Rolando Rosas 4:38
All right, all right. And already did we have a video that we could we’re going to roll to before bringing on Will? I gotcha. So let’s let me before we roll that video. Let me let me give you a little bit of information on who Will Christensen is and what he does, Will Christensen it Is the co founder and chief mess maker, title chief mess, I have to ask him about things I didn’t know he was the chief mess maker. I know he made a mess. But he is the chief mess makers. I wonder who’s the who the junior chief makers, Chief mess makers are a wholly owned, nerd staffed company that uses a SAS framework to support SAS companies in their growth. And in addition to that, they do this by not only providing a set of tools that are awesome for your team, but also the free for sharing and he has a bunch of expertise in this area. I could talk about him for hours at a time because he does a lot more than what it says in his bio here. Let me bring him on. So we have as much time from him as possible. Will Christensen Come on, come on out of the greenroom.
Will Christensen 5:52
How’s it going, sir? Doing well.
Rolando Rosas 5:55
Doing well? How about you? Hey, good to see both. Awesome.
Will Christensen 5:59
Good. Good to meet Dave more formally. Good to be hanging out with Rolando again, always excited to talk automation.
Rolando Rosas 6:07
Awesome. Awesome. And, you know, we’ve got we’ve got something that we want you to react to here in a moment. But just let us know where you’re tuning in from so people know where you’re joining us from?
Will Christensen 6:17
Yeah, we’re based out of Athens, Georgia, the company is based out of Athens, Georgia, DataAutomation. But I’m actually in Syracuse, Utah, which is north of Salt Lake City.
Rolando Rosas 6:26
There you go. Utah, beautiful. I haven’t been there forever. I can’t like it’s hot.
Will Christensen 6:32
It’s hot, as I’ll get out right now here. But you know, we’re at
Rolando Rosas 6:35
96 degrees that are just outside of the nation’s capitol. So it’s it’s a steamy day today. Yeah, yeah.
Will Christensen 6:42
It’s pretty hot here too. Awesome.
Rolando Rosas 6:43
Okay, well, let’s, before we jump into all of the questions that I’ve got for you, I want to share a little video with you and get your reaction on the other side of this video. So go ahead and roll that video Ori
Guest Speaker 1 6:56
be the worker, him or herself, and how they’re going to be impacted for years, if not forever, as a result of this push for automation. How should we think about that tonight?
Guest Speaker 2 7:08
Yeah, I think it’s definitely going to it’s going to change the workforce. I mean, prior to this crisis, the US was experiencing. were unable the facilities that were we were unable to hire enough workers at the at the facilities that they want them in. And so we’re investing in automation. Obviously, that’s changed now with this crisis, there’s going to be a massive amount of people available. But the but the I do believe that this automation will change the face of the employment landscape, no doubt.
Rolando Rosas 7:45
All right. And that’s so want to get your reaction to that. That’s, that’s a couple it’s a really wide open question. Because it could mean a lot of different things. But I want you to get you to react to that statement, then we can jump into some of the other topics.
Will Christensen 7:58
Yeah, so one of the number one things that I see with people when they look at automation, and they look at kind of like this idea of creating an automation culture inside their company, there’s a lot of fear around is a robot going to replace my job, whether that robots physical, like the one you saw on that video, where we’re, you know, moving things around on conveyor belts, or whatever, or whether or not that’s a digital robot that’s taking digital work, you know, copy pasting things like that away from what’s there. And what I tell people is, if you can tell the difference between you know, whether this is a good decision or a bad decision, if you can use that human intuition, if you have even an ounce of creativity, in terms of like making a human decision, you have nothing to worry about. Because as we get deeper and deeper into automation, what we’re doing is we’re freeing up people’s time to put back into creative innovation inside of business. And so the the idea here is to create an opportunity for us to really push on the new ROI, which is creating that space that space for people so I see automation as a leverage a leverage tool to push forward now if you are hoping for a job where you’re just in there button pressing every day, you might be in trouble. But I don’t know that many people who really want just a button pressing job right? There’s human intuition and and I mean, we’ll we could go into the AI and you know all the different movies that have come out about you know, how that’s going to replace everything and but we’re not there yet. We’re not We’re not there yet. Will Will Smith and and all of that stuff but no
Rolando Rosas 9:43
wait for my robot maid to come in and deliver and do the chores around the house. Yeah,
Will Christensen 9:49
someday well, I you know, I already have a robot made Rolando, my I have a vacuum that literally maps now. My whole you know, it’s mapped out my entire upstairs and I can just click three buttons and it goes in vacuums the front room and then goes back and puts itself to sleep. So I mean, I’ve got one of those. For some of my charts.
Rolando Rosas 10:09
I say I say I’m can’t and waiting for the one that does dishes and fixes up the house. And the honey do list too.
Will Christensen 10:15
Did you see? Okay, so CES, like I saw, and maybe it was a joke, maybe it was April Fool’s Day, like I, but I saw like a Samsung robot that seemed to be standing in front of a dishwasher, and like, had like three arms, and it was picking things out. And I was failing, oh, I want one of those.
Rolando Rosas 10:37
It’s coming. I’m sure you’ve seen the, I think it’s Boston Scientific. They had something a couple of months ago where they had these robots dancing. So before robots who had a hard time walking, now they can dance and jump on a box and do all kinds of stuff. And they could do it coordinated fashion. So may not be too far away. You know, I don’t know what the price tag is gonna be for that stuff. But it’s certainly not that far away. They’re coming.
Dave Kelly 10:58
They’re, they’re coming along, you know, even things like pizza, the pizza delivery companies, you know, their programming, their programming, delivery vehicles that have heaters and whatnot, and they’re sending them on their way. They’re testing them with some local, local college campuses out here, as we’re moving along quite well, within the technology world for sure.
Rolando Rosas 11:21
Well, it’s a good jumping off point. So technology as a means of enabling businesses to do their job better. And in some cases that, like we saw, it may mean some robotic type of duties. But technology being automated, autonomous in this case, we’re talking about autonomous vehicles. But if we’re were to jump in on the technology piece Will and talk about what the landscape looks like, let’s start with that. What is the landscape for automation look like? And what does that mean for from a practical standpoint for businesses, and what they can do, and bring it in to their operations so that they can create better efficiencies within their operation? Well,
Will Christensen 12:01
I think the first thing I’d want to throw out there is that most of the business owners listening and professionals listening right now have tried automation before, in some way, shape, or form, because there’s a lot of people out there, touting we automate, we automate like it’s, it’s a buzzword, right. And one of the things that I’ve discovered is that a lot of people have tried and failed. And therefore they don’t continue forward with that. They’re just like, ah, you know what, that sucks. I’m not I’m not doing that anymore. And part of the reason is, because they went in and they, they, they tried to automate something, and it ended up being a little more complicated than they anticipated. And they just walked away, or they spent like four or five hours automating something that like, only save them five minutes. And they were like, flip, I’m not going down the automation rabbit hole again. And so so one of the things that I see is that a lot of people have tried and failed, and they’re like, half the world’s just not ready for automation yet, which is kind of an interesting take, because it’s totally ready.
Rolando Rosas 12:58
It is totally ready. I know that you and I have worked on projects in the past and still working on some right now, where automation is at the heart of what we’re doing. And I think maybe without giving the farm away with secrets, we could jump into a little bit on, what are some of those things, those tangible things? Because selling people on automation, like you said, can be a difficult and tricky thing, because maybe they tried it in the past and it fell apart. But let’s talk about some of the more tangible things that it’s right within the grasp of most business owners or managers that they can bring to their organization. Yeah, absolutely.
Will Christensen 13:34
So I think the first step is to adopt that culture of automation, and to tell your employees that tell your teammates, that you’re interested in automation, and that you’re willing to fund it. So if you’re a business owner, you’re listening to this podcast, you need to be advertising to the people inside your organization, that automation is a priority. And it’s not about automation that’s going to replace jobs. It’s about automation that’s going to fuel that creative innovation. So that’s the first step is to kind of instill that idea that this is not something where we’re going to replace butts and seats, we’re going to enhance butts and seats and help people move forward at getting in there. So I tell people that there are a lot of different tools that you can use to find out what’s there. One of the things I tell businesses is to use what I call 15 115. So 15 115 is where you take out a sticky note. So grab your sticky note, slap it on your desk, right 15 115 At the top, then every time you do something that is more than 15 minutes a day, more than an hour a week, or more than an hour a month, then you need to write that down. So write down whatever that is, and you’re looking for things that are happening in perpetuity. So I do a report for my boss or I do a report once a week. It takes me more than an hour to do that report. You write down that report. The last part 15 115. A last part of that is that you actually need to go down and do it five times manually. So when I write it out, just to be clear, I do 15 dash one dash one dash five, just to remember and keep that separate, right? So if you do it five times manually, then you know what to do when it comes time to actually automate that. So people come to me all the time. And they say, Well, what should I automate? What should I look for first, and I tell him, Look, everybody’s business is so different. The first thing you need to do is start writing down these processes. And you may already have a lot of them written down somewhere, and you need to just go look and see what’s really taking that time. And that’s the low hanging fruit more than 15 minutes a day, more than an hour a week, or more than an hour a month.
Rolando Rosas 15:50
Well, that’s good, really good insight, Will. And when I when you when I hear you say that I’ve just wrote down a few things, because it reminds me of our early days when we first started about embracing the culture of automation, because one of our very first projects was to take a process that took an employee nearly 15 to 20 hours a week, in just trying to gather details and put those all on spreadsheets. And once we got to the the end, that particular employee was very resistant on the new process. It turned out after some time and having her use the new, shorter process that we went from about 15 hours to 15 minutes, she embraced it. But we had she was she was the I would say that the test case for us for on early days of automation. And now of our our internal folks, that’s what they want, they want more tools to make their jobs a lot easier to make their their work life a lot easier. Rather than just looking at spreadsheets and systems and copying pasting all day long.
Will Christensen 16:57
And Rolando, you You were really good about that. Because the moment we took that 15 hour process down to 15 minutes, it wasn’t like, Okay, now go look for another job. It was like cool. Now let’s use that creative brain that you have to make real business decisions that can actually bring the business ROI. So you have to do that three or four times, people have to see people’s jobs. So like, I went to work for an agency. This is actually how I got into automation. And I was doing I had no idea at the time when I when I started, I was doing 16 hours a week of copying and pasting to take all of the spreadsheets, I was taking Facebook data from over there and AdWords data from over there, I was making this dashboard that I would send out as a PDF to the clients every week on how are your campaigns running, because I was working into that at an ad agency. And I was like, There’s got to be a better way like this is driving me crazy, extreme laziness, extreme efficiency, I see them in similar similar form and fashion. I dived in there. Yeah, that same side of that coin, right? I dived in there. And I remember sitting down with my boss, and he was like, Hey, this is a VLOOKUP. And I was like a VLOOKUP. Okay, and he showed me how to connect this spreadsheet to that spreadsheet. So I didn’t have to copy and paste manually, like there was data that was coinciding in the two places, and my mind was blown. And that’s what pushed me into the idea of Wait, if I can do that, what else could I do. And I taught myself to code and I pushed into a whole bunch of other pieces, hired a whole bunch of other smart people to get in and do more automation. In those opportunities, you have to learn to go out and really reward employees who are looking to do that you may already have an automation advocate working at your company, and they may have already automated a fair portion of their job, the dude deserves a bonus or the girls there’s a boat, like, like, you need to go find those individuals and reward that behavior. If you just pat them on the back, like, good job. And then like they just doubled their output by automating something like give them a piece of that pie, the more you can do to incentivize that behavior of automating and removing those manual blocks, the better your company’s gonna be.
Rolando Rosas 19:08
I agree. I agree. It’s It’s fabulous when things come together, and the employees start embracing it, but you have to start at the top if you don’t have leadership behind it, and a clear goal, and I think we had a clear goal when we started our very first project on what we wanted to accomplish. And that was to streamline what we were doing around our online efforts. And so and how we can create some efficiency so we can turn things out faster. And I gotta tell you, if you’re watching this today, and and you have any doubt on how the power of automating a lot of the mundane task or things in the background, you really want to like Will said, you want to sit down and take a look at what are the where are your employees spending the greatest amount of time where may their brain power is not being utilized, if it’s utilizing their brain power is going towards really, like you said, Will taking data from a putting into B, and then C and then eventually getting to the decision making process. From that data, they’re spending way too much time on process and their ways to shortcut that.
Will Christensen 20:19
Absolutely. And, and it’s important that you recognize that, you know, as you’re picking apart those processes that it goes by, so if you’re listening right now, and you’re thinking, Oh, my gosh, guys, just give me some examples. The reason we are pushing so hard on the culture, part of this, and the adoption is because we’ve seen a ton of companies, I mean, this is five years that I’ve been doing this, we’ve seen a ton of companies go into this, and then just fail miserably, because they don’t embrace the culture. Part of it. Automation is more of a mindset than it is a suite of tools. But with that said, let’s get into it. Let’s get into some nitty gritty, and let’s, let’s, let’s talk about that.
Dave Kelly 20:59
All right, I just want I just want to add, you know, improving the efficiencies, to making it making a lot of people’s experiences more positive. I like what you’re saying about the culture. When, when, when you’re when you’re running more smooth, and you’re removing frustration from people, you’re not only making their lives better, but you’re, you’re improving that customer experience, you’re getting them, you know, the people that are paying you, you’re making their lives faster and easier. At the same time, they know when their products are shipping, for example, just bet more receiving product on time, whatever it might be. But it’s like it’s a win, win win on all on all sides. And I find it interesting that you’re talking about the culture piece, because we see it here internally, our folks are happy because our customers are happy. You’ve removed a ton of frustration. So it’s good. It’s a great thing.
Will Christensen 21:54
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely couldn’t, couldn’t agree more in terms of digging in there. So So let’s say that you’ve done that 15 115 process, and you’ve identified three or four topics that you’re like, oh, my gosh, these are automatable. And maybe maybe you’re not saying these are automatable. Let’s say that you’re saying these need to be automated, but I don’t know if they’re automatable. The way that you find out whether or not they’re automatable, is you begin to do some research around what’s possible. Okay. So the first thing that you’re going to do is you’re going to go out, and you are going to pick apart the different pieces of what’s there. And you’re going to ask for questions about each one of those processes, you’re going to ask where’s the data? Now? Where does the data need to go? What needs to happen to the data in between? And what triggered that whole process to start? Okay, so I’m gonna go through those one more time. Where’s the data? Now? Where does it need to go? What happened to it in between? And what triggered that process to start? And if you ask yourself those questions, and you, you know, do yourself a write up, that’s gonna give you the guts of what, what it really means to go around that you’re starting with the origin, you’re going to the destination, what happens in between? And how do we begin there? So where’s the data now? Where does it need to go? What happens in between? And finally, what triggered the process to start? So as you pick apart where that goes, the moment you have that all written up? Here’s my favorite part, you’re ready to go post on Upwork or Fiverr? And get some help? Okay, you will find that you will find a 20 to 50% decrease in the amount of cost associated with a project on Upwork Fiverr, or whichever Freelancer you’re working with? If you answer those questions succinctly, and do it well. So the tool I just gave you is actually a money saving tool.
Rolando Rosas 23:49
Phil, I want to say that that is a pro tip, let’s rewind that part about fiber, or throw up a pro tip for Will. All right, Will Pro K hit for people. All right, pro tip.
Will Christensen 24:08
So pro tip, where’s the data? Now? Where does it need to go? What triggered the process to start? And what happens to the data in between I just mix up the order there. But you put that up in your Fiverr or Upwork listing when you’re asking for help automating and you will save 20 to 50% on that overall bid. Because the director understands now what you actually want to get done, versus you walk up and say, Hey, I got this spreadsheet and I want to automate it. Right? Like right guys like, Oh, that’ll be $1,000 Because I have no idea what you know, or that’ll be $100,000 Because I have no idea what you really want.
Rolando Rosas 24:43
Well, let’s also let’s talk about, let’s say a real life example will a lot of folks use an application like Salesforce? Right? Salesforce is a warehouse of data for many parts of the organization accounting sales, customer support, and I’m when when I’m talking to other organizations They they have a hard time sometimes in Salesforce is a great tool. But they may want to move data from Salesforce and maybe put it into a spreadsheet in a certain format, let’s say a report of some sort, and it doesn’t look. And there may be different bits of it. How does how does an organization then get started? Now they know the process, right? You given them the ABCs, this is what you want to look for? And they said, Yep, great. Well, we use Salesforce for warehousing all of our data, and we have spreadsheets and Google and all these other things as well. How can we take some of this data, massage it and put it over here? Because because then those may be spreadsheets, don’t talk to the, to the to the Salesforce data management part. So how can we move it? So it’s in a spreadsheet format, that maybe a particular manager or business owner needs it?
Will Christensen 25:46
So what I would say then is, so let’s say that you’re, you know, you’re writing it down, you’re like, Oh, I’m just not sure that I need to go get some professional help you get like, let’s see if there’s an option out there for me. Answer the question, where’s the data? Now answer the question, Where does the data need to go? And go throw that in Google? You like it, people are like, what really? Will, you’re gonna give me a Google tip. I’m dead serious. You write in, you write in like, okay, like, I gotta go take that Salesforce data and go put it into a Google spreadsheet, type in Salesforce to Google Sheets, you will be shocked at how many automations there are already out there that exist that you don’t even need to go create that are just on the front page of
Rolando Rosas 26:26
Google. Right? Right.
Will Christensen 26:28
Okay. So, yeah, already exists already exists. Okay. So super important for you to recognize that, that find the solutions that already exist. And then I gave you the pro tip on how to go ask for some professional help. And obviously, DataAutomation, dataautomation.com, you can ask us for help as well, if you want, but you don’t need to come to us, the automation pie is so large, there is so much out there that needs to be automated. It’s ridiculous. So ya know, super, super important that you ask those questions. And I actually go through and first I asked Google, if Google doesn’t give me something, I go ask Salesforce support. And then I go ask Google Sheets support. Like I go, I go find the forums, and I asked those support teams, then I go to my mastermind. And I’m like, Hey, has anybody done this? And I remember, where’s the data? Now? Where does it need to go? I use those same things to go ask my mastermind. And then I keep going down. And eventually I’ll go ask for some professional help if I can’t figure it out on my own. But there’s a series of of just surfacing what you’re looking for, that you’re gonna find a lot of automation opportunity just by doing that.
Rolando Rosas 27:36
Well, Will also want to ask you, because people want to know if they if they get this implemented, you know, I mentioned the project that we started or early on about saving 15 hours, or actually 15 hours on this particular employee, and it’s in perpetuity, we keep saving money and using them in another particular in another fashion for them to work, because of this employee was very productive, but just the tasks took too long. what can organizations business owners look forward to at the end of the process? Where can when can they expect the return on investment? Because let’s say like you said, okay, the low hanging fruit is okay, I want to do something in spreadsheets, maybe I find into Google, maybe I find a YouTube but now let’s move upward up the up the funnel here up the food chain, where you have companies that have more complex needs, because if they are going to invest, I’m just I’m just throwing numbers, whether it’s $1,000 at this solution, 10,000 or 100,000. The very first question I know I’m asked is, when am I gonna get a return on investment?
Will Christensen 28:40
Yeah, and the way that you answer the question about return on investment is you do the math. So I hidden value. So So here’s another pro tip.
Rolando Rosas 28:51
Let’s get oriented throw approach at Oregon.
Will Christensen 29:01
The hidden value inside automation is when you go in and you start to pick apart what you’re actually going to gain as far as the ROI and everybody goes back and says okay, well, how much am I paying the guy an hour? Or how much am I paying myself an hour? How much time am I saving? Let’s talk about that 52 weeks a year? The hidden value is okay. Now what are you doing now that that’s that’s no longer on your plate? People don’t think about that. Often. They don’t they don’t say okay, well, what would you do if you if I gave you so Rolando? Like we can sit down and we can talk about your business? If I gave you an extra 10 hours a week? What could you do to your bottom line?
Rolando Rosas 29:39
X? Several things Yeah, but 10 hours a week. Boy, that’s that’s an extra time that I didn’t have before. Tell me tell me how
Will Christensen 29:48
well that extra time begins to multiply right if you gave me 10 extra hours a week to work on data automations bottom line, I could probably 30 or 40 or 50% the size of the biz This. So now I can take that 10 hours a week. And I know what I’m paying myself and I can come up with that equation. And then I look at that 10 to 30% 50% increase in my business. And now I’ve got some real budget to go around and help figure out where it is. So as long as what I invest is not only the time savings, but also the multiplier effect of that time. That’s the hidden value. A lot of people are like, Whoa, it only takes me an hour a day, or it only takes me an hour a month to do that. So it’s not that big a deal. What would you do with that hour, you’re not gonna go take a nap. I mean, maybe you are, maybe your business is to that point, but but you’re not gonna go take a nap. So it’s a good idea for you to really understand where this goes and where some real opportunity is.
Rolando Rosas 30:45
And I agree, because it’s incremental, in terms of the number of hours and once you start one project, you’re you will you’re I mean, you and I are working on several other ones, where you’re like, Okay, where else can we save it, because it’s you, you do invest, there’s no doubt about it, especially as the the project gets more complex, when you maybe you’re integrating multiple systems, you want a, b, and c to all talk to each other, and then spit out D as a result, and we have several of those going on right now with you. And the investment. And for us, a lot of them have paid dividends within the first few weeks. Because we could use the same amount of labor force for more tasks, essentially letting the computers and machines and we saw that during COVID, our business just went like this. But we didn’t have to increase headcount. Because we were able to scale up with automation. And that allowed us to keep our controls under cost, while allowing our business to grow. And I think as things get more ramped up with more people returning to office, I think more and more businesses are asking themselves this question like, how do I grow and keep scaling up, whether you’re large or medium or even a small business, but maintaining your costs under control? And I think automation plays a key role in that.
Will Christensen 32:09
Yeah, it’s about so so one of the things that’s interesting about handing a task over to a computer versus leaving in the hands of an employee, is that that computer has the ability to understand just the set of parameters that it has, it doesn’t have that human intuition. But it’s also completely scalable. I mean, you literally for pennies can can build 1000s and 1000s of workers that can go out and do whatever it was that was on a human’s plate. And so there’s a scalability to and it’s going to force you to really think about your business. So let me throw out a couple of quick tips. So there are tools that every single business owner, every single business owner, slash employee slash professional, should be using, you should have installed and this is one of the least installed things that I see people have on their computers every single day that they should have installed, that’s going to save them probably upwards of 10 to 15 minutes a week, if not 10 to 15 minutes a day. And so, so these tools, I’m gonna give you a couple of tools that I install, and that I use for time savings and communication, that just really go all out in terms of the opportunity.
Rolando Rosas 33:26
Okay, awesome. I love I love I love it. And so are we going to have those tools, maybe we can, we can throw those up back and in the description and also in once, once we finish the broadcast, we’ll make sure folks have those. So if you’re watching us on the playback, there’ll be in the description. So you can get to some of these tools as well. And take advantage of some of the things that you can do that are quite low cost well, right.
Will Christensen 33:51
Yeah, some of them are free. So the the number one tool that I see people not installing, and this is just for business professionals in general is what’s called a clipboard manager. Okay, so a clipboard manager is a tool that you put onto your onto your desktop, or you know, Mac or PC, and every time you copy something, so let’s say that I’m copying a phone number, or an order number, or an email address, or a series of email addresses, what it does, it actually goes in and it will get for you all of that information. So let’s say that you copied an email address, but you know that you’ve copied three or four things since then, quick keyboard shortcut, it’ll pull up a list of the last 500 Things you’ve copied and you can search for that email address. So instead of you having to be like oh, wait, okay, to go get that email address, I gotta go back into my email and I got to search for whoever sent that to me and then I got a copy paste that email address. Then I go back to the original email that I was reading and I paste it. Instead of all of that you literally quick keyboard shortcut search for that email address. You’ve got it right there in your clipboard. And away you go, works really well for passwords, all of that kind of stuff where you had to copy it. So me, instead of me having to remember where I copied and pasted that from, I’ve got this trail of the last 500 things that I’ve copied, I’m ready. So let’s say that you’re typing an email, you’re like, oh, my gosh, I’m writing the same paragraph two, this guy that I wrote to the other guy, but I didn’t yet store it inside the macros inside the ticket system you’re using. But I did copy and paste it. Oh, cool. So you just search for it, paste it, boom, you’re good to go. So clipboard manager is the number one tool, I recommend clip clip on Windows. That’s the one that I liked there. And copy clip is the one that I like for, for Mac. And those are both free to use tools that are available for both Windows and Mac. So number one tool that I would recommend everybody stop. And now here’s the here’s the funny part. This tool is so it seems so simple. And you’re like oh, it’s not it’s not really saving me that much time. Like, it is so so important that you sit down and you actually go in and and look at it like stop right now go download it, install it, you’ll be shocked at how much time it saves you.
Dave Kelly 36:23
For the manager, good tip.
Will Christensen 36:26
clipboard manager. Okay. Another tip that I love doing. How many of you? You know, by raise of hands, I kind of wish there was like this massive audience because it would be like everybody would be shouting from the rooftops when I say this. But how many of you have ever had a bug inside some software that you were using? Where it didn’t do what it was supposed to do? Everybody’s like, oh my gosh, yeah, that’s been me. How much time did you waste? Trying to get around that bug? How much time did you waste typing up the if the bugs important enough to you? How much time did you waste typing up that really long email describing what was there to send it in? Or maybe you just skipped over it? You’re like, you know what, I’m not typing up that email. Nobody ever fixes them. It’s just annoying. Then the next time you see that bug again, nobody else has reported it. Guess what it’s wasting your time again, the tool I’m going to teach you about now is called loom or Screencastify. loom or Screencastify. There are three questions you need to answer every time you find a bug inside a piece of software that you’re using. Ask yourself, What did I expect to happen? What did happen? And how do I recreate that? If you answer those three questions verbally, in a loom, or Screencastify, and you send that into the support team over there, they’re gonna give you the royal treatment. Because everybody in their dog when they report a bug in a piece of software, they report and they say, Oh, well, so this page is broken. And that and the person on the other end the support tickets, like what do you mean, it’s broken like that could have been any one of 5000 things. So get your bugs in your applications fixed by using something like Screencastify or loom and going back. So that’s the second, the second one that I would recommend. This is also beautiful for, let’s say that you’re developing a website or a brochure or you’ve got, you know, this new sales tactic or whatever else it is, open up the email that the person just sent, you record your screen and just talk through the bullet points, I can literally spew out in a five minute quick loom or Screencastify. Video, that’s how they give you a limit on the Screencastify for five minutes for free, I can create a six or seven pages worth of email that is 10 times more clear than you can I can do it in five minutes, it would take you three or four hours to write the same email and make it clear because I can show my screen, I can show the images I can draw on the screen while I’m going at it. Just the level of communication goes up dramatically. And it’s almost as if you had a video call like so instead of that meeting instead of that 15 to 30 minute meeting where you share your screen. Stop, don’t don’t don’t go bug them. Open up screencast fire loom, record your screen and send it back over you’ll be shocked at how much the the decrease in the number of back and forth that you’ve got.
Rolando Rosas 39:17
No I agree with us we use loom here internally and we’ve used that with internally for internal purposes and external purposes. And we’ve found I’ve found multiple times when going back and forth with vendors or suppliers or other folks that we work with outside the organization. One loom takes care of 10 emails that you easily go back and forth and it’s a huge time saver. So if you’re not comfortable with being on camera, you don’t have to they have a camera feature where you can be on camera as well as your screen. Or you can have it just screen only and that and they would just listen to your voice and Rolando
Dave Kelly 39:52
before before they started before we started using them. We do copy and paste we do screenshots So we draw things with a red circle and a highlighter and make notes. And yeah, I mean, well, you’re absolutely right, it can easily save you three pages of email, which no one would read anyways. And it was no end up creating the need for a conference call or a phone call or something like that. So cool.
Will Christensen 40:18
Dave, imagine if if I had a problem with a piece of software that you wrote, imagine if I could invite you to sit next to me for five minutes. While I showed you what was wrong. It’s the same dang thing. Like I literally am inviting the developer who made the product to sit next to me at my computer and just listen to me, while I explain exactly what was wrong. Like, it’s just unreal, that the amount of communication that that Screencastify or loom will eliminate for your business.
Dave Kelly 40:47
Yeah. And I think they appreciate that just as much because they’re able to get to the root of the problem. They want to fix that product. Right? So being able to do that. Yeah, huge timesaver,
Will Christensen 40:57
just remember to tell them how to recreate the problem. That’s the biggest one. And if you if you tell them, hey, here’s what’s broken, it’s kind of hard not to show them that. That’s one of the reasons why loom is nice, because you have to show them what page you’re on in order to show that it’s broken. But yeah, get into like, how did you get here? Right? That’s, that’s the big piece for for bug communication.
Rolando Rosas 41:16
Awesome. I love the all those tips. And Will, if folks want to maybe use your services follow you how can they do that right now?
Will Christensen 41:29
Yeah, absolutely. The best place to catch me is on is on LinkedIn. If you just search for Will Christensen and DataAutomation, I’ll come right up to the top. And if you’ll if you’ll make a connection request get in there. We’ll connect and I’m happy to answer questions. We do you know, free 30 minute systems design calls where we’ll jump in and, and help people kind of look at different pieces of it. We’re doing our own podcast as well, where we release a lot of tips and tricks all over the place. So obviously, you can find us at dataautomation.com as well. But more than happy to support anyone in their automation journey, because it is a journey, and it is difficult. But it’s well worth it. The dividends pay out big time in the end.
Rolando Rosas 42:14
I love it. I love it. Agreed. I mean, there’s, you know, we use your services, we can vouch for them, we were continuing to do projects. So let’s just say a lot. And they have really helped a tremendous amount, especially in the past 16 months. With with COVID We knew I had no idea what was waiting for us in both a good and a bad way. And, and for us, it was great to have a lot of things automated because you know, people were not in the office or word some people got sick and you know, having systems running in the background doing a lot of this work, whether you’re there or not really helped out, especially because things let’s say things hit the fan. And they hit the fan a lot. Right? They
Dave Kelly 43:03
we were we were very confident that we were going to be able to wipe that fan clean. And it wasn’t that and I’ll tell you Will, the automation processes that that we have global tech has instilled a ton of confidence. And myself and my team here. Always very impressed by the work that you and Rolando accomplished together.
Will Christensen 43:29
Well, honestly, it’s been a it’s been a pleasure working with, with global tech, we love working with you guys in general. And I mean, it’s just fascinating to see, if you prepare yourself and Rwanda would be the first to tell you that it’s not an inexpensive process, right. And I think it’s important that people recognize that you have to invest in it. That’s why I talked about that hidden value of automation. The hidden value for for the global tech team was when COVID hit and when, you know, things just skyrocketed and you guys had that opportunity to just capture the demand that was associated with it was there because you’d you’d invested already in the process to go there. So don’t I guess if the moral of the story is don’t hesitate, don’t wait. Begin your automation journey now because it’s a it’s a it’s kind of like a 401k Right, the sooner you start, the more the more you get out of it. It’s you gotta you gotta jump in now.
Rolando Rosas 44:25
I agree. We’ll well said Is there any other I’m gonna give any other last tip or anything else?
Will Christensen 44:33
Um, you know, honestly, if I were to, you know, to throw out one last thing to the individuals that were that were here, it would be Stay curious. You You would be shocked at what’s automatable people come to me all the time Rolando and I he stopped asking me like is this automatable he just started throwing stuff that was like, let’s automate this Well, and, and so that the level of confidence that he now has in our ability, but I remember at the beginning where he’d bring me something and he’d be like, Are you sure we can automate that I was like, Oh, well to put a spreadsheet in the middle of it and have a human being look at that part of it, because a huge Computers never gonna figure that part out. But this part, this part, this part, and this part 80% of the process was totally automatable. So Stay curious. That would be my last tip for people about automation.
Rolando Rosas 45:29
You’re right, well, staying curious. Because things come up things change, your competitors change, the environment changes, like COVID. And it changes how you work. But having the ability to have things running in the background allowed us to really just be much smoother than I can only imagine those folks who work in organizations that did not have a lot of things automated and people just were not able to get that work done. It had this message in a situation, right?
Will Christensen 45:57
They weren’t in the same building anymore. So they had no idea how to walk over to somebody’s desk and get the paperwork pushed around. Yeah, no, they, they it was it was a whole new world. I’m excited. I think the world’s gotten a better place gotten to a better place. I know, there’s been a lot of casualty in Los Angeles. But I think that it’s been a powerful thing overall, to push society and the world forward in the realm of technology. And I think we’re going to be better for I think we fast forward and some of our technological advances by dealing with the COVID. And it’s been cool to see the human race adapt. Okay.
Rolando Rosas 46:32
Well, well said, well, and I want to let our folks know that are watching us today that we do have more, we’re going to go to the screen. Alright. And yeah, well, there we go. Okay, we’ll invite you to like and subscribe. Follow us, we have a community growing of like minded individuals, business owners and others who want to get information on how to grow their business, how to scale their business, how to improve processes. And if you want that, go ahead, let us know by subscribing because we also release other nuggets throughout the week. And you don’t want to miss out on that, Dave, right.
Dave Kelly 47:10
That’s right. And hey, listen, talk about not wanting to miss out. We’re going to quickly go back to our question of the week. And this was I think his name, I think his name was Charlie, who was asking this question, and the question was related around wireless range and Bluetooth headsets. So here’s the question again, he’s using a Bluetooth headset, he uses a bluetooth dongle with his laptop, which is always smart. But he’s not getting that wireless range, how can he improve it? So listened. Bluetooth is a signal, it’s transmitted through an antenna, the dongle is an antenna. And usually when we’re putting these in there sideways, we have multiple USB ports, you can always try to put it in a different USB port, tried to not obstruct it, the key is we’re trying to look for a line of sight from the dongle to the headset. So you might be able to find success by increasing your range by putting that dongle into a another USB port. Again, if there’s anything obstructing the field of sight, sorry, the line of sight from that set down, move that. But here at global tech, we have a new product that we’re launching, we’re taking pre orders on this now. And this is called the what are we calling this Rolando, this is the blue beacon range extender, the blue beacon range extender, you know, the team has been working on this product for quite a quite a long time. You might have one
Rolando Rosas 48:36
I can I can actually reach over here. I actually use it, it’s it’s over here on the side, let me know if we can get it in full area. So you can see I’ve got my dongle already connected to it. So I use it with my Bluetooth headset that I’m used with my computer and my mobile phone. Thanks sorry for the studio shot there. I use that it goes sits on my monitor. So now I get much better range. And you know, David, something, Dave, another David in my head. The other thing that I’ve found is that I can go over to my kitchen and use my headset and a much longer range than I used to, I couldn’t go in the kitchen and stay on a conference call and go grab a bite to eat, it always dropped. And it’s something else I’d learned just the other day like I just learned something new that on any computer that has a USB three point o port. Many of those computers ports are unshielded and create interference with Bluetooth signals. Turns out that USB 3.0 uses the same frequency as Bluetooth. So a lot of USB ports will cause that are 3.0 that are unshielded will cause a Bluetooth device to drop skip. It will cause delays in the audio and all kinds of stuff. So and we by the way, we do have more more helpful tips on this on Bluetooth on connectivity, as well as business topics. And do we have that ready, Laurie?
Okay, all right. Well, all of that. All of that will be good Dave.
Dave Kelly 50:20
Sorry, Rolando. Yep. So all of that will be put in the description below. We are taking pre orders for the cables. This will be below and again, Rolando, this is why we want the folks to like, subscribe and enable notifications, because these are the sorts of nuggets that you’re going to get from us that are playing with the technology every single day.
Rolando Rosas 50:38
That’s right. That’s right. Well, so thank you. Well, thanks for coming on today. We appreciate you sharing with our audience valuable information. And get a hold of well, if you’re looking to automate your processes.
Will Christensen 50:55
Glad to be here. Thanks, guys.
Dave Kelly 50:56
Excellent. Thanks right.
Rolando Rosas 50:59
Now. All right. So for those that have stuck around to the end, I want to invite you in where am I pointing to? This is new for us. I’m going to invite you over here, I’m going to invite you to continue getting our wonderful content and business topics and nuggets. You’ll see it right here on your screen, where we’ve got more for you. So I invite you to check out those other helpful tips to allow you to grow your business and take it to the next level. All right, thank you very much. And we’ll see you next time.
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