How do you shift from being the business to running the business?
Brett's honest starting point was that the business was all about him. It could not operate without him. That mindset had to flip before anything else could change. Once it did, the holidays became possible, and the holidays became the proof that the systems were working.
The shift is not just operational. It is a decision that the business exists to serve your life, not the other way around. Until you make that decision, every system you build will have you at the centre of it anyway.
How do strategic holidays actually test your systems?
The process is straightforward. Set a holiday with a firm date, get the business as prepared as you can before you leave, go away, and then pay close attention to what breaks when you get back. Fix those things. Then plan the next trip.
Brett came back from an earlier trip to Kokoda and found issues. Before the next holiday, he made sure the mistakes from that trip were corrected. When both he and Lauren went away for the family trip to Fiji, the team had it under control and nothing went wrong. That is the cycle working.
Greg frames it this way: set the business up as well as you can, go, note what breaks, build systems around that for the next trip, and repeat.
Why does a fixed timeframe matter so much?
Putting a date on the holiday creates accountability that a vague intention never does. When you have a date locked in, you know what has to be fixed before you leave. That urgency drives the work.
Brett made the same point about goals more broadly. He has always been goal-driven, but in the past the path to the goal was never clear. After working through a planning session, they had specific goals with timeframes and the steps mapped out to reach them. The destination and the route were both visible for the first time.
How do you think about hiring people who are not billable?
The common fear is that non-billable staff, an admin person or an operations manager, are a cost with no return. Brett and Lauren described exactly that thinking: billable resources felt like the priority, and admin felt like a drain.
The reframe is that non-billable roles are an asset to you as a family. Faster invoicing, better scheduling, and someone carrying the admin load all free up your time and reduce the pressure you carry every day. That pressure relief affects your sleep, your health, your relationships, and ultimately how effective you are as a leader. None of that shows up as a line item, but all of it is real.
Lauren added another dimension: knowing she can invest in people who are skilled in a role means she can step away from the parts of the business she does not enjoy and focus on what she is actually good at and what matters most.
What changes when you hire someone already skilled rather than someone to train?
A common reason business owners delay hiring is the fear of the training load. Brett named it directly: the assumption is that you will have to sit with a new person for months, and you do not have time for that.
The mindset shift is to find someone who is better at that role than you are. You might fine-tune a few things, but you are not their trainer. You are the business owner, and they are the specialist. That person helps you, rather than adding to your load.
What is the practical step for getting ready right now?
Lauren made a point worth taking seriously: do not wait until the new year to start. The Christmas period feels like a hard stop in a lot of people's minds, but things can keep moving quietly in the background. A job ad posted now does not commit you to hiring. But if the right person applies and you have not posted anything, you have already missed them.
Set the goals, put timeframes on them, and start working backwards from where you want to be. That is what Brett and Lauren did in their planning session, and it is what gave them a clear strategy rather than a loose hope.
