How to prepare your business for a few weeks offline

Does your business stop when you stop—or is it pretty self-sufficient? Or perhaps you're somewhere in the middle? In today's episode, I am sharing some great tips to help you understand your role in your business better and how you can prepare to take some time off—on your terms.

– Understanding the “off-grid” test so that you can still maintain high client satisfaction and high profitability.
– The different stages of your business and what these mean for your time offline.
– Why setting up your foundations now will help you build a business that's profitable when you're offline.
– Why taking a few weeks off now *is* possible, even if you don't have all of your ducks in a row.

 

Today I'm talking about how to prepare your business for a few weeks offline. Now, this is something that I've gone through many times in my business because I love to take blocks of time away. 

So when you're first starting out in your business, your business is probably a bit more like a bicycle. You're pedaling all the time, but when you stop pedaling, the business stops running, the income stops coming in, and then you might progress and you might end up with an e-bike where you've maybe got some systems in place and maybe a virtual assistant or some other team members to help you pedal sometimes, but for the most part, you're still the person doing the pedaling.

Then the next stage is where you've got a manual car where it runs, but you are still there pressing the accelerator, changing the gears and then that final, that goal is that self-driving car where it runs itself. It steers itself even when you are not sitting there putting your foot in the accelerator, steering the car where you need it to go now.

So that's the longer term goal, right? 

Building a business that's profitable when you are offline and there's a bit of a balance because a lot of the things that go towards building a business that's profitable when you are offline, they don't necessarily grow your business in the short term. They don't bring in revenue in the short term, but they set the foundations in place so that when you step away, your business doesn't fall apart.

But this is also not necessarily attainable in the short term and does it mean that you need to take, you need to get all of your ducks in a row before you can take any time off at all? No, it doesn't. 

So today I'm going to share what you need to do to build a business in the long term that is profitable when you're offline, but also the things that you can do in the short term.

If you want to take a few weeks off right now and you don't have the time to hire and train a team and do all of the things, get all the foundations in place so you can take that time off. 

 

Long-term: Building a business that is profitable when you are offline.

The first thing we want to look at is what is the vision five years from now, 10 years from now. What do you do in your business? What do you not do? What does your day-to-day look like? What does your life look like? For everything that you no longer want to do in your business, you need an action plan to get this off your plate.

You either need to hire someone else who can do it, or you need to automate it or put a system in place to do it, or you need to delete it altogether. Stop doing it all together. 

An example of one thing that you might not really want to do is show up and sell all the time on social media or on live webinars or whatever it is.

So in that case, maybe you would create some sales processes that run when you're offline, you'd build out an evergreen funnel that is selling so that you do not have to be there constantly showing up and doing sales calls or doing live webinars. 

Another one might be creating marketing structures and processes so your business can continue to grow when you're offline.

So that's what we need to do in the long term. But does that mean you cannot take any time off until you've got all of those foundations in place? No, it doesn't. 

 

Short term: Building a business that is profitable when you are offline.

So in the short term, if you are wanting to take a few weeks off for whatever reason, I know if you are quite early in your business, you might find that all of your time is going to that and you cannot step away for a moment.

What do you need to do to? 

So the first thing that you need to identify is what are all of the things that need to happen while I'm away from my laptop, for example, three podcast episodes need to go out, three emails need to go to my list. These social media posts need to go out. This client project needs to be delivered. These customer support emails need to be responded to. Those are all of the things that need to happen to keep the lights on while I'm away from my laptop. 

 

The difference between the short-term and the long-term. 

So the difference between taking some time off now when you don't have all the foundations in place versus long-term when you've got those foundations in place and you take time off is…

In the longer term, the goal is that when you take that time off, your business keeps growing. But in the shorter term, it's more like keeping the lights on and keeping your business in a holding pattern. 

 

Keeping the lights on in your business…

So firstly, what are all of those things that need to happen to keep the lights on while you are away from your laptop? And then for each of those things you've written out in your list, we need to identify will you prepare it ahead of time. Will you delegate it? Will you automate it? Will you delay it or will you delete it? 

So preparing it looks like batching your podcast episodes and scheduling before you go away or doing that client project before you go away.

Delegating. It looks like giving ownership to someone else, so maybe you'll bring in a virtual assistant to manage those customer support emails while you're away.

Automating, it looks like scheduling posts and emails to go out while you're away. It also might look like automating your email list-building process if you haven't already done that.

Delaying it. For example, if you have a meeting booked in your calendar, can you maybe move that meeting to after you get back, or can you have a conversation with the client whose project is due, and ask them if they would be all right with you doing it a week later. 

And then the last one is you potentially could delete it. For example, I don't take clients when I know I'm going to be offline. There's only one way really to work with me, and that is in a sort of one-off container. I don't work with retainer or ongoing clients and I don't book in clients when I know I'm going to be offline. 

 

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