Is your online business protected online?

When a business owner opens the doors to a physical store they have receipts and physical reminders of all the investment it takes to build a business. They know how expensive those chairs for clients were and the cost to replace a broken computer. There’s money in the cash drawer and inventory on the shelf so they protect that investment with locks on the door, a security system, maybe even loss prevention staff and by running background checks on employees to ensure they’re not thieves.

But… how do you protect your online business?

For an online company your assets are not all tied up in equipment like a computer or tablet but in your online presence.

Your website.

Social media influence.

Followers.

Subscribers.

Reputation.

Take a trip with me down nightmare lane for 2 horrifying scenarios which you pray will never happen to your business but I’ve seen occur in real life.

Scenario 1 : Good-bye list! Good-bye emails!

Imagine that it’s a normal week but you’re making a staffing change to find a better fit in one role. You’re focused on finding a new VA or OBM and then, logging in to wrap up your newsletter for the week you find… nothing.

Infusionsoft is gone. Your entire account has been deleted. WTF.

Calling the company in a panic (cursing that cheery hold music) you find out that someone, with your login details, has deleted everything.

No list, no email templates for your upcoming launch, no order forms, no products, NO LIST, no record of your orders for the last 5 years, did I mention no list?

How are you going to communicate with your people, share your offers and make money now?

Cue crying and ice cream therapy.

Now I’d like you to remember that your team is awesome, great people. They’d never do that to you, right? Well, deliberate sabotage is not the only way you can get screwed online.

Scenario 2 : Tsunami wipeout

It’s a month before your launch and you’re ready to go update the copy on that dedicated sales page when you realize… the domain expired. Someone else is now running mysalespageURL.com and you not only cannot get it back but you’ve lost your only copy of the original sales page.

A hundred hours of design work and copy edits: gone.

Or you think it was just a new Facebook update when you look at your sidebar and don’t see that group. You know, the one you created to nurture members of a program so you can share your new offer that’s coming up? They’re engaged and lovely and… where is it?

Gone.

You’re so proud of yourself. For years now you’ve been tracking the metrics of your blog posts or speaking events or Facebook ad promos and having all that data in a Google spreadsheet makes you feel like an organized God/dess.

Except, you can’t find it. Not in your folder, shared with me and, did someone change the name? You hunt down the last time you sent the share link to someone and, sure enough, it’s like it never existed.

You can never go back and recall all that data.

Why does this happen? That recently departed team member was just cleaning up their stuff. They didn’t forward you the domain renewal because they’re off the team, the Facebook page they were admin on got deleted instead of transferred and the Google doc? Oh, they deleted all of those to clean up their Drive folder. Any file they created is now like dust.

Cut to screaming and punching bag therapy.

You don’t have to be paranoid to protect your online business. Honest mistakes happen and yes, even deliberate sabotage happens.

If you want to protect your business and ensure you’re never scrambling to fix your business then you owe it to yourself to dedicate some time to this problem.

Because it will happen. You don’t get to decide who and when and how bad, just how strong your system is to protect your business.

And yes, it totally sucks but go back to that imaginary place and remember the pit in your stomach, the impact as this ripples through your business. Now imagine the magnitude if this happens on your first vacation in 3 years. During your biggest launch. In the middle of a family emergency. While you’re on stage at a huge speaking event.

I’ll say it again: you don’t get to choose WHEN.

You’d laugh at the store owner who left the doors open all night or gave a copy of the keys to every employee and never got it back when they left. So ask yourself if you’re leaving your online business assets wide open and vulnerable.