How to Take Time Off and Actually Earn More
Do you struggle being able to take time off? Have you NOT taken a vacation in the past year?
Do you worry you’ll lose revenue if you take time off? Do you take less time off being self-employed than when you had a “real” job?
Guess what? Every freelancer and self-employed business person struggles with this; yet, it is possible to take time off AND earn more.
Take Time off AND earn more?
Unless you’re independently wealthy (damn you, trustafarians!) or frugal enough to live in a cardboard box, you need to earn money to pay for things like housing, lattes, and that pesky gambling habit. Being self-employed, though, you only earn cash when you work. And if you’re not working, you’re not earning.
Although your bill rate might be relatively high compared to an hourly salary, you might think you “can’t” take time off because of difficult issues, such as:
- Pressure to generate revenue.
- Non-billable time needed to ensure you have a flow of work (i.e., marketing), which takes time away from being able to bill revenue.
- Time needed for miscellaneous admin tasks (accounting, bookkeeping, networking, business development, etc.).
- Poor time management (guilty as charged…).
So, contrary to what your spouse or significant other might think, no, you CANNOT bill 40 hours a week. Sure, there are things you can do to maintain focus and pare down the time you spend on eBay surfing for beanie babies, but at some point, you’d like to have some time off.
How to Earn More so You Can Take Vacation
Over the past five years I’ve been self-employed, and I’ve learned a few tactics that have helped boost my consulting income so that I can take time off, while avoiding a hit to my revenue. I’ve learned to keep new work coming through the pipeline while taking time off. Most important though, is earning more when I take a vacation and here’s how:
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Raise your rate.I know freelancers/consultants who have NEVER raised their rates. If that’s you, then you’ve just taken a pay cut every year. Personally, I raise my rate about 8-12% annually. And I charge new clients a higher rate than existing clients–since it’s hard to bump your rate for existing clients up more than a “reasonable” increase, whatever that might be for your niche.
As an example, this year, I bumped my existing clients from $150/hour to $165/hour, while I charge new clients $175/hour. The result is that I gave myself about a 13% raise. That means that–all other things being equal–I can earn the same as I did last year but work less, i.e., take some vacation (or, I can work the same amount as last year, and have more money to fuel my eBay addiction).
Be forewarned though: to raise your rate, you first need to believe in the value you provide–that may not be as easy as it sounds. Do you “blink” or hem-and-haw when you tell clients your rate? If so, you may need to work on reminding yourself of the value you provide, and that you’re worth your rate.
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Create non-hourly revenue streams. Depending on your freelance/consulting niche, it may be possible to create re-sellable products like software utilities, apps, e-books, e-courses, and more.
Prior to going on vacation, you can do a marketing push to your clients and; prospects to boost the sales of your products. That way, you can make money while you’re away. My favorite definition of an entrepreneur is “someone who’s willing to work night and day to make money while they sleep.” Put in the time to create something that you can re-sell, then you can keep the cash rolling in while you sip mai tais on the beach.
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Alert your clients that you’ll be taking time off beforehand. I regularly do this–about two weeks before I go on vacation–and it typically results in clients e-mailing me with billable projects.
My initial e-mail reminds the client about me (even if we haven’t talked in a while), and the timeframe before my vacation creates scarcity so that clients want to push work to me. While this tactic may not make you money while you sleep, it usually puts more work in your pipeline so you won’t be as worried about having no work when you get back from your time off.
Manage Work: Before, During, and After Your Time Off
Now that you’ve made some enhancements to your freelance business to earn more, you still need to minimize any hit to your hourly revenue, and keep projects moving forward while you’re off:
- If possible, schedule your time off as an extended weekend. That way, you’re not out for an entire workweek, and can maintain momentum with projects more easily.
- Plan BEFORE you return. Before you leave on vacation, create blocks of time on your calendar for specific projects and tasks–not just the e-mail black hole. Aim to plan out the entire return week, leaving some open times for things that come up, but most of your time should be planned out. That way, when you return from vacation, you’ll know what you need to do, and during your vacation, you’ll be less stressed since you know you’ve done advance planning for your return.
- Increase your billable hours prior to leaving on vacation. I also boost my work hours after returning so that there’s not as big a hit to revenue.
- Optional: Work on vacation. Not my favorite, but it’s a possibility. To do this, I’ve restricted work hours to early morning and late evening.
- Optional: Manage e-mail during your vacation, but only to clean out your inbox. The goal is to reduce inbox clutter so you’ll have less when you return. This doesn’t necessarily mean responding to e-mail or working while you’re on vacation. The point is to come back to work with only the priority stuff in your inbox.
- My favorite: Unplug completely. If possible, do absolutely nothing work-related, and don’t take your laptop or cellphone on vacation. For the past 3 years, I’ve taken my kids on an annual backpacking expedition, and it’s incredibly freeing to only focus on enjoying my time off in the outdoors. Unplugging completely makes it easier to feel refreshed and energized when you return to work.
Those are just a handful of strategies I’ve used over the past five years as a freelancer consultant. By observing and adjusting these tactics, I can see what brings the best results results. In addition, having a mindset for experimentation makes it easier to play around with how I work and how I run my business; that way, I can test new ideas that–hopefully–create big wins.
How have you structured your business so you can take time off without feeling over-stressed? And what successful tactics have you used to turn your vacation time into a boost in income?
Photo credit: Some rights reserved by WDG_Photo.
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Your article came at the perfect time. I have been waffling about taking a much needed vacation in September. The challenge for me is I have a fixed fee contract to average a certain number of hours per week. I cannot decide whether to work on vacation or make up the hours before vacation. But the takeaway from your article is I need to take that vacation.
One option would be to load more hours either at the beginning or end of a week–for example, if you have to work, say, 8 hours a week for a client, put all those hours in on Monday (not necessarily easy, but do-able). That way, you can give yourself some time off while still maintaining your weekly hours requirement.
If you need to work an average number of hours per week, you might be able to load those hours toward the beginning and/or end of a week so you could more easily take time off. I’m thinking you could work your hours on Monday/Tuesday of week 1, and then Thursday/Friday of week 2. That’d give you a little more than a full week off to recharge your batteries.
And, yes, we all need to take vacation.
Here is an unpleasant truth. Without vacation or some type of regular break, you can spend more time on the job but be less productive and less creative. Once that vicious cycle begins, everything spirals downward.
Totally true. The same is true for not taking breaks DURING the workday. If I just try slogging through my day without any breaks, my productivity suffers, and I end up spending more time getting less done.
cool article.. I did this 2 time in the past and it works…
I agree and so far it worked great for me. I also keep myself updated with the latest coding best practices so I also offer quick turn-arounds. That would be a good explanation for existing clients.
I also want to do freelance writing and your blog gives details that are really helpful for me. Thanks for sharing this valuable information with us.
Thanks! Glad you found my info helpful!
Very well written and practical. I’ve been playing with the idea of going on vacation for the past few weeks. I might just give myself a treat.
I like the article, but I’ve found it hard to take a vacation in the last few years. I work as a freelance copy editor on a per page basis, the dollar amounts of which are set by clients. I’ll never make close to $50 an hour, let alone $175. I don’t see a vacation in my future anytime soon, although I certainly could use one!
Not being able to take a vacation is a symptom that there’s something you need to adjust in your business. From what you said, it sounds like increasing your overall hourly rate would allow you to take time off.
Offhand, there are a few ways I can think of where you could increase your hourly rate:
1. Since you essentially do piecework, you could work faster. Yeah, I know, this is not a sustainable strategy–especially if your quality of work output would suffer. Besides, you don’t want to feel like you’re running a hamster wheel. I’m just offering this as a possibility–just so you can start thinking about any and all options available.
2. Shift your niche and go upmarket, specializing with particular types of clients and/or jobs which pay more for your services.
3. Shift your niche so you’re targeting a different industry that’s more profitable. An obvious example is that if you’re currently working with nonprofits and/or businesses that have razor-thin profit margins, you could instead offer your services to companies in a more profitable industry/market.
4. Shift the type of service you offer. For example, instead of copy editing, you might try something like copywriting, which has a higher bill rate.
5. Leverage your time by productizing your services. For example, you could create a paid ebook or ecourse.
It’s going to take some time and effort to implement any of these strategies, but the payoff can be substantial.
One thing you didn’t mention was hiring a Virtual Assistant. As a VA I often get asked to help run my clients businesses whilst they take a break – hell I even sort the travel and accommodation arrangement for them before they go!
Typical tasks I get asked to do are:
Billing clients
Responding to email inquiries and general inquiries (they brief me on how they like things done & their processes)
Sending out newsletters
updating blogs
Scheduling diary appointments for when they get back
A lot of these things can be pre-scheduled by the client (blog posts, newsletters and social media updates through Buffer etc) but knowing an actual person is around to respond to their clients as their PA makes them feel happy that they haven’t just ‘abandoned’ their business and customers.
Now, how I manage to take a break is another matter!
Completely true! VA’s are a great way to keep your business running while you take time off.
If you’re a VA though and need to take time off, you could hire a VA to do your job as well–just make sure to test out their work quality and reliability first.
I also use a VA, but mainly just to check my emails and as a telephone contact. This way I don’t check my emails, she does and if anything urgent comes up she sends a text to a non-work mobile, and then emails it to a specially set-up email address. Works really well and I can relax more, and as Joanne says, the customers don’t feel abandoned!
The first holiday is the hardest. After that you learn when to go, where to go with good wifi coverage, or whether to arrange someone to cover, or whether it’s ok to take a complete break.
I like to go to Asia because it’s so cheap there. It’s actually cheaper to live there in a hotel than it is back at home. So if I stay for long enough and rent out my apartment in the UK I actually save money by being on holiday!
I’ve found the best time to go on vacation for a freelancer is between December and February. Things naturally slow down a bit then.