Contact Information:

Debra Traverso
P.O. Box 4842
Hagerstown, MD 21742-4872
240-782-4218

"...Should be required reading for business owners and entrepreneurs." —United Press International

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About the Book

Proven fixes for scores of small business emergencies.

Finally, owners of small businesses have a practical book that can prepare them for the most common and destructive crises they face. Even problems that would be "small" to a larger company can be disastrous for a small one. Entrepreneurs know this, but many balk at the prospect of crisis planning because it seems endless and overwhelming.

Debra Koontz Traverso shows business owners how to best use their limited time and resources to address the most important potential threats to their businesses. By laying basic groundwork for crisis planning and zeroing in on the most likely, most damaging problems, owners can stay a step ahead of the disruptions that plague their peers.

This book covers preventive measures for bullet-proofing a business and explains what to do if a crisis has already struck. It offers a wealth of information in an easy-to-browse format, including proven checklists, examples, case studies, and resources. A "Vulnerability Identification Form" helps the business owner conduct the kind of risk analysis that a large company would typically perform. Best of all, these strategies are ready to implement immediately, because they don't revolve around 500-page contingency plans and big emergency response teams.

Smart advice on:

• Loss of a major contract or other large, unexpected drop in business
• Sudden loss of a key employee who has important skills and knowledge
• Shortage of cash to pay employees or suppliers
• A product that harms people and has already been shipped
• Fires, thefts (including intellectual property), floods, accidents, and computer network breakdowns
• Internet problems
• How to deal with the press if the business suffers a newsworthy setback
• Unexpected problems with employees

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Review Comments:

from Jay Conrad Levinson, author of the best-selling Guerrilla Marketing book series
"As all business owners know, terrible things happen. It's how you handle them that makes all the difference—and Debra Koontz Traverso tells you exactly how. Her advice offers solutions to your worst problems. You can toss away your sleeping pills, because this superb book will help you sleep peacefully through the darkest and stormiest night."

from Rolf Dobelli, president of getAbstract.com:
"Debra Koontz Traverso is out to save your business. Her book lives up to its billing as the first practical guide for small business owners who want to know how to manage a crisis like the big guys, or even better. Traverso tells you how to prepare for a crisis, prevent a crisis and manage a crisis if one happens. She's written a thorough manual imbued with her understanding of the mindset and circumstances affecting small business owners. Traverso's well-written book is jam-packed with insights, valuable lists, ideas and examples, and it never skims the surface of an issue. Come wind, sleet, hail or dark of night, if you are in a small business, we at getAbstract.com recommend this essential book. Even if you work for a large organization, this book might be worth your time, since many big companies are strictly small-time when it comes to planning ahead."

from Larry Smith, president, Institute for Crisis Management
"The old expression 'the bigger they are the harder they fall' is not true. For businesses, sometimes the smaller they are, the harder they fall. Even small problems can cause big trouble for small businesses. This book is uniquely designed to address the kinds of crises that typically strike these companies."

from Barbara G. Stanbridge, president, National Association of Women Business Owners
"This book will serve as a guide for small-business owners in overcoming all the things we all wish would not happen...but always do. Read it and keep it as an aid to forestall all the problems that will confront you."

Keith H. Dinger, Instructor, Harvard University says:
"Traverso has masterfully taken the lessons learned by large corporations in planning for and responding to crises and put them in a practical how-to guide that gives the small-business owner all the benefit, but none of the expense, of lessons learned in the field of crisis management. It's a resource you can put to immediate use."

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Table of Contents

Section A
Principles of Planning for a Small Business

Chapter 1 - Get Control of Risky Business
How to put risks into perspective, protect your assets, identify your vulnerabilities, and prepare your organization for smoldering, as well as unexpected situations. No every potential small-business crisis or setback can be addressed in one book, so this chapter helps you prepare a basic response plan for any unexpected situation.

Chapter 2 - Conduct a Small Business Self-Audit
You my have problems brewing in your organization and not even know it. This chapter will help you identify where you may be vulnerable and which risks you can eliminate before they become crises or uncontrollable situations.

Section B
Getting Your House In Order

Chapter 3 - Avoid the Most Common Management Missteps
According to the Institute of Crisis Management, 75 percent of all small-business crises can be attributed directly or indirectly to management. This chapter identifies the chief areas in which you might go wrong as a manager and explains what you can do about them.

Chapter 4 - Practice the Personnel Touch With Employees
Employees are a blessing and a headache for any business. In this chapter you will learn the principal ways that employees can render a small company vulnerable and how you can act now to avoid crises in the future.

Chapter 5 - Ease Your Vulnerability to Computer Problems
Computer equipment and Internet access are vital to a small business, but with them come a multitude of potential perils. This chapter will walk you through dealing with hardware breakdowns, corrupted software, competitive snoops, credit card fraud, hackers, vandals, and much more.

Chapter 6 - Insure for the Worst with The Best Coverage Available
Despite your best planning efforts, it's impossible to prepare for every crisis that may befall your company. That's why insurance is vitally important in helping to protect you from financial disaster. This chapter offers a primer to get you started in shopping for the right insurance for your company and situation.

Section C
When the Crisis Moves from In-house to the Public

Chapter 7 - Brace Yourself for Negative Publicity and Public Scrutiny
Your business did nothing wrong, but the public thinks it did. Enter the news media, who sometimes target businesspeople as villains, and the situation goes from bad to worse. This chapter explains what you should do during unexpected news media encounters, questions, interviews, and visits, and how to deal with negative publicity.

Resources

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Top Ten Steps to Prepare a Crisis Plan for Your Business

Stories such as that of Cantor Fitzgerald, a bond firm which tragically lost 700 employees in the September 11 attacks, have made business owners realize that although some crises may not be preventable, that fact does not exempt a company of any size from living with the consequences. The "Washington Post" recently reported that only about half of American businesses have a crisis plan in place; as a result, business owners are scrambling to protect their companies against terrorism.

However, it's a mistake to assume that most organizational crises arise from accidents or catastrophes like the terrorist attacks; instead, most crises, regardless of the size of the company involved, are neither accidental nor sudden. Instead, they are smoldering crises, accounting for approximately two-thirds of the crises experienced by companies of all sizes.

In my latest book, "The Small Business Owner's Guide to a Good Night's Sleep: Preventing and Solving Chronic and Costly Problems," I show owners of small businesses (even if they're a solo act) how they can prepare simple action plans to safeguard their businesses. But you can start your plans with this list of top ten heads-up steps:

1. Know What Assets You Need to Protect
Opting to handle a crisis when it occurs rather than planning in advance is about as good as taking inventory of the lifeboats AFTER the Titanic has already been launched. The Titanic had lives that should have been saved; what assets does your company have? Make a list of all your assets from the tangibles, such as accounts receivable, employees and raw materials, to the intangibles, such as brain trust, claims rating, and credibility. (Assets are anything owned, or that is part of your company, that has value.)

2. Know Where You Are Vulnerable
Next, you need to think through what people or situations might threaten your assets. The idea is to identify your vulnerabilities and your areas of risk, so you can prevent them from turning into crises. Every potential risk - from technological accidents to natural disasters, to internal concerns, to external threats - should be considered. Once you've identified your vulnerabilities, list them each on a separate sheet of paper. Next, list all the actions needed to resolve or address both the areas of concern (now) and the potential problems (during an unexpected event).

3. Determine Probability
As you go through your list (number 2), keep in mind that the predictability of a threat and the frequency of a threat help to determine the probability of its occurrence. This will help you rank your risks from "most likely" to cause problems to "least likely." Obviously, you will want to take preventive steps to resolve all potential problems, but limited resources may preclude you from doing so; in this case, concentrate on those threats with the highest potential of occurring.

4. Consider Ripple Effects
You should also consider the ripple effect each concern could have on other aspects of your business. For example, if you experience a situation that results in lost revenue, you may also face contractual fines or penalties if you cannot meet your obligations. Or, if you experience a flood, your problems may go beyond equipping your office with dry computers and diskettes from your backup location: the negative publicity about the flooding area may affect your ability to attract customers back to your place of business.

5. Involve Your Employees
Employees sometimes are in a much better position to spot - and be objective about - problems than the owner of the company is. For that reason, involve your employees in identifying potential problems. No doubt, you will be surprised to hear some of their concerns. And, during this very conversation, you might, together, eliminate some situations that - if left unattended - could escalate into severe problems someday.

6. Scrutinize Your Business Functions
Next, conduct an audit of each function and feature of your business, from customer relations to sales to location, even if you alone oversee them all. For each function, consider every potential concern that could be associated it. For example, regarding Personnel, you should consider aspects as seemingly innocuous as fair work load. Why? It may not be obvious how an unequitable distribution of work could lead to trouble: unfair work practices can lead to frustration or anger that can lead to a variety of negative consequences, from low morale to workplace violence. Low morale creates a negative atmosphere that customers can pick up on. Eventually customers stop frequenting places that are not friendly and customer-oriented. In the end, with no customers, you have no business. Now that's a crisis.

7. Review Your Lists
Look at each worksheet you and your employees completed. Review the list of action steps outlined and determine which ones can be done in advance so you can be better prepared if the unexpected occurs. You may find that what's left to be done at the time the unexpected hits is the same from one sheet to another. Thus, you have the beginnings of your simple plan.

8. Do What You Can
Instead of planning for one highly unlikely scenario, develop a crisis plan - or at least a plan of action - that can be applied to any type of crisis. For a small business with very limited resources, the plan may consist only of simple checklists of action steps to take regardless of the type of crisis. The point is to do what you can, and as much as you can, before it's too late to do anything. A small investment of time can go a long way in averting damage to a business.

9. Know What Your Goal Is
It's easier to prepare plans if you break down a crisis into three categories: logistics, administrative, and content. By developing your plans, you can line up, in advance, your administrative needs (such as, what personnel, supplies, equipment, resources, approvals and purchasing power you'll need), and your logistical needs (such as, Where will you and your employees meet? How will you contact one another at 2 a.m. on a Saturday night? How will you get organized? Who will carry out what response tasks so that precious time is not lost to redundant efforts? What will you need to do to return to business as usual?) Taking care of the administrative and logistical concerns in advance (the things you CAN plan for), leaves you free to concentrate on content. Content, generally, is something you can't ideally plan for in advance because you won't know the focus of the crisis until it is presented to you.

10. Safeguard Your Sanity Too
Finally, if protecting your business wasn't enough reason to develop a crisis plan, then do it for your sanity and peace of mind down the road. After a crisis has passed - and sometimes even while it is still unfolding - you may be quizzed about how diligent you were in your efforts to identify potential problems and then initiate changes or offer solutions. Who will quiz you? Angry employees, disgruntled customers, nervous neighbors, hungry attorneys, excited news media, and, if you have them, anxious stockholders. Many business owners have learned this, too late, the hard way.

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