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3 tools for sharing your knowledge & know-how with customers

August 30, 2022

Things that should be on your radar this month 👀

1. Australian website domain names are getting simpler, but while this is great news for fitting your website on a business card, it’s leaving businesses open to being impersonated online. Find out how to protect yourself.  

2. Apple has encouraged users to do an emergency software update after hackers were found to be actively exploiting a security flaw – so make sure your work devices are up to date asap.

3. There’s a new tool to help small businesses streamline the process of checking and applying for a trademark.

4. The remote work revolution is in full swing. Another fall in Australian commercial occupancy rates through June suggests this trend is becoming the status quo – and it’s raising questions about the future of Australian CBDs.

5. The government has released a list of 63 critical technologies that Australia needs to develop capability in over the next decade. They’re looking for public consultation from business leaders to develop this list further; register to have your say.

Get your knowledge out there with these tech recs

🏢 Notion – We became converts of this easy-to-use wiki builder after using it to develop our new business startup guide. It boasts tonnes of templates to get you started and has some handy integrations. Don’t sleep on this one.

👥  Dewstack – Looking for a platform that’s more text-focused than Notion? Dewstack has an interesting take on creating documents like online user manuals and product info sheets.

📝 Klutch – This tool focuses on collaboration, making it possible to build living knowledge bases that can be updated by your team in real time. A fantastic tool for ever-evolving startups.

The highs 📈  and lows 📉 of small business life

📈 Over the last year, we’ve been taking on heaps of clients in the early stages of getting their business off the ground. We noticed that most business owners had similar questions about processes or compliance that weren’t easily answered online, and it got us thinking about ways we could help our community grow.

So for a few months now we’ve been compiling information into our new business startup guide, which finally went live this month. Finishing big pieces of work like this is an incredible feeling, and we’ve had lots of positive feedback. If you haven't already, sign up here to read the guide – and when you do, we’d love to hear your feedback!

📉 In a hilarious turn of events, this month we’ve been inundated with calls from people trying to contact the ATO. Turns out Google had latched onto a phrase from our website that convinced it we don’t just do tax returns, but we’re in fact the tax office 😎

All jokes aside it was incredibly frustrating, and was one of those moments that makes you wonder whether technology is making our lives easier or harder. We’ve fixed the issue now, but it's a good example of needing to expect the unexpected as a business owner.

Productivity hacks 👩‍💻

Let's be honest, most of the communication happening in the workplace these days is done over some sort of instant messaging platform.

We’re convinced this list of Slack shortcuts has already saved us hours since we saw it a month ago (the first shortcut especially 🤯) – every millisecond counts when you’re using a tool day-in and day-out. We also found a similar list for Microsoft Teams, but we’re still waiting for Teams to be as intuitive as Slack.  

A super interesting study out of Macquarie Business School in collaboration with the University of Otago has suggested people are more likely to procrastinate on tasks with deadlines. We’re not advising that you never set another deadline for your team (sometimes limited timelines are unavoidable) but it might be worth testing this theory on work that’s less urgent.

This concept plays into the wider conversation about the fact that trust in your team makes them more productive, which we’re huge advocates of at Project Alfred.

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Not to alarm you, but it's the end of August… We found ourselves in a meeting the other day discussing work Christmas events and it was VERY disconcerting. But while we loathe to admit it, right now is probably the best time to get all your holiday season planning out of the way.

The tail end of the year can get pretty hectic, so locking in the work Christmas party now might save you lots of pain in November when you realise everywhere is booked out (not speaking from personal experience at all).

We promise that making plans this early won’t turn you into one of those people that puts Christmas lights up in October – although we can almost guarantee it'll mean you enjoy the holiday season more.

That's just our two pennies' worth.

- Liam and Amy, co-founders of Project Alfred

(changing the way people think about accounting)

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