What Small Businesses Should Do About Hardware Shortages (Part-3)

Hardware shortages aren’t just a big enterprise problem — they hit small businesses the hardest.

In Part 3 of this 3-part series, Act on Tech shifts from understanding the problem to taking action. Alex breaks down what small businesses should be doing right now to stay ahead of ongoing hardware shortages — from smarter purchasing strategies to planning upgrades before failure and avoiding costly downtime.

If you rely on computers, servers, or network equipment to operate, this episode gives you practical, real-world steps you can implement immediately to protect your business.

Visit Alex Custom Tech to learn how to build a more resilient IT environment — or reach out when you're ready to take control of your infrastructure.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Are you ready to make technology work for you? Tune in to Act on Tech, the podcast where we break down the latest tech trends and show you how to boost your productivity at home and in your business. So subscribe to Act On Tech today and visit alexcustomtech.com to see how we can take your business to the next level. That's Act On Tech, your guide to smarter tech for a smarter business. Alex Custom Tech, IT means integrity and trust.

SPEAKER_01 0:31

Hi, welcome to Act on Tech where we talk all things technology. I'm Alex of Alex Custom Tech, and today is gonna be part three of our mini-series. And what small business should do about hardware shortage. So this is the third and final topic on this little kerfuffle. And I might visit again later. Depends on what if anything changed, but we're gonna really focus on solutions here. If there really is any, because there's not really any solution, it's only um trade-offs. So we're gonna focus on the trade-offs. We're gonna focus on the what we can do to minimize the blow of this um global shortage or global supply chain that's affecting our business and affecting IT and affecting the hardware that we are using in our business and how that how what kind of delays it's causing and and and how much money we're losing, so we can minimize that, right? So that's what this is gonna be today because we already talked about the DDR shortage, and we also talk about how the global event affects our supplies. But now it comes to the most important question: what should we do to actually what should we actually do about it? Okay, so let's talk about reality, right? Because here's the truth: most small businesses don't feel because of technology shortage, right? It's gonna be blunt about that. When your business feels not because of the computer in your office, why it feels they struggle because they don't plan for or planning their technology properly. Now it's a weird thing that me saying that, but again, I say it in my own life, right? Technology doesn't hold me back because I'm knowledgeable, right? Like I just mentioned this to you guys a couple weeks ago. Like I said, um my wife works from home, so her her job relies on the on the internet, right? So there's other people in her in her company that work from home too, right? When we lost internet over the weekend, it was like Sunday morning at 4 o'clock in the morning when I got up and it wasn't working. If that happened to somebody else, right, they'd have to unless they have a cousin or a or their husband or something like that, what they're gonna do, they're gonna have to call the ISP and say, Hey, my internet's not working, right? And ISP is gonna say, Well, okay, I have to I have to book you into my you know open windows and whenever the open windows is, and I have to wait around until they come near and fix it. And that problem is not something that it's not even they can actually say, Well, that's not on us, because that's beyond the demarcation. Because again, it's the modem. So unless you unless you get a modem from them, and it's their modem that went bad, right? They don't have to come and fix it. And again, if you if say say it was someone that that some that heard from somebody else that hey, you can buy your modem and not pay the rent from the isp, right? And then you went and got the modem, and then the modem goes bad, but you're not a technical person, then what? When you call Verizon, they're gonna say that's not my modem, that's a U problem. And you have to call you have to talk to the person who told you about the modem idea before. So, again, how much time you're gonna lose from the company you work with if you're working from home. So that's the that's what I'm trying to point out to you guys. Of course, MSP, you need an MSP for your business. So you have somebody on hand, you can call, you know, they come in, they look at it, they say, Okay, yeah, this is an issue either with the ISP or this is on RN. You need that, right? You need knowledge in your back pocket, whether it's your knowledge or someone you know you can call. That's what MSP does, that's what I do. Okay, so again, they struggle because they don't plan their technology, that's why they fail, right? So, principle one. Let's just go through some principles. Principle one, stop reacting to it. Let's not react to IT, right? And I'm gonna say that with a caveat you as a business owner shouldn't be reacting to IT. If you're technically technically technically in time inclined, technology inclined or tech inclined, right? You'll like it. Fine, you can react to it because it's fun for you. I can tell you that for myself. Like, you know, solving these problems is fun, but as an amateur as a as a small business, lawyer, doctor, accountant, whatever business that you focus on, you shouldn't be reacting to this. You should have someone that is on top of this, right? So the first thing, stop reacting, waiting until something breaks, or waiting until you need an upgrade, puts you in a very put you at the mercy, pretty much, at price availability and that kind of stuff. So, like again, if you were waiting around for something to break and then now this is happening, and you're gonna have to deal with the prices and the shortage and all this. I was like, Can you wait around? Kind of like I said in my last um podcast. And I said, Yeah, it would have been good to have a modem put aside. Okay, this is a house. I can go to um Best Buy and pick it up. So I'm not really losing anything, like really my wife didn't lose anything. She's she's off Sunday Saturday and Sunday, so it being down on Sundays is perfect. She's still late when I was doing this, she was laying in the bed, just chilling, right? Monday mor tomorrow morning morning when she gotta go to work, internet is up, you gotta fix, you know, by 12 on Sunday. So again, but if it was a business, they have to wait eight hours, nine hours until it gets fixed. But if one wasn't in the closet, you could have put it out and put it in. So it's kind of plan ahead, especially for critical systems. That's a critical system. Uh, a modem is a critical system because that's where the demarcation ends. When If comes in, it converts what's on the co across the cable and it turns it into Ethernet, and it and it and it you can run it on your on your network. So that's a very important piece of the backbone on the network. Okay, principle very, very important, right? That's the first principle, right? Let's go to principle two. Extend what you have. This is something that I do all the time. So when you say extend what you have, if you don't, if your company is working fine, you don't have to upgrade, right? Wait until the price comes down. If it's not broke, don't fix it. In a in a sense, right? And that's kind of what I did with the modem, right? Yes, it was old, right? It what it's mystical, it's mission critical as far as like for the house, but my kids could do without internet for a couple of days, or if worst case scenario, my wife can't, right? But you know, on the weekends, it's fine. I can get up, get my breakfast, and go go go buy the modem, right? But I did let it I get the life out of that thing because I bought it years ago. I got the life out of it, and I got the life out of the and believe it or not, the one that modem is a surfboard, I think it's 61.90. Right? I had a surfboard before that one, a neck gear, a neck gear uh modem before that one. So I've always had my own modems, and that one wasn't broke when I replaced it with the surfboard, so you know, I do have a practice of leaving. I right now bought this new one, and I'm gonna have to I probably should buy one as soon as the next model comes out. I'm probably gonna purchase it and put it to the side, just in case, right? So you you want to extend what you have, right? You know, just instead of constantly replacing systems, focus on maintaining and extending the life of what you have already owned, right? To kind of you know, because again, wars you know how long it's gonna last, but if it's if it's gonna last a little bit, you can extend your life on until it's over and then the supply chains come back, and simply simple upgrade the RAM storage and proper system maintenance like when your MSP would do can go a long way in weathering the storm, if you will, right? Principle three standardization. This is a big one, right? So, say you have an office with a couple couple people in there, a couple users, and they all got their one desktop, right? How about getting the same computers for all of desktops, all the all all the users, right? You standardize it. One of the things that we do here at Alex Custom Tech, we standardize the networking, so it's only two companies that I use one more than the other. I use TP Link and I use Unify, right? Those are what the network equipment we use. Now, there's other network equipment like Jupyter and Cisco and stuff like that. Like I've dabbed in those, I've used them. Um, I've been into places where I had to configure them. I get that people have them, but again, when you sign up with me and you're on board with me, we we're gonna put in either TP Link or or or um or unify in your in your system because I I do unify my network, I do standardize my network, right? Because then it's easier for me and I can react to things faster, I can up, I can you know it's I have a complete system for it, so I I do that, but it's also good because like I said, when you standardize things, another thing, you know, it focuses on one standard, right? Running different types of machines makes it harder to manage upgrades and replacements, right? When you standardize, you know what is this is all the same. Standardized system makes the environment easier and so easier to support and predictable, right? Again, with Unify, for instance, like it's built to talk to each other, so it's just that's like plug and play, it's really simple, and you want reliability, right? You want your internet to be up, you want your printers to work, you want that standardization. And again, you can hodgepodge different different things, duct tape it together and have it work if you're technically inclined, but use multiple places of failure, and it's not standardized. If if if you have a standardized set of computers in your in your office with users, one finished, one networking, you can pop that one out and put another one in, and you're off to the races again, they're not down for too long. So that's why standardization is might be something you want to consider and as a principle to mitigate supply chain shortages, right? Four, buy ahead. We talked about that a little bit on the last podcast, and I'm and here is it when you buy ahead, you buy ahead strategically. So if you know you're gonna need a hardware, right, buy it ahead of time, or buy the next model, buy the buy the the latest model of hardware, even before the one you break, when you have breaks, so say like I said, like I just did the did the surfboard, um I had the surfboard doxes 3.0 years ago, right? If I bought the next model up, right, and just have it in the house when this one went I could pop the other one in without even going to my without going to a Best Buy. I would have had and I would have cut the time down by four hours, right? So you can you can do that because you're gonna have to replace things anyway just because of the life of it, because after a while company stops supporting things, so yeah, you can do that. Um, again, a home is different from an office, so I can get away with that in my home, right? But you as a as a business owner, you have your own modem, for instance. You buy the one that you need right now, it's in the in the subrack, you have that one, and then as soon as the next one comes, when they upgrade it, and it's an upgraded version to the one you have, you grab it and you put it to the side. So we put it to the side, and then that one dies, or there's a supply chain issue, or whatever the heck happens. Murphy tends to come along when time things are bad. So you would already have it in the closet, take it out, put it in. You're done for what an hour, two hours, have it put aside, and it's not only modems we're talking about, it's computers. And so if you have five clients, if you have five devices or five users, five computers, five desks in your in your in your environment, right? You can have seven computers, seven actual desktops. Five of them is actually in use with the with with your employees, and then you have three in your closet. So anytime one of them dies on you, just pull up the other one, hook it up, and then off the races you go, right? That's what I mean. Like, you know, that's an option, right? So definitely, like, that's a principle. Buy ahead. So if you know you're gonna need the hardware, buy ahead, not excessively, you know. You don't want you don't want to buy 10, right? You know, but strategically, especially if it's critical, critical system. You should know what network what's in your network that's critical. You should know that. Like in my radio station right now, it's it's offline because I'm doing some revamping of it, but I know what the critical things are. My net my NAS is critical, my my automation computer is critical, my mixing board is critical, my you know, these things are critical. In my in my office, I have I have a NAS in my office in Alex Custom type that's critical. I have you know, there's a couple of switches that are critical, you know. Of course, the modem is critical, the firewall is critical. So, like you know what's critical, you know, in the network, and you wanna have a backup for that, right? So backups are gonna only files, right? So especially if it's critical, it's a critical system. You wanna you wanna have something, and I mean not only that, if if you go down, it's gonna be you're gonna cost you money, but you wanna have something to backup for that. So buy ahead, right? Principle five, don't chase trends. This is uh this one I'm talking to my talking to my kids about, and I've always uh had a problem with trends. Don't trust, don't chase trends. Not every business needs this the latest technology, every business needs to have a Cisco because Cisco is a brand and whatever, and every business needs to have that, right? You don't need to have that, like again. Argue all day with me, I don't believe in trends, right? Just because DDR5 for existence, for example, but because DDR DDR5 exists and it's in the world, and we know it's a base, you might not need it. More likely, nine times out of ten, you're not gonna need it, right? You don't have to have that. Doesn't mean that you need to, you know, move into it immediately, right? Stable is more important than being on the cutted cutting edge, which is just use computers and technology for its functionality and stop using it to show off, right? I that's pretty much what I'm saying. Right? I've been inside of offices where the guy literally showed me that he has a Cisco switch. I got a Cisco switch right here, like you know, you know that an girl would have done just fine. You spend how much money for that, really? So again, you don't need that, so yes, you know, definitely definitely technology isn't about having the newest thing, it's about having something that works consistently, reliably, and predictably. I am definitely the vanilla guy, okay. I grew up the vanilla guy, um, girls are not really into that, but hey, I'm the vanilla guy, and I don't care. I like when things just do what it's supposed to do. I'm not into the bells and whistles. Um, I don't I don't I just don't never understood trends. I don't understood try I just don't understand trends, I don't understand the the allure of it, the people group thing. I don't I don't get it. So that being said, the stay away from that kind of stuff. So the f so the principles I just laid out to you, I'll give you five principles that you can definitely um if you use these, say you don't even have an MSP, you do these, you should be fine. Principle one, stop reacting to IT, right? Have a plan, right? Um fears to principle two, extend what you have. If you have something that's not broken, you know, keep it, just maintain it. If you can maintain it, maintain it, right? Um standardization is a good thing if you have computers in your in your in deployed in your office, um, desktop, computers or laptop, computers, whatever it is. If you decide you're gonna go with HP, go with HP. Don't have HP, Apple, this one, that one. No, just have HP. So if desktop is HP, desktop, a certain brand, a certain model, just have everybody has that one, right? So you can interchange, swap it, or whatever if you need to. It gives you that ability to react to do things in case something happened, and it's simple, right? You can buy one drive, one net um what RAM for this can go going going any of them. You have you know the same size, form factor, or whatever the case is. I don't know, it's different different scenario, but you it's all the same, so you don't have to really think about it too much. You can do that with your networking gear too, right? Standardizing. When it's a standardized, you can have like all the omaga line from TP Link. I thought that's a big question with them right now, but you can have that, right? And in you know, it's it's it's built to talk to each other, so it's not complicated, and you have like one access point, one brand access point. So all of them could be mesh, of course, if you if you if you know what you're doing, and everything is just talking to each other with seamlessly, it's not a problem. Standardized, standardized, standardized. Okay, principle three, right? Standardized. Um, principle four, buy a head, but don't buy the whole farm now. I'm just buy a head strategically. You have five users, five computers, and a desk. You can have three more in the closet, right? You have a modem, like kind of my situation that happened to my house. Instead of you know the modem dying, you gotta go call somebody and do all this stuff. You can have another modem in the closet, it could be the exact same one. You can buy two when you buy the one if you want, or you can buy one, wait a couple of years until they do the next one, and then buy the other one, whatever you want to do. But make sure you have a backup for the mission critical recording night, mission critical devices, mission critical software, mission critical, right? Would mean that you you you cannot work without it, right? So buy ahead, and the last one, of course, my favorite, is don't follow other people. This is a Jamaican thing. Don't follow trends, right? No need to follow trends. Your your number one focus should always, always, always, always, always be always be cons consistently. Is it working consistently? Is it reliable? Is it predictable? Those are the things. Boredom, my friend, and you're only gonna hear it here at Acton Tech. You're only gonna hear it from Alex. Boredom is good, boredom is not bad. When you're bored, you're safe. That's my philosophy in life. I got a couple of philosophies, but that's my philosophy in life. Boredom is safe, so stay with the uh with the tried and true. Don't follow trends because it's never good. Right, never never good. So, final thoughts or takeaways, if you want to call it that hardware shortages will come and go. Right, it's not gonna be the last, and this is not the first, and it's not gonna be the last. But businesses that plan ahead, stay structured, and understand the system won't be affected the same way as others, and then and then the system I'm talking about. We talk about it over the last three podcasts. Is that there's an economical trend to this, there's an economical reaction to this, and it's pretty predictable, right? What causes is it doesn't matter really half the time, it's just the economical process that happens all the time with the supply chain, right? And then also there's the market factors too, like the AI you need and stuff like that. So it's not so so blaming people and blaming companies, which I never understood that companies are not a person, but blaming companies for being greedy is it's dumb, it's just dumb, right? And and and it shows a lack of intelligence in a sense, like you know, you don't understand how life really works because like evil that's that's a that's a broad statement to make, you know. You know what evil is? Have you seen evil? I'm not gonna go into that. So companies aren't evil, so that's what it is, right? And then take that take that away. So again, the first the first one I did in this series was the DDR shortage, and um I I didn't I kind of I felt like I kind of you know brushed over a little bit and I wanted to be more in-depth. I think it deserved that, so that's why I kind of broke it up into three parts on the same topic, and I'll do that with other topics too if if I think it requires it requires deep dive. Like this one did, right? And as long as you understand that, right, and and also changes in the making in the podcast, like I I've spent a lot of time doing this now, it's like a year now, so a year and a half, I'm doing this, and I've very I've been very reluctant to to say to you guys, hey, you know, act on tech is uh is a marketing funnel for Alex Custom Tech, which is me. And I'm looking to work with people. So if you guys need a stable network, need reliability, what we're talking about in this podcast. If you need something that's stable and you want somebody to support you and and and back you guys up and keep your network up and running, visit aliascustomtech.com, fill out the form there, and we'll get back to you and see if we can work together again. Um, of course, take the time out to listen to the podcasts if you can get through them and see if you're I'm somebody you want to work with, of course. But that's why I'm here, I'm here to help. If I can help via the podcast, that's good. If I can help actually be your MSP, that's also good. Either way, stay productive, don't be reactionary, right? And again, if you are a tech person and you're listening to this, because I don't know why you listen to this, you're a tech person because you already know this stuff. But if you are a tech person and like myself, like I'm telling you to not be react reactionary. In some cases, I am, right? In some cases, I am. Like I said, when the modem went down in my house, that's a reactionary thing because the modem went down first and then I reacted to it, I fixed it. But that's not a business, first of all, and even the more I work from home, right? It wouldn't have been down long enough to affect her. So because I am there, she has somewhat of an MSP there, right? So it's not the same. If you're not technically inclined, you can't do that. Because if you're in a situation where your business needs to be up 24-7s, you can't take that risk, and that's the difference I want to I want to point out. Like, I'm not gonna just say here, don't be reactive, and you're a technical person, you're like you love that, you live for that. Like, I get that, but I don't think my audience is is that I think my audience is people who want to be able to keep their business up and running without worrying about technology because again, it's it's it's it's a job a job within itself. So I get it, right? So I always say stay productive.

SPEAKER_00 26:46

You've been listening to Act on Tech, powered by Alex Custom Tech. We help small businesses take control of their technology with secure networks, reliable backups, and systems designed to run without interruption. No guesswork, no quick fixes, just IT that works the way it should. For business services and professional camera installations, visit alexcustomtech.com. Stay connected, stay secure, and stay in control. This is Abby from Pauline Lady 7 FM saying thank you for listening to Alex Dum and Tech. And we'll see you next Wednesday, same time, same place.