Balance your vacation & business

Balance your vacation & business

When you work long and hard at your home business for some time, you may feel like you've earned yourself a little break. There is a home business owners out there who haven't taken a real vacation day since they started their businesses-including some who have started their business as long as five years!

After all, how can you only ever desert your business and your customers and go bronze yourself on the beach? How can you avoid being on call 24/7 for your vacation? Well, everyone deserves some time to herself at least once a year, if they want to maintain productivity and avoid stress. Here's what to do.

Tell people when you're going away.

You can't just disappear when you are running a home business-you need to let people know since a long time in advance that you won't be available, and make sure that they have everything they need to manage without you while you're away. It is best to schedule your vacation doesn't interfere too much with the business.

Whatever your holiday may wish in the summer, it is important to remember that every business in the quiet months, should you schedule your vacation from which they seem to be.

Change the Answerphone message.

A quick and simple way to let people know that you've gone away to change the answerphone message. This allows you to hear people have still said upon return, stop them from wondering why you seem never to answer your phone.

A good format for the message as follows: ' Hi, this is [your name] at [company name]. I'm sorry I'm not in the Office now, but will be back on [give date]. If you leave a message, be sure to get back to you '.

Set up automated e-mail.

Similar to answerphone message, but less common, autoresponder email. Again, I don't want people to wonder why e-mail messages go unanswered, so your best bet is to set up your e-mail program to automatically reply to any email you get with a message saying that you have gone away.

For example: ' Hello, thank you for your email. This is the answering machine, I am away on vacation until [date]. I received your e-mail, however, and will respond to it when I get back. I apologize for any inconvenience you, I prepared an offer of 10% off your next order to make it up to you. ' Special offer for people who get an autoresponder nice touch-it makes them feel lucky that was emailed to you while you're away, instead of frustration.

Don't stay away too long.

Of course, when you go on vacation, you rely on the people ready to wait for you. This really means not taking the kids to disniurld for two weeks or a month to stay with a friend on the outside-it's just too long to be away from your business.

You should consider a weekend away as the ideal (which avoids the whole problem mostly), and a week tops can allow yourself. Don't let people make you feel bad about taking a one-week vacation only: after all, you can always have more than one each year.

Instead: get someone to look after.

If you really want to get away for a longer period, it is necessary that customers do not have any interruption in service, then you can consider getting someone to take care of your own business. This can be an existing Member of staff that you can make your ' vicar ', to be in charge while you're away, or it could be someone you connected, and has some experience in business management. You can even deliver business to a competitor that was friendly with and sharing the profits with them, if you think they're trustworthy and she can handle.