Your own company always keeps going, right? And if you like what you do, why would you take time off? And if you don’t have colleagues to push the work on, can you ever actually have time off? For those three reasons, I have never given myself more than 4 days off in a row in my three years of entrepreneurship. I found it incredibly exciting to let go of my company and take a break. In retrospect, it was really lame, because I have just as much right to a holiday as anyone else. Fortunately, I made a plan anyway and it turned out that going on holiday as an entrepreneur wasn’t that complicated at all. With these 7 tips, it turned out to be perfectly feasible.
1. Plan a vacation as an entrepreneur – then you “have to”!
The moment that your agenda is suddenly empty and the amount of work dries up by itself, will not come (if all goes well). Work can always continue in principle. So don’t wait for the perfect holiday moment to present itself, but just plan something. Once you have two weeks of crosses in your agenda, you have to make your agenda fit your holiday (instead of the other way around). At least that’s how it worked for me.
Normally I wouldn’t be quick to say “I can’t pick that up for another three weeks”. But with the holidays in sight I had to say things like that and plan around them. It turned out to be an excellent incentive to prevent one of my “mistakes” as an entrepreneur (working too much)! So my number 1 advice: don’t think that planning a holiday is not possible for you. No matter how incredibly important your job may be and how many essential projects you have running, you too can plan freely. As long as you work on it and don’t passively wait for the perfect holiday period to come along.
2. Inform regular clients and make a plan yourself
Communication is key when you go on holiday as an entrepreneur! Of course, it is not very polite to email your client two days in advance “By the way: I will be away for two weeks. See you later!”. The sooner you communicate about your holiday, the better your clients can plan around it. First of all, I have informed my regular clients about one month in advance. These are people with whom I work together continuously or on a regular basis.
I did it as follows:
- Make an overview in Excel (or on paper if you’re not so keen on Excel) of all the clients you work with a lot. Include their contact details, the projects you have running for them and the deadlines for them.
- Make a plan for each client on how you are going to do things during your vacation. For example, can you work ahead so that everything can continue during your vacation? Do you perhaps need to arrange a replacement? Or can you agree that the work will be on hold for two weeks ? I have looked at what is feasible for each client and made a proposal. I personally believe that it comes across as professional if you make a proposal yourself. So don’t put the problem “I’m going on vacation. What now?” on your client, but come up with a solution yourself.
- Be on time with your vacation announcement. The sooner you announce it, the better you and your clients can plan around it.
- Do you have clients who contact you more irregularly? Email them that you will no longer be available from date X and that they can still send you requests that need to be completed by date Y.
- Also clearly indicate until when you are still available . For example, are you going on holiday on Friday? Then you can also say that you are available until Tuesday to prevent people from throwing things over the fence last minute on Thursday “because you will be gone soon”.
- Engage support to keep things moving. I can leave assignments for two weeks, but my blog and website have to keep running. That way, you can’t leave updates waiting for two weeks. That’s why I opted for website maintenance with my website builder Lamper Design. They do all the updates for me, so I never have to worry about my website suddenly going down or something going wrong.
3. Make agreements with yourself about what you will/will not do
During your holiday as an entrepreneur, do you still regularly open your laptop, answer phone calls or secretly tackle that urgent job? As an entrepreneur (and actually also in a salaried job) the work will never really stop. The more often you dive into your laptop, the more often you are confronted with the fact that there are probably still people who need your help while you are mainly focusing on growing a tan on your beach bed.
Therefore, make agreements with yourself about what you do and do not want to do in terms of work during the holiday to prevent your holiday from being neglected.
- For example, do you still answer emails ? And how often? And which emails do you and do you not? You can also use the two-minute rule : you immediately deal with everything that can be arranged within 2 minutes; the rest has to wait.
- Do you answer phone calls and texts for work or not at all? For example, I do not answer work phone calls and I consciously respond to them via WhatsApp by indicating that I am temporarily unavailable due to vacation. Of course, you can also choose not to respond at all.
- Do you still take on urgent assignments or not? And what do you consider urgent? I wouldn’t do that during the holidays. What a waste it would be if you had to cancel your beach plans for an afternoon of deadline pressure. Only if it’s a mini-question or if everything goes completely wrong if I don’t do anything now, I would make an exception.
Also keep in mind: with everything you do during your vacation, you are actually sending a signal that you are flexible. That may sound positive, but it is not always. I think that “flexible” should never be your greatest quality as an entrepreneur. People choose you because you deliver quality. You will not get really nice customers if “always being available” is the reason they choose you.
For example, I myself have often worked on weekends in the past, until I noticed that my own weekend work sessions also allowed me to receive urgent work on Sundays that had to be done on Monday mornings. Then I stopped. Because every time you do something on the weekend or during your vacation, your clients will think “She is on vacation, but we can still email her!” Is that what you want to radiate?
4. New clients? Move them to after the holidays!
For example, if you are a copywriter (totally random example, ahem!), you might get a few new assignments just before your vacation. My advice? Move the entire assignment to after your vacation, including the introduction and quote, for example. If you pick up something halfway now, you will have to dive into it all over again after your vacation. Moreover, your mind is probably not really there when you are still finishing up last things for regular clients.
So don’t be tempted to pick up things quickly, even if the other person is in a hurry. If your new client really needs to wait one or two weeks longer, then they may not be your ideal client either.
5. The classic: a good out-of-office email
With a good out-of-office email you can also solve a lot of problems when you go on holiday as an entrepreneur. I found this article by Racheal M. about what you should definitely NOT put in your out-of-office email very entertaining. About, among other things, how you can make your colleagues unnecessarily jealous by telling them about your dream holiday in great detail in the email and about how you can also be too specific (“I won’t be there between Friday 3:30 PM and Monday 9:30 AM.”)
But if you can indicate in a fun and informative way when you are away, when you will be back and when your customers can expect a response , you will have come a long way. Maybe also make something creative of your out-of-office mail. Or is that something that I as a copywriter am especially charmed by?
Furthermore, I recently got a handy tip from Matthew’s podcast : offer mailers something until you’re back . For example, have you written an e-book? Point it out to your mailer. They can probably get tips from that even in your absence. Do you have a number of really good blogs on your site? Link to them in your out-of-office mail. Or have you developed an online offer or an Instagram account with thousands of tips? Refer to them. That way you don’t have to disappoint your customer and you can also help them while you’re lying on your sunbed on the beach or enjoying a mindful walk in the middle of nowhere .
6. Empty your mailbox
A week before my vacation, I took an evening to plow through all my e-mail . That’s how I discovered that there were still a few things on the shelf that I hadn’t heard anything about from the client. I immediately e-mailed those people to tell them about my vacation planning and to let them know until when I could still pick up things. Other e-mails could go straight to the digital bin. And e-mails that were meant as a reminder that I still have to do something with them, I moved to a folder that I will look at the week after my vacation.
Such a tidy mailbox immediately gives you a tidy feeling in your head. You know for sure that there is no one waiting for your response somewhere.
7. Make a plan for after your vacation
You will probably receive requests just before your vacation. “Can you quickly…?” or “Will you have time soon?” Make a plan for these kinds of requests for after your vacation. This will not only give you peace of mind now (because: you don’t have to do anything with those emails now!), but it will also help you not to be led by the madness of the day right after your vacation. For example, the week after my vacation I am already full of appointments and assignments.
Except for Monday morning; that is for “overdue maintenance”. Because that will undoubtedly be after the holidays. But that is not a disaster, as I have learned in the meantime. You do not always have to be on top of things . The world will continue to turn without you. In a good way.
Let it go. It’s a vacation. And you deserve it as an entrepreneur just as much as when you work for a boss and can hand over your work to your colleague.
Extra tip: take your own assistant when you go on holiday as an entrepreneur
Wow, that actually sounds really cool! I haven’t done this myself, but I know that several entrepreneurs around me have one: a Virtual Assistant. He keeps an eye on your mailbox while you are on vacation as an entrepreneur , can also answer emails and makes sure that everything is streamlined while you are carefree on your towel.
The costs are often not too bad, because you pay such an assistant per hour and such a person works super fast (maybe he/she can handle email programs, design tools, etc. faster than you). For now I can manage without an assistant, but who knows, I might treat myself to such a pair of professional extra hands during a future vacation.
Because I do realize one thing: you also need to take a vacation when your work is your hobby. I’m going to do that more often!
