By Ann-Marie Burton
In a few weeks, I’ll be stepping away from work for almost a full month.
That sentence alone might make some business owners uncomfortable.
For years, entrepreneurship has been framed around constant presence — the idea that if the owner steps away, things might fall apart. But as I prepare to celebrate my 50th birthday with a long-planned trip, I’ve been thinking a lot about the kind of company we set out to build at LeftTurn Strategy back in 2018.
And whether we’ve actually built it.
Because the truth is this: if you can’t leave your business for a while, you may not have built a business — you may have just bought yourself a job.
Building a Company That Can Run Without You
When we started LeftTurn Strategy, we didn’t want to build just a marketing agency. We wanted to build a company that trusted its people and allowed them to do their best work without rigid rules, unnecessary oversight, or the outdated idea that productivity is tied to physical presence.
Eight years later, I’m proud to say we have a team of incredibly capable women who lead their work, manage their clients, and support each other in ways that make the entire company stronger.
We’ve intentionally built a structure where leadership exists throughout the organization — not just at the top. Responsibility is shared, decisions are trusted to the people closest to the work, and everyone understands the role they play in the company’s success.
Which means that while I’m away exploring parts of Europe, the work continues.
My business partner Tanya will be here with the team, and the leaders within our company will continue to guide projects, support clients, and move the business forward.
Not because they have to.
Because they’re fully capable of doing so.
In many ways, stepping away is one of the clearest validations of the culture we’ve built.
Investing in the Partnership Behind the Business
There’s another part of this trip that feels just as important.
For the final week of my travels, Tanya and I will be sightseeing together in London, then off to Bordeaux, France, for a few days of exploring and enjoying wine tours.
Yes, we’ll inevitably talk about business — that’s part of the deal when you build something together.
But this time is really about our partnership.
Founders and business partners often spend years focused on the operational side of running a company: clients, revenue, hiring, and growth. But like any long-term relationship, the partnership itself requires attention and care.
Trust doesn’t maintain itself automatically.
Alignment doesn’t happen by accident.
The strongest partnerships — whether in business or in life — come from investing time in the relationship itself. Taking space to reconnect, to talk openly, and sometimes just to enjoy each other’s company outside the daily rhythm of work.
This trip is our way of doing that.
Because when the partnership is strong, the business becomes stronger.
Designing Work Around Life — Not the Other Way Around
Our ability to step away, travel, and still stay connected to the business also reflects something we believed in long before it became common: flexible work.
LeftTurn Strategy has been a remote company from the beginning. Our team lives outside the GTA and works from their homes, their offices, and sometimes from wherever life happens to take them.
And importantly, we’ve never created rules about where work has to happen.
Some organizations require employees to stay within a province or even a country while working remotely. We’ve never felt that made sense in the modern world.
Our belief is simple: if the work gets done, the location isn’t the issue.
Tanya is a perfect example of this philosophy in action, living a bit of a two-continent life. She spends time traveling throughout parts of Europe several times a year, connecting with people who matter most to her.
When she’s there, she adjusts her hours, stays connected with the team, and continues to lead her work just as effectively as she does from home in Ontario.
The geography changes.
The accountability doesn’t.
Freedom Is the Real Measure of Success
The older I get, the more I realize that traditional work structures were never designed for the lives people actually live.
People have families. They travel. They care for aging parents. They pursue passions outside of work. They move, evolve, and sometimes fall in love with someone who lives on the other side of an ocean.
Work should be able to adapt to those realities.
That belief shows up in small ways — like our “limited operations” Fridays, where we take no meetings and give everyone space to focus or step into their personal lives without interruption.
And it shows up in bigger ways — like allowing people to work from wherever makes sense for them.
The goal has never been to create the most rigid structure.
It’s been to create the most resilient one.
This month away isn’t about escaping the business we’ve built. It’s actually about enjoying the freedom that business was meant to create in the first place.
Freedom to travel.
Freedom to celebrate milestones.
Freedom to invest in the relationships that make the work worthwhile.
When Tanya and I started LeftTurn Strategy in 2018, we took what we often call a “hard left” away from the traditional agency model because we believed there was a better way to build a company.
Eight years later, this trip feels like proof that we might have been right.
Or at the very least…that taking a Left Turn was the right direction.
A question for fellow founders:
Could your business run without you for a month?