Why Annual Planning Helps Small Business Owners to Take More Holiday

If you’re a small business owner that wants to take more holidays you need to take annual planning seriously. So many solo, micro and small business owners dream of having more time off and going on more holidays, but it stays a dream. There are numerous reasons why taking holiday as a business owner can be tricky, but taking holiday is important both for your health and it can help your business too. So keep on reading to find out why annual planning helps small business owners to take more holiday.

 

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WHY ANNUAL PLANNING HELPS SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS TO TAKE MORE HOLIDAY

You can block your holidays in advance and then design everything else around that. 

 

There is a big difference between saying “I want to take 4 weeks off this year” and then saying I’m going to take off week commencing the 10th February, 1st and 8th of August and 24th October.

 

If you commit, whilst doing your annual planning, to blocking in your holiday first then it means with all of the rest of the business planning you do you will be able to work around the holiday or notice possible issues straight away.

 

For example, if you are thinking of launching a 8-week accelerator and you can see one of the delivery weeks clashes with your holiday then you can decide to change the dates of the accelerator or do the call even though you are on holiday. There isn’t a wrong or right answer – but by seeing these issues in advance you can make the decisions, and changes, from a proactive rather than reactive position.

 

If you don’t block your holidays in advance then it is easy midway through the year to try and find a time to go on holiday but there not be a clear week. Blocking your holidays in first, before you start agreeing collaborations, partnerships, projects etc will help ensure the time set aside for time off actually happens.

 

Blocking your holidays in advance also means that you can notify ongoing clients with plenty of notice. This will help ensure you are able to put in the right measures so the client feels supported but you can take time off.

 

 

Projecting your finances on an annual basis will help you to confidently know how much time off you can have and still achieve your annual finance goals 

A big mistake that service-based business owners make in relation to the finances of their business is setting their financial goals based on working (virtually) every week of a year.

 

For example, I’ve seen numerous business owners who will take their annual revenue goal and divide it by 12 and then check that their offers and pricing mean they can hit their monthly goal. And doing that calculation is great, but you can end up in a situation where you then have to achieve that monthly goal every month and if that goal is based on you working at (virtually) full capacity you can’t take time off without impacting the finances of the business.

 

When you do annual planning you can avoid this. Instead you can proactively decide how many days or weeks of holiday you want to take off. Then you can do all of your calculations based on your working year rather than the full year.

 

For example, if you’re a financial coach that wants to generate £120,000 in the upcoming year then if you just think monthly you’ll set yourself the target of £10,000 per month. However, if you take an annual approach that will change. You decide that you want to take 8 weeks of holiday so will only have 44 working weeks. This means your target would be £120,000 divided by 44, which is £2,737 per week and you’d really need to aim at making £12,000 per month (rather than the £10,000 per month when you based your calculations on working 12 equal months).

 

TAKE YOUR ANNUAL BUSINESS PLANNING TO THE NEXT LEVEL BY WORKING WITH ME  – BOOK A 2024 STRATEGY DAY I’ve been running annual planning strategy days with small business owners since 2019. Doing your annual business planning with someone external from your business and with tons of business and marketing experience and expertise makes a massive difference. I’ll support you to face the facts about your current position, dream big about the future and get really strategic about what you need to do in order to achieve those big business goals. So if you are planning on preparing for 2024 and you want to get your annual planning done in the most effective and efficient way, book a 2024 Strategy Day. For more information and to book click here.

 

Annual planning will allow you to get the necessary support in your business so your business can continue to run whilst you are on holiday

To take holidays in your business it may be that you need other people to cover your holidays. Now depending on the current physical support you have in your business it may be that you just have to ensure that someone else on your team isn’t off at the same time as you. It may be that you have a virtual assistant and you increase their hours when you are on holiday so they can cover some additional tasks. Or it may be that you need to get someone in just for over those periods.

Regardless of what the approach you need to take the more time you can give the better. Knowing at the beginning of the year when you’ll be taking your holiday and then being able to share with your team or your outsourced support will enable you to have the support in place so you can not only go on holiday, but also really switch off during that holiday.

 

You can build up demand so you know there will be work for as soon as you return

For many service-based business owners taking time off work means a loss of money whilst they are not working, but it can also impact the following weeks when they return. If your marketing and sales activity is very dependent on you then without those activities happening you can be in a situation where you return from holiday and have no (or little work). This is especially so if you take off extended periods of time. For example, I see lots of business owners who are parents and take off an extended period over the summer holiday then struggling in September.

Annual planning can help combat this because you can consciously build up demand for your working periods. For example, you can mention in your marketing that you are booking for clients from X and then have people booked in for your return. You might also decide to create content for your social media, email and long-form content marketing and have that schedule to go out. This will mean you could return to new sales or at least new enquiries in your inbox or new discovery or sales calls booked in your diary.

PUT TOGETHER A 2024 MARKETING AND SALES STRATEGY THAT YOU HAVE CONFIDENCE IN – BOOK A 2024 STRATEGY DAY Returning from holiday to notifications of sales and enquiries is a great feel, but for that to happen you need a robust marketing and sales strategy – which I can help you with! During a 2024 Strategy Day we’ll decide what your marketing and sales strategy is for the year, and put together a top line annual timeline so your marketing will continue regardless of whether you are on holiday or not. For more information and to book click here.

 

You may be able plan your holidays around the seasonality of your business

When you do annual planning for your business you can look at the seasonality of your business and increase the time you take off during the low periods of your business (if that’s possible).

 

Virtually all businesses have a degree of seasonality and for many business owners it is easier to confidently take holiday and enjoy more time off when they know it is impacting your business less. Therefore, taking your holidays in your low periods make a lot of sense. However, for that to happen you need to be aware of the seasonality of your business. Annual reviewing will help you to see that seasonality and then annual planning will allow you, where possible, to take more holidays in those low periods.

 

That’s it. You now know why annual planning helps small business owners to take more holiday.

 

I hope reading this blog post has helped you to see that taking more time off and having more holiday is absolutely possible for you. And by committing to annual planning you’ll put yourself in the best position to not just take off more time, but it not have a negative impacton the business.

 

Let me know in the comments what your biggest takeaway has been.

 

 

Want more holidays in 2024? And want to put the plan in place to ensure that happens?

Running an annual business planning day by yourself can be tricky. You might not have the analytical mind to properly review your finances and marketing data. You might have a money mindset that impacts your approach to pricing. You might not have the knowledge for creating an effective marketing and sales strategy. And you struggle to take your big goals and create a plan to achieve them.

 

If you think any of those things might hold you back then I can help you. You can book a 2024  Strategy Day with me and I’ll guide you through the process, ensure that you don’t skim over the bits that aren’t your strengths and be the external support to ensure you have strategically thought through everything and have the best plan possible for the year ahead.

To find out more, and to book a 2024 Strategy Day click here.