You Are Probably Your Business’s Single Point of Failure

By Jordan Polasek · September 9, 2026

Here’s an uncomfortable exercise I put owners through: if you vanished for two weeks with no warning, what would break? For most small businesses the honest answer is “nearly everything,” and it’s worth sitting with why.

Convenience today, fragility tomorrow

It’s efficient to keep it all in your head — the passwords, the vendor contacts, the reason things are set up the way they are. Right up until you’re sick, on vacation, or hit by a bus, and nobody else can log in or knows who to call. Convenient and fragile are often the same decision.

Write it down; share the keys

A password manager the right people can access. A short doc of critical vendors and accounts. Backups someone other than you can restore. None of it is glamorous, and all of it is what lets a business survive its founder — and eventually outgrow them.

That’s how I think about it, anyway. If you want a second set of eyes on your own setup, reach out — happy to talk it through.