SBCN Small Biz Podcast

Linda Ockwell-Jenner returns with Steve Bentley as they catch-up on the next part in the discussion on rebranding. In this episode Linda and Steve cover the importance of being prepared for a rebranding effort, and how to ensure that the project is successful.

In our latest episode, Linda Ockwell-Jenner is joined by Karen Egoff to discuss some of the techniques she employs to help people achieve balance in their lives. As busy small business owners know, stress is always close by, but there are ways to reduce it's effects on our long term health and wellness.

In this episode, Linda Ockwell-Jenner hosts the first in a series of discussions with Steve Bentley, a long time successful business owner. For their first chat, Linda and Steve discuss a recent rebranding decision, what prompted it and how the new brand is positioned.

Linda is once again joined by Chris Davis to continue their discussion on IT topic for small business. In this episode Chris tackles the Cloud, what it is and what it means for your business. As always there are some great tips that can help you avoid costly mistakes, yet embrace the value that cloud based services can provide.As a special bonus, Chris shares an important article on Cloud Data Protection.

SBCN Co-Founder Linda Ockwell-Jenner chats with Donna Simpson from Cards Connect People. With technology making communication faster and more efficient, isn't still nice to receive a good old fashioned personalized card in the mail? Donna uses her passion for building relationship with a personal touch together with technology, with Send Out Cards, a great way to send someone a card!

We welcome back Gunther Kramer who discusses the importance of not trying to do everything yourself. Speaking with Linda Ockwell-Jenner, Gunther shares some of his experiences in helping to scale his successful business over the past 20 years.

In this episode, Linda Ockwell-Jenner interviews The Canadian Networker's Janet Benedict on her rise to become an expert in networking. Janet's story demonstrates that networking can be both rewarding and fun, and that it only takes simple steps to get great results.

In this episode, SBCN Co-Founder Linda Ockwell-Jenner chats with Lisa Sinclair of Enviro Painting. Learn why an environmentally friendly approach to painting is also friendly to our health.

SBCN Co-Founder Linda Ockwell-Jenner chats with Dorothy Sinding of Elite Training Facility.A car hit Dorothy when she was 5 years old, physiotherapy followed and because of the accident, she decided to follow her passion.The Team Spirit Programme is a big part of Elite Training Facility and you can find out more about Dorothy & Clint, her partner, and how fitness programmes can ready you for everything you do in life.They say that a healthy body leads to a healthy mind, so don't miss some fantastic approaches to maintaining an active and healthy lifestyle.

Chris Davis returns with Linda Ockwell-Jenner, co-founder of the SBCN,  to delve deeper into the subject of IT downtime and what it means for your business. It's quite easy to think of downtime purely as the situation where your PC stops working, but as you'll discover, there's so much more to it than that.What is Downtime?Many small businesses do not have a solid plan for preventing "bad things" from happening to their computer networks. "bad things" such as server/desktop crashes, firewall crashes, or router/switch malfunctions can take down an entire network for many, many hours. These instances are considered downtime, but they have another hidden component that is possibly even more costly than when a network device crashing.Things you may not realize that contribute to downtime can be as simple as  waiting for applications to load.... waiting for slow web pages to load..... Waiting for pages to print on the printer.... When you recreate deleted and missing documents... these are all forms of downtime that can quickly add up.Employee deletes something by mistakeAnd employee clicks something they shouldn't - crypto lockerWait time to restore files and systemsIt comes down to:RTO how much downtime can you tolerate? (Recovery Time Objective)RPO how much data are you willing to lose (Recovery Point Objective)Free Calculator on the Polarverse web site: http://rcalc.polarverse.com calculates RTO and RPO.That is just protection from failure, it doesn't mitigate issues cause by a poorly maintained network and that is where something like managed services comes in where your network is monitored with regular maintenance. Does your car run better with regular maintenance and care? Would you just drive it till it stops working?The main benefits of Managed Services is discovering and fixing problems before they can negatively impact your business. A well maintained, proactively serviced computer network always runs better than a network serviced by a break-fix method. Proactive network monitoring, patch management, and desktop optimization performed on a regular basis, you will notice a tremendous difference in reliability. With this type of service you can typically reduce your annual IT costs by 30 to 50%.