My life changed the other night.
It was 10:00. He was sitting in front of the television in my living room watching a baseball game. And, as usual, I was catching up on my company’s daily paperwork. My wife came into the room and took the remote from me. She changed the channel to Bravo and together we watched The Real Housewives of New Jersey.
My life has never been the same.
I was fascinated. Who wouldn’t be? Ashley, who is Jacqueline’s 19 year old daughter, got into a fight with Danielle and can you believe it, she ripped out some of her hair extensions in front of everyone. At a charity party, no less. Danielle was understandably upset. The police got involved. Husbands got involved. I got involved
This show makes the Sopranos look like English royalty. I need to watch more episodes, but the only way I’m going to be able to do this is to do more work during the day. I need to be more efficient if I’m going to make The Real Housewives of New Jersey an important part of my life.
How am I going to do this? With good and productive technology for small businesses.
Your own social network
First, I’m going to reduce the number of service calls my people answer and try to get my customers to answer their questions faster. The more we work online, the more time I have to watch Teresa and Jacqueline complain about Danielle. I’m going to ask my webmaster to install a Chat4Support or Zopim gadget on my website so customers can chat with us online instead of wasting valuable TV time on the phone. And instead of meeting my high school friends on Facebook, I’m going to create my company’s own social network on Ning or Forumotion so my customers can research issues themselves or post questions and we can respond with advice, support and items.
Next, I’m going to remove all the different calendars from my company and improve the way my people schedule appointments. I’m sick of spinning wheels asking where everyone is or having to explain why we double booked a client visit. She should spend more time finding out how Danielle’s breast got infected and how she can avoid those things in the future. When scheduling internal appointments, I’ll use Google Calendar (GOOG) or FindMyShift, or just pass everything we’re doing to an online project management tool like Basecamp, Skylight, Ubidesk, or Wrike. And if I need to engage outsiders, I’ll make more use of Tungle or Meetifyr to coordinate everyone’s available time.
I have too much stuff on my plate right now, so I’m going to outsource more. I will find people to help me with my accounting, telemarketing, customer service, and personnel matters at Elance or Guru. I don’t care where they live, I’ll connect them to my office through GoToMyPC or Logmein, or just give them access through my internal Windows Terminal Server (MSFT) on my private network. I’m going to conference call with them using FreeConferenceCall or video chat with them via Skype (EBAY) or Oovoo.
subtleties of communication
I can also learn a few things from these fine New Jersey ladies. For example, see the way they communicate? Lots of yelling and dropping the f-bomb. Of course, I can’t get away with it in my business, but I can certainly use technology to improve the way I communicate with my customers. I can make sure they receive frequent emails using services like Constant Contact and Jangomail. I can schedule regular training webcasts with GoToWebinar and WebEx. I can record tips and examples on my computer and send them as screenshots to my clients using services like Screen Castle and Screen Jelly. Or I can just invite my clients to connect to my computer using Glance or CrossLoop so I can quickly share information with them.
A friend of mine in construction told me that he always watches past episodes of The Real Housewives of New Jersey on his iPod, which got me thinking, Hey, if I started making better use of mobile technology in my business, I could have more weather. to see this stuff on my iPod, too. So I’m going to get everyone in my company to download Google Latitude, which is a free GPS service that allows me to track where everyone is. I’m going to try iVisit to help us all video chat from our mobile devices. And Qik to capture videos or photos at a customer’s site on a mobile device and quickly send them to the office.
I’m also going to be smarter with my documents. If my people and subcontractors can share more online, I figure that should free me up some time from Housewives. So I’m going to be looking to expand my use of Zoho apps. They house word processing, spreadsheets, customer relationship management, project management, and other tools that everyone can use from anywhere. Or I can decide to use Microsoft’s Live service and put my Office files online. Or I can ditch Microsoft altogether and move to a fully hosted office system like Google Apps, Open Office, Peepel, Feng Office, or Think Free. The key here is to access my files from anywhere, share this information with my people, and get things done quickly. That way I have time to see if Joe really does have the vasectomy Theresa wants him to have. Oh.
Expand your cash flow
One thing that bothered me a bit when I watched the last Housewives show: How can these people have so much money? I love them all, but they’re not exactly the smartest sharks in the tank. This show has motivated me not only to be more productive, but also to use technology to increase my cash flow. I’m going to sign up for services like PayPal, GoogleCheckout, and AcceptPay so my customers can easily pay me online. I’m also going to start billing more on the web, using apps like BillingBoss, Curdbee, and InvoiceBubble to help me get bills out faster so I can get my money faster. That way, the little lady can afford a trip at her expense to the Paramus Mall, a favorite hangout for housewives.
The payoff for all this? My life will change. With the time saved, I’ll be able to rent the entire season 1 of The Real Housewives of New Jersey and sit back and watch all day. I even get to spend some of those extra hours working with the Real Housewives Makeover Tool on the Bravo (GE) website. And he thought these small business tech tools were JUST to save money. silly
