The Space Time Discontinuum

By David Moore, I Hate My PC

Have you ever noticed how nobody seems to respect appointments?

No, then you are probably one of those inconsiderate people who thinks your time is more valuable than everyone else’s.

Start a conversation with your friends about the last time they tried to get someone to come to their house to fix something. No doubt you’ll be regaled with story after story that will sound very familiar to all of us.

“We can only narrow delivery time down to a half day window” read; “and then we won’t bloody show up within it anyway”.

Aside from the lucky few with time travelling DeLoreans, we only get one go at any point in time. Do you really want to spend it waiting for someone else?

Tell me, why is it that some people consistently show up late for events that happen at the same time every week? Is it that 7pm on a Wednesday night sneaks up on them from a different angle each week? Do they really forget something that predictable and repeatable every week? No, they are just inconsiderate and rude.

While we are at it, why is it that if you send something by overnight courier it never arrives the next day? Why do TV shows always run late these days? Why don’t shops open on time and why do they close early? Why do meetings always start late? Why do planes wait for one person and inconvenience 350 others? Well, I know the answer to that one.

As an aside, here’s a free way for a forward thinking airline to fix that problem. Instead of having a cargo hold under the passengers, make the whole plane passenger space. Instead provide luggage space behind each seat and let passengers carry their own luggage on board. That way the doors can be closed on time because no-one can send a bomb on ahead. Airlines would save so much money on luggage handling costs. I think I’ve blown my own mind. You are welcome Richard, send the cheque to my home!

I understand that sometimes people can be late due to unforeseen circumstances. Things happen, roads get blocked, weather does stuff and so on. In that case make a call before you are late. You may feel uncomfortable and not want to do it, but it isn’t hard.

I am amazed at how often people are amazed that I am so punctual. Don’t tell me what time your party starts if you’ve built in a buffer for fashionable lateness. I am neither fashionable nor late and we’ll be partying on our own for the first 2 hours I guarantee it.

And right there is the problem. If we let them get away with it, either directly or by association, it will creep and you’ll only have yourself to blame.

If you are waiting for other people you are a chump. Plain and simple. Take control of your life and your time. No-one else will. Do what you say when you say you are going to do it. Sure, be considerate and flexible but keep a close eye on that monkey throwing poo at you from the flexible path.

Deadlines don’t exist. If they did half the software industry would be dead (and no bad thing either if you ask me). Doing things in a timely fashion is, however, sensible if not for any other reason than it lets you tick things off you list and move on to the next one.

Timeliness and consideration: Teach it to your children and demand it of your team.

I think it all comes down to two levels of respect, respect for your own time and respect for other people’s time. The first is your problem. I am happy for you to do whatever you want with your time. Guess how I am going to deal with the second?

Networking is a word that comes with a lot of baggage

These days the assumption is that you are talking about social media and “social networking” which, by the way, isn’t actually social, but I digress. Computer people instantly think of computer networks, cables, routers, switches and so on.

Occasionally it gets bundled in with “Network Marketing” and assumed to be the domain of your Amways and the like.

When I started my business I knew it had to grow from a foundation of personal contact and referrals. To do this people said I had to network. This scared the crap out of me. My wife, as a Public Relations professional, would often go out and network. She’s good at it too. I asked her about it but I still didn’t know what it really was.

I thought networking was meeting people, lots of people, at business breakfasts and handing over and collecting as many business cards as possible. I hated the idea of it. It seemed so false and the wrong way to go about building an authentic business.

Despite being able to turn on a “stage persona”, I am the guy you see at parties sitting in the corner waiting for it to end. Especially when it is full of people I don’t know. If I’m not into it I’m not budging.

I’m also not into small talk for the sake of it. I’m fairly sure my mother thinks I’m evil because I don’t call her when I have nothing to say. So how the hell was I going to network?

Elevator pitches, 60 seconders and all that just seemed so false.

Despite this I forced myself to get out there and meet real people. You know, three dimensional, living, breathing, warm to the touch, minds of their own etc. This started three and a half years ago before the GFC.

I tried quite a few groups and found the practicalities of attending them all and balancing that with actual work tricky. I also found, to my surprise, that networking could be fun. However, to make it fun I had to axe that word. For me it has bad connotations. So what I do isn’t networking – in my mind anyway.

I found the low pressure business groups more to my liking. I prefer to build relationships, make new friends and just be available rather than force, or be forced, to provide referrals on a regular basis. I don’t like being pressured into working for someone else and I don’t like my friends feeling similarly pressured. I’ve also found that the forced referrals are of a lower quality and bigger time/money wasters.

Without my groups my business would not have survived the recent, or current, financial crisis. Two of my groups, Northern Beaches Business Swap and Manly BRG simply decided not to participate in the GFC.

When I was younger, and Australia went through financial crises, I was an employee and pretty much oblivious to what was going on. I had other priorities and it simply did not come up on my radar. I was too busy playing in bands and trying to form meaningful yet short-lived relationships with attractive young women. As a result I weathered them all, the crisis not the women, without a care. There really was a DFC – David’s Female Crisis going on that I couldn’t do anything about – hormones you know. Anyway, ignorance was bliss from a financial perspective.

This time was different though. This time I was in my own business and therefore very aware of what was going on. I knew businesses and people were going to start making decisions that affected me. So it made sense that to me that actively, as opposed to passively, not participating would be a good idea. It worked. Hanging out with people who chose not to be GFC’d meant I wasn’t GFC’d either.

What I’ve learnt is to show up consistently, form genuine friendships and persist come hell, high-water or GFC. It is not too late. The GFC may be over but business goes on. Do you really think you can do it all by yourself?

David L. Moore

Discussion topics August 19th

Where do you see yourself in 10 years?

Many business owners struggle to put together goals and plans for the coming 12 months, let alone set goals for themselves for 10 or 20 years time. After all, what are we working for if we don’t have clear goals for our careers or retirement?

So,

• Where do you want to be in 10 years?
• What will your business look like?
• Do you plan to cut back on working hours or retire?
• Will you expand your business? If so, how will you achieve a work/life balance?
• If you retire, what exit strategies (for your business!!) have you planned?
• What do you need to do in the next 5 years or so, to achieve these goals?

Data backups – face it, you’re ****ed!

 

If there’s one common theme that has run through my 25 years plus of IT career it is how badly data backups are done and how often they fail. I’m talking about the data backups failing. Not the failure that forced you to discover that your backups were rooted.
Ask your IT guy, be they in house or outsourced, about data backups and I’d bet a squirrel’s stash of nuts that you won’t see their eyes rolling. All you see is the back of their head as they leg it for the horizon.
Do you want to know why?
It’s because when they tell you that you need to do data backups your eyes glaze over and you run for the horizon.
 

There’s nothing more boring than listening to a computer person tell you how much money you have to spend right now so that at some indeterminate time in the future you’ll still have exactly what you’ve got now.
It is a bit like picking up your car from the repairer after a smash. You are happy that your car is back the way it was. You’ve spent money, you’ve been without it and you should be annoyed. But you aren’t, you’ve are happy that you’ve got it back just the way it was and that is good enough. But is it? Have you opened the glove box yet? Did you find any screws or parts? Have you been out in the rain yet and did the windscreen leak? Was there a new rattle that you are just going to have to live with? Did they put on different tail lights because the old ones can’t be found any more?

See, it ain’t all roses is it?
 

But I hear you say “my car was insured so it didn’t cost me that much and I can live with the little problems because at least I’m mobile again”. Very true, but now ask your business insurer to see if you company’s data is covered in your business insurance? I mean it. Pick up the phone now and find out. I’ll wait while you do it…
…what did they say? Hmmm, that’s a worry isn’t it?
You should also consider that your important data is unique. There is no warehouse somewhere with data just like yours that can bolted on to replace the damaged parts. Chances are that when it is gone it is really gone.

Totally and irreversibly gone. All you’ll be able to do is recreate it from scratch and only YOU know the true cost of that!
 

I’m sure you’ve heard all this doom and gloom before and I am equally sure you’ve ignored it to one degree or greater.
 

I’m not going to tell you how to do your backups because every case is different.
I am going to tell you something else that I suspect you’ve not heard from any IT person before. It is probably the most important piece of information you’ll ever hear about data backups. It comes from the heart, it comes from cold hard facts and it comes from painful experience.
1.       You need to keep a person who cares about the data in the backup process.
 

Up until now I’m sure you’ve been sold automatic backups solutions that “look after themselves”. Now why would you believe that? Nothing else in computing looks after itself. Why would your backups?
I do not care what anyone else has or will tell you about data backups. I will stand by this assertion until the day I die. You need an actual person regularly checking that your backups are working and testing that the data can be recovered.
Sometimes, if you are a small business, the person who cares about the backups may be the person doing them. In larger operations it is most likely that the person who cares about the data doesn’t even know the person who is doing the backups. This is a problem.
Some responsibilities simply cannot be outsourced.
I’m going to tell you something else that I bet you’ve never heard from an IT person before either. This is probably the second most important piece of information you’ll hear about data backups.
2.       You need to build a “backup” mindset into how all your team work on a day to day basis.

 
Home and small business computer users simply don’t have the time, resources or expertise to do the sorts of batch-like backup jobs that big businesses do. In big business it is a common belief that “someone else is doing the backups”.
Instead individuals need to be encouraged to build backup strategies in how they work on an item by item basis. This can be hard when your team is made up of people who just know enough about computing to get there job done and nothing else. Backups have to fit into the way your business works so that it happens “as part of what you do” rather than “something extra that is a bother”.
An example implementation of this mindset is manual file versioning. Most people will work on a single copy of a document until it is complete. Not me, at least once a day when I reopen a document I make a new copy of it. I keep track of which is the latest document very simply. The end of every filename includes the date and an incremented alphabetical version identifier. For example, this document is called “Data Backups you are screwed if you dont pay attention 200709 AB.docx“. In very important cases, where lots of data changes from hour to hour, I include a timestamp in the filename too “Data Backups you are screwed if you dont pay attention 200709 1221 AB.docx“. You’ll also note that my document name is more descriptive than most. This helps when it comes to finding lost data later on.
Here’s the last thing I’ll tell you that you’ve probably not heard before from your IT person.
3.       You need  at least two completely different backup strategies and every piece of important data should be in at least three different physical locations.
 
Of course, working on local copies of documents and storing them on a server gets your data in two places. If you don’t have server you can get a pretend one by emailing documents to your Gmail account, putting them on your Skydrive (25GB of storage there FREE, that’s amazing), copying them to your DropBox or any other number of things. Just get your files onto a remote computer somehow.
If losing what you are working on would cause you pain, then back it up now!

These three points are but the tip of the iceberg. When data loss happens it happens very fast and data recovery is very very slow.
Data backup and data loss is a horrible business.
Sooner or later you will need to come to terms with losing everything and starting from scratch. Some people find that liberating and the process of renewal exciting. Yeah, well, not me.
 

David L. Moore

Business Owner Wellbeing

Business Owner Wellbeing…. what keeps you on top of your game?

Have you ever felt burnt out, overwhelmed or exhausted as a business owner?

What do you do to wake up each morning invigorated, motivated and excited about your day?

There are many strategies to ensure we don’t reach that point of burn out. How do you achieve the following?

• Work/life balance
• Stress Management
• Time management
• Prioritising
• Delegating
• Health and Fitness

What are some simple steps we can all take to reduce that ‘burnt out’ feeling?

Make a list and start on them TODAY!

“I still need more healthy rest in order to work at my best. My health is the main capital I have and I want to administer it intelligently.”
Ernest Hemingway (1899 – 1961)

New listing in Clontarf

We have just listed a great 2 storey property just a short stroll from the Clontarf beach. It is set upon a beautiful section in the quiet and highly desirable area with beautiful views of the harbour. This 4 bedroom house is an excellent opportunity to buy a large home and has much to offer including Position, functionality and comfort.

Click the link below now to view this property and send me your comments.

www.pointestate.com.au/pages/properties.php

Business meeting minutes

From the last meetings and today’s discussion of future topics there is a strong feeling for more information on how to improve sales (and get new business).

John Evans raised some very good points on the whys and wherefores of how our group should and could be helping each other more with generating business.

So we’d like some topics and help around generating sales.

Today we also discussed how the BRG web site, or A web site of some nature, may help us to better refer clients and perhaps plug some of the skills gaps in our group.

Blogs (maybe free Blogspot blog through Google) were suggested as was a Facebook group.

A central resource of some kind for blogging, articles, testimonials, discussion etc. was seen probably beneficial.

Putting BRG in the social media may have an automatic wider benefit aside from the initial membership participating.

Julian will be talking to you (Carolyn) in more detail about this later today.

It was also suggested that we may include a feedback session on a memebrs business to explore market perceptions etc. Perhaps in place of or part of the 10 minute presentations.

We’d also like reminders for the BDM in the intervening weeks. Without topics or at least a reminder people forget that they are on.

I’ll add our members to my outlook calendar appointment (accepting that will put an appropriate entry in your compatible calendar program).

Lastly we discussed revisiting Craig’s host-beneficiary strategy in conjunction with seminars for our clients. Amanda suggested a more personal one-on-one type option within  the seminars so that slients could to talk anyone from our BRG and get something personalised to take away as opposed to a bunch of general presentations (death by powerpoint).