I did a webinar about having the Best Year Ever and some of it is about time management. So how do you manage tasks, projects, time? Here are some apps and lists of apps.

Time Management: Best Apps for ADHD Adults. This list includes the likes of Listastic, 2Do, 30/30 and 24me, a reminder app.

Top 15 Time Management Apps and Tools.

10 Time Tracker apps.

10 Great Time Management Apps for Adult Students.

I know 2 million people swear by Slack every day, but Quip is like Slack and used internally at Facebook. I think the key is to be able to add functionality. In this case, both Slack and Quip have integartions. Read more about the Quip integrations here. Comparing Quip and Slack.

You can add integration with platforms like Zapier or IFTTT

Toggl track how much time you spend on different projects.

Mindmapping is a great productivity technique, and Mind42 is the best free mind-mapping app.

MyLifeOrganized – Powerful To-Do list, task management & personal organizer software

Boxer – email client and to-do list maker.

Email overload?
Mailbox
Sanebox

More productivity apps from LifeHacker.

Tech That’s Revolutionizing Your Daily Chores

Get stuff done for you:

• TaskRabbit
• Fiverr
• ThumbTack
• RedButler
• Fancy Hands
• Virtual Assistants

Need some ambient sound while working? Supposedly increases productivity. Coffivity.

Two recent fiber acquisitions.

In North Virginia, “SummitIG gave an update on its progress since completing its new intercity and metro fiber build within and between Richmond and northern Virginia late last year. The infrastructure upstart says it now has 45+ on-net buildings to go with its 450 route miles of underground network, and has seen revenues climb 650% over the past year.”

Just 450 miles of fiber and 45 on-net buildings = huge revenue explosion.

“Maine-based Oxford Networks purchased the New Hampshire Internet and data center company BayRing Communications. The purchase combines 2,000 miles of fiber-optic network in Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusetts and positions the company with access to 50,000 commercial buildings.” I didn’t know there were 50K commercial buildings in that part of New England. (I am from CT and spent time in each of those states skiing and vacationing.)

Even if you don’t out fiber in yourself. Have a Lit building strategy. Get a tenant in a multi-tenant building – and then aggressively pursue the other tenants. Granite Telecom has an MDU strategy to chase malls and strip malls.

Cliff sent in a good article about the Year of the Hacks (2015). “Hackers had a busy 2015, breaking into everything from the Ashley Madison database to CIA Director John Brennan’s AOL account… This year, more than 178 million records on Americans were exposed in cyber-attacks, according to the Identity Theft Research Center. The worst of them included the breach of the Office of Personnel Management, which exposed the personal information of 21.5 million people.”

In marketing, one technique is called news-jacking. I would suggest that every time you see an article about a hack that you leverage it as a way to email your list about security. You can be educating your customers about Ransomware, Password Basics, wireless security basics and more. You can be sending out password change reminders. Lots of ways to be Helpful (rule # 1 in sales) and establish your company as the expert, the helpful expert.

Have you explained about the Insider Threat?

“The insider threat encompasses not only malicious employees who want to do harm, but also compromised corporate IDs and credentials — for example, a user who inadvertently clicks on a suspicious email attachment that exposes the system (and possibly the corporate network) to malware is an insider threat.”

A survey by Autotask of “more than 1,100 ITSPs found that there is an increased demand for them to manage the security concerns of their clients.”

There is opportunity here. Grab it.

I have been asked to repeat some webinars from the past. Yet I never give the same presentation twice, so while the name of the topic of the webinar may be the same, the subject matter will be fresh and up-to-date.

BEST YEAR EVER

First up is a 45 minute webinar on Friday, January 29, 2016 at Noon Eastern time to provide concrete steps to have your Best Year Ever. The 6 things that you can do to improve your business. REGISTER HERE for $19.95.

COMPETING AGAINST THE INCUMBENTS

Join me for a 1 hour webinar to learn some techniques for Competing Against the Incumbents on Friday, Feb. 19, 2016 at Noon Eastern time. REGISTER NOW for $29.95!

FISPA Live is Feb. 24-26 in Tampa where I will be presenting live 2 sessions: Competing Against the Incumbents and Marketing Your Fiber.

MARKETING FIBER

Are you deploying fiber? This one hour webinar is on ways to Market Your Fiber. On Friday, March 4, 2016 at Noon Eastern to go through different ways that you can market your fiber for greater take rate and pre-sales. REGISTER HERE for $45. [This is the only webinar that you get a copy of the mp3.]

SOFT SELLING

One of the most popular webinars I haven’t given since 2014. Soft selling tips for customer service reps and technicians in two separate webinars of 45 minutes each.

Soft Selling for CSRs REGISTER HERE at just $24.95 on March 8th at Noon Eastern

Soft Selling for Technicians REGISTER HERE on March 9th at Noon Eastern.

CLOUD COMM / UCAAS

Probably the session I have presented the most – both in-person and on webinars: How to sell Cloud Phone Systems. REGISTER HERE for only $19.95.

You can buy the ebook, SELLECOM2: Selling Cloud Services for just $10.

Get a company package deal: all these webinars in Q1 2016 would cost you $175+. You can get them all including the mp3’s, the slides and the ebook for just $118 for MLK Day.

The original ISP bought a PRI and an Internet T1 from the ILEC, plugged it into a modem bank and then sold some accounts for $25 a pop. CLECs helped to reduce the cost of the PRI and Internet over time. But dial-up gave way to DSL. DSL was mainly resale of the ILEC or CLEC (Northpoint, Rhythms,Covad). The ISP bought a hub circuit and sold DSL circuits off the hub.

The surprising thing is that as we make the move to fiber and Gigabit, the resale business model is in full swing. The time when CLEC’s colocated in the central office, added their own gear and used copper to supply the last mile to the customer for T1, T3, xDSL and EoC is coming to a close I think. VZ, AT&T don’t care what anyone says they are selling off, decommissioning and not installing any new copper wires. It is all fiber, all theirs and available only through commercial agreement.

In the current resale model, CLECs would need to remember the era just after UNE-P was canceled. In that era, they struggled to survive until commercial agreements were negotiated that replaced the UNE-P deal. Granite Telecom is a billion dollar company based on copper contracts, but even they are shifting to an MDU product and cloud.

You can ride it out like the UNE-P guys and LD minutes did. Or you can pivot or innovate or change up your game a little bit. At the FISPA Live event in Tampa on Fen. 24-26 I will presenting on How to Compete. I have presented that before (2012, see here and buy the mp3)… and this will be a 30 minute session. If you can’t make it, then join me on a 1 hour webinar about Competing Against the Incumbents on Friday, Feb. 19, 2016 at Noon Eastern time. REGISTER HERE: