Ep. 013: How to Take Time Off as a Business Owner
If you want to sustain your business for the long-term, you have to be able to take time off to rest and enjoy the other parts of your life. As Leslie Knope says:“We need to remember what's important in life: friends, waffles, work. Or waffles, friends, work. Doesn't matter, but work is third.” If work always comes first, you'll eventually burn out.
Whether you want to take vacations or just have time to unplug, the keys to doing it without hurting your business are to eliminate, automate, and delegate.
In this episode I explain how to effectively do all three so you can enjoy some guilt-free time off.
LINKS & RESOURCES MENTIONED TODAY:
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Erika Tebbens: Hey, welcome back to the podcast. I am super excited to be sitting here at my desk. Again, recording episodes for you because I love to batch my episodes, which this comes into play with today's episode.
So, uh, I actually, it's been a few weeks since I've been sitting here recording because I was away on a cruise and then, uh, it butted right up into 4th of July week, which at least in the States is, uh, this year it was a shorter week for a lot of people cause a lot of people had Thursday and Friday off.
So I, uh, I've kinda been like off of work for two weeks now, which feels really surreal. Um, but also kind of wonderful. And I was super excited to get to work today. Cause I feel incredibly refreshed. So today's episode, uh, because it is the summer when this is coming out is all about taking time off in business.
And I know that not everyone, but for a lot of us, especially if you have kids in school aged kids, you really think about summer as a time to take some time off to rest, to recharge. Uh, and so I want to make sure that I give you some really helpful tips on how to do that with your business. So that one you don't backslide in your progress and two, so that you don't burn out because I know I talk a lot about.
Relational selling and Knowsley selling, but it's also really important for me to teach women how to grow their business so that it is kind of burnout proof. Right? So for me, I'm more about sustainable growth over the long-term rather than a boom and bust cycle, because that's not fun and I've been there.
And I will just tell you that if you haven't experienced it already, it sucks as bad as you can imagine. And so now all of my, like my decisions and my workflow and everything are really born out of a desire to have sustainable growth in my business and not burn out. So there are three things that I really, really, really recommend in order to successfully take time off in your business. And those three are eliminate automate and delegate.
So first up eliminate. So there are a lot of things that we do in our businesses that we don't love, that don't bring us joy, that don't really, uh, bring in new business or anything like that. But we do them because we think that we are supposed to do them.
And I'm a little bit rebellious by nature. And so I'm kind of the person who's always like, you know, well, why, why do I have to do that? Like, I'm not just going to do it because so-and-so said I had to like, do I really need to do it? And so this could be everything from, do you need to be on a certain social media platform, uh, to, you know, do you need to be making a course or, you know, there's 12 million things that I could think of that people are told that they quote unquote need to do in business, but you don't really need to be doing them.
So I would suggest taking a look at your weekly workflow and anytime that you're doing something that you're like, I hate doing this, uh, it feels like a chore. I don't look forward to it. Uh, I procrastinate on it because it feels so sucky, just anything like that make list. And, uh, then I would also think about are there things that you have thought about getting rid of, but maybe you're nervous. So a good one is a Facebook group.
So I have known over the years, several people who had a Facebook group, some that were even really active that had thousands of people and then they just decided, you know what, I'm going to eliminate it. It's not part of my overall plan anymore. I don't want to be posting in there. I don't want to be managing it, anything like that. Like, it just, it wasn't floating their boat anymore. So they got rid of it and other people are like, Oh my God, you know, how could you do that? Blah, blah, blah.
But it's like, if it's not, you know, like Marie Kondo says, like, if it's not sparking joy and, uh, and if it's something that is suddenly just feeling like a chore or you don't feel aligned with, uh, or, you know, I don't know.
It's just, it's not, it's not your thing anymore, you can simply use, let's say a vacation time or even a month so maybe you're like, okay. You know, August is going to be a busier month for us, family wise with travel and things like that. So for this month, I'm going to eliminate this, and then I'll reevaluate and in the next month, and see, you know, did it negatively impact my business because you might be telling yourself the story that like, you need your Facebook group, right?
Or you need your LinkedIn or your Instagram or something. Along those lines, and then you don't do it for a few weeks or a whole month and then you realize, Oh, actually you weren't really getting any business or any momentum or anything through those channels anyways. And they were kind of sucking out your soul.
So maybe you can just fully get rid of them altogether. There's just so many, so many things that, uh, we are led to believe are essential in every single business and that is just not true. So eliminate, eliminate, eliminate that is first.
Next step is automate. So it's easier than ever with technology to automate. So there are things like, I love Instagram. So I'm @erikatebbensconsulting on Instagram. If you're listening to this on your phone, I love it. When people screenshot and then post in their stories and tag me just makes my heart so happy. So if you're an Instagram user, be sure to hang with me over there.
And I love it. And I'm pretty much on Instagram about every day, but that doesn't mean that I want to have to think about posting on Instagram every day. And in fact, I don't post on Instagram every day. But what I like to do much like with, um, batching podcast episodes, where I sit down and I'll do two or three at a clip, and then I schedule them out in, uh, a platform called Libsyn.
So I schedule them all on there and then they get. Dripped out on the date, I schedule them and they go to all the different places. So I don't have to manually do it week after week. So I love it. And I do the same with Instagram. So I, or my VA will make, uh, graphics like the podcasts graphics that go up, or I will get a bunch of photos taken all at once and then I will use those, I will batch those.
And so I'll sit down and usually about a week or two at a time, I will schedule out. All of my Instagram, uh, regular posts and then I'll go live and stuff in the stories organically, but the rest is scheduled. And then what I can do is spend my social media time, actually engaging with people on the platform and not having to think of what am I going to post.
And what's the caption going to be and whatever hashtag is going to be, because I've already done it. And I automated it. So I also, um, you can also do that. Uh, Facebook has, um, native scheduling rate on the platform for both groups and pages. Um, I will put my affiliate link to plan only for Instagram, uh, in the show notes, or you can just message me and I'm happy to give it to you.
Uh, I, again, like I mentioned Libsyn for my podcast. I use Acuity for all of my client call scheduling, which I love. And, uh, basically I go in at the beginning of every month, I block out times that I'm available for coaching calls. And then I send out the link to all of my, uh, private one-on-one clients and all of the members of my Success Squad group program.
And they can just go in on their own and they can schedule their own call. So we don't have to have this whole back and forth email chain of figure and figuring out what day and time is going to work best. And again, there's just, there's like so many other things that you can automate depending on your business and a lot of platforms are really inexpensive or free to, uh, get automations set up for different parts of it.
So you definitely want to automate whatever you can, but of course you don't make sure to leave that human element. Like I mentioned, in my bro marketing episode, I'm not about the set it and forget it business. I'm really into interacting with people and forming relationships and, uh, interacting with the people who I'm serving.
So this isn't to say that you're going to automate every single thing, and then just sit back on the beach for the whole year and not ever have a hand in your business, but you can automate a lot of things.
And then lastly is delegate. So this feels really, really scary. It can feel really, really scary because it is giving up some control in your business to somebody else. So two things that I recommend one as you are going through and you're doing your tasks each week. Again, those things that you're like, I don't know if I can eliminate this or I'm pretty sure I can't eliminate this, but I just hate doing it myself, make a note, make a Trello board something, jot it down. I did this before I ever hired a VA.
I kept a Trello board of all the things that if money were no object that I would outsourced to somebody else. And then think about the things that are not essential for you to do. So it is not essential for me to go into Canva and make graphics that's something that I can outsource. And if I'm spending an hour every week on creating graphics, let's say that's one less hour that I have to either be working with clients or reaching out to potential new clients.
So that is where the actual money part is coming into my business and not necessarily making graphics. So the other part to that is you are going to want to hire somebody before you are drowning. In work, because then it's really stressful trying to explain and delegate while you're also trying to do stuff. So start a little bit before you feel fully ready. And I will say that you can very easily for under a few hundred dollars a month, hire somebody for several hours a month to go through and actually do different things for you.
And if you didn't want to do like an ongoing work type of situation with somebody, you can actually hire a VA for a project. So maybe like a project that you think is going to take about five hours, you can hire them just for that project. And this is a great way to also see if you're a good fit working with somebody before you commit for several months.
There are other things like, um, bookkeepers or, uh, social media managers, all sorts of things. Um, one thing that I have done, so I use a CPA, uh, at tax time, but I actually under the audit, the automation category is I use QuickBooks. So I kind of delegate out my bookkeeping to QuickBooks and I have automated it so that it syncs up with my business accounts and my business credit card and all of that.
And I actually have automated some of the recurrent transactions. So when those come in. It auto sorts them into the categories. So each Monday when I'm going through and I'm checking all of my transactions and everything, uh, if it's a recurrent transaction, it's already sorted for me. And so I don't even have to deal with that.
It's wonderful. It makes, uh, taking care of, uh, expenses and everything like that. It makes it a breeze. And that is something that I've automated and, um, And yeah. And then again, I just delegate out at the end of the year, I print out everything from QuickBooks and then I pay a CPA and she does our taxes for us because I cannot think of a worst thing to have to try to figure out on my own.
So I'm happy, happy to delegate it. And so, yeah, so that, you know, don't, don't think that you have to hire somebody at, uh, you know, 40 hours a week or anything in order to start outsourcing, you can actually do it for like five hours a month. If you want to. And you can get started that way and then build up as you go.
Um, and I will say one of the women in success squad was asking me since I was, uh, when I got back from my cruise, she was like, yeah, but how do you, how do you like do it and not feel guilty? How do you take time off and not feel guilty? And I'm like, good, that's totally valid question and I've been there and it's something I still occasionally struggle with, but here's the thing.
And I know. You know, I'm not the first person to say this, but if you are not refreshed, you are not going to give the best work in your business. Uh, if you are feeling resentful because you're always giving, giving, giving, and you don't have time for yourself, you will burn out. You will not do quality work.
You will self-sabotage, you will do a whole host of things that are not great to do. So it is better to be preemptive and schedule in some time off, so that doesn't even need to be, uh, you know, a full week way or something. It might just be like, you don't work on the weekends or, you know, you don't work in the evenings, anything like that.
And then maybe a couple times a year, you take that week away, but it really is super important to structure your business in a way that enables you to have a time off, because it is, it is crucial. It is really, really, really essential. Um, and I will say that if you, if you don't even know where to begin with that, if you don't even know how to set something up to delegate it, if you don't even know ways to streamline your business, anything like that, um, reach out by all means.
Let me know. Uh, I always have, um, if you are on my Instagram and you click the link, that's in my bio, I have, um, a link there and I'll put it in the show notes for a free 20-minute strategy session with me. So no strings attached, you know, nothing like that. Uh, there might be some really easy ways that you can just adjust a few things in your business right now, um, to actually be able to take more time off and not have it hurt you financially.
Um, and I would say, lastly, if you feel inspired while you are taking some time off and you get a brilliant idea and something you want to work on right then, or whatever, you also don't need to feel guilty about that. Uh, when I was coming back from my trip, I had, um, some really long layovers, uh, as I was flying home.
And because I hadn't been working all week while I was on the cruise. I actually, you know, even though it was a Sunday, and even though I was traveling, I felt really inspired to do some work. So I pulled out my laptop and I got a bunch of stuff done in a really short amount of time because I felt excited and inspired to do it.
So, um, don't feel guilty about that either; just, you know, you don't want to fall into that trap of, uh, constantly feeling the need to work when you are technically, I'm not supposed to be working when you were taking some time off for yourself. So. Uh, as always reach out if you have questions or anything, I hope this was helpful.
I hope that you do take some time off this year and in future years in your business, and as always happy selling.
