3 min read

Our first summer as Entrepreneurs - How to have summer holidays?

Our first summer as Entrepreneurs - How to have summer holidays?
Photo by Link Hoang / Unsplash

We already decided to have full summer holidays before launching TalentBee last August.


Most entrepreneurs I know are not having holidays or working all the time.
We wanted to make sure that the business is running without us, and this summer is a great time to give it a test drive and ensure that things are working.


Our situation:


So if you are not familiar with TalentBee, we currently have:


šŸš€ 3 Founders: Me, Siiri & Saara
šŸš€ 2 employees: Noora & Nea


šŸš€ I'm doing sales, marketing, finances, building the business, etc.
šŸš€ Siiri & Nea are doing Employer branding for our customers.
šŸš€ Saara & Noora are doing recruitments for our customers.


Our first idea: Let's have the summer holiday at the same time

Our first thought was to have a summer holiday at the same time - Let's close the whole company for July.


We used to have the same model at Trainers' House (I used to work there in the past), and it worked well over there (at least from the employee's perspective. I have no idea about the business side of things.)


Luckily, we have an advisory board that can get help when we are unsure about something.


"Your plan doesn't work"

That's what they said.

When discussing with them, we noticed a few challenges with our plan (which we had already discussed with the founders, but not enough.)


Here were the main challenges if we would all be on vacation at the same time:

  1. Are we able to serve customers in the best possible way?
  2. Are we able to keep our ongoing revenue coming (for EB, yes --> For recruitments, harder)
  3. What if some new customers contact us during the summer?
  4. Are we able to focus on relaxing as founders?

I had thought about the first 3, but the 4th point was something I didn't realize myself.


After discussing these topics, we decided that we shouldn't have the holidays at the same time.


We created a few rules for the holidays:

  1. We wanted to ensure that there would always be a recruiter & employer branding person working --> to ensure that we can support our customers in the best possible way.
  2. We wanted to ensure that there would always be one of the founders working (that way, the founders who are having a holiday and focus on relaxing and don't need to focus on work.)
  3. Saara & I would be having the holiday around the same time (we are also a couple, so we wanted to have some time together.)


From here, we asked everyone when they would prefer to have their holidays, and it went quite smoothly:


1) Noora & Siiri will be having their holidays around mid-June to mid-July
2) Me, Saara & Nea will be having holidays around mid-July to mid-August


So everything worked quite well.


Few things to figure out before holidays

There are still a few things to figure out before the holidays to ensure everything runs smoothly. We still have some things that only one of us knows how to do. Here are some examples of things we need to make sure to handle:

  1. PandaDoc, Finances & our website booking --> Currently, I'm sending contracts for signing and sending invoices & there's my calendly link on our website --> We need to make sure that once I'm gone, Siiri knows how to use all of these. I think this is also a great test to see if there are some things only I know how to do.
  2. Emergency cases: When it's ok to contact another founder when they are on holiday. This is an interesting question, and I'm unsure when to draw a line. E.g., answer the following question. Should Siiri inform me & Saara while we are on holiday if:
  • Nea or Noora would resign?
  • We would get a new big customer
  • Our biggest customers are leaving us?
  • Nea would go on a long sick-leave
  • You need some information about the customer the other person has been leading.


Where would you draw the line?

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