When I started my first business 4 years ago, someone told me kiss goodbye to holidays. This really upset me, because I LOVE my holidays (don’t we all), and so I made it my mission to prove that I could run a successful business and still take time off whenever I wanted, within reason.
As you are reading this I am 15,000km from Sydney and about to get married in Istanbul. As much as I love my work helping fantastic businesses with their Marketing, I don’t want to spend the lead up to my wedding or the honeymoon on a laptop.
So how do I ensure that my business continues to work seamlessly while I’m away?
My fantastic Virtual Assistant, Debbie from www.deb-e-secretarial.com.au, is taking care of all correspondence, inquiries and bookings for my mentoring sessions while I’m away, and will only contact me in case of emergencies. I wrote and scheduled my newsletter 3 weeks ago to be sent out today through www.aweber.com. Members of My Business Book club have kindly offered to run the meetings in September. My wonderful mentoring clients are happy to have a short break to their mentoring sessions and I’m already looking forward to hearing about their progress.
You may be reading this thinking “yeah it might be alright for you, but there’s no one I trust enough to take care of my business, and I’ll lose all my customers”. Maybe you will lose a customer or two, because no one can represent your business in the same way that you do. All I’m saying is that we all need a break sometimes to recharge our batteries and gain a fresh perspective on things. As someone much wiser than me once said “where there’s a will, there’s a way”, so if you need a break (to get married or otherwise), find a way to take it.
For more tips and hints on how you can enjoy more time away from your business I recommend the following books – “The Invisible Entrepreneur” by local authors Louise Woodbury & William de Ora, and “The 4-hour work week” by Timothy Ferris.
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