We recently connected with Alejandra Marqués Méndez and have shared our conversation below.

Alejandra, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Do you take vacations? How do you keep things going – any advice for entrepreneurs who feel like they can’t step away from their business for a short vacation?

Yes, yes, and yes! Taking vacations is non-negotiable for me, and it is one of those things I highly encourage all my clients (and everyone) to take more of!

As a business owner, there’s this common guilt of taking time off, and most of my clients have come to me feeling anxious when they think about taking a vacation because they feel if they stop, their business will stop and that everything they’ve worked for will crumble.

Let me tell you, taking a vacation not only will help you as a human being, but will also help your business. Resting and recharging are more than needed for your well-being, and if you’re not taking regular breaks and vacations, you’re probably going to hit burnout anytime soon, if you haven’t already. But also, as a business owner, as the creator, as the visionary, you need time to get new and fresh ideas. If you don’t take time off, you can only create what you’re seeing every single day, with no new inspiration, no new source of creativity.

Here are 2 of my favorite tips to step away from your business and take a vacation without feeling guilty:

1) Plan your vacations and block your calendar. I know, it sounds simple, but being intentional with the time you’re going to be off is very important. Once you block the time you’re taking off, I recommend you also block the week before and the week after your vacation. And don’t freak out yet, hear me out.
Blocking those 2 extra weeks will allow you to prevent overbooking and stress. Most of the time, I’ve seen people having so much stress the week before a vacation because they’re doing everything that week. When you intentionally block it, it allows room for more space, you focus on the most important things to do, and you also have room for the unforeseen. Now, the week after the vacation is usually very well-packed as well because you feel guilty about the time you’re out so you add everything into that week. Big mistake. You need to leave room to slowly get back on track, otherwise, all you will think of during your vacation will be the endless to-do list that’s waiting for you to arrive. That week you’ll focus on revising the planning you’ve already done, making sure you have everything ready to go, and allowing yourself to easily be back full of energy.

2) Go on a 2 in 1 Retreat! One of the best ways to get started with taking vacations if you’re currently feeling anxious about it, is to pack it up with some learning time. This allows your brain to think about the benefits this time off will have for you and your business. Retreats are a great way to unplug and connect with like-minded people while learning something new. This is one of the things I like the most when signing up for events, both as a speaker and attendant. When you learn something useful while you’re on vacation, there’s no way you feel guilty about the time you’re off (and you never should feel guilty about it anyways!). And this is the main reason why I decided to host my own retreats where I teach all things related to time management, stress, burnout, work-life balance and so much more while being in a beautiful space that allows you to fully unplug, recharge, discover and live!

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I’m a Productivity & Business Strategist, Best-selling Author of the book “From Burned out To Unstoppable. A Guide To Becoming Your Most Productive And Balanced Self”, International Speaker, Host of “The Unstoppable / Imparable Podcast” and I lead teams to increase their productivity, efficiency, and performance + empower ambitious entrepreneurs to achieve their goals without burning out, design time management systems that suit their needs, have work-life balance, and create more time for the things that matter the most to them – with my unique framework: The T.I.M.E. Protocol ™.

As a sought-after expert, my work has been featured in over 300 publications including Entrepreneur, Inc Magazine, Yahoo Finance, ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, CW, Medium, Authority Magazine, Thrive Global, & more.

If I were to choose 5 things that sets me apart from others, they would be:

– My family is my #1 motivation, so I always make sure I have lots of quality time with them. And I want you to create the time for the things that you value the most, to those things that matter the most to you.

– As my clients always say, when you work with me, you’ll always feel heard, and in a non-judgmental space. I will gently challenge you to achieve your dreams, while always respecting you and holding space for being completely honest with me without feeling guilty or judged.

– Doing just for doing is not my jam, so everything I teach is very intentional and one of the things I always focus on is making sure that you’re creating a life that you love, being able to thrive both in your professional and personal life.

– When you hire me to speak to your team/audience they will be mind-blown by the knowledge but even better, they’ll walk away with actionable steps and easy-to-implement tools to change their lives from that same day.

– If you want someone who delivers great content, creates long-lasting results, and shows up with the best energy, then you’ve found your person!

Businesswise, I’m proud of the impact I’m creating in other people’s lives, how I’m helping them to feel more empowered and more at ease with their time, feeling unstoppable. And I’m also very proud of the structure that I’ve built in my business, the freedom it allows me to have, and the intentionality of everything that I’m doing.

I’m really excited about the projects I have right now, especially my upcoming This is Vida Retreat – an empowerment retreat in the Canary Islands, Spain. Whether you’re looking to create more time for yourself, get rid of burnout, achieve your goals with ease, or ignite the spark for your business growth, the This is Vida Retreat is exactly what you’ve been looking for!

Besides that, my ongoing services include International Speaking, Corporate Training, and 1:1 Coaching.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

So many lessons I had to unlearn! But if I had to choose, there’s one main lesson I had to unlearn that I want to share with you today: “More equals more”.

This is probably one of those things that I really struggled with in the past because I was always taught that working more hours = earning more money, that studying more hours = better grades, that having more degrees = better status and I can keep going on and on with many more examples. But the fact that doing more would bring in more of a certain outcome is a lesson I definitely had to unlearn once I tapped more into getting rid of burnout and building a business aligned with my vision with ease and not overworking.

When you have this mindset of more equals more, you find yourself in a vicious cycle where you cannot stop working. Where you always stay up late at night doing that extra thing for your business that according to you “couldn’t wait till tomorrow”. When you think that more equals more, you don’t leave room for resting and recharging, and therefore, you limit your creativity and inspiration, because there’s no way you find creativity in overworking.

More equals more is what keeps you trapped in a hamster wheel, where the only thing that you think of is “What can I do now?”, and if there’s something I’ve learned these past years, is that not everything is about the doing, but also about the BEING, so the question should change to “Who do I want to be?” and “How do I want to feel?”. Once you understand the power of this shift, doing more is no longer your norm, because you know that the most important thing in your life and in your business is YOU.

So I encourage you right now to start thinking about what are the areas in your life where you keep thinking that more equals more, start questioning it, and ask yourself, how do you want your days to look like? How do you want your life to look like? What do you need right now to release that old limiting belief that more equals more? Do you need a better structure in your business? Do you need someone to hold you accountable? Do you want and need a vacation so you can come back feeling fresh with new ideas? Once you start questioning this limitation that’s holding you back, you’ll realize that you can enjoy more both your work and your overall life.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

Sure! I love sharing the story of how I drastically pivoted in my career and started my coaching & consulting business, I feel so many people could get encouraged by it!

I was supposed to be a lawyer according to the “normal” path I should have followed. I graduated top of my class with 2 degrees: Business Management and Law, then I graduated with 2 Masters: Advocacy and Sports Law, and while I was studying, I worked part-time in notary offices, one of the top law firms in Spain, as a criminal law professor at The Autonomous University of Barcelona and in different research centers.

One thing that became obvious to me while doing all of that, is that I was great at time management and that no matter how many things I was already doing, if I wanted to do something, I created the time for it, hobbies, learning languages, spending plenty of quality time with my loved ones, you name it, if I wanted it, I would find time for it.

When the pandemic hit in 2020, I started questioning what was normal and what was possible. I thought about how I wanted my life to look like 3, 5, 10, 20 years from now, and something came crystal clear to me: I wanted to be more intentional with my time, with what I truly wanted, and with my purpose. I thought about the impact I wanted to create on other people’s lives, on my family’s lives, and on my own life. So I decided to bet on myself and start my own business while I was still working part-time as a criminal law professor and as a project manager at the research center. I visualized my desired outcome and I decided to go all in with it, followed my intuition on what I thought was possible for me, and looked for someone to guide me and support me to get there, I worked with my first mentors and there hasn’t been a day till today that I haven’t followed my intuition or worked with a mentor to speed up my process to reach my goals.

It might feel scary when you’re about to pivot or when you’re in the middle of it. You might find some difficulties in your path, and people who would think you’re crazy. But I can assure you, if you’re intentional with it, if you’re aligned with what you truly want, it is going to be 100% worth it!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://alejandramarques.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alejandramarques_yourplana/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alejandramarquesmendez/
• Other: Upcoming Retreat in The Canary Islands (Spain): https://alejandramarques.com/this-is-vida-retreat/