Entrepreneur vs Out of Office:
How to Prepare for Multiple Days Away

As we’re approaching mid-October, we thought we’d add in this extra post about scheduling time away from the office. And not just, “I’m away from the office… but I’ll still check in.” Full out, I’m out of the office, do not contact me.

For anyone who follows us on social media (and we’ve likely mentioned this in earlier posts), but my daughter has complicated medical issues. One of which is an extremity deformation on her left side – hand and foot. She has 4 fingers and 4 toes down her left side, then 5 and 5 on her right. The issue being, her right hand (with the 5 fingers) has a pousse flottant, meaning her thumb is there, but not attached to her hand. So it tends to just get in the way more than anything, as it serves no actual purpose.

Now, my initial #MomThought was “Well, let’s just reattach it! How hard can that be?!” Well apparently, quite hard. So hard in fact, they’re actually just going to remove it instead. You may read that and think “WHAT!” (that was my initial though, too!) but eventually you shift into logical mode and the thought shifts to “that makes the most sense!”

Here’s why: it’s safer for her to have this done now than to leave it to when she’s older (at this time, she’s 3.5 years old); she has the best chance at recovery and adapting to another 4 hand. Plus, she should be fully rehabbed before she starts kindergarten! Secondly, it’ll be WAY more functional than what she has now. The thumb hasn’t grown much, so it tends to just get caught on her shirts, jackets & mitts, and be more annoying than anything. With having it removed, and her pointer finger shifted to the thumb position, it will be a million times more efficient! Try to open a doorknob with your pointer finger and middle finger – it’s tricky and nearly impossible!

She is going to have that surgery done this month, meaning this mama needs to have all her ducks in a row.

With that medical lesson out of the way, this brings us to preparing to be out of the office for multiple days- and how to not let your business burn to the ground in the midst of it!

We’re planning on shutting down for at least 1 week, if not more, depending on how her recovery is going. She will be confused, sore, and need her mama, and I’m not going to deprive her of any of that as she’ll be going through enough as it is, she doesn’t need me telling her to just “hold on” while I send one more email.

And here is how we’re going to do this:

Automate. We’re going to preschedule #AllThingsSocial in the next few weeks to make sure we’re covered for while we’re Out of Office, plus an extra 2 weeks afterwards. That’ll allow us to not be stressing about when we have to “return to work” to get our social posts out, as everything will already be good to go, including our blog posts! We are just entering October now, and already have all of our posts for October and 2 for November drafted and they will be scheduled before the end of the week.
Communicate. We gave our clients plenty of notice as to when we will be out of the office, and made sure they understood that under no circumstances, are we available. We communicated what’s happening and why we’re away, and because they’re so amazing, there was zero pushback. They have coverage in place and we told them we would let them know if we need to be away longer than originally planned. We’re starting with 1 week and will re-evaluate around day 5 when we have a better idea how recovery is going.
Plan. Because we had the surgery date set months ahead of time, we’re able to look ahead as to what our month looks like and get ahead of the game so that there isn’t much falling to the person who will be covering for us. This means busting our asses for a few weeks and powering through as many tasks as we can. Not everyone is always able to just take a week off without checking in or doing any work, and we’re thankful we’re in the position that we can. So we’ll show our clients how much we appreciate them and their understanding by getting things done ahead of time. Again, this also makes returning back after that week much easier, and knowing we aren’t walking back into a day of #AllTheTasks.
Forgive. Not everything always goes according to plan. We can only do our best and what’s best for our clients, but there will likely be a hiccup somewhere in there. And that’s okay. Thinking ahead, planning, scheduling – all of that, will certainly help. But then it’s also reminding yourself to not be too hard on yourself. It’s okay if a post or blog doesn’t go out one day because #ShitHappens or maybe you don’t get all of your own business stuff done in time, but your clients are set. Your business will be okay – because you did your best for your clients and they’ll respect you and stick with you.

With all of this said, we’re going to get back to prepping, scheduling, and planning #AllOfTheEverything !