Gerrie Car MacFie- CEO of Sunshine Coast Enterprises and regular columnist for Business Matters Magazine

  

Those who know me recognise a personal penchant for champagne.

I love a New Year's celebration for that reason. Professional considerations also attach to a love of the season - it brings a chance to reflect, review and look to the year ahead. A new year generally heralds more than champagne to be savored.

With obligatory corks now popped and January 2011 displayed on the desk calendar, the promise of a new decade zings with the effervescence of making a fresh start. Our team at Sunshine Coast Enterprises is certainly gearing up for an exciting year delivering low cost and local government subsidised business support services, despite the unseasonably grey skies.

For some Queensland businesses located outside the Sunshine Coast a fresh start is not a matter of choice. It will be compulsory.

The catastrophic flooding has inundated hundreds of small business premises across Queensland. Immediate economic retraction will be followed by an unprecedented demand for goods and services to repair and rebuild. As is the case with most natural disasters, the economic law of supply and demand will ultimately prevail.

This should present out-of-region export opportunities for suppliers, tradespeople, and services located here on the Coast.

In the last edition of Business Matters Magazine, I wrote about businesses moving from survival to thrivival mode. Economic recovery post-the big wet will have some winners and some losers. There will be business survivors and the few that seize the opportunity to thrive. These survivors and thrivivors of the big wet will be the businesses that have prepared, planned and stayed informed.

Losers will be those unable to make a fresh start.

An estimated 50 percent of small businesses that suffer catastrophic natural disaster are unable to resume operations. Businesses that have not made allowance for adequate insurance cover will be most at risk. Insurance coverage is the bubble that can burst and destroy a business. Based on industry and Australian Government research into effects of natural disasters; no insurance, under and over-insurance, will be a reality that constrains the majority of small business owners from achieving a successful fresh start in the post-disaster period.

So, whilst businesses here on the Coast have a flood-free opportunity to not only plan, but implement a fresh start strategy for 2011, it may be time to also do what many counterparts across central and eastern Queensland have not done. Planning for hazard mitigation before disaster strikes, including a risk analysis and insurance review, will help ensure sunny days no matter what the weather brings.

And of course, when your business is reaping rewards from the fresh start initiatives implemented in 2011, the champagne corks can pop, bubbles can flow and celebrations can be initiated for reasons other than New Year's Eve.

For information sheets on Disaster Resistance for Business, and a list of business support services provided by Sunshine Coast Enterprises and subsidized by local government funding go to www.scenterprises.com.au

Photo: Reflecting on the year passed and celebrating the opportunities ahead.