The questions get uncomfortable fast: Who approves payroll if I’m unreachable? What happens to the person who calls my cell on day 12 and gets voicemail? What decisions still depend on me?
I’m seriously considering a challenge for 2027: taking an entire month off from MultiFunding. I mean really off: no email, no work texts, no WhatsApp, no calls to see how things are going. Only a short list of genuine emergencies would require my involvement, and my team would help prepare that list. Otherwise, I’d be gone for 30 days.
I’ve realized this idea presents two very different challenges, and I’m more nervous about one than the other. The first is making sure the business can run without me. I started MultiFunding in 2010. We’ve built a terrific team and grown a lot, but plenty still lands on my desk. I still approve payroll. Prospective clients still call my cell phone all the time because, somewhere along the way, I became the number people save. I’ve probably encouraged it without realizing it.
So the questions get uncomfortable fast: Who approves payroll if I’m unreachable? What happens to the person who calls my cell on day 12 and gets voicemail? What decisions still depend on me, and where have I become the bottleneck? I suspect addressing these kinds of questions and preparing for the month could be as valuable as the month itself.
And if I come back and find everything has gone beautifully without me, I won’t feel bad. I’ll be proud. That’s what I’ve been working toward for 16 years. There’s also a financial benefit to this. A business that can operate without its founder is inherently more valuable than one that can’t. Whether I ever decide to sell MultiFunding or not, reducing its dependence on me would make it a stronger business and a more valuable asset.
But there’s another challenge, and it’s the one that really freaks me out: What am I going to do with myself for 30 days? I love my work. I love the people, the problems, the conversations. Most mornings I wake up knowing exactly what my day looks like, and most of it revolves around the business.
I could travel. I could read. I could exercise more, spend time with family and friends. All of that sounds wonderful in theory. But 30 days is a long time. I’m not even sure I know how to turn on my television. And I wonder how long it would take before I started itching to find out what was happening at work. Would I enjoy the time? Or would I spend the first two weeks wandering around the house looking for something productive to do? Being the person everyone calls, the person who’s needed, is part of what I’d be giving up.
And there’s a bigger question lurking here. Someday, whether I sell the business, retire, or simply decide to work less, I’ll have to figure out what life looks like without MultiFunding taking up so much of my time. If I can’t figure out what to do with myself for 30 days, what happens when it’s permanent? Maybe taking this month would be a useful dry run for that day, too.
Then I started thinking about scaling the experiment. What if my senior leaders did it too? We’d have to stagger it, and it would take serious planning. But each of them would have to figure out how their part of the business runs without them. And they might discover some of the same things about themselves that I expect to discover about myself.
I wouldn’t feel right asking them to do something I wouldn’t do. And maybe I need to be the guinea pig. Of course, not everyone would want to do it. For some people, a month away is paradise. For others it creates as much anxiety as excitement. That’s worth remembering, too.
I’m not sure yet whether I’ll do this in 2027. But I’ve already decided how I’d measure success. I don’t need to come back to record sales or flawless operations. There will probably be mistakes. Just taking the month off would be an accomplishment, for me and for the business.
So here’s the question I’ll leave with you. Could you take 30 days away from your business? Could your senior leaders take 30 days? And if the answer is no, shouldn’t you want to know why? The funny thing is, I started out testing whether my business could survive without me. Now I think I’m also testing whether I can survive without my business. I’m not sure which of us has more work to do.
