Running a small business can be a very fulfilling endeavor. However, contrary to the beliefs of many, the life of a small business owner is not all chocolates and roses!
Friday May 4th, 2012 I was hard at work. Since email is now a preferred mode of communication in the insurance business, I was in the process of sending some emails to my staff. Two of my agents use their personal emails (not an “@allchoiceinsurance.com” email). After sending them an email, I received an immediate kick back. My emails were not going through.
I made a quick call to our web host (also hosts our email) to see if there was a problem. He told me that another small business which shares our email server had been compromised. Fortunately, the compromise only affected the one small business. However, as a direct result of the one small business being hacked the entire server had been “blacklisted”. In a nutshell, since our email was hosted on the same server, emails coming from @allchoiceinsurance.com were blacklisted as well!
So, instead of working on the mound of paperwork that I had planned for that day, my day quickly became consumed with trying to get our email back up and running.
ALLCHOICE Insurance has been using “Google Apps” for approx two years. As a growing small business, we needed the access to corporate infrastructure that in the past was only available to larger organizations that could afford this type of technology. Using Google’s Free Business Apps, ALLCHOICE was able to set up a corporate intranet, have shared documents, as well as shared calendar(s). These particular aspects of Google Apps worked well, but we did not have FULL Access to all the features.
When the email debacle of 2012 hit, I immediately got to work upgrading my free Google Apps to the full version. I will say that the transition was quite simple. However, it does take a good amount of time. The majority of this time is not “hands on” time…rather you have to take 5 to 10 minutes setting the the synchronization, then the rest of the time you just have to sit back and watch Google do the rest.
The life of a small business owner is never dull!
About The Author: Jack Wingate is a Professional Insurance Advisor and Founder of ALLCHOICE Insurance in Greensboro, NC. For more information about Jack Wingate or ALLCHOICE Insurance please visit https://allchoiceinsurance.com