Hey,

Wow! I know you've been moving a mile a minute lately.

I hope you're doing well!

Today we're going to talk about....

Disaster Plans, do you have one?

I don't mean to be a downer but, any time you start or have a business, you are taking the risk that the business might fail. What you may not have considered when you started out was along with your business plan you need a disaster plan. A must now with this Covid19 experience. Having a plan in place will help you shield yourself from risk and help you make sure that you can keep your business going even on the brink of disaster.

You need to have a plan for what you're going to do if your business looks like it is going to go under. Are you going to borrow money, raise prices, cut back or let people go. Are you willing to sell your possessions or mortgage your house, ? What will you do? This is where your disaster plan comes into play.

Just like a business plan your disaster plan will layout a list of options that you can refer to if your business runs into trouble. In your disaster plan include a list of the things that you will or will not do before you close your doors on your business.

A good disaster plan will depend a lot on how much risk you're willing to take on yourself. If you are sensible and conservative then you will go as far as you can to avoid selling or borrowing against any of your own assets to keep your business open.

If you don't lean to the conservative side and are willing to take more of a risk, then you may consider getting a loan against your car or maybe even your house. Just be prepared to lose it all if you can't recover from whatever business disaster you may encounter.

A good disaster plan also includes a recovery plan. Once you have decided what you will do to handle a business disaster you need to decide how you will recover. When writing your disaster plan consider adding these things to your list. What will you do if you keep your doors open? How will you rebuild? What will you do if you decide to go out of business? Start another business? Go back into the job market? What will you do next?

How you handle a business disaster is completely up to you. That is where having a good disaster plan comes into play. You have to decide are you going to cut your losses and walk away or dig in your heals and risk it all to make your business a huge success.

I hope that is helpful to you, Talk to you soon!

Take care until...
James E.