In my brief time blogging (3 days and cooking!), I've mentioned that this will be about small business and my personal experience with my small business. Well, I've got to tell you about my last 24 hours, even though its only vaguely connected to entrepreneurship.

I've had a smallish hernia for a while that has gotten bigger and finally decided to get it fixed by a great surgeon in town, Mike Tyner of Cary Surgical. He did it yesterday and things were a little more involved than he originally thought, so I was going to be a little more sore than previously described. That certainly turned out to be correct! I was wiped out and pretty sore last night. That wasn't helped by the fact that I couldn't urinate - for about 12 hours! It finally was so bad, my lovely and extremely kind-hearted wife, Lori, drove me to the ER at 11:00 last night to get a catheter placed. For those of you who haven't experienced that bit of fun, it is every bit as distasteful as you might imagine. For those of you who don't know what that means, DON'T LOOK IT UP - it will just frighten you. But I felt a ton better afterwards and am proud to say that the water pipes are working much better today.

That explains why I didn't blog yesterday but you wouldn't have wanted to see anything I might have rambled about anyway.

This is connected to small business peripherally, I guess. Luckily, I've got a tremendous GM who runs our Athletic Nation gym in Clay Garland (learn more about the Claydog here). He is running the gym with me being out of action for a while. Its particularly impressive as he is recovering from surgery as well. But in spite of his pain, he has kept our business going. But what if I was running the gym myself, as a lot of our franchisees do? What if a sole proprietor gets sick suddenly, or in an accident, or something else that takes him or her away from the business unexpectedly? It is essential that every so-called solo business owner has a backup plan established before they need it. For example, we have a part-time trainer whom Clay has trained to run the gym, and he did so very nicely when Clay was laid up for a few days. In a pinch, I can also run the gym. But every business needs this succession plan, someone who can at least keep the place running when you might be out of action. They can just be a Band-aid, but you have to have that Band-aid for unexpected times off. Make it a part of the planning before you open. It will add a bit to your expenses to have an employee that you really don't want to use, but like any insurance policy, your business can't live without it.