Keeping Barman Appy (Part 2)

Continuing on from last week, I just wanted to share the rest of the Apps that help me each and every day to run my business; Thirst First Mobile Cocktail Bars.

Apps to me are vital.  Without them, working on the move like I do would be impossible.  Last time I mentioned things like Outlook 365, Xero, Tiny Scan, IFTTT and the awesome Task Task. Have a read here; Keeping Barman Appy (Part 1). In Part 2 I’m going  to share another 7 Apps that I love.

PayPal Here Contactless

Dropbox

I must of admit, I was a late converter to Dropbox.  Because of O365 I used One Drive for Business.  However I found the “For Business” App annoying lacking in functionality.  The normal One Drive is great, but the one that comes as part of the O365 family doesn’t do the job.

Dropbox on the other hand gives me 1TB of storage.  Yes a lot of other cloud storage does too, but Dropbox advantage is that it links seamlessly into everything I use. My iPhone, O365, Outlook on my iPhone and even Tinyscan for my receipts. Its the definite winning platform in my books!

 

LinkedIn

Not the desktop site, but the App!  As a business person I am getting loads of value out of LinkedIn.  Much more than Facebook, but the 2 are completely different.  LinkedIn is all about staying in touch and if used right, i.e.. actually talking to people and not just connecting, so much can happen.  Plus there’s also Connected, Slideshare and Pulse…other LinkedIn apps that keep you in touch with what’s going on.  The best bit for me, is that if you add a new contact to your address book, the next time you open the LinkedIn app it’ll match that person and ask you if you want to connect.  Brilliant!!  Just remember to send them a message when connecting and not just randomly click the connect button. Introduce yourself and be friendly!

 

PayPal Here

This has revolutionised the way I can take money at events.  Its brilliant for any small shops, market stalls, pop ups, mobile food vans, authors and public speakers who have events they’re promoting, etc etc.  A £50 investment in a Contactless Card Reader and a quick download of the app and you’re away!! Yes the fee’s are slightly higher than a proper PDQ machine, however you don’t have the line rental or monthly fees.  I can take anywhere between £200-£1000 on this a month…at this level its cheaper for me to go down this route.

The advantage of PayPal Here over Payleven, iZettle, Worldpay etc is that funds are transferred instantly! Not 3 days later like the rest, but the very second after payment is taken which is brilliant for the cash flow of a small business like mine.  Charges are also taken instantly, so no monthly bills to factor in.

The other cool feature is that if you download PayPal Here on an iPad and you’ve got a fully functional EPOS till system…for FREE.

 

Crowdfire & Publish

2 great Apps for tracking Twitter and Insta interactions.  Crowdfire shows you who’s followed/unfollowed. People who are inactive. It gives you your competitors Stats. It can show any Tweets that have been posted nearby. It has the ability to copy your friends/competitors followers.  Its also available on the desktop too.  Its enabled me to really trim the people I follow to genuine people with interesting stuff to say!

Publish, developed by the same dudes, is for scheduling Tweets and Insta Posts. You can let it publish at recommended times, or set the times yourself. For me, its the best thing I’ve found for the iPhone!

 

FrameMagic – Picture editing app

 

 

FrameMagic

This is all down to personal taste, but for me, FrameMagic is hands down THE BEST app I’ve found for Picture creation for Social Media.  There’s loads of Frames to chose from. Every little detail of the pic can be edited, including background colours, frame sizes, grid layouts. It also has the ability to overlay your logo which is Ace.  But, even better than that, if like me, you use custom Fonts, you can upload them to the App so the Text matches your brand on every platform! In my opinion, its way better and easier to use than Canva et al.

 

iMovie

Apples native Video Editor. It does everything you’ll ever need and unless you’re a real pro, negates the need to spend £80/£250/£1000 on Video Editing software!  Adding effects. Cropping. Stitching 2 or 20 videos together to upload as 1 video. Overlaying Logos. Adding Text. Adding music.  Choosing the Ratio and finished size of film. In fact, for little old me, there is nothing that I can’t do with it.

 

So that’s me done.  I hoped that’s helped in some small way?! Of course, there are other Apps that I LOVE.  Even things like Spotify which helps me with my focus during the day.  All the Facebook Apps are Vital. Twitter. Kindle for Bed time reading.  Tom Tom which takes me directly to someone’s front door (its take me wrong 3 times in 3 years) and because its downloaded to your phone, you never need to worry about data, or a phone signal!  Apple’s Passbook is brilliant for Apple Pay and my Starbucks card!

There are also some apps that EVERYBODY I know uses that I just don’t really have the need for or that over complicates matters.  ToDoist is great, but not necessary for me. The same with Evernote.  At the end of the day, its about what can help you and make your life easier.

If you have other Apps that I’ve not mentioned that you think I’d like, please do mention them below. Sharing is caring…

Until the next time
StB x

 

Steve the Barman owns and runs Thirst First Ltd, a Mobile Cocktail Bar company that provides the WOW effect for your events. If you have an event coming up, Business or Pleasure, give us a shout and we’ll do our damnedest to help out. Check out; thirstfirst.co.uk

 

Marketing, IFTTT and Refocusing

I won’t lie, August was a great month for me.  I decided back in early July, that August was going to be the month I stepped back a little to take time out and relax. To kind of refocus on a few things.  Business has been going great for me in 2015. Turnover on the previous year has already doubled, yet I found I was still coasting along.  I’d lost direction and a little enthusiasm to be creative and grow Thirst First even more.

So after Bradcamp in Norfolk…

the first thing I decided was to hand over the Cambridgeshire 4N Area Leader role to someone new.  I’d felt that I’d accomplished all I could do for a while, Cambs is absolutely Buzzing and it was time for a new challenge.  But also this would free up a huge amount of time to refocus on my Business.

The second thing I decided was that I was going to have my first Holiday in over 3 years!! Actually getting on a plane and jetting off somewhere!  Even if you’d asked me 4 months ago, I still thought that wouldn’t be achievable this year.

And the third thing was that I was going to use August to plan an Autumn assault ready for my new financial year on the 1st November.

You see, when you’re just coasting along and you’re on your own in the business, you don’t often get a chance to refocus and plan the next stages.  You just continue to do what you’ve been doing successfully for the last 6 months!

Along with the 4N Area Leadership, I also wanted to take a “Sabbatical” from meetings too. 5 weeks out completely. Well, I didn’t do too badly, I only attended 2 meetings.  Come on, its 4N. Its 50% social after all. Its not just about Business, a lot of these guys are my friends too. Going a month without seeing them would be hard!

Roll forward to the 1st of September and what have I achieved?

Well, quite a lot actually.  I have so many plans and so many changes to make. So many adjustments and lots of new things to concentrate on.  The majority of this is down to Dee Blick of The Marketing Gym. I must confess that I’ve still not properly read her 15 Essential Marketing Masterclasses book yet, however I downloaded The Ultimate Small Business Marketing Book on my Kindle App and read the whole thing Cover to Cover in 4 days…and made soooooooo many notes!  This book is brilliant to get you firing again.

The second thing I achieved which is coupled to above, is to achieve a new Working day Focus regime. Inspired by Richard Eaton’s Blog about going offline while on holiday, I wanted to achieve something similar.  I wanted to create habits where I was not constantly going to grab my phone, or respond to emails.  This was going to be a massive ask as after all, it is just me in my Biz.  I can’t afford to ignore enquiries for a whole week. However, I did mange to go 95% off comm’s quite easily actually…and after being back for 3 days, I’m still in the same mindset.

Firstly, I have turned off ALL the notifications off my phone except for Calls and Texts. Everything! Not even leaving the Badge App Icons on to show how many notifications I have on Facebook.  I even turned off my Email Notifications…and they are staying off too!  I will now being responding to emails in the evenings only.  But this is where the cool new tech comes in that allowed me to stay online for 5% of the time.

During a 4Sight at Ely 4N (that I wasn’t supposed to be at), Mark Noel mentioned a service called IFTTT (If This, Then That). I’d heard of it before, but never explored the possibilities. Well, I have to say its completely changed my world.  As I mentioned, I can’t afford to leave enquiries, I’m in a competitive market and I need to be first off the mark as much as I can.

What I managed to set up with IFTTT is amazing.  I now have it forwarding Enquiries via my various Webforms from my Outlook Email Inbox, to me as an SMS Text.  This lets me see Enquiries immediately, without seeing and being tempted by the 30-40 other emails all vying for my attention in my Inbox.

The other cool bit, is that I have auto-text saved on my iPhone, so I can send a quote out immediately and even attach PDFs in a matter of minutes. While I was away in Italy, this actually got me 2 bookings for 2016…and I still had no idea of the other emails in my inbox until I returned home.

IFTTT has so many other possibilities too with a shed load of platforms. Check it out for yourself.

 

So now instead of just aimlessly sitting down at my desk every morning at 7am I have a whole new regime.

On non 4N days, my Alarm is now set for 7am and I’m straight up and out for a Walk. Then I’ll have brekkie and try to do something that Ian Dickson is always banging on about. Eating That Frog for Breakfast.  For me, its my Follow Ups after enquiries, they take me so much time and i never look forward to them.  So now I have them all done by 10am, which now leaves me the rest of the day to concentrate on Dee Blick’s Marketing Regime…

I have my Outlook calender fully scheduled for the next 8 weeks. I have created 27 new Marketing tasks to achieve in those 8 weeks.  I really want to build the corporate side of Thirst First Mobile Cocktail Bars. I’m adamant now that I don’t want to build biz where we’re taking 2/3 events on Saturday. That’s not what I’m about. I want to use my spare capacity through the week for now. That’s what I’m concentrating on. Dee Blicks book is going to help me massively with this.

If you own your own business and you want to grow, I really strongly urge you to go out and buy it, download it and have a good read…and have a Notepad or Evernote ready!  Its given me so much new inspiration.