19 Jul 2021

Dear Business Owner: You Need a Vacation

You need a vacation. Not a checking-my-phone-all-the-time-because-I’m-home-anyway vacation. A real vacation. A get-the-heck-out-of-dodge vacation. A night-time-at-a-campfire-in-the-wood vacation. A day-drink-on-the-beach vacation. Whatever strikes your fancy – and you feel like you can do safely – go.

Getting business owners and entrepreneurs to take time off to recharge has always been difficult, but when you tack on 2020 and the way we’ve all learned to work from anywhere, people are having more trouble than ever unplugging. What makes this even more interested is that the COVID-19 pandemic gave us a fresh perspective on spending time with family, traveling and truly appreciating every day… so what’s the problem? Why can’t we just take our own advice and go?

Sure, finances might not be what they were in 2019 and maybe you’re not as well staffed as you were 18 months ago, but at The Growth Coach, we think the real issue is the same as it’s always been… Business owners are so entrenched in the day-to-day operations of their business that they don’t feel like they can get away to relax and recharge. Sound familiar? If this strikes a chord with you, we have some suggestions to help you get to the beach, or the woods, or wherever you want to be on your next vacation.

First of all, you need to hire and train great team members. It’s important to be able to delegate your work to someone on your staff, but if you don’t trust your team to run the business without you, you’re not going to relax anyway. So start at the bottom, find the right people to run and staff your business and onboard them with the right training and systems. Make sure they feel like they can operate the company without asking you 1,000 questions every day.

Secondly, delegate the work and trust your staff to run the business without you. We know it’s hard, but half the battle here is making them feel like you are confident in their abilities. Create systems they can use and trust them to use those systems in the best way possible. The bonus here is, once those systems and leaders are in place, you’ll find that you’re able to take more time out of the office to build your company rather than run the operations in the future.

Thirdly, practice. This is more for you than for your team. If you’re having a hard time imagining how the business can operate without you for a week or two, try taking the afternoon off. Try taking a long weekend. Try calling in sick and seeing how it goes. This isn’t a test for your team – don’t make them nervous. This is a low-risk way for you to reprogram your brain into realizing you aren’t always the lynchpin.

So why is taking a vacation so important anyway? When you are deep in the everyday operations of your business, you aren’t able to step back to see the big picture, you can’t take time to imagine and innovate and you aren’t your most creative self. You’re going to burn yourself out. Vacation is as important for you as it is for your business and your employees. If you don’t feel like you can take a trip – or even a long weekend – this year, it’s time to connect with your local Growth Coach.

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