Storing and Sharing Your Files

Welcome to the Scale Your Small Business Podcast. This is the place where we help entrepreneurs and small business owners put systems in place to see exponential growth. I’m your host, Jillian Flodstrom, a serial entrepreneur, a compulsive organizer, and your business cheerleader. I’m going to help you calm the chaos, increase productivity, and grow your revenue. Let’s get started.

This week, we’re talking about the best way to store and save information. We’ll get back to the podcast right after this message. If you’re an entrepreneur or small business owner and are looking to calm the chaos, increase productivity, and grow your revenue, I want to give you a special invite to request a free strategy call with me by visiting scaleyoursmallbusiness.org/freecall. Again, that URL is scaleyoursmallbusiness.org/freecall. I look forward to talking with you soon. Let’s get back to this week’s episode.

If you’ve listened to my earlier podcasts, then you know that I love Dropbox. We use it all the time for everything. Now, I know there’s some alternatives, too that you might want to check out. If you’re a G Suite user, you could check out the G Drive. I think it’s very similar, but I can’t comment on it because I don’t use it the same way that I use Dropbox. However, I do love Google Docs. That’s a whole other podcast that you’ll definitely want to tune into later, but let’s jump back to Dropbox.

Now, there’s many different types of Dropbox. I have the business version, which is one of the paid options, and I will tell you why we chose that option. The reason why is that if anybody jumps in there, any of your employees, if they delete a file accidentally or on purpose, you can get those files back. And that’s why I made the choice to pay for the extra service. I think it makes the most sense, especially if you have someone who gets upset with you and just starts deleting everything. With certain levels of Dropbox accounts, you may not be able to get that information back. So for me, it’s well worth the money, knowing that no matter what happens, I will always have access to my information, even if it gets deleted.

Dropbox is super easy to use. I know that there’s also been some talk about the security of Dropbox, and I think that’s something that you definitely need to check into when you’re using any cloud-based software. You’ve got to do your own research. So don’t just take my word for it because we’ve got some extra layers of protection set up, which I think makes us less likely to be hacked. However, keep in mind, if anybody wants in there bad enough, they’re going to get in there. There’s no way to stop them. However, there are steps that we can take to make things as secure as possible.

My favorite one is dual authentication. Anytime any one of our employees signs in to Dropbox to get any information, it always prompts out a dual authentication code. One of my favorite things about Dropbox is how easy it is to share documents. If you follow along, you know that we have team members all over the world, and Dropbox allows us to share documents wherever, whenever. It makes it for easy collaboration, but also if people need to upload files for me to review, so I can download them and post them to different places, it just makes our lives so much easier.

One thing that a lot of people don’t know is that Dropbox is available offline, which I think is huge. If you’re someone like me who used to travel quite a bit, you’d be able to access all your Dropbox files anywhere you need them, even when you’re in an airplane. Another great thing about Dropbox is, I’m sure that you’ve seen external hard drives. We all have them. We have to carry them around, depending on how much space they have. You might have to carry a couple of them, depending on what you’re doing with those external hard drives. With Dropbox, you don’t need those. Everything lives in the cloud. It makes it so much easier and so much safer, because if you drop a hard drive, who knows what could happen to it? It might corrupt all the files in there. I think just by being able to have things live inside the cloud, it just makes me feel so much better, that the backups, there’s dual backups in multiple different spots. But knowing that everything is in the cloud waiting for me, should I ever need it, just makes me feel so much better.

If you’re like me, you might have multiple devices. I have a laptop. I have an iMac. I have an iPhone and an iPad. I’ve just got all sorts of different devices all over the place, and Dropbox makes it super-duper easy to access files from anywhere. They even have an app, which I use all the time. If there is footage that I’m recording from my iPhone, it makes it so easy to just upload it straight into Dropbox. Sometimes it does take a little time, depending on if you’re on WiFi, or if you’re using your internet that comes with your phone, but I still love it. It just always is uploading, even if my phone goes dark, because it’s been so many minutes after my device goes to sleep.

Now, depending on where your business is at, you might find great value in something like Dropbox, or even in another software program. It doesn’t matter which one you choose. Just choose one and make sure that you research, that you get it set up correctly, and you’re sharing those files with your team. Cloud-based storage can make things so much easier for you, so much easier to make sure that people have the files they need when they need them. Whichever program you choose, it’s great. Just make sure that you choose one.

That’s all we’ve got for this episode of the Scale Your Small Business Podcast. One thing that would really help me and other new potential listeners is for you to rate this show and leave a comment in iTunes, Stitcher, or wherever you tune in to listen. Also, make sure to link up with us at hijillian.com, or on social media. And don’t forget to please just share, share, share this podcast with anyone who you think might enjoy it. Until next time, remember, it’s never too late to get clear.