Why Every Business Owner Should Unplug … And How It Can Lead to a Better Exit

Every year, I speak to hundreds of business owners about exit planning. And every year, when I tell them they should completely unplug from their companies — meaning no emails, no calls, no “checking in” for at least two weeks at a time, multiple times a year — the room reacts the same way.

Disbelief. Pushback. Occasionally something close to alarm.

“My team needs me.” “My clients expect me to be available.” “There’s no way I could do that.”

A small handful, usually just a few people, respond with something that looks more like relief. Like they’d been waiting for permission and didn’t know it. Like they’d assumed stepping away completely would be irresponsible, and nobody had ever told them otherwise.

Those reactions stuck with me. After more than 30 years of working with business owners, I’ve come to believe that the ability to fully unplug from your company is one of the most important and most underutilized tools available to any owner, whether they’re thinking about an exit or not. But I also recognized that my advice was based largely on experience and instinct rather than hard data.

So earlier this year, our team decided to find out what actually happens when owners step away. We surveyed more than 200 business owners and CEOs, largely from the Vistage community, on their actual practices over the prior 12 months: how often they took time away, how connected they stayed during those periods, and what happened inside their organizations when they did. The result is The Unplugged Report, which represents what we believe to be the first research of its kind.

Here’s what stood out.

Most Owners Aren’t Actually Unplugging

More than 5 out of 6 owners reported taking at least a week away from their companies over the past year. On the surface, that sounds encouraging. But when we looked at what they actually did during that time, the picture changed quickly.

About 75% continued reading and responding to emails throughout their time away. Around a third kept taking calls. Fewer than 1 in 12 truly disconnected.

Put simply, most business owners who think they’re stepping away are just working from a different location. Their location changes. Their involvement in the business doesn’t.

When we asked why they stayed connected, the answer was revealing. More than 56% of owners cited personal preference. They simply didn’t want to be out of touch. They love what they do and have both a personal and emotional investment in their companies. Only about 11% said the business would actually suffer without them. The barrier to unplugging, for most owners, isn’t operational. It’s personal.

In our qualitative interviews among owners who participated in follow-up conversations, several admitted they were probably getting in their teams’ way by staying connected. One described themselves as “just nosy.” Another recalled being so anxious the first time he stepped away years ago that he pulled over to the side of the road and used a payphone to check in, only to realize afterward how unnecessary it had been.

The Owners Who Did Unplug Tell a Different Story

This is where the data gets interesting.

Among owners who fully disconnected, 90% reported that employees made sound decisions without their input. 80% said projects and operations continued without interruption. 80% said company systems performed well. 70% said that employees stepped up to handle increased responsibilities.

Zero percent reported customer issues being mishandled. Zero percent reported employees making decisions outside their authority. And more than half discovered previously unknown strengths in their organizations.

Every single owner who fully unplugged said they would do it again.

Compare that to owners who took time off but stayed connected. In that group, more than 21% reported employees escalating issues they should have handled independently. Nearly 20% saw projects slow or stall. About 15% experienced communications breakdowns.

The gap between these two groups, across nearly every measure, was significant. And it points to something important: when you’re always available, your team doesn’t have to step up. When you remove yourself from the loop entirely, they have no choice. It’s the ultimate way to stress test your team. And most of the time, they rise to the occasion.

A Week Isn’t Enough

More than 3 out of 4 owners who took time away limited themselves to just a single week. Based on both the data and my experience, a week isn’t sufficient to meaningfully test or develop owner independence.

When an owner is only gone for 5 business days, teams tend to hold decisions until they return. They know you’re coming back soon, so the path of least resistance is to wait. The dynamic doesn’t really change.

Taking 2 consecutive weeks changes something. Your team has to make calls. Systems get tested in ways they simply can’t be in a shorter window. More than 8 in 10 owners in our study also reported needing several days just to mentally shift away from thinking about the business, meaning a weeklong trip barely allows enough time to gain any real distance before it’s time to return.

The minimum effective dose, based on both the data and our practical experience with clients, is 2 consecutive weeks, at least twice per year.

Why This Matters for an Eventual Exit

Owner independence, the degree to which your business can operate and grow without your constant involvement, is one of the most significant drivers of company value during an exit. A company that requires its owner’s daily involvement to function isn’t just harder to run. It’s harder to sell, harder to value, and harder to transition.

Buyers don’t just evaluate whether your company can survive without you. They evaluate whether it can thrive without you. That’s a meaningfully higher bar, and the data suggests most organizations aren’t there yet. When we asked owners how confident they were that their teams could grow the company to double its current size without their involvement, only 5% said they were very confident. Nearly half said they were not confident at all.

Perhaps the most concerning finding in the entire study: business owners who indicated they intended to exit within the next 36 months were not unplugging with any greater frequency than owners with no near-term exit in mind. For the group with the most at stake, they’re leaving one of the most effective owner-independence tools on the table.

Unplugging is a Tool, Not a Reward

The good news is that unplugging isn’t a reward for having already built a perfectly self-sufficient organization. It’s a tool for building one. Our research found no correlation between the ability to fully unplug and company size, owner age, founder status, or any other demographic variable. It is, at its core, a personal choice. And it’s available to every owner, right now, regardless of where they are in their exit journey.

If the idea of stepping away completely for 2 weeks sounds impossible, that reaction itself is worth paying attention to. It’s telling you something about where your company stands, and what it might take to get it where you want it to be. The sooner you start unplugging, the sooner you can gauge your company’s owner independence and the more time you have to improve it.

The full findings, including detailed data, firsthand accounts from business owners we interviewed, and practical guidance for getting started, are available in The Unplugged Report.

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