Episode 006: Schedule a Vacation

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Geoff Khan, the sworn enemy of James T. Kirk, once shared an ancient Klingon proverb when he said Revenge is a Dish Best Served Cold. While Khan was pretty much spot on, he’s apparently never eaten a delicious homemade cookie during his tortured, eugenics-enhanced, existence. Natalie, never one to welch on a bet paid up with a delicious plate of cookies. But we know that’s not why you’re here.

We recapped our episode about updating your social media profiles. Natalie and Alex share their social media profile updates and observations. There was a lot of out of date information that we updated. As web-based businesses, it can be a little embarrassing when your social media profiles are inaccurate. However, it’s not a big deal because that’s why we are doing this. To find the problems; the things we missed and fix em!

One of the things that came up was that we had to think about our social media profiles with a little more intent. What social media profiles matter to our business? Which profiles will we regularly update? Natalie added one on Instagram, and Alex added an Instagram profile for his company, too.

Also, Natalie came up with an odd issue while trying to set up a Linkedin Profile page for her business. LinkedIn requires a physical address now, and a standard PO Box will not suffice either. Alex did some research and found that the United States Post Office offers a service called Competitive PO Box Street Addressing. That program will help Nat get around the issue in the future. We’ll check back with her in a few weeks to see if she went through the setup. Alex uses the address at his Co-Working space since they handle mail.

This week’s challenge: Schedule a vacation

Vacations. They’re nice, really nice! So many small business owners fail to take a proper vacation. In 2014, the lender OnDeck, conducted a survey of small business owners and found many of them hadn’t planned a vacation for the year. For those business owners who did take a vacaction, a whopping 67% of them said they still checked in on work while on vacation. Now is that a real vacation? Natalie says “#$%^ no, it isn’t!”

We can all agree that all work and no play makes for a dull business owner. Natalie and I set out to discuss this very thing and then made a plan of action. People need time away from work and when they do they need to be present and fully embrace their time away from the office.

For Alex, the last time he took a vacation without his laptop was before he owned a laptop. Lame! Natalie shares some of her top tips for handling time away from your business. She discusses how to plan for your vacation including how to make sure you have the right people and resources in place. She also talks about being out of town and communicating those dates with your clients and customers.

Resources for completing this challenge:

• 5 Ways to Plan a Vacation as a Small Business Owner by Joshua Johnston
• Twelve Tips for Managing your Business during a Vacation by John Rossheim
• How small business owners can have a worry-free vacation by Kristin Eriksen
• How to Take a Real Vacation While Running Your Business by Jason Richelson
• The Importance of Taking a Vacation as a Small Business Owner from Capital Alliance

Other helpful links:

The amazing salty brown butter triple chocolate chip cookie recipe that Natalie made for Alex because she didn’t complete last week’s challenge because she was IN THE HOSPITAL.

Show Notes:

• 00:25sec — Basically shaming Nat because she owes me delicious cookies.
• 02:30 — We discuss last week’s challenge.
• 17:50 — We talk about this week’s challenge, putting yourself on a damn, interruption-free vacation. No laptop, no kidding!