How would a crisis impact your home business success?

A couple of weeks ago my laptop died. I am not talking, throwing a bit of a wobbler and then being OK. I am talking totally dead and every scrap of data lost.

My world was on that laptop – all my business stuff, all family photographs since my son was born (6 years worth), important personal documents – to name just a few things!

If you have experienced this yourself you will know what I mean when I say I felt physically sick. However, there is a happy ending to this story as I have an online back up system which saves everything on my laptop. It happens throughout the day in the background without me ever having to remember to save stuff.

It took a few days to sort out the laptop and restore all the data. I had lost nothing. The experience turned out to be just an inconvenience and a temporary setback. Had I not had a water tight back up procedure, well, the consequences for my business and personal life, doesn’t bear thinking about!

The point here is this:

Having contingency plans, procedures to protect your business and disaster recovery plans are a necessity for protecting business success.

Most large organisations have disaster recovery plans. Not because they are being doomy and gloomy and think the worst will happen. They have them because they know that if the worst does happen, having a disaster recovery plan could be the difference between their business surviving or dying. Every home based business should have disaster recovery plans too.

Bear in mind that disaster recovery plans aren’t just about technology. They are about every area of your business. For example, financial contingencies, equipment failures, contacting customers etc.

So, how would you business cope in a crisis or disaster?

Unless you can answer that question in specific detail your business is at risk. I invite you to go and take a good look at what systems and procedures you have in place to protect your business success should a crisis arise in ALL areas of your business.

Think this isn’t important? In that case, you are literally gambling with your business as collateral.

Taking calculated risks in business – YES! Gambling with your business – NO!


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  • http://twitter.com/coblyn Christine Livingston

    This is a timely reminder for me, Ali.

    All my business system stuff is Apple and I have a Time Machine that used to do automatic back ups but died not long after we moved to the country, so almost six months ago now. I have never figured how to fix it and even speaking to Apple hasn't helped. Since then I've been doing some patchwork back up stuff, putting bits and pieces in the cloud. But ….. And all not helped because I'm not brilliant with technology and resent spending the time.

    Luckily today I've got an IT and Admin Director hat on, to use your way of thinking about things, and am putting this on my list to address ASAP.

    Thanks again.

  • http://alidavies.com/ Ali Davies

    Christine, great to hear you are thinking in terms of director hats – one of my hobby horse subjects as you know! Glad to hear you have moved this up your priority list. I had ignored sorting it for months and only actually got a full back up procedure in place just a few weeks before the big crash. It's a total no brainer but so many people still don't have it nailed.

  • http://twitter.com/coblyn Christine Livingston

    This is a timely reminder for me, Ali.

    All my business system stuff is Apple and I have a Time Machine that used to do automatic back ups but died not long after we moved to the country, so almost six months ago now. I have never figured how to fix it and even speaking to Apple hasn't helped. Since then I've been doing some patchwork back up stuff, putting bits and pieces in the cloud. But ….. And all not helped because I'm not brilliant with technology and resent spending the time.

    Luckily today I've got an IT and Admin Director hat on, to use your way of thinking about things, and am putting this on my list to address ASAP.

    Thanks again.

  • http://alidavies.com/ Ali Davies

    Christine, great to hear you are thinking in terms of director hats – one of my hobby horse subjects as you know! Glad to hear you have moved this up your priority list. I had ignored sorting it for months and only actually got a full back up procedure in place just a few weeks before the big crash. It's a total no brainer but so many people still don't have it nailed.