Okay girl, I know how to blog… learned LOTS from the last 2 Challenges (where I originally “met” you) BUT now I need to learn how to turn that into publishing some income sites as an IM… I unfortunately missed out on Crowd Mountain when life got in the way…(sound familiar?) …so when you are ready to rock and roll and teach some of us your “secrets” you just say the word! We’re just waiting on you… well at least I am!

Thanks Michelle. Great interview and a perfect way to help folks understand the situation last year.

Hi Michelle, thanks for a great interview and welcome back

I had an email from Rosalind Gardner this morning where she she explained that her hosting provider had passed away and as a result most of her sites were down.

So you’re not the only one.

It does make me think though…

A lifetime ago I was an IT manager for a small international finance company and one of the most important tasks I had, other than day-to-day running, was putting together and maintaining a “disaster recovery” and “business continuity” plan.

I learned a lot from that process, probably the most important being to prioritize the functions of the business should the worst happen.

Number 1 is always

“have a way to keep customers informed of what’s going on”

but the rest will vary from business to business.

It’s a very worthwhile exercise to list the functions of the business, put them in order of importance and then figure out a backup plan for each one.

It doesn’t have to be complicated but it does need to be written down.

When all hell breaks loose I promise you won’t be able to remember all of it. And should you be incapacitated whoever has to pick up the pieces will need to know where to start.

You could create a “disaster recovery partnership” arrangement where you provide backup for someone else and they do it for you.

You could work with someone who has a similar business to yours so you only need to give them an outline of your business functions. You could let a third party that you trust hold the passwords with your partner contacting them in the event of disaster.

I’ve often thought about disaster recover within the Internet Marketing community, maybe there’s a product there

I’m sure most of your customers have already forgiven you and if you show that you’ve taken steps to prevent it happening again this will be just a bump in the road.

In the Facebook box on this page it says “2,148 people like Michelle MacPhearson” and that’s not going to change in a hurry

All the best

I agree, this is a really good interview, and of course we all think Michelle is really smart and we’re glad she’s ok. Honestly though, that was hardly the first time she went totally AWOL on her paying customers. This latest time was actually the fourth time in the past few years, and there was a great excuse every time (oral surgery, a hotel with no wireless, a move…). As users we were also discouraged from inquiring about the status of the membership site–comments were regularly deleted, trouble tickets not answered, etc. Again, I really appreciate your intelligence and insight, Michelle, and it seems like your talents are better suited to one-time seminars. As someone who was repeatedly burned, I would only be willing to give you my money again if it was extremely low commitment. Just my opinion, of course.