Are you longing to take extended time off but fear your business can’t handle it? Listen in to hear how to take four months a year off from your business.

In today’s episode, host Maegan Megginson talks with Sage Polaris to explore her time-off business model. Sage is an entrepreneur who has mastered the art of taking four months off each year while growing and sustaining her business. She shares how she transitioned from her artistic roots to a thriving career as a copywriter and entrepreneur, all while prioritizing rest as a pivotal component of her business.

Maegan and Sage explore the importance of setting boundaries and batching tasks. Sage also shares about the transformative power of VIP days for scaling your business without sacrificing your personal life. Sage and Maegan lay out practical tips for how to start integrating more time off into your schedule and why it's essential for long-term success and well-being.

Don’t miss hearing this transformative perspective from Sage, including:

- Sage's journey into being a business owner (01:15)

- How to build a business model that supports time off (13:11)

- Practical steps for making rest a priority (21:17)

- The importance of recurring revenue and VIP days (30:32)

- How to embrace rest without losing momentum in your business (45:01)

Whether you’re dreaming of taking more time off or simply want to bring more balance into your work life, Sage and Maegan share actionable insights to help you get started. If you're not taking four months off a year yet, be sure to tune in to hear how to make that possible.

To watch a video version of this, check it out on YouTube: https://youtu.be/IluvlXHdHiI 

Connect with Sage Polaris

Free Triple Your Open Rate: The Email Template

www.sagepolaris.com/restrocks 

Mentioned in this episode:

Want deep rest inspiration delivered directly to your inbox?

Join the Deeply Rested newsletter for weekly emails that will help you deprogram from hustle culture and opt out of urgency in your life and business. Plus, you'll be the first to hear about new podcast episodes, Deep Rest Retreats, and other offerings from Maegan. Subscribe today by clicking the link.

Join Our Newsletter

[00:00:20] Sage has created what she calls the time off business model. For years, she has taken upwards of four months off per year, and she still pays herself exactly what she needs to live her best life. Her business is thriving. It's growing year over year, and she does it on a platform of deep rest by taking an abundance of time off.

[00:01:12] You're going to want to take some notes for today's episode with Sage Polaris. Enjoy.

[00:02:07] Sage: Thank you for having me, Maegan. I love being here.

[00:02:51] Sage: I'm so ready for it.

[00:03:14] Let's start there, and then I have some follow up questions.

[00:03:52] Right now, what looks like creativity to me, and this is going to tie into our conversation for sure, is creatively raising my children is the work I'm doing right now. The business is just a conduit to allow me to do that. But that is really what I'm working on right now.

[00:04:18] Sage: Yeah. So inside of my business, I am serving private clients, and half of my business, I work with them in terms of launch copy and copywriting. If you're not familiar with that term, it has nothing to do with legal. It's a marketing term. So I help people with the words on their website to help them sell more

[00:05:00] But I also really love my copy template membership that I run that's a bit more accessible than working with me privately. And I really love my VIP day group program that I also run. I mostly do things once a year, like I open up my membership once a year. I open up my group program once a year, but in between all of that, I'm always serving private clients, and that's kind of my evergreen offer, if you want to use a marketing term for it.

[00:05:47] You share numbers really transparently. There's so much transparency about business structurally, and then we get all of the learning and the wisdom from you around boundaries and taking time off. It's really juicy, and I want to rewind back to the artist days for a moment.

[00:06:21] Sage: Yeah. So the art started, I mean, I have memories of growing up in Oklahoma. And, my caregiver at the time teaching me how to dig clay. She was indigenous, how to dig clay out of the red dirt earth of Oklahoma. If you know Oklahoma, it's a very distinct kind of earth there. And so that's when it started for me.

[00:07:03] So I was doing ceramics. I was doing glass blowing. I was doing painting. And then I found exhibition design, which is essentially someone who installs art shows. And I fell in love with this whole process of... Basically they crate the art all over the U S, and then you uncrate it, and you put the art on the walls.

[00:08:10] where the projects that were coming through and the funding and the budget that we had to support artists at that time, looks entirely different now, but at that it was so exciting and we were getting some of the best artists and the best curators. So that whole installing art at museums was my first foray into understanding what freelancing is.

[00:08:53] Cause I definitely worked a nine to five before. I worked for a finance company, which is like a total U turn. And it was like, Oh, I can start to control my own schedule. I can say yes or no to each museum that I choose to work at. And in between each show, I would travel the world.

[00:09:18] Maegan: huh. Wow, that sounds really magical. I love it. I love you were experimenting, you were playing with being a freelancer before you actually were a freelancer. You're traveling the world, you're amassing all of this lived experience, and then something... At some point, something shifts, and you become a copywriter.

[00:09:46] Sage: Yeah, so I was no stranger to pivoting, right? Like, I had gone from finance, doing sales for a finance company, to doing art installation. And then, what happened with the art installation is that I was working... The last job that I had for a museum was the California Science Center. We had won the bid to get the Endeavor shuttle.

[00:10:18] Maegan: Uh huh. Okay.

[00:10:50] And I had a, like, it just struck me. It was like, I don't think I want to do this anymore. And they were asking me to come back early from maternity leave. They wanted me to return to work early because the project was so big. And I put my two weeks notice in.

[00:11:24] It's time. every logical, conditioned part of you was probably wanting to say, yeah, I'll come back whenever you want me to come back. This is a huge project. This is a huge opportunity. The ego... Oh, what a juicy opportunity for the ego. Yes, absolutely, I want to be part of this project. But intuitively, you knew it was time to make a change.

[00:12:11] And I didn't know that I would fall in love with my son like I did. I'm going to say that with a little bit of a caveat, like either way is fine. For me, I fell in love with being home, and being with my son. I couldn't imagine leaving his side, but there was no way I could know that

[00:12:45] Maegan: Right. I really appreciate that acknowledgment, right, that there's no one right path for any of us, and so much of your journey has been this attunement over and over again to what is true for me now, and what choices can I make to honor that? it's also interesting that you said the job you had in finance was in sales.

[00:13:36] So I'm just standing in awe here for a moment of the incredible tapestry that has been woven in your life. You're bringing in, weaving in your experience doing sales with all of the natural ways you've been creative with your understanding of freelancing and doing these consulting type projects with folks.

[00:14:05] Sage: Yeah. It's so funny, too, because people are like, why did you go from working in the arts to being a copywriter? I'm like, it's just another creative tool in my belt. It doesn't matter if I'm painting with a keyboard. Using my words. Yes.

[00:14:19] Sage: I see the through line, and I'm so happy you do, too, because sometimes people even the outside in are like, wait a minute.

[00:14:42] Your nervous system knows. And I'm attracted to the copy that feels like art. That's the kind of world I want to live in. And it's the kind of world that you're creating in your business. Let's fast forward a little bit. Time off business model. I'm curious if you stepped in to business ownership from day one

[00:15:16] Sage: Yeah, so I love that you asked this question, and honestly it's a natural rite of passage to think I'm going to start a business that's going to afford me more time with my family. I would push back on that a little bit and say that's a fantasy. In the beginning of your business, you will give into anything for it to work. If you want a profitable business, the fantasy pulls you in but the reality kind of smacks you in the face.

[00:16:03] Sage: Yeah, so that path was about two years for me. The first two years of my business, I was bringing my laptop on every vacation, felt like I was letting everyone down, staring at my screen, but still at the same time giving myself grace, saying like, listen, at least I'm home, which is what I wanted. I wanted to be next to my child.

[00:16:40] So I made a business that would at least allow me to be in the physical space with my kiddo, even if I was focused on my screen a lot. And then those first two years starting to like, kind of lift my head from the laptop and be like, Oh yeah, I did this so that I could create more time for my family. What is that going to look like now that I've got a business that I've proven to be profitable over the last two years.

[00:17:26] Because that's going to solve all your problems. That's the

[00:17:32] Sage: Yes. So they say. And so I did that. I launched a course. Like lots of divine things happened that just made it really easy for me to launch a course, but the results were lackluster. I hadn't built the right, for lack of a better word, authority around my brand.

[00:18:15] I realized that wasn't working out the way I wanted, but that my private client work was what I like to call my profit sweet spot. Like it

[00:18:39] And doing something that people don't talk about enough, which is scaling private client work, which is also possible. Yes, you can scale with a course. It's wonderful if that works out for you. And for some people it does really well. And I was like, Ooh, Oh, right. Why can't I just scale private client work?

[00:19:06] Maegan: I love it. I'd love to have a conversation about the myth of the course. And ah! I love what you said about how it was really easy to create, not so easy to sell. Kind of a lackluster result. And I think that's such a common experience. Yeah, it's, of course it's easy to create. We're just following a template. But the selling is a whole different story. So you again, follow this intuitive knowing, love this about you so much. You follow this intuitive knowing that I'm going to scale my private client work, I'm going to hire a project manager, and as that begins to blossom, the time off business model begins to wiggle its way into your life.

[00:20:01] Sage: So I'll take you to where I'm at now and then I'll reverse engineer how I got there. So now I've taken four months off for the ninth year in a row. And initially I took this idea of taking time off. I didn't know how much I wanted. I just took the idea to my project manager. I was like, I think I'll take every other Friday off.

[00:20:44] So she basically showed me how to batch everything. And it worked beautifully. And so I've kept that system. I will say that the one month off every year, sometimes I split it into two, two week chunks if I need to, it's not always the same month every year. It genuinely allows me to have that piece be fluid.

[00:21:31] Maegan: It's so cool. I love the way you do this. We've compared and contrasted before our different, you know, models, if you will, for taking time off in our business. And I love about... What you're describing, I love the fluidity of it, and the way that you're really giving yourself permission to meter out the time off in whatever shape and form and structure is really calling to you in the moment, which is so important, right?

[00:22:23] You and I were talking before we hit record about how jumping in to four months off can feel really overwhelming to folks who maybe right now are only taking time off when they are super sick. So let's start a little bit smaller, and hear some tactical tips, some advice that you have for folks who want to start taking more time off right now, maybe just in smaller chunks than the full four months a year.

[00:23:23] And now I have two boys since I initially started my business. And so what I always recommend to people, if you want to take more time off, you can start small. Like I just mentioned, give yourself that one day a month. Cause to some people that feels big. Like

[00:23:38] Sage: Yeah. So that's cool.

[00:24:03] And I forgot it was even a holiday, because we can do that. It happens. Markoff, you know, any government holidays, any days that you know that you need for yourself, just do that, and here's the stretch ask from all of you, for the next 12 months. And I'm not saying that because you have to stick to that plan, but if you at least mark off those days, like the first day the kids go back to school.

[00:24:48] Sage: then you're more likely to stick to it and you're more likely to take more time off.

[00:24:59] Maegan: I think that's such a great piece of advice, Sage. And you're hinting at this, I want to make it more explicit. Yes, start with birthdays, start with holidays, this is a great way to begin. But also think about times of the year that are hard for you,

[00:25:25] I find that people are really quick to not create buffers around seasons that are challenging. So like, let's create buffers around seasons that are celebratory. Let's create buffers around seasons when the rest of the world is offline. I love that tip because I do that to myself a lot.

[00:26:00] I was like, ugh. I want to be at the lake. I want to be having a barbecue. So like, let's protect that time too. Let's protect times that are hard. And I love your suggestion to do it a full 12 months in advance. Take an hour; do it today. Then it's done. That is a challenging, but doable place to begin.

[00:26:37] So that's a fantastic way to start. Let's take a big step forward now and talk about once people do that, once they're like, okay, I'm a pro at taking a day off here and there, I'm a pro at anticipating what's coming. I think I want to move towards the full time off business model, the full four months off per year.

[00:27:06] Sage: Yeah. Well, you have to batch your work. There's no way of getting around that. So you need to get clear on when are your most productive times? Protect those. The most common mistake I see people make, and I know we're going to get some mistakes, but this is an important one, is that when I look at their Calendly link or their Acuity link, whatever link they have,

[00:27:35] Sage: And I'm like yo! You are not protecting your time whatsoever. And I love you for that. I know you want to be available to people.

[00:27:44] Sage: But even early on when I could have given anything for my business to work, I was so so protective of when someone could get on a potential sales call with me or book me as their copywriter.

[00:28:19] And that's just the

[00:28:21] Maegan: And I want to add to something you just said, right, that most people, especially in the beginning, they want to be available, they want to be flexible, and I would add that for most of those people, I think it's really coming from a place of scarcity, right? It's like the choice to be super...

[00:28:58] And that's it. And you did okay. People found a way to make those times work for them.

[00:29:20] Maegan: Yeah, people want... I'm looking for... This is a random example. I'm looking for someone new to cut my hair. I'm like, I want a new hairstylist. Okay. yeah. When I get on someone's booking website, I see that they have 10 spots open every day starting tomorrow. And then I look at somebody else and I'm like, Oh, I have to wait two and a half months.

[00:29:55] Right? It protected you. So there's two, two things you're laying out here to begin as we're moving towards the time off business model. We have to learn how to batch our work, and in the spirit of batching our work, we have to get really good at creating crystal clear boundaries around our time. What am I going to do next to get to four months off a year?

[00:30:40] So at some point you are going to need to get to quarter to quarter planning where you can, three months at a time, project where your revenue is going to come from, and three months at a time project the amount of work that you're going to have to get done in that period of time. So that definitely helped me.

[00:31:24] So if you're only doing one off projects for people, or single sessions as a therapist, at some point you're going to have to figure out a business model that allows you to book more than just singles at a time, projects or sessions. So that's another piece that you're going to have take a long, hard look at in terms of your strategy of how you work with clients.

[00:32:09] If I don't have that space and flexibility to play, because that kind of work feels very co creative and playful for me, if I don't have that space, I get really cranky really quickly. I want that space, but in order to take a lot of time off, which I do, which you do, we also have to have some solid recurring revenue streams.

[00:32:48] what this foundational level of revenue is going to be, and then we can start playing and shape shifting our business to say, okay, so what will things look like if I take off for the summer? If I just don't work in June and July, like how can I make that work? Am I getting that right for you, Sage?

[00:33:27] But I still wanted to do the one off work, because like you, it feels collaborative and fun and playful… One thing I had looked at to increase my revenue, but give myself more white space on my calendar. I had started looking at VIP days and I think that's, you know, some of you have heard me talk about this before because Maegan has been so generous to share it with her audience.

[00:34:19] Maegan: Yeah. And how has that gone for you?

[00:34:44] I mean, I won't say... I will admit that my first few VIP days charging way less than I should have been, and giving way more than I should have been. There was a calibration, you know, figuring out what exactly is that going to look like. And it's not the only solution to creating more white space on your calendar.

[00:35:24] Maegan: It's such an inspiring lens. Can you take the business that you have now, and just put a different lens in front of your face and go, okay, wait, how could this look different? Can I open myself up to the limitless possibilities of what this work can look like, of how I can show up to serve people in the way that I want to serve them?

[00:35:59] I knew I had to move away from a business model where I was doing one on one work in a repetitive way, that never really ended. That, for me, too, just energetically... My unique design as a person, I don't do well with things that have no end date. I need to know energetically when something's going to be over.

[00:37:23] Also, Sage teaches the VIP day model in her business. It's one of your core offerings. So if you're listening to this and you want some support in actually making that happen, we'll make sure people have all the links at the end of this episode. So you can go and learn that from Sage.

[00:38:04] Sage: is so key. I want people to be careful of saying, you know, I just want to do three month programs. I don't ever want to give people one off sessions anymore. Just be careful and mindful. Maybe that'll work for you. But you don't want to abandon the things that might be feeding the bigger stuff that you have in your business.

[00:38:21] Maegan: Thanks for highlighting that. That feels really important. And I think many people get sucked down the online business pipeline that says, you can never do one off work ever again. You know, one off work, it's like a waste of your time. Like you're never going to be... If you want to scale, you can't.

[00:38:36] Sage: Not profitable, but...

[00:38:43] people one on one. Don't be available for... Yeah, it's not profitable enough for that 90 minute session. That messaging, I got sucked into it in the beginning, and I had to really decondition and back myself out of it when I remembered

[00:39:54] Sage: Amen to that.

[00:40:11] Sage: Yeah. I mean, one thing that I see people make mistakes around or even just have hesitations around is figuring out their pricing.You know, they're often thinking in this single month... Again, they're month to month planning. So they're thinking, in this single month, I really want to make 8, 000 this month.

[00:40:51] And that, to me, is a huge mistake. The first thing you need to do is look at, what do you want to make an annual revenue? And I'm just going to go off a 10 month year. It's easier to calculate the numbers, but it's like, okay, on an annual revenue scale. I want to make 100k, or I want to make 200k. Great.

[00:41:29] Great. Then you need at a thousand dollars per person, a hundred people 10 per month to come through your course. How does that feel to you? Does that feel right then? Does that not feel... Do you need to raise the price? Do you need to bring even more people and lower the price? There's no right or wrong answers here, but I think the question is often asked in a more myopic way when you could be looking at the full 12 month or 10 month goal and reverse engineering from there, and being honest with yourself.

[00:42:43] I had to charge what I knew would be a steal of a deal price. Watch it fill up so easily so that I could over time incrementally raise my prices. And those price raises that I did at a later point, they weren't easy for me to do. But there were definitely very specific things that I... tools that I use to help me process all of that.

[00:43:30] Unfortunately, our brain is kind of wired that way.So, you know, I'm not a therapist, but I do a lot of learning... actually, I should own the fact that I'm getting certified in somatic therapy, but I do a lot of work around nervous system regulation for myself, me personally. I'm even getting the certification just for myself.

[00:44:07] Sage: You know, some months I hit the good, some months I hit the better, some months I hit the best, which is amazing.

[00:44:23] Maegan: Yeah. Yeah. It really is deep and interpersonal therapeutic work to learn how to thrive, and how to feel so proud of yourself when you hit the good goal, right? To let good truly be good enough is lifelong work for most type A perfectionistic business owners. But that's so... It's so beautiful. Good, better, best.

[00:45:16] Maegan: Like we're finding a way to put those things together and it's complicated. This conversation, I really hope, Sage, is just a door opening for so many people who are going to start to map this out in their own business, and in their life. It's very exciting. Let's talk here as we come towards the end about ways in which we get in our own way, right?

[00:46:04] So tell me about some of your personal experiences bumping up against your own upper limits, your own limitations in your business. And what are some common themes you're noticing with your clients now around their limitations?

[00:46:37] So I, in the last year and a half, have become an avid Muay Thai fighter, which is basically kickboxing. That's like the more common term people know. As I got more into that, I wanted to start weightlifting. Never done any kind of aggressive sport, let alone any much of sport in my life.

[00:47:01] Sage: Any much of sports.

[00:47:02] Sage: It's a technical term, any much of sport. And I've never... weightlifting scares the pants off of me. Like, it just is too much. So, I had to borrow someone else's belief. I'm going to be honest, like when I first tried weightlifting in my gym, my friend was there, it was just me and that other person.

[00:47:40] And I, I mention that because sometimes, again, you have to borrow someone else's belief to allow yourself to do something new. So when we got to the rack and he set me up to bench press, it was 50 pounds. And I was like, there's no... I can't do that. And he said, yes, you can. And I was like, no, I really can't.

[00:48:19] Maegan: Oh my God. He was like, I couldn't lift this with one finger.

[00:48:26] Maegan: Oh, wow.

[00:48:37] Yes, I am a paid coach, and I love being a paid coach, but I am telling you if you put the right mentors around you, that will help. So that's one piece of it for sure. And then I have a really awesome tool. I don't know if some of you have heard of Access Consciousness. Are you familiar, Maegan?

[00:48:54] Sage: Oh, yay. Okay.

[00:48:56] Maegan: Yeah! Woohoo!

[00:49:22] Sage: it's a whole feeling.

[00:49:43] that you can ask yourself. And I'm going to share with y'all these questions so that you can work through them. But what's beautiful about the questions is you listen to them. You can choose to respond to them, but often you'll just kind of get the message that you need. And if you want to journal about them, you totally can.

[00:50:26] I want to call in for my VIP days? What's their mission in this world? That's the first question. The second one. How closely aligned will I be with this new potential client that I want to call in? How closely aligned will I be with this new potential client that I want to call in? What's the new consciousness of business owners popping up into the world?

[00:51:06] Sage: then fifth question, What's the honing signal, vibration, and feeling in my body to call them in? What's the honing signal, vibration, and feeling in my body to call them in?

[00:51:30] Maegan: Wow. Those questions feel really powerful. And I love that you're saying they're rhetorical. Sure, if your thinking mind needs to journal about it, you can journal about it. That's okay. But that's actually not the point. It's like you're letting the questions imprint onto you.

[00:52:15] Sage:Oh my goodness. I get whole body chills, you asking me that because it reminds me of the feeling. It creates a whole new feeling in my body. I guess I could describe it as like cellular renewal, right? New neural pathways are happening. It changes everything for me. There's a softening. I always feel less judgmental of myself.

[00:53:03] Maegan: And I talk about ease a lot with the people that I work with, and almost always the response is I'm just... I want that. I'm just afraid that if I say yes to ease, everything will fall apart. Right? So there's, in our heart, it's like we don't believe that ease is actually possible. It feels like a fantasy.

[00:53:49] That these clients you want to work with, that they do exist. That taking four months off a year isn't a pipe dream, right? There is so much inside work that you need to do to realize the vision. And it's all possible, and you're living proof that it can be done. And I'm so grateful that you are in the world sharing what you've learned with all of us. Sage, thank you so much for being here today.

[00:54:22] Maegan: I'm so glad. I love it. Before we wrap up, can you tell folks where they can find you and how they can learn more from you?

[00:54:42] If you go to sagepolaris.com/restrocks, because it does.

[00:54:50] Sage: you can grab my triple email open rates. This is for business owners. If you have an email list, it's three emails that you can copy, paste, and personalize that will allow you... If you've ghosted your list, it'll allow you to reappear in, into your potential client's inbox.

[00:55:38] So yeah, go to sagepolaris.com/restrocks. That's the best entry point into my world. From there, we will stay connected. I know Maegan mentioned that I have resources around VIP days. I talk about that every summer. So, I would love to have you come over, and we'll talk about it again in summer 2025, because it's one of my favorite topics ever.

[00:56:21] Sage: It's my absolute pleasure. Thank you everyone for listening in. And if you ever want to reach out to me and tell me like, what were your big takeaways from our talk today? I'm on Instagram, Sage Polaris. I'm everywhere, Sage Polaris, but it'd be fun to hear from you in the DMs.

[00:56:37] Sage: Bye.