4 Critical Systems Your Business Needs in Case of Emergency

If you were unable to work in your business for one month, two months, three months, or even six months, what would happen?

Would your business go on without you? Or would everything come crashing to a halt? Would you be freaking out about how you were going to pay the bills? Would you be stressing and feeling anxiety about making sure your clients were taken care of?

This is something that I really took for granted until recently. During the end of June I hurt my neck. I have no idea what I did. I just woke up one morning feeling a little stiff and sore.

I just chalked it up being in my late forties. Maybe something happened, but more than likely I’m just getting old. As the day went on, however, things got worse. The pain reached a point where it was so intense I could hardly sit. No matter what I did, I couldn’t get away from the pain.

I went to the chiropractor. Over several days, she tried everything from massage to traction. Still I wasn’t getting better. So I went to my primary care doctor and got an MRI.

Unfortunately, insurance would not cover it right away. So I had to wait for the green light from the company for a few weeks. The pain was horrible.

Once the insurance company verified that the MRI was covered, we did the test and discovered I had two herniated discs. No wonder I felt like crawling the walls because I could not get away from the pain. No wonder I was sleeping in the La-Z-Boy. And I suspect I was a bit overly-grouchy with my family.

Meanwhile, I have clients who need help. I have a team with questions. I’ve got bills to pay. I’ve got a family to take care of. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

I had no idea this was going to happen. It was unexpected and frightening. But, I had done some things in my business unknowingly that set me up to be in a position to really be able to focus on my healing and not even worry about my business, clients, team, or bills.

Here’s Why I’m Telling You This

I hope you are so healthy and not even at all concerned about something like this, but I think COVID taught us a big lesson that you never know what’s going to happen. We can’t control the future. The unexpected happens.

What can you do today to protect yourself from the unexpected? How can you position yourself so that when (not “if”) those things arise in your life, you’re not left in freak out mode. Had I been stressing about paying the bills and my clients and all of these things during that time when I was in so much pain, it just, it wouldn’t have been fun to have that added on top of the pain that I was in. But I happened to have the right critical systems in place to get me through it all.

So, Let’s Start Thinking About Getting Some Critical Systems in Place for Your Business:

I suggest taking a look at your business and identify which things can’t go on without you? There are some things that just have to be done by you, such as recording a video that tells about your business, what you do, and why you’re passionate about it. But there are also a whole lot of things that you don’t need to be the one to do them. And so I had the foresight (or whatever you want to call it) to set some systems up in my business that would create standard processes so that someone else could do them and it didn’t have to be me.

S.H.I.T.

Whenever I talk about setting up critical systems, I have to start talking about S.H.I.T. It’s an acronym for your standard operating procedures.

The “S” stands for your schedule. When do things have to happen?

The “H” stands for the how-tos. How do you refund a client, how to launch a blog post, how to edit the video for the memberhip, where to put links, and all of that.

The “I” is for information. Where to find links, how to put your finger on that download that someone is asking for that was from three years ago, that kind of thing.

The “T” is for templates. This could be template emails, template blog posts, templates for different landing pages, and things that can save you time.

I recommend that you focus on all that first and get that material done and in place. That way, if for some reason you couldn’t show up to work one day, someone else could take those things and keep the balls moving and down the line and keep your clients taken care of.

Automate Repetitive Tasks

The second thing to get those critical systems in place would be to identify things that need to be done repeatedly in your business specifically by you. So for me, that includes invoicing.  Another is client onboarding. Whatever needs to happen on a regular basis. A lot of this stuff can be automated.

You might automate using Zapier, forms on your website, or “if this, then that” platforms. This will allow things to happen in the background without you having to do it.

A good example might be your Facebook ads. If you getting a return on ad spend that’s a certain level set, you can set a rule that it will increase the ad budget a certain percentage each day until you hit a threshold.

When you use automation, you don’t need to keep your finger on the pulse of everything going on in your business.

Get Support

Look for areas in your business you need to get things done in, but it doesn’t have to be you doing it. It makes a huge difference if you can have someone else do it for you. This could be hiring a virtual assistant who helps you for a few hours each week. Or, it could be hiring someone on a project basis to help you complete a project or get something done. But as you start hiring people for your team, it doesn’t have to be a full-time employee with benefits, which might be hard to afford.

Financial Planning

I read about a year and a half a book called Profit First by Mike Michalowicz. Someone had recommended it, I bought it, but then it just sat on my audiobook list for a while. When I finally started listening to it, I realized I was hearing some really great information.

You probably all know the rule “pay yourself first”. Well, the concept of this book is “profit first”. You want to make sure you are getting profits on what you’re doing in your business. And if that means you’ve got to scale things back in order to create a little wiggle room for profit, then you do it.

So in my situation, I started about a year and a half ago, setting aside 10% of everything the business brought in and dropped it immediately into a savings account. I called it the “Cushion Fund”. If something bad happened, a computer broke, or something else went wrong, I had a cushion to fall back on. And so I started saving that money consistently.

When my health took a dive this summer, I literally did not work, I did not bring in new clients, and my existing clients were all taken care of. All this because I had my profit-first savings account. My team could be paid and I could have all the things in place I needed. It kept my business running when I needed to really step back, focus on myself, and heal.

As I recover, I’m working about 50% of the time. I still need healing and physical therapy is helping me to get better. And I’m so thankful for my past self—the younger version of me who thought maybe this would be a good idea to do. I’m so thankful because my business didn’t crash when I needed to step away and take some time for me.

Hopefully You Never Need It

That’s what I wanted to share with you today. I hope that you’re well, I hope that you never have to go through what I went through. I hope that this is something that like having an insurance policy, you never have to use it.

But if you do, it’s there. And if nothing else, having these systems in place and automating, having a team to delegate to, and having a savings account for your business, all these things can really give you some breathing room and allow all you to focus on the things that you absolutely love doing in your business.