Three tools I can’t live without. Okay, so what are they?

So I have a team of 10, about to be 12, I’m hiring two more superstars. And what tool do I use to communicate with my team on a daily? What tool do I use to make sure that we’re community and we’re building a culture? And that is Slack. Now I love it because it is a mobile app, it’s an amazing mobile app. I can be finished in a meeting, I can jump into the car, I can quickly open Slack and I can get a digest of what’s just happened in the last hour or so. One of my girls can tell me that “Hey Steph, you just got out of that meeting, you’ve got X voicemails or you’ve got X things that have come in from your inbox that you need to answer.” I can just quickly go boom, what are my big things that I’ve got right now? My frogs and I can move on.

I don’t have to jump into my email and everything else. Because one of the girls is pulling it out for me and putting it into Slack. So there’s a little system process there attached to how I use Slack, but really Slack is a communication tool that you load up. You can use the desktop version, you can download an app for your computer. I have a Mac so I download the app for my Mac, my big iMac. I’ve also got it on my iPhone and my iPad. So I’ve got so many I’s. Anyway, big Apple fan, thanks so much for the free battery. Chatswood Mac Store, I really appreciate that. So yes, Slack is a communication tool that I use to communicate on all the projects that we have going on. My friends often say, “How the hell do you use it?” I use it in a way that there’s a general chat for just good morning, and I might actually open it up and just read exactly what we do here.

So I like to say, “Yeah morning crew, I was up early for a call. Today’s focus is to confirm a job with X meeting and make sure that we get the redesign going and it’s approved so we can get building.” And what else do I say? “My win. So my win yesterday was and today’s focus.” So today’s focus is to do X and yesterday’s win was X. I like to jump in the general chat with everyone and just shoot and say, “Hey, what’s going on?” And what’s keeping me going in the business. And yeah, everyone else celebrates their win and tells everyone else what their focus is. So that’s a general chat. Instead of just saying, “Good morning.” I say, “My focus is …” Then all the other channels that we have are all client based, so if you’re a [inaudible 00:03:24], you might have each job. So I don’t know, four Fairway Drive, Gordon. If that’s an address. Hey, is everyone on site? And you’re moving and what are the photos? And you can take photos of the job and put them all in the channel and that’s awesome.

That’s how we use it. For every single client projects we have going on, there is a channel, there is a Slack channel. And everything that happens in that job, the conversations are all going there. So it’s brilliant. So I can look back, if I haven’t seen a client for a while, I can look back at a channel and I can see all the things that have gone on in just a general conversation perspective. When it comes to managing the actual project itself, that’s where I like to use Teamwork. So Teamwork is a task management, it’s a project management tool. Without it I don’t know we’d get anything done. Now one of its biggest competitors is Asana. And I think they have a free version, so if you wanna dip your foot in the task management, project management pond, then try Asana for free. But I love Teamwork, it’s … I don’t know, it just works for me. It looks a certain way and the tasks cascade a certain way and things are in the right place for me, and it just works.

So again, what is it? So it’s a project management tool. All my templates and how-tos for the team, all my processes are also all in Teamwork. So every day all the staff open up Teamwork and they jump in and they go to a certain project and they can see all the tasks that they need to attack. They can then jump into a particular list of items and if it’s … They can jump in and if it’s an SEO client, they can go, “Okay, look, we’ve just done keyword research. Steph needs to do this.” Or, “So and so needs to do this.” Or, “So and so …” But you can just see all the tasks for a particular job. I’ve got all my templates inside Teamwork, so there’s one big project file in Teamwork called The Teamwork Template. And everything that we do in the business has an entire system and process in place. So when a new client comes onboard, we literally go to the template and then we go duplicate this list, because this is exactly what we’re gonna do for the client. We drop it into the client’s new project … What do you say? Task, campaign?

And then the right person gets assigned to the right job and we start collecting what we need to collect for the job and we start getting job under way. Rather than getting a job in, going, “Okay, now what am I gonna do?” Jump on the computer, flick the mouse around and click a few things around. The next thing you know you’re on Facebook looking at cats. That is actually probably something that’s going on right now. Yeah, so I am really heavy on process and systems. Systems set you free and … I put something on Instagram recently, “Focus on systems, not superstars.” Because if you have a superstar in your business and they are just ace, and then they know everything and they walk out the door, there goes all your systems. So everything should be a system, everything should be a process, and Teamwork is the best tool that I have ever used when it comes to tracking tasks and deliverables and putting processes in place and getting the team in. Getting them to tick things off, getting things done, getting me to approve it. So, I love Teamwork.

All right, my last tool for today is called Voxer. It is basically a walkie talkie application. I don’t know who gave this to me, because of course you use something from everybody. I didn’t go searching for this tool, someone mentioned it, like I’m mentioning it to you right now. So Voxer, it’s an app. Again I have i thing, so it’s on my iPhone. What I can basically do is, I’m just gonna hit the button. I don’t know if you can hear that, it’s not very loud. Let’s put it straight up to the microphone. Yeah, I don’t know if you can hear this. So basically, it’s a walkie talkie. So again, I’ve got my project managers and my girls all sitting in Voxer for me. Not my boys and not my [inaudible 00:08:12] and not my designers, not my social guys, because the girls manage communication to the team. So I just work with the girls and project manage.

So, I’ll again be in a meeting and I’ll get out of the meeting and I’ll just in the car and I will jump on the Voxer, and I’ll go, “Hey girls, great meeting in Castle Hill. Fantastic, client loves where we’re going, loves the strategy, love the words that we’ve put together, loves the new content we put together, loves the design phase. Wants to get cracking, so let’s go, let’s go, go, go. FYI, that’s what happened.” And then the girls can look at the project and go, “Right, well what are the moving parts, what’s going on? Steph says it was really good. Okay, let’s make sure we put a review in with Steph when she gets back to the desk. Let’s get all the moving parts going and get a project kicking off.” So I don’t know, Voxer is … Instead of typing into Slack, Voxer is just a Walkie Talkie. I can go, “Hey girls, what’s up? I’m not feeling so good today. So I’m gonna need everyone to hustle around me just make sure I get my must have things done, so that I can make sure I get out of here by three, four o’clock and just have a rest.”

So yeah, I absolutely love Voxer. The other amazing thing it can do, is I can record my voice and then I can share it up into Slack. So if there is something that I need to share with the entire team like, “Hey, it’s someone’s birthday. Let’s celebrate their birthday.” Then I can record that on Voxer, I can drop that into the general chat and that can be my greeting for the morning. So today’s win is that it’s so and so’s birthday. All right, so those are my three must have tools. Without these three tools, I would be lost, seriously. I don’t know, I would just turn up to work and I’d have no idea what to do, because tools set me free I guess. Processes and systems set me free, so yeah. So my three favorite tools again are Slack, Teamwork and Voxer. Check out the show notes on stephaniecampanella.com.au, and all the links and screenshots and probably a selfie of me. Why not? Let’s put it up there. That will all be there.

So adios everybody, I hope you enjoyed this podcast, this episode. Hit me up, if you want something debunked, hit me up. I’ll make a podcast episode just for you. Okay ciao, adios.