Will your business survive without any major damage in case you are sick or out of commission for a while? I have been traveling this month and then got sick upon my return right before Christmas and honestly – I have not done anything other than writing 4 or 5 blog posts during that time since December 12th. Sure, I checked my emails and financial stats, but overall everything runs on auto-pilot and that is not bad in a situation where you have limited access to the Internet or when illness really takes you down.
When I built my business it was always designed to be secondary to my full-time job (computer systems administrator at that time). I built it with the mindset that if the full-time job pays the bills, it has higher priority. If the business would pay the bills, it would get higher priority. You get the idea. Anyway – I designed the business based on the idea that it needs to run on auto-pilot with little or no intervention at all for a while and that is serving me well up to today. Sure, the business will not grow itself during that time, but that is expected.
As a business grows you often find yourself “married” to the business. PPC campaigns might need daily ‘massaging’ and maintenance as otherwise you might lose a lot of money. Or do you manually need to update websites or maintain online presence in a forum or chat room to keep things going? If that is the case you cannot just get sick for a few days and turn on hibernation and recovery mode. You are forced to be online and work as otherwise your business would suffer. This might be Ok for a while, but long-term you need to plan ahead and design your business processes accordingly. Example: I run a large vBulletin forum with 5,000 visitors per day. There is always the need for assistance in many ways. For years I did it all myself, but at one point I realized that did not work. Initially it was hard to trust someone else, but by now I have moderators “working” (volunteering) for me and I can easily disappear for a week knowing my forum is in good hands. This was a good learning process for me and I started using automation where possible. As another example I use Sunday nights to post a lot of content to several websites. The content is pre-scheduled and then published upon the scheduled date. This makes the websites look like their are being updated almost daily. Except for one website everything is designed with very little need for personal contact with website visitors. This one specific website however, can be adjusted for when I am gone. Revenue, while delivering a high ROI, is sporadic with bursts in traffic here and there. The financial impact is minimal and does not really affect me.
This business model will not work for everyone, but now that I am still feeling sick with no motivation of doing really work, I am glad that I can lean back recover knowing that my business is waiting for me and that I do not have to sweat about possible problems or issues costing me thousands of dollars.
PS: I hate traveling for one reason – too many people among the way trying to make you sick 
. It also does not help sitting in an airplane with a broken AC that left the section I was sitting in with 45-55 degree (Fahrenheit) temperatures. 9 hours of cold temperatures just don’t help you …
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