You're in for a major shock if you even think for a second that doing business is simple and that nothing goes wrong.
In my 15 years, I've had what I'd call a fairly prosperous business career. I can think of about 10 or 12 truly amazing, joyous moments during that time.
One of them was the first time we ever spent £10,000. It was a sensation like no other.
The part that no one discusses, however, are the 5-7 total disasters that must occur before you reach those landmark successes.
I'm in a pretty good position at this point to advise you on how to prevent as many of them as you can, so I want you to think about what single event could harm your company.
"All our customers leaving" is not a single event; it is a series of events. Nevertheless, "Our biggest customer leaving" is a good one.
Here is an instance. Rob, my brother, owns and operates a very prosperous video production company in Brighton. He has recorded Tony Hawk, a well-known skateboarder, the authors of the bestseller "Brilliant Selling," and Graham Rowan's "Elite Investor TV," the top investing web TV program in the UK.
Rob's issue is that he has about 5 clients.
They all adore him dearly, and their businesses are all based on his services, but if he loses even one of them, 20% of his clientele will be gone.
What would you do if your biggest client disappeared tomorrow?
What would happen if your server crashed and you lost all the data on it? Are your existing backups sufficient to restore everything?
What if you simply didn't get paid by everyone who currently owes you money? Would you survive or would you be destroyed?
What would happen if you had to move there yourself? How would that impact your company?
Just take a moment to consider the top two or three things that could truly ruin you, then start making preparations.
Here are some solutions to the typical ones.
Few Clients, High Spend or Your Biggest Customer Leaves
If you struggle with having few but high-paying customers, try investing just 5% of their revenue in paid advertisements. Whether they are actually profitable is irrelevant. The security of having more customers is what matters, as long as you're breaking even on that ad spend.
Don't believe the myth that providing excellent customer service will keep them for life. There are times when events just happen beyond your control.
Overdue Money Doesn’t Get Paid
Negotiate better terms if you frequently have large sums of money outstanding and that worries you.
Try negotiating 7-day terms if they currently pay on net-30 terms. Call your main contact and explain that 30-day terms are becoming challenging if that seems impossible.
Major Technical Issue
Consider server failure, data loss, and equipment failure.
What kind of redundancy can you implement to prevent the situation from becoming wholly incapacitating? Every two hours, Better Proposals performs data backups and stores them for three months. Although it is wholly unnecessary, it is still wise to take the precaution.
We also have a hosting setup that is entirely mirrored. We'd be up and running in 15 to 20 minutes even if the main Better Proposals server suddenly stopped working and the local mirroring didn't work (let's assume the datacenter was bombed). In order to make sure that we can quickly restore any lost data in the event of a server crash or malfunction, we also make use of a dependable hyper-v backup solution.
Key Person Leaves
Sabrina is that crucial figure in my eyes. What would mess me up if she left tomorrow? Do I remember every password? Do I have the phone numbers for everyone on our development team? Do I know the name of the hosting company's contact person?
These are all simple questions, but solutions are still required.
You Have to Physically Relocate
Life takes place. Perhaps your wife gets a job halfway across the country, or perhaps you need to relocate to a hotter country for health reasons. For whatever reason, you need to be ready for it.
I wholeheartedly support the concept of managing a remote business. Running a remote business is something you should do even if you don't need to.
You can get started by reading Automate Your Business, which I wrote. This will assist you in putting a foundation in place from which you can begin to keep the majority of your business in the cloud.