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Do you plan a sabbatical for yourself each year? Setting aside dedicated time for yourself every year to work on your business or self-development can make a huge impact on your life.

In this episode of So, Here’s the Thing, I’m talking through my own plans to take a month-long sabbatical this June. Listen in as I share the types of sabbaticals most people take, which I’ll be taking, and how to plan for it in your business!

What’s a Sabbatical? (1:10)

Two Schools of Thought on Sabbaticals (2:08)

Rest, Hobby or Interest Focused – Vacation from work

Extended break from job giving you time to  to enhance qualifications, reflect on accomplishments and decide how to prioritize your life and career, or to take an extended rest period due to professional burnout.

My Plan for a Sabbatical (3:13)

How am I planning on not letting my client work fall apart? (4:18)

1. Plan ahead for a sabbatical with team members.

2. Mark the time off for your sabbatical and prep inquiries and upcoming clients.

3. Map out the sabbatical work prior to taking it.

Review the transcript for this episode below >>

0:05
Welcome to so here’s the thing where we share candid conversations that lift the veil on what it takes to find success, even if that means sharing a few unpopular opinions. I’m your host Laylee Emadi, grab some coffee or cocktail. And let’s get real.

0:22
Hello friends welcome back to so here’s the thing, I’m so excited to record this solo episode all about planning out a sabbatical in your business. Now something that I found really interesting while preparing for this sabbatical was how little I actually knew about what I wanted to do. And so I’m excited to kind of share my expectations. I have never done a long sabbatical before in my business. And I’m very excited to share about kind of my plans, my expectations, everything going in. And then I’m really excited to share that once I’m done with this sabbatical, I’ll do a follow up episode, telling you guys how it went, what I learned what I wish I had done differently, or what I really enjoyed. And hopefully that will help you guys as you plan yours if it’s something that you’re interested in. So the first thing that I found when I was planning out my sabbatical, and by the way, right now, we are at the very end, like pretty much the end of April. And I am planning on taking the entire month of june as a professional sabbatical periods. So the full month from the first of the month to the end of the month, I plan on taking that as a sabbatical. And as I was first researching this concept, I found a lot of different opinions, a lot of different resources. And so I wanted to share a couple of those with you. One is that the concept of a sabbatical, for me came from my time in the education industry, or the education sphere, when professional educators would take time off, you know, they would basically pursue other interests like, you know, take time away, or even just rest. And that was the first thing that I kind of thought about it. And then once I started digging in to professional sabbaticals, or business sabbaticals, I found two schools of thought and one of which seems to be that people treat the sabbatical the same way that you would treat a vacation, where you literally take as much time as you plan for and you are not working at all, it’s 100%, rest focused or hobby focused, or interest focused. And you truly treat it as a break or vacation away from your work, the second school of thought, and I put, I’m literally going to read this definition off of Google. But this is kind of the direction that I’m taking my sabbatical in. And that is an extended break from your job that gives you time to enhance your qualifications, reflect on accomplishments and decide how to prioritize your life or career or to take an extended rest period due to professional burnout. So I’m kind of I’m planning my sabbatical to be more of a time to reflect to rest and to grow, and to really tackle some like large scale projects without having the added pressure of client work. Essentially, what I’m planning on doing is taking the larger scale projects that have been put on the backburner for a long time, not taking any client work on not booking any clients not booking any one to one services in that for that month of June, and solely using it as a restful time to really lean into the creativity and the creation process of these larger scale projects. So a few expectations that I have for this month of time. One is to allot myself the time to create more margin for self care for creative thinking, for dreaming and idea creation. I am not using this as a vacation time, per se, I’m moreso leaning into the fact of like, if I need rest in that month, I’ll have the freedom and the margin to take rest without being held accountable to client deadlines or to self imposed deadlines. So a few steps that I’m taking in advance this is a question that I’ve gotten a lot when I’ve shared about preparing for the sabbatical is how are you planning on not letting your business get like a little dent in it by taking a full month off of client work? So a few steps I’m taking in advance full disclosure, I have a small team. So if you don’t have a team, that’s your preparations might look different than mine, but I’m happy to be transparent in the preparations that I’m taking to be able to step away. When is in the past few months. And like I said we’re in the end of April. Right now I’m taking June off leading up I had planned far in advance that June would be the month I take my first sabbatical. And so I was able to tell my team in advance. Hey, I’m going to be out of pocket for this month. I’ll be available to check in

5:00
These are the times that I’m going to be checking in. So on my team, we have Monday meetings, we are not going to be doing a Monday meeting every single Monday of the month that I’m off. Instead, I’m going to have designated times to check in with my team make sure everything is going smoothly. They know how to contact me if there’s an emergency, but they also know what constitutes an emergency. So really, I’m taking steps to fully give over power in my business, to my team and allow them to keep things afloat.

5:32
I had planned, as I said before, I had planned in advance that I was going to be out for June. So anybody who inquired for me for business coaching on June one on one, they know that my earliest start date is July. So I have booked out July and August, while taking June to myself. Same thing goes for photography clients, if somebody wants a brand shoot in June, they know that they’re not going to get one it’s going to happen in July or further out. So these are all steps that I took in advance, I really planned ahead in order to be able to take this time. And I communicated that really clearly with my team and with anybody who inquired so that as my team is handling that inquiry workload, they’re able to say, oh, Lily is unavailable for the month of June, she’ll be back July 1, or she’s currently booking for September, or whatever it is. So that was the biggest step that I think I took was just marking that time off well in advance as I teach. Whenever I talk about time management, I marks that time off well in advance, and I am adhering to those boundaries that I had set forward. So those are the few steps that I took to prepare, I shared a little bit about my expectations. And then I also one thing that I’m doing before June hits is this big project that has been on the backburner for so long, I’m taking the time before the sabbatical to map out what that big project actually looks like before I have to kind of sit into the sabbatical time to create it or to really map it out in more detail. So as much as you can do beforehand, I think the better without putting the pressure of like piling on a ton of work. I think that is something that a lot of people from my research have have reflected back on and thought like, I really didn’t need to do that. I think it’s the same concept of whenever you take time off for a vacation, you feel like you have to get all this done ahead of time, these self imposed deadlines, these self imposed pressure points that you’re putting on yourself, and on your business, they don’t really need to be there. Because at the end of the day, it’s one month and at the end of that month, I’m coming back, and I’ll be there back in my business every single day. So I’m really excited about it. Those are just my few steps that I took to prepare in advance and a few of my expectations and as I said, I’ll be back with a follow up episode once I take that sabbatical to let you know if my expectations were met and how I could have prepared differently for it. And of course, if you enjoyed this episode, please feel free to hop over and let me know what you think over on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen, I always appreciate reviews and ratings. And of course, you can always feel free to slide into my DMS with episode ideas, guest requests or anything else you want me to know about the podcast. I’m all ears. So thanks again for tuning in. And I will see you guys on the next episode. For show notes and resources mentioned on today’s episode head to so here’s the thing podcast.com and if you’re enjoying the podcast, I’d love to read your review on iTunes. Thanks so much for listening and I’ll catch you in the next episode.