Listen as Deb Miller, coach, bestselling Amazon author, and program facilitator, shares, in this recorded presentation, Business Continuity Planning and how to protect your business.
Here is the transcript from the presentation:
Ryan: All right, so, everybody, now as we continue National Safety Month, I would like to introduce our speaker today, who, we finally connected in person for the first time in the month of May during our Race to Support Small Business event, where we partnered with six other central Indiana networking groups and got everyone together at a coworking space to connect and get to know each other, and so I would like to introduce to everyone, published author, Deb Miller, who is going to talk to us today about Business Continuity Planning, so everyone, let’s give Deb a hand.
Deb: Can I share my screen?
Ryan: Uh, yes, give me one second to enable that function and there you go.
Deb: OK, let’s see if I can, oh no, don’t want to do that, sorry, I hit the wrong thing.
Deb: OK, so let’s see here. I want to share this one, alright.
Ryan: It closed your share.
Deb: It’s closed it for some reason. Try again, sorry everybody.
Deb: I’m usually better at this than, this one.
Deb: All right, let’s talk about business continuity. For this presentation, is going to be designed specifically for entrepreneurs and small business owners. Because if you’re a bigger company, business continuity is a huge thing, but small businesses need to do this as well. So, who am I?
Deb: I’m a coach, a bestselling Amazon author, I facilitate programs.
Deb: My passion is emergency preparedness and I’m a member of a number of groups and I do search and rescue. First aid instruction, and I’m a ham radio operator, so all of those things are fun stuff to do that kind of feed into my background.
Deb: Business continuity is a company’s ability to maintain essential functions during and after a crisis occurs. So, I, the question, I get asked a lot is, is this the same as business succession? And the answer to that is no.
Deb: Business succession planning is when you, you create a series of logistical and financial decisions about who’s going to take over your business upon retirement, death, or disability. It’s not the same as what do you do in a disaster situation.
Deb: So, here’s, let’s look at some of the threats that we’re still facing. COVID. We still have severe disruptions that may continue in this year. We’ve got a mental health crisis, that because of people’s inability to work long-term, we are having some incapacity in that respect, depression.
Deb: Unresolved depression can result in a 35% reduction in employee, employee productivity. I’m sure you know, myself if I’m depressed, I don’t work very well either, so that’s a that’s a, a threat.
Deb: We have supply chain disruptions and delays that we’ve all seen.
Deb: Ransomware, cyber-attacks are at a high risk right now too, and we’ve, we’re having more and more natural disasters and severe weather problems, and these are events that still continue to provide threats today.
Deb: So, and the threats to solopreneurs or entrepreneurs is everything about your business rests with you.
Deb: You have all of the information in your head and a lot of times we don’t have that information written down so that we can share it with others.
Deb: Some questions to ask is, would someone know how to keep your business running if you became ill or injured? What if you were unexpectedly unable to access your Home Office for several days or weeks? Would you be able to continue in your business?
Deb: Over the holidays, my son-in-law received a text on his phone from his ring security system. With fire depart people out in his driveway and as it turned out, a neighbor down the street, lost their home completely to fire, and at first he thought it was his, his home. But it turned out to be somebody elses, but he would, he was unable to get into his, his street for day a couple of days.
Deb: And it was a real problem, and it’s something like that that can really impact a small business owner.
Deb: And do you have your critical business processes documented? Do you know how, have you written down how to send a package to you, you know, and the information that you need?
Deb: How about, who’s your bookkeeper? All of those kinds of questions and how do you, how do you use the software that you have.
Deb: And another thing is, do you have a physical copy of your client’s information? If you are away from your computer, the internet’s down, powers out, how can you get ahold of your content, of your clients, and your customers? It’s important to have that information available.
Deb: Here’s something to think about- 40 to 60% of small businesses never reopen their doors following a disaster.
Deb: And an additional 25% of people will reopen, but their businesses will fail within a year and 90% of small business companies fail within a year unless they can resume operations following a disaster in five days. That’s, that, doesn’t, that seems a lot, but these are statistics that come from a number of sources.
Deb: And those who are involved in a disaster might not be available to come back to the office to help you rebuild. Or, you know, electrical power or Internet connections may be unavailable, for those who work at home, so there’s a lot of issues for small businesses to keep going.
Deb: So, the question is, are you prepared?
Deb: And it’s not just you, you know what. If your supplier in California is unavailable, do you have alternate resources for your critical business products and services?
Deb: What if there’s a Blizzard between you and your supplier and transportation is halted? How will that delay affect your business?
Deb: A hurricane, hurricane strikes in in Florida and the ports are not open. Do you have products that are inbound on ships?
Deb: Any place in the world these, these questions could be a problem.
Deb: So, what happens if a key client of yours suffers a medical emergency?
Deb: Is that the end of your business with that person? You know, as small business owners, we oftentimes have one or two key clients that we work with. And if that client, has a potential issue, your business could suffer.
Deb: And then is your bank the subject of a ransomware attack? Do you have finance, your finances only in one single bank? You might want to think about how that would impact your business.
Deb: So, what information should you document and part of business continuity is understanding and knowing where all of the information is and what you need to gather.
Deb: So, basic information about your company, you know, what’s your, uhm, business tax number?
Deb: What kind of structure do you have? Are you a sole-proprietor or you a corporation or are you an LLC?
Deb: Uhm, you should have copies of all of your employee’s contact information. If you have employees, how are you going to get ahold of them? And you need to have it not just in an electronic form, because if the internet’s down or the, you’re, you’re without power, you may not be able to get ahold of them, and cell towers go down just as easily.
Deb: Communication, you need to have all of the information about your own business like what are your phone numbers? What are your emails? Where, where is your website located? Who’s hosting it?
Deb: What are your passwords and addresses where you know? Where is your support e-mail? How do you get access to it?
Deb: Those are just the basics about your business.
Deb: And then there’s things like client information. You need to really know who your clients are and be able to get ahold of them, but also your vendors.
Deb: Who are your suppliers? Who, who’s giving you information and sharing that information with you?
Deb: So, and that’s just the basics. And then there’s the financial information. You know if, if something would happen to you, would somebody know how to get to your bank’s? Your account number is, your routing number, there’s online login information.
Deb: How about brokerage accounts or your retirement accounts, credit cards? Your credit cards could be at risk if you don’t have the information written down.
Deb: You know who, who do you mail your checks to if you have to physically mail a check for some reason.
Deb: Do you accept payments online? If you do, who’s your merchant account? What is all of that account access information that you would need? What bank does that information go to?
Deb: If you do online bill pay, most of us do these days, we don’t get physical statements anymore. We get online notifications. Where are those counts going?
Deb: How do you, what are the mailing addresses? When are they scheduled payments?
Deb: Or do you have to manually enter payment every month.
Deb: This is information that you should have documented about your business.
Deb: And then all of that online backup information. Are, are your computers backed up only online in the cloud?
Deb: That’s probably not a good thing. You probably need to have an offsite physical backup of your, of your computer and your information. Because what happens if you can’t get to your Internet and you can’t get to your computer and you need information you need to be able to, to get to your backups on a regular basis.
Deb: And then there’s all the hosting and your website information. Where’s your domains listed? How do you get to that information? Where is your website?
Deb: Uhm, that doesn’t, those are just the basic, standard stuff that you need to know.
Deb: And then, of course, there’s your social media accounts. I don’t know how many accounts you guys have. I’m, I’m trying to streamline mine down to a couple but you know, you’ve got Facebook and LinkedIn and Instagram and Pinterest and Tik Tok and YouTube and you know, you can start thinking of all of those things.
Deb: But who knows where that information is and who’s authorized to access it?
Deb: And how do you, what’s your plan for marketing?
Deb: And then, an autoresponder is your client management system, that has all of your clients in it.
Deb: If you’re sending out automated emails to those folks. How do you get to it? Who, who’s accessing it? All of that kind of stuff is important for you to keep track of in order to continue your business beyond what happens on a day-to-day basis. So, are you overwhelmed yet?
Deb: I know this is, this is a problem for people and so, what I’ve put together is a business organization or journal and basically it’s, there are printable forms that you can use to fill out, for all of the information that you might need to have.
Deb: I’m going to give you a couple of pages as a sample so that you can take a look and see what kinds of information is included in here. These will be available starting Wednesday. I haven’t quite finished getting it all together. The website’s not ready yet but this is really how, how you can put all the information together in a workbook or a binder.
Deb: So, that you can keep track of all of this information and take it with you if you have to, it’s a physical format rather than an electronic format so that you can get to it and then, if you guys are have, are small business owners with three or more employees, you really probably need to think about a more comprehensive business continuity plan and most business continuity plans include at least three different plans.
Deb: You’ve got the emergency preparedness plan. That’s what you do ahead of time.
Deb: If an emergency happens, that’s when you look at your emergency action plan to see what you need, what steps you need to take right now, now
Deb: And then, there’s a communication plan. What are you going to talk to, to the media about, and how do you do it?
Deb: And so, you would have a, a process in place before an event happens so that you have information available, so that’s kind of what I was talking about in terms of, all kinds of, uh, my business continuity plans.
Deb: So, do you guys have questions?
Deb: And I want to make sure that I share the, the documents with you. It has a list of all of the, the those slides that showed what kinds of things you should you should gather and then talks about the, I give you samples of, of a couple of the forms so you can see how easy it is to, to put one of those together.
Deb: So, does that help? Anybody have questions?
Speaker: Yeah, I’ve got one. How do you, what’s the process that you use especially for CRM’s or, or, you know, sections of the website and-
Deb: Well that depends on the particular person and what, what system you’re using. Everybody uses something different, and having your system backed up is really important. I’m trying to find my form, I, I know I had it on here somewhere.
Deb: Did you mean like? Who you know? What CRM system do you use?
Speaker: It starts, yeah, like that could work as well. What system do you use?
Deb: Yeah, this is the sample file that I, I provided to you guys and, it, it’s in the chat so that you can download it.
Deb: From the chat box, I can show you, you know, basically what I’ve done is taken these three documents, this information on the financial information, online presence and all these, these screens are available in the PDF for you, so you have it, kind of, look through it and figure out what you need to gather.
Deb: And, and then I’ve given you a couple of these forms for you to look at to see how, how to put the information together. When I created my first one, I just basically sat down with a Word document and typed out all of this information and it was a lot of a lot of stuff to look at.
Deb: Kelly, you had a question. Or Shelly, I’m sorry.
Shelly: I had a question, but Max had his hand out first.
Deb: Oh, go ahead Max, OK? Max, go ahead.
Max: Thank you, Shelly, and Deborah, I decided to ask, do you offer considering the amazing service that it will be powerful for a lot of entrepreneurs and I know a lot of people. Do you offer an affiliate program? [unintelligible]
Deb: Uh, yes, I do have different programs. I do, do coaching with individuals and with businesses to help them get their, their documents all, all put together and created and, and I have, like I said, these forms will be available for sale coming up and starting on Wednesday.
Deb: I haven’t quite got them all together yet. This has been a process for about three weeks of pulling this information together from documents I created 10 years ago, so I’ve been doing this a long time.
Max: Yeah, I will, I will, I ask because I will be glad to offer the affiliate link on which we are promoting lot of good companies and we have a lot of contacts so I think it will be amazing, an amazing service for them. Please keep me updated on it, about it. Thank you.
Deb: I will do that Max, thank you. I’m going to download all, everybody’s e-mail information from the [chat].
Deb: So, Shelly, what was your question?
Shelly: That’s lovely, Deborah.
Shelly: Max is saying he wants to sell on your behalf and get it and keep promoting it. For you great.
Shelly: My question is super simple, just related to the process for a single entrepreneur, solo entrepreneur and I have most of the information to hand. How long would it take for me to fill out these forms and sort of feel like I’m in a good spot, that I’m ready to kind of, if something happened, you know?
Deb: The way I, the way I do it, you can probably get, maybe, the most critical information gathered in in a day or two.
Deb: Basically, what I, what I suggest people to do is to start with a, you know, an hour a day and fill out information.
Deb: So, every time you add a new client, you fill out the client information form, any time that you have any vendor, you would put them, you know, the vendor information form together.
Deb: I, yeah, it, it varies on how much you, your business is, how big it is, but I would start with, you know, the basic information about your business that people would need to know.
Deb: So, the banking information your about your company. There’s pages for your, you know, who has your, you know, how many emails do you have and who is responsible for each e-mail, for example.
Deb: Yeah, if you have employees, each employee will have their own e-mail and they’ll have, you’ll have a helpdesk e-mail and you’ll have a Webmaster e-mail and by the time you start going through all of these, you know, it’s, I would take it a day at a time and just do a little bit at a time without being overwhelmed.
Shelly: That, that makes sense, and my business is pretty streamlined right now. So, it’s just, I think putting it in a document that somebody else can access if they need to. You know, at least communicate to the key parties what’s going on.
Deb: Right, you should have, yeah, that, that list of key contacts and people that are important for them to know that if you’re, if you’re out of, out of pocket.
Deb: For example, my accountant disappeared on me at one point. And it turned out he was ill, but nobody bothered to let us know that he was not going to be able to do my taxes for a year. And I ended up at the last minute trying to find somebody else to do my taxes. Well, nobody had told me that he wasn’t available or you know, and it was two weeks before taxes were due and I’m just now finding this out.
Deb: It was, it was scary. As a business owner, it really is important to have all of this information and you know, who are your, who your vendors?
Deb: What about all those memberships that you guys have? I’ve got probably 10, that I can think of right off the bat, or software that I purchase, and then I pay on a regular basis. You know, I’ve got Adobe, and I’ve got Dropbox and I’ve got, you know, different types of software that we all have to pay on every every month, so keeping track of all of that information is, is important as well so.
Shelly: Thank you, I see Ruth has her hand up. I don’t know if she was next but.
Deb: I didn’t see that. Who, who else has? Ruth, I’m sorry.
Ruth: I’m sorry, I’m just.
Shelly: I’m done. Yeah, you go.
Ruth: I’m talking while I was muted, I’m sorry.
Ruth: I wasn’t sure if I was next or not, but uhm, I was wondering, I know about keep, having all of this information, but writing it down, where would you store it? I mean, ’cause if you’re not able to access your, For your office, like where are you putting this information?
Deb: I actually have a binder that I use. It’s a zippered binder that I put all the information in, and sometimes if I don’t have time to, to write it all down, I’ll just make a copy of something and stick it in the binder for, for until I can get ready to go organize it all.
Deb: And then I keep that zippered binder in a place where I can grab it quickly, and if, you don’t want to have it just out for people, for security information. For security purposes, we recommend either putting the title like recipes, on the title instead of your business continuity information, or putting it behind a piece of furniture or in a closet somewhere where you could, where you know where it’s at or somebody that you can tell somebody else where the information is. And it’s not just sitting out someplace.
Deb: Sometimes, we also scan these documents, and once they’re completed and I scan them into a PDF file and put them in a safe deposit box so that somebody who needs to have that information can get to it. It’s not always the most convenient because they have to have access to your safe deposit box, but if you’re worried about that kind of security, you can do that. I also keep a copy of my backup in my safe deposit box so I have a physical hard drive that I copy everything and update on a regular basis so that it’s offsite, and in a, in a secure location.
Ruth: OK, that’s helpful and I didn’t see, I was looking in the chat and I didn’t see the documents that you shared, so I don’t know if everyone else didn’t see it, but I don’t see anything on my end.
Deb: So, did I not do it?
Ryan: Hey Deb.
Ruth: So maybe, maybe, Ryan, go ahead, Ryan, sorry.
Ryan: I’m sorry, Ruth, Deb if you would, please go ahead and upload it again. I do see it here in the chat, but go ahead and upload it again so everyone can see it right away. OK yeah, I didn’t do it until just a few minutes ago, hoping that we get everybody.
Ryan: If, if not, I’ll upload it to our site and get a link for people, so if that doesn’t work, go ahead and continue uploading it, but I’ll do this in the meantime.
Deb: Yeah, it said it was sent.
Ruth: OK, thank you, Ryan.
Deb: Should be there now, so, and if you want to see what the files look like, here is, here’s the document that you’re going to get.
Deb: Sorry, scrolling, so this is the definition of what business continuity is. The three pages of information that you should, should gather up, talks about this.
Deb: These two things and how to get ahold, here’s how you get ahold of me, my e-mail, my website, all of that information that that’s there and then, this is a copy of the information for it, so this would be your company information. Those of you who are doing business as something else, you might want to, you know, keep track of that information, your sales tax or your EIN numbers.
Deb: And then there’s client information that you would collect, and these pages of client information, if they’re 2 pages long, are designed to be printed front to back so that you can save paper and, they’re set-up so that they will print correctly and, and look good on a, in a 3-ring binder.
Deb: Does that help everybody?
Ryan: Deb, another question for you. How often should we reevaluate these documents? ’cause this information is always evolving?
Deb: I know. Basically what I do is, if there’s something that’s changing and I don’t have time to do it at that moment, I will make a copy and just slip it into my binder so that it’s there for me to pick up, date and then I would suggest every six months to 12 months, at least every year, like in the week between Christmas and New Years, when nothing is going on, that you take some time and you spend a little bit of time going through your binder and updating the information that’s there.
Deb: So, if I buy new, new software, I might just make a copy of the e-mail that I received with the receipt and tuck that into my binder until I get a chance to go back and fill it out.
Deb: That help?
Ryan: Yes, uh, an additional follow-up question then. So, since you know most of us are one-person business owners, is this the kind of thing that we should also include a copy with our will, or any of those documents?
Deb: I would, I would definitely do that. I would make sure that if you have an attorney, you could leave, you could scan these documents into a, a PDF file or thumb drive kind of thing and, and get it to your attorney or leave it with somebody that you trust. Most definitely.
Deb: You know, scanning documents after you fill them in is pretty simple, but it’s just the matter of how can you gather all of that information. And I know people think well, I’m just going to I want a PD-, writable PDF, and that’s well and good.
Deb: But most of the time you want, you’re not going to open up the files and do that if you have it printed out and you’re ready to write it in, you can just do it quickly and you want to have a physical copy of it anyway, so do your physical copies 1st and then create your PDF or your scan file afterwards.
Deb: Bill, are you talking? I didn’t hear you, No? OK. Other questions?
Ryan: Alright, well if no one else has any questions for, oh, I’m sorry, Kristen.
Ryan: Is that a hand up or a clap?
Kristen: Yeah, it’s a clap, sorry.
Deb: Thank you.
Ryan: Welcome everyone, let’s give Deb a hand for her presentation.
Deb: Thank you.
