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:
Schedule Posts
While you’re away, you can schedule your social media posts, so you’re still engaging with your customers. This is an effective and easy way to show your business is still running even if you’re away. It’s a good idea to let your customers know that you’re away; this way, they can be more understanding when it comes to longer response times etc.
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.
Set Boundaries
As a business owner, you may not feel like you are able to give up working entirely. While it’s essential to take time off, it’s also necessary to be comfortable, even if that means checking on your business while you’re away to keep your mind at ease. This may be allowing yourself 20 minutes each day to check on your business and ensure it’s running smoothly. However, if you are doing this, you must be setting boundaries, and your business isn’t taking over your holiday.
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:
Run your platforms
Your VA can help run your social media and website while you’re away. If there are any issues, your VA can be there to solve them rather than sending you into a panic while you’re not here to deal with them properly. As well as keeping up your platform maintenance, a VA can also help with content creation for your social media to keep up engagement on your pages and upload blog posts to your website.
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.
Complete Routine Tasks
If your business requires regular tasks that need to be completed on a daily/ weekly basis, a VA can help you with this. For example, if you’re a product-based business, your VA can ensure your supplies are still being ordered and delivered, complete any necessary stock takes, help with orders and send out your products.
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.
If you need a hand with your General admin, Email management, or Online Media Management then BizzyBee can help.
Feel free to get in touch with Erin for advice and more information. And why not check out the Bizzybee Bolly Instagram account for some social media inspiration?