EP : 178 How I prep for a month long vacation from my business

I’m going on a vacation and I am so excited about it. 

But the thing is, at this very moment, I’m not technically going anywhere. I’m just not gonna be working in my business for 30 days. 

And today I wanna share with you all about how I plan for my 30 day vacation and why in the world do I do it? 

Now, at the time of me recording this, I do not have a trip plan. I don’t have plans to go anywhere. 

I have been toying with the idea of going to London. I’ve been going back and forth but as of the moment I wrote this article, I don’t have anywhere to go.

I’m not planning on going anywhere, but I wanna talk to you about what I do, why I do it, and more importantly, how I plan for a 30 day vacation. 

First, it’s just really important to know that a couple years ago I was listening to a podcast, Rachel Hollis. 

And she was talking about how she takes three weeks off. And she gives her team off during the time of December. 

And it makes sense to me when I hear it because it’s the holidays. People can spend time with their families and all that type of stuff. 

I had never done something like that before.

Maybe a couple days off or a week off as an entrepreneur, but it was like, “I’ve gotta keep on”

And I just felt like God was talking to me about learning to allow Him to be my provider and not me working in order to make money. 

Now, granted I was not used to that, but I was just like, “Let me just try this”

The worst thing that could happen is during this quote unquote vacation, I need to go back to work. 

And so three years ago I tried it and I was watching more sales come. I wasn’t doing anything and I was just like, “This is really interesting”. So I did it again last year, but I did it for the whole month of December.

I actually went to Mexico for two and a half weeks and I had a great time. 

I did not know any Spanish. I was screwed a little bit, to be honest with you. But I was glad that I did it. 

And so this year I said, we’re gonna do the same thing again. Except this time I don’t really have a trip planned because I just hadn’t planned it yet.

But I’m just definitely not gonna be doing anything. 

I want to share with you how I plan for that. 

So here’s how I look at things. 

First of all, our team hasn’t been with me for a very long time. The longest person on my team has been our website tech person, and then the second person is my assistant.

Now, this will be her very first time of me being gone for a long period of time. 

So, because I know that the last thing I wanna do is stress her out or the whole entire team out, and so I have to prepare for this. 

One of the things that I did was to ask myself “What are their regular duties? What do they do every single day, even when I’m working? And what is it that I, as the owner or content creator have to give them in order for them to be able to do their? 

I had to have all of my podcast episodes written out. 

I had to have all of my podcast episodes recorded, the video podcasts and the audio podcasts at four the month of December, and then for the month of January. 

In that way in December when they’re editing things for December and editing things for January, they can have something to do during that time.

But also, I’m not like scrambling when I come back and not making them scramble to come back for the things that we need to get done for January. 

In addition to that, I have set all the topics for my podcast episodes and so now, the graphic person knows all the graphic images that she has to create for all of these particular things.

But then, I had to foresee that we will open up the doors to my mastermind course called Monetize the Tok in February, and so all the different things that we need for that, they can be working on in December too.

They can work on all the graphics, all the updates from the website, and write emails in December. 

And then all the different things that go along with launching a product or service is what they could be doing in January. 

So what I had to do is to make sure that we were already putting systems and processes in place. Like having everything kind of put in ClickUp showing all the things that have to be done. 

I’m sure my graphic designer is like, “Oh my God” 

But I made sure that we had these systems and processes every time we launched a product. 

We have to have all of these things over here so then when I went to my assistant and said, “Okay, for the month of December, you guys are gonna focus really heavily on getting everything ready for the launch”

She wasn’t asking me, “Well, what do we need for the launch?” She already knows because I already had made sure that we had a process of here’s everything that needs to be in place for a launch. 

So for me, it was really more so about giving them the things that they need to do on a regular basis that they already do when I’m present. 

Making sure that our YouTube videos go out, our podcasts and other stuff go out, by giving them all of those types of things.

Also, more importantly, I need to foresee where the business is going? What are we doing in January, February, March, April in 2023. And instead of my team working on that stuff in January, they can work on everything in December. 

What did that look like on my end? It has been extremely busy. 

Very, very busy on my end because I have to be the one that records the podcast records, the YouTube videos, and develops the plan. You know what I mean?

It’s like giving my assistant opportunities to fail and to succeed. 

There was this one thing where we sent an email out on every Thursday of a review. 

All the things that have happened that we’ve talked about on social media and all the type of stuff that we feel like our audience could benefit from, and it’s called “The Review”

And so I had to let her send a review without my input. 

 

I was just like, “We’re gonna let her send it without my review” 

And I knew that there was potential that it would not look the way that I wanted to look, but I let it go out and it went out. 

It looked great. There were some errors or whatever, but I said, “I didn’t even give them feedback on it”

I just said, “Okay, great” 

And that empowered her like, “Okay, I didn’t know what I was doing there” 

And then, every Friday we send a text message for the TikTok Trend of the Week. 

And so I gave her the video of what’s the trend of the week without giving her what to put on the page.

And I said, “Now I want you to look at what I normally do every single week, and I want you to take this video and I want you to write what you think I would write for this particular page” 

So she wrote it and I only gave her one or two feedback and that empowered her to go, “Oh, I’m kind of doing this”

And so then she just did the new trend of the week for the other week. And it only required a tweak or two. 

So I gave her two tweaks and I’m just empowering her to make decisions and do things without my input.

We have our video editor who does long form content and short content, and I have allowed my assistant to go like, “You’re gonna approve this moving forward. I’m not approving them. If all she’s doing is putting captions and all that, you need to look at that. You need to approve it.

And again, that’s just empowerment. 

When all this stuff comes across her plate in December, she feels empowered to do so. The way that I prepare for vacation is knowing what all in the world has to be done before I’m able to go on vacation December 1st. 

So it’s like back in September, “I’m going, “Okay, what all needs to be done for September, October, November in order for me to really be on vacation in December?” 

And so I wrote out this really long list for myself. I mean, it’s very long. 

I have been just chugging along when there have been videos I have to record. 

Sometimes I’ll come in on a Saturday or Sunday just to record the videos and then I leave because I’m like, “Nobody’s calling, nobody’s texting, nothing’s happening in Slack”

I can record all this stuff uninterrupted. 

And then when the team comes in on Monday, all of this stuff that I’ve recorded over the weekend are ready.  

And so that way during weekdays, I’m able to be present with them answering the questions and not necessarily them quote unquote interrupting me while I’m creating a video content.

It’s really important that if you’re gonna take a vacation, that you have to be preparing your whole team well in advance. 

Like teaching them how to be independent by themselves. 

Letting them make decisions by themselves, empowering them and saying, “Hey, what do you think about this? How do you think we can enhance this? How can we make this better?”

And then that way they’re constantly gonna be giving you feedback on different things. 

And when I am not there and they have to make decisions, they don’t feel deathly afraid about making a decision because I have been empowering them the entire time. 

If you are gonna take a one week vacation, two weeks, three weeks or a month, you really have to think about all the things months in advance. 

Preparing your team for what’s gonna happen months in advance. 

Empowering them to make decisions with and without you months in advance. And then having the bulk of different things that they need to do while you’re gone. 

Having the things set up for automation that way, from a business standpoint, you’re still making money. 

Making sure that your ads person is still running ads, and so that you’re still making money and making sure that you batch recorded content and all that type of stuff. 

If I don’t go anywhere, obviously, I’ll have my ring light and I can shoot TikTok videos if I want to. 

But if I am not gonna be here, I’m gonna travel. 

I can batch record 20 or 30 videos and then just hit posts on them while I’m in London or wherever it is.

So, when I choose to go on vacation, that’s kind of how I do it. To think as far ahead as I can in advance, plan in advance, empower my team, giving them permission to succeed and fail all at the same time. 

And then just telling them, “Hey, listen, everything’s not gonna be perfect, and it’s okay if mistakes get made, but let’s try to make some mistakes right now while I’m here so we can avoid really big mistakes”

Does that make sense? 

And so if you’re gonna do this, I want you to think as far in advance as you can, prepare your team and set things up in automation, especially so that you could still make money while you are on vacation. 

If I go to London, then I’ll probably shoot some different things while I’m in London and share with you in another article some of my experiences there. 

And if you are ready to use TikTok for your business, but need some guidance on getting started? If so, be sure to grab the Create on TikTok Course to learn the secrets of TikTok and how I’ve leveraged the platform to gain almost half a million fans and amassed $500,000 in revenue. 

This course will show you EXACTLY how you can too!