Planning for the Unexpected

If an emergency happens, and you are forced out of work for six months, would your business survive? Would it thrive without you? Or would it struggle through, leaving you with a shadow of what it is today?

In 2022, I was diagnosed with cancer. I was prescribed an aggressive form of chemotherapy that would put me in the hospital one week out of every three, and the weeks I was not in the hospital, I was left very sick. From my first meeting with the oncologist until treatment started, I had two weeks to prepare my team to run the business without me.

Thankfully, I had already put some thought into disaster planning. The rest was a scramble.

What you will find in this article are five straight-forward suggestions to help prepare your business for the unexpected. Together, these are the foundations to build on: the necessities to keep employees paid and income flowing.

Payroll. The first, and possibly most important, thing that needs to be considered is payroll. Employees won’t come to work if there is no check at the end of the week. No matter how much they love their jobs or how much they support the business, they must get paid. They need that check to pay rent, buy groceries and put gas in their vehicles.

If you’re doing in-house payroll, train someone how to do it. This person needs to be trustworthy, good with numbers and able to run the correct reports. Give them administrator rights to your timecard program and show them how to use the accounting software to pay your staff. Then, have them run payroll unassisted while you supervise. Double check their work and do it again the following week. Once trained, your backup should run payroll once every few weeks to keep their skills fresh.

Keys. Many of the smallest businesses only have one or two employees with keys. Sometimes, the keys are only given to the owner and the spouse of the owner. But what happens if both of those individuals are in an accident and can’t come to work? How do you open the doors for your staff?

It is important that someone besides you can open your doors. If you have a big enough staff, vet them. Decide who is most trustworthy and give them a key and a code to the alarm. If you’re a small shop with only one or two other part-time employees, who do you trust? Do you have a family member or a close friend who can be a backup in case of an emergency? Designate someone.

Honesty With Vendors and Customers. One of the first things we did when I got sick was reach out to our customers and our vendors. We didn’t want the business to seem unstable, and if I disappeared for weeks at a time, it would send the wrong message.

First, reach out to your vendors. Let them know what is happening. Don’t forget your landlord. In my case, everyone was very understanding. I promised them I would send checks when I was well enough, but they might be a little late. They notated my accounts and gave us grace when payments were a little behind.

With our customers, we sent a notice out through our newsletter and posted one to our social media. Again, people were very supportive. Many checked in on me; some shared their own cancer stories. The important part was that I, the most visible person in the business, didn’t just disappear. 

Your Little Black Book. This is something you should be doing now.  Create a “little black book.” Mine is a three-ring binder that is kept behind my desk on the bookshelf. Inside is all the information needed to run the business in case of an emergency — everything from a list of vendors, sales representatives and phone numbers to other assets like instructions on how to contact our insurance company. 

The black book takes some time to build and should be updated regularly. I try to glance through mine every six months. Update things like policy numbers, phone numbers and active vendors. Think of this book as your lifeline.

Because it is filled with such sensitive information, my notebook is a plain, black binder. There is no label, and it is on a shelf between other binders with production notes and rental contracts. It blends in on purpose and only one person knows it is there — my designated survivor. If something happens, she can pull the binder from the shelf and run the business without me.

Have a Designated Survivor. You have your black book. You have someone trained to do payroll. Someone other than you has a key to your building. Now designate a survivor — someone who traditionally doesn’t travel with you to NAMM Shows, who understands the business and can run the show if an emergency takes you out of the equation. 

It seems redundant to say you need to designate a leader to take over in your absence, but if you don’t specify who is responsible for leadership, you may end up with hurt feelings, angry employees and staff walking off the job.

Before an emergency happens, designate who is going to be your voice during your absence. Keeping expectations clear will help maintain a calm and happy staff.

Not all emergencies are expected, and not all absences are planned for.  By putting a few simple guidelines in place now, you can save your business time, angst and money when the unexpected happens. Preparation is the key to survival — keep your business thriving and your staff happy while you deal with the emergency you didn’t see coming.