The New Business As Usual Amid COVID-19

LDH Updates Their Numbers to Show 136 Cases, 3 Deaths
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LDH Updates Their Numbers to Show 136 Cases, 3 Deaths
March 16, 2020
Court Proceeds For Those Scheduled
March 16, 2020

It’s here. It’s officially here.

 

On Friday March 13, we sent all of our employees home with their computers and the directive to make sure they could access our G Suite applications from their home so we could move right into remote work Monday. On Monday March 13, myself and two other managers went into work and finalized the last things we needed to have a 100% remote office.

 

We are lucky. Since our on-site server started letting us know it was dying around Christmas, we started moving all of our data to Google Drive along with an office wide migration to Google’s G-Suite. It’s been a bumpy transition but now we all know it was worth it.


 

We still have one program that requires a computer at the office and that old server to run. A quick call to our local IT provider, Computer Sales & Service, got us a simple, free solution to access that from anywhere.

 

As of tomorrow morning, Rushing Media will officially be working 100% remote. Our editorial department will still be operating (God Bless them) and our graphics artists and sales team will be helping local businesses attract customers like always.

 

So of course you want the details of what we did. Here you go.


 

Remote File Access:

The simplest way to do this is through Google Drive. We migrated our entire email system over but you may not want to do that just yet. My suggestion is to sign up at this link with one user. https://gsuite.google.com

 

Then look at that old hard drive or whatever that you are saving everything to and start moving things over. Get the most important and recent stuff moved first. If you have a ton of stuff, it might take a while. We had over 5 Terabytes of data. It took us a month. It won’t take you nearly that long. Start moving stuff now.


 

Remote Desktop Access:

Everyone knows about GotomyPC. That’s expensive at $35 a computer. Our tech over at CSS suggested these guys: https://www.remoteutilities.com

 

That service is free for one user for up to 10 computers. Set up a user for everyone if they need occasional access to their computers or if you don’t feel comfortable sending computers home. It’s working fine for us.


 

As it stands today, unless your business directly helps walk in customers on a daily basis, you need to send your staff home now. That’s just the right thing to do.

 

If you can’t because you are a retail store or restaurant and you are trying to help people by walking products out to their cars or through delivery, you need an E-commerce store, like, yesterday.

 

While we would be absolutely glad to build you one, we can’t help everyone right now so I’m going to help you out. Right now, go to https://www.shopify.com and build an E-commerce store. It doesn’t have to be pretty; it just has to work. Rather than setting up shipping, set up a “pickup in store” option. Then have people call when they are there to pick up their order.


 

You need to make this really easy for your customers to shop with you rather than the big guys. That is the only way small businesses like us are going to make it through this Covid-19 nightmare.

 

Here’s my promise to you, as a fellow local business owner in South Louisiana. I am making myself available for planning sessions to help you make the Covid-19 epidemic just a bad memory and not the end of your business. Reach out to me at brian@reimagine-marketing.com if you want to set up a time to chat or just to get another perspective on what your plans are.