 Hey there business talk with Tom and Brett and good morning You know, I have my coffee Tom has his tea and you know, it's funny when business we always talk about Marketing we talk about the the things we're gonna do to bring in business the things we're gonna learn the employees We're gonna hire But what we tend to forget is can your business survive without you? What do you think Tom? I know my business can if Tom died it would be unfortunate the YouTube channel would die but the business the checks would still get cash the Processes and procedures are in place so the business can run without me and that's an important thing because you Can have the perfect sales pitch you get all this effort and work put in you've got the great stack You're offering you get in front of the client the client goes man You've got everything we want one final question before we put our You know name on the dotted line here and sign and go with you. What happens if you die? What happens if you are incapacitated in any way and you can't run the business? And if you don't have an answer for that that can be where they just slide the contract back across the table Shake their head and go this is a risk for us And it's really challenging for a small startup coming You know getting really early on into this to get over that But it's something you should be thinking about before you even start your business business Is how you're gonna have some type of continuity your pitching business continuity to them your pitching will do your backups We'll maintain your business and make sure things are going but what if something happens to you and One of the reasons we talk a lot about this and think a lot about this is because not only do you have to have it But we often come into businesses We had a local one where their IT person had passed away suddenly which was unfortunate He died in a motorcycle accident and now they don't have any passwords We had to go in you're an amazing tool out there I mean you did some incredible stuff to get into their system. Well, that's where they're simple That though the password is simple and a little hacking skills. You can bypass a lot of things There's really valid good reasons to use some of the different Skills you may pick up for breaking into things But it was quite the challenge and it left them really they had no idea no idea So they're like we don't know when the backups go we don't know how to restore We don't have any problems. Everything's working, but we don't want to wait. This is very recent. It's tragic He was you know a long-time personal friend of the owner And but now he's gone and now so is every piece of knowledge person hadn't and this owner had never thought about it So this person was doing right to work for a number of years and the owner never thought that this person would Or something would happen and that documentation like this would come up And I'm gonna have a suggestion first though about it And I know we've already established what you need, but how to do it is one of things I always like to put into these talks so you have some right and take away and honestly having an entire book and having Documented all the processes where you keep procedures where you keep passwords Maybe your master password putting it in writing someone will go pulling your hair out screaming Oh my god, you can't ever put a password in a password book But I see having it somewhere with some clues maybe spread amongst two very trusted confident people Right, we're not likely to be on the same motorcycle as you or in cars you on a frequent basis Having some type of safe deposit box with double keys some way of having that information Available and having a plan at which someone else can get it a trusted staff member and things like that I even have a dead man's trigger set up on my Google account to where it goes to there's a lot of series of things It can be as simple as your spouse so they have you know someone you may trust and go I trust my spouse to be able to delegate this information right trusted party These are just a few things it doesn't have to be in a super elaborate plan But at least the basics should be covered so you can give that confidence over to the person you're pitching to because if you Don't there's nothing quite like that whole Losing the flushness in your face and the sinking feeling of I did everything right, but I missed one step and Hopefully on the other side if you're a business owner and watching this going yeah I have this guy that comes in that does my IT work I or Gail and they're like yeah I never thought about what happens if they don't show up and this is just a problem They matter of fact sometimes IT people just ghost Accounts right reasons that are mysterious to us. We've taken over plenty of counts like that Brett We're like what happened the other IT person one day. They didn't answer the phone Well, they just weren't there anymore. They weren't there anymore. They don't return our calls Well, you know, we just we just brought on a company a larger company in New York that asked us questions about how many people we had Working for us, you know, what happens if this way if a person leaves What do you guys do and and we have processes in place to help fill that, you know Yeah, Tom if you were gone, it would be a big loss, you know And and but would we be able to continue on on the stuff we do every day? Yes We would there would be some skill gaps that would be created You know in the in the interim, but we would be able to continue on and what can your business do to continue on? You think about disaster recovery and business continuity But in a business continuity plan, there is that what if this person dies? What if this person is no longer here, you know, and there's there's ways to get around that But you really have to think about that as a whole. What am I going to do? You know and we talk to businesses all the time and That's just a question that never really comes up and it should Yeah, it should it's a mix. I've had people ask me at which I think this is a very forward thinking business I've had some like this client, you know, we dealt with where we had to come in after their IT person died and They were just kind of at a loss because it was a sudden and unexpected and tragic death So it there's both sides of defense on there, but it's better to be prepared It's good to be thinking about it and you shouldn't be if you're thinking from a business strategy standpoint The epicenter of your business that is something you always should be working towards is going Can I put process in seizure place? I mean that's as long as you plan on growing if you just like being the smartest person in the room all the time And you being the gatekeeper and a micromanager where everyone is forced to come to you I don't understand it business philosophy. I do know some people that do that They are the center of the universe as far as their concern. I think that's why they run their business sometimes My style, but hey, it's up to you in the end Well, that's why I like about this team here that you've created Tom not anybody else But you know, you've created this team everybody knows what's going on We all know when we hear a client's name that oh, eric steve someone out your miles You know, Kyle, they're working with that person and we all but we all know what's going on Because it's about Having that ability to continue on if what if Kyle's not here one day What if you're not here? What if I'm not here one day? You know, those are the things that we need to be and you as a business as an as a startup it as a It that's been around for 30 years What about you? Yes, and also don't be afraid to update that documentation 18 years in business and we're still updating documentation We still look at process and procedures. Are these still valid? We try to document new ones to come in because business evolves, especially tech business There's so many changes. My business is nothing like it was Changes years ago. I know So keep that document alive. Keep it up to date. That's my advice also have that document There's the first priest and then keep it up to date keep it alive And it doesn't just apply to you make sure any different person in your system Isn't any hold up or it doesn't hold all the keys to a kingdom to where you have some deficit other than the deficit Of skills who follow those procedures, uh, which is more replaceable than just the knowledge went with them They're the only ones with the password or knowledge of how the system works in our head So that's what I want to leave you with today and thank you. I have a good one guys