We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Erin Taylor. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Erin below.

Alright, Erin thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Do you take vacations? Why or why not?

Vacations were one of the main reasons I started a business! Requesting approval for time off and being limited just felt wrong. The flexibility to build a business that allows me to take time off when I want and to work while traveling if I feel like it is a huge perk. I work with my clients to create a business that allows them to do the same.

I’d invite entrepreneurs who feel like they can’t step away to evaluate why. It’s usually one of three things: the belief their clients won’t understand, a lack of tech, or not trusting their team.

In preparation for a vacation:
1. Notify clients more than 30 days in advance and depending on the work, let them know how things will be handled during the time off
2. Review work that happens the week before, week of, and week after. Create a plan of action and build SOPs that your team can leverage to complete the work or provide the necessary reply while you’re out.
3. Use automation (like Zapier or within your tools) to handle any new leads or client questions while you’re out. This helps reduce the overwhelm when you return
4. Turn on your out-of-office notice and relax. The best business owners take time away.

Unless you’re in a very small subset of career fields, our work is not life or death. Everything can wait for a week or two.

Erin, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I’m Erin Taylor, an online business manager and the founder of Lunimae Strategy & Systems Design. I spent 12 years in the corporate world, primarily as an IT Project Manager. In late 2019, I took the skills I had gained, along with the freedom I craved, and established my own business.

I now help burned-out brand and web designers put down the matches and design a calmer business. Creative CEOs usually come to me when their batteries are at 1%. They’re juggling multiple projects without supportive systems, and they don’t know how to delegate or automate—let alone scale their business.

With strategic systems, tech support, project and team management, we tackle their greatest hurdles in just 90 days, and we light the path for even bigger creative visions that recharge their batteries.

It’s like having a second screen for your brain—one that gives you the space and energy to design your dream business

Can you open up about how you funded your business?

Due to the nature of my business, there wasn’t much capital I need to start but I did feel like I still needed income as I built my business. While many people start their online business while they have their full-time I didn’t feel that was realistic due to the hours and the travel that was involved. Instead, I creatively found two ways to produce income while still being able to determine my schedule.
First, we leveraged an area of our house that was primarily just storage to create a one-bedroom Airbnb. I utilized the money I was making in my corporate job to fund the setup of the rental, knowing it would produce income for me after I quit.
Once I quit my corporate job, I outsourced the skills I already had by taking on a contract project management role in a very part-time capacity. It was the same job but with less stress, no travel, and a mutually agreed on end-date. There is no shame in having a part time job to fund the full time one you want.

These two revenue sources gave me the funds to float myself until my business grew.

Any advice for managing a team?

Get to know your team! Find out what work they love to do, how they like to receive feedback, and how they learn best. If words of affirmation are important to your team but aren’t for you, make sure to schedule reminders. Each time a reminder pops up, send a note to that employee and let them know something specific they’ve done recently that has made a positive impact.
Trust your team to do their job. Once you’ve provided the training and SOPs, give them ownership of the task. If you’re constantly coming in behind them and making changes (without a discussion), they are never going to improve and you’ll always have to worry about it.
In surveys most people want to like the work they do, feel appreciated, and get paid. Stop trying to make this a “family” and give them a raise when they deserve it and a bonus when the company is doing well.

Because travel is so important to me, I encourage my team to take time off, even prompting them every other month to schedule time away. We shut down the company for holidays and during our two-week end-of-year break, they are still paid their average amount (even though they are hourly). I also schedule quarterly feedback surveys and biannual state of the business updates. It makes an impact to show you care and that you want them to be “in the know” as your company grows.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.lunimae.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lunimaestrategy/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erinwtaylor/
• Other: https://www.threads.com/@lunimaestrategy

Image Credits

Annabeth Kierspe Photography