How Jennifer Fugo Travels The World While Helping Women Conquer Gluten

Transcription

 Today’s guest is none other than Jennifer Fugo.

I’ve known Jennifer for a number of years. She attended one of my mastermind events and has done some amazing things with her blog, GlutenFreeSchool.com.

Jennifer has been getting some very high rankings and a lot of traffic for some very competitive keywords in the gluten space

As you can imagine, gluten it’s a very competitive space.

She’s done very well and I’m happy for her progress and success.

Let me tell you a little bit more about who she is.

Jennifer is a functional nutritionist and CEO of The Gluten Free School.

In her clinical practice, she helps women with chronic IBS problems which are obviously a pain in the butt. No pun intended.

Jennifer helps them get back to pooping like a normal person while simultaneously empowering gluten sensitive women to finally break up with gluten.

She’s been featured on Dr. Oz where she’s appeared twice as a guest. She’s also been featured on Yahoo News, CNN, E-How as well as several prominent gluten free magazines.

She’s got great content which has enabled her to be featured in many publications.

Jennifer has also written a best-selling book that hit number five on Amazon in the food allergies category which is a very competitive space.

One of the things that she’s most proud of, at least this year, is she’s taken three vacations.

The reason why I mention that is because we’ll be talking about the importance of disconnecting from your business.

So now that you know who Jennifer is, without any further ado, let’s bring her into the show and have some fun.

 

Jennifer welcome. How’s it going?

[Jennifer] It’s going well. Thank you for having me.

[Yuri] Yes, it’s a pleasure. It’s been too long since we’ve connected. I think the last time we hung out was in Toronto at our mastermind in May or June of 2016.

[Jennifer] Yes and it was my first time to Canada.

[Yuri] Isn’t that crazy. What did you think about Toronto?

[Jennifer] I loved it. It felt like I was going to Europe, but it felt familiar. There was an American familiarity to it.

For instance, I was in Italy this past April. It was very different, somewhat similar, but different enough where I felt like I was. away.

[Yuri] If you’re American and you’ve not come to Toronto, you guys are crazy. Part of my mission is to extract more Americans up north because Toronto is an amazing city. Everyone is blown away by how big it is. It’s the fourth largest city in North America and it’s awesome.

Jennifer, I’m happy that you had an enjoyable time when you were in Toronto and that we got to hang out. It was a lot of fun.

[Jennifer] It was. And there’s also a lot of good gluten free food there for anybody that can’t have gluten. I was very impressed by the opportunities the restaurants provided and were willing to go through to make sure I ate safely, so it was great.

[Yuri] It’s a very healthy accommodating city with a lot of health conscious neighborhoods and restaurants. I get fresh pressed green juice delivered to my house on a regular basis, which is amazing.

Traveling, outsourcing, and staying focused

What’s been going on with you?

I see you’ve been traveling. I saw you were in Italy posting pictures showing all this kind of stuff. It’s been a good year for you.

What’s new and exciting?

[Jennifer] I finished my master’s degree in clinical nutrition which opened a lot of new doors. I had closed my practice for a couple of years and then reopened October of last year.

As I’ve been slowly building my business, I recognize there are so many different pieces to it that need some love and attention.

What I realized was that I can’t do everything myself and began hiring people to help me.

I recently hired a copywriter, and a marketing administrative assistant to be the liaison between myself and my business to help connect me to food companies and how we may work together and partner together.

I have a practice with an administrative assistant that’s helping me get the flow of things down as we upgrade to different software.

For now, that’s been a huge step.

I already have a social media marketing team.

I’ve been working with a woman I hired almost five years ago who handles my social media and she is amazing. She’s always five steps ahead of me. She’s better than me at that job.

I realized how much of value that’s brought specifically because I don’t want to sit on Facebook all day posting 10 articles a week or 20 articles a week on my Facebook. I want to do any of that.

[Yuri] We’re not supposed to do that?

[Jennifer] No

[Yuri] I’ve been wasting all this time. I’m just kidding.

[Jennifer] What you do Yuri, is so different. I watch your videos and there are great reminders of things I’ve forgotten. You remind me that I’m making a mistake or that I sometimes need to up my game.

I really enjoy watching your videos.

What you do is different than what I do which is posting about my blog, giving content and memes to keep people engaged.

It’s nice to have somebody on my side that’s able to do the things that I just I don’t have the time or energy for.

I don’t want to be on Facebook as much as I am now and it’s been so nice to minimize that.

[Yuri] I completely agree with you and I think you’re talking mostly about my profile page and maybe my Healthpreneur Group.

The Yuri Elkaim Fan Page which is health and fitness, has that same machine you’re talking about where we have all our stuff scheduled out.

To be honest, I don’t even I don’t even know what’s going on over there. That’s all being taken care of by someone else.

I’ll pop in there every now and then to do a Facebook live because I enjoy doing that.

I think social media is powerful, but I think a lot of people spend way too much time on the minutia that’s not really moving the needle, but it can also be very powerful if it’s done properly.

I’m happy to see that you’re expanding your team and giving yourself a bit more freedom and travelling.

Did you travel all of Italy or did you do more of the Amalfi Coast and up the coastline?

[Jennifer] My husband and I had this dream of renting an Alfa Romeo because we both drive manual transmissions. We wanted to do a road trip in Italy. We flew into Milan and we drove to Lake Como and then we drove down through Genoa and across Portofino.

As we drove further down, we stayed in Los Spezia which is the base of Cinque Terre. We drove across through Lucca to Florence where stayed for three days and then went to Bologna, Parma, Modena, and back to Milan where we flew out of.

It was a fun and interesting experience. I don’t remember how many hundreds of miles it was, but it was an interesting experience.

It was really cool to take a break from my business for those 10 days and go experience a different part of life.

Eating gluten free in Italy

One reason we wanted to go to Italy was from a foodie perspective because my diet is gluten free and oftentimes I avoid things like dairy and eggs.

I’m sure it would surprise a lot of people who know me that I’d choose to go to the capital of bread and pasta to treat myself and my husband to this food excursion. You would think it would be so gluten heavy, but it wasn’t. We almost didn’t want to come back because the food was so amazing and it was so easy for me to eat.

[Yuri] That’s awesome because you don’t associate Italy with gluten free.

You know Dr. Peter Osborne, right?

He was at an event we ran in Florida a couple of years ago and he was telling me that he’d just come back from a 10 day trip to Italy.

He’s just very much like you like you – no gluten.

I’m like “how does that work?”

He’s like, “Oh yeah. No problem. We found these cool restaurants and it was all good”

I’ve never thought of Italy being as progressive as North America is with regard to being gluten-free, and obviously it is.

[Jennifer] They test all the children at a young age for celiac disease.

We stayed with friends of our family in Bologna and I was a little nervous to tell them.

They were like “Oh yeah. We’re friends with you on Facebook. We know we already know what to expect when you said you’re coming to stay with us.”

They don’t understand why people in the U.S. are a little more difficult and get upset when you say you need to change something in your diet. Their focus is they want everyone to be able to eat together. They don’t really care what is or is not on your plate, as long as everyone eats together. That’s what matters most to them.

During my stay, that was something that resonated so deeply with me. It was that sense of family and togetherness.

“Who cares whether you’re having gluten or not. Let’s just all eat together as a group, as a family, as a community.”

It was a life changing experience many times over.

[Yuri] It’s so cool how you can have “less than healthy food”, but feel so good afterwards because of the ambiance, the energy and the happiness versus stressing out about your food.

[Jennifer] I encourage anybody if you’re afraid to travel internationally. One thing that stood out to us was that many times the restaurants would cite up to 14 or 15 different allergens on their menus. Things you wouldn’t expect like celery. They are so much further advanced as far as food labeling is concerned than we are in the U.S.

Best of all, they don’t care and they’re not judgmental. I never got a nasty look.

They’re like “No worries. We have that in the back, or we can adjust it for you. No problem.”

[Yuri] You have the domain, GlutenFreeSchool.com which is a great URL.

I’m going to give you a better one which might work better the next time you are in Italy.
FreeGlutenSchool.com.

Come on guys. Eat all the bread you want. It’s all good.

Taking time off as an entrepreneur

Time to get down to business. You travelled for 10 days and you’ve taken a couple of trips this year.

What’s it been like to have that distance and space from your business? What has having that space from your business brought back to you physically, emotionally, and mentally?

[Jennifer] It gave me a sense of clarity and that 30,000-foot view of not just my life, but also how I am within my business.

I didn’t take a vacation for possibly three, maybe four years before this.

Part of the reason was because I was in grad school and it’s very difficult to take time off. I was also afraid that if I left my business, what was going to happen?

It’s an irrational fear to have. Taking a week off is not going to kill your business. You just have to be smart. You have to plan for it.

I’ve made it a point this summer to take long weekends, to go away with my family, and enjoy time because that time has been invaluable to me and it has helped reduce my stress overall.

I now find that when I do sit down to work, I’m so much more focused.

The target audience that I talk to are women in their 50s and early 60s who are very family centric. This is a part of their culture, their livelihood, and what is important to them.

I have adopted and tested that out and what’s it like to be with your family, to really be in that moment, to cook and eat with them and go away with them.

I have realized there is a whole part of my life I was missing out on and as a result, it’s made me a lot more passionate about what I do.

[Yuri] You have to have that space. I’ve got three kids and the space from the kids is important because I really appreciate them that much more when I’m with them. If I were with them 24/7, they would not be alive. It’s the same in business.

If you have that space for business, it gives you more clarity, and you come back more refreshed.

Knowing what you know now about where your business was a year ago, or three years ago and seeing the power of taking time off, would you have done that earlier even with the way the business was set up back in the day.?

[Jennifer] Yes. If I could go back in a time machine I would tell myself to schedule time off. What I’m shooting for next year is to take an entire month off.

[Yuri] Go for it. It’s amazing. I took a two month sabbatical last summer. It was the best.

[Jennifer] I remember that and I really enjoyed seeing your energy when you came back from that.

It does change you to take a step back, reboot yourself, and come back with a fresh frame of mind.

[Yuri] It’s a paradigm shift I think for entrepreneurs and business owners. We live in a culture especially with social media and a lot of different influencers talking about the importance of grind and hustle, and outwork your competition.

There’s this badge of honor for putting in 20 hour days, but you can’t do that.

You can do that for a short amount of time if you have to, but you’re going to burn out.

What I appreciate where you are now, you’re recognizing the importance of that balance.

Even if that balance is not 9:00 to 5:00 every day, you work hard for a little bit, take a couple weeks off, do your thing and find your own rhythm. It’s really that important.

[Jennifer] I’m Italian. My great grandparents came here from Italy. Family and time off to Italians in general time is very important.

From my understanding Europeans typically take six weeks’ vacation every year. It’s sad that in America we have to kill ourselves.

A business coach had said to me…

“Look, you have to be honest with yourself about what type of lifestyle you want to live. If you’re going to shoot for a $5 million company, the job and the way your life is going to be structured is going to be much different than being comfortable with doing $250,000 or $100,000.

It’s OK whichever you want to choose, but choose a lifestyle that’s going to work for you that you can handle. One that’s not going to be overwhelming. You can always choose at some other point to say OK I want to up my game and go to this next level or goal, but a successful business is successful based on what you want your life to look like.”

It was very freeing to hear him say that.

[Yuri] What are your thoughts when you hear people say I want to scale my company to 10 million, or 100 million?

[Jennifer] That’s a good question. I know there’s a journey out there. I’m not sure if that is the journey I want to have.

I have had a lot of wonderful experiences in my life. I would ideally like get somewhere into six figures and be very comfortable. Once I am at that point I can reassess based on my life and where I want to be.

I’m a little hesitant to go dreaming so large. The more I’m finding out from meeting people that are so far ahead of where I am, that have gone further distances, there are some things I don’t know that I want.

For instance, I don’t want that many team members. There are practical things you need to think about and complexity issues that come along with each zero you add on.

Right now, I’m just looking to get a lot of groundwork laid so that next year will be a much different experience. From there I’ll make my decision about what I want to do beyond that.

[Yuri] I think it’s important because a lot of people look at different businesses and think,
“Oh my god that’s what I want to do. That’s what I have to do.”

You end up modeling something that’s not true to you.

If you build a business around the life you want to live, that really should be all that matters.

As long as you’re providing value and contribute to others, you don’t have to have a billion dollar company.

I think everyone has their own path and some people want to build those companies and that’s awesome. I’m not saying you shouldn’t, but I think it’s important to honor yourself and have the mindset of:

“I think this is the type of business I want to run. This is the type of life I want to have. I don’t need a thousand employees. I don’t even need ten. I’m going to do this.”

In your journey, what was the one big challenge you think back about over the past couple of years? What was that one moment where you’re, “Holy Shit! I can’t believe I got through that.”

What was that big challenge and how did you get through it?

 Recognizing challenges, dealing with them, and moving forward

[Jennifer] This is a great question. This is something I talked about with somebody who works with me and had recently cried over something in her business.

She asked me if I ever cried over something that was so frustrating.

I did have a similar experience. The last time that I cried over my business was January 1, 2016.

I know that date because I had sat down at my computer to get some tax documents ready for my accountant.

At the time, I was using the hard copy version of Quick Books, and my company wouldn’t open up.

I tried the backup file and that wouldn’t work. I went on my hard drive and couldn’t find the file. I was freaking out because several years’ worth of financial data had disappeared.

Long story short. It was my fault. I learned you had to be careful with how you back up data, especially on hard drives, so that is an important piece of this.

As I sat there sobbing, my husband was great. He just let me cry it out and said, “look we’ll figure this out”.

I got in touch with my accountant and told him the problem. He gave me a very feasible solution that worked out.

What I learned from this incident was so powerful because I realized it was time for me to step up my game. I had to stop distrusting a lot of the online applications and programs.

That is a critical part of your business.

I migrated everything over to Quick Books Online, and by the way, this is not an advertisement for Quick Books.

There was a sticking point that was preventing me from making that leap. I didn’t trust the service and I didn’t see the value in it.

I didn’t see the freedom that I could gain from having a service that backs everything up for me, having the ability to call customer service any time of the day, or that my husband could work on it from any computer. It made things easier, and more organized.

That has been a big lesson for me. Now, when I have to add on another service or integration, instead of being resistant to it, I now think about it in terms that this make my life easier or will make someone on my team’s life easier.

Integrations have made my life so much easier, as long as they work.

For people that are in the beginning of their business, yes, there are going to be moments that are going to break you. And you will cry.

Yuri, I don’t know if you’ve ever cried over your business.

I realize there were things sitting inside of me that either I wasn’t willing to deal with, or it was a moment where it became very clear that I had to make a change.

Recognizing that, instead of saying I failed, or fixating on I failed, those moments that felt so emotionally jarring, turned into some of the most pivotal points of change within my business and how I operated.

I think I’ve gotten past my moments of crying.

My tolerance for addressing things over the last two years has really improved tremendously.

If anybody is dealing with things where you end up in tears over clients or anything like that, give yourself 10 or 15 minutes, deal with it, address it, and let it all out.

Then you focus on what’s the next step. How are you going to get yourself out of this? How do you fix this?

If you spend your days telling yourself “I’m a failure”, you’re not helping yourself.

It’s sort of like a child when you put them in time out. You give them that time to deal with their stuff and then you can start getting back to normalcy of how you move forward.

[Yuri] There’s a level of maturity that you acknowledged there. You go through this challenge and initially it’s like, “Oh my God. How am I going to overcome this?”

But then you do it, you look back on it, and you realize it wasn’t that bad.

The way I look at it now, if crap really hits the fan, or something comes up that is a big obstacle or challenge, instead of freaking out, you need to think, “What’s the next step?”

I look at it as a game. I’ve got a cool challenge to overcome so I can add that to my reference list of things that I have overcome.

It becomes a little more interesting that way as opposed to being paralyzed by “Oh my god. I’m never gonna get through this.”

[Jennifer] The simple solution is to ask your yourself who is on your team or who do you know that you can ask for a referral.

Here’s a recent situation I found myself in.

I have this upsell issue because of my newsletter service.

This has been a thorn in my side for the last six months. It’s a tech problem and I hate tech problems.

I finally got my tech guy on the phone the other day and he’s like “Oh you know we can do everything with this in Infusionsoft.”

I was like “Really”. I don’t have to pay for another service or put another plug-in on my website? I don’t have to do any of this stuff?”

To my surprise, his answer was “No. We can build all of this.”

It’s important to surround yourself with people that are better than you are at in particular areas. They can help guide you in moments where you’re like “I don’t know what to do”.

[Yuri] As you’ve grown your business online, what’s been the biggest needle mover for you in terms of marketing or getting your products out there?

Marketing, listening to your tribe

[Jennifer] Listening to my tribe. I’m doing surveys, reading people’s e-mails, going through all the letters I get sent, and looking at it, I realized, “Wow, I really missed the mark”.

What was an eye opener for me, I had been under the impression the ideal woman I could serve in my private practice were women in their 40’s.

Thinking that this demographic was my true avatar, I’ve been talking to women in their 40’s.

It turns out the demographic that comes to me that I serve, are women between the age of 55 – 60. That is a much different age bracket. What is important to them is different from women who are in their 40’s.

It’s important I listen to them so that I can focus on them, and provide the value they want and need.

Even though in your mind you might decide this is who I want to work with, make sure you listen to them, you talk to them, and that it’s a good fit.

[Yuri] If you’re talking with 55- 60-year-old ladies, it affects how you write to them. For instance, you may be using the term “your grandkids” as opposed to “your kids”. It’s that small distinction that makes all the difference

[Jennifer] What’s important to them is so different than a woman in her 40s.

[Yuri] What do you love about your business? What do you love about having your own business and having the internet at your disposal to share your message?

[Jennifer] I love that I can connect with people all over the world and that I can inspire or empower somebody anywhere in the world.

I’m not entirely certain why, but I get a lot of e-mails from people in South Africa. I never anticipated that or that I would have a client that’s in China. She’s American, but her family lives in China because her husband works there.

I have people all over the world I’m able to provide information to that changes the quality of their life.

I help make their lives easier and better by improving their capacity to enjoy their family, to work more efficiently, and feel like they can get their household taken care of amongst other things.

It trickles down to all aspects of their life.

That’s why I love it. I am not confined by a building, and that to me, is so powerful.

[Yuri] What advice would you give to someone who is like a little Jennifer? Someone who is coming up in your shoes who has an idea for a website or a product or a membership and has some great stuff to share, but they’re not sure what to do. Perhaps they do have some stuff and it’s not working out.

If you were to sit down and have a coffee with them., what kind of advice would you give to that person?

Jennifer’s story and her advice for new health and fitness entrepreneurs

[Jennifer] The first piece of advice I would provide them is that they’ve got to test out their idea a little bit further and find out if their idea has legs.

Not every idea is going to work. Gluten Free School was not my first iteration of my business.

We want to think that every idea we have is a million dollar idea and it’s not. Oftentimes there’s probably more failures than there are successes.

I’ve had to work hard to get gluten free school to where it is. It’s taken a long time. There’s been a lot of trial and error.

I would advise someone to be very clear with their plan. Interview your ideal client to get a sense if what you’re saying or sharing is of value to the person you are looking to serve.

[Yuri] Did you find it helpful working one on one with people in a clinical setting? Did you find that to be an advantage to you for coming online in terms of really understanding your avatar or potential clients?

[Jennifer] I would say to some degree yes. I don’t want to take 100 percent credit for the growth the web site has now. That would be unfair. For instance, Google changed its algorithm and started to favor some of the posts that I had written a couple of years ago which are now getting massive amounts of traffic.

Working one on one with clients has absolutely helped me. I’m not talking to a woman in her 40s. I’m working with women who are grandmothers.

I worked with my dad who’s a doctor for about 10 to 12 years in his medical practice directly with patients.

The experience I had working at my father’s practice, seeing the issues that were preventing women from feeling empowered in the conventional medical system, is what helped me get to where I am.

Working one on one has been enormously helpful in understanding what’s important, how to really serve that audience, how to provide them with the most value, and how to speak to them from where they are.

[Yuri] That’s one of the reasons I love working with health and fitness entrepreneurs. Almost all of them have come from having worked one on one with people, so they have a good sense of who they are. They know who they are trying to serve.

When I was working with clients, I was working with them for an hour at a time. There’s a lot of discussion that happens in an hour and you multiply that by several training sessions, several years, you can’t get that data from doing stuff online.

Our industry has a unique advantage because we’re so connected to a lot of our audience, at least initially.

[Jennifer] I still do my copywriting for my newsletters every week. I write them and I respond to those emails, and I think people on my list appreciate that.

I’m not saying this is bad with regard to entrepreneurs whose businesses have grown so large that they have somebody else writing the copy for them. That’s where they are and that’s fine.

I think to some degree, by doing this, people can hear my voice. They know what I have experienced. They know I share their frustration, their troubles, and their everyday ups and downs. I really do understand it and they appreciate it.

I’ve had a lot of people write me and tell me…

“I know that when I read your newsletters, it’s you writing, and I appreciate the time you’ve taken. I know that if I were to hit reply to this e-mail, you’re going to respond back to me”.

Part of my commitment to my business is being a human being. That comes to the part of scalability.

I like that I get testimonials about my customer service. That alone is awesome.

I don’t have all these chargebacks and issues and fights with people.

I like it to some degree that there is a person. There’s personality and there’s somebody there. It’s not just some random stranger you’re talking to.

You have to decide what type of business you want. You have to decide what’s important to you so that you can remain authentic to your own personal values about how you want to interact with the public, your audience, and what’s going to work within your own life.

[Yuri] I want to ask you more question before we get to the good ’ole rapid fire.

Let’s say what happened to quick books happen to your business, god forbid. It disappeared overnight, and you had to start in a new market starting tomorrow. What’s the first thing you would start doing to get that business up and running?

[Jennifer] I would start doing research online. I’d be jumping into Facebook groups, reading people’s comments, and asking questions to test out some theories about that market.

I would figure out based on the amount of funds I have available to me what I want to do, and what’s going to be the most efficient way to get to where I need to be in the next six to twelve months.

Rapid-fire questions

[Yuri] Okay Jennifer. Are you ready for the rapid fire?

[Jennifer] I’ll try my best.

[Yuri] I’m going to ask you a quick little question or fill in the blank and whatever comes to mind, just shout it out.

Your biggest weakness.

[Jennifer] I’ll have to say tech stuff.

[Yuri] Your biggest strength.

[Jennifer] Being efficient.

[Yuri] One skill you’ve become dangerously good at to grow your business.

[Jennifer] I would say Infusionsoft

[Yuri] That’s interesting because you said Tech is your weakness.

[Jennifer] I hired a consultant for two years and had him train me on it.

[Yuri] What do you do first thing in the morning.

[Jennifer] I go to the bathroom.

[Yuri] Yeah sure. After that. After the business is done.

[Jennifer] I usually go and sit at my desk.

[Yuri] And you just sit there or do you do work?

[Jennifer] No. I’m usually just looking at current events at what’s going on in the world.

[Yuri] Final question. You’re going to complete the following sentence.

I know I’m being successful when ___________

[Jennifer] I know I’ll be successful. That’s hard because I feel like I’m successful now.

[Yuri] Let’s rephrase that. I am currently being successful when _______

[Jennifer] I am currently being successful when I do something that is outside of my comfort zone and I just get it done.

[Yuri] There we have it.

Jennifer Fugo this has been awesome. Thank you so much.

What’s going on? What do people need to know about? What’s coming up in the next couple of months that people can check out now or in the near future?

GlutenFreeSchool.com is one place.

Is there any other place they can stay up to date with what you’re up to?

[Jennifer] That’s pretty much the main spot. I have a bunch of passive programs and courses that people can go through on their own such as the Gluten Free Sugar Cleanse which is a live group program that starts January.

There’s also Kick Gluten for Good which is the Bible of all the gluten free knowledge one would ever need to make the diet and lifestyle happen in a short amount of time.

If anybody’s interested please check them out

GlutenFreeSchool.com is the best place to go to check in, say hello, shoot me an email, read some blogs, and check out the recipes. That’s my hub.

[Yuri] You guys should go and check it out. She’s got amazing stuff on there.

It’s no surprise that your ranking at the top of Google for a lot of these very competitive keywords which is tremendous, Jennifer. Well done.

Thank you so much for being on the show. It’s been great to connect with you and I look forward to seeing you soon.

[Jennifer] Yes. You as well. I look forward to seeing you.

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Yuri’s Take

So hopefully you found this interview and conversation to be inspiring. One of the things that I love that Jennifer has been able to do the last year or so in her business is just taking more time off.

As I had eluded to, I had taken a two month sabbatical in the summer of 2016 and it was just amazing.

All I did was play tennis, I hung out with my kids and it was phenomenal. I came back so refreshed, and so much clearer.

I’ve inspired other people to start taking more sabbaticals in their business, or even thinking about how they can set their business up to take a sabbatical whether it’s a month or longer.

You don’t have to take a full sabbatical, but just giving yourself the permission to step away from your business, to have the space to think about nothing.

Perhaps have the space to think about bigger things you want to do in your business as opposed to being stuck in the forest, being in the trenches day in and day out where you’re doing the work in the business but never thinking about the bigger vision.

It’s so important that you step away whenever you can.

That’s why I’m such a huge believer in “Thinking Thursday” where you take Thursdays off.

Whatever day of the week works for you, take some time off. Disconnect from the Internet, take a notepad. Do some big thinking. Go for a walk. Spend half the day in nature. Things like that make a significant difference.

If you can get away for a week or so and completely disconnect from the business, that would be powerful as well.

While there’s a time and a place for that, Jennifer didn’t start taking vacations until she was three years into her business. As she mentioned, she probably would have still done that sooner. It’s something you want to build into your calendar before you do anything else to be very honest with you.

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 www.glutenfreeschool.com

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