When the Boss Gets Sick: Part 1

I do not get sick very often, but I recently fell ill to the point that I needed to take some time off from work.  The great part about being the boss is that you do not need to file a vacation request or ask for sick leave.  However, the awful part about being the boss in a one-person firm (freelancer) is that if you take a break, the business may have to go on hiatus with you.  Of course this depends on the type of business, business model, etc., but in my case, the business was on break.

It happened the week of Christmas, so it was fairly easy to take the week off to recuperate and I had only planned to work 2 of those days before falling ill.  Although working as a freelancer I am a one-person entity, I do have a few things in place to help me out in case of illness.  One is fairly simple; my auto responder emails.  The bulk of my business comes from two places: through my website and via referrals.  Referrals either contact me directly, via email or through my website.  The first point of contact from me for inquiries through my site and referrals is via email and this is where an auto responder comes in.  When I am sick, on vacation or out of the office for an extended amount of time, I turn on my “out of office” email auto responder.  This lets those that contact me directly via email, know that I am out of the office and when I expect to return.

There is also an auto responder/reply email attached to each service inquiry form on this site.  Depending on the form that is being filled out, an auto reply email goes out to the submitter of that form either with additional information about the service they are inquiring about or a time table for when they will hear back from me.  If I had needed, I could have set all of the forms to send out a reply that I was out of the office due to illness for a specified amount of time.  Because of the way I have my business set up, the types of replies that form submitters receive, and the fact that it was a major holiday, I did not make this change.

While I was out for a week, because of the Christmas holiday, it did not have much of an impact on my business.  Auto responder emails are a simple and easily accessible tool that most solo-preneurs can use.  Tomorrow I will talk about the back-up plans that I have.