Last summer, my business turned 4 and quite frankly, I was done with it owning me instead of me owning it!

I remember the feeling I had, at the end of each of the 3 summers prior, where I felt like I had served everyone but me!

So last summer, I decided to really think about what I’d like to get in the bank from both a business perspective, as well as from an “I’d like to, just once, enjoy the summer” perspective.

What I’m about to share with you, isn’t radical, but then again, it might be.

Why?

Because there’s too many assholes telling you that you have to “hustle” 24/7 and give up your personal life, if you want to be successful.

I’m here to tell you that having no life isn’t a sustainable strategy!

This will represent a radical departure from that philosophy.

Before, I tell you how I did it, I want to point something out about the training/coaching industry.

Come July, business falls off a cliff.

Mine didn’t!

I tripled the amount of business I had done, the year prior, during that same period, (and to be honest, the year prior was pretty damn good)

The vacations I had taken were all during the week (not long weekends) but they were short, 2-3 day getaways.

So anyway, here’s how I did it . . .

1. I asked myself a different question going into the summer. I didn’t ask some lame question like “Why does this sh*t happen to me every summer?” or some other dead end nonsense like that. Instead, I asked “How can I actually utilize the summer, to sell more, while enjoying the heck out of it?” Ask a different question, you get different answers! One of the answers I came up with, was to run an online, virtual sales camp, on a topic I had never offered before. A new product if you will. I leveraged the summer by appealing to one’s need to do something productive, while outworking their competition while they slacked. I didn’t just use this theme for my online program, I used it to talk with VP’s of Sales and business owners I had been trying to get in front of. I use it across multiple forms of communication (phone, email, direct mail, social networking, creative things I did etc). I created a communication map so my messaging was well thought out and consistent. So instead of cursing the summer, I was exploiting the sh*t out of it. Always use the landscape you’ve been given!
2. I ran like a lunatic whenever I wasn’t on vacation. Instead of running with the pack and slowing down over the summer, I dramatically increased my activity. The best time to communicate is when there’s less noise and summer has a profound way of facilitating that. I looked at the various forms of outreach I was using and created an aggressive communication map to help me keep up appearances and stand out. This means that I needed to make some sacrifices that could have cut severely into my family time but I didn’t let it. I got earlier to get things done so I could have even more time to get on the phone with potential clients and I even allocated some time over the weekend BEFORE my family wiped the sleep from their eyes. There’s an old time management tip that tells us to act like its the day before you’re leaving for vacation if you want to get things done. Taking as many vacations as I did, helped with that, and I can tell you, that you have no choice but to work more efficiently! I totally amazed myself, how much I could get done when I had those types of deadlines, and so will you!
3. I didn’t balance, I blended! When we balance, we do our best to have separate time for work, and separate time for play. I blended both. Because I was taking so many vacations, I was willing to sacrifice some of that vacation time. There were some days where I sat, poolside doing emails, writing sales training content for clients. There were other days where I did my coaching calls from a campground (the best office in the world by the way) other days where I was on international calls talking about Castain Training Systems and how we could help. By the way, the mobile Skype app is awesome!
4. I created a peak performance state! The vacations had me more relaxed and in a real fun mood (Could this help us in sales?) Little things that would bother the hell out of me, were quickly dismissed (Could you benefit from keeping your focus on more productive things?) And quite frankly, I had to work at superhuman speed in order to have my reward (6 vacations). So in many ways, I actually ran faster, and more efficiently, than when I was just running without vacations. Because I was more relaxed, I came up with incredible ideas to grow my client’s business as well as my own. I came up with the concept for a product we launched a few months later that grossed over $350,000.00 Because I was more relaxed, I gave off even more of a “quite confidence”. I’ve been pretty good in the “quite confidence”department, but being relaxed helped me shut down conversations with people who just weren’t a fit, that much quicker. Time was of the essence and I had zero time to dick around with tire kickers.
5. In a way, I had “burned my bridges” Once I planned 6 vacations, I had no choice but to use the rest of my time productively. There wasn’t any turning back and emptying my bank account to finance valuable time away from my business wasn’t an option.

There’s no rocket science to what I just laid out for you but one things for certain;

You don’t have to curse the summer any more.

Find ways to leverage it and have some fun in the process!

You’re allowed to you know!

I’m going to be sharing a lot more details on how I, personally, leverage the summer selling season during our 25 Ways To Rock Your Sales This Summer webinar.

We’re going to discuss everything from how to respond when potential clients say “Call me back after summer” to how you can actually leverage the summer to completely dominate your competitors. We’ll talk about 10 email tactics to help you get noticed (and responded to) and we’ll even talk about a detailed communication plan designed with summer in mind.

To learn more (and to reserve your spot) please click HERE or the handy/dandy button below!