Tony from Run M Ragged posted a message today over at the Free Business Tips Forum about insuring your business.
There was recently a fire in an industrial factory that destroyed six businesses. How many of those businesses had insurance? Well in percentage terms it was exactly 0%. If you are in business, you must be insured. Yes the payments are all an expense we could do without but losing everything and having to start with nothing is an experience that should be avoided.
Tony makes a great point. Manage your risks!
Imagine.. you go home tonight from the office and go to sleep. Meanwhile, your office burns down. You're not one of the 0% people so although it is a pain you can rebuild your office. But what about your office computer? You know the one with your Quickbooks file and the address book with all of your clients and the last years worth of email and everything else.
Think about how long it is going to take to get all of that back.
- If your answer is like mine (an hour) then congratulations, you're doing well!
- If your answer is months and months that's not a good thing!
How do we make sure that this isn't ever a problem?
BACK UP YOUR FILES REGULARLY!
Everybody has an internet connection these days, make use of it to keep a complete copy of your important files encrypted and stored safely online. A service that I have used and found to be fantastic is Mozy.
Why is it great?
They give you 2GB of storage for free, and if you need more you can get it for a crazily low monthly fee of $5.
Here is a link that you can click to go and sign up for your free account.
Got it yet?
No?
Think again about that office burning down and how you are going to spend the next month replacing all of your files and trying to get all of your information back into one place.
Got it yet?
Oh good. Congratulations! Now you can sleep without worrying about ever losing your data again. If that disaster ever comes (or if somebody ever deletes the files accidently) all you have to do is get the Mozy program back, open it up, and ask it to download your files.
It doesn't get much easier than that.
But, do you back up your website?
Now that your files are backed up, what about your website? It is sitting on a server somewhere on the internet. What happens if the server gets hacked or gets a virus and all of your pages get deleted? What if there is an earthquake where your site is hosted? Do you know where a safe copy is?
If you don't, send your webmaster an email today and find out. If they don't have a good answer, send me an email and ask me about the options that we provide for our clients.
Don't risk it!