We work hard to prepare to work with with our clients. Yet it’s difficult to prepare for every contingency. A recent experience of a fellow virtual assistant brought this to my attention. It helped me realize one more thing we might want to prepare when working with our clients.
This virtual assistant had a client and a large portion of her income was received on a monthly basis from this client. Then unexpectedly the client passed away. Fortunately she is in a position where the loss of income is not a severe blow to her business. However work is left hanging and the virtual assistant is not sure what to do with the website she was in the middle of working on for the client.
So here’s a suggestion for anyone in business. Make sure you have an ’emergency’ contact, someone you can contact if for some reason you are unable to contact your client or something happens to your client. On the flip side, you should provide your client with an emergency contact so that if something happens to you, they have someone to contact to get their project work done.
I would interview prospective borrowers when I was a branch manager for a bank and in that interview I would inevitably ask what their back up or exit plans were. The hardest thing as an entrepreneur is to think that things might come to a sudden end especially to me.