In this episode, our business coach Heather Prestanski shares a personal struggle with how an accident affected her business and 5 tips to prepare your business and protect your cash flow from illness, anxiety attacks, or accidents. For those of you that are new to the podcast, this the podcast for network marketers that want to up-level their sales and their sales leadership skills while being a good human.
“Failure in business is the major derailment of business at large.” Those are the words that I heard Todd Herman utter on the 90 Day Year stage…I think it was just during a Q & A session at the 90 Day Year live event in San Diego, and I had this moment of relief knowing that I wasn’t alone.
And I also had this moment of panic. Is this something that could happen again?
Two years ago my husband and our little Bichon, Molly, were attacked by one of our neighbor’s dogs.
They were on their regular evening walk that they took every single night after dinner. Molly was on her leash she was just on the sidewalk minding her own business, and the neighbor’s dog was tied up outside, but somehow he broke the chain, and for the lack of the better words, ripped Molly apart.
My husband tried to free her…he was also bit and broke his hand. I remember hearing her shrieks, and hearing my husband yelling for help. I remember I had just gotten out of the shower and had just thrown on a t-shirt I ran outside. He was covered in blood. I saw her there with her insides hanging out, and I’ve seen that picture over and over and over and over and over again since it happened.
We took Molly to the vet when we got there we realized that Kyle hand was also hurt and that he needed to go to the hospital. I called my brother-in-law, who is so fantastic, and he was in the car before we even hung up from that call.
He took Kyle to the hospital while I stayed with Molly at the vet.
Molly is sitting next to me right now…
We were so lucky that it was Kyle who was walking Molly that day. We were so lucky because if it had been me, I don’t think that she would have survived. Kyle is a lot stronger and a lot bigger than me, and he was able to pull this hundred pound dog off of her and get away.
Kyle couldn’t go to work because his hand was broken. Molly needed around-the-clock care.
This was really difficult because at the same time we were receiving a lot of criticism by people who didn’t really know us asking, “why would you spend all this money to keep her alive? Why wouldn’t you just put her down?”
And dealing with all of this, my income took a huge hit that summer because I had to stop selling. I had to stop prospecting. I had to serve as few clients as possible. Our income took a huge hit during those two months and it took us about six months to recover from that financially.
A few months later we had some major catastrophes at the house which just added to the hardship.
This is a devastating story for me, but I wanted to share with you because although I know that it may not be a an attack on your family…it could be an illness, or it could be an accident, or it could be an aging parent that derails you….life just happens.
So because life happens, I wanted to share with you 5 tips that you can take to prepare your business to survive illness or accident.
Tip #1:
Lean on your team even…if it’s just one person.
I think that we all have this myths that lies inside us that there are certain things in our business that only we can do.
The truth is that 99.9% of the things in your business, if not a 100% of the things in your business, can be done by others.
I think it is our ego that really holds onto this idea that we are so much better at doing something and that we have this unique gift. But the reality is, even if we may be very talented at something and we operate at a 10 out of 10 at doing something, you may be able to find somebody who’s a 9 at a 10. And that’s fine. You do not have to do it all.
So even if you are at the point where you just hire somebody for two hours a week! That is totally okay. Having somebody else who gets to know your business over time is very important.
Tip #2
Create systems and standard operating procedures.
If you ever have to outsource, or if you have somebody on your team that needs answers, they have a place where they can go.
One way of doing this is when you answer a question for your team doing it via a video and keep a library of those things. It allows your team to go in and find the answer WITHOUT you!
The answers are still coming from you. It is still your advice. it is still your work, but this way your team can help if you are in a jam, or even if you’re just wanting to take some time off for vacation!
Tip #3:
Build a brand…even if it’s just you.
Your brand is not just about your product. Your brand is about who you are as a business and, possibly, who you are as YOU. It needs to be something that feels like a living and breathing thing that people can connect with.
If you do not have brand guidelines for the way your brand looks, the way your brand speaks, and the way that your brand shows up, it’s very difficult for anyone else to create outward facing pieces of your business other than you…especially if you are the brand.
Tip #4:
Utilize savings and carry low credit balance.
Cut back on your life even if that means that you need to sell your home!
We did that…we sold our home we moved back into the small home that I owned and was currently a rental.
We still live there today.
We’re actually moving into our dream home in a month, but we stayed here until all of that debt was paid off and until we had savings.
Now our business and our lives are in a place where we feel comfortable again taking that next step.
It was really hard on our ego to move into a neighborhood that’s not so great and to move into a home that was 10 steps down from the home that we’ve already been in. But it was the best thing for us because I’m not sure that we would have been able to grow the business to where it’s at now if we did not take that step to minimize our cash outflow while our cash inflows we’re still building.
Tip #5:
Keep your business simple and focus on one thing at a time.
This is a huge mistake that I see people make. Many of you, like me, are multi-passionate, right?
I have a couple of businesses, but had I tried to grow two things at once and split my focus, they would not have grown as far and as fast as they have.
So, until you have built a team that is large enough to handle multiple facets of the business, you want to stay focused in. Build one thing at a time and then slowly introduce another once you’ve maximized on that one thing.
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