Your Business Needs An Emergency Contact

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Dec 13

It's really important because when you think about the worst case scenario of you suddenly dying or being taken away from the business for whatever reason, your business doesn't just end. There are actions that someone else in your life is going to need to take.

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Does your small business have an emergency contact in the case that you suddenly become unavailable?

This can be a huge gap in your business if you don’t have one. You’ll learn what you can do to address this as soon as possible.

Your key takeaways:

What this role is
Why it's so important
How you can put steps in place to designate this person and get them what they need to be effective if and when the time were to ever come

What’s An Emergency Contact?

Emergency contacts are otherwise known as authorized representatives. Essentially, whoever represents the business affairs in dealing with the rest of the world.

This person is someone that would step into your shoes if you were to be temporarily unavailable or permanently unavailable, whether that be voluntarily or through some sort of emergency or accident.

I often like to ask this question to my clients:

"What happens to the business if something happens to you?"

You will think of different scenarios that could potentially happen in the future that may take you away from the business or unable to function in certain aspects of the business.

Then it comes into who would be able to step in and do those activities in your stead. I recommend if this is your first time thinking about this or planning for this, that you start with the worst case scenario.

I know we don't like to think about death. We don't like to think about our mortality and the mortality of people that we know and love. But the reality is it's something that we will all face someday. If we start with thinking about that, then we are thinking about all the pieces and then we can start to work that back through succession planning other scenarios.

How To Select Your Emergency Contact

Let's start with who would be taking action? I would say that the default person will be whoever is the executor of your affairs. That is, who would be cleaning up your life after you pass.

Oftentimes that will be a spouse, a parent, an adult child, a sibling, or a close friend. If those roles aren't present in your story, then maybe it's some sort of trustee, or lawyer, or some other hired entity to act in that role.

For the sake of examples, I'm going to start with the spouse. Maybe they have no interest in knowing anything about the business presently, because you're around your doing things regularly. So, they're not engaging. They don't know anything.

What does that person that needs to address all of your affairs in your absence need to know about the business to take any sort of meaningful action?

You would then think about how you would designate your person. Talk to them about it. Awareness and communication are very important.

Here are the three questions you need to get started.

Are they aware that you expect this of them if something were ever to happen?
Do they know what the expectation is of them to take action when that trigger event occurs?
Do they have what they need to take action?

When thinking about this role, I would also recommend having a second person informed that they would be taking on this role if something were to happen and neither of you nor your spouse were available.

So, you don't necessarily want to put all your eggs in one basket, but that also doesn't mean that you need to give all the information away to these people.

**How To Actually Plan Your Emergency Contact**

It's pulling together some sort of secured documentation that centrally acknowledges all of the affairs. This will include some sort of instruction on what actions to take first to either keep the business running along on a temporary basis, or to transition the business to someone else.

In the second case above, it would be about selling the business or just handing it off to family or a team member or a business partner. Or shutting down completely.

They would need to be completely informed on what to do in those circumstances.

What if you just want to plan for a temporary departure or absence, maybe an extended vacation or something like that? You can think about what are the activities that you're involved in typically during that timeline.

What are things that can either be shut off or postponed? Versus things that maybe are trainable and delegatable to somebody else on your team. Or you could outsource and hire a freelancer to do that activity for you during that time.

Why is all of this important?

1. Your business doesn't just end

Otherwise, if no actions are taken, expenses are going to continue to be incurred. Are there recurring payments happening that are auto pulling out of credit cards and bank accounts? Do you have clients that need to be contacted? Are there open invoices? Are there open contracts? Is there payroll for your team?

There's all these different components that maybe need to be considered and addressed, as soon as possible. That's in addition to their own life and any grief and emotional experiences that they're having around the fact that you're no longer around.

2. It’s an act of care and respect

This is really an act of care for yourself. It's a sign of respect to the business. It's a sign of respect and care to those that you love in your life that you want to ensure are taken care of, and that the business that you created as an asset to take care of you and them. It doesn't become a liability and a burden after you're gone.

If you want to get started with addressing this gap in your business today, I recommend checking out Project C.Y.A. Essentials.

It's a 'GET IT DONE' guide taking the guesswork out of how to implement all of this; it's pulling together and organizing all of your affairs, getting it all documented and a central source of truth for your business.

It is creating your succession planning strategies. It is designating your emergency contacts and creating a sense of peace of mind and structure for your future, whatever that might entail.

If you just want to chat about it, go ahead and reach out.

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