My new printer operates in ways I didn’t even know could be useful.  It will print on one side or two, and can format pages into a booklet.  So now I am wondering how I can use a booklet in my business, where no booklet thoughts had existed before.

New bright shiny printer

I am even wondering if it could bring me a nice warm cup of tea, or soothe my entrepreneurial brow.  It is more remote than my previous printer (it sits in another room) and turns itself on automatically when needed.   But it is also far more personal.

Messages appear on a home screen as though from it to me.  I enjoy random messages and am amused by the fact that it is not congruent. “Momentarily” is not a word I would ever use, and here it means after a 6 minute delay.  Spelling mistakes and grammatical errors in a shiny object can be fun.

Back to the booklets.  How could I use a booklet in my business?  They would have to be used in a very personalised way if I used them in marketing literature, or with clients, so they are more appropriate than a printed item and more impressive than a flat page.

And technology can do that to you, can’t it?  Make you think it is the most desirable thing in the world.  You had been quite happy with what you had before, and now suddenly you want something different.  And when it is in your hand you are in danger of fulfilling that well known quote by Abraham Maslow “To the man with a hammer in his hand everything looks like a nail.”

So I could go booklet-crazy but it might not help my business.  Technology is one of the easiest outsourcing options for the small business.  But you do have to know how to use it, and to contribute some human – and business – intelligence and creativity.

Despite the lack of personal messages, and its erratic performance, I was quite fond of my old printer.  Certainly more tolerant of it than with the new shiny stranger in the next room.

I prefer to be on good terms with all the technology that supports me and my business as it makes my day go more easily.  So we will probably develop a bond once we have worked together for a while. I suspect this relationship-building could be a trait of a female, rather than male entrepreneur.

At the moment it is very shiny and I am slightly in awe of what it knows.  Just like many a new relationship.