It’s that time of year again. Every time this year around my birthday, – which is next month, mark your calendars! – I talk to people about having what I call a State of the Union for their business. What does that mean? A State of the Union for your business is when you take a look once a year, and you go over everything that’s going on in your business and see if things need to be updated or changed, but mostly so that you can know where everything is located. If, unfortunately, something bad happens to you, whoever is going to be in charge knows what to do.
I know everybody knows about having a will and life insurance and all those kinds of things, but let’s talk super specific business items. And I made a little list. Because there’s a lot. First of all, you should know what the password is to your computer, which you obviously already do, but does the person in charge know?
Number two, where is your domain name hosted? Your domain name is different than your website. So where is your domain name? A lot of people use something simple like GoDaddy, but where is it? And what is that log in information you need to make sure whoever’s in charge knows where to go to find that?
And then of course. Who is hosting your website? How do they get into that platform? A lot of people use WordPress, for example. So what’s the login information for your WordPress site? Does the person in charge know this information?
The next one is an easy one. It’s social media logins, your Facebook, your LinkedIn, whatever you’re using. Can they get in there to access your account? It’s so much easier if they have your login and password than trying to go through the other channels of asking Facebook to shut down the account in the event someone has passed. Write down the logins and keep track of them because we all know everybody gets hacked or something happens and you change them throughout the year. Minimally once a year is a good idea to go over. What in the world is your password to these? I can’t tell you how many people I run into that have no clue what their password is to Facebook. That’s bad. You have to know your passwords!
Other things you need to know that you use to run your business are things like Amazon accounts. Do you have prime accounts, maybe a UPS account, anything like that that is vital to running your business. You should know the logins and passwords, so you can put them in one place where someone can find them and help you.
Any kind of proprietary software that you use or anything that you have to log into every day to run your business, whatever that is, what are your logins and passwords for the most vital information? And maybe it’s something simple, like your Canva account, or maybe it’s something much more complex and highly confidential. Definitely make sure that you have that in one place.
A lot of people use an online service to keep track of their passwords. There’s one called Passpack.com that’s very helpful. But you can even keep it simple by putting all of this in a Word document and save it in your Dropbox folder. Which, again, give someone your Dropbox login information. So a good way to do it is to put everything in Dropbox, but then to also print it out and keep it where you keep your life insurance and your will and your special documents. That way, whoever’s left in charge of running your business for you, if you’re incapacitated or die, can have access to this information.
You don’t want your loved ones scrambling, you don’t want the clients that you serve scrambling because nobody knows how to help them. So every year about this time, I remind people it’s time to check your State of the Union for your business and make sure that everything is in line just in case, because you never know what’s going to happen.
I know this isn’t a fun topic, but it’s incredibly important for you to stay on top of. So I hope that you found this helpful. And in the meantime, if you have any other questions about that kind of stuff, I have been through deaths, divorce, you name it.
Things get sticky. So if you have any questions, I’m happy to help.