How To Keep Your Business And Finances Healthy

How can business owners survive and thrive during a viral pandemic?

Virus outbreaks can wreak havoc on the economy, entire industries, businesses and executives. What best practices can help business owners keep their companies and personal finances healthy during these chaotic times?

As a doctor, consultant, business owner and investor who has made it through previous crashes and disasters, these are the principles I’ve found most successful.

The COVID-19 pandemic is the latest and perhaps most impactful epidemic we’ve had to face so far. The Black Plague killed around 30 million people in Europe in the 1300s. It took the continent 200 years to recover. The Spanish Flu of 1918 killed more than 50 million people. The world’s population is much larger now. Even an infection with a much smaller mortality rate could kill far more people.

Unfortunately, with the Spanish Flu, it was malnourishment, lack of food, poverty and packed medical centers that were ultimately responsible for more deaths than the original virus strain.

As we’ve seen with other types of disasters such as hurricanes, the ongoing financial side effects can also last for years. They can cost billions. Many businesses don’t survive. Yet, some thrive during these times of distress. They even come out stronger and wealthier.

The coronavirus may prove to be the most significant financial event in the history of America. In one day, it crushed the Dow Jones by more than three times what we saw in the 2008 Great Recession and the most since 1987. It’s likely to get a lot worse before it gets better.

Business Owners And Your Personal Health

You can’t lead well if you are not personally in good health. A rundown immune system, poor sleep and added stress can impact your energy and decision-making ability.

Of course, if you get sick, you can also infect your teams and spread these issues throughout your organization, with compounding impacts.

What can you do to stay in peak health?

? Eat healthy food.

? Get enough quality sleep.

? Exercise daily.

? Practice good personal hygiene.

? Reduce potential exposure to infection.

? Stay home if you are sick.

Tips For Maintaining The Health Of Your Business

Your business is probably your main source of income. It may also be how you fulfill your mission in life to help others and add value to the world. In addition to your customers, your top concerns and responsibilities probably also include your employees and investors. How do you protect all of this?

? Be proactive in making moves that will ensure the continuity of your business.

? Make any needed layoffs at once, versus the demoralizing impact of multiple rounds of redundancies.

? Ask sick team members to stay home.

? Trim unnecessary expenses, but don’t stop marketing.

? Restructure business debt while credit is still available.

Above all, keep communicating with your customers, investors and staff. If you don’t, they could assume the worst and make rash and unhealthy decisions.

How To Keep Your Personal Finances Healthy

Hopefully, most of your own money is no longer tied up in your business. This is a vital time to keep your personal portfolio healthy and thriving. It will help offset any dip in your business performance and give you the freedom and ability to help your business out later if needed.

Don’t let your portfolio get infected: Start by quarantining your portfolio from the financial virus. As seen above, the public stock market is a breeding ground for panic and disaster during these times, and even more so after a long bull run that isn’t based on real fundamentals. We have plenty of public companies that have raised billions of dollars and are still losing money every quarter. They are only running on hope.

It is a good time to limit exposure to public stocks, especially in industries that are directly impacted, such as airlines and municipal bonds, due to rising costs.

Investors can always buy these stocks back later, if desired.

Keep your portfolio healthy: It's equally important to know how to invest through a pandemic. Having six to 24 months of emergency expenses in cash stockpiled to get through leaner times ahead is wise. More than that is counterproductive.

You also need to be investing for growth and cash flow to offset weakness elsewhere.

Where do you find that without unnecessary risk?

Investments' intangible assets such as real estate can save your finances. They won’t evaporate like stocks can when companies go broke. These investments are even better if they are cash-flow properties that provide income every month.

Private equity investments are also an attractive option. Invest in private companies with real fundamentals alongside other savvy investors. Some of the fastest-growing in the big COVID-19 shift seem to include e-learning, helping businesses shift to operating virtually, health and biotech.

There will be other types of pandemics in the future. As with those of the past, these best practices can go a long way to helping businesses and their executives survive and thrive.

This post originally published on Forbes