Category Archives: Business Automation Tips

Are You Building a Pipeline or Hauling Buckets?

Posted on by
1



I would like to share the story below with you.  This story changed the way I do business. I read it approximately 6 years ago and it has effected every business decision I have made since.

Before I make any business decision I ask myself one question: ”Am I Building a Pipeline or Hauling Buckets?”

I hope this story by Robert Kiyosaki in his book “Cashflow Quadrant” will serve you as well as it has served me.

Are You Building a Pipeline or Hauling Buckets?

Once upon a time (nope, not in a galaxy far, far away)…
There was a quaint little village.  This little village was a great place to live except for the fact that there was no water unless it rained.
The village elders decided to solve the problem by announcing that they’d be taking bids for contracts to have water delivered to the village on a daily basis.
Only two people volunteered to take on the challenge and the village elders awarded the contract to both of them.  They figured that a little competition would keep the prices low and ensure that a backup water supply was available just in case.
The first of the two winners, Ed, immediately got to work.  He bought two steel buckets and began running water back and forth along the trail that ran between the village and the lake which was a mile away.
He was immediately making money as he worked hard, dawn to dusk, hauling water from the lake with his two buckets.  He emptied the buckets into a large storage tank that the village had built.
So every morning he had to get up before all the other villagers (to make sure there was enough water available during the day whenever the villagers wanted it).  It was tough, tough work but Ed was ecstatic to be making so much money and for having one of the only two contracts to provide water to the village.
But what about the second winning bidder?
Well, the second winner, Bill, took off for awhile – completely disappeared.  That was fine for Ed since he had no competition.  Ed was making all the money.
Instead of buying a couple of buckets to compete with Ed, Bill had written up a business plan, created a company, found four investors and hired a president to do the work.
(STOP!: Don’t give in to unpowerful thoughts like “I don’t know how to start a company” or “I don’t know how to hire a president”…in fact, “I don’t know” is a bad excuse in general.  Back to the story…)
Bill returned to the village six months later with a construction crew ready to get to work.
Within a year, his team had built a large volume, stainless steel pipeline connecting the village to the lake.
At the grand opening, Bill announced that his water was cleaner than Ed’s (people had complained about Ed’s water being dirty).  On top of that, Bill also announced that he would supply the village with water 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.  On the other hand, Ed could only deliver water on the weekdays since he didn’t work weekends.
Then, to add insult to injury, Bill announced that he would charge75% less than Ed did.  So higher quality, always available, cheaper water!  The village cheered and immediately ran to the faucet at the end of Bill’s pipeline.
In order to compete, Ed lowered his prices by 75%, purchased 2 more buckets (and added covers to them this time).  So now he was able to haul 4 covered buckets each trip.  He also hired his two sons to work the “business”, giving him extra help for the night shift and on weekends.
When the kids left for college, he told them to hurry back because one day, that business would be theirs.  For some strange reason, they never came back.  Hmmm….
On top of that, Ed started having problems with his employees and the union.  They wanted higher pay, better benefits, and only wanted to haul one bucket at a time.
Bill, on the other hand, saw that if one village needed water, then other villages probably did too.  So he went from village to village selling his super-clean water delivery system around the world.
Granted, Bill only makes about a penny per bucket of water that’s delivered, but he delivers billions of buckets of water and all that money pours right into his bank account.  (Sidenote: $0.01 x 1 Billion = $10 million…not bad huh?)
Bill lived happily ever after and Ed worked hard for the rest of his life.
The End.

So what about you?

Are you building a pipeline or are you hauling buckets?

How’s that working out for you?

On-the-go document scanning

Posted on by
Reply


I would like to introduce you to an app that has really simplified my on-the go life.  The apps name is Genius Scan and you can download it for free from the app store.

Genius Scan turn your iPhone into a mobile document scanner.  I hate having to fill in a form, fire up the old PC, warm up the scanner, preview/scan/save as, and then attach to an email to get the document off.  Well, no more of that.  If you have a document that you want to scan, it does not matter where you are, pull out your iPhone (or iPod Touch) open the app, and snap-scan it with the phones built in camera.  The quality of the scan depends on the quality off the camera, but I find that the 3Gs 3 mega-pixel cameras scan quality is more that good enough.

Genius Scan will then do a quality improvement process after which you can select the new document, and emails as a PDF attachment.  Really not much more to it.

This app is great for business man that quickly want to make a copy of a document at a meeting.  A definite must download.  Genius Scan is a free app, but having used it for more that 6 months, I’ll gladly pay for it as well.

Please click on the link below to watch a demo video clip of Genius Scan in action.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkSidc-j8-I


Simplifying your Emails, Simplifies your Life

Posted on by
Reply



Email is something that we all use every day and I believe that we all have the same email needs. We need an email program that syncs emails across different computers and devices, archive emails simply and effectively and retrieve them quickly. We need our emails to be safe secure and backed up. These days, legal battles are won and lost because of emails.

I find it very strange that 99% of email applications do not offer the above mentioned requirements and do not provide the user with what they really need.
I’ve searched long and hard trying out different email applications, loving some and hating some, but it comes down to where the email application that solved all my email needs was GMail.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that your business email address should read:” jpmorgan@gmail.com”, but in stead of using outlook, use the GMail application to simplify and solve your email needs, at least till something better comes along.

How will Gmail improve your life?

  1. If you have more than one email address, you can setup up to five email addresses with every GMail account. When you check your GMail account, the application will automatically check your business address, personal, and any other address you might have set up. This keeps all your emails in one location. Now that you have set that up once, you only have to setup your GMail account details on a new device, and it will still check all five. You do not have to set up all five account again.
  2. You don’t have to delete anything. Except for spam, you can keep all your emails, with the amount of space that GMail gives you, if you do run out of space, a bigger inbox will cost you a minimal amount.
  3. Gmail allows you to “google search” your emails. If you are looking for a specific email just type: sister/car/insurance and bam, there it is, email found. This in my opinionworks 100% better than MS Outlook search and saves me a lot of stress and anxiety when it comes to retrieving that email that proves I’m right.
  4. Email threads are by far the best way of keeping track of a ongoing email conversation, it makes following up and managing email replies easy.
  5. Labels work much better than Folders. The problem with folders is that each email can only be in one folder. So if you get a email from your sister, about your car insurance for your business vehicle, you have to decide if you want to file it under Sister, Car, Insurance, or Business. Now you have to remember that. In GMail, you can setup a label for sister,car,insurance and business and the email will show up under all of them.
  6. You have access to all your emails from any device, because it is web based. You can set up your device to download your email, but it always keeps a copy on the web. This means that all your emails are always on all your devices.
  7. If you like a desktop email program, or worry that google might loose your account, you can download gears, and GMails off-line application. This will download and sync your emails to a off-line location. Should you have any problems with your GMail account, at least you will have a mirror image of your emails, backed up on a PC offline.

Let’s Recap.
Since I’ve changed to GMail as my email client, my live has change dramatically. No more:” That email is on my home PC, or, I downloaded that email last night on my laptop, I will have to froward it to my work PC. My inbox is always clean, because I’ve set up labels and if I haven’t I know I can retrieve that email with a single “google mail search”.

Its Fast, its Everywhere, its Free, its a must.

On a sidenote. In a PC world where it feels like everything has been done, I’m sure that if someone developed a “Dropbox like” email program, it will be a winner. – I will pay for that. If you know of any great email programs, please lets us know, and leave a comment below.

Camcard Application Review

Posted on by
1



The first app that I want to talk about is Camcard. I discovered this app a couple of weeks ago, it was mentioned on Mashable on one of their “Boost Your Productivity” App Reviews.

Camcard is a mobile phone business card scanning application with a difference, currently available on the IOS, Andriod and Blackbery platforms.

Yes, I know that there are many similar type of business card scanning applications on the market, but Camcard’s OCR scanning ability is really clever. What it does is it scans the image of the business card, then recognizes the text on the card using OCR scanning technology. But wait, it then takes it one step further, it also recognizes what field the information would belong to, and adds that information under the add new contact fields of your applications contacts, meaning that it matches mobile with mobile, email with email, name with name etc. The accuracy is astounding.

There are some really bad business cards out there, and if you cant make out the fonts by reading it, then blame the designer of the card, not the app. I must be honest, I have not come across this often, most of the cards I have scanned, I have saved to my IPhone contact without having to edit anything.

Tips and Tricks:
If you set up your GMail account to automatically sync with your mobile phones contacts and emails, your newly scanned business card contact will seamlessly appear in you GMailcontact, next time you visit a PC.

So lets recap. Someone gives you a business card, you pull out your Smart Phone and snap the card with CamCard. You quickly look over the field to make sure that the OCR did its job, perfect. You hit save to contacts and the information not only gets added to your phone contacts, but automatically gets added to your GMail contacts as well.

Just the expression on the business card givers face is worth the download of the app. It is priceless when they don’t know what to do with the business card when you return it to him.

So lets recap. Someone gives you a business card, you pull out your Smart Phone and snap the card with CamCard. You quickly look over the field to make sure that the OCR did its job, perfect. You hit save to contacts and the information not only gets added to your phone contacts, but automatically gets added to your GMail contacts as well.

Just the expression on the business card givers face is worth the download of the app. It is priceless when they don’t know what to do with the business card when you return it to him.