Tech Health IS Economic Wealth

Small business is the heart beat of our US economy and what ails our small businesses causes an epidemic across our national economy. While it may not seem like it during our challenging times, here are some important facts to remember so that we continue to focus on our roles as small business owners in shaping our collective destiny:

1. Small businesses make up more than 99.7% of all employers.
2. Small businesses create more than 50% of the nonfarm private gross domestic product (GDP).
3. The 22.9 million small businesses in the United States are located in virtually every neighborhood.
4. Small businesses employ about 50% of all private sector workers.
5. Home-based businesses account for 53% of all small businesses.

If we, the small business community, form the foundation for our US and local economies then we also need to be proactive in our planning for the economic health of our businesses. Last week we explored the importance of health and wellness for wealth creation. This week let us explore the importance of tech health and resulting economic value.

Information Technology (IT) serves as the central nervous system of our small businesses and every small business relies on technology for managing its operations.  Computer virus, worms, etc are no longer a rare occurring but a norm. The latest cyber scam involves the DNS Changer that will route online banking, business activity, etc to rouge links with major theft ramifications to follow.  Are we going to sit back and allow a group of international hackers to not only walk away with our financial security held at our banks but also bring our businesses to a screeching halt? Certainly not!  We have great IT resources in our very own community to help guard against such risks.

As a small business consultant and coach, I conducted my own research to understand what is available to us as we deal with this very real business threat. I wanted to share with you my findings so that you too can benefit fit from it. Cube Jumpers is a local IT strategic partner to small businesses with a focus on Preventative Tech Health, 24/7 Support, Back-up, affordable services and much more.  I found out about the 9 things they do better than the big firms to bring value to small businesses. I was amazed at the offer of a free Preventative Audit as a wellness check-up that will benefit all of us small business owners while laying the foundation for a customized IT wellness plan to safeguard our central information system. I walked away with the feeling that Steve Smith and his team at Cube Jumpers truly understood the essence of reliable IT support for small communities like ours.

I know of businesses that have paid $5,000 to $10,000 per occurrence to clean up individual situations of IT breach and then finally saw the light in proactive IT in-sourcing partnership with local providers.  Such local partnerships help with economic growth as opposed to foreign outsourced IT help that can be fraught with language and cultural nuances that could prove challenging; it will also keep
the business costs low because prevention is a frugal alternative to after-the-fact treatment. When small business owners and employees work on computers and communicate via emails it is only a matter of time before inadvertent series of events lead to virus related risks.  Pretending that “it will not happen to me” is not prudent risk taking for businesses.  Let us work together to prevent contraction of IT ailments and focus on preventative IT health. Then we can freely move on to growing our business without worrying about “am I safe” or “who is stealing my stuff”!

**Do share your thoughts and insights on how we can benefit from IT preventative wellness, support & Back-up. We need to make our finances stretch for our families and improve our small business bottom line understanding the interconnectedness. I look forward to an engaging discussion! **