21 May Have You Got An Emergency Plan?

You get a call in the middle of the night, your mum, who lives interstate, has had a stroke and the doctors aren’t sure about her prognosis.

Understandably, you’re in shock.  You’re scared, devastated, terrified and completely lost.  You manage to get your thoughts together enough to jump online and book a one way flight for first thing in the morning.  After no sleep, you shower at 5am, throw a few changes of clothes in a bag and head to the airport.  Sitting in the taxi, all of a sudden you remember you have a client deadline for 5pm that afternoon.  There is no way you’re going to be able to deliver.  And then you remember the 11am Skype call with another client. Fuck! Now, you’re really stressed.  It’s like you had forgotten you even had a business for the last 12 hours but now as you approach the airport it’s all you can think about.  What else is due?  What other meetings are booked? You unlock your phone to check and see a little 23 in the circle above your email icon. Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! You burst out crying as you immediately feel overwhelmed with the thought of contacting clients and cancelling jobs.

But it doesn’t have to feel like this.  It is possible to have a business and deal with an emergency at the same time but it’s a little like living in a bush fire area… You need to have an Emergency Plan in place.  You hope you never have to enact it, but it’s there.  You know what to do and when to do it.  The thinking and decision making has already been done (back when you were able to think straight) so all you need to do is put the plan into place.

I can’t tell you what your Emergency Plan should be, as it will depend on your business model but here are a few things to think about….

Email Auto-response and Voicemail

First things first, put an auto-response on your emails and a voicemail message on your phone. You don’t need to give details but it can help people to understand if you put “family emergency” or something similar.

Contact Your Current Clients

Write a canned email and send to all your current clients, if you can do all at once, even better.  How much detail you put in the email will depend on your relationship with your clients but again, like the auto-response, it can help to put some details as to the reason you’re going offline.

Get Support

Just like making friends with your neighbours isn’t purely about your bushfire plan, creating a support network of subcontractors isn’t purely about your Emergency Plan, but it certainly will come in handy. If possible, have at least one trusted subcontractor or even better, your virtual assistant that you can direct your clients and enquiries to.  This will boost the support you’re able to provide your clients and will give you peace of mind that you’re not leaving them in the lurch, after all, you’ve got family to worry about. Ultimately, your goal is to be able to be in contact with only one person throughout the entire ordeal.  Not every client, not every enquiry.  Just your one trusted person, they’ve got your back.

Have Your Procedures Up To Date

Almost all long term biz owners will shout the importance of having your procedures documented and there are a couple of reasons why but one super important reason is that in the case of an emergency, your trusted person will know exactly what to do.  So yes, your Emergency Plan is included in the list of procedures to be documented! Within your procedure, don’t forget to include the wording of your canned emails and also any passwords, etc required to access your emails, CRM and Project Management system with your clients and job details.

There are obviously many other factors to think about but these are just four to get you started, others might be a short paragraph explaining your absence on your website and social media pages but still welcome them to contact you as you’ll be back on board soon.

I’ve written it, now what?

Make your procedure as simple as possible, for both your peace of mind and ease of use of your trusted person. And the most important factor of all – tell your trusted person! Ask them if it’s ok to use them like this and discuss the procedure with them. This will save questions during the emergency and they may even have suggestions on more things to add to it!