Detailed Notes
In the latest episode of the Building Better Developers podcast, hosts Rob Broadhead and Michael Meloche discuss business continuity, a concept that is often overlooked until it’s too late. They explore the question: What happens when business operations are disrupted? Whether it’s an illness, a vacation, unexpected growth, or even a global crisis, ensuring that a business can continue operating smoothly is essential for long-term success.
Read More: https://develpreneur.com/business-continuity-keeping-your-business-running-when-life-happens
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*Additional Resources*
* Growing Your Brand and Business – Suggestions For Any Entrepreneur (https://develpreneur.com/growing-your-brand-and-business-suggestions-for-any-entrepreneur/) * Spend Time Or Money – The Best Approach To Growing (https://develpreneur.com/spend-time-or-money-the-best-approach-to-growing/) * Hiring Talent: Strategies for Building Strong Teams (https://develpreneur.com/hiring-talent-strategies-for-building-strong-teams/)+ * Scaling with Contractors and Employees: A Strategic Guide to Business Growth (https://develpreneur.com/scaling-with-contractors-and-employees-a-strategic-guide-to-business-growth/)
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Transcript Text
[Music] oh man I got too much too much going on there we go there just hit record as far as you know anyways all right we are gonna do business continuity this will be a fun one because this may go this may go far and wide we'll see how this goes it should be fun three a two well hello and welcome back we are continuing our season of building better businesses this episode this is the building better developers podcast develop preneur podcast I'll get you the other stuff in a minute first I want to throw the little teaser out that we are going to talk about business continuity what happens when life happens basically well when life happens to me I say Rob Broadhead because that's who I am why don't you take advantage of this thing and find a way to solve a problem and one of the problems I saw was that there wasn't a podcast called developer orb about building better developers so I happened to be one of the founders of said podcast also a founder of RB Consulting and a person that sometimes takes a very long time to get to the point that he was trying to get to as I just showed you but with RB Consulting we are a boutique consulting company and what we do is we step like beside you we we under work with you to understand your business now in doing so I just want to like something I haven't mentioned is in you describing your business to us and what is your secret sauce and what is it that makes you you makes you and your business unique actually is a very good journey for any entrepreneur business owner to go through because when you really step back and say I'm going to explain the inner workings of my company to somebody else it really does help you sort of review those and go like wow do I really want to do that is that how we do it we really need to do that still because that's part of the conversation and where we take you is I'll get your business and your secret sauce and we help craft a recipe for you for technology for how to build your team how to get your all of your devices and your applications and things like that through in through Innovation integration simplification automation we find ways for you to take your technology sprawl Wrangle that thing in put a nice little pretty bow on it and leverage it so that you're often one of your most expensive Investments other than your employees you can get the most out of it and that can help you and your business today tomorrow 6 months from now 6 years from now even that's what we bring to the table and when we walk away usually everybody is wellfed and ready to go tackle their own day in whatever way that is good thing bad thing it might be a bad thing you think that it took me too long on that in that introduction but this time around we're going to go with the good thing bad thing of good thing is and I've sort of had this recently uh business business has has been really well got a lot of stuff going on so there is a steady stream of stuff coming in the bad thing is and this is something we'll probably talk about another one and we we have touched on before is that we were not as prepared for the growth as we would have liked to be there are you know there's we are literally at a point of like maybe adding you know adding people and stuff like that which you can't just go out and like you know check a box on a website and then boom you've got person it's sometimes almost like that if you look at some of the sites that are out there but for what we're looking for we've got to spend a little more time a little more investment and we got a little bit surprised at how fast things have moved and how things have changed and you know that's the world we live in today so good and bad it's like hey we've got a lot of business and it's a honestly the bad it's a good bad to have it's a good problem for us to be working through also good is that I get to spend yet another episode with Michael and he's going to introduce himself whether he does it good or bad thanks Rob hey everyone my name is Michael mlash I'm one of the co-founders of building better developers otherwise known as develop andur I'm also the founder of Envision QA where we help businesses who are having bad days of Technology where their technology or software is not working for them we are a software uh Consulting business where we come in and we can help you build custom software we can help you take the existing software you have we can help you fix it we can help you test it we can help you basically make your customers happy or make your experience with your own software uh better we also help you walk through the user experience we help you understand what it is that you need out of your software what it is that your software really does and we kind of fill in the holes we help you understand that hey are you paying for what you need or do you need to Chuck that out the window and get something better to basically make your lights easier make your business grow and to hopefully scale faster and make everyone happy good and bad well kind of with what I was just saying there we have run into some issues as well where scalability is kind of good kind of bad um I'm looking to grow my company more towards the second half of the year and like Rob said it's not real easy to just go out and grab someone off the internet and say hey come work for me you kind of got to be careful you want to make sure that the people you get kind of meet your mission that work with you that kind of have the same goals in mind that you have and that's been a little difficult so that's kind of the bad thing I haven't really been able to find someone yet but the good thing is I am able to look I'm starting to grow and so that's kind of my good bad in this situation so what and this actually sort of goes into that a little bit is business continuity is what I want to talk about and this is something that again I think it seems like it particularly like Sol preneurs or you know side households or small businesses stuff like that we really don't tend to think about it until we get into it and then by the time we're out of it we forget about it and what it is is what happens when things get in the way for business continuity and it it goes a little bit into Disaster Recovery it's things like and but it's really not so much about recovering it's about continuing business as usual when non- business as usual things occur now in a small business this very often will be things like U life events like uh suddenly somebody goes on maternity leave or somebody's got has a you know takes two weeks of vacation or you know they've got they end up a accident and they end up in a hospital or they're sick or they got to deal with a relative or all these things that life throws at us they can disrupt business what we want to do is be able to avoid doing that now if we are a oneperson shop if life hits us it's probably going to hit our business now not always there are some things we can do we can build automations we can do things that allow business to continue on even when we're not a part of it and honestly that is like really one of the goals we should have is to be able to have our business just hum along and not need us if you want to see like that you know done I guess right or whatever and get a lot of hints on it it goes back to one of our favorites is go to 4H Hour Work Week there's a lot of stuff there that is really focused on automating your business and it's not really it's not always implementation as much of its ideas some thoughts some things you can do to scale your business out without having to fully scale your business out or to let it grow as it needs to grow and Shrink as it needs to shrink hopefully never the latter with business continuity it is going to be things like what happens if I take a week off maybe it's for you what happens if I take a day off what happens if I get sick for a day is my business going to suddenly shut down for a day if I have a holiday if I have you know if I take a vacation if I go somewhere and I am not connected to my business for a while will it continue do I have as we grow I think it becomes more have I empowered the people around me my team my company do they have what they need to do their job or am I still holding too tightly on to things and that's going to keep them from getting things done if I disappear for a while there's always going to be tasks that we take on that we're like okay I need to take this task and do it but maybe it's something that and it it may be something that you do it that's you're the best person in the company that does it that's great but if you're not available for let's say a week is it still valuable for for that to just now be delayed or is it something where you should want to be able to give that off to somebody else so they can keep the ball moving forward and this is I think one of the things that we struggle with the most as entrepreneurs as Business Leaders is that we don't always you know scale ourselves out properly we're not delegating enough we have too much stuff still in our head we don't have all of these processes in place and I say this as someone that is very much in the middle of this is of trying to expand some things out that has been very comfortable and very and you know honestly successful doing things without having to scale up but now when you want you know it's time to grow it's time to start shifting some of those things it becomes very difficult because there's a lot to do there are a lot of things that we take for granted but if we're suddenly not in the picture it's like okay well how does that get done and it may be as simple as like for me as a technology kind of guy ear on it was things like people having access to the servers that I could log on to on a regular basis so if a site goes down does somebody have access to the stuff they need so they can log onto the server and restart it and get those things going but there's going to be bigger things like that there going to be things like you know if if you have uh for example like let's say you've scheduled some uh some training sessions or some customer sales calls or something like that do you have essentially a backup do you have some way for that stuff to continue if somebody quits if you have a person on your team particularly a small team and they quit are you going to be able to sort of pick up and go now it may be that you're going to like you stumble for a minute or it's going to it's not going to be just super smooth but are you going to be able to continue business as usual when these things occur and I'll flip this over to Michael and see what what are some of your thoughts on this and maybe some of your experiences with it so yeah I we constantly refer back to the 4our work week because it there was a lot of good information in that for starting out and kind of preparing yourself and one of the interesting things Tim ferce talked about was extracting himself from his company because like you said you know he when we're like this soulpreneur or we're we build the business from scratch we know every in and out of the business and it's very hard for us to let go or divy out the work part in part for those fears of if I give it to someone are they going to quit and then am we going to have to take that back how am we going to handle that the other thing is what happens if they get hit by a bus or God forbid you know some illness happens like covid you know how is your business going to survive when a pandemic hits we talked about Disaster Recovery in the last episode but in this one you have to think a little bit differently it's not just all about Disaster Recovery this is about business processes and how to keep your business running smoothly so you can scale so you can grow and keep things moving when essentially people disappear or when things happen that you have to keep the lights on the business running even if the lights are off and you're not able to get to a computer uh case in point one of the biggest ones I'll talk about here is financial information so one of the critical things that hit me and I talked about this last time was uh my business account has been hit by the bank as I got hit with the fraud alert I got locked out of my system which has now made me start to concern is okay what happens to me since uh I am you know the owner of the company I have access to all the financial information no one else does so if I were to get hit by a bus or I were to get sick or go on vacation are the bills still going to get paid I have Automation in place to pay a lot of these things but you still it's scary because you have to essentially give some of the keys to your financial information so you have to make sure you have the right person you can trust to have access to these so if something does happen to you they can get into your system and make sure that the bills still get paid that people can get paid payrolls handled so those are a lot of things you don't think about at all and it's just one of those things where it's like oh crap you know you have one of those uh moments where it's like oh wait uh whoops the other thing that's interesting is you know vacation PTO sick days depending on your type of business if you are very heavily customer support driven you better make sure you have some a system in place or people in place not one you do not want a single point of failure when you're dealing with customer service especially if you're dealing with tech support or help you better have someone buy you I don't care if they're a part-time whatever hire someone find someone cheap find a high school kid or a kid in college to help you at least test the idea of scaling up your C customer support so that you have more than one point of failure uh and that's the other thing for business continuity similar to disaster recovery but this is more internal business workings of the business what are the single points of failure that are going to cause your business to fail because you have not thought about scaling you have not thought about okay if I'm not here doing it or this person's not here doing this can the work get done so again I keep referring to single point of failure but in this particular context anything in your business that is a single point of failure where there's only one person doing it do you have processes in place to get access to the work that they're doing do you have a uh Dropbox or a shared network folder where everyone puts their information or are they putting it on their local machines and oops that laptop gets broken or they lose the laptop or their car is stolen and the laptop's gone how do you get that information is your business going to be impacted so these are just some of the things that I think of when I think business continuity it's not necessarily just disaster recovery but this is business how am I going to keep the business working how am I going to keep my customers happy how am I going to get the work done if something were to happen to me or if life happens you know if my daughter uh decides she wants to have a baby and suddenly I'm out for a week being a grandpa uh how am I going to keep the business going so these are the types of questions that come to mind when I hear business continuity and this is I think that it's not just emergencies and stuff like that and I I just have to point out it is very funny that you said somebody gets hit by a bust or God forbid a pandemic it's like okay you just got hit by a bus no big deal but the pandemic whoa that's a big deal I know it is a scale of things but it is one of those things it's just very amusing how we phrase our stuff but I want to go back to that actually you brought up a great point with the whole idea of like what happens if there is some positive thing that happens in your life that you want to enjoy and you don't get to because you didn't figure out how to allow your business to continue and I trust me I have lived this I do it on a regular basis where I'm like Dad I would love to do this thing but I can't because I have these other obligations and they are it is the kind of thing that's say if you're serious about your business if you you know if this doesn't if this never bothers you and it's just a side hustle you're like ah no big deal then you're it's always going to be a little bit of a side hustle and you're just not as serious about it and you if you if you lose customers and things like that then you're going to have to deal with that and just say well okay it's because that's not as important if you want to build a business if you want to have customers that trust you and all that kind of stuff you have to find ways to be there and get these things done and sometimes it's very difficult these are the things that we don't talk about often enough probably as entrepreneurs is that it is really really difficult to let it all go for a while and go away and unplug and chill we don't get to do that very often but that's what business continu continuity will do for you is as you're going through these exercises and putting these things in place it will allow you to actually step away from your business and sometimes this is critical even not even for your Health but so that you can actually work on your business instead of in your business which is another thing that is like I'm living it right now I would love to spend more time there's so many things I'd like to do on my business but I too busy in the business right now because I need to work on some of these continuity things and build some of these pieces out and it's sometimes good to have that problem because then it's like it's a pain point it's something that's going to poke you on a regular basis you're like okay I've got to change this I got to move this I've got to adjust this I've got to hire a person whatever it is so that you can put the things in place to allow your business to continue whether that's without you without you know some critical you know key person that's part of your your business all those things that can happen that can cause your business to stumble put these things in place so you don't have to now I will I just I will add to all of this is that it it doesn't have to be and I think this is where too often we get stuck it doesn't have to be perfect it doesn't have to be that the business continuity is 100% the same as when it's you know in its normal phase that when we move into we'll say business continuity that it right away is exactly the same and nobody notices it's okay if people notice it's things like it's okay if you have an outof office response on your email that says hey I'm out of office but send all of your stuff to any questions to this person and they will be able to take care of it or they'll be able to help you out if there's an emergency and things like that it doesn't yes it's an extra step for them but it does allow things to continue it's not perfect and you know maybe eventually they'll just go straight to that person if that's what you want or if not you will you know you will come back you will recover whatever it is and then they can return you know business as normal can you know business as usual can return thoughts on those yeah so that made me think of one additional thing so as in a lot of our podcasts we've talked about automating your business find common tasks and automate those if especially when we're starting out and you're bootstrapping your business you are typically going to do a lot of that you're going to have a lot of these automation uh things in place like backing up systems automating systems keeping things running smoothly the problem is six months a year from now two years from now if one of those breaks you're going to forget about and this is a very good point to think about especially when you grow your business or with uh you know work with your customers make sure you have some type of documentation around these in a central location that is backed up and shared so if something happens to any person that is working with a system or doing a process that even if it's automated you have a way to go say okay this is how it's supposed to work so if it goes down you have a way to recover this example like one of the things I was thinking about is this the it got a little bit lost on that for a second is is the podcast itself and and blogs and things like that if you are a Content producer is there is we've talked about the regular scheduled things that you want to hit you it's just like payroll people want to get paid they don't like it when their paycheck doesn't show up on the day that they're supposed to get paid but we also have business things that we're supposed to do we have in this case they I'm going to go directly into this so the development or podcast as you probably know and if you don't you should listen to more of these we release on Tuesdays and Thursdays and if I'm incorrect in that Michael correct me but I think we've done this for a while and earlier on we did Monday Wednesday Friday and with we have talked about if you do a podcast if you do a Blog that you want to have stuff in the can you want to have stuff that is ready to go in case something happens and you're not able to hit your you know your normal routine and a lot of times it's but your normal routine should include doing extra things because sometimes something could happen and you're GNA you know Miss a week miss a month whatever it is and you need to be able to go say okay well we're ahead of the game we can absorb that and we can move forward and so that's something that would be like that is very near and dear to our heart is that we want to be able to have things in place so that for example if one of us Michael or I has something going on and we can't record then you know in our case we always have the worst case it's a solo podcast for a you know an episode or two uh but you ideally we don't want that to happen so we want to make sure we're ahead of the game so if we miss a week then it's like okay we missed a week we'll just go back to we'll go to our you know our scheduled stuff and we're off and running so there's they're very practical things that will basically help your sanity when things happen and does make it so that in general things are not as urgent and then it allows you to not have to get into the effectively what it is is the wait until the day before your final examed and then start to study really hard for that test this is something that that's what really business continuity is about and it's it's that same kind of mindset is that like look things are going to happen I don't want to be stuck in like I don't want to procrastinate I don't be stuck on this stuff where at the last second I got to do it and then I gota like just slam it home and I'm not going to have the quality that I want instead make sure that we're building these things as we go and putting things in place and uh contingency plans basically so that we can handle the disaster recovery part uh closing thoughts before we go to the challenge yeah so again business continuity you know take a look at yourself and your business and identify those single point of failures look for what can your business do if you are not there or if you pull someone out of the business business will the business continue to run do a self-analysis of the business now I don't want to steal from what the challenge is going to be but personally you should do this not just once in a while but work this into like once a quarter once a week always review your processes for points of failure and to make sure that you have coverage and this is something that's this is the challenge is go into your this week we and or actually you can even do this now look at the week behind what happens if you weren't available let's say a week ago some life event pick whatever one it is it could be as simple as you got sucked into March Madness and you just really spend a lot more time doing that than you wanted to it could be uh you had a bad allergy day or you know whatever it is or it could be you're just sick and tired for a little bit and you need some rest what happens if you're not there what what was in place what do you have in place so that you could I don't know reach out to somebody uh set a couple of flags or you know do a couple of things and then be like okay I'm I'm not going to be available for a while or that somebody else could pick it up and say oh you are out you know you're not available for a while so here's the things that need to be done take a look at that what would you need to do is it would that have happened if you just decided not to show up for work Monday would everything have flowed properly and if not what are the things it wouldn't what needed to be done and then whether it is telling those people and putting those things in place to say okay if this ever happens then do this or just having a document sometimes a business continuity document process procedure folder would is just as useful if not more so because it's like hey if somebody doesn't show up if I don't show up here's where you go to figure out what this stuff does and honestly you should have this for everybody in your team there should be something there should be a place you can go that says hey somebody was sick today this is what their normal stuff is this is where they're at so that you can pick it up and and you know keep things moving forward that is your challenge is look back how do you fix it and then of course the follow-up is that fix it put those procedures in place and let's get that going for you that being said we're going to wrap this one up as always you can reach out to us info developer.com for email you can go out to the developer.com site and leave us contact form information you can leave us respon some any kind of review and responses you can do wherever you get the podcast out on the develop Andor Channel out on YouTube uh x no longer Twitter you can go out there and you can leave comments there we are at develop Andor we have a Facebook page you can go out there and leave us stuff love to hear from you your War Stories your suggestions your comments your feedback all that stuff we take into account we very much we hold it near and dear to our heart and we use that to build you know future episodes and even future Seasons so you help us help you as they say but for now my final challenge of this episode is for you to go out there and have yourself a great day a great week and we will talk to you next time bonus material so one of the things we didn't necessarily touch on is the tools and software that you can use to help you organize and figure out your business continuity one of the biggest things in larger companies is having an or chart who's responsible for what so if you're a small company it's going to be one or two people or maybe three but if you're one do that or chart regardless if you are just one person build out an or chart and figure out what are all the things that you do to keep your business running and that may help you understand that oh I'm only payroll but if I hire someone am I going to have the time to do payroll or it C customer support this if you break your hierarchy out if you are one person and you're trying to do the order chart do your order chart by services or by business features that you have to work on within your business taxes payroll uh bookkeeping you know writing software if you break it out that way one that's going to help you identify all the ways you can grow your business as you extract yourself from certain things to focus on others and that will also help you figure out where and when you need to hire someone someone when those tasks start weighing you down and I think that's the that's the best bonus piece I can say is that Disaster Recovery we talked about last episode and then business continuity in particular doing these tasks not only help you in emergencies but they do help you when you need to like carve off or peel off a piece of stuff and put it to somebody else because now you have the things in place and you can say all right I'm going to hand this over to you instead of it being a a one-time thing or a short period of time thing or a Band-Aid it is like now this is going to be the new normal so we're going to hand this over to this person and or this service or this Automation and now I the owner of that process whether it's you or one of your employees don't have to do that anymore there are other people that can do it and we can scale it up too sometimes maybe it's something that it's like there's a lot of work that goes into that and there's a certain point as your company grows that one person can't do it anymore you have to split off to another one then okay you can do that and this also allows you to do it um the bonus of this is think about this is you can do this peac mail this is something you can do where you can say like you know what I don't need a full-time employee to do it but I do need somebody I just need like one day a week of somebody to do this and you can go get like a virtual assistant you can go hire somebody part-time there's this gig economy and all those kinds of things to be able to say hey I can grow and I can do it with protecting my sanity as well now we will wrap this one up as you can see I have not protected my sanity enough and that comes through on the podcast and everywhere else so I am this I live this stuff and I very much a a firm believer in hey get out there and do it where you can so that you don't end up like I am not always a bad thing but on a lot of days it make it very much a struggle so the struggle is real as they say that being said I'm going to wrap this one up and let you get out there I'm going to get out I'm going to go get some more caffeine uh we're going to start our day here it's going to be a fun one cuz we got all kinds of Storms and stuff like that so hopefully you do not where you're at hopefully it's a sunny day you know Sunny and 75 or whatever your favorite temperature is uh that's in Fahrenheit for those of you that don't do Fahrenheit it's 75 CS whole different world that being said do go out there and have yourself a great day come on back next time we are not done we've got plenty more for you to help your business and uh anything that you feedback to us we will use that and incorporate that into future episodes have yourself a good one and we will talk to you next time [Music]
Transcript Segments
[Music]
oh man I got too much
too much going on there we go there just
hit record as far as you know
anyways all
right we are gonna do business
continuity this will be a fun one
because this may go this may go far and
wide we'll see how this goes it should
be fun three a two well hello and
welcome back we are continuing our
season of building better businesses
this episode this is the building better
developers podcast develop preneur
podcast I'll get you the other stuff in
a minute first I want to throw the
little teaser out that we are going to
talk about business
continuity what happens when life
happens
basically well when life happens to me I
say Rob Broadhead because that's who I
am why don't you take advantage of this
thing and find a way to solve a problem
and one of the problems I saw was that
there wasn't a podcast called developer
orb about building better developers so
I happened to be one of the founders of
said podcast also a founder of RB
Consulting and a person that sometimes
takes a very long time to get to the
point that he was trying to get to as I
just showed you but with RB Consulting
we are a boutique consulting company and
what we do is we step like beside you we
we under work with you to understand
your business now in doing so I just
want to like something I haven't
mentioned is in you describing your
business to us and what is your secret
sauce and what is it that makes you you
makes you and your business unique
actually is a very good journey for any
entrepreneur business owner to go
through because when you really step
back and say I'm going to explain the
inner workings of my company to somebody
else it really does help you sort of
review those and go like wow do I really
want to do that is that how we do it we
really need to do that still because
that's part of the conversation and
where we take you is I'll get your
business and your secret sauce and we
help craft a recipe for you for
technology for how to build your team
how to get your all of your devices and
your applications and things like that
through in through Innovation
integration simplification automation we
find ways for you to take your
technology sprawl Wrangle that thing in
put a nice little pretty bow on it and
leverage it so that you're often one of
your most expensive Investments other
than your employees you can get the most
out of it and that can help you and your
business today tomorrow 6 months from
now 6 years from now even that's what we
bring to the table and when we walk away
usually everybody is wellfed and ready
to go tackle their own day in whatever
way that is good thing bad thing it
might be a bad thing you think that it
took me too long on that in that
introduction but this time around we're
going to go with the good thing bad
thing of good thing is and I've sort of
had this recently uh business business
has has been really well got a lot of
stuff going on so there is a steady
stream of stuff coming in the bad thing
is and this is something we'll probably
talk about another one and we we have
touched on before is that we were not as
prepared for the growth as we would have
liked to be there are you know there's
we are literally at a point of like
maybe adding you know adding people and
stuff like that which you can't just go
out and like you know check a box on a
website and then boom you've got person
it's sometimes almost like that if you
look at some of the sites that are out
there but for what we're looking for
we've got to spend a little more time a
little more investment and we got a
little bit surprised at how fast things
have moved and how things have changed
and you know that's the world we live in
today so good and bad it's like hey
we've got a lot of business and it's a
honestly the bad it's a good bad to have
it's a good problem for us to be working
through also good is that I get to spend
yet another episode with Michael and
he's going to introduce himself whether
he does it good or
bad thanks Rob hey everyone my name is
Michael mlash I'm one of the co-founders
of building better developers otherwise
known as develop andur I'm also the
founder of Envision QA where we help
businesses who are having bad days of
Technology where their technology or
software is not working for them we are
a software uh Consulting business where
we come in and we can help you build
custom software we can help you take the
existing software you have we can help
you fix it we can help you test it we
can help you basically make your
customers happy or make your experience
with your own software uh better we also
help you walk through the user
experience we help you understand what
it is that you need out of your software
what it is that your software really
does and we kind of fill in the holes we
help you understand that hey are you
paying for what you need or do you need
to Chuck that out the window and get
something better to basically make your
lights easier make your business grow
and to hopefully scale faster and make
everyone happy good and bad well kind of
with what I was just saying there we
have run into some issues as well where
scalability is kind of good kind of bad
um I'm looking to grow my company more
towards the second half of the year and
like Rob said it's not real easy to just
go out and grab someone off the internet
and say hey come work for me you kind of
got to be careful you want to make sure
that the people you get kind of meet
your mission that work with you that
kind of have the same goals in mind that
you have and that's been a little
difficult so that's kind of the bad
thing I haven't really been able to find
someone yet but the good thing is I am
able to look I'm starting to grow and so
that's kind of my good bad in this
situation so what and this actually sort
of goes into that a little bit is
business continuity is what I want to
talk about and this is something that
again I think it seems like it
particularly like Sol preneurs or you
know side households or small businesses
stuff like that we really don't tend to
think about it until we get into it and
then by the time we're out of it we
forget about it and what it
is is what happens when things get in
the way for business continuity and it
it goes a little bit into Disaster
Recovery it's things like and but it's
really not so much about recovering it's
about continuing business as usual when
non- business as usual things occur now
in a small business this very often will
be things like U life events like uh
suddenly somebody goes on maternity
leave or somebody's got has a you know
takes two weeks of vacation or you know
they've got they end up a accident and
they end up in a hospital or they're
sick or they got to deal with a relative
or all these things that life throws at
us they can disrupt business what we
want to do is be able to avoid doing
that now if we are
a oneperson
shop if life hits us it's probably going
to hit our business now not always there
are some things we can do we can build
automations we can do things that allow
business to continue on even when we're
not a part of it and honestly that is
like really one of the goals we should
have is to be able to have our business
just hum along and not need us if you
want to see like that you know done I
guess right or whatever and get a lot of
hints on it it goes back to one of our
favorites is go to 4H Hour Work Week
there's a lot of stuff there that is
really focused on automating your
business and it's not really it's not
always implementation as much of its
ideas some thoughts some things you can
do to scale your business out without
having to fully scale your business out
or to let it grow as it needs to grow
and Shrink as it needs to shrink
hopefully never the
latter with business continuity it is
going to be things like what happens if
I take a week off maybe it's for you
what happens if I take a day off what
happens if I get sick for a day is my
business going to suddenly shut down for
a day if I have a holiday if I have you
know if I take a vacation if I go
somewhere and I am not connected to my
business for a while will it continue do
I have as we grow I think it becomes
more have I empowered the people around
me my team my company do they have what
they need to do their job or am I still
holding too tightly on to things and
that's going to keep them from getting
things done if I disappear for a while
there's always going to be tasks that we
take on that we're like okay I need to
take this task and do it but maybe it's
something that and it it may be
something that you do it that's you're
the best person in the company that does
it that's great but if you're not
available for let's say a week is it
still valuable for for that to just now
be delayed or is it something where you
should want to be able to give that off
to somebody else so they can keep the
ball moving
forward and this is I think one of the
things that we struggle with the most as
entrepreneurs as Business Leaders is
that we don't always you know scale
ourselves out properly we're not
delegating enough we have too much stuff
still in our head we don't have all of
these processes in place and I say this
as someone that is very much in the
middle of this is of trying to expand
some things out that has been very
comfortable and very and you know
honestly successful doing things without
having to scale up but now when you want
you know it's time to grow it's time to
start shifting some of those things it
becomes very difficult because there's a
lot to do there are a lot of things that
we take for granted but if we're
suddenly not in the picture it's like
okay well how does that get done and it
may be as simple as like for me as a
technology kind of guy ear on it was
things like people having access to the
servers that I could log on to on a
regular basis so if a site goes down
does somebody have access to the stuff
they need so they can log onto the
server and restart it and get those
things
going but there's going to be bigger
things like that there going to be
things like you know if if you have uh
for example like let's say you've
scheduled some uh some training sessions
or some customer sales calls or
something like that do you have
essentially a backup do you have some
way for that stuff to continue if
somebody quits if you have a person on
your team particularly a small team and
they quit are you going to be able to
sort of pick up and go now it may be
that you're going to like you stumble
for a minute or it's going to it's not
going to be just super smooth but are
you going to be able to continue
business as usual when these things
occur and I'll flip this over to Michael
and see what what are some of your
thoughts on this and maybe some of your
experiences with it so yeah I we
constantly refer back to the 4our work
week because it there was a lot of good
information in that for starting out and
kind of preparing yourself and one of
the interesting things Tim ferce talked
about was extracting himself from his
company because like you said you know
he when we're like this soulpreneur or
we're we build the business from scratch
we know every in and out of the business
and it's very hard for us to let go or
divy out the work part in part for those
fears of if I give it to someone are
they going to quit and then am we going
to have to take that back how am we
going to handle that the other thing is
what happens if they get hit by a bus or
God forbid you know some illness happens
like covid you know how is your business
going to survive when a pandemic hits we
talked about Disaster Recovery in the
last episode but in this one you have to
think a little bit differently it's not
just all about Disaster Recovery this is
about business processes and how to keep
your business running smoothly so you
can scale so you can grow and keep
things moving when essentially people
disappear or when things happen that you
have to keep the lights on the business
running even if the lights are off and
you're not able to get to a computer uh
case in point one of the biggest ones
I'll talk about here is financial
information so one of the critical
things that hit me and I talked about
this last time was uh my business
account has been hit by the bank as I
got hit with the fraud alert I got
locked out of my system which has now
made me start to concern is okay what
happens to me since uh I am you know the
owner of the company I have access to
all the financial information no one
else does so if I were to get hit by a
bus or I were to get sick or go on
vacation are the bills still going to
get paid I have Automation in place to
pay a lot of these things but you
still it's scary because you have to
essentially give some of the keys to
your financial information so you have
to make sure you have the right person
you can trust to have access to these so
if something does happen to you they can
get into your system and make sure that
the bills still get paid that people can
get paid payrolls handled so those are a
lot of things you don't think about at
all and it's just one of those things
where it's like oh crap you know you
have one of those uh moments where it's
like oh wait uh
whoops the other thing that's
interesting is you know vacation PTO
sick days depending on your type of
business if you are very heavily
customer support driven you better make
sure you have some a system in place or
people in place not one you do not want
a single point of failure when you're
dealing with customer service especially
if you're dealing with tech support or
help you better have someone buy you I
don't care if they're a part-time
whatever hire someone find someone cheap
find a high school kid or a kid in
college to help you at least test the
idea of scaling up your C customer
support so that you have more than one
point of
failure uh and that's the other thing
for business continuity similar to
disaster recovery but this is more
internal business workings of the
business what are the single points of
failure that are going to cause your
business to fail because you have not
thought about scaling you have not
thought about okay if I'm not here doing
it or this person's not here doing this
can the work get done so again I keep
referring to single point of failure but
in this particular
context anything in your business that
is a single point of failure where
there's only one person doing it do you
have processes in place to get access to
the work that they're doing do you have
a uh Dropbox or a shared network folder
where everyone puts their information or
are they putting it on their local
machines and oops that laptop gets
broken or they lose the laptop or their
car is stolen and the laptop's gone how
do you get that information is your
business going to be impacted so these
are just some of the things that I think
of when I think business continuity it's
not necessarily just disaster recovery
but this is business how am I going to
keep the business working how am I going
to keep my customers happy how am I
going to get the work
done if something were to happen to me
or if life happens you know if my
daughter uh decides she wants to have a
baby and suddenly I'm out for a week
being a grandpa uh how am I going to
keep the business going so these are the
types of questions that come to mind
when I hear business
continuity and this is I think that it's
not just emergencies and stuff like that
and I I just have to point out it is
very funny that you said somebody gets
hit by a bust or God forbid a pandemic
it's like okay you just got hit by a bus
no big deal but the pandemic whoa that's
a big deal I know it is a scale of
things but it is one of those things
it's just very amusing how we phrase our
stuff but I want to go back to that
actually you brought up a great point
with the whole idea of like what happens
if there is some positive thing that
happens in your life that you want to
enjoy and you don't get to because you
didn't figure out how to allow your
business to continue and I trust me I
have lived this I do it on a regular
basis where I'm like Dad I would love to
do this thing but I can't because I have
these other obligations and they are it
is the kind of thing that's say if
you're serious about your business if
you you know if this doesn't if this
never bothers you and it's just a side
hustle you're like ah no big deal then
you're it's always going to be a little
bit of a side hustle and you're just not
as serious about it and you if you if
you lose customers and things like that
then you're going to have to deal with
that and just say well okay it's because
that's not as important if you want to
build a business if you want to have
customers that trust you and all that
kind of stuff you have to find ways to
be there and get these things done and
sometimes it's very difficult these are
the things that we don't talk about
often enough probably as entrepreneurs
is that it is really really difficult to
let it all go for a while and go away
and unplug and chill we don't get to do
that very often but that's what business
continu continuity will do for you is as
you're going through these exercises and
putting these things in place it will
allow you to actually step away from
your business and sometimes this is
critical even not even for your Health
but so that you can actually work on
your business instead of in your
business which is another thing that is
like I'm living it right now I would
love to spend more time there's so many
things I'd like to do on my business but
I too busy in the business right now
because I need to work on some of these
continuity things and build some of
these pieces out and it's sometimes good
to have that problem because then it's
like it's a pain point it's something
that's going to poke you on a regular
basis you're like okay I've got to
change this I got to move this I've got
to adjust this I've got to hire a person
whatever it is so that you can put the
things in place to allow your business
to continue whether that's without you
without you know some critical you know
key person that's part of your your
business all those things that can
happen that can cause your business to
stumble put these things in place so you
don't have
to
now I will I just I will add to all of
this is that it it doesn't have to be
and I think this is where too often we
get stuck it doesn't have to be perfect
it doesn't have to be that the business
continuity is 100% the same as when it's
you know in its normal phase that when
we move into we'll say business
continuity that it right away is exactly
the same and nobody notices it's okay if
people notice it's things like it's okay
if you have an outof office response on
your email that says hey I'm out of
office but send all of your stuff to any
questions to this person and they will
be able to take care of it or they'll be
able to help you out if there's an
emergency and things like that it
doesn't yes it's an extra step for them
but it does allow things to continue
it's not perfect and you know maybe
eventually they'll just go straight to
that person if that's what you want or
if not you will you know you will come
back you will recover whatever it is and
then they can return you know business
as normal can you know business as usual
can
return thoughts on those yeah so that
made me think of one additional thing so
as in a lot of our podcasts we've talked
about automating your business find
common tasks and automate those if
especially when we're starting out and
you're bootstrapping your business you
are typically going to do a lot of that
you're going to have a lot of these
automation uh things in place like
backing up systems automating systems
keeping things running smoothly the
problem is six months a year from now
two years from now if one of those
breaks you're going to forget about and
this is a very good point to think about
especially when you grow your business
or with uh you know work with your
customers make sure you have some type
of documentation around these in a
central location that is backed up and
shared so if something happens to any
person that is working with a system or
doing a process that even if it's
automated you have a way to go say okay
this is how it's supposed to work so if
it goes down you have a way to
recover this example like one of the
things I was thinking about is this the
it got a little bit lost on that for a
second is is the podcast itself and and
blogs and things like that if you are a
Content
producer is there is we've talked about
the regular scheduled things that you
want to hit you it's just like payroll
people want to get paid they don't like
it when their paycheck doesn't show up
on the day that they're supposed to get
paid but we also have business things
that we're supposed to do we
have in this case they I'm going to go
directly into this so the development or
podcast as you probably know and if you
don't you should listen to more of these
we release on Tuesdays and Thursdays and
if I'm incorrect in that Michael correct
me but I think we've done this for a
while and earlier on we did Monday
Wednesday Friday and with we have talked
about if you do a podcast if you do a
Blog that you want to have stuff in the
can you want to have stuff that is ready
to go in case something happens and
you're not able to hit your you know
your normal routine and a lot of times
it's but your normal routine should
include doing extra things because
sometimes something could happen and
you're GNA you know Miss a week miss a
month whatever it is and you need to be
able to go say okay well we're ahead of
the game we can absorb that and we can
move
forward and so that's something that
would be like that is very near and dear
to our heart is that we want to be able
to have things in place so that for
example if one of us Michael or I has
something going on and we can't record
then you know in our case we always have
the worst case it's a solo podcast for a
you know an episode or two uh but you
ideally we don't want that to happen so
we want to make sure we're ahead of the
game so if we miss a week then it's like
okay we missed a week we'll just go back
to we'll go to our you know our
scheduled stuff and we're off and
running so there's they're very
practical things that will basically
help your sanity when things happen and
does make it so that in general things
are not as urgent and then it allows you
to not have to get into the effectively
what it is is the wait until the day
before your final examed and then start
to study really hard for that test this
is something that that's what really
business continuity is about and it's
it's that same kind of mindset is that
like look things are going to happen I
don't want to be stuck in like I don't
want to procrastinate I don't be stuck
on this stuff where at the last second I
got to do it and then I gota like just
slam it home and I'm not going to have
the quality that I want
instead make sure that we're building
these things as we go and putting things
in place and uh contingency plans
basically so that we can handle the
disaster recovery part uh closing
thoughts before we go to the
challenge yeah so again business
continuity you know take a look at
yourself and your business and identify
those single point of failures look for
what can your business do if you are not
there or if you pull someone out of the
business business will the business
continue to run do a self-analysis of
the business now I don't want to steal
from what the challenge is going to be
but personally you should do this not
just once in a while but work this into
like once a quarter once a week always
review your processes for points of
failure and to make sure that you have
coverage and this is something that's
this is the challenge is go into your
this week we and or actually you can
even do this now look at the week behind
what happens if you weren't available
let's say a week ago some life event
pick whatever one it is it could be as
simple as you got sucked into March
Madness and you just really spend a lot
more time doing that than you wanted to
it could be uh you had a bad allergy day
or you know whatever it is or it could
be you're just sick and tired for a
little bit and you need some rest what
happens if you're not there what what
was in place what do you have in place
so that you could I don't know reach out
to
somebody uh set a couple of flags or you
know do a couple of things and then be
like okay I'm I'm not going to be
available for a while or that somebody
else could pick it up and say oh you are
out you know you're not available for a
while so here's the things that need to
be
done take a look at that what would you
need to do is it would that have
happened if you just decided not to show
up for work Monday would everything have
flowed properly and if not what are the
things it wouldn't what needed to be
done and then whether it is telling
those people and putting those things in
place to say okay if this ever happens
then do this or just having a document
sometimes a business continuity document
process procedure folder would is just
as useful if not more so because it's
like hey if somebody doesn't show up if
I don't show up here's where you go to
figure out what this stuff does and
honestly you should have this for
everybody in your team there should be
something there should be a place you
can go that says hey somebody was sick
today this is what their normal stuff is
this is where they're at so that you can
pick it up and and you know keep things
moving
forward that is your challenge is look
back how do you fix it and then of
course the follow-up is that fix it put
those procedures in place and let's get
that going for you that being said we're
going to wrap this one up as always you
can reach out to us info developer.com
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site and leave us contact form
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we are at develop Andor we have a
Facebook page you can go out there and
leave us stuff love to hear from you
your War Stories your suggestions your
comments your feedback all that stuff we
take into account we very much we hold
it near and dear to our heart and we use
that to build you know future episodes
and even future Seasons so you help us
help you as they say but for now my
final challenge of this episode is for
you to go out there and have yourself a
great day a great week and we will talk
to you next time bonus material so one
of the things we didn't necessarily
touch on is the tools and software that
you can use to help you organize and
figure out your business
continuity one of the biggest things
in larger companies is having an or
chart who's responsible for what so if
you're a small company it's going to be
one or two people or maybe three but if
you're one do that or chart regardless
if you are just one person build out an
or chart and figure out what are all the
things that you do to keep your business
running and that may help you understand
that oh I'm only payroll but if I hire
someone am I going to have the time to
do payroll or it C customer support this
if you break your hierarchy out if you
are one person and you're trying to do
the order chart do your order chart by
services or by business features that
you have to work on within your business
taxes payroll uh bookkeeping you know
writing software if you break it out
that way one that's going to help you
identify all the ways you can grow your
business as you extract yourself from
certain things to focus on others and
that will also help you figure out where
and when you need to hire someone
someone when those tasks start weighing
you down and I think that's the that's
the best bonus piece I can say is that
Disaster Recovery we talked about last
episode and then business continuity in
particular doing these tasks not only
help you in emergencies but they do help
you when you need to like carve off or
peel off a piece of stuff and put it to
somebody else because now you have the
things in place and you can say all
right I'm going to hand this over to you
instead of it being a a one-time thing
or a short period of time thing or a
Band-Aid it is like now this is going to
be the new normal so we're going to hand
this over to this person and or this
service or this Automation and now I the
owner of that process whether it's you
or one of your employees don't have to
do that
anymore there are other people that can
do it and we can scale it up too
sometimes maybe it's something that it's
like there's a lot of work that goes
into that and there's a certain point as
your company grows that one person can't
do it anymore you have to split off to
another one then okay you can do that
and this also allows you to do it um the
bonus of this is think about this is you
can do this peac mail this is something
you can do where you can say like you
know what I don't need a full-time
employee to do it but I do need somebody
I just need like one day a week of
somebody to do this and you can go get
like a virtual assistant you can go hire
somebody part-time there's this gig
economy and all those kinds of things to
be able to say
hey I can grow and I can do it with
protecting my sanity as well
now we will wrap this one up as you can
see I have not protected my sanity
enough and that comes through on the
podcast and everywhere else so I am this
I live this stuff and I very much a a
firm believer in hey get out there and
do it where you can so that you don't
end up like I am not always a bad thing
but on a lot of days it make it very
much a struggle so the struggle is real
as they say that being said I'm going to
wrap this one up and let you get out
there I'm going to get out I'm going to
go get some more caffeine uh we're going
to start our day here it's going to be a
fun one cuz we got all kinds of Storms
and stuff like that so hopefully you do
not where you're at hopefully it's a
sunny day you know Sunny and 75 or
whatever your favorite temperature is uh
that's in Fahrenheit for those of you
that don't do Fahrenheit it's 75 CS
whole different
world that being said do go out there
and have yourself a great day come on
back next time we are not done we've got
plenty more for you to help your
business and uh anything that you
feedback to us we will use that and
incorporate that into future episodes
have yourself a good one and we will
talk to you next time
[Music]