In 1997 Reed Hastings got a late fee. For a movie rental.

Together with a friend, Marc Randolph, he began to imagine a way to avoid paying another movie rental late fee.

He sent a DVD through the US Post Office.

And Netflix was born.

Last week, Netflix sent it’s last DVD by mail. The final deliveries were sent out with this final message attached: “Please enjoy your final shipments for as long as you like!”

But Netflix is not finished...

It continues in its many incarnations as a streaming service, a movie production company, and so much more. Netflix should also be a lesson for all of us on the power of planning for resilience.

If Netflix had only focused on delivering small round plastic discs to consumers, they would have gone the way of Blockbuster Video long ago.

In the same way, if you spend all your time focusing on doing what it says on your business card, you might also be dead if something catastrophic were to happen.

October is cybersecurity awareness month. Security is a broad term in my book.

I encourage all business minded individuals to not only be concerned about the bad guys trying to shut you down, but also consider the other mistakes, blunders, or errors that could land you on the ash heap of history.

Here are some things that could go wrong:

• Ransomware, Virus, Denial-of-Service attacks
• Hardware failures, human error, natural disasters
• Key personnel loss, key vendor loss, Illness
• Political upheaval domestic or foreign.

And so much more…

The key to resilience is not having a perfect solution. It is to START:

• Start: Create a resilience notebook, a cybersecurity policy, an incident response plan. Write down problems and their solutions.
• Tasks: Every day, every week, every month take time to do one thing to bullet proof your business.
• Ask: Don’t wait for things to happen. Ask for help to avoid them in the first place.
• Review: Don’t record it and forget it. Review your resilience information and keep it up to date.
• Tell: And finally, be a beacon for others. Tell someone about the steps you are taking to be resilient.

I challenge you to use October to focus your energy on building systems, processes, and documentation that will help your business survive and thrive during disruption.

Are you ready to start? Hit Reply and send me a note.

Here are three things that I'm doing this month:

1. I'll continue my work with the entrepreneurial education community I co-founded at All For One Academy. Watch this page for information about our October meeting. We should be releasing the date and topics soon...
   ​
2. This month I start my 4th round of Cybersecurity webinars as a subject matter expert with my friends at Washington Small Business Development Centers. Our first session for this last series of 2023 is October 4th and continues every other Wednesday through November. You can sign up HERE.​
   ​
3. I'll be speaking at least one additional time this month on Cybersecurity with a local Agents Helping Agents group of independent Real Estate agents. I'm always looking for additional opportunities to speak. If you have a referral, I'd love to hear about it or earn it. Please reply to this email and let me know.

​