Recently, after everyone had gone home for the night, a pipe burst in a toilet in the women’s room on the third floor of my three-story building.
The third floor had half an inch of standing water, which soaked the ceiling tiles of the second floor, causing several to fall to the workstations below.
“It will take weeks to clean up,” said one of our younger managers.
We reopened the office six days later.
It helps that Debt.com (where I’m founder and president) is headquartered in a building I own. It also helps that I’m headquartered in South Florida, where I’ve started half a dozen other businesses. When you live in Hurricane Alley, you can expect strong winds and high waters for five months of the year.
In fact, hurricane season started on June 1st. So now is the right time to talk about preparing for the worst times in your financial services business.
I’m not going to walk you through how to create a disaster recovery plan because others have already done it. However, I would urge you not to ignore disaster planning—something I’ve seen too many young business leaders do.
I understand why. First, young people generally feel invincible. I know I did when I first started. But with the advent of artificial intelligence and other time-saving technology, I also believe that many of today’s budding entrepreneurs have grown up thinking that the solution to every problem is on their smartphones.
Usually, it is. Technology can solve staffing issues, supply issues, billing errors, you name it. But what happens when the power goes out and none of these technologies work?
I also realize that today’s entrepreneurs are much busier than I was three decades ago. I didn’t have to deal with social media. With real-time customer reviews shared worldwide. With constant fears of Google’s algorithms changing.
However, there’s no excuse not to spend a few hours reviewing disaster planning best practices. It takes less time than a team building or a staff happy hour.
Lease for disasters
What has helped me get through hurricanes, floods and broken pipes is the skills of my employees. I hire—and demand that my managers hire—coaches who can handle criticism, can take a joke, and never quit.
So when that pipe broke recently, the first two employees on the scene were an accountant and a content writer. Without waiting for permission, one figured out how to shut off the water while the other checked our two floors for damage. And of course, both knew to alert other managers immediately.
Even as managers assessed the situation, employees who could not communicate and were told to stay home gathered in dry areas to discuss how to meet deadlines for important work. They did this without being told by their managers, who were trying to figure out the extent of the damage.
Of course, we don’t hire with impending disasters in mind, but I can tell you that good employees are more important than the best disaster plan. Plans are only as valuable as their execution, and on the ground, it’s the workers who execute them.
Here is the example
When that pipe burst last week, I made sure we had cleaning vendors on site within hours. I didn’t hesitate, because I knew that any emergency fee I would pay would be far less than the cost of keeping the office closed for weeks.
I’m not an advocate of working from home, but even if you are, moving quickly to solve an obvious problem lets your team know they should always do the same. For any entrepreneur setting up a business, this should be a priority.
Every go-get-’em speech you’ve ever given will be undermined in a quick minute if you don’t respond decisively to a disaster. Your employees will notice and may not believe you during your next speech.
Turning disasters into culture
A workplace disaster can be both straightforward and costly. It is an opportunity for you to demonstrate leadership and a measure for your managers and employees. So plan for disasters, pay for their repairs, and then squeeze whatever value you can out of the experience.
