The APP to USE to Get Your LIFE & BUSINESS More ORGANIZED!

Hi, I'm Evan Carmichael, your friend in all things entrepreneurship. Today I'm going to be talking about how I use Evernote to organize my life. I've created a couple videos on Evernote and keep getting asked questions, so today I'm specifically going to look at how I organize my notebooks and the type of information that I put in here, and hopefully you can learn from the structure that I use. So I'll go through each one in a little bit of detail. The first one is book. So here I'm working on a book and I'm sharing, just dropping in different notes. So these are quotes I'm gonna use, here are some ideas I'm gonna use. And the, the, what I love using Evernote for is just dumping information that I want to have available to me on any device. So if I update it here, I'm on my office computer right now, it'll show up automatically on my laptop, I can pull it up on my phone, and so wherever I am I have instant access access to all of my notes. If I'm just using one computer and I don't need access anywhere else, then, then it's fine just to use a series of Notepad files, I guess. But I find this, this super helpful, and it's easy to do a search up here for any note that I'm looking for just by keyword, and I can find it. So I've created different notebooks based on different projects that I'm working on. So book is, is the main book project, I guess, that I'm working on. Then business notes are a variety of different things that I keep coming back to that relate to my business. So New York, this is an agency that I'm working with and some projects we're working on, a radio show, webinar, book. Some, when I talk to them on the phone, I usually write down my to-dos. So I have to go to New York in early June. I have to book a couple times for them. And when they give me notes or things that I need to remember, again, on various devices, I can pull it up from anywhere. So this is about a radio show. That I'm, that I'm going to be hosting and how to go about doing it. Webinar process. This is something that I've started to do, and it's how to get things promoted through Google+. So I started doing it, and I found a great article here that, that helped kind of set you up. And I only do this once a month, and so I found that I was forgetting what I was doing every month. So I just recorded the process and put it down here. So every time I create a new webinar, I can just refer to my list I know what I have to do in Dreamweaver, in my newsletter software, on Google+, on Facebook, YouTube, my email software again, and on Twitter. And there's more ideas here if I need to. So whenever I come back to this at the end of every month, it's not starting from scratch again. I've made a process of what I have to do. I'll also clip articles that I find interesting. So one of the things I do is I work with big companies who are trying to promote to small businesses. And there was a series of articles in the New York Times that was showing, you know, how big companies can help small companies. And so this is helpful for me in the sales process when I'm talking to some of these bigger companies on what they can do as well. So showing some best practices. So anytime I find an article that I like, I can also clip it and save it to my folder. And it's easy to refer to it whenever I need to. I can pull it up on my phone if I'm meeting them, or my iPad. And quickly show them. So that's my business notes. I put the stars at the, the tops just so that they'll rank at the top, 'cause I use these sections a lot. And so it's easy to refer and get quick access to them. When I'm meeting with my team, I should have something in here. So Adis and Gretchen are people on my team. I can click on and see, now these are some of the programs we have going on. Whenever we have our meeting, I can just quickly update what we're doing this month, any to-dos that we have to do. And again, you know, really great way for me to refer to. And if I'm meeting him at my— if I'm talking, talking from my office, it's easy. If I'm on the road, I could pull it up on my laptop, or if I'm really on the road, I can pull it up on my phone. And it's easy to be able to have our meeting and take notes, and then the to-dos and updates are automatically on all my devices whenever I need to. I find that really helpful. And just a series of notes and ideas that I have, you know, my big ideas list, other business ideas that I'll add to as I come up with different things that I want to do for my business. Big brain dump of things that I want to do, as I'm sure we all have as entrepreneurs. Personal notes, this is just a list of things that I want to do personally or things that I found interesting that I want to check out. This is a line dancing night in Oshawa. This is a Chinese song that I was learning the lyrics from. Cineplex, I got a free popcorn, and so I saved this in my Evernote, and then I could just quickly pull this up on my phone when I went to Cineplex, and they could scan that barcode, and I can get my free large drink. And so, you know, whatever it is, Things I don't remember. This was a drink from a TV show that I saw that I wanted to try out. So just different things that I wanted to try and remember, and so I just saved it to a personal folder. Business receipts. This is why I got started using Evernote, and basically my year-end is in the middle of the year, and so I'll divide up my receipts. I used a program called ScanSnap by Fujitsu, like in all my receipts and automatically pulls them up here. And here is a parking ticket that I got that I paid for, and so $5. So I can throw away the piece of paper itself and I have everything done electronically, so I can, I can always pull it up whenever I need to. And you can also do full-text searches if you ever need to. So if I pulled in parking, it see that it's pulling in this parking receipt here, and there was another one from earlier on in the year, I guess, as well. And so if you're ever doing a search, you need to find something, it's a lot easier to find it through a search full text than it is to look through a shoebox or look through photocopies or whatever it is. And so I've saved a lot of time. I've on my life from being able to quickly find whatever receipt I'm looking for and also not have stacks of paper. So I've really gone paperless here. I use it for my agreements too. So this is a non-disclosure agreement that I had one of my customers sign. And again, instead of keeping the full paper copy, I can scan it in and I can have it be pulled up here whenever I need to. And again, I could search. If I was looking for him or any of the, the non-disclosures, I could type in on this non-disclosure. You see it's popping up here and a bunch of other non-disclosure agreements that have been signed and faxed in. So I always record these things, scan them in, they're saved automatically to Evernote, and then I can delete the actual files themselves and throw them away. And if I ever need to get access, just do a quick search. I used to do it for business cards, but I don't really collect business cards anymore. But you can scan in their business cards, see what, you know, keep their information. If you ever need to find them, just put the person's name in. Now everything's kind of online, so don't do it as much. Government documents, this is the last thing that I kept on to before actually shredding. But you can, if you need to, get any hard copy of a government document back. So I scanned all my tax returns and all that stuff in, income returns, corporate documents, anything that needs to be filed with the government is automatically saved in here. So again, I could do a quick search to find it. So that's all my business stuff, and again, it was the main reason why I started, but we've expanded since then. Family receipts, same kind of thing. I recorded all the stuff that I spent with my family. All these various receipts. And again, if I ever need to find something— so let's go here and let's go look for, I don't know, Home Depot. These are all my Home Depot receipts. So what did I buy here? Doesn't say the item. Anyway, if I ever need to find a receipt, I can pull it up here. I could search for it, easily find it. Pull it up on my iPhone or Samsung or whatever, or my iPad. They could scan that barcode and I can get a refund on it without ever having to keep that receipt anymore. So just get the receipt, scan them in, easy to find access to them through here, and, um, you know, get rid of the actual receipt itself. So going paperless at home as well has helped. Memories— this is something new that I've just started doing, so I don't have a lot of information here, but the idea is is trying to turn memories like cards that you get, instead of chucking them if you ever need them, you know, we have these stacks of paper that what do we do with? At least I did. Boxes full of memories that sometimes it's nice to have the original, but a lot of times a digital copy is great and you can print it out whenever you need to. So here's an example. I took my son to Seattle to see a baseball game and it's a first ever game, and they gave us this certificate. And so, like, is this something he's ever going to be interested in or not? Like, he, he's— he was born in 2009, so am I going to save this for 20 years and then give it to him? You know, who knows? So at least there's a digital copy here. It's full color. I can print it off for him if he really likes it, and it doesn't take up any space really beyond just some space on my computer. But I'm not collecting stacks of boxes So this is something I'm slowly working on, adding new memories and creating different folders for the years. You see, I don't have a lot in here, so I haven't done a great job on it, but it's something that I'm planning on doing. Um, and again, easy to find either by the year or by doing a search. I could type in Seattle and this would show up. Recipes. I am not a huge cook. Um, yeah. But I thought it'd be cool to try out a few things, and so when I'm on a website and I find something interesting, I can always save it here. This is something that I want to try out. It's making your own protein bars at home, and so it's from this website that I basically just clipped, put it in here, and it's, uh, No Meat Athlete, uh, Ultimate Homemade Protein Bar Formula, and it gives you a formula for what to do to create your own protein bars and different options and how to make it. And so one of these days I'm gonna, I'm gonna try doing this. This one was for a garlic dip. So if you find something interesting, I just kind of clip it here and put it under recipes. So again, I'm not too active on that, but something interesting. Uh, salsa. I'm very active in the salsa world and do a lot of dancing and teaching and DJing. One of the things I do is I teach a class called the Stud Class. And so, um, you'll see different folders. I've taught 5 different versions of it already, and I like to keep notes on what I've taught each year so I don't teach the same thing the next time around. So I'll make notes on what I taught that class and scan it in, and then I— again, I don't have to save this file. And then I can go to Stud 2 the next year and see, you know, what songs I use and what I taught and go through that every year. So make sure that next the next year I don't do the same program. So just a great way to organize your notes and again all full-text searchable if I need to. Um, TO places to check out. These are things that are in the city. TO is Toronto. Places I want to check out that I find interesting. Um, I love reading a blog called BlogTO. It basically highlights different things that are happening in the community. And so this is a saltwater pool that opened up that I want to check out. This is a community center that there's a bunch of new stores and restaurants that have opened up out of shipping containers that looked interesting that I want to check out. This is from BlogTO, is a restaurant from Tokyo, and just some information on it here. This one I've gone to, so I marked it as winner. It was really good, had some really good ramen in Little Italy part of Toronto here. And so again, I'll just clip it from the web as a reminder. And if— I don't know, so I don't know about you guys, but sometimes I find myself thinking, what should I do this weekend? Or what should I do tonight? And you're kind of at a loss for things to potentially do. So I'll look at my Evernote folder and see what I've saved. And so maybe I'll go check out this community center with all the, you know, the stores and the shipping containers, or I'll check out this other new restaurant, or go for a saltwater pool swim. And I can either save it with a winner or delete it if I don't like it. And so again, something that I find helpful. And again, it's all available on your phone. And if you're trying to find the place, you know, usually I'll write down the address and put a map in here as well so I can quickly pull it up on my phone when I'm close. And in vacation, I've used it a lot for as well. Let's pull up one trip here. Here. So, uh, this was a cruise that I did and what I did was for every city. So this is Ensenada. I would go to, uh, I think it's a TripAdvisor and pull in some of the things that I liked from here and give it as an option. And, uh, so put pictures and what it's all about. And usually they give you some kind of map there. So I'll just have to go find where these places are. And I find this super helpful again because I can pull it up on my phone when I'm walking around. And when we're thinking about what to do next, I've already done all the research and pull it up. We could talk about it over dinner. I could share my hotel information. So again, I could pull it up anywhere. So we stayed at the Renaissance in Long Beach. Shuttle information, how to get to and forth. This was a Best Buy, so we bought a GPS. We wanted to buy a GPS system, and so I pulled it up at the hotel on my computer, did a quick Google Map of how to find the place because we didn't have a GPS, and I popped it into my iPad. I popped it into Evernote, then I could pull it up on my iPad and quickly find out how to get to the closest Best Buy so we had a GPS. So lots of different ways to use it. I've kind of classified it by priority projects, things I'm interested in, Things I refer to on an ongoing basis with the 3 stars so they show up at the top. My book is like my project, business notes, personal notes, and then things that I use ongoing: my business receipts, family receipts, memories I'm trying to save, recipes I'm interested in, my teaching, my dancing, places to check out in Toronto, and when I go on vacation. And so I found it really helpful. I keep finding new ways to use Evernote. And really, I just think of it as a, as a place to dump stuff and keep a running tab on different projects that I'm working on, and then quickly be able to access it from any location that I'm at. And that's really one of the big things that makes a difference for me. If I find that I'm going to need to access this file from multiple locations, and especially when I'm mobile, then I'm popping into Evernote because it's the fastest way to get access to that information. So hopefully that helped with all you guys who are having questions about how to organize your Evernote. It's definitely not the only way to do it. I'm sure there's a lot of other fun, creative ways to use it, and again, I'm always finding different options for it too. But if you guys like this video, you want to see more similar ones, please give it a like below, a thumbs up. I love seeing those come in. And if you have a specific question about Evernote, how I use it, I'm happy to do another video and kind of drill down a little deeper. So feel free to leave those in the comment section below. I always read those, and even if you just like the video, leave a comment too. It really makes my day seeing those come in. So thank you guys, and I'll see you on the next episode.