Do you remember those early days in entrepreneurship? Maybe around the time, you decided to start your business. Your Instagram page was littered with images of beach vacations and “the laptop lifestyle”. You thought, “yeah I could do that”! I can work from anywhere! You imagined your days in your new business, between meetings you would hit up the pool or the gym, meet friends for lunch, or work on a new hobby.  

Fast forward two years and your 6 am alarm is just ending as you walk from your bed to your desk. Still, in your pj’s, you rifle through emails and start to put out fires one by one. The days of casually sipping on a margarita while sending out client proposals are all but forgotten. But are they?

This week on Financial Conversations I sat down with Zafira Rajan – Copywriter & Brand Strategist. She closed the doors of her business for 4 weeks earlier in the year and I wanted to find out how!

  1. Plan for how you will take a vacation from your business:

Closing the virtual doors and setting the out-of-office reply for next week might give you heart palpitations. What about 3 months from now? 6 months from now? Sounds slightly more achievable, doesn’t it? Giving yourself this timeline gives you enough of a runway to begin rescheduling meetings, moving out deadlines, and making yourself unavailable for new work.

2. Block off more vacation time than you actually need:

It may seem like a no-brainer. After you have committed to taking time off, STOP accepting new work! However, in Financial Conversations episode 5 Zafira talks about the challenges she faced as a business owner having to turn people away. Protecting the time is just as important as blocking out the actual dates. Zafira recommends two strategies to help, firstly, let your team, your partner, your friends know your plans and ask them to help to hold you accountable. Secondly, schedule a longer vacation than you actually plan on taking! This way if things creep in your actual vacation time stays protected. 

3. Plan for your time away from your business:

Setting expectations for your team and your clients ahead of time will help ensure you can keep yourself on “vacation time” for the duration of your time away. It is worth considering how you will manage client requests, how you will filter through new business, and who will be monitoring your email while away?

4. Review your business revenue by month:

In terms of affordability, taking a whole month without revenue may seem a little daunting. Instead of saying no, consider saying “not now” and booking client work in for the prior or proceeding month (within reason of course). You may just find saying “no” creates a sense of urgency around working with you! It also can create a nice cushion for the month before and month after to help support you during that time.

5. Determine how you will draw a salary from your business while on vacation:

Depending on your business model you may not be able to plan in advance, if not it’s time to start saving. You can begin saving for your salary right now. This way you will still be able to receive your usual monthly salary during your month’s vacation.

Going from working 24/7 in your business to completely shutting the doors is not likely to happen overnight. Zafira recommends starting small and practicing taking time off slowly for example start with one day a week. The task list may not move as fast, however, it’s also important to remember why we started our businesses. It probably wasn’t so we could work more!

Have more financial questions? Tune in weekly to ‘Financial Conversations’ the podcast at www.financialconversations.com, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts.