In the longer term, the goal is that when you take that time off,
your business keeps growing. But in the shorter term, it's more like
keeping the lights on and keeping your business in a holding pattern. So firstly,
what are all of those things that need to happen to keep the lights
on while you were away from your laptop? Welcome to Imperfect Action. I'm
Steph Taylor. For years, I read all the books, downloaded all the
freebees, and did all the courses, but it wasn't until I started taking
imperfect action that my business had its first million dollar year. Imperfect action is
about doing things before you're ready, prioritizing consistent action over perfect action, and
moving forward even when you're not sure you're doing it right. On this show,
you can expect mindset advice, actionable marketing tips, and strategies to build
a business that brings you more profit, more freedom, and even more joy.
Are you on the list to get my daily businesses? Every day I'll
send you a bite sized prompt signed to help you grow your business in a
more intentional way. Sign up at step taylor dot com, forward slash DBB,
or at the link in the show notes. Hey, welcome back to
im perfect Action. This is episode six hundred and sixty seven. Today I'm
talking about how to prepare your business for a few weeks offline. Now,
this is something that I've gone through many times in my business because I love
to take blocks of time away. So back in twenty twenty one, I
took a whole month off and traveled down the coast of Australia in a van
and it was so much fun. And then last year in twenty twenty two,
I took two weeks off completely and went hiking through the Outback. And
both of these times there were things that I had to do to prepare my
business for that time away. But here's the thing I've been I've spent the
last few years building my business so that it can pass what I call the
off grid test, which is where you have both high client satisfaction and high
profitability when you are off the grid or offline. And passing this off grid
test isn't something that happens overnight. It's not like you just create a course
and you launch it and boom, your business runs without you and you've got
all this passive income coming in and there's nothing you have to do It happens
in stages. So when you're first starting out in your business, you're probably
your business is probably a bit more like a bicycle. You're peddling all the
time. But when you stop peddling, the business stops running, the income
stops coming in, and then you might progress and you might end up with
an ebike where you've maybe got some systems in place and maybe a virtual assistant
or some other team members to help you pedals sometimes, but for the most
part, you're still the person doing the peddling. Then the next stage is
where you've got a manual car where it runs, but you're still there pressing
the accelerator, changing the gears. And then that final that goal is that
self driving car where it runs itself, it steers itself, even when you
are not sitting there putting your footing the accelerator, steering the car where you
need it to go. Now. So that's the longer term goal, right
building a business that's profitable when you are offline, And there's a bit of
a balance because a lot of the things that go towards building a business it's
profitable when you are offline, they don't necessarily grow your business in the short
term. They don't bring in revenue in the short term, but they set
the foundations in place so that when you step away, your business doesn't fall
apart. But this is also not necessarily attainable in the short term, and
it doesn't mean that you need to take you need to get all of your
ducks in a row before you can take any time off at all. No,
it doesn't. So today I'm going to share what you need to do
to build a business in the long term that is profitable when you're offline,
but also the things that you can do in the short term. If you
want to take a few weeks off right now and you don't have the time
to hire and train a team and do all of the things, get all
the foundations in place so you can take that time off. So long term,
let's start with the long term, building a business that is profitable when
you are offline, building those foundations to support that business keep it running when
you are not there. The first thing we want to look at is what
is the vision five years from now, ten years from now. What do
you do in your business? What do you not do? What does your
day to day look like, What does your life look like? And for
everything that you no longer do in your business, you need an action plan
to get this off your plate. You either need to hire someone else who
can do it, or you need to automate it or put a system in
place to do it, or you need to delete it all together, stop
doing it all together. An example of one thing that you might not really
want to do is show up and sell all the time on social media or
on live webinars or whatever. It is great. So in that case,
maybe you would create some sales processes that run when you're offline. You'd build
out an evergreen funnel that is selling so that you are not having to be
there constantly showing up and doing sales calls or doing live webinars. Another one
might be creating marketing structure and processes so your business can continue to grow when
you're offline. I created a free workbook called Escape the Messy Middle, which
is my guide to getting out of this messy middle stage where your business is
running but you can't quite see that path to that business that will run without
you that freedom, and this guide is really there to help you to identify
what you need to do next to start to build a business. That runs
even when you are not at your desk. If you want that guide,
send me a DM on Instagram. I'm there at step Taylor dot com.
Send me EMM just those three letters and I will automatically send you the link
to download that guide. Okay, so that's what we need to do in
the long term. But does that mean you cannot take any time off until
you've got all of those foundations in place. No, it doesn't. So
in the short term, if you are wanting to take a few weeks off,
or if you need to for whatever reason, take a few weeks off,
or even a weekend, a couple of days. I know, if
you're quite early in your business, you might find that all of your time
is going to that and you cannot step away for a moment. What do
you need to do to take some time away from your business? So the
first thing that you need to identify is what are all of the things that
need to happen while I'm away from my laptop. For example, three podcast
episodes need to go out, three emails need to go to my list,
These social media posts need to go out, this client project needs to be
delivered, These customer support emails need to be responded to those all of the
things that need to happen to keep the lights on while I'm away from my
laptop. The difference between the short term and the long term as well.
So the difference between taking some time off now when you don't have all the
foundations in place verse is long term, when you've got those foundations in place
and you take time off is in the longer term, the goal is that
when you take that time off, your business keeps growing. But in the
shorter term it's more like keeping the lights on and keeping your business in a
holding pattern. So, firstly, what are all of those things that need
to happen to keep the lights on while you are away from your laptop?
And then for each of those things that you've written out in your list,
we need to identify will you prepare it ahead of time, will you delegate
it, will you automate it, will you delay it? Or will you
delete it? So preparing it looks like batching your podcast episodes and scheduling before
you go away, or doing that client project before you go away. Delegating
it looks like giving ownership to someone else. So maybe you'll bring in a
virtual assistant to manage those customer support emails while you're away. Automating it looks
like scheduling posts and emails to go out while you're away. It also might
look like automating your email list building process if you haven't already done that.
Delaying it. For example, if you have a meeting booked in your calendar,
can you maybe move that meeting till after you get back, or can
you have a conversation with the client whose project is due and ask them if
they would be all right with you doing it a week later. And then
the last one is you potentially could delete it. For example, I don't
take clients when i know I'm going to be offline. There's only one way
really to work with me, and that is in a sort of one off
container. I don't work with retainer or ongoing clients, and I don't book
in clients when i know I'm going to be offline. So another way that
you can delete it. For example, with this podcast, over the Christmas
and New Year break, we tend to schedule best of episodes, so we
reshare the best episodes from the previous year, so that I can take a
little bit of a break off from recording new episodes or I will record them
ahead of time. But if we can remove a task from the list,
that's always going to be one of the easier ways to really get your business
ready for you to take some time off and a lot of the time we
create things that we think we need to do, but we don't actually need
to do them. So there you have it. What are all of the
things that need to happen while I'm away from my laptop? And then will
we prepare it to delegate it automated, delay it or delete it? For
each of those tasks, make sure you pop on over to Instagram and DM
me there. I'm there at Steff Taylor dot com. Send me EMM and
I'll send you the Escape the Messy Middle Workbook so you can start to build
that business that is still profitable and still growing when you are offline. That
is it for today's episode. Thank you so much for listening. Catch you
next time.