Category — Tools

My business runs on Macs. Period. Therefore I’m always excited when there’s a Mac conference coming up, because as we all know thats where Apple CEO Steve Jobs introduces new producs for us fans.

The WWDC is only a couple of days away, so if I could decide, which products Jobs should introduce, here’s my wishlist:

The iPhone in a 3G version and with at least a 3,2 megapixel camera in it. The current model makes no sense to me with the EDGE network support and a crappy camera (I use my camera phone a lot). This looks likely to happen, and I’m super excited about that.

A MacBook Tablet Edition. I had a tablet PC while I was at Microsoft, and unlike a lot of other people, I actually loved it. Today I often find myself missing the opportunity to use my laptop as a whiteboard for projecting onto the big screen while drawing doodlines, lines, squares etc to illustrate my point. Therefore having a MacBook Tablet would be a dream for me. However that doesn’t look to likely to happen anytime soon.

NB: I’m not talking about an oversize iPhone here. I really need to have the full keyboard and the drive, so I’m not just adding yet another device to my collection.

One of the hardest things to come up with as a self-employed individual is the elevator pitch. At least if you’re anything like me.

Its not that I don’t have a profound idea about the value I bring to clients. I do. But I just have a real hard time boiling it down to something tangible enough for use in the elevator.

I have been thinking a great deal about this, and maybe it’s because the idea or the image of the elevator is to weird for me. Are we talking a two storey building or a 50 storey building going all the way from the top way down to the lobby. I don’t know about you but that makes a big difference to me.

For the same reason I was quiet thankful when Stowe Boyd came up with the idea of the TwitPitch - the micropitch fit for Twitter. Because 140 letters/numbers - or the equivalent of a SMS - is something I can relate to.

I have still not completed my own TwitPitch, but I’m more positive than ever that I can.

One of the really cool things about working on a Mac is that you avoid all the hazzle that PC users have - usually with Outlook.

However, lately I have found that there are actually some quite cool applications being released that only work on PC’s with Microsoft Office on them. Why? For one simple reason: Because they go in and fix some of the things that Microsoft haven’t provided properly for in the standard version.

Examples of such applications are Xobni and the now available ClearContext. Two apps which I think it would be cool to play with and perhaps use on a day to day basis - if I only had a PC with a more or less flawed Outlook client on it.

This has me wondering: Is it really sometimes necessary to want B in order to say A? And should you?

(I for one am not switching - cool applications or not).

Being self-employed it’s vital that your clients and partners trust on you. If they don’t, don’t be surprised to find yourself somewhat alone out there.

But how do you know, if you’re trustworthy? Well, you can now take this quiz developed by Charles H. Green and the Trusted Advisor Associates.

It takes you through 20 questions and provide you with a score on how trustworthy, you are. The test takes 5 minutes, and apart from providing you with a score, it also zooms in on your biggest strenght and your biggest room for improvement. For the latter there is even suggested reading.

(Via HarvardBusiness)

Even if you are self-employed (hopefully) you need some kind of system to take care of your clients. And even though you may think that an Excel sheet will do, I have come to the realization that it just doesn’t cut it for me. It’s too hard to keep updated and adding new kinds of data to without messing the structure up etc.

Therefore I have been looking for a web-based CRM system to help me manage the stuff I have got going on with clients. I have tried various solutions such as TactileCRM, but to my needs they often seemed hard to really get under my skin.

That was until I found PipelineDeals.com. This is a system that labels itself as ‘Simple CRM for big business’, and after playing around with the system, I think this is quite fitting.

First of all the system has a very slick user interface, and it allows for a great deal of customization to fit your particular needs. At the same time it seems like a lot of thought have been put into the flow of the application, which makes it very intuitive to use.

Second, there is rich options to import and export data towards other applications, which makes the barriere of starting to use the application and getting max out of it almost painless.

So far I have only found two things missing. One is support for Danish Kroner as a currency, but thats not a real problem, since the currency codes aren’t really used for anything and for reporting purposes I can use Swedish Kroner instead. The other is a way to weigh deals depending on probability, ie getting a better glimpse of what your current sales pipeline is actually worth to give you an idea of how much time you should be spending bulding additional pipeline in order to meet your budgets. I hope this one will be added soon, as it would be really useful to have.

The application costs 15 USD/month/user, and I think it’s well worth the money.

According to their blog, they’re working on mobile versions of the application, which in my mind will only add to the value of PipelineDeals.com.

One of the hardest things to do as self-employed is to maintain a stringent set of Rules-of-Engagement. Because more often than not - and especially when you are starting out - you’re caught in the trap of either doing something because you desperate need money to pay your bills or doing something, because you think the opportunity is too exciting to miss.

Howver, quite often nothing really good comes of this approach. And this is why you might as well have a set of guidelines that you follow in order to effectively manage the business aspects of your day-to-day routines.

Such guidelines can be hard to develop though. So it’s really handy when you can get inspired by somebody else like the American social media expert, Stowe Boyd, who defines his rules here.

While I’m certainly no Stowe, I think his guidelines is an excellent starting point for defining ones own rules. So thanks for the inspiration, Stowe.

One of the most important things in any profession is the ability to get access to the tools you need in order to do your job.

As a self-employed individual and applied to the world of software and services this gets ever more important for two obvious reasons: (1) You don’t have the time to fiddle around with tools that are too complex or to basic to do what you need to get done as fast and efficiently as possible and (2) you don’t have a lot of money to waste on licenses for software you cannot use.

Web Worker Daily has a stellar article on what you should be aware of when picking out the tools you need. Go read it and note the key message from the article:

…a software tool (whether a desktop application or a web application) is only worth adding to your collection if its expected value exceeds its expected cost.

So right. So right.

In my small business I use Google Apps for Premier Edition. Why? Because it gives me everything I need, and because I like the idea of being able to access my business applications from any computer connected to the internet.

But it hasn’t been without pain points. One of the biggest is the lack of offline access to my documents and my mail. It’s a real pain. But now Google is doing something - albeit not all - about it. In the coming weeks it will be rolling out offline access to Google Docs through the use of Google Gears. In the beginning you can only edit existing docs, but lets hope the offering becomes more compelling in due time.

Josh Cartone from ReadWriteWeb asks what has taken Google so long? I second that question. It’s just incredible that Google hasn’t gotten its act around sooner. One could almost get the impretion that Google Apps are not a priority for the search giant.

Please Google, lets get the full blown thing - and for all apps - ASAP. We now you can do it, if you want.

When you have more than one computer, you work on, you get the problem of how to keep your files in sync. I think most of us have tried to work on a document only to realize at some later stage that it was the wrong version of the document in the first place. Oh, the agony of lost time.

Luckily there are great solutions to the problem. I recently tried out Microsofts new FolderShare service, and although I got it working between my Macs, I must admit it was kind of a steep learning code. It did a nice job but just wasn’t intuitive to use.

Enter DropBox. DropBox is the simplest, coolest sync’ing tool, I have ever seen. You map your computer towards your account, and the sync’ing starts. It syncs on the fly, so the minute you have updated your document on one computer, it’s syncronized on the next. It’s just seamless - and it works.

DropBox is in a closed beta for now, but you can request access here. Microsofts FolderShare is also in beta albeit an open one, so here you can sign up in a few seconds.

Happy sync’ing!

When you’re working as a self-employed individual, you have to be more creative than most in order to stand out and land clients. And this can be a daunting task.

Fear not. LifeHack has this excellent list of 30 ways to get back in the creative gear.

Just go do it!