Prepare to Prosper: Ensuring Your Business Survives and Thrives after the Next Disaster
When a major disaster strikes, 60% of affected businesses never recover. This workshop focuses on ensuring that your business will be part of the other 40%. You will learn how to take bite-sized steps over time so that, every week, you will be more prepared than you were the week before. Take action now to increase your business’s disaster resilience.
Workshop Overview:
According to FEMA, more than 40% of businesses never reopen after a disaster, and for those that do, only 29% are still operating after two years. For businesses that lost their information technology for nine days or more after a disaster, the likely outcome is bankruptcy within a year.
How can you position your business to be in that 17% that survives and thrives after a disaster? This workshop will help you identify steps you can take in advance to (1) minimize life safety risks, (2) ensure that a natural disaster does not become a personal financial disaster for you, and (3) gain the enormous competitive advantage of being the first business in your trade or profession to be up and running after a disaster.
This workshop will help you slay the twin dragons that block the road to resilience: Time and overwhelm. We will help you create a schedule of steps – doable yet high-impact – that will ensure that each week, you are more prepared than you were the week before. We will provide you with a guide to the essential services and products you need, so you do not get bogged down in researching every possible option. Resilience is not about having a plan of what to do after disaster; it’s about working a plan in advance of a disaster.
At the end of this workshop, participants should be able to:
- Identify the disaster-related risks specific to your business that you should be focusing on
- Identify actions you can take in advance to improve your business’s disaster resilience
- Create a doable schedule for steadily moving away from vulnerability and toward resilience
Optional: Bring a laptop for one of the exercises.
Workshop Presenter: Cate Steane
Cate has been developing her expertise in safety and preparedness since her work as a Deputy City Attorney on the Oakland Hills Fire lawsuits in 1991. Her business, Make It Happen Project Services, helps small businesses take action to build resilience to disasters. A Certified Associate in Project Management, Cate combines 20 years in small business senior operations roles with in-depth training in project management.
Registration Costs
General Public: $35 for early registration.
Veterans: Free admission is available for this class.
Students: $20
Contact Information
