Welcome to another edition of Small Biz Go Mobile podcast. I’m your host, Mario Armstrong. On each edition of Small Biz Go Mobile we try to help you understand how you can be more productive being mobile and how you can just get more done, make more sales, and have a better quality of life at the end of the day.
One way that I get that done is by the use of apps. Now we all know that there are hundreds of thousands of apps that are out there, so the real issue when trying to identify apps is not just going out, word-of-mouth, finding out what apps work for people. I mean that's one way that you can discover apps, but I think before I tell you about one of my favorite apps, I want to tell you how you can discover new apps.
Certainly, word-of-mouth can be one of those ways, but I think if we actually take a better assessment, let's say, for example, we take a step back, we really look at our business, we look at our daily routines, we look at our lifestyle, we look at managing our home, our company, our employees, our clients, where's the real pain in your business right now? Do you know what those pain points are? I think you would find more happiness, less stress, more productivity, more relatability in apps if you can absolutely identify where your pain points are, and then you should go and look for apps that help to solve those pain points.
So I get the question often, “Mario, where do I go to look for apps?” Well, it depends on the platform that you're on. If you're on Apple operating system devices, then you want to go to the iTunes store and do a search there. If you're on Android, then you want to go to the Android Marketplace, and so on and so forth.
One of the apps, though, that I wanted to share with you today is one of my favorite apps, called Evernote. Now Evernote has been around for a while, but the company is a small start up itself, about five employees. I think they’ve grown now but started off that way, about three to five employees, they were just on the cover of Inc. Magazine. But it's been my favorite app for a while because Evernote basically turns your Apple device, your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad into this extension of your brain.
It becomes a place for you to remember things, it becomes a holding cell. You can hold notes in categories based upon notebooks. You can have a slew of notebooks, maybe something as sales strategies, maybe another one is projections for 2012, maybe another one is customer service ideas. Whatever those notebooks are, whenever you have a new idea, no matter what device you’re on—laptop, tablet, desktop, phone—you can make an edit or add a new idea into that same notebook in Evernote, and it would be synced across all your devices because basically working on the Internet, it’s working in the cloud. So not only can you write or type out notes, but you can also do audio recordings, which is I think an underutilized feature, and I use that quite a bit to record audio as a note. So you can create text, you can do photos, and, like I said, do audio notes, and it automatically synchronizes against all of your devices. And it's all searchable, which is really, really good. And they can include geolocation information from mapping and search, if need be.
So some examples of where this might be helpful—I’ve seen people use this in things as simple as in class seminars, education, and research, but also to capture ideas and maybe some inspiring thoughts. It also helps me stay in sync with all my notes and Web clips. I don’t use bookmarks anymore, I don’t use a browser’s bookmark. If I’m on the Web and I see a site or piece of information from a site that I want to save, I don’t kill trees and print it out, I save it in Evernote and come back to it later.
I think these are different reasons why you can use it, and you can also privately share notes. We do that internally with our Small Biz Go Mobile staff, where we will create a note specifically just for staff eyes only.
So I hope that helps you come up with some new ideas. The app is free. They do have a premium version, but you can get so much done on the free version.
Alright, that’s going to be a wrap of today’s Small Biz Go Mobile podcast. I’ve been your host, Mario Armstrong. Find out more apps like this and other ideas at our website at www.marioarmstrong.com, and you can also follow us on Twitter at @smbizgomobile and on our website at www.smallbizgomobile.com. Until next time, I’m Mario Armstrong, telling you, See ya, have a good day, be mobile, and be productive.
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