June 2018 Summaries

Do your word choices inhibit your ability to be effective at your job? Do your friends and family think you're wishy-washy? Being assertive through language doesn't come naturally to everyone. Unassertive people often rely on hedging words and phrases that make what they say less definitive and less direct. To combat this, associate data scientist Kristie Wirth created "assertiveness snippets" using the Mac productivity app Alfred's text expander function. She customized it to automatically delete or rewrite non-assertive words and phrases when she types them, making her word choices more direct and confident. By doing so, she improved her language and assertiveness, particularly in a workplace setting where she felt vulnerable due to being one of the few women on her team. Kristie shared her project with a women's Slack channel at Zapier and has since provided instructions for using Alfred to create similar snippets, which can help anyone become more aware of their language use and improve their writing and assertiveness.

As a small remote startup, Dollar Flight Club leverages Zapier to streamline its workflows, freeing up engineers from one-off projects while saving time and increasing efficiency. The company uses Zapier to automate tasks such as lead collection, contact creation, deal management, and team communication, allowing the sales and marketing teams to focus on their customers and product development. By implementing a few simple Zaps, Dollar Flight Club's director of sales and partnerships, Kyle Maltz, was able to create workflows that manage leads from form submissions to CRM updates, saving an "unmeasurable amount of time" for the team. The use of Zapier has had a significant impact on Dollar Flight Club's productivity, allowing them to work smarter and more efficiently, while also giving their engineers more autonomy to focus on product development.

Zen to Done (ZTD) is a productivity system created by Leo Babauta that helps individuals build individual habits, step by step, as they work through a workflow management system. The system suggests forming 10 productivity-boosting habits, but Babauta recommends starting with four core habits: Collect, Process, Plan, and Do. These habits focus on documenting to-dos (Collect), reviewing and prioritizing tasks daily (Process), scheduling time for high-priority tasks (Plan), and minimizing distractions while working on big rocks (Do). By mastering one habit at a time and taking a step-by-step approach, individuals can develop the willpower needed to implement significant changes in their workflow.

Facebook ads can be a powerful way to reach potential customers on the social network, but what happens when those people see your ads and then become customers outside of Facebook? To measure the success of your campaign and optimize based on performance, you can use Facebook Offline Conversions. This feature allows you to match events like store visits, email opens, and webinar signups to your Facebook ads, providing a way to gauge the impact of your social advertising campaigns. By connecting offline events with data on who's seen your ads, you'll be able to track conversions from non-Facebook activities, such as in-store purchases or email clicks, and analyze their performance. To get started with Facebook Lead Ads, which include a sign-up button and lead form that allows users to interact with your company without leaving Facebook, follow the step-by-step process outlined in the article, including setting up ad objectives, creating ads, and automating workflows using Zapier or other integrations. By automating your campaigns and tracking conversions through Facebook Offline Conversions, you'll be able to streamline your sales process, measure campaign success, and make data-driven decisions to optimize your marketing strategy.

Zapier has developed an innovative interview process that focuses on a skills test designed to assess candidates on the practical abilities they would use in their roles, rather than traditional methods like intimidating whiteboard challenges or standardized online tests. This approach involves a take-home coding challenge that simulates real-world problems using Zapier's tech stack, allowing candidates the flexibility to use resources they would typically have on the job. The test is crafted to be completed in about four hours, ensuring a balance between complexity and manageability, and candidates can initiate the test at their convenience. The process is automated using GitHub repositories and is structured to provide clear instructions and specifications, with the evaluation based on a rubric that assesses specific, observable criteria. Feedback from candidates has been integral to refining the test, making it a less stressful and more accurate reflection of a candidate's potential, ultimately leading to a more enjoyable and effective hiring process.

Automating the sharing of success, such as new leads, can boost morale and create a sense of joy among team members. The company DogSpot uses Zapier to automate this process by connecting their apps and celebrating new leads in real-time. With automated workflows, the team can share wins and create CRM contacts without manual work, shaving hours off their week. This not only saves time but also spreads good vibes throughout the entire company, improving morale and productivity.

Mind maps are an effective brainstorming technique that mimics natural associations in the mind. They help collect ideas, questions, problems, and potential solutions without judgment, allowing for fearless sharing and capturing of every idea that comes to mind. Mind maps can be created using paper or digital tools like MindMeister, which offers features such as drag-and-drop functionality, file attachments, and real-time collaboration. The tool is useful for various projects, including defining project requirements, creating product roadmaps, developing marketing strategies, defining team goals and priorities, documenting workflows and processes, onboarding new software, planning events, creating editorial calendars, and capturing ideas for personal projects. Once the mind map is complete, it can be converted into actionable tasks using a tool like MeisterTask, which integrates with MindMeister to provide real-time collaboration and project management capabilities.

Vanessa Prothe, a solopreneur and founder of Speak English with Vanessa, an online English as a second language program, knows the importance of implementing tools early to achieve long-term success in business. She started by focusing on developing content and connecting with clients, rather than learning how to code or build tools herself. To manage her growing business, she adopted automation through automated workflows using Zapier, which made it easier to manage tasks such as enrolling students, adding them to mailing lists, and processing payments. By automating these tasks, Vanessa was able to save time and focus on what she does best: fostering conversations with her clients. With the help of tools like Zapier, solopreneurs can also learn how to do more without wearing multiple hats, just like Vanessa did.

Spivo, an eCommerce business that uses Shopify as its store, experienced a bug in one of its plugins that caused thousands of emails to be improperly categorized, resulting in missed email funnels being sent. To mitigate the effects of this outage, Spivo automated its work using Zapier, an app automator that connects various tools and services. With Zapier, Spivo can automate tasks such as sending emails and tracking referrals without manual updates or bugs, providing a sense of security and reliability in their workflow. By leveraging Zapier's automation capabilities, Spivo was able to streamline their operations and trust their tools to work right every time.

The concept of Minimum Viable Product (MVP) was coined by Frank Robinson, CEO of SyncDev, Inc. An MVP defines the absolute minimum features needed for a project to feel complete and delivers value while allowing feedback gathering. In web development projects, an MVP is crucial to reduce risk and maximize return on investment. The process of finding an MVP involves defining what's valuable, determining the smallest amount of work that delivers value and allows feedback, and testing assumptions along the way. This mindset can be applied to personal decision-making, helping individuals tackle small, incremental steps toward long-term goals while validating assumptions and deriving value in increments. By adopting an MVP mindset, individuals can make progress quickly, avoid wasting time and money on incorrect assumptions, and ultimately achieve their goals more efficiently.

Save all the images from a Google Doc or Microsoft Word document using the "Download as Web Page" option, which saves the file as an HTML page with separate image files for each image in its original dimensions. This method can be faster and more efficient than copying and pasting individual images into another app. When saving from a Word document, simply select "Web Page (.htm)" and extract the zipped file to obtain all the images, which can then be used as desired.

The author's personal experience with hiring their first employee, Aaron, led them to conclude that finding and hiring great people is not easy and requires careful planning and execution. They highlight the importance of using the right tech tools and workflow to streamline the hiring process, rather than relying on guesswork or intuition. The author shares their own small business hiring toolkit, which includes tools like Evernote, Google Forms, Calendly, Dropbox, and Google Sheets, among others. They emphasize the need for a clear and focused approach to hiring, including writing a winning job description, filtering applicants, and conducting thorough interviews. By following these steps, small businesses can increase their chances of finding and retaining top talent.

WordPress is a widely used platform that requires regular updates and security measures to prevent vulnerabilities. Keeping your WordPress site updated with automatic plugins like Easy Updates Manager can help ensure security. Using plugins such as Wordfence Security or All in One WP Security & Firewall can provide additional protection against brute force attacks, malware, file inclusion attacks, and SQL injections. Regular backups using a plugin like UpdraftPlus can also safeguard your site's data in case of an attack. By taking these steps, you can significantly reduce the risk of security breaches and protect your website and its users.

Miguel Domínguez, founder of pest control service MrBug, used app automation tool Zapier to create a minimum viable product (MVP) without months of development work, instead opting for pre-built SaaS products that fit his needs. With Zapier, Miguel connected various apps and tools in automated workflows called Zaps, automating processes such as scheduling appointments, payment processing, and customer feedback collection. By leveraging Zapier's flexibility and scalability, MrBug was able to launch its business with a seamless online experience for clients in just three weeks, saving time and money. The company has since become profitable and continues to use Zapier to streamline its operations and improve productivity.

The latest operating systems from Apple, macOS 10.14 Mojave and iOS 12, have been announced at the World Wide Developer Conference, bringing several key features to improve productivity and collaboration. The most notable features include Siri Shortcuts, which allows users to automate tasks using built-in and third-party apps, and Group FaceTime for team video calls with up to 32 people. Additionally, new screenshot tools and a redesigned Voice Memo app are available on both iOS and macOS. Other notable updates include password app integration, one-time passcodes from SMS, and improved security features. Both operating systems will be released in fall 2018, with beta versions already available for developers to test.

TravelPerk, a business travel company, aimed to simplify travel for companies by offering easy-to-use tools and stellar customer support. To keep costs down and their team small, they automated as many of their processes as possible using Zapier, an app automator that connects apps at a fraction of the cost of hiring an engineer. By constructing Zaps, TravelPerk's marketers connected apps on their own without relying on developer resources, removing the engineering bottleneck from the process and feeling liberated. The company used Zapier to automate workflows for tools like Marketing automation, Lead generator, Customer relationship manager (CRM), Team chat, and Customer communication, saving time and money in the process. With automated connections between apps, TravelPerk's team was able to focus on growth campaigns and learning data insights, rather than spending resources on creating integrations from scratch.

Drafts is a tool that allows users to turn text into anything they want, providing a flexible and intuitive way to capture ideas, notes, and tasks on the go. It offers features such as text formatting options, dictation, and actions that can send emails, append to Evernote notes, create new to-do lists, print with Markdown formatting, post on Twitter, and more. With Drafts, users can organize their notes into an inbox, add tags for filtering, and create separate workspaces to further categorize their content. The app also integrates with Zapier, allowing users to automate tasks and workflows by sending text snippets to over 1,000 business apps, including email services, CRM systems, and productivity tools. This integration enables users to turn their notes into actionable steps, streamlining their workflow and increasing productivity. By leveraging Drafts and Zapier, users can create custom workflows that automate repetitive tasks, send notifications, and take action on their ideas, making it an essential tool for anyone looking to boost their mobile productivity.

The text discusses the importance of time management in businesses, particularly when it comes to administrative tasks that can be automated using tools like Zapier. The author shares a thought experiment where an hourly rate is calculated based on time spent on these tasks, and then highlights how Zapier automates specific tasks such as contact creation and email sending, saving time and increasing productivity for a financial planning firm called Quarry Hill Advisors. By implementing Zaps, the team was able to free up at least an hour per week, which translates to a significant impact on their bottom line. The article encourages readers to explore Zapier's capabilities and share their own stories of automating tasks to improve workflow and productivity.