In the business world, time is money – literally. Tasks such as project scheduling and employee time tracking can quickly go from small issues to significant productivity hurdles in no time at all. The ability to quickly solve these problems – or better yet, avoid them altogether in the first place – is critical for any firm’s bottom line and employee satisfaction.
That’s the idea behind Ximble, a powerful scheduling and time tracking platform formerly known as NimbleSchedule. Ximble helps streamline efficiency, reduces overall operating costs and fosters collaboration and teamwork for any business – regardless of the enterprise’s size or experience with scheduling tools. Ximble has expanded their core services to include personal onboarding, multi-location capability, payroll integration and a messaging service called ximbleChat™.
Michael Daehn (MBA), Vice President of Marketing, recently discussed different aspects of his contributions at Ximble – where he finds personal inspiration, entrepreneurial advice, proven marketing methods and much more. Enjoy.
1. Who has been your greatest inspiration?
For marketing, I have been most influenced by Seth Godin. He was an early innovator in digital marketing and continues to push the envelope when it comes to business thinking.
2. What piece of advice would you give to someone who wants to become an entrepreneur?
Make sure you are putting yourself in a position where the business works for you instead of you working for the business. The goal of most entrepreneurs is to attain a level of freedom, but they end up working all the time. Make sure you have a good team around you and that you can maintain balance between business and your personal life.
3. Where do you see your business in 10 years?
The tools of marketing communication continue to change. I see more interactions taking place digitally, but on mobile devices instead of computers. This includes wearables like watches and glasses. The transition of our company from NimbleSchedule to Ximble has seen a tremendous amount of change, and we’re excited to see what the next decade has in store.
4. How do you go about marketing your business? What has been your most successful form of marketing?
My goal is to provide relevant and useful information to people so that when they have a need we are already on good terms. I have had this approach for most of my career. Today it is called Inbound Marketing. This type of marketing is the first step in offering practical, purposeful business solutions for someone in need of assistance, and it’s much more effective than random leads than often go nowhere.
5. What have been some of your failures, and what have you learned from them?
I love to get feedback and make improvements based on what my customers are saying. In the past, I tried too hard to please everyone which is impossible. It’s best to take the feedback and then make the best overall decision for your business, even though not everyone will like it. You have to make your decisions, live with the results – negative or positive – and learn from them.
6. How does your company provide innovation within your industry?
Ximble is doing things with scheduling and time tracking I did not know was possible. We have a great development team that continues to impress and innovate. And some of the things on the horizon like data-based predictive scheduling is going blow people’s minds by greatly simplifying tedious management tasks. With every new software release, we’re making scheduling and time tracking smarter and simpler, every day.
We’d like to thank Mr. Daehn for sitting down with Innovative Company. His responses include sage advice for executives, business leaders, and entrepreneurs, both young and old. To learn more about Ximble, please visit their website or call (858) 348-4222. Ximble also offers new customers a free trial for their Core and Advanced business scheduling services, which you can check out here.
