Your Business Will

It’s easy for executives and entrepreneurs to neglect their health. Their jobs are extremely stressful and require long hours, which can lead to lack of sleep unusual eating habits, being forced to eat the wrong things due to time constraints and proximity to quality food. These series of events can lead to number of health related problems and diseases such as heart disease and diabetes, ulcers, or even cancer. In certain instances even when a person is as diligent about their health as they are their careers they can still succumb to illness or disease. Typically a person would have a will which is meant to outline how they'd like assets allocated and their estate taken care of in the event their disabled or deceased, this is not always the case when it comes to people and their  business's.

When running a business whether you’re  a solepreneur or part of an entrepreneurial team is very important that you have contingency plans in place for if you or one of the key team members are unable to perform for a long period of time or even worse is deceased. Staples has a current TV spot where a man “Dave” is in different clothing playing different roles in the office such as the IT guy, HR guy, secretary etc. etc. This is meant to depict the life of a business owner there are so many intricacies to running your business that don’t necessarily have anything to do with the business you’re in. How is payroll processed and employees paid, How are key vendors contacted to complete or check on orders, is contact information for clients and access to files critical to current and future projects available?

These questions must be answered as part of the overall equation to running a successful and healthy business. If you’re disabled for a time period you don’t want it to mean the end of your business especially if you’re responsible for the lives of staff and vendors who are relying on your business as part of their survival. The same is to be said when the inevitable happens and you pass away, do you have the proper provisions in place to dictate what happens to your business and the structure of your business when you’re no longer here.

We’ve always heard about the importance of having a will to outline how we’d like our personal estate handled in the instance we’re not able to do so due to disability or death. The same concept needs to be applied to your business, making sure plans are in place to keep the business running, sell the business or have a smooth transition to another staff member moving forward.