Lessons from a Screenless Weekend

Hey friends,

Welcome to the Better Business Brief, where I share takeaways from:

• running a business I’m building to sell for millions
• my consulting with business owners building to sell for millions
• tips and tricks you can use to do the same

It’s been a great reset week. I spent the weekend doing no screen time - a digital detox. I got a lot of reading done, and got a lot of great thinking done. Today, I figured I’d share some of what I’ve been learning and thinking.

So today, in less than 5 minutes, I’ll give you:

?? 3 Benefits I Got From 2 Days Without Screens

?????? How that is Helping Me in Business

?? 3 Things I Learned from an SBA Lender

A whole weekend without using my phone, laptop, or any other screens… This wasn’t an easy thing to do, but I feel like I got a lot out of doing it. I originally wanted to do this because I felt like I am so glued to screens all the time for work that I sometimes struggle to be present in the moment. While technology is great, I think it’s important for us to acknowledge these downsides as well.

Here’s the 3 benefits I got from this digital detox:

1. Presence - The whole weekend, I felt a lot more aware of the present moment. Ultimately, it made me a better conversationalist to whoever I was around. Often times, I will be on my phone finishing a text or email or social media post, and I neglect to interact with someone around me because I am focused on that. Because I was keeping myself off my phone, I was interacting with the people around me and soaking in the conversation way more. Altogether, this felt good for me on a human level. In business, I’ve always noticed I make the best connections when I am in person, and giving my entire presence, and this was a great reminder that I should make the time and space to put down my phone and give my attention in networking events, conferences, and the like.
2. Anti-anxiety - I tend to have a consistent level of stress or anxiety that just runs all the time. In some ways, this is good. It gives me a sense of urgency in business about things. In other ways, it’s not healthy. Being off of screens for a couple days undeniably reduced my anxiety a lot. I felt a lot more consistently calm, collected, and relaxed. While it’s not practical to never use screens, this was a great reminder that I should try to reduce my time on them overall. Because I was more relaxed, I was able to approach a lot of what is going on in my business through a different lens. I wasn’t working much during this time, but I definitely always think about business, and this allowed me to approach it with a different perspective that I think helped me reframe things and focus on what’s important.
3. Focus - The level of focus and attention span I had during this exercise definitely went up. Because there was no option to use my phone to get some little task done or check something, I felt that any other task I put myself too got a lot of efficiency from me, because I was able to lock in on it. I particularly got a lot of reading done (stay tuned for a future edition where I share some of the learnings from it). The applications of increased focus for business are massive. I always get great work done when I let myself get into a flow state of focus, and it was great to see that taking a little break from screens can ease the transition into that flow state.

A digital detox will definitely become a regular fixture in my year going forward, if not maybe a quarterly thing.

I also recently attended an event where I listened to a woman speak that has been lending for the Small Business Administration for over 15 years. She has learned a lot, but I wanted to share my top 3 takeaways:

1. Buying an existing business is a lot more likely to be successful than starting an entirely new one. She backed this up by telling us why the SBA is more likely to lend you money for an existing business. Ultimately it’s easier because it already has shown success.
2. Industry experience is vital, but previous business ownership may be king. I asked her whether you need to be experienced in a certain industry to get SBA lending to buy a business in it. Her answer was yes and no. You can have transferable skills that make a reasonable case for you to be successful in a new industry, as long as there is crossover from your experience. This broadens the scope of what new businesses I could buy and run. If you have experience managing people, you can make a case that a lot of service-based businesses would work for you, because a lot of what you need to do is provide leadership.
3. The importance of a business plan - she said that to get SBA lending to buy a business, you 100% need to have a good business plan written out. Even if it is an established business that has been around for a while, you need to have a business plan that supports your continued ability to run it effectively. She said that in particular, if the executive summary of the plan doesn’t catch her, it’s already over, because she has to process so many of them.

A bonus takeaway is that it is paramount to have a relationship with an SBA lender to get approved. This helps you position yourself correctly, because you can ask them what they need to see and work backwards from it to make sure you fit the bill with your plan.

I’ll be taking these lessons and more with me forward on my journey of acquiring a cash-flowing business. If you are interested in learning from this journey, tune into my live stream of Deal Flow Live any Tuesday at 6PM EST. We look at listings of businesses for sale and give our opinions about whether we’d want to buy them. Join on my Youtube, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn, or Twitter to watch along and comment and ask questions.

Be great. Keeping growing and aspiring. And as always: I hope you got something from this.

If you did, share it with a friend who may too, as this is the best way for me to grow it and make this better.

They can even sign up here :)

Happy value-building to all of you!

See you next time for Better Business Brief,

-Brody

If you are considering selling your business soon, let’s talk. Grab some time here and we’ll make sure your plan is on track.