Web Pro Savvy
Web Pro Savvy is a podcast for freelance web designers and developers, hosted by Cathy Sirvatka. You'll hear interviews with experienced freelance web pros about their business operations, the services they offer, and the types of clients they work with. They openly share their stories and pull back the curtain on how they achieve success so that you can boost your own business.
Web Pro Savvy
Streamlining Business Operations: CEO Hacks and Digital Tools with Gresham Harkless Jr
Discover the secrets to streamlining your business operations with Gresham Harkless Jr., the innovative mind behind CB Nation and Blue 16 Media. Gresham brings a wealth of knowledge from his diverse experiences, including his time as an adjunct professor and a digital marketer, to share actionable CEO hacks that can transform the way you manage your business processes. From invoicing to project management and note-keeping, learn how his entrepreneurial journey has shaped unique solutions to boost efficiency.
Transform your business communication and organization with the right tools. Gresham takes us on a deep dive into the functionalities of Basecamp, comparing it to other popular platforms like Asana, ClickUp, and Trello. Discover how consolidating tasks, calendars, files, and client communication into one cohesive system can save time and enhance productivity. We also uncover the power of scheduling tools for seamless meeting management across time zones, ensuring nothing slips through the cracks.
Finally, join us as we discuss digital tools and strategies to further enhance business efficiency. From cost-effective alternatives for digital services to note-taking preferences, Gresham shares his favorite digital solutions like Evernote and the Samsung NotePhone. We also explore the importance of building habits over sheer discipline, with insights to improve productivity and time management.
Have you ever caught yourself doing something that you've done a hundred times before and thought there's got to be an easier way to do this? What I always forget is that whenever I have thought that there's most likely someone else who's not only also thought that, but has come up with a solution, enter hacks as in tips and tricks things that make your business function faster and easier. Things that make your business function faster and easier. Gresham Harkless Jr is joining us today to share his best CEO hacks to help you run your business more efficiently. We'll cover invoicing and bookkeeping, organizing mail, project management, keeping notes and all that stuff that you have to do in your day-to-day business.
Cathy Sirvatka:Gresh is the founder of CB Nation and also Blue 16 Media, which offers digital marketing services, web design, website support and SEO services. Gresh is a proud graduate of Howard University and Georgetown University and has won multiple awards. He has recorded over 1600 episodes of the I Am CEO podcast and authored the I Am CEO Handbook, volume 3, in which he shares 100 plus business lessons he has learned during his podcasting career. So sit back in your chair or get your walking shoes on as we dive into these super helpful nuggets. Here we go. Welcome to the Web Pro Savvy Podcast. This is your host, Cathy Sirvatka. S as in Sam I-R, v as in Victor A-T-K-A.
Cathy Sirvatka:All right, hi Gresham, how are you.
Gresham Harkless, Jr.:I'm super excited to be here, Cathy. I'm doing phenomenal.
Cathy Sirvatka:Yeah, I'm so glad to have you here. Thanks for being here. I think my audience is going to be really happy with some of the things you're going to share with us today. We're going to talk about CEO hacks, tricks and hacks and whatever hack means to you, which I'm going to ask you in a little bit, and I know I'm going to learn a lot. I've already learned a lot just in our conversations together, so I'm excited. Can you first, though, just give us a little bit about your professional background, where you came from and what you do now?
Gresham Harkless, Jr.:Yeah, absolutely so. Again, excited to be here, Cathy, to talk with all the awesome talk with you and then, of course, hopefully help out so many of your audience and people that are doing phenomenal things. So my background is really varied. I've done a lot of different things, everything from being an adjunct professor to teach little four-year-olds how to throw a football through an inflatable football, to teaching in elementary schools to now doing digital marketing and so many different things. But I think one of my big things in being in the DC area I went to school at Howard and Georgetown.
Gresham Harkless, Jr.:I went through a kind of space and time where I was like I didn't know what I wanted to be when I grew up, so I really just tried as many things as I could to find it, kind of try to figure out what stuck.
Gresham Harkless, Jr.:And for me, I actually went back to when I was a kid and I started what is now called like a family newspaper, but for me it was just a way for me to collect all the things that were going on in our family so that my dad, who was reassigned to an entirely different country because he was in the military, was able to find out all the things that we were doing. So a lot of what I do is fueled by that, by creating what I call media companies, and at that time, when I was 10, it was literally finding out all the things that were going on in our family so that my dad would know, but I also saw the subscription. So I've had that entrepreneurial itch, so to speak, and throughout my life just been trying to figure out how best I can kind of scratch that as much as possible.
Cathy Sirvatka:Wow, that's really cool and so much more advanced than my lemonade stand. I sold lemonade and seeds flower seeds. Ah, I like that, which is funny. That's really. That's so cool. You did a family newspaper. I just love that. That really taps into something. I wish I would have thought of that. That is such a great idea. Do you still have them?
Gresham Harkless, Jr.:I don't still have them. But funny, oh, do I still have the newspaper? Oh, I thought you meant, do I still do them? Yes, so funny enough. Yeah, years later, you know when I'm trying to go through this question, like, what do I want to be? When I grew up, my mom had them and it was one of those kind of unique stories, um, that I felt like not a lot of other people did it. Of course I did the potato chips on the playground and things like that. Um, even went to MJ designs and created beads. Uh, got BEC to create necklaces and things like that. But I felt like this was kind of a unique story where I didn't meet a lot of people that had done that. So, yeah, I had about two years worth that my mom had kept. So now I have them all digitally that I can always kind of leaf through. So, yeah, one of them, my grandma had a squirrel get in her house, so that was like a leading story. So all those kind of fun family things that I can add in.
Cathy Sirvatka:That was the leading story.
Cathy Sirvatka:I love that.
Cathy Sirvatka:That's awesome. Oh my gosh, I love that yeah, I majored in photojournalism, so I got a little bit of that journalism thing in me, so I just really love that. Well, that's really cool. So today you are CEO, you have a couple of podcasts, you got a couple of businesses. You're really out there. You talk to CEOs every day. You said yeah, absolutely.
Cathy Sirvatka:We're here today because you have talked about CEO hacks that you come up with and that you've come up with through your whole experience, your business and life experience. So how do you define a hack? First of all, yeah, absolutely so.
Gresham Harkless, Jr.:I consider a CEO hack to be an app, a book or even a habit that someone has that make them more effective and efficient, and I think those things are beautiful and perfect sometimes when they stand alone. But I think it goes to an entirely different level when you're able to implement that hack into your business, your organization or even your life at that. So I think when we have and hear about morning routines, they sound really cool, but when you're able to kind of mold and adjust it and make it into your own, that's when it goes to another level, because you start to see the impact in your life. So I feel like what makes a CEO hack a CEO hack is when you're able to like, leverage it and implement it within your process, your systems, the things that you're doing on a daily basis, potentially.
Cathy Sirvatka:Okay, I like that. So you, you don't try and reinvent what you do, necessarily, but just merging it into what you already do to make it more efficient.
Gresham Harkless, Jr.:Yeah, absolutely. I think it's very much like that the clay, where the clay can do many things, but you start to mold it into the thing. So I think it's a process and you want to figure out what you're doing, which I think sometimes is a great place to start, and then you start to say, okay, how can I take some of those principles or some of those things or some of that technology and implement it into what I'm already doing?
Cathy Sirvatka:I like that because it feels doable. I don't have to reinvent reinvent the wheel, as they say um. So I'm interested to hear these. So what areas do you think that freelancers or small business owners um tend to struggle the most with efficiency?
Gresham Harkless, Jr.:Maybe, you know, could really benefit from some hacks yeah, I think one of the big things to to kind of keep in mind and I often say the systems will set you free, because I think a lot of times freelancers are really creative and they do a lot of things that could be graphic design or building websites, whatever it might be. That is your freelance gig or the thing that you're doing on a regular basis those systems aren't necessarily in place and I don't think that it has to happen on day one where you have to have all the immaculate systems that do that, automate and do all the things. I think it's just starting to get in the process of figuring out like how can I not carry all the things that I'm carrying, do all the things that I'm doing, but I can make it a little bit more into like a process or a place. So I think one of the best ways to do that is really to just get like overall organized and I think the best ways to do that are like project management software.
Gresham Harkless, Jr.:So we as a team and we have a digital marketing company focus on Basecamp and Basecamp is a way and a place that we literally put everything that we're working on. So anytime we go and we have a new client. We know that we're going to send an invoice, we know that we're going to send a the contract Literally all of those steps are outlined in Basecamp, and again it's something that we're constantly improving place. But also you're thinking like when I want to maybe get an assistant, or maybe I want to hand things off, or I want to have somebody that's interning with me, whatever it is, it's in one place. So I think you start to create that process. Even though it might feel like an extra step, I think it's going to help you to be a lot more streamlined. And then you start to have like a repeatable process with every client you end up working with, and I think it makes it an overall experience for yourself, but also for your clients as well too.
Cathy Sirvatka:Basecamp is something I've heard of but have not actually worked with. What would be the main tools that are main things that Basecamp specifically does.
Gresham Harkless, Jr.:Yeah.
Cathy Sirvatka:I said main and then specific generally,
Gresham Harkless, Jr.:Yeah, I understood
Gresham Harkless, Jr.:So we start. We were using Basecamp now, but before we were using Asana. There's ClickUp, there's Trello. So again, there's lots of different softwares out there, like there's. Like I talked about the clay, there's lots of different types of clay that you can use. You find the clay that works best with you, that you feel kind of fits the needs that you have.
Gresham Harkless, Jr.:But I think the thing that really helps us out with Basecamp is that we literally can put everything we're doing within Basecamp. So it has a place that you can put to-dos. It has a place that you can create calendars. So if we like for example, if we were to update or do any maintenance on clients and we do it a specific day of the week we can put that on the calendar and create that as a task. If there's files that we want to have maybe you need a client's logo that you want to have handy, you don't have to search through your email each time to try to find it you can put that into the Basecamp you can have. Even now you can add on client correspondence within Basecamp.
Gresham Harkless, Jr.:Which is what really attracted me to Basecamp over other ones is that, rather than getting lost in my email and me trying to find all the things. I can literally have as many conversations as possible with the client within Basecamp so I can always go back and say, okay, what did I say yesterday? Or what did I say five years ago to that client? And you have it all in one place. So at the end of the day, it just makes it a lot simpler because you go to one place and you see everything there. Of course you have to build the habits to use that, but I think once you have those habits, you start to see the value of that. I can't tell you how much time, kathy, I've wasted in terms of, like, going through my emails, Like I know that I got this, I know that I put it somewhere, I just don't know where it is and I don't know what I named it, and that hopefully alleviates a lot of those frustrations.
Cathy Sirvatka:Yeah, I was going to ask you about that. So, yes, that would be me. I do have a system. I've been doing this a long time over 20 years so I do have a system with folders and emails, but, honestly, I still have to do some searching. It's not perfect, right, but I guess nothing is. But this sounds not only like a project management, but a client management as well, then.
Gresham Harkless, Jr.:Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. I think it goes to the edge. I wouldn't call it a full like kind of CRM, but I think you could actually build potentially a CRM through that. So, like one of the things that we do is we have like an intake for clients and we call it a PID, which is a project initiation document. We do put some CRM type information there, like the email address, phone number, things like that, but we upload that into Basecamp so that document lives on Basecamp and we can see all the information at all times about clients.
Cathy Sirvatka:And then it's on the cloud so you can get it anywhere and your assistants or whoever can get it anywhere. That, I think, is huge. I think, right there, that is a golden nugget, because for web designers, I mean, that's it right. We're project oriented, we're client oriented, so I think that's a really good idea. So we got Basecamp down, but over the years you've probably gathered a lot of tools, tips, tricks, all this stuff right. If you could categorize them, maybe like three or four or two or three categories of business that they help, say, for a website freelancer, what kind of categories would you put those into? Because, like you said I guess I'm trying to get at, there are many tools to do anything. Right, we know there's just a ton out there. But if there were two or three categories that we would need to address, what would that be?
Gresham Harkless, Jr.:I think that's a great question and I think we I feel like we covered one of those things which is kind of like that project management piece which you spoke to, and I think there's lots of different tools that you can do. Like I mentioned, we started with Asana, there's ClickUp that does a lot of automations, there's Trello. I think you find the kind of like a pair of shoes. You find the shoes that you know work or fit on best for you and you feel like you can function with and walk around with or even run, if that's even you know your thing. But I think after that, one of the big like impactful things for me has been probably around scheduling. I can't say how impactful it has been to be able to share a link and say is there a good time for you? If it's easier, here's my link. And when you have clients that are potentially traveling or even in different time zones, I am probably the worst assistant to myself at trying to schedule things, because I will be the person that shows up an hour late, an hour early or potentially even the next day saying, oh, are we meeting today? And I think this alleviates that, because what it does and I think even with Basecamp, it allows me to make sure that I'm a lot more focused on the smaller things that I can do. So I just know that things are in Basecamp, so I just go to Basecamp. It allows me to make sure that I'm a lot more focused on the smaller things that I can do. So I just know that things are in Basecamp, so I just go to Basecamp to find the things, rather than trying to figure out oh, do I have a meeting today? It's on my calendar, so I just check my calendar to see what's happening on a regular basis. So I feel like it's taken a lot off my shoulders to be able to say, okay, these are the things that I need to do, these are the things that I need to lean on and then just kind of go from there. So I would say, like scheduling links have been huge in terms of like hopefully narrowing down and keeping my schedule in alignment and something that I can execute on. But I think also too, just like the lack of back and forth with emails, because I'm really big on trying to get you know further and further away from the email box and all the things that can happen there. One really really cool thing that I think we've implemented as a team, but I feel like I wish I had done it so much sooner.
Gresham Harkless, Jr.:I think if I was even just doing things solely myself is I have a ticket system. So we do a lot of support and maintenance. That's kind of like one of our main things that we do. So we have clients that will send emails and those emails will literally go everywhere. I've seen them through Facebook message, I've seen them through my email address. I see them sometimes in different social media platforms. So what we try to do is try to standardize even for clients, like how they can contact us. So we use a ticket system and we use Freshdesk. There's a lot of other tools out there, just like the project management software, but what this does is, I think, especially if you're doing any support or maintenance and, honestly, if you have clients that you work with on a regular basis, I think it helps out as far as like streamlining that conversation, because once they send an email, they get a email back to say they received we received your email, and they even get a ticket number.
Gresham Harkless, Jr.:Now we take that ticket number, we put it into Basecamp as a task and do those things just so, again, it's all in one place. But I think the big part of what it does is it creates an expectation. So it says, hey, we received your email, we will complete it in 24 to 48 hours, and usually we have that kind of that expectation that's communicated right when that's sent. But I think too, so many times clients will send stuff or think that they send stuff, and often you can say, okay, did you get an email back? Did you see something back? Then sometimes it may have went to the wrong email address, may have went to spend, whatever might happen.
Gresham Harkless, Jr.:But you start to kind of create that expectation for clients that okay, once I get an email, I know that it's received and somebody will get back to me. So I think that's been a huge thing because it allows again those things to be in a place so that it's not constantly everywhere. And social media platforms in every different way they can connect with you. And so one of the things that I try to do too, especially for clients that we work with even if I'm having a call with a client, I will literally put that either in Basecamp or I'll put it as a ticket if it's a lot quicker of an update so that it creates that expectation and creates that same line of communication. So even on my side I try to make sure that I do that. But those are probably three, at least parts, that I think have been really impactful. But I can go on and on and on. Cathy, just let me know whatever works best.
Cathy Sirvatka:Okay, so I was trying to keep notes here to keep up with you. So Basecamp with scheduling links.
Gresham Harkless, Jr.:No, basecamp doesn't do scheduling links, so I use and I didn't mention I use Acuity for scheduling links, but Calendly is another option as well too, but scheduling links I would probably consider like to be one of those other categories outside of project management.
Cathy Sirvatka:Yeah, Calendly is probably the one I see the most. I use an old one Time Trade, which is fine. It's free. The tickets part is so amazingly cool and I don't know why I didn't know about this. I've been doing this a long time. I am one of those people that's kind of caught in the email situation where you know and then sometimes a client will be like did you get my email? I wasn't sure if it bounced. You know that kind of thing and there's a whole lot of trouble that can come. You know that can get missed in email. So I really love this concept of the ticket system.
Gresham Harkless, Jr.:Yeah, you know, what the really cool thing is is when you have that client that uses their same email or you can even merge emails.
Gresham Harkless, Jr.:I have clients that also send emails from other emails, which make it even a little bit more funner, if that's a word is, you can merge and you can create a profile for each of the people, so the different emails, different phone numbers can all be documented.
Gresham Harkless, Jr.:So like I'll merge contacts. Basically, if I get an email from someplace else, I'll merge it to an existing contact so I can go through and see, like okay, like I had a client actually merge it to an existing contact. So I can go through and see like okay, like I had a client actually I want to say probably about a month or so ago, said hey, do you have that PowerPoint we sent for you to update Because we take their PowerPoint and make it into a slider on the site? And it was literally like four years ago and luckily I was able to go through because it's all in that ticket system and of course I would most of the time say, hey, I don't think I could find that, but I was like, actually, because we have this in place, I probably can find it. So we did that and, you know, end up helping a client out in a way sometimes that they don't expect.
Cathy Sirvatka:Wow, that is really cool. Now I might be able to do that in my emails, because I don't delete anything.
Gresham Harkless, Jr.:Yeah.
Cathy Sirvatka:Which is probably why my computer's slowing down Again. Your hack would save me a lot of grief, probably. I love that, I love that idea and then. So we had scheduling, we had the ticket system and then-.
Gresham Harkless, Jr.:Scheduling ticket system, and then the project management we talked about.
Cathy Sirvatka:Project management, yes, of course. Well, those are super. I mean, those just get at the heart, I think, of our business, just as far as like with clients. That communication is so important. Man, one false move and things can go really awry, and I've seen it happen. It's just not good. There's a lot of cleanup, there's a lot of extra work that can come from that, and then project management, of course, is like the heart of what we do. So what for you? What is the one hack that you have used in your business and you talked about Basecamp. That's probably the answer to that question. Okay, so let's maybe another one that you use in your business that you're like oh, why didn't I do this sooner? This is so great.
Gresham Harkless, Jr.:Yeah. So I would probably say Basecamp and definitely Acuity have been my two that have been the hugest hugest. I'm making up words over here time savers that there are out there, but if there is one like I also consider a hack to sometimes be a book or something that you can kind of lean on that can make you more effective and efficient. I think one of the books that I would recommend to freelancers non-freelancers, everybody is if you haven't heard of the book called the E-Myth. It's an absolute game changer, because I think so many times and this is, I think, speaks directly to freelancers is because you're usually really great at the thing that you're doing, whether it's graphic design, whether it's editing podcasts or whatever it is. That's your thing. You're probably really great at that, but we're sometimes not as great about the other business parts of it.
Gresham Harkless, Jr.:So I consider it a hack because I think if you go through and listen to it and read it, it can be really transformational. Because I think most of the time when we get into business and that's what the book starts out it starts with the parable, and I believe the young lady is a baker, she's really great at baking and someone says, hey, maybe you should start a business doing that and it's like, okay, let me start a business doing that and you realize you're doing all the things outside of baking to grow the business. So I think it's a really great aha moment for people to really understand when they are doing freelancing or even deciding that they want to scale up of what things that they're going to have to focus on and they get to make that decision related to that. But I think it's been one of the biggest and most transformational books that I would definitely consider to be maybe, if not my number one, maybe my number three CEO hack that I would lean on.
Cathy Sirvatka:I have read that book, although I need to go back and read it again. I had a business coach who suggested it to me and I remember that bakery story, yes, and it rung. So true for me. Yes, it. But all the other things that are involved in running a business, you have to kind of if not love them. You got to like them too, because it's a huge part, right, it's, it's the non-billable stuff that you have to do, so you're not even getting paid for it. So you do really need to, you know, be aware of that and be be able to learn how to do it. So I really love these hack ideas are to help us do those things that we need to do, those businessy things or, you know, just efficiency things to make our business run more smoothly, so that we can do the other stuff that we want to do, which is the design and the development and, and you know, even working with the clients, uh, directly. So I love that idea. The E-Myth, E-Myth um, I forget the full title.
Gresham Harkless, Jr.:E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber.
Cathy Sirvatka:Yeah, I'm going to put it in show notes, so not to make this a lightning round, but I kind of want to maybe just list off some topics, that some areas where we need to work in our business and that maybe you have a hack for or an idea for that could help our process. So something like with invoicing or bookkeeping, that kind of thing.
Gresham Harkless, Jr.:Yeah, for invoicing, bookkeeping. I've always heard of QuickBooks and I use FreshBooks myself, though I use FreshBooks, I I use FreshBooks. I feel like it's a lot simpler, cleaner. I feel like they've built out a little bit more of a accounting arm to the things that they're doing, but you can run reports, do all those things. So I think that's definitely been my go-to.
Cathy Sirvatka:FreshBooks yeah, I've used QuickBooks and it is good. It's a little beyond my understanding. It's it's um and it's for people who know bookkeeping a little bit, and so I now use something else Wave apps. I had to think of it. Wave apps it's free and it's super basic, but FreshBooks is one that I know a lot of freelancers use. Okay, well, organizing email is one I was going to ask you about, but we really kind of talked about that. So what do you do in your inbox? You still get email, right.
Gresham Harkless, Jr.:Yeah, so I don't delete emails I'm a digital pack rat, I will say, but I do try to make sure that I remove it out of my inbox. So all that means is I just try to archive as much as possible in my email box, so I literally have those systems in place. If I get something from a client in my email, I forward it over the fresh desk so that it can be taken care of there. So I try to just make sure that really what's only in my email is honestly usually just prospects, and there's different tools that I can use that I need to probably lean more on to make that happen for, like CRM and things like that.
Cathy Sirvatka:Okay, all right. How about keeping your computer organized? Not that I have an issue with that.
Gresham Harkless, Jr.:You know, I don't know that I have a really great you know system for that. I really. One of the things that I do really try to do, though, is I will put anything that I don't think that I need on my desktop. The reason that I put that on my desktop is because it makes me delete it, so, especially when I'm working with a lot of images and things, or if I'm downloading images to upload them, I'll put that as much as possible on my desktop so that I end up deleting it overall.
Gresham Harkless, Jr.:So, you know, I use other tools that are for like antivirus and things like that, but just for the organization piece, I really think that putting it on my desktop of something that I know that I probably won't need long term is probably good, and maybe another subset of that is I do use Dropbox, so my Dropbox does sync all across my devices, so if there is something that is, let's just say, for my business and I want to add a logo to a folder, I make sure that folder is in the Dropbox folder. I have that all organized, it goes there, and then I can get it on my phone on my other computer. Whatever it works, it's all in one place.
Cathy Sirvatka:Yeah, yeah, I love Dropbox. They started charging more. I think I love Dropbox. They started charging more, I think and I was trying to also combine that with contract signing. Do you use it for that? What do you use for contracts?
Gresham Harkless, Jr.:I use and I forgot the name of the tool. I used to use, echosign. They were by Adobe, but I stopped using them and I found like a WordPress plugin and I can get the name of it, but it was something that I can send them out through WordPress. I got kind of like one of those lifetime deals, so I just bought it in advance and said, okay, well, I'm just going to use this for literally everything and I was able to use it for, you know, whatever I needed it to do and I just have to like upload that. But I was using EchoSign and then I try to stay away from like that monthly cost, if at all possible for something like that.
Cathy Sirvatka:Yeah, these monthly costs really add up. All these tools, everything we're talking about has premium versions and I think you know if you can find tools that do the same functionality, but you know they have a free version and you're not going to go beyond whatever that limit is, that's. I would suggest doing that, you know, otherwise we can be nickel and dimed to death. It's into bankruptcy. It's just everything's a fee now. So, anyway, I really like that. How about note keeping? Now, you and I talked about this before and you gave me something really cool, because I like to handwrite my notes and not everybody does that, but I'm on the computer so much. But I still like the tangibility of handwriting notes. But I end up with papers all over the place, notebooks all over, and it's actually kind of hard to find. So what do you do for notes?
Gresham Harkless, Jr.:Yes, absolutely. You were speaking my language when we talked about that, Cathy, because I am that person. I was an English major. So, like I talked about before, like loving to write, that's been my thing and so I literally love like sitting down and talking with somebody and having a piece of paper and writing those things out. But I lose the notebook, I lose the paper and all the things in between. So I started to like kind of I won't say I won't use the word discipline, but get in the habit of just writing things into my Evernote.
Gresham Harkless, Jr.:So Evernote's been big for me, just because I literally will leave and put everything there as much as possible. I've started to kind of transition a little bit because the Evernote is a lot more for personal and it's a lot easier to access. But again, basecamp has notes features as well too, so you can put it in there. It's not as robust or as fancy as Evernote, so I can't write into my Basecamp or things like that. But if it's client focused, I'm gonna type it out and put it into Basecamp and have it in that Basecamp. But if not, I'm using Evernote by default and so you can write it out.
Gresham Harkless, Jr.:I have a note phone so I literally can just write everything out within Evernote and then it will upload there, I can type in it, I can share files, you can do all those different things, and I have different folders and categories I think they call them notebooks in Evernote to be able to place all the things there. But that's been huge, just because now again my whole thing has been like can I go to one place and find everything I don't know If I don't know where it is? Can I go to one place to find out, potentially at least be in the right direction or in the next stratosphere or something? Can I get close to where that possibly is? And that's helped me out as far as doing that I hear you.
Cathy Sirvatka:It's like, just give me at least a nugget where I can look in. Exactly Now you just said NotePhone. What's an? Did you say NotePhone? Did I hear you correctly? Yeah, so.
Gresham Harkless, Jr.:Samsung NotePhone so you can literally just take a. It has a pen, that's here. I also have a I think it's called a studio tablet that it also has a pen as well, too, that I can flip it over and you know not to do a demonstration or anything, but you can take it and flip it and then you can write on it and do those things. So all those things just allow me to tap into the writing when I feel like typing, when I feel like writing, like when I'm doing podcasts. I love taking notes, like you are doing. So I love just kind of flipping this over and not depending on like a piece of paper that I know I'll probably lose.
Cathy Sirvatka:Oh, I love that, but I'd have to OK. So I'm an iPhone person. I'm a PC, but I'm an iPhone, so that's a really cool thing though.
Gresham Harkless, Jr.:I like that idea. Come over to the dark side, but I think they have it for the iPad too. I think they have. I don't know how well it works, but they might OK it for the iPad too.
Cathy Sirvatka:I think they have, I don't know how well, it works, but they might have Okay, yeah, I just love that idea, though that's something to look into for sure. Onboarding clients, that would probably still be well like onboarding brand new you still would be using Basecamp for that.
Gresham Harkless, Jr.:Yeah, so I use Basecamp for that. I think one of the cool things and I don't know if I talked a lot about within Basecamp you can create templates of the processes that you want. So, for example, when we're bringing on, like, an SEO client, or we're bringing on a website maintenance client, I literally have steps that I do on every one of those processes. So we'll break down and say, okay, we're going to send them this email, send them this email, or send them this message, or send them this list of things that they need to look at. So, when we're onboarding clients usually after they are prospects, so they are probably living in my email box I send them a message, say, hey, I have an intro video, I have a list of things that we're going to need from you.
Gresham Harkless, Jr.:I have a new client questionnaire, which is another big thing, and then we'll bring clients over to Basecamp through that and we take all that information, we put that in the PID, the project initiation document, and that way we have all the things there. So, again, if I'm looking at it today or I'm looking at it five years from now, I at least can get again in that stratosphere of like, where that client is, who the point of contact, some of those things. Of course, it's never foolproof. If you know you always have to, you always want to be able to update it, but at least, again, hopefully, get you there so that you have some information to get started.
Cathy Sirvatka:Oh, that's super cool. Okay, so it sounds like Basecamp is our winner for the all around. If you were to pick one thing, I'm guessing that would probably be it.
Gresham Harkless, Jr.:Yeah, I mean there's definitely some limitations though. So that's why I say you know a lot of it is. So I'm very much so, and this is a lot of. I think. Before you jump into the hacks, one of the big things is to understand yourself as much as possible, because, again, you want to build the systems around, I think, your strengths, your competencies and things like that. So Trello, for example, is really a lot more visually appealing than, I think, basecamp.
Gresham Harkless, Jr.:So if you're listening to this and you're more of a designer, web designer, then I definitely would consider maybe looking at that because it might be a little bit cooler. But if you're like, hey, I just want to automate all things in my life, maybe look at something like ClickUp. Clickup is a lot more robust. You can start to add in a lot more automations and things like that. So I'm a lot more of a person that likes to always say like I'm the person that wants to get the duct tape out and even if the two things aren't related, I want to try to connect them. And I'm that person. I want to build out those things and sometimes that works good. Sometimes it doesn't. Most of the time probably it doesn't, but at the end of the day, I know myself and I know where I lean. So that's where Basecamp provides some of those things. It doesn't provide all those things, but it has the opportunity for me to kind of build those out.
Cathy Sirvatka:I love that you said duct tape. Who doesn't like to duct tape stuff?
Gresham Harkless, Jr.:There you go, I'm the MacGyver.
Cathy Sirvatka:I'm wondering if be something Zapier should think about the duct tape of the internet. Yes, Because that's kind of what they do. They work to connect software packages and it's pretty extensive with everything they can do. Have you ever used Zapier?
Gresham Harkless, Jr.:Yeah, I use it. I say we have an account. I haven't used it nearly as much as I think that I could. I was playing around with certain things Like, for example, if I wrote something in Evernote and I think I used a certain tag, it would show up as a note in Basecamp. So that was set up. Those things like that to again knowing your habits and be able to build around those habits was some of that, and Zapier was able to make that happen.
Cathy Sirvatka:Okay, yeah, I love that. I love all those kind of things. It's like they all take effort to set up and they take time to learn and, like you said, get in the habit, but once you get there it's so worth it. You don't have to think about it again. Like you said, your note shows up in all these places. You just get used to that. You move on. You can do the things you need to do. I really like that a lot. So procrastination and we're kind of shifting gears here Procrastination and time management and task management Do you do anything for yourself with regard to that? Are you pretty disciplined in what you do?
Gresham Harkless, Jr.:I would say I'm fairly disciplined and I always hesitate as far as saying the word discipline because I feel like I read this book and I've heard about so many times, but I actually sat down and read it a week or so ago was Atomic Habits and it was really powerful for me because a lot of it was kind of what we're talking about is not trying to. You're trying to create habits for yourself. You're not trying to create the discipline. The more you have to use your energy to do something, the less likely you are to do it. So what you try to do is just try to create those habits and start to build upon those habits. And I think it even talked about if you want to implement something, try to do it for just two minutes and you do it for two minutes every day and then the next day maybe you do three or you start to build and grow from that. So I feel like I've benefited from doing things, realizing that if it's not going to be the way that's going to be beneficial for me or in my strength, it's probably not going to get done. So I think that's helped out a lot. But I think the other thing is sometimes just getting when you do have to use your willpower because I feel like that does happen to some degree realizing how you can kind of work around that. So if there's things that need to get done that I'm dreading, probably do them a little bit earlier in the morning, because the further they get off on the day I'm probably less likely to do them. So I try to spend my first two hours just working on those things that sometimes are most impactful, but sometimes things that I dread as well too. So that's been really huge as far as helping out with the procrastination. But then, like we spoke to, is just like literally putting those things out into wherever you need them to be.
Gresham Harkless, Jr.:So, whether it's writing them as notes, Evernote, I use to-do lists as well too literally putting as many things as possible that I need to get done in a place so I can see, first and foremost, what I need to do. But secondly, if I get into the end of the day, if I have 50 things on my to-do list and I'm like I'm going to finish all these and I get five of those things done, I'm like, okay, well, these need to be pushed off because I'm asking too much of myself, which I kind of run into a lot. So I start to kind of like self-manage and maybe self-regulate myself a little bit more. So I know that, okay, if I get five things done in a day, then that's a really, really good day. So it starts to become okay. Let me take these other 45 things and let me spread them around to when they're actually important or you know just things. You know whatever it might be. So you start to figure out those things.
Gresham Harkless, Jr.:And one other big thing too is we all have habits, and I think this is spoken a lot about in Atomic Habits is where what you really want to do is to find out what your habits are and try to stack those habits. So all that means is that if you literally do something like brush your teeth on a daily basis, maybe you're listening to a phenomenal podcast like this podcast while you're listening to that. So it gives you the opportunity of something you're already doing to start to say, okay, I want to build my skills a little bit more, so let me listen to this podcast. So it's just figuring out what you're doing and then starting to build about, um, build your habits to understand, like, where you want to go and working, working backwards from there.
Cathy Sirvatka:Yeah, that goes along with what you said before not reinventing the wheel, but just, um, figuring out how you are knowing yourself really, first off, and and how you like to do things, and then finding things that can help do it in a way that's more natural to you. Maybe, um, that doesn't feel like drudgery. Yes, right, and I love the idea of stacking, like brushing your teeth, listen to a podcast, that's. Or I go for a walk, listen to a podcast, you know that kind of thing, um, where you can get well, it's just efficiency. It comes back to that word efficiency. Really, with your time, you know something I'd wanted to ask you and this is going back a little bit what do you think of chatbots? This is kind of an out there question, but it just popped into my mind when we were talking about Freshdesk. And wait, was it Freshdesk?
Gresham Harkless, Jr.:Yeah, Freshdesk.
Cathy Sirvatka:So when we were talking about Freshdesk and having tickets, I know a lot of people ask about chatbots and I've always steered clear of them because I personally find them a bit annoying and not so helpful. Have you ever tried them? What do you think? What are your thoughts?
Gresham Harkless, Jr.:Yeah, you know, I'm in the process funny enough of testing out kind of chatbots as well too. So, like I've been able to do, like I have a daily podcast and one of the questions I asked is everybody for their CEO hacks. So we had 1600 episodes and what I wanted to do is take that information of all the CEO hacks and start to compile them. So I started to look at different ways that I can get that information out there. So, of course, you can literally list out all the different hacks that everybody talked about on an everyday basis. But then I started to actually upload a lot of that information to chatbots to kind of see how that interaction would go.
Gresham Harkless, Jr.:And I think that I'm not an expert as far as training chatbots or anything, but I know just from what I've seen there's definitely some room for improvement. But I really like the concept and idea of that because I think that if I think one of the ways that we kind of don't really give opportunity to certain things is that we always are in the sense of comparing. So what I mean by that is that if we compare having the conversation that we're having with having a conversation with a chatbot, then I think the chatbot is not going to do the things that we want it to do. But if we say that, ok, I have to sleep, I have to eat, I have to do whatever it is that I have to do, and then there could be a chatbot in place until then, then I think that sets that expectation and I think also, too, that expectation is for us, but it's also for the other person as well too. So if somebody's coming to your site, I think having that transparency to say, oh, this is an AI chat bot that you're chatting with, allows people to make that decision if they want to have that conversation or not.
Gresham Harkless, Jr.:So I think that's really what helps out a lot. But I think that obviously is a way to go. But I think, with all this aggregation of information, to be able to, even just internally, even if we didn't post that chatbot, but if I can literally go to that chatbot and said, hey, what did I talk about in episode number 1061? And it can tell me that that's huge. So, even if you use it internally, of saying, like you know, what did I do? What did I do last week or last year for that client? Or like I talked about, where is that PowerPoint that I was looking for, all those things? If you can start to aggregate that information, I think it's just going to make us more effective and efficient, so that we can spend the time on actually engaging, creating relationships the things that those chatbots can't do as well.
Cathy Sirvatka:That sounds like a job for a virtual assistant.
Cathy Sirvatka:Yes, that aggregating of all that information, but because it could be huge, but I could also see the huge benefit of it as well. Well, maybe I'll revisit it, especially with AI being integrated into everything now they may even be more helpful and they can be taught, so that could be something, maybe connected to your your fresh desk tickets. You know who knows Gresham? This has been an awesome conversation and I have learned a lot. I know my audience has learned a lot, so I just really appreciate your being here and just want to thank you again.
Cathy Sirvatka:Thank you I appreciate you, Cathy.
