We are all familiar with the story. Winter is coming and the little industrial ants are busy hunting and gathering food for the long cold months of being holed up in their hill. Their minds are focused on one thing - getting food. It’s what they need to sustain themselves and no matter how well they stock their little ant cupboards, they keep going and going until they’re forced to stop. Through the winter months, they’ll have lots of little ant snacks to enjoy while watching Grey’s Entomology on their little ant TVs.

Meanwhile, the ‘live in the moment’ grasshopper has a full belly and doesn’t feel the need to prepare for the winter. He’s out dancing and hopping…in the grass…poking fun at the busy little ants and wondering why they don’t just relax a bit.

Some entrepreneurs are ants, and some are grasshoppers. If you think of leads as food - fuel you need to thrive - this will make much more sense. A business that depends on leads must never stop generating them. Even if you don’t feel hungry for new business today, things can be dramatically different tomorrow. Winter could be just around the corner.

Are you marketing your business even when you have a full roster of clients? Or are you waiting for the day when the snow flies and you’re starving?

In the fable of the ant and the grasshopper, the hospitable ants took the grasshopper in, gave him something to eat and I think they had a big party or something. Unfortunately, this is business, and I don’t know many business ants that would share their hard earned leads with a hungry  business grasshopper.

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I’m spending much of this weekend up close and personal with my business. I’m preparing a handbook to give each of my associate VAs to provide them with a detailed look into my company and how I expect it to be operated. I should have done this a long time ago, and I do have a basic policy and procedure document in progress, but this is different. A policy and procedure manual is something for my husband to give someone if I get hit by a bus, so Mann Made Time can survive without me. Have you read Michael Gerber’s ‘The E-Myth Revisited’? It’s all about implementing systems, and my business could stand to be a lot more systemised.

So as I sit here thinking about topics to include in my handbook, and the way I expect my associates to represent my company, it’s really forcing me to think. It’s a wonderful exercise to go through, and I urge every business owner to put something like this in place. Something you’ll be able to give your employees, or your virtual assistant to follow when representing your firm.

You also should have a general policy and procedure manual that could be handed to someone in case of an emergency that takes you away from your business. A wonderful resource, Yvonne Weld’s Guide to Creating a Thriving Business can be found here.

You can not have any good reason for not doing this. If you do, I would love to hear it. Honestly, who can predict what’s going to happen tomorrow? Your back up plan doesn’t do much good if it’s located ‘in the back of your mind’. Get to it!

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Here on PEI, many people are without power and have been since Monday (this is Thursday). We had some freezing rain on Monday that did extensive damage to the power lines and it’s just a terrible situation. The Maritime Electric crews are working around the clock, and it might be into the weekend before power is restored to everyone.

Once again, this makes me think of how important it is to have a backup plan in place when you operate a business. Many businesses can’t open here because power is needed for almost everything.

We have a generator that will power our heat, coffee maker and our internet connection (three important things!). That being said, it is costing quite a bit to keep up with the amount of gas needed to power the generator.

It’s mostly business as usual, but we can only have the generator going for a couple of hours at a time because of the cost, and the house will stay warm for a little while once the rads are shut off.

We don’t have enough juice from the generator to use our stove, so it’s mostly grilling being done, but we’re a lot better off than some people.

Are you prepared for a power outage in your business? You might want to check out Yvonne Weld’s guide to making a plan for your business, including a disaster plan.

For anyone not living on PEI to see the devastation, check out the Guardian’s website to read about it and see some pictures of the ice that covered everything yesterday. Mother nature is truly remarkable.

So, are you prepared?

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So, I am sitting here at ‘Beanz‘ (I see they don’t have a website, I better drop them a card on my way out) a buzzing little coffee shop here in Charlottetown, PEI working on my trusty laptop. On a Saturday morning. At 9am.

Why am I sitting in a coffee shop working on a Saturday morning when I have two small children at home and I try my hardest not to work weekends? Besides the fact that this is THE best coffee on PEI (in my opinion), I’m here for the WiFi. I live in a rural area where high speed internet is not available - very commonplace problem here on PEI. I am paying out the nose for my satellite internet service which is usually very reliable. However, there is a problem with my dish or my modem and it could take days to repair. I have 5 hours of dial up service available for times like these, but luckily Aliant came through and they’re giving me unlimited dial up for as long as I’m without my satellite.

Today we are also expecting Tropical Storm Noel to nail us with high winds and rain. Maybe I’m lucky that my satellite went out before the storm so that I’ll (presumably) be among the first customers to be fixed up after the storm. I’m expecting that I will be without power for the weekend as well.

This has got me thinking about how important it is to have a back up plan for my business. A contingency plan that you never want to turn to, but something solid to fall back on in the worst of times.

I have a really good start on my plan thanks to Yvonne Weld (my virtual friend and source of major inspiration) and her awesome resource, The Ultimate Guide to Creating a Thriving Business. If you need to create a procedure manual for your business, this is the ticket. I feel that every small business owner should purchase this resource - it’s money well spent.

So I have taken 15 minutes out of my precious time here to write this post - I must go refill my coffee and put my nose back to the grindstone.

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