As a creative business owner, it can feel nearly impossible to ever step away from your work. I mean… who will respond to the emails? Who will make all of the things? Who will continue to market your business for you?!

You get the gist. 

But the truth is that as a small business owner, it’s even more important for you to take some time off and give your brain a break. So, whether you have an upcoming business event, conference, or a fun vacation, I’ve got 3 tips to help you prepare for those vacation & out of office dates!

3 tips to help prepare your small business for vacation

1. Take the time you think you’ll need to recover from being out of office, and double it.

How many times have you gone on vacation or headed out of town, only to return and feel 100 times more tired than you expected to? Traveling is draining, especially if you’re flying or driving a long distance!

Give yourself more time than you think you’ll need to get back into the office, unpack (emotionally and physically), rest up, and answer those emails. Plus, that extra time buffer is a great fallback plan in case of delayed flights or other travel mishaps.

2. Set your vacation responder for longer than you’ll be out of office.

So, I know I just told you to double the time you think you’ll need to be out of office. But now, I want you to set your vacation responder for even longer than that! 

While, yes, you’ll be “back in office” on a certain day, that doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll be truly back in office and available. You’ll likely have a mountain of emails to respond to, and some admin work to get done. It’ll feel so much better to get those tasks knocked out right away. That way, you can have a fresh start to your work week!

I recommend setting your vacation responder for an additional 1-2 days after you’re actually “back” in office. Consider those your admin days!

3. Schedule a day of self care.

If you’re headed to a business conference or event, I highly recommend setting aside some time for self care. Buy yourself a massage and mani/pedi, or lay by the pool!

Even better, schedule your self care for the first day you arrive. Chances are that you’ll be a bit wound up and stressed from traveling in, and from all of the work it took to set your business on autopilot. What better way to set the tone for your out of office dates than to ease into things with a day of self care and pampering?

Wrapping it up

Well, there you have it! These are the 3 tips that I’ve learned to prep my own business for going OOO. I can say personally that I did not do this before my first long business trip. I highly regret it! If you enjoyed this post, don’t forget to save it to Pinterest for future reference! And if you scroll on down, I have a bonus tip for you below. 👇

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Your bonus tip!

I went out of office for a business event for one full week, and I still came back to new inquiries in my inbox! The truth is that your website should be set up to generate new leads and business when you aren’t even working. 
If your website isn’t doing that for you (yet), it’s probably time to update your site’s SEO and copy.

You can read more about the SEO must-haves on your website in this blog post.

If you want to learn even more about optimizing your website for search engines, you can check out my course, SEO for Creatives. I’ll teach you how to set up your website for SEO success so that it can become your lead-generating machine. Get leads on autopilot from Google!