What's Your Best Tip for Running Your Business on Vacation?

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My best recommendation is to treat every aspect of your business as if you're on vacation every day, even when you're not. If you're always acting as if you're not available, you'll be forced to create systems and processes to effectively run your business and you'll learn to delegate. It may take months or even years to get to the point where you actually can go on vacation for a long period of time, but if you're constantly treating your business this way, every day you'll get a little bit closer to this being a reality.

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Haha! I misread the title to this thread as ... What's Your Best Tip for Ruining Your Business on Vacation? I need coffee, obviously. and maybe my glasses

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Having just come back from a two week vacation, while I have ten house in various stages of the buy rehab sell cycle, four active rehabs in progress with four different crew leaders... I would have to agree with @bill ham, having good systems and good people in place are the most crucial keys. Technology, smartphone, text and email, pad, logmein are key for me. Tips; 1. Making sure your people know who to call for most common problems. 2. Foster good relationships with key staff subs so they can call each other instead of me to solve most problems. 3. Pictures, pictures pictures, having guys email me pictures when there are issues I need to look at. Write proposals, idea, list of needs, design idea etc on a piece of paper, take a picture and email it to me, ill view in ipad. 4. Drink large glasses of good Port :-)

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Apps. Honestly, having the right suite of apps on hand makes all the difference. For me its: mail (duh), text, google voice, evernote, google drive, skype, logmein ignition (can remote control my PC desktop from my phone), Genius scan (create PDFs from photos), docusign ink (e-signatures) and notability (can sign PDFs but no e-signature verification).

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I give all my residents a maintenance list with phone numbers of different handy types to call and I usually have 2-3 people from each trade they may need (24 hour plumber, electrician, locksmith etc.) on the list. I tell them if something is an emergency to call 911 because I won't be able to help them anyway, in a true emergency. I also emphasize that I try to keep normal business hours so if they contact me on a night or weekend, I may not get back to them till Monday. I have them schedule the repair man so when they will be available to let him in (for the most part). If I know I'm going to be hard to reach or out of the country I may give a friend in the area keys and give that number to my residents (only to be used if they can't reach me and it's urgent).

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My handyman really stepped up last month when I was on vacation. He got a new tenant moved in and a new AC installed. He worked a punch list of another new tenant move in. He didn't call me once. People can rise to the occasion.

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My best tip? Leverage. It's not just about money, it's about all kinds of resources. Including people. First, hire a good property manager. Use a Realtor (I'm a Realtor, but I have recently been listing my finished rehabs with another Realtor at least in part because of my vacation plans). And don't stress too much over the money. If a rehab is a week or two late getting completed, that's not the end of the world. Now go - and have fun on vacation.

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On-line access is a major issue. When heading for Australia again the house we rented had WiFi. Otherwise it was a 3 mile trip to a McDonalds for free WiFi. Before leaving we took our 'smartphones' into Verizon to be programmed/setup for international calls/data etc. During a previous trip we had issues with our 'smartphones' & we were stuck using calling cards. But several techs had problems getting the International data codes etc functioning!!! Finally their most experienced tech (a UB Science Grad) also admitted she was having problems & wanted to know what part of Europe was Australia close to !!! As mentioned before we did 3 deals while away on that trip, but having the right team in place is paramount.

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Hire good staff! I have an almost 400 unit portfolio and management company and I go on vacation all the time. Not bragging, but what I am saying is that if you put together good systems and delegate to competent people (that you pay well) then business is not that time consuming. Putting the systems in place is the big work load. Try VAs when starting out.

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I think the missing link is a virtual assistant or at a minimum an answering service. I do all the work behind the scenes for arranging repairs/repairs and other issues but not having to answer phone calls is a starting point to building out good business processes. I've started looking into a VA but just onboarded with Buildium to manage the properties and books. My priority now is running everything through the software and not in my head.