So I came back from my Italian holiday almost a week ago, and while I was there I was affected by that Southern European effect of slowly slowly.

In Spain they have Manana, manana, which literally means tomorrow, tomorrow and in Italy it is Piano, Piano, meaning slowly.

I’ve been racking my brains to see if we have an equivalent saying, but nothing pops to mind just yet. If you know of something, please let me know!

Now holidays obviously are historically there to help us unwind, switch off and sit back. We work all year, tirelessly away and look forward to 1 or 2 weeks away when we can become someone else. Someone with less worries, nothing really to do each day and endless mornings stretching out in front of us.

What bliss.

Hands up if that’s you and you’ve once said, ‘God, I can’t wait for my holiday’. As in, well then I’ll really get to relax.

It’s also a phenomenon that if we’ve really been burning the candles at both ends with work, we can take time off and instantly become ill. Our bodies going ‘finally, now we can break down’.

That happened to me once in Morocco. I’d even taken my work with me. And was so broken down with exhaustion I was ill for the entire holiday. Sad times indeed.

So all these leads me to think how can we bring a little bit of that holiday vibe back into our businesses? Do we want to come back to work and instantly be hell for leather again?

Or could we keep that holiday Piano Piano vibe going for just a little bit longer?

Because if you’re reading this, you’re probably running your own business. So that means you are your own boss. So it figures that you get to decide how it all runs?

We want to run our businesses, we don’t want our businesses to run us.

So here are some things you can be thinking about if this all resonates with you and you want a little manana, manana in your life.

Finding your why

Every so often we need to stop, take stock and reconfigure why we started our businesses in the first place.

Did you start your business so you could have more time with friends and family? More freedom? Less work stress?

Take a moment to question your why and then ask yourself is your business giving you your why?

If you started off wanting to work 4 days a week, are those Fridays slowly getting eaten up with work-related jobs?

Creating your own version of success

What is your version of success? How much money do you need to earn to be comfortable? How many hours a week do you want to work? How many weeks in a year?

Mapping out all this stuff and then having a play with the figures and costs and amount you charge could get you closer to your own version of success.

Don’t worry about what everyone else is doing!

When Amy and I first started our podcast just over 2 years ago, we were lamenting the race to 6 figures on Facebook, all the gurus talking about how you can get to your first 6 figures. Now it’s 7 figures! What are people doing with all this money?

7 figures would be £1,000,000 – that’s a whole lots of noughts!

Only 1% of people in the UK earn over £140,000 – so that’s a whole lot of pressure that a lot of people are putting themselves under.

Also, just stop comparing yourself to others. They’re most likely further along than you and you are where you need to be right now.

Create your vision

Just running a business for the sake of it can take a lot of time. How do you know where you are going if you don’t know where you are going?

What do you want your business to look like? Draw a picture of your version of success. Meditate on it. And then think what do I need to do to get there? Be strategic with how you grow your business. Focus on one thing and move towards that goal.

A lot of time in business we are wasting time on things that don’t matter, or that aren’t moving us in the right direction. If you know where you want to be, you can start moving towards it and you can start saying no to things that aren’t serving you to get where you are going.

So that’s my few tips on being more Piano Piano in your business.

Sit back, grab a cup of tea, close your eyes and dream about how you can make your business suit you, not the other way around x

Want more inspiration? Check out my Work Smarter series!

Or listen to the Women Who Create podcast episode all about Piano Piano!