You have been hearing from me (and, I suspect, from other channels) about Catalyit™.

After two years of work, it is finally ready and is launching later this afternoon in our partner states — IIA of Wisconsin, Big I New York, IAB of Louisiana, PIIA of Colorado, Big I New Jersey, IIA of Texas, and IIA of North Carolina. We will be rolling it out to other states next month.

Why Catalyit? Because the number of ways agencies can leverage technology to increase profits and serve customers is nearly unlimited. But time, know-how, and fear of risk are getting in the way. Catalyit provides a solution. My career has been dedicated to helping agencies harness technology, which is why I’m thrilled to introduce you to the Catalyit platform. We’ve assembled world-class experts, guidance, solutions, training, and community to help agencies thrive.

Catalyit offers:

Access to the Internet is vital in today’s hyper-connected world. And, it’s not always possible to find a Wi-Fi hotspot you can easily connect to. Because of my extensive travel, I used a Wi-Fi hotspot for many years to make sure I could connect to the Internet anywhere I had a cellular signal. It worked great but cost $50 a month for 50 GB of data download.

When Apple released iPhone 12, it included the ability to use your iPhone as a data hotspot. I quickly realized that I could use my phone to connect to the cellular data network to replace my separate hotspot.

I assume similar capabilities are available on the Android platform.

The availability of Wi-Fi has increased significantly over the last few years. I always worry about security using an unknown Wi-Fi signal. So, many times I may choose to use my iPhone hotspot instead of an available Wi-Fi signal. This is especially true if I want to do sensitive transactions such as accessing my bank account. Accessing the cellular data network is more secure than an open and unknown Wi-Fi signal.

Using your iPhone as a data hotspot is simple.

I have been talking lately in presentations and articles about “The Key to Technology Success.”

While I won’t go into complete details today, one of the themes for success is the eager adoption of external trends. The phrase comes from Jeff Bezos in his 2016 Letter to Shareowners.

The concept says that you need to see what’s coming and adapt quickly to remain relevant as a company. Bezos says, “Here’s a starter pack of essentials for Day 1 defense: customer obsession, a skeptical view of proxies, the eager adoption of external trends, and high-velocity decision-making.”

He goes on a little later in the same letter to say, “The outside world can push you into Day 2 if you won’t or can’t embrace powerful trends quickly. If you fight them, you’re probably fighting the future. Embrace them, and you have a tailwind.”

This is one of the reasons I have been focused in the last few issues on how you can keep up with technology changes.

Where did the day go?

How often have you asked this question at the end of the day? For me, it was way too often. Then I discovered RescueTime.

RescueTime is a monitoring tool that helps you keep track of what you do all day on your computer — the applications you use and the websites you visit, and for how long.

This tool works on Peter Drucker’s management principle that “what gets measured, gets managed.” Once you install the RescueTime client on your computer, it runs in the background and collects Internet usage data while you work. A dashboard shows useful charts that can help manage your time. There is a version for multiple employees if you desire to monitor everyone.

We are creating more digital information today than ever. Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, PDF proposals, pictures, and video are piling up on our hard drives. The trick is finding that document that you need when you need it. “I wonder what folder I would have stored that document?”

This question is all too common. The more information we have, the harder it is to find that one piece of information we need right now.

Searching for an email in Outlook is better than it used to be, but still not great. The Windows 10 operating system also has a much better search, but still not great.

That’s why Copernic Search can be a great tool.