I have a personal success story I’d like to share quick.

For the past 6 years, I’ve been taking action to better-integrate The Mighty Mo! into my non-work life.

One pain point for me over the years has been taking calm vacation time away from my business and with my family.

Previously…

A common vacation over the years had me working late nights and some days, frantically fixing customer issues and consequently feeling overwhelmed by my failures as a father and husband.

“Why take a vacation at all if I’m not even going to use the vacation to its intended purpose?” I thought over and over again, year after year.

Success!

I’m proud…yes PROUD to let y’all know that I took a 7 day vacation last week that included very little prep/communication on the biz side, and the systems and processes I’ve built over the last 6 years stood strong!

Taking 7 straight days off might not seem like much to someone who works a 9-5 job, but to us freelancers…IT’S THE HOLY GRAIL!

How Did I Do It?

The most significant change I’ve made in my biz over the last 6 years have been on the communication front.

For this vacation, I communicated my availability up-front and didn’t open email for the entirety of the vacation.

It proves once again that if you are confident and clear in your communication AND you mean it, the sky is the limit for how many consecutive days you can take off!

What About WordPress Emergencies?

I have a 911 WordPress Emergency form that is rarely used, however it actually was used by a customer for a legitimate reason during this recent 7-day vacation.

The amazing part is this: my part-time contractor fixed the issue before I even saw the “911” message!  How cool is that?!

You see, the 911 WordPress Emergency form DMs the message to The Mighty Mo!‘s Slack channel where someone can take action on it.  Because of how we use Slack, the message 1) has urgency and 2) can be addressed by anyone in the channel.  (more about how we use Slack)

So in the case of this recent vacation, when my customer sent a “911 Website Emergency” message via the simple web form, the issue was resolved within a few minutes by someone who is not me!

Amazing and the stuff of dreams, I tell you!