The Tech Smart Boss Podcast

I haven't always been a fan of social proof widgets on a website, in fact, I'm a recent convert to the concept. In this episode, I discuss why I didn't like them and what changed my mind.

In fact, I've come to the conclusion that they are a nice addition to your website to generate desired activities and conversions by your website visitors. This comes after testing a few good ones and sharing it on my YouTube site recently. Check out our videos on Fomo and Provesource.

But there's a right way to do it and a wrong way. The wrong way ends up looking like big brother and less credible (not what you want).

In this episode, I discuss what social proof is and the various types. Why it works, and how to add it to your website the right way. Plus I share a few technology options to get you started.

Https://www.techsmartboss.com/105

Everyone these days seem to want, even demand, a work from home position. And I've talked in the past about my company, as well as many others, are 100% remote work companies.

There are pros and cons to remote work, and I cover some of those in this episode, but if you are working remotely the majority of your time, there are some things you can do to do it successfully.

In this episode, I cover 7 tips or best practices to be and stay productive as a remote worker. These are all things that I have learned over the years by both managing remote workers and being one myself.

https://www.techsmartboss.com/104

It's hard to believe it's the end of the year already. It seems like just yesterday we were talking about planning for 2018, and now 2019 is basically about to steam roll us.

More than just planning for the new year, there are a lot of key things an entrepreneur should be doing to wrap up a year. Some are routine things that we just have to prepare for, like taxes, but others are non-obvious and you may be missing a lot of opportunity if you don't take this time of the year to do.

In this episode, I cover 7 of these key year end activities that every Tech Smart Boss should be working on right now to have a successful wrap up to 2018 and an even more productive start to 2019.

https://www.techsmartboss.com/103

It's so easy when you're hiring your first (or 100th) employee just to do a quick Internet search and grab a job offer letter template and quickly hit the send button. But if you do that, you're missing a real opportunity to set the right impression for your potential hire, and in a competitive environment, you may just be losing out on the hire.

There's a better way to let your personality and business culture show while ensuring you cover all the legal and information that needs to be included.

In this episode, I cover exactly what those items are and talk about some of the technology that can help you land your superstar hire with a rock solid job offer letter.

https://www.techsmartboss.com/102

In this episode, we continue with part 2 of your questions as part of our 100th episode, ask me anything.

We wrap up 5 more questions submitted by our listeners and talk about topics that I hope will provide value to all Tech Smart Bosses.

Enjoy and thanks for supporting us on our first 100 episodes (and now 101)!

https://www.techsmartboss.com/101

It's hard to believe it's been 100 episodes of the Tech Smart Boss podcast. I'm just impressed I have stuck with it and had enough stuff to talk about for 100 episodes.

More impressive (to me) is the feedback that I've gotten from the small community that has been built. Listeners from all over the world who have reached out to me on email, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Twitter. And all the feedback has been really appreciated.

For this episode, I decided to dedicate the 100th episode to answering listener questions. I took the questions received and picked the Top 10 (many an amalgamation of multiple similar type questions).

In this episode, I made it through 5, so this is Part 1 of the Tech Smart Boss 100th Episode, Ask Me Anything.

https://www.techsmartboss.com/100

One common trait of Tech Smart Bosses is that tend to support remote teams. I mean who wants to pay a bunch of rent to an expensive office space these days, plus, we're always looking to hire the best team, not just the best local team.

We also rely heavily on part-time, freelancers, fractional staff and without realizing it, our remote and part-time staff typically play a critical role in our business.

What we don't do well is contingency planning, especially when it comes to our remote teams. In the case of emergency, such as a natural disaster, do you have a plan on how to communicate with your remote team and how they should try to notify you of their status? Probably not.

In this episode, I discuss why having a business continuity plan is important for your remote team and some tech and non-tech ways to ensure you always have your remote teams best interests and safety in mind.

https://www.techsmartboss.com/99

Blockchain has been in the news a lot the past year or so, especially with the rise (and fall and rise and fall) of Bitcoin. But blockchain is much more than just cryptocurrency. More and more you hear that blockchain is the future and going to be a very disruptive force in business.

The question is, the future of what? What the heck is a blockchain?

So I've been casually reading, listening and learning more about blockchain over the past few months and in this episode, I give my best non-technical (ok, slightly technical) rendition of what blockchain is, the use cases, how it is going to affect our businesses and what we should be doing about it now.

https://www.techsmartboss.com/98

I've been talking about chatbots for over a year, but I've never really taken them serious. Well, I've changed my mind and I'm jumping in the deep end of the pool with chatbots (I hope they are waterproof and doing this doesn't electrocute me).

I still feel that chatbots are to be feared in the mid-term future, when they start to really disrupt jobs and business models (and becoming sentient and killing humans), but for small businesses today, chatbots can really be a powerful tool in your arsenal.

In this episode, I cover what a chatbot is, the many business use cases that you can leverage chatbots for, and how to get started setting one up. Plus I give you a lot of technology choices, including my current favorite.

https://www.techsmartboss.com/97

Content Marketing is changing and if you're not on top of the changes you will become as obsolete as an Apple Adapter when they release the next iPhone 😂.

Just writing good content unfortunately is not good enough anymore. Everyone is doing it and the search engines that used to be promoting you are now competing against you. But there are ways to stay ahead of the curve and still get your message across (and your inbound traffic in).

In this episode, I go over how content marketing is changing and 6 key things that you must do content marketing in the future, so you can create an action plan today, for 2019.

https://www.techsmartboss.com/96