How to take a holiday from your business

Recently, I took a holiday. A holiday of the no-wifi variety, on a boat that didn’t even have AC power to charge my laptop. I turned my out of office autoresponder on, stopped checking my phone seventy million times a day and disconnected from my business for the first time since leaving my corporate job at the start of 2016.

 

 

 

How to take a holiday from your business

Honestly? Taking a holiday was probably the best thing I’ve done for my business in a long time.

Yes, I’ve been travelling a lot in the last few years. To anyone scrolling my Instagram feed, my life seems like a permanent vacation. But, every single trip has involved lugging my laptop along, working from AirBnBs with glorified dial-up and checking my emails when I should have really been present in the moment.

I was afraid that taking a real holiday would leave our clients feeling like I didn’t care about them, or that the business wasn’t my number one priority. But, truth be told, I think NOT taking a holiday left them feeling this way. I was feeling stressed, anxious and burnt out, which meant I couldn’t show up for clients as my best self.

When was the last time YOU took a holiday? A real holiday, that is. Not a remote-working trip poorly disguised as a holiday.

It doesn’t have to be an expensive trip overseas – it can be as simple as a road trip to a small beach town, or even a staycation in your own town. The key is to allow yourself space from your business; space to be around people you love, or to do things you enjoy but never have time to do, and to remind yourself that you are not your business.

Worried that taking a holiday means that your business will suffer? It won’t. The new-found space in your mind will leave you feeling enthusiastic, motivated and bursting with ideas.

Here’s how to take a holiday from your business:

1. Plan ahead

Make a list of everything that needs to be done while you’re away, and either get it done before you go or delegate it to someone who can do it while you’re gone.

Make sure you let your clients know you’ll be away and unreachable, but give them details of someone they can contact in case of an emergency. Be sure to tell them exactly what constitutes an emergency, so that your poor emergency contact isn’t left to deal with “emergencies” like helping your client decide which outfit to wear.

If you run an online store, ask a friend or family member to pack and ship your orders while you’re away. If that’s not an option, simply put up a virtual “closed” sign on your website, letting customers know their orders won’t be shipped until you’re back.

2. Turn your out-of-office autoresponder on…

…And commit to NOT checking your emails. It’s a slippery slope from “I’ll only log in and check them once a day” to “Oh crap! I need to reply to this person and this person and this person” and suddenly you’re frantically typing email responses in front of the Eiffel Tower.

True story. I’ve done it.

3. Brief your team/friend/mum on how to handle common emergencies

You could type up an FAQ sheet, or you could write some canned email templates for common enquiries. Maybe there’s a process that they need to follow, in which case, this is the perfect opportunity to document that.

If you don’t have someone you can delegate this responsibility to, there is another solution. Believe it or not, there are people out there called “business babysitters” who can do just that.

4. Automate the things you can

This might be as simple as setting up an email auto response and follow-up sequence for the enquiry form on your website using Dubsado.

Or, it could be automating your invoicing in Xero, so that you still send and follow up invoices while you’re out of office.

Setting up an automation is a one-time task, but can save you a lot of time in the future – not just when you’re on holiday. It also starts to set up the foundations for growing your business and takes a few things off your to-do list.

If you do a lot of little repetitive tasks, check out Zapier and see if it can automate any of these for you.

Have you read my list of the best small business marketing tools in 2018?

5. Plan to ease back into it on your first day post-holiday

It might sound like a great idea now, but on your first day back from holiday, you are NOT going to want to do all 47 tasks on your to-do list. Before I left, I made my to-do list one giant “post-holiday Steph problem”. Right now, post-holiday Steph hates pre-holiday Steph – so, don’t do what I did.

Bask in that post-holiday glow a little longer by allowing yourself a sleep-in, or a morning yoga class, some time to do the tasks you enjoy and a slightly trimmed down to-do list, before facing reality.

6. Commit to completely disconnecting from business

This means no push notifications, no checking your business Instagram and no reading business books.

Put the business book down and dive into a novel. Or, spend some time reading up and learning something that you’ve always wanted to.

It might sound like a weird tip, but sometimes you just need a little distance from your business in order to start seeing it from a fresh perspective. The ideas that popped up while I wasn’t thinking about my business definitely wouldn’t have dared show up in my usually cluttered mind.

Now, I give you permission to start planning your next holiday. I’m already thinking about my next one!

Pin this?