The Critical Data Lessons Every Business Must Learn

I get sh done I have fun it's my time and I'm the one I'm breaking [Music] through the critical data lessons every business must learn hey welcome I'm your host coach Phil this is the business Ator if you're watching us live thank you for being here appreciate you and if you're watching us uh on a replay # replay let us know you're watching from if you got feedback comments questions send them our way we'll do our best to respond to everything and everybody that we get uh responding to her are asking us or leaving a comment um oh yeah remember to uh subscribe to our YouTube channel the business renovator on the YouTube channel and um tell your friends because you just never know what what one idea may come from one of my guests that could make a difference in somebody you care about no matter where they are in the world in the meantime I need to do a Shameless plug this is how I keep this afloat [Music] nah [Music] the good news about that is actually it's free no credit cards required it's a 30 minute compliment complimentary coaching session after you've done the business grow score you might find that after you've done the business growth score which is available from coachville doca right on the main page there a button at the top click on that complete the assessment it might just confirm that you're on the right path nothing to do other than stay the course or you might be somewhere else you might be uh struggling in an area and want to ask somebody about uh best practices some ideas around that that's what you could leverage the 30- minute coaching uh session for again no credit card required all you just need to do is let us know that you found us on the business renovator and that's your access to myself and the other thing is if um if I can't help you with your particular concern we have a network of coaches around the globe and I'm sure that I could find somebody that could assist you with a question you have so don't be shy take advantage of that So speaking of taking advantage I'm taking advantage of a nerd this guy I've known him for quite a while um yeah I don't exactly remember the years I think it's 15 16 years something like that anyway he he he came from the frosty Forest of Northern Manitoba to digital Pioneer his uh his ability to be resilient as a techie as a nerd as somebody who helps in the uh don't get hacked World which you'll find out a little bit more today so he entered the tech World in '94 he transformed early challenges into cyber security Vanguard and after graduating from D Institute with a computer science degree in 2003 he actually turned his passion into thriving Tech business uh by 2005 and began his own personal life with his lovely bride so which means he's a a father and a a husband and a all around good guy and a tech nerd he's got 16 years he was at a franchise in the tech space that's where I first met him and he first saw firsthand how digital woes can topple businesses oh ain't that the truth so we're gonna ask Mike today to share some of his tales of grit from the time that he was telling me about a $5,000 gamble in investing in equipment trying to make it get work in his early days and then uh learning from that disaster he broke away to start don't get hacked.com to us right away I'll bring them up now hey look at where's my background go I screwed up look at that anyway welcome how you doing I'll fix back that's craziness um well um let's uh what's will be the first question what do you like about being in a nerd in the tech space because you've been there a long time helping people troubleshoot problems I've done you know when when you're in business or just you know there's all those personality tests out there I can't remember all the names of them but there's so many different types of personality personality tests every personality test I take brings me back and labels me some s of some sort of mechanic or troubleshooter or Hands-On person that is literally the description of what I do doesn't matter if it's computers or like household maintenance I'm not mechanically inclined with vehicles whatsoever so that's one one skill I've never really gra I'm in my 40s I've never really grasped car mechanics but I may know sort of know what the problem is but computers um Electronics you know other type of things I I I think I grew up in this I grew up in the 1980s and back then there's no there's no YouTube so if something didn't really work you took it apart attempted to put it back together and give yourself a pet on the back if it worked and mo mo most of the stuff back then was super simple and easy and you could like resolder stuff yourself things are so much more complicated now but I think realistically just handson and yeah no it's just that's just how I kind of ended up with I like I like the term nerd even though it's associated with my former franchise at the end of the day I think it's if you look in the dictionary nerd means um like oh some there there's a it's actually in the dictionary and it says that you're uh you know high IQ and very brave at you know you know taking on challenges and solving stuff so it doesn't really necessarily mean computers it can be applied to many other fact assets of life well while you're doing that I thought I would go i' never looked up nerd in a dictionary so here I go I'm going to do it right now um a nerd is typically defined as a person who is passionate about intellectual Pursuits often to the exclusion of other activities nerds are often associated with expertise in a specific field such as technology science or Academia and may have a deep interest in topics that considered a niche or unconventional the term is some sometimes used affectionately or as a badge of honor by those who embrace the enthusiasm for knowledge badge of honor see I knew I always like the word I you know doesn't mean you have to wear glasses or anything like that either because you know D throughout my throughout my career people you know and I had my former franchise and that word was in the name they're like don't you feel offended if somebody calls you a nerd and I'm like no because I'm a professional I show up I solve your technology issues I make sure that you're satis 100% satisfied and that's how we build um long lifelong customer base right yeah so you're still in a crazy uh nerd world just as this definition described you fit that to a te based on my experience of hanging out with you um what's the biggest challenge that you're seeing for business owners in and around Tech or maybe there's two well at the end of the day when you start we just like you Phil I do a lot of networking events because I trying to promote myself promote my business coming out of the pandemic there's so many more people who are trying you know working on being self-employed you know they maybe they have experience with it maybe they don't and at the end of the day um my customer base is either going to be in established business who's been in business for five you know 10 15 20 years and has employees and they're profitable or that's going to be attracting newcomers to the business realm that are trying to learn how to be business owners and at the end of the day you've got to do it yourselfers everywhere because what people do is they buy something new um they want to learn it themselves sometimes they have the intellectual acument and T and the amount of time to learn it themselves and sometimes they don't and they and they and they get frustrated with it so I find at the end of the day technology is always going to be one of the you know doesn't matter if your business is small or big if you don't have the proper technology te ology in it and you don't have or it's not been implemented properly or it's not been documented properly it's going to be one of the main bottlenecks that pres prevents your business from scaling so it doesn't matter if you're trying to get to you know a brand new business trying to get to five figures or going from five to six figures or trying to get up to six to seven figures per year technology and systems is always going to be one of the fundamental drivers of that scaling and a lot of you know unless you can find the right people to implement the right systems and train you on those systems you're going to just be spinning your wheels you know there's social media there's crms there's podcasts there's how do I invoice a customer how do I get paid like all these systems now in 2024 are all run by technology and if you have no patience for it you have to find somebody who you get along with who does have the patience for with it and for it to train you and step baby step you through that process so would it be fair to see that majority of established businesses are aware of that and have some sort of strategy where there's a bigger challenge might be within smaller upcoming and they like you say they buy they they listen to the people in the store they trust them they got a trusted advisor um they buy what they buy because they and then they install it on their own then they start running their business but they're still their own it guy or gal exact exactly so said it doesn't matter if it's you know if you're a small business like usually anybody under I'd say that five to 10 employee situation likely is doing everything themselves or the owner doing it or there's some best friend or business partner who's doing all the technology stack and it likely isn't working and that is what is stalling their business F they keep running into this they keep running into the same problems whether it's HR issue or uh accounting system issue or this issue or this issue and then with the larger companies usually that I do Consulting for like mechanical service companies and plumbing companies they've hired people to put systems in place and when those systems haven't been documented or implemented properly they're going to break at some point and then business comes to a complete stop or maybe they're not using it effectively enough to make sure it pays for itself because at the end of the day if it's hard if it's Hardware it's usually cap you know onetime Capital expense unless you're leasing It software is always going to be uh monthly contract monthly subscriptions and a lot of people have a lot of angst against monthly subscriptions especially if they're paying for something and they don't feel that there's any Roi on it because it wasn't implemented properly so in your company don't get hacked is that one of the things you help do do you like to do an audit of what they've got yeah at the end of the day um our business is called don't get hacked so of course we want to ensure businesses don't get hacked they have proper cyber security proper doc um data documentation and proper backup so in case of any type of emergency we can put their business back together within a defined time frame based on how urgent their business is um so when we're you know when we're onboarding larger custom like customers like companies with more than like two employees when we're on boarding those we're going through we're auditing everything that they're using because I know that they may have one pain point they say this system just doesn't work and then it's a result of it's actually if you look at the underlying problem there's four or five other issues that are actually causing that one system problem but if you don't have the technology or softare background you can kind of Point your finger well I think the issue is this and then I'm like well hey you brought me one issue and just me doing a 30 minute maybe you know 30 minute to an hour audit of their systems their computers their internet their email systems whatever they're using every business uses different technology um I can you know we could do an one of our tools is doing like a external penetration test well they'll do other type of tests in the you know on the computers on their email system and I'll be like hey you've told me you have one problem I'm looking at about seven and they're all interrelated it's like you know it's no different than the health of your body like you say Hey you go to to the doctor you're like I have this problem but that problem might be the end result of five or six other problems building up so do you do like um recommend because maybe not everybody's in the world where they can reach out to you talk to you so would you recommend that whenever anybody's talking to a nerd that they uh check to see if they have the ability to do a um a comprehensive coste effective uh systems analysis or audit would you recommend that as a starting point or am I off base there well I would recommend that they go to our website don't get hack. CA and reach out to us because we will provide a complimentary upfront 30 minute um conversation with them because I know at the end of the I would love to help every business owner out there but at the end of the day I want to at least guide them to say these are the question you know if you feel more comfortable hiring somebody in your local town or city or whatever or you already have somebody and you want to actually audit what they're doing we'll give you question we'll give you questions and um like a a checklist to go through to verify your systems are actually set up like set up properly we could do remote check we can we can remotely help you check on certain things and you know document take take photos and send that documentation to us because what I'm finding at the end of the day is not every person in technology not going to bash anybody or bash any company but the the depth of your skill set when it comes to technology is varies widely um when I had my other franchise how many imp you know how many um technicians did we go through probably like two dozen in the 16 years that I was there I I I typically you know we we'll do ongoing training with our technicians but I find sometime you know usually you hit that six Monon Mark and then you realize that technician may not really be they've been fixing computers their whole life but are they actually um do they have a are they willing to learn and do they have a deep enough skill set to actually troubleshoot business technology for a business that has more than you know five employees because technology troubleshooting is very stressful and when everything works great you're like he I'm on the top of the world and when the business calls in and their email system doesn't work for 50 people and the computers aren't working you and this and this and this like it's a it can be very stressful I I don't mind it because I know we'll get to the root of the problem somebody messed up Summers and turned something off or some hacker got in if it's a big problem like that and you know and I've done enough remediations with companies that size that I have a stepbystep process but how you know I don't have companies with 50 employees calling me every day so um you know I'm looking for I'm looking for more customers like that but at the end of the day this is what we do companies come to us and say I've got this problem and I'll do like a 30 minute complimentary consultation with them to say you know here's your for or five issues I see sometimes they don't have the budget they don't even have any M you know if they're a startup sometimes they have I'm like here's the do it yourself steps to get you started and when you're ready to uh invest money and having a professional help you and make sure that you've got proper backups you know check in with us in six months and we'll see how you're doing so as a business coach I would incur them to uh at some point in time uh to actually look at what's the cost of being your own it Guy versus having an outside professional do it what I found is one is I'm not a nerd and not frustrates the heck out of me it actually de-energizes me Takes Me Away from what I'm best suited for and I'm not serving my clients because I'm hijacked by technology so I have a technology team that helped me with a variety of different things um okay would you say that would be something you've found from the tech side that you talk about with your customers well I do because there you know I well I have this I have this I have my own podcast called business speed eting withm magic mike.com and that's one of my questions to business owners out there is who is um since I be since I started don't get hacked.com up on our threee anniversary my real Quest is I'm like in order to build this business I need to find the size of customer that is perfect for our service because I know the size of from my previous franchise I know how many uh you know what type of Cl what size of businesses we coming to ask us for help and I'm like I need to meet more people I want to find out at what point are business owners doing their own you know if they're Tech heavy enough what point are they doing their own do-it-yourself tech support versus hiring out I'm finding that if they fully admit that they have no tech support or ability to do tech tech support for themselves usually it's their spouse or somebody in the family doing it that will get them to about two to three employees realistically based on like 70 80 interviews I've done um others burn through Tech technicians every six every six months so they've learned to do this is when I was talking about depth of technical skill out there um You can call up any Tom Dick or Harry down the street but doesn't mean they know how to doesn't mean they know how to comp doesn't mean your personality is gonna get along and doesn't mean they have the skill set to you know we we do all we do Linux Windows and Mac troubleshooting not every techn company out there not every it support company out there handles a wide variety of tech support calls we do but I've also have 20 years well 20 years professional experience and I've been fixing ripping apart stuff since 93 994 so I have my 10,000 hours in in almost every computer operating system and device out there right so I feel very confident with my skill sets um and then what I find with you know usually a business 10 employees or more will have or close to have you know they may have um level one tech support who knows how to reboot a computer reboot a printer change toner basic basic basic stuff and they will do a lot of Googling so of course we anybody who you know any size of business who comes to us we will definitely help them out we're focusing on larger companies 10 to 50 employees where I know they're going to need a full-time tech support company but I've also found the market in Canada um those are usually it's either really small organizations or huge corporations I have not been finding a lot of uh businesses over 10 employee 10 to 15 employees locally here so but maybe it's just my networking groups that I'm attached to so yeah it could be your marketing needs to week or two but we're not here we're not here to help you with your marketing we're here to pull out of your cranium some Intel so um to me it's it sound like you're quite diverse and what you can support and I I think that's pretty cool in today's world abon if somebody was going to make a change in going to new to upgrade technology do you have any Sage advice that you would depart Upon Us bu um if if they're uh looking to upgrade the compu like I'm finding right now that customers are you know most people don't replace their computers every two to three years most businesses I'm dealing with at least in the Alberta Canada Market they're pushing their Hardware 10 years before they upgrade so um because I sell a lot of Compu i s i don't I I I sold computers last week I sold computers this week everybody's using 10-year-old stuff so um buy as much as you can afford um especially when it comes to speed and storage space BEC uh because at the end of the day there's a lot of there's a lot of manufacturers of computer hardware there is a lot of low lowend it's the computer world now is the same as it was 10 years ago you can buy a low pric computer you're going to get what you pay for you're gonna buy a high high price computer you're gonna get what you pay for but at the end of the day it's also I really stress cut um warranty I know a lot of people don't like the word warranty um I like it with computers because when I sell for example a Windows computer I want it to be a Dell because I know we can we can choose a uh two three four five six year extended on-site warranty what that means is if you have any problem you don't have to pay me for a service call you call if you want you know you'll call Dell and spend an hour on the phone with Dell troubleshooting and if Dell confirms there is a problem they will send a technician on site to you within a business day or two and usually swap out the computer or or whatever part needs to be done so your future cost of operation with that machine is very low because you're not paying for a brake fix technician to come and fix it for you um desktops usually are less problematic than laptops are I know a lot of people like laptops and a lot of people will drop laptops or spill water on laptops or spill wine on laptops within a year of ownership and of course your warranty doesn't cover accidental Dam Dage or uh unless you're paying extra for accidental damage or insurance so it's one of those things um if you're not really sure just because something's on sale at the store does not mean it's a good deal sometimes that stuff's been sitting there for two years nobody's bought it and then they lowered the price just to clear it out so cool so I want to um help people find where you're at and we're gonna I'm gonna bring uh an image up and it's going to look like craziness but I'll bring it up anyway because it is what it is so here we go bring it up okay bring it up oh there it is well it's actually not quite as crazy as I thought it would be okay I thought we were going to have the mirror upon mirror upon mirror but it's having that effect and um what we're looking right at here right now is your LinkedIn profile this is where they can come in learn a little bit more about you uh connect with you send you messages um ask you some basic questions in there probably set up actually you've got an offer on their book a 30 minute Discovery uh conversation via Zoom so you could go there that's just for being here you've been now introduced to uh Mike the nerd who is don't get hacked uh Guy and um let's go to the other site though which is don't get hacked it's right there so this is your website there's contact information there if they want to skip the LinkedIn and they just want to go right to where you are I see you've got an emergency line you've got a fill out a form for non- Urgent tech support uh you can book a session um 24hour 20 pardon me let me do it correctly 247 remote Technology support for business owners using PC Mac and cloud services uh it's pretty broad so um there's also uh all your different locations Calgary Dubai us office your list of services press kit podcast and brand sharks whatever that is I don't know what it's my first book brand sharks oh okay yeah very let me click on it see what happens that then goes to my YouTube channel chapter one there we goand I I I I made my own audio book I read the I'm I'm sitting in the Calgary pum Club in the podcast studio and I'm reading each chapter of the book to you so cool that's how that goes okay very you're marketing yourself so um if there was one thing that you would impart Upon Our users are are I'm talking like a computer tech users are audience what might that be oh that's a good question um backups the first thing I ask anybody who you know I want backups backups backups because our business name is called don't get hacked onca hackers are not the only thing that's going to mess up your data and cause you to lose picture like one of the most frequent requests we get is I've lost my files and in certain situations maybe we can magically restore those for you but at the end of the day you're gonna as a as a user as a techn techology user no matter what you use if it's a mobile device a tablet a laptop or desktop the odds are once a year you're gonna lose data there's like this um there's this this this statistic on the internet I've I've referenced it before and other like magazine articles and podcasts I've done but once a year you'll you every year you'll lose a piece of data so that it could be email it could be contact information could be picture could be something more devastating how are you backing up your stuff are you using like a thumb drive or online backup system we're in 2024 you need to know where your back how to backup your stuff because there's user error there's flood there's fire there's theft there's hackers there's all these disasters that that you know when you encounter a disaster what do humans do humans get stressed out and then they start making decisions which could negatively affect things important to them but you know what if you've got backups of your data that's one less thing you have to worry about it's like having an insurance policy on your house or your car or anything like that right you want to have a plan so your data is one you know you don't even have to worry about it if you if you know you got backups that's my main um people can you know if you don't have strong passwords people will get into your stuff but if you if you've got your data backed up doesn't matter you can always restore it but if you don't have backups you can't go backwards you can't there's there's no way to get that stuff back up back unless you have a plan to recover it then go ahead no that's okay what I heard was this back up back up when I was in yeah when I uh when I there's a networking group years ago I was part of and I'm like I was like B like you sound like a broken record backup Backup backup I'm M at the end of the day it's the only thing that saves your bacon is backup and they sound familiar backup and bacon so if you want to bring home the bacon make sure you've got it backed up so on that gotta wrap up Michael thank you for being here hang out for a little bit um buch of I mean scratch the surface of significance of what you do and what uh you know what's relevant around Tech but I appreciate you hanging out and sharing a bit of your knowledge with us and our audience we'll talk to you soon so that was pretty informative uh couple of things is uh have a system checklist with yourself maybe get your tech support people if it's not uh their in place maybe have them create one for you if they have one get it to you or if they don't go where we pointed you out to go hang out with don't get hacked and talk to them about getting a checklist checked out from that point of view what I would like to do is leave you with my uh normal ending and that is this I want you to continue being wonderful because you are unique and truly are wonderful until next time I'm your host coach Phil this is been an episode of the business renovator I I have fun it's my time and I'm the one I'm breaking through

Channel: The Business Renovator

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Id: ZecuF15iHaw

Length: 33min 20sec (2000 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 11 2024