What WOULD happen to your business, your clients and their workflow if you were abducted by aliens??! OK, I’ll admit that’s unlikely to happen. But you never know what’s round the corner. If you were rushed into hospital/stuck overseas with no internet/involved in an accident (and I sincerely hope none of those things happen!) what would happen to the work you have booked in? Who would notify your clients, and who would ensure that vital deadlines weren’t missed?
I had a conversation with someone ages ago who said that a lot of big companies don’t like working with sole traders because they were concerned about what would happen if the sole trader/freelancer suddenly went AWOL. I had to admit I had no plan in place for anyone to be contacted or work to be passed on if anything happened to me – and the job of setting up such a system has been on my task list ever since.
Today I’ve finally done something about it – I’ve created a spreadsheet that has details of all the clients I am working with at the moment, their contact details, the job I’m doing, the deadline and where to find anything related to it. I’ve shared a link to the spreadsheet (via Dropbox) with someone I trust who will contact my clients and make alternative arrangements should anything drastic happen to me … I’ve also let my partner and my mum know who to contact in extreme circumstances. I’m planning to update the spreadsheet every day so if I were rushed into hospital tomorrow I’d know my current and future (booked) clients were informed and someone was on the case to cover their work. It’s a bit of a rudimentary system, and hopefully I’ll never need it – but I feel better for having it in place.
But it got me wondering – do you have anything similar set up in case of emergencies? I’d love to hear your thoughts – please do leave me a comment!
