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Welcome to Stuff I Learned Yesterday. My name is Darrell Darnell, I think this years Podcast Movement was the best conference I’ve ever attended, and I believe if you are learning, you aren’t living. In today’s episode of Stuff I Learned Yesterday I share lessons I’ve learned by taking breaks.
Today’s Fun Fact of the Day: When Benjamin Franklin died in 1790, he willed the cities of Boston and Philadelphia $4,400 each, but with the stipulation that the money could not be spent for 200 years. By 1990 Boston’s trust was worth over $5 million.
What I leaned yesterday.
Did you know that today is Work Like a Dog Day? I didn’t know that until I started looking up things for today’s fun fact. It seems a bit fitting that today would be Work Like a Dog Day as I’m going to be talking about the importance of taking breaks.
Over the last 3 months I have worked harder and longer than I ever have in my life. You could say that I’ve worked like a dog. I am usually a detailed oriented person. For example, if you look at www.propodcastsolutions.com, there are a lot of details at play that you might have missed or never notice. One of those details is that in every video, I’m wearing a shirt that has complimentary colors to the rest of the website.
Over the last 3 months I’ve been working feverishly on launching a few new clients, taking care of my existing clients, adding members to my team, designing new services, tweaking my existing services, and updating my website. In addition to all of that, I’ve been designing my strategy for Podcast Movement.
Podcast Movement just ended 3 days ago and it was the first time that Pro Podcast Solutions would make an appearance at an industry trade show. Up to that point all of my marketing has been by word of mouth and referrals. I worked tirelessly day after day analyzing and thinking through every detail.
I needed to figure out what type of visual presence was best. At first I thought about pop-up banners, but then I settled on a 10’x8’ fabric covered booth. Once I settled on the type of booth I wanted, I knew I needed help with the design. Guess who I reached out to? If you guess Mark Des Cotes, you’re right!
Mark is a professional graphic artist and has a great set of skills. We worked together to get the right wording and graphics. We were meticulous. For example, we knew we wanted a picture of a person to be the centerpiece of the booth and we wanted that person to be wearing ear buds. However, they needed to look like they were not listening to music. Instead, we wanted them to look like they could be listening to a podcast. They needed to be smiling like the podcast was bettering their life. They needed to have a line of site that we could use to make it appear as though they were looking at our logo. They needed to be female. They needed to be fairly young. We poured over hundreds, maybe thousands of photos and didn’t settle until we found a photo that matched all of those criteria. Mark even changed the shirt color of the model to match the color scheme of the booth.
Dozens of other decisions went into the booth. I created a brochure that contained pricing, explanations of our services, quotes from my clients, and endorsements from Cliff Ravenscraft and John Lee Dumas. I had to think about how I could draw attention to the booth, collect email addresses, and what type of clothing I would wear. Every decision was filtered through the simple question, “Does this reinforce our branding that we are PROS?”
The last two months were extremely demanding. I worked 15 hours a day 5 days a week. On the other days I worked at least 10 hours a day. The final week before Podcast Movement was even more demanding. I had to get nearly 2 weeks worth of production out the door and scheduled to publish before I could leave town. I was actually looking forward to going to Podcast Movement so I could relax a bit.
The results were good. I can’t say how good yet because it’s too soon. I can tell you that we made a very good impression. We got a lot of compliments on the booth and we had a TON of traffic. Everything worked together to reinforce the fact that we create high quality professional podcasts for our clients.
One thing that worked in our favor was our philosophy in how we set up the booth. I could be mistaken, but I believe out of over 30 vendors that were there, we were the only one to not use the table and chairs that they gave us. Instead, we put those behind the booth and moved the booth out away from the wall. We forced ourselves to stand and kept the table from becoming a barrier between us and the folks that walked by. We were able to better engage and be a part of the crowd. My feet and back were killing me by the end of each day, but I wouldn’t have done it any other way.
So what does any of this have to do with taking breaks?
I could not have done all of this work at such a high level if I had not taken breaks. Some days I took a lot of breaks. That doesn’t mean I slacked off all day, it just means that when I knew I needed a break, I took one.
Studies have shown that we perform better when we take breaks. Our brains can not continue at a high concentration level all the time. When we try to force ourselves to focus and push through brain strain, our productivity falls and our mistakes increase.
However, if you’re in the zone and find yourself able to keep a focused concentration that allows you to produce at a high level for long periods of time, you should keep going until you feel like you need a break.
Not only did I take breaks any time that I needed, I also made sure I kept my commitments to my family. At the beginning of the summer we reserved every Wednesday for Family Fun Day! My wife and I made a spreadsheet of various things we could do each week, and committed to our kids that we would go do something as a family every Wednesday.
Based on the info I gave you above, you can imagine that there were Wednesdays when leaving my studio was the last thing that I felt like I should do. I felt overwhelmed with the amount of work and decisions that I needed to make. At the same time, I knew that getting out of the studio and spending quality time with my family was the best thing I could be doing.
As a result, we had some great times together this summer that none of us would have had if I’d not been committed to taking breaks. As I was locking up the house the night before I left for podcast movement, I noticed a note taped to the door that leads out to the garage. It was a note from my daughter and it said, “Bye daddy I love you very much. Have fun on your trip. I hope you get a lot of new clients. Be safe and enjoy the rented car. I love you a lot and I can’t wait for you to come home. I love you. xoxoxo -Addi”
Here’s what I learned.
We must take time to breathe, laugh, decompress, and relax even in our most demanding times. In fact, doing so may be the only thing that enables us to get through those demanding times.
Most importantly, we have to keep perspective. There are a variety of reasons that I do what I do. Some of those reasons include helping podcasters change the world by making it easier to get their message out, a desire to help the world discover podcasting, a dream to be able to work from anywhere, and be able to provide for the needs of my family. But I also have to remember that the needs of my family also include having me as a part of their lives. Having me as the guy that lives in the studio that’s attached to our house is not the same as having me IN their lives.
When I take time to be with them, interact with them, play games with them, converse with them, and share life with them, then I am truly expressing my love for them. My kids will be grown and gone in the blink of an eye, and I don’t want to have any regrets.
I’m Darrell Darnell and this has been Stuff I Learned Yesterday.
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