EVC Tips 006: Business online is business as usual
I've noticed over the last year or so how much of business (including EVC) has moved virtual. Today, I think it's safe to say that more businesses are being born in the clouds of the internet than on the streets of our cities, and I think web 2.0 software has a lot to do with it. So I thought I would take a few minutes to talk about what is working for us, because it might work for you too.
Best Productivity
Google apps wins, hands down. We've been using gmail (and now google apps enterprise version) for years as a way to access files and messages from anywhere in the country that events bring us. Google chat allows for real-time collaboration between our employees, calendar gives us an easy way to schedule meetings across timezones, and docs lets us create work-in-progress forms, spreadsheets, and soon-to-be manifestos or manuals. We also use the presentations for training and communicating. Overall, I can't imagine working without Google.
Best Finance
This one is two-fold. For personal/business snapshot vitals (i.e. how much money is in the bank and on credit cards), I love Mint. Mint makes it easy to track expenses, view spending trends, budget, and ensure we stay out of the red. For invoicing and expense reports, we choose Harvest. Harvest makes it easy to send customized estimates & invoices, track employee time/expenses, and monitor accounts receivable. They also have an iPhone app and Mac widget, which actually makes time tracking fun. That says a lot.
Best File Sharing
If you haven't heard of Dropbox, I suggest you check it out. We have employees in 4 states, and dropbox turns the internet into our own server closet. Company files are shared as necessary, and the most up to date files are instantly available on any authorized PC/Mac, iPad, iPhone, or the dropbox website. Past versions are even saved in case someone makes a mistake.
Best Project Management
37Signals, a Chicago-based godsend, brought us Basecamp a while back. Basecamp is the headquarters of all our project-based communication. Each event gets a project, and anyone involved gets access to the appropriate files, messages, tasks, milestones, and comments. Works like a charm.
Best Note-Taking
Ok, so it's not groundbreaking, but it's pretty awesome. Evernote is a note-taking program that resides on your computer, your phone, your iPad, and of course the evernote website, so that wherever you are, you can take notes, make to-do lists, or even attach a photo from your phone. I use this for everything from meeting agendas to home-improvement plans, and yes, as the program suggests, I've even taken photos of my favorite bottles of wine and let the text-conversion feature do the rest. Best of all, everything is tag-able, search-able, and category-laden to your heart's content.
Best Calling
While Skype has long dominated (and rightfully so), Google Voice and the gchat integration will give it a run for its money. Either way, computer-to-computer and computer-to-cell phone calling is an important tool for cross timezone collaboration, so jump aboard!
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The tools mentioned above are tried and tested EVC productivity-makers, and though I don't represent or profit from any of these companies, I suggest you check them out! Remember that all of these programs are considered "Software as a Service" (SaS), meaning that you can expect to pay a monthly fee for their use, or at least for the use of their premium features. If you're used to paying for software once, and using it for years, those days might be over. So consider these programs part of your monthly utilities, just like your internet access and cell phone.
Good luck!
EV Tips 005: Same way, every time
This morning I tried to make cream of wheat on the stove, and I just about destroyed my kitchen. Why? Because I usually make it in the microwave, and I had no idea what I was doing. I expected it to come out just right, and I fully anticipated that despite using different tools, and a different process, I would get the same result. I expected awesome cream of wheat.
People expect consistency. Whether they're cooking, shopping, traveling, or going through their morning routine, consistent experiences are a source of comfort. Maybe it's the way a store smells when you walk by, or the time it takes to get your drink at Starbucks, or the way your car accelerates. The slightest change can make a customer curious, uneasy, or annoyed. We choose brands (or companies) based on subtle differences. But once we understand them, and develop a preference, it is up to the company to maintain consistency. Think of your company like a franchise, where every sale is a different location.
As video production companies, it's important that we uphold our individual brands by doing things the same way, every time. It's all about the process. I just finished a great book called "The Checklist Manifesto" by Atul Gawande, which explains the importance of using checklists to do things in the right order, the right way, every time. In terms of video production, think about your process for completing a job. Each of us has a slightly different process, unique to our companies, which our customers love. To grow our companies, it's crucial that we stick to that process.
Of course, I'm not advocating you never change. We are always looking for ways to add value - new cameras, for instance, can produce a better image. But buying a new camera doesn't change the process in which you use the camera, or the steps you take before picking it up. Our process is our most important tool!
So next time you're dealing with a customer (or cooking cream of wheat), revisit your process- your checklist. If you want to produce the same results, do things the same way.
Recommended Book:
Free Video?
I've been reading Free, a book by Chris Anderson (@chr1sa), Editor In Chief of Wired Magazine, for what seems like 6 months now. And on my 2 hour and 50 minute flight from Phoenix to Indianapolis, I finally finished it. Not that the book was boring. It was actually very thought provoking, so much so that it caused my mind to wander every time I picked it up, thinking of new ideas and determining how Chris' research applies to EVC and to the Event Video industry.
In many ways, Free reaffirmed some of the things we've started to implement over the last couple of years, and I think everyone could benefit from skimming over the book, or at least reading the first and last two chapters. Main idea: In this book, free refers mostly to online businesses or electronic media, and the dozens of very unique & creative ways in which entrepreneurs are inventing business models around it. Online, free is inevitable. Every year technology gets faster and cheaper, so Anderson recommends rounding down - stop charging for services that you make less and less from each year, and start figuring out other ways to make money.
With EVC, we're using free to give away live streaming coverage of some of our productions (more each year), in order to increase awareness of the video, and hopefully drive sales. Over the next few years, we intend to offer more and more ways for our customers to purchase productions at varying price and quality levels (download, DVD, blu-ray), while keeping the most basic version (low-quality streaming) free. For many of our customers, the free product will satisfy their needs. But for some, the portability of a DVD, quality of a Blu-ray, or flexibility of a downloaded file are reason enough to spend the extra money - and those are the purchases that subsidize the entire operation.
Another way to implement Free is to make the product cost nothing to the end-user (the customer), but make a profit elsewhere. Some examples of this would be to bundle a DVD in the cost of registration for an event, place advertisements within the video to subsidize the cost of the production, or allow a company to sponsor the entire production, even going as far as to put their branding on the DVD packaging.
Today's Free isn't about tricking the customer. But it is a business model that you can't ignore. Assuming technology continues at its current pace, and video distribution continues to get cheaper, you might as well stay ahead of the curve.
Read: Fittingly, you can download Free, by Chris Anderson, for no charge here: link. Or you can buy it the old fashioned way.
EV Tips 002: Manage Expenses
A couple months ago, I went to a seminar featuring Scott Morrison, CPA and Financial Partner of Morrison & Associates in Chandler, AZ. Scott made a great point, and one that I think it's easy for small companies to forget. As our businesses grow, it's easy to keep adding expenses like more equipment, more people, more bandwidth, and more administrative overhead. But as we grow our companies, taking on more expenses as well as more revenue, it's easy to lose track of the proportions and find that despite creating a larger company, profits can shrink. Many event video companies fall victim to this - what starts as a small 1-2 person operation can quickly fall apart without tightly managed expenses and very organized systems. Think of it as a wagon rolling down a steep hill. It works just fine if you don't plan to go anywhere.
Scott also said that during a slow year, if a business shrinks, it should be able to stay just as profitable as it was last time it was that small just by eliminating the expenses that it added as it grew.
After the seminar I took a thorough look at every dollar going out of my company (I can't recommend this strongly enough). What I found were three things: First, there were some expenses that we could just plain eliminate. Things like automatic domain renewals, unused email accounts, and equipment that never sees the light of day. A few calls to vendors and an hour on Craigslist and eBay freed up some monthly cash flow, and brought in some extra cash from things that we don't need. If you can't sell something, my advice is to throw it out or donate it. The less useless stuff you have surrounding you, the better your business will run. Next, there were some monthly plans that we were able to upgrade or bundle in order to avoid overage charges - phone systems are the best example of this one. Crazy how 900 minutes on one plan costs more than 1,200 minutes on the next plan up. Last, I called vendors and asked for better deals. In the last month, we've reduced the cost of our supplies, our credit card processing, equipment financing, and credit card interest rates... just by asking.
Moving forward, I plan to do this every couple of months. Why not?