Being a one person shop means you have total control over your business – you decide when, where and how things get done. It also keeps your overhead down during the start-up phase when revenue may be unpredictable.
But what happens if there’s a family emergency that requires a last minute trip out of town? Or its you who gets sick? Will your business come grinding to a halt? Or will you be forced to choose between keeping a meeting with a client versus rushing to your child’s hospital bedside?
I ran smack into this problem just this month. After fighting a cold with decongestants and Tylenol for about five weeks, the bacteria finally won. I was flat on my back for days. I was unable to complete any but the most urgent tasks for my business. I stopped writing for my blog – did you notice? – and got way behind on all my other projects. I even had to cancel a class I teach at the college.
So what can I – or you – do differently in the future?
The goal should be to stop trying to do everything alone. At the bare minimum, you need a trusted person who can, in a pinch, take your appointment book and reschedule meetings. This could be a friend or family member or you could hire someone, like a virtual assistant (VA).
A VA, hired for even a few hours a month, could also take over some of your administrative tasks on a regular basis that would free up your time for more productive work. And, because the VA is familiar with your business, she or he could easily step in during a crisis and reschedule appointments, reply to e-mails and handle orders while you take care of yourself or your family.
Beyond illness of yourself or your family, you also need to consider a physical disaster. Do you back-up your computer? Most people think about backing up their accounting, but what would happen if you lost all your word processing files? How about your email addresses? You bookmarked web pages? If you are not doing a full system back-up at least once a week, you’re courting disaster. Talk to your IT guy now.
If you do back-up, where do you keep the backup? My husband used to have a second hard drive in his computer that he used to back-up his data. This was fine until someone broke into the office and stole his computer – along with the back-up.
Not only must you back-up regularly, you must store the data OFF SITE. If you have an office outside the home, bring the back-ups home. If not, consider a safe deposit box at the bank or keeping it at your mother’s.
Take some time to make a plan for dealing with the unexpected before you’re thrown into the fire. If you need to implement the plan, you’ll be glad you did.
Andrea J. Stenberg
