How to Take a Vacation Without Neglecting Your Business: Strategies for ADHD Entrepreneurs

Do you need to figure out how to vacation without feeling like your business is going to fall apart in your absence?

Hey, I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and money mindset coach, and this is my podcast "The Weeniecast!"

Are you feeling overwhelmed just thinking about planning a break from your business?

In this episode I'm sharing my tips on how to vacation without feeling like you're burning your business to the ground!

Learn how to set yourself up for success and reduce anxiety when taking a break from your business.

You'll hear practical tips for before, during, and after your vacation, and gain valuable insight into managing your business while enjoying some well-deserved time off.

I'll teach you why documenting your standard operating procedure is crucial before you plan a vacation.

I'll also explain the importance of having a clear plan of action in place.

You'll discover strategies for managing effective client communications, maintaining visibility on social media while on vacation, and easing back into work once you return.

By the end of this episode, you'll be so equipped with the tools and mindset to take a vacation without fear of your business suffering in your absence, you'll spend the next few days browsing for the dream getaway!

Timestamped Summary:

00:00 Document your daily activities to better understand.

05:40 Business owner juggling responsibilities and daily forgetfulness.

10:13 Plan vacation communication well in advance for success.

12:23 Plan content ahead for stress-free vacations.

17:22 Vacation problems can ruin your team's experience.

21:02 Revive your online presence after vacation break.

22:54 Starting a business without unrealistic expectations.

Your next steps after listening

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Mentioned in this episode:

Join the Hyperfocused Community

Squirrel, squirrel, squirrel, squirrel. In this episode, I'm going to tell you how

you can go on vacation and actually enjoy yourself without crashing and

burning your business. Hi, I'm Katie McManus, business

strategist and money mindset coach. And welcome to the Weenie cast,

squirrel. I'll be honest, I feel like a bit of a

hypocrite talking about this topic. I have grown up

in a place that is a vacation destination and I

never go on vacation. I think it's just, it's how you get trained. When you

grow up in a place that's beautiful and people pay to go to, it's, you're

like, oh, cool, like, I can just be on vacation whenever I want. The other

side of this is I really enjoy working. It's one of my favorite

things to do. And maybe that sounds sad, but it just. It

genuinely is. It's one of the things that I can never, I can never imagine

retiring or giving it up. I say this to you as someone who

is notoriously bad at actually going on vacation, but

many of my clients are very talented at going on vacation and

they do it often. And the panic

that comes up before, during and after a vacation for

an ADHD business owner is exactly the same for

each and every person. In this episode, I'm going to show you how

you can set yourself up for success and

reduce your anxiety when you go on vacation and take a

break from your business.

So before we even talk about the planned vacation, let's

talk about before you even planned a vacation. Okay, so

this episode, you're actually going to walk away with some homework. And I'm sorry, maybe

you didn't plan on doing homework today, but too bad. Suck it up,

buttercup. You're going to do this and you're going to email me afterwards and

tell me what your standard operating procedure is. And why do we care about a

standard operating procedure? Well, let me tell you why.

The number one question I get from clients after they come back from

vacation is I forgot how to do my job. I forgot what

I do every single day. How do I post on social media? How do I

get clients? How do I respond to an email? That last one, I'm kind of

exaggerating. But anyway, before you even plan a

vacation, you need to document exactly what

you do day in and day out. And I'm not gonna give you the

homework that we're all used to getting. That is completely

undoable for people with ADHD, which is, as you go through your day,

just document every single thing you do as you do it. You know, it's

like the food diaries that nutritionists want us to do, where every

single time we sit down to eat something or we have a snack, we pull

out our little journal and we jot it down, write down

how it made us feel and what our emotions were that made us eat it,

and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Because that doesn't f

work. Maybe neurotypicals have the ability to

add an extra action into all the actions they do every

single day as a one off thing. ADHD people can't

do that. It does not work for us.

So I want you to open up your phone if you're in a safe place

where you can do so. If you're driving, I want you to try really, really

hard to remember this for when you get somewhere that you can safely do this.

And I want you to go into your phone and set an alarm

00 p.m. Every single day for the next

week. And in this alarm, I want you to name it.

Create a list of all the did, and I want you to count

everything from. You commented on people's posts on LinkedIn.

You answered a few emails. You had three client calls, you did

a few sales calls. You created content, you did a

webinar. And what you did is document all of it.

Because I can tell you from personal experience

and secondhand experience through my clients that a two week vacation can

make you forget half of it. I've had clients come back from

vacation having completely forgotten that they need to post to social

media. I talk a lot about not relying

on motivation to run our businesses and leaning more

into momentum. The reason it's so important to lean

into momentum is because people with ADHD actually don't

have the ability to automatically do habits.

Meaning that for neurotypical, when they wake up, the first thing they do without

thinking is brush their teeth and take a shower. The second thing they do without

even thinking about it is make breakfast. And it's like the breakfast that they

eat. They don't have to think about it. They may get their briefcase together if

people still use briefcases. I don't know. It seems kind of out of date these

days. If they have children, hopefully they're also feeding those children

and getting them off to school. And doesn't that sound amazing? Just

waking up and doing the things that you need to do and not having to

think. Okay, cool. Here's how much time I have. Here are the things that

I need to do. I need to brush my teeth. At some point, I need

to do this. I need this. Which order do I want to do it in?

What do I want to have for breakfast when I shower? Do I need to

shave my legs? Oh, God. Should I get my hair wet? Because then I have

to blow dry it? Like, it's insane the amount of thinking

that ADHD people have to do. And we don't realize that not

everyone has to do this. Like

when I realized that neurotypicals

don't have to go through the daily planning to figure

out how you can fit all the things in. It's just something that they do.

It made me very angry. That's not fair.

Like, I'm exhausted. There's no wonder I take

a granny nap most days because the amount of decisions that we have to

make as humans with ADHD is already

exhausting. Add to that all the responsibilities of a business

owner who owns multiple businesses or even just one business, that's a

lot. It is nap worthy. And on a daily

basis, we can forget things that we do every single day.

And I say this because I know you're a safe place to share this and

you won't judge me because you probably do the same thing. There are days where

it's 02:00 p.m. And I'm like, oh, my God, I forgot to brush my teeth.

So if we can forget a

habit that we've done every single day for our whole lives

of having, you know, teeth in our mouths, think about all the

things that you struggle to build a habit around in

your business and imagine not doing them for two weeks

and coming back and trying to remember them all again and

trying to figure out how to fit them all back into your schedule.

It's really hard. Just remembering them is really hard. So

I don't want you to lean into your perfectionist at all when you do

this. I want you to just brain dump every single thing that you

did in your business every day for the next week.

And if you want a gold star for extra effort, put in

the things that you also wanted to do and didn't have time for.

So once you have this list, ideally what you're going to pull from

it is you're going to pull from it the daily things that you do every

single damn day or that you should be doing every single damn day. Let's be

real. You're not doing it all, all the time. You're also going to pull the

things that you do weekly or a couple times a week. And

in addition to that, you're going to pull the things that you should be doing

monthly. And I say should because, like, oftentimes we forget about it if it's

not something that we're doing on a more consistent, frequent basis.

And a fourth list you're going to make is the things that you should

be doing that you don't quite get to. This is your standard operating

procedure. We're not going to overthink it. We're not going to make it more glitzy

or glammy or more organized than that. I want you to save these

lists in a place that is visible so that you'll remember that

it exists. Because, remember, when something's out of sight, it doesn't exist

anymore because we have a little thing called object

impermanence. Funny story. So, over the last few months, I have this

tiny, tiny bedside table. And, like, my bedroom is kind of small, so it's

really the only size table that fits next to my bed. And

to give you an idea, it's like, 14 inches wide and twelve inches deep. It

has a lamp on it. It has a box of tissues. It has, like, my

favorite hand lotion. It has a gazillion hair ties. It

has pens. So many pens. It has white out also, because,

you know, sometimes when I'm, like, doing some work from bed, I make mistakes and

I have to use whiteout, obviously, like most people. And,

you know, it has, like, advil and just a bunch of other

random that ends up on your nightstand, right?

Literally, I try to cram so much stuff on this that I'll, like, scoot

a little mug of tea on it and, like, things will fall off the back.

And this has been driving me absolutely fucking mental

for months. The other day, I was cleaning my room, and I'm looking at

this nightstand, and I'm like, this is a problem. I need to figure this out.

And I'm looking at the nightstand, and I realized

it has a drawer. This nightstand

has always had. I keep things in the drawer of the nightstand.

Literally. It's not like this was a surprise

drawer. It's not like it was hidden. I've legit had

this nightstand for 23 years. I've had it for

more than half of my life. It's something that I think we got from one

of my grandmothers, and I had it as a child, and then I've just taken

it with me wherever I've moved. This drawer has things in it, I'm

sure, from middle school. And I just realized that I could use

the drawer to put things inside. Now. I put a bunch of stuff

inside, and we'll just have to see if I remember.

I could honestly have a crisis of no more hair ties. You know,

I may go out and buy another big bottle of advil. You

know, I might have to go order more pens, because out of sight, out

of mind. And I share this with you not to. Not to

brag about how smart I am, but to showcase

how important it is. If something's important, we need to keep it out

and visible so that we don't forget that it exists.

When I had this, aha. I literally called my best friend to brag about how

smart I am. She was very impressed. Okay, so that's

your homework. That's your homework. I want you to do this before you

even plan a vacation.

Next on our timeline, let's talk about what you do when you actually plan

the vacation. So there are a few things that are super important

for you to do when you're planning a vacation is a figure out

what kind of communication you need to have with your existing

clients. Are you going to be unreachable? Is there someone else that they can

reach out to if they need help? Are you going to complete projects before

then? Do you have someone filling in for you for their sessions?

Depending on what kind of business you run, figure out what that

communication is and figure out how much advance

warning they need that you're going to be off for whatever amount of time you're

going on vacation for. Make sure that they are set up

for success in that time. One of the things I'm

so grateful I learned from, from previous jobs is

you always want to think about what that customer or client

experience is and what are the things that can make it go

well and go badly. Now, something that can make it go

badly is if you send an email on,

say, a Thursday night saying, hey, clients, so tomorrow's my

last day in the office before I go away for two weeks. Do

you have any questions before I do this? Otherwise, I'll see you in two

weeks, right? Your client may not see that email until Friday

afternoon, and at which point maybe they have some major

questions, and then it either becomes their emergency

or your emergency. And if it's their emergency, you have an unhappy

client. If it's your emergency, then that's

eating into days of your vacation you don't want either.

Warn your clients. Communicate with them in advance

what they need to know about how long you're gonna be gone, how things are

gonna be handled while you're away, and touch base with them

multiple times to make sure that things are taken care of before you

go. It's better to over communicate than under communicate.

Next, what kind of visibility needs to happen while you're

away? This is one of the hardest things for me because I struggle

with batching content. I really do. I'm an intuitive writer.

I kind of sense what does the universe need to hear from me today and

then just write, whatever that is. It's hard for me when I'm batching content to

think, okay, what will the world need from me on Thursday the 17th?

It just doesn't work the same way. So there are some ways that I

manage this for myself and there are strategies that I walk my clients through if

you're curious about those, and I invite you to either join the hyper focused membership

where I guide a lot of our members through these types of

questions, or book a generate income strategy call with me so

we can find a custom strategy for you and your

business so that you can consistently create content that

attracts high paying clients.

As you're planning a vacation, you want to make sure that you're not dropping

the ball on visibility because if people don't know that

you exist, they can't give you their money.

And while you're off enjoying life and

living it up and on the beach or at museums or

diving with turtles, whatever you know, tickles your fancy on vacation,

you don't want to be stressing about oh my God, there's no new clients coming

in. Oh my God, people aren't going to know that I exist. Oh my

God, my audience is going to forget that I exist. What will help you

enjoy your vacation more is knowing that you have pre

written and prescheduled all the posts to go out

for the time that you're out of office. And let me tell you, it is

so much easier when you're at the beach enjoying your

time having a margarita, which actually you shouldn't have at the beach because I

just learned that lime juice can actually cause you to get

chemical burns on your skin if you're exposed to

sunlight at the same time, which is absolutely crazy to me

because it feels like lime is a major ingredient of day

drinking things. They should really warn people about this early on,

and I say that as a non drinker, I want everyone to be able to

drink whatever frosty, vegan, vacationy beverage they

want while they're on the beach and in the sun, but do so with

safety for your skin in mind. Also, wear

sunscreen. I feel like this is the most ADHD episode we've had in

a while.

But anyway, while you're on the beach enjoying that beverage, it's

so much easier to just log into social media and

respond to comments than it is to log into social media.

Think, oh my God, I have to post something. There's nothing being posted right now.

I have to post something that's interesting, inspiring, gets people to book a

sales call with me, but not right now. In two weeks when I get back

to the office, it's way more fun to just go in and see the

responses that people had to whatever you wrote three weeks

ago that got posted this morning without you having to do

anything and just comment on their comments. Maybe dm

them live on the wild side. It's your vacation or not. You

don't have to do that also. But the point being, you need to

plan for how you're gonna stay visible while you're

on vacation without requiring yourself

to do work while you're on vacation. The last bit

when you're planning a vacation may sound like a no

brainer. And you may hear this and be like, oh, God, I would never do

that. That's crazy. Who would do that? I hear you and

also, I know better and I try to do this sh t all the time.

So I warn you, like, your brain is

used to trying to squeeze in work and do

things with a very limited amount of time, right? Because that's how you've

done everything. You've written papers the night before, you've crammed for tests

like the morning of, and you've pulled it off because you

learn really fast and you thrive under pressure.

Any launches you have coming up, anything

that's being put out into the world is brand new. Any

big promotions you're running, look at the schedule and

make sure that none of those actions are happening

during your vacation time. And I know you're going to be like, well, who would

do that? That's crazy. No, you don't do that stuff around vacation. And

yet, as ADHD business owners, we're often

looking at, you know, the best way to do something and we're like, yes,

absolutely, that is the best way to do it. But I

can probably do it in a different way. I can probably hack that.

I can probably set this up to run in the background while I'm on vacation.

No, because things go

wrong. That's not an if, that is a

guarantee. Things go wrong. Email sequences

will get f ed up. Your tagging sequences. If you have an email system, you

know what a tagging system is. If you don't then don't worry about it. Sign

ups go wrong. People have questions. They may have ordered the wrong thing.

Don't plan promotions or launches during your

vacation time. Either do it sooner or do it after.

Don't think because you're smart and brilliant and can usually

pull off that it'll be different for you. Because while, yes,

you are smart and brilliant and can usually pull things off,

don't try to pull this off. It will ruin your vacation.

And if you have a team supporting you who's dealing with things

going wrong for you, they will feel so

terrible reaching out to you, asking you questions while you're sitting at the

beach or in a museum. And finally, what

do you do when you come back from vacation? This is one of the most

important parts because, oh, what am I going to say next? Well, you'll have to

keep listening to find out. But first, squirrel, squirrel, squirrel,

squirrel.

And finally, what do you do when you come back

from vacation? This is one of the most important parts because you know that

feeling when you get back from traveling and you feel like you need a vacation

from your vacation, and then add to that

exhaustion, maybe some jet lag and

maybe like, crap ton of laundry that's going to sit on your floor

in your suitcase until you get the energy to do it, I don't know,

next couple weeks. And then the guilt and embarrassment that it's still there

that you're gonna experience for that first week back, it'll be like a month down

the road and you'll have completely forgotten about the guilt as you step over your

suitcases that still have, like, dirty laundry hanging out of them. But that first

week, it's kind of hard because you have this expectation that you

should be doing it. Add to all that going

back into your business and panicking that you don't remember

what you should be doing. It is the literal worst.

So here's what you're going to do to set yourself up for

success so you do not have a gazillion panic attacks that first week

back. First, you're going to create a minimum of three

posts that you're going to share on Monday,

Wednesday and Friday that week, three of those other days. I don't

care if it's Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday, or Tuesday,

Thursday, Saturday, whatever cadence you want to do. You're just gonna

share pictures from your vacation. You're not gonna worry about it being

clever. You're just gonna share pictures of your vacation. You're gonna make

some people jealous. But what it does when you share

that kind of stuff about your life. It makes people feel like they know you.

It makes them feel like they work with you. You know, it's the kind of

stuff that if you were at an actual networking event and you're meeting

people and, you know, talking to them, what do you do? What do you do?

Blah, like, wow, like you have a tan. Like, did you go

somewhere? Like you would pull out your phone and you would show pictures of

your most recent vacation? You and I both know you would.

Anyone that you go to coffee with or have lunch with or bump into. Oh

my God. Let me show you the beach. It was so beautiful. It's something

that makes people feel like they know you, like they're close to you. Share

it on social media. It builds trust and it makes your

content creation for the week so f easy so you

don't have to overthink it. And as you and I both know, the

most important thing that you can do in your business, day in and day out,

is do visibility. People can't hire you if they don't know that you

exist and your clients are already your clients. They're going to stay

with you. But once they're done, you need to be able to backfill them.

Don't create a vacuum where you have no one to backfill them.

With your first day back in your business, you're

going to a reach out to all of your clients and check in with them.

Make sure nothing blew up. Make sure that they have their

next meeting scheduled with you or whatever it is that you do with

them. Touch base. If you have a team that was supporting them, touch base with

the team and see what the progress is and just do a touch base,

talk to so and so. And they said that they got to x point

in this project they're working on for you. Sounds like some great

progress was made. Here's what we're looking to do this week as I

get back into it. This will make your clients feel so taken care

of. And that first day back, after you do that, you're

then going to go onto social media and you're going to engage. You're

going to comment on all the comments that were made on your post while you

were away. You're going to go and comment on other people's stuff depending on the

platform you're on. You don't want to do this for LinkedIn. If you're on TikTok,

go and share relevant videos. What you

want to do when you come back is you want to wake up the algorithm

right because if you were on vacation and away from your business,

chances are you weren't as active as you normally were. So

the algorithm has started reading. Oh, they're not that

active. We shouldn't show their stuff to many people. The first thing you want to

do is wake that up, and that's it. Your first day back.

Make that enough. Don't schedule more. Block

your calendar for sales calls. You're not going to be good on a sales call

the first day back from vacation. I know you think you're going to be arrested,

but you and I both know that's bullshit. To get from vacation

to your home, you had to have a travel day.

I don't care what level of first class status you

had on what transportation mode you took to and fro your

vacation. Traveling is exhausting, especially

for people with ADHD, because it's a

lot, because it's a lot of decision making,

it's a lot of stimulation that we don't normally have to deal with,

a lot of sounds, a lot of, like, different visual

stimuli. Your brain needs just

a beat to reset and recalibrate back to being

home, and that's okay. Your first week back from

vacation, plan a light week,

okay. You do not have to come back and give it

110% right away. The goal of starting a business,

the way we talk about on this podcast is to create a

business that can withstand you being human, that doesn't

require you to be a robot, to be 110%

productive every single second of every single day, it's just not

realistic. And when you set the expectation that you should be doing

that, and then you don't meet it because you're exhausted,

and that's not a realistic expectation. The only thing you do is

you start associating the work you're doing with failure. And what

happens when we start associating something with failure? We start avoiding

it, because you've already failed at it, you're not going to get any dopamine from

it. I can't tell you how many clients I've had go on vacation, come

back, they have a session with me like a week after they got back,

and they admit to me as if they'd murdered someone. Like, murdered someone

and their whole family and their dog. Like, with that level of

guilt that they hadn't posted to social media since they got back,

like it was the worst thing in the world and they felt so bad, and

it's like, well, I should just give up. If I haven't posted in the last

week, then it's over. I won't be able to post

again and it's done. I should just close up shop now. And of course I'm

exaggerating, but not by much. Perceived

failure is really painful for people with ADHD,

so stop setting yourself up for it. If you build a business

while being a human and being realistic about

the things you can get done every single day, you're going to build a business

that's successful by you being

a regular human that doesn't require you to give

100 being and 10% all the time. And that's the goal.

And that, my friends, is how you successfully go on vacation as a business owner.

Squirrel, squirrel. If you're ready to stop being a weenie and actually run a business

that makes money, then go ahead and book a generate income

strategy call with me by going to weenie

cast.com strategy call. On this

call we will talk about your goals, your dreams, and your

frustrations in getting there. And if it's a fit for both of

us, then we can talk about different ways to work together.

Now, time to get on with your homework.

Squirrel. Squirrel. Squirrel. Squirrel.