Owning a freelance or a microbusiness often means you never really get to rest. The company’s operations depend on you, so if you go down, the business suffers too. Never is it more abundantly clear that your business – yes, your teeny weeny little bitty business – needs systems, than when you get sick.

Lots of us have the dream of owning a business that makes money all by itself while we’re sipping cocktails in the Maldives, and for that we need systems. We need to automate as many processes as possible in order to free ourselves from the constant grind of being a business owner. But many of us don’t create the systems. Maybe it’s because subconsciously we don’t believe we’re capable of creating such a business.

Well, I’m sick. Knock me out with Neocitran and call it a day (or in my case, 3 weeks) kind of sick. But for the last few weeks, we’ve been working pretty steadily on creating systems and processes to keep the business running smoothly in case this very thing happened.

And you know what? I’ve noticed a positive difference from the last time I was sick. Things are still moving along quite nicely.

Plan for Getting Hit By a Bus

We still have a lot of automation to create in order to guarantee the high quality of service our clients are used to. There will always be tweaking and adjusting. But by beginning to put together processes that allow us to continue to meet our clients’ expectations even if one of us goes down for a while, we’re slowly creating a business system that will work for the long term.

Remember, the sustainability of your company can’t depend on you alone.

Is that in your business plan?