realized, man, I get a lot of my needs met through work, you know, just contribution and feeling significant and the uncertainty that's going to happen from what problem is going to come next and the certainty of being able to fix it for them and help them through it, you know, and all these things, I really got a lot of needs met through work. And I found since then, entrepreneurs get The people who are in business that work a lot and enjoy work, you know, see it as a challenge. They get so much of their emotional needs met through work to some degree. Most of them have forgotten how to get those needs met through other things. It's a good point, right? Cause you can get those needs met through family and through your wife and through kids and through hobbies and through exercise. And we're even getting them fed through work all the time.
[00:19:45] Dr. Nate Salah
It's a good check move. And I don't know that you can really understand it or experience it until you've gone through that exercise. I mean, truly, there's no way I could have seen it.
[00:19:55] Shaun McCloskey
I can sit here and tell you the story of what happened. And I can literally, I journaled week by week, what happened in my brain, the four weeks that I took off for the first time, but you can't fathom it. Here's an example. So when I finished the four weeks, first of all, About three and a half weeks in, I was sort of vacationed out. I loved every bit of it. We'd seen every mountain you could see at that point. I've seen all these beautiful rivers and streams and waterfalls and all that. We went to Colorado and Glacier National Park and Yellowstone, all these cool places. But at the end of it, I'm like, okay, I'm good with this. Like I'm ready for some challenge again. You know, excuse me. I'm ready to go kick some butt and take some names and help some people and create and all the things that you do in business. But when I got back home and I got back into work mode. It took me a day or two to get back into work mode, but I was excited to get back more excited than I've been in years.
[00:20:43]
And the difference though was when I looked at my goals list, by the way, I should mention, I think vision and goals are two completely separate documents. So the goals is like how I'm going to pull off the vision, right? When I looked at the goals list that I had before I left on my trip, what I actually felt was important out of that list versus what I thought was important before I left. No, we're doing the same. As a matter of fact, I probably eliminated 60, maybe 70% of my goals just by taking a month off at the end. I go, I don't care about this. I thought this was really important to me. I don't care about that. I thought I had to build out these funnels and these email lists and all these, I don't care about that. You know, keep things very, very simple. I don't even want to grow as much as I thought I wanted to grow. I was growing because everybody around me was growing to that degree. I don't even want to grow in those areas. Here's where I want to grow. My students became more instead of taking on more students, helping them at a deeper level became more important to me. It's crazy, man. All the things that I thought were important to me before I left, they weren't the same when I got back. Jeez, it's just from being relaxed. Just from getting present again and having time not to think about that.
[00:21:53] Dr. Nate Salah
I mean, it's huge. It can't be understated because you think, okay, I'm listening. That's me. Okay. So what are the 60% of the things that I think are vital that under these conditions, I would rethink the entire strategy for those activities. And then the other side is, oh, well, that's pretty cool. Shaun McCloskey, you get to take a vacation. I think that's a self limiting belief. Because you didn't just say, I'm going to take a month off.
[00:22:22] Shaun McCloskey
Yeah, take the next start the next week. No, I planned for it.
[00:22:25] Dr. Nate Salah
You built a vision and somebody listening is saying, well, I haven't done that yet. Well, that's think about you and I have studied vision. I would say ad nuseum because we don't get nauseous to the extent that most people would expect from an expert in understanding the vision process. And it's so clear to us that if you do not have vision, You do not have destination and it's like a ship without a rudder. I mean, you just have no idea where you will go.
[00:22:57] Shaun McCloskey
It sounds so corny, you know, you hear that and you go, it's even biblical without a vision that people will perish. And so it is of the utmost importance, but very, very few people ever do the work. If they even think about vision, it's not in writing and it changes based on your mood. We have this whole new coaching group now just for integrators, which is like the right hand people of visionaries. I coach the visionaries and the integrators are being coached by an integrator that is one of my coaches. And so, you know, my integrator coach's job is to make sure her integrators that she's coaching is doing the best possible job for the visionaries. You know what the number one problem every single integrator had with the visionaries? What? They don't know the vision. So you may think it's crystal clear as the business owner, ask your team. Don't ask them, do they understand the vision? Ask them to tell you what your vision for the company is. They won't be able to, 95% of them won't be able to tell you much of anything because visionaries tend to change their vision based on their mood or a new opportunity, or they go to a mastermind or a seminar and they get all these new ideas.
[00:23:58]
Boom, they'd shift and change the entire direction. Their whole team doesn't know what's coming up next. And no one's clued in and you think it's crystal clear because it's crystal clear in your mind and it's not because it's not in writing. You haven't taken the time to actually put it in writing and share it with your team on a regular basis. And by the way, that's just business vision. The number of entrepreneurs that actually have a personal vision is almost none. Ask them if they have a personal vision and is it in writing and do they plan their week by it? Wow. I've been doing this a long time. this 15 years now. No one says yes to this. And so, you know, taking some time off, it seems like a complete waste of time to somebody who is a busy entrepreneur and loves kicking butt and taking names and constantly moving the needle forward. For me to recommend them to take a month off seems like a complete waste of time. And it is in fact the exact opposite.
[00:24:49] Dr. Nate Salah
Do you get pushed back? It is a waste of time.
[00:24:51] Shaun McCloskey
A hundred percent. Yes. I get, uh, and usually those are the ones that are tend to be the busiest, tend to get the most of their needs met from work. And they go, that's why would I do that? I'm on a roll right now. Why would I take any time off? You can't possibly know why you should unless you try it in all of the people that I coach. I have challenged all of my students with this and all the people that I coach. I've only had four people take me up on it. All four have come back with the almost the exact same story of exactly what it did to them week by week and how much it changed their life. And how much at the end of it, the things that they thought were important were no longer important. And they were able to simplify at the end of it. All of them came back, by the way, and within the next 6 to 12 months, ended up making way more money, having to work less, and it was way more productive than they thought, but it doesn't sound like it's productive at all.
[00:25:41] Dr. Nate Salah
Yeah, it's fascinating. It's fascinating from a cultural perspective, too. Because you've probably heard of and perhaps a listener has or has not heard of the Protestant work ethic. It's an old term and it's derived from some of the work by Max Weber and others in the early 20th century. And it really identifies this idea of productivity and working industrial revolution era. And here in the United States. We have an insatiable cultural connection with work. It just is. I come, my family are from the Mediterranean, and it's a much different philosophy of work in different countries as well. And I say that to say, it just dawned on me. Because most of the time when my family members go overseas to take a trip or a vacation, they're usually gone, you guessed it, for a month. And even I say that like a month, man, that's a long time to be gone in a way. And, but it's not just the Mediterranean. I've talked to so many of our clients who are immigrants and they'll go for a month. And it's always this month long trip. And it's interesting that others have figured it out. And we here in the U S one of the most productive countries on the planet.
[00:26:56]
We're lagging, man. We're lagging with our perspective. With our ideology, with our ideas of what's important priorities, because at the end of the day, as we put our vision together, and you know this, the vision, in a lot of ways, beginning with the end in mind, as Stephen Covey talked about, in terms of what is the outlook, and I say the end in mind, it could be the end, it could be 5 years, it could be 10 years, it could be 20 years, it could be a lifetime, look, at the end of the day, there will be an end of the day for all of us, and part of the vision process is is identifying what are some of the most important pieces to how I design my daily life so that my direction ultimately ends in a goal that meets my deepest desires for purpose, meaning satisfaction.
[00:27:48]
And unless I have Remove some of the blinders, some of the blind spots or the roadblocks to that. I will never know. And I'm speaking to myself right now, by the way. And somebody listens like, okay, well I'm just going to, you know, next week I'm going to take a whole month off. I mean, be judicious, be smart about it, plan it out, but do it in a way that, That gives you the room and I've taken a, uh, one week, two week, three, I've taken up to three weeks off and I've noticed that the very first eight to 11 days for me has been, I'm actually just starting to relax and know the feeling of what you're talking about is some of the things that were super, super important on day one are losing their grip on my mind. On my spirit, on my life, I mean, we'll look at Jesus is going into the wilderness. What for 40 days now, 40 days represents a long time. I didn't have been a literal 40 days, but nonetheless, I mean, even Jesus knew it's like, you know, I need to take some time away so that I can make sure that my vision and the father's vision are in unity.
[00:28:57]
And I am in sync with what my father's will is, or my journey. I know this is a little bit of a tangent, but let's just talk about it. You wonder how that might have changed some of Jesus's focus because he might have been focusing on, you know, some of the things that I thought were important 40 days ago. aren't so important today. Just maybe Jesus was thinking, boy, I've got such a massive ministry ahead of me. I can just heal just gobs and gobs and gobs of people. I am just going to light it up. But what does he do? You know, if you look at his journeys, he retreats after a day, he goes and gets away from all of the minutia. He could double or triple his quota if he needed to, if he wanted to. But he knew his priorities were straight. I think that's a lot about what you're talking about. It's reframing our priorities that can't possibly be reframed when we are in the wheat. Well, my friend, thank you for joining me on this episode of A Call to Leadership.
[00:29:58]
If you've been listening, you've probably heard me talk about our accounting and advisory business. And this show was actually born out of that business, those relationships. I found that entrepreneurs and professionals were missing. And the truth is that so many people still need accounting and advisory help and they don't know where to go. If you're in that place where you feel, Oh my goodness, my tax person or my accountant, I can't find them. Or maybe the service wasn't up to my expectations, do not despair. I'll leave how you can find us in the show notes and one of my team members can do some discovery and help you along your journey. You're not alone, my friend. You always have help. I'm Dr. Nate Salah. Can't wait to see you on the next show of A Call to Leadership.