ISI Brotherhood Podcast

151. The Sacred Pause: Why Every Business Owner Needs a Sabbatical.

• Aaron Walker

Share episode

Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.

0:00 | 24:25

From our archives last year comes a conversation that challenges one of the most deeply held assumptions among entrepreneurs: “If I step away, everything will unravel.”

What if the opposite is true?

In this episode, we examine what happens when a leader intentionally removes himself from daily operations for an extended period of time. For many business owners, even the thought of being gone for weeks feels reckless. Yet through candid stories—including one forced two-month break prompted by serious health concerns—we uncover a surprising reality: the business didn’t collapse. In fact, it gained strength.

The discussion walks through the emotional and mental process of unplugging. The first stretch can feel uncomfortable—even disorienting—as constant involvement has often become part of identity. But on the other side of that discomfort comes renewed clarity, sharper strategy, and space to think at a higher level. When the owner steps back, the team is given room to grow. Responsibility expands. Leadership multiplies.

This episode pushes back against the idea that nonstop presence equals effectiveness. Sustainable organizations are built on strong systems, developed leaders, and clear vision—not on one person’s constant availability. Sometimes the most courageous move a leader can make is to create absence on purpose.

If you’ve ever believed your company depends entirely on you, this conversation offers a different lens—one that invites trust, preparation, and long-term thinking.

What might become possible in your business—and in your own life—if you created intentional space to step away?

Key Takeaways:

  • Why extended time away can strengthen, not weaken, your organization
  • The hidden risks of believing “it all depends on me”
  • What happens psychologically when leaders disconnect
  • How stepping aside develops other leaders
  • Why clarity and vision often emerge after deliberate pause

Connect:

Sacred Pause: Setting The Stage

SPEAKER_01

We all think that our business can't go on without us. And that's just a myth. It's not true. Plus, I think your team deserves the opportunity to rise up. Yeah. When you step back, others step up. And a sabbatical is leadership development in disguise. Hey guys, well, welcome back to the ISI Brotherhood podcast. This is a place where we sharpen each other through our faith, our leadership, and our brotherhood. So, Seth, how's it going, buddy?

Defining A Real Sabbatical

SPEAKER_00

You know, I am doing great. A little bit of travel this week. Got in at midnight and um feeling energetic. And I love this topic today. It's going to be a good one.

Hitting The Wall And Health Scares

Announcing Two Months Off

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, it's uh the sacred pause, why every business owner needs a sabbatical. You know, this is a continuation of last week. You know, we talked about do we deserve a rest and what should we do and what shouldn't we do? And how is the rhythm of life and we should do a little bit each week? This is like about a sabbatical, like an extended period of time. And everyone has got a different framework in regards to what they call a sabbatical, but let's just call it two to eight weeks. Let's just say two to eight weeks for this conversation. Some people have taken annual sabbatical, like they depart for a year. I want to give a little backstory to tell the reason that I wanted to talk about this today. It's two years ago now, I was under a lot of stress in my personal life. Um, we had a daughter that had some health concerns, pretty major health concerns, and that really had me wired up pretty good. And my mom, 91 years old now, but she was battling some real tough health concerns. And we were going through some transition here in the business. And as I, you know, mature and get a little older and thinking about slowing down a little bit, that really had me wired up. And I was trying to do some things to get in order our business, to make some transitions. And man, the stress was just absolutely compounded more than any time in my career. And I came to our team, and this was uh about middle of September, and I said, uh, hey, I'm gonna take a sabbatical. Like I've hit the wall like really bad. Seth, I even had some health concerns myself at that time because I was in this fog and I didn't really understand why I was in this fog. And remember that, yeah. Yeah, I was gone to the airport and I couldn't read the marquee, and I came out of a restaurant here in Nashville, didn't know where I parked my car, and I wasn't sure the city I was in. I called my wife and I said, Where am I? She started laughing. She goes, What do you mean? Where are you? And I said, Where am I? She goes, You're on Fourth Avenue at this restaurant in Nashville. And I said, I didn't even know where I was at. And she goes, Well, something's bad wrong. Had to get some help to find my car because I didn't know where I parked my car. And then I came home and two weeks later, I was at Home Depot getting something, and I came out and I forgot where I parked. And I was like, I was in a bad shape. I was in a bad spot. And found out later it was oxygen deprivation that I was having. Uh, and they corrected that with a CPAP machine that I wear, and we got that back in order. Some hormone issues, they adjusted those. And the stress though caused a lot of that. Interesting.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

And so I came to the team and I said, Listen, I'm I'm taking off. And they said, Well, when are you planning on doing this? I said, in two weeks. They said, Two weeks. And I said, Yeah. Like I'm, and they said, Well, are you going to be gone for a week or 10 days? And I said, Two months. They said, You're going to be gone for two months and you're going to do this in two weeks. And I said, Yeah, I have to.

SPEAKER_00

And they said, You had to. Like at that point, it was, it was, it had gotten to a situation that might be, we call that a little bit desperate. Now, are you glad you did it the way you did it? Looking back.

SPEAKER_01

Well, I wish now that I had done it intentionally. And so I've encouraged a guy that's in uh, and he wouldn't mind me sharing this, Brett Barnhart. He owns Barnhart Excavating in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I've coached Brett every week now for 12 years. And uh Brett's 42 years old. And last year I encouraged him to intentionally take a sabbatical, take some time off, and see if his business could handle it, see if he could handle it. And he was very apprehensive.

unknown

Sure.

Unplugging Completely

Withdrawal, Shaking, And Letting Go

Clarity, Delegation, And Bottlenecks

SPEAKER_01

He was like, Man, I got 30-something employees. We're extremely busy. This is the summer. And I said, Good, that's all the reasons that you should. Let's see if you're leading well and if you've prepared them with systems and processes, you've delegated everything properly. And he said, Well, I'm still gonna talk to this one and this one. I said, No, no, no, you're not gonna talk to anybody. He goes, What do you mean? I said, No, you're gonna take off. You're gonna take a sabbatical. That means I'm plugging. And I'll get to that in a minute. But when when I started doing my sabbatical, and I'm gonna be very candid and very honest with everyone during this interview, the first two weeks was hell. It was terrible. Like I could feel my phone ring in my pocket. Now, when I say I took a sabbatical, I turned my phone off. I unplugged my email. I didn't do anything on social media, I didn't do anything that I normally do. I didn't contact any of our team. I completely pulled back. I went dark for two months. But the first two weeks, I was standing in line at the grocery store and I could feel my phone ring in my pocket, and I reached in my pocket, my phone was not there. And I would stand there waiting to do something else at other places, and I would go to grab my phone to check messages on my phone. I didn't have my phone. And I physically was shaking. Physically, I could look at my hand, my hand was quivering. And I would come home and I would sit down on our patio and I would do that for about an hour and I'd go inside and I said, Robin, I got to do something. I'd go fishing and to come back. So we'll we'll break this down in a second. But my point is that after the two weeks, I became extremely clear because I didn't have other things to distract me. I completely revamped our business and created a new strategy where we were going, got very clear, came back, delegated every bit of administrative task out, all responsibilities, and they're flourishing as a result of it because people there are very competent and capable of doing their role. And I was really in the way. I was the bottleneck in a lot of places. And so I wouldn't have discovered this if I stayed in the grind each and every day. But by allowing my team to step up and flourish and allowing myself to stay in my zone of genius only and not do the things that uh I'm competent, but it's not my zone of genius in doing, the business has flourished even better as a result of that. So I think sabbaticals are important.

Is Sabbatical Soft Or Necessary

SPEAKER_00

You know, I can think uh about the uh men listening to this podcast or others listening to this podcast now, and you said sabbatical at the beginning and they flinched because it's one of these words that's not on the tip of everybody's tongue. It's a it's kind of like I call this like paternal leave or maternal leave for, you know, when you work for a big company now, people are taking like very long periods of time off. And that that wasn't normal. I'm I'm mid I'm mid-50s. Like there's some changing that's happening in our culture. There's this language, and this even this very idea of a sabbatical will feel to people like this is new, it's a little soft, maybe our culture's changing. And then that might be a little bit of an eye roll. Like, do I even really need this? And I know one of the points that we want to get to is this is this is necessary, it's a requirement, it's not a reward, right? It's a requirement. And that God himself, you know, in the beginning in Genesis, it said he rested. It's not because he was tired. I mean, he created all this with his with his word, right? Right in Genesis 2, too. Um, but he did that as an example for us to say if if uh if the all-powerful God of the universe rested, yeah, then it's incumbent upon us to follow that, right? To to to also rest, to, to acknowledge his supremacy and follow his example. But it's it's hard for us. It's a little bit, it's weird, it's different than the normal routine, right?

SPEAKER_01

You know what happened to me in this, and there again I said in the onset that I was going to be honest with this. My feelings even got a little bit hurt as a result of doing this, is because they did as good or better without me. And part of me was glad and part of me was sad because I really wanted to be the hero of the story. I have a small business, Iron Sharpens Iron Brotherhood, big A, I'm the founder. I'm the one that got it started. It's my baby. They're never gonna do it like me, they're never gonna accomplish the same goals as me. And so I asked Derek, uh, that was leading some of the roundtables and some of the other events. And I said, Hey, what what did the guys say about me not being there? And he said, big game they never ask. And part of me was glad, part of me was like, Man, good, we've developed the systems and the processes, and the brand is now standing in the place of my, you know, rather than being on my uh my back and my relationships. And that but part of me was like, man, I'm not the guy anymore. That's the way I felt initially.

Ego, Mentorship, And Identity

SPEAKER_00

Big A, let me let me take a little bit of a um side road for a minute here. You know, I love to talk about mentoring. You've been a great mentor to me. I've had great mentors, and I'd like to think that I'm becoming a good mentor. Um, but part of this is you got to embrace the mentor mindset. And the mentor mindset says, I had my time in the sun, and now I am creating shade for others. I am building stages for other people. Sometimes, here's a great word for stewardship my fruit is going to grow on other people's trees. And the thing, the insight that you just shared right there, big A, is sometimes that hurts our ego, right? Because we're still trapped in the what about me? And I'm trying to fill my emotional need for being important in this world. And God is challenging us to say, hey, I got other adventures for you. Take some time, take a breather, realize that you're even your own company might not need you at the level you think it's gonna need you. And oh, by the way, the best thing is to figure that out. You'll figure it out because you'll be gone from the company, and the company will figure it out, right? There's a great book. It's called From Strength to Strength by David Brooks, Arthur C. Brooks. Arthur C. Brooks. He's uh he's up at Harvard, he's relatively conservative, which is an opportunity. That's a great book. Yeah, it's really good. And he basically says you are changing faster than you think. You're not in your glory days. And by the time you're in your 50s, it's hard to accept, though, Seth.

SPEAKER_01

I'm just telling you. That's what I'm saying. I know it is.

Proof: Teams Thrive Without You

SPEAKER_00

I'm I'm I'm right behind you, big A. Paying attention to your every move. But but the part that's liberating and that he calls us to is realizing that as you invest in that next generation and give them those opportunities, that's what it's all about. Like that's actually where the influence and impact is, is letting go and letting these other people step into those things that we erroneously tell ourselves that we're the only ones that can do it, right?

You Can’t Read The Label Inside

SPEAKER_01

So yeah, and that's not true. That's just simply not true. Brett Barnhart uh took uh the month of July off and he came back and he reformatted his whole business as a result of it and allowed more leadership with his team, and they're crushing it now. And, you know, he works still, but he doesn't have to. He's 42 years old and he can take all the time off he wants, and the business continues going forward because he's trained them well over 21 years. He's done a great job in doing this. The the reason that I think that the sabbatical really is necessary is because strategic clarity really requires distance. And what I mean by that is you can't read the label from inside the jar. And when I'm running our business each and every day, my brother told me something one time I've never forgotten. He said, Other people see you differently than you see yourself. And it really made a big impact on me. Then I started inquiring of other people, how do you see me? And I even send letters out to people strategically asking those questions. It's like, hey, I know that you can't read the label from inside the jar. So tell me how you see me in certain areas. And I think a sabbatical gives you the margin to see the business from a new angle. And I think perspective is one of the strongest attributes of a great mastermind, is you're seeing it from other people's vantage points. And when you're on sabbatical, it allows you to get rid of the social media and the email and the phone calls and all of the distractions that normally plague us on a daily basis, and it allows us to go deeper and deeper and deeper so that we can really see how to effectively run our business. So that's why we've got to get away periodically.

Rest, Fun, And True Renewal

SPEAKER_00

So if you get away on a sabbatical and all you do is spend time brainstorming how your business can be better or improved, or you know, does that does that feel like rest though? Like when you were on your sabbatical?

SPEAKER_01

I did it wasn't just that though, because I did some fun things. Like Robin and I went down to the Mexican Riviera and we took a 14-day cruise. We were gone about 14 days. I think the cruise was 10 or 11 days. Uh, Patrick, a friend of mine, owns a big boat and uh it's uh docked in West Palm Beach. And so I said, Hey man, could I go down and hang out on your boat? He said, Well, the cruise is not down there right now. I said, I don't want to take it out. I just want to go sleep on it. So it's a three-bedroom boat. So I went down there and spent three days. I would take a nap in the middle of the day. I ate all of his food up. It was stocked with everything. I ate all of his food. And I would sit on the back of the boat during the day and just watch people go by. And I'd go down to the local pizza hut and get a pizza during the day, come back, take another nap. I rested. I'd read my Bible. I would read other books. I would take a walk. I would just hang out and I would just rest. And then I did fun things with my kids and my grandkids, right? I had the bandwidth and the time to be able to do it. So it's not just sitting on the back patio contemplating your business every move. It's like giving yourself permission to go have fun and to enjoy your family, you know, without the burdensome worries of running your business each and every day. And then strategically, I sat down. I'm not a big journaler. I don't do that well, to be honest with you, but I did do some of that during this period of time. And I went through an exercise of gratitude. And you are a big proponent and an advocate of gratitude. Your book, Ambition is Amazing. People, you should read Seth's book on ambition. But uh, in that I really wrote a lot about being grateful for things and it heightened my awareness to things that I had let go early in my career that I re-implemented, like the relationships matter most. It got me refocused. It got me refocused on we need to make everything in our business amazing. We need to do it without excuses, we need to figure it out. It re-energized my thinking and who could do some of these things even better than me. But see, here's the problem. When you don't take a sabbatical, you don't have the time to go that deep.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

Gratitude, Vision, And Recommitment

SPEAKER_01

And so we keep doing the same thing. We just stay in the grind. Well, I just think it's really important.

SPEAKER_00

And when we're growing as leaders and we're catching that fresh vision and that energy, you know, that's the best thing we can do. We could have stayed in the office, punched the clock, so to speak, answered our emails, listened to the team call, and and and and erroneously thought we were actually moving the needle. Or you could go hang out on your friend's boat, think deep thoughts, catch a fresh vision, and come back with some leadership and some vision for the team. Like Proverbs teaches us, without a vision, people perish, right?

SPEAKER_01

Without any of the people, and you need to share the vision often. Yeah. Right? It's not, and we just do that periodically. You know, the other thing that the sabbatical gave me was an inordinate amount of courage. Courage. Yeah, because I was afraid. There were some things that I didn't want to do, and I was afraid. And it gave me a lot of courage. It allowed me to think deeper. And I think through that time, through prayer, God gave me the vision. He clarified the vision for me. And when you have clarity in the vision, you have courage.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

And so it gave me more courage to come back and try some things that I wouldn't have been able to do otherwise.

Courage That Comes From Clarity

SPEAKER_00

Well, not only that, big A, but it gave you courage to challenge other people to do this. Like I've never challenged a person to take a sabbatical in my life, I don't think. And frankly, you just today asked me earlier. You're like, have you taken a sabbatical? And I'm like, no. And you're like, why not? And I'm like, it's literally never entered my mind. You know, I think I probably quickly would do the math of like, well, listen, I started this and I started this and I started this, and I kind of have all these obligations. And I, of course, have all these reasons, right? But at the end of the day, I've been self-employed for pretty much ever. Uh, I've been part of teams, and so I take on this sense of obligation and responsibility and tell myself what faithfulness looks like. Um, but you know, the kind of last point on this topic is you know, being able to leave well and take a break allows you in the future to lead well as to be a great example. The reason you are able to encourage people to take a sabbatical, frankly, is you've done it. You've got the evidence, right?

Stress Testing Systems And Culture

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. And that gets into really discovering and evaluating the pitfalls in your business. And by taking a sabbatical, we'll quickly highlight the pitfalls in your business. You're like, hey, we dropped the ball in this area. Well, you know where to short up. But if you're always there filling that gap, there's no way it's stress testing your business. For sure. Grant Baldwin, another good friend of mine, owns the speaker lab. He takes uh he takes off in October every year. And he's got a team now of about 50 people. And I've coached him for years and years and years. And Grant came to me the first time he said, Big A, what do you think about me taking a sabbatical? I said, I think it'll be amazing. And we'll know when you get back where the things that we need to work on. And so now it's on his calendar, it's routine. Just every October he takes a month off so that he can go and clears. And he comes back and his vision is amazing.

SPEAKER_00

I want to take a moment there, and I want to challenge myself and everybody listening. Don't just put this into the good idea bucket that someday I'm gonna explore. I I I would challenge you to put a little star by this one and to say, how quickly can I get the first one scheduled? And start with a couple of weeks. I was gonna say maybe it's not uh eight weeks in Italy, but maybe it's something, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Well, here's the thing: if it all falls apart, you're really not leading. You're in control. And if you want a high-paying job, stay in control. If you want a business that can operate without you, now you've created something that creates revenue in perpetuity without you being there to oversee every single move. And a sabbatical will expose those gaps, either in delegation, in culture, in systems. Uh, listen, that's a gift. It's not a threat. And you want your business to be able to do that.

Lifestyle Business With Lifestyle

SPEAKER_00

Big A, you know, I've been thinking, I d this word came out of my mouth the other day, and I kind of applied it wrongly to somebody, but it was a it was still an insight. And it was this is many of us have a lifestyle business without the lifestyle. And what I mean by that is there's a stigma that comes to the phrase lifestyle business. Like everybody wants to say, no, no, no, I don't have a lifestyle business. Because when you hear lifestyle business, there's there's two roads I would go down with that. Somebody's like, well, I want a lifestyle business. I really don't want any people. I just want this to be all about me. And I'm like, well, then you don't want any impact because you can't have impact without people. You outsource everything and you know, nobody can get a hold of you and you're really selfish with your time. It's like, that's wonderful for you, I guess. But are you really having any impact? There's that angle. And then the other angle is sometimes we have a business that's actually not going to quote unquote scale and get to 10 million or 20 million or 100 million and be sellable. It's a business that I'm going to be involved in because I actually like the business and I like doing the work and I like attending team meetings and I like managing stuff, but it's still built around my quote unquote lifestyle. I may never be able to sell it for multiple millions, but I might be able to sell it to my team. And here's where I'm well, the reason I'm sharing all of that. Sometimes we need to admit, hey, this is just a lifestyle business. It's not going to blow up and scale and be something that I can sell for millions of dollars. However, we cannot defer having a life because we're in the middle of running our lifestyle business.

SPEAKER_01

That's so good.

Final Challenge And Closing Charge

SPEAKER_00

Right? A gentleman uh I really respect, Mike Shiro, uh, spoke the other day about this myth, this fallacy that someday it's gonna get better. And it's like, no, it's not. It's gonna be just like it is today in the future. And it's not gonna be easier for you to take a sabbatical in the future. But if you basically put your foot down and say, no, my lifestyle business actually has to give me the lifestyle, or I'm not doing it right. That's a that's a challenge. I think most those of us who have a small business need to say, Hey, listen, the work's never gonna be get get done, right? It's it's never gonna be finished. When sometimes our wives will say, Are you finished? You're like, you just kind of laugh. You're like, what is what is your definition of finished, dear? You know, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

I haven't been finished in 50 years, right?

SPEAKER_00

Exactly. So so what's the point of a lifestyle business without the lifestyle? And I think this idea of a sabbatical is something I'm going to wrestle with and I'm going to embrace. It scares me a little if I'm honest, big A.

SPEAKER_01

Well, I think it does everybody because we all think that our business can't go on without us. And that's just a myth. It's not true. Plus, I think your team deserves the opportunity to rise up. Yeah. When you step back, others step up. And a sabbatical is leadership development in disguise. Love it. You might be surprised who flourishes in your absence. And I was surprised, quite honestly, but they've proven that they can measure up to the challenge and they've crushed it in all regards. And everyone that I've been associated with, that I've encouraged to do this, report back. It's better now. I'm sorry I waited.

SPEAKER_00

Love it. No, that's great. Very inspiring. And I mean you've given us a lot to think about. And thanks for thanks for leaving well so that you could lead well, big A.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, you guys, thank you for being with us today. Sabbaticals aren't a luxury for the weak, they're a discipline for the wise. So you weren't made to grind endlessly. Uh, you were made for rhythm, rest, and renewal. So remember that. Go back, listen to last week's episode, listen to this week's episode again, and text me and let me know when your next sabbatical is scheduled. You guys have a great one. We'll see you next week.