2230 - Designing Your Disaster Plan: A Strategic Roadmap to Organizational Recovery with 22nd Century Management's Kenneth Edmonds

0:05Hey there, thoughtful listener. Are you looking for introductions to partners, investors, influencers, influencers, influencers, and clients? Well, I've had private conversations with over 2 ,000 leaders asking them where their best business comes from. I've got a free video you can watch with no opt-in required where I'll share the exact steps necessary to be 100 % inbound in your industry over the next six to eight months with no spam, no ads, and no sales. What I teach has worked for me for over 15 years and has helped me create eight figures in revenue for my own companies. Just head to upmyinfluence.com and watch my free class on how to create endless high ticket sales appointments.

0:51Also, don't forget, the thoughtful entrepreneur is always looking for great guests. Go to upmyinfluence.com and click on podcast. I'd love to have you.

1:05With us right now, it's Ken Edmonds. Ken, you are the CEO and founder of 22nd Century Management. You're found on the web at 22CTYMGMT.com. To a friend that's listening, just click in your show notes. You can find a direct link to Ken's website so you can follow along. Ken, it's great to have you. Yeah, it's very nice to be here. Thanks for inviting me, Josh. Yeah. Hey, before we get going talking about your superpowers and the work you do in the world, Ken, what are you doing for fun? I understand you like to get out and fish. I do like to get out and fish. Yeah. And listen, you live in a pretty tranquil area.

1:47And it's Lake Wales, which anyone who's been to Florida, there is a, you know, one place you got to go visit. It's Bach Tower Gardens. and it is just the ultimate place if you want to see some just gorgeous Florida botanical gardens and get some amazing photos. That is Instagram heaven. It absolutely is. And don't forget, you can listen to the Carillion as well. Oh, yeah, yeah, which is gorgeous. Yes, gorgeous, gorgeous. So, yeah, I'm sorry. We were talking about what you, other than going to Bach Tower for photos and a nice walk, what have you been doing for fun lately? Well, I recently went to the Everglades and went fishing for aquarium fish.

2:33Aquarium fish? Yes. A lot of people, when they're cichlids, which are typically seen in aquariums, they get very big and they get pretty aggressive. So people were letting them go into ponds and stuff with the flooding. They wound up, they're basically infiltrated the Everglades as an invasive species. I use the definition or description as the saying that they are a it's like a big bluegill on steroids yeah and super aggressive put up a great fight really good to eat and down in the Everglades they want you to catch and keep as many as you can because they're they're they're an invasive species what when on the last trip we caught a couple of bluegills and they were little itty bitty scrawny things and then all the cichlids were well fed and you know and nice size so So the bluegills are starving out there.

3:20Did you bring any back for the aquarium? No, I didn't bring them back from the aquarium. I brought them back for the skillet.

3:29Best place for them to be for an invasive fish species. Well, Ken, let's talk about your superpowers and the work that you do in the world. Okay, so superpowers, I guess you could say, is my ability to see problems and then find solutions. to fix them. There's a gentleman I follow on LinkedIn, and he talks about having a basically peripheral vision, seeing outside the box. He described it as you take the box out of the way so that you can see everything. And part of it is I have a little bit of ADHD, which makes my mind go really quick through things. And so I'll see a problem and say, oh, I could fix that if I did just this and this.

4:13I came out of the copier industry and I saw a lot of things that I could fix there. I've been working on that a little bit. Yeah. Well, you know, I'm looking at, Ken, would you mind maybe sharing a little bit more specifically? Obviously, I'm looking at your social media and you're talking about, you shared something that was kind of sobering. 40 % of businesses never reopen after a disaster. That's sobering. It is. And it's kind of interesting. A couple of stories associated. The first one was, I was preparing for my Security plus certification when I was working for one of the manufacturers.

4:49And in that training, there was a chapter on disaster preparedness. And it related the story of a limousine company in New York that had just gone through the exercise of creating a disaster plan right before 9-11. And when he saw the first plane hit the Twin Towers, he immediately put his plan in place, evacuated his limousines out of the New York City area, got them out over into New Jersey, I started notifying customers that had upcoming bookings that that wasn't going to work. And the thing that made it really interesting is things started to open back up. This gentleman wound up being able to buy the assets of numerous limousine companies that didn't have a plan because they didn't know what to do.

5:32And just a simple act of creating the plan. And it wasn't for, you know, something hitting the Twin Towers and, you know, causing that kind of disaster. It was just a general disaster plan and recognizing the importance he's implemented in. And so that got me started thinking about it. And I teach a service management class because I came out of the service side of the copy industry. I teach a service management class and I started asking my service managers what they would do if they drove up in the morning and their building was gone. And all I got was a deer in headlights look. And I am like, that was sobering to me because I would have expected at least most of them to have an idea.

6:11And they didn't. And so that kind of put me on the track of let's talk about this. Let's make it something that people are aware of. And it doesn't have to be just in the copy industry, but anybody that doesn't have a disaster plan is putting themselves at risk. You know, the odds are, as we talked about, that a huge number of those that don't have disaster plans in the small business world are not going to open their doors back up. And those that do, survival beyond a year is very tenuous. And so, you know, in the copy industry, I thought through in my mind pretty quickly. I figured out, OK, here's a scene, a series of things that have to happen.

6:47You know, you got to get your phone system moved to a new location. You got to have a computer restore your backup, start ordering parts and supplies. got to have a warehouse to put parts and supplies in, just all of these steps. And if you thought through it and you have a plan and a list of the stuff that you need, pretty simple to do. But if you're just trying to make it up as you go, almost impossible. Yeah. Well, listen, I think it's always great for us as founders and leaders. And again, we're kind of speaking to a room of CEOs right now. Ken, would you mind giving maybe a couple of really important tips or things that leaders should always be doing to keep aware of potential threats, to mitigate them, to plan for them in advance?

7:34I mean, obviously the worst thing is something bad happens and you didn't anticipate it because then you're caught having to make decisions last minute. You haven't prepared for it. most, would you agree that most disasters or most bad things that can, you know, that would normally go in our kind of our threat box of a SWOT analysis, like a lot of that stuff can be mitigated pretty easily with some prior preparation. And so if that's the case, what are some things that you say, listen, across the board, I want folks to listen up. Here's what I want you to do. Go for it. Okay, so I'm going to say first of all is create a plan because the act of planning prepares you for a wide variety.

8:18In other words, if you thought through the problems associated for the most common zone in Florida, we think hurricanes right away. But we also have to include tornadoes and there's a variety of things that come. So if you think through the process of creating the plan, especially if you do it as a team, your management team works together, you start to build a mental agility that will help you be prepared for a lot of things. And there's so many things. We talked about you have natural disasters. Another one is what happens if you have a cyber incident of some kind? And here's the important piece of that is, is the person you call first then is your cyber insurance company, because they'll tell you what you can say, what you should say and what you should absolutely not say, because the words you use could affect your liability.

9:02They'll also help you figure out how to save an instance of the system as it is so that they can do some forensic work on it and still try to get you back up and running. And we've seen some horrendous cases of ransomware recently, about six months ago now or so, they had one that locked up the automotive industry. There was a common provider that provided administrative support tools for most of the industry, it seemed like. and most card dealers had to revert back to pen and paper. And if they didn't have something that had ever done it on pen and paper, how do you pick the pieces up? So it's those kinds of things.

9:42Cybersecurity, you want to make sure you have, and I don't sell cybersecurity. I'm not in that business, but you want to make sure that you have a good cybersecurity insurance policy and that you have a good cybersecurity solution so that if something does happen, you've got the tools to get it back up and running pretty quickly. um you know and then obviously you can think of things like fire and you know and you know i talk about there's some of it kind of drifts over into let's say into um crisis management as well because you know you're communicating you have to have a communication strategy what are you going to tell people what do you tell your customers your stakeholders the press so again templates of all of those things having them ready and then just chaining the details a little bit makes that a pretty simple process.

10:29You know, if you don't have that in the TV news guys up out front and you walk out and well, it's bad. I don't know what we're going to do. That's not going to inspire a lot of confidence in your clients and your stakeholders, any of those. Yeah. You know, so I think that's it. You know, there's things you can do to, again, to rehearse in actuality. One of the parts of a good disaster plan is that you role play it. You know, so you pretend that, okay hey this is what's happened what's our plan who's doing what now you know and everybody starts to line out the things they have to do and maybe simulate some of the phone calls and press releases and all of that just so that they're in a situation if something happens again you're prepared for it you can think of it as a boxer he doesn't know what punches the other guy is going to throw so he prepares for a variety and then if the his opponent uh throws something he wasn't expecting, the training he has will help his instincts to protect himself, cover up whatever it is he needs to do.

11:29So it's the same way with disaster planning is as we go through this process and we think through it, we get, like I said, I'll use the term, we become much more agile in responding. Yeah. Well, Ken, do you mind sharing how you work with folks? Like how can you help? What I can do for them is I can help them work through the process. You know, you can say I facilitate them building out their plan. You know, I can work, I have some tools I use that I can help them identify the most probable scenarios fairly easily. I built an AI tool that does that, looks at the floodplain, looks at what other businesses are nearby, you know, the type of building they're in.

12:10all of those things trying to identify the most probable and then it'll build out what you call a business impact analysis you know and so this tool then gives you the things and prioritizes them in what you need to work on first what's the most likely and highest impact and then you work your way down both in importance and in impact but you know again it's it has it's best done as a team effort that's why i say i facilitate it i'll sit down and talk with the team you'll meet on zoom and that that way we can talk through the stages. And then basically I give them some homework to work on so that the next meeting we can start to flesh out another piece of it.

12:49And we work through the whole process so they're as prepared as they can be. I'll help them create the templates. All of the things they need, I'll help them work through and create it. But when it's their plan and they create it, even with some guidance, what happens is they'll take ownership of it and it'll be tailored to their business. A cookie cutter one doesn't work. It's gotta be tailored to the individual business based on all of the factors. Yeah. Okay, well, when you begin that process with somebody, what questions are you asking? How do you assess for threats and risks? Okay, so the first thing I'm going to ask is to tell them if it's a business I don't know about, I'm gonna ask them to tell me a little more about their business, the dependencies they have.

13:36In other words, what are the things they need to have in place? You know, a grocery store is pretty obvious. You got to have refrigeration, you got to have power, you got to have registers. Those kinds of things are pretty obvious. But if a company's in an industry that I'm not familiar with, let's say it's a small manufacturing company, what are the things that are critical to keep your business running? You know, and so if you got supply chain issues, you know, and a good example, think of the pandemic. Think of what's going on right now with tariffs and the way it's affecting the marketplace.

14:04So you have to have some alternative things in place. You have to prepare for it. So what is your plan B? And then we start to figure out, okay, let's say what's the worst thing that could happen. And we'll say the building's gone, all your equipment's gone. How do you get started up again? You know, if you're in a factory building, is there temporary space that you could get set up in? You know, how much, you know, what are you going to need in the way of equipment? What do you need in the way of supplies what are all of the pieces that you can make it go back together and i'll share one more example of somebody that's maybe even more critical is imagine a small law firm that keeps paper documents and has a trial coming up in a few days and their law office burns how do they go to court you know so part of it is you think about is mitigating some of for a lot of companies is getting away from paper records and getting stuff in the cloud you know because that's one of the tools that makes it recovery easy if you've got file cabinets full of papers that are important yep and you burn what do you do you know you start over and that's that's just not a not a place you want to be another thing that's important this is something that often gets overlooked and i was guilty of this is we don't test our backups to see if we can restore them we met we make a backup and the system says it did good and we think it's fine and take it off site.

15:28And I had a company in, when I started in the copier industry, I actually owned a dealership and we weren't wound up in a situation where something happened to corrupt the data. So we started going through backups. We had to go back through three backups, which was three weeks worth of data that they had to go in. Now we were paper, we paper-based office, so we could go in and get the papers and recreate what happened in the, in those three weeks. But if you're a company of any size that becomes uh traumatic at least you know you're billing you can't get out just all of these pieces of things that you can't really do so you say hmm and that's why i say encourage people just go through these simulations and exercise things like creating or restoring a backup make sure that it works and you can use it make sure you if you have to call somebody to move your phone lines to your cell phones make sure you know who to call it you got that number that's you know so that you can get that done.

16:22And then whoever arrives on the scene first needs to know exactly who needs to be contacted in the company, because the owner might be out of town. He could be on a cruise in the middle of the Pacific, you know, and out of reach. So there's got to be somebody that can take over as incident commander. And then everybody else falls into their roles on the team to start doing their job. And they know because they practiced. Ken, it sounds like you've had some experience with some of these things in your life. You've seen stuff go sideways. You've seen stuff blow up. And, you know, to newer founders, you know, what I'll just say from experience, you know, having been an entrepreneur for a few decades, it's not a question of if, it's a question of when.

17:02I know you hear that. So, you know, and it's hard, you know, it's hard to think of everything, particularly, you know, if you are in the business. And so, Ken, I think that's where it's exceptionally valuable to bring an outsider who has seen it all, who has seen the things that you as a founder can't even contemplate that could go wrong. So Ken, next steps for our friend that's listening to our conversation. I can go to your website, 22CTYMGMT, which stands for 22nd Century Management. But what do you recommend they do next? They can send me an email, ken at 22CTYMGMT.com. That's the best way to get a hold of me.

17:41My phone is 336-653-3699. And you can call that. I love it. All right, Ken Edmonds, founder, CEO, 22nd Century Management. Ken, it's been a great conversation. Thank you so much. Oh, thanks for having me here, Josh. It's been a lot of fun.

18:01Thanks for listening to the Thoughtful Entrepreneur Show. If you are a thoughtful business owner or professional who would like to be on this daily program, Please visit upmyinfluence.com and click on podcast. We believe that every person has a message that can positively impact the world. We love our community who listens and shares our program every day. Together, we are empowering one another as thoughtful leaders. And as I mentioned at the beginning of this program, if you're looking for introductions to partners, investors, influencers, and clients, I have had private conversations with over 2 ,000 leaders, asking them where their best business comes from.

18:43I've got a free video that you can watch right now with no opt-in or email required, where I'm going to share the exact steps necessary to be 100 % inbound in your industry over the next six to eight months with no spam, no ads, and no sales. What I teach has worked for me for more than 15 years and has helped me create eight figures in revenue for my own companies. Just head to upmyinfluence.com and watch my free class on how to create endless high ticket sales appointments. Make sure to hit subscribe so that tomorrow morning, that's right, seven days a week, you are going to be inspired and motivated to succeed.

19:25I promise to bring positivity and inspiration to you for around 15 minutes every single day. Thanks for listening and thank you for being a part of the Thoughtful Entrepreneur Movement.