New York Series: Contingency Plans

It’s no secret I’ve spent some time abroad recently – the tile of recent entries has been a total giveaway.

One of the areas I reckon all entrepreneurs should cut their teeth in is a bit of gardening. The skills required for successful gardening happen to be highly transferable for entrepreneurs. I always keep my my garden in good nick. But this is the condition is was in upon my return.

My beloved box hedges are not very healthy to say the least.

Sure we had some hot weather. But I knew it was the middle of a Melbourne summer which regularly gets temperatures above 40c / 100f . So why didn’t I prepare for the resources to cater for the ‘potential challenges’ the hot weather could present to my garden? It’s pretty simple really. I assumed it would be OK for a few weeks. I assumed that things would progress as normal and we wouldn’t have the hottest temperatures on record – which we did.

I failed to prepare for the worst case scenario. Actually I failed to have an infrastructure set up so things would not only continue in my absence, but have the ability to respond to extraneous circumstances. The net result is business failure. Dead garden. Which means that my garden business is still a sole trader, a side interest or maybe just a hobby.

We only have a business when we can be absent and;

• things get done anyway
• emergencies get attended to
• our customers are unaware of our absence
• we return with no ‘noticeable’ difference

So the questions we must ask ourselves as entrepreneurs, is how we are building an infrastructure which doesn’t rely on us? It’s only once this is in place, that we actually have a business.