44: How To Organize Your Business With Trello

Welcome to the Course Creators MBA podcast. I'm your host, Destiny Kopp, and in this podcast we're talking about actionable tips to grow your online course business. But before I begin, I want to let you know that this episode is sponsored by my Course in a Box program which helps you create your revenue generating course in less than a week. Course in a Box is on the AppSumo Marketplace at a special deal and the link for Course in a Box on apps to is in our show notes. And today I'm talking with Kate Goster and we're going to be chatting about how to organize your business with Trello, even if you constantly lose everything. And Kate is the person, if you have 15 tabs open right now and you never wear socks that match, she is the productivity lady for you. You will see Kate's zone of Zenius is an organization and in fact she's a wild child, creative copywriter, torrent, course creator who kept missing deadlines, skipping over crucial steps in her launches, and lived in a consistent state of digital clutter. It wasn't until Trello entered her life as a solopreneur that things finally started to come together. Think about it. Never missing emails, actually finishing up paid products and publishing and promoting her podcast inbox besties every single week, even when things got crazy. Kate, I'm so excited to chat with you today. Thanks so much for joining me.

I'm so excited to be here. So normally, like it said in the lovely intro that you had for me, usually I talk about like email marketing and sales psychology and mindset and all this, but like, Trello has really been like the backbone of my business. Like when a hundred percent, it is what I outsourced first. Shoot. I always say that Trello was my VA for the longest time and that.

Was actually one of the first questions I had for you. I know that people and I knew you when I first met you. I knew you for your email marketing. I think I bought one of your email marketing courses and I know you're, you know, you've done a lot of copywriting. How did you actually get into productivity and organization?

So it was out of sheer necessity and will. So I am not the type of person that has like color coded binders and a label maker. And like, even if like I do get into like one of those spurts, because most of us naturally, like disorganized people will have like, you know, a cool, I'd say like three days where like we're all super like hyper organized. But it's not the way that my brain was wired at all. And so I tried Asana, tried ClickUp, tried, like, everything out there and even, like, airtable. And it wasn't until I found Trello that it just made sense for my brain. And I'm like, other people who are super uber creative, like, I am, who are always late for things, like, I said, don't wear socks that match. Like, I think they need to know about this. And even though this isn't my. My vertical or my niche, I was just talking to my audience about it and, like, letting them know, like, you know, these are the results that I'm getting. Like, my traffic was going up, my sales were going up. Like, I just felt better. I was getting more opportunities. And I'm like, I think it's because my back end is managed. Like, do you guys want these Trello boards? And they're like, yes. So that's how it started.

So I'll have to admit I'm kind of a closet organized type person. Like, I'm the type of person, when you go into my closet, everything is, like, in its own spot. And you go into my kitchen. I have all this, like, organizer stuff in my kitchen. So this kind of stuff really, really geeks me out. Even my, like, computer files, I keep them pretty, pretty organized. But tell me a little bit, because I have tried. I've tried airtable. I'm not familiar with ClickUp, but I have. I mean, I'm familiar with. In terms of. I've heard about it, but I've never used it. I've used Asana, I've used Trello. So tell me what makes Trello different from those other platforms?

Okay, so I think one is that it's a very visual medium. So the way that Trello is set up is you create. They used to call them teams, but they are transitioning into calling them databases. So just so you guys know, the vernacular may or may not change when we're listening to this episode. And essentially, you create boards there so you can have something like launch board. And the simplest way to sort of set your board up would be something like to do, doing and done. So as you're doing a task, you can visually, like, move over the card so you get that, like, instant gratification. Or you can create a little checklist and get. And get that instant gratification that you're doing things. And then really quickly, at a glance, you can go ahead and see what still needs to get done. So what's really nice about Trello is because, like, I Said we've tried utilizing like, ClickUp and stuff, and you've got to go through like 80 different menus and, like, everything is just so complicated. And I'm not a very linear thinker, but I like the reward of Trello. I like the visual aspect. I like the fact that I can so easily drag a picture, drag a PDF, it lands on a card, and now I can't lose it because it's right there.

So I love that. So in, you know, I have. I have Trello, and I have used it for certain things. I love Trello. I like the boards that you're talking about because I think I'm a visual person. Also, tell me some of the projects that you've put in Trello, and how have they helped you accomplish some of your business goals? Like what you mentioned, you know, increased sales increase, you know, maybe it's traffic to your website. Tell me a little bit about how that helped you accomplish those goals.

I could talk about this forever. I don't want to say everything, but it was really sort of everything. So the way that I sort of set everything up and the way that I like to think about entrepreneurship, especially when it's just you, or maybe even you in a va, is that you need to think of your business as having on like your CEO hat. Sometimes I call it a sombrero, but your CEO hat and then like your worker bee hat. So the CEO needs to tell a worker bee, which it's technically you, what to do. And when you're trying to figure out what to do and actually trying to do it at the same time, there's a disconnect in your brain because your brain doesn't work that way. And so that's how you sort of skip steps and things aren't working out or you're missing stuff. So basically, CEO Kate can come in and I can think to myself in this space, what is every single step that I need to do to say, create a blog post? And you can put in any type of content here, guys. It can be podcast, it can be YouTube videos, it could even be a Facebook Live. And so what you will find, and this is how it kept me not only organized, but really motivated, is that to write a blog post. That's not one activity on a to do list where on an asana, for me, it was because I didn't break it down to subtasks. But that's neither here nor there. To write a blog post, you need to create the idea, you need to write an outline, you need to Maybe you don't want to do that, but you actually need to write the thing. You need to get it edited, get it proofread, make sure that you're linking, get your images in there, make sure that your SEO is on point, create those, share images for it, set your feature photos. Make sure you've got a freebie in there. Like, there are a million steps. So when you were constantly looking at just a plain old to do list, and it says write blog post, and you've been looking at it for three days and you're mad because it's still on there, you don't realize that maybe you have done like 20 out of the 25 steps to get it done. But with Trello, you. You can create a card that's a template. And now every time that you want to have a new blog post, you just hit duplicate. And now it's like, okay, I might not have finished my blog post in three days, but, like, I'm almost done. I only have three more little things to do. And so it keeps you motivated, so that way you will keep going. So the first thing that I had tackled when it came to Trello was the podcast and the blog post. So I literally sat down from, like, like I said, every nitty gritty detail, and I made it into every Trello. The way that tasks sort of move around are little cards. So I decided that every episode had its card, and then inside those cards, it had a checklist. So I even went so far as to break it down to, like, you know, pre production. So that's, you know, creating the idea, outlining the talking point, all that sort of stuff, and then actually, like, recording it, making sure that, like, it was getting put to Dropbox, that it was edited, that the show notes were done. And so when you map out all of those steps, it just, it makes you feel way more accomplished in a day. And so that's where I think that it mentally sort of helped. And now I wasn't constantly searching for, like, the COVID art or even, like, affiliate links, because I would make sure on my board for the podcast that I had a card in that sort of top left hand corner that said assets. And it was a link to all of my affiliate links that I needed. So it just made everything so much fun, faster and easier to find. I always said that Trello wouldn't forget. It wouldn't forget things. And then, you know, you can set your due date, so then it puts it into your Google Calendar, and it just, it just made it so much more Pleasant. So much more pleasant.

So does it. And I, I don't know this about Trello. Does it automatically load those due dates into your Google Mail?

No. So you need to. I'm trying to think. It's not. They have little like add ons. If you call like almost little apps for your Trello boards. And we can talk about some of the ones that I really enjoy a little bit later on. But essentially what will happen is even without the calendar, they're called power Ups on. You should be able to go into your Trello account and get a. For each individual board, it has like its own little. They call it like an Icalin link. So it can either link to your Google Calendar, it can link to your Apple Calendar, you can have one of the links to Outlook. Again, I'm an Apple person, so I don't know what Microsoft uses for its calendar, but you can have it linked to that. So that way anytime you set a due date in Trello, it will automatically set a due date on your actual big calendar as well.

I love that. And I learned something new every day.

Yep. So you just need to, you need to do that one tiny little step. So you import it in. This is for Google Calendar, because most of us are Google Calendars. If you've ever added a Google Calendar to your own, it's like you just goes like, add Calendar. You hit the plus button, you put in a little code that Trello gives you and then it'll go ahead and like, oh, you know, my podcast episode is, you know, due on Thursday. Better go see what I need to have done for it. Or, oh, it's already set and done. Yay me.

Oh, I definitely need to do that. I didn't even know that existed. And I'm sure that you've used this. I know you have online courses, so I'm sure you've used this system to create an online course and even launch it. Tell me a little bit more about that and how you've used it to create your. Create your revenue generating courses.

Excellent. So this is two separate boards. So we'll talk about course creation first.

Okay.

So I love creating courses utilizing Trello because. And I know that you teach this, you know as well, you sort of have to do that brain dump of things that you're going to include in your course. And then a lot of people will tell you to use like note cards. And like, I have no problem with like writing things out. But again, I lose things. I have two young kids. I do not have the sheer table Space to have a whole desk with all these note cards on it and them to stay there for any long, extended period of time. It's not going to happen. What I do have is a trello board. So every single idea that I have will get its own unique card. You can set up little columns so like we talked about before, how you can have like doing to do done. But you can set up little columns that are sending like you know, module one, module two, module three, you can even just have that one column and you can rearrange your card. I always have an extra or a nice to have or like supplemental category. So I might be like, oh, like I want to talk about like this in the course and this in the course and this in the course. But you know, course creep is a real thing, right? So I'll sort of shove that card over there. I can add a little sticker to it if I wanted to. I can give it a little fun visual label just to draw some attention to it. So I really love it for that brain dumping phase sort of first. And that's the way I have my column set up. So then once I actually have like, okay, this is going to be the structure of the course. This is how I'm going to do it. Because I can't outline in a Google Doc. My brain just doesn't work that way. But, but with trello cards I can sort of outline where I want to go then from there once I sort of have where the course looks like it. And I'm sure this is overkill, but it's the way I like to do it. I'll then go ahead and I'll duplicate the trello board. So I've got one that's just sort of like this is going to be the structure of the course and then I have what I call my working board. And so then now I can go ahead and I can assign due dates to things. Like, okay, I decided that in module one I'm going to have these five lessons. The goal and outcome of these, you know, each lesson is this. Each lesson is going to have a worksheet. So now I can have a checklist on there to make sure that I can give it a due date. Like okay, I can see at a glance that I need to make sure that the worksheets are getting done for lesson two and three. But like everything else is done and recorded. So I will have one that says outline. If I'm going to outline it, usually it's slides, proof slides. These are all checklist Items again, I like to go really granular because my brain needs that reward. So it's easy to see but it's nice to get granular. And then it will be like, you know, you get the slides back, record, edit, upload, you know, workbook, proof, upload, workbook, like all those sort of check things. So every lesson will now have its own little card. It can have its due date, the checklist items. Because this is a big thing. If you want individual checklist items like say record lesson and upload lesson to have its own separate due date on the checklist, you're gonna have to pay for the bigger version of Trello. But for what I found, for most people, as long as they have like lesson one due date is Friday, they'll just go in and be like, oh, do I still need to do this video or do I need to do that? So I don't think that you necessarily need to get that granular though some people do like it. But as a solopreneur, it's not like you're assigning tasks to anybody else but yourself. So. So you're usually pretty good with that. And so that's the way that I'll go and I'll see all my checkboxes and I'll be super excited again. I won't forget to make a worksheet. I'll even go so far as to. Once a worksheet is created, depending on what level of Trello you have for most people you can get Trello Gold. I think it's trello.com gold. They don't advertise it, but it is like five bucks a month. And I think that it is really powerful for what you need. So I'll go and I'll drag my PDFs on there. Granted I know that they're in a Google Drive somewhere. I host all my stuff on Podia. So like yeah, they're gonna be in Podia, but I just like having all of it together very easily, very visual. And then for my launches I will map out my launch plan. So we have a couple of different launch boards that I've created, ones that are sort of webinar based, ones that are challenged based. So then you would do like the same thing. Like okay, like what is sort of that pre launch content. Okay, I'm going to do this, this nest. I'll even go as so far as to plan out like my social media. Sometimes I'll drag in the image, I'll write like the quote on the quote card. So again I Can see everything. I can have links to the Google Docs that have the emails. I can make sure that even though the emails are written, that they're actually like scheduled, an activecampaign and things like that. You know, if I'm gonna do a webinar, there's a lot of parts to a webinar, right? Like you've got to, you know, create the landing page, create the thank you page. If your software doesn't have a calendar button, you've got to create the calendar button. You've got to create that welcome email that gives it to people. You've got to create your slide deck and your content for it and make sure your tech is set up. And again, it's all of these things that you could very easily forget or be like, did I actually send people that email? Yeah, I send that email because I see right on here, I wrote it and it's scheduled, so I'm good.

And I like what you said earlier about getting granular. Not only does that help you not to miss any important deadlines, but also gives you that sense of accomplishment when you can go hit that complete button or you know, basically knock it off and say, you know, this is done. There's something in your brain that just goes off and you feel like, you know, ta da, that's done. I don't have to worry about it anymore.

Exactly. You can get granular without being overwhelmed. And that was one of the biggest things that I didn't like about ClickUp is that when you try to get granular with that, it gets too granular and like you literally can't find anything and you can't see anything at a glance. Where with trello, even though you get really granular in your checklist, it's really easy. Even if you create columns up at the top, that's like record video, video recorded, video uploaded and, and you physically move that lesson card along. You can go that way. So then when it's done, like, it's just like, oh, okay, so I see that I already have, you know, lesson four and five. They're recorded, but they need to be edited. You know, 2 and 7, they're already set. It's over there. I like the quickness of being able to go big picture, little picture in like two seconds.

So let me ask you this. So some people out there that might not be as organized as, you know, some of us, like myself, I was going to say they might have it on their New Year's resolution or goal in 2021 to get organized and, you know, take control of that aspect of their life, especially in their business. What best advice would you have for them?

I would say, one, cut yourself some slack. Because a lot of it is that mindset of, oh, I'm always a disorganized person. Oh, I can never get this. Oh, nothing sticks. I would say that you are going to. Even though I'm a huge advocate for Trello, you're going to need to try on all of those project management systems for a little while to see if it works. I wanted to love Airtable because it's so powerful. It had too many bells and whistles and I got distracted and nothing got done. Trello was simple, yet had just enough features that could really, truly work for me. So, one, I would say test out different things, realize that you are not broken. Like, it's not you. It's just like your systems, you're starting from scratch. So call yourself some slack is number one. Number two, after you find the one that you like, which again, I'm partial to Trello, then pick one process, usually one habitual thing, if you will, in your business, to sort of break down. So again, I started with my piece of content. It was my podcast episodes for you. It could be those blog post episodes, it could be a Facebook Live series that you do and then go from there. And then it's like, okay, so once you have all like the minutiae things and now you can't forget, because Trello can't forget. Now all of a sudden, every time you have a great blog post idea, you've got a system to put it into. So. So it's like, oh, now I know all of a sudden what I have coming up down the road. And I'm not just last minute scrambling for something and some episode. It's like, oh, no, this week I need to make sure that I schedule an episode about open rates, because that's what Trello is telling me to do. So that's what I'm going to do. So pick one of your processes and go from there. Maybe for you, you're pretty good about getting your content out on time. Or maybe for your own business, it doesn't matter. Then start on those revenue generating activities like you said. Start using it to map out your course, to set your due date, to make sure that you're actually scheduling things for your launch. Heck, you can even use pictures of your Trello boards, like tease out the course that you have coming, like, you know, pixelate the board and be like, ooh, something special. Is coming and it'll be fine. So start with one thing. Usually people go with a content calendar. You can always start with a goals board. But I feel for most people, if you are, I don't want to say a lot of us that are disorganized don't like to plan too far in the future. But sometimes because we're so spur of the moment and passionate and we listen to our intuition, trying to plan out the next 90 days is like daunting. And it's just like, but what if this happens? What if this happens? But I feel starting with your content or a paid piece of content like a course is a great Trello board to start with.

I love all that advice. And let me ask you this. I know you have other, other people that work with you. Has having a system like the Trello system helped you work better with your team?

It did 100%. It does. So like I said, depending on the different levels of Trello, like, again, no tool is perfect. Spoiler alert. We did, as the team got bigger, we did have a little bit of issues with sort of those checklist items getting them actual due dates. But what was really nice about it is that everyone could see what they were responsible for. So we could still tag people and checklist items. People could see what other people had done because Trello will update in real time. So we also one of the add ons for Trello that they have is their automation tool called Butler. So like I on the free plan I think you have, you can use a couple automations that they have, but on Gold you can use pretty much everything they've got. So like I had it when I did hire a team that after I checked off everything having to do with audio for the podcast for Inbox besties, it automatically moved it over to the column that said ready for editing and it tagged my podcast editor. And I also had it where I would put in my audio file on Dropbox and then I would link the Dropbox to the card so she has everything that she needs. So then it's like, okay, when her part's done and it goes to our social media manager to create the graphics. Now all of a sudden they have a car that's got all of the contacts that they need the URLs for things. Our podcast editor at one point was making some graphics. Now the social media person, they get tagged because they got moved over there, the due date gets changed and it's just, it worked out so well for us that way. So well.

So that is that is perfect example of why you need systems like Trello or Asana or whatever you want to use when you have. When you move from that solopreneur type situation that you might be in today to hiring others, whether it's a VA or anybody else on your team. Like your podcast editor.

Exactly. Oh, okay.

I didn't want to interrupt you there. I know we have a new promotion coming out called Back to the Business. Back to Business bundle. You want to tell us a little bit more about that?

Sure. And ironically, if you guys want to run a free bundle like we're doing, you all can get a free board for it. For Trello, of course. So the Back to Business Free bundle is basically, I always say it's worth for two weeks. I twist the arms of some of the best, brightest, smartest, like destinies online business owner pals that I have that are also all dedicated to help people with online courses and digital products. And I get them to give me some of their best stuff completely for free for two weeks. So essentially, if you guys are listening to this, between February 22nd and March 5th, if you head over to backtobusiness bundle.com it'll ask you for your email address. Once you get that, then you'll be able to go to our gift claim page and you can get amazing courses templates. I'm giving away 30 newsletter templates completely for free. You click the I want that button, it brings you to my landing page. You sign up for it. It's not like we are sharing your email address with everyone. Um, the only thing is you only have until March 5th to claim all the prizes that you want. Destiny has an amazing one about Facebook ads. I know that it is like it's already a super fan favorite. They, they love everything Destiny in the Back to Business bundle. Like I said, it's for two weeks. Um, we have Kristen Miller who gives away one of her smaller products about like starting summits, which is fantastic. We have a gift about mindset. We have one that I think you guys will really like. If you're into Trello. I give away some Trello boards, but I have another one of my colleagues who she is giving away her like mastering Gmail and Google course. So it's like how to maximize Gmail, how to maximize like your Google Drive folder. Like it's a really, really great course. So I think that you guys will really appreciate that one. We've got stock photos that you can get for free. We have Pinterest templates from Kate from Simple Pin media that you guys can get for free. It is quite the event. Like I said, I can only get people to give me their paid stuff for free for like two weeks. And that's what makes it so special. Nothing like a one page PDF or like a quiz or like somebody's webinar? No, this is like either it's a paid product or pulled from a signature paid product.

And we will make sure all of those links are in the show notes. So the Back to the Business bundle link will be in the show notes and and also Kate, I will link to your Trello Magic course so if anybody's interested in that, they can grab that. And where else can people find you?

Kate, excellent. So I love Trello Magic. She's such a great one. So that one is if you're like, oh my goodness, I can't even bear the thought of like breaking down everything that goes into a podcast or YouTube channel or a launch. I do it all for you in Trello Magic. So all you need to do is just hit copy the board and you're off to the races. So the best place is wherever you're listening to this right now. Search for inbox besties. That's my podcast where we talk everything about email marketing, sales, psychology, mindset. We have amazing guests on Hootin, you know, talking about social media and stuff. Well, we'll guys will see when you get over there. I am just starting to hang out more on Instagram so you can look for me. Kate, Underscore dner. And if it's after the Back to Business bundle, we'll make sure to put a link in the show notes as well. I have two years worth of email ideas because like I said, that's usually my main thing. But I feel like more people that are creative need to know about Trello and have it set up for our brains. So we'll go ahead and we'll put a link to that in the show notes as well. So now you won't have to worry about what am I doing today or what to send your email list and.

We will make sure all those links are there. Kate, thank you so much for joining us. Do you want to have one last minute thing you want to say to the listeners?

Don't get so overwhelmed and so over complicating your systems that you never end up using them. That is the biggest problem is people will procrast a plan and I need you guys to take five minutes to plan, but I need you to do 10 minutes of execution like Trello is only going to work if you do the work around it. It doesn't matter if you've got the Trello boards from Trello Magic or or if you decide to set them up yourself in an afternoon. If you are not using them and they are not set up in a way that is conducive to the way you work, it's not going to happen. So know yourself and take action.

Thank you for that, Kate Course Creators, thank you so much for joining us today. If you have any questions about Course in a box which is offered on Appsumo, please reach out to me or DM me on Instagram. I hope you enjoyed this episode with Kate. Would love for you to rate and review the podcast on itunes and or your favorite podcast platform and show us some love there. Have a great rest of your day. Bye for now.