All About Apple Business Connect

Business Brain, the show for entrepreneurs, episode 421 for Friday, February 3, 2023. Greetings, folks, and welcome back to. Welcome to the Business Brain show, where we are always finding different ways of using our business brains in all aspects of our life. Here in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton.

And in Lafayette, California, I am Shannon Jean. Still the same person, still at the same spot. Happy to be here talking about Business Brain. And I think when I. While you're listening to these words, I'll be up in Tahoe.

Oh, nice.

Which is going to be great.

Good for you. We had. Well, I was in Italy, man. We had Snowmageddon here. Is that right? Oh, dude, I think we had three snowstorms. They weren't significant amounts of snow, but they were. It was heavy. Like, it was just on that, like, freezing line. So trees came down everywhere. A pole around the corner from my house came down. An entire telephone pole. We've got a tree down in the yard. Thankfully, it didn't hit anything. The power was out for almost time to be gone two days. Yeah. Yeah. We had. We had put in a standby generator that, like, automatically turns on well this past summer. And I figured we'd go 10 years without ever needing it. That was like, you know, that we told the neighbors, we're like, you're welcome. We spent the money, so the power's never gonna go out again. And it was. Yeah, it was crazy, man. But, yeah, we missed it. We got to come back and reshovel a little, and that was it. Well, and I gotta deal with this tree that's down in my yard, which sucks, because we had a tree come down in exactly the same spot, and we had it removed two days before we left, so.

Oh.

Yep. So I get to pay the guy to come back again, get him back out. That's fun. Yeah. But whatever. We. You know, speaking of my travels, I talked before I went about using. Bringing that extra monitor with me and really being intentional about my work.

How'd that go?

Dude? My life has reset in terms of my flexibility to travel now. That's great. Yeah. I mean, you could probably hear it when we did the show. I was really stressed about, like, it was a bad time for me to not be working, you know, just with everything. And so I. I just knew. I'm like, okay, we're gonna get there. And the first day that we're, you know, we're. Once we're there, I'm gonna get up and work two hours and, like, get my workspace set Up. I came up with like a punch list that I went through every day and I worked. I didn't work every single day, but at least every other day I would work. I mean, I would. I would sort of check in, but it was more than little triage my email and punt kind of thing. There was one day I did that, but most days I spent about two hours in the morning going through stuff before everybody else got up. And dude, it, it, it. Now I'm like, okay, we're going to Mexico in three weeks. It's like, yeah, whatever. Like, we're good.

That. That kind of freedom system. Yeah. And well, that. That system allows me to enjoy my vacation and my trip more. Because I know, yeah, you've done your thing in the morning. Gotta. Okay, great. There's no nagging things. What's happening?

What's happening? What have I punted? There was one day we were there from. We flew out on a Wednesday, so arrived on a Thursday cause of the red eye flights and all that. And then we flew back on the following Saturday. So we were there like nine days, 10 days. That Friday before we flew back that morning, I punted on a few things that I knew could wait until Monday or Tuesday. When I got back into the office, it was not a problem, but it was the. I wasn't letting myself do that at all until that day when it was like, okay, well, today I'm going to do this. But that kind of thing I also do when I'm here, you know, in the office. So it's like, well, today I'm not going to do this. I know it can wait. You know, it could wait three days. So if I do it in two, I'm still ahead of schedule. Like, it's going to be fine. So I let myself do that on the very. Basically the very, you know, last full day that we had there. But other than that, I punted nothing. And it was. It was.

That's awesome.

It was freeing. I don't want to say it gave me freedom. It gave me flexibility. Yes.

We talked about that many times.

Right, right. But. But it. It. My. I am now reset. I think it was the, you know, The. The lack of traveling with COVID sort of made me more dependent on my office because I wasn't traveling every few months and having to just sort of do this as a matter of course. I've certainly traveled since. Since the COVID lockdowns, you know, began two years ago.

Yeah.

But every time it's been like, well, I'm just going to Kind of let work, you know, percolate a little bit. And. And I can't keep doing that. So it was, it was. This was great. That reset was fantastic. So I just wanted to follow up on that, so.

Yeah, that's cool.

That's good.

Very good. Well, I'm, you know, I'm a huge map guy. You know, Google Maps and managing. Managing business in. In the Maps sphere. Whether you use Bing, Google Maps, Apple Maps, that's a big deal. Getting people to find you, coming up in search and all that stuff. And, and one thing I saw that I, I sent you a link over this. The Apple rolled out a new program or system they're using called Apple Business Connect, and I'd love to take a deeper dive into that today.

Absolutely. Yeah, man. Yeah, this is a cool. I had missed this. It must have come out like, I don't know, while I was probably freaking out about traveling and trying to figure everything out. Yeah. But this is a cool thing, this tool that. And it's for all businesses. You don't have to be a certain minimum size or anything. You get to go in and like, list your business and manage your business's profile. Not just for Apple Maps, but for Messages, Wallet. Siri, I don't know if you've ever used messages for customer support with. Dude, it works so well. I can't. It's my favorite way of getting support. I think Delta Airlines uses it Seagate, the hard drive. People use it for their support. I'm sure other companies do too, but it's just. Well, it's like. I mean, you're texting with people, so it's super easy. You don't have to like, leave a webpage open and worry about your phone going to sleep and losing the track of, you know, all that crap that happens. No, it, like, this is fantastic. I'm. I'm really stoked about this. I. I'm gonna look into seeing how, like, how it makes sense to register, like as a podcast for this kind of stuff. Like, obviously we don't have a physical address, but yeah, yeah, it's really cool.

And I think that we'll put a link in the show notes about it and you know, you can upload images, it ties into customer reviews. You, you know, you list your website. People can also book appointments via the. These, the apps or the Maps app. And I think it's. Yeah, it's a huge thing. You need to be listed across all these services, whether it's Google, Bing, you know, and Apple. It really adds a lot to your credibility even if you're small and even just a solopreneur. It's really, I think something you need to spend some time getting, getting up there, get some increased visibility on that, on your business and just get found. Right?

Just get. But yeah, make sure you're listed everywhere you can be. I mean think of this as another search engine, right? Like you, you want to make sure that you're, you're. And, and I mean that's a whole, perhaps that's a whole other episode to talk about is making sure you are. That you have your own profile and account that you can manage your search presence not just on Google. You know, Google is everywhere. The most important one for, for obvious reasons but you know, Bing is Bing's number two.

Yeah, yeah. And you want to control it. You know there's, so if you go up and search you, you may already be, you probably are already listed and you'll see if, if you haven't claimed it, you typically find a link that says claim this business. Whether you're searching in Apple Maps, Google Maps, whatever it is. It's really important because we, I talk about story all the time. You want to craft your own business story, right. Not let someone else do it and leave a certain review or whatever. You want people to see the images you want to show them when they first find you, details about your business, what your hours are, how to get to you. And each of these entities has a tool to allow you to go do that. And well I can remember when we did our Google they used to call it Google My Business. But one of the things that was.

First now the Google business profile. But it's the same kind of thing for Google. Yeah, exactly. Yep. Yeah.

And it also one of the things they have to do is call you at your business number. So if you had a pbx, you know, multi line, you know, auto attendant type system, it was kind of tough to get that phone call. And so I could remember, okay, I'm going to shut the system down, plug one phone in, turn off the auto attendant. When the phone rings, I'm going to pick it up so I can answer the question, enter the code and then I could turn everything back on. Yeah, and it's, it's, it's good, you know. And if you have a bunch of locations like this business connect, they give you, they have an API so you can get updated information about all your listings. They can connect to these listing management agencies. There's this one called Reputation Rio, SEO, Uberall, Yext, All These different companies that help you do this, manage these multiple locations and services. So you can automate it. Not have to go up there and manually do it if you've got, you know, bunch of different places to go.

Oh, man, I feel like these are companies that with some of my businesses I'm going to need to pay a fee to, to make sure that I can control my listing with them.

But yeah, yeah, yeah, it's good. And I think that it really levels the playing field. So you can get connect. Yeah, you can have your listing up there and you can set up the tap to pay on iPhone so you can have people pay you directly and not have to worry about. I mean, you don't even have to take Apple pay or whatever because now you can do that direct to iPhone.

Right, right.

You know, just a ton of stuff that you can set up through this Apple business Connect. It's really, really important. They talk about 24, 7 support all this kind of stuff, like you're saying with messages. Yeah, I think it's. I think it's killer. I would love to hear how other folks are using maps and some, you know, pros and cons pitfalls, things to look out for, you know, let us know. FeedbackUsBrain is the place to send those questions.

And remember, if we feature your question in an episode, and by feature, we mean include it in an episode, and it doesn't have to be a question, it can be a comment, could be a little tip, a little, you know, hey, you guys got something wrong. Let me help you correct this website. That's all it takes that enters you into the drawing for a MacBook Air this year. So, you know, hey, thanks for hanging out with us, folks. Thanks for. Thanks for listening. Thanks for. Thanks for everything. Keep living that charmed life, huh? We'll see you next week.

Happy Friday.