Do you know how hard it is to take a holiday as a small business owner?

Have you ever heard of the world’s biggest carpet museum?

Nope, neither had I until today. And that is only because I visited it.

“Where am I?” I hear you ask.

None other than the delightful city that is Baku, Azerbaijan 🇦🇿. [incidentally Baku also has the world’s largest small book museum #funfact]

I’m here on holiday for the week visiting my darling sister who works out in the region. In fact this is part 2 of my holiday as we spent a few days in Georgia first and that is also a fascinating place (particularly in current climes).

Anyway, this isn’t a travel blog [and I will bore you with all my holiday stories at a later point] but I still wanted to keep up my weekly blog regime to share my world with all those invested in my business.

That said, it will be a short one this week as I am on holiday.

And that’s the point of this week’s blog; do you know how ruddy difficult it is to take a holiday when you run a business?

This is literally the first time I’ve allowed myself to take over a week away since I set up Shiageto Consulting (over 2.5 years ago). I’m only away 10 days but that alone creates small palpitations.

It’s not because I haven’t wanted some time off (or needed it) but either the business was doing too badly to allow myself time off (oh hello lockdown 1)or it was doing so well that I couldn’t find a time to get away.

In the end it was my sister telling me that this would be a great time to visit her before she left the region (and the nearby conflict made it impossible to visit) that made me free up my calendar.

Yes, that’s right. It was because of FOMO (the fear of missing out) that I finally managed to put some boundaries around my work, told some of my clients “no” and jumped on a plane to explore a fascinating part of the world I’d never been to.

Sometimes I can’t believe that I’m a proper adult, let alone a serious business leader who helps others with their own strategic effectiveness, when I can’t seem to take time off.

I know all the theory about why holidays are good and I set myself a bunch of rules when I set up my business about work-life balance but even so it can be hard to actually apply them when in the thick of it [heck, even now I’m answering a few emails whilst I’m away].

In my defence, not only is it my little baby of a business that needs nurturing but I genuinely love what I do so I don’t really see it as work 🤷🏻‍♂️

Still, I fully intend to enjoy the rest of my time off so let me wrap up this blog.

I’m sure many of you readers (whether you are a small business owner or not) may find yourself in a similar predicament at some point. My tip to you is not to beat yourself up but maybe close that laptop a little longer than you may feel comfortable and take in your downtime 😎.

Until next week’s blog and more fascinating tales…

Until then here’s a photo of an amazing carpeted room so you can imagine how awesome the museum was.

Faris is the CEO and Founder of Shiageto Consulting, an innovative consultancy that helps firms and individuals sharpen their effectiveness.

Success = IQ x EQ x FQ