When you’re a small business owner it’s very easy to be wary of taking a holiday in case everything falls over while you’re away. The truth is that stress free holidays are possible. Most of the time taking a break won’t have any negative impact on your business. On the other hand, coming back fresh, eager and inspired on the other hand, will have a multitude of positive impacts.
So how do you do it? Here are five things that will ensure that both your business and your trip run smoothly and that you manage to have a stress-free holiday.
Give your clients plenty of notice.
Make sure to let your clients know well ahead of time that you’ll be unavailable. Then, tell them again and again and again. If you need a deadline for new work, make sure you communicate it, and then make sure you send regular reminders. Then prepare yourself for one or two things that come in after the deadline and prepare your response so you’re not saying “yes” to something you can’t deliver or you’re not saying “no” to something you could easily fit in. Managing customer expectations is the key to happy customers.
Give your clients somewhere to go in case of emergency.
Whether that is a phone or email that you’ll be checking periodically, or a colleague they can contact in your stead – giving them somewhere to go will avoid them going somewhere else altogether. If you’re giving them an email or phone number for you – make sure to spell out what will happen. For example: Call 1234 567 890 and…”leave a message and I’ll get back to you within 24 hours”, or “talk to my answering service and if they can’t answer your question they’ll find someone who can “, “send me an email and I’ll get back to you within 48 hours” etc. As a rule, people don’t mind waiting, they just don’t like not knowing how long it’s going to be until they get a response.
Have copies of important documents elsewhere.
Copy your travel documents and itinerary & store them on Dropbox, then share the folder with your Virtual Assistant, a trusted and well organised family member, or even better both. Then if anything goes wrong, you’ve got a backup that you can access, or if you can’t even get internet access someone else can on your behalf.
Make sure someone trustworthy has a key to your office.
Because no matter how well planned you are, you never know when you’re going to need something that can only be accessed in your office. And you certainly don’t want to wait till you get home from a trip to find out that the bad storm that hit just after you left caused your roof to spring a leak. Giving someone a key to your office means you can go away secure in the knowledge that someone is keeping an eye on everything for you.
If you’re going somewhere new, research your destination.
You really don’t need to plan every second of your trip, but you do need to be aware of any existing travel advisories, visa requirements, potential or existing civil unrest, vaccinations needed and any issues around currency exchange. It’s also a good idea to check out tips from people who’ve travelled there in the past, check out must-see places particularly those that are off the regular tourist trail and of course learn a few key phrases if you don’t already speak the language. And of course, it’s always good to know whether you’ll have phone reception, access to wi-fi and a reasonable data speed if you do need to do some work.
If you take care of these things, the only other thing you need to do during your trip is to kick back, relax and enjoy your stress free holidays.