Determining the Right Time to Take A Break From Your Business

I was walking up a beautiful road with my husband in Spring 1990 when I said to him, “You know I think it is time?” He said confused, “Time for what?” I responded “Having children because women have timelines you know?” He seemed more perplexed and said, “What timeline?” to which I said, “You know the time it takes to get pregnant, deliver the baby, take time off of work, find a great babysitter, return to work to not lose a job and then plan the next baby!” He said, “Oh My Gosh is that really how women think and plan?”

I couldn’t answer his question honestly because I wasn’t sure if other women planned their family that way; but as a professional “event planner” it made perfect sense to me to “plan the right time” to have my first child. Much to my hopes, we had our first son about 10 months later with a plan to continue my career in higher education – that plan worked out pretty well. But after his entrance into the world, planning more children became unexpected as I had one miscarriage and finally had my second son after months of the doctors telling me it might not be possible. The planning for his birth could have been any time and I wouldn’t have cared; I just wanted a healthy baby….and I got one. So why am I sharing part of my personal life with women entrepreneurs today….don’t worry I have a plan.

Yesterday I wrote a letter to my loyal Women TIES members telling them I was taking a medical sabbatical to deal with some non-life threatening health issues. I thought about taking the three month leave since early January but couldn’t find the “right time” to take or announce the temporary departure until I lost my stepmother a couple weeks ago and realized individual health is the most important thing to human beings.

Determining the right time to announce the leave had to be and done right because I love what I do and who I serve and always have. My members are the most important people to me besides my large family; so saying a temporary good-bye to something you love isn’t as easy as it sounds. With the hard decision come thoughts of losing the business, losing customers, losing market share and never rebounding from the choice. I hope the brave move I am making for my own health, and announcing it with you and the public, gives other women who are afraid to take that step inspiration to follow in my footsteps.

I definitely won’t be the first woman or last to take a break from their business for reasons important to them but I hope if you are given the choice to make that decision you choose what is best for your personal and professional life because we only get one.

Today’s Wednesday Wisdom hopefully makes you think about the timing of decisions in your life and company. Your situation doesn’t have to be personal like mine, it could be deciding to downsize for retirement or scaling up by adding staff or branching out to new locations because the market demands it. It could be planning time to rewrite your business plan or recreate your brand. When business owners are constantly busy in the day-to-day details of running a business, it can be difficult to take a long break from work.