I’m sitting at my laptop. My desktop is running Seagate DiscWizard. It’s a handy utility that came with my new hard disk drive. It’s copying my old hard drive onto the new 1 terabyte drive. The old drive is a 200 gigabyte that has been making some funny noises lately. It sounds a lot like cicadas. A high pitch drone that fades in and out periodically. So, I bought a new hard drive.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen someone loose a ton of important data from a hard drive failure… it’s never pretty. That’s why I’m excited that I tuned in and heard my drive making this noise before it died. I had time to get a replacement and save all my data.
The same thing happened recently to a client of mine. (He’s a great dog trainer by the way.) His iMac started making a chattering, clicking kind of noise and was locking up. The noise was the sound of a dying hard drive. I was able to use a USB hard drive to back up all his data and the Apple Store gladly put in a new drive. That is a benefit of having me work with your company: I’m an expert at computer repair and networking.
It’s wise to listen to your computer, but it’s vital to listen to your business. What kind of background noise does your company make? Once you’ve been at it for awhile you’ve got a pretty good idea of what sorts of numbers you see in a month, what sorts of comments folks make, that sort of thing. But what about when a new noise comes out of nowhere? Are you tuned in, or are you too busy to notice until something breaks?
Now staying tuned in isn’t all that hard, it’s just a sort of mindfulness. The hard part is finding the cause and correcting or utilizing it. My computer started making this noise a few weeks ago. At first I thought it was a fan, and I knew my power supply had the oldest fan so I replaced it. The noise came right back. Finally I put on my elbow grease and opened up the case, waited for the noise to come, and listened. I tuned in to it and realized it was the repository of all my data, the hard disk.
The question was “Why is my computer making that noise?” and the answer was “My hard drive is vibrating and probably dying” If only fixing a noise in your business was as simple as replacing a component. Often you’ll know exactly what’s making the noise immediately, and the real question becomes “Why is this noise being made?”
When running a small business that can be a very hard question to answer. Say your sales numbers are down 17% for last month. Why? Well, you had a couple personnel changes. Your local team won the big game. You ran out of a couple things because your supplier messed up a shipment. There weren’t any good movies running in the theater near your store. The list could go on.
My advice to you is to stay tuned in to the noise your business is making. When you hear a new noise spend some time figuring out all the possible causes. You’ll save yourself a lot of time and money when you make informed decisions about fixing your noise. An ounce of investigating is worth a pound of fixing.
That’s an example of the kind of thinking I bring to a company when I am hired. If you need another brain to get to the bottom of something, I can help.
Well, my desktop is now telling me that I have successfully completed the hard disc cloning procedure. I’m going to go enjoy the spaciousness of a thousand gigabytes, you have a wonderful day!