Lumia@work: Why student entrepreneurs love Lumia best
Entrepreneur Nolan Bushnell once wisely said “The true entrepreneur is a doer, not a dreamer.” – and we think as the founder of both Atari, Inc. and Chuck E. Cheese, he knows a things or two about entrepreneurship and getting things done.
In order to find out just how entrepreneurs get things done (with the help of a Lumia,of course), we talked with student entrepreneur and doer Francesco D’Alessio. Francesco is a freelance social media and productivity expert who is currently working on a number of entrepreneurial endeavors, and he had a ton of great info and top tips to share with us. So all of you aspiring entrepreneurs, get ready to take notes!
1. What do you do on a day-to-day basis and where do you do it?
Day to day work is a steady balance. My main port of call is being a full time student at Plymouth University reading a BA in Business Studies. I love the university hustle so I spend most of my day within the campus. From this remote location, I run Future Framework, a start-up business that delivers soft skills workshops for young people and businesses to grow key skills such as Digital Literacy, Enterprise and Communication. Additionally, I am the President of Igniting Enterprise, the University’s Entrepreneur society, work with a startup based in Japan called Fluentli as Head of Community as well as some mini projects like writing a book on student productivity in universities, creating content about productivity and entrepreneurship as well as teaching businesses about social media across the UK. A very flexible array of activities for a student entrepreneur to be maintaining, this always keeps me on my toes. In my spare time, I like to be with my great family and take relaxing walks with my fantastic partner.
2. Which Lumia do you own and what do you like best about it?
For the last month, I have been testing the Nokia Lumia 1520. I am going to be plain and honest, I am an Android user. Many people might shut the page know, but I never got into the iPhone scene and was never exposed to other OS’s until recently, when Nokia sent over the 1520 for daily lifestyle testing in the busy hustle of productivity and entrepreneurship combined. What struck me first with the Lumia was the smooth speed of the device, the OS was very fluid and customisable. This was very useful when doing simple tasks like accessing applications – it makes a huge difference. Colours were also extremely vivid which made low lighting and strong lighting situations never a problem. The thing I would like best about it in one would be the structure of the layout. Everything just works well.
3. In what ways has it changed your way of working?
The Lumia has opened up my vision to a more focused way of work. Although the application store is still growing, I could find my core applications and have a fantastic experience with them. Working with the Lumia has been much more personal and engaging.
4. What are your top tips for entrepreneurs working with Lumia?
If you manage a lot of small projects or big projects like myself, or you have lots of fingers in many pies, then you must simply download Evernote and start organising yourself. It is a basic decision that I made a couple of years ago that now is a daily driver to keep everything referenced and safe.
5. What are your favorite five working life apps and why?
In a fast paced day, you need to have a soundtrack as you swing around the corners of the city, or in Plymouth University’s case, zoom out of lectures. This is a useful tool when managing your business life, it will motivate you in weak motivation times and empower you after a successful client meeting. As a young start-up you need to be swinging hot tunes around to keep the blood pumping.
This again, is an insane tool if you use it in the right way. Make a “stack”, so like a big folder pack for the following: “Projects”, “Areas”, “Resources” and “Archive”. Make notebooks of what you’re working on and pop them in “Projects”, for “Areas” add notebooks on what is general in your life, this could be something like “Finance”. Moving onto “Resources”, put things like forms, documents that are generic and lists of websites, anything that you can use as a tool. “Archive” is simply for your old projects and areas. Once you do this on Evernote for Windows and keep it monitored, I promise you a higher standard of organisation and productivity.
Having LinkedIn nearby all the time is very useful. It will allow you to firstly keep eyes on who is “viewing that profile” and also who is contacting you. This is great as a student to build your network and also as an entrepreneur to see who I am attracting to my accounts and business.
Waking up still seems to be a horrible process. Not anymore, this application will help your productivity in the mornings. Basically, you sign up to the Wakie community, set your alarm for the morning and when it rings in the morning, someone is on the other end of the phone and has 1 minute to wake you up! Amazing, right? I have had such fantastic wake-up calls from people across the world, but it’s a great way to kick off the day and speak to someone that will make you smile first thing. It is a free app and you can repay the favour for free as well. A new idea with great productive outcomes.
This is the obvious one. Keep your eyes peeled for networking and also tweet your passions, for me this is Productivity. Send photos and hashtags and monitor hot topics to keep innovating with your account. It will pay off!
Huge thanks to Francesco for sharing his insights on using the Lumia for handling the busy hustle of entrepreneurship. We think he’s onto something successful! Let us know what you think in the comments, we’d love to hear from entrepreneurs and others alike.