How to Take a Vacation Without Your Business Falling Apart

The question of the day is, can you as a business owner and leader in your company pass the vacation test? Now maybe you're asking yourself what is the vacation test? Or maybe you immediately have a gut reaction knowing no, I cannot pass any test with the word vacation in it because I don't take them. Well, either way, I want to invite you to see stick around because I'm going to walk you through the vacation test telling you why you want to move and create a business that allows you to pass the vacation test. Then I'm going to set you up so you know what you need to do to pass this test in the future. First up, why do vacations matter for your business? Frankly, I think they matter for both you as an owner and an entrepreneur and they matter for your team. Listen to this. An Ernst and Young study showed that for every additional 10 hours of vacation time that employees took, their year end performance improved 8%. And another study showed that using all of your vacation time increases your chances of getting a promotion or a raise. Now listen, this is clearly good news for your team members and for your employees. They get time off and they come back nourished and they see improvements in performance and improvements in their outcomes. But we are humans. And even though you as an owner of a company do not have a specific performance review that someone else is assessing you on, you have results to deliver and you have performance and things that you want to show up for and do well. That's why you want to get your breaks in. So you have that time to rest and renew and recharge and ultimately take a moment to slow down so that you see things different. And when you return to your business, you actually accelerate and speed up you getting to your destination and you accelerate getting the results that you want. So let's dive right into our vacation test right now. It is a very simple test. Three questions. Question number one. Can you take at least seven days away from your business? Now I say at least because maybe you want to get away for more weeks out of the year, but seven days is a really beautiful place to start. Just one week, you stepping away from your business. Question number two, no access to you on those seven days while you're away. That means no random text messages with questions. No situation that someone on the team can't handle if you are not there because you have systems in place, because things are documented or because ownership has been transferred to individuals and the team knows what to do. Now if you have a small team, this could also mean putting automations in place and setting up your out of offices in advance. Question number three when you return from your vacation you do not feel like you need another vacation. Have you been there? I have so been there. Need a vacation from the vacation. We know the jokes, but there is truth in those jokes. And I don't want this to be your reality and I do not want it to be the reality of the people on your team. Because we need that time to rest and renew so that we can get the outcomes we want as individuals within our company and that we want overall as a company and the vision that you have for this company. Of course there might be messages to catch up on. There might be things to reply to and follow up on when you get back from your vacation, but it is not the overwhelming endless stream of messages. Slack Notifications Follow ups amassive to do list that was saved up for you. So hey, thanks. Time to catch up, right? So often we do that at the beginning of the vacation. Crank it out, crank it out, crank it out so we could actually go and have some peace and quiet. And then you come back and you got crank it out, crank it out, crank it out again. I don't want that for you. So be sure to tell us, did you pass the vacation test with flying colors? 3 out of 3? Did you get 2 out of 3, 1 out of 3 or 0 out of 3? But you are ready and committed to take steps to pass the vacation test in the future. Now, how do you set yourself up to pass the vacation test in the future? And again, this applies to both you and your team members because we want your team members to have that ease as well. And we don't want you to be overwhelmed if a team member steps away. We want that balance. So what do you need to do? Number one, I highly recommend that if you don't already have a vacation in your future or on the calendar, put that on the calendar now because you're going to set yourself up to have a deadline. Deadlines, motivate deadlines help us get to where we want to be going because we have a specific milestone in front of us that we're going to align our actions to. Ideally, this vacation is not one year out. Make this vacation three to six months out because this is going to be your momentum. This is going to be your incentive and it's also going to be your reward to get some things in place for your business so that you can pass the vacation test when you designate in the near future. Now to do this, we highly recommend that you Document key processes so that when you step away, someone else can step into those processes with ease and take care of things that you typically do while you're away. And by the way, same thing for your team members, they need to document key processes as well so that someone else on the team can step in and take care of things while they are out. Notice I said key processes, not all processes. Now, at some point you're going to want to have the systemization in your business where all things are covered. However, you don't have to do that to pass dedication test. This is a beautiful starting point to start to get things organized and documented so that you or your team can step away. Those are the key processes. What are the key processes? The key functions, the key activity that the team members and you take that need to be covered day to day, moment to moment, so that when someone steps away, those things can be taken care of. In addition, you can use tools like ScribeHow or Loom to document those processes faster and easier than ever before. A tool like ScribeHow will follow what you are doing on your screen and it will create the SOP for you. So, so the next time you go to do that key thing, try ScribeHow and you can use our link at abq.com forward/scribehow to sign up for that and give it a try. It is super cool how easily this makes documenting systems. There are certainly some things that you're going to want to add. You're going to want to add some context, you're going to want to give people a bit more information on inputs and outputs to the process. But using something like Scribe how to document your systems is going to accelerate this process for you and get you 90% of the way there. And you'll just have to go back in and tweak and make a couple of updates. So what does this mean? This means that you're not creating another to do on your list. You're just going to do the thing that you were already going to do anyway. And you're just going to have a tool like LOOM or Scribe how running while you do that, Documenting the process for you as you go. Beautiful thing. Next up, you want to have clear communication with your team. As soon as you mark those days, that vacation time on your calendar, go ahead and let your team know so that everybody knows what you are working towards and they can rally to support it. In addition, that's going to give them a heads up that you're going to need some coverage while you're out. You would want the same thing from a team member. Right. So we're going to give the team members the same courtesy that you want them to give you and let this become a norm in your company. Next up, as vacation approaches, give everyone a reminder at least two weeks in advance of that date coming up. You gave advance notice. You're going to let people know two weeks in advance so everybody's going to prepare, have a chance to look at those key processes and systems that you have documented and have clarity on who is going to cover what while you or or your team members are on the vacation. Next up, hand off those tasks and those activities one week before. I gotta tell you, it is one of the most frustrating things when someone is rushing out the door on their vacation. And last minute, oh yeah, by the way, you gotta do this massive project and it's due tomorrow. You got it. Okay, thanks. Bye. Bye. And they just disappear without you having clarity of what you need to do to pick up that ball that was just thrown at you in a floor. There's panic that sets in, there's wonder. I'm not prepared. I had other work to do. I had other work planned tomorrow. Now I've got to move things around when we could have planned ahead for this. So hand off those projects, those tasks and make sure someone has actually picked up the ball. There's my confirmation. I'm throwing you this ball and I'm going to be out next week. You're ready? Yes, I am catching that ball. Oh, by the way, here are a couple of questions I have now that I have the ball in my hand and I'm good to go. So just have clarity in handoff of those tasks. Do not do it last minute and try to do it about a week before so that someone has the opportunity to ask any final questions before you are rushing out the door. Now speaking of, I actually don't recommend you rush out the door and book means to the very last minute. Things are naturally going to come up that you're going to need to attend to. So I do not recommend that you have a bunch of stuff on your calendar all the way to 5pm or 8pm or 9 9pm on the day before you are headed out for vacation. Give yourself space. Block your calendar a day or two or three before you are out so that unexpected things don't pop up and that you have space to prepare and step into vacation with more ease and calm than you ever have before. Now last up, don't forget, turn on out of offices. Let your clients know, let other team members know if you are going to be unaccessible on this vacation like we know you are going to be. At least that's the goal. It doesn't always happen, but we can shoot for this and if things come up, it's okay. We have coverage, we have a plan and there are people in place. So as you let your team members know, as you let your clients know in advance that you will be out, also let people know who to contact for what. This can certainly go in your out of office, but also send a separate email to people in advance with that who to call for what so that they know and have awareness and proactively reach out to those people instead of sending things to your inbox for attention. And then you come back to an inbox that is full and you're uncertain if things have been taken care of or not. Now, the final piece to the vacation test is to ask your team members to make notes while you are away. They've got those key processes and systems in place that are pretty good. You created them, you handed them off. Your team members had a time to look at them and ask questions. If it's an important process, they may even have walked through it on their own and done the thing before. They're doing the thing for the first time before you go on vacation and are inaccessible. But in addition, ask team members to write down anything that wasn't clear in the process so that when you come back you can take a look at that and add clarity. Or maybe they catch things that just need to be corrected in the process and they make those edits for you real time because they saw something or the system changed when they logged in, or the workflow changed. Same thing for you and your team members or for team members of team members. If a team member is out, another team member would document those processes and update those processes and just do a cross check on that. It's a great checkpoint to audit and clean processes and systems up as needed for your company. Now, if you're unsure what key processes I just want you to track for two to three weeks, what are you doing day to day, week to week, so that you can identify those things that are mission critical and absolutely must still be done while you are away. And while you're away, you're not going to worry, you're not going to stress. And this is probably one of the biggest shifts of all. You pour time and energy into your business. You're ingrained, embedded in the culture and the being of what you do for your customers and your clients and the work you do with your team. However, we've got to start releasing some of that attachment if we are going to really be able to slow down to speed up and get the benefits of taking some time off. So how you know if it's working well? Ideally, as you document those processes, anyone on the team can come in and pick them up when you or another team member is not there. We want those processes to be so clear that it's not only one person who can execute on them, but another person on your team can execute on them, or even a third or a fourth that the processes are documented. It's clear, clear and someone can step into that with relative ease. Second, especially if you have a small team or you are currently solo, you're going to want to set up QC and automation QC so that things are triggered if a system breaks down, if a system fails, if a payment doesn't go through. You're getting those notifications so that someone manually doesn't have to keep an eye on it. But there's an automatic trigger or a notification to sort of be your fail safe and your test your automated QC process as you're implementing new processes, systems and automations in your business. And lastly, how do you know it's working? The vacation test. If you go away and your teams got it, you are in a really good place and you have truly passed the vacation test. Now I myself have a couple of vacations coming up and we're going to see if I passed the vacation test. In the next episode, I will be capturing our trip to Marrakech and we'll let you know if I'd end up passing this one or not.