Immediate exit!

If you had to evacuate your home office in an emergency, do you know what you’d take?

There was a shout, followed by frantic pounding on my front door. “Get out! We’ve got to evacuate our building!”

I flung open the door to find my neighbor breathlessly explaining that he’d punctured a gas pipe. Yes, the fire department and ComEd had been called, but everyone needed to leave the building. Immediately.

My mind went calm as I moved through a series of actions I had performed mentally many months before. I unplugged the cables from my MacMini (fortunately turned off), grabbed a box of family photos from the top closet shelf, tucked my laptop under my arm, scrambled into my coat and shoes, and bounded out the door for the stairs.

My husband and I jumped into our car, heading for his scheduled medical appointment. After dropping him off, I returned and parked across the street from our building, which had now amassed a collection of police vehicles, fire trucks, and utility vans.

Potential disaster

From my parking spot, I stared up at our front windows as a detached observer, and called a friend to distract me from the potential disaster. I wondered if the night’s newscast would lead with “a gas explosion on the north side of Chicago.”

About a half-hour later, the firefighters and utility crew emerged from the building. The trucks dispersed. Time for them to move on to the next emergency. It seemed like this one was over.

I returned home and looked at everything anew. It was all the same, yet different—since I knew the last half hour could have turned out very differently.

What’s your bug-out routine?

My West Coast friends are familiar with “bug out” routines since they face earthquake risk and wildfire danger. Chicagoans also understand the devastation of fire—it’s been in our cultural DNA since 1871.

When seconds count, preparation matters. If you had to evacuate your home office immediately, do you know what you would do?

✅ Do you have an offsite data backup subscription, so if you can’t grab your computer, you could still be up and running in less than a day? (I use Backblaze.)

✅ Are your non-digital treasures in an easy-to-access place and container? For me, this was a tub of family photos on my closet shelf. One smooth pull on the handle and it was by my side. However, I recognize that in some emergencies, even that would be left behind.

✅ Are your phone, wallet, and keys at hand, ready for you to bolt?

✅ If you have pets, are their collars and leashes easily accessible?

✅ Disaster-preparedness experts also advise taking prescriptions, eyeglasses, and important papers such as wills and passports, if time permits.

✅ Rehearse the scenario. I ran a mental movie of “what if” many months ago, so when the moment arrived, I knew exactly what to do.

Next time

Are there things I would change? Yes.

I didn’t grab my passport, and that’s a document that would be a hassle to replace. It’s now stored for easy access.

I also realized that it’s been some time since I updated our household inventory for insurance purposes. A quick iPhone video of our furnishings and belongings is on the to-do list.

Of course, I hope none of us ever has to use any of these preparations. But readiness brings powerful peace of mind.

Hopefully your holiday was much less eventful than mine.

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Popular past issues

If you’ve recently joined us or missed some past issues, here are a few of the most popular from our first 6 months:

How to break through the $100K ceiling
Many solopreneurs struggle with boosting their business above $100,000. Here's why you keep hitting that ceiling, and ways to earn more.

Your most important solopreneur decision
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Working Solo @ 30: A dozen shifts in Solopreneurship since the 1990s
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PS: If these links and buttons seem a bit more purple than dark blue this week, Substack is being a bit weird. We’ll see if things settle out next week.

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