How to family-crisis-proof your business

The weekend before Halloween my son Sam broke his elbow while jumping on our trampoline. No, we shouldn’t have had two adults jumping on with him at the same time. (Parental lapse of judgment, oy gevult.) It was bad enough to require surgery, and so wiped out Sunday and Monday, and even Tuesday I wasn’t really with it completely, and still missed part of the day.

This could have easily happened on a Monday and wiped out my whole week. I almost had to cancel a teaching call when he fell and hurt his arm again on the stairs, and my wife needed to take him to the surgeon to see if anything was needed. (Thankfully not.)

The theme we want to focus on this month is the thorny topic of “Getting Help.” I want to start out below discussing how to create a business that can weather a family crisis.

Sam is actually doing fine. His cast should be off before U.S. Thanksgiving, and then he’ll have another few weeks of no extreme sports before he’s back to being his usual daredevil, rambunctious self.

How to family-crisis proof your business

I was talking to one of our clients who was facing overwhelm in trying to both build her business and deal with big health concerns with one of her parents. The care her parent needed not only took up her actual time, but it also left her emotionally and physically drained, so it was hard to bring creativity to the business.

How do you weather this kind of a situation when you’re self-employed? You have no vacation hours banked and you only get paid when you see clients.

We are all a part of generations of families, which means that a huge percentage of entrepreneurs has faced, is facing, or will face a similar situation. It might be your parents, or a sibling, or a child. It might be illness, or drug abuse, or traumatic injury.

Whatever it looks like, it’s real.

For my client, the first thing we did was acknowledge two truths. First, that she cared deeply about her parent. Secondly, that she also cared very much about her business. Those two cares she carried in her heart were not in conflict- she can care about both of them.

We spent some time in Remembrance, which allowed a wonderful spaciousness to open up. Then the insight arrived.

“A huge part of my confidence, my clarity, my strength, comes when I work with clients. It’s just true.” This is the same confidence, clarity and strength she needs to be able to care for her parent.

I personally relate to that so much. And I’ve heard from countless people that one of the most painful things about not having enough clients to work with is that your confidence drains away and self-doubt blooms in painful ways.

Working with clients, having a working business, then, is a critical part of self-care.

Revelation! It’s not just about the money. Your business is actually a way to access self-care. Self-care that is so important to stay connected to when dealing with the draining situation of caring for a family member in crisis.

Crisis-proofing your business has a lot to do with building systems
that make running your business easier. (click to tweet)

Another client, actually a few clients, have recently been celebrating the launching of new websites that have beauty and clarity that they’ve never had before (based on the Heart-Centered Websites approach in Foundations 2: Expand Your Reach).

They also both noted how much easier it was to be out in the world and get clients, with the website behind them. The website was a point of leverage for developing their business, in many different ways.

It takes a tremendous effort to create a business that you can disappear from for six months and come back to with it still intact. I’m not talking about doing that.

However, in any extended crisis, even longer than when Holly and I spent two months living in a hotel in Ohio during the adoption process for our boys, you won’t necessarily be disappearing from your business entirely. The more likely scenario is that you’ll just have decreased attention for it.

In those cases, you need a business that functions smoothly, that when you give attention to it, it moves. This involves some critical pieces:

• Having a clear idea of who your clients are and how to get their attention.
• Having a clear offer, priced profitably, that those clients want and need.
• Having an effective way to talk to interested potential clients that doesn’t scare them off, so the right ones can say yes, and pay you.

In addition, you’ll want:

• A clear, effective website that does a lot of the heavy lifting for you.
• A sustainable, not-so time-intensive way of staying in touch with people who are interested, but haven’t bought yet. We call this the Second Journey of Marketing.
• An effective way to reach out to new people and introduce them to what you do, without scaring them off. We call this First Journey Marketing.
• An easy, supportive way of educating your raving fan clients on how to send more clients to you.

If you have these all in place, systematized, sustainable and from the heart, then your business needs a LOT less attention.

The Kicker

The kicker is that it takes time to create all of that and put it in place. When a crisis hits, it becomes very challenging to have enough emotional space to find the clarity you need, plus the work time and just general oomph, to get these basics in place.

It’s not rocket science, but it’s not paint-by-number, either.

If you can see family crisis on your horizon, or better yet, if you can’t see it at all, it’s time to buckle down and start putting these in place as quickly as you can.

By “quickly as you can” I don’t mean from panic. Please, nothing from panic.

Just if this is important to you, it’s time to put some focused effort, probably over a year’s time, to get all of this in place, so you can have a sustainable, functional business that can grow and develop if you don’t have any crisis.

And if you do have a crisis, it can maintain with a minimum of effort on your part.

As one of our clients said, “My parents would want me to be taken care of. They wouldn’t want to see me financially wiped out caring for them.”

My three requests

First: Breathe.
Any panic or urgency that has arisen, let it go. Settle into your heart. Don’t do anything from panic. You are being cared for.

Second: What does your business need?
From the basic systems I identified above, what does your business still need? Identify the missing pieces as best you can. If you need help, you can try our Readiness Assessment.

Third: Make a commitment to yourself and your business
Make a commitment to getting the help you need to put these systems in place. All business teachers worth their salt are all saying the same thing. It’s less about what, and it’s more about the resonance. Find a business teacher, or class, or program, or group of friends, or something that you resonate with, that you feel great about learning from.

And get the help you need to get your business on its feet and in flow. Make that commitment to yourself.

Share

Can you tell me what comes up for you? Have you needed to balance a family crisis and your business? How can you imagine, or have you in reality, weathered this kind of situation?

With big love and appreciation,

Mark

Curious about how to work with us? Check out our Training Programs page, and especially the Readiness Assessment.