1DayLater - The Blog

Surround yourself with skilled people

Some advice I was given recently was “Don’t do it all yourself”, a great piece of advice I think every business owner should take to heart. Which is why when it comes to dealing with law or accounts it’s wise to enlist the help of a pro.

As brothers, David and I are generally very trusting with a shared optimistic outlook on life and people. We find life is just nicer that way.

But with the occasional unscrupulous shark about and a service that can be used anywhere in the world it’s time to call in the legal team. And lovely local lawyers Mincoffs have stepped up to the mark.

Paul King (1DayLater), Antony Hall (Mincoffs) and David King (1DayLater)

So this past week we’ve been making sure that the 1DayLater terms and conditions, privacy policy and reseller agreements are all top notch. Legal banter has been flying around like you wouldn’t believe.

Why go to so much trouble and expense? Well the way that we collect and protect our users data is very important to us, as you might imagine. We take every possible care to make sure that information remains private and secure at all times. So these documents are just as much for our customers benefit as they are for ours!

Antony Hall, Mathew Foster and the rest of the Mincoffs team come highly recommended.

Our Ambitious Vision for 2010

1DayLater have enjoyed a great 2009, and look forward to celebrating this Christmas and New Year. But before we go, here are a some exciting things to look forward to in 2010…

• A Full feature set — with outputs including invoicing, mileage claims, export, more in-depth analysis, and 3rd party add-ons.

• Mobile phone & desktop app development — you’ll be able to log your activities on the move, and our handy desktop app will remind you to log them while you’re working at your pc.

• The launch of our market intelligence campaign — by London-based firm, Kingpin Intelligence. That means MORE FEEDBACK which essentially means better end service for you

• Development of an Outlook application for 1DayLater — A useful Outlook ‘skimmer’ being created by our friends at local Centre for Digital Innovation - Codeworks as part of their new Dev scheme.

- check out David doing ‘The Proposition’ pose, perfect for corporate photos!

Aaand if none of that other stuff tickled you, we’ll also have…

• Integration of 1DayLater with Sage Sales Logix (CRM) & Sage Accounts — Using the expert guidance of our friend Derek Curtis & his company Bond Solutions, the leading NE supplier of Sage software products

• A ‘secret charity based project’ — supported by our friends at Sunderland Software City, Newcastle’s Culture Lab, Codeworks & Bond Solutions - more info to come soon!

• A discounted ‘Time Recovery Tool’ for 1DayLater members — A tool to help you save time which has been created by time-management coaches, Cadenza associates.

Wow!

Writing it down like that just made me realise that next year is going to be epic. I don’t know about you lot but I can’t wait :)

Time Management Tips - no.1

Aggressive Prioritizing / extreme time management

Here’s one of the most effective ways to boost your work productivity. I do this every day and seriously - it works!

Bend time to your will…

Step 1-Create a to-do list every morning

First thing in the morning (after you’ve had your morning cuppa of course) spend 15 minutes constructing a to-do list of activities you feel should get done that day. This won’t be wasted time.

You now have a list of activities

eg.

• 20 activities

• 5 really need doing

Step 2-Use aggressive prioritizing.

If you had to pick just one of these to do today - which one would it be? That is your number 1. Repeat this exercise to find number 2, and so on.

Step 3-Get working!

Stick to the order of your list and make sure you complete each task as much as possible before moving onto the next.

Now if you only get some things done in your day, they will have been the most important ones. Simple but truly effective!

- coming soon: time management for programmers

100 users in London, 100 up North

Tis time to celebrate - the 100th user signed up to the system today! Our beer-based motivation system (we’ll blog about that in the future) says that we must have a pint together to celebrate, happy days.

The real reason we’re writing is to talk about The Big Smoke - London. Last week we took an extended weekend to visit Kingpin Intelligence to talk about the marketing campaign that they’re generously giving to us. The main goal of the campaign is to get another 100 users signed up, and to get feedback from 50 of them a couple of weeks later- leaving us with a comfortable amount of testers and information to launch the full service. The Kingpin guys (James, Darius and Darren) are clearly a talented group and we feel incredibly lucky to have won this great prize with the Teesside’s Business School.

visiting the financial district - can you imagine being rich?

Sad as it may seem, but this visit was our 2nd ever trip to London, and as a city we’ve both got mixed feelings, it’s both vibrant and despairing.

it’s hard to believe that in the many thousands of faces I saw, there was only 1 girl with pink hair…
David King

laughter on the tube must seem like an alien landing, we got stared at a lot - bless them :)
Paul King

And they really do love a good stare, especially if there’s any smiling going on or unusual hair (like Davids) - we bore the brunt of many a steely gaze as we laughed and joked our way about the place. I guess the glumness comes with living in such a big city, but wow does it make me glad to live in Newcastle and remind me why I’m a North East Ambassador

Take it easy, and don’t forget to smile

Paul