Speaker 2: 0:33

Welcome back to another episode of that's Delivered. I'm your host, trucking Ray, and today we have a special episode for you. Something about trucking companies that you know they overlook until it's too late it's their digital assets. So we know you can protect your cargo, but what about your website, social media or even the brand name? The digital tools are just as valuable and also just as vulnerable. Joining me today is my special guest, paige Wise, the founder and CEO of Tree Ring Digital. With 16 years of experience helping companies secure their online presence, paige has seen chaos that happens when businesses lose control of their digital footprint. So if you ever said I think my web guy, my old web guy, has my login, this episode's for you. Hey, paige, how you doing? Welcome to the show.

Speaker 1: 1:21

Good, good, thanks for having me. It's great to be here.

Speaker 2: 1:24

Likewise, I'm glad you're able to be on the show. So, man, we get to tell about your experience and all the trouble you've seen out there. I'm sure it's quite a bit, so we get dig right into it. To kick things off, maybe you heard of a. We all love to hear a story. You know, maybe you work with a lot of companies over the years. Can you share one of those oh no Moments, time where a business came after losing their assets or access? What would you say to those people that maybe lost their website or their domain?

Speaker 1: 1:56

Yeah, there's so many. That's, I think, one of the hard parts and also just where we started to really identifying that this was such a needed area to be paying attention to. And I'd say one of those oh no moments was definitely we were working with a national franchise brand and we were working with their marketing team and the senior marketing director left the company. There was still a marketing assistant there and she reached out to me one day and was like do you have access or logins to the various platforms? Apparently, it just took her computer and wiped it clean. They didn't try to save how-to documents, they didn't try to save any of the templates that we had been using or notes or whatever. They literally just took her computer when she left and wiped the whole thing.

Speaker 1: 2:43

And you know it's one of those where, yeah, it's, how are you looking at it? It is just tasked a job to clean the computer up and get it to the next person that comes in right. And people are forgetting that. There's a lot of information on these pieces and that's just one example. That took quite a bit of recovery. Thankfully we had had some, but you know, working through all of it is definitely a headache.

Speaker 2: 3:06

Yeah, it is Wow. And now for folks out there in the trucking industry, a lot of us focus on physical operation, truck freight and schedules. What do you think digital assets get, you know? Overlooked, you know, especially when the transportation industry? Why do you think that happens?

Speaker 1: 3:24

You know they're so focused on. Hey, I have to, you know, more or less meet the deadline. I have to have the delivery here on this set time and I need to make sure that that part is working and the logistical side of it that they aren't so focused on. But is my website still up and running? Is you know? Am I still generating traffic? Is my contact form still working appropriately in order to continue to grow? Can customers see when things are going to be delivered and what that shipping and tracking looks like? You know, and those are all pieces that they can find through your website, through email communication, and so you know, yeah, the day to day, how do we get the product moved and the trucks rolling? We also need to make sure that we're continuing to grow a business and focusing on that customer experience as well. Nice.

Speaker 2: 4:10

That's perfect, and some people may wonder what even counts as a digital asset. Can you break it down for someone that's running a trucking company or brokerage? What are some of the things they might not even realize that they should have control over.

Speaker 1: 4:25

Yeah, so for digital assets, we've really been able to kind of narrow that down and identify it into seven pillars, if you will. That's going to get into like your domain name and hosting. Your domain is obviously attached to your email addresses as well in most situations, so you lose your domain, you also then are losing your emails. Oftentimes, clients are setting up those two factors to the email address, so even trying to recover some of those assets are tied to potentially now a domain and email address that you don't have control over. It's going to get into social media platforms and anything you're using for marketing Google Analytics, facebook, Instagram, tiktok, whatever that looks like for you. And then it also dives into brand assets and your logos, marketing materials. How are your invoices designed, whatever types of tools that you're actually using, also from more of a design side. And then we also get into third-party tracking.

Speaker 1: 5:18

So a lot of companies and agencies are going to look at digital assets as just your domain and your social and what does that look like? But really, your third-party tools that keep your business running as well are also really really crucial digital assets for your company. Losing a crm login, losing shipment and tracking and logistic logins you know whatever that is for you know the business losing that can really start to play a long-term impact on it. And we've seen that go to where you know employees the business losing that can really start to play a long term impact on it. And we've seen that go to where you know employees the one who set it up, trying to be helpful, trying to help the business owner get a little bit further in business and streamline a little bit more and then they leave for whatever reason and the owner wasn't really sure how it was specifically set up. So you know it gets into those and then it gets deeper and deeper into compliance, security, backups, recoveries.

Speaker 2: 6:10

Wow, thank you for breaking it down. Is there any common mistakes or blind spots that come up over and over again?

Speaker 1: 6:21

You know I think, unfortunately, it's most of the time related to a website or domain that the issue is my website stopped working. I'm not sure why I'm getting this error. My website's been compromised, sometimes it's just the domain is down.

Speaker 1: 6:35

I think one of the biggest mistakes is a lot of people, business owners really just set their domain name as a set it and forget it. So what they do is, you know cause we've sent email notifications out to clients like, hey, just a reminder, I know you've got it, but your domain's up for renewal. I'm like yeah, no, we know we're good, okay, and we keep moving. And then we get the call a little bit later and it's they forgot to update the credit card, though that was attached to the domain name. So while, yes, the domain name is on auto renew name, so, while, yes, the domain name is on auto renew, it's only auto renewing, as good as your credit card is. And so you know, when we you start to see that you know again, they're just on autopilot, focusing on the business, focusing on the deliveries, focusing on how to get things where they need to go, that sometimes they forget those little pieces. So I know it seems like a bit of a no brainer, but one that comes up more often than it should.

Speaker 2: 7:24

Yeah, absolutely so. Let's talk about ownership. A lot of people hire freelancers or agencies to build a website or logos. What are a few key things that business owners should always make sure that they actually own at the end of the project?

Speaker 1: 7:42

Yeah, I think that's a great question on what they should own at the end of a project. I think it really comes down to so often we're convinced that we have the login details that we need, and really diving deeper and asking like, but do you have the admin login or the ownership login details? Is, you know, a small little difference in what you're asking for, but really can make a huge difference at the end of the day, what you're asking for, but really can make a huge difference at the end of the day. Google, my Business and Google Analytics, for example, are ones that can have ownership or admin roles, and so if someone else is setting it up, they're typically set up as an owner and then often just assigning someone else as the administrator, and so that would be one crucial piece. And then same thing with your website. We've logged into sites only to find out you don't have access to half of your website. Like, they've given you editor rights. They didn't even give you admin rights to your website. Like, how do we go back and actually ask for full ownership and admin? But beyond all of that, it also gets into your two-factor authentication right. So great, you've got login details.

Speaker 1: 8:43

I can't tell you how many times, though, the two-factor authentication is actually tied to the person who set it up, or maybe even someone on their team. So, if you've hired a company, what are they using for best practices and standard protocols, right? And is it attached to the company? Is it attached to you or is it tied to an employee within the company? And so, really understanding who is supposed to be getting the two factor, who's supposed to be getting admin email notifications related to your CRM, related to your shipping tools, related to your domain name? There's a lot, and that's, I think, the reason where this starts to get so complicated, right? Is everyone's like oh, I've got logins, I'm fine. Or, to your point at the beginning, right, like, my developers got it somewhere, why do I need that? Or I'm sure they've sent it in an email at one point, but you know that it's not necessarily providing you full ownership, though, of the tools that they're setting up wow, I mean, yeah, that makes a big difference.

Speaker 2: 9:41

I mean, if someone's also listening, um, only checking on digital assets after the episode, what should it be? Maybe that you could help them? What's one thing that's most commonly lost but really critical to have access to?

Speaker 1: 9:59

I think it's really probably going to come down to domain name or email address. I think too many things are tied to your email address for the business side. And we had it happen to a client recently. They had recently sold one of their businesses Well, I shouldn't say recently, they had sold it about eight months ago and then we all of a sudden, out of the blue, get a call and it's just like hey, the website's not down, can you look into it? And we're like well, the domain expired and down, can you look into it? We're like well, the domain expired. And she's like I don't know what email address that's attached to. So we're trying to go through all of the like can we get through the forgot password trick? Can we get through this? Can we, you know, do all these things and really identifying what was used to set that up? And oftentimes and I think it came down to what we couldn't reset the forgot password because she didn't have access to the email, because it was tied to an at domaincom email address, and so it really I think it took us seven to eight days before that website was back up and running.

Speaker 1: 10:56

By the time we really worked with the third party and was like hey, what do we need to do to prove ownership? How long of a wait period is this? It isn't just like let's get a credit card on file. It was let's go prevent present legal documents to make sure that this is in fact the owner, and I think that's something to point out too. Domain names aren't your typical. Just like if I renew or if I repay, you know like it'll be fine. It is a process for sure, and domain like registrars take that very seriously and need to make sure. Like I need ownership, I need to see Secretary of State, I need to see tax, I need to see bills, I need to see things to actually know that you are the owner, because there's a lot of pressure and things that can come back on then if they were to release that to someone who it really wasn't an ownership of. So you know that's where. It's not just a hey, let's just put a credit card back on file and get this thing running again.

Speaker 2: 11:52

Wow, I mean there's certain. I think if domains aren't being used and people you know maybe they've had it at one time and didn't they had it, I think there's an option where that domain company can reach out to them and see if possibly someone else can use it. So if you don't respond and it expired, I mean, I think they only cost like ten dollars sometimes to just to make that prompt. I think I've seen that out there yeah.

Speaker 1: 12:21

So there's like the domain brokerage, and that's a good piece. You that not everyone talks about when it comes to assets is to your point. You could lose it very easily and quickly for not a you know, expensive cost. We've also seen domain registrars sell it back to you because they know it's so powerful, for $2,500 or more. So, again, it's not just like, oh, hey, like let me just pay an $80 late fee and get this back up and running. Depending on how long it's been. We've seen them try to sell it back to you for way way more than it to exit at any point.

Speaker 1: 12:51

Domain names are an asset. That is something that should be looked at in that valuation side as well. As far as to your point, hey, I've had this for a very long time. It's got really high SEO ranking, it's got a great reputation, the page rank is good, it is worth something, and I think a lot of people forget that in evaluation side. So it that's also where we get into of, like, all of the assets. Right, they're so focused on the tangible the trucks, the buildings, the cargo, whatever but they're not looking specifically at the digital assets when it comes to how to make sure their business is still running smoothly yeah, I mean you look at the fact that you, you know most companies want to grow, right.

Speaker 2: 13:45

So they tell you you're going to have to let some control go, you're going to have to let people help you, because you can't do it all, and other people have strengths and they can help you grow faster. So they have that mindset right there. They say, man, you know, I want to grow. And so then they start taking more risk and sharing their information. And so how did the risk change for a company as it scales? How does it help them? Is there a tipping point where things get more vulnerable that you could explain to them?

Speaker 1: 14:17

Yeah, I think you know growth is what we're all working for as businesses and, at the end of the day, when you're just getting started, it's really easy to be like it's written down on a sheet of paper someplace, or someone set that up and I won't forget who that was. But what we often forget is businesses do come and go, especially in today's economy, like you know. And so, while you might think that that developer is going to be there to help your website along the way, you might even think the hosting company is going to be there, like down the road, but you just don't know. And so, really understanding and taking ownership of like, where are these things? Who is in charge? What is the call to action? If something were to happen? What does that recovery plan start to look like? Because, as you're starting off, or you know a couple I don't know five, 10 years in a couple employees, you know, yeah, their websites down for a little bit. It may not seem extremely impactful, but when you start to have a large team you've got a large client base and maybe looking to expand even more you do like that website being down for just a tiny period of time will really, really start to impact your business, your overhead, your cash flow and everything, and so you know understanding what is the recovery plan should something happen.

Speaker 1: 15:28

What do you have in place to be proactive instead of reactive? I think that's probably one of the biggest things that we see clients missing is it's always a reactive phone call that we receive. Very rarely is a client calling us up going, hey, I'm interested in more of my digital security protections and backups and all of that. It's the I've lost something, how do I get it back now? And so we're really more trying to come at it from a proactive side, whether it's your social media accounts, your CRMs, your third-party tool shipping, all of that. What does that full blown recovery plan look like Should something happen?

Speaker 2: 16:05

Wow, yeah, definitely Cybersecurity is important, but you still hear about business owners still thinking that it won't happen to them. Have you seen clients and logistics get hacked or security breaches? Yeah, what would you say should be their first layer of defense.

Speaker 1: 16:25

First layer is just working with an IT company of sorts to make sure that they've got the right things and systems in place. From a website side, it's usually making sure that you're performing maintenance regularly, secure difficult passwords. As much as we all hate having the extra long 15 characters and everything you have to meet to make that password secure, there are reasons that those are out there. The 2FA installed as well Again, I know it's a nuisance, but it's.

Speaker 1: 16:53

You know we do need it. I understand the reasoning. I know even when we talk to clients, we already know that's going to be a pain point of trying to get that. And so how do we make it a smoother process? But you know, those are the first few steps I would take. But even as, like trucking companies who might not think that that's really who a cyber attack would be going after you're storing a lot of customer data, from addresses to credit cards, to phone numbers, to names, all the things, sometimes more than other companies are. You know there's a lot of small businesses that aren't storing that in some sort of third party tool or their website database, and so there actually is like a stronger, more prone reason to say, hey, we should actually go after some of these because of the amount of customer data that y'all are carrying.

Speaker 2: 17:54

Wow, I mean, that's a, that's a lot. I mean, what's the worst one you've heard for business owners with cybersecurity?

Speaker 1: 18:03

Typically it is the like getting in and just holding something kind of ransom to some extent, sending an email out saying, hey, we do have access to these things, we need to receive X amount of money and we'll just let it all back over to you, and that's, you know, probably the worst ones that we tend to see. But definitely it's also not just that aspect of like the ransom. How do we go through this? Again, it's now slowing down your operations, it's now pulling you away from making sure that the customers are getting the deliveries and then, in addition to it's also coming into. Just, you have to tell your clients that that happened.

Speaker 1: 18:40

And it just starts to make them question who are they handing their data to? If you can't handle the digital side, how are you handling our precious cargo and what are you doing to make sure that everything is smooth, secure and under control and where, if you're making a skip and a gap in that area, where else are you cutting corners? And so I always say it really comes into perception when those things start to happen and does start to damage your company's reputation. I mean, while, yes, it seems easy, oh, we'll just send an email out, let them know that it was compromised and everything's fine. No, it definitely starts to play a negative impact with your customers as well, and they will start looking at other companies that have a little bit more security in place.

Speaker 2: 19:24

Yeah, and I just think these, these individuals, I mean, do they ever get caught? I mean we hear about it so much. I mean you think who are these people everywhere? Yeah, it's what a mess.

Speaker 1: 19:37

They're trying to crack down on it more and more. But I mean, yeah, it's crazy how easy it is to set up. You know, set up an email account, set up a couple of things and just start asking for money and disappear and move on to the next right and just. It is unfortunate and way too easy to come at it if you will.

Speaker 2: 19:57

Wow. So let's say, a trucking company. You know you got an entrepreneur that goes through an acquisition, wants to buy a company, a trucking company. If someone is buying an existing trucking business, what digital assets should they confirm are included in the deal?

Speaker 1: 20:15

Yeah, we're seeing this more and more of one just a standard acquisition, but also just the entrepreneurship through acquisition of hey. I would like to purchase a trucking company. That's the business I want to get into and I think that that's a space that there still needs a lot of education around. As far as what assets should I be asking for? Because it does come down to who is the ownership. Do they have access to the domain name or is that going to be a while to try and recover, because the previous owner it could have been with a co-owner that has already exited and is you know, now hey know that everything's tied to them. It could have been that, you know, someone passed away and now we have to figure out how to get that back, and that's part of why it's up for sale. So, you know, there's those pieces. But it goes into who owns the domain, who owns the email addresses, who owns the Google my Business listing? Who owns your social media accounts? Who owns your CRMs and your third-party tools there? How are they integrated? Who knows how these things work? Because a lot of times we see that they want to acquire the business but they might have someone on their own team that's like, oh, I understand marketing, I'll handle it. Or I understand these things, like don't worry about it. I got a buddy over here that's going to handle that part. He's real tech savvy, only to find out, like the systems and the way they're integrated.

Speaker 1: 21:33

You do need someone to be trained in that area before you know if you're acquiring. That's part of what you're trying to bring in is the systems that they have in place, and so really understanding is that someone that's currently on staff? Is that a third party vendor? Is that someone who's no longer with the company? Is that person dedicated and going to stay with the company post acquisition and post transaction? Or are they going to go? Hey, I'm scared of if I'm going to keep a job or not. I'm going to start looking. Those are all things that need to start coming into play. So it's not just great. You know I've got the tangible assets, I've got this business and everything's ready to go. It's how is the operation going to continue and what is happening with those digital assets once acquired?

Speaker 2: 22:17

Wow, I mean, that's a, that is a lot.

Speaker 1: 22:31

I mean so how did you get into this business? I mean that's pretty cool. You get to help people be successful. How did you get this all started? And so I was just like what do I do? Where do I go? How do I make something happen? And so I just started teaching myself website design and was like I'll put a business up online, I don't know, we'll do something. And so I started and ended up just ended up selling website designs and everything from there. And then clients started asking like the website's great, but it's not converting, it's not doing anything. And we started looking at website traffic, realizing they weren't marketing. And so that's when we're like, well, it's hard to have a website actually work if we're not doing anything to drive traffic to the website. So then I started teaching myself more on the marketing side as well. And yeah, after 16 years in business with all of it, I mean it's.

Speaker 1: 23:17

I think, too, in a space right now where we've got so many people hiring vendors, vas, you know, employees with a retention rate that seems to be, you know, every couple of years turning over where, back in the day, they stayed for so long, we're seeing this issue come up more and more with the digital asset side and I think, yeah, that's part of it. Yeah, that's part of it. To your point is we just have gotten so many calls in the last year that it was like this is a bigger issue than just like, oops, I forgot. This is something that people really don't know how to get a grasp on, and we're able to grow at a much faster rate as businesses, but we're losing track of what's actually important to stay successful in that growth.

Speaker 2: 24:00

Wow, and I mean you think about people that it's just a different time. I mean times have changed and so fast, like you said, 2008,. I mean that seems like so long ago. Have you come across a lot of resistance trying to explain this stuff or to more traditional business owners? Maybe they're like I don't need that.

Speaker 1: 24:20

We do all the time, you know. I mean like we talk about it, we explain it. We can give dozens and dozens of case studies over the years and, like I said, I think that's one of the hardest parts is how much people are reactive. And it's always hard because you're on the other end of that phone call feeling for them, and at the same time they're frustrated in general, which then comes out on us or, as you know, on the team, because they just want it fixed immediately, not realizing we haven't touched your website. You know you're coming to us out of the blue because your site's down and you want an immediate fix, but we've never even seen your site.

Speaker 1: 24:55

So now we have to understand the inner workings, or you know what's going on and how are things set up and configured and who is in charge of.

Speaker 1: 25:02

Do you have an IT team? And so you know, a lot of times I think the resistance also comes from we've been making it this long on our own, we're fine, we don't need that until it happens. And then the other resistance is we have an IT team for that. They're going to handle it, and I can't tell you how many conversations I've had with IT companies over the years where they're like I don't know how to log into analytics for clients, I don't know how to log into social media accounts, I don't know how to log into these things Like, that's not us. We are cybersecurity and we are domain names and you know emails typically, but we don't go beyond that. And so most traditional companies think that their team has it covered, but they don't know actually who is taking ownership of that, and it is something, as they're growing, that the business owner does start to just assume someone on the team has handled Wow.

Speaker 2: 25:57

So let's flip. What's one myth or misconception about websites or branding that drives you nuts? You know, something people say or believe is just isn't, isn't true.

Speaker 1: 26:09

I think that it's not working. People you know I don't need a website. It's not working and it's not doing anything that I need. And it's such a myth Like you absolutely need it, no matter what you're doing, no matter where you're at in business. Like you have to have a good web looking website and if it's not converting, sometimes, sure, it's because of a poor design, but typically it's because you're not doing anything with it to make it convert. And that could be. Are you marketing? It could be. Have you updated it recently? It could be.

Speaker 1: 26:37

Have you even just checked your contact form to find out if it's still working appropriately right?

Speaker 1: 26:42

I mean, oftentimes that's one of the first things to kind of break on a site and people don't know until six months down the road and someone happened to reach out through a phone call and was like I've contacted you several times and I haven't heard back. It's because the form wasn't working. Or just give them a reason to go to your site, check shipping status and say what is the tracking number? Where is it at? When's it going to get there and turn it into a really successful tool so that you're actually standing out from your competitors, instead of letting that website be such a dormant like. It's there because I need to look professional, but really it should be a really, really good tool for your customers to be using too. To understand, you know, go to my account sections and see when the past orders were or whatever it might be that they're looking for, and you're going to start to see a huge, huge change in what that website is doing for you from a company side.

Speaker 2: 27:35

Thank you. That's awesome. We want to leave our listeners with something they can do today. You know we want to leave our listeners with something they can do today.

Speaker 1: 27:53

You know, if someone's not tech savvy, what is a special? You know something simple habit that they could do as a special checklist or a tool that they could use to keep their assets protected and organized? Yeah, a tool that they could be using one is at least start taking some documentation. I, you know as much as I would say don't do it on paper. A simple step just start start paying attention to where these things are. Second step, though, would be we do have a digital asset checklist that they can download for free, and that's it.

Speaker 1: 28:12

Tree ring, digitalcom slash, that's delivered and that's just going to go through, like I said, those seven pillars, and give you check by check, like do I have this, do I have that? Do I know who has it? Do I need to do something better here? And it'll start to help you identify those gaps and start to see like okay, this is a bigger issue, or oh, let me at least start with this one bullet point on the checklist and handle that, and then start slowly working through that checklist as well. As you know, how do we get a better grasp on all of this?

Speaker 2: 28:41

That's awesome. Thank you so much. I think that's perfect to help them out. Last thing for you, paige if someone was launching a new trucking company, what's one of the smartest digital move they can make on day one to protect their brand in the long run?

Speaker 1: 29:01

Smartest digital move to protect their brand. On day one, I would say it would just be start documenting every single thing that you're doing. Start documenting whether you know whatever you're setting up, whatever you are having for tools, how to use the tools, start recording training videos, everything like that document, and it will make things a lot easier. Long-term training new employees understanding how your website's working, whatever that looks like, it will better support you in the growth if you start documenting day one Nice.

Speaker 2: 29:34

Well, I guess that wraps it all up. I mean thank you so much, paige, for this conversation. I think every business owner, especially in the industry, where digital isn't always on the top of their mind and they're thinking about the low, keeping that secure. Thank you for helping them understand that, so I appreciate that.

Speaker 1: 29:51

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much for having me. I hope that you all found it enjoyable and just something to have a little takeaway. To have a little takeaway this is an industry that we have definitely seen tends to focus a little more on the deliveries and not so much on like, how do we update the website and make sure everything's moving there Awesome yeah, so everyone out there listening, don't wait until something breaks or gets hacked.

Speaker 2: 30:16

Protect your digital assets. Now. We'll link you up with the page info and her company Tree ring digital in the show notes so that you can check them out. So, yeah, I appreciate this. This is a great opportunity to have you on and talk about what you guys do and helping individuals out there stay successful, so it's awesome.

Speaker 1: 30:35

Thank you.

Speaker 2: 30:36

Yeah, so that's this. Is it for? That's delivered and I'll see you next time.