Enjoy Your Holiday Free of Business Engagements

Sparkplugging is starting a new tradition called ‘Spark an Idea Thursday’. Each week we’ll be sharing some great ideas for a topic of interest to our readers. We invite you to grab our image and carry the tradition through to your own blog! If you do, please link back to this post so we know where you were inspired!

This week we’re Sparking an Idea About Enjoying a Business-Free Holiday

Alright I’m rather late for this week’s meme. This holiday weekend thing is really throwing me off. Or is it because my husband took a day off today and is off tomorrow. His holidays always mess me up because I try to make it a ‘policy’ to be off when he is too but I can’t keep you hanging today can I

When it comes to vacation I’m the worse person to give any kind of advise or tip because… I haven’t been on vacation since I had my firstborn and she’s rapidly approaching 8! Yikes! Seriously Lynette? Uh… yeah. Alright, I don’t consider myself having had any real vacation time. To me, vacation is a week at Disney world, a month roaming Europe or going on a walkabout in Australia. Sure, I had a 3 day weekend at my in-laws (uhm is that even a vacation? LOL) or a day trip to the beach since we are so close to it. So what new idea can I possibly share?

I’ll admit – nothing earth shattering. However, this is what I can tell you, these little 2-3 days away always go off without a hitch. You see, I am preparing my business, myself and my family to be away for 1-2 months a year. My mini stay-cations are a training ground to help me see if my processes and plans put in works. So far, they have.

One of the most eye opening things I learned from my friend Alice Seba is, automation does not always mean software. In fact much of the automation I’ve put in place is non-technical and very human. Absolutely, a team is one good place to begin with but if your team doesn’t know what to do or relies on you to tell them what to do every day or every week then they aren’t going to help you that much. You’ll still be ‘working’ everyday, unable to take off.

Some people call it a system, I just call it a standing order. CJ helps the customers daily, Kit works on adding stuff for my members every week, Libby bills the clients every month and Patrick keeps developing the software every week. All this happens automatically. I don’t breathe over their necks, I don’t give instructions every week. Many are repetitive work and some like Patrick’s work aren’t. For those, I make sure I give as detailed instructions as possible at the beginning of the project, come to a common understanding and only drop in once in a while. All these work orders are considered to be done every week/day/month depending on the task, indefinitely. Until I say stop.

That alone made a huge difference. There are still more standing orders to be given out. I’m going to think of more. But you know the fact is, this isn’t for me or for a vacation. The goal is to build a business that doesn’t revolve around me so when it comes time for me to exit or step down, it can stand on it’s own and perhaps bring in more value.

Oh and one more thing – Exercise your will power to stop checking those emails. If you have set up things to run automatically the sky won’t fall on your head after 2 hours away from your business. Yeah, I was surprised too