MSPs: Please. Take. A. Week. Off. And your business will grow faster (pinky promise)

A couple of weeks ago I took a week off with my daughter (a post-exams treat). We flew out to Krakow in Poland. Have you been?

She had a minor medical drama in front of 500 other passengers at the Polish passport control (which turned out to be completely fine, and which I’m choosing not to dwell on because everything was OK and also because I’m British and we don’t talk about our feelings 🤣)

But after that slightly chaotic start, it was a genuinely brilliant week. We visited Auschwitz, one of those experiences that puts absolutely everything else in your life into perspective.

We stuffed our faces, walked around a beautiful city, visited a terrible waxworks museum and did a fun escape room. I was properly present in a way that’s very difficult when you’re at home and the bloody laptop is sitting there on the desk looking at you.

And then, around day four, something happened that always happens when I take proper time off...

--> The QUALITY THINKING started arriving in my head <--

Why quality thinking never happens at your desk

I came back from Krakow with a minor course correction for my business, the MSP Marketing Edge. I’ve scrapped some projects that were taking up time and energy without going anywhere. And have set up some new ones that I’m genuinely excited about.

None of that thinking happened in a meeting, or while I was working through my inbox. It happened while I was walking around a city I’d never been to before, with no particular agenda, and my brain quiet enough to process stuff.

This is the thing most MSP owners don’t give themselves enough credit for understanding.

• The problem isn’t that you don’t have good ideas or don't know what to do
• The problem is that you never give your brain the conditions it needs to pull all the info together and process it properly

When you’re in the day-to-day, you’re in reactive mode. Tickets. Clients. Staff. Cash flow. Nightmare.

Every day is spent responding to what the business throws at you, and there’s no room left over for the bigger questions.

The real strategic thinking, the “what do I actually want this business to look like?” thinking doesn’t happen in the day-to-day.

It happens when you’re on a 10 mile walk with the dog at the weekend. In the shower on Sunday morning, on a long drive, perhaps exploring a city you’ve never visited before.

Or on the fourth day of a holiday when you’ve finally stopped thinking about "work stuff".

Your brain needs space and quiet to do its best work. And most MSP owners never give it either.

Guilt is the problem

I know what happens. You're away for a few days and then suddenly you remember a client situation, so you check your phone and there's an email and you feel like you have to reply to it. You feel guilty for not being at work. And in doing so you mentally leave your vacation and sort of enter a half work mode.

And the damage is done. You're back in the same mindset you were in the week before when you were sat at your desk.

Real time off requires trust. Trust that your team can handle things without you, and that clients won’t disappear if you’re unreachable for a week. Trust that the business you’ve built is robust enough to run without you watching your PSA every hour.

If you don’t have that trust yet, that’s got to be a priority for you. Because the inability to step away from your business for a week is itself a massive business problem. It means you’re the bottleneck and you're holding the business back.

What happens when you properly switch off for a week

The first day or two, your brain is still at work. You’re mentally running through your task list even when you’re sitting in a restaurant in another country. That’s normal. Let it happen.

By day three or four, your brain has moved into a different mode and the good stuff starts to arrive. I mean connections you hadn’t made before, or questions you hadn’t really explored. Perhaps a nagging feeling about something in the business that you’d been too busy to examine.

Use a notes app (or better still a real paper notepad) to capture what comes up. You’ll be surprised how much arrives.

I came back from my week in Krakow with more clarity about my business than I’d had in months. That’s not a coincidence. I knew it would happen.

Paul's genuinely outrageous suggestion

Here’s what I think every MSP owner should do...

--> Book a week off at least every two months <--

Not just a long weekend. A proper week where you’re not available, checking in, or “just keeping an eye on things.” A week where someone else is responsible for the business and you are genuinely somewhere else.

Is that outrageous? Maybe. For some MSP owners reading this, the idea of six weeks of proper holiday every year will feel completely unrealistic. Which is a shame because your family would love that from you. That's perhaps the greatest gift you could give them in the next 12 months... more of you!

(cue the jokes)

So get into your calendar now, put the time aside and then actually book some flights so that you're mentally committed to being away. That last bit is really important.

When did you last take a proper week off? Let me know. I read and reply to every email (unless I'm on vacation) 😃