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How Small Business Owners Can Take a Real Break This Christmas

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Hooray – it’s nearly Christmas! Did you just groan? Hmmm? If you did, don’t worry, you’re not alone.

Many business owners find themselves ridiculously busy at this time of year – clients demanding things be ready for the new year, trying to finish up those messy jobs still outstanding – like the world is going to end on December 24.

You might even have staff members taking leave. Do you remember when you were an employee? You put in a form and took leave and generally didn’t think about work again until the night before you were due to go back. It was all gloriously simple.

A study by online bookkeeping app Xero found that almost 60% of Australian small business owners haven’t taken a break for more than a year and nearly a quarter hasn’t had a holiday in more than 2 years.

“But I CAN’T take a break. I’m self-employed.”

I hear you. And I know how busy life is as a small business owner.

Time Off is Important

However, research has shown that time off is necessary for your body and brain to recharge. Otherwise, you could go down a path you probably don’t want to go down – burnout, depression, etc.

And neither of those conditions are going to make life better for you or bring you the joy that you first had when you started your business. So, let’s avoid them happening by making sure you take a break.

It doesn’t have to be a looooooong break. We’re not talking a couple of months – although if you really wanted to you could put things in place to manage that. But for now, let’s start small.

Could you do two weeks? It’s Christmas and unless you run a shop or an essential service, chances are, it will be pretty quiet between the day before Christmas Eve and New Year. That’s 10 days right there. See how easy this is? One of those days is like the last real working day of the year – everyone will be at parties. 4 of those are weekend days and 3 are public holidays. So really, it’s only 2 days that you’re MIA from the business.

You can take those two days. The world will not end. And let’s face it, you’re a small business owner, you’ll more than makeup for that time over a couple of months.

So How Do You Do That If Your Self Employed?

Well, it takes a bit of planning, but it can be done. You might consider the following;
• Calling all your clients a month or so in advance and tell them that you’re taking 3 weeks off at Christmas. Checking what they’re likely to need over that time and taking care of it earlier.
• Doing a deal with a friendly competitor. When you’re on leave, they look after your clients and vice versa when they’re on leave.

Got you thinking, haven’t I!!

“But my phone will ring.”

Yes, it might. But in order for you to have a real break, you actually have to log-off – and that means no emails or answering the phone.

Unless you’re an on-call surgeon, or something similar, no-one will die if you don’t answer your phone.

“But it could be that big job.”

Yes, it might be. Chances are it won’t be. But okay – I’ll go there. What if, someone else looked after your phone and your diary. Then IF it rang, they could book that client in at your first available time slot – after your break.

Now to do that you need to either hire a temp to look after your office whilst you’re on leave – your daughter, niece, etc won’t do – too close and they might bother you.

Or, you could set up a professional, virtual receptionist to look after your phone, so that no calls go unanswered, bookings can be taken and if anything really, really urgent is required someone can get in touch with you.

Oh, umm. When you put it that way, I guess I could take a break.

You’re welcome. And you’ll return back to work refreshed, revitalised and ready to go again.

If you’d like to know more about how a Virtual Receptionist might work for your business, so you can take the real break you need to start 2017 refreshed and ready to go, we’d love to talk to you. You can call Roland on 1300 318 680 or drop us a note.

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Article by Michelle

November 22, 2016