I like to keep track of stuff – notes I take during a meeting, ideas that come up at odd times and get thrown onto a post-it note, a cool website I run across, powerful images I could use for blog posts, interesting videos or a important emails.  Historically I haven’t had much of a system for being able to track all of that stuff…but I think I may now have an answer that could really work!

I stumbled onto Evernote over a year ago and I was intrigued by the possibilities, but I wasn’t sure how practical or helpful it would be.  At the time I had an older Palm OS phone that didn’t let me do much of anything and I was primarily just using one computer in my office.  Fast forward to now – I’ve got an Android phone, I’m using a laptop and a desktop for different things and I need access to all of my stuff from all of those places.

Although I’ve only used the application sparingly so far, I’m seeing some strong possibilities for Evernote – here are a couple of ways I’m using it so far (and I’m just scratching the surface):

• I finished a great book and wanted to make sure I remembered the author the next time I was book shopping.  I took a picture of the book and stored it in Evernote where it was easy to bring it up 2 weeks later on my phone in the book store.  (Did the same thing with a great bottle of wine we had at a friend’s house).
• I’m starting to use it Evernote for note taking – creating a someday / maybe file of ideas that I’d like to do…someday maybe (that way I don’t lose the thought but I get it out of my head).
• When I buy things online I virtually clip the receipt and store it in Evernote in case I need the confirmation number.

Here are a couple of things that I haven’t used yet, but look pretty powerful:

• Evernote has character recognition built in, so you can scan or take a picture of your handwritten notes, store them in Evernote and later search on the text to find what you want…(could do that with business cards as well).
• You can encrypt files – so saving all of your application passwords and IDs in an encrypted file that you could get to from anywhere.
• You can create specific notebooks of information and share just that notebook.  Imagine if you were doing a project with 3 other people and you had notes, pictures, a video and some websites as input for the project.  Put it all into a single notebook and share it – it gets updated for all of you as new things are added.

I don’t know if Evernote is going to be as useful as Dropbox (which I use extensively) and it’s going to take some effort to incorporate Evernote more into my workflow – but the possibilities are pretty amazing!  Check out the Evernote Video page for lots of cool ways people are using it.

“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” – Ferris Bueller

Life does move fast – I’d like a place to put some of the cooler things to look at later…Are you using Evernote?  What have you found to be really useful?  I’d love to hear your thoughts – share them in the comments below.

Shawn Kinkade  Kansas City Business Coach

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Do you ever get that feeling that you’re just beaten down…that it’s too hot and nothing really matters?   There are times (especially after you make the mistake of watching the news) when it seems there’s nothing out there but bad things, people struggling and an endless parade of gray.

Well it’s time to perk up because I’ve got 3 things to inspire you:

• Bookbinding
• Shoes
• Unicorns!

It may not sound like an inspirational list, but keep reading and I think you’ll find something to get you moving!

Bookbinding as a hot new business!

There are plenty of stories out these days about businesses failing and industries going bankrupt, which makes it especially refreshing to hear about a skyrocketing success that leverages techniques that have been around for centuries and technology that’s been around for decades.

The company is called DodoCase and currently their sole product is a hand made case for an iPad.  Priced starting at $60, more than 60,000 cases were sold in the first few months after the release of the iPad, with much bigger numbers planned (the iPad is projected to sell 17 Million units in the first year of production). 

DodoCase uses a local San Francisco bookbinding company to create the custom cases – saving a dying and declining business (and in fact tripling their headcount with more to come).  Check out this great story about Dodocase – the winner of the Shopify business contest. 

What simple product do people want and need that you could deliver?

Shoes and a totally different business model

Toms Shoes started back in 2006 – you might have heard of them.  The founder Blake Mycoskie was inspired on a trip to Argentina where he encountered lots of children who didn’t have shoes.  That trip inspired the company’s very straightforward premise:

With every pair of TOMS shoes you purchase, TOMS will give a pair of new shoes to a child in need.  One for One.

The idea of helping people out is pretty inspirational – but even more amazing is the business model Mycoskie is using to help  those people out; a for profit, socially conscious business.  The company isn’t looking for a handout, they won’t be signing up for grant money, but they have a bigger purpose beyond just making money…and that’s making a huge difference!

As Mycoskie puts it, there are some great benefits to having such a clear and unselfish value statement:  “First, consumers are now conscious about where they put their dollars. A product like TOMS that gives to others is appealing to people more than ever.”  Another major benefit is the attraction of well above average employees who are willing to work for less than average pay.  Read more in this article from Success magazine.

What core values does your company stand on and how does it impact your business?

It’s so fluffy!  Inspiration from a unicorn.

The technology behind movies continues to be amazing, but what’s even better is when the technology takes a back seat to a creative story and great writing (and acting). 

Sometimes you need to find your inspiration in the little things that are around you – comedian Louis CK had a great interview with Conan O’Brien a while back where he talks about how Everything is amazing and nobody is happy.  We definitely take things for granted these days – if we took the time to really look around at our day to day things (like 3D animated movies) we would find a lot to be inspired by.

The reality is that we’re lucky to live at a time when amazing and creative things are created almost every day.  One of the more recent examples of inspirational creativity is the movie Despicable Me released to theaters just a few weeks ago. 

If you haven’t seen it yet, make the time to catch it in the theaters (3D is good, but you’ll enjoy it just as much in plain old 2D).  The animation is great, but what really stands out are the characters and the overall premise. 

It’s a story about Gru who’s gunning to be the most famous super-villain of all time.  He’s had some success so far, he has his own army of minions and he has a rival arch-nemesis, but he just hasn’t hit the big-time yet.

In a desperate contest to steal the moon and become famous – Gru ends up taking in 3 orphans that ultimately end up melting his heart.  It’s got a lot of style, it’s very funny and everyone in the family will enjoy it – for your final bit of inspiration, go see Despicable Me.

What’s inspired you lately?  Share your thoughts in the comments below – I’d love to hear them.

Shawn Kinkade  Kansas City Business Coach

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I continue to be surprised with some of the cool applications and sites that pop up… a lot of free stuff and generally pretty innovative!  From a business standpoint, free may not be the best way to go, but I think the developers are in a tough situation.  If you want people to find your stuff, try it out and talk about it, your best bet is to make it free and get it out to a lot of people.

So that’s what I’m doing here – talking about 3 interesting, useful and free sites that you should check out today.

Check out Soluto

The first surprising new site is the recent winner of the Tech Crunch Disrupt contest held this past May (it’s a Silicon Valley review of new technology related start-ups).

Israeli based Soluto is billed as Anti Frustration Software and targets users of Windows who are frustrated with how long it takes to boot up their computers (and why they bog down over time).

Soluto’s approach is an app that runs in the background of your computer during the start-up sequence and measures how long (and what) is running when you’re computer is chugging away.  Once you’ve done the initial load and analysis you can fine tune what runs, remove anything that’s not needed and delay other things that aren’t critical.

I saved about 40 seconds on my start-up (of a fairly new computer), but I can really see the value over time as things get loaded and added in over time – Soluto gives me a way to see what’s actually going on and a way to do something about it (and it’s free)!

Build some Rapportive

Over at Duct Tape Marketing this weekend, John Jantsch suggested a helpful app called Rapportive.  Rapportive works with Gmail and adds in Social Media background on who ever sent you email (into your Gmail inbox).

It has some of the same functionality that Xobni offers with Outlook (also a worthwhile free app that I’ve written about before).  Primarily a quick and easy shortcut to a lot of information on who ever you’re interacting with (links to Social Media profiles, etc.).  It also has the capability for you to record notes, giving you some simple CRM functionality as well.  Simple, but useful.

I believe the trend on this kind of functionality is only going to accelerate – at some point this will be built into all most applications and sites, but until then it would be silly not to take advantage of it now where ever you can.

Go to Market

Finally you should also check out the Google Apps Enterprise Marketplace.  I knew there was  a Google Apps marketplace out there (there’s another one focused on mobile devices similar to iTunes App Store), but I didn’t really know much about it.

It turns out there are hundreds (if not thousands) of free and paid apps available to be checked out at your leisure.  I quickly browsed through some of the accounting and finance apps and found Expensify (an app to help your company streamline expense reporting) which could help out a couple of my clients.

The Market is still evolving, you may or may not find anything useful right now – but keep looking!  This is another big up and coming trend.  Find applications based on what other users think, how well they work and how popular they are…for whatever problem you’re trying to solve.

What cool apps or sites have you discovered recently?  Share your thoughts in the comments below – I’d love to hear them.

Shawn Kinkade   Kansas City Business Coach

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photo by lepiaf.geo

The continuing evolution of the internet has changed a lot of things – how people communicate (Facebook, Twitter), how they establish expertise (blogging, answering questions, wikis) and how business is done (online presence is mandatory now).

What’s really exciting is that social media and the internet has generated a lot of cool new businesses and business models.  Business models like Threadless – a t-shirt design studio that’s completely driven by fans and users in terms of what t-shirts get made and sold (and they’re selling millions of them!). Or Woot! – a deceptively simple site that sells 1 product per day until it sells out or runs out of time.  It’s popular enough to have turned into a phenomenon on it’s own.

The latest fresh business model that I’ve seen is Groupon (a combination of Group and Coupon).  They just made it to Kansas City earlier this week.

Groupon is a local based ‘deal’ site that offers 1 deal per day for your city.  Typically the deals are 50% off or even more…however there’s a catch.  The deal isn’t ‘on’ unless a minimum number of buyers sign up for the deal that day.  So if you see a deal you really like, it’s in your best interest to promote it out to your friends via all of the easily available social media channels.  (You have to love that built in viral component).

As a business owner, why would I do Groupon?

Overall it’s a fairly low risk situation – you get to decide what the cutoff is for your deal – if you feel like you need 50 buyers to make it worthwhile, you can set the cutoff at 50.  Once Groupon is more established (they only have 105 followers in KC right now on twitter @grouponKC, but I’m sure that will grow) – it will be a great way to get exposure to new potential customers.

Even more interesting – based on Groupon’s research, most customers spend 60% more than the value of the coupon and most participants are first time customers (I don’t know how they know this, but it’s interesting…).

Obviously you’re paying to advertise if you decide to sign up with Groupon, both with a discount and a cut to Groupon (they don’t say how much their cut is) but wouldn’t you generally rather give more of your advertising money to your new customers rather than some 3rd party?  Plus – let’s face it, old school advertising isn’t exactly knocking it out of the park these days in terms of effectiveness.

Don’t stop with Groupon!

Groupon only takes 1 deal per day – but there’s no reason why you can’t take the same idea and run your own variation of a groupon to drive in traffic or pick up new customers.  If you wanted to be more sophisticated, you could partner with a few other complimentary businesses (or maybe do it as a shopping center) and setup a page that’s a deal of the day / week and feature one of the partners and promote it via social media.

Or you could copy the Sprinkles model (high end cupcakes, coming to Kansas City soon) and offer daily freebies to visitors that are fans on Facebook or Twitter.

Obviously this works best with Business to Consumer types of businesses, but you’re only limited by your imagination!

What fresh business idea have you seen lately?  Will you particpate in Groupon?  Share your thoughts below, I’d love to hear them.

Shawn Kinkade  Kansas City Business Coach

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It’s a Friday afternoon and I thought I would share 3 fun and interesting, but totally unrelated things.  The internet is an amazing resource…what is it not capable of?

Item #1 – Accidental Innovation

Most of the time you think about inventors laboring away in the lab, spending years coming up with great ideas and products.  However for a lot of products, the innovation actually comes about accidentally.

You may have heard the story about Post-its as an accidental creation at 3M, but did you know that  Corn Flakes were totally an accident discovered by the Kellogg brothers in the late 1800s?

Or that the x-ray was discovered accidentally when a fluorescent screen unexpectedly started glowing during an unrelated experiment? 

The fun folks over at Business Pundit have pulled together an article on popular products that were invented by accident – you can see it here at the unique origins of 25 popular products!

Item #2 – Unbelievable Photos!

I’m a big fan of photography and the amazing things you can do with Photoshop, but it’s even more amazing to find untouched photos that are unbelievable.

  photo by phillip perold

The WebUrbanist has come up with 15 incredible images that look altered but aren’t.  As an example, the picture above is actually a reflection on a beach, not a body of water.  Cool stuff – check it out.

Item #3 – Google Wave is coming!

Finally, if you haven’t heard about Google Wave, you’re hearing about it now and you’ll be hearing a lot more in the next couple of months.  The quick explanation of Google Wave is that it’s a new platform / technology / application that represents what email would be if it were invented today instead of 40 years ago – bringing in all of the real-time collaboration and sharing that people are using in Social Media applications everywhere else. 

Confused?  Me too – but this video might help you make sense of it (and it’s only 2 minutes long!). 

If you can’t see the video, you can find it here.

I can see a ton of uses for something like this and with Google’s backing you know it’s going to get a lot of exposure.  Stay tuned, it will be interesting.

If you’ve seen some fun stuff lately, share it in the comments below – I’d love to see it.

Shawn Kinkade   Kansas City Business Coach

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