If you didn’t land here from Brittany Krystle’s Beyond Influential Podcast Episode “Are You Prepared In a Crisis? The Importance of a Business Continuity Plan“, then I highly recommend you give it a listen HERE. If you did, then go ahead and dive right in. Before I get started, I want to recap our goals with this post. As you firm up the foundation of your business, the primary focus of this post is related to business continuity planning. However more specifically in building solid business processes that help with risk management and redundancies tied to critical business functions. Leaving you in a position to continue operating even in the event of a disaster. Also, at the end of this post I’m sharing a a Business Continuity Plan Outline. You can download and print out to use for your own business.
What Is A Business Continuity Plan?
To define this conceptually, as opposed to technically, business continuity planning is a strategy for business owners and entrepreneurs wherein they build robust and forward thinking business systems that allow for preparedness for both growth and emergency management.
Preparing and developing your plan includes reviewing your critical business functions and info related to; contact information of key players and vendors, data center or data backups processes, your information technology (IT) requirements and strategies, other business resource requirements, and even your ability to continue your customer service needs.
Again, when it comes to risk management and emergency management, you need a plan. This plan should include both business continuity and recovery strategies to minimize and hopefully eliminate any negative financial impacts from a natural disaster or other potential threats to your business, like COVID-19.
Continuity Plan vs Disaster Recovery Plan
This may raise the question of the differences between business continuity planning and a disaster recovery plan. The way that I would explain the difference between them is that a “Disaster Recovery Plan” is just one piece of a well executed Business Continuity Plan. A disaster recovery plan will include certain elements of business continuity management, but it is a more specific action plan. It will have specific details regarding emergency response protocols and how your management team and team leader or leaders will handle the rebuilding of your business (specifically as a result of a fire/flood, natural disaster, or other emergency) that leaves your business (as it stood pre-emergency) inoperable. To repeat, a Business Continuity Plan is a system and process of running the business, a Disaster Recovery Plan is the specific plan when disaster strikes.
What Is The Primary Goal of Business Continuity Planning?
The number one goal of business continuity planning is to be prepared and able to continue operating your business at all times. I like to say that the goal with business continuity planning is to turn “emergencies” into “inconveniences”. So that IF disaster strikes, you have recovery plans in place to set up alternate sites, a proper emergency response, and you’ve done the work to understand the business impact analysis of an emergency so you’re financially capable of surviving it.
What Does A Business Continuity Plan Typically Include?
Your small business/solopreneur business continuity plan should focus on four key areas. They are; financial, information technology (IT), insurance, and managing humanity. Another thing to note, related to helping your business continuity planning, is that I highly recommend running your business as though it was 10 times the size it currently is. If you’re one person, build it out for ten people. If you’re ten people, build it for 100. Experiencing the challenges of building a plan for scaled up version of your business will help you see the weak spots, learn about new resources, conquer less critical challenges, and be ready to grow on demand. If you wait too long, you may need to scale quickly. It can be brutal to deploy those resources without appropriate planning!
The Advantages of Having Continuity Plan For Your Business
Financial
You will want to assess and understand your budget/operating costs (how much it costs to run your business) and your revenues (more specifically what you’re average revenues are on any given month). This will give you the ability to plan for proper liquidity and savings.
Information Technology (IT)
Here you need to know what your hardware/software needs are, what support and backups you have, and how to ensure that you can quickly deploy resources.
Insurance
Depending on the specific nature of your business, you’ll want to know how to CYA. If you are an event planner, can you cover your event with insurance? If you accept deposits, will you be covered in the event of an act of God (force majeure)? Will you business property be replaced? Do you need specific Business Interruption Insurance?
Managing Humanity
Last, but not least, the human element. Emergencies and disasters may not only be affecting your business, they could be impacting the general public. It’s always important to include a component of communication, empathy, and support. This goes for your clients, your vendors, and especially your team! Don’t forget, we’re all human and we all do our best to survive challenging times. Don’t overlook this key piece! Again, a well developed and executed business continuity plan will allow you to manage humanity exceptionally!
Business Continuity Plan Steps
Financial
If you haven’t met with a Financial Accountant or Business Coach, you should do so. They can help you develop a budget. The first thing to do is to pool all your business expenses. Both the fixed costs (monthly recurring costs) and your variable costs (marketing/equipment purchases/etc.). Your goal is to figure out how much you spent in a given year to get an average of your monthly expenses. A more formal budget requires more digging and planning, but this should give you a good idea. Do the same with your revenues, but check factors that impact your revenue as well. For example, seasonality, marketing spend, sale/promotion. Again, we’re looking for reliable averages. Ultimately, you want to put yourself in a position that you save enough cash to cover 3 months of a shut down.
Information Technology (IT)
This is where you want to itemize your assets. Your laptops, your hard drives, your software, your backup hardware, etc. The goal is to be capable of having your laptop crash and be up and running in 10 minutes with your backup machine and data recovery backup. There are some resources listed in the attachment below!
Insurance
If you don’t have business insurance, you’ll want to talk to your business coach/attorney/consultant/accountant to see it they know any good business insurance brokers/agents. Get a meeting and talk to them about your business so they can help you CYA. Talk to your lawyer too about the contracts you’re entering in to!
Managing Humanity
This is a collateral benefit of preparedness! So many times people get overwhelmed in an emergency. Having a well prepared and well executed recovery strategy will give you the ability to stay calm and have empathy for the challenges your fellow humans are facing during a challenging time. So the goal here is to be ready, be prepared, and manage the human aspect of emergencies by being kind, considerate, and compassionate for your clients/vendors/team.
Printable Business Continuity Plan Outline PDF
I’m attaching a Printable Business Continuity Plan Outline to this post, within it you will see the above outlined steps. These steps will guide you on building out your business continuity plan. Moreover, there are numerous web sites and resources that can offer you a Business Continuity Plan Template. Most of these will likely be extremely robust and more than you need. Some of it will apply, some of it won’t. My advice is to just focus on your critical business processes that will allow you to continue to provide your services, your products, your high levels of customer service, and also your business reliability in a difficult time for all the individuals who engage with your business!
TBC – Printable Business Continuity Plan Outline PDF
I hope you gained some value from this post. Don’t forget to listen to the podcast linked above if you haven’t already!
I would love your feedback, so please always feel free to email me directly at nico@plastichuman.com or follow and message me on Instagram/Twitter.
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LinkedIn: Nico Becerra – Operator | Lawyer | Coach
