Running a business requires wearing a lot of hats. You must dabble in a little bit of everything – accounting, management, human resources, technical support.
We’re all told the best leaders know how to delegate but that can be hard when you’re talking about the business you’ve painstakingly built with your time and effort. Most business owners don’t clock out when the 9-5 day is over, a Gallup poll found that 39% of business owners work more than 60 hours per week.
It’s not just about time logged either, there’s more stress and more on the line. You can’t simply find another job if your business fails, once you’ve owned your own business it can be impossible emotionally to untick that box and work for someone else. That’s not even considering the fallout of a business failing and the mess it leaves behind.
But enough of the doom and gloom, as a technology company we’re here to support the businesses we take on as clients and lead them down the best possible path. That includes guiding business owners to smarter decisions when it comes to their technology.
Here are the 5 biggest mistakes we see business owners make from a technology standpoint.
- Not keeping your hardware up to date. Look, we get it. Hardware is expensive, especially if you’re making a larger purchase for multiple employees or investing in a new server. However, this is not something you can put off until later. Waiting until your hardware fails will leave you with both the expense of new hardware and the expense of the downtime while you’re waiting for that new hardware to be deployed. We don’t think it makes sense to wait and be double billed, do you?
- Not keeping your software up to date either. Updates can feel like a hassle (especially if you’re performing them yourself) but it’s not a good idea to put them off until later. There’s a cumulative effect when you wait. What was once a simple update becomes a complex package of updates that will take longer and leave you with a gap in your coverage that could leave you open to the negative effects those updates were trying to prevent.
- Speaking of negative effects, ignoring cyber security. We get the “it will never happen to me” line all the time, and equally as often we hear from those same people later when it The phrase “Don’t be a statistic” is used frequently in cautionary tales and this is no exception. 76% of businesses will experience a cyber-attack and we personally don’t recommend rolling the dice and hoping you’re not part of the majority.
- Forgoing any kind of training for employees. In the same vein as #3, some training in technology and how to use the equipment you’re providing employees is a must, and even if you operate on a BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) model you’re not off the hook. Most cyber-attacks happen due to human error. By not training your employees you’re not just giving hackers the keys to your office, you’re holding the door open for them.
- Thinking you can do it all yourself. Like we said, the best leaders know when to delegate. If you’re not a technology expert but you’re performing most or all of your own IT services what are you doing? How often does a technology snafu turn into an all day (and night) event? Are things in your business being neglected because you’re the only one that knows how to maintain them?
There is a better way. Outsourcing is a scary word to many business owners, but the truth is help is out there and it’s local to you. We help business owners across the Central Valley who find that once the technology headache is taken off their plate, they have more time and energy to put back into growing their business. If you would like to find out more, reach out to us for a free consultation here.
Looking for more to read? We suggest these tech articles from the last week.
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Two Elon Musk tweets have violated SEC settlement agreement, report says - CNN
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Tech giants still aren’t coming clean about COVID-19 disinformation, says EU - TechCrunch
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Cryptocurrency goes green: Could 'proof of stake' offer a solution to energy concerns? - NBC News
This article was powered by Valley TechLogic, an IT provider in Atwater, CA. You can find more information at https://www.valleytechlogic.com/ or on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/valleytechlogic/ . Follow us on Twitter at https://x.com/valleytechlogic.
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