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I have been there and done it. There was a time when I was on my own. I had to attend to customers, and I had to work on my admin, I had to make sure everything was running smoothly. It was hard to even get weekends off. Finding a day during the month when I could simply vanish seemed impossible. Let me tell you one thing, it is possible. The feeling of difficulty on the matter stems from your brain and the little evil man that is constantly nagging at you telling you that you can’t do it. Some call this conscience; others call it ego others call it guilt. No matter the name, it tries to control your actions by setting limitations in your mind.

Let me act as a counterbalance to this and logically explain to your left brain why this makes total sense. If you own a business, immersing yourself totally in operation is very dangerous and irresponsible in the grand scheme of things. You are no longer an employee, you are a business owner, and thus as a business owner, you are responsible for your business strategy. Ignoring strategy is business suicide. The strategy is what ignites your business what takes you to the next level of your journey. Without a strategy, you can’t regroup your thoughts and ideas to improve. What I am recommending here is that you switch off that mobile and go in a room with some writing paper, a pen, a laptop. You take stock of where you are, where you want to be during different periods and then actually jot down tactics of how to reach those milestones. This time is also vital to analyse what you are doing in detail to come up with ideas of how to improve, how to fix current issues, how to fine-tune the operation, etc.…

You need quiet time. You need isolation time; you need to be in a place where you have no intermission with email, phone, and social media that rob you of your time and put you in a position where you can’t think straight. Does this make sense to you? What I am asking out of you is simple, reclaim a bit of time to work on the business, not in it. You are on your own, I get it, and if you are on your own, you are continually receiving calls. I have been there. Lost calls mean lost business.

To show you that I do understand, and I am not sitting on my high and mighty horse spitting advice without understanding, I will also give you some valuable advice that worked for me. So, let me give you some tips on how you can circumvent this.

1. Get a virtual PA – A virtual PA is a lifesaver when trained well to take your calls and to address the minor stuff that you waste time on daily. She can have another number to call you on while your mobile is off. This way, she/he, can get in touch with you in case of emergencies. This process is beneficial because it rids you of what I like to call the “what if feeling”. What if my customer calls with a problem? What if that critical lead decided to call on that day? What if I receive that important email? And it goes on and on. This solution takes care of that, plus it is not expensive, and you can use her to take care of monthly admin too if you want. (It is important to note that you need to invest time to train your PA or otherwise she will still call you every 5 minutes and this will defeat the purpose. I will eventually have an article on this and how to best train, someone, to help you out)
2. Find a part-time employee – In some instances, you need someone else with a certain level of expertise which goes beyond taking calls. In this case, it would be good to start testing a couple of people that can work part-time and that have the background you need to fill in for you when you are unavailable. No man is a god, and you do get sick the same way others do. Therefore you need a replacement either way. The situation as things stand is you need a substitute for the rainy days and this replacement if flexible enough can take over for you on the more technical issues. In conjunction with a PA, this provides you with a team that can work on demand and gives you that buffer you need to take that day for strategy. Do not fall in the temptation of thinking that sourcing these people will waste your time. These individuals increase business resilience for you as well as allow you to scale up and make more revenue and profit from it. It would help if you found the time or else you will stay where you are and never grow.
3. Take this day on the weekend – You can avoid all the above if you don’t work weekends by simply taking this day during the weekends. The above suggestions still work wonders in this case, but you can do without them if you feel you can’t afford the above options, or it is too hard for you to find these resources in your location. (Let’s be clear I am mentioning option 3 for the scope to allow you to take time off, but you need options 1 and 2 if you plan to add resilience and grow your business.)

As you can see, it is not that difficult, and if you still have doubts, then I think you should follow my article named Actions VS Knowledge. You will understand that most of the times, spending too much time working in your to-do list and not acting on what needs to be done to grow your business will either ruin your business or you will never grow it because you are too focused on the day-to-day. You are not looking at the bigger picture here. I hope this has helped you understand the importance of planning a day away from it all and feel free to give a look at our other resources on www.smallbusiness.coach.

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