I am clearly a little bit of a tech geek. My entire business life is wrapped around helping people find a way to manage and use technology well. I find there are lots of tech tools an EBOS (Executive, Business Owner or Salesperson) should never be without and even more they should never be allowed to have. Many of these tools are free, or relatively inexpensive. Some things are really clear and obvious such as a car or truck depending on the business you're in. In the book The Millionaire Next Door , Ford F150s were listed as the most common vehicle of the millionaire class. Since I've been driving an F150 for almost 15 years now, this one is obvious to me.
The first F150 was a crew cab, three door 2 Wheel drive, typical contractor white. My current F150 is a super crew with a carpeted bed and shell. It is a “Lariat” edition fully loaded leather, six disc CD changer, overall a pretty nice truck. As I read the book the millionaire next door, the F150 just seemed like the obvious choice and I kind of found a strange that it even made the book. By the time I finished the book, I realized the whole point was not to teach me or other small-business owners, rather is was to teach people that wanted to become small-business owners.
My uncle owns a printing and custom graphics company in Los Angeles, Custom Photo Craft. He doesn't drive an F150 but it's pretty close, he drives a Ford Explorer. When you really look at it pretty much any good sport utility or pickup truck will serve a EBOS well. Even if you're not a business owner, as a salesman or executive, the same rules apply. I also have a BMW station wagon that makes a great little vehicle for sales calls and long drives. It gets great mileage, holds everything I would need to do a demonstration and has a great stereo system. Most important on the long drives, the cabin is very quiet, so I can talk on the cell phone without yelling.
That leads to the next essential tool for the EBOS, the cell phone. There isn't yet a consensus on the best cell phone for business. Pretty much any phone with voice dial, and Bluetooth will work very well. Currently our office is a mix of RIM Blackberries and iPhones. Each works well in different ways. The iPhone apps are very appealing to our business. Personally, the one thing I will miss if I switch to an iPhone is the keyboard on the Blackberry. For almost 2 years I carried a Windows phone and liked it very much for its e-mail and calendar synchronization capabilities. What killed the deal was the very slow speed, poor battery life and lack of reliability.
One bug with the blackberry is, I still haven't figured out how to get the Blackberry sync with my calendar while I'm on the road. Since switching to the Blackberry have had several instances where I've made a scheduling date, and someone the office has scheduled me as well, and it isn't discovered until the end of the day when I synchronize the phone with a cable. We turned auto sync on and the phone would just fill up with hundreds of emails telling me not to delete since they were required to sync with the server. That feature was turned off the next day.
Another essential tool is really more of a toolbox. A great laptop that has a built-in WebCam, speakers and Bluetooth is almost required today. If you have a great secretary you can get away without it, and I know several owners who do. I call a laptop a toolbox, because many of the other items I consider essential tools for business owners and entrepreneurs are software driven and require a computer. The portability of a good laptop should make the first choice for just about any business owner, entrepreneur or salesperson.
Currently I'm using the HP Touchsmart series. It is about 3 pounds heavier than the Vaio it replaced. I won't make that mistake again. Two and a half years ago when we purchased the Sony's for the office, they were the clear winner. Their small size, large memory and lightweight, coupled with an excellent docking station made them our toolbox of choice. In the office, each talking station has a 19 inch or larger LCD widescreen, a wireless keyboard and trackball, giving them all of the features of a great desktop. At home, I also have a docking station connecting to the home network, giving me a VPN connection back to the office server.
The Sony's had served us well and as they approached the end of their life we had to make some tough choices. As much as we like to Sony's, for the money Sony has not kept up to the market. The unanimous decision has been to go with the new HP tablet, media PC. The ability to twist the screen around and turn it into a tablet PC touchscreen has been a clear winner. My brother already purchased the first one. As a programmer, for our KuhlApps games, he needed the better processor. For desktops we switched to either Quad core HP’s for the engineering or the HP media Smart touch screen PC for everyone else. I realize this PC is not intended for business, however it has so many tools and features I don't understand why every business doesn't use it. The one thing I will say is to make sure the media center TV and recording functions are off. If not the hard drive is very busy and remains full.
Adding the laptop versions this year will help us in several ways, all of which will increase productivity. Some essential software tools for a laptop toolbox include Skype, Dragon, a calendar program that can be synchronized to our phones and a web portal program. If you're not already using Skype you should get on it. Skype is free, the voice quality is outstanding and the ability to add video to many of our conversations helps greatly. New features such as the ability to bill over Skype for consulting fees, and sharing our desktop for training all decrease the so-called windshield time. The coolest new features of Skype are the ability to add real phone numbers and create a virtual business. A word of caution, the numbers don't get listed in phone books that I'm aware of unless you pay for it.
One of the strangest effects resulting from deregulation of the telephone industry is phonebooks don’t always publish numbers. On the other side of the coin they will publish anything you pay them to publish. The hardest part is figuring out which directory will get you into 411 information. We focus most of our money for marketing on the Internet now. A small piece goes to newspapers and finally the smallest piece goes to Yellow Pages or white pages advertising, and that is just to get our number on 411.
The only difficulty we've had by being a truly virtual company in the cloud* is that some of our phone numbers still are not listed. We're in the process of trying to figure that out. We have no traditional telephone lines in our business, and therefore none that are automatically listed with any type of Yellow Pages or caller information services. Over the past year I've only received two inquiries or notices from people that they couldn't find a number trying to call us. Sadly that means there's probably more.
The second essential tool for laptop is Dragon. If you don't know what Dragon is you have missed at least 5 good working versions. Almost 15 years ago, when Dragon first launched, we tried it with basic Pentium one PCs in a law firm, and the program failed miserably. Today it has become an essential tool, even if we only use it for basic e-mail and word processing functions. This entire blog is dictated to Dragon wearing a headset sitting on my second deck patio overlooking the pool. With the toolbox I carry, I could be doing this from a hotel in Maui as well.
It takes a little while to train the software, and once you do you’ll wonder why you didn’t get it sooner.
Dragon takes some power so get a good laptop. You’ll find it a lot easier to answer e-mails, write letters and be productive while on the road than without it. Skip the $99 standard version get the next one up at least. I think it's called premium. Version 10 is available online for under 300 bucks. If you can just save a couple hours a week Dragon becomes a bargain.
Having a good calendar program that syncs with your phone is pretty self-explanatory. If you need me to explain that they have a long way to go to using essential tech tools for business. Google business has worked well for us so far, and we are also testing the Apple server with built in shared calendar. So far both are easy and work well. Google has a sync feature for the Blackberry that doesn't eat my phone.
A good Bluetooth headset should be anyone's toolkit. The additional safety factor while driving should justify the cost of a good headset by itself. Right now I'm using the Plantronics Voyager 8XX series. They're a little pricey, but they work very well in the earplug style speaker which blocks outside sound better than any others I've used. The Voyager 5XX series has good sound and good wind correction but the two color earpiece separates and isn’t replaceable. The new super wind noise reductions sets are available, and since my 520 still works, I am not going to spend the money. If they send me one, I will let you know how it works.
Another tool I use, which is a complete business some people is Send Out Cards. SOC is an Internet-based system that allows you to send real cards through the mail with your handwriting without having to stop at the local Hallmark store, post office and gift card shop. One thing I've learned in business is you can never thank your customers enough. Using SOC, I'm able to send out cards in a more timely manner. They can include gift cards, or even gifts. It used to be that I would forget to send a thank you card because I'd be out of cards to be out of stamps couldn't find the right gift card. Who knows what excuse I would come up with. Now I log in, pick a card, write a quick note to say thank you, pick a gift card and press send. A couple of days later, my customer has a high-quality card with a real note from me in my writing, saying thank you. The response isn't even comparable to what I got when I tried online greeting cards. Just skip that whole program and send real cards or join SOC.
Obviously this isn't the all-inclusive list of essential tools for business owners and entrepreneurs. If you're just starting out, a good vehicle, a good laptop toolbox and a good cell phone will help ease you down your road of success. This article is the header for a series of Articles at Beach Street News.
*In the cloud means our telephone services all go to computers. If I plug my laptop into a hotel in Los Angeles with broadband internet services and you call our Napa Valley phone number, I can still answer it over my laptop, or have it automatically forward to my cellular or anyone elses number.
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Thank you for your insights.