 Let's say Adam Silver. So I'm on a projector big huge white wall screen doing a presentation and up on Twitter Comes my handle. Hey, Adam Silver, which is my Twitter handle. Hey, Adam Silver and it says go yourself Your referees suck Why do you pay them, you know 140 characters later, you know Whatever Bob. All right, so I'm there. I tell my meet-up group why I got these tweets And I reply right then and there. I'm like dear Bob. I'm like, sorry. You're upset. I agree sometimes revs aren't great By the way, I'm not the NBA commissioner He writes back. I'm so sorry. Like what you're really too fast on Twitter Sorry, you have a crappy name. I write back and you know, I can also it's I deleted the tweet. I Write back. Thanks. I think my parents might disagree He's my best man on my wedding. No, I'm getting on now That was the end of that but yeah, I write back to about I mean to everyone who tweets me regarding the NBA I will write back and about I 50% people write back. I'm sorry other people don't write back I have another 25% nothing another 5% are mad. It's still mad at me. They don't they don't believe that I'm not him If you look at my photo, let's do this real quick If you just took a split second Let's go to why can I not see my screen? Here we go. So we go to Adam Silver NBA, let's take a look what he looks like. I have hair a lot of its He has money. I have hair. Okay Funny story also, he actually does not have official NBA Twitter account He's not really on Twitter. It turns out he actually has a Twitter account Which is kind of private and hidden someone found it based on some tweets. He said they did this, you know Little research and recon so they did find his account, but it's not like an official Twitter account Side note. I do own Adams over comm out of her 20 years. It's for sale to him for a lot of money. So, okay So Let me just do this Okay, and let me get my water real quick here So I make sure and because this is a tradition. I have to just do this real quick when we go Okay, it's all I got Every talk usually wakes people up. How we doing for work? Can't last talk of the day Much louder because there's people around. No, I'm kidding. It's okay I'm gonna stand here. I suppose I do want water and this is supposed to be a flash talk and hmm Not a flash talk light and talk Completely awkward otherwise. Let me tell you Completely awkward. All right And my talk title originally was my favorite WordPress business life hacks. It was gonna be an hour originally I wasn't selected to speak originally not bitter Week and a half ago. They reached out. Hey, someone canceled. Can you talk anyways? And it's a lightning talk. So sure. So it's really not WordPress business life hacks. It's more like WordPress business tools. Keep that in mind. So the goal is To share the tools I use to run my business day-to-day as an agency Because shiny objects syndrome does exist. We can move around all the time changing our tools But at what effects to get work done and there's a thing there We'll get to that before we do that Adam is live calm if you go to that right now You'll go and be able to share this talk with people on Twitter because that's what I do Okay, that's all I want to say on that. It's all I want to say about that. Okay. It's like I'm forced to go So, why are you here? Well? Different reasons possibly are you here to get yelled out by albundi who remembers albundi? Okay? Who doesn't who's ever heard of albundi? Wow, you guys are young No judgment no judgment at all really Chloe. Well, okay, you're not from this country. It's okay So albundi a lot of people want to be told what to do what to use right? Maybe that's you But what's more important about this picture is not what's in the forefront? It's what's in Why is that our it's in the background. Oh come on. There's that's me. I was very young I mean look at that me. I'm sick. I couldn't grow a beard then I don't think I I don't have that sweater anymore either thinking thank God for that All right, so yeah, so why are we here? Maybe you want to be inspired? What tools do we use or truly you want to get past this definition my favorite quote by Einstein, right? So truth be told. Oh, actually factoid today is one year since I moved to North Carolina It's crazy a year ago. I moved to Kerry. I'm outside of Raleigh and a year later I'm speaking at work camp Asheville, which is awesome So yeah, I when people say why do you to move across the country? I'm like, well because it was Los Angeles So I had to get out before it caught on fire. Anyway, I do like it here a lot I really do I three kids married and in today today 19th so in 11 days. I'm off To Paris I'm going to that with my wife 20 years of marriage marriage. So so bye All right. Yeah, so a year ago right after I moved here about a month after I moved here in September I realized business wasn't great And I'm completely honest and transparent with how I run my business you guys want to do numbers I'll share anything you want to know because there's plenty of business. How many people here build sites and WordPress Right, how many people here maintain sites in WordPress, right? There's plenty. There's 90 million WordPress websites. Please come up from a place of abundance not scarcity Okay, if you take nothing else away take that I used to be the opposite. I used to have that fake Okay, I might still have it but I have a fake email account. I would email people Hey, how much do you charge for? I was doing photography work for headshots. Why is Billy getting work? Why am I I'm not getting work bad place to be really is don't worry about what someone else is doing Do what you do best Last September I thought I'm crazy. I'm insane. I'm doing the same thing over and over not doing well Friends of mine are doing the same thing. I'm doing they're doing great. Why? Because they have things in place systems in place that are working. They've taken the time to truly do it I had the tools. I was paying for tools. I had the knowledge and I stopped like well, I'll get work people will find me Well, not so much. Okay, so That's my favorite quote for this reason stats. Just some quick stats not official stats Just things I kind of looked up online and Google nothing referenced here These are tools CRM's billion services proposals 20 to 30 versions of everything. I'm talking about You may use HubSpot. You may use whatever I'm gonna share the tools I use to do what I do there are plenty to choose from okay Keep that in mind. There's not one perfect thing. Here's another takeaway People want the magic bullet. You know where you get the magic bullet best buy target. You can make smoothie with smoothie with it There's no magic will up here business Simple like that. I made that up last night. Okay You can tweet that there's magic bullet is for smoothies not to run your business. Okay, so The goal is to share nine tools that I do to run my business reason why I use nine It's my favorite number. It's my birthday November 9th. Send me a card. Okay Number one the number one tool people someone asked me yesterday. What's the number one thing? Who was here? Did someone is that person here in this room who asked me yesterday? No, she was on crutches So she's probably can't be here. Okay, so I said exercise honestly for me exercise is the number one tool I do every day. I have the Apple watch now Bought it for myself from birthday two years ago. Love it. I just got a tweet. I got a like who's Stephanie Who's Stephanie? She's honey. Oh, she's back there somewhere. Anyway, so every day I track everything I track my exercise I did two miles this morning It's what I do. It's minimum 30 minutes and again, we're all busy Make time for exercise. I Also take naps. I'm up at 430 445 every morning. I wake up my alarm goes off. I'm up my brain. This starts It's not worth me trying to stay back in bed So I get up. I do my thing. I work out 30 minutes and actually now my workouts are much harder I'm gonna say this out loud because the more I say it the more it has to become real I'm actually in training for a race. It's crazy. It's called Iron Man. So, yeah It's gonna happen. I have three stages to get there stage one is a basic six-month Base training to get me back to a level of where I can't actually do something without hitting hurt That's now I started two months ago end of this year. I will have that six months done I've done two triathlons not Iron Man Next year I will do half Iron Man and in 2020 I will do full. That's the plan Okay, so and the reason I do this as mental health got really quiet in it As who heard Alisa's talk yesterday Alisa her yeah, that's a one person. Well, she'll appreciate that So she's a good friend of mine. We work in the same co-working space. She shared that she has depression I have mental health issues. We all do we all have something. I've struggled Kind of where to say this out loud on WordPress TV. It's true. I have imposter syndrome, you know, whatever it may be If I don't exercise daily 30 45 minutes, I feel bad, right? I feel bad I make poor choices on food. I make poor choices on food. I feel worse. It's a quick spiral down really quick So I exercise number one thing Okay, the rest are in no specific order necessarily. This is number one Okay, so and it also provides clarity for me once I'm running once I'm out there doing something I get it out of the way early And also the fact that I'm training I did a workout a double two weeks ago where I walked into the Y I Swam 500 meters and I ran back to my own half Hey, I was starving. I burned calories really quick. I'm fortunate that way But I eat like I just I can't keep weight on. I know it's a problem. I know I'm sorry I suck right I know I won't show you like my belt is like cinching over now. I need new pants. It's a problem Yeah, it's my problem. Okay, so yeah, so I have to eat healthy food and fuel myself. So clarity helps, okay? Number number two tool. This is huge. I use what's called the productivity planner Okay, there are plenty of versions of this you can have your own calendar your own kind of planner the why and how I use it as my weekly and my daily planner. I'm gonna show it to you real quick and Looks like this. Okay It's it's basically it's kind of it's based on the Pomodoro technique So I plan my week I do it on Sunday nights when I get back to rock carry tonight I will plan my week of five ten or fifteen things. I want to do all week And on Monday, and I'll plan tomorrow. So I wake up. I know what I need to do tomorrow, right? And I give myself flexibility. I can move around a little bit, but at least I have an outline keeps me on task All right, so that's I haven't said I managed to say it's not here. I'm just making the shut up No, I'm kidding. Okay, I use this religiously. It's 24 bucks. It's an investment You know, it's just paper, but you don't have to use this one Michael Hyatt has one John Dumas has it. There's tons of these out there. It's the one that works for me. Okay Second one Omni-focus anyone here use Omni-focus or heard of it. It's a Mac app Macintosh only and iPhone Now no one's heard of it and use it. Okay, so how am I use it? It's a brain dump I subscribe to getting things done by David Allen Okay, I want stuff out of my head because I have way too many ideas How many people here know me with an idea per week? Couple people. Okay, so literally I have I have two podcasts right now. We'll talk about those later I had two new ideas for podcasts in the last week. Okay, I don't share these with my wife anymore She doesn't she loves me doesn't care She just I mean I've learned in a hard way 20 years in she Wants to know only if can we pay rent mortgage health insurance If it doesn't have that in the conversation can you care less in the most loving way? Okay, so it lets me dump my brain out. Okay, it really does. I have an idea. I did it actually sitting outside I was listening. Oh, I was listening to your talk John's talk about the database about an idea for doing a podcast about Serial serialized serialized data. I can't say that word go ahead and say it Okay, you know what I'm talking about right serial Yeah, whatever data with an S and that tool you should because I may use that tool in my podcast I won't remember that if it's in my brain I need to dump it out as fast as possible have an idea put it in my an omni-focus and it's only for me I can't share this with anybody else really. It's really my to-dos. It's overall just overall projects Okay, so that's what I use on a daily basis all the time and sometimes I go through it And I will literally just if I'm not gonna get to something after six months to a year, you know I'll just say it's done. It's out. It needs to be done need to kind of every now once a year twice here I go through and I just clear house Domains are the same thing How many people here own a domain have renewed it more than once haven't launched the site don't see the rest of you are lying But how about five years how many people yeah, yeah, yeah, that's true real quick trivia How long can you register domain for ahead of time? You think it's ten years. That's actually a hundred Crazy right like they're gonna be around Apparently there's a hosting company that will do a hundred year registration We found this out on last week because I'm gonna ask the question about your life after death like your web life after death Or one of my shows, okay? It's weird it's kind of like Marty McFly when doc sent Western Union to deliver the package the letter at that same time in the future, you know, yeah, good luck. Okay. All right One of the main things I learned in September last year was really Tracking business really figuring out the way I used to do this was So first of all CRM who's heard of a CRM? Okay, who's never heard of a CRM? So those who don't know stands for crayons really matter. No, it doesn't Customer-relation manager, okay, it's a way to put all your content in a place for business for tracking I use pipe drive. I was fortunate last September that I spoke to my friend Jamie as a developer and I was kind of just Venting to some extent. I'm not sure what I was doing, but I know it wasn't the business wasn't good I was stressed. We just moved across the country. I left California. No debt got to North Carolina 7,000 dollars in moving debt Right, that's expensive to move across the country and I realized my mistake was being the insanity thing my old way of Getting work was I would find someone who might need a website I would shoot off an email that I hadn't just copy and paste it over and over or write it fresh every time and I would be CC it to my Trello board who uses anyone know Trello? Okay, so you get it you take a BCC it there till an email address that goes there That way in case John Doe email me back. Yeah, I want to hire you. I could go back and look to see what I sent him I never followed up. I didn't track anything. I had no sequence of events I had no evaluation on the project nothing one and 15 20 might contact me terrible stats No way to run a business just a shocking approach shoot off 10 or 20 emails a week and hope they contact me Pipe drive saved me on this. So I tested three CRMs. I've tested pipe drive Agile CRM and HubSpot, they're all fine. They're all great. They all have free levels to start HubSpot has a free level for life, but the minute you want more features. There's a big investment upward You have to spend the money Agile had too much. I didn't need it pipe drive works for me the way my brain works and what I do is it keeps me Untasked and it's my home base. So I put in projects and I give everything a value It reminds me to do something later So if I put out an email and I have sequences of emails that are Pre-written templates, but I send them manually because if I'm sending someone a warm cold email, I Don't want to be automated. I want to make sure that I know I'm sending it So I can then personalize a little bit if I met somebody at a conference Let's say I meet Chloe. Can I say Sam? No Chloe. Let's go back to Chloe So I met Chloe somewhere and I want to follow up. Hey, I can take the template I have I'm not recreating the wheel each time, but I could I can modify it. It was great to meet you at XYZ conference Here's what we talked about You know that kind of thing and I can then send right when I send it It says what do you want to do next and when phone call email follow up whatever and it's in my calendar and I pay for it 30 bucks a month it connects to my Google Calendar so I can see what's up there. What's going on? Okay, so I use this every every day literally these are things I do is every day Another one is a way for to to literally I Make it faster to get money fast in a sense about proposals. Let's just cut to proposals Proposify there's tons of them. I use nifty quotas Reason being the cost it's less expensive than proposal fi not as sexy not as elegant on the UI and US doesn't matter But I can have these blocks of text And insert them and be fast about getting people a proposal the faster you get people You know a proposal they can look at it You think they can agree to it say yes once they agree to it I then go and send them a request for money through what's next when that would be fresh books simple, right on Nifty Quoter like I said, it's not sexy. What's great about it is I can set it to let me know when someone opens the email You do the one time only or every time I do it every time it's annoying sometimes like why do they keep opening the email? Just say yes already. I had one client 27 times They still haven't said yes That's crazy. All right fresh books wide how I use it billing how many people use fresh books Handful people. I use it to about 10% of its potential. I need to do more with it. I really do I need to track time better with it. I don't do that as well as I should But it's make I want to make it super easy to take people's money I love the fact that they know when they open the invoice. It's an email. They're married Oh, I never got that invoice really because someone I never never point the name someone opened it at 1042 this morning It's an awkward conversation. They're like, oh really So make it easy they can pay online just like that and fresh books is an awesome company. They have great support. It's okay Almost done here with a couple more a sauna project management. How many people use a sauna? It's great. Some people use base camp. How many people use base camp you guys are crazy. No, I'm kidding It's fine. So I use a sauna. I use the free level. It's fantastic The difference between a sauna and OmniFocus a sauna is project management for a team I do have a small team. It's it evolves. I've had sick five people. I'm down to two I'm gonna lose one soon. I might need some more people if you're looking for work. Let me know So project management and I do let some of my clients have access to their Project so they can add tasks there as well. Very few of my clients can do that most of it We we take care of that. Okay. I track everything that way just easier. Okay for the project itself And I think lastly. No, honestly Two more this one helps out support. I do a lot of support email is terrible for Tracking anything right so I do support tickets. They get support at conciergewp.com And I can track it. I can assign it to somebody else. I usually get it in as Undefined for the person and then I assign it to me So, you know, it's alright. I'm doing really well on my metrics though I'm banging it out. I'm a hundred percent closed tickets right now. No, I'm not I went open Okay, but that's how I use it. I use the free level there as well No, I yeah, so I'm grandfathered into the free level until November They finally they're finally getting rid of all the free levels of help scouts. So I have to make a choice here Do I switch to like Zendesk? I'll probably stay it's fine. Okay, and last but not least almost done here I say these things a lot. These are my mantras. It's kind of woo-woo. It may you're like what really? I'm like, yeah, I'm into this so I said this one Claire to be gets action. Action speaks louder than words Okay, I'll say it one more time Claire David gets action. Action speaks louder than words. This is important because of this Once you know what you're gonna do You can go do it Once you've done it. Don't tell anybody Just just accept the fact you did what you said you're gonna do for your client And clearly I wrote this because I'm married and for your spouse. Okay, so just own that aspect of it What if you're gonna paint? Yeah, I'm gonna paint this room. It's just an example. I Need to go be clear. What do I need? I need paint. I need drop cloths. I need brushes. I need blue tape And a big ladder right or the really tall person I'll get Sam on my shoulders will be good. Okay, so once I'm clear about what I'm gonna do then go do it And that's it then don't call it out Just you know if you've done it if you're a good person client work family work just take care of that And the other one is this it's okay to say no Often my favorite thing to say is no and not just to my kids I tell clients know all the time and I've actually turned work down most recently. I'm like, you know, that's not what we do I'm sorry. I'm not sorry. I just I don't do that. Okay, so That was short and swift actually I'm right on time here a couple things left to talk about I have two podcasts How many people listen to any of my podcasts a couple people so I have kitchen sink WP That's episode 234 comes out tomorrow every Monday for four years. I think get options podcast That's a co-hosted show with Kyle Maurer. It's really fun episode 65 comes out on Wednesday. All right, well, let me just check them out. That's me and that's me Right, that's so you can find me if you want to email me I will answer any question you want and lastly because this was so fast and because Q&A may not be up an option here I'm willing to do this for this for work camp Asheville if you want email me I will set up a webinar this week either Tuesday or Wednesday I'm thinking like 12 31 o'clock p.m. Local. That's right. We're on the East Coast So anyone here not from the East Coast Okay, good. Oh, forget you. Oh, yeah, you're from California now, whatever too bad for you So I will do a webinar where you guys if you guys want to see any of my tools inside them I will gladly log in and show you pipe drive a son What if you want to see something let me know and it'll be recorded and just let me know shoot me an email I'll set up a webinar if your webinar ninja send you the link It'll be invite only kind of thing you can do that by sending an email to Adam not him Send an email to him That's awesome. Let's get rid of that and that is the end of my talk. Oh Fine, I Think so yeah, hold on Get options Can you see that there you go? So it's so the get so who remembers the car brothers click and clack Okay, so get options. I'll tell you how get options works very much the same where the car guides the car brothers They would they were master mechanics They would take questions from listeners for example my 1992 Toyota Tracelle makes a weird noise turning left. What should I do? One of the brothers would say don't turn left So Kyle and I We've retold a bit, but we answer people's questions in their life with WordPress. So let's say Sam somebody named Sam sends into questions as hey, I'm a remote worker. How do I stay motivated? We give you options and the reason why it's get get options is because get underscore options is part of the query of WordPress by the way, okay? It's always in there. It's always so we may give an option one based on the how do you stay motivated? I may give the option of drugs Not a good option But it's an option So that's what we do we did we answer two questions we do like what's new in our lives in the WordPress life What's going on people on the move? We have some fun segments now. It's about a 45 minute show once a week It's a lot of fun sending your questions to questions or questions at get options podcast calm There's a form there's a speak pipe. We need more questions. We love them question in the back Yeah, sometimes yeah, yeah, so yes, sir lost a bet. No, I'm kidding Reason we moved two fold well three fold but the two I'll share with you is cost of living quality of life My wife started a new career. She's based in Boston. She's a flight attendant for JetBlue. I fly for free You guys don't just put that out there now buddy passes ain't gonna happen. Don't get it So that's why and I do have three teenagers I'm actually gonna have an adult another adult in my house like in two months. It's gonna kill me Hope she has a job She's in high school. She'll be a senior I think that's it for anything else ask anything else. That's all I got I guess. All right. Thanks. Bye We're done