In a recent episode (Episode 350), we addressed burnout and called it out as a business risk. Today’s episode addresses a different reason to step away from your business with a micro retirement. Unlike burnout, micro retirement is a planned business response and not a crisis break. It is a deliberate, designed pause that you build into your practice before you need it, the same way you build a financial runway or a contract clause. Michelle opens with a hypothetical question: what if she wanted to disappear for four months next year, and Karen's first reaction is not alarm but logistics: let's talk about how. What follows is a clear-eyed conversation about what micro retirement actually is (a planned break of weeks to months, taken periodically across a career, not a one-time event at the end) and what the research shows across two very different surveys. The episode also discusses how solo practitioners are uniquely positioned to give themselves permission that employees have to negotiate along with the real risks in a tumultuous 2026 economy. Karen and Michelle walk through four objections with straight answers and provide a three-question framework for figuring out if and when micro retirement is realistic. The episode closes on something that goes deeper than logistics: the uncomfortable question of who you are when the work goes away, and why that discomfort is data worth paying attention to, not something to push past.
Full show notes at thatsololife.com