Some truly disturbing news appeared on my Twitter feed this week. According to a survey by the insurer Simply Business, around 750,000 small business owners will not take a single day off on holiday this summer.
Now even allowing for seasonal business owners who need to work summer for all it’s worth, this is still very bad.
Holidays are good for people: good for your health, good for your family, and good for your business. We need time off to get refreshed and get our thoughts in order. To just chill out.
And for some business owners who go away, switching off is impossible and several phone calls a day are par for the course.
How can this be avoided? Three key steps are going to really help you free up your life so that you can step away and take some quality time off:
(1) Growth. Your business has to grow so that you have the funds available to get some really good staff – switched on people you can trust with your customers.
(2) People – make your firm an attractive place to work, so that you can recruit the best people. Picture your ideal workplace, and aim for that.
(3) Systems – once the great people are in place, create the necessary systems so that your business runs the way you want it to work, with your style of doing things, even when you’re not there.
We’re tackling these issues in more detail in a new, free business book that we’re publishing shortly. Watch this space.
