Show notes:

Summer is here, the wedding season is in full swing, and for many of us in the UK, the school holidays have officially arrived too. Whether you’re juggling children at home, working back-to-back weddings, or simply trying to carve out some time to recharge, this time of year can feel incredibly full.

A few years ago, I recorded an episode all about surviving the school summer holidays as a wedding business owner, but so much has changed since then. My business has grown, my children are older, and I’ve learned a lot about what works (and what definitely doesn’t!).

In this episode, I’m sharing the practical strategies I use in my own business to help me navigate busy seasons without burning out. Even if you don’t have children, these tips will help you manage your workload, protect your time and build a business that supports the life you actually want to live!

Becca x

Time stamps:

00:19 – Surviving the Summer Holidays: An Update

05:31 – Preparing for Summer Holidays in Wedding Business

08:03 – The Power of Outsourcing and Time Management

15:45 – Finding Balance: Enjoying Time Off with Family

19:39 – Navigating Business During School Holidays

23:02 – Tips for Managing Time Off and Work Balance

Transcript:

Becca
00:00:00.320 – 00:24:58.650
It’s July in the uk, we’ve had a massive heat wave and summer is absolutely here. And as I record this, it’s the last day of work before my children break up for the school summer holidays.

A couple of years ago, I recorded a podcast episode all about how to survive the school summer holidays as a wedding business owner in the industry. And today I decided it was time for an update.

So whether or not you’ve got children at school, whether you’re a grandparent or maybe it’s just that you need help to survive a busy summer season and there’s no children in the picture, this episode is for you. I’m Becca Pountney, wedding business marketing expert, strategist, speaker and author.

Over the last decade, I’ve combined my love of marketing with my knowledge of the wedding industry to help thousands of wedding pros and venues just like you learn new skills, strategize, get re energized and grow their businesses. Because after all, that’s how you stay top of your game. Whether you’re brand new into this industry or been here forever, I want to help.

So grab a cup of tea or a cocktail, sit back and enjoy a brand new episode of my award winning podcast, when wedding Pros who are Ready to grow. Let’s get going with today’s episode. Okay, so summer holidays is absolutely upon us.

And for those of you that are parents will know that that means that there is a six week block here in the UK that’s right ahead of us. If you’re based in the States, you’re probably already in the middle of summer madness.

And as I said, even if you don’t have children in the wedding industry, this is some of our busiest times of year. You may be looking at this and thinking, wow, I don’t even have children and I’m back to back to with work.

So today I’m going to walk you through some of the things I do in my business and some of the things I recommend my clients do in their businesses to survive the school holidays and to survive that incredibly busy season and still smile and still walk away with a thriving business at the end of it. So as I said in the introduction, even if you don’t have children, there’s going to be some tips in here that are going to help you.

And it’s also worth bearing in mind that my business has a different seasonality to your business.

Actually, summer is sometimes my quieter times, so some of the things that I do in the summer are actually going to rely on you doing them at other times of year. But I hope that some of the practical tips help you along the way.

As I said, I recorded a previous version of this a few years ago, but my business has grown since then. My children have grown since then. The industry shifted, so I decided it was time to bring it back.

And so today I’m going to be giving you lots and lots of different practical tips.

So my first tip, and this is something I talk about quite often at the beginning of every year, is that every single year, without fail, one of the first things I do is I go into my diary and I block out dates.

So as a school parent, I look at the school calendar, I look at when the dates are going to be, that I know that my children are not going to be in school.

And I immediately put them all into my diary as children at home, so that I’ve got a really clear picture when I’m having conversations with people, when I’m booking meetings, I know exactly when the children are going to be at home.

And the reason I say that you should put this in early is because it’s a lot easier to free dates back up than it is to try and sort it out if you’ve already got loads of stuff in your diary. So I know that the six weeks of summer, immediately in January, I had this whole six weeks blocked out.

However, I then have the flexibility to change that. So for example, I got invited to speak to at a conference in America in August. Well, that’s in my six week summer block.

But I decided it was going to work for me to be able to go and speak at that. And so I can now give that week back to myself as work and that’s absolutely fine.

However, if I wanted to take time off with the children and I didn’t have this system in place, I can guarantee my diary would be full of meat meetings and appointments and podcast recording schedules and all sorts of other things that would make taking that time off nearly impossible. So my advice to you is at the beginning of a year, always sit down and start putting those key dates in your diary. Block them out.

You can always then change things around. You can take them out again, but put them in in the first instance.

Now, if you’re listening to this and you don’t have children, then those school holiday dates are probably going to be irrelevant to you. But I would still recommend you do a similar exercise to ensure you have some time off through the year. Give yourself an alloc amount of holiday.

Maybe you want to have five weeks off in the year, six weeks, seven weeks, it’s your business, do what you like and go through and strategically put some of those times in so that when wedding bookings come in, you make the decision whether to take that holiday time out to put the wedding in or not.

Because again, I speak to so many wedding business owners who get to June and they want to book a holiday and they’ve realized that all their diary is booked out and they’ve got weddings every weekend and they actually have no time to take a break.

So whatever time of year you block out, whether it’s school holidays, whether it’s annual leave for yourself, make sure you get into the habit of blocking those weeks out. And if you free up one of those weeks and decide you are going to work, then make sure you move it and put it in a different time of year.

Although you may end up working some of the time in those blocked out weeks, it will change the way you see that time when stuff comes in because you have to make a proactive decision to remove some of that holiday, to remove some of that time you’ve blocked out to spend with your kids or whatever it is in order to work. And so therefore the job you take has to be worth your while. So that’s tip number one. I always block out the dates early.

And so since January, I’ve had the whole of the next six weeks blocked out in my diary. Okay, the second thing that I’m going to recommend you do over the summer holidays or at any time of the year.

So for some of you, like I said, you’re going to actually be working flat out now, you’re not going to be taking much of a break, but maybe come October, November, December, you may be taking an elongated break. So when you take a break in your business, what do you need to do to prepare for it and ensure that happens?

But one of the things I always do now is I batch create my content.

Now I am someone that posts a lot on social media and many of you will know that I decided to hire a content creator last year in order to ease the amount I was spending on social media and to give myself a more consistent presence. And we get together already every month to batch content.

But because I knew that the school summer holidays were coming up, because I knew that I was going to have a six week chunk where recording content was going to be really, really difficult for me, earlier in the year we put in a date which was actually this week as I’m recording, to do two months worth of batch recording in One day, which is a lot. But it means that we could record the whole of August’s content and the whole of September’s content in one go to free up my time over the summer.

So I’m not stressing about I need to find a time to record this content either on my own or with Simona instead. It’s already done and I can relax and forget about it.

And the great thing is, when you plan and batch content, whether you do it with a content creator like I did, or whether you do it on your own, actually, the time taken to create that content is a lot shorter because you have a plan, you know what you’re going to record. You get your camera out and you just do it.

Now, our goal for the summer, for this summer recording session, was we wanted to record 60 videos in a day, because we want a video every single day to go out in August and every single day in September. And so recording 60 videos is a lot. But we came with a plan. We had a venue, we knew that what we were going to try and record.

And we actually managed to smash out 60 videos in two hours and a half, which is definitely a new record for us. But the great thing is now I know, yes, Simone has now got to go and edit that content for me.

And if I was doing it myself, I’d have to sit and edit it. But at least I know I’ve done the work.

It’s done, I’ve batched it ahead of time, and now we don’t need to worry about it until we get back in September. This also works the same with other things, like blog posts. So, as an agency, we write blog posts for people.

And if I know that my team are going to be off more in the summer, we might write some of those blog posts earlier so that we’ve already got them ready to go for August, so that we’re not scrambling about in the middle of a busy time or busy season, and we’re staying consistent with our marketing. So tip number two is absolutely batch your content.

Okay, tip number three, and I know this is going to be difficult for some of you because of financial reasons, but if it at all possible, outsourcing is your friend.

I’ve been doing a whole series on Instagram and TikTok this month, all about outsourcing and the power it has in your business and how to outsource and when to outsource. So you can go and check that out.

But outsourcing is one of the best ways to free up your own time and so if there are tasks that you can outsource, even if it is just for a busy period, if it’s when you are going to be away for a period of time, then I recommend doing it. So for example, in the Wedding Pro agency, the kind of things people outsource to us is blog post writing for a season or for a long time.

Pinterest management, content creation.

You can hire Simona for yourself and she will come and do exactly what she’s done with me and create you a load of content creators content in one go and edit it for you and send it back updates to your website.

We know that in a busy season you don’t have time to go in and update your website necessarily and we can log in and do minor tweaks and updates for you. And building out CRM systems so one of my clients has hired us this summer to build their CRM system.

They are a busy time of year, they don’t have time to even use the system that they’ve got at the moment. They want a better system. They know they don’t have time to implement that system now and to get it ready for the inquiry season coming in.

And so they’ve outsourced that task to us. And so behind the scenes we are building their CRM system. We teach them how to use it so that it’s in place as of September.

When inquiries start coming back in, they’re good to go and the system is there.

So if you are thinking about outsourcing, write down all of the tasks you’re doing and the things that you don’t feel like you’re going to have time for or the things you think are going to drop off either because it’s school holidays or because it’s busy season. And look at are there any areas that you could pay someone else to do it for you?

You know your time is valuable, your time is money and sometimes you don’t actually put a price on your time.

But I see it more for myself and others in the summer holidays because I know if I am doing a day’s work in the summer holidays, that’s a day that I’m not then spending with my children.

And so suddenly the value of my time feels so much higher than just a normal workday in my office because if I’m not getting a decent amount of money for that time, I would rather be spending it with my kids. And so that’s why outsourcing is somet worth the money.

Because if you can outsource, I don’t know a couple of website Updates or for 25 pound plus bat per hour to the agency, we spend two hours doing a task that could have taken you six or seven hours because you don’t understand what you’re doing.

Well actually that 50 pound plus bat is well spent to you to have a bit more free time and to free you up to do the things you’re good at, delivering the weddings, having time with your family, whatever that looks like for you.

Okay, my fourth tip, if you are having some time off over the summer or another time of the year is my biggest one and I’ve talked about about this before, taking your email off your phone and to be honest, even if you are still working but you’ve got children at home for the summer, I recommend doing this. I took my email off my phone Easter 2025 when I went on a family holiday to Florida.

It has never gone back on and the impact on my business has been basically zero.

The impact on me and my family life is huge because what would happen was I’d be spending time with my children, we’d be on holiday or we’d be playing ball games and a notification would come in and I would quick think, just quickly look at my email.

Something would land in my inbox that needed my attention, maybe someone who had a question and then I would think I need to reply to it now and so the kids would have to wait for me.

I then go and reply to the email or I think I’m not going to reply to that now because I’m spending time with my family and it would just be living rent free in my head. So having that taken away, not even being able to see emails coming into my inbox has been huge.

It means that when I’m working I can have my email open and I can check and reply to things but it means when I’m not working, whether I’m on holiday, whether I’m spending time with the children, whether we’re on a day out, I’m fully present with them and I’m not thinking about that email I need to reply to because I haven’t seen it. And I promise you it has had no impact on my business for a couple of reasons. Number one, I have various automations set up.

So for example, if you’ve got a contact form or you’ve got a CRM system that’s sending the reply to those inquiries for you, well, it’s not so important that you see those emails within the first few minutes of them arriving. So it just Frees you up to be able to go in later and then reply to your email.

So if at all possible, I recommend every single one of you take your work email off of your phone.

I guarantee you it’s going to help you and I guarantee you it’s not going to impact your business negatively if you’ve got the systems in place to support it.

Okay, my next tip for you is kind of along the same theme and this one is particularly for those of you that have children or those of you that are wanting to spend a lot of quality time with a partner or your family. Because as a soul trader, as a business owner, we know the work is on our mind all of the time.

And I chat about this with some of my friends who are in the wedding industry and outside of the wedding industry. When you own your own business, it’s really hard to switch off and it becomes your whole life and it’s there in your head all the time.

You’re thinking about it all the time. If you’re not actually emailing, you’re thinking about emailing, you’re thinking about social media. Like it’s hard to let go. It’s your baby.

Okay, but one of the things I’ve learned is that if I don’t divide my focus, everything falls apart. If I don’t divide my focus, everything falls apart. Let me explain what I mean by that. Okay, so let’s picture the scene.

It’s the school summer holidays and I decided to spend the day with my children.

We’re just going to be in and around the house, we’re doing some craft activities, we’re doing some, I don’t know, some board games maybe we’re going to pop out for a walk, we’re going to go to the park. So that’s my day.

But because I’m self employed and I’m thinking about all of the stuff I’ve got to do, I’m thinking to myself, right, I’m going to be able to, in between times, I’m going to be able to catch a few minutes to get my laptop open and do some work and answer some emails.

And I’ve tried this method in the past and it normally always fails because what ends up happening is the children start getting frustrated at me because I’ve said I’m going to spend the day with them and now I’m palming them off for a few minutes here and there to be able to do some work.

And then I start getting frustrated at the kids and the work because actually I don’t have enough time and now something big has come in and I want to spend some time thinking about it, but I can’t because I need to go to the park.

And what happens is my focus is so divided that I don’t actually achieve anything well at all because I’m not parenting well, I’m not being present and I’m also not working well. And you know, if it works for you, great.

But for me, I just found I was getting myself in more of a tears, I was getting myself more wound up and I just felt that guilt on every corner. I felt like I just wasn’t working well. So now I try and divide my focus very strategically.

So I will say to myself, you know, I’m not working today, but I’m going to have an hour at 6 o’ clock tonight where I’m going to go into my office when my husband’s home and I’m gonna spend an hour doing work. And so all day I know I’m not doing work. And then I’ve got that dedicated hour to go and do it in the evening.

Or I’ll say, right, kids, this morning Mommy is working until 12 o’. Clock. And from 12 o’ clock onwards I’m turning off my phone and it’s you time.

So if you can busy yourselves until 12 o’ clock while I work, then I’m gonna come out and play with you later.

And by keeping that clear focus, I get more stuff done and I then enjoy the time off more with them because I’m not trying to do everything at the same time. I. I honestly think it’s almost impossible to try and work and be in a room with children at the same time.

It sounds good on paper, but the reality is we all just get frustrated.

Now the next one is one that I want to encourage you with because I think sometimes we forget that we went into business to be able to work for ourselves, to be able to have the time off that we wanted to have off. And we end up being just a really bad employer of ourself and working too much.

And so I want to encourage you if you have children at home, if you don’t have children at home but you’ve got some time booked off, maybe you’ve blocked out some dates midweek to spend with your partner. I want you to enjoy that time.

Stop feeling frustrated, stop feeling like there’s more work to do, stop feeling like you need to go back to the office, stop resenting the time you’ve got because you went into your business to have the freedom and flexibility to live the life you wanted to and you now have that option. But don’t complain about it because you wanted it and you should be enjoying the fruits of it.

Even though there’s hard times of being self employed, one of the biggest benefits is the flexibility to say yes or no to how you spend your time. If you want to take four weeks off in the summer, you can take four weeks off in the summer.

If you want to take four weeks off in October, you can take four weeks off in October. There is no boss telling you you can’t. Yes, you’re going to have to have systems around it, but why not enjoy that freedom of flexibility?

And I’ve had to remind myself that time and time again. When we get to this time of year, I’ve got six weeks in my diary where I’m thinking, yikes, I’m going to have my children at home.

And then I remember. Yes, but that’s what I wanted from my business.

I started this business to work around my children and yes, there will be times in six weeks I work more on that later. But I also realized that the whole point I started this business was to enjoy that time, to have that freedom and flexibility.

And yes, other times of the year are going to be busier, but that allows me to just relax and spend some time doing things I wouldn’t normally do with them. And like I said, if you’re right in the middle of deep dark wedding season, your seasonality is different to mine.

You may not be able to take four weeks off, six weeks off.

But look at the other school summer holidays, look at the winter holidays, look at other times of year when you can have that time and then gift it to yourself. Don’t feel like you’ve got to be working 24, seven flat out.

Okay, that brings me on to my next tip which is this year I’ve decided in my business I do need to have regular check in days. When I first started my business, I basically took the entire six week school summer holiday off work and I barely did anything.

But as my business has grown, I found that that’s actually ended up becoming more stressful.

So last year I tried to take most of the school summer holidays off and when I came back in Sept, I basically felt like I was going to have a breakdown because there was so much work piled up.

I had got behind on so many things, everything had built up and I suddenly felt incredibly stressed and I realized actually I need different systems in place. So this year I’m going to try something different. And I’m going to take the majority of the summer off.

We are going away for two weeks to Florida, which is going to be amazing. And then I’m staying on for an extra week to work and speak at the conference over the there.

But in the in between time, I have now sat down and looks at my diary and I have put in regular check in days, regular check in days where I can spend half a day or an evening or a full day in the business. The kids are going off to football camp and various other things so that I am not getting to September and realizing I have a whole backlog of work.

And so for me, if I want to take a prolonged period of time off more than just my two week holiday, I know that I need those check in days to keep myself sane, to make sure I’m on top of things that may have come in, to make sure I don’t lose out on sales.

And yes, I have an amazing team and yes, they’re going to pick up some of the things for me in my absence, but there are some things as the business owner that I need to stay on top of. And so for me this year I’m going to try that out.

I’m going to have regular check in days and therefore I’m hoping and I can feed back to you when I get to September. I’m not quite so burnt out by having the break and then having to do everything in one go as I was last year. Okay, I’ve got two more tips for you.

This one is particularly for those of you that have children. But the other thing I’ve tried to do in my business over the last few years if the children are at home, is to get them involved in my work.

Now this kind of initiative started when we were in Covid. My children were a lot younger then, but obviously we had our kids at home all the time and I had to work.

And so I decided to spend some of that time helping them understand about work, helping them set up their own business and helping them understand what mommy does for work as well. And so when they are off school, on their off work and I’m at home with them, sometimes I try and get them involved in the business.

I’ve been known to have my children sitting on the floor while I’ve recorded a podcast interview or while I’ve done a members call. Not because they haven’t got anything else to do, but because I want them to see what it looks like.

You can’t see them on screen But I want them to understand what the work looks like. They find it interesting. They want to hear what I have to say, they want to see what’s going on. And I get them involved in it.

When there’s practical things to do. Like after Wed Pros live, I got the kids involved in sorting out the lanyards, cleaning the lanyards. We were sorting lanyards, counting lanyards.

They love getting involved in the business. And depending on what work you do, I’m sure there’s ways you can get your children involved, involved as well.

Maybe you’ve got some stock to rearrange. Maybe they can count some stuff for you. Maybe they can listen in on a call that you’ve got coming up. Maybe they’re gonna.

You can put the podcast on in the car and you can talk about business ideas. But it’s again, instead of resenting having people around, it’s a gift, like, utilize it. Enjoy your time with them.

And there’s ways they can get involved in the business. Now, I’ve seen other people take this to even further lengths.

There’s an amazing photographer that I follow on Instagram and occasionally, and obviously with the permission of the couple and the venue and everyone, El he’s taken his son to second shoot weddings. Now, his son is older. I think he’s about 11 or 12, something like that, maybe even a bit older than that. And I love that.

What amazing experience, what a great thing to showcase and how amazing that he can get him involved in his business.

And yes, we may not all want to take it to that extreme, but I think there are ways that kids can understand what we’re doing, especially if they’re at home for six weeks where we can work and get them involved in it at the same time.

So have a think about the way you could get them involved in your business, how you could chat about about it, and ways they can be practically helpful. Trust me, counting all those lanyards would have taken me ages.

And so to have children who were excited to do it and write down the numbers made it even better. And that brings me on to my final tip of surviving the summer holidays. And that is keep your first week back relatively clear.

Okay, I learned this the hard way again last year.

I started putting so many meetings into my first week back because I thought I haven’t had any meeting space all of the summer, so everyone needs to talk to me the first week back. And I ended up being so busy and overwhelmed, I was exhausted. Exhausted. And so this year, yes, I’m having six weeks mostly off.

But that first week back is also going to be mostly off too, to allow me to get back on top of things to reply to emails. Yes, I might have a couple of meetings, but I’m not going to fill my diary.

So whether or not it’s the summer holidays for you, whether or not it’s that you’re going on a long break, whether you’re having a sabbatical another time of the year, don’t forget about the importance of that first week back. It’s so important. Keep it clear. Do not fill it up to your eyeballs or you will record regret it. I guarantee it.

Okay, let’s really quickly then recap all of the things I talked about in today’s episode. How on earth are we going to survive the summer season, the school summer holidays?

Or if you’re having time off at a different time of year, how are you going to survive that? Well, number one, remember my tip. Block out dates early. It’s easier to take dates out than it is to put them in.

Secondly, look at ways you can batch your content.

If you’re going to have some time off, get ahead with your social content, schedule it out, write your blog blog post, or look at things you can outsource. That was my third point. Where could you outsource, even if it’s just for a season and then you take it back later in the year?

Take your email off your phone. If you’ve managed to do this since I’ve done it and you’ve been successful at it, let me know.

I would love to hear more success stories because I’ve been championing people, taking their email off the phone and people look at me like I’ve got two heads.

So if you are doing this in your business, if you’ve taken it off your phone and you’ve got a success story in this field, send me a message on Instagram. I want to hear about it. The next tip was about not dividing your focus.

Divide your time, family time, partner time, or work time, and don’t try and mix the two. Next, remember to enjoy the freedom and flexibility. Take the time off. Cherish it. Enjoy not working. Don’t feel guilty for it.

That’s why you went into business in the first place.

If you need it, make sure you have those regular check in days so that you don’t have that crazy time in September when you’re completely overwhelmed. If you’ve got children, get them involved in what you’re doing. Chat to them about your business, get them in involved in your work.

And finally, keep that first week back relatively clear. If, like me, you’re about to go in, or maybe you’re already there in the school holiday madness, I’m thinking of you. I wish you the best of luck.

I know what it’s like. I’ve got two children at home, and trying to juggle it all is both a privilege and a struggle. But I hope some of the tips in this episode help you.

And if you want to find out more or you’ve got questions, drop me a message on Instagram. And if you need help outsourcing some of your work this summer, reach out to me.

I can put you in touch with the amazing people in the Wedding Pro Agency team, and we can take some of that work away from you. I’ll see you all next time.