Why even the smallest of businesses need Zoom: 50 ways to connect, serve, and earn income

Many of my small businessfolk friends either already use Zoom—the groovy online tool that lets you hold inexpensive video conference gatherings on the web—or are “Zoomcurious,” wondering how they could use it to benefit their work. Even I was intrigued . . . and I’m known as being terribly camera-shy.

Things like Zoom weren’t always something solo entrepreneurs or small businesses had to think about. Not too long ago, video conferencing was for corporate types, with 20 people sitting around a polished boardroom table looking up the table to a screen where a ghostly head from Corporate was droning on and on.

Nowadays, services like Zoom, Skype, and Go To Meeting give service providers like us the ability to have meetings with faraway clients, prospective clients, audience members, potential partners, buyers, donors, virtual assistants . . . anyone. This gives us a much greater reach, widening the circle for the work we do.

Overview of its top benefits

It has benefits for many types of businesses, even though it might not be obvious. For me, they are coaching sessions with people anywhere in the world, website co-creation and repair, private training, weekly virtual “office hours” for client questions, and a lot more. I can share my screen, share the viewers’ screen, take control of their screen to show them how to do something, play a video or audio, text chat publically or privately, write on a collaborative whiteboard together, create breakout rooms for individual groupings…and much more.

Best of all, I can save the video recording, audio recording, and a chat transcript, and offer those whenever it’s helpful. The free version allows you to have meetings of up to 40 minutes each. I use the service level that costs $14.99/month, which allows you to do a lot more. It pays for itself a hundred times over every month, probably more than any other tool I use.

So how might this help YOU and to YOUR work?

Below are some common and a few uncommon possibilities to ponder. See if anything here, or anything else comes up for you.  And if you have your own creative use to share, please do share it in the comments!

Attracting New Clients:

Free exploratory consultation or conversation
Free group workshops and classes
Summits and discussion groups
Group meditations or healing sessions
Demonstration of a product
Demonstration of something physical, such as

A yoga pose, meditation posture, proper exercise form
Using a tool properly
Teaching a dog a trick
How/where to apply essential oils
Doing a website/social media task online
Finding images collaboratively
Finding answers on Google
Creating a helpful document for productivity…

Serving Existing Clients Better

Meetings/conversations with or without video – you can use it even if you’re camera-shy!
Client pre-evaluation for acupuncturists, naturopaths, and healers of all kinds (to determine the right appointment type for a client)
Regular/recurring coaching, consulting, or guidance sessions
Working consultations with screen sharing
Private/secure meetings for money management or confidential activities
Group, team or mastermind sessions
Customer tech support
Video demonstrations of the products/services you offer
“Office hours” — times when you’re available online to answer questions and offer help and support
Co-working sessions: Scheduled sessions to do focused work together, avoiding procrastination and powering through a project or challenge
Larger online meetings and corporate presentations (advanced Zoom packages)

Income-Producing Activities

Sell live group workshops, classes, webinars
Sell recorded (evergreen) workshops, classes, webinars  for passive income
Introduce your service business locally
Have a video or live component to an online course you’ve created
Create an entire online course
Offer 1-to-1 coaching or guidance
Offer group coaching programs
Book/manuscript/content review and feedback
Tutoring services
Music lessons
Online instruction
Certification programs – use as a meeting component
Regular meetings as a value-added service for paid groups
Optional follow-up support packages for your product or service
Consumer survey interviews

Help, Community, Business Growth

Recording a video/screenshare to share to YouTube/Vimeo or other social media
Interviews with potential employees or freelancers
Video meeting with an employee
Video meeting with a faraway virtual assistant
Group meetings for collaborative projects
Event planning team meetings
Virtual lunch meetings
Private virtual meetings with students
Listening in on a workshop or class while driving (with the mobile app)
Nonprofit board meetings
Writing group meetings
Informal “tours” of an office space, building, shop, community garden…
Interview speakers for an upcoming event
Mediation

Certainly, there are a zillion more uses, but these were the first to come to mind. Zoom.us has really terrific support, ongoing regular webinars to introduce you to the platform, and great documentation for learning how to make it work for you. There are books and videos online too, of course. And if you’re the kind of person who best learns things like this in a hands-on, one-to-one way, I also offer a bite-sized private training session for it here, where you’ll walk away with everything you need to know, without digging for it.

But no matter how you learn, I’d encourage you to give this tool a test drive if you haven’t already. It has really opened up the world to me, and to many of my clients. It might be just the tool you need to be joyfully productive, pleased and profitable in 2019.