When extreme conditions like last month's snowstorms come to Delaware, business owners need to be ready. Industry expert Donna Childs has a book out titled, "Prepare for the Worst, Plan for the Best," a guide to get small and mid-sized businesses ready for disasters of any kind. She says obviously, you want to protect computers and other office equipment against power outages and take stock of your business as a whole.

Childs: "You have to think about what are the unique aspects of your business and how you would protect them and that exercise will yield some non-obvious insights that will really help you run more efficiently."

Childs says her first taste of how valuable a disaster plan is came when she was working in New York City on September 11th, 2001. Hundreds of businesses were shut down that day, including a pizza shop near where she worked.

Childs: "...and September 10th, 2001 was their first and last day in business. They opened and closed like that."

Childs says the business wasn't ready for a setback of that scope. Childs says the investments a business makes in back up networks and laptops for employees so they can work at home if needed, can start to pay off immediately.

Childs: "I was able to reduce my commercial insurance premiums by showing my insurance carrier that I had a disaster plan in place including provisions for remote working, and that made it less likely that I would file a business interruption claim, so I'm a better risk."