On my trip to Lexington, Kentucky two weeks ago, Greg, Emily and I attended The Land Rover Kentucky Three-Day Event. We had a great time watching the competition and cheering on the riders.

The event was held at Rolex Stadium at the Kentucky Horse Park, which is a well-known and popular destination featuring The International Horse Museum, The American Saddlebred Museum, the Hall of Champions where several celebrity horses are living in retirement and many other interesting sites.

As with all good tourist attractions, it also has a gift shop. The three of us are unable to resist the opportunity to add to our ever-growing t-shirt collections, so we went right in and found new shirts. What we didn’t notice as we were browsing was the line to the registers that was growing longer and longer. We finally learned the problem: the registers were unable to connect to the internet and, as a result, were unable to process electronic payments.

The three employees behind the counter were nervously trying to get the registers reconnected when, finally, the manager swooped in. He looked very managerial, but I could tell as I listened to him talk to the technical troubleshooter that he didn’t have much experience with the system in its current state, either!

Finally, one of the customers called out: “What if I have cash?!” The manager thought about it for a second and said, “Yes, we can do that.” Fortunately, the cash option satisfied many customers (including us) and we were soon on our way.

So, how about you? What’s your Plan B for the services that are essential for your business?

We’ve all got systems for running our respective businesses: formal and informal, tech-enabled and back of the envelope; long standing and brand new. And, if yours is like most small businesses, you’ve created processes that actually work pretty well, most of the time.

But, you’ve also probably got many potential points of failure throughout.

So a Plan B is important. Here are some tips for creating yours:

• If you’re using a password management software, routinely export the list so you can see the passwords if you can’t connect to the Internet from your own computer.
• Use a system like Dropbox to store your digital files so they are accessible when you’re connected to the Internet and when you’re not.
• Invest in a spare laptop and make it a habit to keep it charged and synced with all your applications and data.
• Create an operating manual with key contact information for all your critical information – your payroll company, Internet Service Provider, website hosting company – so that you can just pick up the phone and call them.
• Make a list of all your company credit card numbers, bank account numbers and anything else you’d need in case of a financial emergency.

Like a retail store that suddenly can’t sell T-shirts to eager buyers, make sure you don’t wait until you’re in the middle of a problem to figure out your Plan Bs!!