How to Keep your Business Running When on Holiday
As a business owner, it can be challenging to find the time to take off and keep your business running and enjoy your holiday at the same time. The good news is that it’s possible, and there are many simple and easy ways to ensure your business doesn’t stop when you do.
Here are some simple ways to keep your business running while you’re on holiday:
Dedicate some time beforehand to prepare
This is essential. Giving yourself some time before your holiday to prepare your business is an excellent way to keep organised and ensure the running of your business. Organising yourself will prepare you and make you aware of what’s coming up while you’re away and help keep you at ease and prevent you from worrying as you’ve already fully prepared. Before you go, organise your calendar, and write a list of everything going on while you’re away. This can help you if you are planning on working while you’re away, or better yet, if you’re hiring someone to help you, you can work together, and complete any training with them before you leave.
An excellent way to set boundaries is by physically stopping yourself. For example, by leaving your laptop at home, you are restricting yourself by only being able to complete work from your phone. This means that you can still access your business, but you can’t access a computer which is preventing you from being sucked into your screen and working even more.
Hire a Virtual Assistant
A virtual assistant can aid you with running your business all year round, especially while you’re away. You can give a VA as much control as you need to and work with them to ensure a smooth running. A VA can help to:
Communication
A VA can take care of all your correspondence. This is a great way to ensure there is someone to look after your customers/ potential customers and stop you from checking your inbox and replying to emails. This will ensure your customers are getting quick responses and prevent you from coming home to an overflowing inbox.
You may not have the time or access when you’re on holiday to ensure your incoming and outgoing payments are going through. Your VA can help chase up payments, pay any bills and send invoices out to your customers. Your VA can also help with bookkeeping. This is a great way to keep track and ensure you don’t miss any payments while you’re away and prevent you from coming home to outstanding payments to chase or late payment charges. And finally,
Prepare for your return
Your virtual assistant can help make your return from holiday as smooth as possible. One of the reasons it can be challenging to disconnect is the fear of coming home to 1000s of emails and a much bigger workload to catch up on. A VA can help to reduce this by taking care of some of that workload, such as admin and organising your schedule to help you hit the ground running when you return.