Business owners: could your business continue to operate without you if it had to?
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Business owners: could you business continue to operate without you if it had to?
By Tracey Hancock
If you're a solo-prenuer or a small business owner, you're it, aren't you. You're literally doing most, if not all, of what needs to be done to keep the business operating. There's no team, head office or branch somewhere else with people who can help or step in if needed.
That makes YOU critical to the success of your business.
Now while you might cross your fingers and hope to always have a reasonable (maybe even an exceptional) level of health and be able to turn up each day, the reality is that's not always going to be the case.
People may say they won't ever get sick and need time off, or if they do get sick they'll just keep working to get things done, but (and I'm going to be brutally honest) they are fooling themselves.
Unexpected time out of your business
Stuff is going to happen that you could not have anticipated. While some of it may be big like a health crisis or the death of a loved one, other events may be much smaller like minor day surgery.
Regardless of the size, when the unexpected happens, how well is your business setup to operate without you?
Take time now to do a quick business health-check.
- If you were unexpectedly out of your business, could it continue to successfully operate, albeit at a reduced level?
- What would be the impact of your absence on your customers, your reputation, the products / services you provide, income and anything else that's relevant to your business?
- How does your response to the questions above change based on being out for a day, week, month, three months and a year?
Planned time out of your business
To avoid burnout and to keep yourself healthy, you are going to need to take holidays (and not just a day or two, 1-2 weeks at a time is ideal from a health perspective). You might also want to attend conferences or trainings, special occassions, family events and so on.
While these types of events can be planned for, sometimes well in advance, they too have a significant impact on businesses.
Let's do another quick business health-check.
- If you planned to be out of your business, could it continue to successfully operate, albeit at a reduced level?
- What would be the impact of your absence on your customers, your reputation, the products / services you provide, income and anything else that's relevant to your business?
- How does your response to the questions above change based on being out for a day, week, month, three months and a year.
How to reduce the impact of your absence
The reality is at some stage you are going to need to be out of your business. While ideally it would be a planned absence, don't rule out an unexpected absence.
Taking the time now to consider the impact of your absence will mean you're not scrambling for solutions to keep your business operating if something were to happen.
Here are 3 actions to help you reduce the impact of your absence on your business.
- Identify your key processes - these are the activities that must happen to keep the busy running. Document the processes, ensuring that someone else could pick up what you've written and actually do it.
- Identify who could step in while you're out of the business. While they might not be able to do everything you do, think about the core tasks that you need someone to do like respond to customer requests and send out invoices.
- Review your income streams and payment terms to identify whether there are other ways to generate an inflow of money even if you were out of the business.
Take action now to avoid putting the success of your business at risk because you weren't prepared for an unexpected or planned absence from your business.
Tracey Hancock, coach and mentor, specialises in helping people put their health at the heart of everything they do in life and business. Because you don't need to sacrifice your health to achieve the life and business success you dream of. Plan for your success now. Contact me to find out how to get started.