When Your Whole Team Disappears: Reviewing 7 Years of Summer Sabbaticals

Speaker A: Foreign. Hey, it's Andrew here and welcome to the Ecom Fuel podcast. The show dedicated to helping seven and eight figure brand owners build incredible businesses and amazing lives. And now today on the podcast talking about something we've been doing for the better half of a decade here, which is give all of our us stateside full time team members a month off every summer as a summer sabbatical. Sounds crazy and insane unless you're the team member. That sounds great. But there's a reason why I've done it historically. Like, you know, living a rich life outside of your business has always been important to me. I try to do that throughout the year. I want my team to be able to do that. So from a uh, from an ethos perspective it lines up. It also from a selfish perspective, I want my team to be able to recharge. We're in the, we're in the community business. Right. And it takes a lot of love and care and empathy and even the most incredible people need to recharge deeply from that. That can be draining work. Right. When you're always pouring into other people and thinking about the emotional side of things and the uh, and the personal side. So that's part of it too. Yeah. And also, I don't know, I like right now it is October 12th. It's dumping snow in Montana. As you know, very. This is a classic Montana move. Beautiful fall and then one day whammy. Um, just get hit by a semi truck of 10, uh, inches of snow. And so also like having, taking advantage of the best time of the year to be able to. Summer slows down. It's a great time in Montana to be able to get out and do stuff. Having seasons. I've talked about this in the past. I'm increasingly thinking like having work seasons and play seasons are really helpful anyway. We do it for a bunch of reasons. But I wanted to give you kind of the post mortem. We're going to keep doing it but give you thoughts on my, the pros and cons from doing it over seven years. I think we've been doing it about that long for our team and uh, there's some real pros to it which is why we're going to keep doing it. But there's also some, some downsides too. So kind of interesting, very unusual. Yeah. And maybe you don't steal it verbatim, but maybe there's a few things here you can steal for your business as an owner. All right, let's get into it real quick. Once a year we survey Members of the Ecom Fuel private community. Our community for seven and eight figure operators and owners. Two to figure out what's really happening in the industry. Not on X, not what you heard. I kind of. But not theory. Not hot. Takes just data from 300 store owners representing 3.5 billion revenue. Our report for this year is out, it's free and there are findings in there that will make you rethink at least one or two things you're doing right now. I promise. You can go download it. Check it out@ecommercefuel.com blueprint to learn all the details. All right, let's get into the episode. All right, let's talk about the pros first. Well actually even before we do that structurally usually we do once we do the sabbaticals for a four week period always in the summer and increasingly probably going to be focused on July which is a good month for a while. We used to do them where we'd kind of split it up where half the team would be on for. We kind of do a six week period where everybody kind of where different team members rolled in and out of being on call because we're off. I'd say our team, most team members are realistically completely offline for a huge, you know, probably the majority of it. But we definitely have a little bit of on call in case stuff really hits the fan or we need to check in for things. We have a team member who outside the US who kind of keeps the lights on. But in general we kind of go no new projects, you know, not taking calls, not doing team meetings pretty much offline apart from just kind of the bare minimum to make sure we keep things running and smooth for, for our members. But yeah, but after that six, like I said, we used to do it for a six week period with, with some different on call things but now we've compressed that in just one month because six weeks is a long time to have everyone offline and no work moving forward. So let's talk pros first. First pro is obvious one but, but you know, one of the reasons we do it, it gives a really deep recharge to the team. I think, I think one thing that if you're going to try to build an organization to build team members that want to stick with you for the long term or just do anything for the long term. Man, there have been moments where I'm like I'm just, I'm done. I'm going to throw in the towel. I'm going to sell everything and Just get on a bike and bring my family along and we're going to be monastic bikers living in the woods. I mean it's a little extreme. That's probably what I dream of. But I'm guessing you've had these moments too where you just kind of freak out and you're like, I'm done. I'm going to, you know, go move into a cabin in the woods. And usually sometimes that's what you need to do. More often than not you just need a break and you need a vacation. And the amount of deep recharge you get, that our team gets, I think that I get from doing this helps with that long term burnout and gives uh, you inspiration coming back. The amount of inspiration I get and how motivated I am to come back and make things better after a multi week break is pretty, pretty impressive. So that's one of the big pros. This is kind of an unusual one, but I get to do a business audit every time in the summer when we do this. I am probably, I'm really good at taking time off throughout the year and throughout the summer. Like I mean the summer I was gone for a week and a half in Europe for a trip. I, you know, we did a bunch of family trips, we went to Colorado for a week. I do a lot of bike trips throughout the year. Like I'm good at taking time off throughout the year. I'm probably not, I'm probably the worst one at our company of actually taping four weeks off in the summertime because a couple reasons and the first one is I get a chance to do a business audit. So I love the, the ability to drop into my team members roles for at least a week to see how things are being done day to day. Because guessing this will relate if you run a business. But it's easy to delegate stuff and then you have team members that are running it and then you kind of, you know, as you should, you're not in the weeds every day. But then things kind of have a tendency to shift and change over time and I'm always very surprised when I come, when I have a chance to dive into those team member things either A things that they're still doing that I asked them to do months or years ago and they don't need to be doing or ways which we're running our business, which I think could be improved. And being able to sit in those seats, even if it's for, you know, a week is ideal. Even if it's just a couple days, very Telling, right? It's like the same reason that a good CEO is going to go walk the floor at their business operations or fly the airplane or whatever it is. Anyway, so that's. Another of the big pros is being able to dive into a business audit. And again, I mean, I think by especially my team members have been with me for a little while, dread a little bit coming back, partially because they know there's gonna be a big list of things that I'm excited to do or change. Number three pro is a retention and a recruiting tool. And so I have never, ever seen anyone else offer this perk. Yes, it could attract the wrong people, right? People who are gonna loaf and they're just there. But I also, I mean, that's kind of on me, right? To set the expectation that, hey, we gotta get some real stuff done the rest of the year. And I think it also gives me the ability to ask my team to perform at a high level the rest of the year when they're, they're not on the sabbatical because it's kind of a, you know, a, uh, classic. Hey, let's, when we're, we're working, let's crank it out. And when we're not, let's take some good, meaningful time off. So again, could be, could filter for the wrong people. But if you're cognizant of that, I think it's a really impressive retention and recruiting tool. There's no one else that's going to offer. This fourth one is. It is by far the most incredible time for me as a leader to think through vision, planning and what the next year looks like. There's something about, um, having your team go dormant from the day to day hustle things slow down a little bit. Summer's a good time to do it because there's kind of a natural lull as people are on vacation and things are, you know, not quite as hectic. And man, the amount of clarity I get for thinking, what's up? What are our priorities for the next year? What should we be doing? That kind of comes a little bit with the team audits and the business audit that I do. But even in general, there's just something about having things slow down for a little bit that gives such a sense of clarity and an incredible ability to look to the future. So it's by far the sabbaticals are my best time for vision, for planning, for thinking in the whole year, bar none. Those are the big pros. Oh, I guess that's the fifth one. And I kind of hinted at this, but it lets me adventure more as an owner too. I love getting stuff done and then also taking time away from the business to travel. And granted, I don't have to do this for my team, but I think it's a nice kind of alignment where maybe they're not doing it with quite as much flexibility, but they still have the ability to go do this in some capacity in their own life. If I'm taking off and, you know, lines with my values removes a little bit of guilt when I do go MIA for a week or two, which isn't super common, but I like that, I like that it gives me a little more freedom, even if the freedom is not absolutely necessary to go out and. Yeah. And have some amazing trips and adventure when my team is keeping things going real, real smoothly back home. All right, the cons for doing this, it's expensive, right? I'm giving the whole team a month paid off in addition to their kind of normal pto. We're not moving things forward. And it's, you know, it's, it's, it's effectively like you're paying the team close to 10% more on a salary basis. So, yeah, that's just no way around it. It is an expensive thing to do, I think, I think it's worth it, which is why we're going to keep doing it. But not cheap. Not cheap to do. That's the first con. Second con is, man, all of your projects get interrupted and come to a screeching halt. And then you have to wind them back up a month later. You lose momentum, you lose context, you lose speed. And so I think having doing this in the summer is helpful for that. And I think planning, trying to plan through and do this throughout the year. So you're not starting stuff right before a huge projects, right before you try. We try to do a natural break point when it happens, helps mitigate it a little bit. But there's always something where it's like everyone comes back. It's like, uh, where, where were we with this? What were we doing with this? Okay, it's kind of like, you know, getting a diesel engine warmed back up and you know, 20 degree weather or, you know, negative 20 degree weather. Anyway, so projects interrupted, there's, there's, you lose momentum. That's a downside as well. And the other one is the optics and support. Right. Like the optics of getting an email that says, hey, I'm out for four weeks, I'll talk to you in August as a member of A community or as you know, if you're running a business as a customer, like not great optics. Right. So you need to be sensitive to that. You need to be careful about how you message that. And of course we're still taking care of all of the. Like I mentioned, we have a little bit of a few on call times for people. We have a team member who is on full time to kind of keep trains running, support any urgent issues, things like that. But yeah, we're not reinvesting in the business and reply times take a little bit longer to get back to. So anyway, the optics have to be managed carefully and, and thought through carefully because we still really value our, our members and everyone we're serving. So have to walk that. But all in all it's, it's a, it's been a really cool cadence and, and kind of rhythm in our company from a seasonality standpoint and always, always enjoy it. It's always a little bit stressful leading into it. I don't know about you, but I have guilt when things aren't moving forward. I have a hard time being like, hey, we're just going to rest here. So that's always a little hard for me. But in general the, the benefits always are, are worth it in terms of just, you know, recharge and insights and vision and hopefully the team getting a chance to, to be able to prep for the coming year and put something in the emotional and work bank as well. So anyway, yeah, that's it. That's a sabbatical for seven years. We'll see if we keep doing this. Hopefully we will for, for the, the long term. Hope that's kind of interesting peak if nothing else. And maybe a few of these things you steal. Especially things like, like the business audit. Such a hard thing to do regularly if you don't have a forcing function for it. Because I don't always enjoy diving back in. Right. Like it's, it takes work to figure out what's, you know, what do I need to do. How do the systems work? It's, it's, it's work to do and it's having the forcing function so helpful the sabaticals but something that is insanely valuable uh, for anyone doing this. Anyway, hope you found this little random peek into a, a quirky part of our culture interesting. Forging what matters. I thought this would be kind of an interesting. I think I maybe even hinted at it at the main episode today. I've been thinking more recently about seasons in work and in life. It's really difficult to grind effectively for five years straight. I mean, some people do it, some people grind for 25 years straight, and the results are usually rough. At the same time, it's hard to build anything meaningful when you're traveling perpetually too, right? Like, talk to some people who do travel a lot. And, uh, I'm m always amazed. I don't understand how if I'm not somewhere for at least a week, it's hard for me to get into a rhythm, a workspace, a mindset, to really get a lot of work done. And so, I don't know, the longer I do this, the more and more I'm becoming a fan of seasons in terms of productivity, work, things like that. Last year was a big, you know, uh, a year and a half ago, I guess. Man, it's been. Been a while. It was, it was a gap year with my family. It was amazing. Had some incredible memories. The business didn't really make any big leaps in the business actually. In fact, probably had, you know, some stuff build up and a little bit of growth was not something that was prioritized. And it was. Was not a time to focus on the business, time to focus on family and. And that was the right move and so glad I did it. And this year, locked in much more on E. Com Fuel turned down a lot of travel this fall, stacking a lot of uninterrupted weeks back to back and seeing some progress in a lot of areas, which is really cool, but also, you know, kind of a little monotonous at times. There's things that I, you know, would love to be doing. I'm enjoying big parts of it, but also, you know, it's not quite as novel, as exciting as being on the road anyway. Seasons, you know, already looking forward to this next summer. Getting a lot done now and having some epic plans in store that I'm starting to think about for. For, you know, nine months from now anyway. All that said, it's hard to do both at once. You can have a little bit here, you can work hard and have some fun, or you can also have a lot of fun and work a little bit. But older I get, the more I think I want to know what season I'm in and commit to it fully and get after it. Short list full. Send a final note before we wrap up. E. Com growth, as you may know, consumes cash. And it does faster than most people plan for, especially if you're growing. So if you're scaling hard and you haven't gotten intentional about your cash position and cash forecasting. Now is the time before you enter crisis mode and the Financial Mastery series from econfuel covers this how to grow without hollowing out your balance sheet when and how to start extracting capital all the financial frameworks that operators at your level need. It's a free course you can take@ecommercefuel.com mastery and if you're a seven or eight figure owner looking for a peer group, check out our community@ecommercefuel.com work hard adventure often. I'm looking forward to seeing you again next Friday.