August is close, and if you run a small business you’re probably weighing up two bad options. Stay reachable the whole time, answering emails from a sun lounger, or accept that the business drifts for a fortnight and you come back to a mess.
There’s a third option, and it takes one afternoon the week before you go. Five setup jobs that let someone else hold the fort properly, with AI doing the drafting and you only approving what matters. None of it needs new software. It’s the tools you already have, pointed at the handover most people never write.
Here’s the full setup, with the exact prompts to use.
1. Build an answer bank
The person covering for you doesn’t struggle because the questions are hard. They struggle because they don’t know how you’d answer them.
Go through your inbox and pull out the last ten questions customers actually asked. Opening hours, lead times, pricing queries, “can you fit me in”, the usual. Paste them into ChatGPT or Claude along with two or three real replies you’ve sent that you were happy with, and use this:
Here are ten questions customers ask us, and three examples of replies I’ve written. Draft a reply to each question in the same tone as my examples. Keep them short and specific to my business, using only the facts I’ve given you.
Read the drafts, fix anything wrong, and save the lot in one document. Whoever’s covering sends from the bank, not from scratch. Customers get answers that sound like you, and your cover person stops second-guessing every email.
2. Fix your auto-reply
“I’m out of office until the 15th” is a message that helps nobody. The customer still has their question, and now they know they’re waiting a fortnight for the answer.
An auto-reply can do real work. Include the answers to your three most asked questions right in the message, plus who to contact for anything urgent. Something like:
Thanks for your email. I’m away until Monday 10 August. In the meantime: our opening hours are [X], current lead time on new orders is [X], and you can book directly at [link]. For anything urgent, [name] is looking after things and you can reach them at [email]. I’ll reply to everything else when I’m back.
Most enquiries are one of those three questions. You’ve just answered them without lifting a finger, and the genuinely urgent ones have somewhere to go.
3. Cover your quotes
Quotes are where holidays cost real money. An enquiry comes in on the Tuesday, sits unanswered for twelve days, and by the time you’re back they’ve gone with someone else.
Set up a project in ChatGPT or Claude before you leave. Into it goes your price list, one or two past quotes you were happy with, and a note on how you price the common jobs. Then show your cover person this prompt:
A customer has asked for a quote. Here’s their enquiry: [paste enquiry]. Using the price list and past quotes in this project, draft a quote in the same format. Flag anything you’re unsure about instead of guessing.
They draft, they send it to you, and you approve from your phone in two minutes. The customer gets their quote inside a day instead of after your holiday, and you never priced anything from a beach.
4. Record the handover
The handover document is the job every owner means to write and never does, because sitting down to type out how the business runs feels like a week’s work.
So don’t type it. Record it. Open the voice recorder on your phone and talk for twenty minutes about how you handle the usual jobs. How you deal with a complaint, what you do when a delivery is late, which customers need a phone call rather than an email, where the supplier contacts live. Talk the way you’d explain it to a new hire on day one.
Then get the recording transcribed (your phone may do this already, or use any transcription tool) and paste the transcript into ChatGPT or Claude:
This is a transcript of me explaining how I handle the day-to-day jobs in my business. Turn it into a one-page cover document, organised by task, that someone covering for me for two weeks could follow. Keep my wording where it’s clear, tidy it where it rambles.
Twenty minutes of talking, done once, and it’s useful every holiday, every sick day, and eventually every new hire after this.
5. Keep marketing ticking
Two silent weeks on social media costs more than an hour of scheduling. Not because any single post matters, but because momentum does. You’ve seen the accounts that post in bursts and then vanish. Don’t be one for a fortnight.
Before you go, draft two weeks of posts in one sitting:
Here are five posts I’ve published recently [paste them]. Draft six new posts in the same voice on similar themes. Each should be useful on its own, and none should mention that I’m away.
Edit them into shape, then schedule the lot through whatever tool you use. The business looks open because it is open. It’s just running on the setup you did in advance.
One afternoon, the week before
That’s the whole system. An answer bank, a working auto-reply, quote cover, a recorded handover, and scheduled posts. Realistically it’s one afternoon of setup, most of it drafted for you, all of it reviewed by you.
And here’s the part worth noticing. Everything on this list is useful the other fifty weeks of the year too. The answer bank speeds up every Tuesday. The handover document is the start of your onboarding pack. The quote project means faster quotes even when you’re at your desk.
The holiday is just the deadline that finally gets it built.
What’s the one thing that always drags you back into work when you’re away? Start there.