First our thoughts and prayers go out to the French people following Friday’s shootings. It unfortunately reminded me of how I felt after 9-11. I can remember vividly when that happened and everyone walked around in a daze for a couple of weeks until things slowly returned to somewhat normal. I had a hard time back then, here are some tips for you.
We’ll talk first about if it happens near you – this could be anything (including weather events).
- You should always have your important documents where you can find them, and your family too.
- If you weren’t directly affected by it then help. A tornado happened a couple of counties away from us a couple of springs ago, helping those folks helped me to not worry about. Make sure you let your current clients know what is going on. Put an announcement on your site – telling prospective clients what is happening.
- If you’re a local service business – allow people to reschedule appointments. A couple of weeks after the event extend your hours so that you can fit in those that rescheduled.
- Make sure you have some savings set aside for events like this. Saving money is hard, but if you put a bit every week, it won’t be so hard and you’ll be glad that you did it.
What about if it’s somewhere else?
- If you have clients / customers near where it happened, make sure they are Ok – make arrangements with them (delay things etc.). We had a couple of clients in New York city. We called both of them, made sure they were Ok, then told them we would continue to do their monthly promotions / they didn’t need to pay us for a couple of months.
- If you have friends that are in business near there, offer your support. I have friends all over the world that I’ve met in my almost 20 years of business. When you help, they will help you if you need it too.
- Try to keep to your routine as much as possible. This is what I failed at with 9-11.
