- Why I took a sabbatical and how I knew when it was time to come back
- How I adjusted to having less structure and routine
- The phases of my sabbatical
- My take on why other entrepreneurs have taken breaks
- What my business looked like during the sabbatical
- The physical health struggles I've dealt with and how things have improved.
Made for More with Amanda Kolbye
144. Sabbatical Q&A
I have gotten so many questions in my DMs since announcing my return from a seven month sabbatical, and this episode is dedicated to answering those questions for you! I'm covering everything from what my business looked like while I was away to how my physical health has improved over the last few months. Whether you are planning an extended break in your future or just curious about my sabbatical experience, this episode is full of honest reflections and juicy takeaways that will get you thinking! In this episode, we cover…
You guys had a lot of questions about the sabbatical, everything from personal questions to moving and travel questions to a lot of business life tips. I'm assuming a lot of you are quite interested and of course hopefully your life doesn't have to get so bad to the point of taking a sabbatical, but how would you to be able to take a break like this or how do you know when it's time to and all of those things that are racing through your mind? So I've compiled everything, mostly a lot of these questions were asked on Instagram via conversations and in my DMs and we are just covering all of it and diving in. Hello hello and welcome to the made for more podcast. I'm your host Amanda Colby, a seven figure entrepreneur and founder of my company Laptop Lifestyle Co. This podcast is full of raw perspective challenging conversations about the whole picture of entrepreneurship. You didn't start a business to learn Instagram hacks and tech tips. You started a business to build a life full of freedom and limitless potential because you knew in your gut you were made for more. I believe you can do anything you put your mind to. I believe your success is inevitable and I want you to learn how to tap into your own power to achieve the unthinkable in your life and business. On the podcast every week we want to help you unlock and craft your made for more life through actionable business strategies, powerful mindset insights and raw honest conversations that really pull back the curtain on entrepreneurship both from myself and amazing industry leading experts. You are a powerhouse and it's time we stop holding ourselves back, unlock our potential and fearlessly chase after our desires. This friends is the made for more podcast. Okay so a few very very quick notes if you are just tuning in here. First note is this is a part of a short series of back-to-back episodes on the podcast here that are exclusively about my sabbatical. The podcast will not always be talking about sabbatical stuff. It's basically a two-week stint if you're here with us live and then the podcast will be rebranding and resuming to our quote-unquote normal slash new content in a few weeks. So get ready for that and if you're liking this content obviously soak it all up. Also if you happen to be new here and are like what are you talking about Amanda sabbatical? What like what is going on here? Go back a couple of episodes. You can go to the link in my Instagram where we have a like sabbatical playlist. I built a seven-figure coaching business. I'm not going to give the whole spiel here due to a lot of personal life things. I have been on a seven-month sabbatical since the beginning of 2024 and I have just come back and I'm giving you guys the lowdown. So I have previous episodes where I answer a lot of other questions more in depth such as why I took it kind of the story of what happened while I was there. I have an episode coming up about financials so really check out all the episodes that we have and this one is really going to be kind of like grab bag style with all the questions from A to Z that you guys have asked and I've kind of grouped them together so that hopefully they you know can piggyback off of each other and make the most sense possible as we cover a lot of ground. So let's get right into it. The first question that was asked a lot was why I took a sabbatical and I have an entire episode, episode 140 that explains that and I actually recorded it before I took my sabbatical and then like I said there's a bunch of other episodes of me recapping things after so I'm not going to get into that on today's episode but because that question was asked so much I am just telling you where to find the answers. So I loved these first two questions that I'm going to get into here that people asked I don't know about you guys but I had literally never seen someone take a quote unquote sabbatical. I couldn't even have used that term like in my brain it was just oh my gosh things are so bad I've got to just push pause and like take a break. I think I've seen a couple other people now take one so I feel like taking breaks of some sort are becoming a little bit more normal but I hesitate to say normal in any way shape or form because there is like no information out there about it. It's not something we see or that is normalized and part of my hope in doing this episode and a lot of stuff to come is to normalize things like this in conversations like this not because everyone should take one but because if you need one I want you to know how to and be prepared because had I of had this be more normalized or had more information I would have probably taken it sooner I wouldn't have felt as crazy or bad for needing to do this and as we'll get into with some other questions I definitely would have done some things differently or yeah I totally went into this blind you guys so these first two questions are how did I know it was time to take a break and then how did I know that I was ready to come back? So I'm going to start with the first one. I've talked about my personal life and some of that story in some of the past episodes I'm not going to get too much into that but if you're relatively new here my sabbatical in short was solely because of my personal life and my personal like situation being so absolutely insane my life had gotten worse and worse and worse for about three years it was kind of this like crumbling and then massive explosion last year and all of that also impacted my mental health and my physical health and so as you're listening to these questions take in mind that I'm answering most of these questions from my perspective in my story which I would say is not exactly a typical sabbatical I'm essentially clumping together what is my really really intense deep healing journey that also happened to coincide with my sabbatical so just keep that in mind as you're listening to the answers there will be some answers I give that are kind of just like tips or high level that would apply to like any type of sabbatical or break or whatnot right but how I knew it was time to take a break for me it was like a long time past obvious okay but again that's because like it wasn't necessarily about the business it wasn't just like oh I kind of need a break like yeah it was holy freaking shit I cannot last another second and the reason I didn't take a break sooner is a very complicated answer but a lot of the things in my personal life were out of my control and I kept thinking okay this has to be it right like things are totally gonna slow down here and then I'll at least get my feet under me and then kind of can decide what I need but it was just a spiral for those three years of getting like slapped in the face time and time again so I would say that I knew for sure that I needed a break at least six months before I took it to the point that halfway through 2023 last year like I was looking into month long like treatment centers intensive therapy places like I was pretty much debating almost every month since last summer until I actually took it in December if I could keep going and ultimately for reasons we won't fully get into here like I decided to finish out the year and I think that was a I hesitate to say good but it was the right decision for me at the time so as a very quick tip what I would say if you're asking or wondering this question is hopefully your situation isn't as extreme as mine most people are able to take things under control before it gets to that point and I would say if you're thinking about taking this kind of break you're probably past the time that you needed the break and in the next episode I'm actually going to be talking about different types of breaks slash sabbaticals that you can do because not all of them have to be this extreme or this long or look like this and so I really want to like lay that out so that taking some sort of extended break feels more realistic and manageable in whatever manner that you need it to be right but if you're thinking about taking one you probably already needed one so as annoying as it is to say trust your gut that is the answer because everyone's situation is so different and only you know what you need but what I will say is everyone waits to do this because they don't know how they maybe don't even know it's an option and it's freaking scary which we'll get into a little bit more but I promise you just in short like it will be worth it because if you're not right now it's probably only going to get worse or it may get a little better and you might hang on but you know what's a life if we're hanging on what's a life if we're a little bit better rather than doing the scary thing to like take a step back in whatever that means figure your shit out and then come back as the fullest healthiest version of you right like that's the gist that we're going for here right so I did want to touch on a few things that are kind of almost taking out of the picture all the craziness of my personal life and mention a few other things that I think are helpful to admit normalize and enter the conversation here that I think a lot of you will be able to relate to that we're definitely quote-unquote signs for me that it was time to take a break and refigure out a better direction right so in the midst of all of my growth which if you haven't been around since the beginning I grew really really fast and that sounds sexy and wonderful but I would almost say like that was part of the beginning of a domino effect that I had no clue would last for so many years right but I grew really really fast I hit six figures in 10 eight months something like that yeah eight months and then I hit multiple six figures in 10 months and then I hit a million dollars in 24 months like within my first two years that's freaking insane right sounds amazing but fast growth creates a lot of growing pains a lot of problems and I got very stuck for my own like internal raisins into a cycle of overworking this coincide with covid I was working like 12 15 hours a day burned out but also very quickly realized that I ended up in a cycle of addiction as a workaholic starting then and that lasted for two three years right so like that was kind of the beginning for me but I mentioned this because I think that in various ways a lot of you can relate to this whether you also had fast growth or maybe you didn't have fast growth but you burned out or things got really like messy in the business and and you never maybe took the time to slow down because even just slowing down to restructure or figure out how to scale or something like that like those are the beginning stages that if you don't deal with those sorts of things your mental health personal health whatever it is will start to get worse and that is unfortunately what leads a lot of people to end up needing a sabbatical or extended break like this so that was one thing and then a long kind of that journey of so much growth honestly of just being in business for four years that I was in business for and combine you know with a lot of my personal stuff I really lost sight of me I lost sight of what I was even working for like why I started my business in the first place I was just chasing achievement money milestones I didn't quite realize what I was doing because so much else was going on but I know that a lot of you have felt this way as well or maybe feel that way right now where you kind of feel like whoa like how did we get here and you start to feel really out of alignment and I do want to say that out of any of the things that I'm mentioning here none of these inherently mean that you built a bad business or a wrong business none of these inherently mean you need to burn it all to the ground none of these inherently mean that you need to take a sabbatical so there's so much context here before you go make some like rash decisions and again listen to the upcoming episodes where I will kind of spell a little bit more out and give some more tips on this stuff but yeah I just felt really off I felt really out of alignment like everything felt like a lot of effort not from like hard work perspective it just was hard in a way that it wasn't hard in the beginning when I was so in alignment I was so inspired I was just like oh my fucking shit like in the beginning like it was good like I was hustling but from a good place right and I think part of that is like you know again besides my personal stuff like I grew as a person and that's what a lot of people actually I don't hear anyone talk a ton about this about what happens especially when you run these like personal brand and like service based typed businesses what happens when you maybe outgrow your business and really how to make those decisions of whether you need to pivot or remodel or start a different business or like whatever it is I think it's really hard to make those decisions which causes a lot of people to hold on for longer than they should so anyways with all of this brewing like I really started to question things like you know what is this all for I felt like I found myself stuck in this hamster wheel and it wasn't a business problem I had done the things to scale to streamline to automate to even simplify and this is where it's my personal life factors that exacerbated all of this and took it to the next level and drug it out whatever but like yeah I was just so stuck and I was just holding on waiting for things to get better and I just I was questioning like what what am I even doing right like I'm sitting here selling a dream I'm sitting here traveling the world to some of the coolest places and I feel nothing I feel numb I feel empty like what was I trying to prove and after achieving milestone after milestone and money after money like I started to actually question which I should have seen sooner but like when would things ever be enough right it's like I knew but I wasn't fully ready to admit a lot of stuff to myself which is why this has been a journey I started to realize like the more work I did on myself I started with therapy and a somatic breathwork healing journey three years ago now like end of 2021 and so obviously that was helping to just me work through certain things bring certain things up question things but all of this underlying stuff of past beliefs and conditioning that were quite toxic were running the show and mine might not be the same as yours but I can guarantee that all of us have past conditioning and beliefs that are running the show and entrepreneurship is the best personal development journey you'll ever go on and I say best in terms of it's gonna speed things up real fast it's gonna bring all the shit to the surface which doesn't feel good in the moment but you know ultimately is good so for me and maybe relevant or similar to you as well like I had gotten through my whole life by working hard by running from one thing to the next by focusing on money by putting my worth and productivity and achievement all these things and those played out in a plus fashion with my business and in all of us started to become signs as well as create issues which is why I'm highlighting them right now in terms of how did I know it was time to take a break other than my personal bullshit right and also if any of these resonate with you but things aren't so bad or terrible or even bad at all right now I would really really invite you to sit with them write some of this down question them whether you have a therapist or a life coach or a friend or just yourself because they will keep running the show even if it's in a smaller or more subtle manner in the background and they will prevent you from not just more success but like happiness fulfillment like so much that you may or may not be able to realize yet so another thing is I had this like whatever it takes and at any cost mentality and I was really proud of that because it had gotten me through so much in life and it was kind of my secret weapon my security blanket that I knew I could always like rely on that if push came to shove I knew I would stay up till 2am I knew I would literally do whatever it takes to succeed and I did I was very successful but at what cost right I think there's a lot of good grit in a mentality like that and it's not black and white that you shouldn't have any of that but to a certain extent right so this is really narrowly minded for being so focused on my goals like and from the beginning and I had a lot of stuff with money and achievement for various reasons we won't get into now but money controlled me money drove me but in a way that was not inspiring was very unhealthy I was terrified of not having enough money which comes from childhood a lot of different things but I kept thinking that if I had enough money if I had enough achievement like it would finally save me whatever that really meant right like a lot of this is not so much cognitive where you're sitting there like yeah this is what's happening in my brain right now right but like y'all I had made millions I had been featured in all these publications served hundreds of clients like I had achieved so much so young I made my first million by 27 years old and I still woke up every single day terrified that if I stopped or let up on the gas I would lose it all I don't even know fully what I thought would happen but I I was terrified that if I stopped it would all disappear and in my gut I knew that I had killed myself almost literally to get here and I was afraid that if I let go of what I had built that I wouldn't be able to build it again because I didn't have it in me anymore I was so beaten down right and so I just I held on in that fear literally controlled me from the second I woke up to the second I went to bed and yeah it's just crazy like looking back on everything so I share this because while again your story is probably different than mine in some ways and if none of those things I mentioned necessarily relate to you then take what I said about entrepreneurship is a fast track to personal development that you need to look at what beliefs and narratives are running the show so those are some things that told me that it was time to take a break as I became more and more aware of these things and started to be able to see how they were playing out in my business in my life and how they were controlling me those were a lot of signs and then the biggest signs were just how crazy my personal life was and how bad my mental and physical health had got that's the real answer there but I'm hoping most of you don't get to that point right now this was a freaking terrifying decision which I feel like is part of why people ask like well how did you know it was time to take a break because if you're thinking about you're probably freaking terrified and I was too like I'd given everything to my business it was my identity my livelihood my reputation like it was my baby and so I did I gripped onto it I held onto it I tried to remodel revamp down scale but whatever and it got to the point where like it wasn't a choice anymore like I had to let go yeah because I wasn't gonna make it if I didn't right so went through the whole spectacle and not ever question will be this long by the way but um next question was how did I knew I was ready to come back and I really love this question because I think we hear a lot of like these you know hero stories of bad thing happened I took a break I took a sabbatical very vague high level I came back and everything was great right and that's also why I'm trying to be so so freaking honest and give you guys behind the scenes of this because I think those stories make us all feel crazy so I did not necessarily come back when I felt ready I was not like wow I feel so rested I feel so much zen like man am I ready to come back I got an idea I got a plan like literally none of that like opposite of that right there was no sign at all and there wasn't even necessarily like this feeling of finally feeling ready one day but again unlike other people sabbaticals maybe I can't answer for them but like mine was just so busy so hectic so stressful it was being dictated also by like a lot of life things including like our visa and it was also being dictated by a lot of my mental and physical health issues to where I had originally planned like the sabbatical to be two or three months and then very quickly into it realized like that was not going to be long enough and so after that point I never had a month or like a deadline of which like things needed to end because I knew even if I had to go into debt or like literally whatever it was like I knew I didn't have the capacity or energy or anything to come back a moment sooner than I was quote-unquote ready and I knew that as hard as it felt to forgo money to whatever it was like I had to take advantage of the break that I was already in and had already planned for because like I had done the hard work to shut down all the clients and shut down all the programs and the team and all the things and so it would have been 10 times worse in so many ways for me to come back too soon try to start things up again then be kind of in a mess in the midst of clients and contracts and all this stuff and also like not actually be quote-unquote better and I say better because there's not other language but being better at least in this instance it's not like a finish line it was better enough and then figuring out what that meant because I was never going to jump back into business at the same speed, pace, depth, etc. any of it that was when I had left right so to give you some ideas like my whole sabbatical was about seven months I started brainstorming and wanting to do like a little business brainstorm about three months in just ideas starting to write things down and sheets you know look at things for inspiration and I did that for a little bit I paused for a while would kind of go back to it but there was no pressure per se which I do think was like a very good decision at least for me because it again in this situation I knew I was not coming back to the same business that I had before and I knew that it wasn't even like a we're switching up some offers or anything like I pretty much knew pretty quickly that I was going to be starting a completely new business in every sense of the term right and then when June June was when my life started to settle for a little bit kind of for the first time when there was enough space for things to start to peel in some ways again like some of the chaos out of our control settled and the biggest factor here was my health honestly like my physical health yes my mental health I think had like kind of slowly been being poured into and rewiring over the course of all this but my physical health I couldn't find answers for I couldn't get under control and someone did ask about my physical health so that is a question I'll like just list off what I was actually dealing with there but it wasn't until probably the end of June that I finally got although probably temporary but some relief for my physical health and I mean y'all it was night and day like I couldn't get out of bed for 90% of my sabbatical I mean it took me three four hours to get out of bed in the morning because I was so exhausted I would sleep 10 to 15 hours a day and be exhausted the entire day not to mention like the depression and mental health side of it so that was a really big turning point for me and I think once I started to have energy and I could like wake up and function like a semi-normal person that for me was a sign and a tipping point where all of a sudden I think combined with a lot of the healing and space I'd allowed myself I felt like I wanted to do something again and I didn't know what but basically that was when my decision was to come back to social media with no pressure or expectations because that felt fun for me not because I had to but I'm one of the weird ones that actually enjoys like social media and content like sharing it wasn't until mid-July after we'd gotten to Bali and at this point I'd had about two three weeks of my health being in control to a manner and that's when a lot of things started clicking really really fast I mean like 50 times a day I was like holy shit everything is like really clicking and sinking in and aha and a lot of this was just for myself personally not necessarily all the business but I sort of feel inspired again so I made the decision at that point after a little time in Bali to contact my team and say okay we are coming back but it's gonna be messy that's where we are now there was no pressure I don't have offers mapped out yet I don't even know the direction of my business if you listened to the last episode I go into depth about that so I made the decision to come back slowly and pretty messy so I think this answer to close this out it's gonna be so unique to you in your situation and you have to trust yourself again I know that's such an annoying answer but what I will say with full certainty is what I don't recommend is forcing coming back you will know if you're not quote-unquote ready in your gut I promise you because it will feel like oh it will feel like oh shit like I don't want to do this I like like you know what it feels like to be excited or inspired and want to do something versus feeling like you have to do something and trying to convince yourself that you're ready when you know you're not right I had to fully prepare myself because like we have a lot of savings and a lot of stuff that has allowed you know me to do this but at the same time we've also used a lot more than I was comfortable like getting down to so I was fully prepared that if I had to for the sake of not forcing coming back I would get some freelance or consulting gigs or hell even a remote job if it really came down to that right not that those things are bad they're just not what I want right so that is my answer for how I knew I was ready to come back okay so next question a lot of you guys ask like how was this about a goal was it nourishing was it what I hope it be and I think you would probably conclude by listening to the last episode this says like I'm back the story of this radical how crazy it was how hectic how stressful it was but I wanted to just add in answering this question directly here that beyond the obvious string of crazy events the part I didn't discuss in the last episode that is kind of the main factor of what happened during the sabbatical was all the inner stuff and the inner work that I did and transformed and was working through so was it nourishing and what I hoped it be like no it was nothing that I thought it would be I think if you plan a break like this or you're on some sort of a healing journey in some manner or identity shift I don't think you'll ever be able to plan or guess kind of how it's gonna happen but I also don't want to scare anyone into thinking that like if you take a sabbatical all those crazy shit's gonna happen and whatnot like again that I'm combining sabbatical with my healing journey but yeah like it wasn't nourishing because I didn't have a stability I didn't have support I didn't have community the work for me to heal was facing every skeleton in my closet and stripping myself of my entire identity and everything I'd ever known and that sounds dramatic but I mean it in the most literal hardcore sense of those sentences right is really my entire life crumbled like every bucket my I guess we're not married but you know like basically my marriage slash relationship my physical health my mental health my life my family my business you know like all of it right and so because my entire life essentially crumbled I sat in what I refer to as the void during this sabbatical and I'm gonna talk a lot more about this this is a term that I think other people use but it's not necessarily like a specific fully agreed upon term so if you hear it other people may use it differently or may refer to this as something different but like I sat in this void in between the crumbling and the hard stuff and my past identity in life and it's in between space and actually now figuring out who I am and the new life and all of that stuff that's the void it is the craziest experience of my entire life which is why I'm going to talk more about it and not get into it right now but I was also throughout this process why it didn't feel like what I wanted it to be I honestly was really upset like until pretty recently because I felt I got gypped of this opportunity to take a sabbatical all I wanted was peace calm to relax to rejuvenate and until very recently I didn't feel any of that yeah and so so recently I've been able to come to peace with things because I can see now that in order for me to heal which was my goal I can see how and why things had to happen the way that they did and again at the end of the day my goal for my sabbatical was to heal and I don't want to say I'm healed because I think I'll always be healing in progress but I do feel like it accomplished that but I really couldn't see that until the last couple of weeks when so much started coming together and clicking it was messy it was not what I wanted it to be but I can say it was what I needed and yeah yours probably will be too okay next question how did I financially manage the business and personal stuff expenses during this time I had a lot of questions and I think a lot of tips and stuff about this so I actually am doing an entirely separate podcast episode coming in the next one or two episodes basically all about that because I know that the finances is also probably one of the top two if not three biggest blocks for people taking some sort of break like this even like a maternity leave or something so that is coming we're not going to get into this now okay so y'all heard what kind of happened and like the series of events of my sabbatical but people were asking what is it like and like what was challenging about the sabbatical not in terms of necessarily like all of my healing journey but y'all were asking questions like you know were you tempted to work was it easy or hard to like turn off your brain and like the business side of things how long did it take you know did you find yourself I don't know scrolling or you know all of these things so I totally get that because I wondered that too like you always just hear these like high level statements not so much like very literally like what was it like what did you do right so I have two answers it was and was not challenging right so what was challenging in terms of being tempted to work no I was not tempted to work at all for me and this is surprising I am actually someone who prior to this I would lay in bed for hours sometimes thinking about like a failed payment or yeah like it was very hard for me just as it is for almost everyone to like turn off right but for this it wasn't it ended up being like very black and white off switch for me simply because I just didn't have the capacity I didn't have the capacity to do basically anything and as soon as my last clients finished and I closed things out it was like my body and brain and everything like knew I had to get to that finish line and my nervous system my spirit everything just absolutely crashed once I finally took the break and stopped I was surprised honestly that like turning off my brain ended up being quite easy but I think that's because I also was pretty checked out of the business and in that whole world at least six months prior to my sabbatical just because of how consumed I was in my personal issues and was kind of like barely hanging out by a thread so yeah I'm not saying that if you take a break you won't struggle with that but you guys asked me of my experience right and ways that it was challenging it was very challenging in terms of going from 100 miles an hour to zero miles an hour and then figuring out what the fuck do I do with my time I asked anyone that I could that was a mentor friend pure therapist parent of mine saying no but like I get it I'm supposed to do words like relax or take time for myself or blah blah blah and I was like no but I literally don't know what to do when I wake up like what do I do okay it was funny and maddening all at the same time because like beyond the logistics of prepping my business like I had nailed that down that part was fine but I was shocked my body brain everything was in shock to go from 100 miles an hour to zero miles an hour without actually having much of a plan like a healing plan of what to do with all of that and I think part of that is the lesson in many ways you have to figure out and kind of learn for yourself in the way that it needs to be learned for you but I wouldn't recommend going from a hundred to zero you know and have all your business stuff figured out but then not have an actual plan for your sabbatical or break I'm not saying you need to overly plan or try and control or build this elaborate timeline or have 50 million to do's every day for like I'm in a journal I'm gonna do this right like it's such a complicated answer but having no guidance and support really sent me down a spiral and so that part was really challenging it was really hard for my body to turn off right we talked about the mind but it's hard for my body to rest and slow down because I am someone who like slowing down and stillness like was not safe it was a foreign concept for me for my entire life like busyness was safety I didn't know how to rest okay and I had been existing in functional freeze so from that perspective my body freaked out everyone's break is gonna look different and have different needs but I do wish I had more structure and support and guidance on how to approach like that side personally and in really use my sabbatical to heal because yeah no one had any tips for me I actually sat and stared at walls and trees for so many hours probably more hours than I should I also scrolled so much TikTok I'm not even gonna hide that okay so boundaries and structure them that I did end up setting for myself during the sabbatical this question is semi answered from what I just said because I didn't exactly have a good plan or I wasn't necessarily super intentional about my boundaries and structure because it was such a desperate hard and fast like holy shit made it to the finish line collapse but as I was thinking about this question I did have a few almost what I would say phases of the sabbatical and so like at the beginning I eventually got to the point where I didn't know what to do I didn't know if I should like try and wake up every day and operate like a normal person it felt weird to just like lay in bed all day I felt like I was doing something wrong right so eventually I would say in phase one I let myself just lay exist do anything that I wanted to do even if I knew it was like bad for my mental health or something in terms of like watch tv scroll like we all know you know you shouldn't exactly do that but I just let myself do whatever that I needed to for a little while and I focused on sleeping as much that was pretty much the only goal at first so I would sleep for like 10 to 12 hours per day still exhausted but yeah that's also part of like functional freeze and coming out of that nervous system stuff and I would say then I entered a phase where I tried to like add some habits and goals into my days so I still would sleep as much as I wanted that was always a number one goal no alarm but I would try and have a realistic bedtime and then my only maybe task for the day was sometimes as simple as go outside take a walk go to the gym or yoga class even if you walk on the treadmill for five minutes which seems really simple and may not be how some of you executed but for me that was where I was at and then I started to add more walks journaling some somatic and like breathwork daily practices I added some brainstorming of my business then I did start setting an alarm and I would try to just be somewhat of a normal person right like I didn't have anything to do all day and sit on a laptop but I tried to explore some hobbies and again I was kept quite busy with a lot of our life things but yeah I would say one thing I didn't do was I didn't listen to any podcasts at all I couldn't learn I couldn't squeeze anymore into my brain so I want to say I set a boundary around consumption but that would also somewhat be a lie because I did check Instagram a few times a week I would say maybe two to four times a week but very minimally I really didn't want to be on Instagram just because it's so associated to work for me but I was curious and I did want to kind of stand the loop with things and then otherwise I really did consume so much freaking TikTok but it was all non-business stuff I mean like dancers and singers and healing stuff I don't know and then TV shows so yeah I won't say what I did was right or wrong but yeah you guys asked I answered okay why are so many online business owners taking breaks aboutacles or shutting down their business this is the next question whoo this is a loaded question that could probably be an episode in itself so what I will say to this is basically a little background many people who started their businesses I would say between the years of like 2017 and 2019 maybe even 2020 so this includes me we came up in a very different era of the online space where no one talked about putting your life first no one talked about nervous system regulation no one talked about all these different business models all that was talked about was making millions overnight money being the main authority marker whether we wanted to say it all out or not scaling really fast all that was talked about was essentially copying while we didn't call it this but essentially copying one to two main business models that were deemed the way to succeed becoming a coach and then spending all your money on like Chanel purses and first-class flights to show you were successful like that that was the era in which I started and grew up my business right so I've talked to many of my friends and peers who like me started within that era and almost all of them have either burned out pivoted or taken a break because all of that that was the basis for what we started our businesses on was never sustainable in the first place and no one built a business that was right for them we all just built these money-making prisons and not everyone ended up to these extremes like I said you have to remember that it was 99 if not 100% my personal life that caused me to end up where I was and in such a bad place that I was but I definitely would have pivoted and remodeled my business no matter what and experience certain things like burnout etc because of that so I think that would be my best answer for you is a lot of those people that did start between like 2017 and 2020 and made it and were quite successful so that a lot of you are probably seeing them that's the premise of why you're seeing so many people probably take breaks and I also think the conversation thankfully is starting to be had about being more balanced and yeah taking a break to realign your life or your business and certain things like that are having different business models and so therefore you need to pull back or remodel or put your life first or whatever it is so yeah you know because building a business is hard no matter what and I also think that after a certain amount of years of being an entrepreneur even if it's not because you did something quote-unquote wrong I just think it's not for everyone and I don't say that in any kind of bad or demeaning way at all I have so much respect and sometimes even jealousy for people with a 9 to 5 who get to just close that laptop and not care right so I also think that you saw like such a big boom in 2020 and so many people started online businesses kind of with this like promise and even if it's not necessarily that they burned out or failed or something I think a lot of people just realized that wasn't actually what they wanted and I know other people too that actually loved their business and were successful and there wasn't necessarily a crazy burnout or something but for whatever reason they realized that in a new season of life now their business or entrepreneurship as a whole wasn't for them anymore and I think that needs to be talked about too because it might not be right for every season of your life and that's okay that doesn't mean you failed in any way shape or form but I'm just so glad that there's a lot more openness about all of this now okay last question in this section and then we have a few more to wrap things up that are a little bit more about like the business and a couple of tips to leave you guys a quick pause before we wrap up the rest of the questions if you are enjoying this episode and enjoying just this series about really open and candid details and tips about my sabbatical I would love if you would share this on your instagram stories or just with a friend privately as I know so many people need to hear these and have this permission and see these examples and that is why I'm sharing all of this especially this series about the sabbatical so please please please share this in a group you're in with friends because this information is not out there and if you share it on your stories make sure and tag me at Amanda Colby okay let's get back into it so the last bit of questions a couple of them were business a bunch of people asked how I like prepped my business for a break and again I talk about some of this in episode 140 which I recorded before my sabbatical and I'm also going to give you some tips and structure that I have developed in the next episode about planning for and figuring out the different types of breaks you can have and like how to do all of that so stay tuned for that next question what did my business look like while on sabbatical did I have clients did you know what did my team do did I still make money so for me I made the decision to like completely shut everything down so like I had no clients during this time no marketing we didn't want to batch anything no anything and that doesn't have to be how it is that was just what I knew I needed so what did I still keep and what was still running in the background I kept two of my core team members in a very minimal capacity to work on a few things in the background at the time again I thought it was only going to be two or three months so I was kind of like eh you know hang on work on a couple of these projects get things organized and we'll be back obviously I communicated with them as things changed and I needed a longer break but I did still pay them in more of a cut down hours way and I worked with them to establish all of that just because these people had been with me for years and as long as they were willing to do it I wanted to keep them because I know what it's like to hire a lot of different people and when you know that you have good people like you do whatever you can to keep them so I was okay with those expenses even if I was going to be in the red every month and then I also did have to still pay for all of my softwares and business expenses and this one really sucked because I had a very large business I was making at least you know five hundred thousand dollars every year since I started my business so yeah my expenses are quite high and I did go through them during this sabbatical to see to cut back I'm shifting some softwares etc but I won't go into all of that now just telling you like what existed and what I had to deal with running behind the scenes because yeah unless you're gonna like actually get rid of your website and your courses and everything you've built which if you're planning on coming back you would obviously never do that is something that you don't probably think about at first that you probably are going to have expenses to keep things going in some manner now I knew I wasn't going to market or have any clients or anything so in terms of like did I still make money I had a few payment plans really not a ton that would be coming in for the first few months and I didn't really expect to make any more money and that was really hard because that would have meant I was in the red pretty much every month I also didn't have any pre-planned marketing or funnels even during this time so I was actually very surprised when I was making course sales not a ton I'm not gonna like blow it out of proportion but I did make course sales every single month to varying degrees and I think looking back on that now that that is just due to years years years years years of so strongly and consistently building a reputation and also being one of the best at what my offers were whether those people found me from you know my podcast or an article or whatever it was I'm sure there potentially was also some word of mouth just because of how like damn good I was at what I did and how much I focused on like client retention and community and experience so that is just one of those fun little lessons that we hear how important that is all the time and it will come back to benefit you in ways that you can't even know now so on average I made about two thousand dollars a month in passive course sales so not a ton but for not having funnels marketing or anything I was very surprised and very grateful and don't forget I'm gonna do like a financial episode next so next question was what happened to laptop lifestyle co which was my entire company and brand and I answered this a little bit on instagram but yeah just to say it here I rebranded from Amanda Colby where I started my business and rebranded to laptop lifestyle co kind of as this community brand in 2021 and to be honest I basically just knew I wanted to rebrand to a community brand in a name that wasn't myself at that time but I could not for the life of me figure out a good name that wasn't just like forest or cheesy or whatever it is so when I rebranded in 2021 I was never really in love with the name but I ended up just picking it because I had become really known for the phrase laptop lifestyle and because of my signature program laptop lifestyle bootcamp and quite literally because I travel the world but from the beginning of my business I was always going to show my life but I never wanted the whole digital nomad thing to be a big focus of my business once I became so known for it I leveraged it and leaned into it but yeah it was never aligned in the first place and then I also just outgrew the brand so anyways coming back from the sabbatical I mean I knew immediately like well even before the sabbatical I knew I was going back to a personal brand and that's just because I felt out of alignment with that and I realized just how much more powerful I could be with my personal brand in many ways and I also knew I wanted to expand and start to build a couple of other businesses and then have the personal brand at the core so that is why I made that decision okay did I miss this did I miss business Instagram etc yes and no I miss the community like I love you guys I know I'm so bad at my DMs be patient with me getting back into the swing of things I do love you guys like that is why I am still here is because of the people in the community that I have built and get to be a part of and I actually really like sharing my life I like marketing I like creating content and showing up I know that half the part that everyone hates about this I've always liked that part there were times where I didn't where it just felt forced in like another to do item of course I'm not a psycho but yeah it was hard after having shared my life daily for the past six years to then like not share my life at all for six whole months like that was very bizarre but I just didn't have the capacity so like yes I missed it but I didn't I really didn't think about it that much because I knew I was coming back I was so focused on other things and so I'm glad you know I'm glad because I think it would have been very distracting to not have a bit of a kind of hardcore cut off and by not sharing any of my life publicly after having gotten used to that while I don't think I was ever super bad as some people have shared like they struggled with in terms of doing things I hate even saying this phrase but doing things for the gram I do think no matter what when you get so used to sharing your life every day that you seek that validation and kind of that dopamine hit from being able to share it and so that was quite stark that was very noticeable for me and that without sharing my life or getting to talk to other people about it or whatever it was it felt weird right so yeah next question how has this experience impacted my message and how I want to show up oh girl whoever asked this it's changed everything everything because I have changed to a cellular level as a human being like who I am what I want what I value how I see the world everything I haven't even really unpacked a lot of that with you guys because I don't even know how to say it I don't even know where to start right but basically I think anyone taking an extended break maternity leave sabbatical is going to come back changed in some manner and almost always want to change something in your business but like two varying degrees I don't think everyone will come back from a break or sabbatical and be as I have said like a whole last different person like any part of myself that I knew doesn't exist anymore type thing but I do think that you will change like for whatever reason you end up maybe taking a break I think that there will be shifts and so it's inherently because we run personal brands and service-based businesses it's unlike some other types of businesses right where it is going to be hard to separate like your personal elements from your business and that can be a really good thing and it's also a difficult thing but I would say that it's something you need to accept is going to be a factor and an influential factor in your business if you are choosing to build this kind of business so I'll share more about like my messaging and more of like actually how it's impacted me just as all the content keeps coming and flowing okay three questions left last business one was asked how am I integrating coming back to work and balancing things how do I think like mindset habits work will be different etc so to keep this as concise as I can I don't have like a full answer for you because I've only been back to quote-unquote work really for like two weeks so I have some answers for you but I am gonna revisit this question and give you guys an update because I know this would be really helpful but I think the biggest thing as far as like how I'm integrating coming back to work and quote-unquote balancing things is I decided to come back with no pressure no expectations no huge game plan like is messy y'all but for me I didn't want to force things like you know I've kind of already explained that like I want to rebuild really intentionally so things are gonna happen in stages rather than this big sexy rebrand and I'm really getting to practice now that I've added this new layer into my life of okay you know where do you see yourself leaning back to old habits how are we becoming aware of that and redirecting that right I'm a lot more in tune with myself really for the first time in my life I've accessed two emotions in my body and so that has been kind of interesting to try and listen to that rather than do what I've always done before which was quite robotic push-through etc so it's a lot of these like little moments honestly that for me look one way and for you might look another way but they're all learning moments they're all awareness moments it's not like you come back with this plan and it's just like go execute with all the new I don't think even if I did have this whole game plan that it would work like that so that's really what it's been it's been a lot of noticing oh wow I've changed in xyz manner or oh wow I think differently about certain things right because the biggest thing is a lot of my core values and beliefs and and mentalities have changed and so I think I'm gonna see that more and more the more I get into it such as like I'm no longer willing to do whatever it takes right like I'm no longer chasing money or these arbitrary milestones I truly value peace which I didn't before because I'd never experienced real peace and so now nothing is worth sacrificing my peace as a new you know quote-unquote boundary so I'll share a lot more of these like insights but I'll also revisit this question okay last two questions a lot of people asked about my like physical and mental health in terms of like wait what what is it you were dealing with because I've in some ways been kind of vague the mental side of things I feel like I've talked about a decent amount where I'm not going to get into it in this episode the physical health though I have never really shared it's been a lot of different things and it's really started in I would say 2021 probably from burnout right before a lot of my personal life like crumbled and exploded but all of it was stress stress stress stress so much stress like if I had to categorize it like that was the core at what I would say caused all of this so some of the physical health issues I was dealing with were hormone issues high cortisol and adrenal fatigue my vitamin levels and all of that stuff was completely screwed up my thyroid became a really big problem so it's been a freaking roller coaster because I haven't been able to get good doctors so I still don't really fully have answers but at one point I was diagnosed with like hypothyroidism and Hashimoto's I've also had a lot of sleep issues absolutely no energy to the point like I could not get out of better function and a lot of this is then figuring out like stress management stress release through like somatic release stuff I also have dealt with a lot of shortness of breath and difficulty breathing a lot of this is all just different manifestations of stress so anyways it's it's been a journey and I'm happy to talk more about it because at this point I have been able to heal for the most part my quote unquote hypothyroidism Hashimoto's naturally and I'm not saying that I'm a doctor or I know how to do things I'm more just opening up the conversation that I'm happy to share more about what I've experienced and what I've done just because I know this stuff is really confusing to figure out and I know a lot of other women the more I've talked to people privately have dealt with these types of things and also struggled to figure out answers and I have spent the past two and a half years daily listening to health podcasts reading health books just researching learning I have spent more time learning about health nervous system body hormones all of that then I've spent learning about business and anyway shape or form the past two and a half years so that is where I'll leave that and then last question everyone asked are we traveling moving to Spain what are all the things I think y'all all probably know the update by now but we as of last week we gonna have to go got approved finally for our spanish visa so I'm officially a permanent resident of Spain I got a visa for three years which is extendable for more we're really excited about that because we've been wanting a home base stability community friends all of that I'm really sad to stop traveling but at the same time the traveling has not been enjoyable for the past couple of years because if you're not right I mean traveling full time is absolutely the worst decision you could possibly make but we were kind of like stuck in it so yeah I've had to do a lot of like honestly morning the end of a chapter that I wasn't really ready to end in many ways but needed to but I'm also extremely excited to move to Spain in Europe that's our end goal is to live there permanently in Europe maybe not Spain forever but we do love Spain so yeah follow for more I'll share house apartment updates all that stuff soon so I know this was a bit of a long episode but I wanted to give you guys some thorough answers these were such good questions and what I just kind of want to leave you with as far as like a piece of advice in terms of sabbaticals in this theme because a lot of people ask like what was a lesson you learned you're like but what's a good piece of advice and I tried but like I can't choose one and for me this period was defined more by my healing journey than the concept of a sabbatical or business break honestly so what I will leave you with is nothing is more important than your health your relationships and yourself none of this shit is worth it if internally it's miserable to be you and if you aren't happy and while your story and journey will surely look different than mine I really believe wholeheartedly that everyone has shit yeah even if you don't have big tea trauma or whatever it is right like everyone's got stuff and truly healing and discovering the true you is the greatest gift and thing that you will ever do in your life and for me taking this sabbatical not only because of that gift of the healing journey and getting to find myself but just taking this elongated break for whatever purpose I needed it to be and may need it to be in the future like man you guys like I have made millions I've traveled the world I get to set my own schedule earning blah blah blah all those things are really cool benefits of running your own business taking as many Fridays off as you want blah blah blah blah I don't think anything is more valuable and more of a gift and a privilege to yourself because you get to run your own business than taking an extended break sabbatical I fully plan on taking more extended break sabbaticals in the future next ones won't be so so heavy for me but I have now locked this in as like oh man this is the goal like if I can go take four months off in two years or even in the next year or so and use that time however I want like one thing I want to do is I want to become a certified sommelier which is I think a four to six week process like not a full sabbatical right but like bam like that's what I'm working towards because people don't get to do this right and if you're intentional with it what you could do whether healing or exploring other parts yourself using time off from one business to start another yeah I don't even have words for how much of a gift it is and so if this feels scary I'm going to leave you with this quote and for those of you that are oh geez you might recognize this because this was a quote I talked about all the time when I started my business in terms of the mentality the single mentality that guided me when I quit my nine to five move to Thailand without any clients or even a business idea and I think it's appropriate for the situation to leave you with the quote is it's a quote by me is you know what you have now you know what's in front of you and if you know that what's in front of you is not it then you have no other choice but to try something new and rest assured knowing you can always go back to what currently is but something tells me you won't so I hope that gives you a little just a little glimmer for your day and I will see you guys in the next episode [Music] [Music] [BLANK_AUDIO]