Yes… absolutely yes!!! In fact if you noticed I have been quiet for the past week it’s because that is exactly what I did .

Last Saturday my father-in-law passed away, for those of you who have lost a loved one you know the emotional drain this puts on a family, whilst also coping with the organisation of a funeral. As a small business owner I found it was incredibly difficult to be there for my family whilst continuing to work in my business. I tried it for a day and it was neither productive nor beneficial to anyone. So I decided to stop working for a week.

One of the benefits to running your own business is you can drop everything and be there to support the people you love during a difficult time… and if you have proper systems and processes in place for your business its an incredibly easy thing to do.

Having effective procedures in your business means you can assign a team member or colleague to step in and hold the fort in your absence. They will have all the information to take over from you and you can leave the business and relax knowing it is running like clockwork, even if you are not at the helm.

Perhaps you don’t even need to have someone step into your business, effective systems and procedures means your team can function without you for the week. They know what is expected of them, they know how the process works and they can “hold the fort” and get by for one week without you.

A lot of small business people tell me ‘systems and processes are boring’ or ‘I don’t have time to write out my procedures’ however I don’t think these people would find them boring when an unexpected event occurs in their life and those systems and processes allow them to drop everything and leave their business with a moment’s notice.

So my question to you today is, could you leave your business at the drop of a hat? If not, then start getting your systems and procedures into a document, a manual, a video – anything you like as long as you can document your systems so anyone can run your business.

Contact us, if you need help with this process, we’d love to help you.