How to Prep Your Business for a Vacation
As a solo entrepreneur, everything rests squarely on your shoulders. It’s a lot of pressure to manage on a day to day basis, but that pressure exacerbates whenever we take time out from work. I know how important it is to take a vacation every now and then as a business owner- mostly from my own lack of vacation time. Self-care is ridiculously important to help you keep in tip-top shape to face the challenges that each day brings, and vacation time, too, is a requirement to help you relax and recharge your batteries. But, how do you prepare for taking the necessary time away from your business when you are the business? This is a question I’ve been forced to ponder since I have booked my first week long vacation since my business began to take off, and this is what I’ve come up with after taking a look around to see how the best solo entrepreneurs and small businesses manage prepare.
1. Communicate your absence: If you work for yourself, by yourself, the first step to preparing for your much needed vacation is to communicate your time off to your customers. If you have clients, you will want to give them notice of your time off and make sure that you are able to properly schedule your work for them around this time period. If you run a shop, you will want to consider letting your customers know via a newsletter and then post a site-wide notice that let’s people know when you will be away and how that will affect order fulfillment. Whatever you do, just don’t say nothing! Customers are incredibly understanding when they have notice that there is going to be a change in routine, so let them know as soon as you can!
2. Create your vacation protocol: Depending on the type of business you run, you may be able to manage some items of your business while you are away. For example, perhaps you run a digital shop like I do, then your shop doesn’t need to close while you are on vacation, you just won’t be able to respond as quickly to customer service emails. Set the protocol for what is going to happen while you’re away. Will you respond to emails while you are away or will you be some place where you don’t have reliable internet? This will need to be communicated to your customers. Do you have stock that can be sold while you are away, but you just won’t be able to fulfill orders until you return? That should also be decided and communicated. It’s very hard as a solopreneur to step fully away from your business and if you feel like you would still like to be tethered in some way, make that decision and set your protocol. Perhaps you will respond to emails while you are away but not be able to troubleshoot issues or play tech support. Whatever you decide is fine as long as you define it and communicate it before you leave!
3. Pack only what you need to take: Once you have defined your protocol and communicated your absence and plan for managing the business while away, you will want to make sure you pack the specific items you will need, no more, no less. For example, if you know you will have internet access and might want to send emails, bring your smartphone to limit the amounts of emails you will send. If you know you will need to play tech support while you are gone, bring your laptop. Don’t bring more than what you need, “just in case” because you will most likely put yourself in a situation where you end up working more than you need to.
4. Pre-schedule content as needed: If your business revolves around content, you may want to take some time before you leave to pre-schedule some content for the time you will be away. Write your blog posts (or find a guest poster- even better!), take your Instagram pics, and schedule your tweets or Facebook updates as needed. Apps like Hootsuite or Buffer allow you to schedule your content out across multiple platforms so you can ensure promotions are running smoothly while you are away.
5. Close up the office: The final way you can prepare yourself for vacation mode, is to close of your office before you leave! What I mean by this is to make sure your office space, whether its a desk in your bedroom, a home office or even a rented office space, is cleaned up, everything is put away and your equipment is shut down. A simple act like this can go a long way to help your mind turn off from work and turn onto vacation mode!
I hope these tips help you prepare your business for your next vacation! There is one more thing I wanted to mention to you all since I have received some questions about it. I am going on vacation in a few weeks to Disney World in Orlando Florida, and it has been brought to my attention that some of you are in the area and may want to do a meet up with me. If you are in the Orlando area and would like to see if we can make this happen, send me an email and let me know! Can’t wait to hear from you!
xoxo,
Great tips!