Self-Employed and Injured: How to Plan for Time Away From Work

The story below is a composite of real experiences; details changed.

When you own the business, your injury has a payroll.

Tony Russo has run a plumbing company for 19 years. Six trucks. Eleven employees. One shoulder that finally gave out.

The surgeon wants to repair his rotator cuff in March. Tony’s first question isn’t about pain or the sling. It’s “How long until I can work?”

The second question he only asks himself, at 2 a.m.: What happens to the business if I can’t?

That question deserves a plan, not a guess. Here’s how to build one before surgery, not after.

“Back to work” means two different things

Most people hear a return-to-work number and assume it means full duty. It usually doesn’t.

A study of 1,502 rotator cuff repairs looked at return to work six months after surgery. About three out of four people were working in some form. But only about four in ten were back to their pre-injury level. (Ting et al., American Journal of Sports Medicine, 2023)

Those were all one surgeon’s patients, and group numbers aren’t your deadline. But the gap is the point. Answering phones at week three and pulling a water heater at month six are different milestones.

Plan for both.

Sort every task into three buckets

Before you estimate time off, list your duties. All of them. Then sort.

Most owners find the “only you” list is shorter than they feared. The physical work is usually the easiest to hand off. The hard part is letting go of it.

Workplace-safety guidance points the same way. NIOSH lists force, repetition, awkward postures and task duration as the main loads on joints at work. It also says work can be redesigned around what a worker can do. (NIOSH)

Run the money honestly

You don’t need a spreadsheet model. You need two numbers.

1. Revenue you’ll delay. Jobs that can wait six weeks and still happen.
2. Revenue you’ll lose. Jobs that go to a competitor if you can’t cover them.

Use profit, not sales, when you do the math. A $10,000 job that nets $2,500 only costs you $2,500 if it walks.

Here’s a hypothetical example. Say Tony’s crews can cover 80% of installs without him. The other 20% are jobs customers want him on. Some will wait. Some won’t. That lost slice, at his margin, is the real price of recovery. It’s usually smaller than the 2 a.m. version.

This is a planning exercise, not financial or legal advice. Talk to your accountant about insurance and cash flow.

The last one matters. Owners re-injure themselves “just grabbing one thing” off the truck. For the emotional side of stepping back, read how to take time to recover when everyone depends on you.

Ask for limits you can use

“Light duty” means nothing on a job site. Ask for limits that match your actual work.

• How much can I lift, and from what height?
• Can I work overhead? Reach behind me? Drive?
• Can I climb a ladder or crawl into a tight space?
• When will each of those be reviewed?

Bring your job to the appointment. A photo of a crawlspace says more than “I do plumbing.”

If you’re still deciding whether to have surgery at all, start with surgery or more physical therapy.

For what the months after a cuff repair look like, including return-to-work data, read what’s normal four months after rotator cuff repair.

The lead on the board

Two weeks before surgery, Tony writes three names on the whiteboard in the shop. Under each, a list of jobs.

At the bottom, in red marker: Tony does not lift. Period.

His lead, Danny, reads it and laughs. “Took you nineteen years.”

The business ran without him for six weeks. Not perfectly. But it ran.

Tonight, list every task you did this week. Put each one in a bucket. You’ll know more about your recovery plan than any calendar can tell you.

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Tony is a composite, drawn from the kinds of stories business owners describe during recovery. The details and the financial example are illustrative.