How to Keep up Momentum While Unplugging

Emily Thompson 0:00
Hello and welcome to being boss. This minisode is all about how to keep up momentum while you're unplugging.

Kathleen Shannon 0:13
Today we've got a good question from Caroline about going on a honeymoon and not wanting to give up momentum on her growing business. I'll let you listen from her.

Caroline Donahue 0:23
Hi, Emily and Kathleen. It's Caroline Donahue and I am calling in with a question. My business is, I'm a life coach. And my business is called the book doctor. So I work with people who want to write or build their life around writing. And they've often hit a major transition in their life, and are really looking to take it seriously and not put that writing Dream on hold any longer. My question is, I'm about to get married in October, and go on my honeymoon for three weeks. And I'm really trying to figure out how to keep the momentum going. Because it's really been building a lot. My podcast has quadrupled its listenership, which is so exciting, but I don't want to give up the momentum while I'm away. And at the same time, I really want to enjoy this time with my then husband, once we get married. So I would love to know any suggestions or ideas that you have to keep your business going, and yet fully allow yourself to unplug? Because I know I'm so excited about my business right now. I feel like I'm going to be like Miranda on Sex in the City and sneaking on two devices. And trying to keep going with my business while and gone. And I don't want to do that. I want to feel safe and comfortable that things are progressing while I'm away. So any insight you have about that would be fantastic. I know Emily, you probably worked with this when you were on your big 40 day road trip. And I know Kathleen, you've been away on trips as well and unplugged. So I leave it up to you. Thank you so much. Bye, bye.

Emily Thompson 1:58
This is such a great question. Because I think that all of the creative online entrepreneurs need to unplug more often. So let's talk about this. Because one of the great things about the internet is that you can schedule so many things. So whether it's scheduling out your podcast to be released later and all of your newsletters announcing it and whatever else it is that you do with your newsletter list or all of your social media that promotes it all. If you spend a little time pre unplugging to plan out the content that you'll be that you would be sharing. If you were here. And just go ahead and write it out and schedule it out, then your business doesn't have to stop at all, especially if you're in the business of content sharing. You just have to schedule it out. I know you've done this a whole lot, Kathleen, especially whenever you did you were blogging a whole lot. You would go on these grand adventures, and you'd still have blog posts coming out every single day like a boss.

Kathleen Shannon 2:59
Yeah, no one would ever know. And we do the same thing with the podcasts. So we just schedule accordingly. We double up on our content. And what I want to tell you Caroline is Enjoy your honeymoon three weeks in the grand scheme of things is nothing at all, you really don't have to worry about it. Just set up that autoresponder tell people how they can engage with you in the meantime, and that you will get back with them as soon as possible. Another thing that you might experiment with is hiring a virtual assistant just to manage your emails for those three weeks, so that they can sort through the emails, they can mark your newsletters as read or sort them into a folder for you. And really get back to those potential clients as soon as possible by saying, hey, Caroline is on her honeymoon. She is so excited that you emailed and we'll get back to you ASAP. In the meantime, here's how you can engage. Again, that could be an autoresponder. But

Emily Thompson 3:54
even then, even then, I feel like I mean, the online world runs so quickly. And people are so batshit crazy about needing to respond to every email immediately or respond to every tweet immediately. And that is not necessary. Like I have no problem leaving emails in my inbox for a couple of days. If it's, if I'm going on vacation, especially I let everyone who needs to know know that I'm going to be unavailable. And unless there's something like a launch happening, which even then I don't really ever schedule, vacations around important things like that. But if there is something crazy important going on, I'll make sure there's backup but on the regular you don't need backup. I think it's okay for you to leave things unattended for a moment, you'll be back and people can wait a little bit of time because you're right three weeks and the grand scheme of things is nothing. And unless you like deliver babies, then I don't think emergencies online are really going to be happening. So it's okay to just sketch Fill everything up and let it go.

Kathleen Shannon 5:03
Speaking of delivering babies, one of the longest breaks I took that I unplugged on was maternity leave. And so any vacation or maternity leave, I think it's just great to let people know that you're going to be on a vacation. And one of my favorite things to do is to create digital products that help pay for that time off. So I created a DIY coaching series, which is now only available through being boss. I think it's at being boss club slash bundle. But that email subscription, essentially paid for my maternity leave. And so I think that giving people a great way to engage with you, whether it's with free content, or directing them to your favorite podcast episodes, like make that autoresponder really fun and really valuable, so that they're not going to forget about you. And like you said, Emily, just schedule out everything, schedule out some email drips, schedule out some blog posts, schedule out some podcast episodes, and it can kind of all take care of itself. But like, what I wouldn't really say is that sometimes it takes me three weeks just to get back to when even whenever I am working. That's not entirely true. I don't take that long. But think about like how many clients you've worked with that have taken three weeks to get you content for a website, right? There

Emily Thompson 6:22
have been three of those

Kathleen Shannon 6:25
three weeks, it's just not that long of a time.

Emily Thompson 6:27
Right? Right. And worst case scenario is you are gearing up for your your wedding. And the best you can do is get out the content that's due then in there. And you don't get anything planned out in which case so why Enjoy your honeymoon.

Kathleen Shannon 6:46
One thing I do want to mention though, is having a reintegration plan. So whenever you come back from unplugging this recently happened to me, and I think you remember Emily, I jumped back into work. And I almost felt like I had come to the surface too fast. And I almost see myself into having a panic attack because I had really forced myself not only to unplug physically from work and not bring my laptop. But anytime I started thinking about work, including fun stuff like writing a book for being boss, or planning out our next product or thinking about developing an app for being boss like fun stuff that's typically fun to think about. I didn't even let myself think about that stuff. So I really truly did unplug and I jumped back in and the water was called reintegration plan. So I would map out a plan for whenever you get back from your honeymoon, some things that you can kind of tackle one at a time and know that it takes a lot longer to get through those emails than you can anticipate. So give yourself a solid week to just allow yourself to, to get back into the swing of things before you hit work really hard.

Emily Thompson 7:54
Yeah, and one of my very best recommendations to would be, do not jump back into work immediately when you get back like give yourself some time to unpack to go to the grocery store to take a nap. Like I always give myself at least one day, if at all possible. Where I'm not working where the most work I may do is just filter my email go delete all the junk. But otherwise, giving yourself a day to resettle your life before you jump back into work can be sincerely beneficial because three weeks is going to equal a lot of email pile up. So give yourself a moment to breathe.

Kathleen Shannon 8:34
Thank you so much Caroline for your question. We love having you in the beam boss clubhouse and for those of you who are interested in joining the clubhouse and submitting questions, go to beingboss.club/clubhouse.

Emily Thompson 8:48
Hey, their bosses. Kathleen and I are honored to be speaking at venture pop a conference for creative entrepreneurs in New Orleans in September. That's right, Kathleen and I are hitting the Crescent City my very favorite city again and we're hoping you'll join us. Venture pop is a two day conference held September 17 and 18th. Designed to gather creatives with the guts and grit to grow their business sounds like a place for bosses to me. And to make it even more boss join Kathleen and I for a beam boss meetup on Saturday evening of the event. purchasing a ticket for venture pop is more than an excuse for a lively weekend in New Orleans. It's an investment in you and your business. Join us for two days of influential speakers and activities built to invigorate and educate find your community grow your business. To learn more visit being boss club slash venture pub. We hope to see you there. Did you like this minisode Be sure to check us out on our website at being boss dot club. There you can find more from being boss including our full episodes minisodes and blog posts. And while you're there, be sure to sign up for our mailing list so that you can get access to Behind the scenes and exclusive content from Kathleen and myself, to help you be more boss in your work and life, do the work. Be boss.