Hi Reader!

Happy almost Halloween! I can’t wait to see photos of you, your kids, and your pets all dressed up in your costumes flood my social feeds!

The holiday season is traditionally when many people take time off work and schedule vacations. But as a small business owner - it can be difficult to disengage, enjoy the down time and still have your business run smoothly. And do you know what can be even harder?! When your assistant or freelancer goes on vacation and all of the work that you outsourced is now back on your plate!

Today, I’m sharing some tips for keeping your business running when you or your assistant are taking some well-deserved time off! These SAVED me when my assistant went on maternity leave earlier this year, so I hope they help you too! (And whew…I was SO happy when she came back!!)

When’s the last time you took a vacation? Let me rephrase that… When’s the last time you took a vacation and didn’t work on your business the whole time?! For many small business owners, a true vacation seems like a distant memory. While technology is convenient and gives you peace of mind that you can handle whatever comes up if you need to, it can also be the chains that hold you back from truly disengaging while you’re away.

And remember - if you have an assistant or a freelancer that you have outsourced tasks to, they also deserve a vacation where they don’t have to think about you or your business!

So let’s talk about the best way to plan and prepare for vacations and time off so that you and your support staff can truly rest and recharge knowing that everything is running smoothly!

Work in Advance

The key to enjoying vacation is to work out what tasks and content pieces need to be performed or posted during your time off. At least a month before your scheduled vacay, come up with a list for yourself and your freelancer and have them start preparing those pieces well in advance. This is especially important when it comes to things like content creation (such as emails, newsletters, blogs) and social media posts. I find that it’s best to schedule a “brain dump” meeting or time block and write down everything that needs to go out during the absence. Then make room in your workload to tackle each additional task one by one. Yes, this takes the foresight and planning of knowing what you want to be posting, but it is well worth it. Everyone will breathe easier when the time off comes and the content is already created.

Utilize Scheduling Tools

If you think having the content created is a win, wait until you have it scheduled! All of the major content and email marketing platforms have scheduling features that allow you to create content ahead of time and schedule it to be sent or posted on a specific day and time.

Social media scheduling tools, such as Later, Hootsuite, or Loomly, have a lot of benefits on top of just being able to schedule for a vacation. They can help you plan throughout the year and schedule posts as you finish them, freeing up your brain space to either keep creating or work on something different.

And I’ll say this much about scheduling tools: it’s great to have them, but they’re pointless if you don’t utilize them! My assistant went on maternity leave earlier this year, and while we had a clear plan for social media while she was gone - she designed a lot, drafted captions, and everything was prepared and ready for my approval and posting. But we didn’t schedule the posts. And wouldn’t you know it? Anything that wasn’t actually scheduled by her before she left did NOT get posted. So I can speak from experience about the importance of not just creating and working ahead of an absence, but actually following through to the point where you can “set it and forget it.”

Centralize Information

This is especially important if the person on leave is the one that knows where everything is. If one of you is constantly emailing google doc links to the other because one of you either doesn’t know the filing system well or doesn’t have access to it, this is VITAL. Set up a single place that’s easy to find that can link to everything someone will need while you’re gone - or make sure your VA does that for you before they take a vacation.

Create a Delegation Plan

A delegation plan will look vastly different depending on the size of your team and the length of the absence, but regardless, it is important to know who will be handling what while you’re gone. A big part of this plan is understanding priorities. What tasks, if left undone, will ACTUALLY hurt your business? Make sure those tasks are delegated very clearly. Any task that is not that high of a priority can be communicated as such, and everyone will be ok if it doesn’t get done while you’re gone.

Set Clear Boundaries

As you can imagine, the most important part of any vacation as a business owner is communication. Communicate with your team and with your clients that you will be out and what dates you are unavailable. Do the service of tying up needed loose ends before your departure, and make sure everyone knows who to contact while you’re gone.

If you’re the type of person who can’t stay away from a computer even while you’re on vacation, go ahead and check in, but make sure to limit yourself so you can actually enjoy your time off. And if you’re the business owner and your assistant is the one taking time off - do everything in your power NOT to email, text, or call them about business!

And let me leave you with this final piece of advice: it’s all going to be ok! If you take a couple weeks off and come back to a mess, you are more than equipped to clean it up. It’s important to think ahead and plan ahead, but it’s also important to have grace and flexibility. Your business WILL survive vacations - and most likely, it’ll be better for them.

More insight on vacation and leave time...

• ​How Small Business Owners take Vacations​
• ​How to Take a Vacation as a Small Business Owner​
• ​How to Take a Vacation When You Run a Small Business​
• ​A Small Business Owner’s Guide to Maternity Leave​

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