Transcript:
Doug Wagner 00:00
Yeah, that’s one of the things to be concerned about, especially when you start thinking about what’s happened to here over the past couple I don’t know of weeks, even the past couple of years. There’s always something that comes in the way. The big question is Joshua McNary from McNary Marketing Design. Go to find him at McNary on Twitter and then McNary me. That’s right, isn’t it?
Joshua McNary 00:22
Yeah, McNary me or Mcnarymarketing.com gotcha I.
Doug Wagner 00:25
Got it right that time. Hey, Joshua. Good morning. Talk to me about the businesses not being ready for a tech crisis point and some of the things that can happen. I know that for example, was last week I had absolutely no phones, nobody nationwide, nobody at iheart had their voiceover IP phones for like 4 hours. And it just happened to be the five to nine during my morning show. Now, maybe there wasn’t something that happened, but that could be something that happened to you. I hear a lot of other companies that have stuff like that happen as well.
Joshua McNary 00:56
Sure. Well, any critical business system, you have to have a backup plan, have to have other ways of going about things. I was thinking about this issue last week with all the things happening in the world and of course, over the last number of years, we’ve all been affected by whether it be the Pandemic or here in eastern Iowa, the duration, just these events that hit us. And all of a sudden we’re shocked and realized, wow, we didn’t quite have things in order the way we should. So I was just encouraging in my newsletter last week, just, hey, stop for a minute. This is not urgent, but it’s very important work to stop and think, well, what is our backup plan for those critical systems? In your case, how could you call me if you don’t have that system? What’s the next thing I could do that I can bring into play while not wasting time either, because we all have important work to be doing to try to make the world better.
Doug Wagner 01:45
No, I agree with you about that, but at the same time, there’s so many things that need to happen because if you’re not making money, then you’re not making the world better because you can’t keep your doors open. Things like design, credit card handling, billing, things like that.
Joshua McNary 02:00
Yes, well, I mean all those systems are cross critical in today’s day and age, and they’re all relying on technology. We’re all using some kind of web service or something out there. I know personally in my business, I’ve got tools that monitor those tools. Understand? Are they working? Are they not? Can we mitigate the problem so that.
Speaker 3 02:19
We have first sight of it, so.
Joshua McNary 02:20
Then we can quickly move to the backup plan as needed? Documenting your systems, that’s something I see across all businesses. Even if you do document your systems, your technology systems, they change very quickly. Right we’re trying new things all the time. We talked about AI last month.
Speaker 3 02:38
Hey, we got to try that. Well, then that changes our processes. So having a process to set up.
Joshua McNary 02:43
The processes, but you got to do that in a way where we’re not wasting time procrastinating.
Doug Wagner 02:48
Yeah, and the thing is, it’s got to be scalable, too, because whether you’re just a small one tooth, five person shop, or whether it’s like a convenience store locally, or they’ve not had the ability to order online for the week, their loyalty program is down. Because if something happens so what’s happening is that the staples that they rely on, the people rely on to come in there and purchase on a regular basis, instead of having correct numbers, they’re just dropping off pallets of stuff and saying, this looks like what you had last time. So we’re just going to go like this. You can’t do that without a solution.
Joshua McNary 03:20
Yeah, well, you’re going to lose in that case, you’re going to lose money, and you’re also going to have the circumstances of not serving the customer, which leads you to lose money. So that’s where this becomes important. But not urgent, right? I mean, it’s not urgent until you have the computer breakdown or the inventory breakdown or the VoIP breakdown, but you have to slow down and do this work and be cognizant of it, both in our business lives and in our personal lives, because we’re all relying on these systems. What happens if you’re working at home and your home Internet goes down, right? Then your boss is mad at you. What’s the backup plan? Okay, mobile hotspot. I mean, that’s a simple one, but stopping to have that thought process, what are the key things that could go wrong? And then in your circumstance for the size of your business, the situation you’re in, and then building a backup plan around that. But it starts with documenting what you have and then going from there.
Doug Wagner 04:11
Sign up for the newsletter. He’s talking [email protected] McNary marketing. Follow him on Twitter at McNary. M-C-N-A-R-Y. Joshua McNary. I appreciate your time this morning. Thank you for your words of wisdom.
Joshua McNary 04:25
Thanks for having me, Doug.
Doug Wagner 04:26
All right, bud. Take care. 651 now on the Morning show. Happy Tuesday, October 17.
Transcribed by https://grain.co