It’s that time of year again.  Excitement among the little people is reaching fever pitch with sports days, planning for end of year assemblies and school trips.  The summer holidays are coming.  Six whole weeks of fun and freedom!

At the same time stress levels amongst women who run a business around their family are reaching fever pitch as well. Running a business around a family is always a juggle but the summer holidays add in an extra layer of complexity… and noise…. and mess!

I’m now in my third year of running a business around my children during the summer holidays and I am delighted to share with you my ‘success strategies’ to help you enjoy summer and still keep your business moving in the right direction.

Plan for Success

The more that you can plan out the summer holidays the better.  Sit down with your diary, a planner or an Excel spreadsheet and mark off all the time that the kids will be at home.

Make a list of all of the things that you HAVE to do to keep your business running during this time.  These are your key priority tasks to complete over the summer holidays.

Also make a list of the things that you would LIKE to do for your business.  You might be surprised by how much time that you do have available to work on your business over the summer holidays.

Every year your children get older and more self-sufficient so it’s worth having a back up list of tasks to work on if you get the chance.

Take a look at your plan and identify how much childcare you are going to need over the holidays and think about how you can get your ‘team’ involved to help you.

Get Your Team in Place

As women we have a tendency to think we have to do things ‘all by ourselves’.  We don’t.  Get over yourself and ask the people around you for the help that you need.

When it comes to childcare do you have family, friends, neighbours who could help you out? Perhaps you could come to a mutually beneficial arrangement with other local mums so that you could take turns at having each other’s children.

Do you need to invest more in childcare than you normally do during the school year?  Perhaps you need to call on a babysitter or a childminder for some extra hours or identify a holiday club that the children can attend to give you proper blocks of time to focus on your business.

You also need to think about properly utilising or establishing your ‘work team’.  Could a Virtual Assistant ease some of your burden?  Is it worth finding investing in a Call Answering Service.  Do you have team members or associates that you could delegate more work to?

Set Your Ground Rules

Before the summer holidays even begin you need to set ground rules with three different groups of people:

1) With your clients/customers

It is so important that you are clear up front with your clients/customers about what you will be able to deliver during the summer holidays.

Be realistic and honest with them, if you know that you are going to have to cut back significantly on your hours then they need to know.

If you are a product based business you could tell your customers that your order books have closed and will reopen on a particular date.

If you are a service based business you should have more control over when you are going to schedule in work over the summer months.

2) With the kids

Setting ground rules with your kids will get easier as they get older but it is important to set some clear work/home boundaries.

Explain to them that you will need to work at X time and that if they let you get on and finish your work that you will be free to go out and enjoy time with later in the day.

If you are using a babysitter while you get on with some work then they need to know that it is not acceptable to come and disturb you if they want something.  

3) With yourself

Now it is probably harder to set ground rules with yourself than with anybody else!

You want to enjoy this special time with your children so you need to be strict with yourself.    Don’t say that you will spend the day with the kids and then spend the entire time on the phone or checking email and social media.  It’s no fun for them – they want to spend the day with mum – and it’s not fun for you – because you will feel that you are not giving anybody your full attention.

There will undoubtedly be things that you MUST do to keep your business going over the summer holidays but be disciplined and say NO to the things that can wait.  September will come round quickly enough and there will be time to play catch up.

Let Technology Help You

Technology is a wonderful thing.   It allows you to give the impression that your business is running on all cylinders when actually there isn’t much happening in the background.

Think about how you can use technology to your advantage.

Do you need to set up a call forwarding service your mobile so that you can still handle customer enquiries when you are out and about?

Do you need to schedule your social media posts over the holidays so that you can minimise the time that you spend on your computer?

Do you need to set up an autoresponder or an out of office message to let your customers/clients know that you will have more limited availability over the summer months?

Think about how you can use technology to your advantage in your business this summer.

Use the Time to Think

While you might not be able to get on with as much ‘work’ over the summer holidays as you may like, taking a break and switching off for a while might be exactly what your business needs.

It will give your brain an opportunity to process everything that has happened over the past year and you will probably find that inspiration of the solution to a difficult problem will just magically materialize now that you have some time and space to think about it.

Remember Your Why

You decided to build a business around your family for a reason.  To be there for your kids.

When you are juggling commitments to clients or order deadlines from customers it can be easy to forget that.

Your little people won’t be little for long, enjoy the time that you have with them!

 

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Nicola Semple is a small business mentor and founder of Build Your Biz Online.  She works with women business owners to help them get out of their own way and create a business that fully aligns with the life that they truly want, not the life they think they should have.