Home stagers, do you have as much trouble with getting into vacation mode as I do? Being my own boss, there is always so much I want to learn to improve how I approach my life and work, or new marketing ideas I want to get into place for the coming season.
I feel the pull of that against my desire to also kick back and relax.
When you love what you do for a living, work doesn’t feel as much like “work.” So there just isn’t the same need to take a “vacation” from it. This is a good thing. Who wants to go through life waiting for that magic 2 weeks a year when you can “escape”?
When I’m not stretching how I think or trying new things, I’m bored and feeling very uncreative and uninspired. I don’t feel like I’m always chasing that elusive “work/life balance” because it all blends together.
As a home stager, and home staging trainer and mentor, my experience is that “work” is part of my creative life and personal growth.
While there are times I long to get out of the city and escape to a cottage on a beach somewhere, I know I’d quickly get bored “doing nothing.” It wouldn’t take me long to get out my journal and start brainstorming:
- What direction I’d like to take by business in
- Ideas for marketing plans
- Blog post ideas
- Content for my next book, Life as a Home Stager
- Re-decorating ideas for my home
When I wasn’t doing that or napping, swimming, or eating, I’d also be re-listening to the many courses I’ve taken this year on topics like: public speaking, high performance, Internet marketing, blogging, etc. I keep taking courses or joining masterminds or specialized networks because I love to learn and it gives me new material to share with the Staging Diva community inside my home staging courses, the Staging Diva Network Online Discussion Group and also our monthly Staging Diva Dialog calls which are a combination of mastermind and questions and answers.
I’m also planning on catching up on the non-fiction books piled on my nightstand during my next “vacation.” Maybe I’m weird but I’m more interested in reading The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles
I’m not saying vacations aren’t important. I just think they might look/feel different when you love what you do for “work.”
Home stagers how do you feel about “vacations“? Are you longing to escape what you do everyday, or do you also find that the boundaries between work and life don’t have such clear distinctions anymore? What book are you planning on reading next? Please share your ideas and comments below.
Debra Gould, The Staging Diva®
Debra Gould has been a serial entrepreneur since 1989. She is president of Voice of Possibility Group Inc. with a mission of helping entrepreneurs create their ideal businesses and lifestyles.
An internationally recognized home staging expert, Debra created the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program with 7,000 students in the U.S., Canada and 20 other countries. She is the author of 5 guides and appears frequently in the media.
I definitely find it difficult to break away and take a vacation since I can’t imagine putting my business on hold for a week or more. When you own your own business, it’s difficult to just stop. Perhaps if I had people in place to handle the phone calls while I was away (which unfortunately go to my cell phone) and the day to day management of the business I would feel more comfortable. But right now I am already stressing about a one week vacation I am taking next June.
If I work 12 hours or more a day usually, and don’t for one week while on vacation, how will I ever make up that time?
And unlike you, Debra, if I was to take a vacation, the last thing I would be doing is thinking of ideas for my business or reading a non-fiction book. Though I love what I do, once I am on vacation, I am on vacation. Reading all of those fiction books that I never have time for is one thing I would do.
Donna thanks for sharing your experience! I started a reply here and realized I was well into a full blog post about “how” to get away when you run your own business!
Watch for “5 Tips to Escape Your Home Staging Business When You Need a Break” coming out on Tuesday! Thanks for the inspiration, I know you’ll find these tips really helpful in letting you take a break well before your vacation next June!
I want to add that for anyone thinking that working 12 hour days is the only way to have a home staging business, it’s not. There are many home stagers work their business part-time around another job, or around parenting, or whatever else they have going on. That’s the beauty of this, you can grow at a pace that feels comfortable for you.
I traveled out of state in late June for a family wedding. Although I hesitated to travel during a peak home staging time, I went for it. As I was driving down the highway after the wedding, I received a phone call on my business cell. I’m glad I answered it because it was a prospective staging client. I let the caller know I was out of state, on the highway in a car, and provided her with my return date. I told her I would call her the day I arrived back home. With this reassurance the caller was fine to wait for my follow-up call. As promised, I DID call her on my return date and that resulted in a new home staging consultation and additional staging services I offer to home sellers. For those times we need to travel, there are ways to keep tabs on ou business without it taking too much time. I agree with you, Debra, that we can escape from our home staging businesses as life happens. Taking time away or pursuing our other interests IS good for our business because we are also taking care of our wellbeing.
Thanks for sharing your example Stacy. I know it will inspire and reassure others.