During this special episode, you will hear an excerpt from a conversation with Lane Burdett, Evan Englezos and Liam Benson where we discuss Top Tech Tips for Small Businesses.

In part one of this conversation, we look at

• The importance of IT security
• Document storage solutions
• CRMs
• Developing your business processes
• Speakers favourite business applications

Our discussion lasted for over an hour and a half as we geeked out on all things tech. We have split this into two sections and you will find part two coming soon.

Scroll down to find all the links to the applications we shared. 

Connect with our fabulous Speakers

Lane Burdett – Tradie Marketing

 

Lane works with businesses to help them ‘engage’ with consumers online. Many businesses assume that a website and social media feed is what they need to start but without the knowledge of where to target and how they usually fall far short of their expectations.

He has been online since 1996 so has seen many changes in the online world both from a business and personal point of view and has given a number of talks to groups about online marketing and engagement.

The effect we have on the environment concerns me and through Social Media, I’ve sat on VECCI’s Carbon Down Industry Advisory Council (IAC).

Email: admin@tradiemarketing.com.au | Website: https://tradiemarketing.com.au/

Facebook | LinkedIn | Twitter

Sign up to 52 Weeks of Business Tech Tips 

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Evan Englezos – Digital Team Coach

 

Evan is a digital coach, consultant and developer based in Melbourne, Australia. He is passionate about helping small businesses and not-for-profits to get the best out of their team and tech through digital strategy, training and support.

Since 2001, Evan has worked in corporate, educational and not-for-profit sectors as a digital developer, team leader and communications manager. Now he is helping organisations focus on integrating all their digital systems to align with their goals and needs.

Evan has a keen mind for streamlining processes and systems to make life easier and save time on trivial and time-consuming tasks.

Email: evan@digitalteamcoach.com | Website: https://digitalteamcoach.com | FB / IG @digitalteamcoach

LinkedIn | Please checkout Year Glance |  Website: https://yearglance.com | FB / IG @yearglance

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Liam Benson – EvolveCLOUD

 

Liam works with all different corporate businesses to help them manage their IT, IT Strategy and Cybersecurity. Liam has been working in the IT industry since 2012 and has had the opportunity to work with hundreds of small businesses as well as hundreds of statewide and national businesses around Australia. 

Liam’s passion is to understand clients’ pain points and solve those ongoing IT headaches for his clients as well as keeping them safe and protected in this digital age.

His burning desire is to see businesses take full advantage of IT and IT systems to enable businesses to scalability and growth. Because… Who doesn’t want to grow right?

Phone: 03 9998 7443 | Email: liam@evolvecloud.com.au | Website: https://evolvecloud.com.au

Personal Linkedin  | LinkedIn | Facebook | Instagram:

 

Links To Applications

Password Security

LastPass | BitWarden

Business E-mail and Document Management

Microsoft Office 365 | Workspace Google | DropBox

Client Relationship Management (CRM) / EDM’s 

Plutio | Apptivo | Agile CRM | Hubspot | Sales Flare

Kartra | Active Campaign

Task and Project Management 

ClickUp | Trello

Accounting Software 

XERO

When you are looking to compare software options for your business have a look at:

Capterra

 

Connect with Nicole on Instagram.

Visit Nicole’s Website.

Get the Action Takers Guide to ClickUp here.

Join the Take Control with Nicole Facebook group here.

Join the waitlist for The Members Lounge here

 

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Full Episode Transcription

 

Nicole Smith 0:02
Welcome to take control with Nicole. As business owners, we experienced firsthand the fine line between our personal and business lives. During our conversations, we will look at simple hints and tips to create time, reduce, overwhelm, and help you to navigate through your journey to where you want to be. If you’re looking for smarter ways to work, and create space and time freedom in your day, then you’re in the right place. All right, let’s go.

Hello, and welcome to another episode of take control with Nicole. Now this week is going to be a little bit different. I had such a fabulous conversation on Monday evening as part of an event that I was helping to coordinate. And it was all about top tech tips for small businesses. This is something that I wanted to make sure that you were all able to be able to benefit from and really take in some of the knowledge from these three experts. So today is going to be a few excerpts from there. And we will be splitting this episode up as we really geeked out for about an hour and a half talking about all the exciting tactics out there. So tune in, and then keep an eye out for the second episode of this in a few weeks time. Radio enjoy. For those who don’t know me, my name is Nicole Smith from the artisans Business Solutions, and I assist small business owners to create space and time freedom. And I am so happy to be here with you tonight hosting this amazing discussion on top tech tips for small businesses. Tonight, I am joined by some amazing business owners so who hopefully will be coming up on the screen very soon to join me and they are ready to share their top tech tips and must have knowledge for all small business owners. It is my pleasure to introduce our panellists. We have Evan and Goliath. He is a digital coach, consultant and developer based in Melbourne, Australia. He is passionate about helping small businesses and not for profits to get the best out of their team and tech through digital strategy, training and support. Hi, Evan. Hello, thanks for having me. It’s my pleasure to welcome. The next amazing person I’d love to introduce is lane badet. You may know lane from our last conversation we had late last year at Lane works with businesses to help them engage with consumers online. Many businesses assumed that a website and social media feed is what they need to start, but without the knowledge of where to target and how they usually fall far short of their expectations. Hi, lane. Welcome. Hello, thank you. And Liam Liam Benson works with all different corporate businesses to help them manage their it. It strategy and cybersecurity. Liam has been working in the IT industry since 2012, and has the opportunity to work with hundreds of small businesses, as well as hundreds of statewide and national businesses around Australia. Hello, Liam. Hi, Nicole, thank you for inviting me. I’m very excited for what we’re going to cover off. My pleasure. I’m so excited that you can see here we’ve got three amazing people on the panel tonight for this discussion. So I know that it is going to be absolutely fabulous as always. Now I want to just to start the discussion of around how to select the right app for you to use. And there are so many offerings out there that you know, they all offer the bright shiny solution to solve the world’s problems. But do you have any tips in particular to selecting the right applications for your business without ending up with the hundreds and 1000s of logins when you first start, I’ve been using LastPass for about the last six years or so I think I’ve been really happy with it. So basically what it does is it saves all of my clients passwords, it saves all my passwords. And then whenever I go to log into let’s say clients website for example. It literally pops up and you know I can scroll through and click on the client it puts it in and you know I can jump straight into the site or into the into the programme

Lane Burdett 4:22
LastPass has been excellent but they have recently announced that their free version will now no longer work across a computer and a mobile device. So I’ve begun the process of suggesting to a number of clients to move across to bit Warden bit Warden as an open source but secure product that does do a very similar thing. They do have paid options but yeah, there’s just a just a really good way to keep everything locked because as you said, you know people end up with with tonnes of logins and it gets pretty close. Yeah, absolutely. And I think when you are a service based business in particular and you are accessing their systems having that secure way of sharing

Nicole Smith 5:00
hostwinds is really just a no brainer for for the day and age. And I know everyone’s nodding around. But Liam in particular, you probably have maybe not some horror stories, but some words of warning for our listeners.

Liam Benson 5:14
Yeah, I definitely I definitely do have some client horror stories. But we’ll save that for another time. Yeah, something like LastPass in a security sense is very, very, very good in terms of, it’s convenient for you to store your passwords, which is a big thing, because inevitably, we will end up with probably hundreds of accounts to various different things, but also believe LastPass. And those similar products will help you also generate more secure passwords as well. So that’s a big, big plus. Yeah. LastPass is something I definitely recommend for a lot of businesses. And the the other I guess benefit with that is when you start bringing on staff, you can control which staff have access to which platforms through something like LastPass. So, for example, if you have your own sensitive information, and let’s say asik, for example, you’re probably not just going to give that to any staff member to log in and start doing things, you know, something like a Facebook, login to update marketing content. Yeah, that’s fine. You can share that with a staff member. So it does help control access internally so that people don’t have access to things they shouldn’t, if that makes sense. Yeah, absolutely. I think, you know, I’ve come from the big corporate spaces. So that’s security, for even data, data management, document management, that’s, you know, really been a key thing that I’ve had to focus on developing and designing for the businesses I’ve worked for. And something that coming over into the small business world, it’s something that maybe we don’t think about straightaway, because it is earning us. But as we start to grow, having those things set at the start, really will help you to scale, relatively easy. Evan, what do you use for your document storage and document management? All of that? Yeah. So with document management, I’m with Google, I’ve been with them for quite a long time. And I’ve got a legacy account a very long time ago. So that’s working well for me. But I do have Microsoft as well, because I’ve got some clients who work in that space, too. So that works particularly well, for me, particularly when I’m collaborating with other people on content, and things like that. Yeah, absolutely. I’m in office 365 gal. I love that, as we all knew, and one of the reasons why I have gone with Office 365 was historical, I’ve always used it. But also when I was looking to introduce a booking system for my business, I had a single account with calendly. And I needed to increase that and start to pay for the subscription based on the number of meeting required meeting ideas and waiting times, when I looked at the difference between upgrading office 365. And looking at that secondary solution, it was actually more cost efficient to bring it all into the one roof. So going on those more centralised thought of for your applications that you’re using in your business. For me anyway, that’s the method that I’m always trying to look at whenever I’m suggesting another application or another way of working and so on that when we’re first starting, when you’re first starting your business, are there any of the key elements that our listeners should be thinking about? Or even if they have started? And they’re finding they’re in a little bit of a kerfuffle?

Where should we start to reorganise them? What are the key areas to focus on I just going off the whole office 365 conversation, funnily enough, when I started my business, the first thing I did was go to office 365, and sign up for emails and OneDrive. And basically all of my company documents,

you know, just general information, but also very confidential. documents are stored in my company’s OneDrive or SharePoint folder. And I’m glad I did that to start with, because as I’m bringing contractors on an offer different pieces, I can very easily grant them secure access in a very controlled method. So they’ll only have access for certain amount of days, or, you know, only certain amount of folders. So I think I like you, Nicole, I’d personally recommend office 365 to anyone, Google definitely does have its benefits. But in terms of a small business and the amount of features you get with Office 365 I’d say it’s a very good contender for new business in terms of the various integrations and the way Microsoft has sort of designed the platform if that makes sense. So I think Yeah, office 365 email and OneDrive for Business is very, very good thing. Because a likely scenario, let’s say, I had all my company documents on a laptop, that laptop died. I had no backup

Now, I don’t have any documents, whereas at least in OneDrive, it’s accessible in multiple different locations. So if my laptop does die, I can still get to the documents, you know. So I highly recommend that for small business. Yeah, absolutely. Layne, what do you use for you’re running your day to day business? Yeah, so I use G Suite or Google workspace, I think it is now.

Lane Burdett 10:27
Basically, it’s Google’s version of of Microsoft’s office 365, I suppose. Generally, I find most businesses are on either one or the other, in a lot of cases, similar sort of thing. You know, I’ve got obviously some cloud space there. And, you know, it’s, it’s quite easy to share documents and so forth. the only the only downside I have found with it is a few times I’ve received a document that’s, that’s in the Microsoft Office format, and the formatting will be about 80%. Correct. When I go to edit it in Google, it doesn’t happen as often anymore, but every now and then I’ll bring something up. So you’ve got to sit there and fiddle around with formatting for a little while. So it doesn’t happen as much these days, because most things are, you know, are on websites with the exception of contracts or whatever else. But most things are on websites, you know, you can just jump on and have a look, save it in whatever you choose to save it in. But I was going to suggest any new business starting and I talk to a lot of small, small, small and micro businesses I want, the one thing I would suggest they’ll be looking at is a CRM or customer relationship management system. Now, that doesn’t have to be anything too involved.

There are some out there that that most most of us would have heard of, which are, you know, sales, floor force, HubSpot,

there’s, you know, 100, others, I use one called sales flair, which has been fantastic. But as I said, there are there are tonnes of them out there that you know, are really good, quite cost effective. Now, the reason I suggested in part is to keep them organised. But the other reason is to keep a good record of clients. So you know, you can go back to, and obviously, some businesses will go through a lot of clients or have a lot of customers, others will only have a few depending on the type of business or service you offer. But it just gives you a really good record of what you’ve got there. And then let’s just say, you know, after a year or two, if you want to go back and do some some cross promotion to those customers, you’ve got the database, all the information there.

And I find that most businesses I talked to just including myself more started, I must admit, you know, haven’t put much time and effort even into having something there. And and by the way, at a bare minimum, if a business doesn’t have, let’s say, an Excel spreadsheet, we put that information in that that would be my base CRM for anyone. And I know it’s not a CRM, but at least it’s something because it can be imported into a CRM, you know, when they need.

Nicole Smith 12:37
It contains all the data, right. And I think that’s the the key message like we don’t eat well. For those who don’t know, I love a task management project management system called click up. And I actually have a basic CRM system built in there. And it walks us through for me and my team, all the steps in the process of initial connection with a potential client all the way to onboarding them. But yes, absolutely. I agree that having a solution that will help you streamline your business and maintain that data for you and then be able to use that data. It’s it’s key, absolutely key. And I just had a few kusari questions on on Facebook that have popped up just around SharePoint, OneDrive, Dropbox, or Google Drive. So basically, do you think OneDrive is better than SharePoint? So just OneDrive and SharePoint, the same thing land in immergas documents

Liam Benson 13:39
they do? They do slightly different things. OneDrive is I guess, the equivalent to Dropbox. So you’d have a OneDrive, you pour your files and then and happy days, you can share links and stuff like that. SharePoint is basically OneDrive on steroids where you can build document management systems. And basically Internet’s and sort of custom web apps that integrate into document storage and stuff like that. SharePoint can get very complex, there’s actually companies out there that all they do is design SharePoint, and implement SharePoint for companies like big corporates, obviously. But yeah, OneDrive is very simple, easy to use. And then SharePoint is just an adaption of that. So I hope that answers the question.

Nicole Smith 14:23
I love that it’s on steroids. Absolutely. Like I love the potential of SharePoint as a solution for business having that internal intranet. That’s something that you know, only the big corporates used to have. But having that ability to build that in a smaller scale is is really a great tool to have. And Jason, OneDrive, Dropbox, Google Drive, I don’t think there is one that wins over the other. I think it’s a real personal choice thing, and around what’s going to be able to be suitable for your business and for the clients that you work with. Yeah, unless anyone else has anything else. For a strong opinion on that,

Liam Benson 15:03
I think, like you said, Nicola, it’s pretty much all the same, I think you’d probably lean more towards one product if you have similar products integrated. So for example, if you use Office 365, you’ll probably use OneDrive. If you use Google Drive, you probably use G Suite as a whole, and then Dropbox, maybe for some ad hoc type functions. So but yeah, they’re pretty much all the same.

Nicole Smith 15:27
And Evan, what was the sort of one thing that you when you started your business? What was your one essential thing that you wanted to implement?

Evan Englezos 15:35
Yes. So I started with Trello, which is just a fairly simple task management system. And I’ve used that for about six or seven years, both for personal and for business, just storing my knowledge and getting things out of my head. And particularly when you asked before Nicole, about how can you sort of unreal unravel things, when you’re a bit confused, I think being able to get information out of your head in a structured way is really helpful, even if it’s just having a few different lists. And in the last couple of years, I’ve upgraded that because I sort of outgrew what Trello could do with basic lists and cards, although it’s still a fantastic tool. So now I use it called a tool called Pluto, which has that element of task management, but then takes it to the next level with Project Management where I can collaborate with my contractors, and also onboard clients into there as well. So I know that has quite a lot of overlap with click up. And then it’s also got quite a lot of other functions in terms of basic CRM, and invoicing and proposals and other great things for small businesses. So I’ve been really pleased with Pluto so far,

Lane Burdett 16:50
I’d like to second wave and say that whilst as you know, Nicole, you talk to me, they pick up very quickly because it was brilliant. They using Pluto for a couple of years, and I’m not moving because I’ve had any issues with Pluto, Pluto has actually been fantastic. There’s just there was a couple of things with with clickup that I found it they just seem to sort of resonate with me when I was you know, putting together content and doing a few things. Yeah, so as I’m a massive fan of Pluto as well. Sorry, Pluto, my apologies. There is an irony here.

Nicole Smith 17:19
I was just about to throw over T links, I was sure that as much as you were a super fan of click off like I am I knew that you had us to was that? Yeah. I think with any of these things, being able to have that automation from the proposal and invoicing and all of that is a fabulous addition to your business because it keeps it all streamlined, consistent. It’s part of your workflows for your business, and you don’t have to be a massive business, you know, you a solopreneur travelling travelling the road, you actually probably need it more, because you don’t have the support of a team that’s right behind you. But then when you do grow, to bring on team members, that scalability to have those types of solutions as well is really, really good. Well, thank you guys.

Lane Burdett 18:09
You know, I throw something in here.

Nicole Smith 18:11
Yeah.

Lane Burdett 18:14
Basically, it’s it’s really connection software. And I’m sure you guys will know, the sort of software, I’m talking about things like Zapier, and you know that there’s a number of others out there like pi sync, and I think of the other ones in a second Anyway, what a lot of small businesses don’t realise is that if they go with, and I’m not saying go with the best now and brand each time, but if they go with reasonably well known software, these things can talk to each other. So you can have your your CRM, talk to your email programme. And that can even talk to your invoicing system. So when for example, I put something into my app, put somebody into my CRM, it ends up the copy is sent via pi sync, which is which is one that I use across to sorry, into my CRM, it ends up in my invoicing system, and vice versa. So I’ve really got to only go to input the clients once and off the back of that I’m setting up my site at the moment, I’ve got one particular client who’s referring clients to me, and I’ve got online digital forms set up. And what will happen is as they fill in that role automatically, sure, after two or three different programmes. So as you know, I mean, I’ve got a couple of subcontractors and so forth. But like, I think a lot a lot of us, you know, it’s I suppose it would be classed as as a micro business with, you know, a few other people involved, but I’m, you know, I’m the business owner, but again, a lot of businesses don’t sort of think, you know, what are we going to need to do in our business. So whether they’ve just started within a year or two in if they haven’t looked to systemize anything, it’s Don’t get me wrong, you can systemize at any time, but if they at least have that core with a CRM, even spreadsheet, or at least have the basic core there, and then you know, have it you know, and then that can start talking other programmes. It just it does make life a lot easier.

Liam Benson 19:52
And just just on that point, that was that was actually the thing that I wanted to say when you first mentioned CRM lane. When I used to work at previous company, they would, they didn’t really have a lot of automation or systems talking to each other. So I would look after doing a lot of the reconciliation in terms of technical timesheets, and then charging customers. And it was, it was honestly a three day process at the start of the month to reconcile everything, put it all together, put it into invoices, and then send it out in a very outdated version of MYOB. When I started my business, when I was looking for the tools I wanted to use, I had, like, I knew I was gonna use zero as my accounting platform. So when I was looking for products, I would look for products that would integrate into zero, and that integrate with each other and share that information across the board. So like I said, line, if I made a new prospect, and they want to do work with me, you know, I’ll get credit card information upfront, give them all the terms, they will sign that electronically, that then spits it into another system that generates the Client Profile, that then creates the job, I then apply the time that I do, it then automatically generates an invoice since the invoice off. And then the client approves it when they approve it, it builds a credit card. So that has saved myself a lot of time. It’s a pretty lengthy process. But honestly, I think I think Nicole, you would you would love that process

Nicole Smith 21:20
going Yes, hello, right here.

Honestly,

anyone who’s getting a little bit scared about that, please don’t. When you’re looking at your workflows, and it basically all workflow is is the steps that it takes you to get from the start to the end. And you can literally start looking at that by grabbing a piece of paper and a pen and just writing it out. Or if you’re a techie person, like we all are, you know, get into it, click on document view, though don’t start to plan all the automations and what systems are going into work out how you’re actually doing the task at the moment, what’s causing you the pain, how many times you entering in that data. So Liam, it sounds like it your old job, you’re entering things three or four times before, you know, whereas you new process, it’s once and then it just all talks to each other. You’ve got all the approvals, they’re like that is just, that’s absolutely fabulous. They Good work. So I want to say that actually, let’s

Evan Englezos 22:18
jump in on that. Nicole. Yes. So with in terms of starting to write down what those workflows are. Do it in the easiest way that you think the best. So whether that’s getting a sheet of paper out and just starting to draw diagrams, if you like concept maps, but if you’re more like a text person you like his spreadsheets, you can start to document step by step into the spreadsheet as well just start somewhere and get some things out of your head under

Nicole Smith 22:45
really bright. That brain dump is probably the most important part of the whole process, right? Because when you’re looking at something like that, you’re like, how am I ever going to make sense of this thing. But you get it out and you get it on the paper. And you’ve got Oh, I can visually I can see that happening. Now I can get from A to Zed.

Evan Englezos 23:04
Yeah. And that doesn’t have to be everything all at once as well just start with one thing and you set that out. And then the next day when you work on something different, you can start to put that in. So it’s just an incremental, continual improvement.

Nicole Smith 23:17
Thank you, Evan, that’s perfect. I’m just going to jump into the chats. Now. I know that you there’s been some conversations going on already, but God has asked, Is there a CRM that anyone would recommend? Now that is, how long do you have, I guess, because everybody has their own personal preference and what they want to use and what they love, some people love dubsado Some people love whatever else. The other thing is, and there’s all these new kids on the block popping up. But really, it’s about like a will pass over to the guys as well. But really, it’s about firstly understanding what you’re trying to do in that system. Is it just capture your client information? And it’s that onboarding process? Or is it the full EDM, you know, email marketing process you’re doing? Or is it more and more? So it’s really understanding that is the key point to start with. But guys, I’d love you to chime in on this one.

Evan Englezos 24:14
And just off the back of what Jodi’s the previous comment was that she’s a she’s a charity. So, okay, yeah,

Liam Benson 24:22
to be honest, I don’t I’ll be upfront, I don’t have the most amount of experience with CRM, to be honest. However, the CRM that I’m using, and the reason I’m using the CRM is more for the digital marketing landing pages and email automation marketing is a platform called kartra k a. t ra I think it is calm, it’s American based, but for the value in the features you get. You can do a lot with it and the real the main sort of real purpose I use is just for the email and digital campaign side of things. I do I did use HubSpot early on, but that was just purely to track just customers. And then I wanted to start doing email marketing and automation. And then that the HubSpot, quote, started getting very expensive for that stuff. So I sort of switched over. So that’s pretty much all I use.

Nicole Smith 25:18
That’s a really good point lame as well talking about, you know, whenever you’re talking about finding a system for your business, is looking at the budget you can afford now, but also with growth. So a, I guess, the different functionalities in the system, but also the bodies in your business. So it might be really affordable with one body. But as soon as you grow like 234, like that price point can really quickly get quite unrealistic. So yeah, I’m Evan, do you I know you love Pluto. But do you have any other CRMs that your your clients love.

Evan Englezos 25:52
So for myself, I use Active Campaign as a small business. Now, that’s not specifically for charities, but I found that to be very economical for how I use it at the moment. And then just in terms of with God looking for a charity one, when I’m sort of doing the research for because there are hundreds of different, you know, software in a particular category, like a CRM, there’s a really good website that does a lot of that comparison between products and the different features they have. And there’s lots of reviews that that particular website is called kaptara, ca p te, E, double ra.com. That’s got a wealth of information, and it’s very up to date, as well. And we

Nicole Smith 26:40
might, even at the end of this, we might pop that in there. It’s gonna say the show notes, but the chat so that you can now have a look in and grab that if you’re interested to have a little bit of a search. So perfect. Yeah. Laying What about you, I know you’re again, a Pluto fan, but what have you

Lane Burdett 26:59
seen CRM wise, I use a programme called sales flare, I am a big fan of sales flare, if I was running a staff of five, I don’t know if I would be as keen just the process. It’s about 30 or $40 US per month per user, which, again, by the time we convert to Australian dollars, it’s like, you know, really, so but it is an excellent programme and the fact that it’s mainly me, you know, dealing with the public, then, you know, it makes sense, it works well. A couple of the programmes I’d suggest if you’ve got a small business and not wanting to spend a fortune, I’d look at a programme called apertivo. And there’s another one called agile CRM. So and they had their domain is definitely agile crm.com. And I say that because there’s now a new CRM out there called agile with a date on it. So that’s, that’s the reason I mentioned that. So the Agile CRM, it doesn’t look quite as quite as fun and up to date as some of the others but it’s been around for years. And it’s got some really good features in it for you know, for for the offer. And as I said, having said that, you’ve got you know, a lot of the other more well known ones out there like say Salesforce, HubSpot, and so forth. But certainly what I think with what Liam was saying before Yeah, HubSpot, once you start adding a few things they really do add up

very, very quickly.

My strong suggestion to anyone business and I’m not an expert on CRM, but my strong suggestion on any size business looking into CRM is to sign up to end up dead serious is to sign up to three or four of them to get two or three you know, upper management staff whatever it may be, sign up to three or four of them because they’ll pretty much all give you you know, a free sign up for 14 or 30 days and have a play with them. See, see what suits you see what you know is designed, you know, see what design you know really resonates with you and you know seems to tie in with what you do. Yes, it’s a little bit of fiddling around but it’s not hard to type in john smith you know variations a couple of times you can always play with it you know see what’s the what’s the look and feel alone So

Nicole Smith 28:59
Paul Smith

Liam Benson 29:04
i think i think line on that it is important to really test products before you jump in and do it because I have been involved with businesses where they’ve just looked at something watched a five minute video and gone Yep, awesome. We’re making this business decision like that. And they get they get down to the you know, three months in they’re like, Oh, actually, this this platform is not very good for us and then they have to spend three times the amount of money and time and investment to find another programme to then move everything back over to so absolutely. Trial away.

Nicole Smith 29:39
There is a limit though. Okay, so you know, when we started I said how do we avoid the 1000s of signups? This is the key is that we don’t need to sign up to every every signage solution. It’s really about whittling down finding those key the key purpose of what you’re looking to fix with this solution in your business and then diving in picking those three or four and trialling them out, and just don’t forget to unsubscribe to cancel the cancel the subscription.

Lane Burdett 30:09
Yes.

Nicole Smith 30:10
Yeah, that true. Yeah. And as well, just a little note, I’m sure we may have all been caught out by this, but pricing in US dollars. They don’t actually say us on the site. So it will be, you know, it might look fabulous. And then all of a sudden, you’re like, Oh, hang on, that’s a bit more than I was thinking it was gonna be. So just being aware of that as well, when you’re doing your budgets and you calculations that it could actually be in US dollars.

Lane Burdett 30:34
If it doesn’t say assume it’s US dollars. Yeah.

Nicole Smith 30:39
I hope you enjoyed that conversation as much as I did, talking to lamb lane. And Evan was so fabulous to really have a look at how they use technology in their business. And really identifying those quick and easy ways to bring simplicity and ease into your business world. Just a reminder that he is going to be a two part series, there was way too much information to cover in just one episode here for you today. So next time, we’ll be looking at some social media and other really interesting and innovative ideas and technology for you to use in your business right

Lane Burdett 31:19
now.

Nicole Smith 31:20
Well, there we go. Thank you so much for joining me today. It’s been such a pleasure having you on board. Have we connected on social shares? If not, please come on over Say hi, I’m on all the platforms at the artisan solutions. So I really look forward to seeing you over there. And if you enjoy today’s episode, don’t forget to tag me and I’d love it if you could leave a review. And of course share this with others so others can come and join us next time. All right, then everyone have a fabulous rest of the week and until next time. See you then