Disaster Strikes! What Do You Do?

Greetings, folks, and welcome to the Small business show at BusinessShow Co, where we bring you business advice and business thoughts every week. Answering your questions, solving your problems, solving our problems. Here in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton.

And in Lafayette, California, I'm Shannon Jean. How's it going, Dave?

It goes, man. How's it going with you?

Good. We're busy out here as always, and a few more little bit more time in summer here, but we are in the midst of rolling out some new software for one of my businesses and that's always challenging.

That's crazy, man. Yeah, that's tough. It's tough. Yeah. Because as good as it is a month from now, even a week from now, today, it's all your fault because you're the one in charge.

Well, and the thing that. Which is good because we're going to talk about today on the show, what to do when disaster strikes. And as I mentioned to you earlier, the first day we rolled out, things went really well. And then the second day, everything went right in the toilet. And it seems to me there's just, there's no way that you can anticipate how your app is going to respond when it starts getting bombarded with different users and the way and the interaction is using the system differently. Even though you've had beta testers and this and that, you know, once everybody really starts pounding on it, that's when you find it's. It's true. Weaknesses.

Yeah, it's.

And go ahead.

No, it's totally true. And in fact, I mentioned in a previous show that I'm involved in this software thing and, and we're, we. It's the kind of thing where we can't really roll it out to a huge number of beta testers because they're going to want other people to use it to really get even more value out of it.

Sure.

So, and we test it internally and it's killer. I mean it just, it solves the exact problem we want it to solve. But I know having done this before that when it comes time to roll this out, I know currently where some of the inefficiencies are in the, in the code. Right. And in just in the infrastructure. But some of it I'm going to have to guess. I mean, in fact, I'm not going to guess at and I refuse to guess at it because I'll be wrong. The right thing is to just let other people try it and. Okay, that part is horrible. You know, it's. Yes, that's really inefficient we need to fix that. And my honestly, part of my rollout plan is have more servers online than I need on day one.

Yeah, that's a great idea. And that's, you know, plan having that backup or plan B I think is one of the most critical things. So you know what to do in disaster strikes and you know, we need some horror music here, you know. But you know, for me, I keep telling everybody just jump back and use the old system. Yeah, there's no stress, there's nothing to worry about. Just all you have to do is click that link instead of that one.

That's right.

And you can, you can manage your workflow through there. It'll hit the same database on the back end. You know, that kind of stuff that we, that we prepared for and that has made all the difference and is actually leads you to my first point about what to do when disaster strikes. Because it's going to strike. You are going, something is going to happen at some point in your business, you know, career that something very bad is going to happen. Whether it's your servers down during some very important thing or you know, things you just never know. But the, the number one thing in my experience was to remain calm.

Yeah, I, Adam Christensen, who is the, he started MacCast almost 11 years ago now. Yep. He is a killer programmer and a great, he's just a great guy. But, but he actually works with us here at Backbeat and TMO and works quite a bit with us in fact and does a lot of programming and stuff. And he's always the one. Now he's my, you know, right hand man, if you will. I mean at times I'm his right hand man, depending depending on the project. But when the server stuff goes down, I'm still the one that's sort of the point person. We have, we have admins that are, that are on duty 24 hours a day and all that stuff. But okay, when it all comes down to it, me, you know, somebody's got to call the shots and if I'm not there, AD can or somebody else can, but if I'm there, I'm the one they're always coming to and I'm really involved and I know this stuff and he always reminds me of someone and I wish I could attribute this quote to the right person, but I'll attribute it to by proxy via Adam. He says, you know, there's this guy that runs a server farm and he says the first thing that he does when he hears that there's an emergency is he goes outside and he spends 30 minutes playing with his kids.

I love that. Yeah, I love that because that's great.

We're not saving lives here.

Yeah.

You know, 30 minutes in the moment, it seems like an eternity.

Oh, my gosh. Yeah, Absolutely. Absolutely. And. And that's it. But it's not what happened. Yeah, yeah. I mean, and, and what I found is whenever that disaster strikes, you know, a key employee leaves or something happens, you got a super upset customer or whatever it is, the eyes in the office tend to look to me and, okay, how do we handle this? Especially in earlier years when we were kind of just getting started. And if you're calm and you can walk up, just go, okay, let's talk about this. How are we going to solve this issue over time? Hopefully those folks, even just by osmosis or just observing the way that you would like things handled, they'll do the same thing. And then you don't have to be the one that's jumping in to put out every single fire.

Well, they'll copy your behavior or at least model their behavior after what they. If they see you freaking out, they're guaranteed gonna freak out. Now if they see you calm, they might freak out anyway.

Yeah, some of them do. Some of them do. And you know, it's. And it's not only your employees, but it's your customers, they're counting on you not to freak out. Your, your suppliers, your family, which really goes towards that 30 minute thing. Right?

Yeah.

I mean, if you're bringing home your, you know, disasters and freaking out and you're impatient and you can't do this, that's not going to be a good thing, you know, and you, when you especially the people in your life that you really need to be there to kind of bring you, talk you off the edge of the cliff, because you may be calm on the outside, but, you know, freaking out the inside, you got to keep calm. Even if it's that, you know, fake it till you make it. The Persona that, don't worry, everything's going to be fine. We're going to figure this out together.

Well, and that's it, you know, saying, I have the answer the moment disaster strikes, whatever that disaster is. And you know, we're lumping a lot of things into disaster, most of which are not actually disasters. Right, but that's, that's correct.

Perceived.

Well, it could be perceived as disasters. But yeah, you know, saying, oh, I have the answer. And if. Unless you actually have the answer is the worst thing you could do. Right, Right. Panicking and totally going ballistic and, you know, running around like a chicken with your head cut off. That's the only, the second worst thing you can do. Right. I really think saying I have the answer is worse. But what you said.

Good point.

Is the best. Which is. We'll figure this out. Let's take a deep breath. What's the, what's actually the problem? Okay, maybe it's really obvious, you know, this employee left. Okay, but what does that actually mean? You know, okay, they don't, you know, we don't have someone filling this particular role. Guess what? You know, there's a lot of us left here and we all know that that person filled that role or that those six roles. Great, let's split them up. Giddy up, let's go.

Yeah, let's figure it out. You know, and I mean, I recently had something happened that has, in 20 plus years of business, never, ever happened. And that was I had two employees come to physical blows in inside our building.

What?

I'm not kidding you. And it was, you know, we were on a very. Our culture is we all work really hard, but, but it's very important. I want to have a good time. I'm there, you know, all the time. And we want to make sure things are pleasant. And I want to hear laughter. It's a huge reward for me to hear my employees laughing and that kind of thing. And we had a guy, that super nice young guy and everything, but you know, he was kind of troubled and we, we had moved some people around and before he was kind of off on his own, a little bit more independent. And then we had kind of brought, brought him back in. I don't go too specific, but I was in my office one day and I heard some loud voices and I kind of thought people were just yelling back and forth and, and then I, I really, all of a sudden I could just tell it had escalated into some very loud name calling back and forth between this other very mild mannered guy. And I jumped out of my chair, barreled across the building and into the. One of our labs. And here these two guys were literally about an inch away from each other. And you know, I just walked right in between them and I just, you know, I didn't even think about it. I was so shocked. And I think I was, When I was so shocked, I said, guys, we don't do this here. It was just the first thing I said. This does not happen here. This is not how we solve problems. And I walked one guy One way and another one of our supervisors walked another guy and I walked this guy out and I said, hey, you know what? I don't know what happened. I don't want to know at this point. We're going to let things settle down. Take the rest of the day off. We'll take care of you. Don't worry about it. Just go and think about it and come on in tomorrow morning, we'll talk about it. And you know, it was just, it was so shocking to me. That was the only thing I could say. This doesn't happen here. It's never, it never has and it never will. You know, we just don't do this. I was such so stunned of what could happen that was so bad. And it turns out it was just kind of a long, you know, term thing that this underlying, you know, thing went on. And you know, unfortunately it cost a guy's job because he was wrong. And you can't, you can't have that. Yeah, yeah, you just can't do that. It's not going to happen.

Like you said, we don't do this here.

I just don't do it. So obvious to me that they were missing this very important thing. I felt like I was about 8 years old again immediately. Hey, wait, we don't. This doesn't happen here. You know, that be so you know it. That kind of rolls into my, my guess.

My next thing is I want to go. No, no, finish. I. I had a stupid anecdote to share.

Just kidding. Oh, that's fine. Yeah. Anyway, that's probably not, you know, communicating in, in any ways. When there's a disaster, what may be perceived as a, or just a big problem, something happens that is the worst time to shut the door to your office, put your phone on dnd, all that stuff. Even though you may want to do that, now is the time you have to get up, you have to walk around, you have to talk to people, you have to be seen because, you know, you're the rock. You're the steady person as the business owner, the founder, the president, whatever you, you know, may be.

That's right.

You need to talk to your employees. Especially if something has happened that impacts them. They need to see you acting normally, you know, normal, that, oh, hey, tomorrow, you know, things will be, don't worry about it. If you had some loud customer that got very upset in the lobby or some kind of thing. After you get things resolved, take a walk around. You know, especially like when we had that issue pop up where two people are, you Know, really in each other's face, which is so shocking. I spent a half an hour walking around.

Hey.

Every day, you know, hey, you know, man, we just didn't. That doesn't ever happen. We had some interns there. You really have to kind of reset everyone.

Yeah.

You know, and go. And same thing. If, if it's about a customer, if it's something that impacts your customers, you have to talk to your customers. If your website's going to be down, you know, God forbid, for 24 hours and you're going to be hugely impacted, jump on all your social media and let your customers know.

Well, that. That's totally it. Yeah. And so now I'll go backwards because my anecdote probably wasn't that much that stupid. But you know, when, when we have that problem and we manage the, the ads for quite a few very popular websites and there have been times, thankfully, very, very infrequently, but they have happened where the ad server goes offline or the web server goes offline because we managed hosting for some other companies. And you know, and so whenever one of those things happens where it's impacting someone else the easiest, the thing you want to do is to just hide and hope they don't notice.

That's right.

Right. I mean, that would be the best case scenario. You fix it. No one knew.

Woo.

Dodged a bullet. But yeah, you know, and, and so, I mean, you know, if something goes wrong, I'll. The first thing I'll do is look right, you know. Okay. Is this an easy fix? Yes. Okay, let's get it back online. Good. Okay. Does anybody, you know, now what's my email box look like? What do I need to do? But if it's more than about 10 or 15 minutes and I realize we're in this for the long haul, you know, the first thing I do is I, or the, the next thing at that point that I do is I stop and I send out an email or call people or whatever I need to do to alert all the appropriate parties that, hey, we have a problem, we know about it, we're working on it. Obviously, I'm sorry, you know, that's, that's where it starts, you know, and, but we're on it and I will give you an update within X, you know, and I mean, if it's, if it's a problem that I think we can solve in 20 minutes, I say I'll give you an update in a half hour. You know, if it's a problem that I think is going to Be a six hour fix. And trust me, we've seen them. You know, it's like I will update you in an hour and I'm honest about that. I think this is going to take many hours to fix. But I will be here again in one hour or whatever the time is. And then I make sure I set an alarm and I commit to it because that's information. Right. You know, and like you said, just managing the situation in a calm but, but attentive way. You don't want to be like, oh wow, we have a problem. You know what man? Sure, let's just you and me go get a beer and think about maybe something else for a little while. You know, that's not so good. But you know, and the calm, attentive is, is the best way.

Yeah. And that's, I think the key thing to that method is not only are you recognizing that there is an issue so that they're not, you're not getting hit by all these people like, hey, did you know this is working, isn't working, but you're also managing the expectation of I'm going to give you another update in X.

Yes.

And you're following through with that and that is huge.

I know that I can't guarantee a solution. I've learned that probably the hard way. I mean, I've been doing this long enough that thankfully I don't do that anymore, but I know I did at some point. Right. So the only thing I can do is guarantee you that I'm going to keep telling you what's going on. That's, I mean, that's the only thing I can guarantee for the future now. I mean, obviously something terrible could happen to me. We could have a double disaster. But that's, you know, I can't, I can't, you know, calculate for that. So.

No, you're right.

Yeah. Yeah.

Within your control and especially with technology, that stuff's going to happen. It's going to happen. You know, you can allay their fears. You know that you're, at least you're working on it, followed up.

Yeah, you know, we, we have, we, A lot of our partners are really smart people that have figured out their own website problems and things and so occasionally one of them will say, hey, I'm around. Obviously I have a vested interest in this problem getting solved. What's going on? And sometimes it's hey, look, you know, I appreciate the offer of help but now's the wrong time. And other times it's actually, you know what, let me run this by you sometimes helps. Even if they don't have the answer, sometimes it just helps to explain the problem to someone that's, you know, not at least at arm's length from it. And in that process, explaining, you know, I used to do a lot of consulting and, you know, just helping people solve silly problems on their computer, not silly problems on their computers. And one of the most helpful things I found was just talking to them while I did it. Now sometimes I'm explaining. I mean, this was back in the, you know, the days of IRQs and, you know, address lengths and stuff. And so I'd tell people, oh, here's what I'm doing now. I knew that half of or more of what I was telling them was completely irrelevant to them. But talking it out, you're sometimes like, hey, wait a minute, hold that thought. They're like, what thought? Like, never mind. I have the answer right. You know, that can help. It can help. So my stupid anecdote, which isn't so stupid, reminded me when you said, we don't do that here. It reminded me of a concert I was at years and years ago, probably 25 years ago, the band, they Might Be Giants, was playing. And it was. Yeah, they're awesome. It was down at Toad's Place in New Haven, and. And the crowd was moshing, like, you know, like just slam dancing and. And yeah, it was really sort of disturbing.

Doesn't match that their. Their type of music.

I would say that they stopped mid song. And one of the Johns, I don't know their. Their last names, to. To tell you which one of them it was, but it was one of the Johns, which is the guys that lead. They both named John that lead the band. And one of them said, all right, listen, folks, I gotta tell you, our fans don't do this. You know, it was that same kind of thing, and it was that same sort of vibe, like, we're just gonna take control. We stopped a song in the middle. Our fans don't do this. You know, we're not gonna just ignore that this is happening and keep playing along and hope it sorts out or ignore it or whatever and just, nope, we don't do this. They were very calm about it. And it actually mostly worked. I mean, there were still a couple of dissenters, but, you know, for the most part, people were like, oh, yeah, oops, sorry.

You know, yeah, that's a good idea.

I mean, helps control the situation.

Yeah, Yeah. I mean, just when I said that to. To these guys, when I was in between, they immediately stopped because it was just such a fact. It's like, hey, you know, you, you know that we just don't do this here. And so it is, it's just a statement of fact, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it is. Yeah. And that, you know, you just, you have to say something and, and without thinking of anything, you just, you know, roll, roll with whatever, whatever comes out.

Sometimes the, the things we say in those moments of either frustration or just, you know, off the cuff. Some of those things I, I had and I still keep it. But it started when I had computer nerds years and years ago. My partner and I obsessed about magic phrases, things that you could say to customers or to employees, you know, at certain times that would get you over the hump. And, and there were things that we found, you know, and we codified them all, and they were in our school manual. Yeah. And. And that's one of those magic phrases. We don't do that here.

Yeah, we, you know, along a similar lines, we had words that we banned when talking to customers, and one of those was like, you know, customer asked, well, will that ship today? Well, human nature say, yeah, it should. No, no, we don't, we don't use the word should. Yeah. Because it's either going to happen or it's not. It's like, yes, it's going to ship. If something comes up to keep it from, I'm going to call you or, you know, that kind of thing. It's that. Right. Because should is a cop out for, you know, anyway. Not to digress, but.

No. Well, should is word you should never say.

There you go. I like it.

Yeah.

That.

I learned that in, I think, 12th grade psychology class. And that was actually the lesson. It was, should is a word you should never say.

That's right.

Because it, it. You're either telling someone something they. That you want them to do or you're copping out of something else. But either way, it's just bad, you know, I want you. It's much better. Like if I say, and I'm not saying this, but if I say, hey, hey, Shannon, I want you to get closer to the microphone, it would sound better. That's a better way of saying, hey, Shannon, you should get a little closer to the mic. Right.

Yes. You know, I agree, and you've told me that many times.

I have. That's right. But today is not one of them. You actually, I. But, you know, that's that kind of thing. It's, It's. Should is a good word. Should is something you should never say, yeah.

And, you know, it seems like we keep coming back to this, but when I started doing show notes for this disaster thing, I just kept running back into this communication, how talking and connecting with other people is at the core of finding a solution to most things that can go wrong. We talked about employees, customers, that kind of thing. And also suppliers and vendors. If you're having problems, maybe financial, that is going to impact you on a short term or maybe even long term, getting those people vested in your success by communicating with them, even though it goes counter to, you know, oh, I don't want anybody to know, or I don't want these guys, maybe, maybe they're not going to ship to me or sell to me in my experience. And luckily, you know, for. Fortunately, it's been few and far between. If you have issues that pop up that are going to impact your supplier relationships, you need to talk to them and, and they'll appreciate it and they'll be there for you.

Yeah, totally that. Totally. Yeah. But it is that communication thing. And that can be the difference between, you take two businesses, you know, that can provide the same service, your business, and another one, let's say there's somebody that does exactly the same thing and you both have exactly the same problems. Right. You know, because they're normal problems. And neither one of you is really screwing up. It just happens. And one of you talks to the customer and maintains that relationship even when things aren't great. Especially when things aren't great. Yeah, that's the one I'm gonna stick with as a, as a, you know, as a vendor. I mean, of course.

Yeah. Even though it may be an unpleasant conversation, it is a conversation.

At least it happened. And you're not just sitting wondering, well, what's going on? God, I gotta lose these guys. I don't, you know, I don't know what's good. There's having problems and they're not even talking to me. I mean, how many times have all of us said that? I. Yes, they're having problems and they're not even talking to me. And yet human nature is to do exactly that.

Yeah. And. And you feel like from a customer standpoint, like you're being misled. Your head is creating much larger problems than are probably, you know, really happening because you're not getting any information. And it would be just like you, Dave, if server went down at some point and it was just radio silence and you started getting bombarded with 30, 40, 50 emails and nothing happened. You know, these guys would Be freaking out, right. They'd be like, oh, my livelihood's going down, what's going on? You know, that kind of stuff. What's going on?

I'm out of control. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. And you can only take that so many times before you take your business elsewhere.

That's right, that's right.

And you know, along the same lines, your suppliers and customers. How about your banker? You know, they're the ones that really would like to have some feedback on how things are going. Even if you're struggling, even if you're going to tell them, hey, look, you know, this year is not going to be that great for our business. We had planned to do this or whatever. I can recall one year we made a decision to invest a ton of money in a new project and launching a new business. And we just knew that based on past year's revenue, we were just going to bury the profits of the business that year. And one of the first things we did, and I was going through, you know, stuff, paperwork like, you know, contracts and proposals and things. And my attorney says, hey, you know, you better go talk to your banker, you know. And I said, why? He's like, well, you know, it's February. It's better to let him know now that, hey, this year we're just going to, it's going to be a write off versus having that discussion the following February when he wants to know how your previous year's books look.

Right.

And it makes a big difference. Again, you get them on your side. You're not the first person to tell them this. No, they know what's going on, you know. And lastly on the communication part is use your support system, you know, oftentimes especially entrepreneurs or go it alone, people, you know, we can keep things inside and think, oh, I got it, I'm going to solve this problem on my own. But you know, talking to your spouse, your other family members, your peers, you know, other colleagues, talking things through with someone that has some distance on it can really give you that different perspective and either, you know, help you get through it with some different ideas or kind of tell you, oh, I think you're doing the right thing. And those, you know, don't discount talking to other people about what's going on.

No. In fact, that's often the time when either like you know, with the server thing I said before, even just with, you know, with the client stuff when I was doing the consulting, if you've, sometimes they'll have the answer, but sometimes you'll have the answer by telling them through by walking them through the problem. It can just be nice to just talk it out. Therapize. It's good.

There's. Yeah, that's very good. So, yeah. So I think the key is, you know, is communication. Just whatever it is that you got to get out there, whether you're. You're talking to the people that it's going to impact or whether you're getting advice about, you know something. You don't want to shut yourself down, even though, you know, you just. It seems like what you want to do. I don't want to take any more phone calls or I don't want anybody else coming to my office. Yeah, I want to really need to open up.

I want to go into ostrich mode until the problem is solved and the world is a happy place again.

You got it. So how do you deal with disaster? You know, we'd love to get some thoughts and feedback or stories about how you solve some problems or what we've missed or what you agree or disagree with. And you can reach us@feedbacksinessshow.co. and we'd certainly love to hear from you.

Indeed. Thanks for listening, folks. And we will see you or talk to you. Talk with you.

That's better. Next week. It's good.

All right, thanks.

Take care, folks.