Disaster Planning for Small Home Offices

Along with the horror of watching Katrina's aftermath, I've been dwelling a lot on what I would do if I lost everything in a disaster. As a virtual business, I could carry on with my widely scattered clientele, even if the entire region around me was wiped out - assuming I planned ahead. I guess this whole event made me realize how sorely UNprepared I really was. So I've been looking around online for disaster planning resources and information. There is a lot of scattered information online but these are two of the best I found aimed at small home business disaster preparedness.

Open for Business is a government web site with good information for helping you anticipate and plan for disasters that might affect your business. It looks like it is all free, but requires more work to dig around and piece together what works for your business.

Home Office Recovery Plan is a different sort of product with the same goal - it is a downloadable workbook with information and step by step guides and forms for small home based businesses to plan for disasters. Considering how organized and well thought out it is, it is a very affordable investment of only $19.99.

As time consuming as it might be, preparing for the possibility of my home business surviving a disaster is going to have to be one of my new goals. I urge you, too, to think about this, wherever you live. My understanding is that after a disaster, only 40% of SOHOs survive to start up again. I'm sure you want to be one of them!