Because our business promise to our advisor clients is to help them create their ideal life in four years, or less, I have learned a lot about what it means to many advisors to have their ideal life.

There is always an element of working less and enjoying other aspects of life more. More time for family, more time for non-work fun activities, more time to be physically fit and healthy, more time to make a difference, more time for spiritual exploration or enlightenment and more time to just relax and "be." This article will explore the challenges even the most successful advisors face to take more real vacation and tactics you can implement to truly unplug from work.

What is a real vacation? A real vacation is when you are completely unplugged from work. That means no business e-mail, no business phone calls, no checking the market, no reading of business books or business magazines, no business conversations, no client calls, no contact with your staff, etc. Can you imagine a week like this? In a word, glorious! How would taking real vacation benefit your family, your physical health and your mental health? Real vacation makes you a better human being. And everything that makes you a better human also makes you a better advisor.

This past March I was helicopter skiing in a remote area of British Columbia. There were about a half dozen financial advisors and investment people on the trip. (They were with a different group than the friends I was with.) As much fun as everyone was having, it was obvious that the financial folks were not completely unplugged. They had regular discussions about the markets, clients and investment portfolios, and they were all staying in touch with their offices via their laptops, iPads and smart phones. And these were all very successful financial professionals who, I imagine, said to themselves at some point in their past, "Someday when I am very successful, I will take real vacations where I fully unplug from work." Sometimes being successful is easier to accomplish than fully enjoying that success.

Why don't financial advisors take more real vacation? Here are a few reasons I have heard from advisors:
Fear that they can't really afford to.
Feel that good customer service means being on call 24/7, especially being available for "emergencies."
Ego. Being available to solve problems and put out fires makes them feel important.
Fear that their staff will not stay on track/be productive if the boss doesn't check in.
Fear of being overwhelmed when returning from a real vacation with a mountain of e-mails, phone calls and tasks.
The bottom line is that staying connected to your office, your clients and the market is a choice, not a need. Here are a few tactics you can implement to work toward taking more real vacation.

1. Do your business-planning math differently.
One of my mentors, Norman Levine, the co-author of our book High-Trust Leadership, has a great tactic for taking 12 weeks per year for vacation and community service. He simply divides his business revenue goal by 40 weeks instead of 52. He then puts 12 weeks of vacation and community service on his calendar in the beginning of the year and is highly productive during his 40 revenue-generating weeks. He assumes, rightly so, that if he's focused and productive during his 40 work weeks that he can earn all the money he needs in those 40 weeks. What would have to happen for you to be more productive at work so you can take more real vacation?

2. Set expectations with your clients that there are no financial services emergencies that require yours and only your attention.
(A client having an inappropriate emotional overreaction to a world event, market event or economic event that is beyond everyone's control is NOT an emergency.) What conversations do you need to have with your clients so they don't mind you taking a few weeks of real vacation per year?

3. Choose quality of life over the ego of feeling important.
Hard truth: People a lot more important than you have died and the world has continued to function. Like it or not, businesses find new leaders, clients move on and are happy, spouses fall in love again and get remarried, and children go on to lead happy and productive lives. You are just not as important to the world as you might like to think you are. Get over yourself and take some real time off. The world will not be nudged off its axis because you're not contributing today. What has to happen to manage your ego so you can take more real vacation?

4. Empower staff to be accountable to results, whether you are at the office or not.
Consider communicating something like this in your next performance meeting with your key staff: "The reason you have this job is to get things done without my direction. You are worth a lot more to me and this organization as a person who can figure things out than you are if you need to double-check everything with me." The bottom line is that you simply might not be working with the right people. The only way to find out is to empower them to be accountable for results. If they produce the results, you have the right people. If they don't, you don't. When will you have this important conversation with your key staff people so you can take more real vacation?

5. Establish a process with your staff for communicating with you when you return.
Here is the e-mail I sent to my direct reports before that ski trip I mentioned earlier:  Just a friendly reminder that I will be out of e-mail and phone communication March 26-31st, so please follow the process. Which is: Please do NOT send me multiple e-mails on various subjects throughout the week. Instead, maintain a place where you capture everything that you want/need to communicate to me and send me one e-mail on Friday afternoon. It is helpful if you prioritize the action items in your e-mail.

Where appropriate, please remind your team members about this process.

I will have quite a bit on my plate when I return, and I will get through your communication as soon as possible.

Thanks! And have a great week.

6. Meet with your administrative manager and/or team to establish a protocol for interrupting your vacation with a true emergency.
The beauty of this business is that there really are no true emergencies. The bigger benefit of working on this process with your team is for them to discover that an event that might trigger interrupting your vacation can almost always be handled by one of them, either completely or until after you return. The way you do that is to ask them to list the things that could trigger a vacation interruption. Once listed, review each one individually and ask, "What could be done by you (or one of you) to permanently resolve that issue or answer that question while I'm away?" Reread the section about empowering your staff. What would have to happen to have an administrative manager and/or staff who can put out their own fires?

7. Have a script for what to say to people when they, in the course of normal conversation while you are on vacation, ask what you do for a living.
Here's my response, "I'm the CEO of a company I founded in 1988. I love my work, but I made a commitment to myself to be on real vacation this week, so, if it's all the same to you, I'd rather not get into discussions about work." Then ask them one of the questions I describe in the next paragraph. An almost identical script will work for you. I've never had anyone ever be offended by that. In fact, I often get comments about what a great idea that is and how they really need to do the same. How would having a simple script like this help you have more enjoyable vacations and more interesting conversations?

8. Get good at steering the conversation away from work-related subjects and toward things that are more fun and interesting.
It's quite easy. Consider questions like, "What do you do for fun?" "Tell me about your family." "What are the things in life you are most passionate about?" As they respond, just say, "Tell me more about that." When they ask you a question about you or work, simply say, "I'd like to hear more about _______." Not surprisingly, they will keep talking as long as you keep asking good questions. One financial advisor on the heli-ski trip I mentioned earlier finally cornered me on the last day of our trip because he was really curious about what I do for a living. We had sort of bonded because of all the great conversations we had during the trip about fun things in life. I had been deliberately steering the conversation to keep him talking about fun things instead of work things. When I finally acquiesced on the last day of the trip and told him and his buddies that I train financial advisors to acquire ideal clients, build their ideal business, and live their ideal life, we had a good laugh about why I was avoiding discussing business all week. We spent the rest of the day skiing the best powder of the trip and never talked about business. What are two or three questions you can commit to memory to keep the conversation more fun and personal instead of business-oriented?

9. Lose the "I'm always prospecting" mindset.
This ties into my first tactic about dividing your work year by 40 weeks instead of 52. When you are highly productive at work you can relax on vacation. Not every financially successful person you meet has to be a prospect or become a client. What would have to happen so you could relax on vacation and not shift into business mode just because you meet a person who could be a prospect?

Ultimately, it will boil down to your self-discipline to unplug from the news and focus on truly being on vacation. The bottom line is that staying plugged into business is a choice, not a necessity. Even in today's high-tech world with powerful communication tools, you can unplug. All of your devices have off switches. Find your off switch. Start with just a day, work your way up to a week, and before you know it you will be enjoying several weeks in a row of real vacation. You'll be a better human and a better and more successful advisor when you do.

Bill Bachrach, CSP, CPAE is considered the financial services industry's leading authority on building high-trust client relationships. He is a popular keynote speaker, and successful financial professionals from around the world subscribe to the Values-Based Financial Planning turnkey business model to acquire Ideal Clients, build their Ideal Business, and create their Ideal Life. www.billbachrach.com