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YOUR MANAGED SERVICES PARTNER
JANUARY 2020
Time to Reboot! Your 2020 IT Resolutions
How to Protect Your IT in the New Year
Update Security Applications Be vigilant about implementing a comprehensive patch management program. Be sure to monitor your patching consistently. Know that keeping your security patches up to date is critical. This will protect you from the latest threats. You may have heard of the Equifax data breach in which 143 million Americans were potentially affected — Social Security numbers, birth dates, and home addresses were exposed. A fix that would have closed the security hole was available two months before the breach, but the company failed to update its software. Take Steps to Avoid Falling Victim to Ransomware Be proactive with your security. This is the best way to protect your company from ransomware. With a qualified IT team like Broadleaf, we will be able to see those issues or attacks well before they become a real threat. This will ensure you’re mitigating the cost and risk of your business more effectively in 2020.
recovery times and objectives. Just think about how much time you can bide without critical systems, applications, and data before your company is negatively affected. Additionally, how much data can you afford to lose between your backups? Make sure your recovery objectives can be met by periodically testing your data protection strategy. Consider enhanced BDR services that can detect ransomware during backups as well. Harden Your Organization Against Phishing Attacks If you don’t have an email filtering application, it's time to invest. When looking over your options, make sure whatever you choose can filter malicious emails. These applications are only so effective, of course, so it’s important to educate your staff as well. Make sure your staff knows the characteristics of a fake email and how to handle them. Ongoing training of your employees is the most powerful tool you can have in avoiding phishing attacks. Up Your Password Game Require your employees to change their passwords on a regular basis. Passwords like “Password, 123456,” or reusing recent passwords should be prohibited. The more complicated a password is the better. Be sure to track all passwords with a password management software application.
Now that New Year’s celebrations have faded, many of us are considering what might need to be improved or changed in 2020. Many of us are evaluating the year gone by and discerning the dreams and goals we hope to achieve in the new year. Regardless of what your New Year’s resolution is, achieving it comes down to having a plan. While we may not know a lot about eating healthier or exercising more, Broadleaf Services can help with your IT security resolutions. Here are a few that can help get your IT infrastructure into fighting shape to defend against the cybercriminals who may head your way in 2020. Develop a Formal Backup/Disaster Recovery Plan Hope is not a strategy, so it’s essential to have a backup and disaster recovery plan. It should encompass not only data back up, but also detail realistic
Call us anytime at (866) 337-7733 or visit our website at BroadleafServices.com.
Happy New Year, everyone!
–Chuck Mosca
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Unlike many members of his family, Yasyf Mohamedali didn’t go to medical school. Even as a teenager, he was far more interested in technology and entrepreneurship. In fact, he launched his first business while in high school, reselling domain names for websites. While attending MIT, Mohamedali found a way to leave his mark on the medical field too. It all started with Joe Kahn, a Harvard student from South Africa who suffered from an undiagnosed medical condition. This unnamed illness caused the young student to have bouts of high fever, diarrhea, and vomiting. Worse still, Kahn was unable to get clear answers from doctors and was often sent from one specialist to the next without so much as a follow-up appointment. Kahn’s struggles navigating the health care system, despite having access to some of the best medical facilities in the United States, made Mohamedali realize just how unique his own access to care had been. Growing up as the son of two physicians in rural Canada, Mohamedali never struggled to get medical advice at a moment’s notice. “Whenever I got sick, I just called a doctor in my family,” he explained in a 2018 interview with the MIT Alumni Association. “I want people like Joe to have that kind of relationship with their care.” So, the two university students founded Karuna Health. This online platform helps doctors keep in contact with their patients, track their progress, and coordinate treatment with other care providers. Leveraging his experience in the tech field, Mohamedali designed Karuna to integrate digital medical records with patient-preferred means of communication, from SMS to WhatsApp — all without breaching the strict HIPAA privacy regulations. This way, users can make appointments, send automatic reminders for medication refills, and hear from patients at a moment’s notice. Yasyf Mohamedali Brings Patients and Doctors Together ENTREPRENEUR SPOTLIGHT
3 ESSENTIAL TIPS FOR USING FACEBOOK LIVE And Making Your Broadcast a Success
Facebook Live has been available to Facebook users for years now, but many business owners still haven’t taken advantage of this powerful customer engagement resource. Essentially, this technology gives users the ability to broadcast live from their Facebook account. For businesses, a gold mine of opportunity is opened to connect with customers and prospects in real time. Some companies utilize it for product launches, rebranding, general announcements, or directly engaging with potential customers. That said, a poorly executed broadcast can leave you with more issues than you started with. With that in mind, here are some essential tips to ensure your Facebook Live videos strengthen your marketing instead of weaken it. 1. Record for at least 10 minutes. If you set out to broadcast for 45 seconds, your content isn’t going to reach anyone in your target audience. A good rule of thumb is to create enough content so that your event reaches at least 10 minutes. With an average broadcast time of 10 minutes, your audience will have more opportunity to see your content, and you’ll reach the highest number of people possible. 2. Prioritize good production quality. You don’t need to be a professional videographer to develop quality video content, but a poor broadcast could damage your brand. For example, your viewers will be distracted if you use an unsteady camera, so invest in equipment to keep your broadcast steady, like a tripod. In addition, make sure your environment is completely quiet so your audience can focus on your content without hindrance. If you plan on having more than one person in the video, use microphones to ensure your audience can hear you. 3. Engage with the comment section. You could be alienating the audience you’re trying to engage by failing to respond to questions in the comment feed. Facebook Live isn’t just about broadcasting yourself; it’s also about communicating with your viewers directly to develop relationships with them. And as an added bonus, viewers’ comments can give you valuable feedback and consumer insights. It takes effort, but putting in the time to respond is well worth it to show you care about your audience’s opinions. These tips only scratch the surface of making your Facebook Live event a success, but they offer a good starting point. Before you dive in, know that Facebook’s platform changes periodically, so be sure to test Facebook Live on your personal page to familiarize yourself with the updated format. And to stay up to date on all of Facebook’s updates, check out their new newsroom at Newsroom.FB.com.
Karuna, which means “compassion” in Sanskrit, is poised to bring doctors and patients closer together and keep people from slipping through the cracks in the health care industry. According to Inc.com, the startup has already raised $1.3 million from investors. It looks like Mohamedali is well on his way to making health care more accessible for all.
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HAVE A Laugh Throughout his book, Ries emphasizes the importance of consumer feedback for the success of your business, but he also warns against putting any real value in vanity metrics, which TechCrunch describes as data points, “like registered users, downloads, and raw page views.” Anyone After reading just a few pages, it’s easy to see why everyone raves about Eric Ries’ invaluable manual “The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses.” Ries is a fantastic writer, but two aspects of his writing style separate him from the pack of typical business writers and keep you turning pages: He is intellectually honest and cheerful about his business insights. Eric takes a common notion in business — “fail fast, succeed fast” — and breaks it down into a system that works for businesses and keeps consumers happy. “The Lean Startup” recommends the use of a minimum viable product, or MVP, to gauge demand before you embark on major product development. Forbes describes an MVP as “a product with only a basic set of features, enough to capture the attention of early adopters and make your solution unique.” If you jump into building the best product possible before measuring what your consumers actually need, you risk wasting a lot of time. Market research can tell you a lot, but MVPs can tell you even more. Plus, if your initial rollout is successful, you can respond quickly to consumer feedback and tailor your final product to specific needs. Jump-Start Your Business With Eric Ries’ ‘The Lean Startup’
can generate immediate hype for a product, but it's another thing to maintain constant engagement and experience growth of consumer interest. With a good MVP and continued improvement of your service or product, your business will see that growth and also retain customers. Ries’ guidance does not end with MVPs and vanity metrics; here are some other key takeaways that will keep you on the lean startup path when it's most daunting.
"It's the boring stuff that matters most."
"Remember if we're building something that nobody wants, it doesn't much matter if we're doing it on time and on budget."
"Customers don't care how much time something takes to build. They care only if it serves their needs."
In the epilogue, Eric's intellectual honesty shines; he readily admits that some readers may take his theories as a means to justify their past business actions. But he encourages everyone to use his book instead as a guide for what they will do next in their entrepreneurial journey.
PUZZLE
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Inside This Edition
1.
How to Protect Your IT in the New Year
2.
Entrepreneur Spotlight: Yasyf Mohamedali Using Facebook Live to Strengthen Your Marketing
3.
Optimize Your Business With Eric Ries
Have a Laugh
4.
Start the 2020s Off Right With Good Sales Goals
Get Your Sales Goals Right the First Time And Make 2020 Your Best Year Yet No matter what industry you are in, you can’t build a
business. For car dealerships, for example, setting individual goals for your employees may be ideal. For physical therapy clinics and chiropractors, however, it may be best to develop company-wide goals. Regardless of your industry, you must make sure sales goals support the overall growth goal of your business and keep employees engaged and challenged. Shift, Shift, Shift Think about the beginning of 2010. Were you the same person then as you are today? There’s a good chance you are not, which means you’ve set different goals for yourself each year to reflect your growth. The same principle applies to business. It’s perfectly okay to shift your sales expectations and end results to better suit your current success and what you need — no matter what you did in previous years. Be flexible and make changes in your sales goals as you see fit. To start off the 2020s strong, you need to create attainable goals that improve your business. Don’t model your goals after another business that seems to be thriving; focus on what you need to achieve success! It all starts with setting the right goals to get there.
successful business without sales. Making a sale establishes a relationship, almost always yields a profit, and lays the foundation for future growth. When your sales fall flat and you fail to meet goals — or even set them — your business suffers negative consequences. As we head into a new decade, follow these suggestions for short- and long-term goals to guarantee your sales success. Think Like Goldilocks The problem with goal-setting is many people aim too low or shoot too high. Instead, you need your sales goals to be just right. The key is to find a goal that is challenging for your team to reach, but also attainable. Here’s one way to go about creating that Goldilocks goal: Look at the number of sales you made each month for the past two years. Identify the months with the highest
and lowest sales and find the average of those numbers. Use this figure as the starting point.
Keep It Personal There’s no hard-and-fast rule on setting sales goals other than this: The goals need to fit your
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