To wonder how self-employed people go on holiday?

[Elmoespanol]

I have just set up a small cleaning business and am self-employed. I am building up my clients slowly. We have booked a holiday for a couple of months time and now I am panicking that my clients will leave me and go elsewhere if I'm not able to offer my services during the week that I'm away.

How the heck do people who offer services needed weekly/daily, go on holiday? I'm thinking cleaners, dog walkers, childminders, etc, etc. What do your clients do whilst you're away?

I'm a freelance editor and don't really take a holiday, but I can work from wherever I am.

My DH and I run a factory we have no staff. Very often we go away seperatley but once a year we close down and go away together. We take the risk tbh. We prepare our customers and they make sure they have enough stock but there is always one who needs something but they have to wait. We may miss new customers but our work life balance is VERY important to us so we risk it. Hope your business goes well, and you enjoy all the hard work it takes to establish yourself, it is well worth it believe me.x

I have a cleaner. The aggro of finding another cleaner is much worse than the inconvenience of not having a cleaner for a week!

Just give a few weeks notice and enjoy your holiday!

We use to check in with our cat sitters and coordinate our holiday dates around their holidays.

I'be had cleaners for almost 20yrs now and they've all taken holidays, been ill, had family members die or had other reasons why they can't come. We survive! The house just isn't as clean as usual as we just do the essentials.
Our current cleaner is away at the moment. This was unplanned. She sent me an apologetic text. With this cleaner, I have noticed before that if it is unplanned she tries to make up the hours by coming at the weekend or starting very early or finishing late. Whilst this is kind of her, I presume it's because she'll be short on money otherwise. Planned absences & she doesn't offer that.

Anyone that provides a service self employed or not is entitled to hols, too! Just give them plenty of notice and if they like you, they will stay with you (another part time self employed person here 👋🏼)

Both my husband and I are self employed and last year was the first time in 7 years we'd taken leave.
We went for long weekends so took Fridays and Mondays off. I work remotely so only need a mobile signal which isn't too bad, husband's role requires him onsite and meeting SLAs, one trip we left early, another had a detour to meet a customer en route. B2B is very different to working for individuals, until you are large enough to employ people to do what you do it never really works

My self and husband have three business, and we can only go away for short periods, usually 3 days, but try to get away quite often. It's surprising how quickly you get used to it. Not sure I could go away for a long time now. Short breaks in Europe are fab.

Just give plenty of notice (3 months if you can) and don't go for more than 2 weeks. I have been annoyed with cleaners in the past who've given me a couple of weeks' notice or even less that they'd miss 3 or 4 visits. I'm afraid I did actually replace one lady while she was away (but I'd wanted to do so anyway but was too chicken until she gave me the opportunity!) It would be a good idea long term to team up with another freelance cleaner so you can cover each other's breaks where clients want an uninterrupted service.

One of my issues as a teacher is that cleaners often want to take holiday in term time so they're not available when I'm busiest and then I need to work round then in my holidays. It takes some give and take and clear communication is the key.

We shut up shop. In previous years I've managed to get people to help but this year we are just taking the financial hit.

You give notice that’s all.
I am never annoyed at my cleaner when she takes time off, never more than 2 weeks in a row so not an issue at all

I am free lance (in software) and only work for 2 clients

I take 6-7 weeks off a year, I always communicate these weeks to the people I work for and try and front-load lots of work before I go, so I don't leave them in a pickle

It's a perk of being free-lance I think!

My work is all laptop based so I take it with me on some of my holidays to keep things ticking over.

They don't! We'll, we go about once every four years

No holidays to start with then a few years down the line, when you've got staff in place to be trusted, you can! We've got 2 retail premises tho so shutting isn't really an option. Have to factor in extra wages to the cost of the holiday though

We run a seasonal business, the only time we can go away without taking a big hit on turnover is February half term unless we take kids out of school. To go on of he holidays would cost 3000 in lost income per week plus the holiday and eat a big chunk of our profit making it unaffordable

I am self-employed, and I also use the services of a self-employed cleaner.

I really value the work my cleaner does for me. Good, reliable, trustworthy cleaners are like gold dust. If she tells me she's going on holiday for a couple of weeks then of course I'm OK with that and not going to tell her not to come back.

From my point of view, I do different type of freelance work so give clients the heads-up when I'm going to be away. I tell them I'll be away from X date to Y date and offer to do stuff before I go. Again, most are happy to go with that as it's less hassle than finding someone else and getting them up to speed.

There’s no way I’d leave my cleaner for one week holiday (at a time).
Mine went to her home country for 5-6 weeks over Xmas and that still wasn’t worth changing cleaner.

We didn't get away as often as we would have liked from our retail and b&b but my brother or sister were amazing and would look after it for us - including when we went away for a month once. But it's one of the reasons we sold up.

As for cleaners, despite us paying really well, they would let me down time and time again, usually at the last minute too (not so much for holidays funnily enough, in one case it was "me and my friend fancy a day out shopping") but we put up with it because they were so hard to come by in the first place. Another reason we sold up.

I never take more than four days and usually work on holiday (though appreciate that's not possible for you/your clients). Luckily I don't like holidays and only go for the DC. If you do like holidays, it's better to have a normal job that you can properly switch off from.

Please just give them notice and take your holiday.

We (myself and DH) own a mid-sized cleaning company, now with 15 staff on board and an office manager.

I still find it hard to get away for more than a long weekend because I do all the 'back office' and spend an hour or so each day doing basic accounts like sending and checking off invoices, setting up payments etc that nobody else has loggins for or knows how to work the systems of, it's worse now if anything for getting away because resposibilities have grown.

BUT we used to be in your shoes and at that time I felt the same as you do, some years we worked through solidly to 'build our business'. Looking back with all I've learned about clients and the domestic cleaning indusrty I could KICK myself.

If your service is good, clients will value and treasure you and you can take holidays, set boundaries, implement cancellation fees and general terms and conditions and they will STILL value you as long as you tell them of any changes in advance.

When you have over 120 regulars you learn what is typical of clients and although right now you will be scared to lose business, as I understand perfectly, I can assure you it is a HUGE relief to find out that clients know we are humans and they value the service we provide and will work WITH us if only we ask them to.

Try telling them now and I bet you only get either positive or neutral responses from most!

Good luck!

My cleaner isn't the world's best cleaner (she's not awful, but she's not brilliant either) but the one thing she is is fantastically reliable. She'll always try to come another time in the week if she can't make it (it helps that I can be flexible with this as I'm at home a fair amount) and when she does go on holiday she'll arrange someone else to come in her place.

And the very odd occasion she misses a week? It's not that big a deal and I just do the minimum myself for the week.

I live on a farm , we don’t often go on holiday but when we did it was every other year away, that only worked because my inlaws were fit enough to look after everything while we were away .
Unfortunately they are both into their seventies now and fil is not as fit as he used to be ( still working though ) so DHis less inclined to leave him .
We usually spend a few days in August at a family members holiday home on the coast .
My children are old enough now that I’m thinking of taking them away by myself this summer.
In your situation let them know well in advance , you’re allowed a break .

My dog walker takes most of the school holidays off ! It doesn't impact me too much as my teenage kids will be off school/ college at that time so can do the dog walking for me but I do wonder how others cope when they are out all day at work and the dog walker is off for 2 or 3 weeks.

As long as I have my laptop, phone and Wi-fi I can work from anywhere. I did some great work last year from a gite in rural France. I accept that I will have to do a bit of work most days which I try to get out of the way first thing plus the odd call. I am more than happy with this in exchange for the flexibility I have the rest of the time. I don't usually mention my holidays to clients and they are generally unaware that I'm away.