What happens to my business if I cannot work for a month?

It depends on what waits for you. In most owner-run businesses the work carries on for a week or two, then the decisions only you make start to pile up: pricing, approvals, the bank, the largest customers. By the end of a month, the people around you are either guessing or waiting.

The business does not stop. The trucks go out and the invoices get sent. What stops is anything that needs your judgement or your name. Quotes wait for a price. Purchases wait for approval. A customer who only deals with you calls twice and then calls someone else.

A buyer calls this key-person risk and prices it. A lender sees it too, usually when monthly reporting goes late because the person who pulls it together is you.

The fix is not to work less. It is to know exactly what depends on you and to hand each piece to someone who can hold it, with enough reporting that you can see it holding. Then you test it by stepping back.

What you can look at this week: for five working days, write down every decision that came to you, and next to each one, who else could have made it. The blank spaces are the list.