Your Contingency Plan may Save Your Online Business

If you have been following me you would know that I recently wrote a blog about my sister having to go through a very traumatic ordeal to get medical help after an asthma attack. At the end of that blog I asked people whether they had thought about a contingency plan for their online business in the cases of crisis. From what I could read most people believed that the subject is important yet most have not gone further than having or hoping a family member could take over if something were to happen. I myself had not done much either. Not being satisfied with my current state I have decided to try to flesh out what would constitute parts of a contingency plan. A template of sorts which you could utilize, if you so desired.

The first thing that must be agreed, is what is a crisis? According to Oxford, a crisis is a time of intense difficulty or danger. In terms of our online businesses a crisis means that a significant, unplanned event has occurred or is soon to occur that could destabilize the business even threaten its continuation and there is very little time to make a decision as to what to do.

What then are the types of crisis that could affect our online business:

1. Leadership crisis happens when you or I disappear from the business without anyone else to takeover. Our absence could be due to death, illness, surgery, other commitments etc. Who would develop or continue the business strategy? Who would write the blogs? Who would see about the social media? Who would engage the customers?
2. Technological crisis occurs when there is a breakdown in the technology and systems that we use in the business. For instance, if Wealthy Affiliate’s system was compromised which caused a knock on failure causing our websites to fail this would be a technological catastrophe that would have all of us hopping.
3. Financial crisis where there is not enough funds to pay debts or expenses. I have seen where people have been unable to continue their Wealthy Affiliate membership payments for example which has led to the canceling of their websites.
4. Forced Takeover crisis occurs when your website has been hacked or taken over by persons unknown. This type of crisis can also occur if your website falls victim to a virus which makes it inoperable or compromises your customer confidential data.

While we would never wish any of these crises to occur they are real and happening as we speak to a number of members right here in WA.

Now that we understand how crisis can impact upon our business continuity lets try to outline some remedies that could assist if a crisis were to actually occur.

Learn to share the load.

Our online businesses are like our babies. We feel that we have done the majority of the work ourselves and that no one can do it as good as us. We have gone through the training and will know enough on how to run most aspects of our online business.

While we wish we could always be superheroes crisis will occur that will knock us out. We therefore have to put in place someone to take over at least part of the more routine parts of the business.

You have a few options. You could train up a family member, engage a Virtual Assistant/ Contractor or hire an employee. These options could allow delegation for particularly time-consuming and mundane tasks. You have to determine what option, if any, could work for the potential business crisis situation(s) that you could face.

Embrace Automation

When tasks are done manually if that person doing the tasks is gone then important tasks are delayed or foregone entirely. To avoid this there are now numerous apps that could assist us with automating customer responses (e.g. auto-responders) , billing (automated invoicing), customer queries (e.g chat bots) and social media sequencing (e.g. Tailwind),

These are all wonderful inventions however for it to work well you have to develop the forms, the email templates, the standard invoicing, the graphics and responses to standard questions. To adequately make sure that this content is all properly prepared you may wish to consider the sharing of load considerations as already outlined above.

Sharing Ownership and Responsibility

Early on in the business we may not have any reason to consider one or more business partners. But that may not be a bad idea if you start to scale and there are many more responsibilities that you would need to effectively manage. Creating shareholding and governance structures in your business will lead to more assistance and procedures in times of crisis.

Once trust is established with key partners part of sharing involves holding similar levels of authority (e.g. website administrative privileges, bank account signing permissions etc.), knowing pass codes and other pertinent account info. All this information (login details, business credit card info, confidential client info etc.) should be documented and stored in a secure space for easy retrieval if it comes to that.

Have Back Up Systems

How many of us had or know of someone that has lost all their data due to a crashed phone or laptop. This can be an extremely harrowing crisis and take quite some time to rebuild/ recover if ever. To prevent this we now have cloud computing, back up storage, virus protections and more. By conducting routine back-ups of your data better assures recovery of current information. Your back up systems should preferably be automatic and can be both on and off site.

Have Reserve Funds

I am sure you can identify the critical payments that need to be settled on a monthly basis to ensure that your online business goes on uninterrupted. If this is so and you can afford it, setting aside a 6-month reserve provides a cushion if a cash crunch, or crisis were to occur. Setting up bank standing orders or automated payments from a credit card drawn on this reserve account would manage these expenses for a short period while the crisis is being resolved. It is noteworthy to state that this reserve account should be routinely topped up to ensure that funds are in it.

End of Life Instructions

While we may never wish to consider this, death is a reality that we can never anticipate. We can however articulate what we would like to happen in the event of our untimely demise. Two ideas that immediately come to mind are a Cover Sale Agreement and an old-fashioned will. In both of these you can clearly lay out to your Estate Executors what you would wish to happen with your online business upon your demise.

I have seen instances where these type of instructions were not left in place and persons who would have otherwise benefited from the business are overlooked due to Intestate laws (law when there is no will).

Conclusion

What often happens during a crisis is panic. This panic can be paralyzing and lead to rash and often poor decision-making. By developing contingency plans ahead of crisis will give you and your online business a better chance of recovery and survival. You cannot plan of course for every crisis but you can anticipate and put plans in place for the most likely ones that may occur. Can we afford really afford not to.

I look forward to any comments that you may have.

Have a wonderful day.

Hugh

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