Jun
25
Gone Fishin’
by Crystal Clayton, filed under In General
Image credit: johnshepherd
How long can your business last without you?
This is not a new topic, of course, but I’ve been sick and the necessary time-out brought alarming clarity to some things. Among them, we’re walking a knife’s edge when there’s nothing in place to earn for us when we can’t earn for ourselves.
Like I touched on in What’s So Great About SEO?, as it is now this blog requires my daily attention. I don’t have even one article held in reserve, no guest posts stashed away, no co-authors to respond to comments or add content, and most new site visitors arrive directly from my activity in social media arenas.
I realized that this blog could only last a day or two, and you can bet I’ll be addressing that tout de suite.
As you read through this, think on what you have tucked away for a rainy day, and also who (or what) would do your work and bring new customers your way if you couldn’t do it yourself.
Sick and/or Tired?
Many employees earn out-of-office time as they work, accumulating 3 to 8+ hours of leave for every 80 hours worked. Whenever they’re not working, those earned hours pay out until they run out.
If an employee runs out of earned sick leave and qualifies for—and their company offers—short- and long-term disability, they’ll receive checks for up to 3 months to forever. Good for them. But what about us?
Heck, what if we’re not too sick to work, but just tired of working? Weekends are short, the year is long, and everyone needs time away from their work to recharge, refresh, and renew.
Most microbusiness owners don’t earn Off Hours while they’re working. We can set aside money for a 2-week vacation, but we can’t save up time throughout the year to pay out later.
Because even if we reserve the time and the money to take off for a week or two, what happens to our business in our absence?
For consultants, designers, and other service providers:
- Client questions go unanswered
- Requests for new business go unaddressed
- No billable hours are logged for later invoicing
For folks in product sales:
- Customer questions go unanswered
- New orders go unshipped
- No new inventory produced (for those who make their products)
- No new inventory purchased (for those who don’t)
The Real Question
Of course, savings and insurance can sustain our businesses (and us!) through lean times, vacations, and illness. And our clients and customers might understand that we’ll be out of the office for a week or two. Overall, we can arrange to be absent. But.
How long can your business generate income without you?
If we’re a service provider who bills by the hour, our business stops generating income the instant we stop working.
If we fulfill product orders, our business stops generating income when we stop shipping or run out of inventory to ship.
If we create products for sale, our business stops generating income when we create and/or sell that last piece of work.
Some Real Answers
A staff of dependable employees can run the shop and generate income for a good long while without our help.
Creative work that pays royalties. Books and licensed patents pay continuous income for as long as they are reproduced and distributed.
Subscription-based access. A product (or content) that customers continually pay to use. The 37signals suite of online productivity tools is an example. Online training is another.
Hmm…that’s all I can think of, but I’m sure there are more ways to generate income without needing to continually have our hand in, and also many more examples.
If you think of some more (or just have something to say), lemme know down below…
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14 Responses to “Gone Fishin’”
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Whew! Taking a short break from blogging, folks. More posts coming soon. Thanks for your patience!
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I’ve been thinking about this issue for some time, Crystal, and have a couple of strategies in mind for making sure that my business could survive my absence. Still putting them into place, though. You’ve made some great suggestions here.
The FHWW (You have read that by now, right Crystal) delves into this topic by showing how we create systems to keep our business going when we go on vacation. Yet when we get back from vacation we are back to 60 hour weeks, but if we could just maintain those systems we set up, we can work 10 hours a week to maintain the same results.
Some systems are to empower employees to handle customers better, eliminate customers that take up most our time with very little profit made from them, or find better technology to use.
For micro-business owners it might be through setting up forms of passive income. A goal I’ve set up for my career is to be able to go on vacation and come back having made more money passively than I spent on the vacation.
Having a set of rainy day posts is good to, but I struggle with sunny day ones, so having rainy day posts are a long shot.
Recent blog post from Jeremy Davis: Rethink How You Search
Blogsitters, why don’t we have blog sitters like we have house sitters and pet sitters for when we are away? Hmm… now that does not generate income so we need some revenue makers to go with those blog sitters…hm…..if we were celebs we could create a fragrance… course then Crystal we would have to hang out in clubs and tease the papparazzi, probably all end up in rehab…
Seriously, is the business model we create a job, or something that is closer to a diversified portfolio? That is the question.
Working on it.
Recent blog post from Janice Cartier: A Little Progress is a Good Thing
I just sold a business due to the fact that we just couldn’t get away from it. Even with good managers and systems in place, it seemed impossible. The problem I think was that we didn’t put systems in place from the beginning. By the time we got around to it, old employees just couldn’t seem to learn new tricks.
Recent blog post from Cheryl Pierce: 1
Good reminder, thanks for the post Crystal.
I’m guessing that a line-up of guest posts would serve as a back-up of material for a blogger’s rainy day, but what can you do as a solo? As a consultant who’s hired for their brain/talent/skill/whatever? I’ve always managed it by grabbing the free time while I could (instead of working in more seminars or workshops or doing marketing, etc.) because that freedom and spontaneity is a major perk to being an owner.
But do any of your readers have feedback on other ways to prep for a rainy day when the only product is your brain on a problem on the phone/page? (This swell post is a good reminder to “Dig your well before you’re thirsty” - MacKay - and to keep up the scheduled maintenance on our bodies to prevent breakdowns!)
…Scheduled maintenance as in Sonia Simone’s post at her remarcom blog…
This is a job for Realtor Brain.
Seriously, Realtors have been dealing with this issue for years. Go on vacation and you sell no houses. Since you work on 100% commision you are now making 100% of nothing NADA. IF you ask another Realtor to work in your place while you are gone and they sell your house guess who gets the commission. That’s right..they do.
UNLESS…you create a partnership. WITH…and important word coming up…someone you TRUST…who is like-minded and works like you do. It is a small little partnership, more like a give and take that says..”Hey..while you are on vacation, I will watch your business and handle it while you are gone and you can do that for me while I am gone. The key is get someone at the SAME level who understands your business.
It sounds harder than it is but it takes a lot of openness and communication and again..key word is TRUST.
Recent blog post from Wendi Kelly: Taking Time for Time Out.
I think Jeremy’s got it right: passive income is a very good idea!
Recent blog post from steph: Working on It
Crystal,
This has been on my mind a lot lately. It’s so lovely that I can just pack up my laptop and work remotely if something unexpected comes up. But what if something were to happen to me? What then?
I experienced this when my husband broke his back in a car accident right after I had my twins and quit my job. Ouch. He was a solopreneur and it took over six months for him to recover. We lived on my 401k.
This is a serious topic for any solo small business. You presented well.
Recent blog post from Kimberly Ben: Generalist or Specialist? What Kind of Writer are You?
It’s not just freelancers who need to worry about this. Salaried employees are never far from a pink slip in today’s dynamic economy. And, for many, there isn’t enough put aside for kids’ college expenses and retirement. We all need a source of income that produces money while we sleep.
I for one have a number of irons in the fire and feel that a second source of income is essential. It will help if something were to happen to my day job and, if it’s structured correctly, it will generate supplemental income when I stop working. The structure is important. It needs to use the skills / contacts we have and not require a lot of day-to-day hand holding. Easy to say, a lot harder to do, but it’s important that something be in place.
[...] Crystal Clayton asks “How long can your business last without you?” if you need some time off? Discussion at: Gone Fishin’. [...]
An offline business cannot run without you for long as well as an online job. Well, when you have sick leaves then its another matter. I do believe that an online job will need your presence 7/7 as im in an online business but for an offline business your absence will not affect the business too much. You described some good and effective informations in your post. Thanks. I will surely consider them and try to improve my business.
my business cant last a week w/o me… and that makes for great leverage
Man i wish i could go on vacation… :/
-Jake
Just follow up your instinct and people will believe you.