Clearly as a business owner we all feel jaded on times.

Simply keeping the door open is a task in itself when you’re the person responsible for everything.

Summer is in full swing and this is the time of year when everyone is looking forward to or planning a holiday with the family. I remember when this time of year filled me with dread for many reasons.

First there was the expenditure. . .  Taking the family away can be pricey, particularly when you get stung like we do here in the UK, as soon as the schools shut up shop. When I was first starting out this was a struggle.

Thankfully we always managed to squeeze a holiday into the budget. So, my attention was always geared into the mad frenzy when you build up to a stretch away from the business. And it doesn’t seem to lessen if its 3 days or 3 weeks.

The sheer amount of preparation and planning to take a break was mammoth in itself. Telling customers, out of office alerts, clearing the inbox and tidying the in tray on the desk are all pre-requisites of a break from the business.

Then, when I was away, I used to get lots of calls and emails, and I would find my long-suffering wife looking at me with a frown and a disapproving stare.

I remember one year her saying, “You may as well have stayed at home…. You’re here, but you’re miles away”.  Sad really, as I can never get that time back with the children and my wife.

Thankfully I made it my mission to build my subsequent businesses to work independently of me.

One of my passions is travel and because of that it led to one of my customers christening me, “Air Miles Matthews”, a tag that has stuck with me in the office.

One thing I do know is this. . . We all need to take time away to refresh and re-invigorate.

If we don’t do that, we just end up, washed up and burned out.

I remember going to see a private client of mine that had worked solidly for close to 9 months. He had a lot of projects on and they had just run into one another, and he looked awful. He was painfully gaunt and pale and just looked exhausted.

Thankfully I managed to persuade him to book a week in Italy with his then young family and when I visited him two weeks after he returned, I couldn’t believe the change in him. He was like a new man. He was tanned, looked well and was full of energy.

He said, “I didn’t realise how much I needed that break”, within days of hitting the de-stress button, he started to feel himself again.

All our staff, and our families come to that, need us to be on top form. We cannot afford to dip or drop the ball. That’s why you need to take that break and relax.

If you feel guilty or think you haven’t got the time, then take a long hard look at the quality of work you are pumping out on a daily basis.

We all need to take time away to refresh and re-invigorate

My client said he was in the office, and on site every day, but really, he was miles away. He was making silly little mistakes and eating profit from the work he was doing because of a lack of focus and drive. Things that would normally take him 2 days were dragging onto a week or even two. . . He was physically, and perhaps more importantly, mentally exhausted.

Daymond John, the American Entrepreneur who appears on Shark Tank, which is the USA’s equivalent of Dragons Den, once tweeted that 50% of the working population of the US are burned out.

That is quite a staggering statistic, and half of us don’t know if we are coming or going!!

As business owners we seem to have a perverse, sadistic kind of logic that we tell ourselves that we have to be there, be present or the business will fall apart.

Quite frankly, if that were to be true for the week you take off, then you have more issues in your business than taking a summer holiday.

I was talking to a business owner the other week who felt that his clients would go somewhere else if he wasn’t there.  I simply said, that if they valued him and his services, they’d wait until he got back.

I’ve recently re-read and listened to Daniel Priestley’s Key Person of Influence and he talks about this feeling in the book.  He said influential people are valued more when they take a break, because their clients realise what they do for them when they’re around.

So, if you are planning that holiday again this year and dreading it – get a grip. View it as an opportunity to recharge and recuperate. Allow this little break to refill the energy tank that you will be draining until Christmas.

Use the opportunity to have space to think about some of the strategies and ideas that have been niggling at you all year. How can you make some of these things happen? Get them straight in your head and lying in the sun or cycling through the Rockies is a great time to align your ducks.

Catch up on some reading and well needed self-development. Read those books you’ve been recommended or even read your favourite book. When I go away, the only book that I pack every year is the E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber. It comes with me everywhere. It’s not that I’m obsessive about it, but mainly down to the fact that as a Kindle owner it’s one of the only paperbacks that I own anymore. Poolside, it’s nice to have a book and that is why I take it. Not only that, it’s a bloody great book for all business owners, hands down.

Allow yourself a break and try to stay away from email and the phone for at least a few days. What works for me is this. . . We normally fly on a Saturday, so I shove the phone on flight mode and don’t turn it on until Tuesday evening. I go a bit cold turkey by then, so that’s long enough.

Quite honestly, I have a team now that pride themselves in dealing with the stuff and not bothering me. (I’ll only mess it up anyway) I then answer a few emails, I always tell everyone that’s made contact that I’m away, and I won’t be back for a while and they should contact so and so in the office if its life threatening or business critical.

All of my customers apologise and it either waits, or its passed to the office. That leaves me to check emails every evening at the bar before dinner and keeps me in the good books with Mrs M and the kids.

So, take my advice. Take that break, you’ve worked hard for it and you and your family deserve it. View it as a positive as opposed to a negative and get something great out of it. Even if it is just a sun tan and a few extra pounds around the waistline. You’ll feel better for it and the business will benefit from it too. Enjoy. . .