If you are juggling school holidays, sick kids, and a business that never seems to switch off, you are so not alone. In this episode, I recorded mid-school-holidays (with one grumpy child off with Dad!), I'm unpacking what it really takes to get rest when you're a practice owner.

After 19 years in business, I still sometimes get this wrong. I block out the holidays in my calendar, but I forget to actually plan for them. And what ends up happening is a half-switched-off, half-working juggle that leaves no one feeling like they've had a proper break.

So today is all about taking a REAL holiday. Not the kind with tinsel and tension or school holidays that feel like a logistical headache. I'm talking about the kind of break where your soul says yes, your laptop stays closed, and no one asks you for toast every three minutes.

In this episode, I share:

• Why practice owners struggle to switch off on holidays
• The frantic pre-holiday energy (you know the one... 117 tasks before Friday!)
• What actually makes a break feel like a real break
• The importance of energetic boundaries before and after a holiday
• How to prep your team (or yourself if you're solo!)
• Tips like the fake start date, the holiday FAQ, and the single point of contact
• Why "no new projects" is your new holiday mantra
• What to do when you come back so you don’t feel punished for taking a break
• And why it’s okay (essential, even) to book that pastry-and-a-book moment

Real holidays don’t just happen. They take intention and planning, not just of the calendar logistics, but of our mindset. I want you to feel like you got a break, not just your business. That means buffers before and after, boundaries, and giving yourself full permission to be a human who needs rest.

Thanks for being here. If this episode resonated, feel free to share it with a friend who needs the reminder too. You can learn more about how to connect with me and join our beautiful community over at theconnectionco.com.au.

Want my freebie download??

I’ve made you a little freebie: a "Real Holiday Prep Checklist" just for practice owners. Send us an email and we'll get it over to you hello@theconnectionco.com.au

Foreign.

Welcome to My Good Allied Health Practice, the podcast for allied health business owners who are looking to bring smart and heart together on their journey.

On the podcast, I'll cover things about being vulnerable and brave, pivoting failures, good wins, things that work, things that don't work.

And I'll talk with other practice owners who are doing good in their journeys.

I'm Amy Geach, practice owner and mum, and I'm here because I believe in you.

So let's go forward on this journey together.

Hello and welcome back to my podcast.

My name is Amy Geach, and today I really want to talk about holidays.

If you are navigating school holidays at the moment, running a business, and you're still trying to keep the wheels turning at home, you are absolutely not alone.

I am in the midst of that at the moment myself, have two kids still at home, both of them unwell with bugs and one being particularly grumpy about that.

And I'm still trying to run the business and do bits and pieces of work here and there when I can.

And I know that at the end of these school holidays, I'm not going to feel like I had a holiday.

The kids probably aren't going to feel like they had a holiday.

And I get to this point and I think, what a wasted opportunity.

What a wasted opportunity.

Because the thing I love about holidays that are in the diary and they're.

And they're national holidays, right?

Everybody knows about these holidays.

And because everybody knows about these holidays, it's almost like there's this unspoken it's okay that you're not at work concept.

And it's one of the reasons I love the time between Christmas and New Year because nobody expects anything of me from work.

And I think the school holidays can definitely kind of lean into that as well.

Easter time, public holidays, et cetera, et cetera.

But here I am, I've been in business 19 years and I still don't get the school holidays right.

I'm the person who thinks, oh my goodness, school holidays coming up.

When are they?

Oh, my goodness, do I have them in my diary?

And I normally do have them in my diary because I do a planning session at the start of each year and I put all the school holidays in and I put all the public holidays in, but I forget to plan what those school holidays are going to look like.

And as you can see now, I'm halfway through, I'm recording a podcast, my husband's taking the kids out to do something because it's a public holiday and he's off work and I feel like I'm, you know, that in between stage, I'm working, but I'm not working.

The team need me.

The team don't all know what I've got going on with the kids at home.

So it feels just a bit messy and bleh.

And I'm.

I'm not regretful, but I'm just think, come on, Amy, you could have planned this all a little bit better.

Anyway, that's where I am at at the moment.

And so I wanted to talk about holidays, and I don't just want to talk about the holidays that happen that are not planned by us.

For example, the school holidays or Christmas time when you might have extended family coming over or you're traveling to see family.

So I'm not just talking about the holidays with the tinsel and the tension and the ham and all of that.

I want to talk to you today about having real time off.

And when.

I mean real time off, I mean stepping away from your practice, closing the laptop, which is really hard, and then maybe even getting within 10 meters of a body of water or a buffet breakfast that doesn't involve someone asking you for toast every three minutes.

Because the word holiday in the calendar doesn't mean it's restful, Right?

And often we have to plan the holiday to make sure we're actually having a proper holiday, a real holiday.

I'm going to call it a real holiday.

Because if you're still trying to juggle clients or communication or social media, support your team as well as be around your kids or have time with your partner or whatever that might look like, it doesn't always feel like a real restful holiday.

So that's why today's episode is all about how to take an actual break from your business.

The kind that doesn't require a nervous breakdown just to justify it and how to prep it in a way that supports your return from the holiday as well and not punishes you for going.

Because taking a real holiday, I'm just going to put my hand up and say it's not easy.

As a business owner, it is not easy.

There's a lot of stuff wrapped around it.

There's a lot of pressure wrapped around it, there's a lot of guilt wrapped around it.

And it takes a lot of prep for your mindset to go on a real holiday and enjoy your real holiday the way it should be enjoyed.

So let's get a little bit real here.

For most of us running a practice, these holidays, these real ones, they're the only moments we actually stop being the business.

And those moments in the year are really important because you know that feeling right when your name isn't being called throughout the day, when the phone doesn't buzz with a quick question, when the calendar is in a game of Tetris.

We know all of the things that go on in a busy day to day life and it's important that we have moments through the year where we don't have that, where we can have a break.

But most of us are really terrible about actually getting to the real holidays.

There's kind of this weird pre holiday energy.

I don't know if you've felt it before, but I have it all the time and it just kicks in and it's frantic.

It, it's like our brain decides, yes, I'm going on a peaceful, soul filling break.

But first I must complete 117 things, reorganize my life and ensure the clinic will run like a switch.

Swiss.

The Swiss watch, that's really hard to say actually.

Why did I type that into my notes?

Run like a Swiss watch while I am gone.

I don't know if you've had that kick in right where you literally, it's a week or two out from going on your real holiday and you've got 117 things that you think you're going to do before you get onto that holiday.

I want to just kind of name that a little bit because I see allied health people do this and I see it in them because I've done it myself so I can recognize the behaviour.

We try to clear every inbox and list before we leave, but I don't know what we think that will achieve on the real holiday, whether we think that will give us more peace, but it doesn't.

Because when we're trying to clear an inbox or clear a list, what happens?

Other things come up in that process.

We might be going, I'm going to clear out my inbox and you'll get into that and you'll realize I didn't reply to that email.

Oh, that's due.

Oh, whatever, whatever, whatever.

More things come up and your list becomes ever growing.

Another thing we do before we go on holidays is we squish four weeks of work into four days.

Frequently I do it all the time.

Or you say you're going to switch off and you're really excited about it.

But before you leave, you tell your team, text me if anything comes up.

Can you let me know how you go with that client or whatever we don't put that boundary there.

And we give people permission to contact us, we do that to ourselves.

So I often find by the time people actually sit on that holiday chair, whether it's a beach or a park bench or wherever it might be, you're already emotionally jet lagged, even when you've never left the state half of the time, okay, so once you get on the holiday, right, with your emotional jet lag, this also then happens.

And I think this type of energy and mindset is something we should be working on well before we're on the holiday, because otherwise we're wasting time on the real holiday still with our brain over in workland.

And this is when we get this mental chaos on the real holiday, right?

Day one, you're often thinking of all the things you forgot to do, right?

Your brain is still there.

Day two, you're often worrying about what you did do and if that was good enough and is your practice good enough, you're still thinking about it all.

Day three, start pondering how you might overhaul your business when you get back.

Day four, you're finally swimming and you're thinking, what business?

I don't know her.

Here's the thing, right?

We're not just bad at taking real holidays, we're bad at preparing for them and energetically.

So I don't want allied health practice owners going into their holiday with this emotional jet lag.

So arriving on day one already drained from all the things you've tried to fit in before you got there, but then taking three days to switch off from the business before you can finally relax.

Because three days is a chunk, right?

If you've only got a week's holiday or two weeks holiday, that's a big portion of it where you're not actually properly there, you're not mentally there, your brain is somewhere else.

So I want to talk about just some tips.

Take from it what might be helpful for you, because I want to give you permission to one, take real holidays and two, to actually be able to switch off on those real holidays.

So I've got a couple of tips and they might suit you or you might think that's not for me, but have a listen and with an open mind and just see what lands.

So the first one is trying not to cram.

I want you to really think about setting boundaries a full week out from the real holiday.

So if your flight's on a Friday, your boundary starts the Friday before and that means not putting last minute client bookings just, just because they're a lovely person or no new projects or quick bits of marketing that suddenly feel really urgent at 10pm none of that.

And write down the rules for yourself in that week where you're not going to cram.

Okay, so a whole week before you leave to go on your real holiday, what are the rules going to be?

I've just mentioned two.

No last minute bookings, no new projects or quick bits.

If you've got a team, you need to communicate about that holiday buffer, so they know how to help you not go on that holiday with that emotional jet lag.

So you let them know you're mentally starting to wind down and hand things over early before you're going.

You don't need to send the email the night before you fly out or you or you drive off for your real holiday.

And that's the handover happening right there.

Because I can tell you right now, that type of last minute handover will stick in your brain for a couple of days on your real holiday.

But if you can hand that over in this week before.

Amazing.

Imagine if you handed over three days before you actually left.

It means your team have got time to ask you any questions.

It allows time for you to think, oh, actually, here's this other thing I forgot that I thought about after I sent you the handover or whatever it might be.

If you're solo, that's still okay.

I still want you to have this week of buffer and I want you to let your regular clients know in advance because they'll understand that you can't just keep packing things into the diary before you go and leave.

Okay.

One of the things that you can do if you are not used to doing this and you think this might sound really hard, is add a fake holiday start date into your calendar two days earlier than your real holiday start date.

And then that will trick you into your winding back before the chaos starts to peak.

Okay, so that could be another tip for you as well.

When it comes to handing over, it's really important that we actually are not hovering when we are handing over.

So if you've trained your team, trust them to rise in these moments.

And they can and they will if you get out of the way.

I have found that with my team, every time if I'm hovering around, if I'm still emailing them while I'm on holiday, it doesn't work well because they don't step up and rise up.

They're still waiting on info from me or they've started to take the lead and then, and here I am still Emailing from my holiday instructions.

So I would definitely recommend leave clear instructions, a few what if guides and your emergency contact and when you are to be contacted and resist the urge to then micromanage once you've completed that handover.

Right, because when you start hovering over your team and when you go away, it steals both your rest, which you need, and their growth as well.

So it's not actually helping anybody.

And took me years to get get through that.

I literally used to get go on family holidays when my kids were little and and on about day four, my husband would normally say, welcome, welcome to the family holiday.

And I would feel really guilty because I wasn't able to.

Like I was there and we were doing stuff.

Wasn't like I was sitting in the hotel room on my laptop, but he could tell my mind was trying to be in two places and day four was when he fully had me there.

So yeah, it definitely, it's real.

If you are solo, right, and you don't feel like you've then got that team to hand over to set up your systems, schedule an autoresponder, create the voicemail message and prep any invoices or notes in advance that you might need to do.

Let all your key contacts know you'll be offline and try and think about what are the things that people might need while I'm away.

Try and preempt those and get something in place.

And when we shut down in our practice over Christmas into New Year, we normally close for a week and we've tried to really think about what would clients and referrers need during that time when we're not available.

And so we developed a frequently asked question for the holiday period in that timeframe that goes out to all of our clients and it goes out to our referrers as well.

And so for the client one, it'll say things like, because we're a hand therapy practice, it will say things like, my Velcro's fallen off my splint, what should I do?

And so we can direct people to go to a shop like Spotlight, who sells sticky Velcro or Bunnings, and just temporarily stick some on or try and super glue some on that kind of thing.

So we've tried to preempt what people might need or people might be worried about their wound or something like that.

So we're trying to give them other options when we're not available.

And that can be something that you can do for your clients when you're going on your real holiday as well.

And we need to teach the people around us what urgent is, including our clients.

Okay, so we might have a list of things that are urgent or a list of things that could wait until you are back to help people.

Okay.

The other tip I want you to do this one's easy to say, but I definitely think it's harder to do is I want you to book something that makes your soul say yes.

Yes.

Forget the shoulds, right?

This is your moment.

Every practice owner needs to have a real holiday.

You deserve a break that fills your cup, not one that just ticks the box for family time or what the kids want or school holidays or whatever it might be.

So if you want to take a walk alone for three days and eat trail mix in silence.

Glorious.

If you want to lie by the pool with zero conversation and a bad novel, love it.

If you want to go to a creative retreat or spend three days going to a day spa, or you just want to stay home and spend four days zhuzhing up your garden, love it.

Go for it.

I've got kids, so I get it right.

Kids often are around with my holidays and I love school holidays.

I love when my kids are home with me, but I understand the some parents don't love that so much, but I've always loved it.

So if you've got kids or family or better halves or whatever it might be, add one thing into the itinerary that might be just for you as well.

When you're on your family holiday or with your kids, it could be as simple as a morning sleep in, a solo coffee, a guilt free hour at a bookshop.

It doesn't have to be extravagant, it just has to feel like you.

Because those small moments where we're choosing something to nourish our soul are amazing.

And one of the things I learned in business and I actually can't remember where I learned it from, but I love it.

I love this concept so much.

And when we want to make the days feel longer, they feel longer.

When we put something unplanned or something that was unpredictable in there, when everything is routine and planned out, the days feel like they got a little bit quicker.

And so I love a lot of the time if I'm on a real holiday, to not have too many plans for how each day is going to run because I love that feeling of the days just going on and on and on.

So that's a little tip as well.

And I honestly can't remember where I heard that or where I learned that from, but I've known it for quite a while and I just love that concept.

Okay, while you are away, we've talked about your team.

I want you to trust that they won't implode, right?

You have built something really solid and you have trained them, you've handed over and now you need to let them do their job.

Right?

And if you're solo, trust your systems, trust your autoresponders that you've set up, trust that the world can turn without you for a few days.

And it can.

And think of it like this.

Your business doesn't fall apart when you rest, but it falls apart when you never rest.

Going on a real holiday is really, really important.

One of the things I like to do when I go on holiday is have a single point of contact and not an open door.

And this is more for those of you that do have a team.

So I normally say to one person in my team, you're the go to, you're the person that can reach me, and here's how you can reach me.

And if anybody needs anything, they're to go through you.

So anything that comes through is from that one person.

For me, I choose someone who's been in my business for a very long time and she's very loyal, we get on very well.

She knows what to bother me with and what to not bother me with when I'm on my real holidays.

So I would recommend, if you've got a team, to pick that one single point of contact and same too, if you need to get them a message.

Right.

Maybe you're going to be delayed getting back from your holiday or maybe something's come up that you need to alert them about that you were the only one that kind of knew about.

So I find that's a really nice way to limit some of the contact that you might be getting so it doesn't feel like it's just an open door.

Door.

If you're solo, you could ask a trusted colleague, another practice owner or a virtual assistant to keep an eye on things if you need to while you're away.

And sometimes it depends how long you're going to be away for.

If it's for, you know, a week or two, that's okay.

But if you want to go away for six weeks, then there's nothing wrong with asking another practice owner to help you out if you've got someone that you work, you know, closely with or that you're good friends with.

Okay, my next tip is to get off the apps while you are on holiday.

Email Slack, Voxer, Trello, Instagram, all of it.

Just get off, log out, take them off your phone if you need to.

If you just think they're going to be there to kind of suck you in.

Because the whole I'm just going to check one thing is a very, very slippery slope to 14 tabs.

Open half written policy document at 11pm in your hotel room.

I would move all your work apps into a folder and label it not on Holiday and don't open that folder.

We have an app in our business where we all communicate with one another and I'm set up to get a lot of notifications during normal working weeks, which is great, that's what I want.

But not on my real holiday.

So I go into the app and I know how I can turn off the notifications while I'm on holiday and then switch them back on when I'm back.

So find out with the apps and the programs that you are using where you might be able to change the notifications when you're on holiday.

Okay.

When you come back from holiday, I get it, the calendar looks tight, you feel guilty for the time off and you just jump into this full day of humans.

That's not kind of matching your post holiday vibe a lot of the time.

So, and we've normally made this happen before we've gone on the holiday in our frantic time beforehand.

We will start as the minute we walk back in the clinic, we'll, we'll start booking people back in from then.

And so we get back and we are full of clients and we're not giving ourselves enough buffer time in that week back to look at things, catch up on things, deal with things that might have happened while we were away.

And so because we've already booked out the diary with other stuff, so this is a, this is an issue when we get back.

So I want you to put a buffer week in when you get back from holidays too.

And I know this sounds like, yeah, Amy, in a great ideal world, let's all do that, but you know, we've got to get all the patients in.

Like, I understand, I completely understand.

Even if it's an hour each day as a buffer, catch up is better than nothing.

You don't want to come back from your holiday and then just feel the next two to three weeks are absolutely frantic because you know what happens in those moments is you just start wishing you didn't go on the holiday because now it just feels worse and we don't want that.

We definitely don't want that.

So the buffer week before you go on holiday, and the buffer week when you come back from your real holiday is really important.

So start slow when you come back, if you can.

I really want to encourage you to try this.

Block out some more admin time, block out a bit more buffer time to deal with some things that might have come up and if they haven't come up and you want to put a client in there, go for it, Go for it.

So if you've got a team, resist the urge to go and look at everything immediately.

Ease into what might be actually needed, and spend some time reconnecting with your team and checking on how they are, rather than just trying to get into everything really quickly because you don't want to go into this to do list, rampage and overwhelm your team that week that you're back as well, because they've had this nice break as well from you.

And when you come back, just spend some time reconnecting, pick a couple of things that you're going to work on and not try and do everything in that week when you're back.

If you're solo, the inbox can definitely wait for a few days.

Respond with your energy, not panic energy.

And then my last tip for you, actually, it's my second last tip.

My second last tip is to write down why your real holiday felt good.

Write down what worked and capture that magic.

Ask yourself, what helped me actually switch off?

Because you want to use that next time.

What felt restorative, what felt like me?

Again, write that down because you want to do more of that.

And what do I want to do again next time?

And what do I not want to do again?

What didn't work?

And just have some reflection on that and stick that list on your desk or your wall or your fridge or wherever, and that's your recipe for your real holiday.

And I think that's really important.

So next time you start saying, I don't need a break, I'm fine, you've got proof that the rest actually makes you better, not behind.

Okay, my last tip is kind of a challenge, actually.

I want you to open your calendar and I want you to book your next real holiday.

I think having them in the diary to look forward to is really important.

It gives you a focus point.

You know, when your break is coming up, work doesn't feel relentless.

Then, okay, so something to look forward to.

So when you put it in your diary now, and even if it's just a couple of days, it doesn't have to be international, it doesn't have to Be expensive.

It doesn't have to be fancy.

Like, I do not love day spas.

That would not be a real holiday for me.

That would feel like a chore.

I would not like it.

But I know other people absolutely love that so much.

So it doesn't have to be what the world thinks is a holiday, it just needs to be what you'd like to do, right?

And it has to feel real to you.

And at the end of the day, it's paid time off for you, not your clients, not for your professional development hours, just you with perhaps a book, a nap, a walk, ridiculous pastry you want to eat, whatever floats your boat.

I want you to really lean into that and I'm saying this with all love for you, you are not a robot, you're a practice owner and you're a human and we need rest and we need real holidays.

And as I said, they don't have to be fancy, expensive, international, just some breaks for you to have.

So a couple of things I want to recap on is holidays are the few times when we truly step out of our business identity and we need them more than we think we do.

The pre holiday chaos is very normal.

But planning that energy before the week before and not just waiting until you get to your holiday and then hoping that you'll just instantly start to feel relaxed, that pre holiday change and buffer week can really ensure that you're there and fully present for your holiday.

And then a proper return plan stops you getting all caught up in that cannonball energy trying to get through it all.

Come back and pace yourself back in and make sure you write down what worked.

If this episode has hit a nerve for you or reminded you it's time to slow down or you are in the school holiday frantics like I am right now because I didn't plan mine out properly this time around.

And I'm feeling like I just should have put a little bit more effort in in the lead up to these school holidays.

But that is okay.

You are not alone and it can be better than perhaps what it has felt like in the past.

So I want you to start getting prepared for your next real holiday.

And to help you, I have created a real holiday prep checklist and it's just for practice owners.

The link is in the show notes.

You can download it for free because I want every Allied Health practice owner to feel like they can have a real holiday where they can switch off from the business and enjoy themselves.

But whatever you do, at the end of the day, please go and book your holiday.

Please book your holiday in.

You have earned it and I'm betting that you're probably feeling right now that you need it.

Thank you for being here.

I am incredibly grateful.

If you have a friend that would find this helpful, please go ahead and share it with them too.

You can learn more about me and how to be part of my Allied Health Connection community over@theconnectionco.com.