The most important thing we have as businesspeople is our connection to others. Our family, friends, co-workers, business contacts, customers, partners, classmates, and others matter. These connections are gold. They are the lifeblood of your business. So treat them that way! You should make sure that you aren’t left out in the cold if you have a computer that crashes or your phone dies.
I spent some time this past weekend cleaning up my database. I had family addresses in one spreadsheet, email addresses in gmail, and my colleagues’ information in a separate spreadsheet. I found that I didn’t have access to the information when I needed it. I have apple’s mobileme, which keeps everything sync’ed up, but I wasn’t really using it. I moved everything over to mobileme, backed it up, and printed out a copy and put it in a file. All told, it took me about 2 or 3 hours to get everything added, remove duplicates and old information, and get my information into a place that I can access it from any of my devices.
Some simple suggestions for your database:
- Have a database! Even if it’s just a spreadsheet in excel. If you don’t have one, start one today.
- Keep copies of it on your home computer.
- Back the copy up.
- Print out a copy and put it somewhere safe in a different location from your home computer.
- Put a copy on the cloud somewhere – and update it at least once a month.
Why take the time to do this? I think it’s pretty simple. How many phone numbers do you have memorized? When is the last time that you dialed a phone number from memory? How many do you think you could recall if you needed to and didn’t have your cell? I am guessing, if you are like me, the answers to those questions illuminate the need to have a database, back it up, and take care of it.
Do you have any tips for taking care of your database? I am investigating BatchBook from BatchBlue, but haven’t yet played around with it. I’ll report back when I find out more. If you have tips, leave them in the comments section!