While we don’t like to think of it, there are always uncertainties in life that can come without warning. When these events occur, it is often very difficult to pay any attention to your business. Either you don’t have the time or it becomes the farthest thing from your mind.
When that does occur, will your business continue to run without you or is it completely dependent on you? If your answer is more of the former than the latter, it is more likely that you have already built or are on your way to building a successful Lazy Business.
Why is it Important?
The main reason is that you never know what’s going to happen to you from day to day.
- You could have a family emergency that needs your complete attention
- You could become injured or sick and not be able to work for a period of time
- There could be some sort of catastrophe where you work or live and you won’t be able to get to work or do any work for several days
All of these things are completely out of your control and more often than, completely unpredictable on when they happen. You need to be prepared so that when they do happen, your business and your livelihood aren’t affected and you can focus on what needs your immediate attention.
An ancillary affect of being so prepared is that you can also be gone for no reason at all. You can take a week off of work at a moment’s notice or just not do any work for several days. Your business will still function without you to support that lifestyle. Now it may not continue to grow without your leadership and vision but that is a balance that you need to be comfortable with.
The important goal to focus on is that your business wouldn’t fall off the edge of a cliff with clients canceling their service or bills don’t get paid, etc.
What if You Freelance or the Main Cog in the Business?
If you are a freelancer, you have other problems. Freelancing is not a real business in the first place and you need to re-engineer what you do and how you work to make sure that you manage the business and are not the sole person responsible for service/product delivery.
What Needs to Be Done?
The short answer is . . . Everything!
Every business is different in what it sells and how it operates. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t common functions of every business – accounting, service/product delivery, marketing, sales, general management, etc.
The fact is that each of these areas should be broken down and detailed in a manual with all the functions that need to be completed. And all of those activities should be delegated to someone else to do. These are tasks that need to be completed on a regular basis like setting up new clients or paying bills on a weekly basis. You should not be doing anything that you can get someone else to do – outsource it.
But there are a few things you should have procedures in place for so that they can be run without you. This is also a good checklist for those who want to automate their business:
- Who is going to handle the accounting and handle the reconciliation of all the expenses and income?
- Who is going to bill the clients, receive the payments, and process the payments?
- Who is going to pay the bills on time?
- How are the taxes going to get paid and any forms or legal documents get filed?
- Who is going to manage the marketing campaigns – set them up, monitor them, and measure them?
- Who will the prospects call or e-mail if they have any questions or would like to place an order?
- Who will take the orders and get the information to deliver the product or service?
- Who will handle product/service delivery and make sure that the client is set-up and receives what they ordered?
- Who will handle client support? They will probably have questions or concerns and they need someone to talk to.
While they might not all be completely automated so that they can get completed without any assistance or initiation from you, you should be able to easily hand them over to someone else to complete. These are all things that you need to automate today so that you don’t have to worry about them tomorrow. And you’ll notice that once you do have them handed off, you will be able to focus more time and energy on growing a successful business. . . or you can just play some golf instead.
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