Taking Time Off from Your Retail Business Without Losing Sales

Why taking time off can feel impossible for product business owners

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Catherine Erdly: How do you find it taking time off in your business? Is it something that you find that you can do easily or is it something that you really struggle with? That’s what we’re gonna delve into in today’s episode. Hi, I’m Catherine Erdly. I’m a small business of retail expert and the founder of the Resilient Retail Club, where I offer one-to-one services, membership, and done for you services to product business owners.

You can check it out at resilientretailclub.com. And today I wanted to share, this is episode number 250 of the podcast. Can you believe it? And the podcast is nearly five years old, which is also unbelievable. And I wanted to take this opportunity in this episode to do something a little bit different, and that’s actually use an example from my own business to talk about taking time off.

Welcome to the Resilient Retail Game Plan, a podcast for anyone wanting to start, [00:01:00] grow or scale a profitable creative product business with me, Catherine Erdley. The Resilient Retail Game Plan is a podcast dedicated to one thing, breaking down the concepts and tools that I’ve gathered from 20 years in the retail industry and showing you how you can use them in your business.

This is the real nuts and bolts of running a successful product business, broken down in an easy, accessible way. This is not a podcast about learning how to make your business look good. It’s the tools and techniques that will make you and your business feel good. Confidently plan, launch, and manage your products, and feel in control of your sales numbers and cash flow to help you build a resilient retail business.

What three trips in one month taught me about success and balance

Catherine Erdly: Now, as those of you who’ve listened for a while will know, I am a service-based business who serves product-based businesses. So I don’t tend to like to use too many examples from my own [00:02:00] business to talk about what your business is like. But I think in this case it is relevant because I had an experience recently, which really made me think about what it means to run your own small business and also what success looks like.

For a lot of people and the experience that I had was due to a variety of different reasons. I ended up having three trips in the month of April. So I was off for a week going to California to Social Media Marketing World, which was a really phenomenal conference. Great opportunity to get some perspective and to really get a different view of the business as well as the San Diego, which is a really fabulous city.

I then took a four day trip to Marrakesh with my daughter because it was the Easter holidays and we had a bit of time together, a bit of mother and daughter time, which was really fabulous. And then finally I ended up taking a week to go to the Netherlands to go on a biking holiday with my husband.

Now, fun fact or not so fun fact [00:03:00] that trip was actually rescheduled from last year when my son had fallen off his bike and ironically had fallen off his bike and broken his leg. And we were supposed to be going on that trip last year and we decided we couldn’t really travel with him being injured.

And so we postponed it by a year. So because of various different things, the timing of these Easter holidays, this trip being moved, and the date that the conference was, I ended up taking three trips in the month of April.

The real cost of not taking proper breaks from your business

Catherine Erdly: Now, why am I telling you about this? Well, it made me reflect on the fact that often when we talk about success in our business, often people talk about the number side of things. They talk about the turnover that they want to hit, and that obviously is a big part of it. But for me, it was making me reflect that as I was working.

You know, over the last seven years I’ve worked with probably around 200 business owners. And a lot of the time we are talking about growing the business. We’re talking about more money, we’re talking about better profits, managing the stock. We’re talking about confidence, all the [00:04:00] rest of that kind of thing.

But often, actually what we’re talking about is work-life balance and how does the business serve you? And it’s one of the key pieces of work that we do is looking at this idea of how do you take a break from the business? And I think about a couple of clients in particular who for us, after working together, after six months, what did success look like?

Well, for one client, it was that they could come in late on a Wednesday morning and go to Pilates first, and they had a team in place who could actually mean that they felt like they could have a little bit of a lie-in and go do some good self-care on a Wednesday morning. And for another client, it was that they took a two week holiday in August, they kept the business open.

Previous years they had felt like they had to close the business down, which lost them a lot of momentum.

Catherine Erdly: They just weren’t able to take a break. And this time they were able to have a go away for two weeks, not think about the business, have a proper [00:05:00] switch off. And that for me, I feel like that is a really great, amazing achievement.

And when you started your business, you who knew that you were gonna feel like taking two weeks off in the month of August is gonna feel like a real achievement? But I honestly believe that it is. And so for me personally, what I found was that in the month of April I was able to do all of these things.

I was able to spend time with my daughter. I was able to spend time with my husband. I was able to travel for the business, which was phenomenal, and really gave me new perspectives and new things to think about. And all of those things were possible, but none of them happened by accident.

And incidentally, I was able to feel confident that emails were still going out, marketing was still happening, that my clients were being looked after. That the business was still able to move forward rather than feeling like, okay well that’s it. I’ve really put a spanner in the works by going away and stepping away from the [00:06:00] business.

So that’s what I wanted to talk about.

Catherine Erdly: You know, if taking time off feels like a luxury that you can’t afford, then that’s what this episode’s really all about. So, why is it so hard to step away? I think a lot of the time it’s simply we have to recognize that the business for a product business owner, for a retail business or e-commerce business, it’s very intense.

There is a constant daily stream of questions and queries from customers. You may have fulfillment that either you have to do or you are working with a fulfillment company. You’ve got social media demands, you’ve got marketing, you’ve got suppliers, you’ve got stock management. There’s just a lot. And often business owners as they grow, they have to really, very mindfully take themselves outta the business.

Otherwise, what they find is that they end up doing everything so they end up being the entire business. So no team, no [00:07:00] automation, no systems in place, and I think personally, it’s often a sign. You know, one of the questions that I ask people if we’re kind of in this diagnostic phase of like, what’s going on in your business? We say, like, imagine if you won a four week holiday around the world.

This is actually a talk that I did with Elizabeth Styles about scaling your business. And the example that she used, give her full credit for this was that if you won a full week around the world. All expenses paid trip. So it was a top prize in a competition and you won this.

Could you take that trip and your business keep running? And it’s actually a very useful way of diagnosing what’s going on in the business and where you’re maybe too involved on a daily basis. If the answer to that is absolutely a hundred percent no way. It’s a good exercise to think about.

Can you take time out? And I think as well, something that maybe you might resonate with is [00:08:00] guilt. A lot of people I talk to, they feel really guilty. The idea of oh, well if I’m not there to help, if there’s a problem. And it’s really something that people get into this mindset that if they take time out, that that somehow is a sign of lack of commitment to the business.

And I think personally, it’s something that is really helpful to have a bit of a reframe around to say, actually it’s not a sign of weakness or sign of lack of commitment to take time off from the business. It’s a sign that your business can actually support itself without you, which is frankly something that in the long term, we all have to get to that point.

So I think it’s really important that we get clear about the fact that it’s not about lack of commitment if we want to take time out. In fact, if anything, it is something really positive. And I think the other thing to recognize is what happens if you don’t take breaks. And for me, what I see when I talk to people and they aren’t able [00:09:00] to step away from the business in the way that they want to is frankly, it’s burnout. It’s fatigue. It’s making bad decisions or it’s even resentment of a business that you probably do love. Still love. But it can make you fall out of love pretty quick if you feel like you can never get away.

And I think the other thing as well, that’s really difficult. Is that the vast majority of people that I speak to when they started their business, they started it because they really wanted something different for themselves. They wanted to reconnect with their creativity. They wanted to do something that had meaning, had purpose, connection with their community.

They wanted to create a business that was kinder and better and left the world in a better place. In than which they found it as opposed to being harmful. And they also wanted something more for themselves. They wanted more flexibility. They wanted a life that was on their terms as opposed to on somebody else’s terms.

So for many [00:10:00] people, that is the reasoning behind starting their business. And so it is particularly painful if you get to the point in your business where you don’t have that freedom and flexibility that you thought you were going to have because you just don’t feel like you can take a break and you can step away.

And I think that that is a big, big issue for a lot of people and it can really impact your motivation and effectively, your burnout. And, you know, worst of all really is that you can’t scale a business that only works when you are giving it 110% because that is just simply not sustainable. As in, it’s not gonna be something that you can keep doing year after year after year.

And if you have growth without it being sustainable growth, then that’s not really true growth, that’s an endurance test and eventually something has to give. And so for me, I certainly, when I [00:11:00] first started, my business would have found it very, very difficult or almost impossible to take that time out.

But as I’ve been running the business for longer and longer, then I was able to be extremely intentional about planning around this time period in my business. And it really, for me, being able to do that, being able to step away, do these various different things and then step back in. It was very, very rewarding to be able to do that, first off.

And secondly, it made, really made me reflect on the number of people that I speak to that feel like this is something that, it’s not maybe it’s impossible for them to take a holiday, but it’s very difficult for them to take a break and very difficult for them to take a break and switch off completely.

How to plan ahead so you can step away with confidence

Catherine Erdly: So what helps? And as I said, obviously my business is a service business. It’s very different model to product business. But in terms of what helps in general, and what I’ve certainly worked with people on in their businesses as well, there’s a few [00:12:00] things that if you think to yourself, well actually, yeah, when was the last time I got a proper break? Or I really just feel the pressure? Or you’re really feeling the pressure? Then here are some suggestions.

Number one factor that helped me take time out of my business and has helped my clients as well was forward planning. So I do love to plan. I absolutely always like to get myself planned far in advance. So for example, I typically, before the end of the year. So usually around September, October time, I will sit down and plan out my year ahead.

So I’ve got a full 12 month view before I start the business. And probably, to be honest, if I’m booking trips, I usually book my trips fairly far in advance. So I would perhaps even have thought about the business a little bit more in detail even before I’ve booked those trips. But I do solid planning upfront.

So I’ve got a full 12 month planned out. And in my case, to make [00:13:00] it simple, I just said, right, okay. April, it looks like I’m pretty much gonna be traveling for the majority of it. So I’m gonna shift things around. So I was very, very intentional with when I had launches. In fact, those of you who came to Retail ROAR, my online summits, I specifically timed that so that it happened the week before I went to California.

I knew that I was gonna be flat out with ROAR, and then I would, we delivered ROAR. We had a few sessions the following week and then I went away to California and that was extremely intentional. And a lot of the time, that is the way that we work it with clients as well. If they know that they’re gonna be away, then they plan around it.

So maybe don’t give yourself a brand new product launch at the time when you’re gonna be away. Sounds really obvious. But what it also allows you to do is work out when things do need to happen, because it’s not enough to just say, okay, well I’m not gonna do that launch. Or I’m not gonna do that product while I’m away.

But you need to think about, [00:14:00] okay well in that case, what? What will my sales gonna look like? Where do I need to push them so that I can have this break? And a lot of the time, that’s why I’m a big believer in this forward planning and the sales planning like this as well, because then you can identify, okay this is a quiet time.

Right. Well, actually this is my quiet time. Okay, maybe I can take a break here. You’ve gotta work around the rhythm of your business, and you’ve gotta work around not just to say, oh, I’m not gonna do anything while I’m away. But okay, but when do I need to do things? Then do I need to move some things forward so that my sales, I feel comfortable with my sales levels rather than taking a break and thinking, okay, I’ve got all of this to do when I get back.

So planning a hundred percent. For me, that was a really, really big piece of it. Like all of my launches, everything I was doing in the business was very much planned around the fact that I was going to be taking that time off, and therefore it meant that I just wasn’t making my life even more difficult than it needed to be because I was given myself that space.

So [00:15:00] having that calendar view of your marketing, your sales activities, your product launches, everything else, it just means that you can avoid your pinch points. I think as well, a lot of the time, one of the things that really impacts small business owners, particularly product business owners. Is just when you look at the things in the 12 month, 18 month timeframe, you can see when things need to get done. And it’s almost always earlier than you think it’s going to be.

So for a lot of people, they get caught out and they end up doing things super last minute. And so what we want to be able to do with this forward planning is we want to be able to pull activities forward. So that we are not rushing. And then just generally creates more spaciousness, and generally creates a little bit more opportunity for you to actually take some time out.

So some other things that help people when they’re taking time out of their retail business is that detailed sales planning. What you gonna launch? When? And then all of your stock you can arrange to have it made, manufactured, delivered. However you obtain your stock [00:16:00] in a time that works for you.

So again, you’re just not trying to simultaneously do lots of things at the same time. You’re really clear when you want to have quiet time and when be away, and when you want to have time. When you want to be busy or launching or getting that stock in.

And obviously you know, your team can do all of those things when you’re away, but for a lot of people, if they’re not used to taking time out of the business, they’re going to feel a lot more comfortable about it.

If all they’re asking their team to do is business as usual while they’re away, instead of a big launch.

Cashflow forecasting, a hundred percent. That’s really important part of it too. This is something that I do with people inside Retail By Design. So knowing what’s gonna be coming in and going out so you don’t get a financial surprise or you don’t come back from holiday and suddenly think, oh no, hang on a minute.

I’m really strapped now because I was away and sales haven’t been great. So really making sure that you’ve looked at when you want to be off, what that’s gonna mean for you, and then also being able to map out your cash flow It goes a really, really long way to making [00:17:00] it feel a lot more comfortable and a lot less fraught.

How support and clear priorities make time off possible

Catherine Erdly: Then the other really, really important element to this is support, and that was partly what I did. I actually realized back in sort of October, November, that based on everything I wanted to do in the business, based on the time that I wanted to take out and look thinking, reflecting on the current team that I had.

I felt like there were a couple of areas that I could use some more support, and therefore I brought that in well in advance, so that when I was off, I knew I had that extra level of support.

And I think that is really a key part of it. Going back to this idea about could you take time out of the business if you had to be off for four or six weeks? You know, that’s a really good indicator of where you could do with some additional support.

Now obviously, I appreciate that it’s an extra cost, bringing people in. And is something that I mapped through with clients one-to-one very carefully. But understanding where you may be missing that support and what kind of support you might need, it’s really, really helpful and really [00:18:00] useful.

As opposed to thinking, oh, I should be doing it all, or maybe it’s wrong for me if I want to take a break. He’s like, no, you need to take a break. You need to have breaks. That’s part of running a business. What support do you need in order to let you do that? Something that I often think about, one of these stories that I heard was about the runner, Mo Farah.

The story was that Mo Farah has, or maybe this is very common for athletes, I dunno. But Mo Farah, he has two teams. He has a team that looks after his active training. You know, everything that he does as a runner to improve his actual workout. And then he has another team that is about his rest and nutrition.

So basically two teams. One for work and one for rest and recuperation. And that is because the athletes recognize that their peak performance is completely dependent on their ability to rest and recuperate in the quieter seasons. And so, I think it’s the same for business owners. If we think that we should be [00:19:00] able to do everything and stepping away from the business is abandoning it.

 We are not thinking about this from the Mo Farah standpoint, and we are not thinking about how our ability to perform is really, really related to our ability to recharge. So have a think about where you’ve got support in your business. And again, if you were to step away for four weeks, what are the areas that you would have problems with? And what could you do to help support that?

Because once you’ve got that support in place, then it makes a huge difference to your ability to step away. And if you don’t have that, then it’s gonna be very difficult for you to take the breaks that you need, frankly. And then the final part that helped me a lot with my own trip was just being really clear on priorities.

So there were lots of things that I just had to park until May, I just had to say, right. That’s a May job because, and I was saying that from about February [00:20:00] onwards, because I had to get really clear on my priorities. I had to get really focused on what I needed to achieve in the month of March. And be aware of the fact that April was pretty much off bounds and then be able to pick up again in May.

So it was really, really useful exercise for me to get really clear on priorities and then I was able to effectively, almost like create the space for myself. Step out, know things that still running, lots of prep work involved as well. Trying to make sure that people wouldn’t need things from me while I was away and then I was able to step away and take that break.

So this is exactly as well. What really struck me was I was thinking about this, was that inside Retail By Design, my one-to-one accelerator. This is really what we go through. So I have the focus framework. The focus framework is your, we look at your business foundations, we look at everything to do with your profitability or stock management, your costs and everything else. Make sure that that’s all where it should be.

We look at your offer strategy. [00:21:00] So we look at what you’re selling, who you’re selling it to, how much you’re selling of it. We look at your calendar planning, that’s the other one, the sea of focus. And this is really important when it comes to things like taking time out.

So looking at your calendar well in advance, knowing exactly what you’ve got. We look at upskilling use, that you’ve got those skills that you need to grow. And then we also have the S, which is for support. So we look at the support, the structure, the systems in the business, and we make sure that you’ve got those in place.

Which again, all really helps you take that step back, step out. And have the ability to have some freedom from your business, rather than feeling like there’s no way that you can possibly ever step away. And it is possible also just to say if you feel like, oh, I haven’t had that before. I certainly have worked with people who’ve gone from feeling like they’re absolutely 100% tied to the business, to being able to actually take that time out, have a break, go away for the weekend, go to a friend’s wedding, [00:22:00] come in late on a certain day or work, have a day off, have a day off.

I mean, who knew? Without feeling guilty and without feeling like the business was falling behind. So one of the clients from Retail by Design said to me, ” For the first time in five years, I’ve woken up to the idea that I need a business that works for me rather than me working for my business.”

And I think that it really, to me, is success, is right? You know, again, like yes, turnover, growth, success, yes. More money in the bank is success. And of course more money and paying yourself more is also an important part of being able to step away financially. But I think the key thing is about feeling like the business is something that, as I said, works for you rather than you giving everything you’ve got to the business again and again.

So if any of this resonates and you’re thinking, yes, this sounds good to me. And you would like to be able to take some time out without feeling super stressed out, then we are nearly at the point [00:23:00] of closing the enrollment for Retail By Design.

But we do have a couple of spaces left. So if you look in the show notes, there’s an opportunity to book a call, or you can head over to resilientretailclub.com and look at Retail by Design, and you can find out all about the program there. But I would love to hear from you. Why not head over to Instagram @resilientretailclub?

Let me know what you thought about today’s episode. Let me know what your plans are for taking time out, and I would love to hear from you. If you have a moment to like and review the podcast, that would be hugely helpful. You can review it in Apple Podcasts and you can also like, and rate to the podcast inside the Spotify app.

And of course, if you like, follow or subscribe, you’ll be the first to know about each new episode, which comes out on a Thursday morning, and I’ll see you next week. 

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