How to leave your business for a month

Most owners can take a long weekend. A week is harder. A month feels impossible, and for a lot of businesses it is, at least as things stand today.

That's the useful part. Whatever makes a month impossible is the same thing that keeps the business small, and you can find it, write it down and hand it over. It takes about six weeks of preparation. Here's how.

1. Write down everything only you do

For two weeks, keep a list open on your phone. Every time someone asks you something, waits for you, or copies you in so you can decide, add a line. Don't sort it yet and don't judge it. Just write it down.

Most owners are surprised by two things: how long the list gets, and how many of the lines are small. Pricing a quote. Approving a refund. Answering the same supplier question for the third time this month.

2. Give every line one of three fates

Go through the list and mark each item. Some of it can be automated: reminders, invoices, booking confirmations, reports you read every Monday. Some of it can be handed to a person, as long as you write down what good looks like. The rest you can simply stop doing, and that last group is usually bigger than owners expect.

Be honest about the third group. Plenty of what lands on an owner's desk is there because it always has been, not because it needs them.

3. Name one person for each decision

A decision with two owners has none, so it comes back to you. For every recurring decision on your list, write down one name. Then tell the whole team who it is, so the questions go to that person instead of your phone.

Expect them to get some calls slightly wrong at first. A decision made at ninety percent of how you'd make it, without you, is worth more than a perfect one that has to wait for you.

4. Agree what counts as an emergency

Write a short list of the things that justify reaching you while you're away. Keep it to a handful, and make them genuinely serious. Everything else waits for one call a week, at a fixed time, which you keep short.

Without this list, everything feels urgent to the person holding it, and the safe choice for them is to message you.

5. Do a dry run

Before the month, take a long weekend with your phone off. Before you go, tell the team it's a test. When you come back, ask what got stuck, what they guessed at, and what they wish they'd known.

Whatever broke is the next thing to fix. Run it again a few weeks later if you need to.

6. Then go, and stay gone

The first week is the hardest, for you more than the team. Checking in early teaches everyone that the old way still works, and the questions start coming back. Keep to the weekly call, and let the team find out they can manage.

Most owners who do this come back with two things: a business that needs them less, and a clearer idea of what they actually want to spend their time on.

A month away, done properly

Savi Sojourns is a month away for twelve business owners whose business still runs through them, with three mentors who've built and sold companies of their own. In the first week you find the one thing your business waits on, and you go home with a 90-day plan to take it out. See how Sojourn 001 works.

Steve Haynes, Savi · hola@savicoliving.com · @savisojourns · Savi Sojourns · Journal · Alcohol-free · savicoliving.com · Privacy