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We all need time off occasionally. Be it for a trip abroad, a wedding, to care for a loved one or for maternity/paternity/adoption leave!
But taking time off as a small business owner is challenging.
There are so many things to consider!
How will we continue to nurture our audience/customers so they won’t forget about us?
How will we make money to pay our bills?
Who will manage customer service in our absence and how can we make enough money to cover their fees?
But the good news is that you CAN take time off and watch your business THRIVE without you!
I know because my own business thrived during my 4 month maternity leave. I made $33K during those 4 months and grew my audience by 14%! All whilst being (almost) completely absent from my business.
Here are a few of the things you need to consider before planning your own sabbatical as an online business owner…
Decisions for online business owners planning to take time off
Service provision decisions for taking sabbaticals from your business
Do you offer services currently? If so what will you do during your time off? Will you refer your audience to other service providers? Will you direct them to your self-directed courses and templates? Will you suggest they wait until you return? How will you relay this information?
Customer Service decisions for taking time off
Who will manage your customer service for you? If you only get the occasional email, you might be happy managing this yourself. However, most people will need to consider hiring a virtual assistant.
If you need a virtual assistant then consider how you will afford this. Can you save up to cover their costs in advance? Are there ways you can continue to earn money without being ‘in’ your business – e.g. via passive income strategies such as implementing evergreen sales funnels and affiliate marketing?
Tech Issues during your time off work
Who will handle tech problems as they arise when you take time off? Are you happy to step in for this or would you rather outsource this to a VA?
If you’d rather outsource tech issues then you’ll need to make sure your assistant is aware of what you are happy with them doing – and what you’re not happy for. Ideally they would have a list of support email addresses to be able to liase with your tech providers should issues arise.
Selling online courses and digital products during your time away from your business
Are you happy for people to continue buying your products whilst you are away from your business? How will they find your offers? E.g. do you have a shop page? Email funnels? Do you display them on blog posts? Or link to them from Pinterest?
If you have group programs, can you remove any live elements & make them available for self-directed learning? (Perhaps at a lower price point.)
Liasing with your team during your business sabbatical
How much contact with your team are you happy to have? Are you happy to answer questions daily? Would you rather touch base once a week?
How are you happy to liase with them? I personally like using Voxer as I only use it for business so messages are less likely to be missed there than on Facebook Messenger or Whatsapp!
What resources (instructions, templates, SOPs, video walkthroughs, lists of links etc) can you give your team/assistant to help them work more autonomously and to reduce the amount of queries you might get?
Helping your business to thrive in your absence
You might think planning to take leave from your business just means making an announcement, employing someone to handle customer service and setting your out of office email.
And yes, that’s one option.
But how do you stop your loyal customers and students from taking their loyalty elsewhere?
How do you make money to cover your bills?
How do you ensure your business doesn’t suffer from taking time away from it?
Keeping your audience warm
You’ve spent time building your audience, getting them to know, like and trust you. The last thing you want to do is for those customers and students to forget about you.
Therefore you need to plan for ways you can continue to nurture your audience and touch base with them.
You don’t need to be in all the places at all times. You could just choose one way of keeping in touch with your audience and plan ahead for this.
But nurturing your audience is probably the MOST important thing you need to plan for during your time off. After all, you want a business to come back to!
Making money during your time off from your business
There are a couple of ways to make money during your time off.
Firstly you could plan ahead by pre-scheduling money-making content – either on social media or via email.
For example, you could plan ahead for big flash sales or recurring sales or you could schedule emails to go out to promote the offers you are an affiliate for. You could even set up some bespoke collaborations with your affiliates so they are promoting your offers when you can’t.
Alternatively, you could implement passive income strategies that will earn you income on a long term basis.
From blog posts written to make affiliate income to sales funnels that sell your offers to on page discounts that make spontaneous purchasing more likely, there are lots of options to help you automate your income.
The advantage of using passive income strategies is that these will also continue to rerward you after your period of planned leave!
Growing your audience during your leave
Again you could pre-schedule growth events such as collaborations or you could set your business up in such a way that it always continues to grow even when you are not actively trying to grow it! From using paid ads to optimising your website for search engines, there are lots of ways to grow organically without needing to be at your desk.
A 3rd option is to give your virtual assistant the tools, trainings and templates they need to continue setting up growth events in your absence – like helping you to pitch, set up and promote bundles and giveaways.
Your next steps to plan your time off from your business
We’ve only really scratched the surface with this blog post but the good news is that I am working on creating a really thorough resource to help you plan for your time off.
Packed with trainings, strategies, workbooks, decision tools and all the Airtable templates you could need to make your time off a reality!
In this course/toolkit we will cover
How to streamline your business to make time off a possibility
How to work alongside a virtual assistant when you want to be as absent as possible
How to nurture your audience without being present on social media or writing newsletters each week
How to make money during your time off via both pre-scheduled money making activities and by implementing set and forget passive income strategies.
How to grow your business with set and forget strategies that don’t require hustling for new subscribers on your time off
How to create a back up plan for unexpected leave that can be implemented quickly by your virtual assistant without needing any further input from you
There will be templates to help you set up every aspect of your leave action plan in a fraction of the time it might take you otherwise (or the time it took me creating this from scratch!)
Sign up below if you’d like a heads up when this course/toolkit is available!
