How to Be More Prepared for a Disaster Than The Titanic

If you have a small number of customers but they all pay you well, try putting 5% of their revenue into paid ads. It makes no difference whether or not they are profitable. The security of having more customers is what matters as long as you're breaking even on your advertising spend.

Don't be fooled into thinking that good customer service will keep them forever. Sometimes things happen that are simply beyond your control.

If you frequently have large sums of money outstanding and this concerns you, then you should negotiate better terms.

If they're currently paying on net-30 terms, try negotiating 7-day terms. If that appears to be impossible, contact your primary contact and explain that 30-day terms are becoming difficult.

Consider a server crash, data loss, or machine failure.

What kind of redundancy can you implement to ensure that the situation does not become completely crippling? We take data backups every 2 hours at Better Proposals and keep them for 3 months. It is completely unnecessary, but it is worth doing just in case.

Sabrina is that person for me. What if she left tomorrow? Do I remember all of the passwords? Do I have the contact information for everyone on our development team? Is it possible for me to contact someone at the hosting company?

Life is full of surprises. Perhaps you need to relocate to a hotter country for health reasons, or perhaps your wife is offered a job halfway across the country. You should be prepared for whatever reason.

Here's the deal. None of these things are a problem right now. Smart people will recognize this and understand that it does not mean it will not be a problem in the future. The best thing you can do now is take precautions to protect yourself for when things aren't going so well.