If you own a contracting company and can't picture a week away without the phone ringing, this is a plan for your first real vacation as a business owner. Taking a week off comes down to four things you settle before you leave: which week you'll go, who answers each kind of call, which decisions get made ahead of time and how you'll check in once a day without getting pulled back in. Give yourself four to six weeks to plan it, and the week itself will show you exactly what still runs through you.
You might already be counting how many times your phone rang yesterday. A crew lead couldn't find the right fittings, a customer wanted you and only you, and a supplier needed an answer on a substitution. Each one took a minute, and together they're the reason a week away feels like something other owners get to do. I ask every owner I meet when they last took a real day off, the kind where the phone didn't ring once, and a lot of owners have to stop and think about it.
Why does a week off feel impossible when you own the company?
A week off feels impossible because the answers your crew and customers need still live in your head and on your phone, so leaving means leaving them stuck. There's nothing wrong with you for feeling stuck, and the research shows how common it is. The QuickBooks Business Ownership in 2026 survey of 1,305 U.S. owners found that 82% made significant personal sacrifices in the past year, with sleep or rest the top one, and 57% missed at least one major personal milestone.
The trades feel this more than most because the work happens in the field, in real time, on someone else's house. One of the owners I'm working with runs a crew of seven and hadn't taken a day off in six months when we first sat down. The crew was calling all day long with questions about how to handle things, and materials were sometimes getting missed because nobody clearly owned the ordering. As the owner put it to me, "I literally can't manage another person."
That's the picture to keep in mind as you plan, because a week off works once those calls have somewhere else to go.
When is the right week to take off?
The right week is one in your slow season, picked far enough ahead that you can plan around it. SCORE's advice on taking time off says that if your business is seasonal, you should travel during the off-season, and it calls one week the "sweet spot" for a break.
For a lot of trades owners here in the Pacific Northwest, that means late winter, after the holiday rush and before spring work ramps up. An HVAC owner I talked with recently told me his next real day off was a holiday months away and that he expected things to calm down around February. That's a good instinct, and the trick is to put the week on the calendar now, while it's still months off, so that the schedule fills in around it.
Once you've picked it, tell your family, your crew and your office the date. It's much harder to give a week away once other people are counting on it.
Who answers the phone, the crew and the customers while I'm gone?
Every kind of call needs one named person who answers it while you're away, and that person needs to know it before you leave. Start by keeping a simple log for two weeks of every call and text that lands on you, and next to each one, write who could have handled it if they'd had the answer.
When the two weeks are up, sort the log into a short list like this one:
New leads and scheduling go to whoever runs the office, or to an answering service if nobody does yet.
Crew questions about the work go to your most trusted lead, with a written note on what they can decide alone.
Material orders and supplier questions go to one person who owns ordering for the week.
Customer complaints go to the office first, with a clear line on when to call you.
Money questions, such as a big change order or a refund, wait for your daily check-in unless they're urgent.
Write the list on one page, print it and put it in every truck and on the office wall. If a role has no name next to it, that's the first thing to solve, and it's often the reason the phone keeps ringing even when you're home.
What has to be decided before I leave?
Anything that would otherwise wait for you needs to be decided ahead of time, either by making the call now or by giving someone a clear limit. Walk through the schedule for your week away job by job and ask what could come up on each one.
For most owners, that means setting a dollar limit on change orders and purchases that your lead can approve alone, deciding who signs off on finished work, and making sure every job on the schedule has its materials ordered and a plan for what happens if the supply house is short. It also helps to settle any customer you already know will be difficult, so they hear from you before you go and not from your voicemail while you're gone.
The phrase to use with your crew is "use your judgment, and tell me about it at the check-in." A good lead will usually make a reasonable call once they know they're allowed to, and the ones who struggle will show you exactly where they need more training when you get back.
How do I check in without getting pulled back in?
Pick one time a day to check in, keep it short and let everything else wait. SCORE suggests checking on the business only once or twice a day, such as before heading out in the morning or before dinner, and having a staff member handle calls and messages and alert you only to urgent issues.
Checking in daily is normal for owners. In that same SCORE article, 67% of owners in an OnDeck Capital survey said they check in with their business at least once a day while on vacation, and a 2017 survey for Xero reported by CPA Practice Advisor found that only 14% of small business owners could completely check out. Those surveys are a few years old, but the pattern still rings true, and it's fine to plan for a check-in instead of pretending you won't.
Define an emergency in writing before you leave. A good line is anything involving someone's safety, a job that has to stop, or a customer threatening to cancel a signed contract. Everything else goes on the list for your daily call, and if someone calls you outside that window for something that isn't on the emergency list, answer with a question, like "what do you think we should do?"
What should I do with what I learn when I get back?
Take the list of every question that reached you during the week and treat it as your to-do list for the next month. Each call points to a handoff that isn't finished yet, and fixing those one at a time is how the next week away gets easier.
This is the same advice I give owners about the busy season. Write down, as it happens, every job that turned into a headache, every system that failed and everything you still do by hand, because by the time things slow down you'll have forgotten the details. That list tells you what to fix first. If you want the bigger picture of getting a company to run without you day to day, I've written about it in how to make your contracting business run without you, and our SOP development page covers turning those answers into something the crew can look up.
Questions owners ask
How far ahead should I plan a week off?
Four to six weeks is a good target, because it gives you two weeks to log the calls, a week or two to set up the handoffs and time to test them. Picking the week itself can happen months earlier, and it should.
Should I tell customers I'm away?
Tell the customers whose jobs fall in that week, and tell them who their contact will be. It lets them know their job is covered, and it keeps them from calling your cell out of habit.
What counts as an emergency worth calling me about?
Safety, a job that has to stop and a customer about to cancel a signed contract are good starting points. Write your own list before you leave and give it to everyone who might call.
Can I do this with a crew of five or six?
Yes, and a smaller crew often makes it easier, because there are fewer handoffs to set up. Even in a five-person shop, naming who owns the phone, the ordering and crew questions can make a full week away possible.
So think back to all those calls from yesterday. When each one has a name next to it and an answer written down, they can go to the person who owns them, and your phone can stay in your pocket on the second morning of the trip.
If you'd like to see where your name still shows up before you plan that week, the free Foundation Inspection follows a job from the moment a lead comes in to the moment the money's in your bank and asks who owns each step along the way. It takes about an hour with no paperwork in front of you, and it shows you which handoffs would free up the most of your week.
I'm Tim Volner, and I run Sentric Group in Salem, Oregon, where I work with contractors who've built a solid company but have reached the point where it can't seem to run for a single day without them.