On Monday, June 20, 2011, literally just a few short weeks ago, my life changed in a single instant. My beautiful award-winning house was struck by lightening, caught fire, and was destroyed. The firemen from the local fire department rushed me and my family out of the house. I only had a minute to grab what was most important to us.
Can you even envision what I was thinking? I literally had to decide what to grab out of your house in a matter of minutes?
So here I am, standing out on the street in my nightgown, watching 3 fire trucks pouring water on my dream home trying to get the fire out. It was raining very hard, and it still took them almost 7 hours to put the fire out. Well, what the fire didn’t ruin, the water did.
My spouse and I then went through the house trying to find any important keepsakes, i.e, family pictures or papers that we didn’t have time to grab.
Over the next couple of weeks we watched contractors from the insurance company inventory every item in our house that removed – down to every toothbrush and every lipstick tube.
The contractors were even going through the ashes and drywall mush trying to find things that we informed them were in every room. This is how the insurance company calculates how much they owe from your policy – by looking at every item and creating an inventory list. This is a tedious process.
There are numerous lessons I have garnered from this ordeal that you can apply to your business, and to your life as well.
Lesson 1: Keep Extra Copies of Important Papers, Photos, and Documents
It is so important that you have backup copies of all the important papers, photos, and documents that are in your office and home. One way you can do this is to scan all those documents into a digital format, and then store them through an Internet file storage service where you can access them from any computer.
Another way you can do this is to make extra copies of your most important documents and have the extra copies stored at separate locations, such as your office, family member’s home, etc.
The key point is that if any one of your locations suffers from a total disaster, you want to make sure copies of those important documents are in another location too, so you could retrieve them easily.
Lesson 2: Have Proper Insurance
Review your insurance policies for your business and your home and make sure that you truly have enough coverage to make you whole. You may not realize how much every single item costs until you have to go replace it. When in doubt, it is better to have too much insurance versus not enough insurance.
You should also consider adding special riders to your policy, such as an “Additional Amount of Insurance” rider, or an “Inflation” rider. Those two riders are on my home policy and increase the amount of insurance that can reimburse me for my loss – beyond the stated coverage amounts.
You can ask your insurance agent to tell you about any special riders that are available. They may not tell you about them unless you ask – and even if you do ask, they still may forget to mention them to you. Thus, you should also consider having a third party insurance expert review your policy and advise you on whether you are adequately insured.
For your business, make sure you add your office and your home addresses as covered addresses. That will help cover you in the event that you take items from your office to your home, and vice versa.
Furthermore, you should consider adding a “loss of income” rider to your policy so that you can also be compensated for lost income while you are dealing with a disaster.
Lesson 3: Properly Document What You Own
Because you generally cannot collect on your insurance policy until you prove what you lost, it is critically important that you have documentation to prove what you own.
An easy way to document what you have in your office and/or home is to use a video camera and walk around and talk about everything you see. Open every single drawer and every single closet and show what is inside it. Make special comments about anything that was really expensive.
Then, take photographs of the items too. Photograph every single room, and every single drawer. Then, upload those documents and videos to the Internet, or store them in DVD’s at a location that is separate from the location that they are related to.
Thankfully for me, I have copies of a lot of my records on my laptop computer that I was able to save. But if my laptop had been destroyed in my home like the majority of my contents, I would have been in big trouble trying to prove some of the items that were destroyed.
Lesson 4: Evaluate Your Biggest Risks, And Address Them
The best time to identify your biggest risks is BEFORE you have a problem. In the case of business, there are 10 common mistakes that seem to account for 85% of the problems/lawsuits that businesses face.
You can learn more about these business mistakes and how to avoid them here.
If you take the time now to fix those issues before they come back to bite you, you will be far better off in the future, and will be better prepared to deal with a crisis or disaster if it ever arises.
Lesson 5: Have a Plan For Continued Income During The Disaster
When an unexpected crisis occurs in your life, it is important that you have a plan for supplementing your income during the disaster.
In the case of a crisis that will be covered by insurance, you can ask the insurance company for an advance off of your coverage, to help you get through the event. But there are also other ways that you can help prepare for lost income.
One way to help you prepare for lost income is to build one or more residual income streams that come in, even if you are not working. One example of a residual income stream is a continuity program where your customers are automatically billed every month for a certain amount, in return for a product or service that you provide them.
Another way to help you prepare for lost income is to have adequate savings. In today’s tough economic times, it’s not as easy to build up your savings. But you still should work each week towards growing your savings – even if you can only add $50 or $100 to it. The money can add up fast if you just work at it.
Lesson 6: When A Crisis Strikes, Stay Calm
If you are ever faced with a disaster or a crisis like I was, try your best to stay calm. Crying all the time or screaming will not make the problem go away.
You will need to be able to think clearly so that you can manage the process in a way that you can get every penny that you are entitled to, or so you can mitigate your loss (such as in the case of a lawsuit, or if you didn’t have proper insurance).
Sure, it is going to be emotional, and it’s OK to cry or show emotion. But don’t let this overwhelm you and become the norm.
Instead, you should stay focused on the next goal of recovering from the situation with the best outcome you have available to you. And in some cases, when there is adequate insurance involved, you can even recover from the situation in a better position than when you started.
To learn more about business growth and starting a business, download my free 47 page “Business Thrival Blueprint”. BusinessThrival.com is a site dedicated to helping business owners achieve a thriving business and life.