Holidaying when you own a small business

How do people do it? 

I guess everyone has to either have faith in their employees or just close down. My parents and sister have always covered me from the beginning. I'm super lucky! But it's been a good year and a half since they covered me whilst I was away. I managed to stay on top of the emails and enquiries in 2017 from the US. This 2019 holiday I'm sending double the amount of care packages then I did back in 2017. Which also means double the enquiries, double the custom orders and double the spam.

I didn't realise until just before I was going away, just how much time I spend on customer service. It's something that I hold dear, treating my customers in the way I would want to be treated. Especially in a quick and caring way. Being 3 hours behind and quite honestly needing a break to recharge and switch off - I started to panic. I knew my parents would be busy packing the orders, it would be too much to ask them to cover my customer service also.

And then Facebook gave me a sign! My friend Susie who I was made redundant with back in 2013 shared a post on Facebook and I saw it. Both Susie and I both went into becoming a VA (virtual Assistant) when we lost our jobs (well after I had my son, I was six months pregnant). 18 months after that I had the idea of Feel Better Box and Susie kept gaining more and more clients. Now I'm one of her clients! There is no one I trust more to help me! 

We haven't really had long enough as a hand over, but with a little help from WhatsApp I'm going to try my best not to check my emails and reply to Susie's questions if she has any. I know how important it is to recuperate from a busy first quarter and be present with my family. Going away does feel like I am leaving one of my children at home. I don't know what that says about me, hopefully that I'm really passionate at helping people feel better.....

So if you do need help with something over the next two weeks, please bare with us as we work as a team from Bali, Melbourne and NSW. We all love Feel Better Box and our goal is to help you to feel the same.