What do You do with all the Free Technology for Your Business

Hello, today was a crazy day.  I woke up at 7:30am and within 15 minutes there was a loud bang like thunder and lightning or a bomb exploded.  I look out the window and I see our rental car several hundred feet from where it was parked the night before.  Thankfully no one was hurt, but the person who hit the car totaled the car, and hit the utility pole splitting it and severing the power for all of our neighbors.  As I write this post we have had our power restored now for about 3 hours, but the Verizon box was knocked loose from the same pole so they are still here at 5:30pm repairing that.  The street had to be blocked all day. 

I can't show the pictures of the rental car or the truck that demolished it, but if you wake up and see the car several feet away from where it was parked, the other car even several hundred more feet ahead of your car, and within a few minutes there are about 10 or 15 of these trucks lined up, stuff leaking, several police cars, and police officers, it's gonna throw you for a loop. 

I brought all that up to give you a visual. This person did not die, and no one was in the rental, but if they had been in the back seat they probably would not be here.  This is the speed of which things occur and even faster on the World Wide Web. Y.O.L.O so don't waste time being scared to learn how things work to your advantage.  I am on it all the time.  I have everything on my I Phone and I have unlimited data so I'm never disconnected. For my tweeps, I actually did a brief video, but I didn't like the quality and I really had to split my walk up into two parts so I did not make a third take it was just too much today.  

When dealing with others sometimes people get things wrong. When we came back from half of the walk the person in charge of claims for Pepco was there and as he read back to us who was in the wrong and had hit their $50,000 pole according to his records it was us.  We were like oh hell no, luckily we had a police report, but more importantly we had pictures of both vehicle's and their landing positions.  The police had already impounded both vehicles and towed them away.  The beauty of having a smart phone is that we didn't have to have any film developed in order to prove our point, we had it instantly and because it was an Iphone we could move the screen big enough so he could read the tag number of the offending vehicle for himself.  

Now to the business of this post.  How can technology help you do more with your business?   

Technology & the 2016 Business owner advantages:

• Your customer has 24/7 access to what it is you do.
• You have unlimited free tools to connect with your current and potential customers.
• You can allow your customers to sample what it is you do with very little to no out of pocket advertising dollars.  
• You have free/low cost tools to share free information with your potential customers.
• You have several ways to fill your sales funnel with a stream of endless customers.  

What does this look like to the small business owner?  If you are tech savvy or an over-achiever who is willing to do the research or take the classes necessary you can set up all the free tools and operate them on your own until you have a strong six figure income coming in regularly and you can now afford to pay a contractor or consultant to run your technology/marketing department for you.  Don't forget the point of owning your own business is to create freedom of dollars and time, otherwise you just own a job.  Don't be cheap and waste your most precious asset which is your time. Pay someone to do it and it does not have to be me. This is what keeps small businesses small, they refuse to invest in themselves and then they don't want to pay a consultant or contractor for their talent, time, and tech savvy.  I stopped doing work for those who did not appreciate my talent and my skills.

 Let's say you're a caterer and you have a gig for a wedding of 150 people.  This is awesome right?  You now need to do what?  Prepare the food.  If you don't own a grocery store and a farm where will you get your food to prepare for the event?  The bulk food service stores.  Will they give it to you because they like you?  Hell no, you either have a line of credit in which you will pay twice for getting the food without cash and later in the hefty interest fees, or you pay right now with cash or you will have an angry wedding party and possible lawsuit for breach of contract.

 This is an exaggeration as I often do, but you pay for the things that you need and you do not question big business so stop questioning small businesses when they give you their fee.  If you are a small business doing a lot of business for free, stop. Your time, talent and service or good is worth the price you place on it so learn how to set your fees for the value you place on it, not what you think someone will pay.  I have stopped doing business even with churches because they want free or really cheap.  I am not Walmart and neither are you.


About technology, let's just take Twitter.  This is a medium where there are about 302 million active twitter users and it is mostly used on their mobile phones about 80% of the users, there are 500 million tweets sent daily and the website supports 35 different languages.  President Barack Obama has 53 million followers.  These statistics are from research I did in 2015 for a business proposal so that just means that the numbers have grown, since most research statistics are a year to a few years behind the actual reporting time. 

Now with this information you can do the research on the other technology that can benefit your business, or you can get up off the dollars and pay a consultant or contractor like DS Woodard Consulting to do this for your business.  (I made it easy for those who can do it themselves, the above link takes you to the stats on several social media mediums) The trick is to not just use the data as a reporting tool, you must learn how to operate at optimal levels within each medium which is different for each.

DS Woodard Twitter  Partial Stats April 2016

  Once you learn the rules and the tricks of how to move in the platform you choose for your business you will see your numbers grow and your name have status and recognition. The other great thing about the World Wide Web is that it is all across the world so now your business is not limited to your small town or local market, you are now capable of global expansion.  This is all for today.  Enjoy the rest of your Saturday and be safe.

To your success,
D.S. Woodard