When you read about disaster recovery, you probably think less about your small freelance writing business and more about bigger companies. Indeed, most of the advice you’ll find on disaster recovery has to do with things like redundant data centers, off-site storage facilities and cross-training. There’s big money in disaster recovery planning, and the a small freelance writing business isn’t usually the target of marketing efforts.
Still, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be ready for when disaster strikes. Just ask the folks at Equipment Express.
Equipment express was a small startup founded by an Indiana man named Jeffery Ake in his garage. Ake designed some specialized way to bottle water, and he traveled the world promoting his product. Equipment Express was a small business with just a few employees.
April 2005 was the last time anyone saw Jeffery Ake. He appeared on Al Jazeera TV with two radical Islamists pointing rifles at his head. He’d been kidnapped while doing business in Iraq. He was never seen again.
After the kidnapping and disappearance, Ake’s business struggled. Without him at the helm, sales dried up. Within a year and a half, Equipment Express was more than a million bucks int he hole and the company was liquidated.
Equipment Express had no plans in place to allow their company to recover in the event that something happened to its founder and primary salesperson.
Even if your freelance writing business is just you, the story still illustrates how vulnerable your business is. One big client goes under, and you could be struggling for months. And, while you can’t plan for every kind of disaster that your business might face, there are some you can plan for.
Over the next few posts, I’ll talk a little bit about the risks facing your freelance writing business and what you can do now to help protect yourself and your family if something bad should happen.
The story of Equipment Express has a somewhat bittersweet ending. In 2007 one of the employees purchased the business’ assets and opened a new company called Liquid Packaging Solutions. They hired most of the old Equipment Express employees and opened up a new plant in Laporte, Indiana. Today, the company has around $5 million in sales annually.
That was a sad and scary story.
I confess I had never thought about disaster recovery plans. Like you pointed out, I thought it was just for bigger companies, not for freelancers. So, thank you for raising this subject. Now I know I must do something about it.
I am addicted to this site and keep browsing through it even when while working!
But I have a slight issue here – Islamists? Really?
I mean terrorists or extremists or fundamentalists or whatever else your heart feels the need to call them but Islamists?
You don’t need Einstein to tell you this is a Muslim talking (or ‘Islamist’ if you prefer).
Freelancers come in all shapes, sizes, colors, places and even religions.
I am done with my two cents here.
Hi Shazi,
I appreciate your comment, and I understand where you’re coming from. If my choice of terms offended you, let me apologize.
I will also ask you to note that I used the phrase “radical Islamists” – not merely “Muslim.” My undergraduate degree was in Religion and History, and so when I use a term like “radical Islamist” that refers to a very specific subset of the religion of Islam, I sometimes forget that there may be folk that don’t know the difference.
Suffice it to say that, by the term “radical Islamist,” I merely meant that particularly violent strain of religion that motivated Jeffrey Ake’s killers, and not all, or a majority of, Muslims.
That all said, this isn’t particularly the forum to get into a debate about political and religious nomenclature. As a writer for hire for this site, I’m sure the last thing that Deb Ng would want would be a controversy of this nature. So, I’m going to steer away from that for now, at least in the comments section.
If you’d like to discuss it further, you’re more than welcome to email me directly at bob@writing-journey.com.