Two weekends ago, I had both of our boys to myself. One is three (almost 4) and the other one and a half.
We had a big morning planned: the zoo, lunch out, and paying outside in the afternoon.
I got them both dressed, packed the stroller, and it felt like everything was going perfectly. I told the boys to put their shoes on and unlocked the back door to head to the garage.
Then, right as I stepped out, I caught the unmistakable smell.
The little one had just pooped.
I told our three-year-old, “Hold on a second, I need to change your brother’s diaper.”
As I’m changing the diaper, I hear a few noises… nothing out of the norm but enough to make me think “what is the older boy doing?” As soon as I get the diaper off I hear the noise I couldn’t mistake: our garage door is opening.
I run out, pants-less baby under one arm, to find our three-year-old climbing out of the driver’s seat of the car. “Come inside now” I exclaim… to which our three-year-old replies “I was just putting some things in the trunk.”
Nothing bad happened, thankfully. But the moment stuck with me.
Because I realized something:
When my wife and I are both around, we have full coverage. When one is gone, we have a plan.
When it’s just me… not so much. When the plan gets derailed… anything can happen.
THE MYTH OF A SYSTEM
With two parents, there’s built-in redundancy: one changes the diaper, the other watches the toddler. But remove one parent and all the little holes in the system become glaringly obvious.
With only one parent around, you don’t feel as in control, but you put things in place to make sure things happen as expected… locking the doors or keeping them occupied.
The same thing happens in small businesses every day.
Everything looks fine until one person’s gone or things don’t go as planned.
The bookkeeper gets sick. The admin takes vacation. The owner’s at a conference.
Then suddenly, invoices don’t get sent, payroll’s late, or the bank account’s lighter than expected.
The truth?
The problem is people generally do their job, so it’s easy to “fall asleep” and think things are good.
Things work… until they don’t.
Good people do their job on autopilot, not thinking about the future or the risks. They remember the passwords. They send the invoices. They check the account balance on a schedule.
But systems built on goodwill are fragile.
And every business feels great until it doesn’t… then that fragility slaps you in the face.
You may be thinking, yes Kurtis, you’re right… but I don’t have other options. We’re already overextended and I’m not hiring anyone else.
I get it. I really do. I’ve felt it personally.
But your business is too important to stay this way.
So today, we’re going to talk about how to protect your business.
HOW TO PROTECT YOUR BUSINESS
Here’s how you start closing the gaps:
- Map the Financial Processes. List out everything that touches money: billing, AR, AP, payroll, reconciliations, reporting.
- Identify Single Points of Failure. Ask: If this person were gone for two weeks, what stops?If the answer is “everything,” that’s a risk.
- Create Minimum Viable Redundancy. Create SOPs and cross-train at least one other person — even 70% proficiency is a win. Store logins in a shared vault. Record Loom videos for repeatable tasks.
- Separate Duties. Even small teams can split the work… One person enters vendor bills, another approves them. One prepares payroll, another reviews it. This helps create redundancy too, as more people are regularly in the task.
- Run an Annual Coverage Audit. Once a year, review your processes and make sure you still have coverage. Play the “what if” game and ask: What if I’m out? What if my bookkeeper quits? You’ll see the holes before life does it for you.
Real coverage gives you three things:
- Resilience. Too many run their business in firefighting mode. Doing these simple things to protect your business, make sure that your systems don’t crumble when someone’s out.
- Value. When things don’t go as planned, it can cost you real money. Whether that be employees upset because they didn’t get paid, fees for late payments, or just staff turnover because of the added stress. Also, businesses with transferable systems are worth more when selling because they’re not dependent on any one person.
- Peace of Mind. You can actually take a vacation and sleep better at night. We’ve done this for real Business owners at Bison CFO and have heard this straight out of their mouths.
Be a real leader and create a real company. You want to design a business to survive in your absence.
We still got to the zoo and no disaster happened. And this is why it’s so easy for business owners to fall asleep. A bad thing will happen, and there will be no consequences over time. It’s easy to ignore the next bad thing and the next bad thing. But eventually, there will be fallout, and you want to make sure it’s not of the catastrophic type.
The best-run businesses build systems that still work when you’re not in the room.
Let’s build this type of business.
