How to take a break from your business without falling behind

You are stressed, overworked, frustrated, and feeling run down? Your body and mind are telling you that it’s time to take a break to avoid burnout but you feel like you just can’t take a break?

As a small business owner, we often feel that our business needs our 24/7 attention which may be true, yet there are a few things you can work on so that you can take small breaks from time to time.

Here are just a few tips:

1. Delegate and prepare staff for any foreseeable issues.
Find support / help in the form of a part-time or even full-time helper to take care of things you really don’t need to do all day: Answering the phone, checking emails, answering social media requests. Your helper can report back to you once a day or once a week if you decide to go on a mini vacation.

2. Communicate with your customers.
Set clear boundaries. Start with office hours and communicate those well on google, your website, your social media. I still struggle with this because I don’t ever want to lose out on business but you most likely won’t lose a job or opportunity just because you didn’t answer the person who messaged you at midnight.

3. Automate processes.
Whether it’s an automatic email or social media reply, invoice or appointment reminders that get sent out automatically. Try to make things easier for your clients and yourself so you don’t have to be on your laptop or phone all day long.

4. When planning a vacation try to plan it around slow times for your business.
You don’t want to lay on the beach of a tropical island while you know your business is struggling due to you going away during the busiest time of the year.

5. When you take a break: Take a real break.
This can be the toughest one as we tend to believe that the ship will sink without us. You have to actually unplug at least for a short time to catch a breath and regain energy. This can be hard for entrepreneurs including me.

A report published by Xero accounting found that 85 percent of small businesses owners admit to working while on vacation.

Let’s try and work on getting better at taking breaks, going on trips and enjoying life as we should. We work hard so we should go out and explore the world just as much!