You need a break.
That’s something you may not want to hear. But it’s true. We’re well aware that if you’re a business owner—especially a small business owner—then there are a million things you need to do and it’s probably best that you oversee personally. You’re the one there late at night, every night. You’re the one evaluating all new vendors. You’re the one double-checking every decision. When it’s your name on the business—and the contracts, the lease, the digital services, everything—you’re painfully aware that everything is on you.
But you still need a break. Here are some hard facts about why that’s true and how you can go about giving yourself the break you need.
The Hard Facts on Taking Vacations
A study by the CIBC found that most entrepreneurs don’t take any vacation during the year and end up working longer hours than when they were employed by someone else. That’s a shame because there are scientifically verifiable reasons why they should take vacations. One study found that employees are better at creative thinking after a vacation. Another study found that vacations are key to building resilience, a necessary trait for anyone, but especially a business owner with so many responsibilities. Furthermore,
Delegate Effectively
You’ve put a lot of work into building the team you want. Well, taking a vacation is an excellent opportunity to further build their skills while you’re away and establish that you’ve made the right choices. After all, if you’re going to keep building a business, you’ll need more and more trusted lieutenants who can make decisions in your absence.
Leverage Technology
If you have a hosted private branch exchange (HPBX), it’s easy to be in touch with your team or customers, if need be. If you have a team, think of leaving them in charge but monitoring them with your HPBX-enabled tools as letting them ride with training wheels.
What kinds of tools can an HPBX enable? Well, you can easily connect with your team or customers via voice, messaging, or even video. You’re reachable with multiple or temporary identities and location-sharing accessed on any device. You can be as responsive as you want to be to your customers or colleagues—but remember, try to delegate. Finally, an HPBX lets you be in control with simple tools for management and administration using the native UI on a mobile device.
Put Your Business on Vacation
There’s one final possibility for giving yourself a vacation, and that is to put your whole business on vacation for a week or so. Yes, you have to organize this kind of thing in advance—by ensuring that your customers are taken care of, clearly indicating when you’re off and when you’ll be back, and changing your hours on all platforms—but it’s doable. Plenty of small businesses shut down for a week or so. Even large businesses do the same thing. LinkedIn, for example, shuts the whole business down for two weeks every year. And how do they keep on trucking without anyone in the office? Powerful digital management tools, just like the ones you get with an HPBX, of course.
We know you’re painfully aware that everything is on you when it comes to your business. And that just means you have to take care of yourself. It would be a real mistake to work yourself to the bone and end up diminishing your own capacity to the point that your work can no longer sustain your business. So take a vacation, for your own sake and for the sake of the business you’ve built.
