NOTE: I am not an insurance agent, I don’t sell any policies, and that is best left to the professionals in the field. This is just mine and my husband Mike’s story. A story about what we wish we knew to protect our family as small business owners. I am sharing primarily because it is a money topic, and many, many people have small businesses that generate at least part of the family’s income each month. I am just going to share our raw story, and our mistake that closed our company, threw us into severe financial difficulty, and took three and a half years to dig out. Also, this post is not about life insurance, the most obvious, or even insurance for our physical business. I want to share the types of insurance that we didn’t know about but can perhaps prevent financial ruin for another family.
When Mike wanted to start a consulting business in 2011, I was so excited. And it was great. It really was. Mike and I followed the state guide, took all the legal steps, got our licenses and set up our office space in our home. Then we took courses through the Small Business Administration, met with awesome advisors through SCORE. In short, we followed the “rules.” We had a business plan, a (now defunct) website, worked hard, read everything, learned a lot, make a ton of rookie mistakes, embraced them, kept going. After about a year or so, we thought we had it figured out. And for the business, we sorta did.
But today we talk about UNEQ Consulting (pronounced unique), LLC, in the past tense. Because it’s been gone since March of 2014. Because on November 1st 2013, Mike was working at a site in Eufaula, Alabama and fell head first 18 feet off of a ladder. Onto concrete. Yup. In three seconds, our life was changed forever.
Here’s why it’s important. Because what we didn’t do, and really never thought about, was protecting our family as self-employed small business owners. Mike survived the accident. Thank God. Had he passed? This is a different conversation. But Mike survived, with a severe head injury and years of rehabilitation ahead.
So, here’s the short list of what we wish we knew:
• What types of insurance we needed to protect our family- not just the business
• The importance of disability insurance on Mike, or “business continuity” or Key Man insurance.
• That in many states, unemployment insurance is for the employed- just not the self-employed
• And that Social Security has an “exclusionary” period for around five months, where even if you are approved, there is no back pay
• Oh, that we shouldn’t incur debt, because we had debt. For example, credit cards “we paid off every month” until the deductibles started needing to be paid, and I had to choose
• We wish that for all of the business preparation, that we would have been told to go and speak with someone about what we may need for this unlikely situation.
This November 1st 2018 will mark five years since our life changing event. Mike has made an amazing recovery, but it has taken years of digging in and working hard to recover financially. We paid it all in full, including the IRS lien on the house (for back self-employment taxes), and have sworn off debt. We hope that this post reaches just one person who needs to read it. Please share our story with every self-employed person and small business owner you know.
