How to be Proactive in Your Business Using a Holistic Approach
I'm really into holistic healthcare. Making sure we're putting good things into our bodies, getting enough daily movement, and creating healthy habits. I recently talked about cashflow being the heartbeat of your business, and taking that analogy further we can really look at our business and how we take care of it, like we look at taking care of our physical health. We need to set ourselves up for the future (with recessions, "what if" COVID happened again, etc) and be proactive so that whenever something happens, we can keep going through the slow times, hardships, or complications that come up. Whatever happens, we want to be prepared. Let's dive in.
Have a Sinking Fund
I've referred to this as a rainy day fund, slush fund, etc before. But today I want to call it a sinking fund. This is going to help maintain your business so you can stay afloat during slow times. I recommend having enough in that fund to cover 3 (or 6, or 12) months expenses (wages to employees and contractors, wages to YOURSELF, necessary subscriptions or expenses). With project-based or photography businesses, you tend to have slow months and months where you'll have an influx of cash. You'll have high and low months, so you might want more than 3 months set aside. But especially if you have that high and low flow in your business, you want to be prepared for those low months so you can keep your business running. One note on this, if you have credit card debt, I recommend paying off that debt first before building up your sinking fund.
Have Backup Plans for SOPs and Marketing
Let's shift gears a bit and talk about operations and marketing. We need to protect our operations. Right now everything for my team is on ClickUp. I have this nightmare that ClickUp crashes and then my team is left hanging! So personally, I want to have it backed up somehow so that if something were to happen with ClickUp, we'd be prepared and know what to do.
With marketing, the things you do NOW will impact your business in 3 months from now. If you pull back from your marketing efforts, you'll see the effect of that in a few months. Posts, emails, etc. Early summer I took a step back from posting regularly and I could definitely see the slowness in my business. After coming back from that "break" (let's be honest, it wasn't a break, I just didn't post as much), I'm now seeing things pick up in my business. So whether you content plan, have templates for posts or an idea bank, be prepared for it.
If Instagram is your only source of marketing and it crashes, what are you going to do? How are you going to reach clients? We've been branching out to an email list, TikTok, Pinterest, podcasts, etc. Protect yourself with your marketing and branch out to where if the one platform crashes or you lose your account, you're not having to start from scratch.
Being Prepared for the Worst
If this is feeling a little doomsday, take a deep breath. I don't bring all this up to say there's going to be so many disasters, everything is horrible, so that's why you need to be prepared. No. Being prepared gives you peace of mind and confidence that you'll know you'll be okay, no matter what happens. You could look at this from a place of fear, but confidence and peace feels a lot better if you ask me!
Bringing it back to our analogy, we take care of our bodies by exercising, eating healthy, drinking water, getting enough sleep, you know the drill. Some people might do those things out of fear of dying, sure. But really we take care of our bodies because it feels good and we're happier and have a better quality of life when we do. Right? Same for our business. We prepare and take action in our biz now, because it helps things run smoother and takes away a lot of the stress of being a business owner!
