This morning I woke up to see a tweet from someone I had never be in touch with before. It immediately got my attention.
At first I thought perhaps this was a spam tweet, trying to get me to click over to a website where I could by cheap viagra, or something else I don’t require 😉
Here’s the tweet in question:
However, it turned out to be a legit Indiegogo campaign that’s even had some local press, too.
Michael Roddy, an entrepreneur from LA, California had made the mistake of putting his entire collection of business eggs in one basket – or, in his case a truck.
The owner of a small TV, film and music video production company, focusing on providing lighting equipment in a turn-key style deal, where all the equipment needed was in one location – his truck – had lost his entire business overnight, as a result of the truck (containing everything) being stolen.
After 25-years of building his business, Raging Pig Productions everything has come to a grinding halt for him.
I want to state for the record, again. I do not know Michael, nor have we ever conversed. I am not publishing this blog to help promote his Indiegogo campaign per se, although there is nothing stopping you backing it by clicking the link below.
Instead I am publishing this post as a reminder to all business owners that read my blog – don’t put all your business eggs in one basket.
This Happened to Me, Too!
Back in early 2009 I had a manager working for me that was in charge of the day-to-day recruitment side of my call center business. She did a great job and was really the only other person other than my wife, that I truly depended on.
As we were busy expanding the business, everything looked great and then she threw a massive curveball our way – she resigned, with immediate affect, due to her husband getting a job offer overseas. We immediately went into a panic. How could this happen to us? Not now… when we’re ramping up as quickly as we were.
We had to go ‘back to work’ in that role, re-learn everything and gather ourselves. My wife and I were totally exhausted by it all and I’m convinced it contributed heavily to my eventual burnout later on that year, which I talk about in the opening chapter of my book, Virtual Freedom.
Eventually, we got new procedures in place, hired and trained a replacement and made sure that contingency plans were there, too, in case the same thing happened again. It hasn’t. We’ve been blessed management wise – but, if it does, we’ll be a lot more ready for it than we were back in 2009.
Get Smart – Store Your Eggs in Multiple Baskets
So…
If you’re business requires virtual staff to handle vital tasks, such as uploading new content and scheduling social media updates, then make sure that more than just one person within your business knows how to handle those tasks (and that they’re properly documented), in case the primary person goes sick, or quits.
If you’re a video marketer, or use a certain amount of video to promote parts of your business, sure, upload your clips to YouTube – but, don’t leave it at that… also upload them to Wistia (my personal fave), or Vimeo to have a back-up, in case something happens to your YouTube account.
If you’re focusing on growing your community on Facebook, that’s awesome – but, make sure to get them over to your website and opting-in to your email list, in case Facebook decides they don’t want you (or your community) around anymore.
If you use an online CRM (such as Zendesk) to handle and manage your customer files, shipping details, etc., be sure to back that sucker up, externally on a regular basis in case the servers storing all your vital company info end up getting hacked, or crash.
I feel for Michael, and genuinely hope that he hits that Indiegogo target – click here if you’d like to help him. Regardless, he’s been working hard and hustling for a long time and no doubt has a great rolodex of people to call on for help / work – he’ll be fine, I know he will.
But, boy oh boy, what an expensive lesson to learn as an entrepreneur.
Heed the warning, my friends…
Don’t put all your business eggs in one basket.