Month: July 2014

5 Conversation Tools For Nurturing Your Relationship With A Mentor

Forbes-150x88July 29, 2014,

Forbes

We’ve all longed for a classic mentor-mentee relationship at some point in our careers. We want someone who is savvy and seasoned. We want her to provide the perfect insights and career advice that will help us reach our goals. We want someone who will guide us to our destination.

How Technology Has Made Home Business Easier

Entrepreneur working from home looking very relaxed in his sofa browsing the web in his laptop computerOf the 28 million small businesses in the United States, 52 percent of them are home-based. Maintaining and organizing your business from home is easier with the advancements in mobile technology. With the latest apps and services you can organize your business’ finances, organize your team, market your product, and provide your customers with top-notch customer service. These technologies have made it easy for home businesses to streamline processes and produce products that mimic larger organizations.

Managing Finances

Managing your business finances can be challenging, to say the least. While you may want to consider contracting this job out to a savvy accountant, programs and apps can help you manage the task yourself. With a great business data plan from T-Mobile on a tablet like the iPad Air, you can even enter invoices and payment in the field or on the go. Quickbooks: The cloud-based platform from Intuit has been a stalwart in tracking expenses for businesses both large and small. The all-encompassing account software allows you to send invoices to customers and accept payment for any sales as well as track any expenses towards you make for your business. Also, if you have employees, it has a payroll feature to cut checks to your employees. Paypal: Paypal also allows you to receive or send payments through your mobile device. If you are on the go you can make sales on the spot. For an extra $30 a month you can customize the experience for your shoppers and even receive payments via phone, fax, and mail.

Organizing Your Team

If your team works remotely, the latest technology enables you to communicate with your team and track milestones: DropBox: Share files with team members seamlessly and securely through DropBox. Share large files with important data with your team members without the need to physically hand it to them. Skype: The leader in video conferencing software, Skype enables your team to communicate face to face and discuss anything related to the business. Omnifocus: This multi-faceted app allows you to organize your team and yourself, as well. Omnifocus let’s you create tasks for your team to complete and provide them with any material to complete any goals you place for them.

Marketing Your Business

The advent of social media has made marketing easier for all types of businesses, but there are plenty of tools home-based businesses can leverage: BufferBuffer allows you to manage all your social media accounts on one platform through your iPad. It enables you to schedule your content to publish when you think the most interaction will occur. TweetDeck: This is a great app for you to directly engage with the followers of your business and track what your customers and potential customers are chatting about. This allows you to engage swiftly and produce content towards your target audience.

Customer Support through Mobile Applications

These mobile technologies have allowed home businesses to provide top-notch customer service to their customers. Zoho CRMZoho gives you access to to your customer’s data through its mobile app. It saves and tracks all communication and transactions with the customer so you have all the data in one place wherever you are. ZendeskZendesk is used by companies worldwide, large and small, and creates a platform for addressing the issues your customers face.

Until next time,

Kelli Richards CEO of The All Access Group, LLC

PS, The right mentor should also have the right CONNECTIONS to move you forward.

Be sure to ask who they think they can bring to the table around advisorship, possible collaboration and even funding.

 

 

A Hard Day’s Night for Digital Legacy – The Lost Beatles Recordings

Screen Shot 2014-07-14 at 3.50.14 PM

Great work will never die in today’s ever expanding online digital world. According to the IDC “The digital universe is growing 40% a year into the next decade. By 2020 it will contain nearly as many digital hits as there are stars in the universe.” In fact, according to Science Daily, 90% of all the world’s data has been written in the past 2 years. Wow. That is an incredibly daunting idea. Literally 90% of the information that is readily accessible to the world today was not available only 2 years ago.

While imagining the sheer magnitude of all this data is overwhelming, studying this information on a more local, individual level is far easier to wrap your head around.

Let’s take a look at the Beatles first Big Screen appearance in the film, A Hard Day’s Night, for example. In examining the 50th anniversary restoration process for the film, technicians needed to compensate for the original recordings (which had been lost) of what is now widely considered the most inspirational musical group ever. Imagine that, the original recordings were lost.

An incredibly foreign idea today in a day and age that with one quick internet search can find you thousands of Kids Pop covers of every song ever done. So how were these recordings lost in history? Well, despite Beatlemania, apparently some doubt still existed as to whether or not The Beatles would make a serious lasting impact; and who wants to track down and organize a possible “one hit wonders” second and third album? I’m 1960, the answer was no one; apparently not even for the Beatles. Today, this is routinely done for even small artists. It may have been a Hard Day’s Night to make a lasting footprint back then, but now, there’s almost no one left without an online footprint. The solid win for all of us is that great work never dies in today’s online digital world, and as a result, we are all, always building a digital legacy for lifetimes to come.

Let’s look at the Lennon legacy. Everyone is probably aware of John’s journey from Liverpool, his work with the Beatles, his marriage with Yoko Ono and his untimely death. But what about his children? Julian, John’s eldest son, has expanded his own musical career, fighting through adversity often faced by platinum artists children, attempting to get out of the shadow of their musical parents. (Luckily for humanity, in addition to his music, Julian has made great strides in his White Feather Foundation, raising funds for a more sustainable future for the planet.) And Sean, John’s youngest son is touring with bands like the Flaming Lips and Tame Impala while releasing his own albums and unique sound.

Our digital footprints go beyond music, of course, Paul McCartney’s daughter Stella need only be Googled to find pages and pages of images of her enormous impact on fashion. And of course, the remaining Beatles themselves continue to make great music and build their legacy, both online and off.

So while the early pieces of Beatles history have been lost, their legacy will not be forgotten and in fact, continues to grow and grow. Living on in their new accomplishments, their children, their fans, and in an online database for everyone to access, so no one will forget.

 

Until next time,

Kelli Richards, President, CEO of the All Access Group, LLC

PS: Subscribe to my FREE All Access Group Newsletter https://bit.ly/AAGNewletter

PSS: Listen to an entire library of intimate discussions with industry visionarieshttps://bit.ly/AllAccessPodcastSeries  (Priceless)

Search Resources

Topic Areas & Guests

Categories

Join our mailing list

For insights on industry trends, and for details on special projects/events. We respect your time and your privacy.


By submitting this form, you are consenting to receive marketing emails from: . You can revoke your consent to receive emails at any time by using the SafeUnsubscribe® link, found at the bottom of every email. Emails are serviced by Constant Contact