Navigating the summer holidays as a working parent can be a juggling act. Taking an extended break or reducing work hours, whether you’re a parent or simply want to work less for a while, can be tricky. In this post, I’ll walk you through how I balance parenting with business during the long summer holidays. Let’s dive in.

Listen to this episode on The Wholehearted Business Show Podcast: Listen on Apple Podcasts / Listen on Spotify

Decide What You Want This Period of Time to Look Like

Firstly, envision what you want this period to look like. What needs to happen, and what do you ideally want in an ideal world? For me, the six-week summer break doesn’t mean shutting off completely from my business, realistically that would be difficult for me, and I’m not even sure I’d want to be completely off for six weeks as I do enjoy my work. For the coming summer holidays I’d like my work / life balance to look like one day a week seeing clients and then some time over the weekend when the children are with their Dad to work on other business tasks and to have some time for myself. Then the rest of the time I’ll be doing things with the kids and hopefully fitting in a couple of holidays too.

What Do You Need in Place to Make That Happen?

Once you have a vision, the next step is actionable planning. For instance, I usually take a two-week break during Christmas and decided this year to shift the summer break to August rather than solstice-timed, ensuring I’m free when it makes more sense for me. I’ve also had to look at childcare options and figure out what I can realistically manage to still get done in my business during that time I have available.

What Work Still Needs to Be Done?

Most people’s businesses will still have work that needs to be done even when you’re reducing your hours so looking at what ongoing ‘ticking over’ tasks still need to be done as well as any project based tasks that can be wrapped up before the period of reduced working is going to help. For me, I’ll be working on seeing my ongoing clients, serving my clients in Wholehearted Business®, creating The Wholehearted Business Show, other than the two week break I have in August and also serving clients inside The Searchable Show Method.

Batch Up Work in Advance

Prepping as much work in advance is a lesson I’ve learned the hard way several times over! To be honest I could have been better prepared than I am going into this coming season, but I am definitely better prepared than I was last year. I have several episodes of The Wholehearted Business Show prepped so I don’t have as much work to do to continue to show up with that part of my marketing.

Communication with Clients

If your extended period of working less includes being less available for your clients it’s important to communicate this with them. While my clients will still be getting their usual service from me, what may change is the time frame I respond to Voxer messages and emails, as well as my availability for calls being a little squeezed. I’ll be emailing all of my clients to let them know what to expect over this time.

Have Boundaries but Be Flexible

It can be really helpful to figure out what your boundaries need to be in order to thrive during this time. If your extended reduced hours time is because of childcare, recognising that the juggle is hard can be helpful! Having some clear boundaries – often with yourself in terms of when you’ll work and respond to messages is useful so you aren’t trying to multi-task and parent at the same time. Obviously it doesn’t always work out like that and so often when children are involved you get a curve ball thrown your way which requires some flexibility too.

Other Things to Consider

Ultimately I remind myself that one of the reasons I wanted to run my own business was to be able to have this kind of flexibility around my kids. I’m really looking forward to this summer when we’ll be going glamping, visiting relatives and doing lots of fun things with friends. Remembering how you might have envisaged this time being for you can be really helpful in embracing the juggle!

Recap and Next Steps

If you are looking to take an extended period of time of working significantly less in your coaching business, you should consider:

• Getting clear on what you’d like this time to look like
• Understanding what you need to have in place to make that happen – such as childcare options
• Figuring out what work is essential to your business not shutting down and creating a plan to do that – which might include batching things up and automating and scheduling tasks
• Communicating any changes with your clients and having boundaries in place, including with yourself
• And finally, if it feels hard, remembering what you had envisaged for yourself and your business

Another last tip would be not to be too hard on yourself if it doesn’t quite go to plan. I’m several summer holidays in at this point and I have to keep refining how I approach things and figuring out new ways not to make the same mistakes!

If you’d like support to create a coaching business where you can take extended breaks then do check out my 1:1 mentoring program here.

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