Want Better Relationships? There’s An App For That

It’s true that technology has connected humanity like never before, but the polarity to that connection is a level of disconnection as we walk around with our heads down, absorbed into our phones. However, what if there was one app which actually could support us to digitally deepen our connections?

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This is one of those tips which has proven to be so effective that I just had to share it with you. I was a very early adopter of this technology, I think perhaps all the way back to 2008 actually. And what I noticed was that no matter where the other people were in the world that I was connecting with through this app, we started to really deepen our relationship.

I pretty much went on a mission to get everyone I knew on to this app. Then it started to branch out of my personal life, into my business life. I was running teams all around the world with such effectiveness it was stunning. It also had an added benefit of massively decreasing my inbox, which is a very good thing when you are producing a film and getting bombarded every day by legal emails and you actually convert your attorney to an evangelical user of this app. And as I embark on my mission to retire from email forever, Voxer is the app that makes this possible.

Then I met Melissa, and of course I had to get her on here too. But there was an issue… Melissa had Whatsapp and was convinced that there was nothing better than Whatsapp, and didn’t want another thing she had to check. But after four and a half years using this particular app, she is in some ways even more obsessed with it than me. You want to talk to Melissa? Don’t SMS her, don’t email her… Voxer her.

That’s the name of the app, Voxer. We were driving along yesterday and talking about how we have noticed those of our friends who are on Voxer, we have a deeper connection with. Voxer is basically like a walkie-talkie where you send voice notes to each other. Yes, you can send text, photos, videos, GIF’s and all that jazz, but the power in Voxer is getting your fingers off the keyboard and talking.

I know what you are probably thinking; but iMessage and Whatsapp have voice messages. Yes, they do, but they are not the same. I will try and explain the difference but really you won’t know until you get on Voxer and try it yourself. First of all, the voice notes come through live. The other night I was at dinner showing one of my bromances, James Colquhoun, and doing my best to convince him that it was different and way better for connection than Whatsapp, when my mother and father starting voxing me from France. Their names lit up in green, so I clicked on them and there they were, live from France.

Now of course you can playback a message if you miss it live, and you don’t often listen to many messages live, but there is something about this format that just feels way more real. And what’s nice, actually James pointed this out, is that it stops people from talking over each other. You let them talk, then you talk. How often do we have that level of presence in our real-life conversations?

Perhaps that’s the real beauty in it. An app which actually delivers a level of mindfulness. Now that said, you can in fact speed up messages, so if you have a really long one, or just that person who always leaves long messages, you can speed it up to double, triple or even quadruple speed. And trust me, in business this can be a godsend.

On that note, Melissa and I run all of our businesses over Voxer. The team knows not to email us unless totally unavoidable. Some groups we have are just two or three people, while we even have one group with hundreds of people in it, just for one way announcements.

So that’s it for today. A simple power tip which can drastically reduce your time in your inbox and take your relationships to a new level. Nothing beats face to face, but this could be the next best thing.

And as I mentioned before, I have now retired from email. I am fine tuning the system as we speak, but when I feel like I have perfected it I am going to do an episode on how you too may be able to quit email for good. Yep, it’s possible, and it freaking rocks.

I would love to hear from you, so please tag me @iamnickbroadhurst on social media. Please also leave me a comment below (I read every single one!). And if you could take a minute to leave me a review on iTunes I would be very grateful. Tell me what you want more of! I am at your service.

P.S. Always listen to your intuition (and your doctor or practitioner) before trying any new health practice.

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