Have you ever tried Googling yourself? Were you surprised? Was it a good surprise? Was it the worst thing you did all day when you first googled yourself? Or are you one of those who google themself all the time? Or is your name not even on google?

For me, showing up on google is 80% of my marketing whether it is for business reasons or personal. Today when I googled myself, I found that there were other Kapil Busaras who were sharing the first page on Google. I am the face of my company. Most of the time my business depends on my name. My clients have found their way to me to GIVE me business from googling me.

Why have I put so much emphasis on my name up until now? Because the world we live in is very dynamic and is ever changing. I started off as a software developer, then as  Performance Test Engineering, later I became a free lance  web develper, and when that was going well, I founded Okinara Consulting Services. Although when the company was formed it's core business was focused on web development, the name that was chosen did not indicate that it was strictly a web development company. I knew I wanted to expand into other areas. Today Okinara does so much more than web development, we design Logos, flyers, brochures, create strategic solutions to social media marketing, and we will soon be launching a new product.

Tomorrow I may wish to start another business or get into a different industry. If it is a brand new company, people may not know about it, however people who know me as Kapil Bulsara, will know me even if it is a new company, and building on my previous successes I can relatively easily transition into a new field of work or business.

Some of you may not have the luxury of owning a domain name that is your personal name because it might already be taken, and even if you do have that domain name, you may be plagued by having to share the Google spotlight with other people who have the same name as you, which I am currently facing.

For that reason it is important to expose yourself more with the use of social media sites. Everyone has a Facebook account, and If you don't, stop everything at once, including reading this article and create an account NOW!. Once you have a Facebook account, what you should do is create a facebook username which gives you a public facebook page, but don't worry your personal stuff like your wall and photos because it will not be visible to the public, unless you chose to. For e.g. this is mine: http://www.facebook.com/kapil.bulsara. It is not very professional you might think. It does not have to be. Everyone knows you have a life outside of work.

Another think you need to do is get a linkedin account. If you don't already know, LinkedIn is a business-oriented social networking site. Here is my page http://ca.linkedin.com/pub/kapil-bulsara/31/4a8/821.

You also need to get a twitter account. Here is my twitter page http://twitter.com/kapilbulsara. The common thing I hear about twitter is that they don't like that it is all open to public. Well you don't need to post personal details on twitter. I use twitter to share some semi-personal stuff and also tweet about my business or just general information that will be useful for the average citizen of the Internet.

All this creates exposure and awareness of who you are. If you haven't noticed this is not new, this is the norm now. You absolutely MUST have an online presence. Traditional networking still exists and can't really be replaced, but you cannot neglect social networking. A lot of your success depends on who you know!

I have thought about getting  a CRM system or a Project Management Software to help me with my getting more organized and efficient. Just yesterday I seriously started doing a lot of research and testing things out. I was looking for a LAMP based web application that handles project management and CRM (Customer Relationship Management). Although I’m a proud owner of by business, I’m still pretty much regarded as a freelancer as opposed to an entrepreneur. I need something simple that gets the work done.

I narrowed it down to these 3:

1. SugarCRM
2. Dolibarr
3. PHProjekt

Now I’m really confused as to which one I should use.

These are some of the things that I need.

• Ability to have customer accounts related to projects
• Add and schedule different tasks inside a project
• Time tracking for each task and summary of time spent on each project
• ability to calculate ROI (not a must but good to have)
• Keep customer related info such as project history, internal notes as to what kind of sales strategy is working with this customer, project proposals, services they are currently using from me etc…
• Keep track of work that I outsource
• Controllable access to let contractors check and update their tasks, and have clients update and check project issues and progress

Any help in deciding what I should be using is very much welcomed. Please leave a comment or contact me from my contact page. Thanks

The question that I am trying to answer is – should we be throwing away our desktops and laptops and go completely mobile with cell phones and tablets like the iPad?

Definitely throw away your desktop. If you just bought one, then keep it to store your media and then when it’s time to throw it away, throw it away.

Laptops – keep those because they won’t be going away anytime soon. The iPad isn’t really a netbook killer yet and netbooks simply put are not notebooks. There are a lot of things that the iPad doesn’t have. Like a web cam, less computing power and etc etc. We’ve heard all about the iPad haven’t we?

Even this blog was posted from my phone, and I am not talking about using a web browser on my phone. I’m actually using a wordpress app on my iPhone to draft and post. I can approve, disapprove and delete comments directly from this app.

When I need to go somewhere and I don’t know where it is, I don’t even bother checking. I get in my car, look it up the gps on my IPhone and I’m off.

I don’t carry a watch on me, I use my phone(likes millions do these days), I don’t keep alarm clock – got a phone. And remember those daily planners, those little books they used to carry back in the days – ya you don’t even need that anymore, and if you are still carrying those – shame on you!

Get a smart phone!!

Even shopping had been made easy. Some of the major stores have their own apps for phone like the iphone and you can browse their entire catalog.

Just about to head into a meeting, so I’ll just wrap it up here, but stay stunned!

Many requests for blog sites and shopping carts have come to me and as always I’m happy to be of service. For those who do not know yet, I am also providing strategic couching in areas of social media marketing, online business strategy, career planning, kick-ass study plans for college and high school kids and help for folks to get out of the analysis paralysis and into putting passion into action.

Just recently I had a client hand me a $100 cheque for my advice which hardly took 20 minutes.

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again. If there is a solution out there then I can do it, if there is no solution out there yet, let’s go get down to it and make one. I don’t believe any business that I do can be done alone. Like I said in my previous articles customers are collaborates of success, so every success solution comes with your efforts and mine.

So why pay me to do anything? Well, when everyone does, I watch, and when everyone stops I do! I love uncommon sense and I love the challenge!

So contact me and lets get down to business!

Customers and businesses are really two sides of the same coin. I even dare to take it one step further. Customers really are partners in business and collaborators of success.

Leaving out customers in important decisions of business is like tossing one wheel out of your 4×4 while going up the hill. The law of nature is that what does not grow gets eliminated. Businesses must grow and customers are becoming more and more important.

I am not a master businessman(not yet) and I have no degree in business. The closest I come is having 2 courses in economics and 1 in administrative studies and I am self employed. But what I am is an observer and I am observing that businesses are moving away from shareholder’s game to a stakeholders game. Although this shift has been happening for quite a long time now, there are few businesses that have taken this game to heart and these are the ones that truly seem to be pulling away from and ahead of the rest.

Ultimately everyone is playing their part. The workers are playing their part, the businessmen are playing theirs and customers are playing their part. The world is becoming smaller and smaller by the minute. A product or service is no longer made or provided by one party or even one part of the world. Collaboration is in a big part the soul of progress in our world today. What’s really making it happen is technology – the Internet to be very specific and to be even more specific – Web 2.0!

If the parties involved in providing products and services are working together, then why not take things a little further. Why not let the customers or the end users play a big role in  it as well. Because ultimately this work, whether it be some product or a service, is for the customers. Make customers your partners in business and collaborators of your success!