Consider:

• An illness or medical emergency can put you in bed for days or even months
• A fire can damage or destroy your work space
• A storm or earthquake can knock out power or communication systems for prolonged periods

The federal Emergency Management Agency recommends that you think about every possible thing that can go wrong in your business. Plan for every contingency, regardless of how remote it seems. Then consider how you would react. That exercise becomes the basis for your personal emergency preparedness plan—a plan that could save your business.

Sick Days
When Tracey Campbell launched 1-888-Inn-Seek, a telephone and Internet search service for bed-and-breakfast inns throughout the United States, she thought about ways to serve customers when she was away on business or vacation.

“I had a friend who is super-duper into customer service who checked my e-mails, made sure the computers were running,” Campbell says of her Danbury, Conn. business. “When the company exhibited at trade shows I hired another friend, who is computer savvy, to baby-sit the booth and make sure the demonstration ran properly when I couldn’t be there.”

Campbell set up her telephone message and Web site e-mail auto-responder to
announce when she was away and to provide alternative telephone numbers to
call. She also set up the Web site so innkeepers could edit and update their own entries.

Such backup preparations helped when Campbell contracted Lyme disease.
“I wasn’t so sick that I couldn’t work at all, but I couldn’t put in the 12-hour days I was used to working,” she says. “I had just revamped the Web site, so a lot of it was automated.

“My husband was able to help too,” she adds. “We have complementary skills, so we’re forever cross-training on each others’ work. We have a ‘how-to’ file in which we write down step-by-step even the simplest detail of how something is done.”

Membership in a trade association helped Christine Edick sustain her secretarial and resume service, Your Type, in Orange, Calif., when she had emergency surgery.

“I’m active in the Association of Business Support Services, where I have found two or three other similar businesses with which to share responsibilities,” Edick says. “If you have an emergency and don’t have subcontractors, similar businesses are helpful.”

She asked a resume specialist to handle that part of her business, a transcription service to do those assignments and so on. Edick would do the same for these colleagues if they had an emergency. She hired a temporary worker to answer the telephone and direct clients to each specialist.

Edick says her colleagues are honorable, so she wasn’t worried about them stealing her clients.“Besides, I figure if I do a good job and please my clients, they will keep coming back to me, and 99 percent do,” she says.

Edick had also created profiles on each of her hundreds of clients, including phone number, e-mail address, type of software they used and other pertinent information. “I could tell my substitute to see my files and contact each client,” she says.

Unexpected Obligations
Prolonged interruptions require more help. One Texas-based Web site developer, who asked that his name not be used, had a family emergency that took him completely away from his business for half a year.

Fortunately, he had already trained not one, but two, backup computer experts for just such a contingency. The plan, however, wasn’t perfect. One backup was in a traffic accident and unable to work. The other wasn’t as well trained, so he spent a great deal of time figuring out how to correct glitches or add information to existing sites. Some clients became impatient and took their business elsewhere.

Business owners should always keep their accountants and attorneys up to date on the business so they can assist if an emergency strikes.

When Southern California dermatologist Lorrie Klein became pregnant, she arranged for a short maternity leave. But contractions started less than five months into the pregnancy, and her obstetrician ordered her to bed immediately for the remaining four months. If Klein stayed in bed, she might lose her practice. If she didn’t, she would probably lose her baby.

“From my hospital bed I frantically called every dermatologist in the area to cover my office hours,” Klein says. “I was not worried about the business, but the patients.”

Her colleagues filled in initially, then a newly licensed dermatologist arranged to keep office hours in Klein’s location two days a week. Klein was able to review patient charts and pay bills from her bed.

“People would tell me to enjoy the rest, but I get so much enjoyment out of my job that it was hard for me not to work.”

Both her baby and the practice survived and are doing well.

Equipment Failures
Sometimes the emergency isn’t your health, but your equipment or building. Irvine, Calif., mortgage broker Mark Moses faced a crisis when the electrical transformer in his office blew up and caused a small fire.

Moses knew the office phone number of his landlord, but not his pager number, home number or 24-hour emergency number. He didn’t have the emergency numbers for the telephone or electric companies.

The computer server was destroyed so Moses couldn’t get to records. The electricity was out, so the phone system didn’t work. Now Moses keeps a printout of important phone numbers and an emergency response checklist in his car and in a safe deposit box.

Off-site storage is vital. Many self-employed business people remember to back up their computer files regularly, but then they store them in the drawer next to the computer. Not a good emergency plan.

Emergency experts also recommend keeping on hand a cellular telephone or an old-fashioned telephone that doesn’t need electricity. A generator and a power source will at least allow you to download or print out vital information that’s stored on your computer.

Power Outage
Generators and battery packs are good investments for another reason, experts say. Most regions of the country have the potential for natural disasters that could knock out electrical power or telephone service for hours or days. You should also keep a battery-powered radio and clock on hand.

The Northridge earthquake in California knocked out electrical power to 670,000 residences and businesses for as much as a week. Even offices with no structural damage couldn’t use lights or computers. Restaurants couldn’t bake bread or heat water. Telemarketers couldn’t use the phones. Even the cellular phone transponder network was knocked out.

Hundreds of self-employed people were able to set up at other locations unaffected by the earthquake and have the telephone companies forward their calls. The forwarding could be done from the phone companies’ main offices.
In anticipation of such an emergency, Pacific Bell recommends that you develop a “telephone tree” with employees, subcontractors or major clients. You have five people to call, they have five other people to call and so on.

Storms, not earthquakes are the major emergency concern for Campbell, the owner of 1-888-Inn-Seek in Connecticut. She regularly updates her computer files and keeps the backups, along with copies of important records, in a safe deposit box in a bank in another town.

“The banker tells us that we’re the only business people he knows who do this,” she says. “I can’t imagine NOT doing it.”

Emergency Preparation Checklist

• Regularly back up computer files and keep a copy, along with copies of other important documents, at another location.
  
• Develop a list of tasks to do in an emergency.
  
• Write a how-to list of important and regular duties you perform to keep your business going. Break it out by daily routine, weekly or monthly tasks, and semi-regular updates.
  
• Keep records up-to-date and legible.
  
• Have a database of contact information for clients, key employees or subcontractors, vendors and colleagues.
  
• If you keep telephone numbers only on computer, print out a hard copy.
  
• Develop a network of colleagues who will help in an emergency. Be willing to reciprocate.
  
• Find out if any temporary employment agencies in your area specialize in your industry.
  
• Know the locations of utility shutoff valves and panels for your commercial or home office.
  
• Make contingency agreements to use an alternate office site in an emergency.
  
• Keep emergency provisions, including battery-powered radio and clock, at your office and in your car.
  
• Have a battery backup to electronic phone systems. Keep a non-electric phone at the business.
  
• Have a generator or battery pack to supply at least enough power to download vital computer information.
  
• Test your emergency response plan occasionally. Modify it, if necessary.
  
• Make sure you can get out of your office or shop lease if the building cannot be occupied.

About the writer: Jan Norman is author of What No One Ever Tells You About Starting Your Own Business. Contact her at jannormanbiz@earthlink.net.