Starting a business, any business, is difficult for so many reasons: financial capitol and start-up costs, legal and tax concerns, licensing and insurance needs, not to mention having a good idea, a better business plan, and the tenacity and drive to actual see a venture actually launched. On top of all this, there are the sometimes more real pressures of time away from family or friends and the ever-lurking monster of self-doubt.
As I struggle to manage all these issues (and more) with not one, but two start-up ventures, I am finding little tips and tricks to help the process along.
Enter the Smartphone. In this case, my 8 gig iPhone 3. I know, I know, hardly the latest and greatest, but sometimes you just gotta work with what you've got. Besides, it was free (with another two-year cell-phone prison term, but that is a subject of another post later to come).
I now have no less than four email accounts, calendars, address books, and reminders set-up, which may sound like a headache, but has effectively kept my personal info, business contacts, suppliers, clients, and the like separate from each other and neatly organized.
And thanks to handy new apps from Etsy, Paypal, UPS, USPS, my bank and even eBay, I can keep an eye on incoming orders, packages shipped to clients all over the world, and snap photos and create new listings for my Etsy shop, and all from my iPhone. Even more exciting are the coming improvements to existing apps and all the new ones on the horizon, allowing me to do business from my phone virtually anywhere in the world.
Case in point, I am writing this from a 15th century home in Gdansk, Poland via the Blogger app.
Ain't technology grand?
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