Summer for business owners goes one of two ways: happens with you or it happens to you. 

• Happens with you: You leave a quick voice memo for a warm lead, send a “looks great” to your OBM, close the laptop by noon, and head outside to a popsicle that’s already melting down your kid’s wrist.
• Happens to you: You’re hunched over a glowing laptop in the only room with AC, saying “five more minutes” for the tenth time, watching the pool from the window.

I’m guessing you know which one you want. But you’ve been telling yourself things like, “My business doesn’t work that way,” or “That just won’t work for me.” 

Can I (respectfully) call bullshit?

It has nothing to do with your business, clients, or discipline…and everything to do with your systems. 

Being summer-ready isn’t about a cute new swimsuit or the right beach read queued up on your Kindle. It’s about the backend seamlessly holding your business together while you’re out enjoying the sunshine. By the end of this post, you’ll know exactly what those systems look like for you and your team so this summer actually feels like one.

The 5 Mistakes Most Business Owners Make Before Summer Hits

For most business owners, summer is a blessing and a curse. Your kids are home, the weather’s gorgeous, and the pool is calling…but your clients still need you and your team has questions that need answers. Your capacity shrinks while you’re getting pulled in a thousand different directions. 

CEOs deal with it different ways, like: 

• Waiting until “things slow down in June” to fix their systems. The truth is June is too late. By then, you’re already in full catch-up mode. 
• Treating an OOO email like it’s a full-blown system. An OOO email is a notification (and, let’s be real, one many clients ignore). Meaning all that work will be piled up, waiting for you the moment you open your laptop. 
• Assuming your team will “just figure it out.” They will…but sending nonstop “Hey, quick question,” texts. 
• Skipping a launch plan because “it’s summer.” PSA: Your audience doesn’t take Q3 off. They still want to hear from you, but if your launch is disorganized (or nonexistent), they’ll spend their money somewhere else. 
• Building the system during your time off instead of before it. Trust me on this: systems built in panic don’t hold. And do you really want to be in front of your laptop while your family’s outside enjoying the fireworks? 

Not planning for summer is a recipe for chaos, stress, and wondering if this is just how it has to be. (Hint: It doesn’t.) If you want to feel less overwhelmed in your business and actually be present with your friends and family this summer, this is your sign to build the systems NOW.

What Systems Do You Actually Need to Be OOO This Summer?

Most OOO advice is just an email autoresponder template. That might work if you’re a corporate girlie, but as a business owner, it just band-aids a system gap. 

There are two layers you need to build to prep your business for time off this summer: 

• Your plan: What holds the business when you, the CEO, step away. 
• Your team’s plan: How time off requests get submitted, approved, and covered without anything falling through the cracks.

Both have to work, separately and together. If only one is buttoned-up, you’re still the safety net.

The CEO’s Time Off Plan

So many clients ask me, “How do I take time off as a CEO without losing money?” and I get it. When you’re the one driving the business, the idea of stepping away means a direct hit to your bank account. But if you build these four systems before you log off, everything keeps humming along, even when you’re poolside.

#1: A Prescheduled Content Bank

If your content disappears the second you do, you don’t have a content strategy. You have a hostage situation. 

The solution? Getting your content ready ahead of time. 

If you’re the content creator, prep enough posts, emails, podcasts, etc., to cover your OOO time, plus a one-week buffer, two weeks before you go offline. Load everything into your preferred social media scheduler or let your team know that content is ready to post. 

If you need a content system that clearly shows the status of every piece at a glance, check out the Content Hub in the Template Shop!

#2: A Warm Lead Follow-Up System

Warm leads don’t go cold because you took a week off. They go cold because no one followed up at all. Luckily, there’s a system for that. 

• If you’re planning on working an hour or two a day, set up a CRM tag for warm leads so you know exactly who to connect with the moment you open your laptop. Then create a short 3-email follow-up sequence the team can send, including a booking link showing your summer availability. 
• If you’re totally offline, designate who will reach out to those leads while you’re out. Maybe it’s your OBM or your EA, or maybe it’s simply an OOO autoresponder with clear return dates and next steps they can take in the meantime. 

Some CEOs feel like they can never take time off because leads will wither away. Leads won’t care if you take vacation, as long as you let them know when you’ll be back.

#3: An Onboarding & Offboarding Workflow That Doesn’t Require You

The #1 thing CEOs end up doing on vacation? Manually sending onboarding emails. And (I say this with love) it’s time to knock it off. 

There are so many incredible tools out there, like Honeybook or Dubsado (KDC’s favorite!), that can automatically send off your welcome sequence, contract, invoice, scheduling link, or whatever else your clients need to start off strong without you. 

The same applies if a client needed to offboard while you’re OOO. Automate the workflow so you don’t have to whip out your laptop at the beach. Or, if you have a team, set up exactly what they need to deliver an exceptional client experience.

#4: A “What Actually Needs Me” Filter

Sometimes, there’s things only you can handle. But, let’s be honest: 99% of the messages that ping your Slack app while you’re on vacation are not it. 

The problem? You’ve never defined what actually requires your attention. 

The fix? Create a “what actually needs me” one-page decision tree your team can run before pinging you.

Your decision tree will be unique to your business, but there are three common categories: 

• Handle it. Your team has the authority and SOP to take care of it without you. 
• Decide and tell me later. Your team has authority, but you’d like a head’s up when you get back. 
• Hold for me. This is for CEO-only decisions, like legal issues, major PR, or big financial calls. 

Creating and maintaining these boundaries helps your team know what they can make decisions on and run with it. And you? You can actually get the rest you need (and deserve) without your phone constantly pinging in the background.

How to Handle Team Time Off This Summer

If you have a team, you know that summer is when the most time-off requests roll in. How do you make sure everything is covered so they (and you) can enjoy time off? You guessed it: systems.

#1: Build a Time Off Request SOP

Scouring your Slack feeds to make sure all the PTO requests are right on your Google calendar is so 2017. Instead, build a time-off request SOP to cut out the confusion. 

Step 1: Create an intake form to house all time-off requests in ClickUp, Asana, Notion, or whatever PM tool you use. The form should include: 

• Requested dates
• Who’s covering what (if not already decided) 
• Active client/launch responsibilities due in that timeframe 
• Out-of-office message and auto-responder confirmed 

Step 2: Create an approval path. Who says yes to the request and the timeframe they need to do it in. (BTW, this should likely be your OBM or integrator, not you.)

#2: Set Your Summer Blackout Windows

If you’re launching over the summer, you’ll need all hands on deck…meaning, you’ll need to black out a certain week (or weeks) where team PTO needs extra coverage planning. 

The secret is to communicate these blackout windows before anyone submits a request. Add it to your team Slack channel, your PTO request intake form, team hub…anywhere you team checks regularly. This will help eliminate 80% of the awkward back-and-forth conversations if someone requests time off during a blackout period.

#3: Create a Coverage Map

Many CEOs have a time-off calendar. Which is great at telling you who is offline, but terrible at letting you know who’s responsible in their absence. 

Create a simple table that lives in the same PM tool as your Time Off Request SOP. Add at least 5 columns: role, person, backup, critical SOPs/projects they own, where the SOPs live. 

This will help you see at a glance who is responsible when person B is gone, what needs to be handled, and where their backup can get all the details to keep everything moving.

#4: The “Before You Log Off” Checklist 

Having a standardized checklist that every team member (including you) completes before they log off for vacation makes sure nothing falls through the cracks and gives you peace of mind that it’s all covered. 

Here are a few ideas to get you started: 

• Inbox triaged and flagged
• Status of active projects and tasks updated in the PM tool
• OOO auto-responder on with backup contact details included
• Slack status updated with their return date 
• Handoff doc shared with coverage person
• Any pending approvals cleared or delegated 

Assign this checklist as a task due the day before a person logs off for vacation to make sure everything’s taken care of.

The Gut Check: Are You Summer Ready? 

You’ve built the systems, added the SOPs, and created your content, but are you really ready for your summer vacation? Ask yourself… 

• Does my team have a single source of truth for who covers what when someone is out?
• Is there anything in my business that only I know how to do and is it written down anywhere?
• If a warm lead came in today and I didn’t see it for a week, who’s catching it?
• Am I currently the person who sends onboarding emails? If yes, how can I systemize it so I can leave my laptop at home on vacation?

If you flinched at any of these, don’t worry. It’s just a sign that you have a systems problem. And systems problems? 100% fixable. 

Summer is coming either way. The only question is whether your backend is ready for it. 

Here’s what I know after years of building systems for online business owners: the CEOs who actually unplug in summer built the right systems on the back end so they could step away without anything wobbling.

That’s it. That’s the whole secret.

And if you want to know exactly which systems to start with — the three that do the heaviest lifting when you’re not at your desk — grab The 3 Systems Every Scalable Launch Needs. It’s a free, 15-minute audio guide that walks you through the exact backend foundation KDC clients use to launch, log off, and actually enjoy the summer.

Because you don’t need to become more operational to enjoy your summer. You just need the systems that already work to actually be working for you.