Square…It’s not what you think!
April 14, 2012 | 
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Square is not what you think it is…it’s not related to other shapes or the slang term “square”, but a great new payment system that was created by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey. Basically it’s a small attachment, about the size of a quarter, that plugs into your headphone jack on your iOS or Android device. Once you signup
with Square, it allows you to take credit card payments from anyone and anywhere, as long as you have Internet access.
So for traveling sales people, artists, street vendors (the list is endless!), you have quick, easy and wireless access to money where and when you need it.
But that isn’t the best part! There is no contracts, no hidden fees, no long term anything. Actually there is no monthly payments or fees. Just a flat 2.75% transaction fee for a swiped card (higher if you don’t swipe but type in). For a small business like me this is perfect, and it came in very handy just the other day. Most of my billing for my business is via invoice as I get paid hourly for my services. However the other day I was doing some image repair (I’m also a professional photographer), and needed to get paid for some of my work. Since this was a non-commercial customer, sending out an invoice wasn’t an option. I have a PayPal account, but then you have to send out an e-mail, wait for them to respond, etc…it’s just a pain. The customer was coming in, and it would be nice to take a payment right then and their. But there was no need for any merchant accounts from a bank, no equipment to buy, no contracts. I’ll I did was a few days before was sign-up with Square, received the small device in the mail, hook-up my checking account with the company…and that was it! I was ready to accept any form of payment, and all is paperless as the customer signs my iPhone right there, and a copy of the transaction is e-mailed right then as well.
And it may be a few months before I need to use it again, but there are no worries as there are no monthly fees or minimum transactions. This is the perfect accessory needed for any startup, no matter if you have a small office or out in the street selling your product.
For more information check out Square.
Posted in Business Startup, Internet, Small Business | 
Tags: Mobile Phones, Save Money, Tip | 
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Making Ideas Happen
I spent over 30 hours in my car last week driving from Indy to the NorthEast to do some work for a current client (I’ll talk more about that when I’m done with the project!). Had plenty of time to listen to some books on tape and I’m going to talk about one of those right now: “Making Ideas Happen” by Scott Belsky. The main point of the book is this: You have a free flow of ideas…you got a million of them. But ideas are not worth anything if you don’t do anything with them. An idea is nothing if you don’t get past the idea stage 
It had a lot of great advice on how to organize and collaborate with others to get those ideas off of the ground and into a project and hopefully to completion. I like to say that’s why I’m here to help…you have a wave of ideas, but need help choosing and working on that idea, and you may not know where to start. Then I can help you free up some of your time by helping you complete these projects.
I highly recommend reading/listening to this book. I’m going to start listing and reviewing books that I think are essential books that I find or have used in the past to help me run my business. You can buy the book below from Amazon (Disclosure: I will receive a commission from the sale of this book from Amazon).
Keeping track of all your bookmarks
If you are a small business owner like me, you tend to work at home, work, at clients and on the go. I use 5 computers, an iPad and an iPhone….and I’m always surfing the web or hearing about a new website that I either use all the time or want to check out again later. But how do you keep all of those bookmarks together. If you are a Mac user, you can use Mobile Me, but that costs $100 a year. You can use Firefox and Google with their build in sync, or you can use something that willgo cross platform, cross browser and on as many computers as you use. Xmarks is a website and plugin that works on just about all computers and browsers. What it does is automatically sync your computers and browsers with all of the new sites that you bookmark and move around. Great for someone like me who has way too many sites that I want to keep track of for future use. To see more information and download visit www.xmarks.com.
The one big feature that this website use to have was the ability to also sync and protect your passwords. However, this feature has been disabled as it was purchased (and saved from dying as well) from a company called LastPass. They offer a premium service for one password storage and protection. I have not tried to use this service as I sync all of my passwords via Mobile Me, but give it a try as well.
Evernote…awesome software for idea people.
A few weeks ago the App store for the Mac went live, and one of the top software downloads on the App store and the iPhone is Evernote. After seeing all of the high marks, I decided to check it out. It has become my savior! I am constantly checking out websites, making notes, taking pictures on business ideas, job opportunities, books I want to read, etc. I had no place to keep all of this information in one place. This is where Evernote takes over. Link and copy articles, sound bytes, photos, text notes, e-mail…you name it, you can store it. And here is the best part, you can sync it between all of your devices and computers seamlessly. So the ad that I saw at a store I wanted to make notes about, will now instantly show up on my desktop. That audio note I had taken while driving…same thing! I can also categorize and make tags for these notes for later retrieval. And it’s free! Each month you can store and move 60MB of information. If you go over you have to move up to the paid version, but it’s so worth it.
How this has helped me is consolidate all my notes across all of my computers and iPhones to allow me to keep all of my thoughts and notes readily accessible and safely stored in one place. No more sticky notes, no more saved e-mails, no more audio notes stored on my phone. I now have easy access to my notes that I can now act on when I am ready to follow up on an idea.
For more information check out their site: www.evernote.com
Mobile Devices for B2B
Well, unless you live in a closet, some of the biggest news for technology and consumers is the explosion of the Smart Phone. In my case we have several iPhones floating around. As a consumer and a small business owner it’s great! Apps to play games, check your flight, see what the weather is, GPS navigation
when I’m out of town and don’t have to carry a second device. There’s also the social aspect with Twitter, Facebook, Yelp, FourSquare….you get the point. But how as a small business utilize this? Does this work for B2B and B2C?
In this post I will talk about an iPad project that I’m working on for a current client. I can’t be too specific as it hasn’t launched yet, but it’s to be used as a sales tool for this business’s reps to use in the field (B2B…it’s something you don’t hear a lot about because these applications are produced and only used within a company and not publicly available). The question you may have is why and how can I utilize these portable devices and applications to help my business? There is no clear cut answer to this question as every business is very different. What problems could having something solve? Will it save money? Can you do a better job in the sales process? What is the cost? These are many questions I had to help answer before we moved forward with this current project. In this case, this would be a tool to help the reps sit down with potential customers and to be able to show products and solutions that were usually shown in catalogs, and basically the rep explaining the product. Now, we can show catalogs, pictures, video, testimonials…much more than ever before. And there is a bit of a wow factor to be able to walk into a sales meeting and flop down an iPad and even plug it into a project to be able to show a presentation. Everything is laid out in the application to make it easy for the rep to explain, show, and answer questions that may come up.
But right now the costs are a bit high as, in the case of the iPad, it’s only been around for about a year. And Apple just recently gave up the fight to allow Adobe to release 3rd party software to develop for the iOS for iPhone and iPad as well as other devices. The point being right now you are going to pay anywhere from $100-$150/hour of development of our product as everything has to be written in a code called Objective C. But with Adobe, and hopefully more developers will come out with ways to make it easier for a non-programmer to come up with their own applications for in-house or public use. As with this current project, we are holding out a bit to see if we can significantly cut down on our costs with some of these new tools coming out.
Think you need an application for your small business, or need info on ways to improve your personal performance and networking abilities….just drop us a line!