Dec 19, 2019
In 2018, I remember planning my wedding very vividly, and looking at my wedding and my honeymoon and feeling stressed out about how I was going to make two weeks off happen. Just two weeks. I didn’t know how that was going to happen without my business crumbling. Because, at that point, I had never taken a full week off.
In 2019, I took seven weeks off and at least four of them were completely unplugged. At the end of the day, we left our jobs to be able to live our dream lives, to be able to do whatever you wanted, to take time off whenever we wanted. We didn’t sign up to work our butts off all the time for no break or reward.
So today, I’m going to share with you how I managed to take so much time off in 2019, and still make money in my business.
“I think our business needs to be scalable. A business needs to be something that can run on its own if something happens or if we need to take a vacation because we’re human. We need rest. And I’m really passionate about this and passionate about enabling you to have time off and still make money.”
In this episode Avani talks about:
I made sure to tell my team and my clients about my trips. I was very clear that I was going to help them hit their deadlines, even when I was gone. That meant we would need to work extra ahead of time if needed. I scheduled business development calls or meetings upfront, and told clients I would follow up with them when I was back. Being transparent is incredibly important if you’re going to take time off!
You can’t clone yourself, so if you’re working with others, you need to trust that they will fill in the gaps while you are gone. If you plan ahead, you’ll be able to be clear about what’s expected of them while you’re offline. Empower them to work without you and complete the work that needs to be done!
Your clients are human, too. They will understand that taking some R&R is necessary for you to perform at your best. If that’s a problem, then you should be considering if they are a client you want to keep working with.
Using your tools is critical. When I left for vacation I was leaving behind clear, concise instructions and tasks so that everyone knew exactly what they had to do. They were well documented in my project management software and everyone knew where to look to see the tasks they needed to complete. Your vacation depends on your team working while you’re gone!
If you’re going to go on vacation, then you truly need to check out. Turn on an auto responder, don’t answer emails, don’t answer anything work related because you don’t want to set the expectation that you are available. You have to draw that boundary so that you are giving yourself that time to recharge!