7 Steps to Business Emergency Preparedness

The fires in California have made me think, once again, about having your business prepared for emergency situations. I made a list of 7 things that every virtual assistant business, or any business that is computer related, needs to have ready:

1) Back up, back up, back up! Make sure every important document and file on your computer is backed up. This can be done with jump drives, CDs, or really anything that will safely hold your information. It would be good if you could keep this and any installation and restore discs at a location other than your house/office.

2) Have another location option. Have a place set up ahead of time where you can go to use a computer, phone, etc. when you have to leave your home for any emergency. This could be as simple as having a laptop that you can take anywhere.

3) Insurance. Make sure, if you work from home, that your home-owner's insurance covers your home office. If it doesn't, increase your coverage.

4) Recovery. Have a plan in place to quickly recover from an emergency situation. If you lose your whole livelihood in a fire or flood, how will you recover? What will you do for equipment until your insurance cheque comes?

5) Communication. What happens when your clients can't reach you? What about an emergency situation as simple as your Internet going down for 3 days? Make sure your clients have multiple ways of contacting you. If this means calling each one from an evacuation center to let them know you will contact them again when you are back in the office, do it.

6) Replacement. Do you have other virtual assistants in place that can cover you while you are in an emergency situation? This is important if you find yourself not being able to do your work for more than a day or two. Find someone located in a different region or state who can competently help you out. This might as simple as having them contact your clients when you are unable to.

7) Family. Make plans for your family and pets. Contact your local emergency measures organization and find out what they recommend you have on hand to be prepared. They know what you need and how to help you plan for emergencies. Make sure your family knows the plan and make sure this plan has provisions for your pets. There is no sense having a great plan if no one knows what it is.

Just because you might find yourself in a bad situation due to fire, flood, hurricane, etc., doesn't mean that your business should be wiped out. If you plan ahead, your business will survive and your clients will appreciate that you included their needs in your emergency plans.

Event Planning

I have been involved in the planning of many different kinds of events - conferences, weddings, concerts, and parties - but the most difficult one to plan and execute is a child's birthday party.

What has happened to the pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey party? Nowadays, you have to have crafts, entertainment, the "right" location, and treat bags to rival the ones given out at the Oscars. Today was my daughter's 10th birthday. It was not a large party, but it was still a lot of work. I had a lot to do. It had to be just right because it is the last "big" party that she is having.

There were invitations to make, goodie bags to make, crafts to create, rooms and a cake to decorate, prizes to make, and food to serve. My wife was working, so I had to do pretty much everything. I tried to break every project down into small parts and get so many of them done each day until everything was all done. It wasn't done until 5 minutes before the kids walked in the door, but it was done!

No matter what kind of event you are planning, it all comes down to preparation. Knowing what the expected outcome is and planning for every possible thing between idea and realization. It sounds like a huge task but if it is broken down into smaller tasks, it becomes way less daunting.

The party was a success and everyone went home happy. There were no fights, and even despite the rain, it went great.

“Odd” Job Virtual Assistants

There are many reasons that one might require the services of a virtual assistant. The following uses of their services might surprise you.

When he started his virtual assistant practice, Darrell Williams imagined himself creating documents for clients, checking their voicemails and emails, scheduling their time or other common administrative tasks. He did not expect to be finding a moving company, writing press releases and articles or finding just the right kind of sunglasses for his clients.

There are many different kinds of virtual assistants and even more types of clients. There are VAs who work for hairdressers, lawyers, doctors, writers, artists, real estate agents and even athletes. Everyone needs help with something and there are a lot of VAs that are experts in areas that clients may never imagine.

Williams, of Right-Hand-Man Virtual Assistant Services says that he enjoys the varied tasks he is asked to complete.
“I love doing different things for each of my clients. I don’t really enjoy doing the same thing over and over again, all day long. If I don’t know how to do something, I have a team of associates that I can count on to be able to do it.”

Clients and virtual assistants must make sure they are a good fit before they agree to work together. There is no sense hiring a VA and then finding out they can’t do what you need done. Some VAs would rather not take on the “odd” jobs and would rather just type documents all day long.

Many clients, after hiring a virtual assistant, find out their VA is not prepared to do what they require. They did not find out the skills and experience of the VA before hiring them. If the VA the client has hired and cannot complete certain tasks, then the client is left to find another VA that can. To avoid this, many virtual assistants are opening Multi-VA practices. With many virtual assistants with varying talents in one team, there is always an expert available.

If a client needs a virtual assistant to find a kennel for their dog while they are on a vacation that the VA has also arranged, and type the client’s manuscript while they are gone, they would either need to hire a multi-talented VA or hire a Multi-VA team with a number of VAs capable of completing one task each. Remember that everyone is an expert at something and there is a virtual assistant that can do whatever “odd” job that each client needs done.

Virtual Assistant's Worst Fear!

Lately my computer has been acting up. I think that it had a virus that was just hanging on, even though I tried every anti-virus program out there. I finally got it back to health today.

This did get me wondering (and worrying a bit), "What would I do if my computer died on me?" I think that this should be the Virtual Assistant's worst fear. We should have a healthy fear of this happening and take measures to protect our businesses in the event that it does happen.

I am now in the process of burning everything of my clients and my business onto CDs. My next step is to go tomorrow and buy a jump drive. I would like to be able to 'move' my files easily to another computer if the need arises. I do keep paper copies of most everything that I can. (So much for the 'paperless' office of the future) My plan now is to back up EVERYTHING! It may seem a bit extreme, but better safe than sorry.

What are some other ways that you protect your valuable information? What would you do if your computer died right now? Do you have a plan? Are you afraid yet? Being afraid is a good thing if you do something about it.

Be like a boy scout and be prepared.