0:00
[MUSIC PLAYING] One of the biggest changes that we've made in our company over the past few years is I was watching my employees and myself feel this pressure to be on 24/7. You can work all day long. You can work the weekends. You can pick up your phone anytime of the day and there's something to do, or someone to engage with, or you can feel pressure to do more. And I didn't want that to be our culture.
0:28
I didn't think that that's healthy at all as a human being, and I don't think it's healthy for a team, and I don't think it's healthy for a business. So now, twice a year, we have two dark periods where we close down the entire company for two weeks. Everybody is off at the same time. No social media, no email, no nothing. We put on autoresponders. We communicate very clearly so people understand what's happening. And everyone gets to take a rest at the same time.
0:52
We do that twice a year, and it's been revolutionary for our company. People come back refreshed. They come back feeling like they've spent huge amounts of quality time with their family, with people they love, on projects that have nothing to do with work. And when they come back to work, they are so much more creative, and passionate, and engaged because they've had that off time. I think that offline is, ironically, going to be the new luxury, and time is the thing that people want the most-- free, unstructured time.
1:20
You ask any entrepreneur, or any mom, or any dad what they're really hungry for, and it's actually free time. So I think in the future of entrepreneurship, I think there's probably going to be opportunities, especially in hospitality, for us to have products and services that are almost like technology-free zones. I think people are going to start craving that a lot more, and I think you're going to see a lot of companies starting to put more guidelines and structure in place to keep their employees healthy.
1:48
To give them not only the permission, but hopefully the requirements, to take downtime, to not be on email 24/7, to not feel pressured to be on social 24/7. I think that technology is a blessing in many ways, but we have to be careful because this behavior and this addiction that we have to our phones and to being connected, I think there are some detrimental effects that it has on people's ability to relate to one another and to just be here, and be present, and be still.
2:15
And there is so much that can happen, in terms of creativity, and connections, and love, and relationships, that simply cannot be replicated through connecting with technology.