What is a "Vacation" for an Entrepreneur?

I'm pretty good about disconnecting from work when I go on vacation, but as any entrepreneur knows, sometimes, life just doesn't play along with your plans.

The day before we were slated to go on a 2-week trip to Europe for my brother's wedding, one of our email service providers completely shut down our Google Workspace due to a technical error. To make matters worse, their support took two days to acknowledge the issue and eventually re-enable our email.

Between packing and getting our two kids ready to fly to Europe, I was frantically coordinating backup plans with the team, barraging our email provider's support lines, and trying to make sure clients knew we hadn't shut down the company as their emails to us bounced back.

While the issue was (mostly) resolved as I took off, it reminded me how fragile things are in small business. No matter how strong your processes are, team is, or recurring revenue commitments are, we're all at the mercy of things outside of our control. It's part of the reason entrepreneurship just isn't right for a lot of people.

Other than that hiccup, I have to say, my vacation was pretty great. Both companies continued closing new deals and running without a hitch while I spent time with family.

As I always say, the highs are high and the lows are really low.

Karl Hughes