Should you take time off your business to spend with your kids this summer? 

That’s exactly what you’ll find out in this solo podcast with me, Janet Murray.

Even if you don’t have children, this episode is definitely worth a listen. It might challenge you to think differently about how you spend your summer. 

Now I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with taking time off to spend with your kids…I’m a mum and I’ll be taking time out to do exactly that.

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IMPORTANT: THIS TRANSCRIPT IS AUTOMATICALLY GENERATED. WE GIVE IT A QUICK CHECK THROUGH BUT WE DON’T CORRECT EVERYTHING AS IT’S INTENDED TO HELP YOU FIND PARTS YOU WANT TO LISTEN TO AGAIN - NOT AS AN EXACT TRANSCRIPT. SO THERE MIGHT BE A FEW QUIRKY WORDS/PHRASES HERE!

I listened to a really good podcast by a business coach called a segment in it. She talks about how only 2% of all female led businesses achieve seven-figure and your revenue 90% don't even make six figures. She also talks about something. I don't think many business coaches are brave enough to talk about why it happens and why it's actually not down to the glass ceiling or inequality,

or certainly that is not the sole reason. It's because some women don't take their business seriously. They treat their business as a hobby. They use their family as an excuse, not to build their business and they take a break over the summer. And you might not like what I'm about to say. I agree with Sigrun I'm a mum too, but I've always worked in the summer.

Not the whole summer is really important to take time off and spend time with children. If you have them or other family members, you may be caring for, but when I'm working with clients who are struggling to achieve their goals, those things come up again and again, they are treating their business as a hobby. They're using their family as an excuse,

not to build their business. And that will say taking a big break over the summer. And before you get mad at me, take a moment to think about something else. Edwin says in this podcast episode, and by the way, I will link to it in the show notes. Most women lose about three months in their business over the course of a year due to taking time off for holidays.

That's about 25% of their annual income. Now there are all sorts of cultural and economic reasons for these patterns. I'm not a psychologist, I'm not an economist. So I won't even attempt to answer them in this episode. What I am going to do is share a podcast episode. I published last year on this very topic and talk about some of the issues that come up specifically for women and those who care for children alongside running a business and offer some practical ideas to help you avoid losing a big chunk of your annual income and also losing your momentum for the rest of the year.

And at the end, I'm going to tell you about something I'm doing to help. So if you duck out for the whole summer, you could have a lot of catching up to do come September, which could make for eight stressy Christmas period. You're listening to the courageous content podcast. I'm Janet Murray. And I love helping coaches, creatives and entrepreneurs create super engaging content that generates leads and sales for their businesses.

No one starts a business and just knows how to create engaging. Content is a skill that has to be learned and practice. And there's always something new to learn, no matter how long you've been in business. And I know running an online business can feel messy, perfectionism, fear, doubts, and other mindset. Staff can stop you showing up online in the way that's best for you.

So you'll get help with that too. Where do you to get courageous with your content? Let's get started. This is a little controversial, but I'm a bit fed up with reading social media posts from female business owners about how they're taking the summer off to be with their kids. Now, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with taking time off to spend with your kids.

I'm a mum and I'll definitely be taking time off over the summer to do exactly that, nor am I championing hustle culture or working till you drop. You should definitely take some time out to rest and recuperate this summer. It's definitely been a challenging year, but do you really need to take the whole summer off your business? Absolutely not. In fact,

doing so could make things more challenging for you in the last quarter of the year. So I am hereby giving you permission, not to feel guilty about not spending your summer in the park or at the soft pay center. In fact, if you have a partner who can take the kids off your hands for a few days or friends or family who could help,

you could even do a babysitting swap, it can actually be the perfect time to work on your business. Take training and development. As an example, I often hear business owners say that summit is the wrong time for them to invest in any learning. So to do an online course or to do one-to-one coaching for example, but actually the opposite can be true.

Many of us do less customer facing or client facing work over the summer, which means there's less distractions and more time to get stuck into learning. That's why I typically open some one-to-one slots in my own business over the summer, because I know there are going to be business owners out there who wants to get organized, particularly with their content for Q4. Then there's content creation and planning.

If you're doing less client or customer facing work, which many of us are over the summer. It's the perfect time to get ahead with your content planning for the last quarter of the year. This is particularly important. If you have a product based business or you offer a seasonal service. So say for example, you're a personal trainer and nutritionist or somebody that offers a coaching program where people are very much into what you do in January the early part of the year.

It really makes sense to get ahead during this quiet summer period, it's also a great time to research content ideas and batch create content, which will reduce your stress later in the air. Even if you don't have a seasonal business, Christmas can be a really busy time for parents. So if you duck out for the whole summer, you could have a lot of catching up to do come September,

which could make for a stressy Christmas period. And then there's research. Perhaps you have an idea for a new product or service. Maybe you'd love to launch an online course or membership a podcast or a YouTube channel. It's actually the perfect time for research and even beta testing of courses and online programs. And please don't assume people don't want to buy in the summer.

The fact you're still around might actually help you land opportunities. You wouldn't have otherwise because your competitors are taking this on or off and plays do not give up on your content. I'm a big believer in taking a few weeks off social media over the summer or any other regular content that you create. And I don't believe in scheduling while you're away, because if you're not around to engage with your followers,

well, it's called social media for a reason. It really is better just to take a break and come back when you're refreshed. However, there's a difference between taking a few weeks off your contents, taking a bit of a break and completely grinding to a halt for the whole summer. If you do that, it will be much harder to get back on track.

Come September. It's really much better to keep up a regular questions, even if you're posting slightly less than usual. If you've listened to this episode and you still want to take the whole summer away from your business, that's cool. Just make sure that you understand that you'll almost certainly have to work harder to have a profitable Q4, and that could even have a knock on effect on the first quarter of next year.

Please also make sure that you're doing it for the right reasons because you genuinely want to take the summer off. Not because that's what society expects you to do or what your partner expects you to do. All your family or friends. My daughter's now 15. And if I could change one thing about her early life, it would actually have been to put her in childcare for longer.

If that sounds shocking, then hear me out, trying to run a business in half the time I needed, because I felt judged by other mums actually made me stressed out and impacted on the quality of the time we did spend together. There is absolutely nothing wrong with putting your kids in childcare or in a holiday club or leaving them with relatives. So you get some time to work over the summer and doing something.

You love something that drives you that inspires you, does not make you a bad parent. And those judgy moms at the school gates, they probably MBU. So I hope this episode has challenged you to think differently about how you spend your summer this year. And I'd like to invite you to join me on something that I've created, especially for women and people who care for children who find they're not able to focus fully on their business over the summer months,

but don't want to lose that momentum and don't want that to impact on the rest of that year. I'm going to be leading a 12 week challenge inside my curators club membership program. For those who want to plan and launch a new product or service, as part of the challenge, members will get a launch plan to follow with some very specific activities to do each week.

The kind of things that can be done during the evening or weekends early morning, whenever people do get a chance to work, even if they are caring for children or family members during the day. And the idea behind is to really keep that momentum going. You may not be able to show up and do much client facing or customer facing work over the summer,

but you can work on your business. In fact, it's a really great time to work on your business when you're perhaps not doing as much client or customer interaction, you'll get accountability, you'll get score, you'll get specific guidance on how to launch a product. You'll get support from me and the rest of the community. And you'll also get to launch a new product or service when you get back to your desk in September or share more about this project in a future episode.

But if you'd like to get on board, drop me an email on Janet's at Janet Murray, top or UK, and my team can tell you all about it, but it does start at the beginning of July. So that's 2022. If you're listening in the future. So if you're listening to this episode around the time it goes live, you do need to get in touch with,

because otherwise you might miss this opportunity.