We’ve been informed
that our electricity
will be shut down
from 8 am to 8 pm
a couple days this month.
I run my Romance Writing Business
from home.
I can’t go multiple days
with no electricity
during prime promotion/selling hours.
So I’m going to
an unimpacted library
to run my business.
Things happen.
Power goes out.
Flooding occurs.
Wildcat strikes
surprise us.
We all need
to be able to
run our businesses
from alternate locations.
Have one in mind
and ready.
I can’t believe
this has to be said
but…
here we are.
You need to have hard copies
i.e. print copies,
preferably laminated,
of your emergency procedures.
The odds are huge
that,
during an emergency,
you won’t have power
and
you definitely won’t have
internet access.
Those emergency procedures
saved to the cloud
or your hard drive
won’t help you then.
You need to have access
to emergency procedures
when the power is out.
Print emergency procedures
and preferably laminate
or waterproof them in some way.
Kill a tree
to save your people.
This could save lives.
Recently,
I scanned
a bunch of photos
borrowed from older generations.
A family had lost
all their photos
so I gave them virtual copies
of the photos we had
featuring
their family members
and their ancestors.
That won’t replace
all the photos
that were taken from them.
Many of those photos
had no copies.
But it gave them
SOME photos,
some visual tracking of history.
I gave everyone access
to the drive
where the scans are stored.
EVERYONE can have a copy.
That means the images should
never be completely lost.
What does this have
to do with building a business?
There are some documents
that you likely only have
in hard copy.
If these documents
are important to your business,
scan them
in case a fire, flood, theft
or something else happens
and they are lost to you.
One of my buddies
told me
she couldn’t afford insurance
on a certain high-priced item
so she installed highly visible
security cameras
around it.
Which is a type of insurance.
It is protection
from the possibility of loss.
Having an extra story
I can release
if I absolutely needed
that income
is insurance.
Having an extra $100
hidden in my home
is insurance.
Having an arrangement
with another business owner
that gives me
an emergency place
to run my business
is insurance.
We should have
different layers of insurance,
including the traditional kind.
And then we should hope
we never have to use
any of those layers.