Business Built Freedom

Your business is either lagging or leading when it comes to technology. You can't be sitting around in the same gear that you're on because you will be pushed back into the past. You don't want that. You can't be scared of technology. The invention of the wheel, that was technology, the light bulb, that was technology and these are things that we all just take for granted nowadays. But if you don't stay on top of the technology, other cool things come out and they will take its place. So today we're going to be talking about why technology matters in business and how you can utilise that to make your business grow.

Learn more about modern technology for business at dorksdelivered.com.au

New Accounting Technology Will Help Your Business Whatever It Is

Let's talk about your business. One of the most important parts of any business is accounting. You can't avoid it. So if you're from the 1970s and the 1980s and you actually had a legit general ledger, probably an abacus off to the side then you know what I'm talking about you. New technologies came out, such as MYOB and QuickBooks, that allowed you to do better than what you were doing before with accounting. Accounting tools have evolved even more and the latest iteration now is Zero. Zero is a wicked tool. It does some awesome stuff and automates to the next level. Zero is something that every business should be considering talking to your account about as Zero is being used across the board.

Retail Businesses: Get a Square Card Reader

I've gone into businesses that don't have credit card facilities still. The cost to head down to Officeworks and buy a square that allows you to take credit card transactions is very minimal, around $60 or $70 bucks. It doesn't cost you any money having it sit there, and you can actually take even PayWave. PayWave is a new technology that you could be implementing into your business. Transactions and the money you take will get back to you faster with PayWave. It means you're not having to walk off to the bank and give them carbon copies. That is so old school!

Take Advantage of Technology and Capture Data

Any business can use technology to its advantage. You could use it if you're a plumber to start quoting using your tablet. You could use it if you're in manufacturing for the quality assurance processes to visualise whatever it is that you've been creating in 3D and see if there's any missing bolts or parts. The best thing that you need to do in your business is looking at analytics and start capturing data if you aren't already doing so You need to be looking at how much time is being spent on certain tasks. We went into a business, and it was taking them two days to do payroll. We implemented a few thousand dollars worth of technology and the amount of time that it took down to two hours a week instead of two days a week.

Take a Step Back and Look at Your Business

Bring it back down to what it is that your business spends the most time on and what that costs you and then look at a way to automate that. If you're not sure, you get a consultant such as Business Efficiency Experts or Dorks Delivered and see what they have to say. There're other companies out there that can do this too. If you're getting an efficiency consultant, they will look at the way that you can integrate products to make sure there's no double-data entry. 

Consider Application Planning Interfaces

APIs or Application Programming Interfaces are changing around the way that you're doing business. It is amazing at the number of man hours that they can save and how they can breathe new life into your business. By integrating a few applications together, it can stop double-data entry. It will make sure that the integrity of the data doesn't have the human connection involved in it, so it's going to be quality information.

Think Outside the Box With Marketing

Get a website as a 24-hour advertising tool for you. Do something different with the way that you're marketing your business. Unless you are truly unique and original and the connection you create with your clients is so unique and original that they'll never forget you, for the right reasons, then you need to make sure you're staying front of mind. Sending out a newsletter is a great idea. If you don't have a sexy industry that has things changing all the time, you can still create a newsletter showing customer experiences, new installations or anything else that you think people might want to hear. You might be just sending out Merry Christmas or something like that and they go, "Oh, yeah, I remember working with them. That was cool." And you'll be surprised at how many people will start doing business with you again, just because they got this newsletter and then, "Hi, I remember working with you guys."

Learn More About Modern Technology for Business!

The Final Word

Be different in business. Be in front of mind for your clients. Utilise technology to speed up your deliverables and to monitor your staff. That is the number one take-home here. Thank you and stay good.

Why Your Business Should Invest in VOIP

Today we're going to be talking about phone networks, and what way to go for your business. You have these things with phone networks traditionally, that would come into the building, called a trunk, and that would delegate how many numbers that you could have for your business. Now, traditionally, if you want to expand the number of lines, you'd need to call out Telstra, and you'd need to have them come out, and physically enable additional copper lines that are coming into your building. That could mean that you need to upgrade your hardware to be able to allow for it. This would cost you thousands of dollars for the equipment initially, and then if you needed to upgrade, it would cost you thousands of dollars again. This is something of the past now and the future is looking towards things such as VoIP phones.

Read more about VOIP Phone at dorksdelivered.com.au

VoIP is Awesome!

VoIP phones are great! You can have a business that has one employee or 100 employees, and you can have a business that has 10 employees and goes to 100 employees, and the time to provide those extra lines, would be 10 to 20 minutes online, without any additional hardware for the most part. The things you need to keep into consideration with VoIP is the speed of your network and the speed of your internet connection. If they are slow, your experience is not going to be good. The entry price for getting into phones with a VoIP setup, very cheap. You can get a VoIP phone for $10 to $20 a month, that gives you unlimited calls. It means that you can move locations for your business, you can have them directly through to your mobile phone, if you're only a small business, you can do all these cool things.

Things to Consider

I definitely suggest any small business that has one or two staff members is to make sure you have a number that people can remember that is not your mobile phone number. The cost of business infrastructure can really add up. But the cost of a 07, 02, 03, or maybe you're going down toward a slightly more expensive path such as 1300 or 1800 is cheap. The price is around $3 to $5 a year, or for 1300, 1800 is around $20 to $30 a month. This could be worth it as if you are going to go away on holidays, you can easily have that divert to someone else, and as your company grows that number can then be used by multiple people.

Big Positives

The huge advantages are that your business can jump up and move locations. You plug your phones into the wall. If they're coming through to what's called a softphone, which is a computer phone that sits on your computer's desktop, not your physical desktop, you can then dial out of. If you're doing that, the cost to move your business and infrastructure is next to nothing. Most of the VoIP providers out there, don't give you these long, hefty, locked-in contracts either. With your traditional line setups, you could be looking to be locked in from anywhere from 12 months to 60 months, which is a long commitment. They're going to charge you extra every time you move location, or you want to add extra lines, and a lot of the time, they'll lock in your pricing as well. With VoIP, the pricing is cheap, and it wasn't a mature technology a few years ago, but it is now, and it's definitely something everything business should be looking at.

Our Set Up

We've got a VoIP setup with 16 lines, so people can call us, and we can have on that one phone number, 16 different people answering calls, and they don't have to be physically tied to one location. We can have them in Melbourne, in Brisbane, on the Gold Coast or anywhere in the world with a decent internet connection. This gives the business synergy and the same feel to any of your customers. I can transfer a call from myself down to the team in Melbourne or vice versa, and there are no problems with it. That's something you could not do without a very, very expensive physical network setup with your traditional phone lines. With VoIP that comes as an available thing for small businesses, that are on a tight budget.

It is a Great Budget Choice

Your budget is significantly less with VoIP. You don't have to worry about that big capital expense. The ongoing expenses are less, everything is less. So it's a much, much better way to go about it. The only you need to make sure you are investing in is a good internet connection. But with businesses moving to the cloud, that's becoming a necessity, not just for your phone systems, but for your software as a service, applications, and everything else that's in the cloud. Most people are using their emails in the cloud, so you need to have a good quality internet connection. The cost of a VoIP line and a VoIP setup, if you're looking at and trying to compare between the two, it's chalk and cheese. As long as your internet connection is great, I think you could probably save 90% of whatever you're paying for current landline costs, situation depending.

Helps Make Business Easier

VoIP makes doing business easier, and the way that it does that is you can have that same old desk phone that used to have to be in the office. Now you can use an app on your smartphone so that when you're outside of the office, customers can still call through to the same office number, and they can talk to the receptionist, and she can forward the call straight through to your phone. You might be thinking, we could always do that, but when the call landed on your phone, there wasn't much you could do with it, except for hanging it up or clicking mute. With the way that VoIP works, is that you can transfer that off to someone else that's back within the office, or someone else that's remotely working away at that stage. This means that your office setup and the environment are very flexible and it works with you. You don't have to be tied to a desk and tied to a location. Everything comes with you and you're setting the rules. The other features that you can get with VoIP setups are things like IVR or Interactive Voice Call Recognition systems. VoIP will also protect you and your time with your family, while still giving you the flexibility to do the work on your terms.

Final Word

There are no disadvantages to VoIP over your traditional setups. It is a mature technology, that everyone should be jumping onto and embracing. If you're not using VoIP, you're going behind and you're wasting money. It's stupid if you're not using VoIP. I hope this has been of interest. Stay cool and enjoy your day!

Burnout is a very serious matter for a lot of business owners. People get into business to get out of a nine to five, but a lot of the time, what happens is they find that instead of working a nine to five, they're working a 5:00 AM to 9:00 PM, a five to nine. They don't get to see their family as much. They don't get to spend as much time at the things they were doing before, but as long as you're passionate about what you're doing, you continue to tell yourself that this isn't work, this is fun. That's perfectly fine, but everyone knows that you can't have the good days without the bad days.

Take a Step Back

When it comes down to it, sometimes you need to step back and distress. We're going to talk about different ways that worked for me. It's been 19 years or so since I started my business, and over the 19 years I've gone through weeks where I've worked 105 to 110 hour weeks of time in the week, and I did that for six weeks in a row. I never felt this way, but I went from talking normally and being reasonably happy, go lucky to feeling depressed all the time. I hated the fact that I'd created this business that was holding me hostage. I created an environment that I had more responsibilities, more security as well, more responsibilities and less time to spend with my friends and family. After the few weeks that I'd been working 110 hours each week, I developed a stutter, I was shaking, I was a mess, I was just destroyed. That is not a good position to be in mentally. When someone comes to you, a new client that wants to do business with you and you're destroyed, you've got to be able to step back and take a break, sharpen your soul so to speak.

Evaluate Your Life

I did a lot of research into meditation, hypnosis and the food that I was eating to make sure that it was having a positive impact on my life. As much as you shouldn't have to schedule away time for yourself, it's an incredibly important activity to do, probably more important than working in the business itself. There are lots of different statistics and reports that have been made around the benefits of working less than 50 hours a week. I would suggest you guys go out and have a look at them. What I started doing in the morning is that I'd make sure that I've reviewed what I wanted to achieve for the day. I then went outside and I would just sit in the garden, not in the dirt exactly, but on the grass and think about what I had achieved previously.

Try Writing Lists

I wrote a list of everything in my personal life and everything in my business life that I really enjoy doing and that I really despised doing. For the bits that I despise doing, I started trimming back on and removing from my life. That led me to have a list of things that I've really enjoyed doing and only very few that I didn't enjoy doing. You have to do these things sometimes, but the fact that there's been acknowledged means you can appreciate when you're doing them, and you know how long that's going to take. Lists are an amazing tool.

Remove Negativity

Being able to use that list, I realised that there were toxic people in my life that were sucking away my energy. Sometimes the hard facts are you've got to think maybe the people that are sucking away the energy, they might be loved ones. You just need to know and acknowledge that, and once you've done that, you can then make an assessment as to whether or not you might be distancing yourself or changing relationships, which I'm by no means suggesting to do, but it might be better for you in the long run. If it's gonna make you a healthier person mentally, you're going to be able to make better decisions in your life.

Reflect on the Positives

Another great reason lists are fantastic is that you can go back to your previous list, look at it and go, wow, look how many things I've done off this list. I made a list couple of years ago that had stuff around the house and the other one was stuff in the business. And I went back and had a look and I'm like, okay, the business list had 600 items, the house list had 150. Two years later I had only 30 items on the house list and 150 on the business list, and I thought, wow, sometimes you do the day to day and you forget how much you've actually achieved and where you've been able to come with that. Having a list, let you see the progress, lets you see your goals and aspirations previously and let you see the direction that you've come. It's fantastic because especially this list isn't just one term, the list could be anything such as SWOT analysis, business plans, anything like that. You can then reflect on it retroactively and go okay, this is where I've come, this would have been able to do. Once you've then reflected in the garden or wherever you find is your happy place, come back inside, breathe deeply 10 times in, and hold it and then let it out. Breathing is something that we take for granted, we do it autonomously, but we don't do it enough. Breathing really helps you relax. Turning your phone off or turning it upside down on mute is a fantastic exercise to not be interrupted for an hour.

Take a Break at Work and in Life

I would suggest anyone try to have a lunch break, walk around the park or somewhere that isn't at your work as this can help remove you from the stress. If your business is heavily reliant upon technology, remove the technology from your life. I run a technology business, yet one of my favourite things to do is to go camping without technology. I love stepping away from this technology so I can appreciate it when I come back to it and see that you've missed it. You can't miss something that's always there in your face.

Give Basic Meditation a Go

If you aren't interested in reading books or looking deeper into mediation, just sit down in a dark room with a lit candle in front of you and stare at the flame-breathing deeply for 10 minutes. Just look at the flame, blinking slowly, breathing deeply and see how you feel after 10 minutes. Once you've been able to relax and then you go to bed, your mind isn't rushing. If your mind isn't rushing, you can sleep and actually get into your deep stages of sleep and make sure you're going through the room process as you should be.

Persevere

Don't fall victim to some crutch that you've got in your life that you need or you feel that you need to stay with. It takes 21 days to break a habit. Doing these small things takes around half an hour or an hour of your whole day. You will feel like a different person full of energy and you'll feel fantastic. I cut out a bunch of businesses that were very profitable, but the clients weren't making me feel happy. They were making me feel uncomfortable. They were making me work longer hours, although that was profitable, it wasn't profitable in my heart and in my head, it was only profitable in my bank account. At the end of the day, the number in your bank account isn't as important as the health score that you put on your life and in your body.

Closing Thoughts

Burnout is something that needs to be said and addressed, especially if you're early on in a business. You need to get that balance because you will not build your business built freedom without balance. Make sure that you've got that downtime so that when you're on your uptime, you're as best as you can. Silly for you to be sitting there spinning your wheels and not actually moving forward. I hope this has been of help for some people. Feel free to email through at Dorks.com with any other ideas or things that you'd like to have advice on. You guys stay good.

Ohm. Bring peace and harmony into your workplace. Today we're going to talk about what's important in the workplace. This could be anything from that coffee machine to anything else that you think people hold value to. I find, for us, there's a lot of things that really just pump up people's spirits. We have a pool table and ping-pong table so that when people are keen on Friday knock-offs, they're able to kick their weekend off with a bit of a laugh.

Read more about Successful Office and Workspace at dorksdelivered.com.au

Have a Flexible Friday

We normally do Friday half-days, and the reason we do that is that it makes work more fun for our staff. They're able to jump out and collaborate in an informal way. You can talk about stuff that's not work related, and you're not just having all work at work. You're having some fun at work.

Make Sure Conversation is Encouraged

One thing that I sincerely suggest you do not do is to enforce a no-talking policy. Some businesses have a rule where no one is allowed to talk to each other unless it's on their lunch break, and a lot of the time their lunch breaks don't line up. It makes no sense, but they do this and I think that's silly. You need to have a fantastic ecosystem, an environment for your staff to thrive. If you planted plants and you didn't water them, you would be annoyed when the crops didn't grow, but it would be your fault. You need to make sure that the whole company wants to grow together. And knowing each other in an informal way is a great way to have your company grow. You might find that people will start talking about things and go, "I didn't realise you like cricket, I love cricket!" And they start talking about that and they start hanging out outside of office hours, and that's a great thing. That means you're creating these bonds and relationships within your work environment.

Have a Relaxing Environment

We have beers on tap, and that's something I've seen a couple of businesses do now, and it's a hip "hipster"-ish, sure, but I think it's great if you can have that sort of relaxation in the office. Another great thing that you can do is get some bean bags and make a fun little chill-out zone. If you're not sure of what to put into your business, look to the big boys. Look at how Google's doing it. They have these pod setups where they're able to co-work and collaborate with people from different parts of the company, and all work together in harmony. Being boring is easy. Standing out and being a bit more fun is great. You want it so people want to come to work. They want to come here and have a place where they can cool down, calm down, and relax.

Bring in Some Snacks

Doing things where you're able to bring other items into the business is a great idea as well. It shows that you're giving back and that you do care about your staff. It really makes a difference to just sit down, listen and talk to them so they can see that you are a real person. Remember when you were in school and you're looking at your teacher and you're thinking, "Do they live here? Are they actually a robot? They're here all the time, they don't really seem like they have any home life, social life. Do they have a wife? Do they have kids? Who knows, it doesn't matter." In a sense, a lot of your staff, if you're acting robotic and you're not creating a relationship with them, will feel the same way. So stop being a robot. Show that you're a human and actually go out and make a connection. Become someone with your staff where you're able to talk to them and really listen to them, and see what your staff want to have in the business. It could be anything.

Participate in Group Events

The other thing that can really make your workplace spirit grow is participating in different events where you're able to have everyone work together as a team to achieve something. It shows that you do have a human side and that your business is bigger than you, and you're trying to grow something that's going to be bigger than just what you've got. If you can do it for a charity that is even better.

The Final Word

It doesn't cost a lot of money to be fun. Just a bit of time and creativity, and you can get that all happening. I hope you've enjoyed this today, and please jump across to iTunes and leave us a review if you have the time, it would really help. Stay good!

Your business sucks, and what you can do about it. Honestly, most business owners are their own worst enemy, and they suck the life out of their business and stop it progressing. They can be terrible at taking responsibility, and they push anything that's accountable on to other people. It's a classic trait with a lot of the businesses that are starting up now that are run by millennials. They want to have all the things, but they don't want to spend the time to get all the things.

Looking Back

After being in business for 19 years, I can comfortably say that it takes a long time. You're not going to be a millionaire in a year. It's going to take you a long time to get to where you want to go, and where your goals are in life. The last thing you want to be doing is sucking the life out of your business. It could be anything that you're doing. You might be on Facebook a bit too much. Your Diet might not be great. Your direction might not be great.

Review

You need to review where your time goes, and assess what is important to you in business. For me, I know when I analyse myself, I stepped back and looked at my life retrospectively only a few years ago. I thought, "Where am I? Where do I want to be, and how the hell did I end up here?" It was a scary time. Things passed through my mind where I thought maybe I'll jump out of business, I don't know if this is what I should be doing, maybe my time is better spent somewhere else. I had a lot of reflection time of about two months, to be honest. That's where I came to the conclusion I love my business, and I wanted it to continue to be the vehicle to success, and I've made it that. I was overweight. I was 110 kilos. I didn't have the best eating habits. I didn't have the best drinking habits. That's not to say that I was drinking excessively, but I wouldn't mind a pint or two over dinner. I wasn't getting smashed, but I would sit there and watch TV on the idiot box while eating crap food and having a couple of beers, which was a lot of empty, unneeded calories.

Make Positive Change

I was working well when I was working, but I wasn't really pushing myself as fast and as far forward as I wanted to. A lot of people have this and a lot of people look to different crutches such as smoking or something like that. You need to take the time out and have a think about why you're in business, and where you want to be in a year, or in a month, or in 10 years, or what you're going to be remembered for, and what's going to be said at your eulogy when you pass away. What are the legacies you're leaving behind? I changed from a heavy in meat and carbohydrate diet, to a diet that consists of 80% raw vegetables, and I'm very happy that I did that. I managed to lose 38 kilos in six months and, for the most part, keep that weight off. My mental status is so much better than what it was beforehand because I did this. Going to the gym releases chemicals in your body that make you feel good. Not only that, when you're talking to prospects they can see that your life is under control.

You've got control over your own body, you've got control of your own image, and that means that ultimately, other aspects of your life you have control of. I'm not saying if you're overweight, you don't have control. Obviously there's lots of reasons why people can be obese, and why people might have a few extra kilos to lose, and everyone has image problems. No one's happy with how they look. Just knowing that you've done that and the success that you have in your own head from doing that, is more important than what anyone else can ever think. Become the person you aspire to be. When you sit back, and you'll think about your life retrospectively, you'll come to realise that the prison that you've created can be escaped.

Final Thought

There's a saying that goes, "you must first realise the prison of your mind before you can escape it." Be there and get rid of those bad thoughts. Be the person that you're meant to be, and be the best person you can be in business.

Today we're going to be talking about money and what can we do to hopefully keep a bit of it in your pocket. We're going to go through some money saving tips for small business that can be applied across the board. Some of them are things more about investing in your capital and utilising that for long term advantage, and some of these are straight up bangers that are just going to save you some money right away.

Throw Out Old Technology

Let's start old, we're going to through and discuss fax machines. Get rid of them. They're dead. Get them out of your business. If you need have a fax machine, get a virtual fax machine for $10 and port the number across. You shouldn't be paying any more than $10 a month for a fax machine. At the same time, get rid of your VHS player. I don't know why you need either of those two things. It's getting to the stage now that even DVD player's becoming a joke. Get rid of those things in your business. Lean it down. They're things you don't need.

Saving Time = Saving Money

A lot of the time saving money comes down to saving time, which can be done through automation. There's tools out there such as Zapya that'll save you lots of time by having things that you'd normally have double data entry automatically disappear. Maybe use Google Sheets or maybe use Excel or whatever you're using to enter data, and then you need to take that data and pop that into your content relation management system be it Salesforce or ActiveCampaign or something else maybe industry specific. Integrating those so that you don't have this extra data double entry will save you stacks of coin. Obviously, that has a bit more of a longterm advantage, and it might only save you a little bit right now, but when it saves you time, that's saving you money.

Outsource

Outsource the bits you don't need. Maybe you don't need to be going through all of your junk in your inbox, and you don't want to be having all this extra spam. Use services such as cloud spam filtration services that get rid of the junk before it even gets to your inbox. Simple things like this only cost a few dollars per inbox per month but can save you hours and hours and hours of frustration of going through these emails. Just do it and you'll save yourself a stack of time.

Consider Working From Home

Another sensible one that a lot of people don't take into account seriously is the ability to work from home. If you can work from home even one or two days a week, and you'd normally drive half an hour to work, you've just saved yourself two hours in travel time. That's two hours that you could be spending with the family or, alternatively, two hours that you could be spending working more. That is just saved time. Let alone the saved energies and wear and tears on your car. As per the ATO in Australia, $0.68 per kilometre is currently the going rate that it costs to run your car that the government agrees upon, including depreciation. Now, at $0.68 per kilometre, if you're driving half an hour to work, the last thing you're going to be worrying about is your time. That's quite a bit of coin.In Australia where you can jump on a highway and get to work in half an hour that will be around $68 you are saving per week.

Monitor Supplies

Keep your finger on the pulse with supplies. I can't stress this one strongly enough. We were paying $1400 for a service when we signed up with them in 2011. We had a bit of a look around 2015 and found out that the service costs had gone down considerably and we could've been $450 better off with a competitor. I thought, "Oh, stuff this. I'm going to go to the competitor." When we brought that to the attention of the supplier that we're with, they said, "Oh, no, no. Don't do that. Don't do that. We'll give you the same price." Whoa. That's a bugger, isn't it? I've now been dropped down. I could've been saving hundreds and hundreds of dollars every month, nearly $1,000 every month, just by picking up the phone and having a bit of a call around. Make sure every three to four months you check out what's available to you. Check out what mobile phone plans are out there. Make sure you're not paying too much for your internet. Make sure it suits the ecosystem that you've created around your business. That in itself will give you a significantly higher amount of money earned, saved, or whatever you want to call it straight up.

Give Away Your Stuff!

This is a big one. This one here is something that I think has saved us so much money, and it goes against most beliefs. Give away more stuff. That's right. Give away more. Read the book "The Go-Giver" by Bob Burg. It is an amazing read, and it talks all about adding value to people's lives and helping people out. Give away more than you receive, and you will see it come back tenfold. While that's not inherently from the strict rules of saving money, it in turn will drive more money into your business and it gives you a great mindset and makes you feel really positive.

The Final Word

I would say these are the generalised tips that I would use to save money in a business: automate, integrate, drop your costs down where you can, and be a good person and help give out and around the community.

Today we're talking about your online business representation. Your online representation is so important because this is what new customers will look at before deciding to use your products or services. First impressions really do count in business, so let's take a look at how you can monitor your online representation.

Reviews

So there're lots of different places that people can leave reviews. I would suggest you go out there and find any industry-specific review sites and then add them to your watch list so that you can see what people are saying about you on these different review sites. Be right on top of it and get ready to send them a review back. There're different sites that you can use or things called RSS feeds. They'll let you set up alerts for different keywords that go out about you. We use a product called Sendible that lets us monitor a whole bunch of different websites and keywords around the internet.

Google Reviews

What we're going to be talking about is Google Reviews to start off with. Check out your reviews, make sure that you're getting alerted when your reviews are going up. That's important. You want to make sure that you're getting any industry reviews that are going up about you coming to your inbox because if there is a problem, you need to jump on top of it. If you want to make sure that customers are happy, make them happy, talk to them and make sure that you're leaving great reviews for them and in responses to their reviews. Set up Google Alerts to make sure that you're getting this input so you know what you're doing.

Social Media Sites

The next thing is the social sites. If you're not updating your Facebook page and you're not creating a community around it, there's no point. It just looks stupid. Don't do it. Just stay away from it. People know what Facebook is. You don't need to be advertising that anymore. There're no more than 2 billion accounts created on Facebook. There's no need to be advertising it. If you have a Facebook page or a Twitter page or a Pinterest page or an Instagram page or any of these other technologies, make sure you're updating it. Update it regularly. Update it once a week, once a month depending on the industry you're in. Show customers comments and feedback. If you don't update it, delete it. Pull the sticker off, get new business cards, delete the page. It's not good for your online brand and online representation. You want to make sure that you are doing what you're meant to be doing on these sites and that is keeping your customers engaged and creating an environment for growth. Don't have the growth mould. You won't get happy people leaving comments on Facebook. You'll get sad people leaving comments on Facebook unless you create an environment to have happy people leave comments.

Have a Think About This

There's a book that I've read from a guy called Ryan McDonald-Smith called Flawsome and it's a great book about embracing your flaws. You can't always be the best person you can be for every single customer. It's just not how it works unless you're operating a business that's selling just one item that is absolutely amazing there still could be a customer who's not going to be happy with you. They might be having a bad day. You might be having a bad day. If the system was perfect, it'd be perfect but it's not, so embrace the flaws. If someone comes to you with a review on a site, you can then just try and keep your finger on the pulse, but spin it, help them out, have them change the review if you are able to genuinely help them out.

The Final Word

So in closing, we use Sendible and we find that is a fantastic tool for keeping track of things like page updates, as well as Google Alerts to different industry words that we might be involved in. They are the two tools that I would suggest you use heavily to find out what's happening in your business and ditch all the sites that you don't need to be on. There's no advantage. I hope this has been helpful, stay good!

2G, 3G, 4G, 5G. Today we're going to be talking about wireless Internet connections, NBN, and why you might want to go wireless. 5G is a technology that's coming to Australia. I suggest looking it up and having a bit more of a gander. 5G is putting through these big bold promises of 400 megabits per second and upwards to 1.4 gigabits. That is 1,400 megabits per second. Now that's four times faster than what the standard NBN connection is promising in Australia.

Learn more about better internet connections for small business at dorksdelivered.com.au

Take Speed Numbers With a Grain of Salt

It comes with its flaws. So when you have an NBN connection Australia, it's shared between a few people locally, and it's piped through to your business. If everyone's on the Internet at the same time, everyone speed is reduced down. So they oversell. Like in any industry, when you go to buy a ticket on an airplane, they have already worked out the math that they aren't going to be having any empty seats because it's too expensive, and so they oversell the plane. They do the same with Internet connections. So most all internet connections are shared to some degree. When you have them shared, and you're an industrial estate, that means that when everyone else is on the Internet, your Internet is going marginally slower.

What Happens With Wireless Connections?

With 4G and 5G, and any other wireless technologies, speed issues become further complicated because you're going through a single point that is shared with a lot more people. That means that your Internet connection can be reduced down significantly. Although the theoretical height is better, and the speed that you can get is better, the actual coming into the real nitty-gritty numbers means that you probably won't actually find it's going to be a big improvement. Reliability is a huge factor. If you get wind, rain, or any other interference on the network, you will have a reduction in speed.

Think About How Many People Work for You

I would consider a wireless option such as 4G or 5G internet connection, but not if you're a business that has 10 or 20 users. It just doesn't make any sense. Hopefully, you've jumped in and done some of that research and you noticed, "Hmm. The plan said 1.4 gigabits per second, but I'm seeing that it does 10 gigabits per second." If you are in exactly the right spot at the right time, and you're standing on one leg, and the wind doesn't move, and everything is perfectly identically perfect. But in real-world test case scenarios, the achieved results at 1.4.

Security Matters

A few of the other reasons that having a wireless connection on a mobile network is not good, especially in Australia, is IP addresses and locking down security. 4G and 5G connections in Australia do not allow for you to have a static IP address. What that means is, like the postman, when the postman comes and there's a signed delivery, he comes to your house. You do your business, he rocks through the driveway, path or whatever. He comes up, knocks on the door, asks for your signature. You sign it. You look at him, he looks at you and goes, "Yep, I remember you from last time." Everyone goes about their day. An IP address that's static works in a similar way. A dynamic IP address means that your IP address is changing all the time. So imagine you're a nomad and you're in your motor home or van, and you're cruising around Australia, seeing all these cool sites. If that's where you're at and what you're doing, it's hard to get mail to you. It's hard to make sure that when you're getting the mail, the postman doesn't know who you are. "This is just another one of those guys traveling around. I don't know you that well." But you get the mail, and that's fine if you're just getting the mail and that's what you doing. But if you want to get a secure parcel, it's difficult to get that. With a static IP address, you can set up rules that mean that only certain traffic comes from wherever they're sending it from. So it could be your cloud-based application that is industry-specific or your client relationship management citizen.

My Personal Choice

In Australia, they don't give static IP addresses for your 4G and 5G connections, so you can never have that handshake, where it knows that number belongs to your business. For us, we would never be on the dynamic connection where that was the case because it would be terrible. That's something to take into account when you're looking at the alternate options that are out there. For a mobile phone, perfectly fine. Would not say there are any problems with that, but most of the time on a mobile phone, you're not doing any of these big, critical transactions that could be having men in the middle attacks and people snoop on.

Other Negatives of 5G

So let's go through a quick synopsis of the positives and negatives for 5G versus the NBN connections. For small to medium enterprises in Australia, your 5G connection could be quicker some of the time. It does give you the flexibility to be anywhere, but it is shared with a lot of people in your local area. So as there are more and more people that jump on, you're going to be having your internet go slower and slower. So it's not going to give you a consistent quality of service. It's not going to give you a static IP address. The costs for the data in Australia is abysmal. It's ridiculous how much we have to pay for data in Australia. In America, $70 and a 4G connection means that you could transfer as much data as you want. I was transferring from 500 to 700 Gig each month through my mobile phone and I felt super naughty. Because in Australia, you'd be spending thousands to do that. So from that perspective, your NBN connections are better for data. So there are the negatives to the 5G.

Positives of 5G

The positives are, you're going to get faster speeds some of the time. You've got huge flexibility if you're needing to move a business or something like that, where you're able to then get up and work here and know that your Internet connection, it's going to be super quick. Sometimes you don't have any other options because NBN relies upon a physical infrastructure layer within your local area. Sometimes you have to go 4G or connection like that. A wireless connection.

NBN Positives

We've covered off on the positive and the negatives of a 5G or 4G connection, so let's dive into the NBN connection. It's more reliable. It's very consistent. It gives you near to unlimited data depending on the plans you're going on, which means that you don't have these anomalies, where one month it might be costing you an arm and a leg and another month it's not. It gives you the ability most of the time to have a static IP address, which means you can have a secure connection handshake between both sides of the party. This means that for business critical applications that are stored in the cloud, you know for sure that you've got that handshake and that peace of mind that your data is only being seen by you and them and if his IP address locks down. Because the quality of service is higher, it means that you can more easily know that there's reliability within the connection. This means you can have different things that need a high quality of consistent connections, such as VOIP phones.

Final Word

In a nutshell, that is comparing the two technologies and why one is better than the other. In my opinion, it's your mileage that varies. It just depends on what business you're in and how you're going to adopt that. But for any big business, if you've got payroll, you should be having an NBN connection. That's a physical connection. If you don't have any other options, jump onto a wireless connection. Anyway, I hope you've enjoyed the content. Stay good!

Technology is all around us, and this generation is exposed to it more than ever before. Today I'm going to be going through hits and tips for your kids, or the kids you look after, to make sure that the relationship you have with technology is healthy.

Learn more about relationships between kids and technology at dorksdelivered.com.au

History of Technology

To start off with though, let's look at a bit of history. Books were the devil.  They were not considered a healthy thing to be reading. You were considered pompous if you read books. I don't think it's ever been cool to read books, but it was definitely a better way of getting information across. You started off with children's books that had pictures, then small amounts of words, then they went from small words to sentences, from sentences to paragraphs, from paragraphs to deep literature with lots of involvement with next to no pictures. With current day technology, the same device your kid is using is usually the same or similar to the device that you're using for the majority of the time. There's a relationship already, you've created something, a device that's on parity with what you're using, which isn't good. Because it means that they can potentially have access to that same information that you're looking at, and you know what's out there, and a lot of that you don't want your kids to have a look at.

Technology Leaders and Their Habits

Now let's look at the history of some of our technology leaders. Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and Steve Jobs all have children that are not allowed to play with technology. Bill Gates has or had, a computer in the living area where his kids could use, sporadically, and only to do things while monitored by a parent because they know that true knowledge does not come from electronic devices. It comes from reading a book and stepping away from the things that offer thousands of distractions per day. If the people that are generating all these products are not allowing their kids to use the technology they've created, it has to make you wonder what the relationship they feel their kids should be having with it. Now, I bring this up because you want to make sure that you, for whatever the reason is you're putting your child in front of technology, is being answered.

Your Technology Habits

Whatever the question is or whatever you're doing, maybe you want to have a coffee with some friends and you go, "Ah, just put 'em in front of the bloody iPad" or whatever it is. Same as you go, "Stick the kids in front of the idiot box. They can just sit there and watch TV for a bit and give me some peace and quiet." Technology will offer that, and that comes down more to a relationship that you have with your kids,  the discipline that you've created and the environment you've created for them to flourish. Some people are giving their kids these tablets as a way of learning, and I think that's perfectly fine if you're there learning with them and you can actually see what it is that they're learning. You don't want to have them sitting in front of something that is teaching them that they need to click now, upgrade, buy this, get this reward of dopamine, and go onto the next level, next stage, and become addicted because that is what they are. They are addiction machines.

In the Good Old Days...

Back in my day, we would sit down and watch the TV and it was a reward of a Saturday morning to watch Disney cartoons. If you got up early enough, before mum and dad, you'd be able to crack out Agro's Cartoon Connection. But if your family was like mine, you're sitting in front of the TV with your headphones plugged in, and making sure you're not making any noise whatsoever.

Think About Monitored Time

On a tablet, a lot of them make lots of noise. Monitored time with electronic devices is good and be there with them while they're using them. Make sure it's a tool for learning. If they're going to be in front of it, don't have them in front of it for hours. Make sure they're still getting their exercise happening. There are very few technology devices that have your child running around the place. From a health perspective, cutting down the amount of technology your children use is a very good idea. If you look back to the 1970s, and you think about the classroom, there were very few obese children. They get social anxiety and social pressures from the world around them, and it leads to more suicides, communication dysphoria, depression and anxiety problems. Children are not going outside and playing in the streets enough.

Don't Use it as a Reward

Don't use technology as a reward for your kids because that shows you're putting it on a pedestal. If you think about technology and the way it should be used with children, if it's like a book and you're saying, "Look, I'm going to reward you for reading this book because you ate your dinner," that's perfectly fine, as long as the child sees the book on the same level as they see the tablet. You don't want to have one have a higher value than the other. If that is the case, then they're never going to want to read the book, and ultimately, readers are leaders. People that are reading books and people that are engaged in knowledge are the movers and shakers of our time. Knowledge and attitude is everything. Give your kids a fair chance, don't have them become overweight from using technology devices. In my opinion, the time that you want to be putting towards spending it on tablets should be minimal. I'm talking maybe 20 minutes a day.

Social Media Use

Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat and all those other different things, they exist and they are going to want to jump on them. You have to be open to allow them to do that. You just have to think of the age that you think would be okay for them to do that, because as soon as you get onto those platforms, it allows the sharing of stuff that you don't want to see, conversations you don't want to read, and that in itself can create a disconnection with reality. No one puts up sad posts on Facebook, Instagram, unless they're looking for attention. Everyone's on holidays, everyone's having babies, everyone's getting married, everyone's positive. Explaining that to them and talking to them about why people put things on Facebook, and what you'd like to put on Facebook is a great idea. Maybe even consider joining and making a profile together and explaining the social aspects of Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat is a way that you can make sure that they aren't held down to the pressures of society and the ways that people post and bully.

Giving Kids a Phone

Now, we've covered a lot of ground on what to do with your child's technology devices while at home, but then there's always the question of what are they going to do when they get a mobile phone and need to take that to school? I was one of the lucky students at the school that got a mobile phone. Yep, sounds like my parents were rich, but the truth is they were looking to throw out this phone, it had fallen apart, the screen was cracked, the battery didn't charge anymore, and all the connectors that joined onto the battery and the sim card were destroyed. I got exactly the same phone that had other broken problems on it, and I desoldered elements from the first phone into the other phone. I had to use Kynar wire to join the battery and the sim card and solder it directly to the phone and I managed to build a phone out of two phones, that worked. That meant that I was learning to create this phone. I had it in my bag for emergencies and that was pretty much it. I had it in there, just in case something went terribly wrong. I was on the cheapest plan you could be on. TPG have a plan for $1 a month and at $1 a month, you can afford to have the phone in your children's bag and you can limit everything that the phone can do so that it's not costing you heaps of data while it's out and about. They still have that security and you still have that peace of mind, so you know where they are if you need to know where they are.

What Age is Appropriate to Have a Phone?

I feel that when they get to an age that they're walking on their own, and you're not 100% confident in their whereabouts, then getting a phone with a limited plan is a very sensible idea, but use it for those reasons. Don't use it as a distraction with lots of technology apps, that means they get in trouble at school because they're not doing what they're meant to be doing.

In Conclusion

I hope this has been of use, have fun and stay safe!

Today we're going to talk today about different Internet connections that are available to us, with a focus on what you can do to utilise them by making sure that they're within your budget and that they make sure they are the best option for your business. There are loads of different technologies out there, and it can get very confusing for a business owner that isn't tech savvy. You shouldn't have to be tech savvy to know what to get. People always talk about getting the NBN, but no one really knows what the NBN is. It's kind of like the cloud. No one really knows what that is.

Learn more on how to pick the right internet connection at dorksdelivered.com.au

Brief History of the Internet in Australia

So originally you used to have to use your Internet connection over your phone and it stopped you getting calls. This then developed having a dedicated Internet connection. It then jumped across to having ADSL and ADSL2, which transmitted everything at a higher frequency so that you could have a voice call at the same time as your internet is connected. That was some cool stuff! It came along with a bunch of speed benefits and now you can get up to 25000 kilobits per second as opposed to what we're getting before, which was only 56, so that was great with ADSL2.

Speed Differences

So ADSL2, let's just look at quick numbers. If you think of it like a car racing down the highway, 25000 is your ADSL2 connection. We're just going to call it 25 for ease. 25 is your ADSL2, 6 was ADSL1, AND 56k where 6 is 6000, 56k is 56.  You can see sort of the differences in speed. It's significant over the years, but now we've got these new technologies. There's cable Internet in Australia and you shouldn't be running your business on cable Internet, but if you are or you've got that at home, it can go up to 100 in the speeds at the moment.  Telstra is increasing the network to be able to get them to go up to 400 in some areas too.

What is the NBN?

The NBN is kind of a collective term that they use for new Internet technologies and they come in lots of different variants and forms. The short of it is, the NBN came and bought about with it faster Uplink speed, which means when you're sending an email or file somewhere else the speed for you to send the file is much quicker. Most NBN connections in Australia are around 100 megabits per second, which is four times quicker than ADSL2. This speed may be increased that 400, which means it could be 16 times quicker than the ADSL2.

Some Problems You May Encounter

A problem with different technologies is that's the physical best speed you're ever going to get. There are so many variables so it is hard to achieve the maximum speed. Your Internet connection is joined back to your exchange, which is where all your cables come through. Then that's when they're piped off to wherever they're going, but your exchange to your business premises. If the cabling is no good or if it's really, really long, it's going to reduce down the speed. Using that car analogy, you've got this fantastic highway, you've got this fantastic car, and this car can go 100 meg or 100 kilometres an hour. 100 meg is what is cruising down the highway but then this car has to go on this really, really dodgy part of the road, and that means it can't go at 100k an hour because if it does it will crash. Unfortunately, that is what most of the connections are in Australia, they are dodgy tracks between your business and the exchange. You need to make sure that you're looking potentially at other technologies.

Consider Microwave Internet Connection

Microwave is a great technology that allows you to have a direct connection from your business. This connection cruises straight to wherever the receiver, which means you're bypassing any of that track. The problem with microwave technology is that if you have bad weather, clouds, buildings obstructing the way the signal can be interrupted. On one hand, it can be reliably faster, but it is also way more expensive for your business. We're talking the difference between a few hundred dollars for a standard Internet connection jumping up as to a couple thousand dollars per month for that same comparable speed but connected with a microwave antenna. I'd say this a good idea depending on how mission critical your Internet is to have both technologies, but if you're running a business that isn't dependent on the internet it's probably not important to be worrying about it.

Fibre Internet

Now, you've probably had to do with fibre thrown around a lot. All it means is that instead of having the copper in the ground, which can degrade over time, fibre optics is a special cable which allows for it to bend around certain radiuses and then get to you. This means that hypothetically you don't have any signal noise degradation over the length of the connection of the electric cable. Because the NBN has been rolled out so quickly throughout Australia, it's not a great fibre connection because they've used inferior optics. Copper cables would normally last a couple of decades comfortably, while fibre optic cables after eight years have started being pulled up and replaced.

Bonded Pair Connection

One of the other technologies you can do if you're not happy with your internet speeds at work is grabbing what's called a bonded pair connection. Doing this will give you several connections coming to your location and they will be joined all together and then send it to your office. As mentioned earlier, it is smarter to get a 100 meg connection instead of 25 that is achieved with ADSL. With a bonded pair connection, you would have had four of your chosen connections so it will be 100 meg for ADSL and 400 for NBN or the cable connections. If the connection is a bit of a dirt track between the exchange in your business, it will be taken up and accommodated for with the other connections. There's a website called adsl2exchanges.com.au, and what they do is show you how fast your Internet connection is where you are. Most of the time with ADSL2 connections where they have a theoretical 25 speed, they actually only go between 8 to 12. Most of the NBN connections where they have a connection that's 100 will normally go between 60 to 80. But this gives you a good idea and understanding of where you sit.

Final Word

I hope this information has been useful in helping you decide what internet connection is best for your business. In the end, it all comes down to your business priorities,  how fast of a speed you need and how reliable the speed needs to be. Stay good!