Why Did I Ever Get Into Business For Myself? Dealing With The Why Factor!

Have you ever stopped and thought about why you got into business? What was the driving force behind your decision to lose the security blanket of having a regular paycheck, benefits and regular vacations? Do you lay awake at night, worried about how you are going to feed your family, the unresolved client issues, or just the stress of an employee upsetting one of your best clients? These are some of the questions entrepreneurs ask themselves on a regular basis when trying to figure out why they ever got into business for themselves.

When I decided it was time for me to take the plunge, and start my own IT consulting business, it was after many years of procrastination. My best clients encouraged and told me I had what it took. I knew I was ready when I experienced several nights of upset stomachs from worry. I was lacking the challenges that sparked my excitement in the position I held, so I invited a couple of other highly qualified technical experts, whom I trusted, to assist me with the business and we were off and running. I am an entrepreneur now at heart and always looking for the next opportunity.

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Many business owners, are just like it is stated, in the E-Myth book by Michael Gerber and are always the constant technician. The reason they decided to get into business for themselves is because they figured out since they had a great technical skill or understood their jobs inside and out, it was a no brainer for them to attempt starting a business. They quickly learn there is more than doing the work. There are worries like getting clients, sending out invoices, doing taxes and account collections. All these are things new business owners do not truly forecast when they start out. When you stay in the technician role, you will never experience the true independence and flexibility entrepreneurial business owners are lucky to have.

Passion is one of the most important things an entrepreneur can have! With a true passion for your business, success will have a better chance of landing on your lap. I have met many business owners who do not have a passion for their business. I get the sense it is just a job to them. They are not free to practice vision exercises, risk analysis or just have fun in their business. "I enjoy teaching people how to live longer. I love seeing peoples' health improve" states Magnus Mulliner of MT Energie.

In my old role, I was just a regular IT Consultant; I wasn't the best technical person in the company. However, I possessed a great skill of being able to talk to clients in a simple language they understood, without confusing them with TLA's or other technical jargon. This skill, combined with a technical understanding, led to increased sales, revenues and an ever increasing client base. The sales game came to me without much effort and it is the area of the company I am truly passionate about. The joy of seeing a client succeed or strike a huge find knowing the technology or solutions my Company put into place (or assisted them with), is truly amazing!

Many business owners quickly realize they need vision to grow their businesses. After a few years of being in business for myself, I realized it was time for me to steer the ship instead of rowing it. You can hire the rowers. I found all of my rowers were much better rowers than I could ever be, and my ship would move ahead much faster. With this new momentum in place, the ship just needs to be guided.

Having the ability to constantly improve my own education, having the freedom to do the things I like to do and understanding I am totally accountable for my own results is very powerful. It is important entrepreneurs learn to delegate the tasks they do not enjoy doing or are not good at and concentrate their efforts on what they do well and enjoy doing. This will guarantee results in your business. "Ownership has its privileges" states Ernie Sherman, President of Ottawa's Harris Computer Services.

When I asked other small business IT business owners and entrepreneurs if they would ever do this again, they all said YES. Some would continue in the same business line and others would move into something totally different like "buy a resort on a lake" says Doug Geary of GearyTech Inc, a Toronto based Microsoft Small Business Specialist Partner.

Why Did I Ever Get Into Business For Myself? Dealing With The Why Factor!

Designing Small Business Computer Network - What Should You Do?

Basically designing small, medium, or enterprise class computer networks are principally similar. You need to design your private network infrastructure to provide the availability and reliability of network resources; network security system to protect your network resources against any types of threats, and secure global communication system. Small business computer network should include these three aspects: the private network; the end-point security system for internet threats protection; and a secure way in providing system communication with global internet.

For example, in your business network you need to provide database application to support your finance management, and an email server to support your business communication, you allow authorized users to connect via internet from homes, or probably you need to link other branch offices via WAN cloud connection. Dig as much information as possible before designing your small business network. The following lists some areas you probably need to implement in your design.

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Software Applications

You need to drill down the requirements each of the main element of your core business needs. For example, you need a database application to support your finance management. What application software to purchase, contact the vendor and ask them to provide a presentation about their product and see if their product can meet your finance need. How critical your application to support your business will be, if you don't accept any downtime - you need to provide redundant servers and configure them as failover / failback system. You can dig more information to meet your business need regarding the finance management.

User Account Management

What about user account management? How do you manage the security of your network resources, who can access or deny certain resources and how they can access them? This will help you to design your logical infrastructure need, for example you need to implement Windows server with Active directory (AD) system which should be integrated with your DNS.

With AD infrastructure, you can create group policies that meet your security needs based on different level of user groups. If you implement a Windows server AD, you need to think about how to manage the patches. How all the computers update the Windows patches and other critical security update, will they download the patches direct from the internet or will you deploy a WSUS patches management system? With WSUS, you can manage all the computers within the network to download the Windows update from your WSUS server, not individually download direct from the internet. This will reduce the latency of your internet bandwidth.

Backup System

What about the backup system? How many data file servers are you going to deploy including the Email system? Will you install a tape drive backup system in each of the server or manage all the backup system centrally using Autoloader backup solution? When your business data grows, you need to implement such Autoloader backup system to centrally manage the backup of all the servers to reduce administration and cost overhead.

Network Security

What about endpoint security protection? When you provide the internet access for your users, how can you manage the security? We know that Internet is where all the bad and good things exist. Internet threats such as hackers and malware are evolved all the time to get smarter to detect and penetrate any vulnerabilities of your network system. How can you manage the internet threats, do you have security experts in taking care of your endpoint security system? Probably you need to implement UTM (unified Threat Management) appliance - an-all-in-one solution for your endpoint security system such as SonicWALL NSA 2400 network security appliance.

Email System

What about Email system? Will you manage your own Email system inside your private network? If so, you need to buy a domain name which represents your organization for example Your-Company. Com. You need to liaise with your ISP to host your domain record in their DNS server using one of your public IP address. You need to manage the firewall to allow the email traffic to flow in and out securely based on security policy of your organization.

Collecting data as much as possible regarding your small business computer network requirements is very essential before you can design the infrastructure to provide the availability and reliability of the network resources securely.

Designing Small Business Computer Network - What Should You Do?