Organization, for creative types, can be a lot. For me, design and organization always paired well together, but I know plenty of creators and entrepreneurs who really struggle with the organizational aspect of their business. Unfortunately, I cannot put everything in tidy boxes for you. However, when it comes to design files, videos, and such, let’s talk what’s new on the market to help.

Time Is Money

Spending disproportionate amounts of time attempting to find files, feeling overwhelmed by not being able to find files, taking entire days out to attempt to organize said files across several platforms, attempting to share files that are so large they actually buffer and fail… this is wasting your time, resources, and ultimately costing you money. And these aren’t exaggerations. These are real problems designers, creators, and entrepreneurs face often. Often enough for a new service called FileShadow to come on the scene, aimed at dissolving these issues once and for all.

Where Do You Store Everything?

If you’re like me, there isn’t one answer. I use a range of cloud-based storage because I work with a wide range of clients from around the world, and I do not expect them to change their platform to appease me. If you’re like most designers or entrepreneurs, you’ve got files in Dropbox, iCloud, Box, Google Drive, and so on. Which begs the question: when you need to find or share a file, how do you know where to look? Have you lost files and been forced to redo work? Have you lost projects, contracts, etc? According to Tyrone F. Pike, President and CEO of FileShadow, “We have stuff everywhere, and we have no idea how to get to it.”

Needs Based Businesses Scale Faster

Again, we see, that a business aimed at using modern tools to solve common, widespread problems, will scale fast  because it solves a very real problem. FileShadow is in this category because their ultimate goal is to help people protect their assets, have easy access to them, and to offer this without them having to move everything around. Their system doesn’t force users to change their process… it runs on top of it, which is a win-win if I’ve ever heard of one. My goal, in sharing this, is to help make your life easier in business, to help you find organization in areas that might be overwhelming for you to organize, and ultimately- to make more money by staying in your creative genius.

How Was FileShadow Born?

Jeff Looman is the Vice President of Engineering at FileShadow, Inc. He has worked in software development for more than 35 years as an engineer, in engineering management, product management, and product placement strategies. Mr. Pike and Mr. Looman talked to me about how they went out and interviewed over 100 prosumers. They found, on average, individuals were using between four to five separate cloud accounts, with no real system for organization or way to find what they were looking for.

Secondarily, they found that if the prosumer found the file, the second big issue everyone seemed to be running into was sharing, so this was really a two-part problem they were facing down.

Real-Life Application

FileShadow offers a few key pieces of technology you might be missing, but that are very important to protecting and growing your business.

1. Much like blockchain technology, their process leave a trail of the entire history of your file. For example, if I send an email with design access to a client in Hong Kong (which I do often), I can see exactly what is done with that file. Being a small business, I’m not going to go build that infrastructure on my own, and you probably aren’t either.

2. Individual encryption offers a new level of protection I am willing to bet you just don’t have now. This is the difference between having one password to access all of your files, versus having individuals passwords (keys) assigned to every single file.

3. Fast access and self-populated tagging allow you to easily find what you’re looking for in record time. This is a huge vantage point for me. I hate feeling like I’ve wasted time, especially on days when I really don’t have time to waste.

Work Smarter

Working smarter, now and in the future, includes allowing technology to work hard for you, and taking advantage of the multi-layered protection you can easily tap into. Losing, unintentionally deleting, corrupted files… make these a thing of the past.  If you are ending your year overwhelmed and unfocused, your New Year’s Resolution might be best to involve getting organized once and for all.