The CEO Vacation

Let’s be real: entrepreneurs don’t really take vacations. Well, we totally could, but with the unfortunate sense of entitlement these days, people move on to the next business isf they don’t hear back within a day or so. It is sad, but unless people already know and love you, they tend not to wait. Thus the “CEO Vacation” was born, where you don’t schedule any specific work time, but you make sure to check your emails and voicemail a few times while you are gone, or plan for a few photo ops.

You may choose to set your out of office reply to let people know you will take longer than usual to respond OR like me, you don’t set it because you already have an auto-responder than goes out with information and just adjust the blurb at the bottom to say “a few days” instead of “next business day” and you notify your current clients before you head out of town so they are aware you won’t respond for the week. You know what, I may just leave that blurb from hereon out to give myself some grace. I am the boss after all…

But being on vacation doesn’t mean you aren’t constantly thinking of new content and ideas, and how to offer value to your audience. And not just because we often can’t “turn off” our brains… In fact, this post was written while waiting for hubby’s baseball game to end so we could go to bed (and only risk waking the baby sleeping in our room ONCE), which means all enjoyment and no guilt for either of us: win, win! I bring my “good camera” with me on most of our roadtrips so that I can capture some lifestyle images for the blog, inevitable cute portraits of my kiddo, and maybe plan an official family photo for our scrapbook (aka printed archives). Of course, my cellphone captures images that are absolutely good enough for blogging and social media, but it is nice to be able to capture some quality ones that can be printed or used as professional portraits in my marketing, especially for my photography business.

This shoot in particular was intended as a simple capture of my working from home lifestyle while away from home, but it ended up turning into an adorable mother-daughter moment that perfectly captures the reality of working from home with a toddler. But I am super proud because, as you may notice by zooming in, my daughter is actually the one who took these last few photos because she stole the remote and immediately knew what to do — such a smart kid! Maybe I will end up with an assistant sooner than later.

What about you: Do you take a CEO vacation or a completely-shut-down vacation?