Prepare For the Worst, Plan For the Best

I recently heard Donna Childs of Childs Capital, LLC speak about her experiences surviving the attacks on 9/11. She was in the tower when the plane hit, evacuated to her apartment just up the street when it collapsed, and evacuated again to be hurried off the side of the pier and into a boat that took people to New Jersey where she spent the next month living and while trying to keep her small business surviving. She has since started a non profit to help small business recover from disaster.

Why is this important? That's what I thought at first. Let me give you some statistics about business disaster.

• Less than 5% of small business claims were settled for what the owners identified as full value.
• The Red Cross says that 40% of small business don't reopen / survive after a major disaster.
• The Red Cross says that 30% of small business have had a major disaster in the last year.
• (A major disaster is defined as having an interruption of business for more than 24 hours)
• Having a disaster plan reduces your insurance premium by up to 30%.
• The most common disasters are not terrorist attacks or even fires, they are data loss and power outage.

After hearing her speak, I became aware of just how unprepared almost every small business I come into contact with is. I wouldn't even count myself as disaster ready.

If you want to learn how to improve your chances of survival after disaster, check out her book here.

To develop your own Disaster Recovery Plan, consider this:

1. Set up an emergency response plan and train employees how to carry it out
2. Write out each step of the plan and assign responsibilities to employees in clear and simple language
3. Compile a list of important phone numbers and addresses
4. Decide on a communications strategy to prevent loss of customers
5. Consider the things you may need initially during the emergency
6. Human Resources
7. Physical Resources
8. Business Community
9. Protect Your Building
10. Keep Duplicate Records
11. Identify critical business activities and the resources needed to support them
12. Find alternative facilities, equipment and supplies, and locate qualified contractors
13. Protect computer systems and data

Beauty Is Not Intelligence

In the wise words of the Pet Shop Boys, "I've got the brains, you've got the looks, Let's make lots of money."

Never could these words have had such a profound relevance as this past weekend, when the Miss Teen USA pageant aired. I tuned in briefly to see the top ten finalists get named. I don't enjoy anything about beauty pageants. Not because they aren't politically correct, but because they are generally boring. My only motivation for watching is to see if I can correctly identify the winner before the judges announce it. This time I was VERY, VERY, VERY wrong.

As I watched the ten finalists take their place on one of the ten little highlighted circles at center stage, I picked South Carolina to win. In my defense, this was before I heard her speak.



So as you can tell from this video, she might have the looks, but definitely not the brains.

Aside from all of the stammering and misspoken words (which I've edited out of the following quote) caused, no doubt, by the stress of the event, her basic answer for why 20% of Americans can't find the United States on a world map was, "Our education in the US should help South Africa, Iraq and the Asian countries so we can build up our future."

Perhaps a position in military intelligence would fit her well. Think about it for a second. If she thinks that our education system, which has failed to train 20% of our citizens where our own country is on a map, then how confused can we make our potential enemies like China and Iraq. You put Miss South Carolina in charge of that task and we'll have China dropping nukes on Canada and Iraq flying planes into the Eiffel tower, and then reporting to their commanders "We've destroyed the United States."

The good side of this is that the winner was Hilary Cruz - Miss Colorado. I was glad to see she made the top 10, but didn't think she'd win it all. I guess that's why no one's ever called me to judge one of these contests.

If It’s Broke Don’t Ride It

As I was leaving our nation’s capitol Thursday, the weather turned to spring and I got to thinking what a beautiful day for a bike ride. The cherry trees were in blossom around town and the light breeze lifted me as I breathed in fresh air.

Unfortunately my 2:30 flight didn’t allow time for a bike ride, but I did have the chance to reflect on what I learned on our legislative trip. I think what was the most eye opening and troublesome is that I became convinced that our system is broken. Maybe I was already convinced, but it just became a reality.

Take for example the issue of immigration. If pressed, I have an opinion about it, but that’s not what this is about. This is about things that are broken.

Immigration is certainly a hot topic for America and the upcoming elections, but also a perfect illustration of a broken system. The US Chamber of Commerce briefed us Tuesday on their involvement in the issue. There are an estimated 12 million “shadow workers” in the US today. These are people working illegally, many of whom pay taxes, but none the less are in our country illegally. How do we fix this problem? Many suggest we absorb them by making the process easier to immigrate legally. Not providing amnesty and granting them immediate legal status, but providing a grace period of sorts whereby they can process through immigration and become legal citizens.

Oh, what a splendid compromise. That sounds like it would work so wonderfully, but guess again. Presently, the United States allows for 65,000 legal immigrants to be given citizenship per year. In case your wondering 12,000,000 divided by 65,000 is 184.6 years. While we may be used to government working slowly, that’s a little much unless shadow workers are okay with waiting for their great grandchildren to be the first citizens of the United States in their family.

But have faith! Our government isn’t made of idiots. They can do the math can’t they? Obviously they can because they are raising the limit from 65,000 to 215,000 legal immigrants per year. That cuts the number substantially by 70%, from 184 years to a measly 55.2 years. Much more acceptable I think. Oh yeah, but did I mention that presently there is such a demand for legal immigration into the US that the 2007 quota has been filled, and the 2008 quota is almost filled and this without any influx of shadow workers being added to the daily workload.

I’m sure though that our hard working and dedicated immigration officers are quite capable of picking up the extra slack for the next 55 years or so and double their production to accommodate the shadow workers. In case you’ve never met a government worker, let me explain sarcasm… Continuing with my sarcastic remarks - because the process of legally immigrating takes the sponsorship of a business, which is already quite costly, and our government understands the concept of economics, immigration decided it would raise the price of immigration in hopes of limiting the number of applications. It all makes perfect sense now doesn’t it?

We want 12 million illegal immigrants to become a legal part of our working class, yet it will take 55 years to immigrate them all if our government increases the proposed capacity by 100% and the current capacity by 662%. Meanwhile we can’t keep up with the current rate of immigration at a mere 15% of what it would take to accomplish in 55 years. That doesn’t even take into account things like population growth. Certainly as a worker, today age 30, has children and grandchildren, the 12 million shadow people will grow too. As the day passes and the sun sets, the shadow will grow longer.

It kind of reminds me of walking along the sidewalk on a beautiful day and seeing a bicycle leaned up against a light post and thinking to my self, “what a great day to ride a bike, I’m going to go hop on that one and take a spin around the block.” Then as I walk up to the bike, I realize that the bike has a flat back tire, is missing the front one altogether, the chain has rusted in half and the seat is missing. No matter how nice the day it’s not very realistic to think I’m going to be able to pedal down the driveway and past the blossoming cherry trees, enjoying the sunshine.

SBA Disaster Loans

The Small Business Administration, like any part of the government has its problems. In my experience with the SBA and financing, they can be good and easy to work with if you have someone to help you navigate the system. Unfortunately you can also end up with a bunch of trained monkeys like this video shows. We had several people we worked with that were Katrina victims and they told similar stories about how screwed up things were.

When the recent apartment fire happened here, the SBA came in last week and set up shop for disaster relief. I'll be interested to see if it's any easier to navigate ashes than it is water.

When they were here they got a parking ticket that cost them $30. Maybe that's why they try to collect on loans that haven't been made - to pay off the parking Nazis in Colorado.