How to Find the Right Project Management Tool

Kathy (host): 

Hi there, and welcome back to Help! My Business is Growing, a podcast where we explore how to grow and build a business that is healthy and sustainable. I’m your host, Kathy Svetina.

Kathy (host):

On any given day, in a growing business, we’ll have a handful of projects that are happening. You might be in the process of recruiting new team members, or you might be launching a new marketing initiative, and many, many, many, many, many others. As more and more things get added to your plate, into the business’s plate, project management can really help you avoid the chaos and overwhelm of managing at all, because it allows you to outline and implement the steps to take down to the last details, if you so choose to. But to do this as efficiently as possible, which also helps you save money, you need the right tools and applications. And finding the right one is really, really crucial to your success. Because a good tool can increase productivity and motivate your team. But a bad one can also slow down progress and waste a lot of your time and resources.

Kathy (host):

Today, we’re going to be talking about what are some of the tools that you can use to manage your workload. And we’re also going to be more specifically looking to one of them called ClickUp. And if you heard any of the episodes on this podcast before, or maybe you’ve heard me as a guest on another podcast, you know that I’m a huge, huge fan of ClickUp. And this is something that I use in my business as well. So that’s something that we’re going to be talking about in today’s episode. What are some of the tools that you can use? And how can you effectively manage the projects that you have using ClickUp?

Kathy (host):

Also, there is no need to pencil it, jot things down because all these episodes including this one come with timestamps to topics that we discussed and the blog post as well. You can find all the links to the detailed topics of this episode in the show notes. I’m really excited to get this episode going.

Kathy (host):

But before we get there, I want to tell you a little bit about my guest, which is Megan Beltekoglu. She is a Certified Director of Operations and Vetted ClickUp Consultant. She’s also an expert who helps women-owned small businesses and agencies with the backend of their business so that they can spend more time making a difference in the world. She thinks creating standard operating procedures is fun, and loves breaking big visions down into focus manageable projects and tasks using her favorite productivity tool, ClickUp. Join us.

Kathy (host): 

Welcome to the show, Meagan.

Meagan (guest): 

Thanks, Kathy. Thanks for having me. I’m so excited to be here today.

Kathy (host): 

I’m so excited that you’re here too because we’re going to be talking about project management. We are going to be talking about ClickUp. And we have such mutual love for ClickUp, too. I’m super excited about that. Before we do that, I want to talk about project management tools in general, because the more you’re growing your business, the more you have to manage, you have to manage money people project. And in my corporate world, in the past, I’ve actually seen billion-dollar corporations use all sorts of inappropriate tools to manage their projects. Excel was actually the most common of them. And, you know, I love Excel. But it’s really not the right tool to use for this. And as I always say, everything that you do in business and how you run it, eventually your reflects and your finances. So now using the appropriate project management tools not only leads to a lot of confusion but also waste and resources like human resources, you’re wasting your people’s time, because you’re just not using the appropriate tools. So for the businesses that you work with, what do you see are the struggles that they have? They’re like a tipping point for them to switch over to using a project management tool, and to help them manage their business better. What are some of the common issues that they have before they start working with you?

Meagan (guest): 

That’s a great question. Yeah. A lot of them are exactly like what you described. They’re trying to use a spreadsheet to manage all the things. And of course, as you said, spreadsheets are really great at a lot of things. But managing projects is not really one of them. Of course, you can kind of customize your spreadsheet to manage your project. But it winds up taking so much customization, so much time, and so much effort, that you’re just wasting hours you’re wasting energy and people are getting really frustrated because the other people on the team aren’t updating things. They can’t really tell when the work was last completed.

Meagan (guest):

There’s no features like timestamping, automation is possible in some ways, but it’s just a lot harder to make it happen. Integrations with other tools are a lot more disjointed in many cases. And people just kind of hate it. They just really like it’s not easy to use, I don’t want to keep track of my project. And then they find themselves also having to rely on email, Teams or Slack, or something else to communicate about the work they’re tracking in this spreadsheet. It actually winds up being a whole lot of extra work when the idea at the beginning was to make it easier for everybody.

Meagan (guest):

They all kind of have this, level of being really fed up with how things are going. They have this desire to do things in a more streamlined and simple and smooth way. But they’re just not really sure what the options are or what’s best for them. That’s probably the main thing that I see. And then I kind of see people who are like, maybe they don’t even have that spreadsheet yet. And they’re kind of like just keeping track of all the things in their head, and that’s just not sustainable. The research shows us that the brain can only hold four thoughts at once. And when you have a family, a spouse, or business, maybe you volunteer, or you have hobbies, that’s already more than four things. Something’s gonna start falling through the cracks, and that just gets really sticky in many situations.

Meagan (guest):

I actually had one client, who, they had a similar business to yours, you know, they were a seat, CFO. And they realized when we were setting up their project management tool, ClickUp, that they hadn’t actually invoiced one of their clients for six whole months. And they were tracking that in the spreadsheet. That was a few $1,000 they were missing.

Kathy (host): 

Yeah, that’s definitely not a good thing. And, you know, you talked about that there are different options that are available to you as a business owner. And I mean, I’ve done a significant amount of research, when I was picking up the project management tool for my company, and I run my entire company on ClickUp. I’m so dependent on ClickUp at this point that I have no idea how, I even read my company before that. And I can relate to this CFO that you were talking about, because it’s so easy to have things fall through the cracks unless you’re really organized, and I’m not particularly organized. But I use tools to help me with that. Let’s talk about what are some of the project management tools out there besides ClickUp? And how do they compare to it?

Meagan (guest): 

I think when people were getting started, a lot of people start using Trello. And Trello is kind of like a great intro to project management tools. But in my experience, it didn’t work so well with more complex projects. It didn’t work so well with communicating with other people on your team.

Meagan (guest):

Also, for me, it was a lot about what type of thinker you are, like how do you visualize things. I’m very linear. I like the hierarchy of ClickUp. I like to have lists with tasks. Other people, they’re more lateral, or they’re kind of like the out-fo-the-box thinker. They prefer the Trillo setup, which uses the Kanban board, where you’re you’re moving horizontally and then you also have cards you can stack. For me, I just my brain just like no cannot compute like cannot use that.

Kathy (host):

Yeah.

Meagan (guest):

What I actually really like about ClickUp is that it gives you the option to use the list or a table view, kind of more traditional options, or you can use the other view like the board viewer, Kanban view. I see a lot of people getting started with Trello and then outgrowing it. I see a lot of people also using Asana, and for various reasons, they seem to all start hating it after a while. And I used to get a lot of people who are like I cannot stand Asana on anymore. Like I need to move to ClickUp.

Kathy (host): 

And what are some of the common things that people complain about when they’re using Asana?

Meagan (guest): 

I think maybe they find it expensive is one thing that I’ve heard that it’s pretty expensive compared to ClickUp. I have not personally used it. But I’ve seen it when I’m helping people migrate over to ClickUp. They just like they feel like there’s a lack of features. They want to do some other things. They can’t always describe it really well. They’re just like, I want to do more things, right. But Asana is kind of just not growing with their business.

Meagan (guest):

And then also see people using Airtable, Base camp, Teamwork, Wrike, Jira. I mean there Every day, it seems like there’s a new project management tool out. I always tell people to kind of think like, what kind of features are you looking for? That’s kind of the first thing, what’s your budget, tools like ClickUp, Trello, like they usually have a decent free plan. For me, also values are important. ClickUp makes their values really clear on their website. I always recommend checking out the about page of any business and checking up there, who they are, what they do, why they do it. And for me, that usually kind of cement the deal. Like, “Yeah, I’m gonna try this tool,” or at least or “No, they’re not for me.”

Kathy (host): 

These are great points. And I’ve never heard anyone recommend I’ve heard, you know, features and budget, but not the values. And I really like that, because as a business, especially a smaller business that’s growing, having, doing business with another one that you actually really resonate with values. It’s so, so important. I do love that, that you actually call that out.

Meagan (guest):  

Thank you. Yeah, I mean, for me, like, as somebody who works with a lot of mission and impact-driven business owners, and a part of my work that I do with them is I encourage them to think about their values to document their values in ClickUp, to not only write out the values that they support but also what they’re opposed to. And for me, and for everybody I’ve worked through this process with, it just makes it really clear, who is a good fit for you not only as like, a vendor, or a business that you’re going to purchase something from, but also for your clients. If you really communicate your values really clearly, what it does is not only does it attract the people that you want to be attracting, but it also repels the people that you don’t want to work with. And for me, that’s key, because my time is limited, my energy is limited, and I can’t be wasting it with people that aren’t that good fit for me.

Kathy (host): 

Yeah, that’s so true. So true. So now that we’ve talked about different options that you have available out there, values is the important thing to look at when you’re making that decision. What guide you into specializing in ClickUp? Was it the values, the budget, the features, what is it that you really, really like about ClickUp that you decided to specialize in? And like I said, we bonded over a mutual love of ClickUp. So I kind of have a feeling where you’re going to say, but I definitely want to hear your actual answer to this.

Meagan (guest): 

Before I started using ClickUp, I was using Trello. And it just did not work for my brain. And back then I was doing, some kind of like VA work for somebody. And she had asked me, “Can you set up my ClickUp for me”, and I was like, “Okay,” and you know, kind of coincidentally, I had started kind of playing around with it myself. Once I dug in a little bit deeper, it was kind of just like seeing my brain like on the screen. Because like I said, I’m a very linear thinker. I like the list. I like checklists, I like taking things off. I like to be able to hide things that I don’t want to see. And I like to build to show things that I need to see and remind myself of all the things. And so it was just kind of like that there was like a moment and then that moment when it kind of just clicked and I was like, “Wow, this is really like exactly how I think on a screen.” And it kind of just kicked off this period of like kind of crazy dive into all the things ClickUp and how can I learn everything that I everything that there is to learn and in a short period of time, and you know, it just kind of spiraled from there where now ClickUp related work is probably 80 to 90% of what I do. 

Kathy (host): 

That’s awesome.

Meagan (guest):

So is your story like that too?

Kathy (host):

My story was actually, originally I looked at ClickUp. It was about two, three years ago when I started the company because I knew that I needed a project management tool. But originally I absolutely hated it. I hated it. I hated it. Because it seems so complex and there seem to be I think the problem with ClickUp is that it’s such a blank slate, and you can do anything and everything with it. The problem with that is that because it’s such a blank slate, it’s almost like a spreadsheet. I think about it in a spreadsheet. You can do a lot of things in a spreadsheet, but you have to develop it and you have to develop it in a way that works for you, that works for your business. I mean you can use certain templates, but I did not like templates either because they don’t really work with the way how I work, and how my workflow looks like. I think for me, the most challenging part was figuring out how to make it work for me, and it was initially it was a huge investment in time and learning curve, because there’s so many things that you can do with it, and I just didn’t know where to start. So once I actually made the decision and said, “You know what, I’m going to invest all this time upfront, and it’s really going to pay off later on, that’s when I started seeing the results.”

Meagan (guest): 

Yeah, I hear that from a lot of people the same kind of thing. Like there’s, they first look at it, and they’re just like, “No, not what I had in mind.” But, with some time some effort with some commitment, they’re able to build it out into something that’s really customized and works with their business.

Kathy (host): 

And I think the nice thing about the ClickUp, too that you can make it look like a Kanban-style, to-do, done, or in progress working on it, you can do these, these types of cards, or you can make it look as a checklist, you can make it look- I like for me the way how I work on projects and the way how I work. I like it to be almost like a pizza tracker, you have a start, you have a finish and you have stuff in between. I like that I like to see that. I also actually expanded it from working just on the project, I expanded it on having SOPs, the standard operating procedures in ClickUp. I now have my HR manuals in there, I have all the marketing materials, I’ve actually put all the content that I put out there like my social media is LinkedIn. When I actually do and I take all the social media postings that I do on LinkedIn, I actually put it in ClickUp as a sort of almost like a backup, and for repurposing purposes as well. So like I said, I mean, I run my entire business on it, but I dedicated a lot of work implementation and training for it. And I’m not gonna lie, it was very painful at the beginning. For someone who was like me before, what would you recommend? What would be the easiest way to implement ClickUp? And what are some of the common mistakes that you see people making when they’re trying to go down that route on their own? And how can they avoid that?

Meagan (guest): 

What I always recommend is making sure that after you sign up for ClickUp that you watch the onboarding videos that they have. They’re short, it’s about like six, seven minutes total. But it gives you a good taste not only for the company but also for the platform and some of the things that you can do with it. And are also then tell people after that, check out in the Help section in your ClickUp, they have free videos, they have free webinars, they have tutorials, they have extensive help docs.

Meagan (guest):

After that, the most important thing is before you start setting up is to have a plan. And that’s kind of the biggest mistake that I see people making is that they go in and they just start like kind of creating all kinds of stuff, which is fine. You’re not going to break anything, you’re not going to mess anything up, it’s not going to be the end of the world. There’s trash, you can find your stuff if you delete it, but they kind of just go in without a plan.

Meagan (guest):

And I recommend using a tool like Miro, or you know, a kind of whiteboard tool where you can plan out things and group like things together. You’re talking about your HR manual, your social media, your clients, all these different things you can keep in ClickUp. But some of these things you don’t want to mesh with other things right, you don’t want to find your social media posts next to your client’s tasks, I mean in the same list or in the same folder, just kind of giving yourself some time to think out the structure, you really get great results, and it makes it easier for you.

Meagan (guest):

And I feel that people are less frustrated once they take this time to just be a little bit reflective about and plan out what they actually want to see in their ClickUp, and related to that. It’s also educating yourself a little bit about the features. Because one thing that I see people do often is not use some of the most powerful features like custom fields and views. When you’re not using custom fields, which lets you add any type of extra information that you want to a task, from email address to timezone, two types of task, the options are endless, and you’re not using views to customize what you see. You’re really just using ClickUp like collect the reminder to the app on your phone. And it’s so powerful that putting in the effort to learn these things will get you so much in return.

Kathy (host): 

Can you give us an example of something that would be really enhanced if you use custom fields and views the way how they’re intended?

Meagan (guest): 

Yeah, sure. One example that I can give you, is that I work with a lot of bookkeepers. This is a bookkeeping-related example, that you have tasks. If you’re a bookkeeper, you might be doing payroll, you’re doing reconciliations, right, you might be doing sales tax. You have these different types of services that you provide. And you probably have the need to see only your payroll-related tasks in one place. You don’t want to be kind of cluttered up with your regular bookkeeping tasks, your 1099, prep your sales tax, whatever else you do. If you have a custom field for the like service type, and you put those different services that you offer in there, and then you have your run monthly payroll task, and your mark as payroll, you can then go up to the top of the screen and create a saved view with a filter, so that you only see all your payroll tasks there, and all the other tasks are hidden. And you can take that example for anything.

Meagan (guest):

I keep track of some of my kids homeschooling in ClickUp. I could have a custom field for my child’s name, and then I can pick my child’s name in the view, in the filter, and I can save that view. I could see Child 1’s homeschooling all in one place, Child 2’s homeschooling all in one place, Child 3’s homeschooling all in one place. I can see them separately, yet I can also go back and then view them all together as they were original. It just lets you take these kinds of pieces of information, and separate them or combine them in different ways so that you can see even more things in different ways.

Meagan (guest):

For a lot of people, I think this is kind of like a new concept. It can take a little bit of thinking through, like, what do you want to see as something else, just basic view is just like filtering your tasks for tasks that are due today, or tasks that are overdue, or tasks that are due next week. And that’s something really basic, but with the custom fields, you can then add in tasks that are due next week, and our monthly recurring tasks, maybe you have a task of the field for frequency. There’s really like so many different things you could do, you were saying you have your HR manual in ClickUp. For those kinds of things, I usually have a status called resource. And then I would have a view, probably to everything level, a saved view. You can see all the tasks that have the status resource and just one place. And it just makes it really easy to just have a one-click, like I’m always looking for these one-click solutions so you don’t have to scroll down, dig around findings, just a one-click thing to go and find what you need.

Kathy (host): 

I love that one-click thing. Yeah, and now as we were talking about it, like maybe I should go back into my ClickUp check out by my functionality right there. We talked about the custom fields, and we talked about the views, is there anything else that you would say are on this like must use a list that it’s really valuable that you’ve seen for businesses and for your clients?

Meagan (guest): 

Favorites, it’s something really basic, but you can favorite a view or space a dark, a dark, which is new, you can favorite docs, that’s a recent update folder, list, a task like anything that you find yourself going to more than once, favorite it because then it’s so much easier to click and get there and not have to dig through all your stuff to do it, down to find it.

Meagan (guest):

Task location is another thing that I always see people say like, I have this list of tasks, but I have like three tasks that have the same name, but they’re in different lists. How do I know which list they belong to? And so they’re always kind of looking for these complex ways to solve this problem. When ClickUp board he has it built-in, and it’s called Task location. And all you have to do is turn it on. And that usually solves a lot of problems and people are like, “Oh, wow, like that just, you know, changed everything for me.” Those are probably like two really basic simple things that can just make a big difference in your usage of ClickUp.

Kathy (host): 

And when would you turn this on? Would you go into the settings where that option?

Meagan (guest): 

In this simple layout, or I used simple layout, it’s in the top right corner where it says Show and there’s kind of like a little tiny eye icon. It says show and then you turn on task location.

Kathy (host): 

Yeah, that’s super useful. I think I have done that for mine a while ago because I came exactly at the same issue too. It’s like I have the same name for the same tasks and like, which client does this belong to? Is this mine, this is the client, I have no idea, I have to click on it. And it just drove me crazy until I found this. And I think with ClickUp because they change it so much, and they do a lot of updates, they actually I think they’re right now that you weekly updates. They’re trying to scale it down a little bit and just work on, it, because they’ve seen that they might break certain things in ClickUp, and people, have not been happy with that so they’re more looking at the quality versus the speed at this point. But they do change a lot. And if you’re using it like keeping up with that it’s a good way to change the way how you work in a better way to be more efficient, to figure out, how is it that you can do what you’re doing right now and in a better way? I mean, I do that with my own business, like every two weeks, I will sit down and say, “Well, what is new in ClickUp, maybe I can use this in my own processes and it has been super, super helpful.” So you know what to do. Like, I like hearing people’s success stories when they’re implementing this because it is such an I cannot emphasize this enough with the ClickUp. It’s been such a learning curve. When people actually implement the ClickUp, and they’re really running on it, how has that changed your operations and your business? What have you seen your clients?

Meagan (guest): 

I have seen so many different things. Going back to that that CFO client, as they realize, like they need to build their clients and ClickUp is now reminding them to do that. I see people who are able to save hundreds of dollars a month because they’re able to use ClickUp in place of a few different tools that they were using before. They were kind of like cobbling together some different things before and now they have ClickUp which can handle all of the things that they were paying for different tools to do before. I’ve seen people who are able to just get rid of a lot of unnecessary stuff in their business because they realized through the process of setting ClickUp up, that ClickUp could help them do things in a different, slightly different way. But give them the same results that they wanted.

Meagan (guest):

For example, the one I’m thinking of she’s a business coach. And so she had, she has coached under her. And she had these really complex forms that she was sharing with the coaches and having them fill out before their coaching sessions at the end of the week, just kind of like updating on the clients and their progress and what they did. And now that’s very simple to just put like in the task description in ClickUp, or end, she also has a saved view where she can go and review you know what the coaches have done without her having to open up all these forms and read them. And without the coaches having to take the time to fill out all these different forms throughout the week. A lot of simplifying a lot of streamlining, a lot of saving money, a lot of saving time.

Meagan (guest):

And people are actually also automating a lot more, because ClickUp has native automation once they get a taste of that native automation they’re like, “Oh, what else is out there?” And then they look to automate other things, which is always a really great experience for them to just kind of see like, “Oh, wow, as I can, I can do that without having to do anything really.”

Meagan (guest):

One other client I have, we just got her set up and ClickUp. And then as we’re going through her podcast production process, we realized that there’s just like, it was just too much she had to she has a few people working on it with her, production team, a VA, a social media person. And she was like sending this to one person emailing this to another person emailing it again to that person. And I was like, “Listen, like, what of these you do actually need to physically do and out of like 10 or so tasks?” She identified only one step. And I said, “All right, let’s go and Zapier and you can automate these. You can have Gmail, sending out emails for you through Zapier. You can have Gmail, emailing your podcast production team when something’s uploaded in Dropbox,” and so she was able to go in and set up a whole bunch of zaps on the free plan with Zapier and save herself so much time. And this just happened as a result of me saying, “Hey, that process looks a little clunky, let’s think about that.” And the things that happen to these different businesses, they’re really able to free up a lot of space and the business owner, or the operations director’s head. And so my whole thing is like, I want to help you free up that space in your brain. Because when you have more free space in your brain, you’re more innovative. And that’s the best thing that I love about being an online small business owner is the innovation that I see from other people. And I just want to see more and more of that. I tried to do everything that I can to get stuff out of people’s heads, so I can see more of their innovation, and help them share that with other people.

Kathy (host): 

Yeah, I love that. Because if you keep things in your head. I think I’ve heard somewhere that your head is not for keeping things in is for actually creating things where you want to keep things is either on your paper or in a project management tool or somewhere else. Because if you have it out there, then you can hire people to help you with that process, to help you with our workflow. The other thing that’s I think it’s really helpful too, as I was going through this process is that you can see, as you’re mapping out your workflows, and you’re trying to put it into a project management tool, you can see where there’s disconnects between teams, where’s their waste? Are you using a lot of complexities like in this client example, the podcaster, that that you gave us, this is a great, great example because I’ve come across this myself, too, with this podcast is that there’s a lot of moving and small pieces. And at the end of the day, it’s like who should be working on this and isn’t really the step that’s necessary for this particular timeframe in the project. And it kind of gives you this step back and look at it and assess this from this 10,000-foot view. It’s like, what am I really doing, as is what I’m doing really working for me and for my business.

Meagan (guest): 

I love that, that you said that they are that’s something that I’m always talking to my clients about. And going back to your values, like, not only is that important when you’re thinking about these things, but also your mission and your vision, and how are all these things connected. If you have a process that’s really clunky and disjointed, that’s going to slow you down from achieving your mission, and your vision. And so it’s all really connected. And sometimes I think it’s not common to think about it in this way. But when we have simple and streamlined processes when our business is more organized when we free up all the space in our brain, it really accelerates our progress towards achieving that vision that’s the reason that you started this business because you wanted to do some things, you know, in the world something special, something, you might want to make some kind of special impact in the world leave a legacy. And when we get bogged down in all these little moving pieces. As humans, we just tend to make things unnecessarily complex for a lot of different areas of our lives. And really just stepping back and focusing on the essentials can provide so much clarity in all different areas of our lives.

Kathy (host): 

I love that. And before we started recording, we talked about other applications that you have found useful as you’re working with your clients, and as you’re working in your business, that is really helping you retain that focus. Would you mind sharing a couple of applications that you use that you find really, really helpful?

Meagan (guest): 

Yeah, so I’ve recently been on kind of like a mission to think about how I spend and use my time, with the understanding that our time in this world is limited. And what am I really doing with this limited time that I have? And so one thing that I started using was a tool called, I think it’s freedom.io. And so that’s a tool that you can put on your phone or on your computer and it lets you block different websites. And it’s not like the screen time app, which kind of lets you block it but you can get around it really easily. Oh, it’s not effective at all.

Kathy (host): 

Yeah. I do that all the time. Like, give me more time.

Meagan (guest): 

I know, you’re just like 15 more minutes. Right? It lets you identify websites, apps, and you can group them into categories. It’s really nice because let’s say you want to have like a focus work time. You can turn off all those distraction websites, you can’t even access them. It uses like a VPN, I think to disconnect them. When you try to access them. It just shows you nothing. There’s no 15 more minutes, there’s, there’s none of that it’s dead, like. Doing that during the day has been really helped me increase my efficiency, I don’t want to say productivity, because I don’t love that word productivity, like, what does it even mean? Really. But my efficiency in getting things accomplished that I want to get accomplished. Also, like bedtime, you know, instead of sitting there, like scrolling and reading nonsense, just turning it all off. And like, I only really allow myself, my like Kindle app, and then just reading instead of scrolling nonsense, right. But then there is a lot of great content on the internet that you may want to read later.

Meagan (guest):

I spent some time looking for quality newsletters to subscribe to. And I also set up a Read later app. And so the most popular relator apps are Instapaper, Pocket, and there’s a new one called Mater. Mater. app. And so I use one of those apps, I’m using Mater to store things that I want to read later. And so what that does is it lets you create your own magazine, basically, where you could just open up your app and then just scroll through only the content you like. That means, you’re not seeing pictures of your cousin’s neighbor’s dog, or,  reading about another person who has Coronavirus and you’re just tired of like, I can’t take it anymore. It’s all only like curated content that you actually want to read. And when I’m selecting what I want to read, I’m always thinking about the future Meagan. What it does future Megan want to read this article, is future Meagan going to benefit from this, should future Megan use this in her life.

Meagan (guest):

Just making these little kinds of shifts in how I use my time and how I interact with social media, and content on the internet has brought about a tremendous change in my life, is now it’s much easier for me to create my own content because I have these little like snippets saved from these articles that I’m reading that inspire me, or that sparks something. I’ve read like I don’t know, six or so books in a month. Whereas the previous year, I only read like 20 books in a year. It’s really just helped me focus more and also be more intentional, and present in my time with my family.

Kathy (host): 

These are great tips. Meagan, I really appreciate that, especially all the software that you provided for us. And all of these are going to be available in the show notes. You don’t have to go back and try to write down what she said, we’re actually going to put that in the show notes with the links as well so feel free to click on that. Meagan, this was so insightful. I love that you came on this podcast, I do have a question that I asked every single guest. And that is, what is it that someone can do today to get them closer to that perfect state of project management in their business. And we all know, there’s no such thing as perfection, things always evolve. But what is the one thing that they can do to get them closer to being better at project management in their business?

Meagan (guest): 

I think the main thing is consistency. You can set up ClickUp, you can set up Airtable, you can set up all these integrations. But unless you’re consistent in opening up, ClickUp, or your project management tool and using it marking phase complete entering new tasks, getting things out of your email and into ClickUp It’s not really gonna get you anywhere.  Consistency is one of the main things that I try to teach my clients. And I have different ways that I tried to support them through creating this for what is new to many of them, this habit of having somewhere where they’re taking these things out of their head and putting them in a digital tool. I would say by far it’s consistent. Without consistency and dedication to that consistency, you’ll just kind of slowly reverting back to how you’re doing things before. It’s also great to have an accountability partner during that initial time. So that they can provide that consistency and accountability alongside you.

Kathy (host): 

Yeah. Otherwise, it just becomes a shiny new object, then it gets shiny, less and less shiny each day. And by the end of it, it’s like, “Maybe I shouldn’t be using that.” Consistency is a good way to do that. Meagan, working on listeners, get in touch with you.

Meagan (guest): 

I’m not really all over social media. But you can visit my website and I have a newsletter there, where I send out tech tips and ClickUp new feature updates, and that you can find on my website, which is www.newleafdigital.net I would love for you to subscribe to my newsletter. I only send it out once a week at most, and I absolutely hate spam. I would love for you too, you know, to subscribe and hear all my other tech tools and tips that I finally have an outlet for sharing them with people and not just storing them in my head.

Kathy (host): 

And I can vouch for this Meagan has absolutely fabulous ideas on how to increase productivity and all the new shiny apps that you can actually use they’re not going to be just the shiny objects that you could use in your business. Meagan, thanks so much for being on the show.

Meagan (guest): 

Thank you so much for having me.