Permission to Stop: Why Business Owners Need a Proper Break

Permission to Stop

By Victoria Buckenham, VB&Associates

Last month I wrote about the concept of leadership ‘pit crews’, the people around a business owner who keep them thinking clearly, recovering properly and moving forward. A few of you got in touch afterwards, and a theme emerged which has inspired me to come back to the CN newsletter for a second month running: even with a strong crew in place, you still hadn’t switched off properly in months.

This month I want to pick up that thread from a different angle. Because having the right people around you only helps if you actually let them hold things while you step away.

It’s July, which for most small business owners means one thing is quietly on your mind: whether you can really afford to take a proper break this summer. And I feel it too.

I hear the same line constantly from clients: “I’m not going anywhere exotic, so it’s not really a proper holiday, is it?”, as if a flight abroad is what earns you the right to switch off, rather than simply the decision to do it.

It isn’t the destination. It’s the decision.

The cost of staying half on

When you run your own business, there’s no separation between you and the company. If you’re tired, the business is tired. If your judgement is foggy, every decision downstream of you is a bit foggier too.

And yet the habit among business owners (and yes, even myself) I work with is remarkably consistent: laptop packed, phone on, inbox checked once or twice a day “just in case,” calls taken from a sun lounger because a client project feels too important to leave alone.

Here’s the uncomfortable bit. That constant availability rarely protects the business. It just delays the rest you actually need, and a tired mind produces tired decisions. Being reachable isn’t the same as being valuable. If anything, we know the owners who never properly stop tend to plateau faster, because the low-grade exhaustion quietly wears down the clarity that built the business in the first place.

Nine in ten UK adults are reporting high or extreme stress levels at the moment, and that figure has barely shifted in three years. For business owners specifically, the guilt around stepping away is often worse than for employees, simply because there’s no one else whose name is on the door.

A small structure, not a big leap

Permission to switch off isn’t just a mindset. It’s a bit of preparation, done early enough that it doesn’t feel like a scramble in the final week.

Four weeks out: be honest with yourself about what genuinely needs your input before you go, and what can wait. Most of us overestimate this list.

Three weeks out: start handing things over properly rather than leaving it to the last few days. If something is time-sensitive, flag it now while there’s still room to plan around it.

Two weeks out: write your handover with actual decisions in it, not just tasks, so whoever’s covering isn’t left guessing what you’d do.

The week before: close the loop on anything outstanding, and agree with yourself what “urgent” really means while you’re away, and who it goes to instead of you.

If you’re reading this with less time than that left before your break, don’t scrap the whole exercise. Even one proper handover conversation and a clear line on what counts as urgent will get you most of the way there.

Back to the pit crew

A pit crew only works if the driver actually lets go of the wheel for the pit stop. The whole point of having people around you is that you don’t have to hold everything yourself, all the time.

So if last month’s article got you thinking about who’s in your crew, this month is the other half of that thought: are you actually letting them do their job, or are you still gripping the wheel from the beach?

Whatever your break looks like this summer, give yourself proper permission to take it.

If you’d like to talk about building a business (or a team) where switching off is genuinely normalised rather than just something we all say we believe in, I’d love to hear from you. Get in touch with VB&A.

Victoria Buckenham, VB&A Founder