April 2015 Summaries

Zapier is a powerful tool that automates email marketing processes, allowing businesses to focus on crafting messages and caring for customers. By linking various systems together, Zapier can add new contacts to email lists, grow email lists with form entries, manage email lists, and automate tasks such as removing list members or adding new purchasers. This enables businesses to streamline their email marketing efforts, reduce administrative time, and improve customer engagement. With its ease of use and flexibility, Zapier has become an essential tool for many businesses looking to optimize their email marketing strategies.

There are two main roles in the online world: content creators and coders. Content creators write copy, craft illustrations, and design tools that consumers pay for or endure ads to enjoy. Coders create complex systems that serve up content efficiently and make it visually appealing. A "hack-it-together" mindset allows individuals to learn coding skills by exploring basics, playing around with existing code, and Googling unknown parts, making it possible to build simple projects like landing pages without extensive knowledge of HTML, CSS, or JavaScript. With this approach, one can create a landing page for a new product or business, gather interest, or automate Twitter engagement, and there are resources available to help, such as Codecademy's classes on HTML and CSS and JSFiddle for practice. By adopting this mindset, individuals can quickly acquire the skills needed to build their own projects without needing extensive programming knowledge.

Innovation can be costly, but a new consulting organization, co-founded by Shane Reiser and Carie Davis, offers events that empower employees to identify and act on ideas for new products and services. These "hypothesis-based innovation" events are designed to engage cross-departmental problem-solving while saving money. The approach is based on the principles of lean startup methodology, which was developed through Startup Weekend, a two-and-a-half-day event where participants pitch ideas and work together to develop them. Companies invest in these events for five main reasons: driving innovation, filling an innovation pipeline, approaching innovation from a new angle, changing culture around innovation, and building a reputation as an innovative company. To run a successful event, companies need to create an open and inviting atmosphere, appoint a facilitator, select participants, provide food and drink, announce the event, hold the event, encourage follow-up, and provide next steps.

Brent Frei, executive chairman and co-founder of Smartsheet, emphasizes the importance of identifying "A" players, who are top performers that can drive a company's success. He believes that these individuals have insatiable interest in learning, are trustworthy and reliable, possess great communication skills, are willing to take calculated risks, and show well-rounded effort. To retain A-players, Frei suggests giving them control, presenting challenges, making sure they trust leadership, offering regular feedback, and rewarding their work. He also notes that smaller companies have an advantage in retaining high-performers due to less bureaucracy.

Asana's "Areas of Responsibility" (AoRs) model distributes authority throughout the organization to promote trust, ownership, and quick decision-making. By giving individual team members autonomy over specific projects or tasks, Asana encourages initiative, collaboration, and transparency. The AoR system allows employees to take ownership of their work, making decisions about how to improve a product or aspect of the team without needing extensive approval from higher-ups. This approach has led to benefits such as improved documentation, expertise sharing, and accountability among team members. To implement AoRs with your team, start by breaking down work into projects and areas of responsibility, deciding who holds authority over each area, making them public knowledge, choosing measurements for success, reflecting on results, and refining processes over time.

We are drowning in information, with every hour bringing a new stream of news alerts, social media updates, and blog posts vying for our attention. This deluge can be overwhelming, leading to decision paralysis, decreased productivity, and unhappiness. Our mental operating system can only process so much information before it becomes distorted, causing us to make poor decisions and feel drained. To manage this flood of information, we need to identify the sources of input in our lives and treat them with care. This includes news, advertising, blogs, videos, notifications, books, and social interactions. By analyzing these sources, filtering out irrelevant or biased information, and taking action only when necessary, we can optimize our inputs and make better decisions. By treating our minds like a Ferrari, we can put in the best fuel possible to achieve optimal performance.

There's a new help desk app in town: it's called Groove. The company started publishing stories about their path to success, attracting readers from all over the world, many of whom are entrepreneurs themselves. Today, more than 30,000 people visit the blog each week, helping attract 3,000 paying customers in just two years. The team has trended towards total transparency, writing about failures as well as successes on their journey to earning their first $100,000 then $500,000 in monthly revenue. They expect some complaints about the product, but have been pleasantly surprised by the positive comments from readers. Groove's marketing strategist attributes this to the fact that they put their whole self out there, being honest and vulnerable. The company believes that brand journalism is the future of marketing, where companies use in-depth articles to tell a story about their brand. They've built their company on the blog, with around 65% of new business coming directly from it. Groove's approach to writing quality content consistently involves brainstorming ideas from all over, planning an editorial calendar two months in advance, and having everyone on the team offer input. The team has turned their idea-to-post process into a well-oiled machine, with more than 100 ideas waiting. Every post should solve a problem for the reader, otherwise it's a path to no one caring. Groove's blog has attracted many reader-turned-customer success stories, including Proposify founder and CEO Kyle Racki. The company's unique approach, tons of ideas offering readers value, and smooth editorial process are key elements that can be learned from their stand-out blog. Good writing is at the core of it all, with reading being a crucial part in improving writing skills.

The Department of Motor Vehicles has a poor user onboarding experience, which is often overlooked in favor of online apps and services. User onboarding expert Samuel Hulick emphasizes that it's not just about teaching users the basics of how to use a product, but rather about helping them achieve their goals and become successful users. He argues against common myths such as relying solely on tooltip tours, copying another app's onboarding process, or focusing solely on features rather than user needs. Instead, Hulick recommends adopting a culture of experimentation, understanding the user's perspective, and providing a comprehensive collection of resources that help them achieve their goals. Effective onboarding should be personal, human, and aligned with the user's goals, using attention to detail, consistency in tone, and lifecycle emails to create a positive experience. By focusing on the user, companies can turn "just browsing" customers into paying ones and generate more happy customers.

The Zapier team has written an eBook titled "The Ultimate Guide to Remote Work" after sharing their experiences and best practices over the past 43 months as an entirely distributed team. The book covers 14 chapters on various aspects of remote work, including building a remote team, communicating effectively, and working remotely, with a focus on overcoming challenges such as burnout, time zones, and distractions. The eBook is free to download in both online and PDF formats, and also available for Kindle users.