Aspire » Technology

Only 29% of biz owners know the Cloud?

Shawn Kinkade — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 19:45:18 +0000

Apparently a lot of small business owners are not familiar with ‘The Cloud’ – at least when it comes to Cloud Computing as a technology solution for their business. According to a recent survey (May of 2011) done by the Small Business Authority, only 29% of small business owners are familiar with the term Cloud Computing.

Only 29%! There’s a huge opportunity right now, both for qualified vendors who can supply great cloud based solutions, but more importantly for small business owners who can leverage Cloud based technology to cut costs and do more with less!

What is Cloud Computing? In a nutshell, it’s the ability to interact with data or applications that are centrally hosted on the internet (or in ‘the cloud’). The reality is that you’re likely dealing with a lot of cloud based stuff today and you didn’t know it – when you get a movie from Netflix Instant Streaming, you’re pulling down data / content from the cloud. It’s available in a lot of different ways (your computer, an iPad, your TV etc.) but it’s all tied back to your account.

Here’s a handy graphic that I pulled out of the wikipedia cloud computing entry Other examples of cloud based services include SalesForce CRM, Dropbox (free file sharing and back-up), the whole suite of Google Apps and other stuff you’re probably already using like Quickbooks (online version) or Pandora (music).

There are a lot of benefits that cloud computing will immediately bring to a small business owner (and that’s not counting specific applications or functionality that might apply especially to your industry). Here are just a few:

Everyone has access to the same data (no more passing spreadsheet versions around)
Data is automatically backed up…without expensive hardware costs
Everyone can get to the important data or applications even if they’re not in the office
You can collaborate a lot easier and do it remotely (w/ clients, vendors, employees)
Solutions are a lot less expensive (in general) – especially when it comes to up front capital

It’s not all sunshine and roses – you do have to figure out how the changes will impact your workflow. Your processes will change and there will be impact…mostly positive, but change is still change. Additionally, just like everything else, there are good solutions and not so good solutions out there and you have to figure out what works for you. However if you can get past that initial hump – you will cut your costs and start doing more using the cloud.

As an example, Aspire just cut over to Google for email and access to the Google business suite of apps. My friend Joe Tierney at Umzuzu helped up migrate our email to a Gmail hosted platform…which means that we can now access all email from any device (laptop, desktop, phone, iPad) and we’re always working on the same set of emails. Additionally we get the benefits of Gmail functionality…priority inbox, better search and new stuff over time. Finally – I no longer need to worry about backing up my Outlook files – which I wasn’t doing a very good job of anyway.

Overall I can already tell this is going to save me several hours a week because it enables a more efficient process for how I work. And in today’s crazy world – that’s worth an awful lot!

Are you leveraging the cloud? If not – why not? I’d love to hear you thoughts in the comments below.

Shawn Kinkade Kansas City Business Coach

Great cloud photo by fifkins

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2 Ideas (videos) that will blow your mind!

Shawn Kinkade — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 21:22:20 +0000

photo by kozumel

I’ve said it before, but we live in Interesting Times…sure there’s the downside of the economy and the constant drumbeat of all of the negative news out there, But there’s also an amazing upside – we are seeing things today that would have never been thought possible 50 years (maybe even 10 years ago). In fact the overall progress that’s been made is nothing short of staggering.

In fact it’s mindblowing!

Want some proof? Check out these 2 videos a couple of friends recently shared as great examples of amazing things that are going on.

200 Years, 200 Countries, 4 Minutes

First up is a fantastic video sent to me by my friend Mike Jones of the Jones Law Firm. Mike’s a great attorney who primarily works with business owners, so if you’re looking for an attorney – I would highly recommend giving Mike a call.

Anyway, Mike passed along a fantastic 4 minute video from a guy named Hans Rosling – this is actually a clip from a longer BBC program called The Joy of Stats, but despite the nerdy title, there are a couple of really cool things to take away from this video.

If you can’t see the video – you can find it online here: 200 Years, 200 Countries

I am amazed at how he took a complex topic with a huge amount of data and boiled it down to a couple of minutes of simple, understandable video to tell an insightful story about how the world has changed in the last 200 years. Can you imagine if that change continues over the next 200 years?

How Cognitive Surplus Will Change the World

This second video was pointed out to me by my friend Joe Tierney from Umzuzu – Umzuzu works with small business owners and helps them figure out how to leverage cloud technologies and Google Apps to make things run better, faster and cheaper. Absolutely give them a call if you are frustrated with technology or just don’t know what’s out there. They do a lot of teaching and educating and can help you figure out what’s possible.

This video is a bit longer (13 minutes) and it’s from TED – I’ve mentioned before what a great resource TED is. There are so many cool things you can learn on that site. Anyway – this video is from author Clay Shirky and it’s basically about a by product created from the disruptive technology of the internet. He calls that by product – Cognitive Surplus:

Here’s the link to How Cognitive Surplus Will Change the World if the video doesn’t play.

One of the biggest reasons we live in amazing times is that we’re getting the chance to see the birth and evolution of the single most disruptive technology since…writing? (I’m not sure what else to compare it to). Think about all of the ways that the internet touches your life right now…and almost all of them didn’t exist less than 10 years ago! And even cooler - it’s creating unexpected outcomes like Cognitive Surplus, which really could (continue to) change everything.

I’m sticking with Mindblowing as my description!

What do you think? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Shawn Kinkade Kansas City Business Coach

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How do you remember all of your stuff?

Shawn Kinkade — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 19:07:47 +0000

photo by exfordy

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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Check out 3 new surprising sites for your business!

Shawn Kinkade — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 03:31:43 +0000

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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3 Tools to help you get found locally

Shawn Kinkade — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 16:09:32 +0000

One of the keys to success with small business (and one of the challenges) is that your potential customers need to be able to find you before they can actually spend any money with you.

Of course you also need to have a product or service that solves their problem, presented in such a way that they get what you’re doing and they see the value (and how you’re different than others in your space). And of course you need to be great at delivering that product or service…all the while developing that difference that makes you Remarkable (just like these 3 Kansas City Businesses have done).

However it all starts with being found – you have to be found first if you want more business. And the best place to be found is where people are already looking…which is online!

The good news is that it’s getting easier and easier to get your business out there every single day. At a minimum you should register with a directory like The Finder in Kansas City. They have free listings or some low cost options that can really help boost your exposure.

On top of that – here are 3 other tools / strategies that can help you raise your online profile for your business.

Get Listed

The first one is a really helpful site called GetListed.org. Get Listed allows you to enter your business name and your location / zip code and they will do a local search and see if you are listed in the top local search directories (Google, Bing, Yahoo, Yelp and Best of the Web). It takes all of 30 seconds to find out if you need to do anything with those directories.

On top of that, they have a lot of resources and information to help you understand how all of this local search stuff works. Great site!

Get a Video for your business

The next site is Pixability.com. Pixability has an interesting model for helping business owners get professional quality video for their business promotion (website, youtube, blog, etc.). They send you a camera, have you shoot some basic footage of what you want covered in the video. You send the camera back, they edit and combine the basic video with text, voiceover, graphics or whatever makes sense on what you want…and you get a professional looking video for a pretty reasonable price.

Video is a hot topic right now – because people want a quick and easy way to see what you’re doing – video is often a great way to quickly get their attention and make your case. Especially if you have a business with some visual interest.

Get Found on Google

Google is the 800 pound gorilla of search engines. If you’re only going to spend time or effort in one place – it should be with Google, they handle 60+ percent of all search engine traffic.

The good news is that Google is constantly innovating, adding new tools (for free) and they make it pretty easy to get up and running. The first place to start from a local search perspective is Google Places, create or claim your business and fill out the profile. Once you’re up and running, you can also use the analytics to see how many people found you, how they found you and what keywords they were searching for when they found you.

First step is to make sure you’ve got a quality website (doesn’t have to be expensive, but at least professional) and then make sure that you are giving people a real chance to find you online.

What tools or tactics are you using to get found online? Are you where you want to be when it comes to this stuff? Share your thoughts or questions below in the comments – I’d love to hear them.

Shawn Kinkade Kansas City Business Coach

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