The excitement of beginning and operating a business created simply from one’s love of aesthetics is the dream for many solopreneurs. Parts of this dream are exhilarating and fulfilling, like transforming a client’s skin and seeing them love the way their skin looks. Having satisfaction in one’s contribution to someone’s happiness is priceless. Other parts of solo business ownership may not be as much fun.
An all-too-often-overlooked aspect of business ownership is insurance. There are simply too many solopreneurs risking everything because they do not know where to start in relation to insurance for their business. Each solopreneur should do the research they need, specific to their individual business. Consulting with an insurance agent is highly recommended. Business insurance policies can be much more complex than personal policies, and very few Americans actually understand their personal insurance. Prior to meeting with a professional to assess the business’s needs, the solopreneur should know some basic information about the types of insurance a business can have. There are many more insurance types than there is space for here, but this space will cover the most popular and pertinent to solopreneurs in the industry.
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INSURANCE TYPES
General Liability
Among the basic types of insurance available to skin care professionals, none is more popular than general liability policies. Also called Commercial General Liability (CGL) policies, these protect the business from personal or business injury, including medical costs or property damage. These policies should exist for any business with a name. To not have a general liability policy is irresponsible as a business owner and can make the solopreneur personally responsible in the event something goes wrong.
Professional Liability
Professional Liability Insurance (also called Errors & Omissions Insurance, or E&O) is for situations that arise in which there is a claim of negligence, information loss, or claims resulting from past services provided. This type of insurance should be considered mandatory for those in the service industry as well.
Property Coverage
Many solopreneurs incorrectly assume that their equipment, furniture, and products in the business are covered against fire, theft, and vandalism with the policies above. While some policies include both general and professional liability and contents coverage, many policies covering professionals do not have any mention of the contents, leaving the solopreneur unprotected in these situations. The business may or may not require property coverage like this, but the solopreneur needs to at least be aware of whether they have this coverage and, if so, the amount of that coverage.
Cyber Insurance
Cyber insurance is a hot trend in the insurance industry. Not only are cyber policies very popular today, but they are sure to become even more prevalent in the future as businesses move online. Every solopreneur should at least consider cyber insurance, which can protect the business in the event of identity theft, impersonation, information theft, ransomware, hacking, malware, and many other events. In the situations mentioned, recovering anything the business has lost is incredibly time consuming and should be left to specialists, so the solopreneur can run their business. High-quality cyber policies have coverage for their teams to work on the solopreneur’s behalf to recover anything that was lost in the aim of restoring the business to its pre-attack state. In addition to being extremely labor intensive, these efforts are impossibly expensive without such policies in place. Cyber insurance should be strongly considered by anyone with an online presence.
BUNDLE UP
There are policy bundles from most insurance companies that work in the commercial insurance space. These are often named specifically to the industry they are targeted toward. The solopreneur searching for such policies will find them by searching online for aesthetician insurance policy, or something similar. These policies are often very affordable. As with any policy from any company for any purpose, the solopreneur should be absolutely certain what that policy covers and what it does not cover. As with nearly every aspect of solopreneurship, there is no right policy in general, only the right policy for that specific business.
PLANNING FOR THE FUTURE
Tailoring the insurance coverage to the business is not a one-time event. Each year, the solopreneur should evaluate the coverage they have to ascertain whether the current plan fits the business’s present needs and also if those policies cover where the business intends to go in the future. As the business and the industry as a whole evolve, insurance types, like cyber insurance, will likely be created where they may have been unnecessary a few years prior. These new policy types, coverage changes, rate increases, and market demands necessitate the evaluation of one’s insurance coverages annually.
Many factors go into making solopreneurship an uncertain adventure. The wise solopreneur will balance the thrills (and uncertainty) of solopreneurship with the backing of policy packages that suit the individual security needs of their business. A great policy package provides peace of mind far greater than the cost of a policy premium.
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Nichelle Mosley’s passion for aesthetics was born out of a desire to help others, after failing to find help for her own acne as a young adult. Licensed in 2015, she has worked in clinics, plastic surgery practices, dermatologists’ offices, and with family practitioners. She then opened her own clinic in 2017, Queen City Beauty Group + Wellness. She focuses on integrative aesthetics and holistic solutions to clients’ skin concerns. As a member of the International Association for Applied Corneotherapy, Mosley seeks whole-person solutions while delivering results for clients. She is also the 2019 Skin Games Age Management Champion and 2018 Skin Games Acne Finalist.
