14: Systems, Hacks and Shortcuts for Solopreneurs

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Hi, I'm Jenny Blake, your host of the Pivot Podcast and author of the book Turn what's Working for you into what's Next, which comes out with Portfolio Penguin in September of 2016.

In this podcast I talk with peak performers to reverse engineer their most successful career. Pivots interview experts on what it takes to be agile in a rapidly evolving economy and open the kimono on what happens behind the scenes of my book and business. You can learn to capitalize on risk, fear and uncertainty as the doorways of opportunity. My promise is that you will leave every episode with practical tips, tools and tactics. For show notes from this episode, visit JennyBlake Me podcast.

If change is the only constant, then let's get better at it. Here we go.

Hello everyone. Welcome to today's super special Pivot podcast on all things systems, hacks and shortcuts for solopreneurs. That was a lot of alliteration, but I'm very excited. We are my friend Alyssa Doucet and I'll introduce her in a minute. We are going to open our kimono on absolutely all the tips, tools, hacks, systems, shortcuts, you name it, that we use in our life and business. Alyssa and I have been friends since 2009 and we talk pretty often every couple days and we don't need to talk about business, but so often we end up covering what we're doing in business, what we're struggling with, what shortcuts we can swap with each other and people are often coming to us and asking these questions.

So at the end of a two hour conversation yesterday we decided, you know, one of these days we should record a call like this. And that's what today's podcast is. So I'm really excited. It's going to be a great chat and we're going to try and jam pack it with tons of useful, actionable stuff for you. So we both agree we don't just want to sit and ramble. We really want to add as much value and we hope you get a lot out of it. And of course, if you have any questions you can ask us both after you take a listen. So Alyssa Doucet is one of my very closest friends. She's the Founding editor@craftyourcontent.com She's a writer, a speaker, an entrepreneur extraordinaire, community. She has experience with community management and oh my gosh, so many things. Alyssa, welcome.

Thank you so much. I love how cool you make me sound.

It's not hard to do. I think it's pretty funny that within 24 hours of us having this idea, we had scheduled it, drafted a newsletter, you set up a Google Doc for us. We had a huge outline that we've now worked on in the last 12 hours and now here we are recording it.

I think that that's always been one of the things that was the foundation of our friendship to start. And then this ongoing kind of spiral mastermind we've developed is.

Our brains. Both work in such systematic ways that as soon as we get an idea about something, we just get everything ready and just run with it.

That's right. For those of you that don't know.

Alyssa and I met through blogging in 2009 and she had this great series on her blog called BlogCrush. BlogCrush. And she would profile different bloggers. And as soon as we found each other, we were kindred spirits online. And so we used to have Skype lumber parties where we would stay in our PJs, have our fuzzy socks on and just have coffee and Skype. And then when Alyssa first came to visit me in San Francisco, we called it our IRL slumber party. So flip it around and you get Spurl. And what I love, Eliza, is that even when we have our most casual friend conversations, I'll usually get a follow up email from you with a detailed outline of links and resources. It's so amazing. That's.

Well, I feel that it's important if we're going to be having these conversations that our conversations, even when they're short and sweet, are epic, jam packed information sessions. I need to write that stuff down because otherwise I'll forget it. It's as much for you as for me as it is for you.

Well, thank you. And for those of you listening, I have gone down the rabbit hole of astrology. This year, Jupiter is in Virgo for the first time in 12 years. Jupiter is the planet of good fortune and expansion. And Virgo is all about systems and structure and service, an organization. So, Alyssa, let's get into this. Let's roll up our sleeves. And I want to kick off by saying first of all, so it's a very fortuitous time in the stars to be thinking about this. What are your must have Oxygen tools that you use in your business? Every day?

In my business every day. I think I've recently really been deep diving into Trello. It's how I manage all of my content calendars, my clients content calendars, my team's project management. It's kind of my lifeblood to get a quick pulse of what's happening in my writing and in everyone else's. And Google Docs or Google Drive just in general. I think I constantly have Google Drive up because as we alluded to at the beginning of the show, what happens is I get ideas, I throw them up in a completely stream of consciousness, unorganized, bullet pointed list onto a Google Doc and then invite everyone in to collaborate that I need to work on with it. Whether it's a client, whether it's my team, whether it's my spiral.

It just makes it so easy to go from here's a super disjointed brain dump onto a piece of paper to here is an actual action plan of how we're going to move this project forward within 24 hours.

I think it's really interesting how you describe using Trello. So for those of you who don't know, Trello is an agile task in project management that takes after Kanban and Scrum, where there's vertical columns and then there's different. They look like sticky notes for each column. The basic version of Trello is like to do, doing, done. But people organize Trello boards in really interesting ways. So Alyssa, I'm curious, when you say you set it up as a content calendar for you or clients, what are your Trello boards?

So my Trello boards, when we set up our content calendars.

Of our columns to be the different parts of kind of, I like to think of it as a post's life from the moment of inception to the moment that it's done. So we have an entire column that's again just brain dumps of ideas and post submissions. Then it moves into writing or in process, then it moves to an approved article, then it moves to the proofing and editing rounds, then it moves to WordPress formatting, then optimization and graphics, then scheduling, then published and done.

That is amazing.

So, and the really cool thing is as you note with these different sticky notes, so each post becomes its own sticky note. Or in Trello they call them cards. And so what I really love is you can actually just pick up your card and move it to the different places. And everyone on the team understands what each of those lists mean, what their responsibilities are in regards to that list. You can schedule different team members to different cards and different assignments. For example, on my team, I have four or five proofreaders and editors. So just because someone's working on one post for my doesn't mean that they're working on proofing all of the posts that week. Someone else might be working on a completely different post. So it's a really interesting way to kind of manage everyone's workflow but be able to keep each project on its own. Trello board.

I love it.

You know, I tried to use Trello. Marisol is my director of communications for all things Jenny Blake Enterprises. Jbe we tried. We really did. And I think she may still be using Trello for her. Marisol does such a great job of staying on top of all of our recurring tasks like newsletters, social media, things that she needs to pay attention to. We send out a Monday Momentum mailer to people in the Momentum community and she never misses a thing. And I think that may have to do with Trello and her having different columns for Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly that she then moves those cards between.

Yeah, well, that's another. Oh, sorry, I was just going to say, on Trello, you can actually enable a calendar feature as well. So that in addition to just looking at the entire board at sticky notes, you then click on your calendar view and it will tell you each sticky note what the due date is for it. So that's actually also how, especially for my poor team that has to manage my site, craft your content, all of our newsletters, all of our postings, everything else, we can hit that calendar view and they can see any given week, what upcoming projects are, what Alyssa is working on, how much writing stuff I've got going on. So they can see where they need to maybe pick up on other calendars and other people.

Brilliant. Yeah. When I was using Trello, I also had my own board called JB Tasks, and then there was a marathol board. And what I would do is, as I finished something, to pass it off, you can send a card to a different board. So basically, Marisol had a column in her Trello that was called, like, delegated from Jenny. And so I would just kind of transfer a bunch of random stuff and then she would figure out what to do with it. But what's interesting is we really found more momentum with Evernote. And Evernote has this great feature where it tells you what note has been updated and we love the checklist feature and everything is in one place and we have different notebooks for next JB Newsletter Next LAC Newsletter Momentum Whatever launches we are working on, we can always see what notes have been updated. But I have to say now that we've been using Slack, we've kind of jumped ship on Evernote and now we're in Slack and we have different channels for life after college. Jenny Blake Momentum Systems Ninja Lucent I mean every project we have a channel and then we also have agenda, we have Jenny tasks, Marisol tasks, general and then like fun ideas. And I know.

My friend Adam has just had a baby and with his human Slack, there's a whole channel for like adorable breaks or something.

So you're using Slack now too, right?

Yeah, that's actually we use Slack quite differently. I use Slack completely internally on my team. One of the things I like find that's a real challenge for virtual teams is that everything is out in the open and there's no real place to.

Come together and have their own internal conversations and dialogues. You know, it's one of the nice things about being in an office. You can walk up to your co workers, cubicle office, whatever and chat with them about a project. You can go to the break room and have like that camaraderie time. And you don't get to do that as much with.

The virtual systems that are kind of open to everyone because you get nervous about what you're saying and how you're saying it and you want to always put your best self forward. So I use Slack just for a lot of ongoing internal conversation, not to manage things so much because I get overwhelmed with a lot of text and things to do that aren't super organized. So kind of the ongoing chat role of Slack overwhelms me. And since I'm kind of the one who runs the most stuff on the day, our systems are set up to be what works best for me. And then in turn how people use those systems on their own is up to them. And I like to say it's between them and their Jesus, but.

So we do all that. I actually do have a channel in Slack. Coincidentally that's an integration with Trello and it shows every time a change is made in Trello. So I basically got a notification anytime any card's been updated.

Whoa, that's cool.

Yeah, that was a total game changer on Trello. I think that's what turned the corner for me there.

Yeah.

I agree. Slack has a little ways to go as far as task management. Because even now things will get lost in the stream. For those of you who haven't used Slack, if you have even a team of two, get on it. But what it does is imagine it's like IMing or text messaging, but you could just create these different topic channels. So let me use the example Life after College and Jennyblake, Me and Momentum. So maybe that's three of our Slack channels. Well, when Marisol or I take action or make updates or we want each other to know something about what we've done on each project, we write it in the proper channel. Sometimes it is just an update. Hey, heads up or okay, back to you. Balls in your court. And what I've noticed is it is easy for tasks to get lost and Slack has a starring feature, but it's not great. I mean, ideally they'll have some way to be like send this to a checklist. But that's cool that you have Trello integration. I just love it because I do not like getting swamped by email all day. And I know that with Slack because there is a mobile app and a desktop app, I am always on top of my business. When Marisol writes, I can respond right away and I don't have to get sucked into the rest of my email inbox. And our communication is now uber organized by topic, which I love.

Yeah, it's a big thing for me to not have to. I and I think you're very similar. I live by the inbox zero principle. I know you sometimes have similar ethics.

I was like, girl, I didn't have it write down.

I could count on one hand the number of times I've hit inbox zero. So I don't really aspire to it, but I so admire that you achieve it.

I don't know if you aspire, but you go through. Because you and I talk about frequently the cycles where you're kind of trying to drill down and get things done on your inbox to quest down to. We'll go for a smaller number inbox less than I want to throw up. How's that?

Perfect. One of the best inbox tips that I learned from you that I just did a few days ago and it was a dream is using Boomerang for Gmail to delay send, sitting and cranking out as many emails as you can and delaying send so they all get sent out, let's say four days later. I did this over Memorial Day weekend because I'm a dork and maybe I'll be answering you up on a Saturday morning or a Friday night, who knows. And I did the four day delayed spend and the peace of mind over.

The next three days.

I know it was a holiday weekend, but I could hear angels singing and I was sending you gratitude through the ether that like oh my God, I just had a break for a few days because people were not responding right away. It was a dream and yet I felt like I'd gotten so much done.

Yeah, I find that in terms of batching massive email inquiries like that, you and I both have crazy inboxes.

We got somewhere between 50 and 75 on a good day, incoming emails from in the various inboxes, from newsletters and then actual people and then audience responding back on things and then inquiries from business people.

So it can get hard. It's easy for those messages to accumulate, which is why I push Slack so hard with my team and for myself is I don't enjoy having important emails get lost in that deluge. That can happen when you have 70 other things to do and you just haven't been able to clear your inbox right.

Okay, I want to insert here one of my Gmail hacks that I did pick up in my time working at Google. I don't know if the listeners, those of you listening know this, but you can sign up for a newsletter list with your email plus anything, any word that you want@gmail.com and it will still get delivered to you. So anything after the plus can be used to set up filters.

I now subscribe to newsletters with the email address jennyblakeplus readmail.com they all get to me and I have a filter that of course gets applied a yellow label that says to read and so I can quickly at a glance see in my inbox what is just to read. And I also have plus watch plus listen plus pivot plus momentum. I'm getting really into this where the emails are coming in and they're automatically filtered and labeled and so that also helps me at a glance. Of course I'll go in and manually label things too. And I use Superstars, which is in Gmail settings and I'll do a question mark when someone wants to schedule something. I'll do a red exclamation mark when something needs to be addressed within the next 24 hours. I'll star something yellow if it's a high priority or more thoughtful email reply and I'll star something blue. There's a blue eye icon for when it's a blog post or I need to Review a newsletter or something that just is like a content based email. So those are some of the ways that I try and manage the email as it's even coming into my inbox. And again, you taught me about unroll me, Unroll me. That will grab all your newsletters and put them in one email. And that has also been glorious.

Yeah, I think between enroll me I personally use SaneBox. I think it's four or five dollars a month for just the basic subscription. They refer to it, I think as a snack subscription to your SaneBox but very similar. It actually takes any email that isn't from someone that I regularly receive email from is sent to a mass mailing group of people, is a generic email address or just looks a little kind of wonky from my usual email ways and it learns about you more as it processes more mail. It actually throws all of those things into a hidden folder for me. So I don't even see them until the next morning at 6:30 when I wake up, sit down with my cup of coffee and go to look at emails. It sends me a digest daily of all of those emails that I can then either decide if I want to keep them, if I want to delete them, if I want to put them into a black hole folder that never comes into my existence again. Please note every PR pitch that I get that's really, really not good goes into a black hole folder never to see my inbox again.

Great, I love that.

And then also I love on your system with the different labels and superstars what I would do and I think you probably do just knowing your inbox. But I also then use canned responses. Oh yeah, jammed through my emails. So I thought of immediately when you said I put a blue, I think you said a blue exclamation mark or question mark when they need to set.

Up an appointment with you.

That I would immediately respond with my canned response that says that I use a system called Calendly to schedule all of my stuff, which is basically here is all of my availability on a calendar for you. Just click the time that works the best for you. I already know it's earmarked in my calendar because I've chosen what the available times are. It makes it so much easier than going back and forth and back and forth on email.

Right.

Are you a morning person or an afternoon and right.

Yeah. Part of the reason I use the question mark icon is because I don't always know the answer yet if I'm going to say yes to this thing and whenever it feels Best for my time. I wait on it, usually a few days. And I've now I'm using a secret to system scheduling link where I have calendly for momentum people. And of course I can upgrade and do this all in one or the other, I'm sure. But then I use schedule once for other calls and meetings. So calendly is for momentum, schedule once is for podcasts and other things. But yeah, having a tool like that to link to eliminates so much back and forth and it's so important and.

Well, and for people like us who travel a lot as well, there are times I don't know what continent I'm going to be on in two weeks.

When I record something. Right, That's a very good point.

Helps as well to schedule across time zones and everything else.

Yes, you don't have to calculate. That would be XPM your time, which yes, you can use time and date or what's the other one? World. World Time inverter. There you go. World time. I knew you would know that's the one I use.

Yeah.

Alyssa's heading back to Southeast Asia in the fall, so I'm sure you'll be sending that out more often.

I wanted to share. A lot of people use Boomerang for Gmail to send. That's why it's called Boomerang. You can basically boomerang a message to say, hey, I don't want to look at this now, come back to me in a week. Or let's say you are trying to coordinate for a coffee meetup and you just can't do it. And you're like, well, I'll follow up with you in a month or two. So you boomerang it. I have switched, I have to say, to follow Up CC because it has very sophisticated you have to pay a couple bucks a month. And I know by the end of this call we're going to have racked up hundreds of dollars in your monthly subscription. But Followup CC is really cool because you just forward whatever email to things like one week ollow UPCC Monday, June 16th follow up monthly at Follow Up. So there's all these keywords and ways that you can have the email get sent back to you. And so I've been enjoying that. And I didn't think I would. I thought it's the same as Boomerang. Why would I need both? And I've actually switched over to follow up.

For anyone who just heard the click that just happened, I totally just opened my pen to be able to start taking notes on things that I didn't know you were using and now feel that I should check out.

That I could go check out Follow cc. Yeah, one thing. I'll go check it out. I will say one thing I do like with the Boomerang follow up is and I don't know if this is something they recently added and I just noticed it. I've talked to a few people who also were unaware of the feature and that's the send only if no one has responded on Boomerang, which I am loving, loving, loving because you always feel like such a jerk when you send schedule something to send the next day or in two days as you were noting, you're trying to just slam through overwhelmed email inbox and then someone responds back and it either completely negates what you're doing email is about to say or it's going to now be confusing when you send yours and make it super obvious that you've scheduled your email and you're a robot that no one wants to do business with because you're not a person.

And so this click thing that you can send only if no one has responded does exactly what it sounds like. It will only send your scheduled email if no one has responded to the email thread.

I am so glad you mentioned that. Yes, that was one of the coolest features that they've added and I had no idea. So thank you for sharing that ninja trick.

I want to shift gears a little bit. I think one of the things that you and I both feel strongly about is this is a quote I picked up from the agile development world, which is each time you repeat a task and take one step toward automating it. And this relates to canned responses, which I use Evernote because I found Gmail canned responses to be a bit glitchy. But yeah, anytime I'm sending a similar message, even if it's directions on how to get to my apartment, I put it in a canned response in Evernote and Marisol and I share this folder. And sometimes I'll tag emails with Marisol. I have a Gmail label for Marisol and she knows to go in and check and just copy and modify and insert canned responses. And it's not to say I'm replying like a robot to everyone. I'm always modifying and personalizing, but there is just no need to type the same thing, I mean over and over and over again. And some people use textexpander for Mac to do canned responses or quick little shortcuts for their address or things that they're typing often. But Alyssa, I also wanted to talk about.

Just our philosophy on that and how it relates to things like our Bali, Thailand travel doc, how that came about and how we both use it in the last four or five years.

Yeah, well, I think 2012 was when I moved out to Southeast Asia the first time and was living in Bali at the Tropical MBA house. And you were my first friend who came and visited me living abroad. And so we knew we were going to Bali and we knew we were going to Thailand and wanted to do a bunch of fun, cool things. And because you and I live in Google Documents, we of course decided that we should start creating a Google document.

Of all of the things we wanted.

To do in Bali, in Thailand. Suggestions from your friends who had been to both places. Suggestions from my friends who had been to both places.

And so it started out as a document for you and I to figure out what the heck we were going to do on our epic three week quest around Southeast Asia and then turned into this really refined document as you and I now both spend a fair amount of time, at least every year or so in Chiang Mai or in Bali, of all of the things that we recommend and do and everything else, so that when people ask us because we spend so much time there, we can just send the link to this Google document that has three and a half years of our travel tips and recommendations.

Right.

I also remember, is that exactly what we did? I'm talking like I'm officially knowing. I'm pretty sure that's what we did.

That is what we did. There are two other pieces of logic that went into think. I initially set up the doc because I was going to visit you. And I had people like my friend Adam and one of my earliest yoga teachers, Ari, who had these great recommendations. And I asked them, what should I do when I'm out there? And they sent them to me an email. And their replies were so thoughtful. They clearly. It took them a week or two. Both of them. They clearly like really thought about it. And it was all these great hotels and bars and surf spots and restaurants. I remember thinking two things. One, oh no, this should not stay hidden to no one else. And then two, it's going to be really inefficient if they have to come up with this manually every time for anyone that asks them. That must get annoying for them. And so that combined with yours and my shared wish list, became this document as a way to do a favor of like, let's all just use this one Google Doc and I cannot tell you. I think probably 30 people have individually emailed me and said, hey, I'm thinking of going to Bali. Do you have any recommendations? And I'm always so relieved to say, yep, go to this Google Doc, they're all in there.

Exactly. Well and I think a lot of people as well.

Don'T realize for both of us, our recommendations, the list is so much more than go to this yoga studio or check out this bar or go to because we lived there so long. We have recommendations on different accommodations, places that we like or the best cafes to work from while you're there. All sorts of really interesting niche stuff. But it's also kind of a wish list of stuff that we wish people had told us existed and we've now found.

Because as digital nomadic type people. But that's something that it's kind of everyone knows in the community. But there's no real central place that has these things. So.

Right.

For anyone who wants to go to Chiang Mai or Bali, there now is.

And we may put together a detailed show notes. So it's going to take a while, but if you're listening and you have a pen, the URL for it is Bitbit ly capital B Bali capital T Thailand. So bit ly Bali, Thailand with a capital B and a capital T. And then you can be on your merry way scheduling your most wonderful trip to Southeast Asia.

Yes. Which everyone should do because it's a magical, wonderful place.

Yes, exactly. And now in Ubud, Bali, where I go for my just awesome yoga writing retreats, there's an awesome co working space called Hubud. Like Hub in Ubud. Hub.

Hub in Ubud. And it's awesome. It's two stories. There's coffee, there's a salad bar, there's a ton of location. Independent entrepreneurs. It's so much fun. I had the coolest. I met friends there. I did co working every day. I was on people's podcasts and vice versa. I talked to a guy working on Bitcoin. It was awesome. So you can even write this off as a business trip. Without question.

That's. It's. I was actually looking at in Chiang Mai because the same thing has been in Chiang Mai starting to pop up more and more these coworking spaces. And you are a much more social creature than I am. People give me hives a little bit. But I do like seeing people occasionally, which is a little dangerous when you're working from home all the time. People aren't generally in your apartment, hopefully without your knowledge. Or permission. So I was looking at, in Chiang Mai, a bunch of. There's like four or five new coworking.

Spaces that have opened up there.

All relatively inexpensive. Pun space is. Pun space is kind of the OG of the Chiang Mai coworking spaces. It's the most established, I think, but there's a lot opening up there too, which are super cool. I'll have to update the document in October, November when I go check some of them out.

Yeah, that would be awesome. Thank you.

Okay, Alyssa, I want to move on to you do this really cool thing at the end of your Craft yout content podcast where you do rapid fire round of questions and the person's meant to answer as many as they can in a short amount of time. I wanted to do that. I was thinking I could start by asking you about podcasting. And for those of you listening, I asked Alyssa about podcasting like every other time that we talk, I mean, and I mean casually as friends, we do not have any kind of formal mastering group. I'm always bugging her like, how did you do this?

Or how did you do that?

And it's such a mystery to me. And so, yeah, Liz, are you game if I just kind of just go rapid fire?

I am game. I'd like to preface it by saying I am so not a podcasting pro. I don't think I have ever more than 100 people who listen to any episode of my podcast. But I adore that you think so highly of my podcast.

But I'm not talking about podcast marketing. I'm just talking about how did you get to where you are now with the technical implementation? And it is an awesome podcast. So I think quality listeners over quantity.

There we go.

My first question.

I think for anyone listening who wants to start a podcast, it's kind of overwhelming. Where should they start?

The first thing I would say if you want to start a podcast is figuring out what you want to say and who you want to say it to. Because the truth of the matter is there are a lot of podcasts out there now. I think everyone that I know in my space that has been looking for new ways to get content out has decided.

At some point in time I should launch podcasts. I think John Lee Dumas from Entrepreneur on Fire has done amazing things for the podcasting world and we've all seen his success off of building a podcast. And so lots of people want to try to replicate that with their own content. So it's. It's getting very, very dangerous in the sea of sameness.

Situation wherein there's lots of other people who have podcasts. So I think the most important thing is figuring out what are you uniquely going to bring to the podcasting ocean that is going to really not only just because of marketing and listens and everything else, but.

We all want to have cool shows, we want to talk about interesting things. And bringing your unique stuff to any sort of podcast or idea or anything is going to be kind of the key to figuring out then what kind of format do you want to use? Do you want to just open up a mic and talk? Do you want to have pause?

I want to ask you these things. I want to ask you these. So to my second rapid fire question, how many people are involved in the process to get a podcast loaded for you?

Three people. Well, four people involved. So because my podcast is interviews, there's always myself and a guest that I seek out who's someone who I find interesting in the writing work that they're doing, either the writing or the publishing business. Then I send it to my podcast editor who has an entire sheet and everything that I'm sure is a later rapid fire question that I will get to at that point in time. And then it all goes to my senior editor, Kimberly, who is kind of the inherent piece of my brain that sees everything about my work, my writing, my everything that I don't see because I'm too close to the situation. So she reviews all the posts and everything else, makes sure nothing gets missed, dot, sighs, crosses, T's make sure I look good and then it gets published.

So is the first person you delegate to making tactical edits and moving things together. And then what is Kimberly doing? Is she editing the blog post? Does she write that blog post?

Yeah. So the way that my process is set up is I have an audio engineer. I just hired a new one. My old audio engineer has moved on to bigger and better things.

So I just threw up a job ad on odesk Upwork, I think it is now. That was basically everything that I wanted to have an audio engineer. And that includes she creates my blog posts, which include show notes and all of the other links to everything that gets said and whatnot. She puts that post together and then Kimberly comes in and looks at the post and makes sure that kind of from the outside perspective of I have no idea what this episode's about, does this make sense if I were happening upon this on the Internet or looking for these resources and information, is it fulfilling that task?

And what qualities did you look for in audio engineer?

I really look for people who have background in audio engineering that understand and are excited about the potential of podcasting and the medium for it to get out there and who are really also genuinely excited. I'm very big on when I hire people, making sure they're a good fit for my work and my team. So I want to have people who are enthusiastic, who are forward thinking, who take initiative and are going to. If I'm not sending them a link for something, they're going to know that they should go out and Google this new podcast editor. For example, in our document it says, you get all of my passwords from LastPass. She sent me an email saying, I've reviewed your information. I don't have a LastPass account, but.

I've gone out and googled it and.

I think I should be able to get everything set up. So. So here's the email address to send all of the LastPass logins.

Great.

Which is that initiative thing is just huge.

Yes. I know that when you hire someone and when you delegate, you create what are called SOPs. And can you tell us more, what is an SOP A and then B, what specifically does your SOP address for podcasting? Yeah.

So SOPs are standard operating procedures or processes, depending on what vernacular you want to use. It's from the Work the System books by, I believe Sam Carpenter writes Work the System. And it's basically. It's almost. It's one of the super annoying things that happens to a lot of entrepreneurs who get into the virtual space because they don't like corporate structures is eventually you come to the realization you actually have to have some structure in your business that resembles corporate for your business to work. Well, super irritating. So you create these standard operating processes, which are kind of almost like manuals for how to do a job from start to finish. So that anyone who comes onto your team should be able to get this document and be able to do that job or complete that task without having to ask everyone how to do it.

So that's what a standard operating process doc is, sops. I learned these mostly from my time working with Tropical MBA and Taylor Pearson, who are huge on this.

So. And then mine is basically just from.

Is I just open a blank Google document and hit the numbered list so that I'm writing out, you know, number by number, step by step, how something's done. And then I go through. Because I never delegate anything to anyone that I don't know how to do myself, I go through and basically do one kind of initial trial of how I want this to be done and create the process. Every time I click, every time I think, every time I do something.

Gets documented on this process so that by the time I send it to someone, they know exactly. If I lived inside Alyssa's brain, how would she want this done?

That brings up an interesting departure in our delegation systems, because there are a lot of times where I'll think, I don't want to invest the time to learn how to do this. So I will not only assign the task, but then ask, let's say Marisol, and then add how to do this to our manager manual. So as you learn it, document the process in case we ever need to delegate it out to someone else. But there are times where I just say, but I like that you have a policy if you don't delegate something you don't know how to do, so that you can always be the backup in case something goes wrong.

Yeah, I mean, I've definitely had it happen a few too many times that something needs to get done, and the person who needs to do it either isn't doing it accurately or doing it well or something happens. You know, they have a family emergency, they go on vacation, they, lord forbid, quit or leave. And if you don't understand how those things work, it can be a little up a creek if you don't have anything in place. I'm actually trying to adopt more, having stuff that isn't documented, having my team create the process docs for it.

So that the documents exist somewhere. But, yeah, it's a weird thing for me. It's probably a little control freaky, but.

I need to know how to do everything in my business, because at the end of the day, I love being able to depend on my team. They're awesome, and I can depend on them for almost everything in the business. But at the end of the day, no one loves your business as much as you do. And so you kind of have to be the one who understands how everything is done until you get to a point that you can hire a secondhand person, which you have in Marisol, that understands how everything is done.

Right. My last question about itunes. And then I'll share my lean and scrappy approach to podcasting, as evidenced by this very call. My last question, was it hard to figure out itunes and getting that set up and uploaded and yada yada.

Holy sweet God, yes.

Oh, gosh. Really? That's not the answer I wanted.

Well, I have a cheat in that. Yet again, I learned everything I need to know about podcasting. I Learned from Dan Andrews. So Dan runs the Tropical MBA podcast. Of course, when I moved to Southeast Asia, it was in large part to work with him and his team as managing editorial. Because I'm a control freak, I needed to know how everything worked on the podcast. So I learned how to do the podcast.

Figuring out how itunes works, it is pretty inherent. One nice thing, depending on who you hire as an audio engineer, I have to say I cheated my audio engineer, the first one that I hired, she fixed a lot of the itunes bugs for me because she had done a lot of podcasting with other clients.

But what bugs would there even be?

So things like.

Figuring out why.

When you itunes is a finicky system, we'll just say that. And so problems like episode one and episode three hit the feed when I first loaded, but for some reason episode two didn't, which is something that no normal human should ever have to figure out why three episodes, all published, but only two of them hit an RSS feed. Of course, I vaguely knew that it was problematic, probably a problem with the ping on the rss, but I had no idea how to fix that. Apparently you go into I use Libsyn to publish all.

People because it saves you a lot of this pain and suffering. So Libsyn is kind of a managed RSS system. It does cost, I think $15 eventually.

When you sign up and get started. But basically I do everything in Libsyn, which works kind of like WordPress. It's just a template for uploading your episodes. And Libsyn handles sending out my RSS, letting iTunes know when stuff is up, letting Stitcher know when stuff is up. And what ended up happening was because episode two wasn't hitting the right way, I just went in and re sent it, hit kind of save and publish again, and then within 20 minutes it was on itunes. Cool.

All right. I just got out my pen and paper to write down lips in.

L.

I, B, S, Y, N. It's. I would assume something about live, possibly library syndication or something is the synonym.

I don't know what the lib is for, but yeah, it will manage so much of your stuff and then you don't even have to worry about how to fix things in itunes and do XYZ and everything else. I like that. Make my life easier. I'm super lazy that way.

That's awesome. Well, thank you, Alyssa, for sharing your processes. I'm going to share a little bit about my approach to these things when I get overwhelmed, because podcasting is a great example of something that I sort of circle the pond and dip my toe in the water and it takes me a little while. But one of the biggest things I learned when I was at Google was to adopt this mindset of be scrappy. We were always saying internally be scrappy or just do this in a scrappy way, which would mean I would launch a global training program and instead of having some fancy tool for scheduling or evaluating, we would use Google forms and spreadsheets. And that is true in my business, even still. So my process, whether it's podcasting or doing more video, is one. I create an Evernote notebook. Right now I have one called Podcasting. I've had that notebook for about two years and anytime I see a blog post that's like Beginner's Guide to Podcasting, or as I ask people like you, Alyssa, what mic do you use or.

All these services, I will throw these notes into this Evernote folder so that when I am really ready to roll up my sleeves and do this for real, I already have a base of information to use that I've culled and narrowed down. And then I launched my Scrappy Pivot podcast on SoundCloud. I do not have fancy intro music. I do not have fancy outro music. But for me it was better than nothing btn to just get something up and not worry about all that yet. And I know it's not ideal and I could have more traffic if I were in itunes, but I guess I share that as encouragement that you don't have to jump from zero to uber polished overnight. And I know, Alyssa, I'm not a saying that's what you did. I know you iterate over time as well, but I'm enjoying my scrappy podcast that I will soon upload to itunes once I have more mental bandwidth after I turn the Pivot manuscript in. And the good news is I'll already have 10 or 15 audio files that I'll just have to append an intro and an outro to.

So that's kind of my jet scrappy approach. Systems wise to when I'm intrigued by something and with video same. I've been asking friends, what video equipment do you use? Who does your intro sequence or your music? And I have a little folder and then hopefully by the end of this year or early next, I have in my mind what my next steps are going to be.

Yeah, I personally love the btn. That's a new favorite acronym. I'm gonna have to adopt the better than nothing for so much stuff. I knew enough about podcasting when I Started. That's an interesting thing I think a lot of people don't consider is if you know enough to be dangerous about with something like take your stuff to that next level. I knew how to do a lot of podcasting stuff from working on tropical MBAs. So to just throw something out onto the Internet wouldn't have been serving my best purpose and wouldn't be putting my best work out because I know enough well.

And that's a great example of a strength that you pivoted on. You were doing a podcast for Tropical MBA and you then could apply all those skills to. So now you mostly had to worry about the content of what yours was going to be. And you already knew and had a comfort level with a lot of the technical system side of things.

Are you still there?

I am now.

Oh, there you go. Great. Okay.

Yeah, it's. I think it's. I say frequently to my authors, I'll say the phrase everyone always talks about, done is better than perfect, but good is better than done. So if you have the ability and the knowledge to up level on something, you know, the fact that you know nothing about podcasting and still sat down in front of a microphone and just recorded audio, that is your good. That's what you have, applying the knowledge and skills that you have. So for me, applying the knowledge and skills that I had, my good was a little bit better. Although last week I got a 17 pointed bullet pointed email telling me everything that I do wrong on my podcast.

Oh my gosh.

Definitely not anything close to. There's always ways to improve and change and grow. And I think people in your, your audience, your brand or whatever, you know, they love seeing people's progress and growth. So just jumping in and starting is always. And then having lots of friends that you can pick their brains constantly.

Right. And I guess, you know, it relates to one of my philosophies from day one with life after college, which was really emphasize quality content and be insanely helpful. And so to me, there is a part of me that says, like, who the hell cares if I have the best intro sequence if the actual meat of the podcast sucks?

Exactly.

I would rather sit here with my ghetto mic set up and it wasn't working this morning, but I'd rather sit here and deliver the very best I have to give. Even on a call like this, which I'm. My mic wasn't working. I'm now using these stupid iPhones, like iPhone headphones, but I'd rather do it. And then both of us focus on giving the best tips and tools that we can and get something out rather than not be doing any of that. Why? Because I don't have the last 15% of Polish. No. And I just believe that the content itself is worth something and I always have. But I will also say that it's part of my downfall because I don't have a massive audience. I love my community and it's very much about quality. But I've never been someone that ever emphasized too much polish or too much marketing or too much of anything that wasn't just insanely helpful content.

Yeah. It goes down to. I'm sure that you know exactly what book this is from. It's by Kevin Kelly. The thousand.

Fans, ten true clients, thousand true something.

I think it's a thousand true fans and then it gets down to 10 true clients.

Yeah, that basically I and I adhere very much to the same same principles as I'm sure no one will be surprised since we talk about them every like four days or so. But that, that yeah, you. It's much better to have a small group of people who love what you're saying because what you're saying is important than have a million people who listen to your show because the outro music is so cool. I would, I would much rather have people who give a shit about what I have to say than listen to me because I managed to make something sound good.

100%. Now question because we both know we can't prevent emails like the 14 point ramp that you got. I'm just curious, did you respond to that and if so, what's your tactic with those?

I actually did just respond this morning. It took me about a week to decompress and really taken. I'm a weird person when it comes to emails like that. In that I think a lot of people will tell you just archive them or don't even worry about them. They don't matter. People don't get you. They don't get you. That's their deal, not yours. Which I agree with to a point. But I'm someone who's always 1 looking to improve and 2 always taking in information.

Processing it. So for me, when someone offers criticism and critique, I don't necessarily take it to heart and do exactly what they tell me at all times, but I do take a lot of their.

How.

To apply it in a way that stays true to myself. So in this one I first forwarded it to my senior editor who Kimberly edits all of my stuff. I think it was the title of the forwarded email was ways for Alyssa to improve her writing.

And said to her. Here are some tips and advice criticisms from someone who received one of our newsletters and wanted to offer insight about my podcast and my writing. Can you make sure to keep an eye out on this when you're editing my work? So that was the first step is getting someone else outside my brain to be able to look at things and see when they should and shouldn't be applied. And then I just responded this morning and said, you know, thank you so much for taking the time to send me such a detailed message and then actually being quite honest and vulnerable and saying which is very true. And I'm sure anyone who's listening will understand this from listening to me. I'm not a great public speaker. I'm actually kind of an awkward human being. And so for me to do my podcast is. It's a challenge. It's very hard for me. And so her feedback gave me a lot to think about. But at the end of the day, I'm going to do my podcast my way because.

This is who I am and that's just how it's going to be. So I said that probably a lot nicer if she listens to this episode. Chill. Definitely.

Understand some of the true intentions, maybe behind some of the nicer phrasing.

But yeah, Well, I love what you said at the beginning and it's really cool to hear your approach.

About. Most people don't realize we welcome feedback because it's pretty isolating to be. I sit alone in my studio apartment all day every day. This is where I work and feedback the good and the bad. And I don't think that I don't appreciate anything mean spirited and I'm thankful, knock on wood. Not get much of that. But I recently shout out to Theo, if you're listening. Theo is this amazing guy who sent me an email and it was like, hey, I don't know if you want me to tell you this or not, but you have a typo on your about page. Here it is. And he's like, sorry if that's annoying. I wrote back and I was like, thank you. It's like having food stuck in your teeth.

Like I would.

I absolutely want to know that. This is like gold in my inbox. And then he's like, oh, okay, now that I know you don't mind, here are five or ten other ones that I caught.

I was so grateful. I was just like, theo, if you're listening, I'm bowing to you. He helped me fix so many typos and broken things because these sites are like an old creaky house. After 10 years, there's all kinds of shit that's starting to go haywire. So I was so grateful and I just want anyone listening. You can always let me know if it's a newsletter. I can't fix those typos. I'm sorry. They have to go out regularly. They usually have at least one or two. But if it's a blog post or my about page, that's the kind of stuff I always want to know.

Positive side. I had someone when I did the Speak Like a Pro virtual conference series, she said not only did her feedback email say, hey, great conference, I loved it. She said, I really liked the clothing that you chose. The colors really complemented your skin well. It was just so rare and so helpful to actually have this constructive feedback. And the third example I'll give, I recently did a shoot for the Wall Street Journal.

And this is for a really cool platform that's launching in January. So you're hearing it here first. And they came and they transformed my apartment into a studio. There was like six or seven crew and cameras and hair and makeup. I mean, it was. I was in a total bliss state. And when we were done, the guy said, the director said, you must be a public speaker. We've never gotten done so quickly before. That was amazing. And the feedback landed in such a powerful way for me because no one, like I'm just sitting here in my house recording stuff on my own. So for someone to be a mirror to the process again on the positive or the constructive side is really welcome. And it's. I think I forget how much I had gotten used to it when I worked at a company like Google, which was all about the feedback constantly. It's, it's very different now. Working on my own.

Yeah, that's one of the things that's really. I actually think of it as kind of scary of working on my own is how much I live inside my own brain sometimes.

And also knowing when to, when to take the feed, when to take the feedback, or what pieces of feedback to, you know, in a 17 pointed bullet pointed email. There were seven or eight things that I really took to heart and wanted to improve on. There were other things such as I swear too much, which could possibly be true, but it's just who I am as a girl from the Northeast. That's my vocabulary. And you know, and being told that if I wanted to be taken professional, seriously as a professional writer, I need to do xyz Like, I don't need someone to tell me that they don't take me seriously as a professional writer. People pay me to write. That makes me a professional writer. So the feedback is welcome and great, but little snippy, nitpicky details like that. I actually laughed when I read that sentence because.

There'S no need for it and it doesn't help anything. But just because you see stuff like that doesn't mean there aren't still good people. Pieces of an email to figure out to improve yourself.

Right? I remember a few years ago I wrote a blog post called what to do when you feel like you're going batshit crazy. It was something along those lines and I was very vulnerable and very open and I got equal parts. You're a disaster. Why would you write this? Don't share this. It's depressing. Stop.

Like don't ever do this again. And then I got equal as many emails. Thank you so much for writing this. Oh my goodness. I can so relate. Big hugs, so many warm fuzzies. And the funny thing is, looking back, I still wouldn't do it any differently. And I get why those people didn't like it and I get why the people liked it. And my content will go somewhere in the middle because I also don't want to just write like I'm a hot mess and then attract like an audience where we can all just. Let's all be. I don't know. I don't. Yeah, like I don't. That's not my thing either. I like talking about systems and career and business. So it's important that I like I heard the feedback from the people who were like, what a donor? Like, don't talk about this. But at the same time, that was me at that time. That's what I was going through and I felt that I wanted to share it. I still feel good about sharing it even though it got such a mix reception.

Well and I think for the kind of mental system of that as well, of being able to really compartmentalize feedback that you get. And there's a great quote From Robert Downey Jr. I'll append it so that there's not too many beeps in your non explicit podcast. But it basically says when people ask you about or give you feedback to, to smile and nod. So acknowledge it graciously and then do whatever the heck you're gonna do anyways.

Because at the end of the day you're you. And the people who get that and like that will stick around and the people who don't and want to tell you how to be someone else, you know that they're. They're not, they're not your people.

Right.

Why try to cater to the not your people?

Yep, exactly. And I always say blogging is a thousand tiny iterations over time. That's what's so interesting about this platform. And I think podcasting will become similar. They're meant to capture a moment in time and then they wash away into the archive river of the past.

And.

Everything is an experiment. It's just an ongoing iterative process. That goes for the design, the logo, the name, the about page, your bio, your content. I mean, all of it is less like a fixed thing because like the new house analogy or a new car only going to be new for that fixed period of time. And then things start to change, you start to change and your audience changes in your content. And so I always feel like my public facing brand, if you will, is always, always a few steps behind where I actually am in terms of what I'm thinking about, what I'm interested in. And like, it's always later on my to do list is like, update my bio.

I totally think of that in the when you're trying to take a pet for a walk and the pet doesn't.

Want to go anymore.

So like if anyone's ever, you know, walked a dog who doesn't want to go in the path that you're going or is stuck in their particular, you know, way, you're trying to maybe pull your dog off from peeing on someone's house or something, which I hear, you know.

They. You have to yank and pull and tug and go to where you know you need to be. But it's not always the easiest thing, getting the stuff that you've built to come with you.

Right. I joke in the pivot book that some big pivots take a few smaller ones, but hopefully not as many as Mike Myers and his 18 point parallel parking job.

But I want to shift gears slightly. I think you had a rapid fire series for me. If we get back to our systems. Ninjury, open kimono mode and at this point in the podcast you can pick whatever you want that you would want to know about. Because I so thankfully got to ask you about podcasting.

I do have a few rapid fire questions, mostly because you.

One of the things I always love about your stuff is you are so organized and systematized in so many ways. I have that all going on, but it's inside my brain, which isn't always all that helpful to anyone else who doesn't live inside my brain. So we're going to start with your Ninja Toolkit because your Ninja Toolkit is like the coolest thing on the Internet that everyone should have. How do you create your awesome docs and sheets and templates and everything else that you use in that Ninja Toolkit?

First of all, thank you. Anyone listening? It's at jennyblake Me Toolkit and I have to say, people have often asked me, oh my gosh, you're just giving that away for free. I was adamant that it not be some cheesy sign up for my newsletter and you'll get my toolkit. Like you don't know if you like me yet. So here's my free toolkit and if you like me enough to stick around and sign up for my email, cool. But if you just want to take the resources and run, cool, that's fine. So that was my big philosophy when I launched JennyBlake. Me was open source, like let the toolkit be out there. I always believe in being 100% so insanely helpful that people want to hear more and get my back behind the business newsletter every few weeks. That's the meta level. Answer 2. I don't think anyone's ever asked me how I create the templates that go into it. But my process is in life. I think this is my reason of existence. However you say that in French.

I'm organized like you in my head, I think in spreadsheets and systems, I just do. It is very important to me that if I'm going to work my fucking ass off to solve a problem, whether it's an emotional problem, a business problem.

I want to then share it with others. And that's why I created Life After College because I was so confused. I read 200 books and I created the website. It's why I wrote the book. It's why I'm writing Pivot. Because I went through a really, really low period where I almost had to quit my business and get a job.

So when I create a template, it's because I've gone through a process myself. I used a system, a Google Doc or a spreadsheet to organize my own thoughts around rebranding a website or launching my first book. And then I clean it up, I save a copy. I name it Template. Well, first I save a copy, then I clean it up and then I publish it and I make it available. And I've done that. The 30 day decision tracker template. Most people don't know, I was dating a guy and I was torn. It seemed great on paper, but I had this underlying anxiety every day. So I created this 30 day tracking spreadsheet and I input data. I ranked how I felt about it on a scale of 1 to 5 against my overall feeling on my day on a scale of one to five. Then it grasped two lines. You can see the daily variance. There was an area for qualitative notes. And so when that period was over and P.S. he ended things with me on day 29.

It worked one way or another. But I once that was over, I was like, you know, I think other people could use this for a big decision they're facing. So I made a copy and cleaned it up and of course wrote a blog post about career, business or relationships. And I didn't go all the way into why I created it because I also don't want the people in my life to think that I'm looking at them as like a piece of data, which isn't true, but it just helps me take some of the emotion out of it to create these kinds of templates and systems.

That's hilarious because of course I do the same exact thing with people I'm dating. I attribute I do pro con listing in my spreadsheet. You're now making me feel guilty about.

It in a good way.

Of applying qualitative weighting to a pro con list to decide if a decision is has a better upside or has a better that you should pursue or a better downside you should protect against. And I, as you noted that this spring with someone I was dating or interested in. So you're. I'm right there with you. I apologize to all humanity who questions why we apply numbers to people, but this helps you think sometimes because feelings are a fucking nuisance. They sure are.

And I, I have a lot of anxiety. I think I've managed it better in the last few years. And I just also feel very fortunate. I just in general have left. Maybe it's a hormonal shift of dealing with less, but in my 20s, had a lot of anxiety and I was a big people pleaser and a big worrier. Thankfully I found meditation in 2012 and that has helped a lot. But so part of these templates and these things are like, I have got to find a way to ease this anxiety and to like live better in my skin. And even when I was launching Life After College, I was still working at Google. I didn't know the first thing about marketing, period. My feedback, my area for development, a few months prior from a manager I did not get along with at the time was, I'm not very strategic. So how did I feel then going into launching the book with that label of like, wow, I'm not very strategic. That is, hence the 15 tabs book marketing spreadsheet retaliation that's gotten linked to and it's now been downloaded and used 7,000 times.

Right. Do you sometimes want to just send those, like, analytics stuff back to that manager and be like, I'm not saying you were wrong or that you're a bad, you know, judge of character, but just food for thought, my friend, because I find it hilarious that anyone would think you are not strategic. That's probably one of your top five words.

I would describe Jenny Blake as funny. I think I wasn't strategic to her agenda, so I probably didn't share the same priorities of what was important. And so for that reason, she said, I'm not very strategic and good prioritizing.

Oh yeah, it is fun to laugh about it now.

I think that that's something that's so important, though, with what you were saying previously about feeling anxious about making decisions or about different life events and everything. And why kind of this system's Ninja Re is so important is that sometimes being able. It's that really annoying thing of whenever you're looking for something in a room, someone else can come in and put their hand on it immediately because you've been staring at the problem too long, you've been looking for your keys everywhere, and someone can come in and see them on the kitchen counter, wherein you couldn't see them ever. And so systems kind of do that for you, for you and I.

Both these templates.

Yeah.

And a corollary, it bothers me when I see a lot of inefficiency among a similar group. So if I see a lot of college grads all struggling with the same thing, or if I see a lot of authors, every author starts from scratch of being overwhelmed with how to market and launch their book. So I see a sea of people looking around for a lost set of keys, and there's one set of keys, and the whole sea is looking for them. So if I can create a template or a book that I can say, hey, all 1,000 of you in this room looking for these lost keys, Here's a starting point, here's a framework that you can at least feel that you're not starting from scratch. Let's reduce the inefficiency of everyone starting from scratch. And it shocks me that publishers haven't systematized the marketing process and I even tried to share my marketing spreadsheet with my first publisher. They never wrote back. They could have cared less. And now I will go to a book launch party, not know the author, introduce myself, and they say, oh, you're Jenny. We used your spreadsheet for this lot.

Well, I was going to say that's funny that publishing houses don't find it as valuable because I remember when you first put out that template. Guy I think some people may know has written a few books. Seth Godin told everyone that they should go download this marketing template. So Right. Yeah. If you like his opinion on how to market books to a mass market, then.

As a publishing house, they should jump on board as well. I'm going to drill into your brain even further because you made me tell everything I know about Trello, which is really still only 10% of how Trello works. Well.

You use Evernote because Evernote overwhelms and confuses me. So tell me about kind of your top three ways that I absolutely should be using Evernote to make my life easier.

Top three? Ooh, that's good. Number one, when working on a book or an ebook or product.

Creating either one notebook for the entire body of work, or I recommend starting with at least three notebooks, Research, Ideas, and Stories. So in research, you use the Evernote web clipper to just clip articles that are related to this book. In Ideas, there's one note for every topic category. So if it's how to pivot, maybe there's one aspect of that that I'm going further into like morning routines, and I have a note called Morning Routines. And then I can add all my thoughts on morning routines. Even while I'm walking to the park, I can pull up Evernote on my phone and dump my idea in there instead of inefficiently capturing it where it doesn't belong. Like in my email inbox or on a A piece of paper is fine, but it all needs to get transferred over. And then stories is so important because when you're writing a book, it's sometimes hard to remember what really happened or what are these little anecdotes, either from me or from clients, and so are people you meet or people you read about in the media. So then I save a note with the name of the person and then I jot a few notes down about the story and why it's powerful and what points it illustrates. The same goes for myself sometimes. This is a great example. There was a morning I was working at my computer. My wireless mouse got disconnected for the umpteenth time and I slammed my fist down on my desk. Everything on the desk jumped up into the air two feet like it was a car fuse. And I was like, holy shit. I.

I gotta get out of the house. I gotta go for a 20 minute run. Like, this is unacceptable behavior. And if this is how I'm behaving at 8am, it's not gonna be a good day. And I felt so stressed and busy. I was traveling previously, so I hadn't worked out in a few days and I didn't feel like I had time for a 20 minute run. But after that I didn't feel like I had time not to. So when I came back, I just jotted a few notes like that down. Like my mouse got disconnected for the umpteenth time. I just wrote a three sentence, four sentence little anecdote. Sure enough, it's in the book now because I was able to capture the richness of that moment at that time, even when I didn't know what I would use it for yet.

Gotcha. And you have Evernote on your computer and on your phone and on your iPad, you Evernote across the.

Yeah, I know I do. I have Evernote on everything. I know that you love Trello. I just love Evernote's checklist feature. It's so awesome. Like I'm I for even for podcasting, I have a note called in my podcasting notebook called Next Steps and I have this little checklist of all the things I would need to do next. And it's so satisfying to just get the check things off but still see the whole list. And for anyone who joins Momentum, which doors are open, here's my little plug, momentumcrew.com that they get access to the 130 item checklist that Marisol and I use to create Launch Momentum. And so it's kind of fun that we can so easily share that note and that notebook with people.

So is the notebook, is it all showing as a crossed off checklist at this point in time time or were you able to revert back to an original state?

Yeah, well, to be fair, we moved it into a Google Doc and this is an interesting the way that I'm delivering the Momentum bonuses is there's a Google Drive folder called Momentum Bonuses and then we give the link so. Gotcha. I believe in functionality over beauty, so if ever I do a PDF like my Momentum Launch checklist or I also have a bonus of 14 tools we use.

Here Again, I did not hire a branding person. I would rather put it in a Google Doc that's easily viewable, editable and shareable, that has.

Functional than some clunky PDF that someone just because it looks nice but now someone has to download it, save it to their computer, open it just too much. It's a pain in the ass for me and I feel that it's a pain in the ass for them. Why wouldn't we all want to access stuff in the cloud and again get the content? Who cares if it's like the most beautiful design they've ever seen?

That's funny because that was actually my next question is what is your go to app.

System for? If something needs to to be created and shared, what do you immediately defer to?

Always. Anyone who has seen the JV toolkit knows it's all Google Docs and spreadsheets. And I've had a mentor make a very good point that he distinguishes himself by his brand. And so I guess I just have to add an asterisk here saying I am going to invest quite heavily in a Pivot brand strategy for that business. But my primary clients for Pivot are actually companies. I want them to hire me and I'll come do manager training and coaching and speak about Pivot to large groups of organizations and conferences. So for that I do want to step up the brand. I do want to look polished and like I care. But with individuals and solopreneurs I feel that we are more scrappy and it's okay to be that way. So yeah, Google Docs and spreadsheets and oh here's a pro tip you can modify in Google Docs your default settings for heading 1, heading 2, heading 3. So I've given my default settings of my normal text Georgia and then I have a certain color heading and it's a certain font. So actually every time I create a doc I apply headings because that's how you can insert a table of contents at the top. They all have a similar look and feel. And even I have a folder in Google Drive in Momentum called Templates and I have a template presentation and I have a template Google Docs. So everything I create for Momentum already has the logo and a footer. And because of my default settings in Docs in general, they all do have a pretty, I would say buttoned up look as far as Google Docs goes.

Nice. I'm a big fan of style guides and using that templated stuff, but I'm so with you. I could put out lots of Stuff that looks really pretty. I would absolutely have to hire someone else because I can't even draw stick figures that look pretty. That's like the extent of my artistic abilities.

So I live in docs as well. Docs and drive. It's so easy. Everything like you said, it's I love too. It's quickly editable and updatable because I think agility is key and I think that things should be able to change quickly when you have new information that warrants an update.

Right. Like I created this email Exhale Inbox Ninja toolkit. It's 50 plus tips and tools to manage your inbox. And I really debated because I sold it for $10. Now it's free if you join momentum. But I debated should this be like a beautiful PDF that people download? And I was like, no, this is about email tools. Those are always changing and there's nothing worse than creating this beautiful. This happened to me with the makeshit happen ebook that I wrote, 150 page book. But the PDF became out of date and then it's three years later and I'm still sending these same old files. And so with the Inbox Ninja toolkit, I felt like I'm going to sacrifice a little as far as look and feel. And maybe people will be pissed that they spent $10 and they got a Google Doc. I hope not because it's going to save them hours every week. But then at least we can update it if there are mistakes and then everyone has the latest version. It's not like, oh, now there are 100 people who have this outdated PDF on their computer.

That's for our voice and vision profiles we do for clients. We send it out in two links. Specifically what you're talking about. I send it out as a PDF that links to Dropbox. That is the very pretty, beautifully branded everything else. And then I send the super scrappy voice and vision profile Google Document ghetto.

Style.

Specifically because I know that a brand's voice and vision are constantly morphing and changing and growing. And so I want to have a space where we can update that and do that. And I actually cheat very much. So basically whenever we go through a massive change or edit on someone's exploits and vision profile, I then just go up in Google Drive or documents to file, download as and PDF and that gives people that beautiful, lovely PDF version of their Google Document if they feel like they need to have some sort of easily shareable, pretty report to give back to a company or investors or.

Right. Well, what I want to highlight there is Dropbox is another great way to keep things as current as possible, because you can always resave the PDF over that same name in Dropbox. And then still, if a client goes to that original link you sent, they're getting the latest file on Dropbox. I have to say, I cannot live without it. This is the best which I ever made for my business. And peace of mind was to move every single file into Dropbox. So it's my organizing system now, basically. My files are now constantly synced and backed up to the cloud. I used to do all the external hard drive backing up kind of shit. Now if my laptop were destroyed, everything is already on Dropbox. There's nothing manual about it and everything else is in the cloud. So it gives me so much peace of mind while traveling.

Absolutely well and beyond peace of mind while traveling. For me, I keep everything in the cloud. As you note, I'm going back to Southeast Asia this fall. I'm looking at potentially being in Europe this spring, next spring and summer. You travel to new locations monthly doing speaking engagements and different conferences and places that you go. It's essential that if I am somewhere and need to grab a file that someone is working on or need to grab a PDF to be able to send to someone that I can get it. And the only way to do that without carrying around a ton of equipment, which is a total pain in the ass if you're traveling a lot, is to have everything on the cloud with a quick little link that you can just sync up, send the link and you're good to go. Or access the link.

Right 100%.

So my last question for you of this drill into Jenny's brain session is you work so much with your team collaboratively, especially Marisol, but then all of your writers for Life After College and everyone else, what are the apps and tools that you, I don't want to say require, because we all know that you're not super forceful with anyone on that kind of thing, but that you really request that your team uses to be able to collaborate well with you.

Here.

The secret killer app is trust. And that happens on several levels. And believe me, I had to release my tight little clutches, my claws off of life after college. Because when I launched Jenny Blake In 2013, I became the biggest bottleneck for my businesses. I was so treading water just to keep up with posting blogs on both sites, running the newsletters, running the social media. I was dying. I brought Marisol on. I met her. They brought me, she and her friend Davis to speak at Yale. And I mentioned I might be looking for a community manager for life after college. So step one is I just had her take over the editorial calendar. And I'm so grateful that Melissa Anzman and Pauline Goni, our guest writers, and Davis, New and still. And I just asked Marisol, could you just email all of us when it's our time to post so that I don't have to worry about it? So one thing Marisol does is just email. Hey, Melissa, you're up next week on Monday. Let me know if you need anything. That's a very small thing, but it's so helpful. And then I used to review everybody's Post drafts in WordPress before going live, and people even would run topics by me. And that was, I think, good in the beginning, but then once again, I was bottlenecking it if I was traveling and I wasn't at my computer. So pretty. Maybe after six months. They just post now. So I trust them. I mean, that's why I chose a very small group. That's why I do not accept guest posts. And I really trust them and I love their content so much that they write on their blogs. And so it's been a huge relief. There's not been one post where I was like, oh, shit, why did that go out? You know, not one. And it was scary to really relinquish that amount of control, but I'm glad I did it.

Well, I think what you just said at the beginning of that as well, or what you said about what you did at the beginning of that goes back to what I said during one of my rapid fire questions, was that you maybe didn't create an entire SOP process document, but you oversaw the process enough at the beginning until the point when you realized you couldn't be part of it anymore. That everyone kind of probably learned a lot about the changes that you made and the specific ways that you like seeing posts posted, how they're written, different things like that, so that they learn your brain.

Oh, yeah. And for about six months, you're part.

Of that trust as well.

Yes. We have this massive LAC manager manual. For the first three to six months. Every time I taught Marisol and Davis how to do something or gave feedback on their blog post, like, oh, I use H2 for this kind of heading. It's H2 3 for this. Oh, I like to have a space after bullets. I mean, all that shit I said. And always the last line of my email. And please add this to the manager manual. So it was always a two part Process of I would teach and then ask that it be added. And that hopefully helped integrate the learning for them, too.

Yeah, that. Well, and I love to. One of the things that I'm working to be better on with the delegation.

Is.

Making sure that people know that they should. I feel like when people add things, you ask them to add things to a document or to understand what's going on, and they need to then take a physical action on it. They own it a lot more. So they are aware much more of those H2 headings, not just because you said something to them in passing in an email, but because they. They've actively had to take an action or do something on it. So it's now ingrained into their brain and process and system and everything else.

Right. And here's a great example of a teaching moment. I used an editorial calendar. And of course there's a template you can get at my site that helped me plan 2014 across all my sites and blog posts and newsletters. And when I asked Marisol at the end of 2014 to create one for 2015, she did, and she sent it to me with a new link. And I said, hey, there was no way for you to know this, and I forgot to mention it, but I like to create it in the same spreadsheet. So we always still know it's the same link and it's the same searching. We're not creating file clutter. So something doesn't need to be in a separate spreadsheet and it could just be a new tab in a existing one, and we have kind of a master. So that was a great example where she learned, you know, not just, okay, let me move them into a new tab. But she also started to understand my philosophy of why I like to work that way and why it makes it easier and more efficient for searching for things and referencing the same set of documents.

That's a super good teachable moment. I'm going to share a hack that I use in Google Docs for that. Yes. When I am updating stuff so that the link stays the same, I will actually, before I do the update, make a copy of the file and then save the copy as old version as 2014 as something like that update now the original file. So like you said, the link stays the same. They always have it. But I also have an archived in perfect condition the last version I used of this document. So if I need to go back, if some, you know, a link is broken or the spreadsheet's not working the right way, I can go back to what the last working copy was and figure out where the discrepancy is.

Yes, I actually do that too. And for any of you who don't know, you can also go to view revision history, and that's a really interesting way to see what changes have been made and even revert to a previous version if you need to.

Yeah, I definitely use that revision history again. It's one of those things for me, if I can see two versions side by side, I can sometimes see what the difference is rather than sorting through. If you change like an entire document, that's a lot of revision history to try to go back through.

So, Alyssa, we've covered a lot of tools in this conversation. It's been so much fun. Sometimes people email me and will say, your toolkit is great, but really I want to know, where do you find out about this stuff and how do you keep up with it? So I would love for us both to just talk about how can we teach people how to teach themselves how to fish when it comes to tools and systems? Because what is it that we're doing that helps us stay on top of tools and systems that other people can borrow or learn from?

I think the.

First thing for most anyone, for me especially, is.

Applying BTN to your systematized life.

And as we'll just hearken back to, that's better than nothing.

To at least start doing something so that you start building those habits and those routines. For me, I know that something is interesting and I want to pay attention. I immediately start putting it into kind of my mental framework of things that I need to pay attention to, things I need to try out and test. I might put a note in trello or save it to my pocket with a tag that says read further.

And so that when I sprawl and we're talking about a problem that one of us is having, I can say, oh, actually I was just reading about that. I learned this, that, and the other thing. Because I've now created a system process for myself and a habit where my mind is just more acutely aware of looking for those things wherein it didn't necessarily always. It wasn't that way before. I wasn't. I accumulate information, but I didn't accumulate that type of information until I just started doing it.

Right. That's so important. BTN is great. I have a couple things to add. One, I always say this, whether it's with a habit that has nothing to do with online tools, or maybe it does, but you will not stick to something just because you should. So if you're creating a tool or a system because you should xyz, it's not going to work. It has to be intrinsically rewarding and helpful to the point at which you're excited to use this thing or do this habit, and you feel the visceral feeling of yes, this really improves my life. So I think that Tools it is a little bit of trial and error to find the things that bring the sweet relief. This should not be about adding and weighing you down with too much technology, and you may be using too many tools if not enough is getting done. Here's my little secret of how I stay on top of things once again. Back to Evernote It's a dream. I have a notebook called Tools, and as I see articles like roundups, 60 tools that content marketers need to know or the 10 tools you have to have for podcasting, I clip them with Evernote Web Corporate all to my Tools folder. Let's say it's on webinars and I'll see a thread online about the best webinar tools I have now. Dozens of notes on everything from webinars, infographics, podcasting, video. I don't sign up for all these tools right away, but when a coaching client might ask me, hey, who do you use for ghost writing? Well, I've never used a ghostwriter, but I happen to have clipped a couple sites in my Tools notebook that I have a note called Ghost Writing and as I see a site, I'm plopping into the right place and that really I learned from David Allen, who wrote the classic Getting Things Done that in my world, every bit of information has a home. The second my little Spidey feelers hook onto something that could possibly be remotely useful, I'm almost like a hoarder in the second. But it goes into an insanely specific place. In my Evernote, I have a whole folder for JB Business Ideas that as I see other people doing cool stuff online, I clip it, save it to my Business Ideas folder. So even if I don't act on it right away, I can always go back through and browse. So yeah, that Tools folder has just been helpful, and I think it's with things like Slack. If ever I hear a lot of buzz like this mega Silicon Valley darling, I want to know like, what's the fuss about? And so I told Miracle, I said, let's pilot this, let's use it for two weeks and let's just. I want to know what it is. So I can either know why I'm rejecting it or why I'm recommending it. And so I think part of it is just give it a shot and be willing to try some of these tools and fumble around. It's like teaching a grandparent how to use an iPhone. Like I always remind my grandma. I'm like, grandma, you really can't screw a phone up too bad if you just click around.

I think sometimes people are afraid, like, oh, I don't know how to use it and they don't do anything. And back to btn, just click around. You can't usually screw things up too bad. And then if you don't know something, Google it. That's how I taught myself HTML and css, Slack and anything I'm stuck on, I just Google it. And you can Google highly technical things and there's usually an answer for it.

Well, another thing too, with the whole trial and error and everything else that's super important for me when I'm trying out new stuff is not only to get tried out and figure out how all the cool things and systems and features that something has to offer, but to also understand what. What is the problem in my life or my business that's going to be solved or made easier by adopting this new tool, process system, et cetera. Because if you don't understand what you're trying to fix right. It'd be super easy sometimes to get caught up in the bells and whistles features. I've signed up for so many tools and programs before.

That looked really fun and great, had a lot of buzz on the front end. I saw, you know, a blog Post of the 50 Ways to Use XYZ to Fix your entire business. And so I signed up for it. But at the end of the day, it didn't actually solve what the specific problem was in my business or life that I was trying to solve. And so I ended up, you know, walking away from, or even worse, not paying attention to the recurring charge on my credit card of a system that I just didn't use very much anymore because I thought it was cool, but it wasn't actually useful.

Exactly right. And then there's the point of diminishing returns. And I talk about this like, diminishing tool returns. There is a point where too many tools actually hampers productivity or just does not make a marked return improvement. So again, sometimes, like, let good enough be good enough. And, and again, a lot of what you and I have talked about today is not actually the tool, it's our mindset. Around creating efficiency and, and capturing processes and not having to repeat ourselves and not having, you know, hundreds of people looking for the same set of lost keys. Like none of that is really the tool. It's our mindset approach to documenting and creating workflow. Just creating a flow that makes sense from person A to person B to person C.

Yeah, that's a big. I actually quarterly will pull up my past quarter of bank statements to look at what I'm being charged for regularly. And I do quarterly reevaluations of whether tools and societies systems are working for me and if they're not serving their purpose anymore, you know, memberships, tools, recurring payments, all that kind of stuff, I'll cancel the membership and try to find an alternative that solves that problem better.

Right. And then to that end, like you said, you can also the quarterly looking ahead, what do I need to learn more about or what do I wish was more efficient? Guarantee. I mean we are so lucky with technology these days that there's a tool and an app for everything. It's amazing.

That's. I have to say, I probably I crowdsource opinions on this stuff frequently as well. And even if you have a small network of people that you trust, whether it's asking, you know, a friend that you talk to frequently about stuff or I've taken to Twitter and Facebook before and said who uses what to be able to solve X problem. So that I get a lot of input very quickly of different things that I should be checking out because other people trusted enough to put their name on the recommendation.

Right.

So helpful. Okay, Alyssa, we are coming up on.

Two hours which I know you an average call. Yeah. As our average.

I'm glad we at least recorded this one, captured it for posterity's sake. Okay, I want to. As we wrap up, let's throw out. You've been in business five years. I just had my four year anniversary of working full time for myself.

Biggest lesson learned or parting thoughts that we want to leave people with.

I think the biggest lesson I've learned in business, and just like life in general is decisions are rarely permanent. There's very few things that you can do or make a decision on that there's no way to either backtrack or to use a brilliant Jenny Blake term, pivot to a more amenable outcome. And so for me it makes it a lot easier for some. I'm a super perfectionist. I love having tons and tons of information. It makes it a lot easier for me to make quicker, smaller movements because I know I'VE lost that fatalistic mindset in terms of making decisions and trying to move forward on things in that there's nothing I can't update, change, adapt to be what I need it to be.

That's going to really affect things.

Love it. I agree so much. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Standing ovation.

So how about you.

Ask better questions, get good at asking great questions. And here's what I mean by that. When I was thinking about leaving Google, I would have this fear based thought, what if I end up in a van down by the river? What if I fall in my face and I fail? And almost immediately I had to realize I need to counter that. That's fine if that fear based question comes up, but counter that with what if I earn twice as much in half the time and that helped alone. But then you can turn that into how can I earn six figures in ten hours a week? I mean, you can ask whatever question you want. I recently asked the question how can I earn a million dollars in 2016? And I made this list. I made myself come up with 10 ways of scaling everything that I do. So momentum would need to be X number of members. Coaching this many clients at this rate, speaking this many, I did. I came up with 10 ways I could earn a million dollars. And I just, I was annoyed at myself that.

I think sometimes I just don't ask cool enough questions to create transformation. So if there's something that you're stuck on, instead of thinking, well, I can only write a book when I have done xyz, just flip it. How can I write a book while working full time? Or how can I do this and that and start to ask more creative combinatorial questions that you may not land on an answer for a day, a week, two weeks, a month. But this is how the topic of Pivot came about. I kept wrestling with the question, there has got to be a better way to figure out what's next because this shit ain't working. And I was looking at my bookshelf and I was pissed that none of them had helped me out of this muck of confusion. And so little by little, the concept for Pivot came to me. And then as you said, even the book proposal I pitched was for a different book than what it's going to be. So things can change even as you start coming to those answers.

Yeah, I love that. I don't remember where I saw that this got framed up, but I fall back on the scarcity versus abundance mindset frequently instead of figuring out why you don't have enough figure out how to make more.

And that's what's so rewarding about doing this. That's what I love about business is it's really such a meaty challenge. It's like.

It'S not about how smart are you or not. I did not think I was capable of being an entrepreneur, per the comment on my strategic thinking abilities. But now that I see everything as these fascinating puzzles and problems to solve and that, like when a course doesn't sell, I'm not a bad person. I just didn't make the mark as far as what the market was wanting or how I talked about it. And everything in business is feedback. So it's kind of fun that way. It's a real meritocracy in a sense. Very, very much so. All right, Alyssa, where can people find you if they want to keep up with your brilliant work?

I usually tell people to hit up my business site not because I want everyone to do business with me, but because it's easier to find than trying to spell my name. So it's craftyourcontent.com and from there you can find Alyssa doucet.com which is odd to spell because I spell my name Alyssa E, L, I S A, which is also how you can find me on Twitter. And that's my favorite, favorite way to talk to new people is to have 140 character conversations with them.

I love it.

And how about you? For those who maybe are just picking this up from random airwaves, where can folks find you?

My main home is jennyblake. Metoolkit is where you get to the aforementioned toolkit. I have a bi weekly behind the business newsletter. My book Turn what's Working for your into what's Next is in progress and it comes out in March of 2020. You can learn more about that at thepivotmethod.com and then right now I'm about to launch a five day live systems Ninja course. And so it's Google Hangout every day starting September 14th. And who knows how long this podcast will live on? It may be long gone. That's 179. But if you sign up for Momentum, my private community for solopreneurs, you get access to every course I've ever created for free. So no matter when you're listening to this, if you join Momentum, you'll get the Systems Ninja course. Email Exhale Toolkit. So much of what we've talked about and anything I create in the future, and that's@MomentumCrew.com. oh, and I'm on Twitter, ennyblake, and would love to connect with anyone who's listening and hear your feedback on what you found helpful and what tools you use that we maybe didn't talk about.

Sharing other people's tools, that would be awesome.

Yes.

Yeah, we're tool hoarders.

Like, share them with us, then we can. Then we can go to them again even further. We're like bees. We just pollinate the tools out into the world.

That's. Honestly, I think probably the best way for new people to ever reach out to me is to tell me to try out something cool that they found and I'm like, oh, you're my new friend.

That's the best way to get a quick response from me is for someone who just writes and says, hey, real quick, what tool do you use for this? And I can just write back and be like, oh, Evernote. Then it's like, they're not asking for something that will take a long time to deliver.

Yes.

Awesome. Thank you so much, Alyssa. Thank you so much to everyone who is listening. We really appreciate you being here and look forward to keeping in touch.

Foreign.

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Pivot podcast. To learn more and get in touch, visit JennyBlake me where I blog about systems at the intersection of mind, body and business. Or find me on Twitter @jennyblake. And remember, build first, then your crochet courage will follow. Hasn't it always.