I am constantly surprised by how many businesses do not have control of their domain. This is the most critical component in their tech-stack of systems. It is not able manging that tech—most savvy business owners outsource that—but having control to remove the outsourced team. Yes, you should have the ability to kick anyone out of your critical business systems. The integrity of your business depends upon it!
The Power of Your Brand
You worked hard to build your business. You agonised over the branding, the logos, the fonts, the website, and your email signatures. And you have spent countless hours building your business reputation….and it is connected to that brand.
Sure, you have other brands such as your products and even your personal brand. Yet all these brands are tied to your business. Though you could argue your personal brand can outlive your business…and it should! Why do you think I’ve spent so much time developing my brand here on LinkedIn?
No-one Can Steal Your Brand Can They?
Well, they can if you have not registered your company name and trade marked your key assets like your logos, product names, and even unique taglines. But more specially, control of your digital assets can be taken from you and that could be catastrophic or at least very disruptive to your business.
Take for example, your internet domain yourbiz.com. Everything is tied to this: emails, websites, customer portals, online shop, and more. If you lost your domain, it would be extremely disruptive to your business. Can you imagine how many leads and opportunities you would lose? And the cost and time to recreate all those assets and communicate the change with all your customers and partners.
Don’t get me wrong, you can replace all of this, and businesses do this all the time when they rebrand, merge, or split. However, those are typically long and well planned out endeavours that still retail the old assets to help educate and redirect customers and partners. You don’t want to rush it.
It’s More than Just your Domain
Your domain is key part of your brand. At the very least, make sure you have control of the registrar (when you bought your domain from) as this will allow you to regain control should you have a disagreement with your technical team.
The other assets include your web site. Even if you have outsourced the management of this, make sure you have an admin account to access the backend. That will allow you to take a backup and quickly more it should the need arise.
Next are your social media profiles. Most social media platforms allow you to delegate access to an agency, which provides most of the same functionality except one: control. You can remove access to the agency at any time. There are some instances where you may need to provide login details to your profiles, I’d be INCREDIBLY careful before doing this. And DO NOT remove and multi-factor protections. It may be annoying to have to send codes, but again that is your control.
And then we have our core productivity platforms. For most small businesses, this is either Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace. There are other systems out there, but they have less market penetration. Make sure you have a break-glass Global Administrator or Super Administrator to ensure you can regain control of your critical data. The same goes for any other key system like your CRM or operational systems.
Protect Your Business
Having the ability to remove anyone out of your systems at any time is not about a lack of trust. It is about protecting your business. As a business owner, you have spent countless effort and money to create a thriving business. One problem with a key technical resource and it could be game over for everything you have built. Do not risk it.
Oh, and for those business owners who are using a family member or close friend to manage all your technology systems, I would implore you to reconsider. I have seen too many businesses put at risk because of a souring of a relationship that requires an extremely expensive and complicated recovery process to regain access to your key system and remove their access. Sadly, this is an activity my company does many times a year.
Bonus Tip
I mentioned Google Workspace above and it is a quite common platform for marketing and web development agencies. As a specialist teaching people how to use Microsoft 365, I always encourage my client to create a personal Google Account using their business email address. This simplifies your interactions with those using Google Workspace and stops the “oh, can you please reshare that document to my Gmail account…” awkwardness. Just look for the non-obvious “Use your existing email” link when creating a new account
You can thank me later. 😎
