Hi Everyone,

I am not sure if this is should be under this thread or if this has been covered - but I am doing my business plan and some things have come up that I would love to hear feedback on.

How do you handle your VA business while on vacation?
What happens or how do you handle your VA business if you get sick?
How do you work offline and still handle your VA responsibilities in the event of electricity going down or natural disaster?
Are there any resources or safety nets used to prepare for the unexpected?

Any advice or insight would be great.

Thanks All!!

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Mae Smith - Owner of eOffice Business Solutions
Your excellent, efficient, economical partner in business support services!

Hi Mae
There are some great threads on this topic in the Policies and Procedures forum that you might find helpful. When you click through to that forum, use the 'Search this forum' option on the inside right hand corner there to search for 'vacation' and they'll turn up for you.

Personally, I haven't had to deal with an extended lack of electricity but the few times I was abroad or traveling and the power or internet went down I would go to and use a local coffee shop's wifi or similar to check email, notify clients (if necessary), and get some work done.

The nice thing about working for yourself is that you set your own schedule and don't necessarily have set business hours (as long as the work gets done and deadlines are respected, clients don't really need to know when or from where you are working) so these kinds of issues can be circumvented for the most part.

And I've (thankfully) never been so sick that I couldn't prop myself up on the couch with my laptop and get things done.

With that said, I do know that some VAs who live in areas that are plagued by hurricanes etc. do have clauses in their contracts relative to this kind of thing and I think some of those situations are mentioned in the threads you'll find in that other section.

I also know that some VAs will create a network of 'backup VAs' who are trusted and known to them that they can call on in the event of an emergency. Other VAs run larger teams and can parse out work to someone on their team as needed.

I hope this helps a bit!

Surely you'll receive more answers on this thread from those who've had more pressing experience with the situations you're looking at.

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Thank you so much Tess!!! You have helped tremendously. :-)

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Mae Smith - Owner of eOffice Business Solutions
Your excellent, efficient, economical partner in business support services!

Hi Mae -

One of the biggest things that will help with this is to make sure you have great processes in place and always kept updated. Kind of developing internal turn-key solutions for all your various activities. This way - should you need to hand certain things over to someone else in your absence they will know exactly what to do, and do it according to your specifications.

Example: You win a cruise to the Caribbean. You don't want to have to even open your laptop while on this kind of vacation, but the catch is you must leave right now. You don't have time to call anyone and round them up. You simply have your sister who lives 1 block over who can run over really quick to help you pack. You have a manual that has everything setup so she can call all your backup, call your clients and know exactly what to say, has information on how to access all your projects and review their status, and has information on how to access your calendar so she can rearrange your schedule. She will be the next best thing to you, and be able to manage it all, and all you have to do is hand her the book.

You also want to be sure to have disaster recovery plans in place. Ensuring that you have backups of everything, have a way that you can still work should you have a PC crash, and much more that you can research.

Hope this helps some.

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Pam Blackman - The Process Coach
Get more done in less time by streamlining!