Business After a Hurricane

Today’s paper has a story contrasting the experience of a couple of New Orleans-based small businesses in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. One self-employed individual who grossed $500,000 per year working out of his apartment and SUV to ship local Louisiana crafts and music CDs to worldwide customers who ordered through his website, lost everything. By the time he was able to return to his home, he found that his laptop, his records, his vehicle – everything he owned – was submerged in water and ruined. His business is wiped out and he must start from scratch. His sad story stood in contrast with that of a mid-sized law firm that had planned ahead. Its staff members had laptop computers with them with their essential files, so they were able to get back in operation from satellite locations almost immediately. According to experts, the crucial factor of continuing your business is to have a contingency plan in place before disaster strikes. While some still see computerized documents and images as volatile, they create enormous flexibility at very low cost. This past weekend, I saw a 250GB external hard drive advertised at Best Buy for $134. Ten years ago, having that amount of storage in any form was completely unaffordable. Having it in a device the smaller than a hard cover book was unimaginable. With a copy of all your data on such a drive and a laptop computer with a wireless Internet connection, you could be back in business almost anywhere at any time. When it comes to a contingency plan, by the time you need it, it’s too late to get one, so don’t wait for bad things to happen to start thinking about what to do when disaster strikes.