So, how do you juggle the Summer Holidays and your business?
For every parent who runs their own business, juggling THE SCHOOL SUMMER HOLIDAYS and your business can have a big impact! And depending on the school that your child attends, you could be facing the challenge of keeping the children occupied anywhere from six to ten weeks.
The Summer Holidays can play havoc with your business
As amazing as it is to spend some family time with your children at the local beach or drape yourself on a sun lounger in a villa somewhere hot whilst the kids are splashing about in a pool, the summer holidays can play havoc with your business.
The effects of the summer holidays can include:
- A reduced income due to scaling back or taking time away from the business.
- Can you really relax as business tasks are niggling at the back of your mind? Possibly making you more irritable with the family…
- Feeling Stressed? Pressures increase (or pressure you place on yourself) as you attempt to juggle work activities, household chores and keeping the kids entertained – missed a business task?
- Affected by lost time due to planning constraints because of the holidays
- Missed opportunities, whether these are short notice or not, sometimes what you have planned for the family may put you in a position where you can’t attend a business networking meeting, where your potentially ideal client or a connection could be.
So how can you minimise the effects of the Summer Holidays and your business?
- Planning – make a list of the tasks that you wish to tackle over the holidays.
- Automation – where possible schedule social media activities at the start of the week, so that you can still appear to be active and continued marketing.
- Prioritisation – Focus on new business activities and then schedule other non urgent tasks for evenings or weekends.
- One big task per day – Following on from your planning sessions, if you can spend 1-2 hours per day on a big task, it will seem less daunting.
- Kids Time – If you and your children are in a safe environment and they are happily occupied building sandcastles, use the time for research, diarise business activities or respond to non-urgent emails.
- Back to school – More planning but this time it is for when the children return to school and you can hit the ground running! But don’t forget – you can plan further ahead too!
Are you lucky enough to have a Summer Holiday and your business continues to operate?
A recent survey stated that 750,000 small business owners were missing out on Summer Holidays with their children, so if you are lucky enough to be in a position to take a holiday with your family, please try to make the most of it and live in the moment with them.
If you need any assistance in this area, please feel free to contact us and we’ll be pleased to help you and your business.
