Welcome to Take Control with Nicole. As business owners we experience firsthand the fine line between our personal and business lives. During our conversations, we will look at simple hints and tips to create time, reduce overwhelm and help you to navigate through your journey to where you want to be. If you’re looking for smarter ways to work, and create space and time freedom in your day, then you’re in the right place. All right, let’s go.

Hello, and welcome back to Take Control with Nicole. A few weekends ago, I attended the most fabulous event up in Orange, in regional New South Wales called the Huddle. It was hosted by a beautiful shop there in the centre of Orange called Jumbled Online. Now I had purchased these tickets over a year ago actually pretty much a year on to the date and when we originally pressed go and play and purchase on that website. And after COVID delays, we finally jumped in the car and made our way and it did not disappoint. The connection between the fabulous humans that we stayed with in orange, we have this beautiful house for the weekend was just amazing. All the events had fabulous decorations and enjoyment. But what I actually loved as much as the event on Sunday, the main event was spectacular. My favourite part was coming back to the house together, popping on our comfy clothes popping out a cheese platter and a glass of wine or whatever it was, and just connecting. Having actual conversations with other people and humans in business. And one thing that came out of that weekend was that people don’t know what I actually do.

Isn’t it funny when we just go along on the daily just doing the thing, talking about the thing, and we think we’re sharing with the wider community what it is that we actually do. And then we realise that our nearest and dearest don’t really get it either. So today I just wanted to share with you what we do with our clients at The Artisans. Yes, we love Clickup. Hello, love it, love it, love it. But we are not Clickup, we are not just all about designing and building out clickup workspaces. Although that is one of our favourite activities to do. It starts earlier in the stage than that.

The main core action that we specialise here at The Artisans is workflow and operational procedures design. And what we do there is we come together with you and your business and your team if that’s the way that you like to operate. And we pull out all the gold from your brain and pop it all in together, it comes into our brains, and we translate it into a way that’s easy and efficient with automations, with actions, with trigger points, with all the bits and pieces that move it from a bit of a jumbled mess over there into a beautiful, streamlined, efficient, easy operational activity each and every day. Once you’ve done that core action, the next stage is actually creating it in your tech. Now this is where clickup enters, at this stage. So as much as we love clickup it’s one of our preferred project management tools over here The Artisans it is not the only way forward. And we support businesses with a whole variety of tech stacks. Now I might put a pause there for a moment because I hear some of you saying what is a tech stack Nicole? What are you even talking about?

Well, I did a Google, jump on Google, what is a tech stack and what it comes back and tells me and what I’m telling you it’s the solution stack of technology infrastructure or your data ecosystem. So basically in an easy format, in a nutshell, it’s a list of all the technical applications that you use in your business. So this could be office 365, Google Workspace, it could be Clickedup, Trello, Asana, Monday, any of the other ones that sit under the project management tool banner. It could be CRMs, HubSpo,t Dubsado. What Kajabi is is a form of CRM. Again, CRM is a whole other topic. There is an episode on that somewhere else further earlier today, so I won’t dive into that. What else could it be? It could be connectors, which is like another episode not long ago, Zapier, Integromat anything technical. Booking tools, Calendly, Acuity bookings, Microsoft booking, anything that you use technically in your business that you may or may not pay a subscription for, that helps you action, the tasks that sits within your procedures, that is part of your tech stack.

Hey, they’re just interrupting this episode to share with you a guide that you are going to want to explore. Are you a clickup user at the moment or have you been sitting on the fence and hearing me talk about it each and every week and just wondering, what is the next step to tech? Well, I’ve created a guide that’s going to support you on your journey to really design your clickup spaces, be able to create those and then connect them into the way that your business operates each and every day. My community have told me that this guide has been a game changer in the way that they really look at that clickup workspaces, and operate each and every day. And you can access it as well. So pop on over to my website, theartisans.com.au\freebies, and access the Action Takers Guide to ClickUp. How fabulous that you know, you’re ready to evolve your clickup journey, you’re ready to move from where you are right now, to where you have always known you want to be. Reach out, let me know, I love to hear all about your journey in clickup. So I look forward to hearing from you soon.

So a little bit of an activity here today, if you’re not aware of what is in your tech stack, pop on over to your project management tool, grab your notepad and a pen and just sit down and write what you’re currently signed up to, and what purpose you’re using that particular tool for. I find that sometimes this is a really surprising exercise and you realise you’re paying subscription costs for things that you may not have used for the last two years. So let me know pop me a message if you discover something exciting as part of you going through that exercise.

Okay, so what we’ve done so far is we’ve designed, we’ve now created, the most important part we’re connecting. Okay, so, this is the element that’s going to make or break a beautiful experience. That’s going to really move and transform your team from ehh okay to I love what I do. I love working in these systems that the business provide me to operate within. It’s easy. I know where I need to go, I know how am I communicating, I know all the information is going to be here we have deadlines all set. So I can easily open up the clickup, the Monday the Trello, the whatever it is on a daily basis, and I’m ready to go. Connecting your team and tech, this is the element that some tend to rush over, we’re like I need this thing done now. Here do, done, build, here you go delivered it happy days. And then your team sit there feeling a little bit uncomfortable, because they haven’t really had that opportunity to press the buttons make the things that maybe aren’t working quite well doing that feedback and having the opportunity to really engage with that new procedure in your business, or it may not be new, it may be something that’s been slightly refined. And you know, we always naturally revert to what’s easy, and the normal that has been for the longest time. So part of this change management process is to really support you, your team, your business, to adapt to this new way of working. It’s about really finding those habits changing the way or evolving the way that you have been working into this new efficient way that you know is the way you want to operate. Which is why my clients have come to me in the first place because they know that there is a thing. They’re just not quite sure right now at that moment in time, how to arrive at that point. So thank you for listening today. I know this is a little bit different than normal. But it was a real realisation to me that I’m not sharing what I love so much about what I do with my clients. This whole process is from, there we go, word process. I absolutely love from the first engagement all the way through to really seeing those new workflows and procedures, the tech just working and humming away and the team happy. People are now happy about what they’re doing each and every day. If this is you if you’re now having a shot going, oh, maybe I haven’t been telling everybody what I do, take a good moment another here’s another action point from today. Take a moment and actually take a look back through your socials, see what you’ve been talking about, and ask your nearest and dearest because they’re the people that if they don’t know what you’re doing, then it’s really clear we need to tighten up that messaging and just start to talk more about the nitty gritty bits and pieces of your business. Well, that’s it for today. I hope you all have a wonderful rest of your day, and enjoy creating space and time freedom, bye now.

Well, there we go. Thank you so much for joining me today. It’s been such a pleasure having you on board. Have we connected on socials yet? If not, please come on over say hi, I’m on all the platforms @theartisanssolution. So I’d really look forward to seeing you over there. And if you enjoy today’s episode, don’t forget to tag me and I’d love it if you could leave a review. And of course, share this with others so others can come and join us next time. All right, then everyone have a fabulous rest of the week. And until next time, see you then