Pressing Pause on Work for a Nine Day Trip to Italy with Jayne Havens

 

It’s been over a year since I have pressed pause on my business to truly unplug and recharge. My recent trip to Italy was just what I needed. It takes work to take a break when you are a solopreneur, but this was well worth it!

Pause on Work

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Transcript: Pause on Work

Intro: Welcome to Becoming a Sleep Consultant! I’m your host Jayne Havens, a certified sleep consultant and founder of both Snooze Fest by Jayne Havens and Center for Pediatric Sleep Management.

On this podcast, I’ll be discussing the business side of sleep consulting. You’ll have an insider’s view on launching, growing, and even scaling a sleep consulting business. This is not a podcast about sleep training. This is a podcast about business building and entrepreneurship.

Jayne Havens: So it’s been about forever and a day since I have done a solo podcast episode, and I think it’s time. I was racking my brain trying to figure out what I should talk about on this episode for this week, and I just kept thinking about how everybody has been asking me about my trip to Italy. And since this is my podcast and I can talk about whatever I want, I am going to tell you a little bit about my vacation and seeing Taylor Swift because I think everybody wants to hear about that. And of course, I’m going to relate it back to my life as an entrepreneur. Because in order to take a nine-day vacation, you really have to be strategic and plan.

So let’s back it up a little bit. I want you all to realize that in order for me to go away for nine days and be in an entirely different time zone and feel totally liberated and free, I needed to lay some very serious groundwork on the front end.

And what that look like for me is, I needed to stop taking clients for my two-week package that I offer two weeks in advance of leaving. Because if I’m going to give my clients two weeks of support, if I’m going to give them 14 days, I can’t start with a new family 9 or 10 days before my trip because then I can’t give them a full two weeks. So I stopped taking two-week clients two weeks before I left, which is hard for me to do. I don’t like to turn people away. I actually ended up getting a little bit creative because a few families just really were not prepared to hear the word no.

It’s funny when you’ve been supporting families for years and years, most of your referrals, most of your clients, will come to you by way of friends of former clients. Right? So when somebody reaches out to me and they say that they’re looking for help with sleep in their home, 98 times out of 100, they got my name from a former client. That former client has told them that I’m the best. They need to work with me. There’s nobody else they can consider.

Now, of course, that’s not true. But that’s what they’re hearing from their friends. And they are committed to working with me because their best friend from college, or their sister-in-law, or their coworker told them, “You have to work with Jayne Havens.” Right? So a few of these families were sort of unwilling to hear the word no, and I had to get creative. So I actually offered a one-week package for a few of these families, and I had never done that before. It actually worked out great.

The other thing that I did was I offered a written sleep plan and a call to review without any support. That also went great. Neither of these options are going to be added to my list of services. I’m not going to be promoting them on my website. It’s not something that I’m going to be pushing moving forward. But it was a great way to still have income coming in in those two weeks leading up to my trip without taking on any full-service clients.

I had a small handful of families that hired me just to write them a written sleep plan and to get onto a phone call and review the plan with them, make sure I answered all of their questions and set them up for success, and they were going to then implement on their own. Then I think I took like three families that were just like one-week support. I explained to them on the front end that, typically, I practice what I like to call a client-led approach, which means that I will present all of the age-appropriate options for sleep training, and I’ll let them decide how they want to handle it and I’ll support them through the process.

But since we were only going to have a week, I needed to be in charge of what the process looked like because I needed to manage the timeline and make sure that they were going to have success in seven days. I couldn’t take a really sort of gradual and parent-present approach with sleep training in these circumstances because we just didn’t have enough time. And I wanted to make sure that all of my clients were comfortable with that. They were, and we had success all around. So that’s what it looked like sort of leading up to my trip.

The actual trip was fantastic. I live in Baltimore, Maryland. We flew out of Newark. So my husband and I drove to Newark Airport. We flew Newark to Milan, direct flight, and landed — I don’t know. I think it was early in the morning. So it was like an overnight flight. We slept on the plane, woke up and had a car service take us to — where did we go first — Forte dei Marmi, which is a beautiful, beautiful beach town in northern Italy. We spent four days there.

Basically, we just parked ourselves on the beach. We had beautiful weather. We rode bikes to the beach. We rode bikes to dinner. We basically ate tomato, mozzarella, prosciutto sandwiches every single day and pasta and seafood for dinner every single night. We did a little shopping and really just had a wonderful time. So that was Forte dei Marmi for the first four days.

Then we made our way to Florence, I think was next. We had two days in Florence. It was so hot there, but we had a really nice time. The first day, we did a golf cart tour, which was fantastic because it was a three-hour tour. And honestly, if we had had to walk that entire tour in 90-degree heat, I think I would have melted. But we were in a golf cart, and we were driven around. We saw all the beautiful sites. We stopped for maybe gelato and water and whatever. We had a really nice time. That was day one in Florence. Day two, we went shopping. It was a bit of a bust, but whatever. It was sort of too hot to do anything else.

Then we made our way to Milan. I’m going to tell you a really great story. So the first day in Milan, we got there and it was sort of around the time that we were ready to eat lunch. We asked the hotel, the people at the front desk, where we should go grab a bite, and they recommended a restaurant. So we made our way there.

We were eating. The people who were sitting behind us were speaking in English, and they were wearing Taylor Swift bracelets. The concert was that night. So my husband turned around and he jokingly said to them, “What time are we getting to the concert?” And so they were really excited to hear other English speakers that were headed to the concert. We started making small talk. They gave us some friendship bracelets. We were trying to figure out when we were going to make our way over to the stadium. Turns out they were staying at our hotel. And so we decided we were all going to get there super early. We didn’t know what to expect once we got there.

And so after lunch, I guess my husband and I went back to the hotel. I guess these three people also made their way back to the hotel, but we didn’t do that together. And as we were — I think we changed our clothes. We were ready for the concert. We went downstairs. We were going to go get a cab. When we got down to the lobby and we walked outside, we saw these three people who we had seen at lunch. They were getting into a car that they had hired to take them to the concert. And we were waiting for a taxi. They’re like, “Oh, get in the car with us.” So we went and got in the car with them.

We went to the concert. We stood in line for merch. Jonathan got everybody drinks. We went and found a spot in the shade and spent the afternoon. Everyone was drinking Aperol spritzes except for me. I’m not really a drinker. It’s just not my thing. I was drinking water all afternoon. It was really, really hot. I knew it was going to be a long day, and I just wanted to hydrate. So I was drinking water. Everybody else was drinking these bright orange drinks all afternoon.

One of the people who we were with had an extra ticket. Long story. It’s not really relevant. But she had a single extra ticket that she was committed to giving away. She wasn’t going to sell it. She just wanted to give it away to somebody for free. She wanted to find the right person. She wanted to find a special person. So this whole afternoon, we’re all sort of on a mission to find somebody that we can give this ticket to.

While everybody is sitting around drinking their Aperol spritzes, at the table next to us is a family. It was a mom with her 14-year-old daughter and then I think it was like the 14-year-old’s cousin and the cousin’s dad. So maybe like the mom and the other dad were brother and sister. I’m not sure. But like two adults, two children. And so, Jonathan, my husband, turns over to the 14 year old. She has a whole stack of bracelets on her arm. And we were wearing our bracelets too. For those of you who don’t know, it’s sort of a thing to trade friendship bracelets at Taylor Swift concerts. I have no idea why this started, but it’s really sweet.

Jonathan turns over to this little, to this girl, this teenager and says, “Hey, do you want to trade friendship bracelets?” And she was so excited. They were Italian. She was so excited that he spoke to her in English. She is an incredible English speaker. Her English was perfect. I couldn’t believe it. She’s from this tiny, tiny little town. She actually flew two hours to Milan to the concert. She was from a tiny little town. Her mother spoke no English, and she was a perfect English speaker. So she was excited to trade bracelets with Jonathan. Then they all went back to drinking.

I sort of could get the sense that she really was craving connection. She was excited that we were all English speakers. She wanted to connect with us, and I just decided to give that to her. So I turned around. I started chatting with her. I was asking her how her summer is going, what does she do during the summer when there’s no school. I asked her, do you play any sports? I was just literally trying to give her opportunities to practice her English. Her mom was so proud of her that she was literally taking a video of the two of us conversing. Because she was just so proud that her daughter spoke so beautifully. And so we’re talking back and forth.

Honestly, I sort of was running out of questions to ask her. I just thought to ask, so where are your seats tonight? Where are you sitting at the concert? She replied back that she didn’t have tickets, that they literally just came. They flew two hours to come and sit basically in the parking lot and hear Taylor Swift from outside of the stadium.

When I heard this, I was grinning from ear to ear. I turned around to my new friend, Elizabeth, who we had met at lunch. I was like, Elizabeth, I think we found our person. And so we offered this little 14 year old — I feel terrible. I don’t even know her name. We offered her the ticket. She immediately burst into tears. She was so emotional. Then I started to freak out, because what if her mother said no? We only had one ticket, and I didn’t know. Is this mother going to let her 14 year old go into a concert completely by herself? I really started to have doubts. I felt like I went from maybe making her night to ruining her night. I really didn’t want that to happen.

Her mom said, FaceTime your father. Ask your father. If he says it’s okay, then you can go. Long story short, ultimately, they did let her go. She was over the moon, so excited that she was able to get this free ticket. She was a diehard fan, and she was going to have the time of her life. She was going in completely by herself. Her mom, her uncle, her cousin were just going to sit outside as originally planned. It was just such a special moment to be able to — look, it wasn’t even my ticket. It wasn’t like I gave her the ticket, but it felt so good to be able to find the person to give that free ticket to.

We just all hugged, and we took pictures. It was just such an incredible moment of connection with people from all over the world. The three people we were with, one of them was from DC; the other two were from London. We met this family from Italy. It was just like such an incredible moment of connection that was really, really special. So that was that.

The concert? What can I tell you about the concert? The concert was outstanding. I mean, I haven’t yet heard anybody say a single negative thing about a Taylor Swift concert. It was entirely over the top. She was on for 3 hours and 15 minutes, multiple wardrobe changes. Everything with the dancing and the costumes and the stage, everything was perfect.

I couldn’t believe we were in a stadium with 80,000 people. And I really felt like my husband and I were the only two people in there that didn’t know every single word to every single song. Like everybody knew every single word to every single song. I know a lot of Taylor Swift’s music, but I don’t know every single word to every single song. And I sort of felt a little out of place that I wasn’t as diehard of a Swifty as everybody else in there.

The energy was high. It was great. Everybody was on their feet for literally 3 hours and 15 minutes, and it was fantastic. So that was the concert. We left the concert. We basically kind of had to hitchhike home. Getting home was really, really hard. Then the next day, we had a super light day in Milan and then we came back to America. So that was my vacation.

I guess if I’m reflecting on the experience, what I will say is that this was the first time in over a year that I completely unplugged from my business. I didn’t have any clients. I really didn’t take any calls. I fielded emails here and there. I actually wrote one sleep plan while I was away for somebody who had signed on to work with me before I left, but she agreed to wait until I returned to get started for our two weeks. But I really, truly was entirely unplugged during this vacation, and it just felt so good.

What I will say is that I created that for myself. That’s what I was reflecting on the other day. It’s that like, I built this. I created this. I created a situation where I can work really, really, really hard day to day in my business. Then when I want to — on occasion, not regularly — I can shut it all down for nine days to just be present with my husband and to appreciate a new country that I haven’t visited since I was a teenager, and really absorb just the wonderful things in life that sometimes you’re too busy to stop and really appreciate.

And in order to have that, it’s such a luxury to be able to work hard and earn good money when you want to and then also just pump the brakes and let it all come to a screeching halt also because you want to. Like what a luxury?

But I worked for that. That didn’t happen overnight. It didn’t happen the first year I was in business. It probably didn’t happen the second or third year I was in business either. It takes time to build something that can ramp up whenever you want to ramp it up, and it can wind down when you’re ready for it to wind down. It just felt like such a treat to truly unplug, really appreciate the culture and the people and the food and the weather and the scenery, all of it, without any ties to any sort of stress or really anything work-related at all for nine days.

Now I’m back in town. We’re back in the States. We actually got home on a Monday and then on Friday, we left again to go visit my kids at visiting day. So like, literally, I had four days to try and get back into the swing of things with work before we were leaving town again. Visiting was great. I guess that’s a conversation for another day. But now I’m back home and really, truly back in the swing of things for work until really the summer ends. We have one final vacation with the kids when they get home from camp, and then it’ll be back into the normal swing of life.

But I kept getting asked. Literally, all of my work friends, all of my social circle, everybody was sort of asking me how was Israel? How was the Taylor Swift concert? And I thought, you know what? It’s my podcast. I can talk about whatever I want, and I am going to share this with all of you. So that’s my rundown. I think that’s all I have for today. Who knows what’s in store for next week? I have no plans. I haven’t figured that out yet. But, you know, I’ll be back on Tuesday again. Have a good one.

Outro: Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Becoming a Sleep Consultant Podcast. If you enjoyed today’s episode, it would mean so much to me if you would rate, review, and subscribe. When you rate, review, and subscribe, this helps the podcast reach a greater audience. I am so grateful for your support.

If you would like to learn more about how you can become a certified sleep consultant, head over to my Facebook Group, Becoming a Sleep Consultant or to my website thecpsm.com. Thanks so much, and I hope you will tune in for the next episode.